Paul Griffin - Burning Blue

“Like what?” Schmidt said.

Mr. Castro closed his eyes tightly and dug his fingertips into his temples. He still wore his wedding ring. “Nicole, I can’t do this, honey. I’m sorry.” He stood up.

“Dad?” Nicole said.

“I can’t work it out like this, in here. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop hating her or Dave or that monster of a girl or me most of all, but any sense of forgiveness I can discover in myself has to come on its own. Not with people watching for it. Waiting for it. I’m not even sure it’s in me to find. Look, I’ll be waiting in the car. Doctor, I’m sorry.” He left quickly.

“I didn’t get to say it,” Nicole said. “I waited too long. I should have said it in the beginning of the session, when you asked me the first time, but now after hearing what he just said, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell him. To get it out.”

“Tell Jay,” Schmidt said. “He’s here for you. Go ahead, Nicole. You can do it.”

Nicole took my hands in hers. “Jay, I need you to know why I do it. Why I cut, I mean. I do it to control the pain my way. Without meds. To feel. To see my imperfection spill out of me. It started after the attack. Shortly after. I wanted to draw the heat in my face downward. I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror in the beginning. I had no idea what the burn looked like. I needed to see it, but at the same time I couldn’t look. So I put it where I could look at it. Where I could control it in every aspect, how it appeared in my skin, how long it lasted. I could start the fire, and I could put it out at will. Remember in biology, that picture of the circulatory system? The blood pumping away from the heart is bright red. The arteries squeeze it through you fiercely, almost uncontrollably. Then there’s the other blood, the blood that goes to the heart, the softer flow, the blood that’s blue. It’s not really. Really it’s just a very dark red, but in the right kind of light, the soft light, the night-light with the sapphire shade, you can convince yourself that it’s the same color as the blood in the picture, that cool blue.” She rolled up her sleeves. The bandages were gone. The scar lines were parallel, all roughly the same length. “We’ve started to talk about it, Dr. Schmidt and I. About her. My mother. I hope at some point I’ll find the courage to contact her, maybe even to see her. I know I’ll have to do that, to hear it directly from her mouth, to know why. Jay, I haven’t cut in thirty-one days.”

“You are amazing,” I said.

“I can’t say I’ll never do it again. Not yet. Maybe I’ll never be able to say it.”

“You’ll always be amazing.”

Nicole was supposed to exercise a lot. Cutting unleashes endorphins in the bloodstream, but so does running. We took up jogging. We were at Palisades Park one beautiful winter day during Christmas break. Not that Nicole had come back to school. We took a breather underneath the George Washington Bridge, at the river’s edge. We hiked the trap rock and found a bench-like slab with a great view of northern Manhattan across the water. A double-flash of bright light hit us. We turned into it with our hands up in front of our faces to block the camera, but the flash had come from the sunlight’s reflecting off the window of a turning Coast Guard speedboat. “How bad was it while I was gone?” Nicole said. “The media attention?”

“Bad.” Actually, it was insane. Everywhere I went those first few days after Mrs. Castro was identified as the person behind the attack, I had at least two reporters tailing me. The stalking died down after a couple of weeks of my not saying anything. What could I say? I didn’t have any answers for them or any answers period.

“Detective Barrone called this morning,” Nicole said. “She wants to talk. Not Barrone, my mother. Talk with me, I mean. She’s cooperating, answering all Barrone’s questions, except one.”

“Why she did it?”

“She says she’ll only answer that to my face. All the stuff you told me about my dad and yours, that night at her debut, then needing to keep me around after the divorce, not being able to let me go. It makes sense on an intellectual level, but I won’t really understand why she did it until I hear her say the words. Until I see her eyes as she tells me. But how can I be in the same room with her? How can I be near her ever again? I swear, when my father told me the doctor said she would probably die from the infection? I was just so relieved. You know? Like I’d been spared my own death sentence or worse, my own life sentence. If she was gone, I’d never have to face her again. I could put away all the pictures and. . Oh my god. Oh my god!” She buried her face in balled hands and rocked back and forth. “My mother had me burned, Jay. My own mother. My mom. I miss my mom.”

She got a job working at the stables, teaching the young kids to ride. She was starting to look at colleges with programs in early childhood education. One night her friend from the stables called and asked her if she wanted to see a horse foal. When we got there, the barn was dark except for a double stall in the corner. The horse was lying on her side and getting ready to deliver. This dog, a boxer mix, I think, sat at Nicole’s side and leaned into her. He kept sticking his nose into her elbow and flipping up her arm and wouldn’t stop until she stroked him.

“No allergies?” I whispered.

“Not that bad, actually,” she said. “The doctor said at some point I might outgrow them.”

We stayed like this for some time, crouching in the stall on upturned crates, just waiting for the colt to be born. The stable master held the mother’s head and stroked her neck. Everyone was quiet and smiling. When the colt was born, everybody laughed.

Her father had put the Brandywine Heights house on the market. He was renting a town house in a luxury condo complex down by the Hudson River, just south of the George Washington Bridge, where Nicole and I ran and hiked. The first floor was Mr. Castro’s office. He’d left his company and was working for himself now, to be around for Nicole. Upstairs was homey, lots of sun and space. Nicole’s room was on the water-view side. We were hanging out on her bed, playing dominoes. Sylvia came in. “Feet on the floor,” she said. She grabbed my ponytail. “If only I had a pair of scissors. One clip, and you would be handsome. Now go downstairs. Let Nicoletta get ready.”

Nicole had been asked to give a speech at the annual Girl Scouts conference in Manhattan.

That night, we were at a midtown hotel. After dinner, Nicole was introduced. She looked stunning, her hair back, her smile wide, except I could see her lips were quivering. The bandage had become smaller, but it still covered all signs of injury. “I’m grateful to you for this opportunity to tell you how much you girls inspire me,” was how she started. “You’re leaders, and we’re all depending on you to lead with kindness. What’s our motto?”

“Be prepared,” half the girls yelled.

Nicole nodded. “Prepared in mind, prepared in body, right? We train our minds to be ready when we need to act to make a situation a bit better. We train our hearts to be strong, to have the courage to give of ourselves to help somebody who-”

“Mommy, what’s wrong with her face?” a Brownie in the front row said.

Nicole kept going. “. . train our hearts to help those who might need. . help.” She brushed her hair with her fingers and covered her face with it. “I’m. .” She hurried away from the podium.

I caught up with her backstage. She was hyperventilating in the corner, facing the bathroom door. “Somebody’s in there,” she said. “The people, they’re still looking at me, Jay, but they can’t see me,” she said. “They can’t see past it.” She rapped on the door. “Please, I have to get in there.”