Random Acts of Kindness

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  “Wow,” Claire said, coming up the stairs behind her, “my nephews would never leave this room.”

  Nicole rose up from her reverie. She found herself in a room with an elaborate elevated model railroad. Claire poked at a switch, and a train idling by a dusty shingled depot lurched into action. The train swept through papier-mâché hills and a copse of furry pines, past sheds that read Feed and Seed and side rails full of wooden boxcars.

  A mournful electric whistle filled the room. In that moment, Nicole was transported back to a Christmas when Noah was four years old. Lars, in a moment of fatherly exuberance, had bought a railroad set that he couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to set up. Noah had squealed and raced around the house in his excitement, knocking over the boxes of ornaments, bouncing off the walls in his exuberance, pausing only to hover by Lars to “help” assemble the pieces. On subsequent Christmases, Noah had taken over the task, learning the names of each piece, jealously guarding the sections from the curiosity of his brother, Christian, and, later, his sister, Julia, assembling the ever-growing set in precise order and with frightening efficiency. She’d been so proud of his skills, so happy he’d found a passion. She imagined him as a future engineer.

  Now she remembered that volcanic enthusiasm and wondered if that was just another sign that she’d missed.

  “This is unbelievable.” Jenna emerged at the top of the stairs, her face buried in a Cheyenne penny saver. “I could afford to buy thirty acres of land outside of Cheyenne for half my current mortgage.”

  “Jenna.” Nicole pressed her teeth together but not quick enough to stop the question. “Are you ever going to answer that phone?”

  Jenna lifted her head, dazed, then she fumbled in her purse to flick the phone onto vibrate. “Sorry about that. I was keeping tally of the rings.”

  “Three times,” Nicole said. “In about fifteen minutes.”

  “Actually,” Jenna said, glancing at the face of her phone, “it’s been about seven times in the last hour.”

  Don’t ask. Don’t ask. “Are you sure there isn’t some kind of emergency?”

  “No emergency.”

  Not your business. “You mentioned that Zoe is at Camp Paskagamak.”

  “Fifth year.”

  “So if nothing has changed since we went there, then Zoe’s under lock and key. No Internet, no cell phone, no off-camp calls allowed, no parental interference at all. Except,” Nicole added, “in an emergency.”

  “I know it’s not Zoe.”

  “How?”

  “Because of the ringtone. If there was an emergency with Zoe, my mother would call,” Jenna said, “and her theme is the Wicked Witch.”

  Nicole waited for more of an explanation, but Jenna just bent down and swept Lucky into her arms, running her hand over his back as she pressed her lips to his head. The sight gave Nicole a sharp, unexpected pang. Jenna shielded herself by hiding behind the clipped, ragged, chewed-up ears of her rescue dog. Noah’s shield was his oversize hoodies and pants that sagged halfway to his knees, and the hair he’d grown long over his eyes. His shield was to turn his face away at the simplest of questions, slam the door on her curiosity, drown out the world in deafening music, pretend that nothing was really wrong even as she stood outside his door willing him to communicate, willing him to crack himself open so she could dig into his mind and fix what was wrong.

  The warm weight of a hand landed on her shoulder as Claire came up beside her. “Hey, I think we’ve seen everything in this museum. Why don’t we check into that hotel you mentioned?”

  Nicole took a deep breath. Claire was offering her a socially acceptable reason to just shake off Jenna’s comments and continue to travel in swift, straight lines to Pine Lake without getting entangled in complications, but inside her crept fingers of worry, alarms of trouble, and dysfunction.

  Nicole curled her hands until her nails bit into her skin. She told herself these women didn’t need a life coach. They didn’t need someone to tell them to outsource tasks they didn’t like to do, or to teach them how to be efficient by breaking their day up into fifteen-minute intervals. What these women needed was a real licensed therapist, someone with training in dealing with deep psychological issues arising from a bout with a serious disease, or a sudden loss of employment, or whatever other dysfunctions they were both doing their best to bury. Most certainly they didn’t need the advice of a woman with a psych degree who’d dropped out of grad school, who never even managed to gather enough credits to become a licensed family counselor, who’d earned her certification for life coaching after a six-week course at a retreat in Sausalito.

