Saving Phoebe Murrow: A Novel (5 page)

The guys squeezed the girls between them, Jessie making sure to grab a seat beside Dylan. “What were you guys talking about?” she asked, sniffing as though something was up.

Even now Phoebe noticed the guys telegraphing each other. Nick studied each girl in turn before saying, “Nothin'.”

The volume at the table rose all at once. “Come on, that's not fair!” Jessie said, insisting they tell. Phoebe could see Jessie had gotten it in her head they were about to ask them to the dance, but the guys merely spoke in cryptic three-, four-, and five-word sentences. “It's nothing, honest,” “You don't wanna know,” “Come on, change the subject.”

Jessie stood up. “You guys are jerks, you know that?” She looked as if she were about to leave. Now that they were here, Phoebe was reluctant to go. Was she really serious? Emma stood up and took out her iPhone and aimed it at the group.

“Okay, okay, keep your cool,” Sam said. “Put that thing away, Emma.” He scratched his close-cropped hair, a little like Will Smith's, as if trying to figure out what to say. One more glance at his three friends and it was clear they weren't in agreement, about something.

“Nick and I are gonna score some weed,” he blurted in a hushed but triumphant tone. Then glancing at Nick, who gave him a nod, he added, “They live just up the street.”

The tumblers in Phoebe's head suddenly clicked into place. Now she understood why they were meeting in Adams Morgan. Sam lived nearby, the dope was here, and after Nick and Sam “scored,” they'd probably want them to go to Sam's to smoke. But what about Noah, this didn't seem typical. Seated next to him made it hard for her to see his expression.

Nick leaned over and whispered something into Emma's ear.

A faint smile curled the edges of her slender lips. “It's like this, girlfriends,” Emma said, pausing to cast her calm gaze on Phoebe and Jessie, “do you want some?”

Phoebe's heart beat fast, like a rabbit's she'd once held at Easter. Her first impulse was to glance around to make sure no one else at Five Guys had heard. Unlike Emma and Jessie, Phoebe's illicit adventures had been limited to a few sips of beer, which she hadn't liked. No weed, ever. Her parents were very clear on the subject. She watched Jessie to see what she would do, but she and Emma were silently communing across the table.

Something vibrated in her pocket. She pulled out the phone; it was her mother. A riot of thoughts flashed through her head. Did she know she wasn't in Georgetown? Could she hear their conversation? Of course not. But she recalled her mother once saying, “There's no point in lying, I'll just find out anyway. Mothers always do.”

She shoved the phone back into her jacket just as Dylan asked, “You guys hungry?” She wondered if she'd missed something, because everyone acted as if there'd never been any mention of drugs. She watched Dylan brush his long surfer-blonde hair out of his eyes and tuck it behind his ear. “Let's get some fries and Cokes, okay?” he said.

A flurry of responses ensued, mostly on the order of who wanted what. Meantime, Noah reached for Phoebe's hand beneath the table and said in a low voice, “I want you to know this wasn't my idea, so it's cool…you don't have to do anything you don't want to.”

But Phoebe wasn't so sure that was true. “What about you? What do you want to do?”

Before Noah could answer, Jessie's voice rose above the din: “I'll just have a diet Coke.”

“Me too,” Phoebe said, trying to achieve the same relaxed attitude of the others.

At once she felt Dylan's hand graze the top of her thigh and rest there. As casually as possible, she brushed it away, hoping that neither Jessie nor Noah had noticed.

“Supposedly the weed's awesome,” Dylan said to her. “You should try some.”

She wanted to shake her head and also tell him that she liked Noah, and didn't he know that Jessie liked him? In any case, she definitely didn't want to go to Sam's to smoke.

Suddenly everyone but Noah was laughing.

“You look like you just saw a ghost, Phoebe!” Nick said. She joined in the laughter, knowing it was in good fun, but wondered how they could be so cavalier. Her mother, and maybe even her father, would kill her if they found out. Didn't their parents care?

Aqua buzzed with the chatter of clients and manicurists, and several TV sets were on, though the sound was off. The TV nearest to Isabel flickered with silent images of the
Dr. Phil
show. Captions scrolled across the screen. The talk show host sat there with two girls, about Phoebe's age or maybe a little older, and two sets of adults who appeared to be their parents. Dr. Phil wore his usual serious expression as he spoke to the parents.

Isabel read the subtitles. “So when did you first notice something was wrong?” Dr. Phil asked.

“After things had already gone pretty far,” one mother said. The other mother agreed, saying she'd had no idea. Isabel wondered what they were referring to, though she'd felt similarly shocked when she'd learned of Phoebe's “self-injury,” the label Dr. Sharma had applied to Phoebe's cutting.

“It's a way of coping with emotional pain by inflicting physical pain on one's self,” she had explained. For a time Isabel couldn't understand why her beautiful girl had done this. She could hardly look at Phoebe's wounds and scars without bursting into tears, and Isabel was not prone to hysterical crying.

