And yet there was something more, too, she had realized by the afternoon. They didn’t know what this meant. They didn’t know what destructive forces had gathered in New York or how close they might come to Greenwich Avenue, to school, to the back steps of the public library on West Putnam where they all hung out waiting for their SAT tutors, to their very own houses. When they asked if Amanda knew anything, they weren’t only asking about Madison. They were asking Amanda, of all people, whether their fathers were going to lose their jobs, too.
She tried to distribute information with as little fanfare as possible, tried not to enjoy her own clipped efficiency.
“She’s doing well,” she said repeatedly. “Really, really well.”
And: “I think it’s best if we just give them all the privacy we can.”
And: “You know, I haven’t even really read anything about it. It doesn’t really interest me, to be honest. It’s mostly gossip.”
The truth was that she had not seen Madison yet that day. They had no classes together. This was the first year that neither one of them had flounced into the dean’s office with Isabel or the more reluctant Lori in tow, to insist that both girls needed to have Mr. Schrode for Honors English, or Mr. Coombs for European History. Amanda tried to remember whether Madison had suggested their usual approach, whether she’d called in late August to compare class schedules. If she had, Amanda had probably ignored the call. Late August wasn’t so long ago. Things must have already been teetering at Madison’s house. Amanda put it out of her head.
It was just before eighth period when she caught Madison at their lockers. She saw her from the other end of the hallway and ran, fearful that if she waited a half second too long Madison might disappear again, rob her of the chance to say something, anything. To begin to atone. She lost track of her speed and came up behind Madison so suddenly that, when Madison turned, they both flinched. Amanda saw that Madison’s first instinct had been to assume she was under attack.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” Amanda said. “You would not believe the things people have been saying to me. Not bad things. Just, like, people you’ve never even spoken to are coming up to me like you’re their best friend, like they can’t sleep they’re so worried about you. It’s gross.”
Madison nodded and smiled, as though they were discussing other people far away, people whose pain could not be felt.
“I guess I just wanted to find you. I wanted to know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Oh, no,” Madison said. “I’m late, but no worries—”
She waved one hand in the air like she was the queen on a parade float, and Amanda caught her by the wrist. “Stop it. Don’t pretend.”
Madison stared hard at Amanda’s hand, at its grip on her wrist. She lifted her gaze to meet Amanda’s.
“Oh,” she said, her voice flat. “I’m sorry. I won’t.”
Amanda tried not to wince, tried to push forward. She let go of Madison’s wrist.
“Did your dad come home from the city?”
“No.”
“Is he going to?”
“I have no idea.”
“Okay,” Amanda said, “okay.” She wanted to stall their way to comfort, run out the clock on her own guilt. Be, once more, the one in charge.
It’s not my fault, she told herself for the fortieth time that day. It’s not my fault that this all happened at this particular time. If I had known what was coming, I never would have pushed her away. I’m not a monster.
“How’s Isabel?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
“She went in?”
“No, I just haven’t seen her.”
“Do you think she’s there?”
“She was locked upstairs with Mina when I left.”
“Has anyone else come by?”
“I don’t know, Amanda. I’ve been at school.”
“I just,” Amanda faltered, “I thought maybe you just got here. I’ve been looking for you.”
“We stayed home until, like, ten,” Madison said. “I wanted to let the boys stay home but Lily won.”
Madison was facing the lockers still when Amanda saw the boys moving toward them. Wyatt Welsh was at the front of the group. Other girls thought he was handsome, maybe, but he turned her stomach. He wore his hair spiked straight up from his head, and she was pretty sure that his blond highlights had been woven in skillfully by his mother’s hairdresser, probably to the tune of hundreds of dollars. He always wore Lacoste polos in the most gorgeous, jewel tones, shirts she never saw on anyone else, but he was already developing a training-wheels potbelly and the shirts pulled, slightly, across his chest and stomach. He wore things like tight gym shorts and knee-high argyle socks on game days, when the football players were supposed to wear khakis and ties, because he knew he could. Because everyone would roll their eyes as he approached but start giggling if he pointed at them, smiled, said their names. Even the teachers. His mother, Suzanne, was one of the women Amanda and her own mother referred to as the gaggle: the women who spent most of their days somewhere in Isabel’s vicinity, always taking in her jewelry, her daughter’s clothing, what she’d served at the last dinner party to which only some of them had been invited.
