It isn’t necessary to invite Denise over the third morning. The doorbell rings at 10:30, and Denise is on the stoop with a cup of coffee and two bagels. In the kitchen, she begins the business of the bagels, slicing, toasting, spreading cream cheese. She’s familiar with the kitchen now, after her snooping. Nathan feels intruded upon. He must remind himself that he said, “Come by tomorrow. Come by every day.”
She sits at the kitchen table, chews on her bagel, and leafs through The New York Times. After breakfast she wants to go to the basement and Nathan wants to go upstairs to have sex and then sleep. He tries to initiate this scenario, but Denise is uncomfortable. “What about Marion?” she says, but not in a sexy, breathy way; she’s looking down at her knees and at Nathan’s hand, which is attempting to smoothly creep up her thigh. He says into her ear, “Fuck her—don’t worry about her. You never did before.” Denise can’t explain, but this is different, so instead of going upstairs to the bedroom they end up fumbling in the kitchen like teenagers. Nathan tries to unbutton Denise’s jeans, but she swats him away. She opens his fly instead and performs an awkwardly angled hand job under the kitchen table. After, Denise heads down to the basement and Nathan goes to his room to sleep alone. He doesn’t want to hear Denise sifting through his family’s belongings—the old clothes, toys, games that lost some pieces or were just boring. Jane still plays down there when it’s raining outside.
Nathan feels calmer now, but also less alive. He wants Denise in his house and he wants her out of his house. It’s not enough, either way.
The Missing Boy
The reporter’s paper with the boy’s picture on front sells 700,000 copies. It’s a daily rag but the first with the story. No one expected a missing kid from the middle of Brooklyn to matter. The story’s picked up by the Times, and the police commissioner is forced to publicly agree with the empathetic young cop. The city should be on the lookout for this poor boy. Yes, he says to the mother, the city will help. The police commissioner looks baffled to be at this press conference, but the NYPD PR rep says, Actually, this is a great opportunity. So long as we find the kid.
MISSING posters are taped up in every subway station in the city. The kid’s pixelated face looks a little to the left of every New Yorker who takes the subway. The poster asks the New Yorkers to keep their distance from the kid but to call a cop immediately. This is not the time for citizen intervention, no matter how concerned a citizen might be. Besides, as the PR rep says, the police need a picture of the kid getting out of a cop car—not in handcuffs, the PR rep explains slowly—and being returned to his mother. This will be a victory for the NYPD.
The cops talk to more reporters; they’ve been told it’s okay. Be more human, they’re instructed. The mother reads the articles about her boy online. The city is with her; the city blesses her.
One paper runs an article with new findings about the school for the city’s most vulnerable. The school is astonishingly negligent in many regards. The city demands justice from this school. The mother reads the article.
Time Out
Ginny feels a heavy responsibility for her sister. She wants to protect her. She always feels this, but it means she wants to muffle her sister. She wants her sister to be quieter, meeker, more compliant.
Her little sister refuses to speak. She folds her pudgy arms and won’t get up off the rug. She insists that her older sister be pulled out of French and that they be alone.
When the adults won’t leave the room, Ginny crouches down and puts her ear next to her sister’s lips.
“They’re after Mom.”
And then there are two quiet Palm girls. Eventually they’re both put back into class, although French is over. Ginny Palm’s off to English, and Jane Palm is tearfully taken back for fractions, and allegations of head lice are made. Jane kicks a snotty boy in her class and is sent to the cloakroom again, this time for a time-out. Overwhelmed, Jane’s teacher finds Ginny again in English and asks her to come back to help with her sister. She’s kicking the boys.
So Ginny goes to sit with Jane but does not advise less violent behavior. She’s just glad her sister isn’t crying about their mother anymore. “Kick all the boys you want,” Ginny tells Jane. Jane is content: the Palm girls are united at last.
Marion Has Her Hair Done
In a new neighborhood, Marion Palm buys herself some red hair.
On the beauty parlor wall there is a framed picture of a rouged model with a spiky short haircut. “I don’t want that done to me,” Marion says, pointing to the poster, and this upsets her hairdresser, a fleshy smocked woman with a haircut similar to the one in the picture. Bad start, Marion thinks. So she chats the woman up, coos at her to regain her trust. The woman is easily won back, and then they are that repulsive thing: girlfriends.
Marion has found this difficult in the past; she doesn’t like giving up her feet, her hands, her head to another woman for superficial betterment. The exchange makes her uneasy. She is paying to be held hostage, all in the hope of becoming a slightly better woman at the end of it. She will have accomplished something that is both necessity and luxury. She is treating herself; she is maintaining herself. Cuticles must be eliminated, roots retouched. Marion would like to scoff at these rituals but still believes there is something safe about a beauty parlor. Besides, this time it’s different. She’s not Marion Palm being dragged into a nail salon against her will by a cloying lunch date. She’s a wife on the run.
She’s been imagining what kind of person she will be on the run, and toying with battered wife. That would allow for her lack of identification, and she can admit to a lot. Her fake name becomes a fake name for a reason. Her new hair is a safety measure, and people won’t pry or investigate.
She imagines being hit by her husband (not Nathan—she cannot imagine Nathan doing this. It is another husband, a taller one who perhaps she would have loved more and better than Nathan). Maybe she’s had a few teeth loosened. She’s hit her head against a sink. She’s put concealer on black eyes. It was difficult because the skin was puffy and sore, but she needed to hide the marks or else. She’s been disguising herself for years, and this is another round. Another do-or-die situation. Do-or-die dye job. Does the battered wife believe she’ll get away with it? No, but this is her last chance to survive.
“Isn’t there a movie where Julia Roberts literally swims away from an abusive husband?” she asks the hairdresser.