by Leslie Lehr
Michelle’s head was pounding now. “Help?”
“You produced the video for him in exchange for pitching lessons.” He adjusted the rearview mirror and swore. “Dad’s gonna kill me for telling you.”
“No, he won’t. It makes sense,” Michelle said. When her boss used to complain that he wanted to make a movie, she urged him to update his director’s reel. He had a few CLIO-winning commercials, but he needed something creative, like a music video. “That’s what I do for a living. Did, anyway. And it might explain why he was in my car. But it doesn’t make it your fault.”
She looked down at the black T-shirt in her lap. She spread it out as much as she could with one hand, tugging at the safety pins holding the sides together. The front was painted with red triangles forming the letter R. “So why was this in Nikki’s locker? Was she a fan? Like that guy at the police station yesterday—he wore a shirt like this.” Tyler didn’t answer. “Tyler, no more secrets!”
“She was more than a fan, Mom. She was in the video.”
Michelle nearly laughed. She looked to see if he was teasing, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. She took note of his smartphone. “Pull over.”
He slowed past a sushi restaurant and a swimsuit store but found only No Parking signs. “I’ll show you when we get home.”
“Now.”
He maneuvered over to the curb, then turned on the next side street and parked in the red zone. Tyler tapped on the screen of his phone a few times, then held it up sideways. He pressed Play.
Michelle watched the title screen cut to a wide shot of four boys standing with their instruments in front of a plain backdrop. The low-budget style was a throwback to early Beatles videos, grainy and soft, so different than the sharp edges of digital images. Victor had taken advantage of the malleability of film. The blacks were saturated, and the shadows were velvety warm.
The musicians looked like any other amateurs, a bunch of scruffy kids in black T-shirts hand-screened with the red R. The shots were long, lingering on fingers plucking guitar strings and bouncing along with the drums, catching a laugh between the boys when the bass player slipped on a lick. It was less a performance and more an invitation to join them, to sing along. “Let it roll, baby roll, all night long.” Tyler clicked up the volume of the tiny speaker until they heard laughter in the background, the chuckle of the chubby bass player as the drummer beat an extra roll. There was no reverb, no echo, only a shouted chorus mellowed by the tenor of Noah’s voice.
The camera swung to him, the pretty boy at the mike, crooning with the charisma of Frank Sinatra. He glanced behind him where a shadow swayed—a dancer, Michelle guessed. Victor’s camera panned the other boys’ faces, but they were stealing glances off camera, at Noah.
On screen, Noah held out his arm and drew the girl close. She looked like a typical groupie in ghoulish makeup, a bit on the thin side, with a black Roadhouse T-shirt pinned together at the side. When the camera cut to a close-up, she winked her false eyelashes, raised her black-penciled brows, and stared right into the camera lens. Her eyes were round and deep, like marbles made of Tiger’s Eye.
Michelle could hear her heart beat. She held up her hand to make it stop, but searing pain shot up her arm. Wrong hand. She cried out and cradled her arm.
“You okay?” Tyler asked. He hit Pause.
She nodded, pretending the Earth had not just shifted off its axis. She opened the glove compartment, grabbed the bent glasses, and shoved them on quickly. When Tyler hit the Play button, she leaned in for a clearer look.
On-screen, Nikki resumed her swaying dance. The camera pulled back to reveal the entire the band, then panned back to Noah, who strummed the last chord and looked over at Nikki. She was laughing as her hand reached up into the frame. Her bitten nails were painted black, and she spread two fingers apart into her trademark sign. The image froze, then the screen went dark.
Michelle found her voice. “She looks so different. If it weren’t for the bunny ears…”
Tyler half-smiled. “Nobody gets that. They think it’s a peace sign, like she’s so hip.”
Michelle smiled at him. No one knew Nikki like they did. She wasn’t a truant or some hippie chick. She was their girl. “You think this had something to do with her running away?”
“I don’t know, but after it went viral, she sure got popular all of a sudden. Then, boom, Noah was gone. You both were.”
