The Nobodies Album (23 page)

Excerpt from
THE RULE OF THE CHALICE
By Octavia Frost
REVISED ENDING

Scott tossed his house keys to Nikki. “Would you lock up?” he asked. She nodded but didn’t speak; inexplicably, she felt close to tears. She thought of Caleb, his chipmunk cheeks, the blue of his eyes. Her boy. She covered her eyes, let it wash over her for a minute, and then put it aside, back in the compartment it had come from.

She locked the door and walked down the porch steps. Daisy was walking in circles on the grass, singing a quiet song, just for herself. She was here; that was something. This child was here.

Scott lifted Daisy and buckled her into the truck. “You want to ride with us or follow us?” he asked Nikki.

“I’ll come with you,” she said, surprising herself. She went around to the passenger side and got in. Daisy sat in the middle, between the two of them.

“Look how high we are,” she said. Her face was as bright as the day.

Nikki opened her window. The three of them rode along, washed in breeze. Scott turned on the radio and twisted the knob until he found a station. There was an old song playing, something that her own mother might have listened to as a kid. She and Scott both knew the words.

Daisy leaned her head on Nikki’s arm. Nikki felt the weight of the child’s body, smelled baby shampoo from her hair. There was music and sunlight, wind and the bumpy movement of the truck. They came to a corner and turned, sliding into each other as they went.

Chapter Twelve

One day a couple of years ago, I parked my car on a narrow street in the middle of Boston. As I beeped the lock and began to walk away, something unusual happened. Ducklings began to fall from the sky.

I saw first one, then another plummet through the air, to land with a muted thud on the sidewalk. They weren’t dead, these two, but they were clearly hurt. They had fallen awkwardly, and were struggling to get to their feet. As I knelt to help one of them right himself, a third duckling landed a little way away, and finally I looked up.

I was standing next to a hotel, and up at the level of the first floor there was a slim ledge that ran the length of the building. A full-grown duck stood up there, looking down at her fallen babies. She let out a husky squawk and paced a few steps from right to left, and as she did, another duckling came to the edge and propelled himself over.

A small group had gathered by this point, five or six of us who had thought we were on our way someplace important until the sky started raining birds like a biblical plague. As this fourth baby fell, we each stretched a hand forward to try to catch it. None of us succeeded, but the toppling yellow body bumped against someone’s arm, which was enough to deflect him from hitting the sidewalk with full force. This one stood up immediately, apparently unhurt, and fluffed his feathers while he waited for the rest.

What were they doing up there? I don’t know. We were nowhere near the water, and as far as I could see there was no nest. But if she didn’t lay the eggs up on that concrete shelf and warm them in that space barely as wide as her own body, then I don’t know how they got there, since clearly the babies were too young to know how to fly.

Three more times ducklings came over the edge, and three more times we broke their fall—perhaps not quite saving their lives, but at least minimizing their harm. And then the mother flew down—someone was already on the phone to whomever you call in a situation like this—and she rounded up her babies and led them away toward dangers unknown. And the five or six of us who had taken part in this unnerving incident went our separate ways, having shared something that felt as if it must hold some significance, though its exact meaning remained elusive.

This is troubling me now, as I wheel my suitcase out of the hotel and ask the doorman to find me a cab, because I sense that there’s some link between my current situation and the scene I witnessed that day, but I can’t quite connect the dots. Something about motherhood and danger, protection and risk. Or trusting fate. Or letting go.

It’s the kind of image I might try to put in a book but ultimately abandon. It’s too capacious; there are too many possible meanings, and it’s not sturdy enough to do all that work at once. Perhaps one day I’ll find a place to use it without ascribing it any symbolic significance. Let it stand as a picture, a visual non sequitur. Describe it simply, like a haiku:
Pacing mother duck / Babies dropping from the ledge / Bumping outstretched hands
.

Or maybe I’ll never use it, and the entire thing exists only in the minds of those who were there that day, to be wiped from the slate of human experience the moment the last of us dies. What would it matter? Why should that feel like such a loss?

•  •  •

When the taxi drops me at Roland’s house, I say good morning to the photographers and ignore their shouted questions as I pull my suitcase over to the security keypad and punch in the code Milo gave me over the phone. Through the gate, up the stairs, ring the bell. Roland himself answers the door.

