Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  But the events of the past few hours had made quick work of erasing that.

  She folded the umbrella without missing a step, suddenly eager to feel the drizzle on her face—to cleanse herself of the whole mess. The city smelled unusually acrid today, polluted and burnt, and she was eager to get off the streets, back into her filtered shell. A police officer was directing traffic away from the intersection ahead—more construction, maybe, or an accident. Always some inconvenience here, never business as usual. She would trudge around this last block, climb into bed, and sleep until she could convince herself she didn’t care about the disastrous dawning of this day. She was already well on her way.

  But she didn’t make it past the corner.

  The swath of gray sky where her building’s roof should have been stopped her cold even before she could register the orange cones blocking her path. She clutched the bag to her, instant tears stinging her eyes even as her legs continued to propel her forward, stumbling numbly through the initial wave of shock and over a ribbon of yellow tape.

  “Ma’am! You can’t go through here. Whole block’s closed.” The poncho-clad police officer was brusque but remarkably nonchalant.

  “But I live here,” she said, her voice mechanical, prerecorded.

  “What building?”

  She slowed her steps, still moving forward, and he followed her eyes.

  “Oh, God. You were out last night?”

  She managed a nod.

  “Just getting home?”

  She nodded again.

  “Ma’am, you were unaware…?”

  She could only stare. Firefighters and various other uniformed personnel were milling around the remains of the old warehouse, still smoldering. All five levels of the building were nearly gutted. A partial outer wall here and there, bricks clinging nobly to their mortar, charred beyond recognition and subsequently soaked through, was all that remained.

  He let out a low whistle, and she finally met his eye. “Is everyone … I mean, are they…?”

  She didn’t know all of her neighbors but was friendly with enough of them. She was thinking now of Sally, the single mom across the hall who was sleep training her baby and kept lamenting to Liza in the laundry room—Liza did laundry as rarely as possible, but the poor woman was always there when she did, no matter the time or day—that she had to stop caving in and carrying the baby into her bed but that exhaustion always won out. Liza hadn’t offered much in the way of encouragement, as she, too, had been relieved every time the cries quieted down.

  The cries. Surely she had cried in time.…

  The officer put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Lucky girl, you. Wherever you were, it saved your life.”

  7

  Molly’s jaw-clenching night finally caught up with her when she got home from Rick’s, the TMJ pain taking her face in its hands and making her go dizzy. It served her right that a feigned headache would become a real one, and she climbed back into bed with a warm, wet washcloth circling her chin from ear to ear, trying to luxuriate in the empty, quiet house.

  It didn’t work, of course. She would never luxuriate in anything as long as she lived with this pain.

  She missed the comfort of a pet at times like this. Daniel was allergic, so she got her fur fixes the only way she could, by feeding every stray that followed the tree line to her back door. But it was no substitute for the real thing.

  She’d grown up with a cat, a dapper tuxedo named Tux who’d curl up against her and purr when she was home sick from school. She and Liza had passed many afternoons constructing elaborate structures out of cardboard boxes for him to hide in and subsequently shred to bits.

  Then, when the girls were twelve, they’d almost lost him. He’d taken a rare sojourn beyond the fenced yard and failed to return. The whole family went out searching, but to no avail, and when he’d been gone forty-eight hours Molly’s parents’ faces turned grim; their voices dropped to whispers about the neighborhood’s growing coyote problem. The morning had arrived in a soaking, freezing downpour, and so convinced were they of his unfortunate fate that they refused to go look again.

  It was Liza who ventured out with her, in the rain. She’d simply shown up on her own, sparing Molly from having to ask. And after hours of trudging through the pooling mud, it was Liza who heard the faint mews coming from a neighbor’s woodpile. Tux had knocked the logs loose and become trapped in an impossibly small pocket of space where they found him curled, wet and shivering.

  “My parents would have left him for dead,” Molly had sobbed, clutching the cat to her chest. And Liza had looked her straight in the eyes and said, “But not you. That’s what matters.”

