The Invisibles (32 page)

“Oh my God,” Monica said. “It's too late.”

Even Ozzie, who was already two rungs down the ladder, stopped and rushed back over. “Nora,” she said, leaning over her limp form. “Nora!”

Monica let out a screech and pointed to a rivulet of blood seeping out from beneath the blankets. “Oh God,” she whispered. “I think it's the . . .”

Ozzie threw back the covers. Nora's legs began to shiver violently under the cool air, but she struggled to sit up, to see. There was so much blood that for a moment she was sure she was dead. But no. It was something different, an emptiness now, a deep and terrible void, as if she were inside some kind of wreckage at the bottom of the ocean. She searched Ozzie's face desperately, watching the planes of her cheekbones tighten and then loosen again. “It's out, I think,” Nora whispered. “Oh my God, I think it's out.”

She closed her eyes as Ozzie moved her legs farther apart. Monica began to cry and covered her face with her hands.

“Yes,” she heard Ozzie say in a hollow voice. “It's out.”

“It's just tissue, right?” Grace's voice was too high. “Right, Ozzie?”

“Yeah.”

“Throw it out,” Grace said. “Throw it out, throw it out, throw it out. I don't want to see it, Ozzie. Please. I don't want to see any of it.”

Ozzie grabbed a towel off to the side and moved it between Nora's legs. “It's nothing,” she said. “Okay, Nora? It's nothing. It's just blood and . . . stuff. It doesn't even look like anything.”

“Where are you going to put it?” Nora tried to sit up, but her body was shaking so hard that it was nearly impossible. Her arms collapsed beneath her, the muscles loose and jellylike. Grace moved in closer, hooking both hands beneath Nora's armpits. Her skin was like ice, the bones in her fingers like sticks. “Tell me, Ozzie,” Nora insisted. “Where are you going to take it? Where are you going to put it?”

“I'm going to throw it out,” Ozzie said.

“In the toilet?” Nora's teeth were chattering. “You're going to flush it?”

“No.” Ozzie swallowed. “I don't think I can flush it.”

“Why not?”

“It's too . . . I don't think I can. I'm afraid it'll block the pipes.”

Nora's teeth clicked together like the rapid-fire sound of castanets. Her eyes were as wide as spoons, the hollows beneath her cheekbones nearly concave. “Oh my God.” It came out as a sob. “Where, then?”

“I'll put the towel in a bag,” Ozzie said. “And then I'll take it out back.”

The back. Where they kept the garbage. The dumpster.

Nora crumpled against Grace's arms.

“Oh, God.” Grace felt Nora's forehead with a shaky hand. She adjusted her blankets and brought her ear down to Nora's lips. “I can hear her breathing,” she said. “I think she's just unconscious. She's probably in shock. Just go,” she whispered. Ozzie was still standing there with the towel. “Please, just go and do it. I'll stay with her.”

Ozzie fought back tears as she turned, still clutching the towel. “Come with me, Mons,” she said. “Please. I don't want to do this by myself.”

Nora came to again slowly, as if coming up from the depths of the sea. She watched groggily as Ozzie and Monica disappeared down the chimney steps with the towel.

“Hey,” Grace said softly. She brought her face down close to Nora's. Her breath smelled like blood. “How're you feeling?”

Nora shook her head and began to cry.

“It's all over.” Grace stroked her forehead and ran a finger over
the thin line of perspiration standing out along Nora's hairline. She began to rock her upper body back and forth, moving it like the mantra coming out from between her lips. “We'll never think of it again. It's all over now, okay? It's all over.”

Nora didn't answer.

Above them, the moon rose like a Communion Host, the white light of it deathly silent. A thought came to her just before she lost consciousness again: would it ever forgive them for what they had just done? Could it ever, in some small way, look the other way?

