The Invisibles (29 page)

“She's so beautiful,” Grace breathed. “Absolutely gorgeous. Just like you, Mons.”

Monica traced the outline of her mother's face with the tip of her finger. “It's funny,” she said. “I don't remember anything about her. Not one single thing. But I miss her more than any other person in the world.”

The moment was shattered by the sound of a bang downstairs. Monica screamed. There was another bang, and a third, followed by a loud male voice. “Police!”

Monica gripped Ozzie's arm as Nora and Grace held their breaths.

“
Fuck,
” Ozzie said. “Now what?”

W
hat do you mean, now what?” Grace hissed. “It's the police, Ozzie. We can't screw around here. We have to go down and explain ourselves.”

“Do you realize you're trespassing on private property?” The cop's voice hurtled up the stairs. Nora wasn't sure if the question was rhetorical or if he was just stalling for time until they showed their faces. Either way, it wasn't good.

“He won't arrest us, will he?” Monica looked like she might faint.

Ozzie rolled her eyes. “
No,
he's not going to—”

“I'll give you three seconds to get down here before I come up there and arrest you!” The cop put extra emphasis on the word “three,” his voice louder than before.

“I knew it!” Monica lunged for the door, stuffing the picture of her mother inside her shirt. “Come on!” She raced down the hall, her leather thongs slapping against her heels, and turned too quickly, tripping at the top of the stairs. A high-pitched scream
sounded through the house as she tumbled down five or six steps, one hand flailing wildly for the railing as her feet flew up in the air. It was, Nora thought later, like watching the scene of a movie play back in slow motion as the railing splintered and collapsed, and then the staircase, with a horrible groaning sound, gave way in the middle, swallowing Monica beneath it.

“Holy shit!” Ozzie grabbed Nora from behind as they both skidded to a halt and stared down into the cavernous opening. “Monica!” There was no response.

“Oh God.” Grace clutched at Nora's sleeve. “Oh my God.”

“Monica!”
Ozzie bellowed again.

The police officer, who Nora assumed had been standing inside the still-open front door, was nowhere to be seen, and for a split second, the only movement in the house was the faint trail of dust that made its way up through the hole in the stairs.

“Monica!”
Ozzie yelled a third time, her voice hoarse.

“She's okay!” It was the police officer, grunting under the weight of something. “I got her!”

Ozzie sagged against the wall, and Grace buried her face into Nora's shoulder. They could hear Monica moaning softly, followed by the sound of something being dragged. Nora wondered how badly she was hurt, if any of her arms or legs were broken. It couldn't have been more than a ten- or fifteen-foot drop from the middle of the staircase to the floor below, but anything was possible when you took into account the direction she had fallen, along with all the nails and splintered wood she'd landed on. She stared back down at the hole, hoping to catch a glimpse of Monica's blond hair or a splayed leg, but it was treacherously dark, a gaping void.

“How bad's she hurt?” Ozzie yelled.

“I'm all right.” Nora could hear the fear in Monica's voice. “I'm okay, guys. Really.”

“You sure?”

“Her foot's hurt,” the policeman said. “And it looks like she's scraped up a little. I'm going to call an ambulance.”

“No!” Monica shrieked. “No, please don't. I'm fine. It's probably just a sprain. Look.” They could hear her struggling to get up, small whimper-grunts forcing themselves out of her mouth. “See? I'm fine. There's no need for an ambulance. Really. Besides, we're actually in kind of a rush. We have to go.”

“You're in a rush, huh?” Nora imagined the cop shining the flashlight directly into Monica's eyes. “If you're in such a rush, what're you doing here?”

There was no answer.

The policeman appeared at the foot of the steps, tipping a flashlight in their direction. “Anyone hurt up there?” He was a short, stocky man with big arms. Nora could see the outline of his gun in its holster, the dull shine of his belt buckle beneath his waist.

“No, we're not hurt,” Grace said. “But . .” She stared disbelievingly into the hole again. “How are we going to get back downstairs?”

Ozzie was already pacing up and down the hall, looking around wildly, as if trying to recall a secret staircase or a hidden panel. The only one Nora could think of was the one in the chimney, and there was certainly no point in going up there. “We'll have to climb out a window,” Ozzie said finally. “Maybe the one in Monica's and my old room.”

The cop narrowed his eyebrows. “Is that how you got in?”

“No, we came in through the basement,” Grace said. “See, we used to live here. A long time ago, when we were teenagers. We just wanted to see it again.”