Wyatt was walking slightly ahead of the rest of the group, his eyes moving across the hallway like a bird of prey searching for life, movement, beneath a choppy sea. And Amanda knew, even before his eye snagged them, that he wouldn’t leave it alone.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she told Madison. She tried to keep her voice neutral and small. “Let’s go talk.”
“Amanda, really. It’s fine.” Maybe the second-best thing was to keep Madison from turning around, just ensure that they wouldn’t make eye contact. He might not feel bold enough unless he felt sure he’d be heard.
“I know it’s fine! I just want to talk to you.” She could feel her voice scaling up, too high.
And then Wyatt was smacking his chest, outsized and excited, casting his voice out across the hallway. He looked like an actual animal, Amanda thought, it wasn’t just a phrase.
“I don’t know,” he was saying. “I’ll tell you what my father said, though. Nice work if you can get it, right? Thirty mil a year to run a company into the fucking ground?”
It was amazing, she thought, how little they all knew themselves. She saw some of the other boys stutter out, their eyes flicking toward Madison, their faces frozen in the last second before they laughed, smacked a locker, shoved one another and stumbled over their own sneakers. They wouldn’t dream of saying it first, she thought, but once he says it, they’ll defend it until they die.
Madison stood, staring at the locker she’d already closed. She held a binder against her chest as though it were the only thing keeping her whole, keeping her from spilling out onto the ground.
“What do you want to bet his mother spent the day camped out in the produce section at Whole Foods,” Madison said, softly, almost to herself.
“What?”
“I’m just saying. I’d bet you money she’s been sitting there all day, pretending to smell the melons, flagging down any other women she recognizes. To tell them how terrible it is and how they mustn’t gossip behind Isabel’s back, not until they have all the facts. That Isabel and her children absolutely should not be blamed, for—”
She cut herself off, chuckled, readjusted the straps of her tote bag where it bit into her shoulder. But her voice was too distant, almost glacial. Something about it didn’t really feel, in the end, like she was insulting Suzanne Welsh.
“Is Lily okay?” Amanda tried.
Madison shook her head, quickly, as if swallowing a pill without water.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Lily’s, like, unmovable. She got mad at me for wallowing. This morning. She slapped me.”
“Wait—like, on the face?”
“I deserved it,” Madison began. But then they were no longer alone, Chip Abbott was standing there. He had his backpack clipp
ed across his chest because he knew he was cool enough to act like a nerd. He might as well put electrical tape on a pair of thick glasses and walk around wearing them, just to prove that nothing could keep the women away.
His blond hair stuck out from his head in soft-looking tufts, and when Madison turned to him he cocked his head to one side, the corner of his mouth twisting.
Amanda fought the impulse to roll her eyes. She knew why Madison was so wrecked by this guy—you’d have to be chiseled from ice not to understand it, a little—but it just seemed so obvious. Like he was the hot guy in a teen movie and they were just female extras, hired to moon around in the crowd scenes and stare at him with their mouths lolling open. Amanda didn’t see where the fun was if he already knew exactly how you’d feel about him from the moment he first said your name.
“Ladies,” he said, his voice low and smooth. “How’s our Monday afternoon treating us?”
“Oh, hi,” Madison said.
The air had changed, and Amanda saw from her friend something she hadn’t seen from her before, the ability to tug on the taut wire between her body and Chip’s, an awareness of how this worked.
Chip was laughing, Madison had made some joke Amanda had missed.
“All right, Madison, take it easy. You walking upstairs?”
Madison nodded. She was doing it again—staring at the thing in front of her as though it held the key to the only language that could teach her anything. As though this boy could keep her alive.
