Chapter 18 Natalie
Natalie
The Thursday following the regatta, Natalie fed the kids and the dogs, cleaned up the kitchen, and went into her room to get
ready for work.
The TV in the basement was so loud that she could hear the frenetic music of a Looney Tunes cartoon right through the floor,
but she decided to cut the older kids some slack.
Sailing classes wouldn’t start again until next Monday. However, after receiving a call from the yacht club yesterday, she’d
learned that the kids of working parents could attend a free arts and crafts class after today’s swim team practice.
That means your kids. You’re now a working parent.
Even though J.J. and Jill made it clear that they had no interest in making God’s eyes out of yarn, the thought that they
qualified for a special class made Natalie’s chest expand with pride. That is, until a competing thought wriggled to the forefront
of her mind.
You’ll be lucky to last the summer. Sid gave you an impossible property because he wants you to fail. And after that disastrous
open house? You will.
“No,” she said out loud, her lips narrowing as she picked at a speck of hardened toothpaste in the sink. “I just need to find the right buyer.”
In the bathroom, she teased and sprayed her hair until she looked like Michelle Marsh, an evening news anchor. Not only did
she and Michelle share an alma mater, but Natalie liked the other woman’s voice and how she styled her hair. She often copied
her makeup and was inspired by the bold colors of her blazers.
Natalie was just about to apply her lipstick when someone knocked on her bedroom door.
“Come in!”
Jill appeared in the bathroom doorway. She was still in her nightgown even though she should have been getting ready for swim
practice.
“Why aren’t you in your suit?”
Jill cradled her right hand as if it might fall off without support. Natalie had seen a Band-Aid on her daughter’s palm after
she’d worked at Mrs. Smith’s, but she hadn’t asked Jill what happened. Her kids always had minor cuts and bruises, insect
bites, and splinters. They were a natural part of any good childhood. Her children were given the freedom to learn things
for themselves. To solve their own problems and deal with their own challenges. Because of that, they’d be ready for the real
world. If Jill cut her hand, she knew how to clean it and bandage it. Natalie was raising independent, capable children.
Children like Charles, coddled until they were practically adults, wouldn’t be able to handle themselves in a fast-paced,
competitive world. After the regatta, Elaine and Benjamin should’ve encouraged their son to go out, to be around other kids.
Instead, Elaine would probably put him under glass until his bar mitzvah.
Natalie’s sympathy for the boy was waning with every passing day. Had he really seen something horrible or was he just using the tragedy to avoid sailing class?
Elaine’s decision to let him stay home, watching movies and playing video games while she plied him with his favorite foods,
was a horrible idea.
“She’s raising a mouse instead of a man,” Jimmy had said last night. “J.J. and Charles are eleven months apart, but you’d
think it was five years.”
This morning, over breakfast, Natalie had taken a long look at her eldest son. He seemed even taller than he had at the end
of the school year. Sunlight and chlorine had turned his hair platinum, and his torso was tanned and muscular. He’d been upset
by the disappearance of the two boys, but he was starting to come around. He ate heartily and chugged two glasses of orange
juice. Then he belched near Jill’s ear, hoping to elicit a response.
He didn’t get one.
Jill didn’t even move. She wore the vacant look of a lobotomy patient as she pushed cold scrambled eggs around her plate.
Nothing a little fresh air, exercise, and time with her peers can’t cure. She needs to learn how to push through.
Jill and J.J. had spent the last two days clearing debris from Mrs. Smith’s garden. There were so many trash bags at the curb
that Natalie wondered if any plants were left behind that tall, rusted iron fence. Not that she cared. Her kids were doing
the neighborhood a favor by attacking the chaos that was Mrs. Smith’s backyard, and they were being paid handsomely for their
efforts.
They never saw Mrs. Smith, but at some point during the night, she’d placed two envelopes of cash in the Scotts’ mailbox.
Natalie hadn’t asked her kids how much they’d earned, but she had a feeling it was more than Mrs. Smith originally promised.
The kids were scheduled to work for another three hours that afternoon, and Natalie hoped Jill wasn’t going to try to worm
her way out of her commitment.
“Why are you holding your hand like that?” she asked her daughter.
“I cut it at Mrs. Smith’s. There was this—I don’t know—thorn? Scale? It was sharp. I washed my hand when I got home, but it
really hurts.”
Natalie beckoned for Jill to join her at the sink. “Lemme see.”