  Molly hadn’t harbored anger toward her folks after that. She’d simply held her head higher, as if she’d completed a rite of passage.

  For a long time she’d thought of her friend just as she’d been that day: pressing on through the muck with a determined poncho-clad arm extended in front of them, shaking a bag of treats. The picture of hope.

  Not unlike how she’d been this morning.

  The shame at how she’d treated Liza clenched at her jaw again, and Molly pressed her cheeks with balled, angry fists, trying to rub it away.

  Maybe it was better to let Liza go. They no longer shared that don’t-try-to-stop-me resolve. She was embarrassed to let her friend see what she’d become.

  “Girls aren’t strong,” Grant told Daniel the other day. He was referencing something frivolous, a cartoon character on the TV screen, but he said it so matter-of-factly—like it was common knowledge—that it sucked the air from Molly’s lungs. She stood in the doorway behind him, gripping the laundry basket that contained the dirty soccer uniform he was meant to wear in a too-short hour, and met Daniel’s eyes over his head. A silent challenge presented itself: Would he let it ride?

  “Of course they are,” Daniel said, his tone between nervous and congenial. “Why would you say that?”

  “I can just tell, from watching Mom. Because of her back and her knees and everything.”

  And everything. Daniel’s eyes flicked back to hers, then away, and she wasn’t sure which of them was more humiliated.

  “That isn’t fair,” she blurted out, and Grant turned, looking surprised to find her standing there, but not particularly sorry. “Someone having an injury they can’t help doesn’t mean they’re not strong. I’m strong in plenty of other ways.” She felt ridiculous, getting defensive with a five-year-old. But he’d cut to the bone of her fears, that her children would see her this way—weak, inadequate, limited. The way Daniel saw her.

  “She gave birth to you,” Daniel pointed out, and she’d have been grateful if she had any faith the conversation would have gone this way without her present. “That’s something no boy is strong enough to do.”

  Grant changed the subject then, and Molly went to put the wash in, where no one would see her cry.

  It haunted her, that this was the example she’d set for her son. Girls aren’t strong. She’d done everything she could think of to try to break free of this pain trap, and she loathed that she was still inside of it. Shivering and full of regret, like Tux. And she’d foolishly sent away the only person who’d bothered to come looking for her.

  She got to her feet and tossed the damp washcloth toward the hamper, where it landed in a sad heap a few feet off target. Leaving it—that’s what Daniel would do—she crossed to the walk-in closet and stood in the doorway, surveying its his-and-her contents as if they belonged to a pair of strangers. Which, in a way, they did.

  Pulling off her tee, she let it fall to the floor and stood shivering in her bra, a plain thick cotton number she wouldn’t have been caught dead in ten years ago. The clothes lining her side of the rack were too compartmentalized: business casual basics she scarcely needed anymore, date-night dresses that didn’t fare much better, and stretchy activewear that only reminded her of how broken she felt wearing it. What she wanted was comfort—something to make her feel like everyt
hing would be okay, even if it wasn’t true. Her eyes fell on an old sweatshirt of Daniel’s—one she’d spent many of their hours apart in back when they were dating—and she pulled it down from the top shelf and slid it over her head.

  An aged, worn version of her former self peered back at her from the floor-length mirror. Wrapping herself in this soft warmth had once felt like wrapping herself in him, on nights when she wanted him so badly she clung to the next best thing. Then as now, it smelled of Daniel, clean shaven and cool. She used to make a show of pouting when he asked for it back, unflattering and misshapen though it was. For a while, the shirt was like a game piece—she’d talk him out of his clothes and later, when he was drowsing naked and spent, she’d pluck it triumphantly from its discarded spot on the floor and shove it into her drawer, hoping he wouldn’t see.

  Now she shared a closet with all his clothes and felt little affection for them—only annoyance when they took up more than their share of hangers. Now she slept in her own clothes whether he was home or away. But she wanted to know if she could feel that way again. As if righting things between them were as easy as putting on an old, familiar shirt. As if she couldn’t get enough of him otherwise.