“Then maybe I was wrong about her being teased.”
“No, she was still teased. But not about underwear.” He avoided her eyes and cranked the key so far the engine screamed.
Michelle put her hand on his leg. “Did you ever get to pitch?”
He shook his head and drove home.
9
Michelle thought she was dreaming again, swimming through darkness in search of some light. Round, racking sobs filled her head, water slipped through her fingers, and her lungs strained for air. She fought to pull out of it, to keep from drowning beneath the weight of her tears. Then she unclenched her hand from the bed sheet to wipe her eyes. They were dry.
Someone else was crying. Michelle fumbled to find the lamp on her bedside table, then gave up, leaping from the bed only to bang her bad shoulder into the wall. She ignored the pain and stumbled out the door into the dark. Another sob barreled down the hall like a cannonball. Michelle prayed it was her daughter. While Nikki’s tears used to torment her, now the sobs were a symphony, the hiccups heaven-sent. Michelle could bear anything, even her baby’s unhappiness, if only she could see her again.
Michelle pushed the door open. A figure lay beneath the knit blanket. Michelle tiptoed in. A car sped past, streaking light through the shutters and across the walls. The light gleamed against the woman’s silver hair. It was Michelle’s mother.
Elyse was quiet now. Whatever nightmare roused Michelle had ended. She backed slowly out of the room and sat down in the hallway. She crossed her legs and leaned back against the wall in a familiar position. This wasn’t the first time her mother’s tears had woken her.
Behind the locked door her mother was crying. She’d called Michelle to her room late at night. Wine-stained crystal goblets were lined up along her bedside table like wounded soldiers. Elyse’s bloodshot eyes were smeared with mascara as she begged her little girl to go downstairs for more wine. She needed to take her Seconal, she cried, she was in so much pain.
Michelle saw the gold pill box cupped in her mother’s hand and refused.
Elyse slapped her.
Michelle felt the handprint rise like a hot brand on her cheek.
“Go away!” Elyse screamed.
Michelle stood frozen in fifth position until her mother swallowed the pills dry and pushed her out of the room. Michelle pounded against the door. There was no answer. She took a bobby pin from her pin curl and bit off the plastic tip. She jabbed the metal point in the keyhole until the lock clicked open. Then she pushed the door ajar and sat guard all night. The next night, Michelle waited until her mother went to bed, until she heard silence, then she picked the lock and crept inside. She put her hand to her mother’s mouth to make sure she was breathing. Then she opened the pillbox and counted her pills.
Michelle leaned her head back and tried to make sense of things. Here she was, outside her mother’s door again. But this was Nikki’s room—Elyse was supposed to be at a hotel. As Michelle looked back at her mother’s moonlit silhouette, she felt grateful that the door hadn’t been locked.
She could hear the crickets now, their song rising until the repetition was painful. Michelle pulled herself up against the smooth white wall and limped to the kitchen to get an ice pack. She tiptoed around shopping bags that hadn’t been there when she fell asleep, then noticed the stolen attendance report on the dinette. Elyse’s cat-eye glasses lay on top. Michelle slipped them on.
The official record showed a week-long absence in October, a three-day suspension in November, and the semester ending with incompletes. Nikki could have run away any t
ime after Thanksgiving.
Michelle turned the page and saw a spot of red. Another drop was on the table. For a moment, she feared her mother was hurt and felt that old familiar panic. Then she realized what she was looking at and flushed with anger. Michelle yanked the trash can open and saw the gleam of glass buried beneath crumpled napkins. She pulled out an empty bottle of Bordeaux.
Michelle strangled the wine bottle by the neck and stormed back into Nikki’s room. She set the bottle down and shook her mother awake. Elyse pulled off her satin eye mask and sat up slowly.
Michelle held the bottle up. “Back to your old tricks, Mother?”
Elyse shook her head. “I had one glass and poured the rest out.”
“I don’t believe you. Did you cancel your hotel room, or just pass out?”
