by Lisa Unger
I nodded my understanding. “I called, too, of course.”
Emily and Trevor hadn’t said a word, something I wouldn’t have thought possible just two days ago. I knelt down and opened my arms and they both came to me. I held on to them, felt their arms wrap around my body.
“It’s okay” I whispered, even though this was a lie, that disease again.
“Mom is really mad at Daddy,” Emily whispered. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Linda bow her head. Erik turned toward the window and looked out at the parking lot. He seemed to be scrolling through the phone book on his cell; I could hear the soft musical beeping as he scanned contacts.
“It’s okay,” I repeated. “Everything is going to be fine.”
I pulled back, looked at their sad little faces, gave them each a kiss, then reluctantly moved away.
“I’m going to check on Fred,” I said to Linda.
“I’ll come with you.” I didn’t want her to, but I could hardly refuse. I grabbed my bag off the chair and Erik’s voice followed us out.
“This is Erik Book, Fred and Margie Thompson’s son-in-law. Is John Brace in?”
In the hall Linda grabbed my hand and held on tight as we walked.
“You already know,” she said. Not a question.
“Yes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “It’s going to be okay.” This was fast becoming my stock response as everything fell apart around us. But I found I couldn’t look at her long, or give her the comfort of my gaze. Her blue, blue eyes seemed to glow in the pale landscape of her face. The purple smudges under her eyes, the strain around her mouth hurt me too much. She didn’t have to say anything else; I knew every emotion rocketing through her. I could feel it through her skin. And she knew she didn’t have to say anything. We’d talk later, dissect and analyze, figure and resolve.
But for the moment we moved down the hall toward the room Fred now occupied, not saying a word. Before we got to his door, I stopped and took both her hands.
“Forgive him, Linda. As awful as it is, he did it for you.”
“I forgive him,” she said, not looking at me. “I just don’t know if I can live with it. I feel like Mom. He did all this, risked our whole future, and I didn’t even know. There are other things, too. My fault. I don’t know if we’re strong enough to survive everything that’s wrong.”
“Don’t say that.” The thought of their marriage falling apart because of a mistake I had made filled me with a terrible anxiety. “Please. Let me fix this.”
“This is not for you to fix, Iz,” she said, putting a gentle hand on my face. “Don’t you get that? You didn’t do anything wrong. You loved him.”
“You warned me. This is my fault.”
“Even I didn’t imagine this, honey. This is not what I meant. I just thought he was a jerk, that he couldn’t love you the way you deserved.”
“You were right,” I said. I let her take me in her arms, rested my head on her shoulder. “Don’t leave him, Linda. Your marriage, your family. It’s real, it’s solid. It can survive anything. It’s only money.”
She squeezed me hard but didn’t answer. “Let’s go see about Fred,” she said after a moment, pulling away from me and taking my hand. She didn’t want to talk anymore; I let her off the hook and led her to Fred’s room.
We stopped at the entrance to the dim space, watched Fred’s still, narrow form, listening to the reassuring tones of his heart monitor. I was buffeted by twin tides of regret and anger. But when he saw us huddling in the doorway, he smiled. That was Fred. He could always manage a smile. Or maybe it was the pain medication.
“You look just like when you were girls,” he said. A dreamy, loopy quality to his words made me wish for a little dose of whatever they’d given him. Linda moved to the bed and took his hand. The births of Emily and Trevor had brought them closer. Fred was a wonderful grandfather, the only one her children knew. He showered them with love, and I think in recent years she was finally able to see the man we all saw. She’d take care of him until Margie got back; I knew that. The good girl.
“I’m sorry, Fred,” I said from the doorway. “I’d never have come to you if I knew …” I let the sentence trail.
He shook his head slowly. “I’m glad you did. I just wish I could have protected you, Isabel. I keep forgetting I’m an old man.”
I went to his bedside and leaned down to gently kiss his forehead. He pointed to his bandage. “Maybe we could get everyone else to wear one just so we don’t look so silly.”
