He orders supplies while he sets up the site. A well-researched and well-reviewed camera will come in the mail soon, and he will take pictures of his meals and his rooms. He will start with his kitchen and retile the banquet. It’s incredible what can be delivered to one’s door.
The site is not an intuitive thing, but he’s getting the hang of it. He makes aesthetic decisions. He organizes and categorizes. He buys the domain, and he’s proud. The name of the site is classy, funny, apropos. He’s even emailed an old friend who also has a blog, who also lives in Brooklyn. The friend will tweet about Nathan’s new blog. Nathan will tweet too. He won’t talk about Marion, because this is separate from her. He’ll talk about his daughters, but only in a charming, anonymous, yet specific way. He’s also going to repaint the downstairs bathroom and update the lighting fixtures. He’s read articles about how to do it, and he’s a careful person.
He turns off his phone so he can concentrate on this new project, so he doesn’t get the calls about his younger daughter and the trouble she’s in now that she’s broken her classmate’s nose. Later, when he does find out, he’ll ask the school to send him emails in the future. He’ll respond sooner. He checks his email religiously in order to catch the anonymous ones. We’re going to sue you, the emails say. Prepare yourself.
Jane Talks to the Missing Boy About Her Defense of Him
In the nurse’s office, with an ice pack on her knuckles, Jane is told by the missing boy that it wasn’t necessary to punch the boy in the face. He didn’t hurt my feelings, the missing boy says. And they weren’t making fun of you for once—you weren’t the subject of their cruelty. Why didn’t you leave them alone? Although I am touched that you care for me so deeply, I abhor violence.
Jane can hear the grown-ups discussing her fate in the hallway. They can’t get Nathan on the phone. Her teacher is defending her. The teacher says the kids were being offensive, and if she’d seen it she would have stopped it. Jane handled it poorly, but she was reacting to something real. “We’ll tell her parents”—she means the father—“of course, but I wouldn’t escalate this.”
Jane can see that her teacher is talking to the principal again, pleading with him. There’s a pause in the conversation. Eventually the principal consents, for the time being. The teacher thinks she’s won something.
No one gets to make fun of you, not ever, Jane says to the missing boy.
No one does because I don’t hear it—I can’t hear it.
Can you hear me?
I always hear you.
Why?
The missing boy shrugs. I can’t explain.
The boy Jane punched is taken home by his mother. She hears the boy lie to his mother, and her teacher confirm the lie. They both say he fell on his face when he was running. The boy lies because he doesn’t want to have been beaten up by a girl. The teacher lies because she feels that Jane needs to be in school. The missing boy puts his arm over Jane’s shoulders and says, See, they’re all protecting you. Isn’t that nice?
Cyrillic
The Russians return from the island, but Marion does not return the laptop. It stays in Brighton Beach. She researches into the dark hours of the night. When she turns the computer off in the morning, she slips it into her knapsack with the cash.
The Russian teenager, the owner of the laptop, has been struggling to ask Marion if she’s seen it. Articles run amok, the subject and the objects are not clear, past, present, and future tenses collide, and Marion makes the girl speak correct English sentences before she’ll answer at all. When the girl, her chest and neck red from frustration, forms the sentence “Have you seen my laptop?” and finally masters the present perfect, Marion replies like an English teacher. “No, I have not seen your laptop. Do you remember where you last saw it?” The girl needs time and a dictionary to construct her reply. Marion is enjoying herself.
The matriarch also asks her if she’s seen the laptop, but with the weary air of a mother who assumes her daughter has been careless and stupid. Marion almost commiserates with her as a mother of daughters but remembers that she told Sveyta she didn’t have any.
The stepfather stays above the issue. He’s rarely there anyway, and Marion feels like he is always looking for his keys. She’s started to hand them to him when he starts swearing in Russian and patting his pockets. At least, she believes he’s swearing. It sounds like swearing.
She likes the family. She appreciates their directness. She loves their money. They have beautiful things, and as always, Marion wants their beautiful things to be hers. She has her Grace Kelly skirt, and she has her knapsack full of cash, but she’s still living in a bedroom in Brighton Beach. It’s not fulfilling her like it did in the beginning.
The man who yelled her name. His clothes didn’t fit. His haircut was cheap. He could have been a friend of her parents from the neighborhood, but then why did he use her married name? She shouldn’t have smiled, but he seemed so comical, and it felt wonderful to be recognized.
Marion’s using the laptop to get to know the girl and her spending habits. It’s difficult because she does not understand the writing, so she teaches herself the Cyrillic alphabet. She can recognize English words spelled phonetically in Cyrillic and then can translate much of the girl’s Facebook feed. The girl is, Marion parses, a very typical teenager.
To steal from her is easy. She begins to siphon small amounts from the Russian bank to an online account she set up for herself ages ago. It’s an international account, and it will be difficult for Marion to withdraw the money, but that’s not important right now. First it’s the thrill of possessing the money; the Russian girl’s loss is also good.
Marion comes into work one morning and the teenager is throwing a tantrum. She’s stomping her flip-flopped feet and swinging her hair. Her laptop has been stolen, she yells, and Marion did it. It’s all in Russian, but Marion hears her own name and sees the girl swing an accusatory finger in her direction. She puts on a blank face of confusion, and then a hurt one. She scurries out of the room as if she is embarrassed but not guilty at all. She hears the parents shout at the teenager. A door slams. An hour later, when Marion is unclogging a drain of hair, the teenager stands in the bathroom door. “I sorry,” she says. “I am sorry,” Marion corrects. “And what are you sorry for, precisely?” The Russian girl wails and storms back to her room to search for her Russian-English dictionary and textbook.
Board of Trustees
I’m glad you could meet on such short notice.
You said on the phone it was important.
Indeed.
Has the PI found Marion?
Not exactly. He’s going to need a larger retainer.
Why?
Marion has done a good job of covering her tracks. The PI needs more manpower. And we’re asking him to do this without informing the family. It’s slightly unethical.
I don’t see why we have to pay more for lack of results.
Perhaps this is a sign—perhaps we should let it go.
Our money? Impossible. The Wing Initiative would collapse.
We would seem vulnerable.