Fear of Heights

by Mara White

  Janinie is taken aback. The garlic knot that was on its way to her mouth gets thrown back on the plate in frustration.

  “How come everybody lies to me? You and Oscar are both full of shit! You said he might not get put away, that he might come home!”

  “Not without Robert’s help, Janinie, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Well, you know what? I don’t really believe Robert would do that. He’s pissed. But he’s not really going to force you. Who could do that? Nobody is that awful,” Janinie says as she shakes red pepper flakes, garlic salt and Parmesan cheese into a mess all over her slice. This time it’s my turn to smile.

  “What’s so funny?” she says.

  “You called my water gross. What you’re doing to your pizza is absolutely disgusting.”

  Janinie picks up her slice dramatically, inhales deeply, and takes a huge bite.

  “Delicious!” she says. Her smile is fleeting. “I can’t believe you don’t get to make your own decision.”

  I hate that she’s right. I’m letting myself be controlled and manipulated.

  “Do you want to know what I think? I think we should get out of here. Ditch the Heights for a while. Me and you. We could go to my family’s house in DR. Did Jay tell you about it?”

  I shake my head. Jaylee and I never really discussed his family life. We never discussed much of anything.

  “It’s practically on the beach. We could go for, like, a few days, and you can think it over without Robert breathing down your neck. It would give him a chance to cool down too. He might even change his mind.”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea. Although Robert would never agree to it.”

  But God, it sounds good to me. I’m desperate to make this decision with a clear mind instead of being pressured into something so life altering—something that if I choose, I may never be able to forgive myself. To terminate the life of a child conceived in love, as well as a child that is truly wanted—it feels like murder.

  “Is your house just empty? Can we show up at the drop of a hat?”

  Am I crazy? I’d have to sneak away, because Robert would surely shoot down any idea I could come up with. If I left without him, he’d follow me. He’d track me down in a second.

  “We can leave tonight if you want to, Kate. There’s an overnight from JFK. I’ve taken it before. The keys are at my house. I know my way around there and everything. We used to go all the time. You gotta buy my ticket though; I don’t have any money.”

  Janinie thinks she can drag me off and talk me out of it. Everyone has an agenda. What I’m afraid of is that it might just work.

  “It won’t work. If I take my passport or even use my credit card, Robert would track me and he’d call the authorities. He’d use it against me somehow.”

  “I know how to get you a fake passport. So does my mom. It’s not that hard. We could get one tonight. We can really do this if you want. Besides, it’ll be fun!” Janinie says. She’s selling this hard.

  “You know,” she adds, smiling, “If you and Jaylee got married, we’d be sisters.”

  Running away sounds better than going home tonight. Disappearing is more appealing than waking up next to Robert tomorrow.

  “Oh my God! Emily!” I blurt out.

  “Who’s Emily?”

  “My sister.”

  “You have a sister? I thought you just had your friend, that crazy Sarah.”

  “No, I have a sister. She— But this is too insane, Janinie, it will never work. We can’t just run away.”

  “Sure we can! People do it all the time. But what’s your sister got to do it?”

  I drag Janinie into a taxi and have her call Janet, her mom, to let her know we’ll be using the beach house for the next few days. Just a couple of days to finally breathe free. I’m running away so that I can come back, to return to my family for real. Start over. And get Jaylee out of jail.

  I’m hoping that Emily isn’t home, but if she is, I can come up with a story for her. Not like she’d be interested in my life anyway. I wish I could tell her what’s going on, but Emily and I don’t have that kind of relationship. I have the cab drop us off on the corner, and Janinie and I approach the building on Central Park East that overlooks the park. The doorman ushers us into the opulent marble foyer, and Janinie grabs my arm as she takes it all in.

  “Oh my God, your sister lives here? She’s balling!” she breathes.

  “You sound just like your brother.”

  “You brought Jay here?”

  “No, I brought him to my parents’ place,” I say as I dial Emily.

