Carpe diem, indeed.
Everyone was silent and still for what seemed like forever. I felt the ripples of the carpet beneath my feet. Without looking I felt Jade leave the table in front of me. Without looking I also knew the footsteps going after her were Andrew’s.
Chapter 26
Mystery Date
NOW I WAS IN the lobby without my shoes or my handbag. I also didn’t have my phone, my keys, or my pride. I trembled as I walked into the Pinnacle’s lobby bar. I sat on a leather club chair at a table in the corner and slid my hands under my thighs to stop their shaking. The bartender nodded but didn’t speak, his people-reading skills above reproach. My thoughts quieted even though guests filled most of the other tables. I blew out a stream of shame, further deflating my ego and consciousness. No windows were around me, just a wall lined with books and an archway leading back to the lobby. It could have been any day, anytime, anyplace, so I pretended for a moment that I’d intentionally stopped for a drink without my shoes, as if a thirsty, tired flower child. Then, the bartender placed a cosmopolitan in front of me in an etched martini glass with a twisted stem. It was pretty and pink and very much something to be consumed with shoes on. I crossed my ankles and drew back my legs.
“It’s your birthday, right?”
I nodded.
“Compliments of the house, then, ma’am.”
Ma’am? If he was trying to make me feel better, that wasn’t helping. But it wasn’t his fault I was almost forty, and it wasn’t his fault I was here in his bar, alone and barefoot, bare everywhere. “Thank you.” I nodded and sipped my pretty pity drink as he walked away.
Honesty was freeing, no matter its vessel, yet it also carried with it the weight of disappointment and expectation—mine and others’. I looked at the glass’s round indentation on the napkin and I pushed my finger along the circle, tearing it. So much for fancy napkin folding. I crumbled the pieces and left them on the table, knowing that every trace of my minutes at that table would be erased as soon as I’d left. Some things could be undone and others couldn’t.
I noticed Darby on the other side of the room, at a table but facing the wall. I wished I’d never met her. Or that Noah hadn’t liked her enough for me to let her babysit. But everything that led to tonight was my fault, not hers.
I stood behind Darby but she didn’t turn around. “Why didn’t you tell Jade when you found out about Mac?”
“Because Holden said he’d tell her I was the one writing those comments, and she’d fire me. Which she just did.”
One thousand points for Holden.
A zillion for Jade.
* * *
The lobby splayed in front of me like a Broadway stage filled with dancers. I searched for Jade amid the bodies and faces of the people walking, sitting, and standing. I needed to know if I’d lost my best friend. But to do that, I’d have to find her.
I sat on the bottom step of a wide, carpeted, curving staircase leading to the mezzanine. As I scanned the hotel guests and a crowd of bridesmaids in navy taffeta, I knew what else I had to do. I had to pay back the money Jade had given me. As soon as Bruce was working again and helping take care of Noah, I’d clip coupons, eliminate cable, and increase the deductible on my car insurance. I should have taken those steps two months ago, but I didn’t want to give up anything else when I felt as if I’d lost so much.
I had no idea how much more there was to lose.
Now, if Noah had what he needed, nothing else mattered. I’d use the time Noah was with Bruce to bring in extra money. I had no idea what I’d do, but it didn’t matter. My breath caught. It mattered very much. I’d stuff envelopes, deliver pizzas, clean bathrooms. I’d do honest work for honest pay.
At that moment I saw Mrs. Feldman walking toward me. I stood, knowing she was not about to sit on the step.
“You did the right thing.”
“No, I rambled like a fool. I thought I was going to implode.”
“Yes, but you spoke from the heart instead of your head. That’s not always a bad thing. Sharing your fears and secrets is never easy. I think everyone in there knows that. I know I certainly do.”
“Does that mean you’ve told your sons about Elizabeth?”
“I have.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“Of course you can, dear, but don’t you want to talk about what happened in there?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, there was some yelling, a little crying, a lot of talking.”
“And you told them that Andrew is trying to find her?”
“I did. And I told them that’s thanks to you. They’re having a little trouble processing it all. The sister, the letter from Sol. Things would have been very different. For all of us.”
I looked away and coughed instead of cried. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you through all this.”
She tugged and I turned back. “The movers come next Monday, dear. But you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Izzy Lane!”
The words smacked the back of my head and I turned around to face Jade. Her shoes were off and her face was red.
“Geraldine, do you mind if I talk to Izzy alone?”
Mrs. Feldman sandwiched my hand between hers and pulled away. “No matter what happens, you’ll be fine,” she mouthed, and walked away.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Jade. “I am so, so sorry.”
“How could you lie to me? To me? I don’t even know who you are. It’s like you’ve been faking this friendship for twenty years.”
“I have not!”
“You lied to me over and over again.”
“I was embarrassed!”
“With me?”
“I was alone and that made me feel awful. And then Bruce lost his job and I was scared.… I’m going to pay you back.”
“This isn’t about the money! I’d have lent you money. Hell, I’d have given you money. You know that. Of all the people in the world, you didn’t think I’d understand what it was like to be single when all your friends are married? How about the fact that all my friends have husbands and children and I don’t want either? Don’t you think I’m an outsider? That I feel different? No, because you didn’t think. You didn’t think enough of me to trust me. You’re not who I thought you were. Not at all.”
