For years, Ginger had started each term of Nurse Tangle’s Danger Class by opening the floor to parents and asking them to tell her their worries. It was from this survey of disquiet that she would create the semester’s curriculum. She came up with this approach after finally noticing how often parents walked into her class with something very specific in mind. All it took was one news cycle about Ebola to make “What to Do When Lightning Strikes” seem like a tone-deaf topic. In the end, the topic didn’t really matter. There were plenty of dangers to go around. As long as parents left her class with more information than they had when they arrived, Ginger was happy. But tonight she felt distracted, unsure that she’d be able to focus. Julia’s extended sleepover had gotten to her.
With her whiteboard and collapsible easel under her arm, Ginger made a quick detour to the high school nurse’s office. Her friend Lydia didn’t teach at the Adult School, but she had told Ginger she’d be in the building to proctor a CPR test for the babysitting club.
Though they were both school nurses, Lydia and Ginger had completely different areas of expertise. As an elementary school nurse, Ginger was proficient in nosebleeds and lice. High school nurse Lydia was the expert on eating disorders and bad boyfriends.
Ginger told Lydia her concerns. Julia was deceiving her. She wasn’t where she said she was.
Her friend, Angie, was colluding in the lie. The friend’s mother was clueless.
Lydia shook her head. “I don’t buy it. If the sleepover was bogus, there’d be clues. It’s the saving grace of teenagers, how horrible they are at hiding their tracks. My opinion? She’s exactly where she says she is. Let it be and it will pass.”
As Ginger walked up the dim stairwell to the classroom, she tried to believe what Lydia said was true. But it didn’t feel true. Lydia might know teenagers, but Ginger knew guile.
She found her room—this term they’d assigned her 302—and opened the door. The funky odor hit her at once. She glanced at the board—algebra equations—and diagnosed math anxiety. Putting aside her Julia worries, she got busy, trying to open the windows that all turned out to be stuck, fanning the front and rear doors to move around the stuffy air, and locating the wastebasket, so at least she’d know where it was if the smell made someone sick.
By the time she set up her easel, her worries about Julia had crept back, like water finding its own level, to their pride of place. She put the whiteboard in position, and as parents tentatively entered, tried to ignore the growing urge to take out her phone and text Julia again.
She was writing down parent-fears on the whiteboard—“Dangers of Recess,” “Heroin in the High School”—when her phone vibrated. She took a quick look—it was her mother—and went back to making the list. The phone buzzed a second time just after the bell rang. She smiled as parents filed out past the whiteboard of warnings—“Candles and Fire!” “Common Household Poisons!”—and took the call. Glory. “Everything okay, Mom?”
“That’s the first thing out of your mouth? Everything okay is your hello?”
Deep breath. “It’s Tuesday night. I teach Tuesday nights, remember?” So much for the color-coded calendar she’d made to help her mother keep track of when she wasn’t available.
“Then why’d you pick up? Did you know there’s something you can jiggle on your phone so it doesn’t ring? Julia showed me. Ask her. I’m sure she’ll show you if you ask.”
“I picked up because my class just ended. Is everything okay?”
“Again with the worrying. I’m fine. You’re fine. Everybody’s fine. I ran out of Metamucil is all, and I know you go by the drugstore on your way home. I’m trying to save you an extra trip. I was planning to leave you a message. You don’t always have to answer.”
“I know,” Ginger said. “Okay. I’ll get you Metamucil.”
In the drugstore she replayed Lydia’s words in her head. Let it be and it will pass. It wasn’t bad advice. But the tricky thing about advice was how quickly it lost its power when the person who gave it wasn’t present. She thought about this as she dialed Julia’s cell. Was it true for her students? After she made them promise to always, always, always wear their helmets when they rode their bikes, after they nodded and repeated it back, did they walk out of her office and immediately forget what she’d said?
Julia’s voice mail kicked in and despite the voice in her head urging her to hang up, at the sound of the beep Ginger spoke. “Just calling to say hello.” That sounded ridiculous. “Just checking to see if you’re coming home tonight.” That sounded desperate. “I miss you, Jules.” That probably wasn’t good to say, either. She terminated the call and reminded herself, If Julia was lying, there’d be clues. But as she got in her car, she couldn’t help but think, What if there were clues and I missed them?
Glory swung open the door. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh.” Ginger hadn’t meant to come back now. She’d driven over on autopilot. Her mother could do this to her, turn her from a nurse with a no-nonsense attitude into a person with neither will nor resolve.
Glory cocked her head. “I could have sworn on a bible you told me a hundred times you don’t like to visit at night. Too tired, you always say.”
Her mother looked different—small things, but Ginger noticed. Her wispy white hair had escaped from its usually well-secured bun. Her porcelain skin had been overpowdered to a ghostly white. And though her eyes were still their usual fierce blue, her gaze was off, giving her the look of a slightly befuddled, retired dean.
