The Good Goodbye

  They walk off.

  Twenty years ago, when Vince returned from Paris with Gabrielle, I found myself covertly eyeing her, trying to discern what it was that had attracted Vince so powerfully. Was it her exotic accent, her angled cheekbones, and her lovely eyes that flashed with confusion whenever we used an idiom she didn’t know? The simple fact that she seemed so completely besotted with him? Or was it something more substantial, her emphatic way of doing things, her single-mindedness and focus, her intellect? A combination of it all? I had no regrets, none at all, as I planned my life with Theo, but still I found myself turning over and over what it was that Vince saw in Gabrielle that he hadn’t seen in me. She was so achingly young. I knew Vince’s predilection for novelty. I predicted they wouldn’t last. But they had.

  Which isn’t to say things had been fairy-tale perfect. Gabrielle got silent with disapproval when Vince and I worked late into the night. He complained about having to be home at a certain time, or having to follow her rules about Rory, but there had never been anything serious. Until six months ago when Vince took all our lives, our hopes and dreams, and dashed them sharply against the rocks.

  I watch the two of them now walk down the hall, a foot of space yawning between them. They’re overly polite with each other. They don’t make eye contact. They don’t smile at each other. Of course, what has there been to smile about, especially now?

  Hours later, Theo lets himself into Arden’s room. His jacket’s beaded with water; his hair’s damp. It must still be raining. He sweeps the curtain behind him, the metal rings rattling. “How’s our girl?”

  I shut off the flashlight and close my book. “Holding her own.”

  Theo goes over to her and looks down. “Dr. Morris been by?”

  “Earlier.” Surrounded by a cluster of white-jacketed people who hovered around Arden’s bed, discussing her accident, her admission, her current numbers. “She checked the drain to see if it’s why the pressure isn’t dropping, but she says it looks fine. She might try increasing the dose again. She wants to consult another colleague before she decides.”

  “You hear anything from Gallagher?”

  “No. What do you think it means?”

  “No idea. I’ll call him.”

  Yes. That would be good. I want to hear something, even if it’s that he’s learned nothing further. I need to know that progress is being made somewhere. “Did you stop by the house?”

  He shakes his head. “But I did stop to see the boys at school. They were out for recess.” In the dimness, I can see him smile. “Henry was chasing a little girl around the playground. You know what that means.”

  I did indeed. “Did she have red hair?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  It had to have been Lily. Henry’s had a crush on her for months. He’s very seriously requested a cell phone of his very own so he can make private calls to her; he’s asked me how much engagement rings cost. Oliver is still oblivious of girls, though I’d noticed them jostling to line up beside him for recess. I miss my boys with a sudden and fierce stab of pain. “I should have gone with you.”

  “I wish you had, but you’d never have left Arden alone.”

  “I miss the boys.”

  “We can ask your mom to drive them up for the night. They’d all love it.”

  We’ve been over this, back and forth a million times. I look to Arden. “Henry and Oliver can’t see her like this. They can’t.”

  “I don’t know, Natalie. They’re more resilient than you think.”

  “Maybe.” But if I’m to be completely honest with myself, it’s me who isn’t resilient enough to answer the questions they’d be sure to ask. Letting the boys come now suggests things are far more serious than I can allow myself to believe.

  “You’ve been in here for hours, haven’t you?” Theo says. “Go get something to eat. Take your time. I’ve got this.”

  This—what is this? This is nothing. This is sitting in a dark room surrounded by machines, talking to myself. This is waiting for a child who might never wake up. She doesn’t even smell like Arden anymore. She smells like hospital, sterile and wounded.

  I step out into the bright hallway. Emotion swirls around me. I press my hand against the wall.

  “Mrs. Falcone?” a nurse calls over. Her face is creased with worry.

  “I’m fine,” I say, automatically.

  In the elevator, I turn on my cell phone. My mom’s called, my dad. Christine. Liz. A friend from culinary school, a couple of chefs, our neighbors, someone from the college. So much sympathy. I’ll listen to their messages later. The door wheezes open to let in two men wearing white lab coats. They use terms I don’t recognize. They sound pompous. They’re enjoying displaying their prowess. I want to laugh. Want to impress me? Save my daughter.

