Home Safe

by Elizabeth Berg

  Helen thanks her friend, and for a moment after she hangs up, she considers attempting the exercise herself. But no, here comes the same feeling she gets when she thinks about trying to write anything these days: a great weariness, a flat sorrow. Perhaps she will use the exercise for her class, though, despite the fact that she wanted very much to come up with an idea of her own. Her phone rings again, and again when she answers it, there is a hang-up. She feels a sudden sense of dread. Her father has been having health problems, and now she imagines her mother sitting at the edge of her bed, the phone in her hand, unable to say the words she needs to. Full of fear, Helen calls her parents' number. When her mother answers, she says, “It's me. Did you just try to call?”

  “No,” her mother says. “But I'm glad to hear from you. How are you?”

  “I'm fine,” Helen says. “But Dad, is Dad okay?”

  Eleanor laughs. “You're not going to believe this. He's off playing pinochle. Then he's going bowling.”

  “Are you kidding?” Two days ago, her father had refused to get out of bed and had told his wife he'd be staying there. He'd asked her to inquire about hospice care. Eleanor had said he was being overdramatic, and Helen privately thought her mother was being insensitive. But it turns out that her mother was probably right.

  Still, “Bowling?” Helen asks. The man isn't exactly a tower of strength.

  “Well, he won't bowl, himself. He's going to watch Ed Silver-man and Tom Larson and that other character, whatever his name is.”

  “Ernie Sanchez?”

  “That's it.” Her mother sighs. “Your aunt Caroline says we should rename your father Lazarus.”

  Helen hears the call-waiting signal, tells her mother they'll speak later, and hits the flash button. Silence, then yet another hang-up.

  Helen jerks the phone away from her ear and slams it down. Why didn't she get caller ID when it was offered to her? She enters *69, and a recording tells her she can't access the call. Then her cell phone rings, and she answers it, only to be met with another hang-up. This time, though, she has the number, and she calls it back.

  A man answers, saying mildly, “Tom Ellis.”

  “Yes, I'm … Who is this?”

  “Tom Ellis,” the man says, and Helen writes his name down.

  “Do you keep calling me and hanging up?” she asks.

  “Who is this?”

  “It's … Mrs. Ames.”

  There is a long silence, and then the man says, “Could you tell me where I might find Dan? I've been trying to reach him for a while.”

  She draws in a steadying breath. “But who are you?”

  “I need to talk to Dan,” he says. “Would you ask him to call Tom Ellis? It's just a business matter.”

  No. Not now. She is not going to tell some irritating stranger that her husband has died. She hangs up and then sits staring out the window.

  Focus. Work. She turns to her computer and types, (1) Introduce self, include brief history of career. (2) Explain class will introduce themselves to each other by doing exercise “Who are you?” Then they'll read aloud and critique each other. Gently. She stops typing. What if they don't want to share their work out loud? Under step number one, she inserts, Explain concept of workshop. There. But what will she do while they're writing? She rubs her forehead, looks at the roses, rearranges them once more. When the phone rings, she looks at it as though it is a bull snake, then slowly picks it up.

  “What.”

  “Whoa!” Midge says.

  “Oh. It's you.”

  “Last time I checked. What's your problem?”

  “Somebody keeps calling and hanging up.”

  “Are you hungry? Because I need to go to Wendy's.”

  Helen is not hungry. She ate a late breakfast. And she really needs to get this work done. But she tells Midge she'll meet her in fifteen minutes. For one thing, she wants to switch problems. Instead of worrying about writing exercises or her father, she'll worry again about where the money went, now that it's fairly certain that Dan didn't buy a boat. She'll brainstorm with Midge about various possibilities. Conversations about this problem are easier since the first “I'm sorry but let's just get this out of the way” one. The one where Midge asked about prostitutes and mistresses and gambling and hidden drug habits and second families. “What do you think he was?” Helen asked Midge. “A politician?” They'd gotten a little laugh out of that. A little one.

