by Jim Nelson
Another sharp click, long and crisp like the clucking of a schoolmarm’s tongue, followed by cackling silence.
Hanna was reclined across her bed. She sat on top of the covers with two pillows propping up her head and a throw under her crossed ankles. Hanna had prepared a glass of cold white wine for bed. She sipped it while listening.
Hanna reached for the stereo, thinking the diary had concluded. With a burst of clicks, Erica’s voice returned. Hanna’s hand retreated.
Maybe I’m wrong, Erica said. She is strong. Not as strong as me. But she is strong. She can make paper cranes and she knows a lot about flowers. She reads and knows how to do her numbers and can count money. If she ran away, she would do better than any bridge at church. They would be cry-babies in a minute if they ran away from home. Hanna is not a cry-baby.
Another cacophony of clicks and the tape went silent. Only the churn of the player’s capstans could be heard. Hanna pressed the Stop button, then flipped the power switch. The wine made her sleepy. She worried she would conk out and run down the batteries.
She nodded off.
When she came to, the nightstand light still burned. Had Erica thought to listen to both sides of the tape? It was her first thought, as though her subconscious recognized the unfinished business and nudged her awake. She turned on the player, fast-forwarded the tape, and re-inserted it into the player reversed.
Dear diary, came a wet, stammering voice,
She stole my money—she ran away—she says she’s getting a bi-graft. She said—she said—she’d break our pinkie-promise and tell Mother on me. She took my money. She ran out the yard door. Her mother found out. Her mother screamed at Mother—Mother screamed at me. I got the slap. After her mother left, I got the belt.
She is awful—I hate her—
Hanna ejected the cassette without pressing Stop. In her hands, she weighed the plastic shell and roll of magnetic tape and eyeglass screws holding together this message in a bottle. The cassette had gained some heft since she first inserted it in the player. This did not sound like the little Hanna she’d imagined, a girl who produced floral arrangements and looked up difficult words in the dictionary. Stealing money and running away to get Blanchard’s Procedure? Delicious scandal—if it had been another family.
There was a custom among bridge daughters they called “writing a letter to yourself.” At the time Hanna was born, few bridge daughters could write above a kindergarten level, so the letter to the twin inside them was usually no more than drawings with labels written in a preschooler’s scrawl. Often the letter was narrated to an adult who transcribed it for the bridge daughter.
Some people cherished these letters. Some treated them with little more respect than a child’s letter to Santa Claus misdirected to their post box. When Hanna was young, she so wished her bridge mother had written one. With this cassette tape, she found herself reliving those childhood wishes for the first time in decades.
She recalled what Erica Grimond had said about Vivian not destroying the letters from little Erica. Yes, Hanna could see her own mother destroying letters from the other Hanna. She could see her mother withholding all manner of details. What else did Hanna not know about her bridge mother? She and the girls would be visiting her mother in a week. She made a mental note to ask then.
Her cell phone rang. She picked it up without thought, finger reaching for the on-screen Answer button, and caught herself in time. Across the top of the screen, in bold lettering, the caller identification read BLOCKED.
Hanna let the phone ring until it rang no more. Call missed appeared on the phone’s touch screen. She waited for the phone to indicate the caller had left a voice mail.
No indication arrived. They called and hung up.
For four months, a caller blocking their identification phoned her without leaving a message. At first, it occurred once a week. Then, like the Doppler Effect of an oncoming train, the calls started coming twice a week. Now the phone calls came every night, the train’s horn piercing the air as the locomotive loomed upon her.
Five
The household vibrated with the bustle of a busy Monday morning. Cynthia taking her morning shower. Ruby knocking on the bathroom door shouting that she wanted to brush her teeth. Hanna pouring bowls of cereal for them and preparing a quick parfait of yogurt, granola, and banana slices for herself. Breakfast in hand, she went from bedroom to bedroom, hurrying the girls along in their morning preparations.