We both smiled and Linda leaned in to kiss him on the cheek when her phone rang. She answered it quickly.
“Mom,” she said. “Everything’s okay.”
With Linda talking and Fred looking at her expectantly, neither of them noticed as I slipped from the room. I backed into the hallway and then walked toward the elevator bank, just missing the closing doors of one car. I pressed the button hard a couple of times, but the digital screen above it told me the car was floors away and I might be waiting awhile. I decided on the stairs.
“Where are you going, Izzy?”
I turned to see Trevor looking slim and stylish in faded jeans and a retro rock-and-roll Ramones T, Vans on his feet. His curls were wild; a worried smile flashed his face, then turned into a frown.
“I’m going to get some air,” I lied.
He shook his head just slightly, and in that moment he looked so much like his mother—the same knowing aura, the same curious narrowing of the eyes. I saw him taking in details—the wrap on my shoulders, the bag strapped around my body.
“You’re going to find him, aren’t you?”
I considered lying again. But instead I nodded, lifted a finger to my mouth, and started backing toward the door.
“Do you have a gun?”
“No,” I said, startled by his boyish question, which seemed at the same time frighteningly practical. New York City kids are just a little too savvy for their own good. “Of course not.”
He shrugged. “You might need one.”
I might at that. “Don’t tell them you saw me leave.”
“Maybe I should. Maybe this is a bad idea.” He was one of the best players on his chess team. He could see that I was outmatched and about to make a stupid move that might cost me the game. Suddenly this little kid who I’d watch enter the world, who I’d rocked and carried, fed and changed, seemed smarter, more worldly than I was.
“Don’t,” was all I could manage. “Not for the next fifteen minutes.”
“Izzy?” I heard him say as I turned and moved quickly through the door and flew down the stairs as fast as I could. I knew him. He was a good egg, wanted things orderly, still thought the world was black and white, just like his mother. He’d tell—but he’d hesitate, just because he was a boy, because he liked the idea of being in on a secret. With luck, I’d be gone before anyone tried to come after me.
A HUNDRED YEARS ago Marcus and I were in Paris. For our first anniversary, he’d surprised me on a Thursday with tickets to leave the next day. We joked that we’d probably saved about a thousand dollars in pre-trip shopping—but I made up for it once we arrived.
“He did what?!” my sister shrieked when I called her. Her delight rang over the line and I knew he’d climbed a rung in her estimation, which filled me with childish pleasure. “That’s soooo romantic. Oh, I love Paris!”
“Dude, you’re making me look bad,” Erik complained when we were all on speakerphone together.
“Yeah, really bad,” said Linda. But I could hear the smile in her voice. They’d had their share of romantic trips and enviable moments. And now they had kids, as Linda liked to say. Romance is a pizza delivery and a bottle of wine after Emily and Trevor go to bed.
We stayed in a small, intimate hotel near Jardins des Tuilleries on the tranquil rue Saint-Hyacinthe and passed our days shopping, eating, drinking, fairly skipping through the streets of that magnificent city. I spent my mornings writing in a small café, ensconced at a tiny table in the corner
, the competing aromas of fresh bread, coffee grinds, and cigarette smoke mingling in the air with lively conversation and the clinking of cups and silverware, while Marcus slept until nearly noon.
In the evenings, we dined slowly, lingering for hours over beautiful meals, then visiting nightclubs, dancing and drinking, returning to the hotel to make love. I don’t remember even the tiniest disagreement on that trip, but maybe that’s revisionist history. Maybe we argued over what sights to see, or whether we could afford more than one Hermès scarf, or where to go for dinner—all the normal negotiations of living a life together, that might blow up into something bigger. But I don’t remember anything like that.
On the other hand, there are some things that come back to me now, moments I hadn’t given much thought to then. He said he’d never been to Paris, that my surprise was secretly a gift for himself, too. But he seemed strangely at ease on its streets, as if he knew his way around.