“Good morning,” he says brightly. He’s dressed in shorts and a T-shirt; his feet are bare, which makes me feel oddly embarrassed, like I’m intruding on something intimate. “So glad you decided to take me up on my offer.”

“Thank you again, so much,” I say, stepping inside.

“Not at all,” he says. “Come with me, I’ll show you your room.”

He takes my suitcase from me, and I make a feeble show of protesting. He leads me across the chessboard floor to the staircase, and I follow him up, feeling exquisitely awkward. It’s hard to make small talk with a man whose Wikipedia entry you read twelve hours earlier.

“Where’s Milo?” I ask as we climb.

“Went back to sleep. He got up just long enough to tell me you were coming, then crawled back to bed.” He turns to smile at me. “I miss that, you know? Sleeping till all hours. Territory of the young.”

“Hmm,” I say. “I suppose clinical depression is always an option.” I was going for witty, but I’m afraid I ended up with merely odd. Well, I never said I was good with words. Not ones spoken out loud, anyway.

But Roland laughs, and the look he gives me is genuinely amused. “Or opium. Doesn’t sound like that Kublai Khan bloke had a problem with early waking.”

“Literary references,” I say wryly. “Nicely done.”

“Comes standard with the room.”

At the top of the stairs he turns to the left, the same direction as the library where I sat with Milo two days ago, and starts down the hall, pulling my suitcase along so that it follows him like a pet. He stops at the doorway of the first room on the right.

“There you are, then. I’ll let you get settled—make yourself at home. Just so you know the lay of the land, Milo’s staying across the hall, next to the library, and I’m down at the other end. My housekeeper’s downstairs. Her name’s Danielle, and she’ll be happy to get you something to eat if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks,” I say. “This is all great material if I ever decide to write a novel about a rock star. ‘Seems to know a lot about opium … hasn’t done dishes since 1974 …’”

“I’d better be careful what I say to you,” he says. He pauses and looks at me steadily, his face serious. “Listen, whatever you do, you must never open the locked door at the bottom of the basement stairs.”

I stare at him, my eyes a little too wide, and he laughs. “Kidding,” he says. “See you later. Shout if you need anything.” He turns and walks briskly down the hall.

I pull my suitcase inside the bedroom and close the door. It’s a lovely room, big and airy, decorated in blues and whites, though like the kitchen, it’s a bit anonymous. The room faces the back of the house, and looking out the window, I see a terrace below, with a pool and some deck chairs. I wish for a moment that I had a bathing suit with me—that vague, involuntary response to the mere existence of a pool—and then I realize that there’s no way I’d go walking around Roland Nysmith’s house in a bathing suit.

I sit down on the bed and allow myself a moment of panic at the reality of being here in this near-stranger’s home, without any idea of what I’m supposed to do next. I hadn’t counted on Milo being asleep, though I’m certainly not going to wake him.

I take a look around the room—open the drawers, peek into the closets—and find nothing interesting or unusual. For lack of anything better to do, I open my suitcase and start to unpack. There hasn’t been any talk about how long I’m staying. I have a ticket back to Boston on Monday, two days from now, but I don’t know if I’ll be using it.

As I’m lining up bottles of makeup and perfume against the mirror in the bathroom, I hear my phone buzz from my purse. I take it out and look at it. It’s Lisette.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hi, Octavia,” she says. “It’s Lisette. How are you?”

“Good,” I say. “Actually, kind of weird. I’m sitting in a guest room at Roland Nysmith’s house.” I think that if anyone will understand the surreal tint my day has taken, it’s Lisette. She used to have a true reverence for celebrity, and I don’t imagine that goes away, no matter how many rock stars you meet.

“Aaaaah!” she says, in a mock scream I find surprisingly gratifying. “Oh, how funny. Were you a total Misters girl?”

“No, not especially. But, you know … I liked them well enough, and I’ve been hearing their music for thirty years. I never thought I’d have
Roland Nysmith
carrying my suitcase for me.”

I laugh at the way I sound, and she joins in. I’ve always been wary of school reunions, because of their transformative magic, the way they turn you back into the person you used to be. But there’s something reassuring about talking to someone who shared your adolescence.

