Square One

Standing at the threshold of her new home, Natalie felt what she could only guess were the first pangs of regret. The door was ajar and an autumn breeze swirled up her bony frame, shaking loose the memory of things lost: old plans and heartache, fluttering away before she could take stock of what mattered, and what she could bear to let go. She stepped inside with the impulse to gather all of her things and hold them close, though of course it was all still in boxes, and would be for some time.

Corey was talking to one of the movers.

“We do everywhere—Raleigh, Greensboro, Asheville. It’s mainly word of mouth,” said the man as he made marks on an invoice Natalie would never see. Corey said “oh, word” in that put-on friendly tone she recognized, the one he adopted with strangers. Hands tucked in his back pockets, long arms cocked to either side like bony wings, one knee bent, and baby blue eyes—all of this made Corey seem approachable, inviting even. He drew people out, though that was hardly his intention. Politeness may have come easily, but he rarely paid attention to what came next, even if he did tilt his attractive head to give the impression he was listening. He probably wasn’t.

“An expansion to the Atlanta market is in the works,” the man went on proudly. He caught Natalie’s eye, which surprised him, and diverted his attention to his hands, quickly folding the carbon copy into crisp quarters before handing it over. “The whole region is growing,” he rambled. “More jobs, more closings, more people moving.”

“Right, right,” said Corey. “They’re catching on.”

“Nothing like Texas, though, man. My brother’s a realtor. He went down to Houston—said they’re selling like hotcakes, one every minute or something.” Corey managed to fit in a furtive, meaningful glance, cluing Natalie into his disinterest. She took a guilty pleasure in these looks, like she was a part of some elite but mean-spirited club. She shuddered sometimes to think of what Corey was like in high school. Dealing in ridicule but always above reproach.

Natalie turned her back on the men and sat on a box labeled OFFICE in Corey’s all-caps hand. She was surprised to see the sun glowing orange through the open door, and remembered that for a while—at least until she filled the rooms—the best part of this place would be its surroundings. Corey tipped the guy, said “good luck with the business, my friend,” and walked him to the door, shutting it just when she’d hit on a purpose, a walk, into that orange sun; it seemed like the only thing to do to dispel her doubting spirits.

“Quite a talker,” said Corey. “He gave me five of his cards. You’d think he was the owner.”

Natalie pretended to be reading something on her phone—some two-page article on a school in Pakistan, maybe, or the abstract of a child psych study—as if the desire for a fix of information was too great to overcome, even for this landmark moment, the first spent alone in their new life. In this case it was just pretense; she couldn’t bring herself to fawn and swoon and fall into his arms. Really all the screen showed was a text from her mother, Alice, one she’d received a few days ago, in the midst of all the packing. “I wish you’d reconsider,” it read. “I don’t know how I’ll manage.” This was nothing new: she was used to her mother’s cries for help, and had steeled herself for a last-ditch guilt trip. Alice had never failed to make the events in Natalie’s life—from triumphs to tragedies—about herself. Why should this be any different?

Take last year, when Jack died. Alice moved in under the guise of caring for her daughter in her time of need. Never mind that Alice had no place to live. Her latest boyfriend had turned abusive, so Jack’s death provided her with a timely vacancy; that was the crux of it. Eighteen months later, Natalie had spent more nights sharing a bed with her mother than she had with her late husband. The marriage had still been so new, and even when he was alive, Jack was often far-off, sometimes deep into the night.

“I don’t know how I’ll manage.” Neither did Natalie, but she hadn’t responded. Instead, she’d finally left that apartment, its hissing heat and sleepless nights. Indeed, she’d let the whole of New York City diminish in her rearview, the city she’d taken to wandering alone in a daze, drifting from pillar to post, loath to return to a room that reminded her of nothing but failure. No longer—she’d abandoned those desperate walks, and all her old habits of despair. She planned to, anyway. Alice and Cal, the German shepherd she’d brought with her, had three weeks until the lease ran out. Where would they go? What would Alice do? I can’t help it, thought Natalie. I’m twenty-eight years old. She could easily devote a lifetime to answering those questions. It felt like she already had.

Before, she would retreat to Massachusetts, drop whatever new job she’d landed, leave her roommate in the lurch, all to help her mother set up somewhere new. Before, she would clean up messes and put things in order, accompany Alice to doctor’s visits and hospital visits, assuage panics and fears, remain always on call. She wrote e-mails and made phone calls on Alice’s behalf, posing as a lawyer, a reference, a landlord, a boss. But this time she hadn’t responded, despite returning to the message every hour, since there it was in her hand, just a click and a swipe away.

