I had only ever heard of the term black swan in connection with the ballet. I shook my head.
“A black swan event is a highly improbable event but also one that, upon closer examination, was predictable. The sinking of the Titanic is an example of one; so is World War One. These are outcomes that are referred to as outliers on an economist’s model.”
I studied the cover of the book sadly and remembered Mrs. McCall’s sigh from the night before, when she first saw us on her front stoop. I’d thought I detected a measure of inevitability. That something was happening out there in the world, a force hurtling with Newtonian aim toward the object of us.
“But not all black swan events are bad,” Mrs. McCall added. “Some people use the models to play the stock market and get filthy rich.” She blew the surface of her coffee with pursed peach lips, took a slow, careful sip. “The point is that nothing can be predicted, really, and so you want to be sure to expose yourself to luck too. Things can go catastrophically wrong, but they can also go so right as to be profoundly transformative.”
I thanked her for the book and told her I couldn’t wait to read it, though I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less than more profound transformation.
* * *
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital didn’t look like a place where sick people went. The exterior facade was edged in aquatic shades, and a new neurological wing led the way in treating traumatic brain injuries and dementia. It gutted me to think about Denise, blue-lipped in the basement of a building that already looked like the future.
“That’s Mrs. Neilson,” I said to Bernadette and the other girls as we approached a prim woman wringing the silk scarf around her neck. Her timid, hopeful smile made my heart twist in my chest. I knew Eileen had always felt like a bit of a misfit in The House, that her mother had likely advised her to put herself out there more.
“Eileen’s favorite color,” Mrs. Neilson said, a hand cupping her cheek. We had come bearing a yellow blanket and yellow tulips. She hugged us, smelling of cigarettes and all the perfume she had used to try and cover them up. Then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial register. “I need to chat with all of you before you see Eileen.” She gestured for us to follow her a little ways down the hall, so that Eileen wouldn’t hear what we’d be asked to do.
“I told Eileen you were all coming today, and she’s very excited to see you,” Mrs. Neilson said. “She’s a little embarrassed about her hair, so please don’t stare or comment on it.”
“Of course, Mrs. Neilson,” I said.
“But that’s not all. See—” Mrs. Neilson paused to center the knot in her scarf and collect her thoughts. She was a more angular, anxious version of her daughter. More than once I’d heard Eileen on the phone with her, insisting that she stop worrying already. She was making friends, going on dates. She was having fun living in The House. “Eileen doesn’t have any memory of Saturday night. She thinks she’s been in a car accident.”
I found my composure as quickly as I could, and still I stuttered. “So, uh,” I began, “should we not mention… or does that mean she thinks she’s the only one who’s been hurt?”
“She thinks Jill was driving, and so she knows Jill is recovering in the hospital as well.”
“But are you ever going to tell her?” I asked in amazement. I imagined Eileen going her whole life without ever knowing what had happened in The House on Seminole Street. I felt faint, wondering what it would take to sustain this fiction.
Mrs. Neilson sawed at her neck with her scarf. The skin there was a scuffed shade of pink. I had to resist the urge to reach out and pull her hand away. I couldn’t stand to witness any more suffering. “Eventually, I’m sure. Yes. We are trying not to upset her for the time being. Her jaw is wired shut, and she can’t scream.”
* * *
When I’m interviewed about this, which isn’t often, the reporter always wants to know about Eileen’s mouth, fastened into a grimace with metal wires, her broken teeth bared. I’m encouraged to talk about the puckered red incision horseshoeing her left ear, slathered in Vaseline, and how the windows were double-locked for her safety so that the small white room reeked of blood and saliva, like a dentist’s office after wisdom teeth surgery.
But what I want to talk about is the way Eileen looked at us when we came into the room, with a desperate remorse that haunts me to this day. If she could speak, I knew she would be apologizing that we had to see her like this.
Eileen’s older brother stood protectively at the head of the bed, eating a bran muffin without a napkin. I recognized the shopping bag folded in the small wastebasket at his feet. Someone had brought them muffins from Swanee’s, the fancy French bakery on Main Street with the Bonjour! sign on the door. I kicked myself for not thinking of doing that.
“Look who’s come to see you, Eileen,” her brother said. Eileen whinnied a greeting.
Bernadette perched on the edge of the bed, delicately, so counter to the coarse physicality we showed each other at The House that I discovered a new loss to mourn. We were always piling into beds, feet in faces, accusing someone of smelling or having crusty toes. Never before did we have to worry about hurting anyone.
“We miss you at The House, Eileen,” Bernadette said. She shot me a look. You’re president. Saysomething. I was standing there, recalibrating, like I had blown a fuse.
“We brought you something to perk up the room!” I said at a tinny pitch that made my own ears ring. I tried to untie the yellow ribbon binding the yellow blanket—three places I had to go to find it—but my fingers would not cooperate with what my brain was telling them to do. Eileen’s brother stepped forward to help, but it wasn’t his job to help. It was mine. I hadn’t even brought him anything to eat. I raised the bundle to my mouth and gnashed at the ribbon with my teeth until it tore. Eileen’s hands fluttered at her sides nervously while I shook out the blanket and tucked it into the lower corners of the bed with aggressive precision.
“Better already,” I declared, and Eileen gazed fondly at the blanket for my sake.
“Is there anything else we can bring y’all?” Bernadette asked. “Magazines? Or maybe a puzzle?”
“A puzzle.” Mrs. Neilson gasped as though it were a new invention. “Now, that sounds fun.”
There was some commotion out in the hallway, a woman’s voice raised in alarm. My pulse blew out my ears, and my vision clotted. He had found me.
“It’s okay,” Mrs. Neilson was saying to the guard, who had occupied a wide stance at the door. “You can let her through.”
In walked the woman who had shooed the press out of our way with her lit cigarette, the one in the newsboy cap, although that day she had her yellow-blond hair tucked under a beret, pinned at a traditional Parisian tilt. She would be a part of my life forever, but at that moment, I didn’t even know her name.
“Sorry that took so long,” she said to Mrs. Neilson, passing her a brown paper bag rolled tightly shut. “I got a little turned around trying to find my way back here.” The woman noticed the blanket on the bed. “How pretty,” she commented. “You girls should help yourself to some muffins. I got too many.”
“I’m just going to pop out a moment.” Mrs. Neilson left the room, the brown paper bag pinned under her arm like an evening clutch.
The woman went over to Eileen’s bed, stooped down, and examined her face. “What do you think? More Vaseline?”
Eileen nodded eagerly. At the foot of the bed, the yellow blanket lifted and lowered as the woman swathed Eileen’s lips with a Q-tip. Eileen was curling her toes.