Autobiography of Us (29 page)

“Everyone loves a missing woman,” she declared the next night. “Especially a good-looking one. You want to know what I think?”

“They’re radicals. There’s no telling what they—”

“
I
think she’s no dummy, Patty. Ten to one, she did it on purpose.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead.”

“Now, why would anyone go and pull a stunt like that?” I asked in my most reasonable voice.

“She’s an heiress, not a saint. For Christ’s sake, Rebecca, don’t be such an elitist. If pricked, doth she not bleed?”

Somewhere outside, a siren was wailing. I’d been standing by the window when she called and I sank into the armchair now, folding my legs under me, pulling a blanket over my knees. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. She’s been abducted.”

“Gone
missing
. There’s a distinction.”

“And?”

She exhaled noisily. “Do I really have to spell it out for you? She gets the front page while the rest of us sit here and rot. Honestly, they have some nerve.”

“Yes,” I said, because she said it with such vehemence I felt afraid, as though she might crawl through the phone line, ready to put her hands to my throat and shake her point out of me if she had to.

“They’re all the same, these girls. The Pattys of the world. Strutting around town with the same goddamn
bravado
. God, do I hate bravado.” She was quiet, the click of the lighter over the telephone wire loud. “You should have seen them at NOW the other day—Nagging Old Whores. The husband’s nickname—clever, isn’t it?” I could hear the ice moving in her glass. “There was a job opening for treasurer. Malice let it slip one day, the snake. She does that sort of thing all the time—pretends not to know she’s twisting the knife. She didn’t think I’d be interested, she said. Gosh, she wouldn’t have thought in a million
years.
” She made a little noise of disgust. “Of course, they turned me down in two seconds flat. Apparently my math skills are subpar. One of the girls going over my test actually snickered—this one couldn’t have been more than twenty, twenty-one.
Working for empowerment
, her button said. So I asked her where the empowerment was in turning
me
down.”

“What did she have to say to that?”

But she seemed to have moved on already, skipped ahead, the conversation turned from dialogue to monologue. “At least in a compound somewhere, everyone would leave you the hell alone. I’d kill for some peace and quiet, I swear.” She fell silent again. “Sometimes I think it’s just a matter of time before I do something, I don’t know,
irretractable.
Though I’d go for something quick, myself—quick and easy.”

“Stop that,” I said sharply. “The girls depend on you.”

“So much depends on the invisible woman … How’s that for a punch line?”

“Not funny.”

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all.

I plucked at a thread coming loose from one of the pillows. “Should I be worried? Because when you say things like that, it makes me worry.”

She sighed. “I’m feeling blue, that’s all. Sunday bluish. It’s only talk,” she went on. “People say all kinds of things.”

I waited to see if she would go on. “You shouldn’t be upsetting yourself like this,” I said finally. “You’re in no condition.”

“My condition happens to be impeccable, thanks.”

“What I’m saying,” I said slowly, “is that maybe we should try concentrating on the good parts. Look on the bright side every once in a while.”

“That’s about enough out of you, Pollyanna.”

I wound the thread around my finger, pulling it tight. “You said it yourself. Look at my mother—lucky, remember?”

“Lucky?” She laughed, and I wished immediately that I could take it back. “Gosh, I’d forgotten. That’s right, you and me and Patty, Eleanor, Eloise—we all hit the goddamn jackpot.”

* * *

According to my rough calculations, she was due sometime in April. I knew she’d gone into labor only because she didn’t call one night at our usual time. I waited a few hours before dialing her number, letting it ring and ring before I finally gave up. It was late at night there by then—early morning in New York—but as soon as I placed the phone on the receiver I picked it right back up. I had to fight before the nurse at Pasadena Presbyterian would even admit there was a patient by that name on the maternity floor. There’d been some small complication, she finally admitted. “Baby refused to turn around,” the nurse said briskly. “She’s still in there. Afraid that’s all I can tell you for now.”