  As if she could never get enough.

  The way she’d been feeling lately, it embarrassed her to admit, about Rick.

  She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared at her reflection. She looked like one of those TV drama wives who greet their husbands with kisses and do still wear their clothes, albeit in a more adorably coifed way than Molly could ever manage. She would leave this shirt on until just before Daniel was due home, and she would relish the empty house. And maybe, by the time she returned it to its shelf, she’d know what to say when he walked through the door.

  It had to be a good sign, at least, that she really did want to be alone. This was new, hoping Rick wouldn’t stop by. Molly was far more accustomed to biting back the urge to speak his name, as if working him into conversations might conjure his presence—even where Daniel was concerned. Sometimes especially where Daniel was concerned.

  Of course, she never did. She hadn’t exactly meant for her friendship with Rick to be a secret. Daniel knew that Rosie and Nori had a bond but was too busy questioning whether it was wise for Nori to spend so much time with a “troubled kid” to realize the extent to which that bond had extended to Rick and Molly. Daniel could ruin things that way. His dismissals came easily and without much thought, before or after. And she hadn’t wanted him to ruin her one good thing outside of work and the kids, even though she was realizing that the fact that her one good thing involved another man—however tangentially, however innocently—was problematic on a fundamental level.

  It wasn’t that she wanted Rick instead. It was just that Rick knew how to look her in the face without cringing or scoffing at her pain, without reflexively looking away from it, even without minimizing it, which was something he of all people had a right to do. It was trivial compared to what he’d been through. But Rick was firm that life was not a competition of whose tragedies were the most crushing.

  Ostensibly he was the one who’d needed help, at the start. That first day, late last summer, he’d rushed down the trail through the woods, toddler Rosie in his arms, startling Molly and Nori, who weren’t used to backyard visitors. Molly had been coaxing Nori through a scavenger hunt, a preschool assignment to consider what was “the same and different” between the nature center and their own backyards. So far, she’d offered to Nori the wispy remains of a dandelion head, an unripe cherry tomato, and a perfect maple leaf, but all her daughter wanted was to rip handfuls of grass from the lawn and throw them like confetti.

  “Sorry for barging in,” Rick had said, standing over her, smiling down. “You’re about to question my parenting, because though we haven’t met, I’m wondering if you can take her for a second? I didn’t realize these tree cutters would come so close to the house. They’re making me nervous.” So that was the noise she’d been hearing. The forest was thick that time of year, making it hard to tell what all that grinding and crashing entailed, or how far away it was. She got to her feet, her scavenged rejects still clenched in her hand. The last vestiges of the carpal tunnel had left her grip weakened, and she crunched the dandelion stem until she felt the milk ooze into her palm, just to prove to herself she could.

  “I’m Molly,” she said, wiping the mess on her jeans and extending a hand, “and this is Nori.” She looked down at her daughter, who was paying them no mind, busy examining the grass stains on the knees of her light gray leggings. Nori’s little fingers slid a tentative blade of grass over her ankle, experimenting, and she looked disappointed when it didn’t function like a paintbrush. Molly smiled at Rick ruefully. “About the same age, I’d say? Nori just turned three.”

  “Inching up on three here,” he said. “I’m Rick. She’s Rosie. And so sorry, but if you don’t mind keeping her at a safe distance—” He was cut short by the smashing of branches and a distant masculine whoop that didn’t sound entirely victorious.

  “Go,” Molly insisted, taking Rosie into her tingling arms with all the assuredness she could muster. The girl was lighter than Nori, wispier, and she blinked wide eyed at Molly with the look of someone who was trying to go with the flow. A mature look, all things considered, for a two-year-old.

