by Lisa Unger
“I’ll take you out to lunch to celebrate,” he said. “Let’s go get some pizza.”
I thought about my aunt Bridgette, who is not really so unbearable. Seriously. It’s only that she’s not my mother. Though I know she cares for me, she doesn’t love me. Only a child who has lost a mother knows how yawning and uncrossable is the space between those two things. Just because horrible things have happened to you doesn’t mean you can’t have a happy, normal life, she’d said to me once. I had felt sorry for her, only because I suspected that she might be wrong. I was marked, wasn’t I? Forever? But for whatever silly reason as we left Langdon’s office, I let myself wonder if maybe she was right after all.
2
I could have gone to college anywhere. My grades and test scores, essays and recommendations, garnered me admissions to Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford. I’m not bragging. It’s totally true. But I just couldn’t see myself in any of those places. They seemed big and impersonal, and I imagined myself wandering in crowds of people, sitting in the back of stadium-size classrooms. I saw myself moving dark and small, unwanted, out of place among the world’s financial and intellectual elite like a raisin in the sun.
“But a degree from one of these schools is your ticket to anything,” said my uncle in dismay. “Your mother would have been so proud of you.”
What he didn’t understand was that, at that point, I didn’t actually want to do anything. I just wanted to hide. I wanted to find a safe place and disappear inside it. I didn’t want to Achieve Great Things or Make Everyone Proud or Prove Them All Wrong. I just wanted to be left alone.
I chose Sacred Heart College in The Hollows, New York. And if everyone was disappointed that I had decided on a tiny but well-regarded liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere, no one was surprised. Everyone expected bad decisions and unpleasant outcomes from my side of the family, and this was the least of them.
The minute I stepped on the campus, small and isolated on 132 acres of land, I felt ensconced, secreted away. I wouldn’t be asked to do anything special here, I thought with relief. It wouldn’t be expected that I distinguish myself. This town, The Hollows, this school, would wrap themselves around me, and keep me safe. Just like I wanted. I was immediately accepted and I enrolled right away without a second thought.
New, gleaming buildings stood shoulder to shoulder with historic structures. A tall Norman tower stood at the center of the campus and loomed high as you pulled down the long, tree-lined drive up to campus. One was greeted on arrival by a rambling five-story colonial, which housed the president’s office and her staff. Students and faculty assembled there, in the grand foyer, for all parties and gatherings. There was a stone chapel where services were held. Alongside that, in the spring and summer, was an elaborate herb and vegetable garden. Because of the competitive equestrian team, there was also a stable of horses, as well as a small barn of animals—including laying hens and three milking cows.
Winding running paths laced through the acres of woods populated by oak and maple, sycamore and birch. The dormitory buildings—Evangeline, Dominica, Marianna, and Angelica—were four renovated Victorian-era mansions with barely a right angle between them. It was my dream of a college dorm, with curved baluster staircases, bay windows, restored woodwork. Imagine towers of bookshelves packed with leather-bound volumes, secret attic rooms, and tiny, winding back staircases. And yet we had high-speed wireless, cable, and laundry in the basement, all the modern conveniences.
The classroom buildings and library, science center, gymnasium, and a newer dorm building were all gleaming glass and stone. Built to coordinate in essence with the older buildings, they seemed to mesh with rather than oppose the existing structures.
There was a part of me that hoped never to leave the safety and isolation of a school campus. Certainly, I knew it was possible; Langdon never had. He’d done his undergraduate work at Boston University. Then went on to get his master’s and his Ph.D. in childhood psychology, as well as his postdoctoral certificate in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Now, he was a full tenured professor here at Sacred Heart.
“It’s a life sentence,” he always joked.
He also worked as a clinical psychologist at the nearby hospital, and with troubled children at Fieldcrest. Fieldcrest was a school where children went when no one else would take them anymore—bring me your bipolar, your ADHD, your raging, your callous-unemotional.
