Page 64 of Blade
She sits up straight on the edge of the love seat. Legs crossed. Both hands folded around her knee. My mind lags, steps behind, fighting tomake sense of things. I mirror her movements on the sofa. Fold one leg over the other. Interlace my hands on my knee. My back is perfectly straight, just like hers.
I hear her speaking, but I’m disoriented by this room, new and different, scrambling my memory. And by this woman who has loomed so large for my entire adult life, and most of my childhood, but who now looks at me without recollection.
“Ms. Robbins?” She’s been speaking, and I’ve said nothing. A deer in headlights of my own making. “How can I help you?”
I close my eyes and search for knowledge, drawing from my years in the courtroom, being thrown curveballs by prosecutors and judges. My clients. Questions in the air. Needing to find an answer. Scrambling. Everything at stake. And I whisper to myself the same words I do then.
Do your fucking job, Ana.I open my eyes.
“Anything you can tell me about Grace would be helpful,” I say, my mouth bone dry, voice trembling. But I get the words out. “And her relationship with Emile.”
Dawn clears her throat and tilts her head. “I really wish I had something useful to tell you,” she says with a shrug. “I’ve thought about nothing else since I heard the news. And after they found the blood on her skate ... Well, you can imagine it came as quite a shock. What is she saying?”
“That she didn’t do it,” I tell her. My voice is steady, though it feels like it belongs to someone else. Like I’ve been divided into two people. The girl crying in the closet at Avery Hall. The lawyer saving a child in a courtroom somewhere back home. “I’d like to understand the history.”
“Well,” Dawn says, more quickly than before. “There was nothing out of the ordinary. Grace has had a spectacular year. Her training has been flawless. As for the rest of her life, it’s not really my business.”
Her eyes are wide, like she’s trying to hold an expression. I recognize this body language from my work. She’s defensive, and knowing how to read her feels like a lethal weapon I can use.
“Whose business would it be?” I ask. The lawyer kicking into gear, calming the child in the closet. “Grace lived here year-round. We used to call girls like that Orphans.” I speak of my past like it has no power over me. I speak of it like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Dawn sinks back against the square cushion. She pulls a throw pillow under her right arm. She appears casual. Nonchalant. But it’s stiff. Orchestrated. She’s having to think about it.
“Have you spoken to Shannon Finch? She’s the dorm mother,” Dawn asks. “From what I understand, she takes a very close interest in the girls’ lives. And Grace’s mother. Jolene Montgomery. She was a skater. I imagine she was very involved, even from afar.”
I think now of what I would do if Dawn was on the stand. Or in an interrogation room. A stenographer taking down every word. A device recording our voices. Maybe even a video, capturing every inch of her face. The wrinkles growing deeper when she pretends to be surprised. The corners of her mouth curling as she fakes a smile.
“Yes,” I say. “I have.” I don’t tell her what I’ve learned. Instead, I press forward. “What do you know about her relationship with Emile?”
“I can only speak to what I observed at the rink,” she says, this time with a little shimmy of her shoulders like she’s shaking off the question. “Emile has a wonderful rapport with the skaters. He’s very casual with them.”
“Casual?” I ask.
“He jokes around with them. Makes them laugh.” She says this as if he hasn’t been murdered right down the mountain outside her house. In the woods by the side of the field. “We make a good team that way.”
“Good cop, bad cop?” I ask, remembering the first thing Jolene said to me about Emile Dresiér. “He dries the tears Dawn makes you cry.” I picture Kayla mocking her. “That’s so poetic.” And the anger begins to rise.
“Well—I don’t like to think of myself as a bad cop. But I am stricter, and I don’t joke around,” she says. “You said you skated here years ago. Was Emile here then? You must know what I’m talking about.”
She’s lying now. I know she remembers me. And Jolene, and Kayla and Indy. I whisper again, to myself.Do your job, Ana.
“So nothing more than that?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I have a lot of students, Ms. Robbins. I can’t be their coach and their mother. There’s no time, and it would be inappropriate.”
I want to scream now, at the top of my lungs, into this room where we watched my videos. This house where she had me for secret dinners. Picked me up on the corner so no one would see. I wonder if she really believes this. That she did her job as a coach and left it there. That what happened when we left the ice was none of her business. None of her making.
“But you must hear things,” I say, finding the right words as I consider the possibility that she believes this. That she had no idea what damage her training methods caused. “From the mothers in the stands. The other coaches.”
“What things?” she asks.
Fight, Ana. Throw the punch.
“Things like Emile planning to leave The Palace and take some of your best skaters with him?”
She reaches her hand to the back of her neck and gently squeezes a small, tight bun of bleached blond hair. I have a flash to another time I saw her do this. It was at a competition in Minneapolis. The year I made Nationals. It was Indy’s turn to skate, and she was by the boards. I remember every detail from that day.
I train my eyes on her face, my heart in my chest with thoughts of Indy. I picture me and Dawn in the foyer, which I can see from the corner of my eye. On the day I told her about the bruise and begged her to help. She shoved that skate into my hands, mocking me. Knowing I could never do anything to hurt her. The desire was there. For Indy, but also for myself. I could feel what she was doing to me. The weed growing inside. I wanted to take that skate and press it against her throat. Press the heel of the blade into her skull. But I froze.