Anybody Out There? (Walsh Family)

by Marian Keyes

  Strange as it sounds, not one single episode of Starsky & Hutch was on. Plenty of other stuff—The Streets of San Francisco, Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey—but a bargain was a bargain. I’d go along to work and see if anything was happening. Maybe they might have changed their minds and decided to sack me after all, which would certainly provide distraction.

  I forced myself toward the door and slowly descended the stairs. The mailman was just leaving. It was the first time this year that it felt like autumn; leaves were skittering past outside and there was a chill and a hint of wood smoke in the air.

  I wasn’t going to bother opening my mailbox. What did I care if I’d got post? But something told me to unlock the box. Then right off, something else told me to walk away.

  But it was too late. I was unlocking it, and there, waiting in my mailbox, was one letter, addressed to me. Like a little bomb.

  There was no return address on the envelope, which was a little weird. Already I was slightly uneasy. Even more so when I saw my name and address: it had been printed neatly—by hand. Who sends handwritten letters these days?

  The sensible woman would not open this. The sensible woman would throw it in the bin and walk away. But apart from a short period between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty, when had I ever been sensible?

  So I opened it.

  It was a card, a watercolor of a bowl of droopy-looking flowers. And flimsy enough that I could feel something inside. Money, I thought? A check? But I was just being sarcastic, even though there was no one there to hear me, and anyway, I was only saying it in my own head.

  And indeed, there was something inside: a photograph. A photograph of Aidan. Why was I being sent this? I already had loads of similar ones. Then I saw that I was wrong. It wasn’t him at all. And suddenly I understood everything.

  Part 3

  84

  I woke up in the wrong room. In the wrong bed. With the wrong man.

  Apart from one small lamp, the room was in darkness. I listened to the sound of his breathing but I couldn’t look at him.

  I had to get out of there. Stealthily I slid from between the sheets, determined not to wake him.

  “Hey,” he said. He hadn’t been asleep. He sat up on his elbow. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “I’m watching you.”

  I actually shuddered.

  “Not like that,” he said. “Watching you to see that you’re okay.”

  With my back to him, I foraged on the floor for my clothes, trying to hide my nakedness.

  “Anna, stay until the morning.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “What difference can a few hours make?”

  “I’m going home.” I couldn’t find my bra.

  He got out of bed and I recoiled; I didn’t want him to touch me. “Just going out front,” he said. “Giving you some privacy.”

  He left the bedroom. I could look only at his legs, and even then just from the knees down.

  When he came back I was dressed. He handed me a cup of coffee and said, “Let me call you a car.”

  “Okay.” I still couldn’t look at him. The previous day was coming back to me, in all its horribleness. I remembered tearing off my clothes and shrieking at him, “Fuck me, fuck me. What’s it to you? You’re a man. You don’t have to be emotionally involved. Just fuck me.”

  I had lain, naked, on his bed and screeched, “Come on!” I wanted him to drive out my rage, my loss, my despair. I wanted him to drive out my dead husband so I wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.

  “Car’s here.”

  The sun was coming up and everything was early-morning quiet as I went home. Even though I hadn’t touched a drop the day before, I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life.

  I let myself into my silent apartment, snapped on a light, and once again got the envelope out of my bag and looked at the photograph of the little boy who was the image of Aidan but who wasn’t Aidan.

  The previous day, as I’d stood on my front step, examining the picture of the toddler in the Red Sox cap, it was the scar through the eyebrow that had given the game away. Aidan had got his the day he was born; a tiny nick in his just-new skin that had never healed. This boy in the picture had two perfect eyebrows, no scar. Then I’d seen the date on the photo. I’d stared at it, my head thinking, This can’t be right, but my gut knowing it was: this little boy had been born only eighteen months ago.

  A letter had come with the photo: the flimsy card opened out to become a big sheet of writing paper. But I wasn’t interested in reading what she had to say, all I wanted to know was who she was. I scanned for the name at the end and—surprise, surprise—who was it, but Janie.

  The red mist had descended and I felt like I was going crazy. She had had him for all those years. Now she had a son by him. And I had nothing.

  Immediately I’d known what I was going to do.

  My fingers trembling in the chilly morning, I rang Mitch. But someone who wasn’t Mitch said, “Mitch’s phone.”

  “Can I speak to Mitch, please?”

  “Not right now.” The person chuckled. “He’s suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling, doing microelectronics.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was too angry. Well, get him the fuck down!

  “Tell him it’s Anna. Tell him it’s urgent. Really, really urgent.”

  But the phone answerer wouldn’t even yell up to Mitch. He said to me, “Mitch is way under pressure up there. Minute he’s finished, I’ll get him to call you.”

  I cut the call and agitatedly kicked the front step, thinking, Who, who who? It couldn’t be any of the Real Men. The only one who was single was Gaz and he might try to “heal” me by setting me on fire.

  Then I got it. It wasn’t meant to be Mitch. It was meant to be Nicholas.

  Cute little Nicholas. He’d do.

  I called him at work: got his voice mail. I called him on his cell: got his voice mail. That meant he had to be at home. I called him at home and got his voice mail.