“Where’d you go?” Corey asked from behind her. He’d circled the room, landed with his hands on her shoulders, and was massaging them in a way he mistakenly assumed she enjoyed. “What’re you always looking at on there?”

“I’m right here,” she said, shrugging off his painful pinches. She stood to meet his expectant face with a kiss. He tasted like coffee and the celebratory cigarette he’d smoked when they arrived. She did her best to hide her disappointment. It had been a long, suspenseful ride to Charlotte, but getting there didn’t offer the relief she expected. Maybe it had something to do with the hours of Motown playlists Corey had insisted on, combined with his own clashing renditions. Natalie felt queasy by the end of it.

“You haven’t eaten anything today, have you? You look pale. Are you sure you don’t want one of my famous sandwiches?” Now he put his hands on her upper arms, squeezing the meager muscles there.

“I’m sure. I need to get my bearings.”

“Want to do a walk-through?”

“Of course.”

He gestured for her hand and she nearly flinched. She thought of running quickly in the other direction, taking nothing, getting by. Was this a fantasy or an alternative? She couldn’t decide. If history was a guide, Simco women were wild by nature—reliant, sure; but not beholden—and didn’t take kindly to stability and so-called ties to the community. Corey, on the other hand, was a paragon of such virtues. They’d come to North Carolina to live near his close-knit family, though thankfully his parents were in Italy celebrating their fortieth anniversary for another two weeks, so she was spared the welcoming parade. It all seemed suddenly and inexplicably unappealing. His hand was too warm and slippery, like something bound to spoil, and his smile was too proud. But by avoiding his enthusiasm, Natalie did manage to focus on something else: the house.

It was a refurbished full-brick Georgian on a cul-de-sac lot. The façade reminded her of the very popular Angie Sutton’s house in Salem, Mass., which she’d only ever visited for parties, never getting to explore the rooms properly and take in all of their subtle luxuries. Things like an island in the kitchen, window shutters in all four of the bedrooms, built-ins, a pantry, and brushed nickel fixtures—all of it so foreign then, all of it now her own.

In the master bathroom, Natalie sat on her heels and ran her fingers over the tile. Travertine, it was called—she only knew the word from the listing. No two tiles looked alike.

“It’s rustic,” said Corey. “But I think I can get used to it.”

Of all the things to say, she thought. “Rustic? It’s probably imported from Italy.”

“It looks like a forest path.”

“You’re right, we’re really roughing it.”

“I’m allowed an opinion,” he said. Then he slipped off his sneakers and stepped into the tub, which came with an alcove seat in the wall. “Sit with me,” he said, hugging his knees. So she did. “Do you like it?” he asked, like a boy in a bath. She wished there was water to splash at him, gently.

“I do,” she said. “I love it.”

Later, while Corey lay prostrate on their makeshift bed—impossibly comfortable already, like he’d slept in this room a thousand times—she sat on the floor of one of the closets. He’d called to her once, twice, before giving himself over to exhaustion. Corey wasn’t much of a crier, so she hated doing it in front of him, forcing him to come up with some strained attempt at consolation that embarrassed the both of them. What was there to cry about today? What could be so wrong when you have all of this? She couldn’t stand the questions. Better to get it over with in private. She would feel too pathetic, too terribly misunderstood if she tried to explain to him—the man who’d offered her security, prosperity, a deck for entertaining, a man who’d never known anything less—that she cried on the floor for what she’d left behind, for the mother who would have given anything, everything, for a closet like this one, for clothes enough to fill it.

Natalie herself would never quite get used to all the space. Her style was simple: one of everything. A dress, a skirt, a favorite t-shirt. She knew that this had developed out of necessity. Even accessorizing—or “making do,” as she called it growing up—was out of the question, ever since Alice attempted to differentiate Natalie’s grade school outfits with various ribbons, earning her the unfortunate title “ribbon girl,” like she was in perpetual performance. A taste for fashion had been conditioned out of her. But keeping that in mind and controlling for their disparate childhoods, she still couldn’t accept that Corey had six pairs of jeans.

Or that he needed a bar installed in the basement, or underlined in all her books, or yelled “shit shit shit!” when he learned that the Panthers lost, or expected every hard-on to come to fruition. It was one thing for Natalie to know he’d always gotten what he wanted—to appreciate how that shaped his expectations—and another thing entirely to see him always get it. She found herself wishing he was more like her—humbler, more surprised, less certain—in spite of his waterproof upbringing, in which life was advertised as an inevitable torrent of yes. And yet, it was this certainty that had brought her here, that kept them together despite her refusal to marry again so soon. It dwarfed her own tentative approach to the future: he was so sure that one way or another, he’d be able to organize his life to his liking, and Natalie could do nothing but defer.

