Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  “No fucking way. They can smell fear. They’ll turn on us with their capped zombie teeth.”

  “Oh, for chrissake,” I said. “We survived the Granta Bitches. Don’t make me slap you.”

  I walked over to the nearest counter, Pagan trailing behind me.

  “Hi,” I said, addressing the zombie Stepford-pod android directly in front of us.

  “My name is Courtney, how may I help you today?”

  Courtney. God help us.

  “We’re here to pick up two bridesmaid dresses?” I said.

  “Mm-hm,” said Courtney, head bobbing. “What’s the name of the wedding party?”

  “McClintock,” said Pagan.

  “McCormack,” I said.

  Pagan shrugged. “Like it will matter six months from now.”

  The woman ignored us. “Here we are—let me just go to the back and bring those out for you to try on, all righty?”

  “Thank you so much,” I said.

  “This is going to suck,” said Pagan, the minute she walked away. “I bet you they picked something yellow. Or pink. Floral monstrosities with fat sashes and great big foofy sleeves. Big and foofy and lame.”

  “We’re going to look like a pair of fucking cabbage-rose armchairs,” I said. “Mark my words.”

  I saw Courtney coming back with a big fat pair of dry-cleaning-bag-encased dresses draped over her arms.

  “Um,” I said. “You may want to close your eyes.”

  “Fucking plaid? You have got to be kidding me.”

  “It’s a nice dark plaid. Be grateful for small mercies.”

  “Small mercies my ass. What next, they beat us to the ground with haggis and light us on fucking fire?”

  “Yes. If we’re lucky.”

  Courtney gave us a capped zombie-pod Stepfordian smile.

  “I’ll get you set up in a dressing room, all righty?” she said.

  On the bright side, the damn things fit us like big, fat, foofy-sleeved plaid gloves—even with my cast.

  There was a polite little knock on the dressing room door. “It’s Courtney? I forgot to give you something?”

  “Come on in,” I said. “We’re dressed.”

  The door swung outward and she stepped into the plush little cell with us.

  “These are your headbands,” she said, holding up a pair of the damn things. “In matching tartan.”

  I started laughing so hard it made me choke.

  “Is everything all right?” asked Courtney.

  No longer able to inhale, I waved my hand, helpless, and collapsed onto the room’s tufted little cabbage-rose chaise longue over in the corner.

  I beat the thing’s femme-y down-filled upholstery with my left fist, positively gagging with laughter.

  Alarmed, Courtney tossed the headbands in Pagan’s general direction before scuttling out backwards and shoving the door firmly closed behind her.

  My sister stared down at the pair of big padded-plaid horseshoes that now lay at her feet, centered akimbo on the room’s lushly carpeted floor.

  “Shoot me,” she said. “Shoot me right fucking now.”

  Dean called that night, a few hours after they cut my cast off.

  “Can’t wait to see you, too, Bunny. I’ll miss the rehearsal dinner, but I should make Bar Harbor by midnight if I drive your car straight up from New Jersey.”

  “I can’t believe it’s not possible to come from La Tuque direct.”

  “It’s four hundred bucks to change my flight. I can’t ask Christoph to cover that.”

  Right, like Astrid doesn’t tip more than that for cocktails she doesn’t actually consume.

  “It just seems crazy,” I said. “You sure you don’t want to blow off Maine?”

  “It’s your mom’s wedding.”

  “So you’ll catch the next one. No biggie.”

  “How’s your arm look?” he asked.

  “Pale. Kind of skinny.”

  “Can’t wait to see it,” he said. “Sucked having twenty pounds of plaster between me and your fine buxom self.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t I know it?”

  63

  I was packing for Maine when the phone rang Tuesday morning out in the living room. My entire closet’s dispirited contents lay spewed across our unmade bomb crater of bed, a sartorial nuke-test-detritus cacophony.

  But at least my right arm was free of plaster.

  I jogged away from the textile-explosion’s epicenter, relieved.

