Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

  But, with the mettle she’s always been proud to possess, she lifts her chin. “I just wanted to say thank you for the challenge, Tara. I’m definitely up for it.”

  Derry doesn’t bother to get off the couch when she hears Linden’s key in the lock late Monday afternoon. The air-conditioning has been on the blink all day and it’s too damned hot to move. Even lying directly in front of the spinning box fan has done little to ease her discomfort in the humidity.

  She hasn’t stirred in an hour, except to change the CD on the stereo from REO Speedwagon to Journey. If she weren’t so wiped out, she would get up to play “Don’t Stop Believin’” yet again. The song has become her own personal anthem.

  “Derry?” Linden asks, tossing his key and lunch pail on a chair. “Are you sleeping?”

  She closes her eyes belatedly, wishing she had thought of that before he walked in. Then she wouldn’t have to speak to him until she’s good and ready.

  But she can’t fake it now, so she opens her eyes and says only, “No, I’m not sleeping.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Does she have to be doing something?

  Apparently, she does. Linden resents the fact that she hasn’t tried harder to find a new job—especially since she took the MasterCard and went shopping for maternity clothes.

  A dozen new outfits now hang in a neat row in her half of the closet. They hang on newly purchased plastic, not wire, hangers, as do the two new blouses she bought in April and never even had a chance to wear yet. Linden claims not to understand how she can buy clothes she supposedly doesn’t need with money they supposedly don’t have.

  That, in fact, was what started the huge fight they had last night—a lovely way to top off the first Mother’s Day she’s ever been entitled to celebrate.

  Which was another sore spot with Linden. When she suggested that he take her out to dinner to mark the occasion, he had the nerve to tell her she’d have to wait until next year. He also pointed out, sarcastically, that she isn’t really pregnant, in case she forgot.

  “Derry? What are you doing?” he persists. She expects him to ask her if she’s okay, but he doesn’t.

  “I’m resting. The air is still out and it’s too hot to move.”

  She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t feel like seeing his expression, knowing what he thinks of somebody who lies around all day without a legitimate reason.

  If she were really pregnant, would he be this callous?

  Probably not. He’d probably be waiting on her hand and foot, telling her to lie back and put her feet up every chance she gets, and forget about working.

  Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe his true nature has finally emerged. Maybe he doesn’t care about her or the baby. He only cares about himself.

  “Thought about dinner?” he asks, after a moment.

  Himself, and food. Jerk.

  This time, she glares right at him.

  “We’ll have to get takeout. I can’t cook in this heat.”

  “If you’d take off that damned rubber belly around the house, you’d be cooler.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” He opens his mouth to protest and she cuts him off with, “If we had air-conditioning, I’d be cooler.”

  “We can’t afford air-conditioning. And we can’t afford takeout. We’re broke, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “If that’s another dig about my not working—”

  “Maybe it is.”

  At that, she screams an obscenity at him, an obscenity she’s never spoken to another human being in her life and never could have imagined hurtling at her husband.

  He stares at her for a long moment. Coldly.

  Oh God. What has she done? What has she become?

  Tears well in her eyes; a lump clogs her throat.

  But before she can voice her heartfelt contrition, her husband silently turns on his heel and walks out of the apartment, slamming the door hard behind him.

  Seated at a table in Tequila Moon, the Mexican restaurant Peyton suggested, Rita surveys the boisterous after-work crowd at the bar. Nearly everybody is attractive and fashion-fad young, sipping lime green cocktails, munching chips, having a grand old time.

  She can’t help wondering what that must feel like. Her own youth was fleeting, certainly never as unencumbered as the lives of these happy hour inhabitants.

  Oh, please. You don’t know that. You don’t know what kind of lives they really have.

  No, but chances are, they aren’t facing the weighty issues and responsibilities Rita did at their ages, and far younger. They might technically be adults, but the burden of adult problems still lies on the distant horizon.

