The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  What had Lulu gone and said now?

  Her old friend loomed large in her mind, sucking up all the oxygen. Lulu, with her kinked dark hair. Curvy hips and blunt fingernails. Those eyes with their piercing gaze and array of fine black lashes.

  Katie grabbed her cell phone and punched in her brother’s number. Uncertain fingers, wrong number. She took another deep breath. Slowly this time she tapped in the digits, and voice mail kicked in. It was still early; David would be dead asleep.

  “Call me back,” she said, her breath hot in the receiver, sweat prickling her lip. “It’s urgent.”

  Calling her mother wasn’t an option. Charlie DuRochois—formerly Charlie Gregory, born Charlotte Amplethwaite—lived in Montreal now, ensconced in a house on the water with a man she’d met online a few years ago. His name was Michel (pronounced Michelle, like a girl’s name), and he was about as different from Katie’s father as you could get. Slim and wiry, fluid movements like a dancer’s. A silky mustache on his upper lip. It would be funny if it weren’t so painful: her beautiful British mother choosing this stranger over her own flesh and blood. Deciding she’d had enough and divorcing her husband while he was in prison, right when he’d needed her the most. Charlie hadn’t had the patience to wait it out.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d said, staring at Katie and David, who was chewing on his fingers just as he had done when he was little. Couldn’t her mother see how badly they all still needed her? She seemed to want to say more, but she didn’t, and the children once again found themselves wordless in the face of her Anglo-Saxon reticence. “I just can’t take it anymore. I’m done.”

  A mother, done? Done with being there for her family—was there a worse sin?

  She didn’t want to call her grandfather in England either; it didn’t seem fair to drag him into all this, even though he never failed to cheer her up when she was down. She couldn’t call her father; she’d have to wait until their scheduled call tomorrow. And she wasn’t sure that he was the right person to talk to, anyway. He’d tell her something she couldn’t quite believe—he’d tell her the reporter was right, that she’d listen to their side of the story, that Katie should talk to her, that it was an opportunity to be seized. Her dad always put a good spin on everything. Like the time her mother had returned from the hairdresser, tears in her eyes, her chestnut hair razored off in hideous chunks, and he’d told her it made her look like Mia Farrow. And when Katie had almost failed chemistry in ninth grade and he’d insisted it was for the best, that at least she now knew where her strengths lay.

  Or maybe he’d tell her to just ignore the calls, that she should trust everything would work out—which she’d want to believe, of course, all the while knowing with a sick tug in her stomach that this wasn’t ever going away. That no matter what she did or what the truth was, this would always be hanging over them, a multicell thunderstorm that only ever quieted down in order to build up energy for the next round.

  The streets were damp, the sidewalks pocked with puddles that shone like oil slicks. The sun streamed down, the smell of wet garbage enveloping her as she ran across town toward the Greenway. At first she was chilled, but she warmed up quickly, running flat out until she could barely catch her breath. Baffled tourists stood in her way, clipped by a shoulder.

  As she ran, she became lost in thought, remembering when she’d gone blueberry picking at Eagle Lake with her father late one summer. She had been maybe seven years old. It was before she had met Lulu. She’d been feeling cranky, and he was always up for an adventure. As they wove through the underbrush, he pointed out a pair of broad-winged hawks swooping and parrying in the air, courting. He held her hand, his fingers huge, palm warm and scratchy, telling her a story about a princess who felt lonely despite all her servants and the hustle and bustle of the court. Even though her father was always doing something or going somewhere, he was surprisingly patient when it came to his children. For them, he had infinite time. For them, he would do anything.

  Her father’s hair had been longer then, darkened with sweat, sticking to his forehead. He must have been almost forty—a little younger than Zev was now. After they filled their buckets with blueberries, he sat down on the moss and Katie perched on a rock, the gore of berries staining her lips, gnats buzzing around her drunkenly. Her thin brown shins were covered in scratches. She glanced over at her father after asking a question and getting no response.

