Chapter 4 Sandhill Crane #2
her little boys, and everyone started to laugh at her and make kissy noises.
When we ended the conversation, I was exhausted.
It was another one of those situations you think happen only in novels, but here I was in real life, panting and sweating as if I’d run a 10K with a hangover.
My T-shirt was soaked through. My cheeks felt as though the skin was scalded.
I wanted to tell Nell that it really wasn’t worth it.
I wanted to run back into the sweet embrace of comparing the merits of scarves cut from silk satin, charmeuse, twill and georgette, or the occasional polyester blend—strictly utilitarian for travel.
If this was what big-league pitchers of writing routinely experienced, I was meant for right field.
Still, I kept trying all the keys I could think of to open the door of Felicity’s life after college. Unusual for people of
our generation, she didn’t have much of a social media presence, except for her own beautiful photos of birds that she sometimes
posted on Instagram. I didn’t do much in that realm either. Ivy insisted on videos about how to tie a scarf like Mary Berry.
I gave Marcus the props, but an intern did the actual tapings. Looping an elaborate scarf knot was for me akin to whipping
up a Salzburger soufflé—forget about it. Yet one more way I was ill-suited to my job.
Maybe Nell was right about everything. Maybe this story was just an exercise in voyeurism for well-heeled women readers with
secret fantasies about the power to parlay a honeypot into a pot of gold.
If I were Felicity, would I talk to me?
In the true crime podcasts my dorm buddies and I listened to at midnight—Columbia, Missouri, being no more a glitter kingdom
of urban nightlife than Sheboygan had been—there were always stories beneath the stories. Women make up most of the audience
for true crime podcasts and books, maybe because they have more to fear. My interest wasn’t so much in what people did as
who they were. In my internship days, I went for what I thought of as the “beforemath,” as opposed to the “aftermath.”
I thought I knew all about Felicity’s beforemath, but clearly I did not. Her secrets, and the real story, would be in that beforemath. Even if Felicity was incontrovertibly guilty, there would be a story for me to write—the story of her broken life and my broken heart.
Later that day, for the third time in twenty-four hours, I set out on the same long drive.
For once, I didn’t listen to a book.
Instead, I opened the book of the past.
When we were kids, even the stoners and stumblers and art hags and assholes adored Felicity, because she was as noticing and
kind to them as she was to the alphas. Was she concealing her meretricious character, handing out smiles, favors, advice,
homework help like flowers from a basket? Why would she bother? Life for her would have been easy enough in any case. She
hardly needed all that extra goodwill.
So, the corollary question was why Felicity, with so many gifts, didn’t have one truly intimate friend? I had other friends,
among them girls like bold Chassy Reingold, sweet Cassandra Sullivan, and the gorgeous and ultimately loathsome bitch Molly
Boone, who were, if not first-tier females, then definite contenders. Felicity did not. Anointed by proximity, I was what
passed for a boon companion. It gave me status. It gave me pause.
Not so very long ago, Felicity and I did things like going ice skating on the pond in Bachelor’s Woods in the soul-shriveling
cold of a purple evening in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, bratwurst capital of the world. One summer day, sweating, swearing, crawling
on my stomach over sharp grass quivering with black flies, I helped Felicity drag her camera equipment as we edged closer
to the water at Horicon Marsh so she could photograph a majestic sandhill crane and her awkward brown chicks for her senior
project in biology and art. I did her updo for the prom. I ate meatloaf at her house, and she ate macaroni-and-cheese casserole
at mine. She taught me how to swing dance.
She would never tell a lie, not even the small social kind that could be banished by the five-year test (which is, will this even matter in five years?).
One morning in our junior year, just before the organic chem midterm, she gave Marty Mazzoli her meticulous notes. A good
student, Marty was on the verge of failing, mostly because he had to work weeknights unloading trucks since his dad was not
only a deadbeat but a mean drunk.
When Mr. Styles caught her out, Felicity immediately confessed. Styles was so moved by her charity and honesty that he allowed
Marty to do a project to replace the final in the knowledge that Felicity would tutor him through it. They started on a Sunday
afternoon. It took them all night. Next morning, when I met Marty coming out of the Wilds’ mansion-house “rectory,” I heard
him say, “That was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.” And he went in to kiss Felicity on the cheek, but she stiff-armed
him, patting his shoulder. Marty was embarrassed; he was a cute guy and probably unaccustomed to girls resisting his moves,
especially moves as mild and sweet as this one was.
He said, “I didn’t mean . . .”
And Felicity replied, “I know. It’s okay. I didn’t either.”
Something about that moment framed it as the first time I ever witnessed anything that made me wonder if Felicity liked boys
at all. But it was far from the first time I witnessed Felicity in benefactor mode.
Another occasion had always stayed with me, possibly because of the appalling viciousness of most high school girls.
It was at the homecoming dance, where every other girl affected nonchalance in Stella McCartney knockoff slip-sheaths, but Felicity rocked a voluminous tulle princess dress, petal pink, like a birthday cake in the shape of a doll.
She wore long black gloves and a cameo on a black ribbon at her throat, all things she’d found at little resale shops in rich burbs like Kohler and Mequon.
About an hour after she was crowned the queen, I saw her throw on a long black opera cape, clearly another thrift-shop find.
I called to her, “Felicity! Where are you off to?” Some too-sweet party, I thought, with college kids.
“Home,” she said.
“It’s nine thirty!” I pointed out. “You’re the homecoming queen!”
“My work here is done,” she said, twirling that cape in a sort of jokey-regal way, then cutting her eyes at her date, soccer
jock Ben Landry. Ben was dancing with Laura Dell-Mason, who’d been in love with him since sixth grade. A bright, kind girl,
she was pretty but so painfully shy that no one really noticed her—except, unfortunately, to call her Laura Dalmatian.
On the day Felicity got nabbed for helping Marty Mazzoli, we stopped for coffee on the way home from school. It was stupidly
cold, and I again thanked the universe for my coat and my grandmother. I would have that coat all my life. Suddenly, Felicity
said, “Reenie, you look like Freya. You look like Freya, if she had freckles.”
“Who’s that?”
“The Norse goddess of the dead. She was beautiful, with this snow-white skin and a coat made from hawk feathers, driving her
chariot pulled by cats.”
“Must have been a lot of cats,” I said.
“She would lend her magic coat to other gods to protect them in battle. She was really kind, but still, she was the goddess
of the dead. So if you had a dream about her, it would be, uh-oh, somebody’s done for.”
“Somebody’s done for,” Felicity had said. She’d said that more than once.
It was she who was the fair one, draping her magical coat over those in need—but still the goddess of the dead.