Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You (16 page)

I will. I will!

I will earn your respect.

Part of Nadia's anxiety about being noticed, and being liked, had to do with the fact that her father had moved to Quaker Heights only three years before, in the middle of Nadia's freshman year in high school. She'd had friends—(she wanted to think)—at her old school, but here in Quaker Heights, New Jersey, she knew no one. Friendships among the most popular girls had already been established since grade school, if not day care; even their mothers knew one another, it was so
unfair
. Boys were different: Boys liked new girls if they were pretty and vivacious, funny and flirty and not serious—and, with her straight-cut bangs that fell to her eyebrows, and snub nose, and warm brown eyes, Nadia Stillinger was
cute
.

What Nadia's stepmother, Amelie, called
charmant
.

Nadia's stepmother Amelie, with her French accent and tinkling laughter, was certainly
charmant!
When Nadia was in the young Mrs. Stillinger's company, just walking into one of the upscale stores at the Quaker Heights Mall, or climbing out of Amelie's white Mercedes coupe, was an adventure—people could look nowhere else but at Amelie, who carried herself as if she were perpetually on camera.

The former Amelie LaSoeur had been a fashion model—(or so she described herself)—with a mane of ashy blond hair, six feet tall in high-heeled leather boots, tight-fitting designer jeans, and an ocelot-fur jacket from Bergdorf Goodman. Amelie had a face that glared like something on a billboard.

“
Charmant
, Nadia—you must try harder. You have a pretty face—or will
—
when your cheeks are not so—what is it?” Amelie spoke in French-accented English and laughed with the most delicious sort of cruelty, the kind that pretends to be helpful. “Like one of those—what is it
—
cheepmonks.”

Of course, anyone who overheard this remark, including Nadia's father, laughed in delight at Amelie's so-
charmant
mispronunciation:
cheepmonks
instead of
chipmunks
.

Cheeks like a
cheepmonk's:
meaning
fat
.

Of course red-faced Nadia laughed, to show that she wasn't
hurt
.

Or if she was, Nadia laughed all the harder.

Tink had said to just hang in there, a stepmother is not a bloody
mother
.

You can grow up and move away and escape a stepmother as you can't a bloody
mother
.

Nadia had climbed a hill into High Ridge County Park. She'd been talking to herself, anxious and shivering and yet sweating inside her clothes. Amelie sometimes crinkled her nose in Nadia's wake, complaining, Une jeune fille
must bathe. If she is to sweat like a little piggy, she must bathe soon.

The mangled English made Amelie's remarks funny. Even Nadia's father laughed, when otherwise he'd have felt disgust for his slovenly fat daughter.

Nadia was leaning against a railing. Staring down at the fast-running Lenape River, which was about thirty feet below her.

This was a narrow but deep and allegedly treacherous river that cut through the hilly countryside north of the village of Quaker Heights. Near shore, Canadian geese in a flotilla were paddling in the cold water and communicating with one another in short, honking cries.

“Oh, Tink. I think that I did something really, really stupid. I think that I . . .”

Nadia was pressing against the railing, staring down. She felt bitterly how unfair it was that Colin Brunner's friends had not taken time to notice her attractive new jacket; they'd never really noticed how attractive she was.

How unfair, Nadia had no mother: only just a stepmother.

Like a girl in a Grimm's fairy tale.

There came a thin, uplifted cry, or call—somewhere behind Nadia in the woods.

Nadia turned, startled. She'd assumed that she was alone.

She could see no one. The woodchip paths were covered in a fine dusting of snow and were deserted.

Yet again—there was the thin, plaintive cry.

“H-hello? Is someone there?”

Nadia's heart beat strangely. It was a sensation she'd felt several times since Tink had left them, but usually in her sleep: in a dream.

Now Nadia was wide awake. Her wakefulness hurt her, like an overpowering light shone into her eyes.

“Is it—Tink?
Tink?
”

Nadia swallowed hard. She stared eagerly toward the woods—a deciduous woods mostly, and the tall, straight trees barren of leaves.

“Tink? Hey, Tink?—Is it you? I wish . . .”

This was ridiculous, Nadia knew. Yet her heart continued to beat so strangely, as if she were in the presence of—someone, or something.

She'd been leaning too heavily on the railing, that was it. She'd been half wanting the railing to collapse beneath her weight. There was something about heights that entranced Nadia: frightened her, yet compelled her. Tink knew this.