  By the time Rick returned, nearly an hour later, Molly was clearing the dried leaves and dead vines from the bottom of the path—now that someone was going to use it, at least once more—and watching the girls with fascination. Nori had taken the younger girl’s hand and not let go. Molly had brought them a picnic blanket and a tin tea party set, and they’d been sitting for an uncharacteristically long stretch, shoulder to shoulder, passing dishes back and forth, looking like the world’s most innocuous two-headed monster.

  She heard the rush of steps behind her, and the string of muttered curses when Rick tripped, and turned just in time to wave off his breathless apology. “Fast friends,” she whispered, pointing at the girls. “You did me a favor, actually—I think Nori was getting bored with me. Though the most curious thing is that they haven’t said a word to each other.”

  “It’d be more curious if they had,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning in as if she were already his greatest confidant. “Rosie doesn’t talk to anyone other than me.” Molly checked that he was serious, and he responded with a brisk nod. “It’s early to diagnose it, but it’s called selective mutism. The doctors are reluctant to tie it to her mother’s death, given her age at the time, but they won’t convince me that doesn’t have everything to do with it.”

  “Oh.” What to say to that? His wife’s death after a yearlong battle with cancer had been the subject of neighborhood speculation not because anyone knew the family—no one seemed to—but because you didn’t need to know them to know that it was just so damn sad. She had a baby, for God’s sake, and had been ill for her daughter’s entire life. No wonder the father was so antisocial, coming and going down his long driveway with the windows rolled up, no acknowledgment of his neighbors aside from an aloof wave. He did seem to have a surplus of relatives around, though, whether his own or his wife’s—the turnout for her wake had clogged the streets—and so the others had left them to grieve in peace. Or so they told themselves when someone ventured that perhaps they should have approached.

  “I’m so sorry. That must be … difficult.” She tried to imagine a life where this had become requisite small talk when meeting someone new—a need-to-know briefing on the tragedy and its fallout. She decided to take a chance on a little levity. “You didn’t think to mention that she wouldn’t talk to me when you dropped her off?” Molly teased, and his eyes snapped to hers, surprised. She persisted. “Good thing I’m not one to let a kid who ignores me give me a complex.”

  It was a good-natured lie. Even an infant could give her a complex, simply by crying—oh goodness, what was she doing wrong, what was she missing, and why was she so incompetent? Molly
had stopped liking that once-favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quote—No one can make you feel inferior without your consent—awhile back. Around the time she realized that she’d taken to granting permission rather indiscriminately.

  A guilty half smile crept across his face. “Would you have agreed to watch her if I had?”

  “Of course.” Actually, there was a decent chance she’d have talked herself out of it—or, at best, agreed but then ruined the hour by trying to overcompensate, talking too fast and loud and forcing things.

  “Then we came to the right place.” Rosie hadn’t noticed her father yet, and he watched with interest as she reached out a spoon and stirred Nori’s invisible tea. “As I said, it’s early, but we’re in therapy now, trying to make headway before preschool, or pre-K—” He stopped, considering. “Actually, the therapist encouraged a playmate. To expand her comfort zone.” He turned to Molly, his expression infused with such hope it took her aback. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so earnestly about anything. Anyone.

  “It’s my fault. I’ve kept her holed up there on the hill, walled in by grief—mostly mine. It’s heartbreaking how little she remembers, already. Though maybe for the best.” He cleared his throat, and Molly’s inclination was to put him at ease. He could leave himself out of it; no need to go there.

  “What kind of therapy is it, exactly?” she asked.

  “Behavioral. It’s focused on what’s called ‘brave talking’—which might be bunk, who knows. But no way am I letting them medicate this kid. So it’s this or nothing.”

  Molly had become an expert in filling that space between “this” and “nothing” with other approaches that someone, somewhere thought might be a good idea. But given her track record, she kept that to herself.

  “What kind of medication would they possibly use for a kid who just doesn’t speak?”

  “Antianxiety stuff. A good percentage of selective mutes have an underlying anxiety disorder, so they try to treat that. But hell if I’m going to let them make a guessing game out of my kid. Who, by the way, is not anxious.”