Birthday Girls

by Jean Stone

  “Saturday?” he asked.

  She heard the crunch of gravel before she saw Cody’s pickup truck. An image of his small bedroom, a reminder of his gentle touch, an aroma of his scent on the rumpled sheets—everything flooded into her mind at once, a giant, unstoppable tidal wave of orgasmic memory. Then Maddie pushed the bangs from her brow and looked into Parker’s warm, charming eyes.

  “Better make it Sunday,” she replied. “Saturday I have other plans.”

  Rockefeller Center glowed in its holiday glory. The Guggenheim exhibit was spectacular; the crisp winter day was even more glorious, with the sun sparkling off the tall buildings and transforming the windows to diamond-like glitters.

  Timmy had challenged them to walk the thirty-plus blocks from the museum; Parker had at first protested, but Maddie was ready. The incredible sex she’d had with Cody the night before left her invigorated, feeling light as if she were twenty again. She wanted to ask Parker if sex with Sharlene made him feel this way, too. She wanted to ask but did not want to know.

  “Do you want to skate?” Parker asked Timmy as they settled in the café for hot chocolate.

  “Sure,” he responded, grabbing some bills from his father and vanishing through the crowd.

  Then they were alone. Together. Maddie and Parker. Alone in a restaurant. The way they had been that first night so long ago. There were no raindrops that frosted his beard, no passion that danced in his eyes, but they were alone. The way she had dreamed.

  The odd thing was, it felt different from what she’d expected. She felt oddly detached. Unaffected. Safe from being dragged into his emotional web. Safe, protected by Cody, a man who desired her.

  “Timmy’s quite a kid,” Parker said.

  “Yes,” Maddie answered. “Both the boys are.”

  Parker looked out to the skating rink. “He’s like you, Maddie.”

  “And Bobby’s like you.” She followed his gaze out to the rink, where the skaters glided over the glasslike floor, aglow from the colored lights of the huge Christmas tree. Sitting back in her chair, Maddie realized what she felt was almost like comfort. The comfort of being with someone you know, who knows you well. The old shoe. She did not feel like an old shoe with Cody, more like an open-toed sandal: free, loose, though sometimes a bit of a clog. She was unsure which feeling she preferred.

  “Maddie,” Parker said, lowering his eyes and staring into his cup. “I’m glad you came with us today. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  The bubble of her comfort burst, its rainbow hues splitting then spitting into the air. She gulped her hot chocolate and braced herself for something she didn’t want to hear: that he was moving to London, that Sharlene was pregnant, that he was going to die. Running her hand through her newly cropped hair, Maddie wondered why, despite the changes she’d worked so hard to make in herself, why in a heartbeat—in one, catch-her-off-guard sentence—she could so easily become the old Maddie, the insecure, stumbling, unworthy Maddie.

  “I told you that Sharlene is in Paris.”

  Oh, God, Maddie thought. He’s not moving to London. He’s moving to Paris. She looked out to the rink again, her eyes hunting for Timmy, hunting for something to balance her plunging emotions. “Yes,” she said calmly, “you told me.”

  “I’ll be joining her for the holidays.”

  She kept her gaze fixed on the ice. Then she saw Timmy. She forced a smile and waved. “How nice,” she said.

  She was aware that Parker was shifting on his chair. Squirming, she thought. Squirming, she hoped.

  “I’d like the boys to go with me.”

  If he had reached across the table and stabbed her with his butter knife, the pain in her chest would not have been greater. Raising her hand to her breast, she turned to him. “What?”

  “I said I’d like the boys to go with me.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Well?”

  She had never said no to him. Never. Not when he asked for the divorce. Not when he said it would be better for the boys if he, not she, took the business. The old Maddie had never said no. She closed her eyes, paused, then opened them. “No,” the new Maddie said. “Absolutely not.”