  Though Katie couldn’t remember now what she’d asked, but she could feel the grit of the fruit’s skin on her teeth, the pulpy burst on her tongue.

  Katie asked her question again, and it took her father a long time to raise his face to her, and still he didn’t answer. The look he cast her way was so distant, so alien, it was as though he were looking at someone he had never met before. Katie’s white T-shirt was reflected in the blackness of his pupils, and she understood for the first time that her father, and therefore every grown-up, had an inner life. Hidden by default. She understood then that she was truly alone inside herself, as were all human beings on earth.

  On and on she ran along the Hudson River now, one foot in front of the other, sweating with effort. How she missed him. For as long as she could remember, she’d been driven by the desire to be worthy of him, her choices calculated on a metric of his approval: Would his eyes light up—would she make him proud? She hadn’t known it then, but when Lulu entered their lives, the family dynamic had shifted, slowly, until everything went belly-up. Why had her friend lied when Katie’s father had taken such good care of her, when they all had? What the hell had happened?

  All of a sudden, the sidewalk tilted upward under Katie’s feet. She took a quick breath in—the sensation was like rocking on a swing, and yet she was no longer moving. Prickles began to form at the edge of her vision, and her stomach flopped; she thought she might throw up. Leaning against a lamppost, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited. When she opened them again, a woman and a young girl were staring at her, mildly curious. Two graying dachshunds were attached to a frayed leash on the woman’s wrist, and another child, a boy, had stopped a few steps ahead of them to wait. Katie felt the urge to cry out: I was a normal girl too—a girl with a father who took me blueberry picking and told me stories, a mother I could count on.

  I had a best friend I adored, and she betrayed us.

  Was this true, this statement that had calcified in Katie’s mind—had Lulu really betrayed them? Katie bent over and put her hands on her knees. She had believed this for so long, but the possibility that she had it all wrong insinuated itself into her mind. The possibility that, in fact, it was Katie who had been the betrayer, who had set everything off that last night of summer almost a decade earlier. After all, she’d been the one to screw around with the order of things, to mess with the unspoken rules between girls. She raised her head, pale and sweaty, and looked straight at the mother with her children. But the woman was just a stranger, and she walked away, yanking on the leash, heading off toward her separate life. Just like that, gone, and once again Katie was alone.

  2

  The thing about Lulu was this: she was brave and unabashed, and Katie was neither. When they were kids, Lulu stole eyeliner and pens from the five-and-ten in Blackbrooke and then managed to charm the Polish man with the stained teeth who caught her, while Katie cringed in the corner, cheeks flushed in shame. Lulu was unrepentant; she was always stepping out of bounds and being forgiven for it. When she was still a brand-new friend—could it have been the very first summer she spent at the lake, when she was just eight years old?—Lulu would get up before the sun even rose and pad from the bunk room the girls shared down to the kitchen. Hours later when the others started appearing, sleepy eyed and incoherent, there’d be flour all over the countertops, a dropped knife under the kitchen table among the dust motes. The smell of something burning coming from the oven. Lulu would be sitting at the counter, bright eyed, the corners of her mouth glistening with grease, her bony knees jiggling up and down. Smiling when
you entered the room, happy for the company. But even though she had her own centrifugal force, she made space for Katie’s brand of quiet. She would listen to her deeply, the bloom of unfettered curiosity on her face. The intensity of that kind of focus was an unexpected gift from a child with such energy.

  These memories—they seemed to come and go, when in reality they were always a part of Katie’s consciousness, simmering just under the surface at a constant, rolling boil. All it took was a smell, a refrain from some old pop song, or even the texture of something Katie brushed up against, and bang, they would return, fully present and in Technicolor. Gripping at her throat with meaty fingers. But Katie had become adept at distracting herself from them over the years. She could will her mind to move toward one thought and away from another, shutting out distractions. She used this skill in her adult life too: she’d become a dependable, focused, punctual woman. You could even call her predictable, though she wasn’t sure that was anything to be especially proud of.

