Happily Ever After: A Novel (11 page)

Chapter 19

I
wake to find I have a hangover and Aidan sitting on the side of my bed, one leg crossed loosely over the other. He wears a blue T-shirt, suit pants rolled casually at the ankle. His perfect feet are tucked into a pair of flipflops I have a vague memory of once seeing on Roger. Aidan has been rummaging through my closets.

“What time is it?” I groan.

“Seven thirty.”

Ouch. I never look good at 7:30 in the morning, especially after two gin drinks, a bottle of wine, and five hours of sleep. Aidan holds my notebook. His shoulders are tense, his eyes red and tired.

“Do you think she’s here?” he asks, shaking the page at me.

“Yes,” I say quietly. A dark place. Sort of.

“
Why
is this happening?” he asks, fury in his voice. “What did I do to deserve this?”

It’s a very good question and one I have asked a number of times since yesterday. To my mind, there are several possible answers. The first, and most compelling, is I’m having a midlife crisis and this is all part of a fantasy I’ve concocted. I’ve watched
American Beauty
. I see the signs. One moment everything is just as it always was and the next, utterly unfamiliar. You know, kind of like that Talking Heads song from the 1980s. But if I’m just sitting in the parking lot of Target imagining things, I’ve certainly gone overboard, even for me.

So that doesn’t answer the question in a way that’s satisfying. How about I was knocked unconscious and am in the ICU right now being treated for head trauma? Perhaps Roger and Allison and Greta stand at my bedside right now, wringing their hands in dismay over my condition. But I remember everything from the last day clear as a bell, and at no time did I fall down and hit my head. There is no interruption in the narrative.

The third possible answer is the most unsettling. Maybe all of this is really happening. Maybe the character of Aidan Hathaway has actually shown up here. Maybe everything is exactly as it appears.

But Aidan asked why it was happening to
him
and not why it was happening to me, and he’s waiting very patiently for an answer. As if I have one to give.

“I don’t know,” I say finally. I’m hot and the room seems too small. We have to get out of here. We have to find Lily.

Aidan looks as though he might argue my answer, demand something more complete and satisfying, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tears the page from the notebook. He crushes it into a tiny ball. He’s a coiled spring ready to explode.

“So you think the Ramble is where we start looking?”

“Yes,” I say.

Aidan pulls back my covers.

“Well, then get dressed,” he barks. “Let’s get going.”

“Okay,” I mutter. “I’m doing it. Go away.”

“Brush your teeth, brush your hair. Do whatever. But get it done.”

“Do you treat your stockholders this way?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I’m nice to them. They give me money, although according to you, I’m broke. I’ll see you in the kitchen in five.”

He must think I’m some sort of miracle worker. Five minutes allows for three minutes of additional yawning and maybe a tooth brushing. The hair will have to wait until some future date.

Downstairs, Greta, Aidan, and Allison sit around the kitchen table eating pancakes that smell heavenly. I kiss my daughter on the head and pile my plate with a respectable stack. I slip a pat of butter between each pair of pancakes and drench the whole mess with about a cup of warm syrup. There is no better cure for a hangover than a teetering pile of high-caloric food. If it comes with a side of fries, all the better.

Greta clears her throat. “Aidan tells me you’ll be doing some . . . sightseeing in the city today?”

“Um, yes,” I say. “And then I’ll drop Allison off at Roger’s for the night. Daddy says you’re shopping?”

Allison does a little wiggle of happiness in her chair. “I can’t wait!”

“How . . . interesting,” Greta says.

“Yes,” I say, stuffing my mouth with the glorious, fluffy pancakes. “It’ll be fun.”

“And hot,” Greta adds.

Already the air outside the kitchen windows looks heavy and thick, and the remaining daffodils wilt where they stand.

“When’s it going to end?” I ask. Greta always knows the weather details. She can talk barometric pressure and inversions and all that stuff.

“No one will say,” she says. “So I suppose it ends when it ends.”

Her pursed lips can only mean she disapproves of my plan to dump my daughter and my credit card with Roger and spend the rest of the afternoon frolicking around the city with my new young lover.

