But then, she’d known what this meant. The special connection between them, that he cared for her, and wanted to help her.
Nadia’s way of behaving in public—particularly in school—was annoying to some people, she knew. But she didn’t know how else to behave!
If you’re beautiful, skinny, smart—you can be yourself.
If not, you have to make people like you.
Since grade school in Connecticut—(in that confused interlude after Nadia’s mother had gone away and there was a new “mom,” Mr. Stillinger’s second wife, of whom no one ever spoke now, especially not in Amelie’s presence)—Nadia had cultivated a way of capturing attention as she’d had as a small child, more naturally: widening her eyes—parting her lips—expressing surprise, even awe—curiosity, wonderment; seeming so helpless; in fact, she was helpless, and most adults were immediately sympathetic.
Her father, for instance. It was very hard for Mr. Stillinger to discipline his daughter, who might burst into tears at the slightest criticism.
In school, often Nadia was restless, squirmy—too nervous to sit still. If attention didn’t focus on her, where was she? Frequently she waved her hand to answer a teacher’s question without exactly knowing what she meant to say. Sometimes she interrupted other students while they were speaking, blurting out answers before the teacher called her name—“Now, Nadia, settle down.”
But Nadia’s teachers rarely scolded her. They didn’t have the heart. In any group of students Nadia was the most childlike and yearning to be loved, and so sweet—and apologetic as soon as she realized she’d behaved rudely, clamping her hand over her mouth in embarrassment.
“Ohhh—I’m sorry.”
And—“Did I interrupt? I didn’t mean to.”
The surprise was that Nadia often gave correct answers—intelligent answers—though you wouldn’t expect so, judging from just looking at her.
Tink had liked her, but why? The girls of Tink, Inc., were so cool—why’d Tink care for silly, fat Nadia Stillinger?
She’d almost wanted to ask Tink that question—except Tink would’ve been embarrassed.
Because I don’t see what you see, when you look in the mirror. I see some other Nadia, who’s my friend. Got it?
It had been shocking to Nadia when at the start of the new term Mr. Kessler, who was usually so polite, funny, and mild-mannered, had spoken sharply to her in front of the class. Nadia hadn’t even been aware that she had interrupted another girl who was answering a question—she’d been too excited, enthusiastic. Mr. Kessler had interrupted her—“Nadia, please! Wait and speak in turn.”
Nadia had been crushed, obliterated. The rest of the class hour passed in a haze of shame and barely withheld tears. When the bell rang, the science teacher relented, seeing Nadia’s crestfallen face. As she tried to slink past him, Mr. Kessler said, with a forgiving frown, “I realize that you’re very enthusiastic about our class, Nadia, but others are, too. You don’t seem aware of interrupting other people, and your behavior might be confused with rudeness.”
Rudeness!
“Ohh! I’m sorry, Mr. Kessler.”
“You seem to become overexcited. Can you count to five?—to ten?—before you fling up your hand?”
“Oh, yes. Yes—I will.”
Nadia’s heart was suffused with warmth, with love.
The way the handsome young science teacher had looked at her—his hazel eyes, his reproachful-yet-teasing smile.
I will. I will!
I will earn your respect.
Part of Nadia’s anxiety about being noticed, and being liked, had to do with the fact that her father had moved to Quaker Heights only three years before, in the middle of Nadia’s freshman year in high school. She’d had friends—(she wanted to think)—at her old school, but here in Quaker Heights, New Jersey, she knew no one. Friendships among the most popular girls had already been established since grade school, if not day care; even their mothers knew one another, it was so unfair. Boys were different: Boys liked new girls if they were pretty and vivacious, funny and flirty and not serious—and, with her straight-cut bangs that fell to her eyebrows, and snub nose, and warm brown eyes, Nadia Stillinger was cute.
What Nadia’s stepmother, Amelie, called charmant.
Nadia’s stepmother Amelie, with her French accent and tinkling laughter, was certainly charmant! When Nadia was in the young Mrs. Stillinger’s company, just walking into one of the upscale stores at the Quaker Heights Mall, or climbing out of Amelie’s white Mercedes coupe, was an adventure—people could look nowhere else but at Amelie, who carried herself as if she were perpetually on camera.