  You don’t know that, she scolds herself again and sips her lemon-garnished seltzer, irritated by her own broad assumptions and the bittersweet memories they trigger.

  Memories of being positively saturated in blessedly requited love, married at twenty-one, and then—

  “I’m sorry I’m late!” Peyton Somerset breezes up to the table and deposits a briefcase on one of the empty chairs. She looks much more sophisticated than she did in yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt. More noticeably pregnant as well, in a snug-fitting jacket she probably won’t be able to wear again for quite some time.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Not long at all,” Rita assures her. “I figured you might have gotten hung up at the office.”

  “You figured right.” Peyton collapses into a seat, her face flushed from the heat and, most likely, the flurry of crosstown rush-hour travel. “I was about to walk out the door when my boss dumped a huge project into my lap. She has a way of doing that.”

  Rita, who has never had a boss, murmurs something appropriately sympathetic.

  Then, after weighing the question’s impact on their meeting, she realizes she can’t ignore it and asks if anybody has heard from Allison Garcia yet.

  Peyton’s eyes promptly mist over. “No,” is the only word she seems capable of uttering for a moment.

  Then she dabs the corners of her eyes with the cocktail napkin Rita offers and takes a deep, nerve-steadying breath. “I called Wanda right before I left the office. She just talked to Allison’s mother. Nobody’s heard from her.”

  “My God. I can’t believe this.” Rita reaches for Peyton’s hand, squeezing it hard.

  At the physical contact, a choking sound escapes Peyton, as if she’s been holding in her emotions all day and the floodgates are about to open.

  Rita rubs her wrist and uses the soothing voice she normally reserves to comfort laboring patients. “We just have to pray that she’s okay. We have to think positive thoughts. Maybe she just needed to take off and go somewhere.”

  Peyton seizes that—and Rita’s hand—like a lifeline. “That’s what I keep hoping,” she says fervently.

  Hope.

  Hope, Rita wants to warn her, can be as fragile as a newborn. It’s meant to be gently cradled, not held in a potentially crushing grip.

  But Peyton needs desperately to believe that Allison’s disappearance had nothing to do with foul play. And Rita needs to reassure her, at least for now.

  She says cautiously, “I don’t honestly think her running away is out of the realm of possibility.”

  Peyton’s head snaps up. “You don’t?”

  “Well, I’ve seen her a few times these last few weeks, as a patient, and I thought she seemed a little bit . . . removed.”

  “I thought the same thing!”

  “You did?” Rita raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Have you told her family that?”

  “No, I only talked to her father for a few minutes last night, and he was too upset. But if you think she was subdued lately, too . . . maybe we should tell her parents. Or the police. Maybe she ran away.”

  “I hope that’s the case. And I hope that wherever she is, she’ll have help if she needs it when she goes into labor.”

  “So do I.” Peyton sighs heavily and slips her hand from Rita’s. She ru
bs her red-rimmed eyes, seemingly unaware of the makeup she’s wearing.

  Smudged mascara is the least of her problems now, Rita thinks, and decides not to mention it. The restaurant is dark, and anyway, Peyton Somerset is beautiful regardless of makeup. She’s the kind of woman, Rita senses, who will be beautiful even when she’s sweating and straining to bring a child into the world. Beautiful, and in control.

  “I can’t stand to think of Allison afraid and alone out there somewhere . . . and in labor, no less. Maybe she’ll call you if that happens, Rita. She trusts you.”

  Rita pulls her cell phone from her pocket and taps it. “Twenty-four-seven. Remember?”

  “Just like the Waldorf Astoria.” Peyton gives a nod of recognition. “If she calls you, will you get in touch with me right away? I’ll give you all of my numbers.”

  “You’ll be the first to know if I hear anything . . . after her parents, of course. They must be going crazy. I just can’t imagine.” She shudders.

  “What are they like? Have you met them?”