She still experienced bouts of guilt when the memory picked at her, sure that her busy schedule had caused her to miss signs of trouble between Phoebe and Skyla. Ron had insinuated as much. Though of course he hadn't noticed either. If she'd had an inkling of the depth of the problem, she would have intervened. Or at least handled things differently.

Isabel knew that some of her friends found it surprising, contradictory even, that while she felt obligated to manage many aspects of Phoebe's life, she tended to stay out of “girl dramas,” believing it best they resolve their own differences. It was what her mother had taught her. How else would they grow up? But it was painful when she recalled that Phoebe, attempting to uphold her philosophy, had refrained from revealing the severity of Skyla's lengthy torment. Now Isabel prayed that the cutting had been an aberrant episode, as Phoebe insisted. And as Dr. Sharma claimed was possible.

But she wouldn't make that same mistake twice. She'd be watching Phoebe and urging her to talk about what went on at school. If only she would. After the initial revelation about Skyla attending Georgetown, and a week of seeking her advice, Phoebe had resorted to saying, “It's no big deal, Mom, really.” She just hoped Phoebe would have the courage to keep the girl at arms' length.

Girls
, she thought, and shook her head a little as she watched the two on TV exchange furtive glances. What
had
they done? She wished she'd tuned in to the beginning of the show.

As Thuy rubbed her calves with cream, Isabel released a long muted groan. The memory of Ron massaging her feet slithered into her mind. In the early days, he'd often whispered how sexy her feet were, and she used to tease him with her toes. Maybe tonight, she thought. We could use a little sex. Her mouth tilted into a crooked smile, but her eyes returned to the TV. She watched Dr. Phil's lips and read the delayed, sometimes misspelled subtitles.

“So, young ladies, from now on you're going to stay out of trouble? Right?” She could hear his trademark inflections in her head. “Because what you were doing almost got you killed, didn't it?” The girls nodded dumbly. “And you know that's not what you want?” Nod, nod. “And, in the future, you're going to be more careful? You're not going to do that
ever
again?” They continued nodding, though not very convincingly. “Right?” he demanded.

Their hesitant answers and embarrassed little smiles made Isabel certain they were disingenuous. What had they been discussing? Drugs flitted through Isabel's mind. She assessed the girls more carefully. Were those circles under their eyes? She couldn't help thinking how many more dangers and temptations existed for children as they grew older. And it seemed far worse today than during her own youth.

Thankfully, the
Dr. Phil
show had neared its end and was followed by a Jenny Craig ad, which reminded Isabel of the high-protein weight-loss drink, something called
Slenderella
, that Sandy had tried to sell to her on several occasions. She'd figured it was Sandy's roundabout way of trying to befriend her, though she'd been tempted to ask if she thought she was overweight, which at 120 pounds and a height of 5'7” was hardly one of Isabel's concerns.

She'd be the first to admit, though, that she had resisted Sandy's pursuit of friendship. Isabel would like to say that, as with most things, she'd given the matter considerable thought. For example, she could make the case that she and Sandy had little in common outside of their daughters, and to build a relationship based on that – when who knew how long their children's friendship would last – seemed pointless, especially when her free time was so precious.

Likewise, Isabel could say that she objected to the woman's laissez-faire parenting.
Kids will be kids
, was Sandy's incantation no matter the transgression. And then there was her mindless, gossipy chit-chat. Isabel detested women's tendency to gossip and rarely indulged. She made no apologies for it, and once or twice when she'd cut her off she knew Sandy had felt rejected. All of these facts would contribute to Isabel's rational examination of why she did not reciprocate Sandy's attempts at friendship.

But the real truth was that each encounter with Sandy triggered an inexplicable revulsion, as if somewhere deep inside of her she sensed that Sandy could not be trusted. That, at her core, the woman was sly and cagey, and around men an unapologetic flirt. Yes, this was, most likely, woman's intuition at work. And yet she chided herself for this automatic response, because her mother had taught her not only about the Golden Rule, but also that all people contain goodness, one only has to know where to look.

As these thoughts cycled through her mind, Isabel remembered Sandy's earlier call and realized she'd missed an opportunity to cut her some slack and also to advise her, because when it came to attire, Sandy often looked like she'd just stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalog, so inappropriate for the Georgetown crowd. Every item of clothing clung to her body – a shapely one, she had to admit, even if her breasts had been surgically upholstered – a birthday gift from her husband Bill. At least that was the rumor. Isabel only hoped that tonight Ron wouldn't make a fool of himself, the way some men did. The same held true for Sandy.

Thuy gathered Isabel's things and moved her to the manicure table. As Isabel glanced around, nearly every chair and workstation was occupied, making the place feel overcrowded.