The former Amelie LaSoeur had been a fashion model—(or so she described herself)—with a mane of ashy blond hair, six feet tall in high-heeled leather boots, tight-fitting designer jeans, and an ocelot-fur jacket from Bergdorf Goodman. Amelie had a face that glared like something on a billboard.
“Charmant, Nadia—you must try harder. You have a pretty face—or will—when your cheeks are not so—what is it?” Amelie spoke in French-accented English and laughed with the most delicious sort of cruelty, the kind that pretends to be helpful. “Like one of those—what is it—cheepmonks.”
Of course, anyone who overheard this remark, including Nadia’s father, laughed in delight at Amelie’s so-charmant mispronunciation: cheepmonks instead of chipmunks.
Cheeks like a cheepmonk’s: meaning fat.
Of course red-faced Nadia laughed, to show that she wasn’t hurt.
Or if she was, Nadia laughed all the harder.
Tink had said to just hang in there, a stepmother is not a bloody mother.
You can grow up and move away and escape a stepmother as you can’t a bloody mother.
Nadia had climbed a hill into High Ridge County Park. She’d been talking to herself, anxious and shivering and yet sweating inside her clothes. Amelie sometimes crinkled her nose in Nadia’s wake, complaining, Une jeune fille must bathe. If she is to sweat like a little piggy, she must bathe soon.
The mangled English made Amelie’s remarks funny. Even Nadia’s father laughed, when otherwise he’d have felt disgust for his slovenly fat daughter.
Nadia was leaning against a railing. Staring down at the fast-running Lenape River, which was about thirty feet below her.
This was a narrow but deep and allegedly treacherous river that cut through the hilly countryside north of the village of Quaker Heights. Near shore, Canadian geese in a flotilla were paddling in the cold water and communicating with one another in short, honking cries.
“Oh, Tink. I think that I did something really, really stupid. I think that I . . .”
Nadia was pressing against the railing, staring down. She felt bitterly how unfair it was that Colin Brunner’s friends had not taken time to notice her attractive new jacket; they’d never really noticed how attractive she was.
How unfair, Nadia had no mother: only just a stepmother.
Like a girl in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
There came a thin, uplifted cry, or call—somewhere behind Nadia in the woods.
Nadia turned, startled. She’d assumed that she was alone.
She could see no one. The woodchip paths were covered in a fine dusting of snow and were deserted.
Yet again—there was the thin, plaintive cry.
“H-hello? Is someone there?”
Nadia’s heart beat strangely. It was a sensation she’d felt several times since Tink had left them, but usually in her sleep: in a dream.
Now Nadia was wide awake. Her wakefulness hurt her, like an overpowering light shone into her eyes.
“Is it—Tink? Tink?”
Nadia swallowed hard. She stared eagerly toward the woods—a deciduous woods mostly, and the tall, straight trees barren of leaves.
“Tink? Hey, Tink?—Is it you? I wish . . .”
This was ridiculous, Nadia knew. Yet her heart continued to beat so strangely, as if she were in the presence of—someone, or something.
Tink had once confided in her friends that she had a phobia about heights—just coming near to the edge of a roof or a precipice, or standing on a balcony, she would feel a swooning urge to throw herself off.
But Tink had said she would never do this.
Why?
Too bloody messy. Too public.
Tink had been joking, of course.
Most of Tink’s mordant remarks were jokes. Of course.
There was a stirring in the underbrush about twelve feet from Nadia. A small furry shape appeared—a cat—staring toward Nadia with widened tawny eyes.
Was this a wildcat—a lynx? Its fur was a beautiful bristling silver laced with black stripes and spots.
Nadia stepped away from the railing slowly, not wanting to frighten the cat. It might have been a feral cat, staring at Nadia from out of the underbrush. Its throat quivered, Nadia heard a soft mewing sound.
It’s Tink. She has come to me.
