Bridget’s nanny family had a darling chubby-cheeked one-year-old girl, Vanessa, and a precocious three-year-old boy, Tyler, who asked me “Why?” all night but more or less listened to me. But Tyler was toilet training and managed to have two accidents over the four hours he was awake, and I was relieved when he finally fell asleep. It was nice to have a quiet hour to myself in a big house in an unfamiliar part of the city. But as I scrubbed Tyler’s playclothes, I knew that nannying wasn’t going to be for me. When Vanessa cried, I felt the same frustration I did with the animals of Kandiyohi County—I wish you could tell me what you need. And I didn’t dare use magic to find out.
When Mr. Johnson laid a crisp ten-dollar bill in my hand at the end of the night, all I could think about was what Nick would be up to then. I wanted more of his rapt attention and the thrill of knowing that he had no idea who I was, who I had been before. I wanted to pretend I was a girl with a whole heart to give away as she pleased.
But when I pushed through the door of the bar, Nick wasn’t behind the bar. My heart skipped a beat. Stupid, I chided myself. What was I expecting anyway?
I had started to turn to go, wondering how long I’d be safe from Magda at St. Kate’s or if I dared used another charm to break curfew, when I heard his voice over my shoulder.
“You’re back, huh? I must have made quite the impression.”
There he was, muscles straining under the weight as he hauled a new keg up from the cellar.
I tossed my head back easily, instantly buoyed with a confidence that I barely recognized.
“I’m just thirsty is all. Nothing to do with you.”
I strode forward and clambered awkwardly onto a barstool directly in front of Nick. I dropped my bag on the ground, which was sticky with sawdust and peanut shells. He grinned as he slid the keg into its proper place and tapped it smoothly.
“Well, all right then,” he said, straightening up. “What’ll it be, Elisabeth?”
He drew out the syllables of my name like he was savoring them, and I melted all over again. I was suddenly very sure of my decision.
I pouted and tapped the Cupid’s bow of my top lip in mock concentration. Seven-and-seven, I almost said, but remembering the whiskey burn, I felt the spirit move me otherwise.
“What do you recommend?” I said with a smile.
He contemplated me for a moment. “Gin fizz,” he said seriously.
I didn’t know anything about it, but it seemed grown-up and ladylike to me. I nodded.
Nick smiled and reached for a bottle. “Coming right up,” he said.
I didn’t know what would come next, but I knew that I wanted it. I felt both completely in control of my actions and simultaneously like I was floating above my body watching the scene. John flashed through my mind briefly, but I pushed him away. I knew I was being careless, the kind of woman I teased Annie about lest she become one, but I didn’t care. I needed to be anything except what I had been in my grandmother’s house.
Nick was a musician. As the last of the Sunday evening regulars filtered out into the June night, he leaned across the bar and told me he played guitar in a band called Hiawatha Man, named for the fictional peacemaker of the Longfellow epic. They played on Saturday nights in Uptown. I smiled and nodded when he went on about music being like a physical part of him, as essential as his heart or liver. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I pretended I did because I wanted him to keep talking. It was easier than talking about myself. I could pretend we were falling in love for real if he kept talking.
As Nick spoke about the rhythm of a hot bass line and slide picks and developing his voice while growing up in Red Wing, Minnesota, I pictured myself standing in front of the stage while he played. I would wear flowing peasant sleeves like Joan Baez and wear my hair longer than it already was, and Nick would write songs about being tamed by his one true love, the wild woman whose heart matched his own. All the other girls would sway their hips to the music, and they would be so damn jealous when they realized Nick was singing about me. At the end of the night, we would go home together and crash up the stairs in one of those turn-of-the-century Minneapolis houses, barely making it to the bedroom before tearing off each other’s clothes, and then … and then what? I caught myself thinking.
The last of the neighborhood crew said goodnight to Nick, their good buddy and ever-present sympathetic ear. He grinned at me, and I pictured his arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me effortlessly into the air like one of those kegs.
He met my eye. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asked. That dimple in his right cheek emphasized his devilish grin.
It was better than risking breaking curfew again at St. Kate’s or drawing Magda’s attention with another charm.