  The elevator doors open and I stop in the hall to phone my mom back.

  “Hi,” I say, when she answers. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yes. The boys are fine. We’re having a grand time. I don’t think they’ve eaten a single vegetable in days.”

  I miss the days when getting my twins to eat vegetables seemed my biggest challenge. “You can grate zucchini into their spaghetti sauce. They’ll never know.” I do it all the time, slip bits of the less discernible vegetables into their food. Bell peppers I roast to peel off the telltale skin, all sorts of squash, cooked carrots, and spinach chopped fine. “They’ll eat celery if you give it to them with peanut butter.” Oliver’s onto my tricks. He narrows his eyes as he dips his fork into his food but he never says anything. My son and I share an unspoken pact. He doesn’t mind vegetables. It’s Henry who’s the holdout. “How’s school going?”

  “Oh, fine.” My mom’s broad midwestern accent sprawls though, the way it does when she’s unhappy or stressed. “They were thrilled to see Theo at school today. They couldn’t stop talking about it.”

  “Theo says Henry has a little girlfriend.”

  “Oh, yes. But we’re not supposed to know about that.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “So how’s Arden, honey? Is the medication working?”

  “Not yet. The doctor might adjust it.”

  “The pressure hasn’t gone up, right?” This fragile straw of hope. It could be so easily snapped. “That’s the important thing. It’ll go down. Just give it some more time.”

  My mother doesn’t know. None of us do.

  I’m surrounded by peachy beige—the walls, the countertops, the floors—punctuated by aqua. Are these colors supposed to reassure and calm me? They do the opposite. I want lemons and cold milk, purple plums and endive. I crave colors that declare themselves and thrust themselves forward, that sweep me along with their energetic rush. These colors tell me to give up. They tell me that there are bigger things at work and that I might as well sit down on this dirty beach and press my forehead against my folded arms.

  “You sound so tired, sweetheart,” Mom says. “I don’t know how you can sleep in that chair.”

  I am bone tired, but that’s not it. “Theo thinks we should rent a hotel room and trade off.” Currently, he and Vince are sleeping on opposite couches in the family waiting room. Gabrielle haunts the corridors; I encounter her sitting in the empty cafeteria or standing by windows looking out into the rain. She isn’t sleeping, either. Her devotion has surprised me. Gabrielle’s never struck me as the nurturing type. It’s not that Gabrielle hasn’t paid attention to Rory over the years. She has—in spades—but it always seemed to me more out of a need to do the right thing than because she really enjoyed Rory’s company.

  “I think that’s exactly what you should do,” my mother says.

  “It’s farther away. The hotel across the street is undergoing renovations.”

  “It’s not D.C. Surely it wouldn’t take you but a few minutes. You need your rest.”

  I don’t want to talk about it anymore. “Mom,” I begin.

  “What, honey?”

  Someone used paint
thinner to set the fire. The police think it was Arden. Theo says she was depressed. Mom will be horrified. She will sit down hard in her chair and put her hand to her throat. She might cry. She might threaten to call my father and have him talk to the detective, which would be useless and might even make things worse. There’s nothing she can say that will make me feel better. In the end, I’ll be the one struggling to reassure her. “Nothing. Just…thanks. Thanks for taking care of the boys.”

  The cafeteria’s largely empty, just a few pairs of people sitting at the round tables. We must be at that in-between time. The hot food and salad bar lines are closed—no doubt the cooks are having a smoke out back and putting up their feet before getting ready for the dinner rush. I select a yogurt floating in a bowl of watery ice and pay for it at the register, the cashier leaning on one elbow to ring me up. I eye the coffee urn and think regretfully of the cup I’d left behind in Arden’s room. Whatever was in those big metal urns at this time of day would be thick and bitter.