I spent the rest of the week in a constant state of agitation, walking my route down along the river each morning with more than my ordinary speed, sending the boys out with Gladys nearly every afternoon so I could sit in my chair by the window and stare at the river traffic while I waited for her call. When the phone finally rang that Friday at our usual time, her voice was flat and buzzing with fatigue. Yes, the baby was fine. No, she didn’t want to talk about it. It had been a nightmare, she said.
Der albtraum
—did I know the word? German, she said, not actually
nachtmar
, as most people thought, German the right language for it, though, because they had been Nazis in there. Absolute Nazis. She kept speaking fast, faster. Her voice ran over words so quickly, I thought she must be afraid to stop. Was it…? A girl, she said tonelessly. Six pounds, so-and-so ounces.

“When they told me it was a girl,” she said in that strange, buzzing voice, “I asked if they could put it back. No one even cracked a smile. Everyone looked so goddamn serious I wanted to scream.”

“They must have been worried.”

She was silent for a minute. “They sliced me open, Becky. Carved me up like a Christmas goose.”

“I wish you’d called.”

“Are you kidding? I was knocked out cold. They gave me something that landed me flat on my back. If that isn’t irony for you.” She laughed a little. “First they won’t give me so much as an aspirin and then they put me down like a dog.” It sounded as though she was breathing unnaturally hard. “I’d like to see the handbook that calls for no anesthesia during something like that. I’d like them to show me where it says—”

“They must have given you
something
. A cesarean, for God’s sake.”

“I’m telling you,” she snapped, “I felt every little cut. Meanwhile, they just stood around with their knives, looking like they’d swallowed a room full of canaries. They strapped me to the table like a goddamn lunatic.”

“You’re both healthy. That’s the important thing.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to say.” She sounded disgusted. “That’s exactly what they tell you to say.”

“Is your mother there? Because someone needs to be taking care of you. Do you hear me?” I tried to sound very firm. “Someone needs to be helping out with the twins. This is no time for you to be worrying about anything. You should be resting.”

She was quiet again. “I thought maybe we’d come out for a visit.”

“Who?” I said stupidly. “You?”

“Try not to sound so shocked.”

“I’m just wondering if it’s wise.”

“You wonder all you want.” She coughed. “We’re getting the hell out.”

“You mean you and—”

“Bertie, yes. And baby makes three.” Her voice flattened, drew itself smooth as a sheet. “Fit as fiddles, all of us, so you can stop sounding so mother hen-ish. I want a vacation, that’s all. A little time away from the twins, once I heal up and get out of this goddamn bed. I want to walk around somewhere that’s not a goddamn sauna. Go to the opera. See a show. We’ll have dinner, the four of us.”

“The four of us,” I echoed.

“Four and a half. Four and one screaming little quarter.”

“It won’t be that bad. Will it?”

There was another small silence. I pictured her raised up in her bed by the dingy hospital window, the Pacific foaming somewhere in the distance. “It’ll be perfect,” she said. “I can’t think of anything more perfect.”

* * *

She did write me once, a postcard sent no more than a month or so before she gave birth. I didn’t mention it earlier because it hurt me terribly at the time to read. She was at the beach, she wrote. Hot as hell.
Shades of Flaubert—or is it Rimbaud? I’ve forgotten it now. I’ve forgotten it all. It’s gotten tricky
, she wrote,
the remembering
. Each time I tried to read the first few lines, I couldn’t help but see her sitting there cross-legged on a towel with a book spread open beside her, her belly big enough by that point to cast its own shadow. Of course I understand now that she must have written it from her house, that she no more picked up and drove out to the ocean than I went to any one of the hundred museums I claimed to frequent. We had settled into our lies by then, she and I; we wore them carelessly, coats we threw around our shoulders to counter the chill.

In the postcard, she wrote that she’d managed to escape for the day, that she’d left the twins with a neighbor and packed up a picnic basket for one.
Divine,
she wrote. I remember the look of that word in her angular handwriting, the way the
i’
s sliced through the page.
The waves are spectacular, Becky
, she wrote.
Carpe goddamn diem.

