“Have you heard anything?”
“Not yet.” When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “What should we do?”
Tears rose up, scalding, in the back of my throat at his unexpected kindness and the unbidden memory of how the two of us had once been “we.”
“Have you two been fighting?” Bruce asked. “Is there something going on?”
“She’s angry,” I said, without mentioning any of the reasons why. “Listen, if you could just keep your cell phone on, you know, in case Joy calls you . . .”
“I will.” He paused. “Hey, Cannie, I’m really sorry about this.”
I brushed at my eyes. “It’s not your fault. I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
“Same here.”
I shoved my cell phone into my pocket. Peter dropped me off at home and went to check Joy’s school, the coffee shops in our neighborhood, the bookstore, the Ronald McDonald House. I opened Joy’s class directory and started calling every family with a kid in her class, asking if they’d seen her, if they’d heard from her, if they knew where she could be.
THIRTY-TWO
I walked off the plane, down the jetway, and into the bright, bustling Los Angeles airport, my suitcase handle clutched tightly in one sweat-slippery hand, still not quite believing that I’d pulled it off, that I was really here.
My plane, scheduled to leave at ten A.M., had taken off two hours late, and I’d spent each of those hundred and twenty minutes in the waiting area feeling as if I would jump out of my skin, as if, at any moment, my mother would come storming around the corner, or I’d get picked up by the police. Finally, they let us board the plane. I took my seat and fastened my seat belt and sat there, staring straight ahead, as the man in the aisle seat looked at me, amused. When his Bloody Mary was gone, he set down his empty plastic glass and tapped my shoulder. “I’ve heard of nervous fliers, but what’s your story? Nervous take-offer?”
“Something like that,” I said, and forced my hands to relax on the armrest while the rest of the passengers filed past us. We’d been stuck on the runway for another twenty minutes, and every time the captain came on the speakers to announce another delay, I was convinced it was because my mother had found out where I was and where I was going.
I’d left Tamsin and Todd’s house at eight o’clock that morning, before Mr. and Mrs. Marmer were awake, and caught a cab to the airport, dressed in the outfit that Todd had picked out from Mrs. Marmer’s closet. While Tamsin stood at the bedroom door, keeping watch, Todd had flipped through his mother’s dresses and skirts and sweaters. He’d selected dark-rinse straight-legged jeans (“Boot cut is too trendy”), a plain cream-colored T-shirt and dark brown cardigan, along with a necklace of silver beads (“I can’t take your mother’s jewelry!” I’d protested, and Todd had rolled his eyes and said, “A, it’s costume; B, she’ll never know; and C, yes you can”). My shoes were my plain brown school shoes. My hair was loose and wavy around my ears (“Not to criticize, Joy, but that stick-straight look is kind of played,” Todd had said). He’d made me swap my backpack for his mother’s brown suede hobo purse (“Kids carry backpacks, ladies carry purses”), but, in my favor, he’d approved my pink wheeled suitcase (“Next time, though, ask for leather. Much more versatile”).
He’d loaded me up with different tops and extra underwear and helped me tiptoe past his sleeping parents’ closed bedroom door, down the stairs, and out to the street. As I headed back toward South Street, pulling my suitcase behind me, looking over my shoulder to make sure Mrs. Marmer hadn’t noticed that I was carrying her purse and wearing her clothing, Tamsin had come sprinting out the door.
“Here!” She handed me a brown-and-white polka dotted scarf and a pair of gigantic white plastic sunglasses. “Todd says to put the scarf in your hair. He says it’s very Sienna Miller meets Edie Sedgwick. I have no idea what that means, but here you go. Oh . . .” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Trade me. So your GPS will still say you’re here.” I handed her my phone, shoved hers in my purse, and raised my hand for a cab.
As soon as the cab was moving, I tied the scarf into my hair and put the sunglasses in the purse, next to my copy of Big Girls Don’t Cry and the printed-out e-mails my grandfather had sent me. In the book, there’s a scene where Allie leaves Philadelphia and flies out west. I watched the world tilt underneath me, then vanish as the plane ascended through the clouds, and I felt my heart lift. I pulled the tight seat belt even more snug around my waist, thinking, Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for, the thing I can’t name, the thing I need.