N
ora woke up again in her own bed, disoriented in the dark of the room. Her blankets were wet, and she was shivering despite the heat of her skin, the fire in her mouth. She could hear Grace snoring across the room, and the faint outline of the oak tree branches looked like tentacles behind the curtains of her window. Traces of pain ribboned through her abdomen, pulsing along the insides of her legs like tiny afterthoughts, and a new maxi-pad placed inside her underwear was heavy with blood. Slowly, the night came back to her: the pain, the roof, the towel.

The towel!

She threw back the blankets and staggered out of bed. She had to get to the towel. It was out there alone, in the dark, buried beneath God knows what, for God knew how long.
I'm coming. Hold on. I'm coming
.

She took two steps and tripped over a body.

“Huh!” Ozzie sat up, swaying. “Who's that?”

“Just me.” Nora got back up, struggling to keep her voice from quavering. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Nora.” Ozzie's voice was alert; she was remembering now, too. “Are you okay? You want me to go with you?”

“No, I'll just be a minute.”

“How do you feel?”

“Better.”

“You sure?” Ozzie made a move to stand up. In the dark, Nora could see the outline of Monica next to her. “Let me just come with—”

“Ozzie, please.” Nora put a hand on her shoulder. “I'd just like . . . I need privacy right now, okay?”

“Yeah.” She could feel Ozzie relax under her hand. “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

“Go back to sleep.” The room began to spin around her. “I'll be fine.”

She waited outside the door for three agonizing moments until she could hear the measured rise and fall of Ozzie's breathing again. The pain was unbearable, razor-knives again, and she was so hot that she was sure she was burning up from the inside out. No matter. The towel came first, above everything else. She paused at the foot of the steps, steadying herself against the railing, and listened. The sound of canned laughter drifted out of the den, which was right next to the front door. Shit. Elaine was watching some stupid show on TV. And there was no way she could use the back door. It squeaked at the slightest movement. There was only one other option.

She moved toward the cellar and nearly stumbled with fright as Grace appeared out of the shadows. Dressed in her shortie pajamas with little blue panda bears, she looked more like a ten-year-old girl than a senior in high school, and her face was so
pale that for a moment Nora thought she was looking at a ghost.

“Where are you going?” Grace hissed. “You're supposed to be in bed.”

“I have to go,” Nora said. “Out there. Please, Grace. Don't say anything. Just let me go. I have to do this. Please.”

“Let me come with you.” Grace gripped Nora's arm.

Nora twisted out of the hold. “No!” It was a whisper-scream. “Don't you dare! Go back to bed.”

“Please.” Grace was crying now; big tears rolled down her cheeks, and her nose began to run. “Please, Nora. I can't sleep. Please let me come.”

“This is not about you,” Nora said, pushing past her. “Now leave me alone, Grace. I mean it.”

She opened the door to the cellar steps and looked down. The flashlight she'd spotted on top of the refrigerator trembled in her hand, and she jerked it to the right and then the left, trying to make sense of the steps that led down into the dark. She could hear Grace sobbing quietly as she closed the door behind her and descended the steps. The sound tore at her, but she did not stop. Tiny dust motes hung suspended in the pale beam of light, and a moth flew into her hair. She cried out as her fingers tore at the insect, clawing desperately at it until she realized it was gone. She went down farther, sweeping the space with her flashlight until her eyes fell on the shelves across the room, the neat line of tin cans and glass jars lined up like some kind of artillery. She moved toward them instinctually, knowing exactly what she would do. The Peter Pan box that Theo had given her in memory of their first date was just where she'd left it, placed there after their breakup, pushed in tight behind the row of jelly jars so that
she would not have to think of it—or him—again. Now she slid it out carefully, her hands shaking, and cried out as it fell to the floor.

“No,” she whimpered, bending down. But the top was cracked, the hinge badly marred. It closed unevenly, the edges misaligned now from the fall. She clutched it to her chest and ran.