  Pagan tossed me the receiver. “Your buddy Kyle.”

  “Hey,” he said as I sank down into the sofa.

  “Hey back,” I replied. “What’s up?”

  “The jury.”

  “How soon?”

  “An hour, tops. Hit the subway right now and you’d be here in time.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” said Kyle. “Get on that train.”

  No good-bye, no chance to tell him our rental car was already parked out front—just click and then dial tone.

  Pagan gave me the hairy eyeball, arms crossed. Her bag and Sue’s stood at parade rest in the front hall, ready for deployment.

  “Listen,” I began.

  She shook her head, pissed. “Madeline, do not even think about fucking with me.”

  “We’re making a pit stop.”

  “No.”

  “It’s on the way.”

  “No.”

  “The car’s on my Amex and I’m driving,” I said. “You don’t like it, go stick out your thumb on Sixth Avenue—see how fast that gets your ass to fucking Bangor.”

  I heard her say “Bitch,” but I was already sprinting to grab my toothbrush and the stupid plaid dress still veiled in its dry-cleaning plastic.

  Pagan called shotgun, but Sue was the better co-pilot so I sent her grumbling to the backseat instead.

  “You’re bitch-at-the-switch as consolation,” I told Pagan, handing her my pile of CDs.

  I started the car and she tossed me some Hendrix.

  Sue took one look at the dashboard clock, said, “FDR,” and we shot uptown like a Roman candle through gift wrap.

  “Bridge or tunnel?” I asked, as we streaked past Twenty-ninth Street.

  “Tunnel,” said Sue. “No question.”

  Sliding down toward the narrow tube’s eastern mouth, I hit the exact-change toll-bucket with a fistful of quarters, through so fast we set off the scofflaw buzzer—nothing but net.

  Twenty minutes later I parked next to Kyle’s car outside the courthouse.

  “I am so fucking carsick,” said Pagan, telescoping her legs out of the backseat. “You drive like shit.”

  I could see Kyle’s head craning, anxious, from behind the crowd inside.

  I pointed him out to Pagan. “He’ll get us through fast. There’s a decent bathroom pretty close.”

  My adrenaline was contagious by that point.

  “No worries,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m cool, so let’s

  boogie.”

  Boogie we did.

  The courtroom felt different that morning. Like there was some kind of low-grade, sub-auditory buzz infecting everyone inside.

  “That’s her up there?” whispered Sue. “The mother?”

  I nodded.

  “What is she, our age?” she asked.

  “Younger,” I said.

  Kyle leaned forward to quiet us, warning finger to his lips.

  The bailiff stood up to say, “All rise.”

  We got to our collective feet, the room filling with muffled clatter.

  The judge’s door opened slowly outward behind his empty chair, and then the man himself strode in, broad shoulders proud beneath his robes’ black yoke.

  “Hear ye, hear ye,” intoned the bailiff. “The Supreme Court of the County of Queens is now in session, Judge Malcolm Arthur presiding.”

  Someone coughed behind us.

  Another door opened and the jury filed into its box.

&n
bsp; Pagan leaned in close. “This is intense.”

  I nodded and grabbed her hand, glad to have her and Sue beside me.

  Another cough, and Judge Arthur turned toward the jury. “In the case of the State of New York versus Albert Williams, has the jury reached a verdict?”

  One of the elder church ladies stood up. “We have, Your Honor.”

  The bailiff walked toward her and she gave him a folded slip of paper, which he ferried back to the judge.

  The judge unfolded this missive and looked down at it, taking a moment to digest its contents.

  Pagan clenched my hand harder.

  The judge raised his head slowly, handed the paper down to the waiting bailiff, and then shifted his gaze back toward the jury’s elected captain.

  When the bailiff had carried the printed verdict back to the solemn woman standing in the jury box, the judge cleared his throat.

  “Madame Foreperson,” he asked, “how do you find?”

  I held my breath and closed my eyes.