Our twenty-year friendship faltered and flashed before me like an old-fashioned slide show. Jade had taken my lies as affronts on our friendship, and on her worth as my friend, not just as assaults on my own character.
“It’s no excuse, but I am so not where I thought I’d be when I turned forty,” I said.
“Give me a break! Who is?”
“You. Rachel. My brothers. Bruce.”
“You really think Bruce is where he thought he’d be? In a new job with less pay and living alone in the suburbs? I doubt it.”
I shrugged.
“Oh, and are you going to leave out the fact that Rachel knew?”
“I tried to tell you!”
Jade rolled her eyes. “Not hard enough.”
I had no defense.
“God, I thought we’d have more time together now. You ruined it. You ruined us.”
“I can fix it. Let me fix this. Please!”
“For God’s sake, Izzy, get over yourself. I have. And now I have to go salvage what’s left of my career.”
Jade walked away without hesitation, pushed around the revolving door, and kept going. I felt an ache, then a snap. Jade broke my heart.
But not before I’d broken hers.
Andrew hurried across the lobby, but when he saw me, he stopped.
I hadn’t moved but was breathless. “Jade left.”
“What did you expect?”
* * *
Though it felt like months, it only was a week. The final boxes were being carried out of Mrs. Feldman’s house by the time I arrived home from work. I hadn’t stayed late, hoping to bear witness, and, as always, hoping that Jade h
ad called and left a message. Not only had I been reduced to an every-other-week mother—but one without a best friend, and now I’d be one without a next-door neighbor. While I felt demoted, Noah had been catapulted to the top of Bruce’s priority list. Mrs. Feldman was off on a new adventure at eighty-five. My happiness for each of them outweighed my self-pity. For that I was grateful. But I needed a new identity. Maybe I would dig out some of Noah’s costumes. Capes could be empowering.
I walked into the Feldman house without knocking or yelling. Ray was standing in the middle of the empty living room, pivoting from side to side, holding a bulging trash bag.
“Hi, Elizabeth,” he said, mimicking his mother. “It looks big in here without furniture, doesn’t it? Lots of potential for a buyer.”
“It just looks sad and empty to me.”
Ray shrugged, and my thoughts tumbled off his shoulders and into the bag with the rest of the garbage. “Moving on to new and better things, I say.”
“New isn’t always better.”
“I don’t think moving on is your area of expertise, now, is it?”
I grimaced. Just because I’d moved back to where I’d grown up didn’t mean I wasn’t moving forward. I had done a lot of new and different things since my divorce. I’d … well, it didn’t matter what I’d done or hadn’t done before.
“Ma says you’re comfortable here.”
“I am.”
“I say comfortable is the kiss of death. That’s why we wanted Ma out of here. Nothing personal, but she needs to meet new people and do new things in a new place or she’s going to wither up. And I’d say she’s got a good decade left. Y’know what I mean?”
Why did Ray sound as if he’d grown up a hoodlum instead of as the son of a bookkeeper in what was once a nice Jewish neighborhood? “Where is your ma, by the way? I wanted to return this.” I wanted to see her. I needed to remind myself I wasn’t completely alone. I held out the pirate box and the key.
Ray grabbed the duo without an apology. “She left hours ago. It’s bingo night.”
* * *
Two weeks later and I still couldn’t fall asleep until midnight. Two hours to go. What was I going to do for two hours? Facebook? TV? Read a book? It was too late to call Rachel. How I missed the days of random texts and phone calls at odd hours with Jade, ones that filled the time faster than a gushing fire hydrant had filled Good Street on a hot summer day. The house was quiet, but I didn’t want to play music because then I might miss an errant creepy noise, one I’d have to investigate on my own. I looked in the coat closet and peeked down into the basement. I opened and closed the fridge three times; the cabinets, four. I had no appetite. Even when Noah was home with me next week, and even when someone bought the house next door, things wouldn’t be the same.
Maybe things weren’t supposed to be the same.
The obvious popped to mind like the early-spring crocuses. I knew this city, and where the still-good neighborhoods and the schools were. I also knew Bruce was apartment hunting, and where. No reason we shouldn’t live close enough for Noah’s sake yet far enough apart for our own sakes. No reason Noah couldn’t be in a new school for first grade. No reason my parents couldn’t finally sell this house or rent it.
It didn’t matter how fast I went … just that I kept going.
I jittered with anticipation—stopped myself for the hundredth time that day from texting Jade—grabbed my laptop, and tapped my fingers while the screen came to life, ready for me to find the perfect new home. Just then, Felix jumped from the floor to the kitchen windowsill. A perfect new home that allowed cats.
But as I typed my wish list for bedrooms and bathrooms into tiny Web-site boxes, I knew what else I wished.
I pulled out Andrew’s business card from the silverware drawer. Andrew had run ads on Philly over Forty with the belief that I was sharing real-life stories with readers. He’d admired the way I wrote about Mac. Maybe my lies had impacted his business as well as his ego. Jade wouldn’t talk to me, but maybe Andrew would. I wanted to apologize, wish him well, and then I wanted to move on.