She went through the smaller, silver garbage cans first, untying the knotted necks, and then pawing through the contents as quietly as she could—orange peels, coffee grounds, soiled maxi-pads, fast-food containers, and wadded-up tissue paper—but there was no sign of the towel. She stopped short in the middle of the third one when she came across a bag from the grocery store, the ends tied neatly in a bow, but it held only an old chicken carcass. She retched, pressing her nose and mouth into the elbow of her other arm, and threw it back.

The dumpster was a few feet away from the smaller cans; white and black garbage bags rose halfway to the top, their necks throttled with red plastic twist ties. A putrid smell arose as she hauled herself up one side of it and stepped in: rotting food, sour milk, shit and blood, the awful, rancid stench of decay. She began to weep again as she balanced awkwardly on the misshapen forms, trying to maneuver the flashlight with one hand as she held the box in the other. A faint scurrying sounded and Nora bit down hard on the outside of her wrist so that she would not scream. And then all at once she saw it, a brown paper bag perched in the corner between two plastic ones. The paper bag had brown and white stripes on the outside, the word
JITTERBEANS
stamped in the middle. She froze, holding the light on it, afraid to go any closer, and then crept forward. A section of towel poked out of the
top, the rough material clean and unsoiled. It could be anything in there, she thought. Anything at all. She poked at it a little with the flashlight on one side, pushing the material back with the end of it. With a gasping sound, the garbage bag she was standing on split. She yelped as her bare foot sank through it. The smell of chicken grease rose up around her as she struggled to extricate herself, yelping again as her foot came into contact with something cold and slimy. She pulled herself up hard, righting herself, and looked around again. Despite her fall, the bag had not been bumped; it was still sitting there, staring at her like a dead eye. She pulled the towel out all at once, and tore it open with shaking hands.

There, in the middle of a horrifying mass of blood and clotted tissue, lay the tiniest baby she had ever seen. Nothing about it resembled a comma or a lima bean. It was the size of a Band-Aid, ten, maybe even twenty times bigger than anything Max had told them it might be, and while the oddly shaped head gave it a strange, alien appearance, there was no mistaking the tiny arms and legs, or the humanness of its face. It was all there, in all its ineffable, horrific beauty.

Nora knew it was dead. And yet as she sat there, looking at it, she couldn't help but feel as if it might open its eyes suddenly or take a single, staggered breath. But nothing happened. Nothing moved or breathed or even stirred. Even the wind had died down, keeping reverently still.

Somewhere a sound emerged then, and the hairs on the back of Nora's neck stood up. It continued on, a piteous noise that got louder and louder, transforming itself into a rending of something already torn, until slowly, as if waking, she grew conscious of the
fact that it was coming from deep inside her, an imploring wail rising to the stars and the planets and all of the heavens beyond.

T
he towel was too thick and unwieldy to fit in the little box, so Nora tore a piece of her nightgown off at the hem and wrapped the fetus in it before tucking it inside. She clawed at the new tears blurring her vision; she needed to see, to do things just right now, without bumping or disturbing it. She could smell the heat rising from her skin; something inside of her was infected or dying. Maybe she was already dead.

Except that she couldn't be dead, she realized, her bare feet racing along the sidewalk moments later, the ripped nightgown flapping awkwardly at the bottom like a tattered flag. She couldn't be dead. She clutched the tiny box in one hand, her weakened body moving soundlessly through the night air, her breath coming out of her in hoarse, staggered spurts. Her feet smacked against the sidewalk until finally, like the answer to a never-ending prayer, she was there.

The birch trees beckoned like pale soldiers in the night, and the light from the moon bled down from the heavens. She sank down beneath them, pawing at the dirt with her fingers, digging, tearing, until the skin on her fingers turned raw. Her fevered body shook as she placed the broken box inside the little hole and placed a hand over the top of it.

“I'll be back,” she whispered. The box felt like a piece of ice, and she leaned over it, trying to decipher its shape in the dark, to impart some kind of warmth from her own trembling fingers. “Every day, I'll be back. I promise.”