The noise of an ululating phone was silenced when a teenage girl a few chairs away answered it. Several heads turned as the girl began speaking – too loudly. She roared with laughter then suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper. The room seemed to grow quieter too. Isabel listened more intently. “You think you can me get some?” the girl asked. “I'll pay you back.” The implication seemed all too obvious.

Isabel's thoughts traveled between Phoebe, the TV, which again featured a commercial, and Thuy, whose soft, quiet features belied the strength in her hands. She rubbed Isabel's forearms, then her palms and each finger. Isabel closed her eyes and tried to relax. She needed to spend more time getting to know Phoebe's friends and their parents, even if one of them was Sandy. She'd start by being friendlier, that evening, and released a long exhalation of air.

“You have long week?” Thuy asked in a low voice. Isabel nodded. Much too long, she thought, when suddenly she noticed a local news commentator's head appear on the TV screen. He wore an earnest, worried expression as he spoke.

The words “Breaking News” popped up behind him. His mouth moved rapidly, though in silence, and for some reason subtitles now failed to crawl across the screen. Isabel's brow wrinkled. What was he saying? Anything could have happened. Anything from those exploding sewer lids in Georgetown, to a drive-by shooting (she thought of the DC sniper of a few years ago), to another act of Al Qaeda terrorism. Why on earth didn't they turn up the volume?

The image on the screen flipped to a low-income neighborhood. At the bottom it said, “Adams Morgan.” She caught sight of several police cars outside a crumbling apartment building. What the hell's going on, she wondered. But the announcer's face returned, mouthing the words, “…breaking news story. Back in a minute.”

The news had made her restless. As Thuy deftly lacquered the nails of her left hand, Isabel wished the manicure were finished. She wanted to be home to sit in her clean house (thank you, Milly) and have a glass of Chardonnay. She again tried to relax, inhaled the familiar scent of polish, but another uncomfortable thought about Phoebe niggled its way into her brain. What if she'd gone to Adams Morgan after all?

The teenager in the salon had finally stopped speaking into her cell. In repose, this girl had a pouty lower lip, and an angry slant to her eyebrows. Not very pretty, Isabel thought. Instantly she chided herself. What did that matter? She was someone's daughter. Isabel rarely wondered what other adults thought of Phoebe. Even after she cut herself, she'd always taken for granted that Phoebe was wonderful, smart, reliable, and kind. And very pretty, even if she had inherited Ron's short, slightly stubby fingers.

She considered this as Thuy brushed sunrise onto her long nails, which accentuated her shapely slender fingers, fingers someone had once referred to as perfect.

Actually, she'd always thought that Phoebe was perfect, or nearly so, until a little over a year ago, when she'd begun accumulating used clothing. Disgusting smelly men's pants, coats, and shirts, women's dresses, and even old petticoats and tattered jeans. God only knew where she found them. Surely she hadn't been going to shops in Adams Morgan all along?

One day – when was it? – Phoebe had told her she wanted to design clothes. A skill she'd learned from Ron's mother. With her chubby, nail-bitten fingers, Phoebe began tearing these hideous clothes apart, then sewed the dark swatches of fabric together, layering them into skirts and assembling them into misshapen jackets.

At first, Isabel had objected. She wanted to steer Phoebe toward a sensible profession. But all at once, passionate, determined, and headstrong, Phoebe had insisted fashion was her future. Isabel believed it to be a cutthroat, low-paying industry, and hoped her own mother was right when she'd called it a phase Phoebe was bound to outgrow.

On the TV, the commercial concluded and the same neighborhood featured earlier reappeared. Isabel leaned toward the screen. A crowd of people had gathered behind Cynthia Chan, the female reporter at the scene, microphone in hand. Police cars stood in the background. The reporter was saying something, her mouth moving exaggeratedly. Still without subtitles, Isabel could only guess at the content. Her eyes drifted to the cluster of people surrounding the woman, mostly Latinos, though whites were among them, and a few African Americans.

A girl standing further back near a policeman caught Isabel's eye. A fair-haired white girl, wearing a jean jacket that looked like one of Phoebe's creations!

Isabel's distance from the TV made it impossible to discern the girl's features. She tugged her hand away from Thuy and jumped out of her chair, awkwardly threading her way toward the TV set in her paper flip-flops. She called out for the volume to be turned up. As she drew near, the camera angle shifted and the policeman and the girl disappeared.

Isabel gazed emptily at the screen. The image switched back to the anchorman, whose mouth shaped the words, “Thank you, Cynthia.”

Isabel turned around to find people staring at her. She felt the need to say something, but the words caught in her throat. “I just thought the girl looked—” She stopped; her eyes scanned the clientele. They looked like jurors, hanging on her every syllable, their own thoughts in limbo. Normally she took this in stride, but now their stares unnerved her. Finally, she met their gaze, and groping for a word, added, “Familiar. She looked familiar.”