“You used to live here?” the cop repeated.

“Yeah,” Grace went on, a little too eagerly. “When it was a girls' home. Turning Winds? It was kind of a while back. You might not remember it. There was a whole bunch of us living here. Anyway, we're in the middle of a road trip, the four of us, from Chicago, and we just got carried away, you know, thinking back, remembering how it used to be, and we were—”

“All right.” Ozzie elbowed Grace in the ribs. “Jesus. He doesn't need the annotated version.” She put a hand on her hip and stared down at the cop. “Is it okay if we try to climb out the window? There's one in the bedroom on the far side of the house. The moon's shining right into it, which'll give us some light, and if you have some rope or something in your car, we might be able to rappel ourselves down the side.”

“
Rappel
ourselves?” Grace echoed. “I don't think I—”

“Relax,” Ozzie murmured. “It'll be fine.”

The cop seemed to consider this for a moment, moving the flashlight over each of their faces as if they were trying to get something past him. “All right,” he said finally. “Stay right there. I have some rope in my car.” Nora watched as he picked his way carefully through the rubble. He moved with an odd sort of daintiness, sidestepping jagged pieces of wood with small, light steps that belied his obvious heft. She hoped he had another delicate side, one that might go easy on them once they got out of here.

“Stay right there,” Ozzie parroted as he disappeared through
the door. “Where we going, dumb ass?” She leaned over the top of the split railing, craning her neck. “Monsie! Where are you? You still okay?”

“I'm okay.” Her voice was faint. “I'm just sitting here. Against the wall.”

“Are you bleeding anywhere?”

“No.” A pause. “I don't think so.”

“How's your foot?”

Before she had a chance to answer, the cop reappeared, holding a thick green coil in his right hand. He tossed it up to Ozzie, who caught it deftly. “It's a military parachute cord,” he called. “Fasten one end of it to the windowsill, and let yourself down. I'll get your friend here, and we'll wait for you outside the window.”

The ensuing twenty minutes, Nora thought later, might one day be described as a comedy of errors as she, Grace, and Ozzie arduously frog-hopped their way down the side of Turning Winds. They would definitely recall Ozzie's agility as she plummeted down along the wall in record time, as well as the terrified whoop that came out of Grace's mouth as she swung the rope too hard, nearly knocking off the old flower box still perched outside the living room window. Nora would remember crawling backward down the side of the old building like some kind of decrepit bug, although she got to the bottom without incident, and none of them would forget the way the moon lit up the night sky like a headlight behind them. But right now there was nothing amusing about Monica's foot injury—which up close, looked gruesome, already swelling and changing color—or the expression on the policeman's face as they stood before him moments later. He was not nearly as old as she'd thought he was,
Nora realized, studying the diamond stud gleaming from his right earlobe. The gold nameplate above his breast pocket read
LAWRENCE
. She wondered if it was his first or last name. With his blond hair and smooth, apple-cheeked skin, he looked young enough to be in college.

“All right then,” he began, fastening the parachute rope with a small plastic clip he withdrew from his pocket. “Now that—”

“Please,” Ozzie broke in. “Please, please, don't arrest us. Like my friend told you already, we were just in there reminiscing. We're not criminals. Honestly, we weren't doing—”

She stopped as he held up a hand. “Are you aware that this building is state property?”

“Oh God,” Monica whimpered.

“We didn't know that,” Ozzie said. “Honest to God, we didn't. We would've never—”

“Let me finish,” he said. “Not only is it state property, but it's also getting torn down this coming Wednesday. If it wasn't, I'd have no choice but to arrest you. Especially considering you just destroyed a good piece of it.”

“It's getting torn down?” Monica whispered. “Really?”

“Really.” The cop pulled out a thick pad from the breast pocket of his shirt and gave Monica a sympathetic look. “You're lucky you weren't killed, ma'am, falling through that staircase. The wood is rotted from the inside out from all the termites. You could've broken your neck.” He flipped open the pad with a flourish and wrote something at the top. “They're gonna put a Dollar Store here, I think. Sometime next year. And another coffee place.”

Nora watched silently as he scribbled on the front of the pad.
In a few short days, Turning Winds would be erased from the planet, the living, breathing memories inside a thing of the past. She wasn't sure if the lonely sound she heard in the trees just then was a bird calling or the sound of her own heart breaking.