“Are you sure you haven’t been here before?” I asked, my nose in our guidebook. He navigated the Metro with ease, quickly found exactly the café or shop or museum we were searching for, while I might as well have been on the moon.
“Maybe in another life,” he answered. There was something solemn to his tone that caused me to look up from my reading. But he was smiling when our eyes met. He pointed to his temple. “Smart. You married a very smart man.”
The truth was Marcus always seemed to know where we were or how to get to any destination. He had a mind for navigation, an uncanny internal GPS. I might wander lost and confused, even in my own city, turned around after a ride on the subway, unsure of east and west. Not Marcus. Not ever. It was annoying, how he was always right, but I found myself relying on it. A man like Marcus was the reason other men didn’t ask for directions.
Our last night in Paris, we were returning to the hotel, both of us a bit glum that the trip was coming to a close.
“One more,” Marcus said, grabbing my hand.
A narrow stairwell led down beneath the sidewalk. An electric strain of music seemed to waft up from the darkness. It was late. We had an early flight.
“Why not?” he said when I hesitated. “This time tomorrow we’ll be home.”
The damp stone staircase ended at a heavy wooden door. When he pulled it open, sound and smoke came out in a wave that pushed us back, then washed us in. Soon we were one with a throbbing mass of bodies that seemed to pulse in unison with the dance beat. We made our way to the bar, where Marcus shouted something at the pierced and scantily clad young woman who leaned in to take our drink order.
I normally don’t like crowds, overwhelmed as I become by details, energies, expressions on faces. But I felt oddly centered, able to coolly observe my environment. I could tell it was a local haunt; it lacked that Parisian self-awareness of its place in the dreams of the rest of the world. There was something gritty and slapdash about it, as though you could come back tomorrow and it might be gone. The chic, lithe Parisians I’d been staring at in envy for days in high-end shops and restaurants were replaced by an alternative set, tattoo covered and glinting with metal in odd places, nipples and tongues, eyebrows. I watched an androgynous couple make out near the door, a woman moving slowly to some internal beat, her eyes pressed closed. On a small stage, three men with identically styled dark hair and black garb were surrounded by electronic instruments and computers; they seemed to be the origin of the sound, though they were as grim and stone-faced as undertakers. I turned to comment to Marcus, but he was gone. I peered through the crowd and saw the back of his head as he moved toward the bathrooms. He must have yelled to me and I didn’t hear him over the din. There was a fresh drink on the tall table beside me which I assumed he’d left for me—something bitter and heavily alcoholic. When nearly twenty minutes passed, my drink gone, my interest in the scene around me dwindling, I headed in the direction I’d seen him disappear.
When I saw him, he was standing with a woman—she was emaciated and pale, with features too sharp, too angular for her to be quite pretty. She was talking to him heatedly, and he was looking around, clearly uncomfortable. Just as I approached them, she reached out and touched his face. I saw him grab her hand and push it gently away. She looked so injured, so confused, that I felt my heart clench for her.
He turned away and almost ran right into me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. It was quieter away from the stage but I still had to yell.
“Some crazy woman thinks she knows me. I can’t convince her otherwise,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go.”
“Kristof, please!” she yelled after us. “Please.”
He didn’t turn back to her, just hurried me toward the door. I felt some kind of primal tug to look at her again. She was yelling something I couldn’t make out.
“You don’t know her?” I asked him when we were outside. I felt oddly shaken, a slight tremble in my hands.
He was already walking away, came back and grabbed my hand. “No,” he said with a scowl. “Of course not.”
“The way she touched you—” I said, and found I couldn’t finish. From where I stood, I would have thought them lovers. Her touch was so intimate—her eyes so desperate. I stood rooted, not willing to follow him. I kept an eye on the door, wondering if she’d come out after us. I saw his eyes drift there, too.
“Isabel, she was high,” he said, tugging at me, his hand still in mine. I resisted, made him move back closer to me. “She called me by another name. You heard it yourself. She was clearly unwell or at least impaired.”
