by Lisa Unger
“It’s just good to see you today,” she says. “I’m glad you came.”
The ice water she brought me goes down quickly. I’m surprised at how dehydrated I feel, how fast I drain the glass. She gets up to fetch me another, her eyes on me in concern.
“How are you doing with it?” I ask when she comes back.
Something does battle on her face, a sad arch of the eyebrows, a hard press in her mouth. She wears a soft pink wrap around her narrow shoulders, pulls it tight across her middle. Finally, she offers a crooked, mirthless smile.
“Let’s just say I’m doing the work. Moving away from anger and toward acceptance.”
I know the journey we the grieving must take. I’ve just lost my way.
“I’m volunteering back at the hospital in the pediatric ward,” she continues. She was a nurse in a small local doctor’s office all her career, working while Jack was in school, home with him in the afternoons. “The night shift.”
An identical snow globe to the one that sits on my desk is on her end table, a little house beneath trees. I pick it up, make the snow twirl, then put it back down.
“Because that’s the hardest time.”
“For everyone,” she says. “Let’s just say the work helps me keep it all in perspective. Reminds me that there’s plenty of pain to go around. It keeps me from sinking too deeply into the quicksand of mine.”
We sit a moment. Outside the trees sway and a bird chirps manically on a feeder close to the window. The city, that train, the hooded man feel a million miles away.
“I’m remembering things—I think,” I say. “Maybe. From those lost days.”
Sarah leans back in her chair, takes off her glasses. There’s so much of Jack in her face, in the shape of her eyes, her high cheekbones. The same sandy curls. I look away, giving her the abridged version of my dreams, tell her what Detective Grayson told me in the park, about the hired killer. There’s no reason to tell her about the hooded man; it will only scare her.
She seems to shrink before my eyes, rests her head on her hand.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” I say, stopping. This is the reason I don’t come here much. Her grief is possibly more profound than my own; it hurts to see that darker mirror of my pain.
“It’s okay,” she says quickly, opening herself back up. “The detective told me about the lead. It’s hard to believe that people like that even exist.”
We both sit for a moment, lost in our imaginings.
“He never seems to get anywhere with any of it, though, you know,” she continues. Her voice tightens. “It’s a year this month. We’re still no closer to understanding.”
A year—for most people it’s a heartbeat, days rushing into weeks into months that pass in a blur. For the grieving, it’s an eternity, life aborted, days dark and slogging.
“Jack talked to you, Sarah. You were as close a mother and son as I’ve known. Was there something wrong, anything bothering him that he couldn’t share with me? Would anyone have wanted to—hurt him?”
I didn’t even realize that this was my reason for coming. Now that some of my memories might be returning, I want more. Jack and I—we talked and talked about everything—our pasts, our careers, our friends, family, thoughts, dreams, philosophies. We were friends, best friends. But maybe Mac was right. Don’t we only ever know facets of each other, like those strangers on the train, moments in time, slivers of self? I wouldn’t have thought he’d keep things from me—never even considered it—but maybe.
“Poppy,” she says, looking away. She picks up her glasses, cleans them on the bottom of her crisp pink-and-white-pinstriped shirt and puts them back on.
“It’s not a betrayal to tell me,” I press. “Not now.”
She twists at a blond curl with long elegant fingers. She still wears her wedding ring. I wonder if she’s noticed that I’ve removed mine. What would she think about my assignations, my newfound dating life?
“Please, Sarah.”
“There was nothing,” she says. “The detective came. He wanted to know the same thing. Maybe he seemed more distracted, more worried than usual. But when I asked him about it—”
She looks down at her hands.
“What did he say?”
“Honey,” she says softly. “He was worried about you.”
I draw in a sharp breath of surprise. “Me?”
“He was concerned that—”
My heart is hammering again.
“What? Tell me.”
“He thought that you were drifting away from him. The miscarriages. He thought you blamed him, that on some level you believed he didn’t really want children.”
The miscarriages. There were two. I flash on the image of the sheet beneath me covered in blood. The second time, in the shower, I looked down to see the dark red water running down the drain. It was devastating, both times. She’s right. It did put a strain on us, a big one.
“I didn’t blame him,” I say. But was that true? The sadness, the dark blanket that settled over me—it didn’t seem to affect him in the same way. He seemed to blithely move on—Honey, this happens. We’ll keep trying—while it dragged me down into despair.
“He said you two were spending more time apart,” she says. “He wasn’t sure how to reach you.”
We were both working long hours at the agency. He was out more with Mac and Alvaro. I had been begging off some client dinners. Nothing dramatic, nothing so unusual. But maybe that’s how it starts; maybe the fissures are tiny at first, then start to widen, deepen under the pressure of life. Before you know it there’s a valley between you.
“He wondered if you might be—” she pauses, her cheeks flushing a little “—having an affair.”
The words land hard, a sucker punch. I let the information sink in. Outside the sun dips, afternoon shifting to a purple gloaming.
“An affair. No,” I breathe. “I wasn’t.”