  It remains a painful mystery why Dan withdrew such a large sum of money, in cash, from their account. For Helen, the biggest problem is not how she will manage financially. She can always sell the house. She has proven that she can get a job. No, what bothers her most is her sudden inability to feel certain about who Dan was. It makes her sad; it makes her feel foolish; it makes her frustrated—to the point of tears one day, to pounding rage the next—to understand that she might never know for sure where that money went. Only Tessa is stalwart in her belief that nothing underhanded could possibly have happened. Tessa still sees Dan exactly the way she saw him before, and Helen does nothing to take away from that—let the girl have her father in the only way she can. But for Helen, it's different. She sits sometimes studying photos of Dan, looking for something she didn't see before. She imagines them making love, wondering if, when he closed his eyes, it was in pleasure or to hide something. She re-creates conversations, trying to retroactively find clues; she regrets that she was never the kind of wife to check receipts, mileage, to look for lipstick on collars, for heaven's sake. Mostly, she is bitter that in his death Dan has managed to present her with a problem on top of a problem: in addition to recovering from his loss, she now must also find an answer to this puzzle.

  One of the things she and Dan used to argue about, one of the things that drove him crazy, was the way she would sometimes refuse to work things through and pretend instead that everything was fine. And now that is precisely what she decides to do; she puts the money problem in the subbasement of her mind. She will not discuss it or any other problem with Midge. Instead she will celebrate with her the merits of naked burgers at Wendy's—yet another thing she and Midge agree on, that a good burger needs nothing but salt. And a vanilla shake. In the car, she turns up the radio, taps her fingers against the steering wheel in rhythm to the sound.

  Just before she gets to Wendy's, Helen sees a shoe in the middle of the street, a man's dress shoe. Could some sort of writing exercise be made of this? Something about all an article of clothing can suggest? A pair of dusty tap shoes? A blue negligee? A box of monogrammed men's handkerchiefs, never opened? Stop, she tells herself. Before the group meets, she will have a plan in place. She will. She hopes.

  nine

  HELEN LEAPS OUT OF THE SHOWER, PULLS HER NIGHTGOWN ON over her hastily dried body, and races to the ringing phone. Too late. Whoever it was hung up. It wouldn't be any of the boat dealerships she's most recently called; they would leave a message. She's got only one more call out; then she'll be back to square one: What did Dan do with that money?

  She makes a pot of coffee, pours herself a cup, and goes upstairs to her study. She'll try to write something. Both her agent and her editor have told her not to worry about when she gets the next book out, both have suggested that someone as prolific as she deserves a hiatus, but they don't know about her money problems—she was embarrassed to tell them, and until she learns more, she doesn't know what to tell them. They also don't know the extreme difficulty Helen is having writing; she doesn't want to admit it to them and make the problem that much more real. “Take your time,” each has said kindly, but with a breeziness that suggests they're confident something will soon emerge, a confidence Helen does not share. She feels like a patient in a hospital, being visited by people who stand back a little too far and glow with good health.

  She'll try a stream-of-consciousness piece just for fun, and see what happens. Before, Helen types, then stares at the word so long it transforms itself into an ideogram: it is a stout governess, pushing a pram. B
efore. Before … Helen sighs, takes a sip of the cooling coffee, turns to look out the window. The winter sky is colored pale apricot; the day has just begun, and she's already stuck. Back to that familiar place of no place at all.

