“I don’t care. It still fits.”
I don’t want to argue with her. Let her wear the stupid thing if she wants to. I’m feeling mellow. I want the world to smile with me. “How was work? Your first shift, right?”
“It was all right.” Arden rocks back on her heels and scowls at the pile of clothes heaped in her closet. She’s got that stiffness in her voice that tells me she’d hated every minute. Well, what did she expect? It’s a crappy job and it’s not like college kids tip.
She should forget her stupid suit and come sit with us, wriggle in to find a spot and tell us everything. It sucked, she should say. My manager’s a perv. D.D. would have warmed right up and everything would have been cool, but Arden’s weird around people she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how to fake it.
“You have a job?” D.D. says. “Doing what?” Now she’s being weird. It’s not like she cares. She’s never worked. She doesn’t even know what minimum wage is.
“Making smoothies at the student union.” Arden looks at me. “They still have openings, you know.”
“I bet they do.” Arden’s worried about how I’m going to pay for books and things, but I hate being in the kitchen; I was always begging my dad to let me do things like pleat napkins into triangles or carve butter into balls of yarn. You sure, honey? he’d say, holding out a frying pan. Just give it a try. But I never did. Besides, my dad sent me money—worn tens and twenties fattening up the envelope I’d held in my hand, feeling the soft thickness and guessing what it contained.
“Smoothies, yum,” D.D. says. “I’m starving.”
“Hold on.” I slide off my bed and kneel to pull out the bin beneath Arden’s bed filled with the snacks Aunt Nat left us. My mom frowned as Aunt Nat dumped in the crackers and cookies. Really, Natalie, my mom had said. Really, Gabrielle, Aunt Nat had firmly replied. Arden and I had looked at each other across the room. I root around the crumpled packages, find an opened bag of Goldfish, and shake it. A few crumbs rattle around inside. “Sorry, dude. All we have left are multivitamins and cough syrup.” Even that’s mostly gone.
“Tempting.” D.D. pushes herself up. “But I got to go anyway. See you at the game tomorrow?”
“If Hunter ever gets around to calling.”
“He will,” D.D. says. “He’s your love slave.” She pauses by the door. “See you later, Arden?”
“Sure.”
“Why do you do that?” I ask Arden, after the door closes.
“Do what?”
“Ignore her. She likes you, you know. She wants to be your friend.” Not true, but possible.
“Oh, yeah. I definitely get that vibe from her.”
“You know she can get you your stuff.”
“I’m fine.” She’s lying. I’ve checked her stash. She has only fifteen Adderall left, barely a week’s worth. “That why you hang out with her?” she asks. “Is she your supplier?”
She’s pissed. Maybe something happened at work. Who knows? “D.D.’s fun,” I said, though that’s not it. D.D.’s dangerous. I’d recognized her the instant she looked me up and down, gauging—just another Bishop bitch. The type you either befriended or watched out for. “If you want people to like you, you have to, you know, talk to them.”
“I don’t need your help making friends. We’re not in high school anymore.”
“No. We’re not.” I lean forward to apply a slick of lip gloss, and when I lean back she’s lit a candle and placed it on the windowsill. The flame’s huge, a million times bigger than the tiny one of my lighter. It’s curling and shivering, hungry. I look quickly away, but the aroma of honey and lavender wafts toward me. She’s done it just to piss me off. I begin to sweat, but I act cool. I twist the cap onto the tube. “But that doesn’t change anything.” I don’t look at the candle. I put it right out of my head. Instead, I watch Arden in the mirror. She has her back to me, but I see the stubborn line of her shoulders. “I heard Ignacio had to go back to Mexico.” A lie. For all I know, he’s in New York, making way more than he ever did at Double.
I’d been there when my dad called Ignacio into his office and closed the door. My dad never closed his office door. I sidled over, pretending to be interested in the schedules pinned to the board, but it was quiet inside. A few minutes later, Ignacio opened the door and walked over to his station. I watched him slide his knives into his case, and that was when I knew. He should have pitched a fit. He should’ve threatened to bring in a lawyer, demanded proof, witnesses, the whole thing, but he hadn’t. When he turned around, he caught me watching him. The look in his eyes told me he thought he knew what had happened. I almost told him then.
