Crying Wolf

20

“I love that,” Izzie said.

“What?”

“Your chipped tooth.” She ran the tip of her tongue over it again.

“It’s a flaw.”

“That’s why.” They stood beside the wind-up record player, down in the cave, their arms around each other, music of long ago all around them; the words incomprehensible to Nat, the emotions not. “How did you do it?” Izzie asked.

“Do what?”

“Chip your tooth.”

“I was born with it. My mom has the same thing, same tooth.”

“Your mom-” Izzie began, and stopped herself.

“What about her?”

“Oops,” Izzie said.

Nat backed up a little, still holding Izzie, but at arm’s length. “What about her?”

“I hope to meet her one day.”

“That’s not what you were going to say.”

Izzie sighed. “She sounds nice, that’s all.”

But he’d never really discussed his mother with Izzie. “Who says?”

“You can be relentless.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m used to it. Patti told us about her. There-happy now?”

“Yup.” He was; the sound of her name stabbed him, but he was happy at the same time.

Izzie laughed, moved closer to him. The music played, the candles burned. Happy, and on his way to exhilaration. He spun her, just a half a little spin, to the music.

At that moment, something caught Nat’s eye on the far, and distant, wall. He looked over Izzie’s head, saw only the biggest of all the oil paintings, hanging halfway up. Fauns, sheep, a centaur spying from behind a rock, three nudes bathing by a waterfall.

“Is she relentless too?”

“My mom? No.”

“What does she do?

“I thought I told you.”

“Must have been Grace. Happens all the time.”

“She works in a law office.”

“Your mother’s a lawyer?”

“Receptionist.”

“How big a practice?”

A question that would never have occurred to him. “In what way?”

“How many lawyers?”

“Just one.”

Izzie’s eyebrow rose, that right eyebrow that took care of nonverbal communication.

“It’s a small town,” Nat said.

“What’s he like?” said Izzie. “Or she.”

“My mom’s boss?” Mr. Beaman: Whatever you’ve got, Evie. Paper cups will do. “He’s all right, I guess.” She never complained. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s about you,” Izzie said. “And we have something in common.”

“We do?”

“I lived in a small town once myself. In Connecticut. Not Grace. Just me. We were very little and it was just for a year. This was after the divorce. Grace stayed with our mother in the city, my father and I moved to the country. I went to first grade at an ordinary public school.”

“And survived?”

“Very funny. I loved it. Especially snow days. They were the best. Did they have snow days where you were?”

“Some.” But not many; Nat’s town prided itself on keeping the schools open no matter what, and anyone with a pickup and a plow was on the road with the first falling flakes, fighting for a chunk of the public-works budget.

“There’s nothing like a snow day,” Izzie said. “Not Christmas, or any other holiday or vacation. You wake up and ka-boom.”

“Ka-boom?”

“Everything’s changed.”

“What do you mean?” Nat said. He himself had earned extra money on snow days, shoveling driveways.

“It’s a different planet,” Izzie said. “This feeling-I couldn’t put it into words back then-of freedom. Real freedom, like I was no longer in the grip of all these forces.”

“What forces?”

“The forces, Nat. The responsibilities, the duties, the relationships.”

“Life as we know it.”

“Exactly. Snow days are different. Like after the world ends but you survived.”

“And you get the same feeling down here.”

“Close. How did you know?”

Later they were in the bedroom, on the canopied bed, the candles all out, the silence complete.

And not long after that: “The things you do,” Izzie said.

Anything. They seemed to be able to do anything together, without need of consultation, without fear of a misstep. He moved slightly so she could put her head on his chest if she wanted; she did.

“Think it’s still snowing?” Nat said.

“Got to be,” said Izzie. “That’s why I picked this place-it was snowing when I interviewed.”

Picked this place. Nat thought of Mrs. Smith and Miss Brown, all it had taken to get him here. “And Grace? Is that why she picked it too?”

“She didn’t really care.”

