Inside Out Girl

by Tish Cohen

  Janie had turned her back and was yanking a T-shirt over her head so no one could see the suit of armor that was her bra, when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around to find Tabitha smiling and holding something out in her hand. Janie’s striped headband.

  “It was on the floor,” Tabitha said, wearing nothing but a flimsy blue bra and panties. Powder blue. With tiny satin rosettes sprinkled across the front. Not that Janie looked. “Is it yours?”

  So nervous she thought she’d throw up, Janie grunted and snatched up the headband more aggressively than intended.

  “You’re from the bus stop, right?” Tabitha had moved in next door a few days prior. But half her gymnastics team went to the Wilton School—the pricey alternative private school Janie and Dustin had attended since kindergarten and would continue to attend until college—so Tabitha had built-in friends. “I’ve learned so many names since moving, I keep forgetting.”

  Janie smiled. “Cool.”

  Tabitha smiled and motioned toward Janie’s chest. “It’s sweet.”

  “What?”

  “Your headband.” She reached out and touched the strip of fabric Janie still held in her hand. “I wish I had one like it.” Then she turned back to her friends, leaving Janie more gnarled than the ratted nylon.

  Now, Janie swallowed as she approached the bus stop. How could anyone look so good just standing there? Tabitha’s long, blond hair was tucked behind her ears. Janie already knew she’d be wearing the faded khakis and three black rubber bracelets. Her binoculars were that good.

  Just as Janie was preparing a witty comment—something about Tabitha’s bracelets and good things coming in threes—the bus roared up and blanketed her unlaced Doc Martens in a film of dust. As the other kids hauled themselves up and into the vehicle, Janie hung back.

  She had a plan.

  Tabitha Carlisle was a creature of habit. Every morning, grinning at Libby Anders in the second row, she sauntered down the aisle, then flopped into the seat with the wheel well so she could prop her feet on it. Always on the left, always by the window. Janie just needed to casually slide into the empty seat beside Tabitha and dazzle her with her shining personality. Simple.

  The doors yelped to a close behind Janie. Tabitha’s blond hair glowed, beckoning, just where it should be—about two-thirds of the way back, on the left. By the window. For a second it looked as if Dustin, little shitface, might swing into Tabitha’s seat. Janie held her breath and vowed to pound him after school, but at the last moment his revolting friend burped Dustin’s name from the backseat and he continued on, clearly charmed.

  Perfect.

  As the bus pulled out into traffic, Janie slid into the wheel-well seat on the left. Right beside Tabitha.

  Tabitha glanced up and pretend-smiled. “Saved,” was all she said.

  Janie jumped up, mumbled, “Sorry,” and dove into the next seat back. She folded her arms across her chest and tried not to stare at Tabitha’s hair the rest of the way to school.

  CHAPTER 4

  Rattus Rattus

  As parents, we must first accept that we will make mistakes. Many of them. If you feel you’ve behaved in a way you are less than proud of, it’s important to forgive yourself and move on.

  —RACHEL BERMAN, Perfect Parent magazine

  Too fast, Rachel steered the old navy Saab around a tight bend in the road. Sprawling hillside homes, architecture blurred by decades of intentionally lax clipping and pruning, peered down at the speeding commuters with disdain, while untamed forsythia bushes, bursting with yellow flowers, cheered them on.

  Checking her watch, Rachel groaned. Nine forty-five. Late for her own meeting. Around the bend, traffic was at a standstill, which forced Rachel to hit the brake and idle in an irritatingly long lineup of cars. Her cell phone rang. “Rachel Berman.”

  “Rachel? Mindy here. Are you getting close or should I bump the meeting to later?”

  “No. Josh is heading out to Houston later and I need him there. I’m…” Rachel craned her head out the window. Traffic wasn’t moving. “I’m almost there. I won’t be ten minutes.”

  It wasn’t a total lie. At this rate, it would be at least twenty-five.

