So Much Pretty (16 page)

I come pick her up and say, “C’mon, Al, it’s wabbit season,” and she’s happy as hell.

Right now she doesn’t like to eat ’em, but she likes to dress ’em and makes things out of their pelts. Made me a pair of earmuffs.

First few times we just went out to Tern Woods, which is not much of a woods compared to when I was a boy, but it’s still pretty, what’s left of it, and easy for a kid to learn how to track through. Later, we went out to some old growth by the river. And that was just gorgeous and hilly and dark in the middle of the day. The “wild wood,” she called it. And she was light and silent walking on the pine bed with a gun almost as big as she was tall. I was proud of her. Proud she’d call me her uncle.

Claire

COMPREHENSIVE FREE CLINIC
FOR THE UNINSURED, 1994

S
HERRI’S SON GOT
sick at school, leaving a bare-bones staff that Wednesday, lines to the door, standing room only. Claire was glad she had a stay-at-home husband. She called to let him know she’d be late. Alice was taking a nap. He said they’d been in the greenhouse on the roof all morning; she’d been playing with worms and a spoon.

“Oh!” he said. “And Micky found out where she’s getting placed for Doctors Without Borders.”

“Where?”

“Let’s just say it’s unlikely she’ll be seeing less HIV. We’re going to make a special dinner.”

After the call, Claire went to the front to pick up paperwork for Sherri’s patients. “Thank you,” the receptionist said quietly, her hand over the mouthpiece of her headset. She handed Claire three clipboards. “Go to five first, she’s been sitting there for twenty minutes. You’ll need a kit.”

Claire hurried to pick one up on her way to the room. Didn’t want the woman waiting any longer. She shuffled the clipboards awkwardly as she knocked on the door, managing to get the patient chart on top just as a woman’s voice said, “Come in.”

Claire opened the door and looked up from the chart, quickly adjusting her gaze to match the height of the patient sitting on the examination table.

She looked to be about five years old. She was pale and had straight dark hair, dark eyes. Her shoulders were narrow and her arms thin. Claire could see from where she stood that the
girl’s earlobes were dark red and encrusted with dried blood. The gown was big on her, and she was wearing grimy white ankle socks with pictures of Princess Jasmine on them. Beside the girl, sitting on a low stool, was Amadi from rape crisis. Behind the screen, Claire could see the cuffs of the girl’s jeans laid out on top of a wide white sheet of sterile paper, for her to take later and seal inside the kit. A clean shirt, sweatpants, and underwear were folded, waiting on the table. The room smelled strongly of urine.

“Lauren,” Amadi said. “This is my friend Claire. She’s going to give you a quick checkup.”

Claire set the paperwork and kit beside the clean clothes. “Hi, Lauren,” Claire said, smiling gently. Lauren lifted her hand, not quite waving. Claire wondered where the girl’s mother was. Knew the injuries should not be extensive, or they’d have taken her to the emergency room, but was concerned to see the box of Kotex on the chair beside Amadi.

They talked about the Aladdin movie while Claire positioned the lamp. It wasn’t until she was gently scraping beneath Lauren’s fingernails that she realized she would be performing the same examination, gathering the same information, whether or not the girl was alive. She sensed the warmth of Lauren’s small hand through the thin plastic of her glove and felt a surge of adrenaline and relief, something bordering on gratitude, to be able to touch her.

She walked home with the headphones on and the volume up as loud as she could stand it. Joe Strummer’s voice in her head blotted out traffic and sirens, rendered the streets a ballet of random events and motions. But the day at the clinic was still there, it wasn’t going anywhere.

Claire was in it permanently. And because of this, her family was, too, her daughter. And there was no leaving. If Claire were to abandon the city and her patients, she would be wrong. She would be morally wrong. She would hate herself. But she hated herself now anyway. Hated herself, hated her
ambivalence about the job, hated someone. Some invisible person, invisible man; the same invisible man described again and again, committing the same act, in the same ways. A guerrilla war against a civilian population. The more stories she heard from patients—stories that mirrored one another to the smallest tactical detail—the more it was impossible to think of it in any other way. Hard to imagine there wasn’t some organizational structure to it. Certainly there was an ideology behind it—an invisible ideology hiding in plain sight. In the language, in jokes, on the television, on sides of buses, in clothes and gestures and wallets and bodies and faces and minds.