She shakes her head, looks at me imploringly. “I told him that. I know how much you loved him, Poppy. I could always see that in you. I see it in you still.”
She rises from her chair and comes to sit beside me on the couch.
“He wasn’t certain, just worried,” she goes on. “He said there were times he couldn’t reach you. That you said you were one place, and then it turned out you weren’t there.”
“What?” I say, confused. “No, that’s not true.”
I search my memory for what she might mean. When was that? When had he looked for me and not found me? How could he think I was having an affair? The distant echo of that dream voice: Who is she, Jack? Who is she?
“I believe you,” says Sarah, her voice comforting. “He felt like maybe you didn’t love working for the agency the way you thought you would. That you missed being behind the camera. He said that the two of you were fighting. A lot.”
My throat is dry, constricting. “No,” I say. “He was the one drifting. He missed the camera. Not me. I was the one holding on—to all of it.”
The passion that comes up surprises me. “I might have said all the same things about him.”
“Every couple has these moments in their life together,” Sarah says, knowing and kind. “You two—you should have had the time to work through it all. But that was taken from you.”
For the first time in a long time, I let myself think about our last year together. In the shock and grief of his death, everything that came before—the miscarriages, the frequent bickering, all of our problems—faded, cast in a gauzy patina. The truth is that it wasn’t the best year of our marriage. If I thought he was drifting, and he thought I was, maybe we were drifting away from each other. What would have happened? Would we have found our way back to each other?
“When?” I ask. “When did he tell you this?”
“Just a few months—” she stops again, takes a breath and
releases it “—before.”
The grandfather clock in the corner chimes the quarter hour. The room is growing dark but neither of us gets up to turn on the lights. We just sit.
“If you thought I might be having an affair,” I say, “why didn’t you tell that to the police?”
She shifts away from me just slightly, bows her head. “I did,” she nearly whispers. “I had to, of course, in case—it had something to do with what happened.”
It cuts deep, just when I thought I couldn’t hurt anymore. I hate that while she was grieving her son, she had to think this of me, that something I did might have led to his murder. That she had to tell that to the police. I remember how Grayson asked me repeatedly about affairs—Jack’s, mine, how the police checked my email, my phone records. That Jack questioned my fidelity in the time before he died—it crushes me. How could he?
I reach for her hands. “I would never.”
For a second I’m back there, in the club, the stranger kissing me, feeling that heat. I push it away. If it happened, it happened after Jack was gone.
Sarah takes both my hands in hers. “The detective says that there was no evidence to support that, nothing to suggest that you were anything but happily married. Which of course I knew.”
“What must you have thought of me, Sarah,” I say.
She just smiles, puts a hand to the side of my face. “My husband and I—we had ups and downs, good times and bad. We were both guilty of mistakes, bad judgment.”
She sighs, glances over at our wedding picture on the end table. “That’s marriage—people make mistakes. We are all so flawed. If we want to stay together, we forgive and move on. I told Jack to figure it out and work it out. He loved you, sweetie, so much, and he wanted the things you wanted. He might have been afraid of fatherhood—his dad maybe wasn’t the best role model, not around like fathers are today. But his father loved him. And Jack would have been a great dad.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, not even sure for what. She wraps me up in her arms.
“Don’t be sorry, Poppy,” she says. “Be well. Be strong. There’s life on the other side of this for you. I’m sure of it.”
I wish I could be as sure that was true.
My eyes fall on a photograph sitting on the end table beside me, one I haven’t seen before. It’s Jack, standing between Mac and Alvaro, an arm on each of them. He wears a wide grin, behind him, lights, a crowd. Mac stares straight at the camera, a typically reserved smile on his face. Alvaro is laughing, arms crossed in front of his chest. It’s a good photo, lots of energy, movement, personality.
“I haven’t seen this.” The frame is heavy in my hand.
“Oh,” she says, looking at it. “Alvaro came by, brought that as a gift.”
I can’t take my eyes off it, this piece of Jack, this moment captured. He looks light, happy.
“When was it taken?”
“Hmm,” she says, her mouth pressed into a sad line. “He didn’t say exactly when. One of their last nights out together.”
There’s something funny on Mac’s face, is it tension, or just the normal discomfort some people have in front of the lens? It could just be the light or the angle.
“Who took the picture?”
“Oh, huh—don’t know,” she says. “Maybe they asked someone to take the shot?”
I look for clues in the frame. The shirt Jack wears, a black button-down with a faint pinstripe, was one I bought for him. When? A while back, too long ago to remember where or when. Just that he loved it. A drink in one hand, nearly empty. Judging by the color, it might have been bourbon.
Behind them—where are they? A club? A bar?—there’s a mirrored wall, smoky and obscured. There it is—the shadow of the photographer, slim, small, camera raised. Just a ghost, though, a figure without a form or face, unidentifiable. Possibly female just judging by size, the dip at the waist.
“When did Alvaro come to see you?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“You see him often?”
“Not at all,” she says. “Not since the funeral. He said he was sorry, that he’s been struggling with Jack’s death. That he’d been losing himself in his work, trying to move past it.”
