Look Good and Feel Better
Look Good
and Feel Better
Oh my God, it’s her, Diane said.
Holy shit, it’s you, Dane thought, flung backward in time to a cold March night when his doorbell rang and he opened it to a broken, weary traveler from the past. Now, exactly as then, time slowed down as a dozen thoughts battled their way to a decision.
First the prism of abandonment dropped on top of the situation and refracted it into beams colored the red of you can’t have him, the orange of get out and the green of he’s mine.
Diane had her kitchen knife in hand, hackles up and teeth bared, reaffirming her vow to go to war for the peace of the Danelaw.
Dane gathered everything he had ever learned from everyone he had ever met.
He called on his strength, dug deep for his grace, and breathed through the irrational, frightened moment.
He let every color have a say, then he moved the prism and let the colors meld back into a simple truth: Here was someone in distress, the victim of an emotional shipwreck, coming to the haven of Schoenfeld’s.
Here was a grieving mother at rock bottom.
A woman who undoubtedly knew actions had consequences, and by a combination of bad choices and bad luck, she’d lost everything.
One ghost and one loose end, he reminded himself. Two hares with space for a third. At any given time, one more comes in and for a little while, we run the other way. Not the wrong way, but the most compassionate way.
Janelle was here. She had come running here. Looking for refuge in the one person she knew would answer her cry for help. In context.
She had sunk onto the porch steps and Liko crouched beside her, his hand moving her tangled hair off her flushed face. Dane came out and crouched down too.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m Dane.”
She looked at him, then put her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Dane said. “No, it’s good you came. A lot of people are worried about you. Come inside where it’s cool.” He stood and reached firm hands down to take hers, draw her to her feet.
“Come on,” he said. “Come in the kitchen. Let’s get you a drink.”
Janelle sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water while Liko, pale but calm, made some phone calls. Dane sat kitty-corner and peeled an orange. It seemed a pathetic, inadequate offering. What this woman needed was sustenance.
Dane stared at the coiling peels, remembering this kitchen on a long-ago night, when Nomi should have been sitting in the chair Janelle now occupied, but never would again.
Maisie and Huff set plates before Dane, Ethan, and Saskia. On each was a single baked potato, skin split to reveal fluffed insides and a pool of melted butter. A constellation of coarse salt and ground pepper.
If Dane had been at all amenable to the thought of food, a baked potato would be the last thing on his mind. He stared at the random, almost absurd snack, then picked up his fork and took a bite.
Butter, salt and peasant sustenance filled his mouth. His stomach closed gentle hands around the simple food, sighed, and wondered if there were more.
“This is perfect,” Saskia said.
“Just what I wanted,” Dane said.
“What I didn’t know I wanted,” Ethan said.
They ate the potatoes, eyes closed and little whimpers beneath their hearts. When Maisie said, “Eat the skin, it’s good for you,” they ate the skin, obedient as children, and licked trails of butter off the sides of their hands.
“Want another?” Maisie said casually.
They held up plates like three Oliver Twists. “Yes, please.”
Diane, in spite of herself, put her blade down and looked closer at Janelle. Took in the wrinkled clothes. The dry tangle of her hair. The pale, lined face ravaged by unfathomable grief and the consequences of actions.
My man, Diane said. My man, this is a lot.
She needs help, Dane thought.
She needs armor.
Dane put his hand on Janelle’s. Jiggled it to get her attention. “Hey,” he said softly. “I’ve got the mother of all bathrooms. A hot shower or a cold washcloth will make you feel better. Want to look?”
She stared back at him a bewildered moment and Dane feared the offer was a mistake. Then she nodded.
“I’m going to help her wash her face,” Dane said to Liko, who nodded and mouthed, Thank you.
Holding hands, Dane led Janelle upstairs.
He put out clean towels and his spare terrycloth robe.
“My wife’s old stuff is under the sink,” he said.
“Body wash, sugar scrub, lotion, the works. Use whatever you want. I don’t want you to lock the door, all right?
I’m going to sit out there on the bed. I won’t come in, but if you’re not out in ten minutes, I’ll have Liko check on you. Is that fair?”
She nodded. Dane put down the bathmat and showed her how to work the various shower heads. “I’ll be right out there,” he said again.
It was a short shower though it felt like days, during which Dane chewed his nails and prayed Janelle found nothing under the sink to slit her wrists. The water turned off and after five minutes, Dane knocked politely.
“How you doing?”
Janelle opened the door, swathed in the robe with a towel turban on her head. Her eyes looked a little more lucid. “Better,” she said. “You’re so kind. Liko said you were such a great guy and this place was healing and I’m sorry I…” She was crying again. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Shh,” Dane said. “You’re safe here.”
Confident now, sensing she trusted him, Dane got a comb. He had Janelle sit on the edge of the tub and got the snarls out of her hair, parting it on the side and combing it sleek and smooth behind her ears.
“Want me to put some makeup on you?” he asked.
“You?”
“Me.” Dane took out his phone and scrolled through his pictures until he found the ones he took back in May, wearing Nomi’s lingerie top and the Dusk Tiara.
“I learned from the best,” he said. “My daughter was the only girl in her class whose father did her makeup for prom. Her friends used to book me solid.”
Janelle looked at the phone, at Dane, then back at the phone. Just the way Liko had, down by the pool. She inhaled deep and let it out slow, a bit of curiosity in her face as she said, “Okay.”
He lit some candles, put some music on his phone, and had Janelle sit on the counter so he could work standing. He did a beautiful, subtle job. No dramatic smoky eyes or winged liner or plumped lips. Just a thin layer of armor. A self in pieces pulled together.
“You’re so much stronger than you know,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I fucked up my life.”
“We all make bad decisions, but we all deserve a second chance.” In the mirror, Dane saw Liko in the door. “Hey, you.”
Liko said nothing. He sat on the floor, his back against the tub, arms around knees, and watched Dane work.
“You deserve a chance,” Dane said. “A second chance, a third chance, a seven hundredth chance. As many as it takes until you find peace. You deserve peace. You deserve to look good and feel better. And you will. You’re so much stronger than you know.”
When he was done, and before Janelle turned to look at her reflection, Dane got the Dusk Tiara and set it on her head.
Liko drove Janelle in her car, and Dane followed them back to Norwalk to keep the peace.
He helped and aided and precipitated as Janelle’s sister and girlfriends took her in hand.
He drove past Liko’s house, because Liko wanted to show him where Kyle lived, once upon a more peaceful time.
He drove to the cemetery, because Liko wanted to show him where Kyle rested in peace.
He drove them back to Birch Island. No music or radio, just peaceful silence.
Liko cried a little, his face in his hands, his head against the window.
Then he put the seat back and fell asleep, his fingers twined with Dane’s on the console.
Dane held their hands to his mouth and gave a bittersweet sigh.
The car felt full of love and grief. Divinely shotgunned with ghosts and loose ends.
His eyes kept glancing to the rearview mirror to check the backseat.
He sensed Ethan and Nomi dozing in the middle row, holding hands.
Janelle and Kyle in the back—the mother sleeping fretfully and the son plugged into his music.
Up ahead, the towers of the Tappan Zee Bridge pierced the sky like the masts of a mighty ship.
“And then,” Dane whispered against Liko’s fingers. “And then. And then. Until finally. And then…”