  “Hey, Em. It’s Kate. Are you home? Oh, where are you going? No, it’s just—well, I’m downstairs, actually. Can I come up?”

  Enriqueta opens the door for us, smiles, and hugs me. I introduce her to Janinie in Spanish, and Janinie gives her a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Where’s Em?” I ask.

  “Ya sabes, Kate. Getting more beautiful for some bullshit party.”

  Janinie’s mouth drops open and I just laugh.

  “Come on, Neenay. Want to meet my evil twin?” I drag her through the apartment and she gazes around in awe at Emily’s extravagant home.

  “Her house is even better than yours, Kate. What’s she do for money?”

  “Thanks! Decorate, I guess. She’s married. Professionally.”

  When we near the bedroom, two yapping Maltese miniatures come running out on the offensive, making Janinie jump back.

  “It’s okay, they don’t bite.”

  As we enter, I whisper, “I wish I could say the same for Emily.”

  Emily is perched on a stool in front of her vanity, smearing lip-gloss on her collagen-plump pout. She jumps up in only a bustier and slip, her breasts nearly bursting out the top, and flounces over to us, air kissing me and ignoring Janinie. I awkwardly try to pull her into a hug.

  “Don’t! You’ll crush my fragrance. It’s settling,” she says, fanning her breasts, then bee lining back to the mirror.

  “Where you going? Where’s Doug?”

  “To an event. I’m hoping to get photographed. Patrick McMullan should be there. He always gets the really good shots. Doug is picking me up any minute. What do you want?” Emily says, finally turning her head away from her reflection to look at me again. “And who’s that?” she says gesturing to Janinie with a mascara wand.

  “My replacement sister. We call her Neenay.”

  “Ha ha, Kate. Very funny. You look like a lesbian in that coat.”

  “Thanks, I like lesbians, and I love this coat, Em.”

  “I can tell. You look bigger too. Did you put on weight? Is she like your help or something?”

  “I’m pregnant, Emily.”

  “You’re funny tonight, Kate! Can you help me get my dress on or do I have to ask Enriqueta? She’s in a pissy mood just because I told her that whatever setting she’s got the damn iron on is ruining my sheets. Enriqueta!” she hollers.

  “We’ll get your dress on, Em. Let Enri do her job.”

  Janinie and I wrestle Emily and her breasts into her skin-tight Hérve Léger dress. The entire time, Janinie’s head is rotating back and forth from my face to Emily’s.

  ‘Oh God, that’s Doug!” Emily says, running for her phone, which is buzzing in the middle of her king-size canopy bed.

  “I can’t believe Doug sleeps in that fairy princess thing,” I whisper.

  “Who’s Doug? Are you two really twins?” Janine asks still staring wide-eyed at Emily.

  “Husband. Yes, they gave her the brains and me the beauty. No, we’re not really twins. We’re actually a few years apart.”

  Emily and I look a lot alike. When we were young, Emily was chubby and I was thin. But now we look like slightly different variations of the same person. We get the twin comment a lot when we’re together. But we’re not often together—we’ve never been close.

  “She got the tetas, that’s for sure,” Janinie says.

  “Those are fak
e.”

  “I heard that,” Emily says, opening a closet next to the bed.

  “Are those all purses?” Janinie whispers.

  “A purse closet, yup. Why, you don’t have one?”

  Janinie smiles at me and I smile back at her.

  “I’m going. Doug’s downstairs. Are you staying? Why are you here, Kate?”

  “Enriqueta. I’m writing something about Honduras and I thought I could ask her some questions.”

  “Oh!” Emily says, air-kissing my cheek again. “Is she from Honduras too?” she asks me, pointing at Janinie.

  “Yes.”

  Emily leaves the bedroom, breezing right past Janinie and shouting for Enriqueta. The dogs follow behind her, yipping like loyal squires. Janinie looks bowled over by Emily’s exit—and her closets.

  “She’s a lot to take in, that one. Most of its an act, too. When you scrape off the makeup, she can be really sweet underneath.”