“I’m going to tell my mom,” Arden says. “It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
It does matter. It will always matter, in Arden World. “Sure, go ahead. Tell her all about it. Here, use my phone. I’ll dial it for you.”
“Don’t,” she says, panicked.
Behind her, I see it: the orange flame crawling up the side of the curtain. My skin pops up in a million bumps of gooseflesh. My throat closes. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.
“What?” Arden whirls around. “Shit!”
She grabs a towel from the floor and swings it with both hands. I don’t know why she tries. The fire’s going to win. It always does. The curtain billows away from the window, sending up a shower of tiny sparks.
“Rory!”
Flames are everywhere, a writhing mass of orange and yellow and furious red.
“Help me!” Arden’s teetering on her bed, smacking at the wall with a notebook. An ember spirals through the air to land on her pillow and disappear from sight.
Shrieking all around us. I press my palms against my ears and put my forehead against my crossed arms. I squeeze my eyes shut, making fireworks explode.
I told you, no! My own voice, crying.
The shrieking noise stops.
I lift my head. Arden’s climbing down from her desk chair. The smoke detector gapes open above her head, wires snaking out. She picks up the smoking towel from her bed and hurls it out through the open window. A shout from below. “Sorry!” she yells out. “Sorry!”
Someone’s banging on our door. “We’re fine,” Arden calls. “It’s okay.” She sinks onto the floor, breathing hard, and stares up at the ceiling, at the smoke smudged there. “Shit.”
I crawl over, the rug rubbing my knees, and come in close, arm to arm, thigh to thigh. She brings her foot close and examines the sole from where she stepped on an ember, twists her hand from side to side, examining it. “You okay?” I ask, a hoarse whisper.
She nods, sags against the wall. I lean against her and she puts her arm around my shoulders and draws me close. Her skin is warm, sticky with sweat. I feel my heart pounding, and hers. I can’t tell which is which.
“I can’t do this forever, Rory,” she says, finally, and I sigh. “I mean it. What happens when you go to Harvard? Or when you get a job?”
“I know. I just need your help with this one. I promise.” I rest my head against her shoulder and she presses her cheek against the top of my head.
“Okay. But no more.”
I’m still holding Aunt Nat’s lighter. It’s cold in my grasp.
Natalie
JANEY’S MOTHER PHONED all the parents. She was apologetic, telling my mother she’d had no idea Janey had chicken pox the day of her birthday party. I thought it was just a mosquito bite. Please tell me the twins have had it. But they haven’t and I hadn’t yet gotten them vaccinated against it. How would my mother manage if they get sick? I’ll be fine, she insisted. After all, I saw you and your sister through it. But that had been thirty years ago. We’ve Skyped with the boys, balancing Theo’s laptop on the coffee table in the visitors’ lounge. Their wide-eyed faces, so close to the screen. I yearned to reach out to stroke their rounded cheeks and ruffle their blond hair to make it stand up. You be good for Grandma, Theo had told them, and they’d earnestly nodded. We have to look for spots, Oliver had said. That
’s right, I replied. You tell Grandma the minute you see one. But a sly look had slid across Henry’s face. He could be a little secretive. He was always snatching the phone when it rang and talking to whoever was on the other end, even if it was a telemarketer or an automated reminder call from the doctor’s office. Henry, I said in a warning tone, but Theo had seen it, too. I know we can count on you both to be the men of the house while we’re gone, he’d said. It was, of course, the right tack. Henry’s very proud of being the older twin. It doesn’t matter to him that it’s only by four minutes.
I’d told Theo what D.D. had said about the horrible fight Arden and Rory had had, and how it had even gotten physical, and he’d been quiet for a long while. Finally, he’d asked, What do you think, Nat? Does any of this make sense to you? I don’t know. All the things I thought I knew were slipping between my fingers. My hands are empty.