Officer Lawrence tore off the piece of paper and handed it to Ozzie. “Considering the circumstances, I'm going to let you all off with a fine. You can mail this in directly to the Willow Grove Police Department.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Grace gushed.

Ozzie stared at the paper. “Two hundred and eighty
dollars
?” she sputtered.

“You're lucky it's not double.” The cop raised an eyebrow. “We caught a couple kids in here last summer who were boozing it up. They got fined two hundred
each
.” He pointed at Ozzie with the tip of his pen. “And don't be late with the payment. After six days, it doubles.”

Ozzie scowled as she shoved the piece of paper in her back pocket.

“You ladies have a good night now.” The policeman peered at them from behind his flashlight. “You are going to leave the property now, correct?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ozzie swung another arm around Monica, supporting the other side of her as they half hobbled, half carried her back to the car. Nora could feel the cop's eyes on them as they put her inside and shut the doors.

“What a motherfucker,” Ozzie said, gunning the engine. “He could've let us go with a warning. Especially since the damn place is going to be fertilizer in a few days. Two hundred and eighty dollars. What a crock of shit.”

He lifted his hand as they sped past him, and Nora wondered if the gesture was one of spite or if he was just trying to be polite. Whatever it was, she was glad they were leaving. She didn't want anyone, including the old house, to see the look on her face as they drove away from it for the last time.

F
or over an hour, Monica refused to entertain the idea of going to a hospital. She brushed off Grace's insistence that her injured ankle needed to be X-rayed and dismissed Nora's suggestion of a possible concussion, even launching into a long, roundabout explanation of the physical symptoms of concussions (Liam, apparently, had suffered one a while back) and how none of her symptoms were even remotely the same. Besides, it was almost two in the morning! She couldn't bear the thought of having to sit in a dingy emergency room for another two or three hours just so that she could get her foot taped up and be given a few Tylenol. “Please,” she said for what must have been the third time. “Please, let's just get into the city. All I want is a hotel room, a hot bath, and a little bit of sleep before I have to go in and face the firing squad.”

They stopped pushing. After all, it was Monica's call. Her mind was obviously occupied by a number of other things, namely the litany of events that would take place at the precinct in a few more
hours. And since nothing seemed to be horrifically injured and she did not appear to be in agonizing pain, there was no need to add to her stress level, especially if she was insisting otherwise.

They were on the Henry Hudson Parkway, the city on their left, lit up like a carnival, when Monica turned awkwardly, grimacing as she rearranged herself against the seat. It was then that Nora saw the blood, like a smear of blackberry jam against the filmy fabric of her shirt.

“Monica?” She reached over, her fingers hovering just above the spot. “You're bleeding back here.”

“I am?” Monica reached around with two fingers, wincing as they came in contact with the wound. “Oh, I got scratched, I think, on the way down. It's tiny. I can hardly feel it.”

“Can I see?” Nora asked.

Monica leaned over a little so that Nora could push up her shirt. There were three wounds, each about two inches in length, running just along the outside of her backbone. They were small but deep, the surrounding area already beginning to bruise a sickly yellow color. The one closest to the outside was still moist. As Nora leaned in closer, she could make out weblike trickles of blood leaking out from the bottom. She lifted her eyes, but Ozzie was already watching her in the mirror.

“I knew it.” Ozzie made a hard turn into the left lane and then skidded to a halt in front of a red light. A flurry of angry honks rose up behind them, but she turned around in her seat and leaned all the way over until she could see Monica's injury for herself. Her face darkened as she shook her head. “No way. Uh-uh. Monica, you have to get checked out. A sprained or broken ankle is one thing. These are puncture wounds, which are serious
even if you hadn't gotten them from a shit-heap like that. Are you up-to-date on your immunizations? When's the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

Monica stared at her blankly. “Um . . .”

“That's what I thought,” Ozzie said. “All right, let's go. Grace, will you get your phone out and Google me the closest hospital?”

“No!” Monica gave the effort a final stab, reaching forward with both hands to grab Ozzie's shoulders. “Please, Ozzie. I hate hospitals. I'll call my doctor on Monday. After . . . everything else.”

“Forget it,” Ozzie said. “You don't have time to screw around here, Monsie. If you got tetanus from some nail in that place, you can get symptoms within twenty-four hours. Fever, stiff neck, even spasms. Now, we're finding you an ER and getting you looked at. End of story.”

Monica lowered her hands from Ozzie's shoulders, letting them fall limply into her lap. Then she turned, pushing her face into the seat, and sobbed.

