One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  Nathan shrugs but holds her gaze. “He’s family.”

  “There are more important things than family.” She turns her head away from me when she says it, as if I won’t hear if I can’t see. “And there are other families besides yours.”

  He smiles sadly and opens his hands, like what can he do. “It’s my legacy.”

  I don’t know if he means GL606 and what it wrought are his legacy, or the need they engendered for him to risk everything by trying to fix it. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m starting to realize: so far, we’ve been doing everything wrong.

  One

  I am learning magic.

  I am learning everything.

  I have stopped going to tutoring altogether. Mrs. Radcliffe gave me shit about it. Petra gave me shit about it. Even the Kyles gave me shit about it. I could tell them it wasn’t helping anyone anyway. I could tell them they should hire someone with training and a degree in teaching kids with poisoned blood instead of foisting it off on Track A as if the only skills required are average intelligence and showing up. I could tell them I don’t owe them anything since drawing the long straw was just as likely as drawing a shorter one, and I didn’t get to pick my straw any more than anyone else did. But among the things I don’t owe them is an explanation. So I don’t tell them anything.

  Instead, I am learning magic. Making small objects disappear and reappear, picking your card, reading your mind. River isn’t supposed to show me how. I know the whole magician’s code thing sounds cheesy, but I get it too—it’s not really magic, so if everyone knew how to do it, it wouldn’t be cool anymore. Sometimes in order to preserve the enchantment, you have to know less.

  In history, from across the room, he palms a quarter then motions for me to look in my shoe, and there it is. In calculus, he passes me a note folded like a rose. I unfold it, and instead of lying flat, it makes a heart. In the cafeteria, he guesses what Monday has in her lunch. (She is unimpressed, and in fairness, how many sandwiches besides egg salad and how many fruits besides bananas are yellow and easy to pack in a paper sack?)

  After school, we hold hands and walk with lovely lazy slowness (if she weren’t annoyed at me, Petra would say “perambulate”) in the woods behind my house or around Bluebell Park. We hang out downtown and wander in and out of the few stores, feed each other bites of whatever’s hot at the Do Not Shop. We sit on the steps of the church and just talk. You wouldn’t think we would have anything in common, since he has been so many places and I have been so few, since his dad is rich and mine is dead, since what his family does for a living took living away from mine. But I might never run out of things to say to River. We sit and talk for three hours after school and then go home and call each other. We stay up late whispering into the phone, and I still have so much to tell him by first period that I have to write him a letter instead of taking notes in World History. It’s not because he’s new anymore since I’m getting used to him. It’s because everything about him makes me feel bright—luminous—and there is nothing to do with that feeling but put it into words.

  It’s freezing in the mornings, chilly all afternoon, the sky clouding up right after lunch or staying gray all day, fall racing toward its end. It’s not like there’s much of anywhere for us to be together inside, though. We can’t hang out at his house where his angry, brooding mother is, or at mine with Monday and all her books and anxieties and yellow things. We can’t go to the coffee shop or the drive-in or the mall because we live in Bourne instead of on TV. So we bundle up and stick to our outdoor haunts. It’s a good excuse to hold hands, to stay close.

  The steps of the church are cold through my jeans the day he is teaching me the disappearing-key trick. We are sitting there, freezing, giggling, wriggling the key free from our sleeves, when Pastor Jeff trudges up the wheelchair ramp pushing Pooh. I haven’t seen her in ages. Guilt grabs me by the ears and shakes my face. I stand to go over and give her a hug.

  “Don’t you dare,” she says, and my heart drops.

  “Oh Pooh—” I start but she interrupts.

  “Don’t you apologize to me, Mab Mitchell.” Then her voice dips to a too-loud whisper. “This is what we trained for!”

  “It is?”

  “A secret boyfriend. An affair that just might kill your poor mother. Heavy petting and who knows what-all else.” I blush so hard it hurts. “So don’t you feel bad about not coming to read to a blind old lady. I can read to myself, thank you very much.”

  While I am thinking about whether I can play this off to River later as the ramblings of what Petra would call senescence, it gets worse. “Still, I need to hear all the details. Obviously. I think you’ll agree I’ve earned them. Come for bulgogi and hamburgers soon as you can, and plan to tell me absolutely everything. I miss you. But don’t hurry. I’ll wait. I’m very patient.”

  I nod mutely, but she’s not done.

  “And Mab, honey? Try not to sin actually at the church. It’s bad for your karma.”

  Pastor Jeff laughs. “I should do more with karma. That’s a good angle.” And they continue inside. We hear her say to him, “Romeo and Juliet, those two. I’m so happy for her!”

  To cover my embarrassment, I take the key back from River and try the trick again, but my palms are sweaty and I have the same problem he did the first time he tried to do it for me. The key slips from my palm, up my sleeve, and when I try to wiggle it out, it goes the wrong way, down my shirt and into my jeans. Since I’m not going to take them off in front of him, I excuse myself, slip inside, use Pastor Jeff’s facilities—I think of Pooh’s advice not to sin at the church, but what can I do?—and bring the key back out to River.

  “Speaking of taking your pants off,” he says, “I have a great idea.”