  She hears the sound of air brakes, and here comes the garbage truck rounding the corner. Once again she has forgotten to put out the trash—she has two weeks' worth in the garage and despite the cold, it's beginning to stink. She rushes downstairs and bundles newspapers into paper bags, carries them and the kitchen trash out to the bins, then rolls them to the curb. She arrives just as the truck is pulling away from the house next door, the house that comes after hers. “Hey!” she yells at the truck. She pulls her coat tighter around her nightgown, and runs in her slippers after the truck, praying she won't fall on the icy sidewalk. “Hey!” The truck stops and a man pokes his head out the window. “Can you back up?” she yells. “Can you come back and get my trash?” Loud beeps sound as the truck slowly backs up. Helen holds up her hand and yells thank you. The man waves back, and he is frowning. It is not anger, it is concern. Well, she is in her nightgown, her hair wild about her head. Her coat is flapping open, hanging off one shoulder, now. Her slippers are full of snow. Also, apparently, she is crying—she can feel the wetness on her face. She runs back to the house, tries the door, and finds it locked. “No!” she wails, but then remembers the spare key hidden on the porch. When she finds it beneath a planter, it seems to her to be a miracle all out of proportion and she nearly weeps again. She is aware that, not so very long ago, all of this would have been funny, a good story.

  Inside the house, she changes from wet slippers to bed socks, and returns to her study. On the computer screen, she looks at the one word she has typed. Before. In her mind, she sees a jewelry case, absent of wares. Its wooden corners are nicked, the glass scratched. These flaws are all there is to focus on, now that the cabinet is empty. The image widens, and she sees everything so clearly, the maroon carpet of the store, worn nearly silver in places that were heavily trafficked. The dusty plate-glass window, yellow sun pushing through to the display space, empty but for dead flies. The outline on the walls of the merchandise that used to hang there. She can smell the air, the ironed smell of an overheated room. Keys to cabinets lie on top of the empty cases. There is a door at the back of the store, slightly ajar. Behind it, a small bathroom, the toilet ruined by rust, a few paper towels still on the roll, at the edge of the little sink a thin bar of soap cracked with age and turned up at the ends like a potato chip. A small, high window with bars behind it. Why bars? Why a jewelry store? In any case, the image doesn't inspire her. It sits in her brain and then it fades away, and then there is only the sound of a ticking clock, a passing car.

  She sits with her hands in her lap. Rubs the back of her neck. Picks up a fetish stone, the bear with the turquoise chip on his back, and holds it until it is warm in her hand, then puts it back in its place. Sits still again. A row of icicles hangs outside her study window and she counts them: twenty-seven. This seems an excessive number to her. Her neighbor's house does not have such icicles. She remembers that she never got around to having the gutters cleaned. After two hours of accomplishing nothing, she turns her computer off.

  She will dress. Then she will make a grocery list. There is laundry to do, baking for the visit to her parents. Later in the afternoon, she will attempt some exercises for her writing class. The phone rings, and she seizes the receiver, says hello.

  A man clears his throat, then says, “Helen? Mrs. Ames?”

  She clutches at the top of her nightgown, squeezes the fabric in her fist. What. What now?

  “Yes?”

  “This is Tom Ellis, and I just found out … I have just learned of Dan's death.”

  She draws in a steadying breath.

  After a moment, the man says, “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Ames, I had some business dealings with your husband, and I need to talk to you. Is there somewhere we can meet?”

  “You can't come here,” she says automatically.

  “That's all right. I'm in town; I'm staying at the InterContinental. I'll meet you anywhere you like.”

  Should she? She supposes she has to. She supposes she's about to find out what happened to the money. She hopes she doesn't owe more. “Your hotel restaurant,” she says. “Noon? How will I recognize you?”

  “I'll wait by the entrance,” he says. “And I'll definitely know you.” He adds hastily, “Don't worry. It's just that I've seen your picture.”

  But she is worried, of course she is; she's afraid, and she starts to call Midge to see if she'll go with her, then hangs up. She's not sure why it is suddenly so clear to her that she must go alone.