Nadia was shivering so hard that her teeth chattered. She saw that the cat had no collar and its haunches were very thin. Again came the plaintive mewing cry.
Fascinated by the cat in the underbrush, which was looking so purposefully at her, Nadia approached the animal with an extended hand. Softly she murmured, “Kitty! Kitty-kitty-kitty . . . Are you lost? Are you hungry? Poor beautiful kitty . . .”
The cat hesitated as Nadia approached. It seemed to Nadia that the little cat yearned to come forward, to sniff at her extended fingers and rub against her ankles—but fear held her back.
“I wish you would come home with me, kitty. Please, kitty . . .”
The cat shrank backward. Its ears were laid back and its tail twitched nervously. Its throat quivered again, and this time Nadia heard a sharp hiss.
“Oh, kitty! I’m not going to hurt you—I promise.”
But the cat turned now and ran away gracelessly through the underbrush. Nadia took a few quick steps after it, calling, “Kitty-kitty!”
In an instant the cat had vanished. Nadia’s breath steamed in the cold air. Soon it would be late afternoon, and dusk—she had better hurry home before she was thoroughly exhausted and chilled.
She would walk quickly now. She was anxious to get home.
She was thinking, Tink sent a sign to me. Tink did not want me to harm myself in the river.
She was thinking of her stepmother Amelie’s lynx jacket. Beautiful fur, exquisite markings, and so soft . . . Nadia hadn’t quite realized, when she’d first seen her young stepmother’s fur jacket, that many people are disgusted by fur coats; that many people are morally revolted by the practice of skinning beautiful creatures for their fur. And wasn’t lynx an endangered species in the United States? But Amelie had a ready excuse: Her lynx jacket, which Nadia’s father had given her, was vintage, not new. Amelie had picked it out for herself from a chic boutique in Tribeca.
The poor cat! Nadia vowed she would return to High Ridge Park the next day to leave food for her.
Just thinking of the cat that had mewed to her, Nadia was feeling better. More hopeful, somehow.
It was childish to think that Tink had sent the little cat to her—Nadia knew. And yet.
Thinking, Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe Mr. Kessler will understand. Maybe—Nadia didn’t dare to think, Maybe my father won’t miss the painting.
By the time Nadia returned home to the two-story fieldstone-and-glass house at 6 Wheatsheaf Lane, which always looked as if no one lived in it, the wintry sky had darkened almost to night, and the slow-falling snow wasn’t melting so quickly.
Unlike her friends, whose parents—mothers, in any case—were vigilant about their daughters’ whereabouts at all times, Nadia wasn’t concerned that her father or stepmother would have wondered where she was since she’d failed to come home from school at her usual hour.
Neither Nadia’s father or stepmother would be home, she knew. This was a consolation!
Even Merissa Carmichael, who sometimes complained of her mother’s excessive vigilance, now that her father had moved permanently out of their lives, really took comfort in knowing that a parent cared about her, if perhaps excessively. Cell phones had to be forbidden at Quaker Heights, otherwise mothers would be calling their children constantly through the day; as Anita Chang joked, she couldn’t go to the restroom without her mom checking on her. Nadia thought it was ironic that all of the girls of Tink, Inc., were so watched over by their mothers—except for Nadia, and, when she’d been among them, Tink herself.
It was marveled how, if you invited Tink to come to dinner at the last minute, even to stay overnight, she was very casual about checking with her mother, who might or might not have been home in any case.
No lights were evident in the Stillinger house, from Wheatsheaf Lane. In the little cul-de-sac in which the Stillingers lived, two other large fieldstone houses, looking like architects’ models, were also mostly unlit except at the rear, where the housekeeper would be preparing a meal in the kitchen.
Nadia’s father was CFO at a pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Quaker Heights, New Jersey; previously, he’d been a financial officer at a pharmaceutical company in Hartford, Connecticut. And before that—but Nadia’s memory shut down. Not healthy to dwell on the past! Nobody likes a whiner.
Even when Mr. Stillinger wasn’t traveling, when he was at the New Jersey headquarters, most evenings he worked late at his office. And today was a day when Amelie was in the city—that is, New York City.
