Читать книгу Forget Me Not - A. M. Taylor - Страница 9

I didn’t make it back to Madison of course. I went to bed early, not because I thought I’d be able to sleep the day away but because retreat has always been my first and last form of defense. I chose something on Netflix that I’d watched a thousand times before and didn’t have to think about at all, so that when my phone gently buzzed beside me I was only dimly aware of what Lorelai and Rory Gilmore were saying to one another. You would have thought that upon seeing it was Nate texting me I would have read and replied to the message immediately, but instead it stilled me, froze me even, and I had to wait a few minutes before shoring up enough courage to read it in full.

You awake?

he wrote.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard for a few seconds before I replied:

Yeah.

A few more seconds passed and then my phone started ringing in my hand. I didn’t answer immediately, I couldn’t. I just stared as his name lit up my phone screen and desperately tried to think of something to say when I picked up.

“Maddie?” Nate said, as soon as I answered, not waiting for me to say anything.

“Hi, Nate.” There was a pause and I looked around at my room, squeezing my eyes shut in an attempt to block everything out. I got the feeling, even from down a phone line, that Nate was figuring out what to say too, how to speak. I took a deep breath and did the decent thing and spoke for him.

“I heard about Elle,” I said, practically whispering in the dim bedroom light. “I’m so sorry.”

I could hear his breath catch, words getting caught in his throat. Words were always getting caught, trapped, in my world. There were just some things that couldn’t be said, couldn’t be heard out loud, not because that would make them more real but because sometimes sharing certain pieces of you makes them less real. Or maybe it was a combination of the two, I don’t know. I just know that there are times when language is made impotent.

“Nate,” I said, “is there anything I can do? To help?”

I heard that catch of his breath again and then the release. “Yeah. Yes, thanks. We have to go down to the station tomorrow, to the police station, but Mom doesn’t want Noah to come with us. Could you come round to sit with him?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks … thank you, Maddie.” There was another short pause before he added a little stiffly, “I know my mom will appreciate it.”

If I hadn’t already been stunned into submission by Elle’s death, I would have been heartbroken over the formality of Nate’s request. It was better, although only marginally, than the outright hostility I’d gotten from him the day before; but Nate talking to me as if he barely knew me, as if I barely knew him, was a special kind of heartbreak. The kind that had already begun to heal years before. It was like brushing your fingers over the remnant of a scar; your skin was raised, changed, marked and when you took the time to remind yourself of it the ache was still there, but only just. But Elle was an open wound, blood still pumping to the site of the injury, demanding all my attention just to keep it from hemorrhaging. Hearing Nate’s voice, however briefly, however stilted and formal, made that stupid old scar throb with pain though, however much I didn’t want it to. The last time I’d spoken to Nate over the phone, the last time I had called him, I’d still been living in New York. I was twenty-three, over a year out of college and finding it increasingly difficult to get out of bed every morning.

***

It happens the way it always happens; shutters screaming shut over everyday life. I pull on my running shoes because they’re the first pair of shoes I find, even though I haven’t run in months—since I got to New York, really—and even then it was only ever something I did because my therapist and all my doctors told me I should. Exercise, they all say, as if it’s some kind of magic word. Abracadabra. I grab my keys and my cell and as I’m slamming the door behind me I pull the hood of my gray sweatshirt over my head. I have to walk up the basement steps just to get to street level and when I do I can smell it, despite the city smell: the engine exhaust and the trash cans, the Chinese takeout and the pizza place a couple doors away, the dog shit and probably the human shit too. Snow. Not yet. It’s not snowing yet, but it will. I shiver, from anticipation mostly but also regretting not putting on a coat warmer than my leather jacket. I start walking, hands stuffed into my jacket pockets, not even looking where I’m going, but still feeling the too-huge feeling in my chest. It’s grown in the last couple days to the point that I can barely breathe. Even now, with the cold stinging my eyes, they’re already smarting from almost crying anyway. I try not to cry, I really do, but I do it anyway.

The brick wall keeps rising up no matter how hard I try to knock it down, or stop it from building up in the first place, and I haven’t left the apartment in days. It has taken me the last fifteen hours just to force myself out now, and the only reason I’ve been able to do so is because it’s night, the middle of the fucking night, and no one will care who I am or where I’m going, or why I’m doing what I’m doing, or why I am the way I am. Every time I think about seeing anyone, or speaking to anyone, or having to stand at an ATM, or in line at a coffee shop, or make eye contact, or purchase milk, the scratching feeling starts up at the back of my eyes and it’s as if I can actually feel my retinas. The block of granite gets bigger and bigger inside my chest, and the brick wall builds itself up again, as if I never managed to knock it down in the first place.

