by Megan Abbott
Dara looked up at Marie, her eyes dry in an instant.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You can just leave.”
COLD, COLD
When she woke, her brain felt thick, wiry, an old scouring pad. Her phone was ringing. Her hand was tangled in Marie’s hair.
Missed call and it had to be Charlie, but it wasn’t. She was relieved for a second, then, obscurely, sad.
The voicemail clicked and beeped, and then a flinty voice began talking and talking and Dara felt the stir of old wine in her belly.
“. . . All-Risk Randi here, remember me? I’m like a bad penny. I was hoping you might be able to make time for me this morning. Planning to swing by, say, nine o’clock? Maybe I can speak with your sister too. So I’ll see you then if I don’t hear from you. Same address, same spiral stairs?”
Dara put her hand over her mouth. She thought she might be sick.
Pulling back the bedspread to rise, she saw Marie’s bare legs and arms covered in lurid rosy hives.
* * *
* * *
She guessed Charlie had spent the night nestled in the contractor’s marriage bed with his PT, the wife. In other rooms, there were children sleeping innocently. Everywhere, there were Derek’s things, the smell of his aftershave, all his shiny boots. Charlie, she thought, in the same bed, on those same sheets as Derek.
What did it matter, she thought. How different is he from Derek? She might never know.
Once, in the night, she had woken with a jolt. Derek’s injury, the pipe spraying hot water on him, the flood. Had that been Charlie’s first, failed attempt?
She might never know.
* * *
* * *
I dreamt about that old-timey dancer last night,” Marie said, her face puffy and voice scratched. “The one who caught fire.”
“I remember,” Dara said, trying to make the coffee go down, the instant crystals sludged at the bottom of the mug from the day before.
That story their mother used to tell—the dancer whose tutu brushed against the footlights and burst into flames. Whenever she heard it, Dara couldn’t help but feel herself burning. She was feeling it now, her feet tingling. Marie standing before her like a clean flame.
“She refused to wear the skirts that were safe,” Marie said, rubbing her face. “She only wanted to wear what was light and beautiful.”
Dara turned to the stove, her hand over the stove burner, lighting the jet for more coffee.
“She wanted what she wanted,” Dara said, the words tipping from her mouth, which felt hot, too, felt thick with hot water.
“But in my dream,” Marie said, “I was the one onstage. And it was my skirt that went up, up, up in flames.” She turned and looked at Dara. “And you were there.”
Dara didn’t say anything, watching the kettle.
“You saw me and you cried out,” Marie continued, her voice urgent and pained as if she were dreaming it now. “You threw Mother’s rabbit blanket over me and smothered the flames.”
That blanket again, Dara thought. The one she’d left moldering in the basement the other day.
“The flames ate the fur,” Marie said, rising and walking toward Dara. “But they never touched me at all.”
“Marie,” Dara said, turning off the stove.
“He set a fire in me—Derek. No, I set it in myself. But I’m burned through now, you see,” Marie said, her voice quivering but strong. “I’m burned through and now it’s over. It’s over.”
She reached out for Dara’s hands and held them in her own, hot as a burner coil. Dara swore she could feel Marie’s blood rushing under her skin.
It was like Marie was awake. Awake for the first time not just in six weeks—the sex haze and humiliations, the impulsivity and retreat—but in months, years maybe.
It was like seeing someone who’s been away so very long, their face changed, the shadows heavy now, but in the eyes a flash of something ancient and pure.
Oh, Marie, she thought. I’ve missed you for the longest time.
* * *
* * *
She told Marie to go straight to the Ballenger.
“I have to meet with the insurance lady,” she said. “She wants to talk to you, so you can’t be there.”
“No,” Marie said, pulling their father’s sweater over her shoulders, “I’d rather not.”
“We can’t let her in,” Dara said firmly. “We have to get her out.”
They’d had invaders enough.
* * *
* * *
As they put on coats, gloves, silently, the shush of their shoes, the scatter of bruises on Marie’s neck as she threw a scarf around it, Dara kept thinking of what could happen. All-Risk Randi suspected it wasn’t an accident. The likeliest and most convenient suspect? The wife with the big, fat insurance policy her bosses will have to pay out. But how many steps might it take to find out about Marie? About Charlie? There were things investigators knew how to find out. There were cameras everywhere now, the parking lot, the traffic lights. Phones told them everything. There was no private world anymore. The larger world had turned itself inside out, was seeking to infiltrate every smaller, private one. The home, the family.
Seeking to pass judgment. To prod and probe at a safe remove.
No one wanted to face the truth. That every family was a hothouse, a swamp. Its own atmosphere, its own rules. Its own laws and gods. There would never be any understanding from the outside. There couldn’t be.
“Are you going to tell the police?” Marie asked suddenly. “About Charlie?”
“No,” Dara said. “Not now.”