I’d done several internships with Langdon at the school—art therapy, some poetry with the least disturbed of the kids. I could see myself following his path. I could see myself helping people in a significant way doing something like that. And I made the mistake of saying so over Christmas break. The leaden silence that followed was almost a scream.
“Oh, but,” said my aunt with that strained smile she always seemed to wear when I was around. “There are so many other things you could do.”
I felt myself bristle. My cousin Rose was at FIT; she wanted to be a fashion designer. My other cousin Lily (I know. My aunt is really into gardening) was studying film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. They were bright and creative and gorgeous, both of them, full of life and energy and promise. Maybe that was because my aunt had created her life, as she was so fond of saying, and my mother had most certainly not created hers. But I wasn’t Bridgette’s child, was I?
“I want to help people,” I said weakly. “My mother wanted me to help people.”
“Your mother wanted you to be happy and free and safe,” said Bridgette with uncommon passion. She was usually so careful with me, so gentle. I always wondered if she wasn’t a little afraid of me, of what she might see if she pushed me too hard.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
My uncle and my two cousins had drifted from the room, presumably to play with their new iPads. We’d all gotten one from Santa.
“It means that you don’t spend your whole life with psychopaths,” she said. This time she nearly shouted. And then she covered her mouth and bowed her head, blond waves bouncing, diamonds glittering. “I’m sorry.”
The Christmas tree was glimmering, the fire crackling (even though we were in Florida with the a/c cranking—I mean, come on, the planet, people!). A low strain of classical music—Mozart, Beethoven, who knows?—was coming from the mounted speakers. We sat on chintz sofas, leaning against perfectly coordinated throw pillows. I caught sight of myself in the mirror, a slim black line with folded hands and furrowed brow, an ink stain on cream silk.
“But what if …” I started to say. I hadn’t voiced this thought to anyone. And I almost didn’t want to. She stared at me expectantly, eyes wide open and caring.
“What if ?” she said. She was eager to make a connection to me, always had been. It was I who pushed her away, rebuffing her with chilly politeness and icy platitudes.
“What if I could help someone?” I said. “What if I could keep someone from doing something horrible?”
We locked eyes—hers a deep blue, mine coal black. Each of us had endured horrors most people don’t allow themselves to imagine. And so when we looked at each other, we could hardly see through all of it. But I saw her that afternoon. I saw how frightened and sad she was at her core, and that all the prettiness with which she surrounded herself was a kind of armor. Behind it, a little girl’s heart beat fast with terror and grief.
“Then you’re a stronger person than I am.”
We both knew it was true, so I didn’t bother to argue. When I saw her start to cry, I moved beside her and put my arms around her and she kissed my head. We stayed like that for a while with nothing resolved between us.
Come with a purpose and find your path. That was the school motto, and I’d had it ringing in my ears since I’d returned from break. Not that babysitting was exactly my path. But, for whatever reason, as I rode my bike through the crisp air down the winding road that led out of the school, and onto the street that would take me to town, I felt infused with a new forward moment
um.
Skylar was right; it felt good to seek to do something, whatever it was. If not for the job interview, I’d have been buried in a book or at the gym, killing time until classes started. My suite mates weren’t back yet, so I didn’t even have their various girl dramas to entertain me—boys, and who said what on Facebook, and Lana, can you write my essay for me?
The Kahns’ house stood white and pretty, a small colonial just off the square. People in The Hollows called this area Soho, short for south Hollows. There were wreaths with white lights and red bows in each window—the remnants of Christmas past—black shutters and a shiny, red door. My aunt would have no doubt reminded me that red was an auspicious color and that a red door meant opportunity in the world of feng shui. I thought about texting her, just to be nice. But then, of course, I didn’t. I walked up the gray-painted steps to the front door and used the brushed gold knocker in absence of a bell.
I waited a moment and listened to a lone bird singing in the tree above me. I looked up at him, a gray-and-black sparrow sitting on a branch.
“What happened?” I asked him. “Why didn’t you fly south for the winter?”