  He reached a gloved hand toward her. “Maddie, this will be a great chance for them to …”

  Her gaze shifted back to the rink. “The holidays are hard enough without you,” she said in a whisper. Her head began to pound; the glitter of lights off the ice and the blur of the skaters’ motion now hurt her eyes. “Please don’t take away my sons, too.” She tried to drink her hot chocolate again, but the taste had grown sour.

  “Maddie,” he said quietly, “I don’t expect you to understand this, but things between Sharlene and me are not … well, they’re not perfect.”

  She wanted to say “Excuse me for not giving a shit.” But the words were trapped in her heart, her old Maddie, insecure, heart-in-her-throat. Then she realized what he had said: Things between Sharlene and me are not perfect.

  She focused on Timmy as he cut a figure “8,” and slowly she began to wonder …

  The last remnants of sun crawled around the edges of the draperies, but Abigail barely noticed. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling, the same way she’d been laying through the days, through the nights, all alone, crushed by pain. She thought it might be Saturday. Or Sunday. Not that it mattered.

  She’d hoped it would help to come here, into the bedroom of her childhood. Amid the teddy bears and antique dolls, untouched since her youth, she’d hoped she might find answers—or at least some comfort. She had not.

  Turning on her side, Abigail noticed the silver lap tray resting on the white wicker table. Louisa must have brought it in earlier; that, too, did not matter, for the orange sections, the water biscuit, and the pot of jam would remain untouched. The thought of putting food to her lips, into her stomach, revolted her.

  She had told Louisa she would see no one, talk to no one. Not Edmund. Not Larry. No one. Even that, apparently, did not matter. Edmund was off to Washington to host an opening exhibit at the National Museum of Art. Larry—well, God only knew what he was doing. Arranging reruns, probably Basking in the power of calling all the shots. Maybe working out his plan to betray her.

  Betray her.

  As Kris had.

  As Kris had.

  The father of my child was your precious grandfather.

  Abigail clutched her stomach. A low moan rose from somewhere; perhaps it was from her.

  She pulled the bedcover close against her and bit hard against the lace-edged hem. The frilly, frothy, little-girl-hem of the thick down duvet—made especially for Abigail when she was only ten. Made especially for Grandfather’s little girl—the little girl who once had lived in this room, who had believed that a grandfather’s love would compensate for the loss of a mother’s. And a father’s.

  That love had never come. It had gone, instead, to her best friend.

  And now there was no more little girl.

  She pulled herself up slowly, reached for her cigarettes, lit one. Her mouth was dry and crusty; she exhaled; she coughed; she stretched for the pot of tea and poured herself a cup.

  She thought about suicide.

  For real.

  She knew it wouldn’t matter.

  Slowly she lifted the cup to her lips and tasted a small sip. It was cold, bitter, acrid. With a trembling hand she returned it to the saucer. Then she hung her head. Tears spilled onto the lace-edged comforter.

  She parted her lips again and whispered into the empty, unfeeling room. “Did you really love her, Grandfather?” she asked. “Did you really love her … more than you loved me?”

  And then she remembered the condoms, the package she had stolen from Grandfather’s drawer, so she could have sex with … what was his name? The stable boy … Oh, God, she cried, What was his name?

  But Abigail knew that didn’t matter either.

  Nothing mattered.

  Betrayal was all around her, had alw
ays been around her, as if she’d been born under a thick, gray cloud, as if she deserved nothing more.

  Kris.

  The name seared her tongue as an icicle in winter, branding to her flesh, burning to the touch. And then, in the muted darkness of her muted soul, Abigail knew what had happened: Kris had tried to steal Edmund in the same way she had tried to steal Grandfather.

  But Abigail knew how to get back at her. How to get back at everyone.

  It was colder on the bridge than she had expected.

  She set the note on the dashboard, slipped out of her shoes, and shivered. Then she let out a small, foggy breath and stepped into the inky night—the night lit by the stars and the tiny white lights that outlined the span from east to west.

  Touching the locket on the bracelet that graced her wrist, Abigail looked down at the dark water of the slow-moving Hudson and knew that this was the only way.

  And it would serve them all right.

