“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 momentum.
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.