  I find a table and peel the foil from my cup of yogurt. It’s blueberry, Arden’s favorite. When she was seven, she went through a period where she wouldn’t eat anything unless it contained blueberries. Pancakes with blueberry syrup, cereal topped with blueberries, toast smeared with blueberry jelly. Just like Violet Beauregarde, I’d told her, wincing as she dropped blueberries into her bowl of minestrone, one by one by one. She’d turned her green eyes to me, wide. Who? she’d asked with great interest.

  “Mrs. Falcone?” someone asks, and I look up. It’s that pink-haired girl whose dorm room is next to Arden and Rory’s. Whose dorm room was next to Arden and Rory’s, I correct myself.

  “Hi, D.D.”

  Just a few short hours ago, I might have assumed she and Arden were friends. Now I’m wary. Now I’m seeing monsters under the bed. Just look one more time, Oliver would plead, and I’ve learned to keep a stuffed animal under there just so I could produce it with a flourish. It’s only Mr. Teddy, I’d say, and he’d nod, relieved.

  D.D.’s wearing skinny jeans and a cropped top hanging off one shoulder that reveals a few inches of bare midriff. A row of silver hoops dangle along the curve of one ear. Arden had grimaced when one of the servers got her belly button pierced. Why do people do that? Arden had muttered to me privately, but now I remember she’d been the one to get a tattoo. “How’s Arden? Is she better?”

  Surely this means she and Arden were friends. “She’s not any worse.” This is the most honest answer I’ve given anyone. It’s the bleak fluorescent light overhead shining down on me, laying a firm hand at the base of my neck. It’s this slight girl, barely five feet tall. Without her gang of friends around, she seems even smaller. “I’m sorry, D.D., but the girls still can’t have visitors.”

  “That’s okay. I had an appointment here anyway. Now I’m waiting for the bus.”

  She’s holding a paper plate with a muffin balanced on it. “Want to join me?” I ask.

  She nods, pulls out a chair. “We’re holding a vigil Thursday night. Eight o’clock. Do you think you can come?”

  “I’ll try.” So much could happen between now and then.

  She glances behind me. “I wish they’d stop playing that.”

  I turn to see the television set mounted on the wall. The news is on. The screen shows Arden’s dorm, smeared with soot and gaping black holes where windows once were. I’ve been avoiding the TV, ignoring the newspapers abandoned in the family lounge. Now I can’t look away.

  A flutter of yellow caution tape droops around the perimeter; a drift of stuffed animals and candles and flowers are piled, soggy, by the entrance. I had gone through that door, arms filled with Arden’s clothes. I had been focused on hiding my sadness at saying goodbye to my daughter, but she had seen it anyway. She had let me hug her, resting her head against my shoulder. It’ll be okay, Mom, she’d told me. I’d tightened my arms around her and kissed her cheek. The good thing about saying goodbye, I’d whispered in her ear, is getting to say hello.

  On the screen, Arden’s window, the startling vision of a man leaning out, his face covered with a paper mask. He drops an armload of sharp and broken objects into the open-yawed dumpster below. All the pieces of my daughter’s room, all the things we’d chosen together to make her transition a happy one—the pumpkin-orange comforter and matching pillow sham, the desk lamp with its reaching arm, the pink rubber shower caddy and bright yellow plastic trashcan. Will Arden want to come back to this place? Will she ever feel safe anywhere again?

  I turn around, putting my back to the television. I don’t need to see any more.

  “They won’t let us back in, not even to get our things.” D.D. picks at her muffin, breaking off pieces of the sugared top and putting them in her mouth. “We’re all doubled and tripled up while they find us someplace else to stay for the rest of the year. Our RA says it’ll probably be one of those motels on Route 4. I guess that’ll be okay. Maid service.” She shrugs, looks at me with red-rimmed eyes. Yes, I decide. She and Arden are friends and this has deeply upset D.D. I feel Arden standing behind me, begging me not to do anything to embarrass her and I stop myself from reaching across the table and clasping D.D.’s small hand, lying just inches away. “Arden talks about you all the time, you know,” she says. “You own a restaurant, right? She says you make the most amazing macaroni and cheese.”