Who was she to simply go home after this day? Lauren wasn’t the only child she had seen; she was just the youngest so far. Claire wondered where the girl would go tonight, who would be caring for her. If her labs would come back okay. What kind of woman she would grow up to be. She turned up the Walkman until there was white noise inside her head and stood still on the sidewalk on Seventh Street. It was not enough. What she was doing was not enough. The way it was being done would never be enough.

Claire said nothing about work when she got home at eight. Alice was still up, and she nursed her and gave her a bath while Gene and Micky made dinner. Washed her blond-white hair, her strong, pale, and tender body, her impossibly soft skin. Claire dressed her in green footie pajamas. Then sat on the side of the tub as the steam rose and dissipated in the bathroom, holding her for a long time.

Haeden, NY

NEW YORK, 2008

“I
S SHE AWAKE
?”

“Holy shit, dude, does it look it? Could I fucking do this if she was awake?”

“Dude, cut that shit out. Wait till my brother gets here.”

“Maybe she’s playing possum.”

“Shh. Shh. Fucking quit laughing.”

“Fuck. What if she’s dead?”

“We got the coroner here in a minute. He can take her pulse.”

“Look at her face. Oh shit. I can’t believe she doesn’t feel this shit.”

“Wait. Would you just wait till my brother gets here?”

“All right, all right. Hands off. Jesus. Remember when she used to be a fucking cow?”

“Yeah, dude, if this had happened six months ago, how were you going to fit her down there?”

“In pieces.”

Theo

HAEDEN, NY, 2006

T
HE IDEA OF
the next day arriving was impossible for Theo, a day that Alice was not there. That day couldn’t be. He wanted to leave town, wanted to go to a good school, but not without her. Knowing this would happen had ruined his fourteenth birthday. He’d asked Claire then if they would be sending Alice to Simon’s Rock, too. No, they wouldn’t, she said. Theo was lucky because it would be so exciting. He would get a better education, he would be close to the city and Constant, and he would have fun. But Theo did not feel like he would have any fun without Alice.

He’d just begun to get taller than her, and now, when they did the trapeze catch, they had to wait longer than before because his weight had changed things.

She was already crying even though he would not leave until after dinner. She was crying out in the barn, upside down on the low trapeze, tears rolling off her forehead onto the ground. It smelled like fall. The things they had painted on the walls since they were little surrounded them. Maps of fake countries, extra circus characters, two-headed animals, a guy with a goat head wearing a business suit and holding a briefcase. A fake porthole with a view of fish and mermaids and Poseidon.

Theo held her hands and backed away, pulling her with him until she was stretched almost parallel to the floor, then let go. She swung backward, then forward to him again. Tears rushed off her face. Her hair hung down, nearly touching the floor.

She pulled up and stood on the bar. Pumped her knees to go higher and higher. He watched from below. She let go of the
ropes and stood balanced on the bar, leaned forward, and leaped off to land in a pile of straw next to him.

“I will be ever so sorry to be leaving you, old chap,” he said.

“Quite.”

He got into the straw with her and lay his head on her chest, and she put her arms around him while he cried. Her skin was warm. He felt like his heart was being squeezed. She wiped her nose.

“This fucking sucks,” he said into her shirt.

“I’ll send you stuff,” Alice told him. “We can test our psychic powers. We can write letters from all the characters. It will be cool because they’ll actually come in the mail. We can make the code even harder to figure out.” She was talking quickly, making things up to comfort him. “We can stop using the ones with numbers and do the ones with author and character names, make them context-specific. You know, the more boring the letter seems, the more exciting the
real
letter is.” He could picture it perfectly. It stopped him crying. “We can make a map of an underground river for them to meet in secret. Can you draw it?” she asked.

“I probably already have one drawn somewhere,” he said. “I should keep my maps and all that shit with your stuff while I’m gone, so you can use them.”

