So with my little drugstore phone in my bag, I look out the train window and watch the scenery go by. We travel along the Hudson River for a long time. There is still snow in the shadows as we go north, but the trees have a soft glaze of green along their tips. The forests here are thick and mysterious, and I can close my eyes and feel the cold air collecting along the ground, feel my childhood feet kicking up thick piles of leaves, smell the spicy humus composed of earth and worms and layers and layers and layers of leaves.
Such a long time ago. It strikes me that Billie would be seventy now. Hard to imagine.
The farm where we grew up wasn’t far from here as the crow flies, straight west, in a hollow of the Catskills. It was never a particularly successful farm, but it produced plenty to feed us.
All I dreamed of was leaving. Billie and I both spun tales of what we would do when we got to New York City, how we would live. She favored the idea of a shared apartment, but I wanted to just get out by any means necessary. We both flew away, rarely to return.
Even now, the idea of returning makes me feel panicky, as if the land itself might rise up and capture my ankles and I could never leave again.
The rolling, beautiful hills rush by, and I wonder again why my mother never left. Was she serving some misguided notion of loyalty? It wasn’t like she hid her misery from my father. He suffered her sharp tongue the entirety of their marriage, bearing the brunt of her disappointment on his broad shoulders. I have no idea what his motives were. He never talked to us, never really talked to anyone, so I didn’t know him at all.
But now, with time on my hands and the land that he loved (I did know that much) right over the horizon, I wonder about my taciturn father. I can call up his big hands, with blunt nails and marks of all kinds from the hard work he did. His hair was thick and dark, falling over his forehead like Elvis Presley’s.
He was among the Americans who first freed Paris, then went on with the troops to the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of the camps. It couldn’t have been easy on him, and then he married a startlingly beautiful Parisian, who must have seemed to him like a fairy queen or an angel. He brought her back to New York, and like in a ballad, the angel turned into a shrew.
Why do people do what they do?
A prick of irritation snaps behind my eyes. Why do people put up with so much, or rather, why do they settle for so little? Did my father love her so much it was all worth it? Or did he just not know how to get out of it? Why didn’t my mother take her beauty and her talents to New York or Montreal and try to make the life she wanted?
Trees whoop by, whoop whoop whoop, and then the water appears again.
My mother couldn’t leave again, couldn’t face another hard road. At least at the farm she had food and clothing and enough luxury that she wouldn’t suffer. My father had his land and a wife so beautiful everyone envied him and two little girls I’m pretty sure he loved.
And my mother breathed her hunger for more into her daughters, and Billie in turn breathed it into hers.
I close my eyes, wondering what those two beloved nieces of mine are doing. Have they discovered my departure yet? Is Sam still improving? I am not a weeper, but tears sting the corners of my eyes. How did I get here, running away like this?
Why do people do what they do?
I think of Isaak, the last time we were together. A little older now, weary. He was nearly arrested in the early nineties and had to go underground. Before he did, he called me late one summer evening. I had my own apartment in New York by then, nothing quite so grand as Billie’s, but nice enough. When I answered the phone, I’d been watching the last of the colors fade from the sky outside my window, the pinks and peaches turning paler and paler until all was a soft gray.
“Hello, Gloria,” he said. “How are you?”
I smiled. “Isaak! How wonderful to hear your voice.”
“Yours is one of my favorite voices in all the world. I miss it very much.”
We had not coordinated one of our trips in quite some time, almost three years. I’d stopped carrying contraband years before—thus his need to seduce someone else into doing it, a fact I knew and ignored. We’d never been monogamous, after all.
I’d started flying less often to faraway destinations, partly to help out sometimes with Sam and Willow, but I still loved the adventure and freedom of flying. I hadn’t yet realized how erratic Billie was, how unreliable her nannies and babysitters, who were often hangers-on who wanted to partake of the drugs she kept in such vast quantities. She’d always liked drugs, all kinds of drugs, from the early teenage years on, when she’d stolen bennies out of my mother’s medicine cabinet, but she seemed to stay fairly sane. Her first stint in rehab was long before she had her first smash hit, and I lost track of how many times she went back, got clean, held on for a time, fell back into her habit. In between she married Robert, had Sam, wrote more than a dozen perfect songs, and sang them. Had Willow. Got clean for a solid eight or nine months, went on tour—
Why hadn’t I just gone to live with those girls long before Billie checked out? Why did I just keep looking the other way?
Isaak said, “I am going back to Casablanca in two weeks. Will you meet me there?”
It had been such a long stretch between, while he lay low, and I’d missed him far, far more than I wished. If I met him again in our old stomping grounds, I feared it would be more pain than pleasure. “Oh, Isaak, we are beyond all that, don’t you think?”
“Are we, ma bichette?” He paused, and into the silence fell memories and longings, the yearning I felt, even then, to press my body into his, to feel his lips on my hair. “For old times’ sake, hmm?”
I thought of the moments we’d first danced, of the hours we’d spent in his apartment, making love and eating, me posing while he painted. I thought of a thousand kisses, a hundred belly laughs. I swallowed. “All right.”