  “Only once. They’re overbearing, like Allison says. But loving, and they mean well. They’re kind of like I am with my kids.”

  “And like my mother was with me. You have two children, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Nancy told me.”

  “Oh, Nancy. She loves to talk, doesn’t she?” Rita shakes her head, marveling at her friend’s willingness to discuss with patients—and, no doubt, Dr. Lombardo—the intimate details of everybody’s life but her own. “Yes, I’ve got two kids, a dog, and a husband. But John and Paul are grown, the dog is old and tired . . . and so, frankly, are J.D. and I,” she adds as an afterthought.

  “John and Paul are your sons?” At Rita’s nod, Peyton asks, unnecessarily but politely, “And J.D. is your husband?”

  “Yes. We’ve been together forever.” She sees a fleeting, wistful expression cross Peyton’s face, and is compelled to ask, “Is there anybody in your life right now? Or is that a sore subject?”

  “Not a sore subject, just . . .”

  “I guess it’s just a useless question. I don’t know why I asked it. If there were somebody, you probably wouldn’t be coming to Pregnant and Single meetings, would you?”

  “Actually,” Peyton says, wearing a secret little smile, as though she’s momentarily forgotten her burdens, “there wasn’t somebody when I started in the group, but there is now.”

  “Really? Who is he?” she asks, intrigued, yet trying to sound casual, sensing Peyton isn’t a woman who freely dishes about her personal life.

  “His name is Tom.”

  Rita waits for more, realizes nothing more is coming, and is hardly surprised by the reticence. She noticed a quiet reserve about Peyton yesterday at the meeting; saw that she seemed to hold herself apart from the others, even after the frightening news about Allison.

  Especially after the frightening news about Allison.

  While Wanda and Julie cried openly and dramatically discussed worst-case scenarios, Peyton seemed to retreat emotionally. She was obviously accustomed to finding her strength inside, rather than reaching out, leaning on others.

  Well, that quality will serve her well when she finds herself faced with the childbirth challenge ahead. Some of Rita’s laboring patients have collapsed into screaming, begging, panicking, tortured souls. That isn’t good for anyone—not the mother, not Rita, and certainly not the baby fighting its way into the world.

  But Peyton isn’t going to fall apart when the time comes. She gives off an aura of absolute fortitude. Working with her, Rita concludes, will be a rare pleasure.

  If you wind up working with her at all.

  She can ask more about Tom later.

  For now, it’s time to get down to business.

  “I know you must have a zillion questions, sugar pie,” Rita says, beginning the heartfelt speech she’s given so many times before. “I may have been pregnant a lifetime ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I especially remember wanting to know absolutely everything about what I was going to go through, because knowledge is comfort.”

  Peyton’s eyes light in recognition. “That’s exactly how I feel!”

  Rita smiles. “I figured. I’ve been there, remember? Twice. So why don’t you go ahead and start asking me about what a midwife does, and anything else you want to know?”

  Peyton shifts her weight. “I’d really rather you went ahead and started telling. If that’s okay with you.”

  “A take-charge attitude is always okay with me,” Rita says with a smile.

  With that, she launches into the information she meant to provide at yesterday’s meeting, before Allison Garcia fell off the face of the earth.

  Alone in the house with her sleeping children, Anne Marie knows better than to steal into Jarrett’s study, where rows of gleaming battle swords line the walls, and pour herself a glass of Jarrett’s scotch.

  She knows better, yet she does it anyway, filling the glass to the brim with amber liquid that might somehow numb the assault on her heart and soul from the moment she answered her cell phone twelve hours earlier.

  This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

  Mothers are supposed to protect their babies, shelter them from harm.

  Well. You’ll just learn to live with this, won’t you?

  This isn’t the first time you’ve had to face harsh reality. You’ve done it already and survived, haven’t you? Survived every time. Haven’t you?

