But if no one ever knows. If we keep quiet.
I’m afraid that’s out of the question. Marion’s departure was too suspicious. Too enticing to the gossips. That man she worked with—the pathetic one…
Daniel?
He’s been telling everyone she’s gone. The truth, or something like it, will come out.
I suppose. Well, how much more does the PI want? I can try to make some room in the budget.
Actually, that’s not quite the issue. We’ve been talking—
Discussing—
And we feel that the board of trustees is no longer a good fit for you, Eugene. I’m sorry.
What do you mean?
We’ve appreciated all your hard work, with the holiday events and landscaping suggestions, but it’s become clear that the time has come for you to go your own way.
But…my family.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Eugene. Just accept the facts. Don’t make this worse.
Worse? My family has been on the board of trustees for decades.
And we’ve appreciated your service. But now it’s over.
We appreciate you.
We appreciate you.
We do appreciate you.
But—
I said we appreciate you.
West Village One-Bedroom
A week goes by and Ginny is not spoken to. She avoids the smokers because of Chloe. She keeps her head down. The boy from French class has been telling everyone how close he got to Ginny, but can no longer look her in the eye. She does not catch him staring at her anymore in French class. He stares at the girls on either side of her, and it seems deliberate, so Ginny stares at him. She remembers what it felt like to have his mouth on her neck. At the time it didn’t make her feel anything, but now she becomes flushed thinking about the proximity of another person.
Ginny has adapted somewhat to this new reality when Chloe appears, waiting for Ginny at her locker. She says, “Come to my apartment after school. I’m with my dad this week.”
Ginny says, “Oh, okay, yeah, totally.” When the words come out, they are croaks, because she’s been talking so little.
It turns out that Chloe’s dad lives in the city, so they take the train in an unusual direction for Ginny. She rarely stands on this subway platform. Chloe leads Ginny into the West Village, to an apartment building on a cobblestone street. She skillfully enters the building with an electronic key, and six floors up, down a long corridor, the girls hang out in a white-walled one-bedroom with a view of the Hudson.
The bedroom of the one-bedroom is Chloe’s. A mattress on the floor in the living room belongs to her father and stepmother. The art in the apartment is large and colorful. Everything else is black or white.
Chloe tells Ginny that she’s forgiven her for the party. It took some time to get over it, but she now understands that Ginny was embarrassed. “I mean, you totally embarrassed me, but I don’t think you meant to.” Ginny agrees: she acted without motivation but was still thoughtless. Chloe nods with pursed lips, raised eyebrows, and large eyes. Then: “I have a Skype date with my boyfriend. Do you mind?” Chloe pushes Ginny back into the living room. “I haven’t talked to him in, like, forever. I miss him like crazy, you know.” The bedroom door closes.
Ginny sits on a black leather couch looking at the art while Chloe laughs loudly in the bedroom and then whispers. Ginny drinks a diet soda and wonders if this is what it’s like to have friends who are older than you.
The door opens, and Chloe says, “Rafi wants to meet you. I told him about you.”
Ginny’s seated in front of the computer. The boy on the screen has curly dark hair, wears glasses, and looks maybe a little older than Chloe. Chloe says they fell in love at camp as CITs and now Skype every night.
Rafi says that Ginny is pretty cute. Chloe flicks her hair back over her shoulder, turns Ginny’s face to her, and this time Ginny does not pull away when Chloe kisses her. Rafi wildly approves from the screen.
Nightmares About Nathan
One late afternoon Marion returns from midtown and Sveyta’s waiting for her in the kitchen. She’s on the phone but gestures to the teapot. Marion’s tired; she was up late the night before, dissecting the Russian girl’s account. Then the matriarch insisted that Marion clean the oven, even though it has never been used. Marion’s head is pounding with noxious fumes and Cyrillic. Sveyta finishes her phone call and sits at the table.
“I’ve been having bad dreams,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” Marion says.
“They are about your husband. I feel like he’s going to find us here.”
Marion assures her that he won’t.
“Ivan hunted me down. He could not rest until he had found me and made me his own again.”
“Nathan doesn’t care that much about me. No one has ever cared that much about me.”
“Still, I want his surname.”
“To give to your friends?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do that. An impossible thing to ask.”
“I must insist.”
Marion wants to cry. Nathan would never hunt her down like Ivan hunted Sveyta down.
“Can we please go to the ballet soon?” Marion says. “I’ll buy the tickets.”
“Maybe, but I would feel too ill at ease to enjoy the choreography. You must understand, the dreams are nightmares.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“You do not have nightmares about Nathan?”
Marion says no, but doesn’t explain that she’s too busy dreaming of her daughters to dream about Nathan.
“If you don’t give me his surname, I will have to ask you to leave. And I will need to find another cleaning lady.”
“May I think about it? I just need a day to think.”
Sveyta pauses.
“All right. One more nightmare. But if you give me his name, your problems will be over.”
“Yes, you’re right, but it’s a major step. I want to think about it.”
“Fine.”
“And then we’ll go to the ballet?”
Nathan’s Blog
The blog is blowing up. Nathan checks his analytics. New readers find his site, and they stay. Previous readers return. Nathan has found his voice. His blog persona is a lumberjack domestic god with a satirical, self-aware edge. If he had a beard, it would be a full one and casually groomed. He is so comfortable with himself that he writes about buying maxi pads for his older daughter. The voice comes easily, not like with a poem or a book. He simply tap-tap-taps and there it is, so it must be true.
A neighborhood acquaintance links to his blog from her blog on urban green spaces, and the readers slip over. They want more bright pictures. He takes selfies as he works. He’s started to include the delicate hands and feet of Jane. Ginny would not give permission; she hasn’t allowed her picture to be taken since she was eleven. She said something about her soul.
As the blog develops, so does the house. He’s wallpapered the downstairs bathroom. He’s fastened new mismatching knobs on all the kitchen cabinets. He’s in the process of designing his new office. He’s moving into a small, previously ill-used room on the first floor. He’s talking about taking out a wall. He’s talking to himself.