  I couldn’t believe it. I simply could not believe it. I needed this. Why were all these obstacles being put in my way?

  In the middle of the rage I remembered something. Hands shaking, I grabbed my handbag and tipped the contents all over the step, going through the mountains of shite, searching for that little bit of paper. I didn’t really believe I’d find it. Although I had to.

  And there it was. A small curling strip of paper. My lifesaver: Angelo’s number. Angelo whom I’d met with Rachel in Jenni’s one morning.

  It wasn’t meant to be Nicholas. It was meant to be Angelo.

  But I got a no-show on Angelo’s number, too. “I’m not here right now. You know what to do.”

  “Angelo, my name is Anna, I’m Rachel’s sister, we met one morning in Jenni’s, then again on West Forty-first Street. Can you call me.”

  I left my cell-phone number, hung up, scooped everything back into my bag, and sat down on the step. I couldn’t think of anyone else. There was no one. Maybe I should just go to work.

  Then, like salvation, the phone rang. One of them ringing back! Which one? “Hello?”

  But it was Kevin, who sounded like a maniac. “Anna, I’m here, at LaGuardia. I’m in the city. We’ve got to talk.”

  “It’s okay, Kevin. I know all about it.”

  “Shit. I wanted to tell you gently! But don’t worry about it. We’ll fight for custody and we’ll get it! We’ll bring him up, you and me, Anna. Where do you want to meet?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Benjamin.”

  “Go straight to your hotel. I’ll see you there.”

  So it wasn’t meant to be Mitch, Nicholas, or Angelo. It was meant to be Kevin. Well, who knew?

  I hailed a cab and climbed in. “Benjamin Hotel. East Fiftieth.” Then I got the envelope out again and studied the photo, which had been taken only four days earlier, and tried to figure out the sequen
ce of events. When had I first met Aidan? When did we go exclusive? What age exactly was this child? He looked like he was eighteen months but he could be big for his age, or small. If he was only, say, sixteen months, what implications did that have? Would it be worse if he was nineteen or twenty months? What if he’d been a preemie? But my head was too mental and I couldn’t nail the time line. I’d nearly have it hooked and then it would all slide away again.

  When my cell phone rang, I almost didn’t hear it because it was buried deep in my handbag.

  “Hi,” a voice said. “This is Angelo. You called me?”

  “Angelo! Yes. I’m Anna, Rachel’s sister, we met—”

  “Sure, I remember you. How you doing?”

  “Very, very badly.”

  “Would you like to meet for a coffee?”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “At my apartment. Sixteenth, between Third and Fourth.”

  I looked out the window, managed to focus on street numbers long enough to see that we were on Fourteenth.

  “I’m in a cab, two blocks away,” I said. “Can I drop by?”

  It wasn’t meant to be Kevin. It was meant to be Angelo.

  85

  My buzzer jolted me awake—every cell in my body got such a fright I thought I was going to have a seizure. I’d lain down, with the photograph of the little boy on my chest, and I must have dozed off.

  On shaky legs, I got to my feet and the buzzer went again. Christ Almighty! What time was it? Just gone 8 A.M. This early in the morning, it could only be one person: Rachel.

  Angelo had called her the day before, when it became clear that he had a total lunatic on his hands. She had showed up with Luke, and I’d given a garbled account of the photo and letter, which they insisted on seeing. Then they tried to take me home but I refused to leave and eventually they went away again. But I guessed that Angelo had kept Rachel up-to-date with my movements, letting her know that I’d gone home.

  It was Rachel. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “As good as can be expected considering that my dead husband was unfaithful to me.”

  “He wasn’t unfaithful.”

  “I hate him.”

  “He wasn’t unfaithful. Read the letter. Where is it? In your bag? Get it out.”

  Under her watchful gaze, I reluctantly unfolded the letter and tried to read it, but the words were jumping all over the place. With a sharp rustle, I thrust it at her. “You read it.”

  “Okay. And listen carefully.”

  Dear Anna,

  I don’t even know how to start this letter. Start at the beginning, I guess. This is from Janie, Janie Wicks (née Sorensen), Aidan’s ex-girlfriend. We met briefly at Aidan’s funeral, but I’m not sure if you remember me, there were so many people there.

  I don’t know how much you know of what’s been going on, so I’ll just tell it all. It’s hard to write this without drawing a bad picture of myself, but here goes. After Aidan left Boston to work in New York, he came home a lot on the weekends, but the in-between bits were not good, and after, I guess, about fifteen, sixteen months, I met someone else (Howie, the man I’m married to now). I didn’t tell Aidan about Howie (or Howie about Aidan) but I said to Aidan that he and I should take time off and date nonexclusively, just to see.

  So for a while I was dating (and sleeping with) both Howie and Aidan—whenever he was home from New York.

  Then I found out I was pregnant. (I used contraception, I’m not a candidate for Jerry Springer, but I guess I was that one person in ten thousand or whatever the stats are.) The problem was I didn’t know if the father was Aidan or Howie. (Take it from me, I know how trashy that sounds.)