  “Even though you look alike, somehow, she doesn’t seem like a sister,” Janinie says, fingering the ornate post on the canopy bed. I swallow tightly because I wish she was. What I wouldn’t give to have the warm, sweet flow that passes easily between Jaylee and Janinie. The way they would do anything to protect one another, when Emily does all she can to avoid me. To be honest, I don’t try to see her much either.

  “Come on, Honduras, we’ve got some ransacking to do!”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Emily has a stash of travel credit cards. She’ll never notice that they’re gone and it will be way too late by the time she does.”

  “We’re going to steal your sister’s credit cards?” she asks.

  “Borrow,” I correct her. “But first we’ve got to find them.”

  Janinie and I go through all of the drawers in the dresser as well as the ones on the vanity. It takes a bit of prodding to convince her that it’s okay. I move on to Doug’s, and in the top left-hand drawer I find a sterling-silver box containing their passports. There’s a billfold in there as well that has Emily’s three travel credit cards.

  “Bingo!” I toss it to Janinie.

  “Oh my God! It’s you!” she says, folding the cover back and staring at the passport photo.

  I grin at her and open the door to the purse closet. In the back I find two matching rolling suitcases with travel tags that say “Emily Whitland Hersh.”

  “One for you and one for me.” I push one to Janinie.

  “Can we pack our clothes from here, too?” Janinie asks, eyeing the designer purses like a kid who’s never been taken on a shopping spree. Maybe that’s something I can change for her right now. Emily has more bags than she could possibly carry in a lifetime.

  “Take whatever you want. She won’t even notice. And if she does, I’ll buy her new ones. I’m going to go catch up with Enri, then we’ve got to go because I need to see the girls before we leave.”

  “What about Robert?”

  “We’ll be at the airport by the time he gets home.”

  My goodbye with Ada and Pearl is bittersweet. We’ve spent a few days apart before, but this time, people’s reaction to my unannounced departure may scare them. I tell Ada over and over that I’ll be back in a few days. Pearl accepts it silently without question. Ada demands to know all the details, which I can’t tell her, and puts up an outrageous protest. It ends with me snuggling her to sleep while she sniffles in my arms. I make sure that Pearl has the phone numbers for both sets of grandparents, my best friend Sarah, and Aunt Emily, as well as those of close neighbors. I instruct her to call Sarah every day and that I’ll check in with Sarah daily on my end. I don’t want to ask Pearl to lie for me, so I just leave it up to her to decide what to say and who to tell. She’s ten years old now, and I trust her.

  When both girls are sleeping soundly, and their babysitter Stephani has settled in to watch a movie in the den, I go to my room to pack a few things. I change into a comfortable sweater and jeans for traveling, and then throw a few light dresses, swimsuits, and linen separates into the suitcase. I rub my belly absentmindedly, thinking about how much fun I had wearing a bikini in the south of France when I was seven months pregnant with Ada. Robert took so many photographs during that vacation. Pearl was just a toddler, and was ecstatic about getting a new sister. We were all so excited about the new baby.

  I touch my belly again and tell myself that even if this is to be a goodbye, this trip will give me a chance to say it in a meaningful way.

  Anger toward Robert tears through me at being forced to choose between my lover and my unborn child. Either he’ll free Jaylee, or I’ll keep my baby. It’s heartless. Whatever I choose, the decision will eat away at me for the rest of my life. Either way, I lose.

  In the heat of this anger, I scribble him a note.

  I need a few days away from you. No matter how you betrayed me, I would never make you kill a part of yourself. If you truly love me and want to stay with me, stay with me through all of it, even this. You believe in defending and forgiving those who have committed greater crimes. Can you help me through this? Is it too much to ask? Isn’t the deepest beauty in life found in the sacrifices we make for love?”

  - Kate

  Later, as I try unsuccessfully to find sleep on the plane, I wonder if the letter I wrote was really to myself.

