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The video then leaves the studio, going to an image of Lake Shore Drive, where a voice-over says the most recent victim is a young woman who tried to take her own life by jumping from one of the city’s pedestrian bridges on the near south side. I stop eating. I hold my breath, my fork suspended midair. The image is wide at first—the skyline, Lake Michigan—and then it homes in on a bridge where a reporter stands, freezing cold, telling us that this is where the young woman jumped. The video then goes back to the studio, where the anchor interviews a psychologist. It’s a split screen view. The psychologist is in an office somewhere, and he tells us the warning signs to look for in people who may be suicidal: talking about suicide, withdrawing from social contact, doing risky or self-destructive things. Across the bottom of the screen flashes a suicide prevention number. The whole news segment is unexpected and sad, and then the psychologist disappears and the anchor moves on to something uplifting—how one of the city’s animal shelters will be waiving adoption fees this weekend in an effort to find the animals good homes—to end the newscast on something lighter. The shift is sudden, the anchor’s segue practically glib: “This next story will cheer everyone up,” she says, the sad look on her own face transforming into a smile on a dime, before we get a look at a litter of puppies that will make most viewers forget all about Caitlin. But not me.
Six
Someone is moving into the apartment downstairs. I see the moving truck arrive and double-park in the street. I stand at the window with my mug of coffee, watching as a couple of burly men haul boxes and furniture out of the truck and in through the doors of the three flat to the apartment below.
“What are you looking at?” Sienna asks, coming out of her own bedroom in a long-sleeved blue polo shirt and the pleated khaki skirt she hates so much. Sienna is tall; she manages to hike the modest skirt up high enough on her waist to reveal more of the thigh than is intended. I smile to myself. She’s nothing if not resourceful.
“Someone’s moving in downstairs. Are you almost ready for school?” I ask, and she nods, slipping into a coat to leave, and I can’t help but be cold for her bare legs on this winter day. She doesn’t have to wear a skirt. Pants are also an option, but she hates the tan, twill, shapeless uniform pants even more than she hates the skirt.
Sienna goes out our apartment door and a few seconds later, I watch her emerge on the sidewalk below, holding the door open for the movers. It makes me happy; for as sassy as she sometimes is, she still has good manners. I follow her with my eyes as she walks down Dakin for Sheridan, where she’ll catch the bus to school. Her commute is long, nearly forty minutes—two buses and a short walk—each way. She’s been riding the city bus alone for years. City kids are resilient that way. Her school is a Roman Catholic college prep high school, one of the best in the city, though it comes with an exorbitant price tag, which Ben and I split.
I watch her out the window for as long as I can, captivated by her infallible confidence, but also scared of it. A little prudence would do her some good.
I sink into the sofa with my coffee, kick my feet up on the coffee table and open my laptop, grateful for a day off. I navigate to Nat’s Facebook page. Now that we’re Facebook friends, I’d like to know a little bit more of what she’s been doing these last many years. Sienna gives me a hard time for still using Facebook. She thinks I’m a Luddite because I haven’t replaced it with TikTok or Snapchat so that, like her, I can agonize over keeping up with my streaks. She likes to think of Facebook as the social media platform for middle-aged moms, and I’m not sure she’s wrong.
I don’t post much myself, not anymore. Still, when I look at it, my page is a history of faux-happy memories, like the picture of Ben, Sienna and me together, smiling beside the Millennium Park Christmas tree last year, when in reality Ben hadn’t wanted to go, to venture into the Loop for dinner and to see the lights. I’d practically had to force him to and even when he did, he was still upset about it, mostly because of how much he hates tourists and holiday crowds, but also because his week was so busy and the last thing he wanted to do on a weekend was have plans. I remember how he walked three steps ahead of Sienna and me the whole night, and if he spoke two words to me, that was all. He only smiled for the picture because a stranger was taking it, and he didn’t want to come across as rude in front of someone he didn’t know, and so he’d stood in the middle of Sienna and me, arranging his arms around our shoulders and pulling us in so that our heads touched. He smiled widely for the picture, the tree in the background giving off perfect holiday vibes. He’d gone so far as to snatch Sienna’s Santa hat from her head for the photo and put it on his, and I remember how friends’ comments all praised Ben—He is SO funny. Love the hat, Ben! OMG he’s too cute.—though he couldn’t get it off fast enough when the moment was through. He’d handed it back to Sienna and then turned and walked away, hands in his pockets, three steps ahead again, and I was grateful for the way Sienna looped her arm through mine and walked with me, though she shouldn’t have had to do that.
Still, when I got home, I posted the picture to Facebook, because everyone was posting pictures of all the festive things they were doing that holiday season to Facebook—cutting down Christmas trees, pictures with Santa, ice-skating at Millennium Park—and I wanted to make the world believe that we, like them, were happy too. The truth is that social media is an optical illusion. It’s an unreality, it’s the very deliberate version of people’s lives that they want you to see.
I haven’t posted anything to Facebook since the divorce, though I haven’t given it up altogether. I like to look because it’s how I keep up with family and friends.
