The Vanishing Year (11 page)

“Henry, you haven't even asked until
right now
if I'm okay. Where the hell have you been?”

“I'm sorry, Zoe.” He pulls me into an embrace and I breathe in his fresh-laundry, lemony Henry-ness and I remember that I love him. “I've been in a lockdown meeting, no one in, no one out. Those things are brutal. We were in there for almost four hours.”

I look at the clock. It is close to four. It was
possible.
With very tight timing. I don't know what to think.

“Can you call Penny? See if she can get a crew in here to clean up? I can't do this, Henry.” I can do it, of course. When I lived in Hoboken I cleaned a rich couple's house every week. I'm not opposed to housework—in some cases, I revel in it. I just don't want to. Let Henry spend his money, it comes so easily to him. I wonder if Henry knows I used to be a housekeeper. I wonder if he remembers Evelyn was basically a version of Penny. I can't remember what I've told him.

“Of course. Of course. God, what if you had come home early?” He pulls me against his chest. “This is the second time in a week I could have lost you.”

“I'm sure that's overstating it.” I turn my face to the side and return his hug, one-armed. Halfhearted.

“Let's go away. We can ride to Pennsylvania tomorrow. Get out of town, I'll call in to my meetings tomorrow. We'll open up the country house.”

The country house. Henry's four-bedroom “cabin” in the small town of Fishing Lake, Pennsylvania. It's a family home, owned by his parents and passed down. He grew up there, I think. I've only been there once, one fleeting weekend, in mosquito-laden July. All I remember is oppressive heat.

“Henry, I don't know. Officer Yates might find something or need something . . .”

“Then we'll come back. It's only an hour and a half. Zoe, I'm worried about you. First the car, now this. I want to keep you safe.”

All I hear is
I want to keep you.

I could fight him. I could. I would win. Henry doesn't forbid me from anything ever. But I think back to what I'd said to Cash.
I feel untethered.
Because the truth is, the only person I have in the world is Henry. He is my root.

Slowly, I nod. “I'll go pack.”

CHAPTER
11

The city recedes behind a curtain of fog while Henry's fingers tap the steering wheel to the Rolling Stones. His arms are bare in a navy blue polo shirt tucked in to khaki shorts. He whistles along with the radio and every few minutes glances over and gives me a smile.

This is the Henry I fall in love with, again and again. He is relaxed, in his arrowroot Henry way. His blond hair is “vacation” messy. The day is warm for April and smells of summer, wet pavement, and popcorn, like a state fair. We have the windows cracked and I am happy. Well, I am mostly happy. I have the previous evening's fight in my mind and I can't turn it over. I keep thinking about Henry's hands pushing down on my shoulders, his cold glare at Cash. His quick about-face.

I tried to say something later, in bed, telling him he worried me. He curled against my back murmuring apologies. His hands snaked up my midsection to cup my breast and I shrugged him off, blaming fatigue from the day. He pulled me against him until I felt like I could suffocate, his breath wet on my neck, my ear, and whispered “poor baby” again and again. I fell asleep, a deep dreamless coma, while he was still awake.

Now in the car, his fingers tapping to the radio, his lips moving to the words, basking in the glow of his carefreeness, I close my eyes and breathe. The day is overcast and gray, and in front of us is open New Jersey countryside, rolling green hills and yellow wheat fields.

“Penny will be taking care of the apartment,” Henry says mildly, as though all Penny had to do is water the plants.

In the light of day, my fear about Jared being the burglar seems melodramatic, even silly. I gaze out the window, analyzing this. I've had two strange occurrences in less than a week. The car, which may or may not have been intended for me at all. A speeding car running through an intersection toward a crowd of people didn't imply any intent, when you think about it. The crowd around me was maybe seven other people, including Cash. Who's to say that one of them wasn't the target, if in fact it was deliberate at all? I cling to the careless driver/late for an appointment theory. The break-in seemed a clear signal until Henry drew up a list of missing items, including several expensive diamonds and several thousand dollars in cash. The safe had been impenetrable, but given the scratch marks around the dial and latch, it wasn't for lack of trying.

The police found no sign of forced entry. The investigation is ongoing, they tell me, but they say precious little. They asked if anyone had a key to the apartment and Henry said no until I jostled him with my elbow, hissing
Penny
under my breath. He corrected himself, “Oh yes, Penny does. She's harmless, though.” Trey swore he'd been watching the door, had taken no breaks within the time frame, and to his knowledge, there were no visitors to tenants. Henry grumbled at this, rolling his eyes. “Of course someone got in
somehow.
But he's saying what he needs to say to protect his job.”