Elyse pulled her silk robe over her matching peignoir and followed Michelle into the kitchen. The morning sky was beginning to glow through the window. Elyse checked to be sure she had filled the coffee machine, then pressed the button to brew. “French Roast?”
“Oh, now it’s okay?” Michelle asked.
“Anything to help you calm down.”
“I heard you crying, Mother. Were you drunk?”
“Non, ma chérie, je suis très fatiguée. And I was upset.”
“Upset that I’m no longer an invalid, so you can’t tell me what to do?”
“Don’t be rude,” Elyse said. “I know you’re tired, too, but—”
“If you only had one glass of wine, why didn’t you just cork the bottle?”
“I didn’t want to leave any temptation for Tyler.”
“Right, because teenage boys have a real palate for Bordeaux.” Michelle opened the wrong cupboard for a coffee mug.
“You’re overreacting,” Elyse said
“Am I? Nikki used to cry, too, you know. She got it from you.”
“She was a teenage girl with raging hormones. That’s perfectly normal.”
Michelle slammed the cupboard. “She cried a lot more than normal, Mother. Her own brother called her a loser. And you know what she wanted to do on her birthday? Watch Winnie the Pooh.”
“So?”
“She was sixteen.”
“Everyone needs a break now and then.”
“Everybody doesn’t have a genetic predisposition for depression, Mother. And most kids don’t refuse to go to school on their birthday. But I remember now. I took her home, but she just curled up in her bed and cried more. She put on those stupid disco earrings and got out her paintings of ponies and ripped them all up. People do things like that before killing themselves!”
“So, she felt bad about the trouble at school and decided to clean up her act.”
“No, she was so miserable that I was afraid to leave her here alone. But I had to go to work. That must be why I brought her to the set. She had been crying all night, every night, for weeks. Just like you!” Michelle dissolved into tears. “What if she…”
Elyse wrapped her arms around Michelle. “Shhh. Nikki would never hurt herself. She’s much stronger than I was.”
Michelle broke free. “She’d better be. Because if anything happens to her, I’m blaming you.”
Elyse held Michelle’s glare. “It’s you I’m worried about, ma chérie.”
“Me?” Michelle grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at her eyes.
“You need to rest. Let me help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” Michelle insisted. “I’m not a child.”
“You’ve never been a child, that’s the problem.”
“Whose fault is that?” Michelle asked.
Elyse stiffened. “Don’t make me say something we’ll both regret.”
“Then don’t say anything at all. Just get the hell out!”
The coffee maker gurgled. Elyse yanked the carafe out, then dumped the steaming liquid in the sink. She opened the trashcan and dropped the carafe in. The glass shattered against the side.
Tyler entered, rubbing his eyes. Bella bounded in after him. “What’s up?”
“I’m afraid I must go,” Elyse said.
“Is something wrong?” Tyler asked.
“No,” the women said in unison. Elyse pivoted and went to pack.
“Go back to sleep, honey,” Michelle said. She heard them say their good-byes as she opened the window. Elyse was right that she needed rest, but exhausted or not, Michelle had meant what she said. She just shouldn’t have said it aloud.
Michelle was still stewing when a taxi pulled up in the driveway. The driver, whose head was wrapped in a white turban, trudged to the porch. He saw her and shouted, “Does a Madame Deveraux live here?”
Michelle shook her head. “No, thank goodness, but she’ll be out shortly.”
The wheels of Elyse’s suitcase rolled down the hall like an aftershock, getting louder as they approached. Elyse set another shopping bag in the kitchen. “Here are some other items you won’t like. Feel free to return them—or give them to Lexi, for putting up with you. Also, Dr. Palmer’s office called.” She tapped a note pinned on the refrigerator beneath the green plaster fin, all that was left of the turtle magnet.
Michelle looked around. “You didn’t happen to see an envelope from Nikki’s school, did you? With clothes from her locker?”
Elyse pointed across the room at the laundry basket on the couch.