S
he knew logically now that the only thing left after all this time was the old box, that the contents inside had disintegrated into a pile of dust. But sometimes she thought, her cheek still pressed against the cold earth, she could feel it there beneath the dirt and rocks; she could sense it somehow, as though it had merged behind her rib cage, inside her heart.

Yes, Grace, I believe dead people can feel love.

She'd never say it out loud, would never admit it to another living soul, but she knew the child could feel her there, pressed against the blankets of snow and the sheets of rain and the mud and the grass, day after day, week after week, year after interminable year. She knew.

It was then that she realized, with perfect clarity, that the pain she'd been carrying around for so long was not about the girls leaving her behind or their inability to speak of that night. It was about her and the baby in the ground and nothing else. Which meant that this was hers to fix, hers to free herself from. No one
else's. She understood, too, that she did not want to live any more of her life with the weight of her decision strung around her neck. Hadn't she just been wondering why she could not find it in her to forgive? Could it have something to do with an inability to forgive herself? And if so, what might happen now if she did?

Nora stretched out the fingers of one hand along the dirt and pressed down, leaving small indentations beneath her fingertips. It took a long time for her to find her voice, and when she did, it came out in a whisper.

“Goodbye, my angel,” she said. “Goodbye.”

H
eadlights sliced through the dark. Alice Walker lifted her head as a car pulled in across the street, and pricked her ears. A low growl sounded in her throat as the lights dimmed and then went out. The sound of a door opening and then shutting again brought the dog to her feet, and Nora reached out, grabbing her around the collar. Figures emerged from the other side of the street, two, three, four of them. No, five. Nora squinted as she got up from her supine position, praying that the group was not a bunch of drunk teenagers and that none of them had seen her there.

“Nora?”

She nearly wept as Ozzie's voice came through the dark.

“Nora, are you over there?”

She sat up, holding on to Alice Walker's collar, and tried to steady herself. The dog was growling with abandon now, her danger sensors on overload. “Shhh,” Nora said softly. “Shhhh, baby. It's okay.”

The women came over slowly, Ozzie first, then Grace and
Monica. Trudy and Marion followed on tiptoe, their faces twisted with anxiety and confusion. Nora drew back as she saw them, drenched again in a new fear, a new hopelessness. She didn't want them to know; she didn't want any of them to know. This was hers alone, and no one else's.

“Norster.” Ozzie sank down next to her, one hand going to Alice Walker's head, massaging the dog behind the ears. “Oh, Norster, I thought we'd lost you.”

Nora brushed a loose remnant of dirt from her face and tried to compose herself. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Is Monica allowed to leave . . .”

“I'm okay.” Monica hobbled forward, facing Nora. “Theo came with us, too. My arraignment isn't scheduled 'til Wednesday. He made sure it was okay.”

Nora shook her head, struggling to understand. This wasn't about Theo. Or was it? She couldn't remember anymore. “I just . . . I don't understand what any of you are doing here. How did you even find me?'

“We went to your house,” Grace said. “But there was no one there except Marion and Trudy here, who were sitting on the step. They said they were waiting for you to come back. That you'd left for a walk.” She reached out, placing a hand on Nora's arm. “I knew where'd you'd be.”

Nora looked over at the older women; they were holding on to one another, as if one of them might fall over if the other let go.

“She's here,” Nora heard herself say, holding Grace's gaze. “I brought her here.”

Grace nodded. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Who, Nora?” Ozzie sounded faint. “Who's here?”

It was time. Her turn now to peel back the cover she had been hiding under all these years. Her turn to open a vein, to tell the whole truth.

To become visible.