  Chapter 2

  Miches, República Dominicana

  We arrive in Santo Domingo a little after three AM. Maybe I would have run away before if I’d known how easy it could be to throw everything into a bag and jump on a plane. I’m hopeful that a few days’ rest and a change of pace will be exactly what I need.

  The airport is sleepy at this early hour, and the immigration line is long because there’s only one lone officer stamping all of the passports. Our trip to the capital shared neither the destination or the hour with sightseeing tourists; our fellow passengers were almost entirely Dominican-Americans. Janinie is texting, glued to her phone as usual. I peel off my sweater and fold it over my purse.

  “They’ll meet us by the entrance after we go through customs.”

  “What? Who is meeting us? I thought this trip was going to just be me and you?”

  “My uncle Julio and his friend Edwin. My dad told my mom to call them; he didn’t want us here alone.”

  “Well, shit, Janinie, you could have told me! I’d have let Janet know that we’re perfectly capable on our own. I’m a well-traveled adult. I think we could manage.”

  “Yeah, but it can be dangerous by the airport at night. We won’t start out to Miches until tomorrow when it’s light.”

  “Is that where the house is? How long does it take to get there?” I didn’t even ask where we were going. This is the problem with fleeing.

  “The drive is only a few hours, but the road is bad. It’s better to have them drive it. Besides, we wouldn’t want to go alone, just two women.” It’s my fault for not asking questions, for allowing Janinie to call all the shots.

  Janinie greets the two men who meet us curbside with a brisk and awkward kiss. They acknowledge me only with curt nods at our introduction, but both rush over to enthusiastically assist with the luggage. The shorter of the two, Edwin, nearly trips as he scrambles to relieve me of my suitcase. At another time I might protest, but I’m exhausted and battling a vicious headache. I just want to be directed to the nearest bed.

  We get into their Jeep silently; no one asks a simple “how was the trip?” I can’t help but wonder if these men resent me already, and if I’m in for a getaway filled with uncomfortable silences and stares.

  Julio explains briefly that it would be better to get a hotel away from the airport, citing drug violence as the deterrent for remaining in the city overnight. It dawns on me slowly, through the fog of my headache, that Julio and Edwin are Jaylee’s father’s friends. His father in Sing Sing. This doesn’t reassure me about our safety, or about escaping the pressure I was feeling in the Heights. I thought I was coming here to leave my problems behind, but we may ha
ve stepped into something deeper.

  “I wish you would have told me we were meeting people once we got here,” I whisper to Janinie as we buckle into our seats.

  “They’re here to protect us, okay?” She glares at me as if I’m being ungrateful for the trouble they’ve gone to.

  “From what? Sunburn?” I say sharply, abandoning my whisper and letting the anger take over. I don’t know if Julio or Edwin have any command of English, but I don’t much care at this point.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what my family does, Kate.”

  “Oh, were we coming here to do that? I wasn’t informed!”

  “They just wanted us to be safe. That’s what Jay woulda wanted. It’s his baby too.”

  “Janinie, it’s what they do, not you. I never would have agreed to this.”

  But I lose the battle with staying awake, just as the city lights begin to fade behind us. We whizz past fewer blinks of civilization, retreating farther into the star-covered blue-black night.

  A slamming door awakens me; it appears we’ve stopped at a low-budget hotel. I reach over and shake Janinie awake, but not before I notice a gun on the car floor. Seeing the gun makes my blood run cold. It’s for our protection, I tell myself without conviction.

  Edwin and Julio make their way to the reception. I hope we won’t be sharing a room. I step out of the Jeep into the all-encompassing humidity, the heat undeterred by the blanket of night.

  I stretch my legs and assess my physical condition. I don’t remember ever feeling quite this bad. These men could take me out to the mangrove forest and shoot me, and at this point, I wouldn’t put up much of a fight. My anxious thoughts get the best of me, and I wonder for a moment if that’s what we came here to do. I question whether Janinie set me up for this, or if she’s as clueless as I am about what’s going on. I’m wondering what I can do to protect my baby when Janine jumps down and slams the car door.