  “You’re not like any kid I’ve ever met,” Tanisha from the office had once told her. They’d been at a bar in Chelsea during happy hour after working together for a year or so. It was funny to still be called a kid when she was almost twenty-five years old, but Tanisha was probably pushing forty. “You got that laser thing going on, that crazy-bitch focus.” Tanisha laughed out loud, throaty and lighthearted, and Katie understood it was supposed to be a compliment.

  After her run, she showered and, at a loss for what to do with herself, slipped back under the covers. The musky smell from earlier was gone, and the sheets were chilly, like the limp skin of a reptile. It took a long time for her to finally warm up. She begged off seeing Zev later, claiming to be coming down with a cold. She so badly wanted life to be simple, to move ahead steadily, and yet now she was being drawn in once again to the impossible question of why things had veered so terribly off course. In a matter of weeks, her father would be with her again, warm and funny and indelibly present. Life would not be the same anymore, and that was good. Wasn’t it? The reporters’ questions had stirred up feelings she didn’t know what to do with. She tried calling her brother, David, again—still no answer. Call me!!!! she texted.

  Fitfully, she dozed; she was afraid of dreaming, but the dreams didn’t come. Instead there was a blank kind of panic that erased all conscious thought. It was a relief, really, and she sank into it.

  Things looked different on Sunday morning. On her run along the Greenway, Katie reveled in the awesome power of her legs. Salty air blew over her face, cool and sharp, spurring her on. She was looking forward to her call with her father later that day. All her life, he’d made her feel like she was a priority for him. When she was younger, he’d been present at every parent-teacher meeting; he’d loved accompanying her on class outings or to buy a special dress for a bat mitzvah. During her brief flirtation with playing the violin, he’d sit and hold the notes up for her, encouraging her to keep sawing away, trying to persuade her she’d get better if she just kept trying. Even now—with unthinkable constraints reducing his life to a whisper—he focused on how he could help her. Not that long ago, she’d complained on the phone of sudden dizziness when rising, nausea sloshing unexpectedly in her stomach. During their next call he’d regaled her with advice about checking iron levels and having her thyroid looked at. He’d spent the hour allocated to him on the library computer searching for solutions to her problems.

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself,” he’d said. “You’re my Amazon warrior, remember.”

  At midday when she entered the Gaslight gallery on Houston, Katie walked in with squared shoulders. Her jeans were tight fitting and flared, embroidered with vines along the side seams. She wore no makeup except scarlet lipstick. Zev looked up from a trestle table on which he was cutting up a sliver of wood with a handsaw. The overhead lights were turned up fully, bleaching the faces of the others milling around the gallery, unpacking crates and hanging art, but Zev’s skin was dark hued, healthy looking. There was color high on his cheeks.

  “You,” he said. He smiled, and sharp creases sprang from the corners of his eyes. He was a striking-looking man, but it was his eyes that were hard to turn away from. They were so frank, startling, and there was something sad about them. “Come to spread your germs, huh?”

  At first she didn’t know what he meant; then she remembered her supposed cold. “Just the sniffles,” she said. In the paper bag she was holding were twenty lemons from the market. Zev grew up in Tel Aviv, where his neighbor allowed him and his little sisters to pick lemons from her tree; he loved their scent and considered them good luck. Katie held the bag out toward him. “Brought you something.”

  He sank his nose into it and breathed in deeply. He swooned backward a bit and fluttered his lids as though he’d just taken a hit of something fabulous. “Yeah, baby,” he said. With one arm, he pulled her toward him. “Glad you came. And thanks. We’re slightly freaking out here.”

  The gallery was surprisingly spacious. The floors were wide-plank wood painted a high-gloss white and shimmering with reflections: blues and grays, the bright yellow of one woman’s top. At the front of the space was a bank of large windows that sank almost to the ground. The walls were still mostly bare except for a few paintings hanging at the far end. Sounds echoed hollowly. “You’re opening tonight, right?” Katie asked. “Isn’t it tonight?”

