The Nobodies Album (3 page)

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At home, in her swing, she floats back and forth as smoothly as a shadow moving across a wall. It’s the time of day when food smells come from the kitchen and the trees outside the windows disappear, the time of day when she usually can’t get happy, but the motion of the swing and the rubber comfort of the pacifier are making her feel calm and a little dazed.

Her mother walks into the room and kneels in front of the swing. She speaks with a voice that sounds rougher than it usually does—
I’m so sorry, baby, I love you so much
—and she stares at her mother’s face, so big and so beloved. She smiles underneath her pacifier as her eyes begin to close.

Seventy-one years from now, on the last morning of her life, she will wake from a dream that she has been sitting on a porch swing while a woman she does not recognize stands in front of her, moving closer, then farther away. She’s a young woman, but somehow she knows the woman is old, too, and she speaks to her in a language she does not understand. She will wake with a depth of peace she rarely feels in her daytime life. The feeling will last as she gets up and dresses, careful not to wake her husband, and puts on makeup, careful to cover both the new bruises and the old ones. It will last through her morning work (she has to be careful that she doesn’t leave streak marks when she wipes down the glass table), through the usual flitting thoughts about her father and her children (she has two sons, though it’s been a long time since she talked to either of them), all the way until her husband goes out to take his walk and she sits down to drink a cup of coffee, as if it were any other day.

But on this evening in her swing, the evening that will someday be longer ago than she thinks she can remember, she knows nothing of death, or makeup, or even coffee. She dozes and rocks until a new sound wakes her. It’s short and sudden and loud—louder than a voice yelling on the other side of a wall, louder than a pile of blocks falling to the floor. All at once the room is filled with a smell that burns her nose. Startled and furious, she begins to cry, her body pushing the sound louder and louder until her father walks through the front door and sees her there.

Her father looks around the room and lets out a wordless howl, loud and fierce. His face is red, and he looks at her in a way that makes her scared. He takes her out of the swing roughly—
Goddamn it, stop crying
—and walks to the table where they keep the phone.

As they walk through the room, she takes in what she sees: toys in a basket, an empty glass on the coffee table, her mother sleeping softly on the floor. She reaches out toward where she lies. She’d like to put her fingers in the dark bath around her.

Her father’s forearm is too tight on her chest, and she struggles, and he lets go of her and drops her to the floor. For a moment, in the shock of it, her mouth won’t make a sound, and she stares, frozen, as he picks up the phone. Then the air rushes in and she begins to cry, knowing that if she yells loud enough, her mother will come to get her.

Excerpt from
MY ONLY SUNSHINE
By Octavia Frost
REVISED ENDING

At home, in her swing, she floats back and forth as smoothly as a shadow moving across a wall. It’s the time of day when food smells come from the kitchen and the trees outside the windows disappear, the time of day when she usually can’t get happy, but the motion of the swing and the rubber comfort of the pacifier are making her feel calm and a little dazed. She hears the front door open, and after a minute her father comes into the room. He stands in front of her and speaks to her gently—
Hello there, Teddy Bear
—and she stares at his face, so big and so beloved. She smiles underneath her pacifier as her eyes begin to close.

Seventy-one years from now, on the last morning of her life, she will wake up from a dream that she has been sitting on a porch swing while a man she does not recognize stands in front of her, moving closer, then farther away. He’s a young man, but somehow she knows he is old, too, and he speaks to her in a language she does not understand. She will wake with a depth of peace she rarely feels in her daytime life. The feeling will last as she gets up and dresses, thinking of the day ahead of her (she has a job in a casino, making change behind a grubby pane of acrylic glass), through a phone call from one of her children (she has two sons, each of them now older than she ever imagined being herself), all the way until her midmorning break, when she sits down to drink a cup of coffee, as if it were any other day.

But on this evening in her swing, the evening that will someday be longer ago than she thinks she can remember, she knows nothing of death, or casinos, or even coffee. She dozes and rocks until a new sound wakes her. It’s short and sudden and loud—louder than a voice yelling on the other side of a wall, louder than a pile of blocks falling to the floor. All at once the room is filled with a smell that burns her nose. Startled and furious, she begins to cry, her body pushing the sound louder and louder until her mother comes and picks her up.