  “It’s always been her favorite.” The first grown-up food I’d ever made for Arden. For months, it was the only thing she’d eat, patiently chasing each bit of pasta around the tray of her high chair with her fingers, cheese sauce smearing her cheeks and clinging to her hair. If I tried to intercede and hurry the process along by feeding her with a fork, she’d thump her heels and howl in protest.

  “I’ve never eaten homemade anything. Mrs. Stouffer does the cooking at my house.”

  I smile. “I can make you mac and cheese sometime.” Sometime—that imaginary point in time when I would make food and bring it to Arden and her friends, stay for a while, tease them as they dig in, encourage them to put some vegetables on their plates, peel back the plastic wrap to reveal the tower of frosted brownies.

  “That’d be awesome. The food here blows.” Her gray eyes are thickly lined in bright blue; a tiny nose ring glints against her ivory skin.

  “Arden says the same thing.” Theo teased Arden when she complained. Welcome to the real world, he’d told her.

  “The only vegetarian thing they know how to make is salad. They even scramble the eggs in lard. Arden and I eat a lot of ramen.”

  “Arden’s vegetarian?” The girl who loved my roasted chicken, veal cutlets, liver pâté smeared on rosemary crackers? Arden had come home for two whole days and never said a word, not even as I pulled things from the refrigerator and set about basting and roasting and chopping. Talking the entire time to dispel the silence between us while she sat at the island and sipped tea. Disappointment about art school, I’d thought. Homesickness, I’d thought.

  “She’s trying it out. She’s not sure she can give up tuna. I told her she could just cut out poultry and beef. That’s where the real industry abuse is, anyway.”

  You must treat animals with respect, my instructor had scolded, looking down at the chicken I was attempting to debone. Everyone had stopped to listen and I had been mortified. After she had moved on, I’d glanced to my right and seen the pristinely sliced portions of chicken shimmering on Vince’s cutting board next to mine, plump and perfect, not a vein of fat or tendon to be seen.

  “Rory says there are ways around that. She says there are humane farms, but what’s humane about raising animals for food?”

  Sensible Rory, so very much her mother’s daughter. What had Gabrielle seen in D.D. that worried her? I see nothing here but a girl my daughter’s age, making choices, figuring things out.

  D.D. pushes away her plate. “Do the police know who did it yet?”

  “I don’t think so, but I know they’re talking to a lot of people.” Witnesses have come forward. Ma
ybe this girl? “Have they talked to you?”

  “They talked to all of us. They had a big dorm meeting and then this dude took us each into separate rooms.” She fiddles with an earring, pushing it in and out. Her features are delicate, gentle swoops, a flutter of eyelashes. Just a child, somebody’s child.

  “Detective Gallagher?”

  “I guess. He told me his name, but…” She shrugs.

  It hadn’t mattered. She had to have been nervous, afraid to say the wrong thing. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I do anyway. “What did you talk about?” I keep my voice conversational, casual. I don’t let her see the anxiety rippling beneath the surface.

  “I don’t know. Nothing, really. Just that we’re friends; we hang out together.”

  “That’s nice. Arden’s talked a lot about you, too,” I lie.

  She drops her hands to her lap, chews her lower lip. She’s thinking.

  A clatter behind us, the kitchen crew arriving for setup. I don’t turn around. I’m aware only of this young woman sitting just inches away. A bird, gauging the wind for flight. “Detective Gallagher says there was a fire in the girls’ room a few weeks ago. I had no idea. Arden never said anything.”

  She glances up with her smoke-colored eyes. “She didn’t?”

  “Do you know how it happened?”

  A one-shoulder shrug. “I wasn’t there.”

  Which isn’t really answering the question. Who is she trying to protect? “The university didn’t know anything about it, either.”

  “No surprise there. Our RA’s pretty obtuse. All Arden and Rory had to do was cover the ceiling with scarves and leave the window open for a few days. But he still would’ve found out at the end of the year. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have gotten back your security deposit.”

  I didn’t know anything about scarves on the ceiling. When we Skyped, Arden sat with her back against her headboard. All I saw was yellowed oak, painted cinder block, and Arden’s face. All I’d wanted to see was her face.