They both paused. It was one of those moments—they’d had them before, the night their mother struck their father in the head with the cast-iron pan and he dropped to the floor so fast Dara and Marie both burst into tears. For a long moment wondering what to do, like all the times their father had chased their mother around the house or that time he locked her in the garage overnight and Dara and Marie only found out in the wee hours, her screams finally frenzied enough to wake them from their sleep. They didn’t ever call anyone. That was not something any of the four of them ever did. It wasn’t what you did. You kept going.
* * *
* * *
Driving into the lot, she looked up at the third-floor window, which was dark, its glass smeary.
Randi Jacek was waiting at the front door in a pantsuit and puffy vest, palming a vape pen. “Terrible habit,” she said. “But we all can’t be as healthy as dancers.”
* * *
* * *
Inside the studio, there was a chill in the air, as if the furnace had broken in the night.
When they stepped inside, Dara had the thought: What if Charlie is here? She couldn’t see him, not now.
But as they moved through the studios, the coolness sinking in their bones, there was no sign of him.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Randi was saying, following Dara to the back office. “I know you have your show coming up.”
“Performances. Sixteen performances,” Dara said, her voice tight. “The detectives said you might be back.”
“Like a bad penny,” Randi Jacek said, repeating the same joke.
“Or a bulldog.”
Randi smiled. “My reputation precedes me. Detective Walters?”
Dara nodded, pulling her coat tighter, setting her hand on the radiator. But Randi Jacek didn’t seem to notice the cold, or the smell in the air, like an electric iron left on the pad too long.
* * *
* * *
The back office was warmer, its door shut overnight, trapping the last of the heat. But everywhere else, the floorboards and ceiling beams were creaking and popping from the cold.
“All yours,” Dara said, stepping back. “Though I can’t imagine what there is left t
o look for.”
Randi nodded distractedly, her eyes back on the staircase. “And your sister? She’ll be here soon?”
“She’s at the theater. You know, our ‘show.’”
Randi looked at her, smiling generically.
“Ms. Durant, you know what?” she said. “Last night, my husband made chicken riggies for me.”
“Pardon?”
“Chicken, rigatoni, peppers. We had it on our first date. We’ve made it together on anniversaries, special occasions. And last night, out of nowhere, chicken riggies. I got the point. Fella can’t come out and say he misses me, but . . .”
“Ms. Jacek, I have to get to the theater,” Dara said.
“The son of a gun even put out place mats,” she said. “Cloth napkins. Extra-hot cherry peppers, just like I like it.” She smiled, shaking her head. “But I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“No?”
“No. Because you know what I was thinking about?”
“Ms. Jacek, I—”
“Why. Why was my friend Derek—old D-Wreck—going up the stairs? At that hour? What sent him up there?”
“A noise,” Dara said quickly. Here we go again. Here we go.
Even empty, the studio was full of noises, buzzing lights, a scurrying mouse or two, birds flapping against the gutters, clanking pipes, the furnace wheezing.
Even now, there was that whistling sound that had to be from the radiator, though the pipes were cold to the touch.
“The thing is,” Randi said, “if there’s one truth you learn after fifteen years in this business: People mostly behave in completely explicable ways. Until they don’t.”
“Maybe the power went out,” Dara continued, her voice speeding up, taking on a tone. “Maybe he thought the fuse box was up there. Maybe he just wanted to snoop, to pry. Who can say what went on in that man’s head.”
Dara closed her mouth a sentence too late. She was so tired, so tired.
Randi’s eyes were fixed on her now.
“He was just another contractor to you—someone to take up your time and take your money. But I knew him back when he was eleven years old, that great curly mane of his. All the girls loved him. I remember my friend Carla Mathis telling all of us how he’d accidentally touched her hip in gym class and she nearly passed out.” Randi laughed. “An ache that was not an ache. That’s what she called it.”
Randi seemed, maybe, even to be blushing.
“Look, Ms. Jacek,” Dara said, “I’m sorry you—”
“But he chose me. Briefly, but he chose me. One long summer day a bunch of us ran into each other biking around town in our bathing suits, like you used to do. And somehow we ended up behind my cousin’s house. Derek had stolen a Popsicle from the fridge inside. One of those twins, you know.”
Dara didn’t know. Dara doubted she had ever had a Popsicle in her life.
“Broke it in two with one hand! And gave me half. Midway through, he leaned in and kissed me right on the mouth. Tasted like grape soda. The Popsicle melted all over my hand. I still can’t drink grape soda and not think of him.”
Dara was listening, but she wasn’t listening. She was thinking of something. Of Charlie, the year he was the Nutcracker Prince. Age fourteen, cheekbones like knives. That feeling when she first saw him in the costume, so unbearably handsome in the crimson tunic with the brass buttons, the epaulets, and their mother draping the gold sash across his chest, pressing her palm on the velvet. Look, she said, seeing Dara in the mirror. Look. And Dara understanding, somehow, that their mother, like Drosselmeier in the ballet, seemed to be giving him to her. Passing him to her, the most special gift. An ache that was not an ache. And yet now it was.