  Words tumbled from her lips. “No one can really help you, Jenna, if you don’t tell us what’s wrong.”

  Jenna shot her a look, and the anger in her eyes was so lightning quick and unexpected that Nicole leaned back as her stomach dipped in a looping drop as she relived the feel of a young muscular arm swinging back to connect.

  “It’s my husband calling.” Jenna’s expression hardened. “It’s just my husband.”

  Nicole managed a breathy “Okay.”

  “Right now Nate is sitting with a lawyer in Seattle waiting for me to show up for a meeting.” Jenna hefted Lucky into her other arm. “Nate’s trying to take my daughter away from me.”

  Chapter Five

  Jenna didn’t remember exiting the museum, crossing the cavernous lobby, or pushing open the doors to the depot square. She didn’t really come back into her own body until the hot breath of the Chinook wind struck her. Only then did she realize she was half-walking, half-stumbling across the open square toward the building called the Plains Hotel, pausing only to wait for the traffic light to change.

  She’d never meant to keep her situation a secret. Back in Oregon, she hadn’t told Claire the details because it just didn’t seem right. Claire didn’t need to know about the domestic explosion that had destroyed every relationship that Jenna held dear. Claire had problems of her own. Had Claire asked for the truth, Jenna would have relented long before they’d crossed the Sierra Nevada. But by then, Nicole had joined them, popping the fragile bubble of her new closeness with Claire, making confession impossible.

  Jenna believed there were three kinds of people in the world. You could sort them according to how they reacted at the sight of a big, hairy spider. The first sort would bolt screaming to the far corner of the room. The second sort would labor to coax the creature onto a paper towel so that they could release the living thing into the wild. The third sort, casting a withering glance at all the trouble, would cross the room, raise a foot, and crush it beneath a heel.

  She’d always been afraid of the third sort.

  As the traffic light changed, she continued her awkward bolt toward the far corner. She plunged into the cool interior of the Plains Hotel. She made a beeline across the faded tile floor, through the halo of light falling from the skylight, past a player piano that had seen better days, to the reception desk. She asked one of the concierges about the reservation.

  “I got it, Jenna.” Nicole came up beside her and slapped a card on the counter. “This one is on me.”

  Jenna turned away before Nicole could use her ocular therapist implant to perceive the true mess she’d made out of her life. The lobby was blessedly noisy, full of tourists, full of chatter. She glimpsed Claire lumbering in through the doors with their overnight bags, and Jenna hurried to relieve her burden. Moments later, the three of them were sandwiched into the smallest elevator in the universe, crushed so close together that she could smell the acid-tainted scent of Lucky’s nervousness mixed with the intensity of Claire’s and Nicole’s curiosity. They found their room down a hallway and opened the door to a mixture of red-patterned bedspreads and a couch covered in buffalo-themed upholstery.

  Claire remarked, “Holy nineteen fifty-three.”

  But Jenna didn’t pause to take in the ambiance. She trotted quickly into the bathroom. She slipped Lucky in the tub just in time. He did his business
while gazing up at her with sorry eyes.

  When she emerged a few minutes later, murmuring comfort into the back of his head, she found Claire standing with her hands on the small of her back, and Nicole collapsed in a chair hugging a throw pillow.

  Jenna hated silences like these most of all, silences that weren’t really silences, because of the full force of attention of two pairs of eyes. This was a screaming silence. In it all her failures lay exposed, as if both of them knew, just by looking at her, what a screwup she’d always been.

  Nicole spoke first. “Jenna, does this situation with Nate have anything to do with your job?”

  The small muscles of her neck tightened. Lucky whined plaintively. Jenna let him down. He sniffed around the legs of the couch while she imagined plates of armor clicking together to cover her brain, her ego, her heart.