Nick reached around me to pull the front door closed—and locked it, I noted. We were in the kind of neighborhood where people locked their doors. Nobody did that in Friedrich. His home was not the charming little house I pictured.
Nick rented a room in the back of a house where I saw evidence of at least three other roommates. He led me through the kitchen to his first-floor bedroom tacked onto the back of the house. It should’ve been a laundry room at best, but sure enough, there was barely enough room for someone to walk around the perimeter of a full-size mattress on the floor. That mattress had never seen clean sheets, but I was thankful in that moment that at least it had sheets.
Reality broke through as I took in the room. Nick watched me from a respectful distance as I eyed the strangely neat row of guitars that lined one wall. A broken closet door hung open, revealing a mountain of dirty laundry. The room smelled faintly musky, like a man, like sweat and whiskey and cigarettes.
What am I doing here? I felt suddenly very sober, but I didn’t want to leave. I was nervous and excited and scared all at the same time—and somehow calm about it all.
“So this is my place. What do you think?” Nick said softly, standing within arm’s reach.
I leaned toward him, testing the touch of my hand on his chest. I chose this, I told myself. I want this.
“It’s nice,” I said in a low voice, trying to play the part. “I like your guitars.”
Nick took my face in both hands and kissed me long and slow, more gently than I was expecting. I slipped my arms around his waist. A thrill went through me when I felt his flat, hard stomach beneath his shirt.
As I relaxed into the kiss, Nick’s hands migrated. He twisted my braid, gathering my hair around his fist, and pulled my head back softly but firmly so that my lips couldn’t reach his. I tugged against his grip, my mouth opening and closing softly as I was stuck, wanting him. He held me like that, immobile, and I opened my eyes to see him smiling down at me, enjoying my struggle.
“You like me, don’t you?” he teased.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” Nick said. He kissed me hard as we tumbled to the mattress together.
In the back of my mind, I realized that Dorothy hadn’t made herself known for a while. I was embarrassed to think she might be watching me, embarrassed of what she’d think. But … she has no problem telling me what she thinks. She would have steered me away if she thought I belonged somewhere else, I reassured myself.
I was surprised when Nick didn’t immediately undress me. My hands went to the hem of his shirt—I thought that’s what I was supposed to do—and he automatically lifted his arms as I pulled his shirt over his head. Nick’s bare skin was beautiful, taut over lean muscles, and unblemished save for a crooked scar that snaked from his clavicle down the side of his heart. I couldn’t resist tracing it with a finger.
“I caught a branch helping my dad remove a tree after a storm when I was thirteen,” Nick offered.
His face fell in the ambient light through the uncurtained windows.
Before I could ask—Did I do something wrong?—Nick blurted out, “What do you think happens when we die? Like, after? What happens to us?”
“That’s a big question,” I said slowly, surprised.
I felt self-conscious of my hands hovering above his chest. I could feel the warmth off his skin.
“Come here,” Nick said, tugging me toward him. He turned me over in his arms, pressing my back to his bare chest. Nick nuzzled his chin into that soft spot between my ear and neck. I complied, confused at the turn of events.
“I’ve been thinking about it lately,” Nick said with a sigh, his breath warm behind my ear. “My dad died last month, and it takes me by surprise sometimes. Like it’s such a trip to be here with a beautiful girl and breathing and thinking and my dad isn’t here anymore. He’s just gone. Poof, he doesn’t exist anymore. Gone from earth.” Nick’s voice trembled as his words came out faster.
I shivered as he absently ran a hand across the softness of my belly where my shirt had inched away from my jeans. Nick whispered into my hair, like he was talking to himself, entranced as he traced shapes on my exposed skin, and I was flooded with tenderness for him.
I didn’t know what to say but tried to make soothing noises. I started to think maybe we wouldn’t do it after all and was vaguely relieved. I felt painfully awkward. Does he like me, or does he need a sympathetic ear? What did I think was going to happen anyway?
As Nick rambled on, I realized how vulnerable he was beneath the hard-boiled exterior, and I began to understand the role I was playing for him—a comfort, a distraction. It took immense self-control to not cast out the ice floe and read him, to soothe his energy in all the ways I had been trained. I decided to do the next best thing: I told the truth.