  “On the count of murder in the second degree,” she read, “we find the defendant Albert Williams not guilty,” she said.

  My eyes snapped open, tears already pricking at their corners.

  “On the count of manslaughter in the first degree,” she continued, “we find the defendant—”

  Here Pagan gave my hand another squeeze.

  “Guilty.”

  I exhaled with relief, ducking forward to catch Kyle’s eye.

  He mouthed “Yes,” giving me a new thumbs-up when each of the next six counts came back guilty, as well.

  Pagan hadn’t let go of my left hand yet, but as the bailiff carried the leaf of paper inscribed with Angela Underhill’s verdict toward the judge, Sue threaded her fingers through my own on the right.

  Judge Arthur unfolded this second sheet, again taking a moment to absorb its contents before looking toward the jurors in turn.

  “In the case of the State of New York versus Angela Underhill,” he said, “has the jury reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor,” replied the woman to whom he’d addressed his words.

  “Madame Foreperson,” asked the judge, “how do you find?”

  I closed my eyes, gripping Pagan’s hand even harder, and all I could hear was the woman’s voice saying “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty…” over and over again, until she reached the very last count and paused.

  “On the count of filing a false police report,” she said, as Sue gripped my other hand, “we find the defendant guilty.”

  The room exploded.

  I watched Elsie reach across the railing between herself and the defense table, in order to hug her no-longer-pregnant granddaughter close.

  Good God.

  When she turned around and saw me, she dropped her eyes.

  I felt comforting hands settle on my shoulders, but I shook them off.

  I looked over at Kyle. His eyes were clenched shut, and he shook his head slowly back and forth.

  “What does that mean?” Pagan asked him. “They’re just going to let her go?”

  “They’ll set bail first,” he said. “She’ll probably get probation.”

  The judge banged his pointless gavel, calling for order.

  My voice was hoarse. “I can’t be here anymore.”

  Pagan tugged at my wrist, her hand gentle.

  “No,” I said. “I just can’t fucking stand it.”

  “Maddie,” said Kyle.

  “She got off, Kyle. She fucking got off!”

  There was a glitter of shared pain in his eyes, but I bolted out of that room all the same.

  64

  I didn’t stop until I reached the rental car out in the parking lot, and then I just let my body go slack against the driver’s-side door—head down, hands thrown loose across its cold blue roof.

  I didn’t shut my eyes or anything, just lay there staring into the tweed-covered crook of my elbow.

  I watched my steamy breath unfurl against the overcoat’s wrinkled warp and weft until the fuzz escaping its married threads of black-and-white wool bowed down, burdened with tiny beads of exhaled moisture.

  I didn’t move or even look up when someone sat on the hood beside me, making the car’s body dip beneath the added weight.

  “Dude,” said Pagan, “that sucked.”

  She insinuated the point of an elbow into my exposed rib cage.

  I leaned over and threw up all over the asphalt.

  NORTHEAST HARBOR, MAINE

  February 13, 1991

  65

  So of course we showed up thirty minutes late to the rehearsal dinner, and I was dressed like shit besides.

  That we’d only stopped twice to piss during nine otherwise-straight hours of incredibly fast driving didn’t count in our favor, nor had I expected it to.

  I looked around for Dean, hoping maybe he’d gunned the Porsche and created a rent in the fabric of the time-space continuum in order to have beaten us there. No such luck.

  It wasn’t like anyone had started sitting down already once we got to the party. The guests were still milling around a hunter-green-painted clubhouse bar, swilling gin but disdaining the offered platters of shrimp, baked morsels of Brie en croûte, and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts.

  “Slightly better food than I was expecting,” said Sue. “For a WASP wedding. I practically starved to death at yours, Madeline.”

  “I don’t think we’re allowed to bitch about anything,” said Pagan, “when we show up this late.”

  “Who’s bitching?” asked Sue.

