She’s removing her clothes as soon as she hears the door shut for the last time, and she’s sitting on the edge of the bath, testing for the perfect temperature. Settled in, she massages their shampoos and conditioners into her scalp. She takes advantage of the Russians’ multitude of masks, which peel, tighten, unclog, moisturize, or diminish the appearance of pores. When a product dips noticeably low, Marion adds water or cheaper versions of that product. Soon the Russians will be lathering themselves with Jergens. At the end of her bath, she dabs their scents from glass bottles on her wrists and the hollows of her neck.
After her bath, she blow-dries her hair and returns to work. She puts the polyester uniform back on, a blue-and-white tunic that she must wear with shapeless gray pants. She must press both garments at home each day. She does it while looking at the Grace Kelly skirt.
Vertical Gardens
Nathan’s online again. He can’t help himself. Packages arrive in a constant stream. They are all things he needs, but he’s building individual relationships with both the UPS guy and the FedEx guy. He’s even begun to explain why he’s at home so much. I’m a writer, I’m a single dad. They don’t really care, but they need his signature. He elaborates: It’s a book I’m writing. I’m writing a book.
He is not writing a book. He is buying shirts online. But he could be doing research. He must allow for this time, for his idea to germinate, percolate, do something. It should be growing. He wants to look back at the eight thousand words he wrote when Ginny was in the next room, but instead he plans dinners. He buys toilet paper for the year. He reads articles about urban gardening.
He’s got a plan to build a vertical garden, but first he must understand his sunlight. Is it full? Is it partial? Where’s the wind coming from? How much rain will it get? He finds himself reading the weather report and learns that hurricane season is here. This delights him, because he has a new thing to shop for. He needs to prepare. The book must wait.
Nathan tries to set up a filter for the anonymous emails, but the sender uses a new email address each time. The messages are getting more specific about the amounts. Your wife owes us $120,000. Find her, or the money, or else. He writes back once: Email me again and I’ll tell the police. The reply: Go ahead. Do that. Be our guest. Nathan has considered calling the Palm financial manager but doesn’t know what he’d say.
He clicks on more items to put in his shopping bag; he right-clicks, left-clicks, right-clicks. In between looking for storm candles and flashlights, he drags his book to the trash-can icon and leaves it there. An hour later he empties the trash. The computer asks if he is sure that he wants to permanently erase the contents. It cannot be undone. He is sure and repeats the right-click. The office is filled with the computer-generated sound of paper crumpling.
An Introduction
Ginny’s at her first party and it’s not what she expected. The music is loud, so when she says something she must bellow it into an ear and turn her ear to the mouth in order to hear the response. She’s holding a red cup with something sweet in it, and she is thirsty and nervous. She makes an excuse to the ear and the owner of the ear nods.
She weaves her way to the front of the house, or what feels like the front, and this is it, this is the front door. But Chloe catches her: “Hey, I was looking for you.” She is pulled into a room where boys and girls of her class play spin the bottle. Ginny’s a little surprised. “We actually do this?” she says. Chloe shrugs, says, “Why not?” Ginny looks around the room, and there’s a girl in the corner without a shirt on, and a boy has latched himself to one of her small breasts with his mouth.
Ginny seats herself in the circle, and the crowd looks at her, and it’s decided that it’s her turn. She spins the bottle and it lands on Chloe, and Ginny is relieved. When Chloe puts her tongue into Ginny’s mouth, she shrieks a little, and the crowd laughs. When it’s done, Ginny wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “What, you never kissed a girl before?” Chloe asks, suddenly haughty, suddenly older. Ginny almost says that she’d never kissed anyone before a few days ago, but Chloe’s already angry with her, and Ginny doesn’t know why.
Since Chloe won’t look at her now, Ginny figures she’s allowed to go home. She’s looking for her coat in a mountain of coats piled on the floor by the door when someone tugs at her elbow. It’s a boy who sometimes stares at Ginny in French class. It’s not that Ginny is special. He stares at all the girls. Now he’s teetering back on his heels. He’s gripping her shirt, and he’s nuzzling Ginny’s neck like a horse. Then she can feel his wet braces scrape the skin below her ear, and she could push him off, but she lets him do whatever it is that he is doing, and then he releases.
“There,” he says.
“Okay,” Ginny says. “There what?”
“I got you,” the boy says.
He pivots back to the spin-the-bottle room, and Ginny escapes. On the street she realizes she left her coat behind, but she isn’t going back, so she hasn’t forgotten her coat, she’s lost her coat.
Her father allowed her to go out because he thought it was a sleepover with Chloe. He was happy that his daughter was making new friends. She was going to spend the night with Chloe to make the story credible, but now she’s homeless for a few hours, so she makes alternative plans for her evening. She’s been adventuring by herself a lot these days, and now she’ll do it at night. She’ll go home when she feels like it, she decides, and explain that Chloe’s father dropped her off. It sounds kind of true. Ginny pauses her adventure to call her mother’s cell, and the call goes to voicemail, which is full. She looks at her mother’s Facebook page. She calls her mother again.
Ginny goes home around two. She unlocks the front door, ready with a story for her father, but the house is dark. She climbs to the second floor, and there is a bar of light under his bedroom door, but the door remains shut as she creeps by. Her mother would have caught her. Ginny takes note: this is her new existence, her new adolescence. She feels invisible but powerful.
In the morning Ginny finds an orange-and-red mark on her neck under her ear. It is ugly like a bruise, but more speckled. She knows enough to hide it, to wear her hair down in front of her ears, but other than that, she’s confused. It takes some time for her to associate it with the boy from the party and what he did to her when she was looking for her coat.
She’s scared of Chloe, too. She wanted a new friend but ruined it. She’s also a little in love with the boy from the party because he seemed to choose her.
She makes the mistake of tucking her hair behind her ear when she’s getting her books from her locker. Her old best friend sees the mark, points at it, and asks what happened. Ginny doesn’t know why she admits the truth, but she does, and her old best friend laughs into her open hand and then tells everyone. Ginny later sees the boy from the party walking proudly down the hallway. He is very thin—his T-shirts hang from his bony shoulders—and he never wears deodorant, but Ginny walks proudly too. She feels noticed. Everyone is talking about her. She puts her hair up. Let the school know. She exists.
Marion at Twenty-Four