Who was I kidding? I wanted to hear his voice.
* * *
The anxiety that anchored me to my cell phone was worse than when I’d sat by the Princess phone in the apartment Jade and I shared our senior year at Penn.
This new kind of angst was mobile—so for more than a week now, I’d been reminded that Andrew had not acknowledged my voice mail just as he hadn’t acknowledged my e-mail, and I’d been reminded of that whether I was in the bathroom, at school, or in the supermarket.
How was this social progress?
Maybe I didn’t deserve acknowledgment, but I did deserve closure. I wanted to apologize, if not face-to-face, at least voice-to-voice, but I hadn’t been given that option. I stared at Andrew’s business card for a hint or direction. It was time to forgive myself for being unforgivable. I tore the card in half and then looked at each piece.
The answer had been there all along.
* * *
After work the next day I drove into Center City and beat most of the traffic. But I wouldn’t have cared if the drive had taken hours.
The building was tall and glass and stood like a soldier among its brothers. The lobby had a metal detector but I could get in without ID. I had the element of surprise on my side, although last time that didn’t work so well.
The elevator doors opened on the twenty-third floor, and I, along with others, poured out. I turned right for Suite 2320. The door was plain and simple.
ANDREW MANN, ATTORNEY AT LAW
I turned the doorknob. Locked. Andrew wasn’t working at four o’clock on a Monday? Of course not! He had two kids who still needed car seats, like Noah. Andrew could be anywhere. Soccer, dance, the dentist, the doctor, the car-pool line. He could be in court. With a client. On vacation.
I knocked and waited. I knocked again. I unclenched my fists when I realized I was digging my nails into my palms. I had lied, but I had also confessed. Publicly. And I apologized. Privately. The least Andrew could have done was acknowledge the effort. Say okay. Say thanks. Say go to hell. Say anything.
The door opened.
“Hey.”
All of a sudden, I had nothing to say.
“I was in the neighborhood…”
“Okay…”
“Can I come in? I won’t take much of your time.”
“Okay.”
The waiting room looked like a living room. One that’d had a woman’s touch.
“Sorry I knocked so loud.” There I go lying again.
“I lock the door if I don’t have any appointments scheduled. Which I don’t.”
“Who is it, Daddy?”
A little girl with long brown hair slinked out of a back room. She was more tween than toddler.
“Paige, this is Ms. Lane. Would you give us a few minutes? You can play on the computer.”
She smiled at me with a mouthful of braces before turning away.
“She’s adorable,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“She looks too old for a booster, though.”
Andrew cocked his head.
“I saw them in your car. The booster seats?”
“Oh, no. Paige is eleven. The boosters are for the twins. They’re three and a half.”
“Boys or girls?”
“One of each.”
“Three kids. Wow.”
“No, four kids. Zoe’s eight.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it usually gets that reaction. Widower, dad, four kids. We also have a dog, a snake, a turtle, and many stuffed animals, along with a vast assortment of sports equipment and art supplies. The dot paints are my personal favorite, which really makes me a chick magnet.”
“I’m sure it does.” I nodded and my throat burned. Andrew was not just a good dad, he was a great dad. His ocean-deep loss did not drown his soccer sensibilities and playdate priorities. Or his sense of humor. If that didn’t make a guy attractiv
e, what did? Jade had known all along. I swallowed, and the heat traveled to my ears and then hijacked my body from the top down.
“Truly, Elizabeth? I was being sarcastic. Is there something in particular you wanted?”
“Sorry. I just wanted to say … I was thinking … I just wanted to say I was sorry. In person. I didn’t know if you got my voice mail. Or my e-mails.” Oh, how I had rambled in those e-mails.
“I did.”
“Did you read the e-mails?”
“I did.”
“Did you listen to the voice mail?”
“I did.”
“You didn’t answer them.”
“No, I didn’t.”
I shrugged. Eloquence had left the building. “I guess I thought—I hoped—that we were friends. Or that maybe we were becoming friends. That maybe you could forgive me. I guess I was wrong. I won’t bother you again.”
I almost turned to leave through the open door, but Andrew put his hand on my shoulder. Even through my trench coat, the pressure rooted me. I wanted him to ask me to stay, to talk, to explain myself, to apologize again. “I liked you, Elizabeth, but how I felt doesn’t matter. You lied to your best friend for months, not to mention to me and everyone else. I don’t have the time or the energy for games.”
“I lost my best friend and I humiliated myself in public. Believe me, I don’t have the time or energy for games either. I’ve said I’m sorry a thousand times, and I’ve meant it every time. Now I’m done.” I looked at him. We were eye to eye. I looked right in and through. Andrew wasn’t as short as I’d thought.
“I believe you’re sorry and I wish you the best. If we ever bump into each other, I hope it won’t be awkward.”
“Absolutely not.” Another lie. I looked away.
“Good.” Both his hands gripped the door handle, ready to close it behind me, shutting me out the way I deserved.
“How is Jade? She won’t return my calls or e-mails either.”
The Good Neighbor Page 19