Not that he asked her to change. On the contrary, Corey practically worshipped her just as she was. Even the night they met, he was charmed by her self-deprecation. Gina, a fellow assistant teacher from the middle school in Queens where Natalie had once worked, was getting married to Corey’s friend from law school at the Prospect Park Boathouse. The party was upbeat, full of the ambient sound of many words spoken at once, and people were beginning to test their limits. A woman with chapped lips named Courtney had just cut short a conversation with Natalie about her alcoholic roommate and troubles with online dating, perhaps because she had begun to hear herself. Under cover of alcohol, the sordid truth crept its way to the surface. Judgments, confessions, and gripes—but only of a certain sort. Courtney wouldn’t want to hear about the solitary bed bug that obliged Natalie to stuff all her clothing into plastic bags that morning, or how she’d washed this dress by hand before she’d come, or how her husband was dead, yes her husband was dead, it’d been six months but her husband was dead, a fact she could never forget. So Natalie didn’t drink, she stayed tight-lipped—she feared she had too much to lose—and Courtney moseyed away, without even tinkling the ice in her glass to suggest she needed another round.

Natalie sensed that her position was precarious. In fact she’d been surprised to be invited; it was rare for new friendship to survive bouts of distance, what with Natalie’s frequent trips to care for her battered mother in Massachusetts, her corresponding leave of absence from the job in Queens, and her recent retreat from the world after tragedy followed her back to New York. Besides which she felt always at risk of becoming unmoored, cast off, and forgotten. After all, this wedding might have been the beginning of the end: a pity invitation that allowed for a secluded life to follow. Natalie hadn’t even gotten a proper conversation with the bride, just a quick kiss on the cheek and a clutch of the heart across the room, a gesture that came like a buoy thrown out to her at sea, and just as quickly torn away. She remembered not to expect too much: to be her friend was a burden, an act of charity. She didn’t wish what came with it on anyone—the secondhand guilt, the problem of how to relate—and would just as soon lose her friends’ numbers and let them all keep their peace of mind. It was then that Corey saw her.

“Is everything alright? You seem very serious,” he’d said at first, leaning casually against the wall. She felt exposed, like he’d been eyeing her for some time without permission.

“I’m sorry. I think it’s about time to leave.”

“Leave? Things are finally heating up.” Following this he executed a lovable dance move with his arms reaching up above his head, spilling a bit of his drink in the process. Natalie managed to smile.

“I don’t think dancing will help,” she said.

“You don’t need any help,” he replied. She played with her dress, pleating the fabric between her fingers, a bad habit.

“You’d be surprised. I’m driving them away in droves.”

“Less work for me,” he said.

“I meant the women,” she demurred. “I can’t quite catch on to the pace of play.”

“Come on, it’s Saturday. There’s a whole week to complain about.”

She took a deep breath and ran her fingers through the waves in her hair, loosening up. “It’s like they’ve all gone off the record,” she said. “And I’ve got nothing good to dish about.”

“It’s nerves,” he said. “Nobody knows what they’re doing.”

“Me, in particular.”

He moved closer. “But look at us now, having a conversation.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Natalie. “We haven’t hit any snags. Or silence, god forbid.”

“I guess we’ll just have to keep talking,” he said, as if struck by sudden panic.

“About what?”

“Weddings. They bring out the worst in single people. You can cut the jealousy in here with a knife.” He was a good actor. It was unclear where imitation ended and sincerity began. She took a gamble.

“See, already I think you’re exaggerating and generalizing, and I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Oh, I see—you’re too smart. That’s your problem.”

“That’s my problem?”

“The trick is to know when you can stop paying attention. Pick up on one thing that you can relate back to yourself and you’re home free. It’s not like you’re going to miss a lot. Everyone’s just saying some version of the same things in different order.”

“This is quite an education.”

“Here, let’s try it. Hi, I’m Corey Ramsey, nice to meet you. Gosh, I wish I could eat any of the food at this place but I’m strictly raw-vegan, which incidentally is much more affordable than any other diet, and with rents in this city, I can use all the help I can get! They just raised my one-bedroom in Tribeca to four thousand—can you believe that?”

“My husband is dead,” she deadpanned.

Corey laughed so hard and long it turned into a cough and back into a laugh again. She didn’t know what possessed her to come right out with it—his irreverence? His nonchalance? She looked to the floor, embarrassed, like she’d done something indecent by betraying her grief; except, no one was holding her to it, especially not this man, whose veins bulged in the shape of a ‘Y’ on his forehead, who slapped his knee indiscriminately.

