The Stranger (12 page)

A
dam pulled over
when he hit the Cedarfield town line. He took out his phone and texted Corinne again:

I'M WORRIED. THE BOYS ARE WORRIED. PLEASE COME HOME.

He hit
SEND
and put the car back into drive. Adam started to wonder, not for the first time, how he ended up spending his life in the town of Cedarfield. It was a simple thought, and yet the obvious implications weighed on him. Had something this important been a conscious choice? He didn't think so. He and Corinne could, he knew, have chosen to live anywhere, but then again, what was
wrong with Cedarfield? It was, in many ways, the winner's spoils in the war we call the American dream. Cedarfield had picturesque homes with expansive yards. There was a lovely town center with a variety of restaurants and shops and even a movie theater. There were updated sports facilities, a modern library, and a duck pond. No less a nearly biblical authority than
Money
magazine had ranked Cedarfield the twenty-seventh “Best Place to Live in America” last year. According to the New Jersey Department of Education, Cedarfield was classified in the socioeconomic District Factor Group of J, the highest of eight categories. Yes, the government ranks towns in this way for real. Why they do this ranking is anybody's guess.

In fairness, Cedarfield was a great place to raise your kids, even though you were raising them to be you. Some thought of it as the cycle of life, but for Adam, it felt more like a shampoo-rinse-repeat existence, with so many of their neighbors and friends—good, solid people whom Adam liked a lot—growing up in Cedarfield, leaving for four-year stints to college, returning, marrying, raising their own children in Cedarfield, who would grow up here and leave for four-year stints to college, in the hopes of returning, marrying, and raising their own children here.

Nothing wrong with that, was there?

After all, Corinne, who had spent the first ten years of her life in Cedarfield, had not, it seemed, been fortunate enough to follow this well-trodden trajectory. When she was in fourth grade, this town and its values already deeply ingrained in her DNA, Corinne's father was killed in a car accident. He had been only thirty-seven, too young presumably to have worried about stuff like his own mortality or estate planning. His insurance coverage was a
pittance, and soon after, Corinne's mother had to sell the house and downsize with Corinne and her older sister, Rose, to a brick garden apartment in the somewhat less upscale city of Hackensack.

For a few months, Corinne's mother had made the ten-mile trek between Hackensack and Cedarfield so that Corinne could still see her old friends. But then school started and predictably her friends got busy with town sports and dance classes Corinne could no longer afford, and while the physical distance stayed the same, the societal chasm grew too far to bridge. The childhood relationships quickly frayed on their way to completely falling apart.

Corinne's sister, Rose, acted out conventionally, doing poorly in school, rebelling against her mother, experimenting with a potpourri of recreational drugs and dead-end boys. Corinne, on the other hand, channeled the deep hurt and resentment into what most might consider positive outlets. She grew focused in school and in life, determined to do her best in all endeavors. Corinne kept her head down, studied hard, ignored the normal teenage temptations, and silently vowed to return victorious to the place where she'd been a seemingly happy girl with a father. Corinne spent the next two decades like a child with her face pressed against the upper suburban glass, until, at long last, the window opened or—just as likely—shattered.

Corinne and Adam had bought a house that looked suspiciously like the one in which Corinne had been raised. If it had bothered him at the time, Adam didn't recall it, but maybe by then, he shared her quest. When you marry, you marry your spouse's hopes and dreams too. Hers were to triumphantly return to a place that had cast her aside. There was a thrill, he now guessed, in helping Corinne fulfill that twenty-year odyssey.

The lights were still on at the aptly named Hard-core Gym (motto: You're Not Hard-core Unless You Lift Hard-core). Adam took a quick gander at the parking lot and spotted Kristin Hoy's car. He hit the speed dial for Thomas's cell phone—again, no point in calling the home phone; neither boy would ever answer it—and waited. Thomas answered on the third ring and gave his customary distracted and barely audible “Hullo?”