“So we didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday,” I say. “How are you? What are you doing these days?”

We spend a few minutes catching up. She likes working in real estate; she’s dating a man who used to play for the 49ers. She has an idea for a book that she’d love to discuss with me sometime. We talk about who we’re still in touch with from high school. Her list is long, mine practically nonexistent.

“How was the rest of the service?” I ask.

“Oh, it was nice. Sad, but nice. A lot of people had stories to share about Bettina. Kathy’s a wreck, of course. But she’s glad to have a project to keep her busy.”

“A project?”

“Oh, you know. The domestic violence thing. And, of course, seeing your son convicted.” She laughs, which I hope is a response to nervousness.

I don’t answer. I’m thinking again of the mother duck, how it must have looked from her perspective. Fragile bodies hurtling toward the pavement.

“God, I’m sorry,” she says after a brief silence. “That was so not the right thing to say.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “No one knows what the etiquette is for this kind of situation.”

I hear the sound of a cigarette lighter, and she pauses as she breathes in the smoke. “Last week I asked my mail carrier if she was pregnant.”

I shake my head, slightly baffled. I assume she’s giving an example of another time when she said something that turned out to be inappropriate, but I don’t ask her why she’s telling me this, or whether it was embarrassing, or how much weight her mail carrier has gained. Instead I think about how to redirect the conversation. “You know, speaking of Roland,” I say finally, though it’s actually been several minutes since we have, “after I left yesterday, I saw him outside the building, trying to get into the funeral. The security people asked him to leave.”

“Oh, well, I’m not surprised,” she says. “It’s too bad, though, because I think he really did love Bettina.”

I think of the photograph sitting on the table downstairs, Roland pushing Bettina on a swing, and I feel … not frightened, exactly, but uneasy.

Lisette continues talking. “He was definitely like a father to her,” she says. “Even if he turned out not to be her actual father.”

I pause. Now I’m completely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you don’t know the story?”

“No. I don’t know anything.”

“Well, for years Kathy thought that Roland was Bettina’s father. And Roland believed it, and he did his part—he gave them money, and he saw Bettina from time to time. And then, when Bettina was maybe eight or nine, they did a paternity test, and it turned out not to be him.”

I try to absorb this. “Wow,” I say. “So …”

There’s a knock on my door. “Mom? Are you in there?”

“Hi,” I call. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be down in the kitchen.”

“Is that Milo?” asks Lisette.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got hot- and cold-running rock stars over there,” she says. “I’ll let you go.” I feel like I need to ask her more questions, but I’m not even sure what they’d be. “Good to talk to you. How long are you in town for?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Everything’s pretty much up in the air.”

“Right. Well … call if you need a break.”

A break from what, I’m not sure, though I suppose she means a break from my own project of trying to keep my son out of prison. “Okay,” I say. “Thanks. Take care.”

After we hang up, I go downstairs. I stop to introduce myself to the housekeeper, who’s sweeping the entryway, and then I continue to the kitchen, where I find Milo, eating a bowl of cereal and looking at an open laptop.

“Good morning,” I say. “Sorry for waking you earlier. I’m glad you were able to get back to sleep.”

“That’s okay,” he says, looking up briefly. He points toward one of the counters. “There’s coffee, if you want some.”

“Thanks.” I open cabinets until I find a mug. I realize I haven’t eaten breakfast, so when I open the refrigerator to get milk, I also take a carton of yogurt. It’s a brand I’ve never seen before, German or Austrian, with pictures of cherries on the foil lid.

As I sit down at the table, Milo closes his computer, which I take as a gesture of politeness, though it could also be that he doesn’t want me to see what he was looking at.

“So … welcome,” he says, looking at me as if he’s not quite sure what I’m doing here.

I smile at his expression of vague disconcertedness, his tousled morning hair. “Thank you.” I peel the top from my yogurt. “How are you? Anything planned for the day?”

“Yeah, my lawyer’s coming over to meet with me around eleven.”

I nod. A house call from a lawyer on a Saturday morning. My son is an important man. “To go over anything in particular?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I’m not sure.” He takes a bite of cereal. “Also, I guess the police are finished with my house, so I need to … deal with that in some way.”

“Deal with it?”