As they walk through the room, she takes in what she sees: toys in a basket, an empty glass on the coffee table, her father sleeping softly on the floor. She reaches out toward where he lies. She’d like to put her fingers in the dark bath around him.

Her mother carries her upstairs, lays her on the padded table, changes her diaper, and wiggles her out of her clothes. She dresses her in soft pajamas, then plops her down in her crib.
Just a minute, baby girl
, she says. Her voice sounds rougher than it usually does.

Her mother walks away and makes some crashing sounds in the next room. When she returns, she’s carrying a big blue bag.

We’re going for a ride
, she says.
Let’s get you fed, and then we’re going for a long, long ride
.

Her mother plucks her from the crib and sits down with her in the chair, lifting her shirt to nurse. Her face is brought close to the nipple, but everything is shaky and wrong. The arms around her are too tight. Even the smell is different. She pulls back, afraid. Her mother breathes deeply, says
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
. Wetness on the top of her head. The two of them rock together until finally her mother’s limbs begin to still.
It’s okay
, she breathes, and it’s like a lullaby. As she begins to suck, her body relaxes. Soon she’ll be asleep again. She flexes her legs, pushes a foot against the spokes of the rocking chair, the pale moon of the breast all she sees, the milk as warm as her mother’s body.

Devastate me
Punch holes till the light shines through
Desecrate me
I’ll lie under water for you

From “Devastate Me” by Pareidolia
Lyrics by Milo Frost, music by Joe Khan
As quoted in the
New York Times
, Wednesday, November 10

Chapter Two

When at last this day is finally over, after I’ve made it through a wretched afternoon spent in faceless hotel splendor and a plane ride during which I became airsick for the first time since I was a child, a taxi lets me out in front of my house in Newton, and I discover I’ve been found. My yard is scoured with artificial light, and fifteen or twenty people with cameras and microphones and other technological paraphernalia are standing, waiting for me, in the drizzle. As I open the door of the taxi, they move toward me in a single clot.

For a moment I hesitate, and I’m surrounded, pushed back against the door of the cab. Immediately, there’s yelling: “Ms. Frost!” “Octavia!” “Have you spoken to Milo?” “Did he do it?” “Was Milo violent as a child?” “Does he have a history of drug abuse?” And other questions I can’t make out.

I glance back at the cabdriver, who has begun to honk. I think about getting back in and fleeing, but that’s ridiculous. I stand up straighter and draw a long breath. “I have no comment,” I say to the bouquet of microphones in front of my mouth. I feel like I’m reading from a movie script, but what else is there to say? I repeat it over and over as I push through the crowd and work my key into the lock. They yell after me as I slip inside, but they can’t come in with me. It ends at the threshold.

I close the door and stand for a minute in the dark hall. I moved into this house with my husband, Mitch, when Milo was three and Rosemary was an infant. It was new then; we’re the only family who’ve ever lived here. As I reach for the light, I realize I’m expecting the house to be different than it was when I left. Something dramatic, some visible sign of disintegration or decay. I imagine my belongings sunk in a foot of water, my walls covered with a creeping mold. But of course everything’s the same as it was when I walked out the door thirteen hours ago. Mess of mail on the hall table. Pictures hanging on the walls: the four of us, and then the two of us.

I take off my shoes, use the bathroom, get a box of crackers from the kitchen. I pause for a minute to lean against the counter, without bothering to turn on the light. It’s a big room, warm with sun in the mornings, cool and empty now. Framed finger paintings over the breakfast table, artwork created by children who no longer exist. A shadow box displaying two baby hats, one tied with blue ribbon, one with pink. Provided by the hospital and slipped on their heads moments after they were born. One thing that can be said about me as a mother: I’ve always enjoyed the artifacts.

I walk around the first floor, drawing curtains and blinds, keeping myself away from the edges of windows, though it appears that most of the reporters are packing up to go. Dining room, office, living room, cozy and familiar, more cluttered than they ought to be, considering that only one person lives in them. I don’t know whether it’s nostalgia or laziness, but I’ve never once thought about leaving this house. After Milo left for college, I waited for it to hit me: the wish for walls never touched by crayons, for floors unscratched by scooters that weren’t supposed to be ridden indoors in the first place. A willingness to trade pencil marks on a doorjamb for space that’s indisputably my own. But it never did, and tonight I’m glad. I can’t imagine how I would absorb this news in a place where my children never lived.