But now, sitting in the driver's seat, his left knee bopping to the softly playing radio, he looks ten years younger. I can't figure out why we don't do this more often. The house sits
vacant for months at a time. Henry has gone up a few times in the past year, hunting, he says.
Alone?
I'd asked him once. I always pictured hunting retreats to be for groups of men. Men unlike Henry, with burly beards and large bellies. Men who drink Miller Lite and wear camouflage, fingers orange with cheese ball crumbs. Henry laughed at me. “There are lots of kinds of hunting, that's for deer.”

“Well, what do you hunt?” I pressed. I mean, it was incredible that I didn't already know.

“Rabbits. Pheasant. Sometimes fox.”

“Fox? I thought that was with the dogs and the horses and only done in nineteenth-century England?” I pictured bugles and plaid vests.

“No, you can hunt foxes without dogs and horses, Zoe. That's the sport. The basic hunting uses a fox whistle.”

“So you have guns? At the cabin?” I felt incredibly dumb.

“Yes, Zoe, I have guns.” He rolled his eyes at me and rubbed his forehead. He hated my
interview mode,
firing questions at him like a journalist. “Besides, in Fishing Lake, everyone hunts.”

“What do you do with a fox? Can you eat it?” I wondered if Penny had cooked us fox one night, pink gamey slices laid glistening over a bed of radicchio. I shuddered.

“You can't eat fox meat. I sell the pelt sometimes.”

“You what?” I waved my hand. “Never mind.”

New Jersey fades effortlessly into Pennsylvania and we drive through a small town on an isolated road until even the houses dwindle down to one or two per mile. At the top of an isolated hill, looking down onto the farmland below, sits Henry's country house. It's hardly a cabin. A stone farmhouse set a quarter mile back from the road, shrouded by enormous pines. Henry has his own forest.

He empties the trunk, dragging two Rimowa suitcases behind him on the gravel driveway. I follow him inside the
house, which smells like wood and must. He runs around, opening all the windows, the breeze lifting the curtains, bringing with it the scent of lilacs. The living room is sparsely decorated, wide plank floors and brightly colored woven rugs, canvas sofas and original local artwork. Simple but expensive. Surfaces gleam and windows shine. I want to ask if Penny has been here, but I don't.

I follow him up the wooden steps to our room. Through the screened windows I can hear birds and the soft distant whirr of a lawn mower, but not one car. I get up and cross the room, part the white, gauzy curtains. As far as I can see, it's green and brown rolling hills. My city heart pumps for action, for movement. In the distance, all I can see is the soft sway of soy and wheat. I exhale and try to relax, but all I feel is edgy and unsettled.

“Are you relaxed?” Henry wraps his arms around my waist from behind, his voice a low rumble in my ear. I nod in half agreement. “For dinner, we'll get something from the store down the road. Venison or duck?”

I shrug, I don't have any preference. Henry is energized by the sweet, lilting breeze. He bounces on the balls of his feet. His hands rub across my back, between my shoulder blades and work their way down.

I inch myself out of his grasp and give him a too bright smile. I owe him this. I feel guilty for not accepting this house, this countryside escape, as the gift he means it to be. Of everything he can offer me, I should be grateful, but I'm not. I'm edgy and unsettled and I watch Henry's arm flexing under his shirt and try to take deep quiet breaths. Henry's need to paint last night with a rosy brush and make it all perfect is suffocating.

“I think I'm going for a walk.”

“A walk?” His mouth opens and closes, like a fish around a hook.

“Isn't that what country folk do? They walk. And knit? Something like that,” I murmur with a flick of my wrist. I'm being deliberately dismissive and his eyes cloud with confusion. Before he can stop me, I wave gaily and head down the steps, my feet clattering on the wood.

Outside, I should be able to breathe again, but I can't. My lungs feel like they are going to burst. I'd be the first person to suffocate in open air, choked to death by the stench of cow manure.

I remember our very first fight, after our wedding, when Henry started to change from suitor to husband, that elastic period when my head was still spinning. We'd been to a party, they all blended together but this one was for a colleague's retirement. They had sickly sweet cocktails with a deceptive amount of alcohol and I drank until the room spun. The night blurred together until I couldn't be sure in retrospect what was sequential. I got caught in a conversation with a man and a woman, the woman, blonde and beautiful in a short black silk dress, her hair carelessly piled up in a sexy bun, her makeup an ad for “barely there.” I felt overdressed and overly made up, in my sequined green gown and crystal heels. She laughed and touched my shoulder, called me a member of Henry's Harem, unaware that we were married, despite the large rings—plural—on my finger. With a thick tongue, I kept trying to insert my status,
my husband, have you seen him?
Henry had disappeared for hours, lost in the throng.

She linked arms with me, her name was Cynthia, she'd said, and guided me to the bathroom. While I listened to her tell me, mean and incisive, through the stall divider all the ways I would never be one of them, I pressed my cheek against the cold marble of the stall door. She left me in the bathroom, where I vomited up the rest of the cocktails.