“All okay at home?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“And by nothing, you mean?”

“Playing
Call of Duty
. I just started.”

Right.

“Homework done?” Adam asked out of habit. It was an oft-repeated parent-child verbal hamster-wheel of a question, never going anywhere, though somehow still mandatory.

“Pretty much.”

He didn't bother telling him to “pretty much” finish it first. Pointless. Let the kid do it on his own. Let go a little.

“Where's your brother?”

“I don't know.”

“But he's home, right?”

“I guess.”

Brothers. “Just make sure he's okay. I'll be home soon.”

“Okay. Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Where's Mom?”

“She's away,” he said again.

“Where?”

“It's some teachers' thing. We can talk about it when I get home, okay?”

The pause was long. “Yeah, okay.”

He parked next to Kristin's Audi convertible and headed inside. The bloated musclehead behind the desk looked Adam up and down and clearly found him wanting. He had the Cro-Magnon brow. His lips were frozen in a sneer of disdain. He wore some kind of sleeveless unitard. Adam feared the man might call him Brah.

“Help ya?”

“I'm looking for Kristin Hoy.”

“Member?”

“What?”

“You a member?”

“No, I'm a friend. My wife's a member. Corinne Price.”

He nodded as if that explained everything. Then he asked, “She okay?”

The question surprised Adam. “Why wouldn't she be?”

He might have shrugged, but the bowling balls flanking his head barely budged. “Big week to miss. Competition next Friday.”

Corinne, he knew, didn't compete. She was nicely built and all, but there was no way she'd don one of those skimpy suits and start posing. She had, however, attended nationals with Kristin last year.

Musclehead pointed—he actually flexed when he did so—toward a corner in the back of the gym. “Room B.”

Adam pushed through the glass door. Some gyms were quiet. Some featured loud music. And some, like this one, echoed with primordial grunts and the clank of heavy metal weights. All the
walls were mirrored, and here, and only here, primping and posing for self-pleasure was not only acceptable but expected. The place reeked of sweat, disinfectant, and what he imagined from the commercials Axe cologne smelled like.

He found room B, knocked lightly, and pushed it open. It looked like a yoga studio with blond wood floors, a balance beam, and, yep, tons of mirrors. A super-toned woman tottered out onto the floor in a bikini and ridiculously high heels.

“Stop,” Kristin shouted.

The woman did so. Kristin strutted over in a skimpy pink bikini and the same ridiculously high heels. There was no totter, no awkwardness, no hesitation. She stalked across the floor as though it owed her something.

“Your smile is weak. You look as though you've never been in high heels before.”

“I don't normally wear them,” the woman said.

“Well, you're going to have to practice. They will judge you on everything—how you enter, how you exit, how you walk, your poise, your smile, your confidence, your demeanor, your facial expression. You get one chance to make that first impression. You can lose the competition with your very first step. Okay, all of you sit.” Five other super-toned women sat on the floor. Kristin stood in front of them, pacing back and forth. Her muscles coiled and uncoiled with each step.

“You should all still be leaning out,” Kristin said. “Thirty-six hours before competition, most of you will carbo-load. This will prevent your muscles from flattening out and get them to have that natural puff look we're going for. Right now, you should still be eating ninety percent protein. You all have the specific diet plan, am I right?”

Nods.

“Follow it like a religious scripture. You should all be drinking one and a half gallons of water per day. That's a minimum. We'll start scaling that down as we get closer. Only sips the day before Nationals and no water at all on competition day. I have water pills if any of you are still retaining water weight. Any questions?”

One hand went up.

“Yes?”

“Will we rehearse the evening gown competition?”