“Didn’t care?”

“Where she went. College isn’t really that big a deal, is it? If I liked it, that was good enough for her.”

Silence.

“And when you went with your father and Grace stayed with your mother?” Nat said. “How was that decided?”

“What a funny question.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s one of my earliest memories, maybe the first. It was supposed to be the other way, me with my mother, Grace with my father. Then there was this goodbye scene in Grand Central Station. Suitcases, porters, the old nanny and the new one, probably the Albert of the time, the four of us. The four of us of the time. And Grace-do you know Grand Central?”

“No.”

“There’s a mezzanine with a restaurant above the main concourse, or at least there was then. This was before the renovation, when it was still full of homeless people. We were having hot chocolate while someone got the tickets for Connecticut. Grace’s chocolate spilled-I can’t remember how, but I can still see the chocolate flowing across the table and dripping onto her lap. She just watched it, didn’t even flinch. Then she looked up and said she wanted to go with Mommy.”

Silence. And yes, like a snow day, everything muffled, the world disconnected.

“But it was all arranged. That’s what they said, my mother, my father, one of the nannies, someone. No one took her seriously. The next thing, she’d climbed on top of the railing, over the concourse, and spread her arms. I can see that too, much stronger than the spilled chocolate, even. On tiptoes on the railing, like Acapulco. It was in my dreams for years.”

Silence.

“What was that?” Izzie said.

“What?”

“That noise.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

They listened, heard nothing but snow day silence, insulated from sound by the earth around them.

“Then what happened?” Nat said.

“This homeless guy, going from table to table with a paper cup, grabbed her and sat her back down in her chair, like it was part of his routine, kind of roughly. Couldn’t have happened now, of course, the way it’s all cleaned up. Then the tickets came. I went to Connecticut and Grace went back to the apartment with our mother. This was on Fifth Avenue, not where we are now. And that was that. The next year, our mother met someone new and moved to Paris, and my father ended up with both of us, back in the city.”

Silence.

“But I never understood what she was basing her preference on,” Izzie said.

“How do you mean?”

“We hardly spent any time with either of them. I don’t know why it made such a difference.”

Nat didn’t either, but he could see that chocolate dripping into Grace’s little lap as though he’d been there. In the darkness, he felt Izzie’s eyes on him.

“What’s your earliest memory?” she said.

“The same kind of thing.”

Izzie took it for a joke, and laughed.

They climbed the rope ladder, started back through the tunnels, Nat leading the way with a flashlight. “A teacher?” said Izzie; he felt her breath on the back of his ear. “Is that really what you want to be?”

He replied with a question of his own. “What did you put?” The rest of the cards had been forgotten after Mrs. Uzig’s appearance.

“Guess.”

“Spearing fish,” Nat said.

Pause. “I wish I had,” Izzie said. “I’m starting to think you know me better than I do.”

He had a troubling thought. “You didn’t put what Grace did?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then what?”

“Now I’m not telling.”

“Even if I guess?”

Somewhere during this dialogue they’d stopped, faced each other, embraced; the flashlight beam pointing here and there without guidance.

Izzie started to reply, then made a little sound, a quick inhale. “Look,” she said, and pointed to the quivering circle of light on the tunnel ceiling.

A bat hung upside down from a plastic pipe, its eyes wide open, liquid, intelligent.

“Our cave,” said Izzie. “Our bat.”

The thing hung motionless.

They climbed into the janitor’s closet in the basement of Plessey, out into the hall, upstairs to the main floor. Late night, snow coming down hard.

“Snow day tomorrow,” Izzie said, “for sure.”

She led him out the door and onto the quad, the snow in her hair, on her eyelashes. “Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss me right now.”

He did. Everything was all right, would be all right; whatever problems there were lost their power, like normal forces on a snow day, just as Izzie had said. He loved her, no doubt about it, and would have said so; but she was already gone, running across the quad toward Lanark, snow falling behind her like curtains.