“Okay.” She kissed the side of his face and said, “I love you,” which made her start crying again. They never said it, even if they thought it. Saying it now proved they could read each other’s minds. “I’m going to really really really miss you,” she said, putting her cheek right next to his.

He knew she would. And he knew she would write. But he also knew she would replace him somehow with projects or research or a new game. He knew her. She couldn’t help it. He knew they should not be apart. He was afraid of who she would become without him.

EVIDENCE
P47909

4/17/09 1:00
P. M
.

Cpt. Alex Dino

Video Record 0002

Bailey, Theophile

I’m not smirking. I know you think that I’m the key to all of this, and you’re wrong. I went to elementary school with them. I played sports with them. Whatever. You don’t seem too upset about it, either, frankly. I don’t think I should be talking to you without a lawyer.

She was never violent, no, absolutely not at all. That doesn’t even make sense.

She never even got mad at people. She just didn’t care that much. I mean, she watched . . . she paid attention to people. Which every kid does. When we were little, we used to pretend to be spies, so we’d watch people.

I would definitely say she was my best friend. I think that’s pretty obvious. There was never a time when we didn’t play together. But she never said a word to me about this stuff. And she would have. She really would have.

Yes. She was really smart. Back in elementary school, she was kind of dorky. Then she got some influx of brilliance with her period. Seriously. She got like PMS that made her build stuff and talk faster and have weird dreams. It was pretty cool, actually.

Why wouldn’t I know when she had her period?

A lot, I guess. We did every summer when I came home. Why? You think the sex made her do it?

Do
nothing
! I was kidding. Whatever. You wouldn’t even be
talking
about sex if it was a guy that did this.

I mean, did whatever you
think
she did, which nobody else thinks she did. Which I know she didn’t do. But if a guy did it, you would never find some girl he had sex with and ask her about it. Why do you want to talk about whether or not she had sex? Isn’t that what people do? People have sex, right? Don’t you have sex? I do. Whatever. You don’t need to get so pissed off. I’m not a fucking cop, I didn’t know that you like to talk to everybody about sex when there’s a murder.

No. Why would I care if Alice had sex with people? I highly doubt she was having sex with a bunch of football players. I wouldn’t say I was her only boyfriend, no. I mean, I wouldn’t really say she was my boyfriend at all. What? I mean, I was her boyfriend. You’re confusing me. I left here before high school. I already told you how close we were.

What I
do
know is that I should have a lawyer here if you’re asking me this kind of shit. I was willing to talk about things, but now I know this is wrong. I know what you’re doing is wrong. You’re trying to get me upset. You’re confusing me. I don’t think I should talk to you anymore. No, I wasn’t trying to be funny. I know this isn’t funny!

Oh my fucking God. Jesus, please. I am not going to look at those pictures. I’m not. I’m not going to look at them. It must be illegal for you to make me look at them. Please. I need a lawyer here. Because! You said you were going to ask me one thing, and now you’re trying to show me those disgusting pictures.

Call it whatever you want. I’m not opening my eyes and I’m not saying anything else and I want a lawyer here. I’m not the key to anything. Oh my fucking God! Why are you asking me? You know what happened. I was in Annandale when all this shit happened, and you don’t have any right to hold me here and abuse—please put those things away.

I will not open my eyes until you take those pictures away.

Thank you. Now can I please go?

What? No, of course not. Do I look like I know how to hunt?

I imagine my parents are on campus right now, and I assume you already know that. Please can I go now? I actually know I can go. I
actually know you can’t do this unless a lawyer is here. Please just let me go.

I don’t know anything about Wendy White. And the last time I saw those guys was middle school. Wendy was older than us. I don’t remember her at all. Alice never talked about her. She was a waitress or something. You’re the ones who know. I don’t know
anything
. Alice didn’t tell me anything.

Beverly Haytes

HAEDEN, NY, NOVEMBER 2008

B
EVERLY HAYTES HAD
wide-set champagne colored eyes and a flat freckled face. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cropped, and her back was enviably straight. She played golf every Tuesday with a group of ladies who had named themselves the Haeden Homegals, all of whom she’d grown up with except for Ruth Tyson, who had come up from Florida with her husband who worked at the salt mines.