IT was late May by the time they came to visit. I took a taxi across the park to their hotel for dinner, Paul’s secretary calling to say he was stuck in meetings and would meet me there. It was warm that evening, one of those New York spring nights that drives everyone half crazy with hope. People were out in droves, filling the cafés along the sidewalks and lining the benches along the park’s periphery, the sound of their voices through the open window surprisingly loud. There looked to have been a parade of some kind on Fifth Avenue. The remains blew up in the wind, paper cups skittering along the pavement, clouds of confetti funneling toward the sky. A few balloons, partially deflated, went limping along the curb. The cab stopped at a light and I watched as a car pulled around the corner, passing close enough to one of the balloons that the drag pulled it up into the air where it fluttered, hovering, before drifting back down.

I’d asked Paul to recommend a hotel for them and of course it was very nice, the front opening up to a view of the park, the entrance flanked by gargoyles gone green around the eyes with age. When I came through the revolving door into the lobby, I found myself blinking, the darkness inside after the bright sunlight momentarily blinding.

“May I help you?” The woman behind the podium smiled at me inquiringly.

“Mrs. Turner.” I pressed my fingers to my eyes. “I’m meeting three others.”

“Bertrand Lowell, party of four?”

I looked behind me into the street one last time. The light that evening was so beautiful I thought for one desperate moment I might turn and march right back through the door out into the spring air. Sit down at a little table outside one of those cafés. Order a drink, something celebratory: champagne, maybe. A kir royale.

“Ma’am?”

“Thank you.” I settled the strap of my purse against my shoulder a little more firmly. “That’s the one.”

“If you’d like to follow me?”

I could have stretched my hands out like divining rods and pointed straight at her—Boots lifting his paw. The room was filled with people, the ceilings high. Alex sat in the middle of it like something on fire. She wore a cherry-colored blouse, her mouth a matching-red
O
. She was positioned halfway behind one of the partitions that divided up the room, the baby wrapped in white and resting against her chest.

“Becky,” she called, waving. “Over here.”

I came around the edge of the partition and there was Bertrand Lowell, his long body folded into the chair like an accordion. I was struck in that moment by how ordinary he looked, just another man among the many men sitting with their drinks. I must have been expecting some hint of that old thrill; instead, I felt only the piercing disappointment I have experienced countless times when something fails to live up to my expectations, like the time I rode the ferry to Ellis Island not long after arriving in New York and found myself gaping at the Statue of Liberty, crushed by the ugliness of that face up close—those hollow eyes, the cruel spikes of her crown.

“Hello there,” Bertrand Lowell said, raising one big hand in greeting.

Alex got up immediately and put her cool cheek against mine. “Here she is,” she said, beaming. “My lovely girl.”

“She’s beautiful.” I touched my finger to the tiny forehead, the skin smooth as a petal.

“I meant you.” Alex sat down hard. The baby’s head bobbled awkwardly against her chest. “Whoops-a-daisie.”

“It’s been a few years,” said Bertrand. He held his napkin to his waist and bent across the table, extending his arm. I grasped at his wrist. “Rebecca.”

“More than a few.” I was surprised to find that up close he looked exactly the same—his black hair untouched by so much as a single gray, his eyes that ghostly blue. “I’m afraid my husband may be a few minutes late. Stuck in a meeting—he sends his apologies.”

“We don’t mind, do we?” Alex appealed to Bertrand. “We get you to ourselves for a bit this way.”

He looked at me from under heavy lids. “Rebecca Madden,” he said. “Tell us all the news.”

“Turner now,” I said brightly. “Afraid there’s not much to tell. I’ve got two boys at home. Matthew will be six next month. Lucas is four.” I met his gaze and gave him my best smile. “They’re good boys.”

“Please ignore the tinge of green to his skin,” Alex said. “He’s had it up to here with girls, haven’t you, Bertie? Says we’re living in a henhouse. Getting pecked to death, he says.”

“It’s wonderful you could make it out.” I tried another smile.

“Three days of freedom, thanks to Saint Eleanor.” Alex’s eyes were lined heavily with pencil; a smudge just below her left eyebrow had colored the skin gray. She looked, I thought, oddly disheveled, her blouse skewed to the right, her hair tousled in a way that might have been intentional but I thought was likely not. “She flew all the way back from Florida, bless her. Said she missed her grandchildren, and God knows we weren’t coming to visit anytime soon.”