Madison turned back, pressing her face to Amanda’s ear.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m totally fine. Who cares about Wyatt Welsh, forget it. I don’t know anything else yet. But my dad will be home soon, and besides, it can’t be worse than it’s been today, right?”
Amanda watched them walk together down the hallway, toward the glass doors, their bodies becoming silhouettes against the late sunlight. She saw them stop and stand there, despite the swarms of people crowding the hallway, and she saw him pick at something on the sleeve of Madison’s shirt, saw Madison tip the upper half of her body toward him as he did this.
A few days later, Amanda would take a shortcut to class, the one that cut along the leafy path just below the library, and she would see that someone had Wyatt Welsh pushed up against the side of the building. She would imagine the cottage-cheese surface of the wall scraping against the back of Wyatt’s neck. Then Chip would shove Wyatt once more, his hands at Wyatt’s collar, before walking away, and Wyatt would kick the ground a few times and then gather his things. He was a senior, a year older than Chip, even a bit bigger.
Now, Chip looked back, once, over his shoulder. Not at Amanda, but just to be looking away from Madison. Then he brushed his thumb against his chin, smiled, and turned back to her. They still were just standing there. Their feet were rooted on the ground, not coming any closer to each other, but their bodies swayed and curved, like the stems of a plant yearning toward sunlight.
Amanda knew, and tried to tell herself it had just now occurred to her, that she hadn’t told Madison about the column, about next week’s paper.
Madison and Chip started walking again, moving in tandem side by side, and their silhouettes merged. As Chip reached to open the door, Madison stepped in front of him, and then you couldn’t see her at all anymore; he’d swallowed her up.
SEVEN
On that first morning, Madison didn’t go into the kitchen. She didn’t act like a sister, find her brothers to kiss the tops of their heads and preemptively explain that Isabel wasn’t feeling well. She didn’t act like a daughter, knock on her mother’s door to ask how she could help. She didn’t look for any of them. She did not want anyone to touch her, comfort her. She did not want to find out whether her mother would simply ignore the knock.
She went, finally, to her father’s study. A television. A thick door to muffle the sounds from the foyer, from the kitchen and her brothers, their small voices.
She turned on the television, found the morning news, and what she noticed was that they were treating this as news of a crime. This wasn’t a natural disaster; there was none of the patronizing sympathy, the eagerness to exploit, that you saw when the news covered a hurricane or a fire. They were scanning their spotlight over everything and looking for the culprit. All summer, each time she’d seen her father’s name in the Times, each time she’d stood at the end of her parents’ hallway and listened to her mother’s low, urgent tones, to her father’s quick, hissed replies—to the way his voice layered over hers until hers finally fell silent—Madison had not understood this. That there was a crime somewhere beneath everyone’s anxiety, like the invisible letters on a piece of paper that reveal themselves only when you sketch over them with a pencil. That it was more than misfortune.
Now, a blond reporter was interviewing some guy on the sidewalk in front of the Weiss building near Times Square. The reporter looked like the woman who used to work at Weiss. She’d been forced to step down at the beginning of the summer, at the start of that period of time during which Madison saw her father rarely if at all. The same small features, the same frozen helmet bob of ice-blond hair. Amanda’s father had written something about that woman, but she couldn’t remember what. The woman had been there for all of a year, otherwise Madison surely would have met her at some point. It was odd, actually, that she hadn’t. She would have to find Jake’s article, later, online. She would have to read everything she could. She could not have anyone else at school know any more about this than she did. They only had half the story; they didn’t know her father. She was the only one who could know everything.
She tried to remember the woman’s name, but it kept receding further. Sometimes, when her mother ordered dry martinis on the rocks at dinner, her father would slide the glass over to Madison when the wine arrived. She would try to spear the olives with a toothpick, softened and useless from the vodka, and it would skid off the fat little globes, sending them tumbling down beneath the ice cubes. The longer she tried, the harder it became to skewer what she wanted.