For a very split second, I consider coming clean to Greta. But an explanation would require time and finesse, and this morning I have neither. Plus it’s possible that Greta would call 911 and I’d be parked in my own room at the fancy insane asylum by lunch.

As I inhale the pancakes, it occurs to me that I’m heading out into a world that no longer has anything in common with the world I woke up in yesterday. And while part of me pines for yesterday, when everything made sense, another part of me is very aware of the shifting sands upon which I walk. It hurts my out-of-shape calves and the tiny muscles of my feet. But, and this is a big one, I feel all of my synapses firing. I see everything in sharp relief. Usually this only happens when I’m having a panic attack.

I can’t say it out loud because it sounds crazy, but I’m excited about finding Lily. I’m excited that I will hear if her voice sounds like I intended it to. I want to see her face. Are her eyes really cornflower blue?

Since Roger left, I’ve had moments of great happiness with my daughter and moments of creative elation with my novels. I’ve seen wonderful movies and read books that kept me up all night. But joy, joy at the heart of Sadie Fuller, has been in short supply. It is not something I noticed or acknowledged until right now. And that is only because I feel the tendrils of fun creeping in around the edges. They are utterly inappropriate considering our current situation, but here they come, nonetheless.

Chapter 20

T
he gods must be smiling down on us because I find a parking space on Seventy-Third Street and Central Park West. When I open the car door, heat, the kind usually associated with a jet engine, rushes in. I gasp. Aidan blinks his eyes repeatedly.

“It’s damn hot,” he says. “Is it always this hot here?”

“No,” I say, willing myself to step from the cool comfort of the minivan out onto the melting sidewalk. “But what’s normal anymore?”

“Mom, why are we here?” Allison asks, unplugging from her iPod and looking around. “You’re supposed to drop me at Dad’s. Remember?”

And I would, darling, except Daddy isn’t awake yet. Our divorce decree stipulated that I would never attempt to deliver his daughter to him until ten o’clock. He needs time to put away his incense and sex toys, and I have agreed to respect that.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” I say with a wide grin, “I thought we’d take a little walk in the park before going to Daddy’s.”

“A walk?” Allison is horrified. “It’s, like, two hundred degrees already.”

“But the flowers are beautiful this time of year,” I say, grabbing her hand and dragging her as if she were a toddler and not almost the same height as I am.

As we enter the park, the daunting nature of our task hits me. The Ramble is thirty-eight acres of woods, rock outcroppings, and confusing foot trails. Birds sing. Daffodils bloom. There’s a stream. It’s huge. And we are guided by nothing more than a whim. A Roger whim. I see my own distress reflected on Aidan’s face.

“Even if she is here, how the hell would we ever find her?” he asks.

“Who?” Allison asks.

“We’re looking for a friend of Aidan’s,” I say quickly.

“Can’t you call her?”

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Well, where are you meeting her?”

“I don’t know,” says Aidan.

“So you’re supposed to find a person here in Central Park just, like, somewhere?”

Sometimes it takes a child to put it all in perspective. A sense of doom settles over me. This will never work. We are flailing.

We continue walking along a wooded path. I feel I should be shouting Lily’s name, like when I call Perkins in from the backyard. We pass a fellow intrepid hiker.

“Excuse me,” Aidan says. The walker is a middle-aged woman, dressed in expensive workout wear. Her face glistens with sweat. Her eyes drink in Aidan.

“Hi,” she says, pretending Allison and I don’t exist.

“I’m wondering if you’ve seen a woman,” Aidan says with a perfect, knee-weakening smile. “Tall, red hair, perhaps wearing an orange dress and heels.”

The woman is so taken with Aidan she almost quivers.

“Yes!” she says. “I did.” She takes the opportunity to rest a confirming hand on his arm. She squeezes. She sighs. “On the path. Maybe a quarter mile? Sitting on a bench, I think.” She grins as if she has just done something truly exceptional. Aidan rewards her with a wink.

“I’m grateful for your help,” he says. We leave the woman to collect herself and possibly finish her aerobic morning walk. Although more likely, she’s going to say “fuck it” and head for the nearest coffee shop to savor her brief encounter with the unforgettable Mr. Hathaway.