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said cautiously when he stopped to take a breath. “The end is not just the end. People leave this earth, but they’re always with us.”
“Yeah, they’re with us in spirit?” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I’ve heard that one before. Like, what does some priest really know about me and my family and where my dad is now? He’s with God? That’s the best they can do?”
I wriggled out of Nick’s arms and pushed myself up on one elbow to face him.
“I mean it,” I said. “It’s not exactly like they say in church. But it’s definitely not the end. Spirits walk among us. We just can’t all see them.”
Nick mirrored my pose on my elbow, cradling his head in one big hand. He searched my eyes intently. “How do you know?” he asked seriously. “How do you know what comes next? What if we’re all wrong and it’s just over?”
“Because I’ve seen it,” I dared to say.
Nick gave me a funny look, rightly so, and I couldn’t bring myself to say the next part: Because the spirits are there on the other side of the frozen energy river. Because my departed great-grandmother talks to me and may even be here now. Because I grew up in a house where magic is real, spirits are real, and we are stewards of this earth for a short time before we pass our learnings to the next generation. I couldn’t tell a man I’d just met all that … unless he had grown up in a place like Friedrich too, where the friendly county witches were around to take care of the town and the spirits and all that.
So I said the most true thing I could manage. “How do you know there isn’t something after? Our existence on this earth is too random, too special, that we rose out of the bubbling swamps and dark forests, for what? It can’t be random. There is something larger than us at play, something we will never quite understand. It’s there, the spirit world, all around us; we can’t all tap into it. It has to be there. Our little lives here aren’t enough. There is more to this place than meets the eye.”
I got chills as I said it, the soft blonde hair standing up on my arms and the back of my neck. If Dorothy was listening, I knew she was proud of what I had to say.
Nick nodded solemnly. “Maybe.” He smiled and reached out to tug on a lock of my hair that had worked its way free.
I smiled, thinking that maybe we’d talk all night. Maybe that’s what he needed.
But then Nick reached for me, pulling me close, and wrapped a hand in my hair. I laughed, surprised and unsure of myself, as Nick pulled me down on top of him by the shoulders, and I knew I wouldn’t say no. He paused to retrieve a condom from the dresser, so nonchalant, and I tried to play along, hiding my inexperience. Can he tell I don’t know what I’m doing? That I’m barely not a virgin? But then he made love to me, frantically, hungrily, like I could fill the void that threatened to swallow him whole when he let his mind get quiet.
I thought dreamily, after, that I had never once been remotely satisfied by what John and I did. I didn’t know I could be. I wouldn’t have known how to ask for that indescribable mix of pain and pleasure until Nick was above me, his forearms hooked under my shoulders, teasing me slowly toward an edge I didn’t have words for.
With my legs still shaking, my whole body coming down from that edge-place, Nick gave me a full-body squeeze and rolled to one side. He lay back, and I snuggled into that spot that let him wrap his arm around me and let me press my cheek into his chest. Nick lit a cigarette with his free hand, the scent instantly clinging to my skin and hair.
“That was nice.”
“Mm-hmm,” I managed.
I didn’t know if we were supposed to talk more. My brain was like jelly. I was content enough to dare think that even if Dorothy was watching us, she wouldn’t be judging.
Nick finished his cigarette and stroked my hair absently.
When I thought he had drifted off to sleep, Nick must have felt that void opening up, because he asked in a small voice, “So do you believe in God?”
I considered. I knew what I was supposed to say, the good Catholic daughter and all that, but I was beginning to like this feeling of telling the truth after so many years of hiding my voice and deferring to Magda. “I don’t know,” I ventured. “I believe in spirits and people and some kind of grand plan. But is it like they say? I don’t know.”
Nick seemed reassured by that. “Me too,” he said, burrowing his nose into my neck and hair. His lips brushed the back of my ear. “Goodnight,” he breathed. I started to drift off, feeling a sense of wonder toward Nick, and I hoped I could pretend to have a whole heart for a while longer. If I didn’t have a heart to give, at least I could give Nick the truth.