Cobble Hill

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  “Who’s that?” Ted asked, right on cue. He asked the same question every day.

  “I don’t know,” Stuart said, as usual. Then he added, “But we see him every day, so it’s polite to say hey.”

  Ted giggled at the rhyme, and Stuart felt his dour mood lighten. Ted was a quiet boy who hadn’t made any close friends yet, but he was a good kid, a really good kid.

  Stuart picked up Ted’s skateboard and followed him inside the school entrance. The skinny, dark-haired boy headed up the school stairs to his classroom on the fourth floor, his army-green Herschel backpack banging against his butt.

  “See you later, skater. After a while, chile. Be real cool, fool. Eat your food, dude,” Stuart called after him.

  He tucked both of their skateboards under his arm and turned away from the stairs toward the dimly lit cafeteria. The school had been built in the 1950s, a mixture of old-fashioned flourishes and uninspired practicality. A sweeping marble staircase greeted visitors just inside the entrance, but the rest of the schoolrooms were prisonlike and drab, with dingy gray linoleum floors, low ceilings, barred windows, and terrible fluorescent lighting. Mothers and fathers in a variety of costumes—business, exercise, Birkenstocks and pajama bottoms, breast milk– or beer-stained T-shirts—straggled by and out the main door. Inside the cafeteria, a mom was crying into a Styrofoam cup of coffee while Miss Patty, the school’s sinewy, sleep-deprived, overly made-up assistant principal who commuted there from Staten Island, tried to comfort her.

  On the far wall of the cafeteria was a closed door marked with a yellow sign that read NURSE. Stuart knocked twice, turned the knob, and opened the door.

  * * *

  Peaches stiffened at the sound of someone knocking and opening her office door. She’d been totally engrossed with The Brookliner’s morning news. A headless female torso had been found in the water behind Ikea, in Red Hook. The torso had a tattoo of a rose on her upper arm.

  “How can I help?” Peaches asked without turning around. Her early-morning visitors were most often pukers, kids whose parents had fed them multivitamins, orange juice, and eggs for breakfast.

  “Hey,” a husky male voice greeted her. “Sorry to bother you. I was thinking of buying a lice comb? It’s for my son. Ted Little? He’s in fourth grade. In Mrs. Watson’s class?”

  Stuart thought he detected a crimson flush around Nurse Peaches’ ears and jawline when he mentioned his last name, but her blue eyes remained glued to her computer screen. Without even a glance in his direction, she reached down and pulled open the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.

  “That’s ten dollars. I can’t give you change, so if you don’t have exact change now, just send the money in an envelope with your child and his teacher will get it to me.”

  Her voice sounded stale, canned. Stuart was disappointed. “Sure. Okay.” He ran his hands through his wavy brown hair and then realized that she might think that was pretty gross of him, to go around rubbing his hands all over his lice. He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  Unable to resist any longer, Peaches released the scroll button on the computer mouse and swiveled her chair around. It was really him: Stuart Little, from the Blind Mice.

  “Wow. Sorry. That was a bit brusque,” she gushed, her entire person transformed by shining, flirty exuberance. You’re a married woman, she warned herself, and a mother Plus, you’re pushing forty. “I try to maintain a professional veneer around parents, but I’m really just a former English major, college dropout mom. I have no idea how I became a school nurse.”

  And now Stuart Little thinks you’re insane and stupid.

  “Hey,” Stuart replied, hands still stuffed into his pockets. Whenever he was there, in Ted’s school, he felt like a thirteen-year-old kid again—awkward, confused, self-conscious, worried about his armpits smelling, stray boogers on his face, leaving his fly unzipped. He’d never been too awkward, but he’d never really outgrown what little middle school awkwardness he’d had.

  “Sorry. That was way too much information,” Peaches said, trying to recover gracefully from her outburst. She tucked a few stray strands of strawberry blond hair behind her ears, wishing she’d come up with something sexier that morning than a ponytail. “Just the one lice comb then?”