“Monsie.” Nora put an arm around her shoulder. “Why are you so upset? It's just the—”

“I don't want to
go
!” Monica wailed. “I hate hospitals! And I'm fine!”

“All right?” Ozzie nodded at Grace, blatantly ignoring Monica behind her. “Where're we going?”

“Lenox Hill,” Grace answered. “It's about four blocks away, on East Seventy-Seventh. The ER'll be on your right.”

The Escalade shot forward, narrowly missing a parked car, and careened down the street. Nora moved in as close as she dared and patted Monica's thin shoulders, which rose and fell under her
staggered weeping. She thought she might know where Monica was right now, at least inside her head. It was a place she'd been many times before, when the threat of one more thing, even a single, unnecessary word, felt as though it might break her completely. It had been a long weekend. And it was not over yet. She smoothed Monica's damp hair back from her head as Ozzie drove through the narrow streets and held on tight.

I
f the hospital had not been identified by the bright blue
LENOX HILL HOSPITAL
sign out front, Nora thought she might never have been able to tell it from a high-rise apartment building. With its dull brick exterior and small windows, it took up most of the block and rose so high up above them that Nora could not see the top of it. Inside, the space was all sleek chairs and shiny floors. Wide hardwood walls rose up like fortresses around a row of hanging lights, and the scent of lemon oil and rubbing alcohol hung in the air. Directives were everywhere:
QUIET, PLEASE
and
LINE FORMS HERE
and
PLEASE HAVE ALL INSURANCE CARDS READY AT CHECK-IN,
each one written in neat block letters.

Nora helped Monica into a blue chair against one of the walls as Ozzie walked across the room and launched into a conversation with a red-haired woman behind a desk. Grace stood next to her, still fiddling on her phone. Every so often, Ozzie's voice would rise, and she would lift an arm, pointing in Monica's direction.

“She's the bossiest person I know,” Monica murmured, watching Ozzie across the room, “but I think I could be in hell and I'd still be okay if she was with me.”

“Me, too.” Nora squeezed Monica's hand, wondering how it was possible to reconcile such a statement with the reality of
Ozzie's life back home. It was not so much that Ozzie was in a horrible relationship—such a thing wouldn't have shocked her about any one of them, really—it was that she had stayed for so long. That she had stayed at
all
. Even her explanation about the familiarity of it and being able to navigate through such volatile territory had sounded hollow, as if she had believed such a thing before but now it wasn't quite holding its weight. But maybe that was what saying things out loud did sometimes: it made a situation tangible, forcing you to look at it in a way you never had before. Maybe for the very first time.

After a few minutes, an aide dressed in maroon scrubs and white shoes came out and helped Monica into a wheelchair. His long hair had been tied back into a ponytail and a gold star-shaped earring adorned his right earlobe. They followed him as he wheeled her back into the emergency waiting room. “It'll just be a few minutes,” he said, adjusting the wheel brake. “I'll come back for you when they're ready.”

“Famous last words,” Ozzie muttered, sinking into a chair. “Which reminds me, Mons. You ever get hold of your attorney?”

“I left him another message,” Monica said, staring at the floor.

Ozzie looked hard at her and then dropped her eyes.

Nora looked around the waiting room. Two middle-aged men sat a few seats down from them, their heads tipped back against the wall, eyes shut tight. The one closer to Nora had his hand draped lightly over the other's, a gold wedding band glinting on his fourth finger. Next to them was an overweight woman with a pink bandanna over her head and a teenage girl, an emaciated slip of a thing with bright blue streaks in her brown hair and quarter-sized holes in her earlobes. She leaned heavily against the
woman, who was reading a magazine, and picked at her cuticles. But it was the woman across from them, dressed in a dirty khaki coat, who held Nora's attention. She was slumped sideways in her chair, either too exhausted or in too much pain to sit up straight. The toe of one black sock peeked out from a hole in her sneaker, and the other shoe had no laces. The combination of a green knit hat pulled low over her forehead and the grime on her face made it impossible to tell her exact age, but Nora guessed she was in her late fifties, maybe even early sixties. Every few minutes, she reached up and yanked at one of the ratty braids sticking out from the bottom of her hat. Nora watched her chew on the end of it, biting down hard and then pulling with her lips, as if trying to suck marrow from a bone, and she wondered with a vague sort of horror if the woman was hungry.