She’d already showered that morning, after twenty-five minutes on the exerciser in the master bedroom. It was placed where the nursery would’ve been if she’d had newborns. Soon she’d have to move the exerciser out to the garage to make room for two cribs. Not only cribs, but also a changing station, a washtub, and storage for diapers and powder—all the attendant necessities for raising infants. Cynthia’s and Ruby’s baby clothes were stored in the attic above the garage. She’d get those down soon enough.
Ruby could brush her own hair but always wanted Hanna to do it for her. As Hanna pulled through Ruby’s knots before the mirror, Cynthia stood beside them and flicked a comb through her wet hair. She placed a sharp part down one side and smoothed her hair back to a duck’s ass, like a greaser.
“Not today,” Hanna warned her.
Cynthia crimped her lips and went to work again with the comb, putting her hair back in a tight ponytail, the tail a mere stub due to her cropped cut.
“Were you in my purse last night?”
“No,” Cynthia said with a shrug.
Hanna looked in the mirror at Ruby. Wide-eyed, she turned her head left and then right, and Hanna knew she’d been in it. A purple-and-plastic portable stereo sat on the desk in Ruby’s room. She rarely listened to the radio but often listened to children’s books on tape from the library. Perhaps Ruby had listened to the tape. That would explain why the tape was not rewound if Ruby hurried to put it back in the purse.
The girls dressed in their bridge school uniforms. Hanna put on the most formal business suit in her closet, a charcoal skirt with faint pinstripes, a matching jacket, and a cream blouse she buttoned up to her throat. Mondays were a day of meetings with heads of departments and teleconferences with New York and Dallas.
She shepherded the girls out to the Audi and into the backseat. Their bridge school provided lunch and snacks, saving her a bit of time each morning, and, for a little extra in the way of tuition, would watch the girls up to three hours if she was late getting out of the office. Hanna made a silent mock prayer to herself in the car, just like she did most mornings, thanking the maker above for the Coit New Bridge School of Berkeley.
“I need to speak with your teacher,” she explained to the girls as she parked. Normally, she dropped the girls off at the front of the school, a school attendant escorting them from the curb to the building. This was one of the school’s guarantees, constant supervision of the bridge daughters from the moment they arrived to the moment they departed.
The school was housed in a hacienda-style building from the 1920s, umber half-moon roof tiles and buttermilk stucco with visible trowel marks across it, like the swirls across a hand-frosted cake. A non-profit first founded in the 1880s for the Bay Area’s wealthy and elite, the school only began teaching bridges to read and write in the 1990s. Otherwise, it operated on mildly anachronistic values, a gentle reminder of California’s more traditional and civic-minded history. Tradition cost a considerable percentage of Hanna’s income, but she couldn’t imagine raising the girls otherwise.
Hanna waved to the curbside attendant she didn’t need her assistance, then led the girls up the entry stairs through the school’s formidable carved redwood double doors. Bridge daughters in uniforms moved through the hallways in double-file guided by teachers and attendants. Hanna, mindful of the time, cut a path between the groups to a classroom at the far end of the hall.
Cynthia’s and Ruby’s teacher was Janet Ridmore, a woman younger than Hanna by five years and shorter by a head. She wore oversized, perfectly roun
d glasses and a continual smile on her face, which Hanna found either reassuring or off-putting, depending on her own mood. Ms. Ridmore welcomed the girls to the classroom, touching them on their shoulders as they passed her on the way to their desks.
Mrs. Ridmore peered up with a quizzical smile at Hanna’s presence. “Good morning,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve had a chance to talk since last fall.”
“We spoke at the bridge-parent meeting in February,” Hanna reminded Ms. Ridmore.
“I’d forgotten,” she said. “Did you want me to update you on Cynthia’s and Ruby’s progress? I’d be happy to schedule a meeting—”
“Actually,” Hanna said, one eye on the wall clock, “it’s about something Cynthia told me last night. I don’t know how to ask you this. It’s a little…I don’t know?”
Ms. Ridmore reached out with a reassuring hand. “You can ask me anything concerning your bridge daughter’s welfare.”