  God, the car was hot. As the dirty pickup ahead of her inched forward, Rachel spotted a black Audi at the side of the road. A striking man in a crisp suit and royal blue tie, blondish, maybe in his mid- to late thirties, pulled a spare tire out of the trunk while a young girl flopped against the car in misery, whacking a naked Barbie doll against the bumper.

  Poor kid. And from the way her dad was squinting at the tire jack, one thing was clear—the man had never changed a tire in his life.

  Rachel averted her eyes, pretending she didn’t see them. Wasn’t that one of the cardinal rules of the road? If someone needed help and you weren’t prepared to offer any, glance away and feign ignorance. She couldn’t resist looking back. While she wasn’t exactly an expert on changing tires, she knew enough to see he was setting the jack wrong side up. The girl was now tossing her Barbie in the air and darting around at the road’s edge.

  If Rachel weren’t so late, she’d definitely have stopped.

  Definitely.

  Traffic sped up and Rachel tried to concentrate on her meeting. She was holding a focus group for lapsed subscribers that night, a last-ditch effort to find out why her family’s magazine, once the country’s primary adviser on everything from proper nutrition to temper tantrums, was slipping into obscurity.

  In her rearview mirror, Rachel caught a quick glimpse of the father pulling his daughter away from the road. Traffic was now hurtling past them. Clearly, he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on both his inverted tire changing and keeping an active child away from speeding cars.

  She checked her watch again. Nine fifty. How would it look if the publisher couldn’t be bothered to show up to resuscitate her own magazine? She drove past a road construction crew, three or four men dressed in orange vests, the cause of the slowdown, and reached for her coffee, determined to relax and forget about the man, the child, and the tire jack. And she did relax, for about a minute. Until she remembered one small thing.

  Men were easily distracted. So easily distracted that her exhusband, long before he vanished from their lives, nearly drove to work once with Janie’s infant car-seat on the trunk of his convertible, his daughter strapped firmly inside.

  Rachel wrenched the steering wheel to the right, pulled off the road, and thrust the car into reverse.

  “It’s awfully nice of you to stop,” said the blond guy. His pant legs were smeared with dirt and he had grease on his tie. “It’s been a rough morning. I’m Leonard Bean. Len.” He glanced toward the girl, who was trotting up and down the length of the car, shoulder pressed to metal. “This is my daughter, Olivia.”

  Rachel waved toward the child. “Hi, Olivia. I’m Rachel.”

  Olivia didn’t look up, just kept cleaning the car with her sweat suit, the top of which, Rachel noticed, was on inside out. Maybe even backward. At first she couldn’t make out what, exactly, the girl had on her feet, then it hit her: the gray felt liners from a pair of winter boots.

  She smiled at Len. “If you could pass me that lug wrench, we’ll loosen the nuts and get this tire off, slap on the spare and screw it into place. Then you’ll be all set.”

  Len smiled. “It’s that simple?”

  “Believe me,” Rachel said. “I was just as clueless my first time. Not…” she blushed, “that I think you’re clueless. Or that it’s your first time…” Oh God, that didn’t come out right.

  “Quite all right. I can admit it. When Triple-A said they’d be an hour and a half, I cried like a baby.”

  “No you didn’t,” said Olivia, moving toward the front of the car. “You didn’t cry like a baby. You didn’t even cry not like a baby.” She had her sweatshirt tucked into her sweatpants, which she pulled up nearly to her armpits. Rachel couldn’t imagine how that could be comfortable, but even more, how the child
didn’t get pulverized at school.

  With one eye on his daughter, Len loosened the last nut, shimmied the tire off the axle, and dropped it onto the ground. “Don’t pull your pants up so high, Olivia. The other kids wear them lower down.”

  “I like them high,” she said. “They keep my nipples warm.”

  Rachel laughed. “Your daughter has an edgy sense of humor.”

  Len just smiled.

  “Daddy, is tomorrow my birthday?”

  “No. We discussed it this morning. Your birthday is in December.”

  “My kids were born with their birthdays scratched onto their foreheads,” Rachel called out to Olivia. “That way they can start needling me for gifts months in advance.”

  Olivia seemed troubled by this. “Do their foreheads bleed?”

