by Joy Fielding
“Are you okay?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Cindy nodded. “How’s Faith?”
He shrugged, as if he weren’t sure how to answer the question.
“My sister had postpartum depression,” Cindy offered. “With two of her children.”
“Really? And what happened?”
Cindy struggled to remember, but like her mother, she actually had no recollection of Leigh having suffered from any such affliction. “I guess it just went away with time.”
“That’s pretty much what her doctor says will happen. Apparently it’s not all that uncommon.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You never had it?”
“No. I was lucky, I guess.” Cindy had sailed through both her pregnancies and their aftermath, relishing the time when her daughters were infants, despite the fact that Julia had been colicky and demanding from the moment of her birth. Heather, on the other hand, had slept through the night at ten weeks, settled into a three-feedings-a-day schedule the week after that, and potty-trained herself at thirteen months. Cindy sat down on the bottom step and stared down the quiet street, half expecting to see her older daughter emerge from the shadows of the streetlamps. “Has the doctor recommended any medication?”
“He prescribed Valium, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Maybe she needs something stronger.”
“Maybe she needs to talk to a psychiatrist.”
“Maybe.” Ryan Sellick massaged the bridge of his nose, as if trying to keep a budding headache at bay.
“What about Faith’s mother? Any chance she could help out for a few weeks?”
“Her mother’s been back and forth from Vancouver several times already. I can’t expect her to keep flying over every time there’s a problem. And my parents are both dead, so. . .”
“What about hiring a nanny?”
“Faith won’t hear of it. ‘What kind of mother can’t take care of her own child?’ she says whenever I so much as mention the idea.” Ryan shook his head, gingerly patting the deep scratch beneath his eye. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep taking time off work, that’s for sure. I didn’t get to the office today till almost noon, and then I had to leave again when you called.”
“Maybe I could drop by a few times a week,” Cindy suggested.
“No. I couldn’t put you to that much trouble.”
“It’s no trouble,” Cindy assured him. “And I’ll talk to Heather and Julia, see if they’d be willing to baby-sit occasionally.”
Ryan laughed, an unexpectedly hearty sound.
“What’s funny?”
He shook his head. “Julia just doesn’t strike me as the baby-sitting type.”
Cindy had to agree. “I didn’t realize you knew my daughter so well.”
“It’s all in the way she walks. Nobody struts a street quite like Julia.”
Cindy watched Julia’s image step out of the shadows and walk toward them, head high, shoulders rotating in time with her hips, arms swinging at her sides. She moves as if a camera is following her, Cindy thought, recording her every move.
“Everything all right at home?” Ryan asked.
What was he talking about? “What do you mean?”
“Well, Julia and Heather’s boyfriend, I’ve forgotten his name. . .”
“Duncan.”
“Yeah, Duncan. They were going at it pretty good this morning.”
“They were fighting?”
“In the driveway. I heard the yelling from inside my house.” He motioned toward the dining room to the left of the front door.
It must have been when I was out shopping for chardonnay, Cindy thought, recalling today’s lunch with genuine nostalgia. Already it seemed so long ago. Why would Julia have been fighting with Duncan? And why hadn’t he mentioned their argument to her earlier? Why hadn’t Heather?
“What time was that?”
“A little before eleven, I think.”
So Julia had been fighting with Duncan just before she’d had to leave for her appointment. Maybe the argument had upset her, caused her to blow the most important audition of her career. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t come home—because she was too angry and embarrassed and upset. Damn that Duncan anyway, Cindy thought, pushing herself to her feet. She should never have allowed him to move into her house. “I should get home. Let you get some sleep,” she said. “Come on, Elvis. Party’s over.” Surprisingly, the dog immediately jumped to his feet and followed after her.
“Thanks for being such a good neighbor,” Ryan called as Cindy reached the sidewalk in front of the house.
Cindy waited while Elvis relieved himself against the side of a tall maple tree. “Everything’s going to work out fine. You’ll see.” Confidence radiated from her voice, and it was only later, when she was lying in her bed, wide awake at nearly 4 A.M., Julia still not home, that Cindy wondered who it was she’d been trying so hard to convince.
SEVEN
AT precisely seven-thirty the next morning Cindy phoned Sean Banack. “Sean, this is Julia’s mother,” she said instead of hello. “Is Julia there?”
“What?” The sleepy voice was raspy with cigarettes and alcohol. “I’m sorry, what?” he said again.
“It’s Cindy Carver. Julia’s mother,” Cindy repeated, picturing Sean Banack slowly propping himself up on one elbow in the middle of rumpled white sheets, his free hand pushing long blond hair away from his forehead, then rubbing at tired brown eyes. She wondered if Julia was stretched out beside him. I’m not here, she could almost hear her daughter whisper before flipping onto her other side and covering her head with a pillow.
“Mrs. Carver?” Sean asked, as if he still wasn’t sure who she was.
“I’m sorry to be calling so early, but I need to speak to Julia.”
“Julia’s not here.”
“Please, Sean. This is really important.”
“She’s not here,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Do you know where she is?”