Stepping closer and lowering her voice, Hanna said, “Cynthia told me last night she’s a sister of Hagar.” Ms. Ridmore’s eyebrows raised. “She also told me that it’s her child, not mine,” Hanna continued. “I just want to know if this is something she might have heard here at school.”
Ms. Ridmore’s smile faded but a notch. “I assure you, she did not hear about Hagar’s sisters from me or any of the staff. Absolutely not.”
“She also—” Hanna involuntarily closed her eyes and shook her head. “She threatened to get a Blanchard’s.”
The name removed the final traces of Ms. Ridmore’s smile. “We would never discuss such a topic with any of our charges without first consulting the parents. In fact, we would demand the parents be present during that discussion.”
“So it’s come up before?” Hanna asked.
“There are cases where a bridge hears of the procedure from another student,” Ms. Ridmore said. “These kinds of things spread without our knowledge. Bridge daughter gossip. There’s little we can do to stop it other than shut it down when it does come to our attention. I’m sure you can appreciate our situation.”
Morning Chopin played from the wall speaker, muffling their conversation from the bridge daughters milling about their desks.
“I’m not blaming anyone here,” Hanna hurried to explain. She thought about the wisdom of her mother’s home schooling of her own bridge daughter, and why traditional families like the Grimonds merely locked theirs up. “But you spend so much time with Cynthia, I was wondering if you’d heard her mention it.”
“Absolutely not,” Ms. Ridmore said. “And I would inform you first thing if I did.”
Hanna looked about the classroom. One bridge in particular concerned Hanna, another boyish girl sitting in front of Cynthia. Her hair was cut short, barely reaching past her earlobes. She had the sunken eyes of a junior high school boy attempting to appear tough.
“Does Cynthia have any friends here that might have planted the idea?” Hanna said. She nodded toward the other girl. “I’ve seen them talking sometimes when I pick her up after school.”
“Lonni?” Ms. Ridmore needed only one glance back to verify who Hanna was speaking of. “They talk, to be sure, but I’ve never heard Lonni question her obligations.”
“Nothing about Hagar’s sisters?”
Ms. Ridmore shook her head. “Not once.” She looked once more back across the classroom. “She’s also friendly with Danielle.”
Trying not to be obvious about it, Ms. Ridmore pointed out a bridge daughter on the far side of the room. She was about Ruby’s size but her hair was fuller and her figure more developed. From the side, it was apparent she was in pons anno. She looked as fresh as a flower, and when she glanced back at Hanna, appeared even more innocent than Ruby.
“But I can’t imagine Danielle saying anything like what you’re asking,” Ms. Ridmore said. “She’s a model bridge daughter. Everyone on the staff agrees.”
“Where do you think Cynthia got the idea she’s not carrying my child?”
Ms. Ridmore’s reassuring hand touched Hanna on the forearm. “We teach all our bridges they are the front-line of responsibility for their parents’ infant,” Ms. Ridmore said. “Responsibility for and the safety of the child inside them is the bedrock of our curricula. We teach a healthy diet, cleanliness and sanitary practices, and personal safety. Their bodies represent the first and final safeguard for your child’s health and well-being.”
Hanna nodded along, sensing she was being read bullet points from an internal memorandum or teacher’s handbook. “You understand my concern,” she said.
“Of course,” Ms. Ridmore said. “If you want, I can direct Cynthia to one of our counselors for a session on personal responsibility.”
“No, that’s fine,” Hanna said. “I don’t want to make an issue of it.”
“May I ask?” Ms. Ridmore said. “Do you allow your bridges to watch television without your supervision?”
“We watch together,” Hanna said.
“And the Internet?”
“No,” Hanna said. She caught herself. “I’ve walked in on Cynthia using the computer without my permission.”
“Often?”
Hanna bobbed her head, offering a wishy-washy yes-and-no.
