The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "She's clever."

  "There's something you're not telling me, Sophy."

  There was so much I hadn't told him that I didn't know where to begin or which of my omissions may have led to this moment. "She talked about her mother in Vietnam, and her father. I took her home. I watched her go in the door."

  "Why didn't you call me when she was there? Or afterwards?"

  "She asked me not to."

  "That's the shabbiest reason—"

  "I mean, I didn't tell you straightaway when you got to my apartment, but I was going to, and I would have, if the police hadn't called. How are the other children?"

  "I can imagine Vicki going to find her mother, but why would she go to such lengths to find you? Why would she run away? If she wanted to speak to you, I'd have rung you up for her. Don't you think she knew that?"

  "The heart wants what it wants," I said softly.

  "What did you say?"

  "When she came to my apartment yesterday, she brought me a card she'd made. It said she wanted me to live with all of you."

  "Why didn't you tell me that?"

  "I just told you."

  "What else haven't you told me?"

  "Lets see. My husband was dead for three weeks before anyone found him. He left me a dollar in his will. The woman he was married to twenty years ago is arriving tomorrow to plan his funeral in a Catholic church, though he stopped believing forty years ago. Should I go on?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Call the police now. Maybe she's around the corner. I'll call you in the morning."

  I drank down what was left of the wine, but that wasn't the only reason the room spun when I lay down to sleep.

  I drew the extra down pillow to my side, listening to the sea whoosh and boom like Beethoven's Ninth, imagining my dear Vicki on a bus traveling up 1–95 to find me, imagining the other kids in all their terror and confusion in their little beds on Waverly Street. I gathered them around me and assured them that everything was going to be all right. The trick, my precious dumplings, I said, is to keep our eyes on the sky, not on the ground, and I described the endless blue sky over Swansea, how on a clear day you can see nearly forever, farther than Kansas and Oz and even Vietnam, and Vicki will be back home so soon, they would hardly remember she had been away. After that, I must have passed out. When I woke up the next morning, I was wasted, good for absolutely nothing, and Mavis wanted me to leave.

  9. The Morning After

  SOPHY, there's someone here to see you."

  This was Swansea, that was Evan's voice outside the guest room door, and I was in agony. "Am I dead? Is it a condolence call?" I could barely speak, but even the phlegmy croak of my voice was deafening.

  "It's Henderson."

  "Henderson?" Was it possible that my eyelids hurt? There was thumping with a hammer in the place where my brain matter had been. Henderson was in New York. No, Switzerland. With his friend Bianca. So maybe all of this was a dream. That Will was dead, Vicki was gone, and I was hung over. "Is there coffee?"

  "Open your eyes."

  "I can't. It hurts."

  "Open your hands."

  "Can you hook up an IV with a caffeine drip?" I was whispering, I was stiff. It hurt to think. Words hurt. Sentences hurt more. Light, even the idea of light, was excruciating. A body sat down on the bed beside me. "Evan?"

  "Yeah."

  "Henderson's here?"

  "Downstairs. See if you can tip your head up a little. The mug is hot."

  With my eyes still closed, I pushed some pillows under my head and opened my hands, holding them out as if to cradle a cantaloupe, then an orange. The sensation of Evan trying to fit the mug into my fingers, and my fingers trying to grip it without burning myself, plus the thudding in my brain, made me think of the famous movie scene. "Wa wa wa wa," I croaked and finally took a sip. "What's that from?"

  "What's what from?"

  "I'm Helen Keller. You're Annie. This is water. I can speak."

  He let out a tight, miniature chortle. "Not so loud," I whispered. "I'm the opposite of deaf. Every noise is fingernails against a blackboard. The ocean is too loud. Please turn it off." I felt Evan stand up and heard his rubber soles squeak across the bare wood floor. My hangover registered every beat of every breath, and what I heard in Evan's inhalation was annoyance. I opened my eyes a crack and saw him about to walk out the door, and maybe I detected or maybe I imagined a spike in his annoyance. "I fucked up, Evan. I know I did." I was still whispering. "I could hear you sigh as you walked across the room. I'm sorry. A thousand times. Flowers. Candy. Handwritten apologies on monogramed note cards." Silence. And more of it. "You have no idea how bad it is."