“See, I’m terrible at this,” she said as he recovered. Others around them had turned to look, curious about what could split a grown man’s sides like that. Natalie thought she noticed a few groups breaking up, as people went looking for kicks like Corey’s, but she could have been imagining things, overestimating their influence on the room. She certainly felt inflated, like she could have floated away, and lightheaded, like she already had, and was taking in thin air.

“What part of what I said related to that?” he finally asked.

“You said four thousand for an apartment. I thought we were in the realm of tragedy.”

“Well, I was wrong,” he said. “You surprised me.”

“Because nobody’s expecting that at this age.”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“Sure I’m serious. I’m not that funny.” His face began to change. “But don’t you get serious now. Your reaction was the best thing I’ve heard all year.”

“You tricked me,” he said.

In a matter of minutes, he’d helped her make light of her past. Despite any of her qualms, he’d eased a bit of the weight on her shoulders, eyelids, and brow—that heaviness she’d begun to take for granted, which drove her gaze so often to the ground. That relief was all any of the other venting guests were trying to accomplish, but Corey and Natalie still based their rapport on the premise of being different. From the beginning, they set themselves apart. She imagined herself unable to fit in with normal people—too volatile, too raw. He described those people in broad strokes: their problems were banal and their interests predictable. But not Natalie—she’d seen real tragedy, she had true insight. He told her he’d never met anyone so frank and unpretentious. She didn’t try to impress or seduce him, and she wasn’t under the illusion that the city would make her dreams come true, which suited him, since he’d always intended to return to the South with his Yankee degree. And with him she could be honest, angry, flippant, and free; free to surprise him, to joke or despair as she pleased, to differentiate herself from Jack, her mother, or the woman who begged on the train—her husband, too, was dead, she claimed—and the women who pretended not to see. She questioned and doubted, and he made fun; she built up her armor, he egged her on; picking holes in city living, its excesses and deficiencies—top 40 blaring, cabbies cursing, garbage flying, resentments brewing; sharing fantasies of leaving, until he graduated and finally they did.

Things changed once they got what they wanted, once Natalie went through with the move he suggested, turning her life on its head. The original jokes lost their charm, and so did the buoyant rapport. The early stories were put to rest, no longer rehashed and relived, and somehow, on a Friday night spent in her sparse, spacious Dixie kitchen, listening to Corey review his second week at Alston & Bird, the thought of what she’d lost was what remained: she hadn’t seen Gina since the wedding after all, had not even told her she was leaving New York. It all could have been from a movie she’d seen—not just the characters, like her former work buddy, but that feeling of certain love for a man who set her free. From where she sat, it was as remote and unlikely as fiction. She watched him shovel the food she’d made while complaining about a partner named Camille, who apparently thought that because she was a woman among men, her vote counted for more. Had there always been a hint of misogyny in him, she wondered, and a current of hate inside her, running against the grain?

“And how was your day, honey?” he asked jokingly.

“You have to stop doing that,” she said. She got up to clear her plate, though she’d hardly touched her homestyle chicken and rice.

“What?”

“That fifties suburban parody thing.”

“Okay, but I’m curious. What did you do?”

The question was simple enough, but each night it bothered her more. For the two weeks he’d been at the firm, Corey unloaded the minute he walked in the door. What he chose to share was rarely about any actual work he’d done; it involved someone from his childhood he’d been surprised to see, or a scene he’d witnessed that had given him a laugh, or whatever seething truth he’d had to mask with a false show of respect. And then, once his home-happy rant petered out, he would turn to Natalie for a thorough account of her time.

She’d ordered an oriental rug for the bedroom. “Oh, I wish you’d have shown me first,” he said. She’d read an article on the history of teacher’s unions in the U.S. “Where?” he asked. “Where?” she repeated. “I mean where in the house did you read it.” “The den,” she said, and he nodded with a satisfied smile. “In the new chair?”

“Yes.”

“How’s the lighting?”

“Did you know,” she went on in spite of him, “that we moved from the state with the highest union membership to the state with the lowest?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“It’s not even legal for teachers to unionize here.”

“Why the sudden interest?” he said. “And will you sit? Please?”

“Sudden interest? This is my field. Or at least I want it to be.”

“I know, I know, I mean in unions.”

“I want to know the lay of the land,” she said. “It’s homework. For my interview on Monday.” She began to clean up. The most ordinary noises—dishes, pans, and cabinets—echoed through this house like the blows of heavy machinery, so that by the sound of it, she was cleaning in a rage.