Whether Allie or my mother had found what she needed, I wasn’t sure, but maybe I could find my own version.
At the airport, my heart had almost stopped after I’d swiped the stolen credit card through the machine to get my boarding pass and the screen read PLEASE SEE GATE AGENT. Maybe my mom had found out somehow. Maybe she’d already called the airport, or even the police. But when I went to the gate agent, all that happened was they gave me my ticket and a pin reading UNACCOMPANIED MINOR that I stuck on Mrs. Marmer’s sweater, then slipped into my pocket as soon as I’d run my shoes and suitcase and borrowed purse through the X-ray machine.
I pulled the seat belt tighter and stared out the window, letting my breath fog the scratched plastic, listening to my heartbeat thundering in my ears. “We’re number three for takeoff,” said the pilot. “Flight attendants, please take your seats for departure.”
My breath whooshed out of me. The businessman gave me an amused look. “See? No worries. Everything’s fine.”
I nodded, using the sleeve of my borrowed sweater to wipe the condensation off the window as the voice invited me to sit back, relax, and enjoy the six-hour flight to Los Angeles. “I’m going to see my grandfather.”
“Oh yeah?” The man had opened up his Wall Street Journal.
“Yep.” I nodded and ran my fingers through my hair.
When we’d been in the air for a while, the flight attendants served lunch to the first-class people, our choice of salad or steak. I had a chicken Caesar salad, soup, and a roll. The tray came with tiny shakers of salt and pepper, real glasses for wine and water, and cloth napkins, but the silverware was all plastic. “Nine-eleven,” grunted my seatmate. “The security people confiscated my toothpaste, and I’m eating my steak with a spork. Score one for Al Qaeda.”
I nodded, slipping off my shoes and resting my feet on the pink suitcase that I’d stowed underneath the seat in front of me. Maybe I’d be discovered in California. Maybe someone would see me and decide that I was just the girl they were looking for. I could move in with Maxi, I could get a tutor to finish school, I could turn into somebody else, somebody better. I could rewrite my own history. I could tell people that my parents had been married and they’d loved me very much but unfortunately had died in a car accident, and everyone would believe me because I’d change my name to Annika and there wouldn’t be anyone around to tell them otherwise.
I used my own spork to eat the chocolate cake for dessert. Then I fumbled around until I found the button that reclined my seat. I’d planned to close my eyes for just a minute, but I guess I was more tired than I’d thought, because the next thing I heard was the thump of the landing gear, and when I looked out the window, we were descending through a thick brown cloud into Los Angeles, where the temperature was seventy-two degrees and the local time was two-forty-five P.M.
“LAX,” said the spork man, accepting his suit jacket from the flight attendant. “God help us all.”
I grabbed my purse and suitcase and walked through the airport, ignoring, for the time being, the buzzing of Tamsin’s cell phone.
“Ms. Krushelevansky?” The driver was unbelievably handsome: square-jawed, dark-haired, with sparkling blue eyes, waiting at the base of the escalators with a sign with my name on it, just the way Riley had said he’d be. I wondered why he wasn’t a movie star. I wondered if maybe he was trying to be, if the driving wasn’t just to keep him busy until his b
ig break came. “I’m Kevin. We’re going to the Regent Beverly Wilshire?” he asked, taking my suitcase.
“Yes, please,” I said, and put my sunglasses on. We’d flown through a cloud of brown smog, but the sky above looked perfectly blue, and the palm trees that lined the road leading out of the airport were waving in the warm breeze. I rolled the window down, thinking the air would smell like the seashore, but I got a faceful of exhaust instead. It didn’t bother me. All of a sudden I was happy . . . and hungry enough to eat the copy of Fortune folded into the seat-back pocket.
“Um, excuse me? Kevin? Can we maybe stop for a snack?”
He pulled the car smoothly off the road and into the parking lot of an In-n-Out Burger, which I’d had before, when I’d been to California with my mom to visit Maxi (Maxi always got her burger wrapped in lettuce leaves). I ordered and devoured a cheeseburger and fries. Then I got back in the car with milkshakes for me and Kevin, and we drove for half an hour before we pulled through the ornate wrought-iron gates and up the cobbled drive of the hotel.