  Kris hadn’t planned to come to Khartoum. But the first available flight out of JFK was KLM to Amsterdam, bound for Sudan. It seemed as good a place as any to set her next Lexi Marks adventure, and the thousands of miles between Khartoum and New York were exactly what she needed. A pleading call to Devon’s friend at the United Nations had gained her an emergency visa; apparently her notoriety was good for something.

  So here she was, an unescorted woman in a land that frowned on unescorted women, isolated in her hotel room trying not to breathe the dust that permeated the air, trying to block out the clamor of the honking horns in the bustling sug al-arabi—the Arabic marketplace—five stories below, and wondering why, after nearly ten days, she still felt as though she hadn’t left Manhattan at all.

  She hadn’t even called Devon. No one knew where she was. And, in Sudan, no one knew who she was. The ideal place to work. The perfect escape.

  But so far she hadn’t accomplished a thing. She’d given up trying, for each time she attempted to charge the battery of her laptop, the power went out. Out of frustration she’d decided to go down to the bar at her hotel one afternoon and have a stiff drink. Maybe two. Then she remembered that booze was illegal in the city, and her choice would be Pepsi or guava juice. Neither seemed appealing; either would wash down the dust, but neither would numb her senses.

  And of all places, Khartoum was the last place where she could get laid. Too many Moslems, too many standards. Kris knew she should board the next plane out of here, but she had no idea where to go. She pulled her khaki camp shirt close around her, trying to erase her emptiness, trying to think of something productive, trying not to think about the loneliness—and the guilt—boring into her soul.

  Get a grip, girl, she chided herself, and sat up straight on the bed. Get the hell out of this room and get a grip. Kris Kensington was not going to give herself over to depression. Kris Kensington was stronger than that.

  • • •

  She stepped off the elevator and breezed through the hotel lobby with determination. If nothing else, she would spend some money in the marketplace. Buy some trinkets. Maybe grab a sandwich of fava beans or a mango or two. She would do something. And she would get a grip.

  The noise, the dust, and the chaos assaulted Kris when she opened the door. She turned back.

  No.

  She turned around again and stepped onto the hard-packed sand of the street.

  Heading toward a string of shops, Kris sidestepped two small boys toting a bucket of dirty water, accosting the drivers on the street, begging to wash the grit from their cars. They were dirty and looked malnourished, slaves to the streets for their survival, candidates for countless worldwide charity organizations. They would not be that way in America, she reasoned. They would not be that way if they were her children.

  Her children. Like the child she’d aborted in a back-alley Harlem tenement, where she’d shivered and shuddered and suffered alone, a sixteen-year-old girl who had not even shared her pain with her mother, for her mother had been on a mission witnessing Martin Luther King Jr. accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Kris may not have been poor or dirty or starving, but she had been alone. At least these kids were not.

  She shook her head and moved on, down the sidewalks and past the litter of people: dark-skinned men selling fruit and nuts; small girls with bony legs weaving through the crowd, trays of nuts on their heads, pleading looks in their eyes. Everything, Kris noticed, was brown. Brown, beige, the color of sand, interrupted only by the colorful thobes of the women—the yards of fabric wrapped around their clothing, concealing their flesh from the intrusive world.

  Brown. Beige. Sand. Abigail’s neutral-zone colors. Contrasted only by the thobes of her cuisine, the thobes of her color-splashed centerpieces.

  The muscles of Kris’s stomach tightened. She ducked into a shop for distraction.

  But the bleakness inside was pervasive. More sand. More dust. More brown. Except for one rack that stood along a wall: a rack filled with bright, colorful thobes.

  She bit her lip and decided to fight her demons, slay her dragons, put all that clichéd crap to rest once and for all. Thobes, after all, would make great Christmas gifts for Devon’s kids. Thobes, and maybe a hijab headdress, traditional wear of the Moslems, their black brothers and sisters.

  Without hesitation she grabbed some items from the rack, as if the faster she moved, the faster everything would fall back into place, the faster her life would become hers once again.