I flew in on a Thursday evening, and we met at a tiny bar near the sea. He still looked marvelous, in a linen shirt, his hair thick and silvery. My reaction to him had not changed in the nearly two decades I’d known him, and when he took my hand and kissed my fingers, I damn near caught fire on the spot.
It was worth it, that trip. We walked on the beach and feasted on tagines and skewers of chicken shawarma and drank buckets of wine, then wandered back and made love. Perhaps it wasn’t as vigorous as it had been, but we still meshed. Later, we lay in moonlight, his fingers splayed over my belly. “I’m going away,” he said.
“You are always going somewhere,” I laughed. “Where this time?”
“This is different,” he said gravely. “It’s time to truly disappear.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding that it was law trouble. I pressed my hand over his. “Will you call me sometimes?”
“I was rather hoping you might like to go with me.” He rose up on his elbow. “I have loved you for decades. I know you love me too.”
“I do,” I said, “but my answer has never changed.”
“Why must you cling to this idea that the only good life is an independent life?” He flung himself away. “We can be happy in our old age.”
“I can’t live in exile, Isaak. I loved you and I always will, but—I love my life, my nieces, my sister, my job. All of it.”
“How much longer will you be able to hold on to that job with your back issues, kitten? Hmm?”
I took a breath. “Not long. But I still need to be close to my nieces.”
“Bring them, then. Your sister is an addict—she cannot care properly for them.”
“How do you know that?”
He made a noise. “I read the papers.”
In that single instant, I knew I’d been lying to myself. “I have to go, Isaak.”
He tried to stop me, cajoling and pleading, but I suddenly knew I’d been letting the girls and my sister down completely. I could find a desk job with the airline, move into the spare bedroom, be a steady presence in all their lives. The urgency of doing
this swamped me so acutely that my hands shook.
Before I landed again in New York, Billie was dead of an overdose.
Watching the landscape of the Hudson Valley flash by the windows, I suddenly know what I have to do. What I should have done all along.
The conductor announces the next station, and I put on my coat.
Chapter Fifty
Willow
My mood is all over the place after Balakrishna leaves, swinging wildly between terror and anxiety over what might happen to Gloria, excitement about the Rolling Stone interview, wild hope about the new piece, and fear that everything is going to fall apart any second.
The only answer is to play music. I run through all my practice pieces, play a few of the songs on my album, and then, for no reason except that I’m in her music room, I start bowing the melody to my mother’s most famous song. So much hope and passion in that song. It’s mighty and full of power, and she sang it with her signature voice, husky and beautiful, almost whispering at times, then belting out those famous lines.
Still bowing, I wander down the hall to look at the painting of her. It’s enormous and one of the best pieces Karen Shroeder ever did. She was known for her color work, layer upon layer upon layer to render light and glow unlike any other portraitist. The thing I love the most is the slight, knowing smile. It shines in her eyes, and if you look closely at the pupils, you can see Shroeder.
It reminds me that she was happy sometimes.
And just like that, I hear a new song. The melody first, and a sentence—my feet are on the ground and my head is in the clouds. Parts, too—for me, for violin, for recorder, for flute, for two voices, winding together. I think of Crosby, Stills, and Nash and their exquisite harmonies and alliteration in “Helplessly Hoping,” and I wonder if there’s any chance Josiah and I can ever capture something so timeless and perfect.
I pull out my phone and text him. When will you be here today? I’m anxious for us to finish the first piece.
For a long minute, nothing. Then three dots tell me he’s typing.
As I wait, I head into the kitchen, filled with a swelling, excited energy, and start pulling out vegetables, herbs, and the chicken stock, but that’s not going to do it tonight. I call Bloom’s and order apples, gluten-free flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and a dozen other items.
My phone buzzes. A couple of hours okay?
Great
He sends back a laid-back emoji version of himself in a suit and glasses, smiling with thumbs up. It’s silly and cartoony, and I love that he doesn’t take himself too seriously to do something like that.
To direct my energy, I start the soup, then am diving into a gluten-free pie crust when the other groceries are delivered. Sam loves apple pie, and I make a version with caramelized apples and lots of ginger that she’d walk a hundred miles for. The careful mixing, the rolling, and the smell of apples ease the agitation in my neck, and after I get it in the oven, I wander outside and admire the low clouds pillowing the tallest buildings in Manhattan. Their weight lends luminance to the world below, as if capturing the light and possibility and reflecting it back down.
I wonder where Gloria is. How long it will be before I see her again. How can I communicate with her?
How will I know if she’s safe?
Chapter Fifty-One
Sam
As soon as Eric leaves, I call Asher, but he doesn’t pick up, and I curl up in bed, feeling weepy and lost. It occurs to me that I’ve done more of that in the past few hours than I’ve done in a week. I fall asleep.
For a long time. I can tell it’s been hours by my dry mouth, by the shift in the light in my room. The air smells of apple pie, and I know Willow has made it for me. For one moment, I think about how kind she’s been since the start of all this.
For God’s sake. All these stupid emotions.