  Seated in Jarrett’s leather recliner, surrounded by lethal blades that glint in the lamplight, Anne Marie lifts the glass to her lips and sips. She feels the potent heat sliding past her shattered heart, feels it swallowed into the depths of an injured soul where it stokes the flames of fury.

  Fury is all that remains now.

  Jarrett and the boys are all but forgotten in this moment; there isn’t a glimmering shard of love to light the smothering cloak of darkness that surrounds her. Not a flicker of warmth, nor a speck of hope.

  Just a familiar, burning fury that she thought she’d tamped out long, long ago.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Three days have passed.

  Three days in which Anne Marie has gone through the motions of living while thinking every waking moment of dying. Of what it must be like.

  Death, decay, extinction.

  The stench of it seems to permeate her every breath; the repulsive reality of it seeps into her sleep, transforming dreams into bloodcurdling nightmares. She’s consumed by visions of rotting flesh buried in rain-dampened earth, haunted by clinical terms like dental records and DNA.

  “Mommy, can I have more milk, please?” Caleb asks, and she pours rich, creamy milk into a glass, seeing only crimson blood flowing from gaping wounds.

  “Mommy, tickle me, please,” Avery begs and she wriggles her fingers in his squirming midsection, imagining knives splitting flesh, wounds so deep they leave slashes in bone.

  It didn’t have to be this way.

  You did it yourself. You have nobody else to blame.

  Yes. She can blame fate, blame the perceived immortality of reckless youth. Blame the dearly departed, or blame the devil that saw fit to punish, to extinguish life.

  Or, Anne Marie can try to forget, try to move on.

  Try . . .

  And fail, time and time again.

  You opened the door in the first place, she reminds herself as she washes supper dishes heedless of the dishwasher, needing hot water running over her hands in a futile effort to cleanse them, to cleanse her soul.

  You opened the door.

  It’s become a warped refrain, one she can’t escape. Yes, she opened the door. And now it’s too late to close it, too late to shut out the demons.

  She turns off the water, dries her hands, dries the tears rolling down her cheeks. She remembers to be glad Jarrett is late coming home from the office again, too far away to ask questions that might mean something for once.

  The irony, she
thinks as she mindlessly bends to pick up a stray sock, a small car, a crust of bread, is that ten years ago, nobody would have known her if they found her.

  Now, thanks to the miracle of science, anything is possible. These days, remains of one who lived centuries ago can be identified by a single strand of hair. A human who would otherwise have gone on in infinite anonymity can be given a name, a face, grieving loved ones who crave answers.

  It just takes time, and patience, but the answers will come to misguided souls who seek them.

  “Mommy, I’m tired,” Justin says, tugging the hem of the shirt she hasn’t changed in three days.

  “I’m tired, too,” Anne Marie says wearily, bending to gather him into her arms.

  Goddamned miracles.

  In the three days that have passed since Allison’s disappearance, Peyton has thought of little else—other than work, of course, when she’s there.

  Alain hasn’t even left for Paris yet, but already, Tara is piling on the assignments, to the point where Peyton was too bogged down yesterday to even attend the annual Kaplan and Kline spring outing. Not that she minded. She was hardly in the mood to socialize.

  But her boss didn’t know that. And it seems as though Tara secretly gloats every time she allocates a new task to Peyton.

  Or maybe that’s just my paranoid imagination, Peyton reminds herself as she wearily covers the last block heading home Wednesday night.

  Half the time she’s able to convince herself that Tara doesn’t suspect that she’s pregnant. After all, Peyton’s made an effort to conceal her bulge beneath looser-fitting suits these last few days.

  Then again, Tara did make that catty comment when she found Peyton carrying a bag of microwaved popcorn out of the kitchenette late this afternoon.

  “Eating again?” was what she said, or something along those lines. Almost as if she expected Peyton to defend herself with an explanation.

  Well, let her think I’m just getting fat, Peyton thinks, digging into her pocketbook for her keys as she mounts the steps of her brownstone building. Fat can’t get you fired.