Of all her children, Jill had the highest pain tolerance. Considering she was also the most accident-prone, that was a good
thing. To hear her say that a cut on her palm really hurt was out of character.
Jill peeled off the Band-Aid. Then she moved her hand closer to Natalie’s and slowly uncurled her fingers.
The smell hit Natalie like a slap in the face.
Her daughter’s hand smelled like their bait bucket. Briny and rotten.
Recoiling, she gestured for Jill to toss the Band-Aid in the trash can under the sink. Then she studied her daughter’s wound.
The skin in the center of her palm was puckered. The red-purple lines surrounding a dark purple circle looked like an almond.
Or an eye.
Natalie gently pressed on the skin. “Looks infected.”
Jill let out a hiss and snatched her hand away.
The reaction took Natalie by surprise. “Did you use iodine? You didn’t, did you? I can tell.”
“Just soap.”
Natalie shrugged. “There you go. You know you have to clean cuts with iodine.”
“But it stings!”
“That’s why you blow on it. Soap isn’t enough. You’ll have to soak your hand in a bowl for a few minutes and then use the
iodine. Show Una. She’ll know what to do.”
Natalie turned back to the mirror and applied her lipstick. Next, she dabbed perfume on her wrists and behind her ears. She
could sense Jill watching her. Her daughter had more to say.
Annoyed by the weighty silence, Natalie said, “What is it? I need to go.”
“Should I go to swim practice after I soak my hand?”
Natalie’s eyes moved over Jill’s body. “Of course you should. It won’t make your hand worse. If anything, it’ll help.”
“What about Mrs. Smith’s?”
Natalie’s patience ran out. She shook her hairbrush at her daughter. “You have a commitment. In this family, if we say we’re
going to do something, we do it.”
For once, Jill didn’t talk back.
Natalie descended the spiral staircase, her heels clack clacking with every step. In the TV room, she kissed Justin’s cherubic
cheek and shooed Lady off the sofa.
“Don’t be late for practice!” she yelled at J.J. through his closed door. She heard him singing “Fernando” and smiled to herself.
J.J. had gotten hooked on ABBA last summer and played their Greatest Hits all the time.
Natalie remembered when music had been a huge part of her life. Back when she was single, living in a shoebox of an apartment
in the Village, she’d been surrounded by music. And so much more. There’d been art and restaurants and such interesting people.
She and her girlfriends spent their weekends in smoky clubs.
She’d heard the Doors, the Byrds, Cream, the Yardbirds, and the Band.
She’d rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol and had drinks with Franz Kline and Roy Lichtenstein.
A dozen photographers had asked her to model for them.
Other artists wanted her to be their muse.
But Natalie’s ambitions had nothing to do with art.
She was going to be a successful scientist.
She’d been on the right path, too. She’d graduated with a double-major in bio and chem and was hired as a lab assistant for
a drug company in Brooklyn. She was the only woman working with a group of scientists studying genetic change and protein
expression. Her job was to run experiments to help isolate and analyze DNA, RNA, and proteins. She was fascinated by the work
and never tired of staring at bacteria through her microscope. One day, she hoped to be known as the woman who helped eradicate
E. coli.
Back then, she still dreamed big.
But after her kind, encouraging boss had a fatal heart attack on the golf course, everything changed. His replacement, the
son of the company’s CEO, didn’t see Natalie as an integral member of the team. He saw her as a conquest.
Ken Hoffman.
“Nope,” Natalie muttered as she slid into the driver’s seat of the station wagon. “I’m not letting you in. Not today.”
It had been years since the man had invaded her thoughts. She’d pushed that asshole’s smug face into the far recesses of her
mind. This was how she protected herself from the memory of what he’d done. How he’d ruined her career and made her a pariah
in the scientific community. No one would hire her after the disaster. No one would have believed her if she’d told what really
happened the night of the fire.
Ken Hoffman had threatened to punish her if she didn’t give him what he wanted. When she refused, he’d made good on his threat.
He’d destroyed one of his own labs and blamed her for the loss of expensive equipment and valuable research.
All because she’d fought him when he tried to rape her.
He’d made a pass at her before, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested.
“Playing hard to get, eh? That’s fine with me, babe. I like a challenge.”
He got tired of chasing her very quickly, and one afternoon, after the staff meeting was over, he told her that he needed
to speak with her in private. And then he shoved her face against the conference table.