Inside the lobby, it was all cool beigey-pink marble. A towering arrangement of lilies and forsythia stood in the middle of the room on a round gilded table. Fancy people glided through the sweet-smelling air. There were men in uniforms standing beside the heavy glass doors, asking if they could hail a cab or help with shopping bags. I spotted a bowl of green apples on the counter, and I took one. Then, feeling very competent, like Joy Krushelevansky, Girl Reporter, or Girl Detective, or Girl Solver of Family Mysteries and Unraveler of Secrets, I checked my suitcase at the bell desk and went to the ladies’ lounge, where I locked myself in a stall, flipped open Tamsin’s phone, and called her house. When Todd answered, and got his sister on the line, I said, “Operation Eagle Soaring Free is a success!”
“That’s great,” Todd said. “But I think you should call your mother and tell her that you’re okay. She’s already called our house five times.”
“I’ll call her later.” I crossed my legs and thought about it. “Or maybe you could tell her that I forgot my phone at your house but that I borrowed someone’s phone at Amber’s bat mitzvah and called you from there.”
“I think she knows you weren’t—” Todd started.
I cut him off. “Just call her. You don’t have to say that you know where I am or anything, just that you’ve heard from me, and I’m okay, and I’ll call her by . . .” I looked at the time and did some quick math. “By midnight, okay?”
“What if she thinks you’ve been kidnapped?” asked Todd.
“Kidnapped?” I repeated. Why would anyone think I’d been kidnapped? Who would want me? “I don’t know. Make her pay you ransom money, I guess.”
“We’ll call her right now,” said Tamsin in the background. “Call us, like, every hour, so we know you’re okay.”
I promised I would. I studied myself in the mirror to make sure I looked all right, that my hearing aids were in place, and that the credit card and my list of addresses were safe in my pocket. I went back outside, where my car and driver were waiting.
The address I had for Dr. Lawrence Shapiro was on Linden Lane—a bungalow, I thought that kind of house was called. It was a little building with lots of right angles and a low-hanging porch that set the front door in shadows. In front of the house was an iron gate, painted blue. A walkway led up to the gate, then past it to the front door; there was an orange tree in the front yard. Nobody answered when I rang the doorbell. No dog barked, and I didn’t hear anyone inside. I went back to the car. “We might have to wait awhile,” I told Kevin, but fifteen minutes later, a little white car zoomed up the driveway and a lanky woman with short blond hair wearing pink scrubs got out with her keys in her hand. “I’ll be back soon,” I said. I walked across the street, through the sweet-smelling, balmy air, and jogged onto the sidewalk, then over the lawn, right by the painted door. The grass was crunchy underneath my feet, strange and different, L.A. grass. Six or seven oranges had fallen off the tree and were rotting on the ground. I could see something that looked like black liquid streaming over one of them—ants, I thought. “Excuse me,” I called.
The woman’s face looked tired and guarded as she turned toward me. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Shapiro? Christine? Is Dr. Shapiro here?”
She had a backpack over her shoulders, and as I watched, she tugged it closer. “Mrs. Bloom,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Bloom now.”
“But you were Mrs. Shapiro? You were married to Dr. Shapiro?”
She squinted at me through the hazy twilight. “You’re the youngest process server I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not a process server,” I told her. I didn’t even know what a process server was. “I’m Joy Shapiro Krushelevansky. My mother is—”
“Oh God,” the woman said unhappily. “Candace.”
“Yeah. So listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m wondering if you know where my grandfather is now.”
“Right now? No idea,” she said. She turned toward the house, reaching into her pocket, probably for her keys. In the book, my mother had described “Allie’s” father’s new wife as slender, and maybe this woman had been once, but at some point she’d crossed the line from slender to skinny and looked pretty close to emaciated, like one of those actresses whose pictures they show under the words EATING DISORDER??? on the covers of supermarket magazines. The ex–Mrs. Shapiro had a corded neck and scrawny arms. The short-sleeved V-necked pink scrubs revealed the cracked skin of her elbows, the bony plate of her chest.