Tink had once confided in her friends that she had a phobia about heights—just coming near to the edge of a roof or a precipice, or standing on a balcony, she would feel a swooning urge to throw herself off.

But Tink had said she would never do this.

Why?

Too bloody messy. Too public.

 

Tink had been joking, of course.

Most of Tink's mordant remarks were jokes. Of course.

There was a stirring in the underbrush about twelve feet from Nadia. A small furry shape appeared—a cat—staring toward Nadia with widened tawny eyes.

Was this a wildcat—a lynx? Its fur was a beautiful bristling silver laced with black stripes and spots.

Nadia stepped away from the railing slowly, not wanting to frighten the cat. It might have been a feral cat, staring at Nadia from out of the underbrush. Its throat quivered, Nadia heard a soft mewing sound.

It's Tink. She has come to me.

Nadia was shivering so hard that her teeth chattered. She saw that the cat had no collar and its haunches were very thin. Again came the plaintive mewing cry.

Fascinated by the cat in the underbrush, which was looking so purposefully at her, Nadia approached the animal with an extended hand. Softly she murmured, “Kitty! Kitty-kitty-kitty . . . Are you lost? Are you hungry? Poor beautiful kitty . . .”

The cat hesitated as Nadia approached. It seemed to Nadia that the little cat yearned to come forward, to sniff at her extended fingers and rub against her ankles—but fear held her back.

“I wish you would come home with me, kitty. Please, kitty . . .”

The cat shrank backward. Its ears were laid back and its tail twitched nervously. Its throat quivered again, and this time Nadia heard a sharp hiss.

“Oh, kitty! I'm not going to hurt you
—
I promise.”

But the cat turned now and ran away gracelessly through the underbrush. Nadia took a few quick steps after it, calling, “Kitty-kitty!”

In an instant the cat had vanished. Nadia's breath steamed in the cold air. Soon it would be late afternoon, and dusk—she had better hurry home before she was thoroughly exhausted and chilled.

She would walk quickly now. She was anxious to get home.

She was thinking,
Tink sent a sign to me. Tink did not want me to harm myself in the river.

She was thinking of her stepmother Amelie's lynx jacket. Beautiful fur, exquisite markings, and so soft . . . Nadia hadn't quite realized, when she'd first seen her young stepmother's fur jacket, that many people are disgusted by fur coats; that many people are morally revolted by the practice of skinning beautiful creatures for their fur. And wasn't lynx an endangered species in the United States? But Amelie had a ready excuse: Her lynx jacket, which Nadia's father had given her, was
vintage
, not new. Amelie had picked it out for herself from a chic boutique in Tribeca.

The poor cat! Nadia vowed she would return to High Ridge Park the next day to leave food for her.

Just thinking of the cat that had mewed to her, Nadia was feeling better. More hopeful, somehow.

It was childish to think that Tink had sent the little cat to her—Nadia knew. And yet.

Thinking,
Maybe it wasn't a mistake. Maybe Mr. Kessler will understand. Maybe—
Nadia didn't dare to think,
Maybe my father won't miss the painting.

 

By the time Nadia returned home to the two-story fieldstone-and-glass house at 6 Wheatsheaf Lane, which always looked as if no one lived in it, the wintry sky had darkened almost to night, and the slow-falling snow wasn't melting so quickly.

Unlike her friends, whose parents—mothers, in any case—were vigilant about their daughters' whereabouts at all times, Nadia wasn't concerned that her father or stepmother would have wondered where she was since she'd failed to come home from school at her usual hour.

Neither Nadia's father or stepmother would be home, she knew. This was a consolation!

Even Merissa Carmichael, who sometimes complained of her mother's
excessive vigilance
, now that her father had moved permanently out of their lives, really took comfort in knowing that a parent cared about her, if perhaps excessively. Cell phones had to be forbidden at Quaker Heights, otherwise mothers would be calling their children constantly through the day; as Anita Chang joked, she couldn't go to the restroom without her mom checking on her. Nadia thought it was ironic that all of the girls of Tink, Inc., were so
watched over
by their mothers—except for Nadia, and, when she'd been among them, Tink herself.

It was marveled how, if you invited Tink to come to dinner at the last minute, even to stay overnight, she was very casual about checking with her mother, who might or might not have been home in any case.