  Which is how I find out there is something to do with that bright feeling besides put it into words. The place we can be alone, the place that isn’t my house and isn’t his house and isn’t the church steps or the park or the school, the only place really, is the plant. And after all, we have the key. I just retrieved it from my underwear.

  Same as last time, Hobart is there and no one else. He’s thrilled we’ve come and wants to chat—about the weather, about the holidays coming up, about the enormous dog Donna Anvers bought last week to help guard the nursery. “Is she crazy? No one wants anything she’s got in there anyway,” says Hobart, which is a fair point though I wonder whether he’s just miffed that a dog got the job over him, a professional security guard. But we’re anxious to be inside, so we say goodbye and hustle in and pull the door shut against the chill behind us. Inside is just like last time: sleeping. I smell nothing—no chemicals, no people—and all around us is quiet, deep, no machines running, no one there to talk, but everything building, waiting, nearly ready to go.

  We stop on the threshold of the only room that looks lived in, which must be his father’s office. There are papers on the desk, a computer, phone, and printer, and against one wall, a long, soft-looking blue sofa.

  “What if your dad comes in?” I say.

  “He won’t. He’s hardly ever here. He says his work is at the grocery store, the bar, the Little League games.”

  “There are no Little League games,” I tell him.

  “No, but you know what I mean,” he says, and when I don’t look like I do, he makes his voice deep like his father’s. “‘You can’t spread goodwill behind a desk, son. The most important work is always fieldwork.’” His voice returns to normal. “So you don’t have to be nervous.”

  I am anyway. But that’s not why. He unlocks the office door, then stops and turns toward me.

  “I was just kidding about taking off your pants, you know.”

  “You were?”

  “Not kidding exactly,” he hedges. “Trust me, I meant it when I said you taking your pants off gave me an idea. This idea.”

  This is very honest.

  “But I did not mean to suggest that what happened next would necessarily have to involve you taking t
hem off again. Though you could. You know. If you wanted.”

  I consider this. “Not by myself,” I say finally.

  “No, no,” he agrees. “It would be a real shame to be the only one without pants.”

  “Not first,” I add in a whisper because if we’re going to keep talking about what we’re talking about, I don’t want to do it out loud.

  “Maybe together?” he suggests.

  And that seems okay, and he reaches over and opens the door and takes me by the hand and leads me in and closes it behind us. And then, while we’re still fully dressed, he kisses me, standing there, first a little, then a lot. And then he leads me over to the blue sofa, and first we’re sitting on it and then I’m lying down on it and he’s lying over me, still with our pants on, stopping every once in a while to make sure it’s all still okay. It is. More than okay. Dizzying. When I said before falling was nothing like flying? I was so wrong.

  And then he says, “Ready?”

  And I wonder, for what? For taking my pants off? For what comes after that? Or for what comes after that? And since there’s no way to know what that is, how can I possibly know if I’m ready for it? But that’s Monday-logic, so I swallow it and breathe. “Yes, I’m ready. Yes I am. Are you?”

  And we’ve been kind of laughing about everything, but now he stops and looks in my eyes and holds my hand against his chest and just nods. So I guess we’re both ready. Except I feel like he should know something so I say, “I’ve never done this before.”

  “That’s okay,” he says.

  “Have you?” I ask, and my heart beats hard while I wait for the answer, though that may or may not be why or what I’m waiting for.

  “Are you kidding?” he says. “Loads of times. I take my pants off every night.”

  * * *

  Later, when Monday and Mirabel ask what this is like, which they will, which they should, I will have to lie. They have a right to know, I know, but I can’t tell them. There are words for it, but they don’t describe what it feels like. It feels like full. It feels like singing but not out loud. It feels like opening, like everything is opening, like everything in the whole wide world is suddenly open to me. It feels like magic.

  After, we are lying together on the blue sofa, and I say, “What will he do with this place?”

  “Who?” He is tracing a line on my shoulder with his finger.

  “Your father.”

  “When?”

  “When we shut it back down. He’s got all this new equipment. All these new supplies. Do you think he’ll be mad?”

  “My grandfather will be furious. My dad will just be taking it.”

  “Will your grandfather be mad at you?”

  “Me, you, my father, my mother, your mother, everyone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say but that’s not it, not exactly. I’m not sorry to be doing it. I’m desperate to be doing it. I’m not sorry his grandfather will be mad. It’s his turn. But I’m sorry River will have to bear it.

  “It’s okay.” He pulls the back of me against the front of him. “I’m used to my family.”

  “You think they’ll raze the whole place or convert it into something else or just leave it here to rot?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean not right away, of course. I know it’ll take a while. But when it’s a done deal and they have to give up. When they realize it’s dead.”

  And what River replies is “If.”

  But I’m not really listening.

  * * *

  I get home distracted, floating, a little bit sore in the best, most secret way.

  I would like the house to myself.

  I would settle for the bedroom to myself. For an hour to myself. For a little bit of time alone to consider what just happened and replay it without anyone watching me or demanding to know what I’m daydreaming about or making fun of the stupid smile on my face or pestering me with questions or wanting me to think about what they want to think about instead of what I want to think about.