As if reading her thoughts, Ozzie leaned forward. “Anyone hungry?” she asked. “God only knows how long we'll be here. I can try to find an all-night place that delivers.”

Monica shrugged. “A little.”

“I could eat,” Grace said.

Ozzie walked back over to the desk. “You guys have a yellow pages I could look through?” she asked.

“Just use my phone,” Grace said, holding it out.

“I hate all those iPhones.” Ozzie waved it away. “I can do it faster this way. Trust me.”

She tucked the phone book under one arm and gestured toward the front door. “I gotta call Gary, too. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

Nora watched as Ozzie let herself out the side door and held the phone to her ear. She wondered what Gary looked like, what
kind of expression came over his face, his eyes, when he got angry. If it was anything like the tone of voice she'd heard on the phone, it couldn't be pretty. But was he handsome otherwise? Did Ozzie ever look across the room at a party and exchange a wordless, intimate look with him? Have him come up behind her at the kitchen sink while she was doing the dishes and kiss the back of her neck? Did he do nice things for her, maybe on her birthday or Mother's Day or Christmas, take her to breakfast with all the kids, or book a bed and breakfast just for the two of them? Were the occasional kindnesses how Ozzie justified staying with him? Was that really all she thought she was worth?

Nora looked over at Monica. “How're you feeling?”

“Okay.” Monica let her chin drop into her hands. “Tired. What time is it?”

“Two forty-five,” Grace said.

Monica shook her head and closed her eyes. Nora watched as she inhaled deeply through her nose, the planes of her cheeks widening like wings on either side.

“I bet we'll be out of here in thirty minutes, tops,” Grace said. “There's not that many people here in the waiting room and it can't be that backed up at this hour.”

In fact, they didn't call for Monica until 4:26 a.m. By that time, Ozzie's Thai food order had been delivered, everyone had eaten, and Ozzie and Grace had nodded off. The old woman in the khaki coat had been summoned twenty minutes earlier, hobbling across the room as her name was called and then reappearing again just a short time later, only to head immediately for the side door. Nora was filled with an ineffable sadness as she watched the old woman go, one hand clutching the front of her coat as she
limped down the street. She thought of running after her, tapping her lightly on the shoulder, asking where it was she was going, just so she could hear her say “Home.” But Nora did not move, and when she leaned forward to catch sight of her again, the woman had disappeared into the night.

A
young Indian doctor with a red bindi in the middle of her forehead ordered an X-ray of Monica's foot, which turned out to be badly sprained, and tightened an air cast around it. She gave Monica a tetanus shot, as well as something called tetanus immune globulin to prevent further infection, put clean bandages over the wounds, and told Monica to come back in two weeks.

It was almost six a.m. by the time they got to the hotel Grace had found them on East Sixty-Fifth Street. They'd argued on the way from the hospital whether or not it was even worth it to get a room at this point; the hour was so late and since they had to be at the precinct before noon, what little sleep they might get would probably be light and restless. It was Grace who'd insisted finally, convincing them that even four or five hours of sleep would benefit Monica—and the rest of them—more than they might realize. The hotel was only two blocks away from the police station where Monica had to turn herself in, but Nora was more relieved to see that it had recently been cleaned. The bathroom, with its white fixtures and spotless mirror, smelled like eucalyptus, and there was not a trace of dust on any of the furniture. Grace and Ozzie collapsed on the pull-out couch, while Nora helped Monica into the queen-size bed and got in next to her. Thirty minutes later, she could still hear Monica next to her, tossing and turning.

“You okay?” she whispered finally. The room was dark; the heavy curtains over the window obliterated even a hint of street light outside. Still, she could hear the faint sounds of traffic below, the occasional beep and screech of a tire.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” Monica rolled over awkwardly, her casted foot heavy behind her. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“No,” Nora lied. “I can't sleep either.”

“Not tired?”

“Exhausted.” Nora arranged an arm behind her head and stared up into the inkiness above her. “Just thinking.”

“Me too.”

“About what?”

“About how scared I am,” Monica said.

Nora reached down and took her hand. “I know. But you're doing the right thing.”

“I am, right?”

“You are.”

Monica rolled over so that she was staring at the side of Nora's face. “You know what else I was thinking about?”

“Hm?”

“Running away.”

“Running away?” Nora blinked. “From here?”

“Yeah. Well, from tomorrow, actually.”

“You can't run away, Monica. That would just make things worse.”

“I know. I just like thinking about it.”