“When you know someone before,” Randi said and she had moved to the spiral staircase now, her hand resting on the railing. “The Big Before. Before things happen. Before all the adult stuff—the disappointments, the broken hearts, the missteps, the scars. Then you know the real person. Before everything happened to them and they became what they became.”
“You don’t have to let it change you,” Dara said. “The adult stuff. That’s a choice. These are all choices.”
“Maybe,” Randi said. “But the thing is, how often do you realize something’s a choice when you make it?”
Dara started to open her mouth, but no words came out.
“Sometimes,” Randi said, shrugging, “choices feel a lot like surviving.”
* * *
* * *
She only knew the second before she saw him.
Oh, Charlie, her voice a whimper.
* * *
* * *
Do you mind?” Randi Jacek was saying, starting up the stairs, her breath little puffs now.
“The police said it’s dangerous,” Dara warned, moving toward her. “They’re not safe.”
But Randi was already heading up the steps and there was that sound, that lonely whistle she kept hearing, hissing harder now as they ascended.
“I just want to get a look up there,” Randi said, reaching the top as Dara stood tentatively on the bottom step, “to understand what he might have . . . Maybe that’s the sound he heard? Do you hear it?”
The rafters squeaking, squeaking and popping so loudly, and what was that whistling sound and why was it so loud here?
“Ms. Jacek, it’s not safe. . . .”
But Randi Jacek was already disappearing into the dark at the top of the stairs. Dara followed quickly now.
As she made that last turn onto the third floor, the cold coming hard as an ice sheet, Randi started screaming, really screaming, even as her mouth let forth only the smallest sound.
Her lips gone white and Dara pushing past her, and knowing suddenly, and how hadn’t she known before?
* * *
* * *
Oh, Charlie. Beautiful Charlie.
Charlie, hanging there, long and lean, his blond head dipped, his face hidden.
An orange cord was lassoed around one of the heating ducts and around that lissome neck of his, his weight dragging the duct to a silver V, dragging his body down so far his knees nearly brushed the floor.
When Dara put her hand on his neck, cool and smooth as ever, and impossibly lovely, it reminded her of the snowy neck of a swan, exquisite and impossible.
Behind her, Randi was on the phone and the bent heat duct was dipping lower and lower, the cord squeaking and Charlie’s body turning so Dara couldn’t avoid his face, a white smudge.
She was thinking of that moment in The Nutcracker, the book. The part that made her stomach tighten, that gave her an ache that wasn’t an ache. How the heroine sees a spot of blood on the Nutcracker’s neck and begins rubbing it with her handkerchief until he suddenly grows warm under her touch and begins to move. How she brings him back to life.
But Charlie wasn’t going to move at all and was only cold, colder than ever before. Cold as the radiator below. Cold like marble church steps, Midnight Mass. Cold as a star.
Randi was saying something beside her, reaching out, then stopping, wanting to touch Dara, something.
* * *
* * *
But Dara didn’t want to talk, to move. She only wanted to stay in this space a moment longer with this boy, this poor broken boy, the red-rimmed furrow she’d see on his neck once they lifted the cord loose, once they let her touch him, that swanling neck. He’d given her so much, after all. More than he had to give. But he’d ruined everything all the same.
A DISPUTE
Everything happens three times. Three times, the wicked queen tries to kill Snow White. Three times, Christ asks Peter if he loves him. Three times, Rumpelstiltskin spins the wheel.
Three times, police officers filled the studio. The fire, the fall, and Charlie.
Detective Walters, this time in a thick shearling overcoat, and Detective Mendoz
a talking to Randi and all of them talking to the medical examiner, wheezing and whistling once more into a mask clamped over his face.
Dara watched through the doorway as a gloved woman slipped the orange extension cord into a paper bag. The same cord that, the other night, they’d unplugged from Marie’s lamp and Charlie had wrapped it around and around the lamp base, like bright circus taffy, before hiding it away.
* * *
* * *
It turned out there was a note. Shoved in Charlie’s pocket, written on a Post-it, a word more than a note, written in Charlie’s cramped hand: Guilty.
The detectives were puzzling over the reverse side, another single word: Snow.
Only Dara knew that it was Charlie’s to-do list. More snow for The Nutcracker. Always more snow.
* * *
* * *
Is it possible your husband had a confrontation with the contractor?
They were trying to be gentle, respectful. She was the grieving widow, after all.
Inside, though, she had such clarity. The grieving, complicated as it would be, could come later.
In the end it was Randi and the police who gave her the head start.
Earlier, she’d overheard Randi saying that in the end it’s always two men throwing themselves at each other. An accidental shove at a bar. An argument over a bill.
Aren’t there some states, she’d heard Detective Mendoza joke to Walters, where murdering your contractor is a misdemeanor?
* * *
* * *
We were both frustrated,” Dara admitted. “Everything was taking so long. Charlie was very upset. The tension kept building.”
“That morning, did your husband say he was going to confront the contractor?”