  "I can see."

  "It's worse than that. A friend's child—" I said, but stopped. Vicki's disappearance was too awful to mention to someone already burdened by the grimness of my last two days. "She's having trouble. Serious trouble. I found out late last night." I, who rarely expect anyone to hold open a door for me, had become a bad luck charm, an alchemist in reverse, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the difficult house guest who won't leave. "Thank you for the coffee. Tell Henderson I'll be down in a minute." Henderson, I thought, thank God. This is his territory, life at the pitch he's used to. He'll put up with my hangover jokes and know where to look for Vicki.

  "Sophy?"

  "She's in here," Evan said. He pushed open the door to let himself out and Henderson in. I could see him through my squinting and raised my hand for him to take as he leaned down and kissed my cheek. He sat at the edge of my bed as if this were a hospital and I was dying.

  "You're looking very J. Crew," I whispered, "very Swansea in your khaki togs," and swallowed as much coffee as I could, trying to remember how many cups it takes for a headache like this one to run its miserable course. "Don't look at me that way."

  "What way?"

  "As if you feel sorry for me."

  "Of course I feel sorry for you. Do you think I came here for the fishing?"

  "What happened to your trip? Switzerland, the fat farm?"

  "We taxied down the runway, and at the moment the plane was about to lift off, there was a massive noise that sounded like the George Washington Bridge breaking in two. I'll spare you the details, though there were no fatalities. I didn't get on the next plane they rolled out."

  "For me?"

  "Because I was scared to death."

  "But what about Bianca and losing twenty-five pounds?"

  "Twenty minutes before I left for the airport, I got a fax from her. Her doctor forbade her to lose another ounce. She proposed meeting me afterward in Milan. Frankly, Sophy, I wasn't looking forward to starving to death by myself. So I'll have to diet. You know, not eat too much. I can't bear it, it's such an ordeal. Jesus, look at you."

  "How do I look?"

  "Hung over. And very much the widow without portfolio. She's a popular archetype in homosexual circles. I just this second realized that I am trying stupidly to entertain you, being the magnanimous homo impresario funeral director that I am, but I haven't said a word about poor Will. And poor you. How ghastly the whole thing is. Evan filled me in. I'm sure you're still in shock. It lasts for days, months, if you're lucky."

  "H., I fell off the wagon."

  "I know, dear. It was in the Times this morning."

  "It may as well have been. I made a scene at the clambake last night. It would have been obnoxious in New York, but here it was obnoxious and unforgivable."

  "It happens to the worst of us. And the best."

  I closed my eyes and was surprised to feel tears leak from below my lashes. "Daniel's daughter disappeared."

  "I know that too."

  "How do you—"

  "She was on the eleven o'clock news last night." My aching eyes opened wide against their will. "If I hadn't met her at your apartment, I'd never have known there was a connection."

  "TV? I spoke to Daniel last night and he didn't say anything about that." It must have been before
eleven when we spoke, and he may not have known it was coming. But all of this meant that she was officially missing—and that my life was awash with missing creatures. I noticed Henderson squinting at me, the sympathy squint I'd seen directed at me a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. "That's why you came today, isn't it? Because you figured that might push me over the edge, and I was already close enough?"

  "Yeah."

  "Thankyou, Henderson." I reached for his hand. "But how did you find me? When I left a message for you last night, I didn't know I'd end up here."

  "I took a cab to Will's place from the airport and—"

  "How did you know where he lived?"

  "The phone book, darling. And if there was no one at his house, I intended to perch on the front porch looking as out of place as I possibly could. Attract a crowd and ask everyone where I'd find you. But the instant I got out of the cab at his house, a nice fellow accosted me. Said he lives next door. He knew exactly where you were."