We continue down the wooded path. We pass runners and more walkers, people in pairs and people with dogs.

“I’m hot,” Allison says. “This is boring. Can we go now?”

“Not quite,” I say. “In a minute. And you know how much I love
bored
.”

“I know, Mom,” Allison says. “But I am. Even if I’m not allowed to say it.”

We come to an intersection of pathways. A bench, “in memory of John Stark, who loved these woods,” sits off to one side. It’s empty. Aidan clenches his fists. Did he really think we’d just march into Central Park and find Lily? It can’t be that easy or Ellen would have my head.

I approach a jogger who has stopped for a pull from his water bottle. I smile fetchingly. He stares at me blankly.

“Nice day for a run?” I ask.

“No,” he says. Oh well. So much for small talk.

“Okay then,” I say. “Maybe you can help me? We’re looking for a woman in an orange dress. Tall. Red hair. Any chance you’ve seen her?”

The jogger chugs his water. Little rivers run down from the corners of his mouth and soak into his shirt.

“Yeah,” he says after a pause. “I think I did. Real beauty. She was pretty close to the field over there. You know the one? She was messing with her shoes. I think one of her heels was broken.”

I bet if I asked this man about what expression she wore on her face he could give me all the details. Men notice beautiful women. It’s programmed into their DNA.

“Thanks!” I say brightly.

Quickly, I herd my reluctant crew forward. Our path is surrounded by dense vegetation and meandering streams. We pass under an old stone bridge that could have been conjured by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s easy to forget the Ramble exists by design and is not the work of Mother Nature. We reach a bend in our path and turn onto another track.

“Mom,” Allison whines. “We’ve been walking forever.”

“No, honey,” I say. “We’re been walking for twenty minutes.”

“Whatever,” she says. I wonder, if I can find sex on Craigslist, can I sell a surly preteen? I’m sure.

“Just a little farther,” I say to her as much as to myself. We reach another intersection.

“This is fruitless,” Aidan hisses. He sweats only slightly, while I appear as if I just stepped out of a shower fully clothed. It’s not fair.

“No,” I say. “She’s here. I just know it.”

Once in a while, Roger and I would walk here. I’d admire the flowers, and he’d scope out places he could return to later for anonymous sexual encounters. It was all very domestic.

“How?” Aidan demands.

The same way I know when a scene is going to work. There’s a small rush of adrenaline, an excitement, and suddenly my fingers cannot keep pace with my racing brain.

“Just trust me,” I say. “This way.” I choose the path on the right not because it is less traveled but because it is slightly more shaded. But still, it makes all the difference. As we walk, our path widens. A few hundred yards ahead a small field comes into view, littered with half-dressed sun worshipers.

“Hey, Mom,” Allison says. She stops walking.

“Honey,” I say before she can launch into a full-fledged hissy fit about our lovely walk in the saunalike conditions. “I’m sorry, but this is necessary. We have to find Aidan’s friend. I know you aren’t enjoying yourself just now, but sometimes in life you have to do things that are unpleasant.”

“Jeez,” she says. “I was just going to ask what kind of red hair and you get all crazy.”

“What?”

“What kind of red hair does this person we’re looking for have?” She enunciates each word as if I am an idiot. Eleven-year-old girls can be cruel. But I still outweigh her by a fairly large amount.

“Curly. Long,” Aidan interrupts.

“Like that?” Allison points toward a bench off to the side of the walking path. Sitting on it is the woman from Grand Central, a cascade of strawberry-blond curls spilling down her slender back. She has the kind of hair that embraces humidity, as opposed to mine, which turns directly into a halo of frizz. Her skin is dewy like the morning grass, but the apples of her cheeks blaze red hot. From this distance, I can’t see her eyes, but I know they will be cornflower blue. I imagine her orange dress bears telltale signs of a long night and a sweaty morning. She sees us and stands abruptly, hands on her hips, chin jutted out. I’d say this is the type of woman who looks great naked. She also looks totally pissed off.

“Where the
hell
have you been?” she snarls at us. We have found our dear Lily.