I found myself studying his face. His expression was earnest, even amused. His eyes were wide, brow lifted. He matched my gaze and then finally dropped his eyes to the sidewalk.
“Okay, you caught me,” he said, lifting his hands. “I have a girlfriend here in Paris. This whole trip was just a ruse so that I could rendezvous with her this last night—while you stood a few yards away.”
He gave me that magic smile then and the lightest drizzle started to fall. It all just washed away as he pulled me close.
“You’re not the jealous type, Iz.”
I bristled. It wasn’t about me being jealous or not. It was about a woman who wore an expression I recognized on some cellular level. Loss, betrayal, a touch of anger. I knew that face; I’d worn it for different reasons. But I didn’t say anything else. I let him drop his arm around my shoulder and steer me toward the hotel. I stole one last look behind us, sure I’d see her standing there grim and lonely in the rain. But the stairwell was dark and empty; I didn’t hear the music that had drawn us there anymore, either.
I WENT BACK to Linda and Erik’s. I had a key and knew that the apartment was empty; maybe not the best idea in the world but I was desperate. I needed space to think, a change of clothes, and some time on a computer. I also needed to figure out how to get some money. I’d stopped at the ATM and cleared out the rest of my cash, a hundred from each account. Now I had five hundred dollars, the money from the accounts plus what I’d already had in my wallet. I knew it wouldn’t last long. I still had my credit cards but I knew I couldn’t use them without creating a trail that was easily followed—that is, if he hadn’t maxed those out as well.
I took a shower in Linda’s bathroom, the only uncluttered space in the house. Her sanctuary with its stone walls and steam shower. The kids weren’t even allowed to enter. Sometimes I think she’d force Erik to use the kids’ bathroom if she could. I tried not to wet the bandage but failed and wound up peeling it off painfully.
After my shower, I looked at myself in the long mirrored wall over the marble sink and was shocked at how horrible the cut on my head looked, reaching from the middle of my brow to my temple—like something out of a horror film. My hair had been hideously shaved back a bit, which was bad enough. And the wound itself was too red, some dark yellow puss leaking out between the black stitching. I didn’t think the leakage was healthy, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I found some gauze and medical tape in the
first-aid kit under the sink and bandaged myself up again, nearly nauseated by how much the wound hurt to the touch. I recalled then that I was supposed to be taking antibiotics. Were they in my bag? I couldn’t remember. Brown watched me mournfully, hands on his paws. He emitted a low whine from the doorway, as if he was concerned about me.
“It’s okay, Brown,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
I padded into the kitchen with him at my heels, put some food in his bowl and changed his water, gave him a doggie treat. He seemed to feel better about things after this.
After choosing a pair of jeans and a black wool sweater from Linda’s closet, a matching pink bra and panties from her underwear drawer, I dressed and went into Trevor’s room, where I knew the computer was on 24/7, no log-in required.
I tried my accountant’s office again and just got an endless ringing, no voice mail ever picking up. I called directory assistance, tucking Trevor’s cordless phone between my shoulder and ear while simultaneously searching for the firm on Google. Maybe I had the wrong number.
“No listing for a Benjamin and Heller, Inc., in Manhattan or the five boroughs, ma’am.” And nothing online.
I realized I’d never visited their offices or even made a call to Arthur, the man who came to our house at tax time, who called me with the occasional question about my expenses, requesting this receipt or that canceled check. I let Marc handle it all. I just signed the quarterly tax reports and year-end returns without so much as a glance.
The computer screen swam before my tired eyes as I rechecked my bank accounts, since I knew those log-ins and passwords by heart. Nothing had changed except my recent withdrawals, when I’d basically cleaned myself out.
Then I checked our American Express bill, looking for Marc’s last charges, knowing he was too smart to be using his cards now. I was just grasping at what little information was available to me. All the usual charges—the smoothie shop at the gym, takeout places we liked, the grocery store, our local bar. I started scrolling back through the last few months.