In the living room, I sit down on the couch—relatively new, bought to please no one but myself—and pull my laptop from its case. I’m not going to check my e-mail, but I open it up long enough to send one note, attach one document. Type in the first letters of my editor’s address, let the computer fill in the rest.
Dear Lisa, Sorry to cancel lunch, but I’m sure you’ve heard what’s happened by now. Just wanted to get this to you before
it slips my mind. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Best, O
. Press Send before I can formulate any questions about whether this is a reasonable way for me to be spending my time on this particular night.

My voice mail tells me I have thirty-three new messages, and I run through them slowly, listening for the one voice I’d like to hear. It’s mostly journalists, a couple of prank calls, a message from a police officer in San Francisco, notifying me of the arrest. There’s one from my mother, who sounds upset; I’ll have to call her tomorrow. A scattering of messages from friends and acquaintances: some offer kind wishes; others clearly just want the pulpy details. When I’ve finally waded through it all, I lean toward the coffee table and pick up the remote.

I have a habit of recording newscasts so I can watch them at my leisure, and never before have technology and personal need seemed so perfectly in sync. I turn on my TV, push two buttons, and there’s Milo, walking with police officers, his hands clamped behind his back. I’ve already seen this footage, in my hotel room and in the airport lounge, but now I take time to really study it. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and black jeans. I can’t get a good look at his face; he’s keeping his eyes down, the way they all do in these situations, unless they’re Manson-level crazy. He looks skinnier than he was the last time I saw him, and his hair—dark like mine, though mine now requires artificial means to keep it that color—falls to his chin. A lock of it slips over his face as he’s led forward. Somewhere, in an envelope, I have a few strands of that hair, saved from his first haircut. It was lighter then, and finer. If I wanted to, if I was willing to spend some time with the boxes in the basement, all my cardboard archives, I could find that envelope and run my fingers through that hair. I could marvel at how silky it once was.

After I’ve watched the news story all the way through a couple of times, I pause the recording so that Milo’s image is fixed on the screen. I look at the picture, my son in handcuffs, and use it to test myself. How does it make me feel? I don’t cry; I did that in the hotel and on the plane ride home, and for the moment I’ve run dry. I feel instead the way I felt for a stretch of months eighteen years ago, when Milo was a nine-year-old boy, forever sticking out at odd angles from pajamas that had grown too small, and I was a widow who had never published a word. A great welling fear, and something that might be called despair. A feeling of intangible loss; a certainty that nothing is ever going to be okay again.

When Milo was little, before I’d suffered any
real
losses, I would look at him sometimes and imagine that I’d just heard the news of his death. That was a test, too. The horror I felt, the surge in my guts and the stinging at my eyes, the need to reach out and touch the solidity and wholeness of his body, would satisfy me. Yes, I would think. That’s how a mother is supposed to feel. Before Milo was born, I’d imagined the love a mother feels for her child to be a solid thing, completely unshakable. I thought it would be like a coat—rather cozy, something that can be added to the self without changing the flesh underneath. I didn’t understand yet the way that love can scoop you out; I didn’t know that each time a new channel of care and attachment forms, it carves something else away.

I think sometimes of the Etch A Sketch Milo had as a child. When he was nine or ten years old, he took it apart to see how it worked. I was surprised by what he discovered; it turned out I had the whole thing backward in my mind. I had imagined that by turning the dials to move the stylus, the user was drawing metallic dust to the other side of the glass. I’d thought it was this dust that made up the lines. In fact it’s the opposite: the inside surface of the screen is coated with aluminum powder from the moment you shake it, and when you turn the knobs, you draw the particles away. The lines you draw represent an absence of the dust, not its presence. It’s possible, with enough time and care, to draw a design dense enough to clear the screen completely. Scribble over a big enough area and you can see right through the glass to the machine’s dark innards.

My love for Milo—and for whatever reasons, it was not quite the same with his sister—has always been fierce, but it has not been unchanging. Sometimes the lines of it are drawn so clearly, are so complex and overlapping, that they seem to cover every inch of me, laying open everything that lies below. But when something happens to shake the ground between us, the surface of that emotion can turn—for just a moment—blank and opaque. Looking at it, you’d never know there had been a picture there at all.