He whistled at me long and low, annoyed as if I’d asked an embarrassing question that he would be compelled to answer out of politeness. We count so much on politeness, those of us who are hiding things. We count on people not staring too long, or asking too many questions. Finally, after a brief standoff, he flew away.
Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Wondering if I’d gotten the time wrong, I knocked again. Then I heard the staccato rhythm of heels on hardwood, and the door flew open. She was tiny and powerful, like a ballerina, with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her pale face was a spotlight and I felt the sear of her assessing gaze just briefly before she smiled. Unconsciously, my shoulders slouched a little, arching my body away from her gaze, as I am prone to do under too much scrutiny.
“Lana.” She was breathless again, a woman always on the move. “I love that name. It’s so —romantic.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t heard that before and it made me blush idiotically.
“Rachel,” she said. She offered me her tiny hand in a hard and steely grip. “Rachel Kahn.”
Did it sound familiar? I thought, not for the first time since she gave it. Every time I reached for it, it slipped away. I liked her name; one could do great things with a name like that: run companies, compete in triathlons, conquer nations. It was all hard sounds, three abrupt syllables. My name was all loops and whispers, the name of a dreamer, a procrastinator, someone who slept in. I bet Ms. Kahn was up no later than 5 A.M., whether she had to be or not.
She ushered me inside, apologizing for the unpacked boxes that stood in the hallway, next to the exquisite cream sectional, beneath the large Pollockesque oil which hung over the fireplace mantel and reached almost to the tall ceiling.
“I thought I’d have accomplished more by now,” she said, lifting a veined hand to her forehead. She released a frustrated sigh. “But the days just seem to race by, don’t they?”
Not my days, no. My days were long and winding, filled with big, empty blocks of time to fill with nothing but studies, books, films, pub crawls with my friends and roommates, weekend parties that lasted into the night, occasionally some Internet shopping. My days didn’t race by, not at all.
“They do,” I said, just to be sociable. The best way not to call attention to yourself is to agree with what other people say. Even silence attracts attention.
I followed her to a cavernous dining room and we sat at a long table fit for a king’s feast. It was one of those tables, the kind you see in design magazines and never anywhere else. It was basic, rustic even with the natural lines of the tree, and a surface with lots of knots and eyes and shades of color. But I could tell just by the feel of it that it cost more than a car. A simple piece of black wood, lined with three perfect green apples, served as a tasteful centerpiece.
From her crisp gray shift and her silver flats to the simple black-framed glasses she unfolded as slowly and carefully as one might a piece of origami, she exuded the kind of style that could not be bought. I slid my hastily cobbled-together résumé across to her. And while she looked it over I gazed around. Even in the disorder of unpacking, there was beauty. Even the dishrag folded by the sink looked like a gorgeous accident, coolness caught off guard.
“So,” she said after a minute. “Do you have any child-care experience?”
She placed her palm on the résumé, and pushed it away toward the middle table, where it lay looking inadequate. Not sure whether she hadn’t really read the document, or just wanted to hear it from me, I told her about my various internships which involved working with troubled kids in various capacities. But actually picking someone up from school and hanging out, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No, I admitted.
She put her hand to the back of her neck and rubbed. I figured we’d chat for a few more minutes and then she’d ask me to leave. She’d want someone who knew what they were doing, of course. This had been a silly exercise and I felt bad for wasting her time, of which she clearly had too little already.
“Interestingly enough,” she said, “your experience might better prepare you for Luke than I could have hoped.”
She took off her glasses, and I saw something in her eyes that I recognized—a deep and fearsome sadness.
“You see,” she said, “we moved here from the city so that Luke could attend Fieldcrest during the school year and over the summer as well.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
Okay, so he was troubled. No problem. Who wasn’t? I mean, I had been classified as a troubled kid and I hadn’t set things on fire. Much. Just kidding.
“At his age, another kind of boy might be approaching the point where he could spend some afternoons at home alone. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving Luke to his own devices. He’s quite smart, and certainly capable of taking care of himself. But he needs someone—” She stopped short of finishing the sentence.