I take a deep breath to steady myself, and even stop, my hand resting on a black iron railing in front of a brownstone. I almost lean over, head between my legs, about-to-faint-style, but I just keep a hold of the freezing iron and let that reassure me. After a couple of seconds, or maybe even minutes, I’m able to look around me somewhat and I notice that there’s a guy on the other side of the street walking in my direction. He’s wearing what looks like a magenta shell-suit jacket, and corduroy trousers and shoes without socks and he kind of looks right at me, but not as if he’s seen me. Just as if he were watching a movie and I was a secondary character he wasn’t really all that interested in. Blank look, then move on. I feel warm relief spread through me, as though I’ve just done a killer pee, and begin to walk on again. I don’t stop until I get to the East River.

I hunker down in my sweatshirt and jacket, trying to make myself as small as possible, hoping that it’ll also make me feel warm as well. The snow smell is even stronger here, the wind whipping it up along the river and mixing with that almost-salty metallic smell you get from the water as well. I sit down on a bench and it takes me a while to realize that there are people lying under some of the other benches, presumably because it’s got too cold to lie on the actual benches. One, two, three, four flakes of snow hurl themselves at my face, but if you ask me, they’re not trying hard enough. I lean back on the bench and, suddenly, my hands still stuffed in my pockets, my right hand curls around my cell and then, as if it’s not four o’clock in the morning, or damn close, I’m calling Nate.

He picks up on the seventh ring when I’m about to give in and hang up.

“’Lo.”

“Nate?”

I can practically hear him sit up in bed, even across half—more than half—the country, across one time zone, thousands and thousands of miles of night, and black sky, and farmland, and mountains, and rivers, and road, and motels, and tollbooths.

“Mads?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“I dunno, Nate.” I’m sitting looking at the Manhattan skyline but it’s not even like I’m looking at it at all. The slick blackness of the river looks nice though.

“Where are you?” he asks, as if we’re back in Madison, back when this used to happen all the time, and I’d call, and he’d ask where I was and he’d come meet me, and sit with me, until the too-huge feeling went away or at least lessened slightly. Sometimes, he’d even spot me walking across campus and he’d come after me, without me even having to call him. I never asked if he was watching for me, or just sitting up, late at night, unable to sleep, and looking out of his window. I never asked.

“I’m looking at Manhattan. I’m in Brooklyn. Where are you?”

“I’m in bed.” Oh, of course. I wonder for a second if he’s lying down, or sat up next to Emmaline. I wonder if she’s there, asleep next to him, dreaming. Probably not even dreaming yet. Pre-REM.

I don’t say anything for a while and it feels like a full minute goes by until I hear Nate cough softly and then say: “You should go home, Maddie. Go back to bed.”

But I can’t tell him about how I haven’t left the apartment in almost three days, and how every time I even think about doing so, my vision swims and black, black, black seems to rise up in front of my eyes.

“I need to ask you a favor,” I say instead.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Can you read it out to me? Do you have it?”

I hear him suck in his breath, even across those thousands and thousands of miles, because of course he already knows, instantly, that I’m asking him to read to me the last words Nora ever said to me. It’s the last voicemail she left me—the last voicemail she left anyone—and I transcribed it years ago, worried I would lose it one day, which of course I did when I finally upgraded my cell phone. Nate’s the only other person in the world who has that transcript, and this isn’t the first time I’ve asked him to read it out to me.

“Mads.”

“Please, Nate.”

There’s a pause before he says: “Okay. Just give me a second.”

I wait while he turns on his computer I guess, and I can hear him moving about, and moving furniture around, and the sound of a Mac starting up. It takes a while of tapping and typing and then he says, with a catch in his throat: “Mads, it’s me. Where—oh God, Maddie I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I can’t read this out.”

I can hear in his voice that he’s about to cry, about to break down, and I wonder to myself if I’ve done this purely to know that someone else is crying at the same thing, and at the same time, as me, to know that someone other than me feels the same pain. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” I croak, “I should never have asked. I shouldn’t have called—”

“No, that’s—”

But I cut him off before he can finish his sentence and I say, “I love you, Nate,” and then I hang up before he can reply, if he even replies at all.

Back in my childhood bedroom, almost four years later, I managed to ask him what time I should be round the next day to look after Noah before crawling out of bed to root around in my bag for a bottle of diazepam I hadn’t had to use in months.

Ange and I met for breakfast at CJ’s the next morning. It had taken me a little while to get out of bed; my limbs heavy, my brain sticky. I’d almost given up and texted Ange to cancel, but I didn’t want to do that to Elle. I lost so much time, so much of myself after Nora went missing. Days, weeks, months had slipped by, sometimes with me barely even noticing, at other times with a heaviness and a slowness so thick it spread itself all over everything, smothering me. I couldn’t be sure that wouldn’t happen again; I never could be, but I wanted to do my best, my very, very best to ward it off for as long as possible. I felt as though I owed Elle that. At the very least.

