The Nakeds (9 page)

•  •  •

Dr. Bell’s hybrid was a strange contraption made of plaster and metal that was cast
and
brace, an amalgam, something she’d wear for eight months without one signature or set of initials, without one sketch or funny drawing.

•  •  •

And every night before bed, they twisted. Once in a while, Hannah did the twisting by herself, alone in her bedroom, but usually her mom sat with her, drinking tea and watching Hannah twist. And sometimes her mom said, “Let me do that, baby girl. Here, let me.”

She’d ask Hannah if it hurt and she’d say no.

“At least the doctor didn’t lie. Your father, the dentist, he lies. Once he filled a cavity of mine and said it wouldn’t hurt. Well, I nearly shot out of the chair.”

Hannah was twisting, trying to concentrate.

“Do you miss him?” Nina asked her.

Hannah looked up.

“You don’t have to answer that,” she said.

MARTIN, CROUCHED
between a Volkswagen bus and a black El Camino, kept an eye on Hannah’s front door. Three girls played hopscotch across the street. They’d drawn squares with yellow chalk on the driveway and were singing some girlie song that Martin didn’t recognize. He wished Hannah was up and healthy and playing with the girls. He wondered if they missed her, if the four of them used to play together.

One girl said something about a boy named Ryan and the other one said,
Hey, he’s mine,
and Martin decided that the three of them were too mature for Hannah anyway.
Let them hop around and talk about boys,
he thought. The three of them looked alike, matching shorts and shirts tied at their waists, matching blonde ponytails and bangs, white sandals with fake daisies at the center. They looked stupid, he thought, and he couldn’t tell them apart, and when they hopped fast, one behind the other behind the other, they could almost have been one girl with one long pale curtain of hair flying behind her.

He’d moved from behind the El Camino and stood behind an oak tree. His bike was a few blocks away, propped up against the side of Tony’s apartment building. What would happen if the girls caught him behind the tree, he wondered. They’d probably scream and think he was some sort of a pervert, which he wasn’t, no matter how weird his dreams were. Perhaps if the girls caught him they’d figure out who he was and what he’d done, which was worse than if he were just a flasher like that guy Brandon Striker who dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade to roam the neighborhood and show his dick to all the high school girls who wouldn’t look at his face when he was just a student. It was said that Brandon targeted the girls who had snubbed or made fun of him. He was unique that way, the cops had said, and he was labeled The Revenge Flasher, but no one ever ended up in a hospital without a spleen or with a fucked-up liver, no one ever ended up maimed for life because a guy flashed his dick at her.

This was the fourth day in a row that Martin had been here, waiting for Hannah to come out and show him that she was OK, maybe not perfect, but still a whole girl. He thought that if she didn’t come out today he’d give up. He’d continue leaving presents on the porch but wouldn’t hide out here like an idiot.

It was mid-afternoon when they finally came out of the house. He thought Hannah maneuvered pretty well on the wooden crutches and was impressed with what he decided was her ability to adapt. Oh, who was he fooling, he quickly corrected himself: It was summer and she was in a cast and she was probably hot and, despite a short giggle at something her mom said, Hannah was probably cranky as fuck. Her mother wore a silky dress and high-heel shoes and was even prettier than Hannah, which might have been because she was that kind of beautiful or maybe because she was a grown woman. There were flesh-colored pads on the crutches to protect Hannah’s hands and underarms, and one of the hand pads sprung loose and was rolling down the driveway. Her mother rushed to retrieve it, and while Hannah stood waiting by the car, Martin got a good look at the strange cast. It didn’t look like any cast he’d seen before. There was a clamp or something metal around her ankle, which told him that Sandy was right, that something was very wrong with Hannah’s leg.

The girls were waving at Hannah now, but hopping at the same time, and Martin wished they were more sensitive. Couldn’t they see that playing hopscotch was something Hannah could not do? Couldn’t they stop hopping for one fucking minute? Finally one girl did stop hopping, but only to stare at Hannah and her mother, who was now taking the crutches from under her daughter’s arms and laying them in the backseat of the car. Hannah was on one foot too, hopping, just like the stupid girls, which made Martin want to cry. She took a couple quick hops before her mother helped her into the car. She rolled the window down.