•  •  •

Morning. Today begins, as yesterday did, with me sitting on a plane. This time, however, my fondest wish is
not
to be recognized. I’m going to San Francisco. Of course I am. I have little idea of what I’ll do once I get there, but sitting at home is not an option.

I made phone calls on the way to the airport—the head of the English department where I teach, canceling my upcoming classes; my mother in Fort Lauderdale, who needed reassurance, though I had nothing reassuring to say. I haven’t yet made any attempt to contact Milo; I don’t have a current number for him, and as far as I can tell, he’s still in police custody.

I’ve got three newspapers on my tray table, and each of them has a front-page story about my son. In this strange age of technology and information, in which news is practically injected straight into our veins, replaced with a fresh drip each quarter hour, nothing is ever final. I’m sure that by the time I disembark, the story will have already changed. But at this particular moment, the world knows only this: Bettina Moffett, age twenty-six, was found in the home she and Milo shared at eight-thirty in the morning on November 9. She was lying in bed; her skull had been crushed with a ten-pound exercise weight. She was discovered by their housekeeper, Joyce Tung. (Odd to think of my son as a man who employs a housekeeper. It’s not something I ever would have expected of him.) When Ms. Tung arrived, she used her key to let herself in, as she always did; the door was, as usual, locked from the inside. What was not usual was the view she came upon when she walked into the house: Milo asleep on a couch, his face and hands smeared with dried blood. Ms. Tung left the room quietly, without waking him, and continued upstairs with a feeling of unease. Shortly thereafter, she found Bettina’s body and called the police. Milo woke sometime later, dazed and apparently hungover, to find an assortment of officers surrounding the couch, looking down at him impassively. (Please note that the expressions on the cops’ faces are not explicitly discussed anywhere; that detail is my own contribution to the Milo Frost mythology currently under construction.)

The three articles contain largely the same information. Each one lists the same key points about Milo’s background—
He is, along with guitarist Joe Khan, a member of the band Pareidolia, whose most recent album
, December Graffiti,
has produced four top-ten hits, including “Devastate Me” and “Your Brain on Drugs”
—and each paper has found some high school classmate of Milo’s who’s willing to say he was occasionally sullen as a teenager. Each story ends with a quote from Bettina’s mother, Kathy Moffett, guaranteed to bring tears to the reader’s eyes. There are several to choose from; she’s been busy in the last twenty-four hours. It’s like she’s been practicing for this moment.
Bettina was born on Christmas Eve, and I always said she was my angel here on Earth
, one paper reports. And another:
I always knew she was too good for this world
. And perhaps my favorite:
The last words she ever said to me were “I love you, Mom.”

This isn’t the first time that Bettina’s mother has entered my consciousness. Though it’s easy for me to make fun of her overblown phrasing, I believe that she is telling the truth about having a close relationship with her daughter. I’ve seen her in photo after photo, hovering and trailing, always at the edges of the scene; her presence in Milo and Bettina’s life together has been impossible to miss. Milo, Bettina, and Kathy carrying Starbucks cups. Milo, Bettina, and Kathy arriving at the airport. She and I look nothing alike—she’s tall, blond, firm, where I’m smaller, darker, softer—but she’s become a kind of doppelgänger for me. Living a life that could be mine, if I could only figure out how to swap our positions. This is where a mother might go; in today’s performance, the role will be played by Kathy Moffett.

Milo has said (through a statement by his lawyer) that he’s not guilty. He says that he was sleeping on the couch because he and Bettina had argued over dinner—indeed, witnesses place them in a nearby restaurant, speaking in intense, hushed tones around nine-thirty—but that they had gone their separate ways afterward and he hadn’t come home until almost two a.m., at which time Bettina was (he says) upstairs, sleeping peacefully. He passed out on the couch and remembers nothing more until the police arrived. But a man who was out walking his dog around eleven p.m. says that he saw a car resembling Milo’s in the driveway, and two different neighbors have reported hearing shouting from the house and a crashing noise less than a half hour later. The police have found traces of her blood on his skin and on the upholstery he slept on. They’ve found—and here I have to stop and take a breath before I read any further—they’ve found bloody footprints on the stairs that match the tread of his shoes.