“The baby,” she said. “I went back out to the dumpster that night and . . . and got her.” Her voice was a whisper. “I put her in a little box that Theo gave me a long time ago and brought her here so that I could put her to rest, bury her the right way.” Marion pressed her fingers to her mouth. Trudy's lips were set in a tight line, her eyebrows knitted in a line along her forehead. “I've come back every morning since then to sit with her. So that she's not alone. So that she knows I haven't forgotten. But I think she knows now.” Nora nodded. “I think it's time for me to let go.”

Monica fell to her knees. Grace sank down beside her. Soft sobs filled the air, the plaintive sounds of grieving and loss, pain and grief, as it all came back again. It was for all of them, these cries, for everything they had lost—and everything that had just been found again.

They surrounded Nora slowly, these women, these mothers, each of them, Trudy and Marion too. One by one, they reached for her above the dark earth and the howling memory of their past.

She opened her arms and let them in.

M
onica had only a few hours, she told them, before Theo had to take her back to New York. They had a lot to do before the arraignment on Wednesday. There was no fooling around this time, no way they could dicker around with anything.

“Where is Theo?” Nora asked.

“We left him in the lobby of a Days Inn,” Monica said. “You know, the one behind the high school? He wanted to come, but we told him we needed some time with you first.”

Nora nodded numbly, trying to visualize him in his beautiful shoes. He was probably sitting in one of those shitty chairs by the window, fiddling with his iPhone. Maybe he'd unloosened his tie, run a hand through his hair. He might be staring out at the window next to the vending machine in the front lobby, wondering if they'd all come back in time. If they'd come back at all.

Trudy and Marion had left, taking Alice Walker with them, and the rest of them were seated around the faintly ridged hill of dirt. Above them, the birch trees swayed and bowed in the cool wind; higher still, the full moon waned.

“We should finish our Invisibles meeting before we go,” Ozzie said, staring up into the sky. “We can pick up where we left off the other night. I mean, it's the real thing now, with that goddess staring down at us the way she used to.”

“I don't even remember where we left off,” Nora said, settling herself down in a circle with the rest of them. “Monica's wine bottle blow job, maybe?”

They laughed a little, and the sound traveled up around them like tiny pieces of light before dispersing again.

“You were just about to share a first line,” Ozzie said, holding Nora's hand. “You said it was from some book called
The End of the Affair
. Do you still remember it?”

Nora bit the inside of her cheek. “I do,” she said.

“Okay, then.” Ozzie squeezed her hand tighter. “Go for it.”

Nora took a deep breath. “My first line tonight is from the novelist Graham Greene, who wrote
The End of the Affair
. And
it goes like this: ‘
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily, one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
'”

It had meant something the night she chose it, but now the meaning had deepened to a level she had hardly known existed. She made a mental note to add it alongside her other favorite first line in her notebook, one an artifact from her past, the other a light for the future.

“I'm confused,” Grace said. “What's it mean?” She burst out laughing.

They laughed with her, all of them, knowing that somehow tonight they had crossed the deepest of chasms and emerged intact. Somehow, despite their own personal hells, each of them was still holding on to the best part of themselves. And it would be with these selves that each of them would look bravely ahead, into the future.

Stick wishes were next, the final leg of the ritual, thrown out to the full moon in all her glory. Ozzie went first, tracing the air with a small twig she had found, writing her hopes there in desperate, frantic air letters. She turned, finishing, and Nora thought she might sit down the way she always did and concede to the next one in line. Except that she didn't do that.

“I want to say mine out loud this time,” Ozzie said, tossing her stick to one side. “Back at Turning Winds, I think I was too afraid to say what I really wanted. Maybe I thought you'd judge me. Or think I was weak, which would mean that one of you might stop loving me. But I'm a woman now. I need to tell each of you my hopes and dreams. Out loud. Because when I tell someone the truth, and she decides to keep on loving me anyway,
that's when I know I've found family. That's when I know I'm really home.”