I’d planned to take this last summer before Arden left for school to do all the touristy things we never had time for: go to the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn, the Folk Art Festival, have a picnic on the Mall while fireworks showered colors overhead. But none of it happened. The bills poured in. The lawyers phoned. Customers drifted away. I did the only thing I could: I spent more and more hours at Double and let the summer go, sweeping my daughter away with it. She’d never once even casually mentioned wanting to get a tattoo. She’d become a vegetarian and I’d roasted her a chicken for her birthday dinner. Gabrielle might know whether the girls had been fighting, but she would have mentioned this, wouldn’t she?
It’s Monday evening. Arden’s been lying in that hospital room for three nights and three days, unmoving. We’re on our way back from the hotel where we’ve checked in to a room with a plasma TV and a dismal view of the highway. It’s adjacent to the EMU campus and the girl at the front desk had cheerfully asked if we were there to visit an EMU student. I took a real shower and Theo was supposed to take a quick nap, but instead he’s been on the phone the entire twenty minutes we’ve allotted ourselves to be away from Arden. It doesn’t feel safe to leave her alone. Or right. Though of course she’s never really alone. There’s an intensivist, a neurosurgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, three residents, a fellow, two respiratory therapists, a pharmacist, a dozen nurses, maybe more, taking care of her. Still, it doesn’t feel enough.
“Please tell me you’ve had chicken pox,” I implore when Theo finally hangs up from another phone conversation with Karen, the assistant headmistress. All hell has broken loose. Three students have been accused of plagiarism—right in the middle of college interviews and applications—and Theo’s been fielding phone calls from angry parents. I’ve heard them squawking on the other end of the line.
He glances toward me. “You bet,” he says, falsely cheerful. “I’ve had all the usual childhood diseases. Mumps, mono, the flu, whooping cough. I’ve even had my appendix removed.”
Thank God. I need him here. Arden needs him, too, whether or not she’s awake to know he’s there, so when he tells me he might have to go to work the next day, I swivel in my seat to face him. “No!” He’s already been gone one long day. A second one feels like too much.
“Just for a few hours. The board’s calling a meeting and I have to be there. Tell you what. I’ll take the night shift tonight and you sleep in the hotel. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“What if you’re not here and something happens? Who cares if these kids cheated? Just have them retake the test or something.”
“I can’t do that, Nat, and you know it.”
What I know is that he could do it if he wanted to. “Let Karen handle it. That’s what assistants are for. I’m letting Liz run Double.” Which was a far trickier proposition, if you asked me. Karen could put things on hold if she had to; Liz had one shot at making diners happy.
“It’s better if I spearhead this thing. And while I’m there, I could run by the house to check on the boys and make sure your mother’s holding up. Get you another change of clothes.”
“The boys are fine. I just talked to them.” I hear the relief in his voice and that’s what’s really bothering me. He’s looking forward to getting away from the bleak hospital vigil we’ve been keeping, even if it’s for the worst of reasons. Even if I could, I’d never leave. I’m tethered to Arden and he should be, too. He should want to be. “I can’t believe you think someone else’s child is more important than ours.”
A convenience store stands on the corner, its windows garishly lit. I should ask Theo to pull over so I can run in for something while he waits. Licorice, lip balm. Cigarettes.
“I don’t think that and you know it, Nat. But I can help at Bishop. Sitting around here, I feel useless.”
“You’re not useless. You’re helping me.” I look at his profile. He doesn’t answer.
—
There’s a nurse beside Arden’s bed. Even before I enter the room, I can tell from her general build that it’s Denise. I know all the nurses now. I’ve admired the photographs of their children and grandchildren, their dogs and their cats, heard their hopeful stories of other patients who were way worse off than Arden and are now running a business, starting a family, finishing school at the top of their classes. They’ve all been kind, but I’m especially glad when Denise is on duty. She smiles at Arden; she takes an extra moment to shake out and gently smooth the sheets. The other nurses do their jobs—nothing to correct or complain about—but their hearts aren’t in it.
“Hi, you two.” Denise reaches for the tube protruding from the bandages wrapped around my daughter’s skull and clicks on her flashlight. “How was the hotel?”