The door stuck a little as I pushed it open, making a gentle sucking sound as it finally gave way and I walked into the overheated diner. The windows were temporarily frosted with condensation and I immediately started to unwind my scarf as I looked around the room, trying to find Ange. CJ’s wasn’t a chrome ‘n’ leather kind of diner. Just a wooden box by the side of the road with vinyl booths and a slightly off-putting plaid and taxidermy theme. The sloped roof met in a point in the middle of the building, atop which spun a slowly revolving sign that just said “waffles.” Ange was sitting in the booth furthest away from the door by a window overlooking the road rather than the parking lot, and she already had a cup of coffee in front of her when I sat down. The diner was quiet despite the hour; it was just before nine in the morning and normally it would have been busy, but there were only three other booths full of people and there was a general hush over the place that pricked at my skin.

“Morning,” I said to Ange.

“Hey. You sleep okay?”

“Once I popped a couple of pills, sure.”

Ange’s lips pursed just as she was raising her mug to her lips and she put the mug down before even taking a sip.

“How about you?” I asked.

“Not great. I spent most of the night emailing my editor and trying to write up an article about Elle’s death that he deemed printable.” She stared down into her coffee. “This is my fourth cup of coffee this morning.”

I raised my eyebrows and said: “I should probably catch up then,” while signaling to a dyed-blonde waitress I didn’t recognize that I was ready to order. “Is the paper sending anyone else up to help you?”

“No, I managed to convince them that I could handle it myself. They wanted to send up Elise who works for the crime desk but, in the end, I told them just to send up a photographer and I’d handle the rest.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, this isn’t just some random crime. This is Elle. You knew her. We were there when Katherine and Jonathan brought her home from the hospital, Ange. Are you really going to be okay writing in detail about her murder? Not to mention writing about Nora.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said shortly, looking up to smile at the waitress who’d just appeared at our table.

“Can I get you girls anything?” the waitress asked.

“Coffee,” I said before looking down at the plastic-encased menu, although God knows why I did; I already knew what I wanted. “Plus waffles, side of bacon, two eggs over easy. Bacon extra crispy though. Like, carcinogenic.”

The waitress kind of chuckled but Ange gave me an edgy look.

“Sure thing. And for you, Ange?”

“Just more coffee, waffles and a fruit cup, please.”

“Should I know who that is?” I asked Ange once the waitress had gone to place our order.

Ange shrugged. “She’s been here about a year. Ruby. She’s nice. Never charges for maple syrup.”

Before Nora disappeared CJ’s decision to start charging for maple syrup was one of the most controversial things to ever happen there. Ruby returned with a mug for me and poured me a cup of coffee before topping up Ange’s.

“Your food will be right out,” she said before leaving us be.

“I went by to see Willard Knowles before coming here,” Ange said. “Do you remember him?”

“Yeah, of course I remember him.” Willard Knowles was the editor of the local newspaper, and both Ange and I had done work experience with him while we were still in high school. “Is the paper still going?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. It had always been on the edge of collapse, even ten, eleven years ago.

“Yes and no. He’s gone online and he’s working out of his basement but the Forest View Examiner still lives. I went over to see if he knew anything about what happened to Elle. I’d been hoping to work out of his office, but when I saw his new setup I thought better of it.”

“Depressing?”

Ange shrugged. “Just a little weird. His photocopier is on top of his tiki bar.”

I let out a short snort of laughter despite myself, and reached for my coffee.

“He didn’t know much more than me; the police are keeping pretty quiet on this one. Willard thinks they’re waiting on the state police before they officially announce anything. But he did have some photos.”

“Photos?” I asked, barely able to get the word out. I wanted to press pause, to catch my breath; everything was moving so fast, too fast. Two days before I’d stood in front of Elle, talking to her, watching her, worrying over her, and now Ange was talking about crime scenes and photos and I couldn’t quite figure how we’d got here.

“Yeah. He went up to the scene as soon as he heard about it. I must have just missed him yesterday when I was there. They wouldn’t let him take any until the scene had been cleared and the body—”

There were those words again. The body.

The color drained from the room around me and I was drowning in silence.

It was impossible for me to reconcile those two words with Elle. I didn’t want to slip into such anonymity so quickly and so easily. I wanted to hold onto her, as I knew her, for as long as possible, because I knew, so very well, and so very, very painfully, how quickly and easily that whole person would soon turn into an image, an idea, a talking point, and finally, just a memory.