“Oh, right,” he said. “You mean the interview my mom set up?”

“Parkside Elementary,” said Natalie.

“Don’t kill yourself over that. If you want it, you’ve got it.”

“Really? You said she’s the friend of a friend of the principal. How much say could that possibly give her?”

“You’d be surprised, that’s practically sisters down here. Besides, you’re overqualified. It’s child’s play compared to the battles you used to wage.”

“Can we save the war metaphors for your line of work?”

“Okay,” he said.

“You know, the average salary for a teacher in North Carolina has gone down seventeen percent in the last decade, the biggest decline of any state.”

“Again, not something you need to worry about. And you’re not applying to be a teacher, anyway.”

“I’m saying there’s a connection between these things. No unions and low pay, I mean.”

“I hope you’re not going to talk like this in the interview. Or at Thanksgiving, for that matter.”

“What, that there’s progress to make down here? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Are you planning a bid for the Board of Ed?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Can you please stop with all the banging? I’m still eating!”

“Well, I’m done!”

She went upstairs in a huff, leaving him to clean up and think about what he’d done wrong, though she herself couldn’t put her finger on it. She wasn’t used to raising her voice at him; but what did that mean, exactly, that he hoped she wouldn’t talk like that at Thanksgiving next week? Like a liberal? Like she had an opinion?

In the bedroom she knelt before an untouched box she’d been avoiding. After ripping the tape and forcing the cardboard open, she rummaged through it until she found what she hadn’t realized she’d been looking for: a black, leather-bound notebook with a folded map of the United States tucked behind the front cover. She spread it out on the floor, reminded of the delight and surprise she’d felt when Jack gave it to her for their first and only anniversary. He’d turned it into a craft project of sorts, with each state opening like the flap of an advent calendar to reveal a memory they’d shared there, memories he’d fashioned out of thin air: “that time we stole two stallions” in Texas, “canvassing for Barack Obama” in Utah, “our wedding in the foothills of Mount Rainier.” They’d been married in Manhattan’s City Hall. But, like a child, he’d balked at reality, imagining a cartoon life for them instead, with thrills and dares in every frame. What was under North Carolina? She flipped it. “You cut my hair and we camped in the Blue Ridge Mountains, shooting wild turkey for sport.”

The cream-colored room echoed with thoughts of all the things she’d never done; when she finally heard Corey coming up the stairs, she faced the wall and pretended to be asleep. She knew it wouldn’t work: he was too attentive not to recognize the difference. He climbed into bed and wrapped his arms around her reluctant body.

“What is it, babe?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to get out of the house,” she said. Silence. His hands intruded on the skin underneath her shirt, but she was too stiff to resist. “We’ll get another car soon,” he whispered.

“And my mom called today,” she said, though she hadn’t expected to. That put him off; his hands retreated to somewhere unseen.

“Oh. What did she have to say for herself?”

“She just got to Cleveland. One of her ex-boyfriends lives there, apparently. She needs money.” Natalie paused. “Obviously,” she added.

“Well, we can send her something,” said Corey. Just like that, casual and careless. “Whatever you think is best.”

She turned around to find him with his hands cupped behind his head and his eyes closed, taking slow breaths. The fight within her subsided. Not because of the money, she told herself, but because of a change in his tone. It was deliberately patient now, like a leader striking a difficult compromise, no longer so persistent. He wanted to help, while accepting, for a change, that he wasn’t the authority on the issue. So she tugged his left hand out from behind his head and guided it back to her stomach in a gesture of reconciliation. He smiled with his eyes closed.

“Something to get her set up and back on her feet,” said Natalie. “A one-time thing.”

He didn’t have anything more to say about it. His hand moved further down her body and soon he was warming her up, an exercise that was really more for him, since either way he hurt her; not terribly, but enough to send her mind elsewhere, in search of distractions—memories of better sex she’d had, or images of other women suffering the same disappointment, the same view; a strange sort of comfort. He couldn’t help it, she thought, combing her fingers through his hair as he finished, his breath hot in the crook of her neck. Before long he was curled around her once more, kissing that same warm spot, sighing, whispering, “this is what I miss all day, right here.”

It was easy to accept him then; he was sweet, he was gentle, even when he was spent. There was nowhere else he’d rather be. She breathed in deep and easy, letting the air fill her out so that she swelled into him, savoring the calm, the freedom from anticipation and from talk. Savoring his body, so suddenly at rest.