This was a relief! Nadia could eat a meal alone, a nice meal prepared by Mariana, and she could check text messages as she ate, or anxiously scan Facebook and incoming emails—no need to talk.
When would Mr. Kessler discover the present in his car, open it and discover the painting—and the card?
How soon—hours? minutes?—before he realized that Dani A. had to be Nadia Stillinger?
By now, nearly five p.m., Mr. Kessler had probably left school. Often Nadia had seen him, when girls’ chorus practice was breaking up, crossing the parking lot with several other teachers—frequently, in fact, with a new, young math teacher in the middle school whose name sounded like a TV name—Lula Lovett.
Nadia called out a cheery hello to Mariana, in the kitchen. Nadia was always cheery and upbeat in the housekeeper’s presence, but she didn’t want to linger in the kitchen for even a minute; she was too excited and distracted to do anything more than take from the refrigerator a container of strawberry yogurt and from a drawer a spoon with which to eat it.
Thinking, Oh dear God, he will call me soon—maybe. Or—email.
Or—maybe not until tomorrow, after class.
4.
“LEFT WITHOUT SAYING GOOD-BYE”
Suddenly she’d known. It had come to her—unmistakably.
Which was why she’d gone to see Mr. Kessler in his office—she had to be certain.
“Why, hello, Nadia! I wasn’t sure that anyone was waiting here. . . .”
The expression on Mr. Kessler’s face. An avidity, an alertness, and something like alarm in his eyes fixed on her face.
And when Nadia scrambled to her feet, clumsy, laughing, as she’d been sitting on the floor outside Mr. Kessler’s office for—how long?—at least forty minutes, she would have lost her balance and fallen back down except Mr. Kessler instinctively reached out to grab Nadia’s hand, to steady her.
“Hey! Gotcha.”
He’d laughed. And Nadia had laughed, blushing and breathless as if she’d run up a flight of steep steps.
He was relatively new to Quaker Heights Day School.
Nadia would calculate that he’d joined the faculty in the year that she’d transferred to the school—though she hadn’t taken a course with the science teacher until her senior year.
There we
re several science teachers on the high school faculty: biology, physics, chemistry, Earth and Our Environment.
Adrian Kessler was the youngest and had quickly acquired a reputation for being demanding.
At QHD, where classes were smaller than in public schools, and personalities were prominent, it came to be quickly known that Mr. Kessler, though you might trade witticisms with him, laugh and joke with him, was one of the less persuadable teachers.
Athletes who’d seemed to be favorites of Mr. Kessler’s in class, with a habit of slighting schoolwork on the eve of big games, soon discovered that Mr. Kessler was a man of principle. He listened to excuses, smiled sympathetically, and seemed to agree, but then quietly restated his position: Grading in his courses was “blind”—all that mattered was the work itself, not whose work it was.
“In the world, you’ll be judged by what you do, not what you are.”
(But was this so? Not all Quaker Heights students believed this, for there was evidence among their families and acquaintances that who you are was often more important than what you did. But it was hopeless to argue with the idealistic young Adrian Kessler.)
Calling the roll on the first day of class, Mr. Kessler had managed somehow to be very funny, making little jokes of students’ names, and of “Nadia Stillinger” he’d invented “Nadia Stillfinger,” which had seemed to Nadia thrillingly funny—though afterward, when she tried to recapitulate it to friends, the joke was very mild, indeed.
Mr. Kessler had also demonstrated a “modest feat” of memory at the conclusion of the class by recalling, student by student, up and down the aisles, their first and last names. Though he hadn’t known them before calling the roll, already he’d affixed names to faces. Again he’d made them laugh, though they were also impressed.
And then, how thrilling it had been—how strangely tender, even intimate—when Mr. Kessler not only recalled “Nadia Stillinger” but “Stillfinger.”
“In our high-tech age, we must not become overdependent on our machines to ‘remember’ for us. The brain is like any muscle—if it isn’t exercised, it will atrophy.”
Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You Page 14