I have to stop sleeping. It’s been a strange relief to take a break from all the hard things in my life, but enough already.
I stand up and stretch hard, and my energy is decent. I patter out to wash my face and brush my hair, then go in search of that pie.
I look at my phone, and nothing has come in. I’m not sure what that was with Asher, the bad mood, but I’m clinging to the kiss. If he kissed me, there’s hope we can fix this, that we can make that vision I had come true. Maybe we can bring those beautiful boys into the world.
How did it take me so long to realize that’s what I wanted? Why haven’t I fought harder for him before this? I know he loves me. I know we can work this out—but the effort is going to have to come from me.
Willow is in the music room, scribbling. “Is that pie going to be ready soon?” I croak.
“Yes!” She leaps up, and her hair is springing out from her head in that kinetic way, escaping from the ponytail to do whatever it likes, making her look like a girl Einstein. “It’s been cooling for more than an hour. Come on.”
Impulsively, I hug her. She’s small and finely made, like a bird, and I wrap my arms around her tightly. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” I say. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Her arms are tight too. “I love you, sis. I was so afraid you’d die.”
“That’s what Asher said.” I let her go, and we head for the kitchen. “Did he say anything when he left?”
“Not really,” she says, but there’s a slight twitch to her mouth. “Just that he had to go to work.”
I nod, look at my still-blank screen. “I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up.”
“He probably has a lot to catch up on.”
The pie is sitting on the counter, the crust lightly, perfectly browned, little bits of caramelized juice oozing out of the little design. It smells like everything good ever made, and my stomach growls, loudly. “That is a work of art.”
Willow chuckles. “I ordered ice cream too.”
I hear Asher in my head saying, Who made sure that your bed was fresh and you had people around to take care of you? “That’s really nice, Willow. Thank you.”
“Of course.” She reaches into a drawer for a knife. “I had to go through the entire fridge and throw everything out. Gloria doesn’t keep anything in this house, I swear. It’s ridiculous.”
“My apartment is like that too.” I shrug, reaching for plates in the cupboard.
“You don’t really need anything, do you?”
“I do. I need coffee and sugar and milk and maybe some cookies.”
She cuts the pie and carefully lifts a slice out. The apples are stacked like in a photograph. “I keep a pretty full pantry.” She twists her mouth. “Not that I’ve had a kitchen much in recent years.”
I carry my plate to the table and sit down with a glass of water. “Yeah, what happened with David? I thought you’d found somebody good there. Money, prospects.”
“Yeah.” She gives a humorless snort and licks pie off her finger. “Too bad he was also a total dick.”
There’s something about the angle of her neck that makes me think she’s underplaying that. I give her a minute to say more, but she doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” I say.
She shrugs and sits down across from me, digging into the pie. “Oh my God!” she moans. “This is delicious!”
I dig in myself, and it’s a mouth explosion—sugar and spice and the crumbly flaky crust and apples that are not too firm, not too squishy. I make a noise of pleasure, covering my mouth and nodding.
She clicks her phone on, a kindness to help hide the mouth noises, and it’s playing one of our mother’s songs. “I love this,” I say. “I remember her practicing it. I must have been really small, because my dad was around, and he applauded.”
“That’s a great memory.”
I nod, and we listen together for a little while. She says, “That phone call this afternoon? It was a reporter from Rolling Stone.”
“Really?” The first comment that comes to my lips is faintly sarcastic, and I hear it with a sense of startled recognition
. Instead I say, “An interview or something?”
“Yes!” She taps her feet on the ground in a staccato rhythm. “And it’s not even a retrospective about Mom or anything. It’s about my album!”
“That’s great, Willow.” I look at my phone again, and there’s nothing. I open the message app. Still nothing. I realize how rude that is and turn it facedown. “Sorry. When will you do it?”
“Like tomorrow, actually.”
“Wow!” It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t seen Gloria all day. “Where’s G? Have you heard from her?”
She looks at her own phone. “Shit.” She presses her lips together. “We need to talk about this.”
I set down my fork. “She’s dying.”
“No.” Willow takes a breath, touches her napkin to her lips. “She’s gone.”
“What? Gone where?”
“I don’t know that part.” Then she tells me a story about the FBI and paintings and Gloria’s involvement in an ancient crime.
A familiar sense of resentment wells up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You haven’t been exactly up to it.”
“But maybe I could have helped! You didn’t even give me the chance.”
She blinks. “I’m telling you now.”
For long moments, I let the silence stretch between us, fighting the irritability that has been my defense for decades. I take a breath, then let it go. “Okay, give me all the details, and then I’m going to do some research.”
I see the relief in her face, the easing of her shoulders as she lets go of her defenses. It sears me, that she has to erect a shield against me.
“Thank God.” She hugs me. “I knew we needed your brain.”
We spend an hour going over every single thing that’s happened. On my laptop, I type the names, the dates, the various visits of the FBI. “And Miriam knows what’s happening?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I need her number.”
Willow pulls a phone out of her back pocket. “This is G’s phone. She left it.”
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