  “Listen, I know it’s not my business, but I’m just trying to connect the dots.” Nicole pushed the pillow aside and planted her elbows on her knees. “All the cell phone calls you ignore, the evasions when we ask you about home, the utter lack of conversation during a nine-hour drive—”

  “Driving makes me zone out,” Jenna said. “I drift off while watching the scenery change.”

  “—and now when I ask questions, you become defensive.”

  “I’m not defensive.”

  Nicole sucked her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it for a moment. “So…should I be keeping an eye out for federal agents? Should we be ducking into alleys at the sight of police cars?”

  Jenna blinked. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “You lost your job, ran away from home, and your husband is trying to take your daughter away.” Nicole splayed her hands. “I’m thinking embezzlement, insider trading, the Irish mafia. Please prove me wrong.”

  Jenna’s bark of surprise got mangled by a stricture in her throat. “I suppose I should be flattered that you think me capable of that.”

  “I don’t know you very well.”

  “You don’t.”

  The moment the words left her lips a volcanic heat flooded her skin. She didn’t say rude things like that. Not ever. Even when her boss, Samuel, came striding into her office with his colors flying looking for the projection reports she’d e-mailed him two days earlier, she suppressed the urge to bark back. Instead she listened to his rantings from behind a shield of mental armor, while waiting for him to run out of steam. Then she’d speak in a monotone, giving him detailed instructions as to where he could find whatever he was looking for.

  She tried to stay calm behind that armor now, but the plating felt brittle, the joints slipping.

  She dropped a hip on the arm of the sofa. “I thought it was obvious. Nate asked for a divorce.”

  Claire and Nicole exchanged a glance, one of those sad, knowing glances that pass between people who understand each other on a cellular level. That shared moment made her feel smaller, odder, more alone than even when she was in high school, like a little brown sparrow lost amid a chattering flock of purple finches and screaming blue jays and swooping cardinals.

  “Jen, hon,” Claire said, all soft brown eyes, “I’m so very sorry.”

  I’m so sorry was something that you said when nothing else could be said. You need therapy? I’m so sorry. You’re having trouble with your teenage daughter? I’m so sorry. Your husband is leaving you? I’m so very sorry.

  “Well,” Claire said as she turned and crouched by the hotel refrigerator, “I think we all could use a drink.”

  Jenna watched Nicole drop her head between her shoulders. Jenna could see the way Nicole’s dark hair whorled out from a spot on the back of her scalp. Nicole didn’t lift her head until Claire tapped her on the shoulder with the butt of a whiskey nip. Then Nicole seized the small bottle as if it were a branch held out to a drowning woman.

  The cap cracked as Nicole twisted it. “You know, from the moment you two showed up at my door, I just knew something was up. Women don’t just take off from the world, their families, and their lives.”

  “That’s a myth.” Claire leaned across and shook a little bottle of whiskey at Jenna until she reluctantly took it. “I’ve run away at least twice before.”

  Nicole said, “You’ve never followed the rules, Claire.”

  “Well, you just think too much.” Claire winked at Jenna before she sank into the other upholstered chair. “Jenna and I could argue that you yourself are doing the exact same thing.”

  Nicole shot down the drink. “I’m not running away from anything.” She choked her words against the back of her arm as she wiped away a drop of whiskey. “But our friend here just lost her job. And if my memory serves, Jenna, you’re the main breadwinner in your family, yes?”

  Jenna crossed her arms. Nicole would remember that. Everyone seemed to remember that. Jenna supposed it was quite the subject of shocked curiosity among the Pine Lake girls, how little Jenna Hogan managed to snag a Pacific Northwest artist whom she now kept as a househusband.

  “All I’m saying,” Nicole continued as she opened her mouth for the last drops of the whiskey, “is that most people in that position are in a panic. They polish their résumés the next day, make cold calls to potential new employers, and buy new interview suits. They don’t go off to ride mechanical bulls or feed bison on a Wyoming ranch.”