  Before he could answer, she stole a glance at Stuart’s left hand, tucked halfway into his pocket. The knuckles on that hand were tattooed with realistically detailed, tiny mouse heads. Oh, the fantasies she’d had in college about Stuart Little’s tattooed hand, caressing her all over. Stuart Little. She used to devour everything she could find online about him and study it like it was homework. She was a couple of years older than he was, but so what? She’d taken Intro to Latin in college because of his song “Omnia Vincit!” She’d stopped wearing makeup because of his song “My Girlfriend Wakes Up Pretty.” She’d decided it’d be okay to drop out of college because of his song “Fuck College.” They’d both had their kids before they’d gotten married. Who’d have thought he’d send his kid to the very Brooklyn public school where she now worked as a nurse? Thank goodness her husband and parents had encouraged/forced her to stop pretending to write a short-story collection or play, take the required courses at Adelphi University, get her nursing degree, and seek out this fulfilling, practical job.

  Nurse Peaches was wearing one of those old-fashioned long underwear tops—light blue, with big white snowflakes printed on it. It was tight, pulled over the softness of her upper arms and stomach. The open circle of her belly button was heartbreakingly visible beneath the shirt. She didn’t seem to mind. Stuart definitely didn’t mind.

  He released his tattooed hand from his pocket and ran it through his hair again. “I don’t know how to handle the whole lice thing,” he began. “My son brought home your letter and I checked him. But I just can’t get it out of my head, so to speak. I feel like they’re all over me.”

  “Would you like me to check you?” Peaches offered in the same indifferent, professional tone she’d used before.

  “Could you?” Stuart asked, resisting the urge to hug her. “That would be great.”

  Peaches pulled a LiceMeister comb out of her drawer and stood up. She pointed at her chair. “Have a seat.”

  Stuart unzipped his gray hoodie, bundling it into his lap as he sat down. “I took a shower last night. Not that it makes any difference.”

  “It’s easier with conditioner,” Peaches explained, placing a tentative hand on top of his head. His hair was soft. Strands of silvery gray were interspersed with the reds and browns. Thank you Mom and Dad, my dear husband Greg, and my son Liam, she thought as she combed, admiring the sinewy ridges of Stuart’s shoulders beneath his worn black T-shirt. Thank you for cheering me on through those impossibly humbling hours of nursing school.

  Stuart reached behind him and lifted up the shaggy hair on the back of his neck. “Under here’s where it itches most,” he explained. “I can’t sleep. I can’t sit still. I just keep scratching. And the more I scratch, the more it itches.”

  Rhymes with bitches, he thought to himself. Sandwiches.

  Back in the day, the Blind Mice used to get in trouble all the time for using the word bitches in their lyrics. They heard the scoldings of their critics and agreed that perhaps bitches was insulting and degrading to women, but they kept on using it anyway because there really was no better word, except for chicks, which rhymed with dicks, which opened up doors way worse.

  Peaches inhaled indulgently and dug in with the lice comb. His hair was so fine and wavy it was hard to part. He smelled vaguely of smoked meat. Of course he did. He and his kid’s mom—whose name was Mandy, Peaches remembered, and who’d once been a teen model—probably went out to those hip new barbecue bars every night and had a rockin’ roll of a time, doing shots and snorting lines in their leather jackets and perfectly worn jeans, while she and Greg and Liam stayed home and ate penne with jarred red sauce for the ten thousandth time and binge-watched whole seasons of long-forgotten TV shows like
Fawlty Towers and Mork & Mindy.

  “See anything?” Stuart asked with his eyes closed. Even when he’d been kind of a celebrity he hadn’t done any pampering, like getting a massage or a cuticle treatment or having the pores on his nose expunged. He took a hot shower once a day and went to the barber for a haircut a couple of times a year. Peaches’ comb-through felt awesome.

  “So far so good,” Peaches said vaguely. “You have so much hair though. This could take hours.”

  Stuart kept his eyes shut. “I tried to do the conditioner thing on myself, but I couldn’t really see what I was doing.”

  Peaches pulled the top of his right ear out of the way so she could check behind it. There were half-closed holes all the way up his earlobes. She remembered the studs that used to fill them. They looked like screws.

  “So, if you didn’t always want to be a school nurse, what did you want to be?” Stuart asked.