She herself was up for an hour, flush with the glow of understanding, which would eventually dim and darken until it was only a theory among many. But for now, this was the reality of commitment, she knew it for sure: not the mystery and promise of Jack, a man who was just out of reach, but the slow and steady slog, the give and take. One minute your love is compressed beyond recognition, and the next it revives and fulfills you. There was symmetry to it, she thought lazily, and with that her reverie dissolved until she was no longer thinking in sentences, the words emerging and receding in a hurry—attract, reject, repulse, accept—and she began seeing things, funny things like Corey holding a turkey by the neck, Alice riding horseback in a suit, and her own jeering reflection in the mirror, at which point she had joined Corey, deep in sleep.

By Monday morning things looked a bit different. Her life was scattered, with no discernible pattern or sequence to offer comfort. She ran from room to room, gathering what she needed for the interview. Each time she stopped and stood in place, she felt like she was forgetting something. What was she doing here? What did she hope to accomplish? What was it about education, exactly? She couldn’t remember her answers, if she had any to begin with.

On the way out, Corey sized up the Colfers next door. He could tell they were litigious, ready to sue over an inch of ivy; “look at him fuss over that car,” he said. Natalie wanted to be careful and discerning; going in full of Corey’s hot air wouldn’t do her any good.

“Let’s not write them off,” she said. “I had a fine chat with him the other day. He told me about the Cornus florida.”

“The what?”

“The dogwood. The North Carolina flower.”

“Oh, so he’s closeted,” he said, thumbing the push-button ignition.

“Can we give them a chance, please? They’re our next-door neighbors.”

“I’m just saying.”

As they drove past, James Colfer gave her a perfunctory nod. No wave, just that anxious little movement before reaching again into the far corners of his trunk with a Dustbuster. Corey had no patience for that sort of man—offering up unsolicited facts about flowers—but Natalie didn’t fault him his awkwardness, or his data dumping, which she found interesting. In the wing mirror she watched his petite body straining to get the chore done, until synthesizer suddenly flooded the car.

“No, no, please no,” she said over the music. “Can we listen to the news?”

“But you need to get pumped up! How about the eighties? Some glam rock?”

“I don’t need to get pumped up,” she snapped. “This isn’t a game and you aren’t my coach, okay? Please, I don’t know the fucking stations here, can you find NPR or something?”

“Bite my head off, why don’t you,” he said.

“I need to think, I need to listen,” she said to the window.

“You’ll be fine. God, you’re a handful lately.”

In moments like this, she couldn’t believe the conclusions she’d come to. In moments like this she slumped in her seat, deep in derision, sure that this love was conditional. She was always either falling short or overshooting middle ground, living a double life that wasn’t symmetrical, but incongruent. Both couldn’t be true.

She stared out at the houses, many of which she’d studied on her morning walks the past few weeks. Each was beautiful and unique—just like the changing trees—but there was a loneliness she hadn’t expected that pervaded the streets, a feeling she brought with her, as if casting a shadow over the landscape as she went. It was still unfamiliar, maybe that was it; not knowing what came down the block or around the corner made her an outsider, strange and vulnerable. And not knowing what went on in these impressive houses made her skeptical. She imagined boredom and isolation. She imagined worry over what to cook for dinner, putting on a good face, whispers behind screen doors, and not being liked. This place was alluring, sure, but could it be insidious, or even empty? All fluff and no substance?

A blonde woman loading her infant into an SUV gave them a dirty look; Corey was driving too fast. Just before they were out of sight, Natalie caught a glimpse of the woman’s other child, near three or four, running down the sidewalk away from his mother, screaming with his hands in the air. Natalie was reminded of a scene from last summer in her old Brooklyn neighborhood. A boy of a similar age—she’d met him a couple times in the building, Christian was his name—started running toward the avenue one dry August morning, past the dreaded gate, off into the great and forbidden unknown for the very first time, pumping his miniature arms. All the adults nearby had panicked, yelling, coming at him from all sides; he couldn’t have made it more than thirty feet. Natalie had wondered what little Christian hoped to accomplish, what he’d longed to see. Here, there was no such uproar, no prescribed zone of safety, nothing for the daring and reckless to run to or from; the mother didn’t even turn around. She called wearily for the child to come back, knowing he would, unscathed. This toddler saw no danger here, so why should Natalie?

Thirty minutes later they’d made it to the school. The news hadn’t helped: one story about an attack on a hotel abroad and another about a shooting two states over. Her nerves were a wreck. What hope could they pretend to offer these children, after all? But no, no, she recited a few talking points in her head—nurture strong relationships, give kids a central role in problem solving, meet the child’s needs instead of simply controlling behavior—and barely registered her goodbye with Corey. What had he said, good luck, or don’t worry? She sat wondering and waiting in the main office of Parkside Elementary. It smelled like magic marker, which had the unfortunate effect of making her feel like a knobby-kneed student on her first day of class, nothing like an authority figure.