  “I’m looking forward to that ranch.” Jenna, sensing opportunity, stood up from the couch and clanked her untouched nip on the table next to the statue of a bucking bronco. “I’m looking forward to the saloon, too. What do you say we all go get some real drinks?”

  Preferably in a dark room full of music too loud to talk over.

  Nicole tilted her head in that trademark empathic-​therapist way. “Running away solves nothing.”

  “Technically, you can only run away if you have a home to run away from.” Jenna found herself gripping her own shoulders. “And if Nate has his way today, he’ll get to keep that, too.”

  Every time she came close to thinking about what was written in the petition of divorce, the walls closed in on her. No room was big enough. It was like she was called in Mr. Chella’s class, sent up to the front to read her essay aloud, twenty-six pairs of eyes staring at her, and a pulse pounding in her ears and someone snickering in the back. She opened her mouth, and the words froze. Suddenly there was no air in the room, nothing for her to suck in and breathe.

  She had to get out.

  There was a coffee shop downstairs. She’d smelled the aroma of roasted beans in the lobby. If she had a shot of espresso, maybe she could stop her ribs from squeezing. Maybe she’d stop choking on the attention and the concern and the pity.

  “Hon, why don’t you sit down for a piece?”

  Claire loomed up in front of her so fast that Jenna swayed back a step. Zoe used to perform this trick back when her daughter was in the Harry Potter stage. The girl would leap out from behind a doorframe with her cape flying, stopping Jenna on a stutter when she cried out, Look, Mom, I Apparated!

  Jenna tried to step around Claire, but Claire only shifted her stance, so Jen said, “What, are we twelve years old now?”

  Claire’s smile went soft. “You did a lot a running back then, too.”

  “I just need some air.”

  “Then I’ll open the window.” Claire put her hand on her shoulder, warm and weighty, urging her down into the sofa without actually using any force. “It’s stuffy in this room, that much is true.”

  Jenna felt the cushion give beneath her. Claire moved away in a rustle. Jenna thought if it were just her and Claire in this room she wouldn’t have any problem speaking freely. Claire would listen. Claire always listened. When the old newspaper clipping of Jenna coming in second runner-up in the Little Miss Pine Lake pageant had somehow been passed around school, making her the butt of excruciating teasing for the pink tulle dress and the clown-cheek makeup, it was Claire to whom she confessed that her mother had forced her to enter. It was Claire to whom she confessed that she’d frozen in the
floodlights and tripped over the heels her mother insisted she wear. It was to Claire that she’d confessed how disappointed her mother had been when she didn’t win the sad consolation prize of Miss Congeniality.

  Claire fiddled with the window, rattling the latch until Jenna felt a breeze blast against the back of her head. “We’d better keep these sheer curtains closed against flies,” Claire murmured. “The screen is stuck wide open. Lucky can’t jump this high, can he?”

  “No,” Jenna said, distracted. “No, he wouldn’t try.”

  “Well, I’ll tell the front desk about it later.”

  “Jenna.”

  Now it was Jenna’s turn to grope for a throw pillow to press against her chest, as she glanced up to find Nicole perched on the edge of her chair.

  “This is way above my pay grade,” Nicole began, in that soft therapist’s voice that made Jenna’s skin crawl, “but I know this much: There are certain life events that are the most stressful things that anyone can experience. They’re the things that knock you flat. Loss of a job is in the top five. So is divorce.”

  Jenna snorted. “No kidding.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Nicole flinch. Or maybe it was just the slightest of muscle spasms in Nicole’s throat.

  In any case, Nicole plowed on: “Did the divorce papers follow the job loss? Or has this divorce been in process for a while?”

  “I got the pink slip at my job last Friday afternoon.”

  She’d driven home that day in a haze with the contents of her desk rattling in the trunk of her car. The house was in upheaval. Zoe was going off to camp the next day. No one really noticed that Jenna had come home early. It was easy to sneak that box into the attic. Nate was wrapped up in the packing and Zoe…Zoe was angrier than usual. Every time Jenna approached Zoe’s room to ask if she was excited about becoming a Master Ranger, Zoe just yelled at her.