  Your girlfriend.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A singer or a writer or a musician. Something totally useless.”

  Idiot. She yanked hard on a hank of his hair to distract him from the fact that she’d just insulted him, but it was too late.

  He chuckled. “Maybe I should become a nurse.” Nurse, purse. Rhymes with verse.

  Hot school nurse opens up her purse,

  Gives me a Slim Jim for my sick verse!

  The Blind Mice were known for their flippant virtuosity and total lack of reverence for one particular genre. Their songs were a tongue-in-cheek mixture of ska, punk rock, pop, and hip-hop, with a lot of New York City private schoolboy thrown in. All three Blind Mice had gone to Bay Ridge Country Day School, the only school in New York City with its own duck pond. The Mice’s songs ranged from the angry “I Hate My Art Teacher” and “Driver’s Ed,” to the sweetly romantic “My Girlfriend Wakes Up Pretty,” to the wildly danceable “Omnia Vincit!” in which the Mice shouted rhymes in grammatically correct Latin. The band used to get fan mail from Latin teachers and was featured in Romulus, a magazine devoted to ancient Rome. The cover was shot at the Coliseum. For the video, the Mice staged an entire concert with an audience of thousands all dressed in togas.

  “What about your wife?” Peaches asked nosily. “She could comb through your hair.”

  Stuart opened his eyes and then closed them again. “Mandy would help,” he said, “but she’s having a hard time right now.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Peaches bit her lip, her curiosity blossoming. Had Mandy gotten hugely fat after the birth of their child? Was she depressed about how fat she’d gotten? Was she too heavily medicated to leave the house? Did they have to raise the ceilings and open up walls to accommodate her?

  Stop it, Peaches scolded herself.

  “She just got diagnosed with MS,” Stuart said. “A couple months ago. It’s already worse though.”

  “Jeez. That stinks,” Peaches said. So Mandy was a brave martyr, boldly facing a debilitating disease. And she, Peaches Park, was an asshole.

  Peaches drew the comb sideways from Stuart’s right temple to the crown of his head. A minuscule brown spec tottered out of the follicles in the parting and skittered off toward the nape of his neck. “Oh!” she cried. “I think I saw one!”

  Stuart swiveled around in the chair, yanking his hair out of her hands. “Are you sure?” He shuddered involuntarily, horrified that there were actual bugs in his hair and embarrassed that she’d been the one to find them. “Oh God. What do I do? Should I call a lice lady?”

  Peaches wrinkled her nose. “Nah. They all live in like, Brighton Beach, and you have to go to them. Plus, they’re expensive and mean.”

  She smiled her beneficent nurse’s smile, the smile she’d practiced in the mirror until Liam gave it his “not too creepy” blessing. “Don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for. I’ll take care of them.” She picked up her purse and her denim jacket. “I just have to run to Key Food for conditioner. And I’ll need to call your son down. And maybe even your wife.”

  Stuart checked the time on his phone, unnecessarily. Mandy would be right where he left her—in bed, either sleeping or watching TV.

  “Mandy’s pretty busy today. Doctors’ appointments and stuff.” He removed his battered canvas wallet from his back pocket. “But yes, let’s do it. Conditioner, check Ted, whatever it takes. I just want to get rid of them.” He pulled out two twenties and handed them to her. “Here. Thank you. Buy a whole bunch.”

  “You don’t have to—” Peaches began, but took the money anyway. That was the first rule of working at a public school in a neighborhood like Cobble Hill: always take the money. The parents had plenty because they were educating their kids for free.

  “Wait here,” she told Stuart. “I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  This was how it started:

  One weekday back in early July, after Stuart and Teddy had left for Little Mushrooms summer day camp, Mandy flipped aimlessly through the TV channels, just like she always did. She watched the end of a show in Spanish about some jungle in Colombia where the snakes were so slithery and disgusting, she couldn’t look away. Then she watched a show about strange addictions, featuring an elderly woman who was addicted to watching cheesy, sad movies about anorexics—Kate’s Secret, The Best Little Girl in the World, My Skinny Sister—which Mandy was pretty sure was going to get her addicted to anorexia movies. Then she watched Worst Cooks in America, Celebrity Edition, a show she always wished someone would nominate her for. When the show ended, she clicked off the TV and floundered around on the perpetually unmade bed, unsure of what to do with herself.