I don’t go anywhere without telling the nurses where I am going, even if it’s to the restroom. They have my cell number, but what if I don’t hear it ring? What if there’s no signal? I go over to Arden, stand at the foot of the bed. Nothing has changed. We’ve been gone forty-seven minutes and it’s as though we never left. Is this my future, staring at my daughter’s slack face, holding on to her hand that doesn’t hold mine back?
“The usual,” Theo answers. “Though they did have an interesting selection in the minibar.” Theo and I are still annoyed with each other. In a minute, I know, he will abruptly sit in the chair by the door and pull his briefcase toward him, dive back into work.
“Let me guess,” Denise says. “Five bucks for a bag of pretzels.”
“Seven, but these had cheese inside them.”
“A bargain.” She’s still standing there, studying the gauge attached to Arden’s skull. The alarm in my head starts buzzing. She should be moving over to the other monitors by now. “What’s the matter?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a cell phone. “Just a minute, please,” she tells us. Theo comes over to stand beside me. This is it, just like this? She speaks into the phone. “Dr. Morris? This is Denise. Yes, I wanted to tell you that Arden Falcone is showing an elevated pressure reading.” A pause. “Twenty-four.” Another pause. “Yes. Yes. Okay.” She has the phone pressed between her ear and shoulder and she is brisk movement, going from machine to machine and pressing buttons. “Thank you, Doctor.” She slides the phone into her pocket. She removes her latex gloves and drops them into the trash, pulls down a fresh pair from the box attached to the wall, returns to the head of Arden’s bed.
“Denise,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“I’m draining some fluid. Don’t worry. This is painless.”
She’s being kind. Arden can’t feel anything, can she? I can’t see what Denise is doing. I don’t want to. I stand back with Theo. At last she straightens. She is holding a small plastic bag and I avert my eyes. I suddenly feel nauseated. Me, who once gutted a pig. “I’ll be right back,” she says, but I don’t want her to leave. What if something happens? “I need to enter these orders into the computer system.”
“Then what?”
“We should know something soon, ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“Are you coming back?”
Denise has her hand on the curtain. “Absolutely. And Dr. Morris is on her way.”
The curtain swishes shut behind her.
Theo puts his arm around me.
“We’re here,” I tell Arden.
“We’re right here,” Theo says softly.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t make the slightest sound.
When Arden was two, she’d tumbled into a friend’s swimming pool during a family barbecue. No one noticed until another child came running. The teenager who was supposed to be watching Arden had gotten distracted, running after a beach ball that had rolled into the neighbor’s yard. I turned from where I stood with Theo and the other parents and through the metal bars of the fence surrounding the pool saw my daughter, completely submerged with just her fingertips showing.
I couldn’t get around the fence quickly enough. I couldn’t get to Arden. She had been the one in trouble, but I had been the one shrieking the words.
Help me.
Arden
SMOKE CRAWLS DOWN my throat. Fire! I sit bolt upright, coughing. Then everything swims into focus. I’m in my dorm room, in my bed. I’m safe.
I fall back against my pillow and wait for my heart to stop pounding.
A rainbow of filmy scarves crisscrosses the ceiling, hiding the blackened tiles. We should just replace them, I’d said, worried about our damage deposit. Oh, sure, Rory had replied. That’ll happen. We can drive to the building supply store during lunch. She’d yanked open a dresser drawer and pulled out a handful of bright silk—magenta, gold, turquoise, chartreuse, cornflower blue. We’ll tell the RA we’re going for the Buddhist temple effect. Yeah, if Buddhists were into Hermès. We didn’t have thumbtacks so we used tape. In the middle of the night, I’d yelped when one came loose and floated down, tickling my arm. Rory hadn’t even rolled over. I thought I knew her better than anyone, but living with her has revealed a few things. Like how she keeps the bookshelf above her bed empty, piling all her textbooks on the floor beneath her bed. Like how she has to sleep on her side facing the door and startles awake every time someone walks past. At least I don’t snore, Rory retorted. But she does that, too, a little.
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