  “I know, I know,” Zev answered, releasing her. “Better roll up our sleeves.” His voice was deep and measured, with a singsong cadence that she’d originally thought was French but was in fact Israeli. He dropped his h’s and said “em” when hesitating, rather than the rounded, resonant American “um.”

  “Where’s all your stuff supposed to go?” Katie asked, looking at the four walls, one of which was entirely made up of windows.

  “Partitions,” he said, picking up the saw and waggling it in the air. “We’re figuring out a way to secure them to the pillars.”

  When they first met years ago, she had been a freshman at Vassar, and Zev an art professor. She hadn’t known him all that well back then, but they’d developed a casual friendship over the years. She’d go to his studio with friends now and then, and he’d offer them cardamom tea with honey. His energy was so steady, so deep and calm. He was unlike anyone she’d ever met. When he looked at people, it was with a kind of forthrightness that wasn’t accompanied by meddling inquisitiveness. Even when he engaged in conversation, that demanding curiosity she so often felt from others was entirely absent. This man seemed to want nothing from you, while at the same time thoroughly enjoying the fact of your presence. She loved to let his voice waft over her. Her father had been in jail six months when they’d met, and she didn’t let on to anyone what was going on. Using her grandfather’s name had allowed her to keep her story a secret in college and afterward, but she’d paid the price too. Nervous energy that kept her up at night, anxiety fueling ever longer, more punishing runs. During that time Zev’s solidity, his easy silences, had been a great comfort.

  Last October she’d bumped into him at a gallery uptown, at an opening for a sculptor friend she’d read about in the paper. They were standing across the room from one another, Zev surrounded by lithe women with shiny hair, clad in black leather. Katie was the awkward third wheel with a couple who were bickering incessantly. The place was packed, shrill with cocktail conversation, yet when she caught his eye, a silence seemed to fall over her. His look—the flash of recognition. When his smile landed on her, it contained something different than it had when they’d been at school, something startled, intrigued. She’d stared right back at him. Later that night they had gone back to her apartment together, falling onto the mattress on the floor, grateful her roommate was out. Now as she looked at him, she thought of her father, of the fact that these two men would be meeting soon, and she had to admit that it made her anxious. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t entirely sure her father would like him.

  The girl with the y
ellow shirt came up to them. Her eyebrows were thin and severely curved, with a ring through each end. “Hey, can you help me back here?” she asked, gesturing. “I need some man power.”

  Ducking the low mantel of the doorway, they descended four steps and entered a back room filled with equipment, canvases, boxes, and a few paint-splattered tables. Against one brick wall was a long counter with a toaster on it and a sink. A single bed stood at the back near the door. The three of them wrestled with unpacking a wooden crate that had been stapled shut. Later, the girl, whose name was Janet, made them all toast, and an older man dressed entirely in jean material—pants, shirt, and even jacket—brought everyone Carling lager from the corner store.

  The man turned out to be the owner, and the two younger men who had been installing the partitions for the last few hours were his sons, already home from college for the summer. They all sat on the empty crates and talked as everyone devoured toast. Just outside the back door was a tiny patio surrounded by towering, broken fencing and cascading ivy, tinged brown from winter, and Katie stepped out as the others got back to work. She allowed herself one cigarette, sucking the smoke in deeply. It had become a habit that was proving hard to break—a way to calm her nerves. Although now, as the ember burned down toward the filter, her stomach clenched, and she pressed out the butt into a forlorn planter. I’m going to have to stop, she told herself. Soon.

  Zev was hanging a large painting on the partition closest to the front of the room. He had taken off his sweater and was wearing an old T-shirt underneath, frayed at the neck. His eyelashes were long and dark, casting spiky shadows on his cheekbones. “Hey, d’you get your messages?” he asked.