THE BEACH IS deserted. The reeds are dancing to the sound of the northwesterly wind. The sand makes little whirls on the dunes. It’s not too cold, even though it’s the end of November. A man is standing on the shore, hypnotized by the sea. I can’t see his face. I don’t need to see his face. His hair is disheveled and frizzy from the salt breeze. He’s barefoot, with khaki pants rolled up a few times. The waves break with a wild beauty. The receding surf traces furrows around the soles of his feet. I come over slowly, as if I want to surprise him or am worried I’ll frighten him. I’m naked, except for a baggy turtleneck sweater that hangs almost to my knees. I think I just made love to the man, and the sweater is his. The neighing of wild horses. A seagull suspended in the air. Peace is what I feel. Love for the man. That’s why I don’t want to scare him away. I reach him. I have a snitch hidden in my hand. I look for a place to hide it without his realizing.
OLIVIA: Mommy . . .
ME (whispering): Shhh . . . be quiet . . .
In the back pocket of his pants. I can slip it in there if I’m careful. That’s a good place.
OLIVIA: Mommy . . .
ME (whispering): Not now, Olivia, go . . .
I manage to slip it in. I take my hand out very slowly, and just when I’m going to take a step back, Chris, because the man is Chris, turns brusquely and grabs my arm forcefully.
Olivia screamed when she saw me sit up so suddenly. She had taken hold of my arm, not tightly, but in my dream it felt like a lion’s claw. Ruby woke up, and Pony crawled under the bed. Both were whining.
“What is it, Oli? You scared me . . .” I said while I calmed Ruby down.
“Why did you tell me to leave?”
“What? Huh? I was dreaming, Oli. What’s going on? Why are you awake, honey?”
“I had the ugly nightmare again.”
Olivia’s ugly nightmare was worryingly similar to my own. She was up on her father’s shoulders. They were running, jumping, playing, laughing. Giddyup, horsey! Olivia shouted. Faster, faster, until they took off, galloping up into the sky. Higher, higher, until they reached the clouds. And when they crossed through them, her father disappeared. Olivia could walk on the clouds, which she liked a lot, but she was sad because her father wasn’t there, and she got scared, and she cried, asking for him, and she was afraid because the world was very far away and it looked very small down there, and suddenly she stepped in a puddle—actually she had peed—that turned into a hole and she fell into it. And just before she smashed against the ground, she woke up, soaked in urine, crying and frightened.
Obviously, I hadn’t told her about my dream. The similarity between our dreams was startling—and slightly gratifying. Two nightmares from the same fear.
“Come on, get in bed with me and Ruby, honey.”
“No, Shesnotapony’s here.”
“Believe me, with you in the bed, she’s not coming out.”
Pony had learned to stay a few feet away from Olivia. Pony had imposed a restraining order on herself, for her own good.
“I don’t trust her; let’s go to mine.”
“Oli, yours is way smaller and it’s got pee in it.”
Olivia accepted grudgingly. She got in bed and rolled over all the way around, then repeated the same thing in the opposite direction.
“Oli, what are you doing?”
“Well, scare off mine while you’re at it.”
“No, you have to scare your own off. Do it, turn.”
As if we had changed roles and I was the little girl who was frightened and needed to believe her mother, I did what she said. I rolled all the way around once.
“Now the other side. If not, it doesn’t work.”
I turned in the opposite direction.
“There you go. Nice job. Good night, Mommy.”
“Good night, honey.”
It worked. We slept all night, our arms around each other. The three of us, in the fetal position, cuddling like little Matryoshka dolls. The warriors deserved rest.
The next day, I got my first letter in the mailbox. It was a wedding invitation. Alex and Amanda’s wedding, the two people from the proposal during the Labor Day picnic that gave me the anxiety attack.
I called to confirm our attendance after making a decision: I would buy more snitches. Lots more. At Night Eyes, of course. Where I also acquired, as if to divert attention from my excesses, a telephonic voice changer I saw in the display case next to a sign that said: “Professional Voice Changer. 14 different tones! Easy to use! Was $399, now $299.” The usual impulsive purchase that I had no concrete plan for at the time.
I laid out all the listening devices on my desk, an enormous lacquered blue table—better suited to a dining room than anything else—of old pine. A vestige that hadn’t made the cut when the previous owners moved out, it had become my center of operations. Olivia caught me slipping the SIM cards into the devices.
“Mommy, what are you doing? What is that stuff?”
Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that I was starting to hold on to too many things nobody should see, especially my daughter. Until then, it was all just boring facts that would pass unnoticed before a child’s eyes: names, detailed family relations, addresses, jobs, photos of houses, places. List of suspects and questions. Telephone numbers, Post-its, notebooks. For Olivia, the attic was the place where Mommy did her boring things, except for the map painted on the wall, where I would occasionally let her add seagulls, a sailboat, a sun, a moon. But it couldn’t go on like that. I had to make it clear that this was Mommy’s place, that she couldn’t come in without permission. No, that she couldn’t come in, period.
“What are those little boxes?”
“Those boxes are to scare off raccoons like you.”
“I’m not a raccoon.”
“Oh no? We’ll find out right now.” I picked up a snitch. “Puchi Puchi . . . I invoke the spirit of Puchi Puchi . . . Oh, Puchi Puchi, up in heaven, tell me if Olivia is a Puchi Puchi like you. Puchi Puchi. Puchi Puchi,” I chanted while I slowly approached Olivia, who was hypnotized, believing everything. “Attention: Puchi Puchi is going to make an announcement. Puchi Puchi tells me that Olivia is . . .” Dramatic pause. “A raccoon!”
“Noooooo!” she screamed, running off in terror and laughing.
“Out of here, raccoon! Out of here!”
I grabbed a board and painted the following.
An homage to Grizzel Haven. The place where Mommy does her things. A little private parcel necessary to find a little peace in a house governed by the needs of the little ones. Something that didn’t look suspicious, and that any adult would understand, respect and applaud.
But it still needed something else. I went to Dan’s True Value, Dan DeRoller Sr.’s hardware store.
“Hey, Alice. How can I help you?”
I thought about going on a tangent and asking for a bunch of things before what I really needed, but what I needed was so simple, there was no point in preambles or distractions.
“I need a padlock.”
“What kind of padlock?”
“To put on a door.”
“And what’s behind that door?”
“Something that a small, simple padlock can take care of.”
“OK, so we’re not talking about the Declaration of Independence.”
“Well, a little, yeah. It’s my own declaration of independence.”
“Oh, now I get you. I have just what you need.”
He took out a medium-sized lock. Normal, the kind you can get anywhere. But with one particularity, at least for me. The key to the lock was exactly like the Master Key. Same brand, same type of key. Standard-sized and a popular brand, but it made me certain that Chris had bought it there. That didn’t solve anything, just confirmed what I knew before. The big difference now was that I was convinced, with utter clarity, that I would eventually end up finding the lock that the Master Key would open.