Sean made a sound halfway between a laugh and a cry. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Carver, but Julia is no longer my problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we broke up. It means I don’t have a clue where she is. It means it’s seven-thirty in the morning and I didn’t get to bed till after three. Which means I’m still a little drunk and I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Sean,” Cindy cried before he could disconnect. “Please. Julia didn’t come home last night and I’m very worried. If you have any idea at all where she might be. . .”
“Sorry, Mrs. Carver,” Sean said before hanging up the phone. “I’m not the one you should be speaking to.”
“What do you mean? Who should I . . .?” Cindy stared at the dead phone in her hands for several long seconds before dropping it back into its carriage. “Great. Just great.” Elvis stirred beside her, then jumped from the bed, stared at her expectantly. “What does that mean, ‘I’m not the one you should be speaking to?’ ” she asked the dog, who cocked his head from side to side, as if carefully considering his response. Then he ran to the bedroom door and barked. “That’s all you have to say?” Elvis barked again, and began digging at the carpet. “I know. I know. You have to go out. Give me a minute, okay?” Elvis promptly sat down, patiently waiting as Cindy showered and slipped into a pair of jeans and an old orange T-shirt. “Did Julia come home while I was in the shower?” she asked the dog as he dutifully followed her into Julia’s empty room.
Cindy glanced toward the closed door of the bedroom Heather shared with Duncan. It bothered her that neither of them had said anything about Duncan’s fight with Julia, a fight so acrimonious it had spilled from the house to the street, so loud it had attracted the attention of their next-door neighbor. She thought of storming into their room and demanding an explanation, but decided such confrontations were better left till she got back from walking the dog. Perhaps by that time, Julia would be home.
“Where are you, Julia?” Cindy asked the sun-dappled street, listening to the whir of cars already clogging Avenue Road. Avenue Road, she repeated silently, turning in the opposite direction and waiting as Elvis relieved himself on a neighbor’s front lawn. What a strange thing to call a street. Almost as if the city council had run out of names. “Where are you, Julia?” she repeated, stopping again while Elvis left his mark on a newly planted strip of grass.
She turned left on Poplar Plains and proceeded south, letting Elvis lead the way. It was going to be a beautiful day, she thought, feeling the sun warm on her arms, the slightest of breezes teasing the leaves on the trees. A week from now, the University of Toronto’s fall semester would be getting under way, and Heather and Duncan would be back in class, Cindy would be sitting in a crowded movie theater with hundreds of other avid film devotees, and Julia . . . Julia would be where?
Where was she now?
“Where are you, Julia?” Cindy asked again, tugging on Elvis’s leash when he stopped too long at the corner of Poplar Plains and Clarendon, picking up the pace as they turned the corner onto Edmund. “Hurry up and do your stuff,” Cindy instructed, amazed when the dog immediately squatted, leaving a large, steaming deposit in the middle of the sidewalk. Cindy held her breath as she scooped the dog poop into the clear plastic bag. “Good boy,” she said. All my children should listen so well, she thought.
What had Sean meant when he said Julia was no longer his problem? Clearly he was upset about their breakup, but he’d sounded so bitter. I’m not the one you should be speaking to. What did that mean exactly? Whom should she be speaking to?
“Damn it, Julia. Where are you?” Cindy nodded hello to a heavyset man who was skipping rope in front of a mustard-yellow apartment building on the other side of the street. Even from this distance she could see he was sweating profusely, and she wondered if such intense exercise was good for him. She checked her watch. It was a little past eight o’clock. Maybe that’s where Julia was—at an early-morning exercise class. Yes, that was it. She’d probably met up with a group of friends after her audition and they’d spent the afternoon together, gone out for a dinner of sushi and wine, then partied until it was too late to call home. When she woke up, she’d gone directly to her yoga class. There was nothing to worry about; nothing awful had happened. Julia hadn’t been hurt, molested, kidnapped, murdered, dismembered, her body parts hurled into the middle of Lake Ontario. She was perfectly fine, and she’d be back within the hour to shower and blow-dry her hair razor-straight for the undoubtedly busy day ahead. She hadn’t called because she simply wasn’t used to reporting her whereabouts to her mother. Her father had never demanded that she—how was it he so sensitively put it?—check in with him every minute of the day and night.
“I hope you’re picking up after your dog,” a woman called from a nearby apartment window.
Cindy waved the plastic bag full of poop above her head. “What do you think this is?” she snapped. “A purse?”
The woman quickly retreated, lowering her window with a loud bang.
So many angry people, Cindy thought, proceeding up Avenue Road, dropping the plastic bag into a garbage bin already overflowing with them. She turned west on Balmoral, heading for home. I’ve always had trouble dealing with your anger, she heard Tom say, as she ran up the steps and banged on her front door.
*
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND how you could leave the house without your keys,” Heather scolded her mother, yawning as she poured herself a large bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and plopped down at the kitchen table, burying her face in the morning paper.
“You didn’t tell me Duncan and Julia had a fight yesterday,” Cindy said in return.
“It was no big deal.”
“Big enough to concern several of the neighbors,” Cindy embellished.
“Really? Who?”
“That’s not the issue.”
“There is no issue.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Nothing.” Heather shrugged, tossed the front section of the Globe and Mail onto the round pine table. “You know Julia.”