Nat still hasn’t removed her married name, Roche, from Facebook. When I get to her page, I click on the profile photo to enlarge it, seeing again that image of her standing beside some waterfall. In it, she’s leaned back against the metal fencing, her elbows propped on the top rail. Water rushes urgently down behind her, seemingly moving in the static image so that you can practically feel the sprays of cold water that shoot up from the misty river below. Her hair blows in the wind, not enough to mar the photo, but enough that it adds life to it, that it makes her laugh, revealing a beautiful smile. Back in high school, I remember that Nat had a gap-toothed smile. The gap was slight and endearing and only added to her personality and charm, but I can see how, as an adult, it might have made her self-conscious. She’s had it fixed and the result is nothing short of flawless.
I X-out of the profile image to reveal the cover photo beneath. This one is of Nat and a man. He’s handsome, enough that I draw in a breath and hold it. My eyes run over the chiseled cheekbones and jaw, the slim nose, the close-set hazel eyes, the dirty blond hair—which is a combed-back crew cut, classic and clean—trying to decide if I’ve seen him before, because there is something about his face that strikes a chord. I can’t put my finger on it. Nat stands just to the back of him, her arms thrown around his shoulders from behind, hands clasped across his chest—her large wedding ring visible, platinum or white gold, the shank of it lined with small diamonds with a larger, round one in the center of the ring. Her chin rests on his shoulder and, while he’s practically simpering for the camera, she gazes sideways at him, the look in her eyes one of utter adoration, like she can’t tear her eyes off him. I don’t blame her. I can’t either. He’s incredibly attractive. I feel silly, but even as I look at Nat in the photograph, my eyes keep returning to him. Unlike Nat, who’s averting her eyes, he has a direct gaze that practically demands attention.
I was never the prettiest or the most popular girl in school, but even as a grown adult I’ve often wondered what it would be like to snag a man like that, to be able to hold hands and walk down the street with someone that attractive—which is not to say that Ben wasn’t attractive—he was, very much so—but I don’t know that Ben ever turned heads the way this man surely does.
I read her bio, saying how she attended Barrington High School. She works now as a teacher at a cooperative nursery school in Lincoln Park. I’m familiar with the school because it’s one that I looked into for Sienna years ago, though enrollment was limited. After priority spots were taken, there was a lottery for the rest. We threw her name into the hat, but Sienna didn’t get picked. If she had gotten in, I wonder if Nat would have ever been Sienna’s teacher. We might have crossed paths either way. Fate is funny that way.
I scroll slowly back through Facebook, back through time, feeling like I’m snooping as I do, though I don’t know why, because the reason people post things to social media is for them to be seen. If Nat wanted to keep her life private, she wouldn’t put it online and she wouldn’t have sent me that Facebook friend request.
That said, Nat is frugal with the photos she posts. There are some, but there aren’t many. She and the man in the cover photo, Mr. Roche, posed beside a turquoise blue sea in some place like Turks and Caicos or Punta Cana, with one of those little overwater huts behind them, standing with stilts in the water. She and him at a concert. She and him on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier—a selfie—the setting sun and the city skyline behind them. In all, they’re smiling. In every one, they look happy and very much in love, and I wonder what happened between them for their marriage to end in divorce. He hasn’t been tagged in any of the photos and she never mentions him by name; there are only witty little captions like Heaven on Earth and On top of the world. I have no way of knowing who he is.
As I scroll—my feet kicked up on the coffee table before me, lukewarm coffee in one hand, the other on the laptop—the ping of an incoming message takes me by surprise. Automatically, the messenger box appears at the bottom right corner of my screen, insinuating itself onto the page without my having to open it. It’s Nat. I feel a prick of guilt as if she knew somehow that I was on her page.
I hope you don’t mind that I found you on Facebook.
A second later, another message appears.
I just wanted to say how nice it was to run into you the other day. It brought back such great memories of high school. I can’t believe it’s been over twenty years! Thank you too, for talking me into staying for the meeting. I’m lucky I ran into you—for more reasons than one.
I smile to myself, leaning forward to set my coffee on the coffee table so I can type with both hands. So great seeing you too! I’m glad you stayed for the meeting. Did you like it? I ask. I hope she did. I don’t think she would have felt uncomfortable—as promised, Faye didn’t call her out to share—but the meetings do hit close to home sometimes, whether you speak or not. Sometimes even something someone says can jog a painful memory.
A small version of her profile photo appears beside the message to tell me she’s read it, and then three dots appear; she’s typing back. I wait and then, when it’s clear she’s typing something long, I set the laptop aside, grab my coffee mug and go to the kitchen for a refill. Her message will be waiting for me when I come back.
But when I do come back, the dots are gone. The last message in the chat is mine. Whatever she was going to say, she deleted it and took it back, and I wonder why.
I try again, typing, I’m sorry I got caught up in a conversation after the meeting and didn’t get a chance to talk to you before you left. Do you think you’ll be back next week?
Her reply this time is quick. I’m not sure I can come, she says, and I wonder if she’s not sure she can come because she has something else going on that night, or if she’s not sure she can come because she didn’t like the meeting and never wants to go back.
Or if she’s not sure she can come because someone won’t let her.
Ok, I type at first but I don’t send it because it feels somehow caustic in its brevity. I don’t want to come across as short or rude, though I’m reading too much into it, I know.
I delete my initial response. Instead I type, Would you want to grab coffee or a drink sometime? I’d really love to catch up.
It feels forward, bold. But I send it anyway and then wait for a reply.
