Cutting Teeth(21)

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, NOELLE BRANDT


APPEARANCES:


Detective Wanda Bright





PROCEEDINGS


DET. BRIGHT: There’s no reason to be nervous. I’m going to ask you a few simple questions and I bet—I bet, you’ll be able to get them just right. Sound good?

NOELLE BRANDT: Okay.

DET. BRIGHT: And if at any point, you get worried or anxious, you can just look at your mommy and she’ll be right here the whole time. Got it?

NOELLE BRANDT: Yes.

MRS. MARY BETH BRANDT: Yes, ma’am.

NOELLE: Yes, ma’am.

DET. BRIGHT: We can keep it relaxed. That’s fine, just fine. First of all, can you tell me your name?

NOELLE BRANDT: Noelle. N-O-E-Double-L-E. Noelle.

DET. BRIGHT: Whew. Good. See? I had a feeling you’d do a great job. And how old are you, Noelle?

NOELLE BRANDT: I’m four and a half.

DET. BRIGHT: Wow, four. That’s big. Where do you go to school?

NOELLE BRANDT: Little Academy.

DET. BRIGHT: Do you like your school?

NOELLE BRANDT: Yes. Ma’am.

DET. BRIGHT: What do you like about it?

NOELLE BRANDT: The playground.

DET. BRIGHT: The playground does look really cool.

NOELLE BRANDT: I like the slides because I can go down on my tummy and climb back up the wrong way by myself now.

DET. BRIGHT: Wow, that’s impressive. Noelle, do you know what happened to Miss Ollie?

NOELLE BRANDT: Yes. I do.

DET. BRIGHT: You do? That’s very helpful. Can you tell me?

NOELLE BRANDT: Miss Ollie’s an angel.





ELEVEN




Miss Ollie is dead, that much Mary Beth has ascertained. Mary Beth felt it—this breakthrough—so acutely it was sensory, almost physical, reaching through the fog of her insane headache, clawing at her to pay attention, snap to it, Mary Beth. She watches the ceiling fan in her bedroom go around and around, a sort of meditation.

If she thought she knew how she would react in a catastrophe, if she thought it would be logical, then, turns out, she was wrong. Because in response, she returned home, put the kids in front of a movie, and dragged Doug upstairs, where she attempted to screw her brains out—literally.

The strategy worked, somewhat.

Her head hurts less, her animal instincts for survival—survival of her family, but more importantly survival of herself—are satiated, but Miss Ollie is still dead. She tries to find room for that knowledge in her swollen brain, but it keeps resisting, pushing against facts like an overstuffed closet. The death of her daughter’s preschool teacher floats outside of her. She knows this because if she swallowed it, made room, let it in as something to be digested, she would feel wildly different by now. She would comprehend that her daughter was no doubt in grave danger, that nowhere was safe, not even a preschool. She would think about how just yesterday she’d seen Miss Ollie: healthy, young, alive, present. And now she doesn’t even have a heartbeat.

“How many days is that?” Doug rolls over, probably a tad shell-shocked, poor thing.

“I’ll have to check the calendar.” She sounds robotic. The air from the fan whips her sticky cheeks and the thick, slippery sweat pooled beneath her boobs.

Doug props himself up on his elbow. She hasn’t shaved her bikini line in ages and it’s nice that this no longer embarrasses her.

“How does Noelle seem, considering?” he murmurs. Did he think of their daughter’s dead teacher while he was fucking her? Was he waiting to ask this question the whole time?

Her heart thumps, most likely an aftereffect of the sex.

“Fine.” She pries herself from the bed, locates a clean towel, and rubs it between her thighs. “I think I better go call the other moms, speaking of. Can you get the girls to bed?”

Doug still goes through the motions of running his fingers through his hair even though he hasn’t had enough hair to run them through for years. “What if Noelle wants you? She’s going through a real mommy phase, I think.” He makes no motion to go do anything as she pulls on the droopy sleeves of her robe.

“She won’t,” answers Mary Beth.

“She keeps saying she’s—”

“I don’t know,” she snaps. Mary Beth never snaps. “Figure it out. How should I know any better than you?”

She’s a tiny bit satisfied when his lower lip drops.

At Mary Beth’s bridal shower, she received all kinds of advice related to her impending marriage. Never go to bed angry. Always kiss goodnight. Say sorry even when you don’t mean it. Children will make you happier. And for the most part, she believes these kernels of wisdom are clichés for a reason. They are good and true and occasionally, like now, totally irrelevant.



* * *



“Megan, hi, it’s Mary Beth.” Her practice of entering the contact information of every parent in her daughters’ classes does come in handy more than one would think. “I’m not great, how are you?”

Megan is one of the better-liked mothers in the class, not quite as overtly friendly as Mary Beth, but she doesn’t avoid eye contact at pickup the way, say, Rhea does.

“Shaken.” Megan sighs. “I can’t believe something like this could happen at our school. Zeke’s been going there since he was sixteen months old.”