  "Sophy?" It was Evan's voice again, but it sounded distant, as if it were coming from the bottom of the stairs. Far away and businesslike. "Can I have a word alone with you down here?" A little too much emphasis on the word "alone." Henderson did not dare follow me out of the room.

  Evan, sitting at the dining room table in a Red Sox T-shirt and lavender shorts, half-reading the Globe, gestured to me to sit down at the place setting. A mug of coffee, a bowl of fruit salad, and an English muffin. "For me?" He nodded. "Thank you." I had brushed my teeth and changed my shirt but still felt my brain was encased in porcupine quills.

  "I have to talk to you before Mavis and the kids come back. She was upset about last night."

  "Do you think the best thing would be for me to write a note and leave it here or—"

  "She was mortified by the attack on Betsy Schmidt. As was Sue Winston and everyone else who—"

  "I can certainly understand that."

  "And furious about this." He reached into the back pocket of his shorts and brandished my FORMAL NOTICE OF WARNING at me, holding it out between his forefinger and middle finger, a jaunty, cocksure gesture that I did not appreciate. I must have left the notice in the car.

  "It looks worse than it is," I said.

  "Of course, it's not a ticket, but—"

  "I couldn't find your registration. He almost gave me—"

  "But to be stopped for a DWI—"

  "I wasn't. I was parked in the lot by Bell's Cove. It was a lovers' lane search. That's all." But where, I wondered for the first time since last night, was Will's tangerine computer? And where Was my stepdaughter?

  "Sit down and eat, for God's sake." Evan studied the fine print on the warning, not certain what new verdict to pass on me. I glanced around the room and saw the laptop on one of the coffee tables, next to a splashy book of photographs called Swansea Summers: Island Dreams and Dreamers.

  "Where's Ginny?"

  "She took a cab an hour ago to the house her mother rented in Cummington. How'd you get out of the ticket?"

  "Sympathy. I reminded him the State Police had called the day before to tell me Will was dead. I had him practically in tears. Do you think if I explained all this to Mavis that she'd—"

  "Even without the ticket, I'm afraid it's beyond that. Sue Winston was so keen to win Betsy over that I'm not sure—"

  "You want me to leave?"

  "Mavis does. I hate to do this, Sophy; you know that. I abhor it. She actually—" Evan twisted up his mouth, a prelude to saying something even more difficult. But one of the advantages of my condition was that I was in such physical pain, using so much energy just to keep my eyes open, it would have been hard for anyone to hurt my feelings. Though this came close. "It would be best if you weren't here when she got home. In about an hour." Very close. "But I have somewhere you and Henderson can stay. It's a converted chicken coop on Jimmy and Edna Baxter's property near the cove."

  "You own it?"

  "I rent."

  "For house guests?"

  "No."

  We were doing Twenty Questions, and I was getting warm. "You rent it on the sly?"

  "Since you ask."

  "Use it a lot?"

  "Not right now."

  "You're full of surprises."

  "So are you, Soph."

  "There must be a bed."

  "There are two. One in each room."

  "There must have been a lot of chickens in that coop."

  "And a good architect. You'd never know who the previous tenants were."

  I smiled, a tight, shallow smile, all lips. I was beginning to feel this was an Escher print or an old-fashioned amusement park funhouse, where the stairways lead nowhere and the corridors are mazes lined with distorting mirrors. "If I stay there, where will you tell Mavis I've gone?"

  "I'm not sure she'll ask." Evan was gazing at the editorial page as he said this, Everyman at the breakfast table, having an important conversation with a woman. Did he and Mavis speak to each other only to issue edicts? And did he believe his secret hideaway was really a secret on this island, where gossip travels like chicken pox?

  "How long have you had it?"

  "A few years."

  "Since you stopped sleeping with her?" His head swiveled to me in an exaggerated jerk, as if I'd said something shocking. "You told me that last night."

  "I didn't think you'd remember much of last night."

  "Unfortunately, I remember every word. Maybe every other word."