The two front desk secretaries were busy answering calls, but they’d greeted her with toothy smiles and made exaggerated gestures that suggested they’d been expecting her and if she waited in one of the high back chairs across from them, someone would be right out. When both had a break from their phones they turned to each other and recited hushed accounts of what they’d just heard—conversations with parents, Natalie guessed. “Exactly, exactly,” the one with the beehive said, while the other, mousier one giggled with self-satisfaction. They seemed to be plucked from another era, adding to Natalie’s sense of being out of time and place. She was staring right at the beehive when its owner turned to her. She might as well have been a girl awaiting punishment, doubly guilty now for staring.

“Mrs. Ramsey?” the woman said, stretching the first syllable in a way that Natalie found unnecessary, regardless of her accent.

“Um, no. It’s Ms. Simco, actually. Ramsey is my boyfriend’s—my partner’s—name.”

“Huh,” said the woman, looking down at something on her desk. “Mrs. Natalie Ramsey?”

“Well it’s Simco,” she reiterated. “Someone must have gotten mixed up.”

The two women shared a glance. Natalie was more like one of the pushy parents than a delinquent child, it turned out. Her standing in the office took a tumble. Neither secretary sought to further engage with her or apologize for the mishap. In fact, the beehive made a conspicuous call to the principal. “I believe your eight-o’clock is here. I’m not sure, though, there’s a bit of confusion. No, I just think you better come out. Well, I’m just not sure is all. Okay, thank you.” After hanging up she busied herself with a sticky note.

“I’m sorry,” Natalie said, on her feet now. “It’s not a big deal. I just wanted to make sure Mrs. Mitchell knows my name.” She spotted a nameplate on the desk, hidden at first behind a small plant: Mrs. Bunting.

Mrs. Bunting looked up at her in surprise. “Oh darling, don’t worry,” she said calmly. “Everything gets sorted out in the end.” Natalie registered it as passive aggression—some sort of veiled threat—but before she had a chance to give it any more thought, a tall, chic woman entered the scene through the office’s back door.

“Natalie?” she said with a friendly tone and a quizzical look, like she was greeting an old, forgotten friend. Natalie was acutely aware of being in a room with three other women. It was not a grouping she was used to.

“Yes, that’s me!” she said. “Nice to meet you.” They shook hands. Mrs. Mitchell’s wrist was adorned with an oversized maroon bracelet, like a piece of art. She wore a flattering green dress and had bouffant hair, streaked with white. Natalie was underdressed in her chinos and wavy, below-the-shoulder look. “Come on back,” Mrs. Mitchell said, eyeing the other two with suspicion but making do without an explanation. Quietly, Natalie followed. From behind her she heard one more exactly before Mrs. Mitchell shut the door.

“Welcome to Parkside,” she said. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water.”

“I’m fine,” said Natalie.

Mrs. Mitchell settled in at her desk. “Carolyn told me so much about you,” she said. Natalie tried to get comfortable, too, but this statement was improbable enough to keep her on edge.

“We haven’t met yet, actually,” Natalie responded. It was unnecessary information, but honesty seemed like the only way to get back on track.

“Oh?”

“Well, Corey and I just moved here, and Mrs. Ramsey and her husband are travelling abroad. So we’ll be meeting at Thanksgiving.”

“You married without meeting his parents?”
“We’re not married.”

“I see. Of course.”

“Anyway, it was so nice of her to recommend me. She knows of my interests, obviously.”

“And what are those interests?” Mrs. Mitchell asked. There was no resume on her desk. Natalie hesitated as she debated whether to offer the one in her purse.

“The emotional aspect of education,” she said. “Behind the scenes, you know?” Her first “you know” already; she swallowed, thinking that she should have taken that water. Now it might be seen as stalling.

“So much of what goes on in the classroom is about growing up,” she continued. “It’s about skills that are separate from the actual curriculum. They’re like little microcosms.”

“The kids are?” Mrs. Mitchell asked, reminding Natalie to look up from the edge of the desk.

“The classrooms.”

“And you worked at a middle school before, is that right?” the woman asked, changing Natalie’s course.

“Yes, the Cabot School. In Queens.”

“For children with learning disabilities?”

Natalie was glad to hear that not all accurate information had been lost in translation.