One of the strangest things about when Nora disappeared—around the time of the media furor, anyway—was how present and not-present she was. She was everywhere. In every article, on every TV news show, she even made it into Us Weekly for Christ’s sake. But she was nowhere as well. There were no photos of a crime scene because there wasn’t one. The photo that got circulated to the media was the one taken in junior year for the school yearbook. She was just simply—gone. But Elle was being referred to as “the body” now. Stripped down to her most basic function. When I thought of Elle I thought of her either laughing while sucking on a milkshake aged sixteen, or staring me down hard-eyed while playing board games aged six. I didn’t want to replace that with this new image that was coalescing in my mind, based on scraps of information and an overworked imagination.

“Maddie?” Ange was saying, reaching over to lay her hand over my forearm. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing, “I’ll be fine.”

“So, Willard managed to get a picture of something that was left at the scene.”

“What was it?” I asked, suddenly sharp.

“It was this kind of symbol. In the snow.”

“Do you have a photo of it?” I asked.

“Not a good one, but Willard emailed it to me so that my paper could use it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Are you sure you want to?”

I swallowed, not sure if I could answer, not sure if I really did want to see the photo. I realized that it hadn’t quite sunk in yet; that I’d been skating over the surface of this loss, waiting for the ice to break under my weight and for me to fall through the frigid water below. I still couldn’t believe it, that all this was happening again, that Elle was gone, that Elle had been murdered. It felt ripped from the pages of a horror movie script, and yet I knew it had to be real because it all felt so familiar. I hated how used to grief Nora’s disappearance had made me, but I still wasn’t sure I was ready to confront the reality of Elle’s death, because doing so would chip away at my memories of her that were already starting to dim and distort.

The body.

The words echoed in my head and I shivered involuntarily as Ange said: “Mads, you want to see the photo?”

I could have said no, of course, but I didn’t want to give up so easily. Elle—a lot like Nora—had often demanded attention, and if there was any time she deserved it, it was now. So, I nodded yes, and Ange flipped her iPhone towards me after scrolling through her photos. I stared down at the screen.

“Does this mean anything to you? The symbol?” she asked.

The photo was taken at a strange angle, Willard obviously having tried his best to get the clearest shot, but all I could really make out was a symbol drawn into the snow the way a child does. It was the image of what looked like a compass, except that where the four points should have read N, S, E, W, every single one pointed to an “N.” I stayed looking down at it for what must have been a long time because after a while Ange had to clear her throat just to get my attention.

“You all right, Mads?” she asked.

“Yeah—” my voice caught on the word and I took a gulp of coffee. “Yeah.” I passed the phone back towards Ange. “It’s that compass thing the Altmans have at their lake house. Their granddad made it when Noah was born, remember?”

“What?”

“The symbol. It’s a copy of the ‘N’ compass at their lake house. You don’t recognize it? All of the ‘Ns’ represent one of the kids, right?” I traced my finger around the outside of the circle. “See? Nate, Nora, Noelle, Noah.”

“Shit, I didn’t even think of that. And we were just at the lake house on Sunday.”

She shrank down into her booth with a heavy sigh as Ruby the waitress deposited our breakfasts in front of us. I smiled up in thanks and noticed her glancing quizzically down at the phone in Ange’s hand. Ange quickly made the screen go dark and said: “Thanks, Ruby.”

“You girls need anythin’ else?” Ruby asked.

“Just more coffee, please.”

“Sure, you want me to keep it coming?”

We both nodded and with that Ruby went off to get us more coffee. Ange deposited the contents of her fruit cup over her waffles and then poured over at least three quarters of her jug of maple syrup. I watched as she began cutting up the waffles, adding blueberries and sliced strawberry to the forkful and then swirling it around in a pool of syrup.

“What do you think the significance is?” she asked as her dangerously loaded fork wavered towards her mouth.

I looked down to focus on my own plate, breaking off a piece of crispy bacon with my fingers and distractedly dipping it into my jug of syrup. I couldn’t get the words “the body” out of my mind. It was ricocheting off everything else I heard or thought, tainting everything, draining the world of meaning.

“I don’t know,” I said softly, wishing that I did. We were both quiet for a while until I asked: “So, did you get your article finished?”

She looked up sharply, her brown eyes coming into focus on me before she swallowed her mouthful of waffle and said: “Well, it’s my job, right?”

“I’m not judging you, Ange. Just wanted to know if you met your deadline.”

Ange flattened her lips into a straight line, picking up her phone again and looking for something on it. “It should be up by now,” she said. “Yeah, here we go. You want to read it?”

I nodded, reaching for her phone again and leaning back in the booth to read her article. As I did so a white noise roar screamed inside my head, drowning out the rest of the diner.