“Something’s on your mind.” Her mother yanked the belt of her robe, pulling it tighter. “I can smell.”
“You can tell,” Ginger corrected her. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She handed over the drugstore bag. “They had two flavors. I didn’t know which you like, so I got both.”
Glory peered into the bag. “I asked for this?” She set it on the hall table. “If you say so.” It was tricky business, trying to figure out if Glory was attempting to be funny. “Long as you’re here,
might as well come in. Want something to drink? Don’t be a grump.”
Ginger followed her mother into the kitchen and sat down at the table, which was covered with pieces of the unsorted puzzle Ginger had given her last week. “What happened to the felt mat?”
She’d bought the mat so her mother could roll up her unfinished puzzles when she wanted to use the table for something else, like eating.
“Beats me. Maybe it’s with the teakettle.”
Ginger looked at the stove. “What happened to the kettle?”
Glory shrugged. “Probably with the mat. That puzzle?” She nodded toward the table. “Too easy.” This was her latest complaint, that the puzzles Ginger brought were too easy. The ones Mimi brought, hand cut from rare wood, works of art really, were expensive and impossible to do, but Glory didn’t seem to mind.
The puzzle might be easy, but she’d made no progress since the last time Ginger was over.
“Want some help?”
Glory shook her head and studied Ginger’s face. “What’s wrong? Nothing. You’re fine.”
Surprising them both, Ginger decided to share. “There’s been some drama at home. With Julia.
Boy drama.”
“Oh.” Glory sat down and moved around a few puzzle pieces. “I remember that. Boy drama.”
She shook her head. “Drama, drama, drama.”
This was surprising to hear. Ginger could not remember a single incident of boy drama growing up. She had made sure not to have drama of any kind, and if Mimi had boy drama, she’d kept it to herself. Could Glory be referring to Callie? Was that what their big blowup was about—a boy?
Ginger knew so few details. She’d left for college not long after Callie went away to boarding school and Mimi had left two years after that. By the time Callie came home, her sisters were long gone.
Ginger and Mimi knew at some point there’d been a big argument, but what it was about was a mystery. “Can I ask you something?”
Her mother didn’t flinch. “You know you can ask me absolutely anything.”
That was laughable, but Ginger let it go. “Julia has this boyfriend and she knows I don’t like him. We’ve been fighting a lot. Which made me think about you and Callie and the big fight you had. I know you don’t like to talk about it. But what with Julia and all, I was wondering if you could tell me
—was the fight about a boy? Is that how you and Callie became estranged?”
Her mother’s fingers stopped their sorting and her eyes grew cloudy and dull. “What do you mean estranged?” Before Ginger could figure out how to respond, Glory stood up. “Where’s my brush?” She rustled through several kitchen drawers and then disappeared down the hall.
When she returned, her hair was hanging loose. She scooted her chair around and sat so her back was facing Ginger. “I like to brush a hundred times before I go to bed but lately, I don’t know why, I get to fifty and my hand aches like nobody’s business.” She gave Ginger a small silver comb.
“Don’t talk or you’ll lose count.”
Her mother’s hair felt fragile as a web. Ginger counted to a hundred and stopped. “Done.”
“You’re a very good brusher, Gingie. Now, give me a kiss and go home.”
Ginger leaned over and brushed her lips against her mother’s soft cheek.
“Don’t be a worrywart. Julia’s a beautiful girl. And such an actress. Almost as good as me.”
“Julia’s not an actress.”
“Oh, come on. Think positive for once.”
In the car, Ginger experimented with thinking positive. “Julia will be there when I get home,”
she said out loud, smiling so her voice would sound like she meant it. But as she walked up the front
path to her house, the positive thinking came to a halt. There was Richard—she could see him through the dining room window, framed as if in a photograph—alone at the table, computer open, legal pad beside it, pen down, mouth set in a frown, fingertips at his forehead, shoulders hunched in distress.
She locked the door behind her and went straight to him. “What happened? What’s wrong? Is Julia okay?” She felt as if the room was starting to spin.
“Nothing’s wrong.” The pitch of Richard’s voice, usually baseline conciliatory, now sounded defeated. “Nothing’s wrong yet.”
“What does that mean?”
He closed his eyes and sat so still that for a brief moment Ginger wondered if it was possible he’d actually fallen asleep. His eyes snapped open. “I don’t know. Forget it.”
“Forget what? You don’t know what?”
He shook his head, got up, started out of the room. “Forget it. Really. It’s been a long day.”
“Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice. Richard, what’s going on?”
“Work problem. Neglect. Brutal. I’m tired. That’s all. I’m going to bed.”
She watched him slowly walk up the stairs in silence and tried to ignore the nagging sense that what he’d said was only partly true.