“Yes, I mostly assisted at the sixth-grade level, across subject areas.” The image of a former student came to her: Max Wein. He had such trouble with left and right, and mixing up letters and numbers, and memorization, but by the time Natalie left, he’d begun to raise his hand twice, three times a period. She would try to work him in.

“Well, the students here won’t get as much personal attention,” Mrs. Mitchell said, down to business. “This is a public school and we’re full up, as you’d expect, usually around twenty to a class. Your role might be a bit broader than you’re used to. Perhaps more focused on discipline, too, especially with the fourth and fifth graders. And we might move you around, depending on the needs of the teachers as the year progresses. We just had a TA leave unexpectedly because of a family emergency. What made you leave Cabot?”

Natalie had to abandon Max—along with the exceptions she took to Mrs. Mitchell’s comparisons—in order to navigate this treacherous territory. She couldn’t say she’d resigned to move here; it had been two years since she left Cabot. My mother’s boyfriend was a Neanderthal in combat boots who literally kicked her out of the house? I took leave and moved to Boston to read up on domestic violence and tort law, fully intending to return to Cabot, only to have my own hopeless husband die of a drug overdose, whereupon I forgot how to wake up in the morning, let alone help kids like Max with their confidence?

“A family emergency,” she said, going for levity by drawing attention to the coincidence, but striking the wrong tone.

Natalie never quite got the reins back after that. Mrs. Mitchell was efficient to a fault, but then principals had to be. There was no time for backpedaling or circling back around to elaborate. She gave Natalie a rundown on the district’s battle over the federal curriculum standards and warned her about activists on both sides. “We’re not political here,” she said. “We work with what we’re given. I assume you can put any partisanship aside in your work?”

Natalie rattled off a story about defusing a conflict between parents at a back-to-school night, but it ended up sounding vague because she left out the aspect of racial tension, fearing that this veered too far into what Mrs. Mitchell might call “partisan” waters. She trailed off, itching to ask about Parkside’s demographics and history of integration, and then abruptly imagining her own foot in her mouth.

It ended with a flurry of activity. Mrs. Bunting came in—“so sorry to interrupt”—claiming that an emergency substitute had to be arranged for fourth grade art, or else Mrs. Calahan’s class would have to join the third graders for music. “Can you teach art, Natalie?” said Mrs. Mitchell, to which Natalie responded with a series of half-formed words. “I’m only kidding,” she said mercifully. “It looks like I have to cut this short, but I think I know everything I need to know. Do you have any questions for me?”

Natalie summed up her pitch with a few repetitive assurances about her commitment to the job, her reliability, her availability, and some other promises that attempted to compensate for her spotty history of employment. “It was so nice to meet you, Mrs. Mitchell,” she said on their way out.

“Oh, it’s Dr., actually,” she said. “But please, it’s Angela.”

Natalie left to the sound of two grown women snickering behind her. Outside there was a chill in the air that she didn’t recognize, and she clutched her inadequate sweater closer to her chest as a sea of young, white faces swarmed the school’s entrances. She wondered how hypersegregation fit in with Dr. Mitchell’s philosophy of working with what she was given. Natalie regretted her choice of clothing, of words, of towns, of men, and especially regretted the fact that she and Corey had failed to work out how she would get home. The realization washed over her in a wave of shivers, as if her body was anticipating how far she was from the warmth of her house. She knew she’d forgotten something, but hadn’t been able to see past the morning, and Corey, for his part, didn’t really see her at all.

On her phone she found a slew of text messages from her mother; nothing dramatic, thank goodness, just little daily updates. “Cal loves Cleveland,” accompanied by a picture of the German shepherd perched on a cluttered porch, overlooking a wide, sunlit street. “Went to church yesterday for the first time in years. John likes it.” “Make sure your man knows that money is not going to waste. I’m taking a computer science class. Staying with John for a little while longer.”

Natalie had never been one to report on the small stuff; Alice had always been so verbal that there wasn’t much room left for Natalie to recount the details of her days. She walked partway down the school’s hill, racking her brain for what to text back, until she came to a playground where two girls were taking advantage of every last minute before the first bell. Leggy, strong, spirited girls bounding this way and that, endlessly energetic in the early morning, doing pull-ups with abandon. Best friends forever. They were fearless, thought Natalie, until they began to scream and flail and fled up the hill in hysterics, and she realized that they were still squeaky-scared of a bee.

The wind blew like a whistle through wide-gapped teeth, and with everyone suddenly behind her and nowhere to go, Natalie found what to say to her mother, a rare display of weakness. “I’m stranded,” she wrote, and she walked the rest of the way down the hill, hoping to find a bus that would take her home.