  She hadn’t always been this way. The obvious turning point had been when she’d gotten pregnant and had Teddy. She’d let herself go, which was such a cliché. In Cobble Hill, though, she was the anomaly, not the norm. Most of the moms in the neighborhood were super fit and looked good in skinny jeans even though they were fifty years old. It just made her hate them, which she knew was uncool. Still, she hated them.

  That day in July, as she lay on her back in Stuart’s old yellow Blind Mice T-shirt and the same pair of black underwear she’d been wearing for two days straight, she tried to think of something good. Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream was good. Entenmann’s pecan ring was good. Something good about herself though. She turned over onto her stomach, her large chest flattening and oozing into her armpits and against her clavicle. There, that was something good about her. She had great tits. White teeth. Shiny hair. And she was only thirty-five. But somehow that didn’t make her feel any better.

  The staying-in-bed thing had started the first warm day in May, when she’d put on a pair of old cutoffs and discovered that she couldn’t zip them. First, she’d complained of an upset stomach, then headaches, then just plain tiredness. She’d stayed tired into June and then taken to her bed permanently, like a woman in an old-fashioned novel. And whatever it was seemed to be getting worse. She was still tired in July, even more tired than she’d been in June.

  Deep down, Mandy knew there was really nothing wrong. It was a fake sickness, all in her head. Nevertheless, that pivotal July day she flipped over onto her back and made the fake sickness real.

  Her iPad lay on the bedside table for easy access to takeout menus and movies and TV. She slid it onto her chest and googled Always so tired, what’s wrong with me?!?

  Thirty-seven pages of links came up. The first few were full of mundane tips about diet and exercise and anemia. Further down she found one that interested her: Signs You Have MS.

  She clicked on it.

  Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disorder that presents itself in a multitude of symptoms. It is more common in females age 20–50 and in temperate climates, such as the United States, Australia, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe. The most common symptoms are fatigue, double vision, a heaviness or tingling sensation in the legs, clumsiness or difficulty walking, slurred speech.

  Goose bumps appeared on Mandy’s arms. She often felt a tingling sensation in her legs, espec
ially when she got up to pee. Sometimes when she ordered food from Seamless it was hard for her to get to the door in time to buzz in the delivery guy because her legs and feet felt like they were disintegrating, like a sandcastle in the rain. She kept reading, feeling the exact same way she’d felt when she’d first heard Stuart and the Blind Mice play “My Girlfriend Wakes Up Pretty.” Like the words had been written expressly for her, because, of course, they had.

  Around noon that day her phone buzzed and a text appeared alongside a cute picture of her and Stuart at an outdoor show eleven years ago, when the band was still in semi-existence. Mandy and Stuart weren’t even married then. They hadn’t gotten married until after Teddy—he sat in the sand while they said their vows. Mandy had never even thought about kids or marriage. They’d never even discussed it. But then her IUD had fallen out while they were surfing—or attempting to surf—in Montauk. She hadn’t even noticed until more than two months later when she suddenly craved strawberry shortcake ice cream bars and couldn’t stay awake any later than nine. Stuart had been very sweet about marrying her and embracing the whole daddy thing, which should have made it a lot easier, but nothing about their lives was the same or any kind of easy again.

  That July day, still in bed, Mandy read Stuart’s text.

  did you call dr. goldberg?

  She found the doctor’s number in the list of contacts on her phone, stared at it for a moment, and then went back to Stuart’s text and typed a reply.

  yup, news is not good

  !!! calling u now!

  A few seconds later her phone rang and the same picture of her and Stuart, looking tan and young and thin and happy, lit up the screen. She watched it ring and go to voice mail. A few seconds later it rang again.

  can’t talk waiting for tests

  She tossed the phone aside and slipped down under the covers, pulling them up to her eyes. It didn’t even feel that weird to lie. It didn’t even feel like a lie. She probably did have MS. All the symptoms matched up. She didn’t even need to go to the doctor.