  After paying she exited the shop, wondering if this was why Abigail was always in motion—for fear that if she took too long or stopped too long, the world around her would explode.

  Kris clenched her teeth and rounded the corner, determined to purge Abigail from her mind.

  Then she saw the newsrack.

  Numerous papers with Arabic headlines were carelessly stacked on the ground. But something had caught her eye. One thing. Not the words, for Kris knew no Arabic. It was a photo.

  She stopped.

  Her stomach lurched.

  Her hands began to shake.

  The photo was of Abigail, and it was front-page news.

  Kris clutched her sack of purchases, grabbed a newspaper, and flung some currency at a man squatting on the sidewalk. Then she ran back to the hotel, flew into the lobby, and raced to the front desk.

  “Help,” she said to the man behind the counter. “I need someone to translate. Please, does anyone speak English?”

  The man nodded, then disappeared.

  Kris studied the paper, as if the longer she stared, the sooner the words would begin to make sense. Dark suspicion coursed through her. Why would Abigail’s picture be on the front page of a newspaper in Sudan? She was hardly of interest to Arabic women … or was she?

  She tapped her foot. She rubbed her neck.

  Finally the man at the desk returned. A woman followed. A foreigner, a white woman.

  “May I help you?”

  “Yes, yes.” Kris thrust the paper at her. “Can you translate this? Into English?”

  “The entire newspaper?”

  “No. No. This article. The one with the picture …”

  Suddenly she felt the heat of someone’s skin close to her.

  “I can translate,” a familiar voice said. Kris turned sharply and looked into Devon’s eyes. “It’s about Abigail Hardy,” he said. “She’s dead.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kris demanded. Her breath came in short, jerky gasps.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Her eyes jumped from Devon to the newspaper, then back to Devon. “Abigail?” she asked. “Is she really …”

  “Dead,” Devon confirmed. “So the media says.”

  Red lines skittered across the whites of his eyes, his skin was more muddy than brown, his hair seemed tinged with more gray. Devon looked as if he’d been up all night.

  “Do you still need a translator?” The woman behind the desk asked.

  Devon shook his head. “No, thank you.” He took K
ris by the elbow and steered her toward the lounge.

  “What happened to Abigail? How did you find me?” How could she have faked her suicide without me there to help? she wanted to add. Unless she had not faked it at all. Unless because of all that I did … Her mind swirled with the heat and the dust and … Oh, God. Abigail. Was she really dead?

  “Finding you was easy,” Devon said. “But I thought you’d stay at the Hilton; that if you were running away you’d at least want a view of the Nile.”

  They entered the lounge and he guided her to a small table. Kris sat on the faded cover of an old rattan chair. Her legs had gone numb.

  “I had a call from my friend at the UN,” Devon said. “It’s not like you to run away. Without any word …”

  She shook her head. “Things happened.”

  “You didn’t know about Abigail until … now?”

  “No.” She curled the edge of the beverage napkin on the table before her. A chill shivered through her. She looked up at the lazily moving paddle fan and knew the cold had not come from that. “Did she … kill herself?”

  Devon scowled. “Then you aren’t surprised.”

  She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, trying to act uninvolved. “She was terribly unhappy, I know that.” She wished she was not so aware that Devon was watching her. She wished he did not know her so well. “How … how did she do it?”

  “She jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge.”

  A low moan escaped from her throat. “Oh, God,” she cried. She really had done it. Of course she had done it. Abigail had really killed herself and it was all Kris’s fault. She ripped the napkin into shreds of guilt.

  “Of course,” Devon continued, “chances are they won’t find the body until spring.”

  The air seemed to stand still. The paddle fan droned overhead. Kris swallowed a fine mist of dust. “You mean they don’t have her body?”

  “Nope. Officially she’s missing and presumed dead.”

  Suddenly her guilt began to lift. The feeling returned to her legs. She stared past Devon at nothing in particular—the brightly colored paintings that hung on the walls, the beige tiled floor, the bamboo-shaded lamps. Missing and presumed dead.