“We will. Remember, ladies. Most people think this is a bodybuilding competition. It is not. The WBFF is about fitness. You will have your poses and pose-off, just as we've been doing. But the judges now are looking for Miss America, Victoria's Secret, Fashion Week, and yes,
MuscleMag
all wrapped into one elegant package. Harriet will help you coordinate your evening gowns. Oh, and now let's go over travel necessities. Please bring with you the following: butt glue for your bikini, tape for the top of your suit, E6000 glue, breast pad petals, blister bandages, shoe glue—we always have last-minute strap disasters—tanner, gloves for your tanner, tan-block cream for those palms and feet bottoms, teeth whitener strips, red-eye drop—”

It was then that she spotted Adam in the mirror. Her face changed all at once. Gone was the taskmaster preparing for the WBFF nationals. Back was the friend and fellow teacher. It was amazing how easily we all slip in and out of roles, Adam thought.

“Work on your starting poses,” Kristin said, her eyes on Adam now. “When you first walk out, you do one front, then one back, then you walk away. That's it. Okay, Harriet will lead you out. I'll be right back.”

Kristin headed toward him without pause, again crossing the
room in the high heels that made her nearly as tall as he was. “Anything new?” she asked him.

“Not really.”

Kristin led him into the corner. “So what's up?”

It shouldn't be awkward talking to a woman standing in ridiculously high heels and sporting a skimpy bikini. But it was. When Adam was eighteen, he spent two weeks in Spain's Costa del Sol. Many of the women went topless, and Adam had fancied himself too mature to ogle. He didn't ogle, but he did feel a little awkward. That feeling was coming back to him now.

“I guess you're preparing for a show,” Adam said.

“Not just any show, but Nationals. If I can be selfish for a moment? Corinne left at a bad time. She's my travel partner. I know in the scheme of things, this doesn't seem like much, but this is my first show since turning pro and . . . okay, that's a dumb thing to care about. But that's a small part of how I'm feeling. The bigger part, though, is I'm really worried. This isn't like her.”

“I know,” Adam said. “It's why I want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

He didn't know how to do it, so he just dove in. “It's about her pregnancy two years ago.”

Pay dirt.

His words hit Kristin Hoy like a surprise wave at the beach. Now it was Kristin's turn to teeter on the ridiculously high heels. “What about it?”

“You look surprised,” he said.

“What?”

“When I mentioned her pregnancy. You looked like you'd seen a ghost or something.”

Her eyes darted everywhere but on him. “I guess I was surprised. I mean, she disappears, and for some reason, you start asking about something that happened two years ago. I don't see the connection.”

“But you remember her pregnancy?”

“Of course. Why?”

“How did she tell you?”

“About being pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don't remember.” But she did. He could tell. Kristin was lying to him. “What's the difference how she told me?”

“I need you to think. Do you remember anything odd about it?”

“No.”

“Nothing unusual about the pregnancy at all?”

Kristin put her hands on her hips. Her skin glistened from a fine sheen of perspiration or maybe something left over from a bronzer. “What are you trying to get at?”

“How about when she miscarried?” Adam tried. “How was she acting then?”

Oddly enough, those two questions seemed to center her somehow. Kristin took her time now, breathing slowly as though meditating, the prominent clavicle rising and falling. “Funny.”

“Yes?”

“I thought her reaction was low-key.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, I was thinking about it. She was so good about getting over it. So after you left school today, I started thinking—I mean, at first—that maybe Corinne had been too good after the miscarriage.”

“I'm not following.”

“A person needs to grieve, Adam. A person needs to express and feel. If you don't express and feel, toxins develop in your bloodstream.”

Adam tried not to frown at the new age babble.

“It seemed to me like maybe Corinne had bottled up her pain,” she continued. “And when you do that, you create not only toxins but internal pressure. Eventually, something has to give. So after you left, I started wondering. Maybe Corinne had submerged the pain of losing the baby. Maybe she pushed it down and tried to keep it down, but now, two years later, whatever walls she had built suddenly gave way.”

Adam just looked at her. “At first.”

“What?”

“You said you started thinking this ‘at first.' So somewhere along the line you changed your mind.”

She didn't reply.

“Why?”

“She's my friend, Adam.”