The women watched as Ozzie turned around again and faced the moon. She raised her hands the way she had always done, until the milky, orbital belly was centered directly between them and threw her head back. “I want a life of my own,” she said loudly. “I want to forgive my mother for the things she did to me and to stop the fucking cycle she dragged me into. I want to reach down inside myself and find the strength I know is in me to leave the man who treats me so badly, to create a life for myself and my children of stillness and love.” She lowered her arms slowly, as if the words themselves had gotten too heavy.

Nora stood up and put her arm around her. She pressed her mouth close to Ozzie's ear. “You will,” she whispered fiercely. “You will, and we'll help you. Every step of the way.”

Ozzie nodded and kissed her hard on the cheek. “I'll need it. After this trip, I know I can do anything. But not without all of you.”

Monica was next. She stood up, making a great display of throwing her stick to one side, and shook her hair out. The women laughed encouragingly. It was not easy, saying such truths out loud. There had been a reason for stick wishes, for emitting their deepest hopes in silence.

“I want to own up to the things I've done.” Monica's voice was tremulous. “Whether or not that means I have to go to jail. And I want to meet my father, to get to know him, find the good in him, if there is any.” She glanced over at Nora. “I've already talked to Liam. I told him what I did. I don't know what's going to happen to us, but he's going to help me set up a meeting between me
and my father when I get back.” She shrugged, and even there in the dark, Nora could see her lips trembling. “It's a start,” she said. “You know? And I've got to start somewhere.”

Grace was next. She didn't even bother with a stick, but she turned, facing the moon head-on. She paused for a full minute, as if gathering herself, and something in Nora lurched, waiting for her to object again to the pagan-ness of the situation, to the part that didn't have anything to do with Jesus or Mary.

“I want to accept myself,” Grace said softly. “I want to embrace every part of myself, the sick parts and the well parts. I want to open myself to my child, however imperfect I might be, and love her the only way I know how, with my whole, fractured heart.” She sat back down again, breathing hard, and Nora flung her arms around her.

“She needs you, Grace,” Nora whispered into Grace's shoulder.

“I know,” Grace nodded. “And she'll get me.”

“Your turn, Norster,” Ozzie said.

Nora lifted her face from Grace's shoulder and rubbed her eyes. She had the sensation then of having traveled down a long road, a path blocked with thorns and boulders and somehow, in some way, reaching the end of it. She felt different, if not older somehow, then new again on the inside. She stood up on quavering legs and looked up at the moon, still high in the sky, the edges pulsing faintly with some miraculous light.

“I want to talk,” she heard herself say. “I want to talk and talk and talk until everything inside of me comes out and there is nothing else left to say. I don't want to not tell nobody but God anymore. I want to tell you. I want to cradle the past in my arms and feel it there, in all its terrible rawness, and then I want to say
goodbye. I want to close the door on that part of my life and move forward under the moon, with all of you. Again.”

The women rose as one and surrounded her, their arms like a brick fortress around her trembling shoulders, and she knew it to be true.

She knew it to be the truest, purest thing she had ever known.

T
hey went to the car afterward and Nora slid into the backseat. There was not much room, since a large metal cage placed on the floor took up most of the space, and Nora frowned, angling her legs around it.

“Don't you recognize him?” Grace was looking at her from the other side of the car, her mouth split open into a grin. Nora glanced at Ozzie and Monica, who were watching her from the front seat.

“Who?” she asked.

Grace pointed at the cage, and it was only then that Nora saw Elmer, quivering silently in the corner, nibbling on a bit of hay.

“You got Elmer?” She stared at the women, aghast. “How? When?”

“We stopped in Hopatcong on our way here.” Ozzie shrugged. “We thought he'd do better with me on the farm than with those weirdos back at Hopatcong Honey's. The place was a crack den, I think.”

Nora hovered over the cage, her fingers sliding through the slots, as if she could reach him from there. The tiny animal shivered and huddled further into the corner at the movement.

“His name means ‘noble,'” Ozzie said proudly.

Grace laughed. “I thought you named him after Elmer Fudd.”