“Hey, Hannah,” the one girl said with her stupid voice.

“Hi,” Hannah said out the window. And her voice, he thought, wasn’t stupid at all; she sounded smart and sad and older than she was.

By the time mother and daughter had pulled out of the driveway, the girls were finishing up their game. Martin heard them talking, something about Hannah’s broken family or her broken leg, he couldn’t be sure. Either way, he didn’t like them. They were gathering up their box of chalk and plastic cups and a bag of potato chips from the ground. One girl rubbed the bottom of her sandals on the asphalt, erasing the yellow numbers and squares. Finally, they skipped up the driveway and headed toward the front door.

Martin looked around the neighborhood, poking his head around the tree to make sure he was alone. Satisfied, he crossed the street and walked up to the Tellers’ porch, where he very carefully set down one more
Get Well Soon
card he hadn’t signed.

He had the maps laid out on his bed at home.

He had his tip money under his mattress.

He had the bus schedule hidden in his sock drawer.

He imagined himself crossing the country, talking to strangers on the bus, and making up lies about himself.

He took a quick look back at the envelope he’d left for Hannah, and then walked back to Tony’s house to get his bike.

THE HOUSE
went up for sale—a bright orange sign dug into the front lawn. It told people, Hannah thought, that someone didn’t love them, someone had left them, and that they, in turn, were leaving the house behind.

When her dad left her mom, he’d left Hannah too, moving into the home and arms of a woman her mom called
that whore shiksa
or
that surfing Jesus freak.
Worse, her dad had told her that he’d been thinking of converting to Christianity. He had left them on so many levels, left her mother physically alone in that big king-sized bed, in a house that was falling apart, and with a damaged daughter to care for, and finally he’d left their religion and culture too, become another man completely. A man who wore shorts and rubber sandals and too-bright Hawaiian shirts, a thirty-three-year-old man who was taking surfing lessons and going to church.

He calls himself a Jew for Jesus
, her mom would say hatefully.
A Jew for who? What’s a Jew for Jesus? A nebbish traitor, a man without a backbone, that’s what,
she’d say, answering her own question.

But her mother would soon lose her religion as well, which made Hannah believe it was something they had practiced without being certain. It seemed as though being Jewish was only necessary to define them when they were together, what they were: a Jewish family from the East Coast, living on the West Coast now. But once their union of three ended, so too did their apparent beliefs.

When Hannah came home from the hospital, they lit the candles on Friday nights as they always had, but it felt pretend, false, like dress-up. It was a thing they had done as a family, and now with just the two of them sitting at that too-long table with the empty chair at the head, they were barely that. After three weeks of rushing through the prayer with less and less enthusiasm, the fourth night they just sat down with deli sandwiches and tomato soup and ate, pretending it was any other day of the week. And her mom said, “We should move, Hannah. We’ll make a new start, that’s what we’ll do.”

•  •  •

Soon, strangers were making their way through the rooms and halls, whispering about the weedy backyard, the filthy pool, and the gaudy bathroom wallpaper. They moved through the living room and kitchen and den, stood inside the walk-in closets and sniffed. They opened the pantry and commented on her mother’s choices. “Fresh peaches are so much better. I’d never buy these things in a can,” one woman said. And her husband stood next to her, nodding and tugging on her blouse like a five-year old. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, whining loud enough for Hannah to hear all the way from her bedroom.

They were rude, like they owned the house without even buying it. They picked things up, inspected them, and put them down—a self-help book her mom had left on the coffee table, the clock, the
TV Guide
—and Hannah didn’t understand what those small things had to do with the house itself, how it could affect someone’s choice to live there. Often, she watched from her room, propped up in bed, staring over the pages of whatever book she was reading at the nosy strangers and counted the minutes until they said
thank you,
until they said
good-bye,
until they stepped out the front door and out of their lives.