  A phone was ringing somewhere, a series of high-pitched electronic blasts. "Excuse me," Evan said and headed across the great room to disappear once again into his study. It may have been the twenty-five-year-old. Or Ted Turner. Or Ted Koppel. Or Ted Kennedy. I heard Henderson coming down the stairs and Flossie on the deck, scratching at the screen door and sending out her short, sharp barks, like a smoke detector trying to tell you its battery is dead. I let her into the living room and ran my hands over her great swath of fur warmed by the sun. She crossed the room and stood with her nose to the closed door of Evan's study. When that brought no response, she plopped down with a calm, canine display of resignation and promptly fell asleep. Something in the directness of her longing and her certainty of her place in the world made clear to me that I did not belong in the chicken coop, even for a night or two. Nor did I want another favor from Evan, certainly not one that would draw me into his illicit love life.

  "Trouble in Denmark?" Henderson said as he lingered at the bottom of the stairs.

  I saw him gaze around the sun-drenched space, as every visitor does, especially those of us who live in one or two rooms, in walk-ups, on air shafts, yearning for the light and color in this room, for the abundant peace it promises.

  "This house reminds me of the summer I spent on Swansea ten years ago," Henderson said, moving to a shadowy corner of the room. "I was at a party in a house that looked like this, being chatted up by a lawyer from Boston who asked where I was from. New York. New York —long, pregnant pause. He had to ponder that one, as if I'd said the Mississippi Delta or Azerbaijan. Too many avid people in New York, he said. Well, it is chaotic, I agreed. They're everywhere, he said, starting to sound paranoid, and I knew we weren't talking about the same thing. 'Especially the universities. Especially Columbia.' He was talking about Jews. The avid people. It may even have been this house. I decided not to tell him I was avidly queer. What's our next move?"

  Three cups of coffee and the proverbial glass of cold water in my face—Evan's telling me I had to leave—had enabled me to work through some of the choreography. "How long can you stay on the island?"

  "For the duration. My show's in reruns, since I'm supposed to be away, getting photogenic."

  "Thanks, H. But you know, there'll be a sharp decline in the accommodations. A motel room and a Rent-A-Wreck. Let's find the phone book and start calling around."

  "I'll make some calls while you pack up."

  "You're game."

  "You forget I could be drinking water three meals a day at
a Swiss fat farm. By myself."

  "I did forget that." I was going over what I needed to do, a list taking shape in my addled brain. Find Vicki. Find Henry. Be kind to my stepdaughters. Quit putting myself and my suppurating wounds at the center of every encounter. Ask Henderson for help. Do whatever he says.

  "Sophy, are you all right? I mean, I know you're miserable, but at this moment is there something newly awful that—"

  "The great mad joy is over."

  "It always ends, you know. You think maybe this time it won't, but it always surprises you and goes up in a puff of smoke."

  Take Will's computer with me. Dream his dreams. His nightmares. His passwords. Ghost-write the last days of his life. Now that he is a ghost himself. I crossed the room to pick up the laptop when I heard a loud knock at the front door. Evan was still sequestered in the study, so I went into the foyer and swung open the door. It was Swansea, and you never hesitate. But I didn't expect what I saw.

  "We're looking for Sophy Chase."

  "I'm Sophy."

  They were two large men wearing dark gray suits and white shirts, like funeral directors, and for a moment, until they simultaneously flicked open their wallets and flashed gold badges at me and said, "New York Police Department," I thought they were.

  Do you invite them in? Do they take you somewhere? It didn't occur to me to ask how they'd found me, but I was about to tell them that I needed to leave here, needed to be gone before Mavis returned, when I heard Evan say, "Who is it? Who's there?" and felt him come up beside me. One frightening thought tripped another, and I got it into my head that Vicki was dead and they were here because I was guilty of I-knew-not-what in connection with it, which prompted me to say something I never imagined I would have to say. I said it in case it became necessary, said it without even knowing why the cops were there, said it in the event they intended to whisk me off and rough me up—and yes, I was overreacting, but only because I was terrified. I held out my arm to Evan and said to these men, with their gold badges and their pasty, pockmarked, "Dragnet" faces, "This is Evan Lambert. My attorney."