“And you know what Julia and Duncan were fighting about. Tell me.”
Heather lowered the paper and released a deep breath of air, looking imploringly toward the doorway, as if hoping Duncan would miraculously appear. But the shower was still running and it was unlikely Duncan would be down for a while. “It was nothing. Really. Her Highness was running late, as usual, and she wanted a ride to her audition. When Duncan said he was going in the opposite direction and didn’t have time to chauffeur her around, she got angry and started yelling. She even followed him to his car.”
Cindy silently berated herself for not having been home to drive her daughter to her audition. “Would it have killed him to give her a lift?”
“Would it kill her to get her driver’s license? How can anyone fail that stupid test three times?”
Cindy had occasionally wondered the same thing. But not even the sight of Julia’s mesmerizingly long legs had been enough to influence the instructor’s decision. “That’s not the point.”
“The point is that not everyone’s life revolves around Julia. Stop worrying, Mom. She’s fine.”
“Then where is she? Why hasn’t she called?” Cindy braced herself for her daughter’s careless shrug, but surprisingly, none came.
“Did you check with Dad?”
Cindy nodded.
“And Sean?”
“He says Julia is no longer his problem. He hinted she might be seeing someone else.”
“Really?”
“You have no idea who that might be?”
“No, but then I’m not exactly Julia’s main confidante. You could ask Lindsey.”
“Lindsey?”
“Lindsey—Julia’s latest, greatest, best friend ever. She met her last month. The one with the enormous implants.”
A huge bosom balancing precariously atop a skinny torso flashed before Cindy’s eyes. The implants wafted into the air like two helium-filled balloons, blocking the young woman’s face. “Do you know her number?”
“It’s probably in Julia’s address book.”
Several minutes later, Cindy was in Julia’s bedroom, guiltily rummaging through her things. But if Julia had an address book, she’d taken it with her. Cindy looked under every piece of clothing, searched through every drawer. Amid a sea of debris, she found a crumpled five-dollar bill, a sweater she’d been looking for all winter, and several packets of condoms, but no address book. Did it matter? She couldn’t remember Lindsey’s last name. Cindy slapped angrily at her thighs. What kind of mother doesn’t know the names of her daughter’s friends?
“I’m absolutely positive she’s okay,” Heather said when Cindy returned to the kitchen. “But maybe you should call the hospitals,” she added quietly. “Just in case.”
*
CINDY SPENT THE next hour calling every hospital in the city. She started with the downtown hospitals—Mount Sinai, the Toronto Hospital, Women’s College, the Western, St. Mike’s, even the Hospital for Sick Children, and then she branched out, calling Sunny-brook, North York General, Humber Memorial, and even Scarborough. They all told her the same thing. No one named Julia Carver was registered as a patient; no one fitting her description had been brought into the emergency department in the last twenty-four hours.
She called the police, asked whether there’d been any accidents or incidents that might have involved her daughter, but the answer was no, and she hung up, feeling relieved, grateful, and alarmed all at the same time.
She noted the time on the microwave oven. It was ten o’clock. A full day had elapsed since she’d s
een Julia.
Cindy looked around the now-empty kitchen. Heather and Duncan were upstairs, engaged in a quiet but unmistakable argument. They’d tried to pretend nothing was amiss, but Cindy could feel the tension between them. Was Julia in any way responsible for that tension? She found herself remembering how often she and Tom had put on similar fronts, smiling pleasantly for the children before retreating to their bedroom to unleash angry words between tightly gritted teeth, their hostility all the more intense for being so zealously suppressed. Cindy reached for the phone, punched in Tom’s office number, smiling tightly as she waited for his secretary to answer.
“Thomas Carver’s office,” the secretary chirped in her little-girl voice, although the woman was almost Cindy’s age.
“Mr. Carver, please.”
“Cindy?” the secretary asked. “Is that you?”
“Irena,” Cindy acknowledged, amazed her voice was still recognizable after all this time. “How are you?”
“Great. Run off my feet, as usual. Haven’t heard from you in forever. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing very well, thank you,” Cindy lied. “Is he in?” she asked, not sure exactly what to call her ex-husband. Couldn’t very well ask to speak to “the shithead.”
“He’s not. He’s in meetings most of the day, and I don’t think he’s planning on coming back to the office. Being Friday and the long weekend and everything. You know.”
Cindy nodded, although she didn’t know. When she and Tom had been married, one day was pretty much the same as the next. There’d been no such thing as a weekend, let alone a long one. He was always at the office. As was Irena. “Will he be checking in this morning?”
“I’m sure he will.”
“Could you please tell him to call me as soon as possible? It’s very important.”
“Is it anything I can help you with?” Irena asked.
“I don’t think so.” Cindy pictured the attractive, middle-aged woman leaning forward in her chair, crossing one dimpled knee over the other, and tucking her short blond hair behind her right ear. She’d known about Irena’s long-standing affair with her husband almost from its inception. It wove in and around his other affairs like threads in a large tapestry. Cindy wondered if it was still going on, or whether it had ended with the Cookie’s arrival. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, she found herself thinking as she hung up the phone.