Sometimes they knocked on Hannah’s bedroom door before entering and sometimes they pushed right through. Eyes went right to her cast. People had stories of their own: broken tibia, torn ligament, tennis elbow. This man fell out of a tree when he was eight. This old woman twisted her ankle on her wedding day. Thirty-five years ago. Walking down the aisle and then flat on the floor.
Remember that? Remember that, honey?
she said to a fat little man who only grunted and turned away from her, stepping out into the hall.

People assumed Hannah’s leg was broken, but she’d tell them no, it wasn’t. Despite her irritation, she was often just lonely enough to engage them in conversation when they made an effort. She would say that initially her thigh had been broken and in traction, but it had healed nicely in the hospital. Some people wanted more information and probed further, but when she’d tell them the truth—the doctors weren’t yet sure what was wrong with her—their expressions changed. They grew serious, crossed their arms. When she’d tell them that she was hit by a car, they’d step back, away from her.

“Here, on this street? In this neighborhood?” one man said. He was very thin and old, with skinny cheeks that jiggled when he turned his head. He wore a light blue polyester suit and dirty white shoes. His wife, also in blue polyester, was even thinner than he was—her face was a gaunt mask covered with light powder.

“Oh, my,” the wife said, clicking open her purse, then clicking it closed for no apparent reason. “What sort of crazy drivers live here?” she asked her realtor, who glared at Hannah.

“Were you playing in the street, honey?” the realtor asked.

“No,” she answered.

“I heard she was playing in the street,” the realtor said to the couple, talking out of the side of her mouth.

“That’s a lie,” Hannah said.

The realtor laughed nervously. She clutched her blouse at the neck and shook her head. “Honey . . .” she said, an admonition.

“We don’t have sidewalks. There’s nowhere to go. I had nowhere to walk,” Hannah said.

“Bye-bye, dear,” the realtor said then, steering her clients away.

HANNAH SPENT
time on her back, or sitting up with her leg outstretched and resting on a pillow on the coffee table, watching television or reading books. She read whatever she could get her hands on: her mother’s magazines, the dentistry textbooks her father left behind. She discovered
The 1970s Woman,
who worked out of the house and wanted everything: a man, babies, a career, a gray suit, a reliable watch, the perfect stroller, and silky lingerie. And she read about teeth, looked at the pictures of molars and bicuspids and cavities.

Limited mobility kept Hannah inside her head, inside her room, and mostly inside the house. And that first summer, things were breaking inside that house: Screens were coming unhinged; the sliding glass door didn’t slide anymore; the dining room table tipped to one side, needing a shim; mothers and toasters and air conditioners were falling apart. The television was stuck on one channel, so Hannah watched the news. She was especially interested in stories about natural disasters, the earth cracking open like the biggest mouth and swallowing thousands of people, a massive wave erasing a coastal city in Thailand, a hurricane spinning villages into scraps and dust. How insignificant a house became, how little protection it offered, what pitiful shelter.

She followed the news story about the park ranger Roy “Dooms” Sullivan, who’d been struck by lightning seven times—the first strike shooting through his leg and ripping off his big toenail. Another bolt zipped through his hat and set his hair on fire, and the last one scorched his belly and chest.

She used the wooden crutches to get herself from room to room, never knowing what mood she’d find her mother in. Her mother was many mothers that summer. Now that Hannah’s father was gone and Nina couldn’t fight with him, she fought with herself. She’d say something one day and the very next day she’d contradict it.

She was angry and impatient, unreasonable, and quick to shout.

She was sweet and sorry, and overly attentive, painting Hannah’s nails pink and braiding her hair.

She was in her robe and slippers all day, her lips pale and bloodless.

She was dressed up in clothes too young for her, hot pants and miniskirts, low-cut blouses and tight T-shirts.

She had black hair that was shiny and full or it was dull and matted to her head.

She wore lip gloss that smelled like bubblegum.

She was awake all night, walking the halls or sipping warm milk from a coffee cup in the dark kitchen.