No lights were evident in the Stillinger house, from Wheatsheaf Lane. In the little cul-de-sac in which the Stillingers lived, two other large fieldstone houses, looking like architects' models, were also mostly unlit except at the rear, where the housekeeper would be preparing a meal in the kitchen.

Nadia's father was CFO at a pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Quaker Heights, New Jersey; previously, he'd been a financial officer at a pharmaceutical company in Hartford, Connecticut. And before that—but Nadia's memory shut down.
Not healthy to dwell on the past! Nobody likes a whiner.

Even when Mr. Stillinger wasn't traveling, when he was at the New Jersey headquarters, most evenings he worked late at his office. And today was a day when Amelie was
in the city
—that is, New York City.

This was a relief! Nadia could eat a meal alone, a nice meal prepared by Mariana, and she could check text messages as she ate, or anxiously scan Facebook and incoming emails—no need to talk.

When would Mr. Kessler discover the present in his car, open it and discover the painting—and the card?

How soon—hours? minutes?—before he realized that
Dani A.
had to be
Nadia Stillinger
?

By now, nearly five p.m., Mr. Kessler had probably left school. Often Nadia had seen him, when girls' chorus practice was breaking up, crossing the parking lot with several other teachers—frequently, in fact, with a new, young math teacher in the middle school whose name sounded like a TV name—Lula Lovett.

Nadia called out a cheery hello to Mariana, in the kitchen. Nadia was always cheery and upbeat in the housekeeper's presence, but she didn't want to linger in the kitchen for even a minute; she was too excited and distracted to do anything more than take from the refrigerator a container of strawberry yogurt and from a drawer a spoon with which to eat it.

Thinking,
Oh dear God, he will call me soon—maybe. Or—email.

Or—maybe not until tomorrow, after class.

4.

“LEFT WITHOUT SAYING GOOD-BYE”

Suddenly she'd known. It had come to her—unmistakably.

Which was why she'd gone to see Mr. Kessler in his office—she had to be certain.

“Why, hello, Nadia! I wasn't sure that anyone was waiting here. . . .”

The expression on Mr. Kessler's face. An avidity, an alertness, and something like alarm in his eyes fixed on her face.

And when Nadia scrambled to her feet, clumsy, laughing, as she'd been sitting on the floor outside Mr. Kessler's office for—how long?—at least forty minutes, she would have lost her balance and fallen back down except Mr. Kessler instinctively reached out to grab Nadia's hand, to steady her.

“Hey! Gotcha.”

He'd laughed. And Nadia had laughed, blushing and breathless as if she'd run up a flight of steep steps.

 

He was relatively new to Quaker Heights Day School.

Nadia would calculate that he'd joined the faculty in the year that she'd transferred to the school—though she hadn't taken a course with the science teacher until her senior year.

There were several science teachers on the high school faculty: biology, physics, chemistry, Earth and Our Environment.

Adrian Kessler was the youngest and had quickly acquired a reputation for being demanding.

At QHD, where classes were smaller than in public schools, and personalities were prominent, it came to be quickly known that Mr. Kessler, though you might trade witticisms with him, laugh and joke with him, was one of the
less persuadable
teachers.

Athletes who'd seemed to be favorites of Mr. Kessler's in class, with a habit of slighting schoolwork on the eve of big games, soon discovered that Mr. Kessler was a man of principle. He listened to excuses, smiled sympathetically, and seemed to agree, but then quietly restated his position: Grading in his courses was “blind”—all that mattered was the work itself, not whose work it was.

“In the world, you'll be judged by what you
do
, not what you
are
.”

(But was this so? Not all Quaker Heights students believed this, for there was evidence among their families and acquaintances that who you
are
was often more important than what you
did
. But it was hopeless to argue with the idealistic young Adrian Kessler.)

Calling the roll on the first day of class, Mr. Kessler had managed somehow to be very funny, making little jokes of students' names, and of “Nadia Stillinger” he'd invented “Nadia Stillfinger,” which had seemed to Nadia thrillingly funny—though afterward, when she tried to recapitulate it to friends, the joke was very mild, indeed.

Mr. Kessler had also demonstrated a “modest feat” of memory at the conclusion of the class by recalling, student by student, up and down the aisles, their first and last names. Though he hadn't known them before calling the roll, already he'd affixed names to faces. Again he'd made them laugh, though they were also impressed.