  I wanted to talk to Aidan about it, but the next time he came home to Boston, it was to break up with me. He’d met someone else (you), he was crazy about you and wanted to marry you, he was sorry to break up with me like this, we’d always be friends, you can imagine the script. So I had a choice to make: Do I tell him I’m pregnant and completely f**k things up for him and you? Or do I take a chance and hope that the child is Howie’s? So I took that chance and Howie and I got married and I had little Jack and we’re all crazy about him. He didn’t look much like Howie when he was born, but he didn’t look much like Aidan either, so I decided to act like there was no problem.

  But when Jack got a little older, he started to look lots like Aidan. I swear to God, it was like every day, his features became more and more Aidan’s. It was all I could think about and I was just sick with worry. Then my mom noticed and called me on it. I admitted the truth to her and she made me see I had a moral obligation to tell Aidan he had a son and the Maddoxes that they had a grandson. (Totally honestly? I so didn’t want to tell them. Being selfish, I was worried about Howie and my marriage.)

  Anyway, first I told Howie. It was really horrible, especially for him. He moved out for a while but now he’s back and we’re trying to work things out. Then I called Aidan, and like anyone being hit with that sort of news, he went into a total tailspin. His worry was all about you, he was freaked out that you might think he’d cheated on you. But just to make it way clear: this happened before he and you were exclusive. (Like, at least eight weeks before.)

  Anyway, I e-mailed him some photos of Jack so as he could see the similarity for himself. But, a day or so later, Aidan got in the accident and I don’t know if he ever got to tell you about Jack. If all this comes out of the clear blue sky, I am truly, truly sorry.

  I was ready to tell the Maddoxes about Jack when I heard about the accident and then I didn’t know what to do and my mom said Dianne and Fielding [“Fielding? Is that Mr. Maddox’s first name?” Rachel asked. “Funny, I never thought of him as having one.”] were not doing so good, that the news might be too big a shock for them and I ought to wait until they were improved.

  But Dianne and Fielding are still not so good and the right time to tell them still hadn’t come along.

  Lots of times I wanted to call you and check to see if you knew about Jack and also just to let you know that I miss Aidan, too. He was a great guy, the best. But I sorta felt I couldn’t talk to you about Jack until I’d told Fielding and Dianne and I felt it would be wrong to just talk to you about Aidan and not tell you about Jack. Does that make any sense?

  Anyway, I was just waiting for a good time to tell everyone, but, as you probably know, Kevin has fast-tracked it. On Tuesday I bumped into him at Pottery Barn (isn’t that the most unlikely thing ever? Kevin Maddox at Pottery Barn?). I hadn’t seen him in the longest time and I was really happy to see him. But then Kevin looked in the stroller and he was staring at Jack like he was looking at a ghost.

  Right there in Pottery Barn, Kevin started yelling, “This is Aidan’s son! Aidan had a son! Mom has a grandson! Who knows? Does Anna know? How come no one told me?” Then he burst out crying and I was trying to explain but security came over and asked us to leave.

  I said, “Kevin, let’s go get a coffee and I’ll tell you everything,” but you know Kevin. A bit of a hothead. He took off, yelling that he was going to apply for custody and he was going to call you right away and tell you everything. So I guess you’ve had at least one manic phone call from Kevin.

  I wanted to call you, too, but I thought it would be better if I wrote it all down. Least that way there’s no room for confusion.

  This might be way, way too soon, but would you like to meet Jack? Whenever is good for you. I could bring him to New York if you didn’t want to come to Boston.

  Once again I apologize for any distress I might have caused by telling you this. I felt you have a right to know and that seeing a part of Aidan living on might make your loss a little easier to bear.

  Yours sincerely,

  Janie

  “So you see,” Rachel said. “He didn’t cheat on you, he wasn’t unfaithful.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I still hate him.”

  86

&nb
sp; Rachel brought me up to speed on everything that had been happening in my life while I’d been absent without leave.

  “You still have a job. I spoke to that Franklin guy. I told him you weren’t well.”

  “Oh God.” The Devereaux execs and Professor Redfern himself were keen to meet with me to get the Formula Twelve campaign up and running. This was a terrible time for me to be “not well.” “Did he start hyperventilating?”

  “Yeah, a bit. But then he took a Xanax. Actually we had quite a grown-up chat. He suggested that you take the rest of the week and all of next week off. Try to get it together, he said.”

  “The milk of human kindness. Thank you, Rachel, thank you very much for dealing with it. For taking care of me.” My gratitude was immense. If she hadn’t spoken to Franklin, I’d probably never have dared to reappear at work; at least now I had the option if I wanted to. Then I thought of something else. “Christ! Kevin!” Was he still in his hotel, waiting for me to show up?

  “It’s all taken care of. I spoke to him, told him the story. He’s gone back to Boston.”

  “God, thank you, you’re so good to me.”

  “Give him a ring.”

  “What time is it?” I looked at the clock. “Twenty past eight. Is that too early?”

  “No. I think he’s keen to hear from you. He was very worried.”

  I winced with shame and picked up the phone.

  A sleepy voice answered, “Kevin here.”

  “Kevin, it’s me, Anna. I’m so, so sorry. I’m really so sorry to abandon you like that. I went bonkers.”