In the morning snow still fell, but not as hard. Nat put on his boots, warm and waterproof, sixteenth-birthday present from his mom, now a little tight, and walked over to the student union cafeteria. Breakfast smells woke him up. He piled food on his tray-scrambled eggs, bacon, corn flakes, English muffin, banana, milk, juice, coffee. The cashier took his meal card, swiped it through the machine, swiped it again, once more. “Card’s blocked,” she said.

“Blocked?”

“Got a block on it.”

“Why?”

“Have to ask the financial office.”

“But it’s Sunday.”

“Comes to four twenty-five.”

But Nat didn’t have $4.25 on him, had no money at all, and the shoe in his closet was empty. He’d used up all his money getting to the airport and back, would have no more until his next check from the Alumni Office, due the next day.

“Can I owe you?”

“Owe me?”

“I’ll pay tomorrow.”

“The machine don’t allow that.”

All at once he was very hungry. “I could leave a note, and my student ID.”

“Won’t work.” She put a hand on his tray.

Nat abandoned it, walked away. As he went out the door he glanced back, saw the cashier chewing on a piece of his bacon. That put him in a good mood, a mood that lasted all the way home through the snow. He even took off his gloves, made a snowball, and threw it at Emerson, hitting his oxidized copper head from fifty feet.

He sat at his desk, opened Beyond Good and Evil to where he’d left off, part two, “The Free Spirit,” section 30. His mind felt sharp, much sharper than usual, so sharp he noticed the change. Our supreme insights, he read, must-and should! — sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes- Nat’s gaze left the page as he remembered Professor Uzig referring to this same passage on Aubrey’s Cay, and, as it left the page, happened on the blinking phone light, indicating a message in voice mail.

He checked, found one.

His mom. “Nat? Please call as soon as you-when you can. Okay? It’s me. Mom.”

Eight twenty-five, 6:25 at home. Too early to call. But something was wrong; he could hear that much. Then it hit him: Patti. Something’s gone wrong with Patti. She would never do anything to hurt herself, never-say it right-commit suicide, not Patti; but then he recalled a girl at Clear Creek a few years ahead of him who had committed suicide, and how everyone in the halls had said they couldn’t believe it, not someone like her.

He phoned home.

His mom answered in the middle of the first ring; probably the phone on her bedside table, but there was no sleep in her voice. “Nat?” she said. “Nat.”

“Hi, Mom. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Oh, no, I’ve been up all-no, you didn’t wake me.”

“What’s wrong, Mom? Is it Patti?”

There was a pause. He knew she was doing that long slow blink. “Patti? I haven’t heard from Patti.”

“Then what?”

“Oh, Nat.”

“What, Mom?”

“I’ve let you down.”

“That couldn’t happen, Mom.”

She started crying. “I’m so sorry.”

Nat just waited. He didn’t have a clue.

She got herself under control. “I lost my job.”

That made no sense. She’d worked for Mr. Beaman for fifteen years. “Did Mr. Beaman retire?” Stupid question: Mr. Beaman was much too young to retire.

“He… he let me go.”

Mr. Beaman fired his mom?

“I was getting stale. That’s what he said. He hired someone much fresher. Barely older than you, Nat.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I begged him.”

“Mom.”

“The day after Christmas. That’s when he… he did it. I’ve been looking for work ever since, but there’s nothing. And meanwhile the bank found out-why wouldn’t they, he does all their closings-and they called in the home equity loan.”

Nat found himself doing something he’d never done in his life: the long slow blink. When his eyes opened, he saw that it had stopped snowing.

“This was Monday, the day before I was going to mail the check for the second semester.”

Card’s blocked.

“How can they do that?”

“The bank? Change in financial status-it’s all in the fine print, all legal.” She started crying again. He’d hardly ever heard her cry, not since he was a kid, couldn’t stand it. “I’ve let you down so bad.”

“No you haven’t, Mom. Stop saying that.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t keep you there, Nattie. You have to come home.”