“You don’t know where he is?” I asked. “Do you have another address or a phone number?”
“I don’t,” she said sharply. She shot a scornful glance at the car. “Traveling in style, huh? Is your mother in there?”
“I’m here by myself,” I said. “I don’t want to bother you or anything, but I’d really, really appreciate any information you have about my grandfather.”
She slid her backpack off her shoulders and thumped it down onto the grass. “Let me tell you about your grandfather. He left. He owes me money. Lots of money. Me and my kids. And I can’t exactly write a best-selling book about it.” She bent down stiffly, like her back hurt, and picked up her backpack. Then she grabbed the blue gate, like it was helping to hold her upright.
“I just wanted to give him something.”
“Can’t help you. Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. Her fingernails on the hand clutching the gate were ragged, like she’d bitten them. “We’re divorced. Three years ago. I’m remarried now.” She flung the words at me nastily, like a fistful of sharp-edged stones. Probably she was hoping I’d go away. Except I wouldn’t. I flew three thousand miles to a place where there are palm trees and the air smells like suntan oil and ambition, my mother had written. I flew away from the twisted wreck of my past and toward the bright edge of the sea. I was, I figured, at the bright edge of the sea right now, and whatever I found out, whatever happened, it had to be better than what was waiting for me back home.
“I came all the way from Philadelphia,” I said. I couldn’t tell whether she’d heard me, but her back stiffened, just like Tamsin’s did when she was mad. “I just want to give him something.” The bat mitzvah invitations my mother and I had picked out on the Internet hadn’t arrived yet, so, the night before, in Tamsin’s bedroom, I’d written out a pair of invitations by hand on Tamsin’s stationery. “Here,” I said, and shoved one at her. “Here. It’s for my bat mitzvah. I invited him already, but this is official. If you hear from him or find out where he’s living now, I’d really appreciate it if you could give it to him.”
She curled her hands into fists. The invitation fluttered to the concrete. “You don’t want him at your party,” she said. “You don’t want him in your life. Believe me. He’s a jerk.” She gave a tight, horrible smile. “For a long time, I thought he was just misunderstood. His wife was gay, his kids were brats, whatever. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t them. It was him.” She bent her head and muttered something that I cou
ld tell by reading her lips was abusive asshole.
“If you could just—”
“Go home,” she repeated, then turned away, a too-thin woman in a too-big pink shirt.
I picked up my invitation as she walked inside the door. I heard the click of the lock turning in place. “You should pick up your oranges!” I called toward the closed door. “They’re all rotten!” No answer came. I made myself count to twenty, saying “Mississippi” in between. Then I bent down and slipped the invitation through the mail slot. The brass door of the slot clicked shut, and I imagined I could hear the envelope sliding onto the floor.
• • •
“Dr. Shapiro?” The lady behind the reception desk at the Beverly Hills Surgical Centre had glossy black hair pulled into a twist and creamy skin, but when I said my grandfather’s name, her almond-shaped eyes looked dubious. “He’s not on call this weekend.”
Great. Not at home, not even living where I’d thought his home was, not at work. This wasn’t going well. “Can you do me a favor?” I asked. “My name is Joy Shapiro. I’m his granddaughter. He isn’t expecting me, but I came all the way from Philadelphia to see him.”
The woman looked at me with her heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you have his phone number?”
“Not a current one,” I said. The only number I’d found was for the house on Linden Lane, and clearly, wherever he was living, it wasn’t there.
She looked at me for another minute without blinking. “Hold on,” she said. “I’ll see if I can reach him.” She disappeared behind a door set almost invisibly underneath the word “Centre.” I stood in front of her empty desk for a minute, fidgeting, then I wandered through the waiting room. There were fat couches covered in gold fabric, and round tuffets that had fringed skirts, piled high with glossy magazines. The walls were hung with poster-size photographs of the doctors who worked there. I looked until I found my grandfather’s picture, the same Santa Claus one that I’d seen on the website. I was standing underneath his picture when the beautiful receptionist came back. “He’s on his way.”
Certain Girls Page 31