And then, how thrilling it had been—how strangely tender, even intimate—when Mr. Kessler not only recalled “Nadia Stillinger” but “Stillfinger.”

“In our high-tech age, we must not become overdependent on our machines to ‘remember' for us. The brain is like any muscle—if it isn't exercised, it will atrophy.”

Some of the work students would be doing in Earth and Our Environment would involve memorization: activating parts of the brain otherwise dormant. Earth and Our Environment was a science course for non-science college majors, but even students enrolled in AP Physics had enrolled in it, for Adrian Kessler had master's degrees in both biology and neuroscience.

Nadia felt a little stir of dread, for she wasn't at all gifted in science, still less in math; yet Mr. Kessler seemed reassuring. She liked it that the teacher's warm hazel eyes crinkled at the corners with good humor. You could see he liked to
tease
.

No one in Nadia's family seemed ever to
tease
her—though she'd noticed how, in other families, teasing was a principal mode of communication.

Especially parents and children. Dads and their daughters.

Nadia's father seemed confused by her—as if she was getting too big, too
old
. He'd looked away with a little knife blade of a frown between his eyebrows when at last—hesitantly—Nadia had worn her new bathing suit on the beach at Nantucket. (How self-conscious she had been! She wondered if Amelie had been deliberately misleading, assuring her that she looked “terrific” in the two-piece knit suit.)

Nadia had been trying hard—very hard—to lose weight. Over the summer she'd gained weight out of anxiety—overeating, especially soft, creamy-sweet things like yogurt and smoothies—in the wake of
what had happened to Tink
; at her heaviest she'd weighed 119 pounds—
horrible!
(Nadia was just five feet four inches tall.)

By the start of the fall term she'd managed to get her weight down to 111, which was still high—her goal was
ninety-eight
, which she knew to be Merissa Carmichael's weight, or at least it had been Merissa's weight months ago.

Every girl Nadia knew obsessed about her weight except Merissa Carmichael, who appeared to be naturally thin. And Tink, of course—Tink had once remarked that her goal was to gain weight, not lose it.

In her least favorite class, PE, Nadia was required to change clothes in the girls' locker room, and she grew sullen and resentful, trying practically to hide inside her locker. She saw girls' eyes moving onto her—her breasts, her wiggly buttocks and thighs—with expressions part envy and part scorn.

This past August in Nantucket, in her new swimsuit but hiding inside an oversized shirt out of which only her pale, fleshy thighs seemed to emerge like something bloated, Nadia had felt plenty of eyes on her—men's eyes—old men's eyes, for
God's sake
—and she'd never been so mortified as when she'd overheard a (male, middle-aged) friend of her father's remark to him, on the veranda of their oceanfront cottage,
Your daughter is getting to be quite a Renoir, eh
?
And she's only, what, in middle school?

Nadia had wanted to run away, humiliated. She knew very well who Renoir was—what sort of fat, flabby, bovine females the French artist had painted—and she knew what an insult it was, to be mistaken for being in middle school when she was
seventeen
and about to start her senior year of high school!

Her manner, her little-girl breathiness. Her whispery voice and quick, tinkling laughter—these were ways to appear younger than her age.

She'd hate herself, Nadia guessed. If she had to observe herself.

Smiling too much.
Tink had noticed.

High school boys weren't so attracted to Nadia as older guys out of school, and adult men. Strangers' eyes moving onto her body made her feel both uncomfortable and thrilled.

Text messages sometimes came to Nadia's cell phone from boys she didn't know, or hardly knew—she read with surprise, shock—embarrassment—and quickly deleted. Some of the IDs were clearly fraudulent, bringing Nadia the kind of messages a girl learns to quickly delete without reading.

BABY TITS. ASS.

BLOW. GO DOWN. FUCK ME.

Nadia laughed nervously—as if the guy or guys who'd sent it might be observing her. Quickly she sent these ugly words into the tiny trash-can icon on her cell phone.

If a friend asked Nadia about one of these messages, she said, giggling, “Oh, just nothing!” Or “Gross!”

Lots of girls received these
sexts
. It was nothing personal, really.

Never would Nadia tell or report
sexting
. Worse than being a
whiner
was being a
snitch
.

