I hadn’t had one.
Not when Noel and I fought.
Not when he fell down the stairs.
Not when he ignored me at school.
Or kissed that girl.
Not when Dad lay on the floor. And Mom left.
I had not panicked.
Sometimes I had to sing retro metal in my head and breathe deep, or take off my glasses and be semi-blind, or cut class and take a shower—but I hadn’t had a panic thing in a very long time.
Shocking Disclosure in the Zoological Gardens!
Dear Robespierre,
Happy Thanksgiving.
I wonder if goats feel neurotic on holidays, like people do. When I was little, Thanksgiving and Christmas were just parties and pretty dresses and desserts. Then last year, I realized what a drunk Uncle Hanson is, and how stressed Dad and Grandma Suzette were. Suddenly, it wasn’t a party. It was an ordeal.
This year, I’m worried Dad will melt down again and start talking about his dead mother, just when he’s started to get up in the mornings and work on his newsletter. Also Uncle Hanson will be there and no Grandma Suzette to make jokes and encourage him to act normal. Plus Mom is making a turducken1, and there’s nothing like a big meat-eating holiday to make her mad that I don’t eat what she cooks. So it’ll be a miracle if we make it through Thanksgiving without a descent into seriously bad family dynamics.
Wish me luck.
Love,
Ruby Oliver
—written on zoo stationery with a ballpoint pen and folded into a small rectangle.
my mother came home with gifts. A T-shirt for my dad that said DOG IS MY COPILOT and a vintage dress for me.
It fit, too.
I was angry at her for leaving, but I also had to admit that it had been good to have her gone. Good for me and Dad to just take care of ourselves, even if we did it badly. Good for us to hang around together without her giant personality heaving itself between us. She came back full of ideas for the new show she wanted to do, plans for the holiday season, stories about her adventures with Juana and the women’s empowerment group. She was less on the attack, somehow.
I worked at the zoo the weekend before Thanksgiving, mucking out stalls in the Family Farm area early on Sunday morning. When I finished that, I went to help Lewis the plant guy trim some hedges. Perversely, though I complain about helping Dad in the greenhouse, I like trimming hedges. The clippers are really big. I feel tough hacking stray bits of greenery into submission.
I was chopping away and not thinking about anything when suddenly two sets of round arms wrapped themselves around my waist: Sydonie and Marie. “We’re at the zoo! We saw the elephant already,” cried Marie.
“Claude didn’t know where the bathrooms were,” said Sydonie. “I had to show him.”
“Is Noel with you?” I asked, nervous.
“No, Claude! Didn’t you hear me? Of course Noelie knows where the bathrooms are.”
I looked up and there was Claude, looking like Noel, only with dark hair and broad shoulders. Same delicate profile, same pale eyes. He was dressed in blue striped pants and a red cashmere sweater—vaguely nautical and a touch flamboyant. “They know you, apparently,” he said.
“Um. Yes.”
“It’s Ruby!” shouted Marie.
“Noelie’s girlfriend!” shouted Sydonie.
Claude’s eyes widened. “You’re Ruby?”
I felt like I must be a disappointment. I was wearing an ugly zoo uniform and no makeup.
“I’m not Noel’s girlfriend,” I told Sydonie. “Not anymore.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“The picture he drew of you is still up in his room.”
Was it? Was it, really?
“That’s just because he hasn’t bothered to take it down,” I said. “Not because I’m his girlfriend.” I turned to Claude. “It’s good to meet you. I mean, we were at Tate together, but you wouldn’t remember,” I stumbled. “Noel told me a lot about you.”
Claude smiled, but his eyes were serious. “He told me a lot about you, too.”
“It’s always bad when my reputation precedes me,” I said, trying to laugh.
“No, no.”
“Don’t you live in New York?” I asked.
His face contorted. “I couldn’t stay there, in the end. I—ah—I thought I could, but when the term started I couldn’t go to any of my classes. You know? I kept skipping and it was wasting my parents’ money and the whole thing was bad, so I’m taking a semester off.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Um.”
Claude frowned. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Oh. Well.” He looked off into the distance. “I should tell you, then.”
“What?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. Then he said: “My boyfriend died in a bike accident.”
What?
What?
“Your boyfriend?” I said, in shock. “Booth?” The conventional words just came out of my mouth automatically, like the words Nora had said to me in the summer: “I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “For your loss. When did it happen?”
“August.” Sharp lines appeared on either side of Claude’s mouth. “Noel didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head.
Claude looked away as he spoke. His voice was strangled. “Yeah. Booth was on his bike and a car plowed into him.”
Ag.
“Noel was behind him,” said Claude. “He saw the whole thing. They—they told me Booth didn’t suffer.”
A thousand ags.
Noel had seen his friend hit by a car, right in front of him.
In front of him and there’d been nothing he could do.
He’d seen his friend die.
All my problems were minuscule compared with how that would feel. How deeply that must shake a person. Just to have seen that accident, and stood over the body, knowing it was too late.
Not to have been able to save Booth.
Not to have been able to save him for Claude.
Noel wrote me those poems.I miss you
like a limb
like a leg I’ve lost
in a war, maybe
in an accident, maybe
in a tragedy.They hardly move, these clocks.
Watching the hands go round is like
watching someone’s blood drip onto the street
while you wait for an ambulance
and wait
and wait
and the blessed siren does not sound.
The clocks will hardly move
and hardly move
and hardly move
He had told me what happened. In those poems.
And yet he hadn’t told me.
He hadn’t actually told me.
Instead, he had come home from New York wanting to be happy. Wanting me to be the happy girl who would convince him nothing bad had happened. That it didn’t matter about Booth. That he—Noel—was okay.
He kept saying he was fine. He kept wanting me to act like everything was fine.
I put my hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated to Claude. “I mean, I know I don’t know you, but I’m just so, so sorry. For you and for Booth and for Noel.”
Claude wiped his forehead and took a swig from the water bottle in his hand. “Thank you.”
“Sure.”
“How odd that he didn’t tell you,” said Claude. “I mean, he was calling you every day.”