“Has something happened?”
“What? Oh, no. They’ve been so kind, especially Mr. Ring.”
“I’m sure you can call him Joshua.”
She nods. There’s something about the gesture that reminds me of her mother, and I’m struck again at how her face has changed since I first met her. She looks younger now, freer, though she wasn’t old to begin with. “He’s told me that many times, and I do mostly. Emily and Julia call me Auntie Franny, even though that’s not right.”
“It does rhyme, though.”
“You’re trying to cheer me up.”
“Is it working?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
“But you have to take care of yourself, too. That’s one of the things I learned in group. It feels good to help other people, but you can’t give all of yourself to them. You have to reserve something for yourself. There was this woman . . . kind of like the group leader, you know, but unofficially? Her name was Erika. Anyway, she called it boundaries. You need to boundary up. That’s what she’d always say.”
I put my hand on her forearm. The hair on it is thick for a woman, like I’ve seen on some anorexics, though Franny has enough meat on her bones. “You’re wise beyond your years. And your mother would’ve been very proud of you.”
“You think so?” Franny’s eyes are brimming with tears.
And even though I actually have no idea, because what do I know about her mother now, if she’d keep something like Franny from me, I smile and say, “Of course I do. Now eat your cookie.”
Chapter 10
Through the Looking Glass
Kate
If Kate hadn’t already shattered her glass, it would’ve dropped to the ground as surely as gravity. Instead, her eyes moved reflexively to the television, where she saw not herself but images of her children. Her husband. Her best friend. Photographs she didn’t remember taking but that showed them all at their best. Missing front teeth and dress-up clothes and toys scattered under a Christmas tree. Ghosts, all of them. She was looking at ghosts.
“Aren’t kids funny?” Andrea said, half to herself and half to Kate. “Sometimes people look like other people, Willie. It happens.”
Willie frowned and looked at Kate. “Not Kwait?”
“No, honey,” Kate said. “I’m right here, see?”
She stuck out her tongue, catching a disapproving glance from Andrea but a laugh from the boys. She walked to the television—the announcer was focusing on another broken family now—and tapped it twice to snap it off.
“Who wants to go to the park?”
Although it had been her suggestion, an hour later, bundled up and with a cold wind whipping against her that made her cheeks feel raw, almost bruised, Kate regretted her mention of the park. The boys loved it, their small hands red against the wood-and-metal play structure, their whoops of delight carried away on the breeze. But Kate’s hatred of time spent with children in parks was long-standing. It was a penance for her, something she started counting down the minute she arrived. Setting a deadline like she used to do when she was working out. If she could keep going for two more minutes, then maybe she could stop.
Kate checked on the boys, then went to the big-kid swings and sat down. She gripped the metal chains with her mittened hands. Unusually, they were alone. Although she could hear the constant traffic on Sherbrooke Street, it still felt as if she were in a bubble of silence penetrated only by the boys’ shouts of glee.
Where was everyone else? The other nannies she typically passed the time with, the women from the Philippines who made up most of the nanny class in Westmount? The occasional mother there with her own children like a normal mom? Probably all watching television, their children distracted by iPads while they relived their distant grief at the horrors of October tenth.
She checked her watch for the umpteenth time. Though it felt like forever, it hadn’t been enough time. She should keep them there for another thirty minutes at least. With the plastic swing cutting into the back of her knees, Kate broke up the minutes like she had a year ago on the bus from Chicago to Montreal.
That Greyhound bus ride takes one day, seven hours, and fifty minutes.
Kate registered that information when she bought her ticket—a bargain at $120 because she was paying for only one way—but it was one thing to know a detail and another to live through it. Chicago to Kalamazoo. Then Detroit. Then over the bridge to Windsor, Ontario. Then on to Toronto, where they switched buses. Another switch in Ottawa. And finally they pulled into Montreal.
Nineteen hundred and ten minutes in all. Like that song from Rent where the minutes were counted out in a hopeful melody. Only it wasn’t an upbeat show tune. But that was the number of minutes it took to change her life. No, that was wrong. It had taken a lot less than that. The minutes on the bus were the minutes it had taken to change her location. Her life had changed before that, much faster and much more slowly than those two days.
She watched Willie and Steven throw a stick into the dead grass and run after it like puppies. They were content for the moment, but she knew from experience that this could change in an instant. Happy laughter replaced by tears or screams. Arms flying, bruises raised.
She tried to concentrate on them. But now that she’d started thinking about the bus, it was hard to shake it. The dead-air smell. The way she’d become familiar with the odor of her fellow passengers. The way her own body’s smell had changed, even the scent of her pee. How she hadn’t had anything left to read. She’d refrained from asking the woman across from her, who seemed to have a small mobile library, for a book because that might lead to conversation, questions. Everything Kate wanted to avoid.
The worst part was the border crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. She’d sat with her nose pressed up against the dirty glass as the bus got closer and closer to Canada, her thoughts racing. Even on this bus full of oddballs, she stood out. Her clothes a mix of what she’d been able to buy at the bus station and what she’d been wearing when she made the decision to leave. She needed something new before they got to the border. A backpack full of the things people usually had when traveling, not the weird amalgam she was carrying. But with her money already dwindling, she settled for a new sweatshirt.
She washed her hair in the bathroom sink of one of the roadside gas stations they stopped at with hand soap. Then changed and transferred everything she cared about into the pouch of the new sweatshirt. Her money. Her passport. A picture of her family. She should’ve left it behind, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it, either. But she knew, someday, she’d want this piece of comfort. Even if it came with pain. So she touched it like a talisman, and that was good enough for then.
For all her worry, the border was a breeze. Her Canadian passport was scanned, her photo checked. The customs officer asked her where she lived and what she’d been doing in Chicago. Montreal, she said, making sure to pronounce it as Canadians do, with the O replaced by a U. She’d been visiting friends in Chicago when everything happened.
“Bad luck,” said the officer.
“Bad luck,” she’d agreed.
And then, right when she couldn’t stand being on the bus anymore, when she thought she might be sick if she had to breathe in any more of the terrible antiseptic smell or the stench wafting from the bathroom, the bus driver announced that they were arriving at their final destination.
And all she could think was: Now what?
In the park, Kate checked the time again. Finally, enough seconds had passed, and it was coming up on noon. She looked around. She’d lost track of the boys for a moment, and her heart started to battle panic.