And anyway—how could you know who'd sent it, let alone prove it? Girls who had reported nasty sexts or mean online postings had been punished by guys ganging together against them, sending a flood of obscene messages and even threats of murder.

HOW'D YOU LIKE YOUR SLUT HEAD CUT OFF & SENT TO DADDY IN A BOX.

(This was a notorious message a Quaker Heights girl had received the previous year in a case that was still pending. Nadia Stillinger wanted nothing like
that
.)

Really beautiful girls like Merissa Carmichael were not treated this way. And girls like Tink—who were tough, and funny about sex.

Nadia accepted this, for her own father winced at the sight of her. She would not ever be beautiful, she would always be one to be elbowed aside, pushed off the sidewalk, or her head gripped in a drunk boy's big hands, forced to b**w him in a toilet stall, or in the front seat of his car, if she wanted a ride back to her house.

It had to do with Tink, she'd thought. After Tink, Nadia had sort of lost control, for a while.

Except now, with Mr. Kessler. Now Nadia had fallen in love for the first time.

She would not ever be beautiful, Nadia knew. Amelie had all but told her, you have to be born with
high cheekbones
to be beautiful, and Nadia's face was as soft-looking as a rubber doll's.

Maybe you take after your
maman
,
Amelie said.
You surely do not take after your
papa
.

Nadia was ashamed to ask Amelie if she knew anything much about Nadia's mother—if Nadia's father had ever shown her photographs, for instance.

Of course, that was ridiculous. Nadia's father would never have spoken of her mother to Amelie, or to the previous wife, let alone shown them photographs of her.

Nadia's mother's name was never mentioned in any of the houses in which Nadia had lived with her father.

Years ago, when she'd been a little girl, Nadia had asked her father where Mommy had gone, and her father had said,
Gone, Nadia. And she didn't say good-bye to me—or to you.

Still, Nadia knew her mother's name. Even if it was a name banished from the household—
Esther
.

This was a beautiful name, Nadia thought. An unusual name, out of the Bible maybe—“Esther.”

Sometimes Nadia spoke her mother's name aloud. Sometimes she whispered.

More often, she called her mother
Mommy
.

And this, too, she whispered when she was sure no one would hear her—“Mommy.”

 

“Guys don't like you if you're smarter than they are. But if you're too much dumber than they are, you're a
bimbo
.”

Nadia laughed uneasily at her friend's remark. She knew what a
bimbo
was—if her stepmother Amelie hadn't been so chic and so shrewd, with her flashy good looks, she'd be a
bimbo
. And the fat, fleshy, doughy-faced females in the paintings of Renoir, lots of them nude, looking steamy-warm as if they'd just climbed out of a hot bath—for sure, these were
bimbos
.

Nadia said, “It's scary to try for just-between. Not too smart, and not too dumb.” She'd laughed, and her friends had laughed, but was it funny? Hannah and Chloe were popular senior girls who had friends who were boys but not boyfriends—too much was expected of a girl, especially senior year, if you had an actual boyfriend.

Nadia had been naive, or frankly stupid, imagining that Colin Brunner, one of the popular football players, whose father was a New Jersey state senator, would be her
boyfriend
.

He'd laughed in her face, practically.

Nadia's in-box was jammed with
SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT
but she'd scarcely noticed. Quickly she'd clicked delete.

Now she was turning her attention to her schoolwork.

Nadia was excited about Mr. Kessler's course, Earth and Our Environment. She'd looked ahead in the textbook and online, and especially she'd been intrigued by the material about animals adapting behavior to environment—the pictures of South American jaguars, African leopards and elephants and giraffes made her smile, they were such beautiful creatures. Ecosystems—biomes—biospheres—the roles of living things in ecosystems—these were concepts Nadia could understand, and maybe she could talk intelligently to her father about them, since her father had majored in biology at Harvard before switching to a business major.

When Mr. Kessler showed the class illustrations of the Earth as a single organism with countless diverse parts, as part of his PowerPoint presentation, Nadia felt reassured, somehow. As if it were revealed that there was a place for her after all. The idea of the Earth as a single organism made her feel safe.

“And how do we know the Earth is a single organism?” Mr. Kessler asked the class in his genial fashion, as if they were just having a conversation together.

Before one of the brighter students, like Virgil Nagy, could answer, Nadia's hand leapt into the air.