  “Pardon?” Confused, Rachel looked at Len. Then she laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Olivia. I was pulling your leg.”

  The child glanced down at her legs.

  Together, Len and Rachel guided the spare tire into place. Len asked, “So is this what you do all day? Rescue dads-in-distress at hectic roadside locales?”

  “Oh no.” She shook her head. “I’m far too busy bringing about the demise of a company my father and grandfather spent their whole lives building. How about you?”

  He grinned. “Not sure I should say. I don’t want you running into traffic or anything.”

  She thought about this, then said, “Hm. Executioner?”

  “Close. I’m an attorney.”

  “Ahh. I’ve hired a few of those. Mostly to battle my ex.” She paused and glanced toward the sky. “Maybe I should have hired an executioner…”

  “Your ex?”

  “Divorced. Years ago. What about you?”

  “Widowed.”

  “Oh God. I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry.”

  He squinted at her and grinned. “You apologize way too much for a hero.”

  Quickly, she looked down.

  Len and Rachel took turns tightening the nuts and joked about launching their own morning-commute rescue service. Olivia danced around, telling Rachel all she really cared to know about the daily elimination habits of the Norway rat, or the rattus norvegicus.

  “He averages thirty to a hundred and eighty droppings a day,” Olivia said. “And you know you’re dealing with a Norway rat and not a roof rat by the size of the droppings. Kids at school call it rat shit—”

  “Olivia!” Len snapped.

  Olivia sighed and continued, “—but with rodents, the poop is called droppings. That’s what the researchers call it. That’s how you know the researchers from regular people. The roof rat—”

  “Wait,” interrupted Rachel. “Are there really rat researchers?”

  Olivia ignored her. “The roof rat,” she said testily, “or the rattus rattus, has droppings more like a half inch long with no blunt ends at all. With pointy ends. So if you don’t get to see the rat himself, since a rat is nocturnal and probably you’d be asleep when he comes into your kitchen, you can tell which one you got’ve by the droppings.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure how to respond, so she winked at Len. “Well. I guess I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the poop.”

  “Bet you don’t know which one has a longer tail, the rattus rattus or the rattus norvegicus.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right.” Rachel wiped her hands on Len’s handkerchief and stood up, turning around to face the young girl. For the first time, she saw them up close. Olivia’s eyes.

  Rachel sucked in a sharp breath. It wasn’t possible. Taking two steps backward, she bumped against the Audi. She looked away and willed herself to think about something else. Anything but the only child in the world who had a right to those eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Len asked.

  “I’m fine. I stood up too quickly,” Rachel lied, forcing a quick smile. “Head rush.”

  Olivia came closer, blinking the enormous silver eyes. Her irises were as clear as frost; Rachel could almost look right through them. A dark line of gunmetal gray edged crystallized daggers that shot toward the center, where they faded into black pupils like perfectly cut holes in the January ice. Even the lashes were the same, inky black and doubly layered. Rachel felt winded.

  “You don’t even know?” squeaked Olivia. “How come you don’t know which one has the longer tail and I do know and I’m only ten?”

  “That’s enough, Olivia,” Len said, frowning.

  “It’s the rattus rattus.”

  Rachel looked up at Len. “I have a meeting. Better go.”

  “The Norway rat’s tail is only, like, eight and a half inches!”

  Len took a few steps forward. “Thanks for your help, Rachel. I feel I should repay you somehow…”

  She made it to her car and yanked open the door. But before she could tumble inside and sit on her hands to stop the shaking, she heard soft footsteps running toward her. She spun around. Olivia’s body wrapped around her middle, hugging her, squeezing her, burying her wolf eyes into—of all places—Rachel’s womb. Olivia’s lashes fluttered through the cotton of Rachel’s sweater, like tiny bubbles pattering against her flesh.

  Perplexed by this unprovoked display of affection, Rachel looked at Len, who seemed to find the whole thing amusing. He shook his head, smiled, and continued packing things away in his trunk, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

  Rachel needed to escape. It was too much. With her free hand, she patted Olivia’s back, then stepped sideways. “Bye now, Olivia. I have to go to work.”