  At least I’d remembered to tuck Dean’s and my wedding gift into the rental car. It was a rather elegant Chinese-red lazy susan, fitted out with a series of blue-and-white glazed bowls—the perfect delivery system for those garnishes with which one hoped to enliven suppers of Minute Rice and indifferent Episcopalian curries.

  “There’s Mom,” said Pagan, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go say hello.”

  “I am sorely in need of some ice water,” I said.

  “What, no gin?” she asked.

  “Maybe later. Right now I’m just thirsty.”

  “Call yourself a WASP?” Sue shook her head. “No pain, no gain.”

  “Are you sure you’re not an Episcopalian?” I asked.

  “I’m just good with the blending,” she said.

  “ Big smile, bitches,” said Pagan. “Time to make the proverbial effort.”

  We snaked our way through the drinking crowd toward Mom, single file.

  “Oh fuck me,” I said, halfway there. “Larry’s wearing a kilt.”

  They’d split the three of us up at dinner, scattering our place cards around the room to ensure that we’d have no actual support from one another.

  “You’re the bride’s daughter?” The woman beside me pulled her head back, further exaggerating the cords of her tennis-leathery neck.

  “The eldest child,” I said. “Yes.”

  She peered at me, squinting with distaste at my outfit. Had there been a pince-nez handy, she’d have landed the part of “opera-bound matron” in a New Yorker cartoon circa 1934, hands down.

  “I had a court date this morning,” I explained. “In Queens.”

  “You’re an attorney?” she asked.

  “Witness,” I said. “Homicide.”

  With that, she abandoned me for conversation with the dining partner on her right.

  Fine.

  Whatever.

  Rescued from ignominy by the delivery of a paillard of chicken in taste-free cream sauce, I turned toward the tiny octogenarian man seated to my left.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing what you were just discussing,” he said.

  “The sorry excuse for my appalling tardiness?” I asked.

  “Just so,” he said, blue eyes twinkling beneath an unkempt white hedge of eyebrows. “I believe you mentioned a homicide.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a topic you’d appreciate my going into, over

  dinner.
”

  “Try me,” he said, patting my hand. “For an old coot, I’m surprisingly tough.”

  “I first got involved last September.”

  “Who’d been killed?”

  “A little boy,” I said, “the day he turned three years old.”

  “Did you see it?”

  I shook my head. “I found his bones five months later, in a cemetery. That’s why I had to testify.”

  “And who did it?”

  “The mother’s boyfriend. I wanted to hear the verdict this morning. That’s why we got here late.”

  “Did they get him?” my companion asked.

  “Manslaughter,” I said. “I’ll miss the sentencing, I guess.”

  “New York State?”

  I nodded.

  “Fifteen years,” he said. “Probably out in seven.”

  I winced and took a sip of my water. “His mother as good as got off scot-free.”

  “Fuckers,” he said.

  I choked.

  My new friend gave me a sturdy clap on the back.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “No doubt that editorial comment caught you rather by surprise.”

  I laughed, eyes still watering.

  “What are your thoughts concerning your own mother’s impending nuptials?” he asked.

  I hedged. “Larry strikes us all as a very nice man.”

  “Well played,” he said. “But don’t worry, I have no dog in this hunt. I’m only here because I’m old as hell and I don’t go south for the winter.”

  “In that case, I give him six months.”

  “Generous,” he said, resting his gnarled hands on the white tablecloth so they bracketed his untouched plate of chicken.

  “You’re not going to eat?” I asked.

  “One gets tired of nursery food. Creamed chicken and peas, a dab of wild rice.”

  “Innocuous, at least.”

  “I’m saving up for dessert,” he said, as people started clinking their water glasses with random cutlery.

  I lifted a miniature slice of rye bread from my butter plate. “A toast.”

  “Witty girl.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  A bunch of old Yalies started singing about losing their lambs.

  My dinner partner flexed his fingers, and I noticed that he wore a gold crest ring on each pinkie. They didn’t match.