“To keep him out of trouble?” I said.
She looked relieved. “Yes.”
I searched for a tactful way to ask what his problem was, but she asked me if I wanted some tea and I said yes. She motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen. I took a seat in a breakfast nook that looked out onto a trim backyard—a square of lawn, a single bare tree, a lonely bistro table and two chairs. Beyond that, there was a thick wooded area. I knew there were more houses on the other side, but I couldn’t see them.
“Luke has had a lot of different diagnoses,” said Rachel, reading my mind. She flipped on the electric kettle. “But none of them quite fit. We thought at first that it was ADHD. One doctor thought it was clinical depression, which runs in my family.” Here a kind of darkness fell over her features, but then was gone. “Another said that Luke was bipolar. He’s been in therapy, taken various medications.”
She took tea bags from a box by the kettle and poured the water into two mugs. She went on about how she’d reached the end of her rope with having to change schools, doctors, how her work (she didn’t mention what this was) was suffering, Luke was growing ever more difficult and hard for her to manage on her own.
Then she’d read about Dr. Charles Welsh and the work he was doing at Fieldcrest. I knew Dr. Welsh; he was Langdon’s direct supervisor, a warm and disheveled man whom everyone adored and held in the highest regard. His work with troubled children and his theories on childhood psychopathy were groundbreaking. When Luke was accepted to Dr. Welsh’s program, Rachel and Luke moved here to The Hollows.
“We left family and friends behind,” she said. She sat down at the table, putting a cup in front of me. The scent of peppermint and honey rose up to greet me. She hadn’t asked what kind of tea I wanted or how I liked it, but it was perfect. “But to be honest, those relationships were becoming very strained. Luke’s behavior. It’s—well, it can be—appalling. Even my family, what little I have, wasn
’t equipped to handle him.”
I took a sip of my tea. She wasn’t exactly selling the position.
“I just want to be honest,” she said, maybe reading my expression. “There’s no point in your taking the job if you’re going to be overwhelmed by him.”
For whatever reason, maybe it was hubris, or the naïveté of youth, or just a general lack of foresight, but I wasn’t discouraged. In fact, I felt a bit proud of myself for wanting a job that probably no one else would want. Or maybe it was because, when I was young, my behavior could have been called appalling, and many people had difficulty “handling” me. Or maybe it was this idea I had twisting deep in my psyche about helping people.
She went on to talk a little bit about his behavior, his unnatural attachment to her, his rages, his silences, his manipulations. As she went on, she seemed to get more and more tired, her shoulders drooping, head bowing. I waited to say something about Luke’s father. But she didn’t.
“Things have been—challenging,” she said. I couldn’t see her face at all.
I’d known plenty of kids like Luke at Fieldcrest, and had spent time helping them during the summer program. Often, they did better without the parents around. Those relationships were so complicated, the grooves of manipulation dug so deep, so twisted around each other. Sometimes, not always, troubled kids were more relaxed in an environment that wasn’t controlled by their whims and tempers.
“So maybe I should meet Luke and see if we can get along at all?” I said.
She looked up from her teacup, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Okay?” she said. “Yes. That would be great. Maybe you’d like to come back for dinner?”
“I could do that,” I said.
“Or,” she said, looking around, “I could pay you for the afternoon and you could help me with some unpacking. And you’ll be here when he gets home in a couple of hours. Are you free?”
I didn’t wonder if she’d interviewed anyone else, or why she didn’t seem to have checked my single reference. To be honest, I just liked her. I sensed she needed someone, and I wanted to be that person. I couldn’t have told you why. These things are so complicated, every decision underpinned by reasons conscious and subconscious. What we think of as our “gut instincts” are really a very complex mosaic of past experiences, deep-seated hopes, fears, desires. But that feeling, a kind of giddy, hopeful yes!, came from deep inside. I wouldn’t have thought that I wanted or needed anything as badly as I must have to so enthusiastically sign on for the jobs of unpacking boxes and caring for a disturbed child. But there I was.
