In the cupboard next to the sink are some of Emily’s things—a plastic tub full of brightly colored nail polish; another, packed with wild lipstick shades: glittery green, gothic black. And yet another full of hair dye. I’ve kept all these things because I still can’t bring myself to throw them out—these souvenirs of my daughter’s over-the-top preteen tastes, slumber parties, and school dances, the white marble sink tinged electric blue from boxed hair dye. . . .
I grab a box of dye in the most conservative color I can find, which happens to be called Raven’s Wing. Not great for my skin tone, but it beats trying to look for something more complimentary and getting spotted in CVS by people who used to know me. All I want is to look different from the woman in the video, and Raven’s Wing can do that job.
I open the box, grab Matt’s old hair clipper and the scissors I used to cut Emily’s hair with when she was a little girl. Within the hour, my waist-length dirty-blond, gray-streaked hair is shiny black and barely reaches my chin. I examine my face in the mirror, the way the cut accentuates the sharpness of my jaw, the dark circles under my eyes, and my eye color, which the black dye seems to have brought out—a vivid, shattered green. I didn’t think a new hairstyle could make me look angrier, but that is what I seem to have accomplished. If I saw me walking down the street, I’d cross to the other side. Not a bad thing, really. And I do look different.
I run the blow-dryer over my hair, then go to the kitchen and heat up a can of soup, which I eat in silence, then grab a few slices of bread and eat those too. I’m hungrier than I thought. I wash it all down with a bottle of seltzer, then a glass of wine. By the time I head back upstairs to my office, the sun is setting.
Twitter is still up on my laptop screen. When I left the room, I’d been exploring the #MarthaMeltdown hashtag, and I see there are several more entries if I choose to refresh. I choose not to.
I’M EMAILING MY designs to Glynne when I notice another email, this one from Facebook. Invitation to Join a Group, it’s titled. I open it up, recalling the silver-haired woman outside the police station. The card she’d given me: Niobe.
It’s a group, she had said. For people like us.
Unlike Luke, I’ve never heard of the Niobe myth. Outside of my art classes, I was never much of a student—more interested in socializing. I did have a Greek mythology class sophomore year of college, but it was at nine a.m., so I was either dozing in my seat or back in my dorm room, nursing an Everclear hangover. I took the class pass/fail and barely passed. I learned nothing.
So I google Niobe now, and read her sad story, how she bragged about her dozen children so much, she enraged the Titan Leto, who sent her kids Apollo and Artemis down from Mount Olympus to kill all twelve of them.
It’s the price you pay for being dumb enough to feel secure in your life.
After her children were taken from her, Niobe was so destroyed by grief that she turned to stone and became part of a mountain herself, the face of Mount Sipylus, known in Turkish as A?layan Kaya （“the Weeping Rock”）。 Niobe’s tears turned to waterfalls that have never stopped rushing.
People like us.
I log in to Facebook, which is a kinder, gentler place than Twitter. At least, it is for me because I have very few friends and haven’t posted on it in five years. If anybody’s posted my viral video, they haven’t tagged me. But even if they have, that’s not why I’m here. I click on my messages. I’ve gotten a few—“inspirational” chain letters from people who honestly believe they’re “paying it forward” by clogging up people’s inboxes, plus some “are you okays” from Mount Shady acquaintances. I don’t open any of them. But I do click on one—the same invitation to join the private group Niobe. I accept.
The banner at the top of the group’s page is black, the word printed across it in simple white letters. Just the black box and the word. And a slogan at the side of the page. There are 132 members in this private group, which frightens me. It’s bigger than I thought. But maybe there’s safety in numbers.