Michelle rushed over and dug through the folded pile for the hand-stenciled T-shirt that Nikki had worn in the Roadhouse video. She tossed Tyler’s jeans aside and pulled out a black rag held together with safety pins. Sure enough, Elyse had washed it. Michelle held it to her face and sniffed, but her daughter’s scent was gone. Michelle shook it in the air. “Mother!”
Elyse sighed. “A good deed never goes unpunished, mais oui?” The house was quiet as she slipped out, then Michelle heard laughter outside.
Michelle nearly tripped over a shopping bag on her way to the window. When she spied the beautiful leather purse inside, she felt a pang of guilt. She shook it off, then looked outside. Her mother was smiling, flirting with the driver as he lifted her luggage into the trunk. That was more like it, Michelle thought.
When the taxi backed out of the driveway, Michelle snatched the shrunken T-shirt to bring to Nikki’s room. She turned and caught her reflection in the oven glass. The truth was, blaming her mother might make her feel better, but if anyone was responsible for something bad happening to Nikki, it was Michelle. For whatever reason, she wasn’t there when her daughter needed her most.
10
Michelle was sorting the rest of the laundry when Tyler called out from the front door. “Coach is here! Are you decent?”
That was debatable, Michelle thought, now that the guilt from kicking her mother out had set in. “Let me get dressed!”
Kenny’s voice barreled down the hall. “No need, Michelle, I’m due at the courthouse at eleven.”
Michelle heard the front door shut and zipped up her hospital bathrobe. She took her cane, almost as an excuse for not being dressed. At least she still had her pearls on—it was impossible to take them off by herself.
Kenny looked different than usual as he looked up from chatting with Tyler in the foyer. “Hate to barge in like this, Michelle, but I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Sorry about that. Do I need to sign a permission slip for Tyler to play?”
“Nothing that simple,” he said. “I need to file some documents. May I?”
As she followed him into the living room, Michelle realized what was different. Instead of his blue baseball jacket, he was wearing a suit. A stinging sensation overwhelmed her, as if a swarm of wasps was trapped beneath her clothes. It reminded her of the feeling you get after your foot falls asleep and the warm blood rushes in. Only this time she could feel the pins and needles all over. “Does this have to do with Nikki?”
“Ah, the million-dollar question.” He pulled a chair out for her at the dining room table, then sat down at the end. “Make that fifty million.”
“What are you talking about?”
He opened his briefcase and took out a legal pad. “Do you remember anything about the accident yet?”
“I don’t remember who visited me at the hospital yet.”
“Lexi said that’ll be patchy for a while,” Tyler said. “TBI patients can’t have retrograde memory without autograde—the old stuff comes back first. It’s like a rule.”
Michelle smiled. “Remember my care manager from the party? She dropped off a medical release earlier. Tyler has a thing for older women,” she teased, thinking of the cheerleaders.
Tyler blushed. “No, she just knows all this stuff from dating your physiatrist. He’s the dude in charge of all the other doctors. “
Kenny nodded. “From what I gather, before you remember recent events, you have to recall much earlier experiences, correct?”
“But I do,” Michelle said. “I remember so much from when the kids were little…” Her thoughts went to Nikki as a little girl, twirling in the front yard. She tried to picture Nikki the last time she’d seen her, with the braces off, but all she could think of was the video.
Kenny cleared his throat. “Memory is a tricky thing, Michelle. You’d be surprised how many witnesses identify the wrong suspect in police lineups. Compound the power of suggestion with a trauma-based amnesia and you’ll understand why I asked Drew not to say anything he might have heard about the accident.”
He pulled the rubber band from a thick file, then spread newspaper articles on the table.
Michelle looked at Tyler. “Could you please get those old reading glasses from the car?” While he ran outside, she read the headlines: “Fatal Crash in Topanga” and “Freeway Accidents Rise Over Rainy Weekend.”
“Ah, yes,” Michelle said. “Force Majeure. That’s what the motion picture insurance companies call it when a production shuts down and they won’t pay. An ‘Act of God.’”
“Your insurance company has a similar philosophy,” Kenny said, scowling. He unfolded a feature article.