Later I found the man we'd been talking to, his name was Reid, Henry's junior assistant. Baby-faced and kind, he was
a sucker for mascara-streaked faces. He got me water, helped me look for Henry.

He found Henry smoking a cigar at the bar, the center of a circle of men I hadn't met. Henry gave me a chilly smile and didn't invite me in, didn't pull me into the group, introduce me. He left me on the outside and, with calm precision, he turned his back. That was the first time I'd seen what being on the outside of Henry's circles could do. Every cruel word that Cynthia had uttered through that stall door had been rubber-stamped by Henry himself.

I left alone. Took a cab back to our apartment and fell asleep on the couch. Henry came home, turned on every light in the place. I tried to tell him about Cynthia. About how I looked for him for what felt like hours and he waited, very still, for me to finish. Then he smiled. “The next time you want to spend the night flirting with a man half my age, you won't be welcome back here.”

The next day, we flew to Musha Cay. A suitcase full of clothes I'd never seen before, complete with string bikinis and linen skirts. Tropical drinks and expansive, private beaches. Nude sunbathing. Long days on white, gleaming yachts full of people I didn't know. It took four days for me to forget the blackness of his eyes. Four days of tropical bouquets and fresh island fruit delivered in bed. Four days for the heat of his mouth on my body to replace the chill of his smile, as he showed me the life he would give me. All for the small price of forgiveness.

The “corner” store is a mile away and the walk feels good—it slows my thumping heart.

When I push open the door to the store, a bell tinkles overhead. The cashier is round and in her late thirties, perched on a backless stool, reading a year-old
People
magazine. At the sound of the bell, she drops the magazine and gives me a motherly smile.

“Well, hello!”

“Hi.” I'm not used to friendliness; it feels invasive. “I'm looking for venison steaks.”

“Oh, sure! Are you new in town?”

“My husband has a vacation house up on the hill. We're from Manhattan.”

“Oh. The city.” She says it like it's a filthy word,
a cuss word
. “I'm Trisha. I've owned the shop ever since my brother, Butch, died, oh's about ten years ago now. He had a bad heart, got it from his daddy.” She flips up the Formica countertop and shimmies behind me to the deli counter. “Funny, right, that he was called Butch? That was his name long before he became a butcher. Now it's just me, sometimes Sheena, she's my cousin, but mostly it's me. I'm a cashier, a butcher, a cook, and a housekeeper. I don't do too bad, though, ya think?” I shake my head, taken aback by the sheer number of words she's been able to get out in such a short amount of time. Her voice is sweet, bubbling over the
house
in
housekeeper
. She dons an apron and a pair of gloves and hustles into the back room. The heavy wooden door swings shut behind her. When she reappears, she's holding two ­purple-red, thick slabs on brown butcher paper and her eyes are gleaming.

“Don't they look beautiful?” She means it, too, and this baffles me. I'm not the kind of person who would ever describe raw meat as beautiful. I nod and try to look impressed. She wraps it up, ties it with string, and weighs it.

I like Trisha. I mean, honestly, you can't help but like Trisha.

She brings the steaks to the counter. “Do you need anything else? Some salad? Greens?”

“Do you have wine?” I ask hopefully. I have no idea what Henry keeps in his house.

“We can't sell it, darling, but I'm never without it.” She
holds up a finger and scurries into the rear room, through that swinging wooden door again. When she returns she's holding a bottle of rosé, with a plain white label
Table Red.
Henry will die, he's actually going to die. She must see my face because her cheeks flush, round and pink, and she falters. “Oh, I know it's not what you're used to but—”

“No, it's completely fine. I will love it. Who doesn't love rosé?” I give her a wide, friendly smile. “You know, I do need more than just steaks. What else should I make for dinner?”

She busies herself behind the deli counter, rationing out couscous salad and some simple grilled vegetables: mushrooms, peppers, and onions. My mouth waters.

“I think you have the makings of a wonderfully romantic meal for two.” Her apple-cheeked smile is back,
resilient Trisha.
You can tell she bounces. “Where's your house, darlin'?”

I tell her. Her eyes light up.

“I know that place! I walk there every day, usually 'bout six or so. Gotta lose these last twenty pounds. God, my baby is thirteen and you'd think I would have done something about it by now.”

I nod, averting my eyes from her sloping breasts and full belly. She rubs one chubby hand over her midsection and stands up straight. She rings me up. “Twenty-three ninety-­two.”

“This would cost double in the city,” I say with a sly wink. She taps my hand.

“You're funny.” She writes something in a journal next to the cash register, her bright pink nails clicking against the metal spiral binding. On impulse, I want to invite her to eat with us. Henry would kill me; he likes neither impulse nor dinner guests.