  She dresses quickly, aware of the fact that she is happy for an excuse to get dressed. She has so often expressed her gratitude at being able to work at home and in her pajamas; but as it happens, there is a downside. One can deteriorate a little, under such conditions. One can put off getting dressed; then, as long as one has done that, one can put off brushing one's teeth, combing one's hair. On the days when Helen leaps immediately into the shower and dresses for the day, she always feels better, yet she rarely does this. Why? she wonders. Is it a person's natural inclination to be so lazy? Or is it just her? And is it laziness, or rather a kind of protection of the dream state, a state to which you are tangentially linked by virtue of the fact that you are wearing the clothes you slept in? Helen would like to know the percentage of people who work at home and jump out of bed and get dressed just as they would for an outside job, versus the number of people who, like her, stumble into their workplaces wearing mismatched pajamas, contemplating what to do first.

  She selects a black skirt and a white Anne Fontaine blouse to wear, a black blazer. She puts on pearl studs, her pearl necklace, trying not to remember her fortieth birthday, when Dan presented her with these things at their favorite French restaurant, over dessert. “Dan!” she'd said, when she opened the box from Tiffany. “Helen,” he'd said back, simply, and kissed the middle knuckle of her right hand.

  She puts on very little makeup: a bit of concealer under her eyes, mascara, a light pink lipstick. She has the odd feeling that she is preparing for a blind date, and ruefully reminds herself that such is hardly the case.

  She pays bills before leaving the house; she'll drop them in the mailbox by the post office on her way downtown. She has a fear of paying bills late or incorrectly. She writes checks slowly, in silence, and tries to pay bills the day after she receives them. “So you make a mistake, paying bills,” Midge said, when Helen confessed this to her friend. “So it gets there late, or it's the wrong amount. What do you think is going to happen? Worst-case scenario, okay? What do you think is going to happen?”

  Helen thought for a moment, then said, “Jail?”

  Midge, always the voice of reason and practicality, has suggested that with Helen's number phobia, it would be good for her to have someone else handle her finances entirely, just as Dan used to do for her. It wouldn't cost her all that much and then she could spare herself the agony she puts herself through. But Helen resists the idea—she can't imagine trusting anyone the way she did Dan. She tells herself that in time, as she grows used to managing money, she will relax about it. Her plan now is to take a class, just as soon as the right one comes along. “Managing Your Personal Finances” does not appeal. “Soothing Advice Plus Chocolate for Women Who Would Prefer Doing Almost Anything Else to Managing Their Finances” does.

  Helen drives downtown and arrives fifteen minutes early at the InterContinental. She decides to get a glass of wine before going to meet Tom Ellis—she can use a little bolstering up—and she finds an end seat at the little bar next to the entrance of the restaurant. At the other end of the bar is a man reading a newspaper, and Helen studies him, wondering if he's the man she's meeting. He's tall, dressed in dark slacks and a pin-striped blue and white shirt, open at the neck; and from what Helen can
see, he appears to be nice-looking. He looks up then, smiles in Helen's direction, and she smiles back. He is nice-looking, in fact; he reminds her of a boyfriend she had in college who used to tell everyone—in truth—that he had been runner-up for the most handsome boy in seventh grade. It was meant to be a charming and only slightly ironic icebreaker when he met women, and it worked, especially when he produced the aging page of the yearbook that he carried in his wallet of a cute kid with a longish crew cut, whose expression told you that he thought the world was a swell place. This man has the same qualities: a kind of all-American look, the kind of handsome you feel comfortable with rather than intimidated by: even features, warm brown eyes, thick blond hair, longish. “Helen?” he says, and she swallows, nods. The man gets up and comes to sit beside her, offers her his hand. “Tom Ellis.” From here, she can see that he's older than he looks; he has graying temples and many lines around his eyes. He's tan, clearly he's not from here. She supposes he might have gotten his tan in a booth, but the tan seems too real, and anyway, he doesn't seem the type.

  “I want to say first that I'm so sorry about your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I feel like I knew Dan pretty well—even though we only met face-to-face a couple of times.”

  “Who are you?” Helen asks.

  He starts to answer, then says, “Tell you what. Let me buy you some lunch. I think this is going to be a long conversation.”