  But, as usual, what I would like has nothing to do with what I find when I get home.

  “Mirabel found the gun,” Monday reports before I even have my coat off.

  Gun?

  “Smoking gun,” Mirabel’s Voice corrects.

  “At therapy,” Monday continues. “Nathan Templeton invented GL606 in college for his environmental chemistry dissertation, and he tested it, and the tests showed it caused bad things, and he wrote them all down, and he told his father, but Belsum Industrial changed its name to Belsum Chemical and made GL606 anyway, and now we know they knew.”

  “Apple said all that in therapy?” This doesn’t sound right.

  “Lie,” says Monday. “Nathan himself came to therapy because he feels worried about what the GL606 did and worried about what it will do next when they reopen the plant but not that worried because they fixed it.”

  I hear and I follow and I understand, but I don’t believe it. Not quite. It’s too big a thing.

  “Was it a trick?” I ask.

  Mirabel shakes her head no. “He was scared,” her Voice says.

  I nod. The room is spinning. “Mama must be … Is she celebrating? Buying party supplies? Buying fireworks?” I’m happy for her, for all of us, but “happy” isn’t really the right word. Even Petra wouldn’t have a word for this I don’t think. Or maybe the point is more like I have just had a big beginning, the first of firsts, which makes it feel unsettling rather than joyous to come home to such an unexpected, unnameable end.

  “She will not use it,” Monday says.

  “Won’t use what?” I don’t get it. Maybe it’s the spinning room. Maybe Monday is just maddening.

  “The gun.”

  I look at Mirabel, wordlessly, and she looks back the same way. It’s slower for Mirabel to explain, but it’s often the more direct path to get where you’re going.

  “Doctor-patient confidentiality,” her Voice intones like it’s nothing, like the world hasn’t just been offered and then snatched away.

  Ahh.

  And what I do is laugh. It’s the wonder of the day and the magnitude of something like this coming on the heels of something like that. It’s the cumulative hours and weeks and years we’ve spent thinking about this and this and nothing but this. It’s running errands and just happening by the one restaurant in all the world you’ve been longing to try for sixteen years, and they have a table and your favorite food on special, and your dish comes out, and it smells like a dream, but they haven’t brought you any silverware so you just have to sit there, smelling it, knowing how great it would taste if only you had a fork while eventually it gets cold and eventually the place closes and eventually your perfect meal molds and then rots and then dries and turns to dust and blows away. Except that doesn’t make sense because you’d just use your hands, right? Even in that fancy, perfect restaurant, if you had to, if you didn’t have another choice, you’d plop your face into your plate and eat up like a farm animal. Want of utensils wouldn’t stop you. Nothing would stop you.

  “Did Russell say it was completely inadmissible?” I wipe my eyes. “Maybe there’s a loophole.”

  “She says,” Mirabel’s Voice begins, and I wait until I realize that’s all there is. Emphasis is hard for the Voice. What Mirabel means is She says. It isn’t Russell who won’t use it. It’s Mama.

  “No. No way.” Not appalled. Incredulous. Less than incredulous. There’s not a part of me that believes it.

  “Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Mirabel’s Voice repeats.

  “Is that why he came?” I ask. “Somehow he knew we were close, and he thinks that since he told Mama in therapy she won’t use it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mirabel’s Voice says.

  Monday is rubbing her bottom lip with her left thumb. Me too. It’s a weird thing to turn out to be genetic, or maybe we’ve just been mirrors for so long. You’d think she wouldn’t because it can’t be sanitary. You’d think I wouldn’t because sh
e does. But maybe this is how it gets toward the end—everything stops making sense.

  “Fine,” I finally sputter. “You’ll tell them.”

  “No,” Mirabel’s Voice says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “No,” she explains.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Doctor-patient confidentiality,” she says a third time.

  “You’re not a doctor.”

  “Neither is Mama,” Monday points out, predictably.

  “You’re not a medical professional,” I amend, though I needn’t, not for Mirabel’s sake. “You aren’t a therapist. He wasn’t getting treatment from you. You were just there.”

  She types. “Nora told him nothing he said would leave the room.”

  “She was wrong!” I shout.

  “No,” her Voice says.

  “Why the hell not?” I demand again, louder.

  “Wrong,” her Voice says.

  “It’s not wrong. What they did was wrong. What they’re doing is wrong. The whole thing is wrong. They’re corrupt and morally bankrupt and ethically void, and they play dirty, and they’ve shown very clearly for two decades that they don’t give one shit about us. And you’re going to die on the hill of a tiny stupid technicality because you’d be breaking a pinky swear?”

  “Yes,” says her Voice.

  “Are you nine?”

  “No.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you even go to therapy?” My arms are wide, my head flung back so I can rail at the heavens but really at my sister and not the usual one.

  “Didn’t know he was coming.”

  “But you knew Apple was. You’ve been eavesdropping on Apple’s sessions for weeks. It’s not like it was ever much of a plan—that she would just happen to mention something to her therapist about some documents her husband and father-in-law were hiding—but if you weren’t going to use it anyway, why bother?”

  “Point,” she says.

  “How is that the point?”