The guy being interviewed on the sidewalk was talking now. He was a young trader, the reporter said. Fresh from the Ivy League. If he was really Ivy League and had a decent GPA, he wouldn’t be on the trading floor, would he, Madison thought with a twinge of smug pleasure. He’d be an analyst. She imagined her father here with her now, on the couch behind her, stroking her hair absentmindedly when she pointed this out to him, proud that she knew the difference.
Madison turned up the volume.
“Uh, no, ma’am,” the trader was saying. He was stocky, his head square, his face red as he spoke. She imagined a roll of fat on the back of his neck, just where his marine-short buzz cut met the collar of his shirt. “No, he’s not down here. No one’s seen him on the floor. I’m not surprised. You have no idea, really, how bad that’d be right now. If I were that f—er”—and here the news bleeped out his colorful language and Madison started, not having realized they could even do that on news shows—“I wouldn’t want to show my face in this building. Not today, not tomorrow, not for a long time. My buddy’s got a bottle of Laphroaig he’s been saving up for bonus season next year, but we’re busting it out right now. It’s an Irish wake down here, all right? No one wants to see Bob D’Amico’s face down here. Not on the floor. Not the guys he screwed over. They always used to tell us one firm, right? That’s our motto, ‘one firm.’ What a load of horses—t.”
Madison felt her cheeks warming, as though he could see her, had spoken to her directly. One firm. That was how her father said good night when the partners came over for dinner, as he sent them tumbling down the driveway to their waiting town cars, their wives unsteady on their stiletto heels after a night of drinking. One firm, their voices raspy with alcohol, when he shut himself up in his study with his friends and only Madison was allowed to come in, to bring them more rocks glasses or, if he was in a good mood, make the drinks. That was how they toasted, glasses clinking so hard that sometimes the oth
er guys, Jim McGinniss usually if he’d already had a few, cracked theirs in excitement. Her father was famous for this: one firm. He always said that loyalty was cheaper than staving off some idiot’s revenge, that if he took care of his guys for life they would be his forever. He told her this sometimes after he’d had a few drinks, while she sat at his feet watching a basketball game, her French homework spread before her on the coffee table. She’d read an article once in Vanity Fair that was all about this, about how much the firm meant to everyone there, about how her father didn’t like it when partners had showy affairs or got divorced or eschewed their ties on casual Fridays. It wasn’t horseshit. It was her father’s whole life.
The trader’s shirt was too tight on him. It looked like it was choking his neck a little bit. She imagined putting her fingers to that mottled red skin, both hands around his thick neck, and squeezing. The reporter had said that few members of the trading floor had even come in to work. The men who were there had spent their morning packing their desks into cardboard boxes, which to Madison seemed a specious ploy for sympathy. These guys wouldn’t be walking out of the building with cardboard boxes. They’d have their secretaries clear their desks of their few personal items. They’d do none of the dirty work themselves. This weepiness, this packing of the things, this would all stop as soon as the cameras did.
She could hear her father, even now: Only the lazy or the ignorant get their news from those scum-sucking malcontents on TV news, all right? Got it? Capiche?
Her father loved to throw Italian flourishes into their conversations, as though he spoke the language. He didn’t. He wasn’t first generation, he liked to remind her. You had to go back to his grandmother for any real Eye-Talians, but most of the men he worked with thought he spoke Italian. Sometimes, in articles about him, they reported that he was fluent. Sometimes he liked to introduce himself as Roberto rather than Robert or Bob. But Madison knew. Capiche was about as close to his roots as they got in this house. A few Italian words sprinkled here and there and the annual Christmas-Day car ride to Nonna Connie’s house in Williamsburg, where Madison ate all the gnocchi she wanted because Isabel would never say anything in front of her mother-in-law. It wasn’t the potential weight gain that bothered her mother, Madison knew, or that wasn’t what bothered her the most. It was the wanton disregard for discipline, Madison’s willingness to let everyone around her see how bottomless her appetites were, how raw her hunger. If you wanted something, her mother believed, you took steps to acquire it in the privacy of your own home, so that by the time you were out in the world again, you had everything you needed. You did not let other people see you as grasping, desperate.
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