  The child didn’t budge.

  “Olivia, sweetie, go see your dad.”

  “Don’t you like hugs?” she asked, blinking the eyes.

  “Olivia!” Len called. “Let’s get you to school. You’re late.”

  She looked up at Rachel and shouted back to her father, “No!”

  “Olivia!”

  “No! No! No!”

  “All right. This is your two-minute warning,” Len said.

  Two minutes? Rachel couldn’t stand there, patting Olivia’s back for another two minutes, pretending she wasn’t dying inside. It was an eternity. She had to do something. Anything. Hating herself, she pointed back toward the Audi. “Do you think rats ever hide under black cars?”

  The girl loosened her grip. “Huh?”

  Rachel backed into her car and slammed the door. “If I were a rat, that’s exactly where I’d go.” She started the engine and watched the child tear back to her father.

  Inside, Rachel sat perfectly still and focused on breathing. Reaching for her purse, she took out her wallet and opened up a tiny compartment. The photo inside was ragged and faded, but no worse than would be expected after sixteen years. Swaddled in pink flannel, the newborn’s face was still clear. The thick, nearly black hair, just like Janie’s. The small red mouth. The paler than pale skin. Then the eyes. Silver gray, like frost on a windshield. Fringed with the blackest lashes, doubly thick. Like Olivia’s.

  The only difference was the baby’s eyes were slanted upward. One tiny chromosome too many.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Crush

  Len burst out of the elevator and into the Standish, Bean and Roche lobby. The walls were cloaked in gray felt, the floor in plush charcoal carpeting; a hushed and sumptuous workshop of justice. Paul Standish’s intention was that every client should feel the immediate sensation of having been welcomed home—for a mere $350-500 an hour.

  Len dropped his briefcase beside his assistant’s desk, nodded good morning, and marched toward the boardroom, where, with any luck, the meeting was still in high gear. His assistant, Fay, a trim woman with a judicious suit and no-fuss hair, trotted beside him. She passed him a stack of phone messages. “The first one’s from Shannon.”

  Len groaned.

  “She’s changing your meeting time with Clara to four. Apparently Clara’s son is home with flu and she has no child care.” They rounded the corner past the lunchroom. Len’s stomach grumbled.

>   “Hm. That I understand,” Len said.

  “Shannon also said she’ll try to stay until you arrive.”

  Len slowed his step and looked at Fay. “What for?”

  Fay’s mouth twitched. “It’s possible she has a small crush on you.”

  Len considered this. Shannon, his client’s receptionist, had been casting extra attention his way. But she was practically a teenager. Len paused outside the boardroom doors. Voices boomed from inside. “Anything else?”

  Fay reached over and tugged out the bottom message, setting it on top of the others. “Dr. Kate called. She wants to discuss Olivia before she leaves for a child psychology conference in Copenhagen tomorrow.”

  Len frowned. The doctor had left the numbers for her office and her cell. She’d never left her cell number before. He turned away from the boardroom and started back toward his office.

  “Len, they’re waiting for you!”

  “I’ll be a few minutes. Tell them a client dropped in unexpectedly. Say they brought a big check!”

  When Olivia was diagnosed, five years prior, Len had never even heard of nonverbal learning disorders, or NLD. Neither had his wife, Virginia. According to doctors, children born with this condition rely on verbal forms of communication and not much else. Not facial expressions, not vocal intonations, not social cues. In its severest form, the disorder can prevent a child from recognizing her own mother until she hears her speak.

  The human mouth, as it turned out, meant nothing and everything to Olivia. Nothing because she had no way of reading its subtle, and not so subtle, signals. Everything because this most essential channel of socialization was all she had. And, as Len’s ears and nerves could attest, the girl had her own foolproof system for keeping people’s mouths in full view.

  Olivia was five the first time she test-marketed her bloodymurder scream, the winter before Virginia died. They’d planned a weeklong ski holiday at Virginia’s parents’ place in Ellicottville. Seemed like the perfect family trip, but the morning they were to leave, they awoke to a record low temperature.