“A penny of free advice?” Ms. Ridmore said, her toothy smile returning. “Get a password for your computer. If you have one of those Internet tablets, take it away. Don’t let them use it. I don’t mean supervise their use; I mean stop it in its tracks. There are people in this world who will give your bridges all sorts of dangerous ideas. They do not have your child’s well-being in mind.” She meant the child inside Cynthia, not Cynthia herself.
The Chopin over the speaker faded off. A pleasant bell chimed.
“The Internet will unravel years of instruction here,” Ms. Ridmore said as she stepped toward the blackboard. “It makes make my job that much more difficult.”
Ms. Ridmore began leading the bridge daughters through their morning calisthenics. They stood beside their desks moving their arms up and away, then hands on their hips and twisting slightly at the waist. Ruby, eyes on Ms. Ridmore, followed her example with a devoted zeal. Cynthia, a girl who lifted weights twice a day, looked bored. Most of the bridges in Cynthia’s and Ruby’s class were visibly pregnant, and the exercises were designed to accommodate their state.
Not much longer, Hanna thought. Cynthia would give birth first, Ruby a week later. Then Hanna’s second phase of parenting would begin. The real phase.
Six
An international cosmetics firm in downtown San Francisco employed Hanna. Weekdays, she commuted by train under the bay waters and spent her lunch hours at the fitness club on the ground floor of the skyscraper she worked in. After work, she rode the train back to Berkeley to pick up the girls, where they were watched by an after-school program Hanna paid extra for. This weekday routine was a constant in her life, an important constant, piston strokes propelling the engine onward. Weekdays were for work, weekends were for around the house, a life of inertia, all in preparation for the two infants soon to enter her life.
Monday afternoon, she sought out a coworker, Todd McMannis—or was it McManus?—who administered the company’s web servers. Hanna worked closely with the company’s team of web designers. When the web site was down and inaccessible to their customers, Todd and his group were the first responders.
“Just check your browser history,” he told her, leaning back in his office chair. As a company in the luxury industry, corporate policy eschewed the casualwear most Bay Area companies permitted. This even extended to the wireheads, as Todd and his group called themselves. For a wirehead, he was uncharacteristically comfortable in a striped tie and starched button-down shirt, even if the shirt was wrinkled and speckled down the front with faint coffee stains. He turned his chair to his keyboard and in moments was showing Hanna how to check which web sites Cynthia was viewing Sunday night.
“How can I stop her from using the computer?” Hanna asked. Then, to avoid app
earing overly strict, added, “I mean, without my supervision.”
Todd asked a couple of questions about her machine, then said, “Oh, that’s easy, then.” Again, hands a blur on the keyboard, he located a web site with the instructions she would need to set a password on her home computer. He emailed the web link to her without her asking.
“That was so easy,” Hanna said. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Todd popped up from his chair with coffee mug in hand, as though going for a refill. “Hey, just to let you know,” he said, “Thursday night me and some of the crew are going down to that Irish pub on Commercial Street—”
“I have to pick up my bridges after work,” Hanna said with a smile. She moved her left hand through her hair to straighten it. She made sure to give her marriage ring plenty of air time. “It would be great to get out for once, but I can’t make it.”
“Well, the offer stands,” Todd said.
He wasn’t unattractive, Hanna told herself, but she couldn’t imagine having a thing in common with him. Talking with him felt like the conversation she shared with her dentist after a teeth cleaning. He was like a younger brother, but without the common background. And she had other priorities at the moment. Looking for a man would have to wait, the only reason she kept wearing the wedding ring.
She’d had this conversation with herself many times in the past two years. She’d came to the same conclusion each time. She deleted her accounts from the dating web sites she’d registered for and removed her relationship status from the social networks. That corner of her life would have to gather dust for now, she decided, perhaps returning to it when the twins were nearing preschool age.
“Next time,” she said to him, smiling and backing away.
Waiting for the elevator, she glanced down the corridor toward the coffee bar in the middle of the floor. Todd had left his cubicle but, as though only realizing it at the coffee pot, he peered down at his mug and saw it was full. He took a sip and returned to his desk with a blank expression.