“He stopped by my office the other day. I wasn’t there. He wanted me to call but I haven’t yet.”
“People tend to reach out around the anniversary,” says Sarah. She drifts off into thought a second. Then, “He said something strange that day. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but it rang back to me later.”
“What was that?”
“Something like—Jack was one of the good guys. And he wished that he’d been a little less good.”
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t ask,” she says. “You know how sometimes it’s only later that things seem odd.”
Sarah looks so tired suddenly, like the conversation has drained her. How could it not?
“Maybe he meant that he was too trusting,” she says, her voice growing softer. “I told him not to run so early in the park. Both of you, in the dark, alone.”
She’s gone to that dark place I visit so often myself, the spiral of what-ifs and if-onlys. It’s a sad, dizzying spin into nothing. Now it’s my turn to wrap her up. When I do, she holds on tight. I don’t know how long we stay that way.
* * *
Outside Sarah’s house, I’m surprised and not surprised to see Carmelo leaning on the hood of the Lincoln. I’d be mad about it if it wasn’t such a huge relief, dreading as I was the walk through dark streets, the train back downtown. All the shadows around me have form, menace. My talk with Sarah hurts, her words like blows that have left bruises. I was looking for pieces of Jack, and now I have one. He thought we were drifting, that I might be having an affair. Our last year together and he wasn’t happy; maybe I wasn’t, either.
“How did she find me?” I ask Carmelo.
He shrugs, gives me a smirk. “I don’t ask questions. Just do what I’m told, ya know?”
He swings the door wide and I slip into the warm leather embrace of the car, too exhausted even to feign resistance. My phone buzzes with a mind-reading text from Layla: Find My Friends, remember. I’ve been tracking you for a year. In case you’re wondering how Carmelo found you.
You know that’s weird, right? Like, really creepy and strange.
I don’t think so. I track Izzy and Slade.
Not your KID, Layla.
We’re having turkey burgers for dinner.
I stow the phone in my bag. “Carmelo, I’m going to need you to take me to my place, okay?”
He pauses a second. “Mrs. Van Santen’s not going to be happy.”
“If you take me back to Layla’s, I’m just going to get a cab home from there.”
I can see his worried eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m not in the business of kidnapping,” he says with a shrug.
“Good to know.”
The world outside is velvety dark, run through with the twinkling lights of windows and cars and streetlamps. I’m still reeling from my visit with Sarah, the encounter on the train. But deep inside, there’s something else, too.
There’s a girl not hopped up on pills, not rattled by grief, not being stalked or disappearing into dreams. It’s me—the person I used to be—strong and capable of managing her life. She’s still in there. Despite the things my mother-in-law said, seeing Sarah reconnected me to the old me. She had a piece of Jack, but she had a piece of the old Poppy, too. Maybe healing is not just about finding him, but about finding myself.
* * *
Back in my apartment, instead of popping my one prescribed pill and crawling into bed—which I very obviously should do—I shower again, and make myself a big pot of coffee.
It’s not time to sleep, Poppy. Jack’s voice, loud and clear. It’s time to wake up.
Fatigue tugs and pulls at me, but there’s no way I’m going down that rabbit hole. I fight it back. I find my old prescription and Layla’s mystery vial, then dump it all down the toilet. They float in the water like confetti—red, yellow, blue, white. With a tumble of elation and dread, I flush and watch the rainbow swirl disappear.
15
Noah’s picking me up in a couple of hours and I am going to use that time to press into my lost days, keep searching through those boxes, get quiet and start digging into my memories. That nightclub on the Lower East Side—Morpheus. If I’ve been there before, I need to know that. If there are any more answers in the boxes—about Jack, about myself—I am going to find them tonight before I sleep.
Two cups of coffee and a few boxes later, fatigue gnawing and frustration growing, I am about to give up. Then, at the bottom of the last box, I see a flowery printed surface embossed with gold print. A tattered deck of tarot cards, a gift from our next-door neighbor Merlinda. She’s another person I’ve let drift, holding on to her friendship too painful as the line to my old life was wrenched away from me.
My visit with Sarah has convinced me that I need to go back to go forward. If anyone had a front row seat to my life with Jack, it’s the woman who lived next door to us for five years. I find my phone, ignoring Layla’s angry texts and voice mails, and call Merlinda.
“Ah, my friend,” she says by way of greeting. “It’s been too long.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. It feels like all I do is apologize.
“I’ll tell you what. This building?” she says. “Never the same since you left, lovely Poppy.”
The sky outside my window has grown dark. Curled up on the couch, I cradle the phone, remembering the Hudson River views from our old apartment.
“That’s sweet, Merlinda,” I say.
Our old building seemed to mourn Jack; the neighbors were devastated by his murder, in their own backyard. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Away from the memories of our happy, quirky life, away from his ghost at the mailbox, in the elevator, on the street. After the hospital, once I had my feet under me again, I left. I regret it now some days; maybe I should have stayed longer. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost myself as I have.
