Freefall

by Jessica Barry

  He let out a sigh and got to his feet. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He picked up his water glass and brought it into the kitchen. “I’ll see myself out.”

  I waited until I heard the door click shut behind him, and then I swallowed down the rest of the wine in my glass and poured myself another. I checked the clock. Ten to six. Ben would be home by seven at the latest. We were supposed to go out to dinner with one of the investors and his wife. Ben had chosen the outfit he wanted me to wear before he’d gone to work that morning, a black dress with a high slit. “I want you to knock them dead tonight,” he’d said when he pulled it out of the closet. “It’s important.”

  I tipped the full glass to my mouth and finished it in a few quick swallows. The alcohol worked its magic, and already the shock had started to numb.

  Sam had come there specifically to ask about the man in the coffee shop—there was no doubt in my mind. Which led to the question: If he was so concerned with what the man in the coffee shop said to me, did that mean that the man might have been telling the truth about Prexilane?

  I thought back to the trial my father volunteered for after he’d gotten his diagnosis. The doctor told him this drug had proved successful in the first round, with tumors shrinking by as much as 80 percent. Now they wanted to try it on a larger sample size. He signed up on the spot. His diagnosis was terminal, with no more than a year to live. He had nothing to lose—at least that’s what he thought.

  The weight started dropping off him almost immediately. Within a few weeks, he was half the size he had been, just a ravaged husk of the man he’d been. We begged the doctor to withdraw him from the trial, but he refused. “Once you’re signed up, there’s no going back.” So we watched as his life expectancy dropped to six months, and then three. We watched him disappear in front of our eyes, and there was nothing we could do about it.

  “That’s the risk you have to take,” Dad said as he lay on the sofa, eyes wide and haunted in his thin face. “If you don’t gamble on science, you don’t win.”

  He had such faith in the system, and I’d followed him down the same path. Yes, the drugs don’t always work, but their intention is always to heal. It’s never to hurt.

  But maybe he’d been naive. Maybe we both had.

  I felt lost. A wave of homesickness washed over me so strongly that I braced myself on the counter to stop my knees from buckling. Mom. The word pushed up my throat and pressed against my lips. I wanted to hear her clear, calm voice tell me that it was going to be okay, and to feel her fingertips scratch the place between my shoulder blades like she did when I was a kid and couldn’t sleep.

  I picked up my phone and tapped in the number I knew by heart. My finger was hovering above the Call button when I heard the sound of a key in a lock and the front door opening. “Hello?” Ben’s voice called out from the hallway. “Sweetheart, are you here?”

  I dropped the phone on the counter and shoved the half-empty bottle of white back into the fridge. “I’m in the kitchen!” My heart pounded in my rib cage. I looked at my hands gripping the countertop, nails perfectly manicured, diamond sparkling on my finger. I’d been a fool to think I could call her out of the blue after all this time. She wouldn’t recognize me anymore. I barely recognized myself.

  Ben came through the door, his tie loosened, his blue eyes sparkling. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground. “I missed you,” he whispered into my hair, and I tilted my chin up to accept his kiss. This was the only home I had now. There was no going back.

  Later, before we went to dinner, I was sick in the toilet, the white wine coming back up as greenish-yellow bile. I made sure he didn’t hear.

  Maggie

  I sat in the car outside Chloe’s for a quarter of an hour, watching the time tick by on the dashboard clock as I went from on time to late, then later still. Chloe’s was glass-fronted and candlelit, and I could see Amanda’s and David’s dim shapes in the window, heads bent together in conversation. Of course they would have seated them at the front. Chloe’s was the type of place you went for special occasions—anniversaries and birthdays and graduations. It was the sort of place where I’d tell Charles to put on a tie before we got in the car, or at least a shirt with buttons down the front, but they still wouldn’t be used to people like Amanda and David—people whose wealth shone out of every pore, and who didn’t have regular clothes and good clothes, just clothes.

  I didn’t want to go in. I knew I had to, for Ally’s sake, and probably for my own, but I didn’t want to. I found myself dwelling on things after the memorial, doubting Amanda’s sincerity when her eyes filled with tears, thinking David was more rude than standoffish. I thought about the unanswered phone calls, and the big house up in La Jolla with its shuttered windows like dolls’ eyes, and the house in Bird Rock stripped of all traces of my daughter. No, I didn’t want to spend time with these people, but like so many things in life, I didn’t seem to have a choice.

  Amanda was on her feet as soon as I walked through the door. She was wearing a billowing white dress, all elegant folds and drapes, and I felt oafish in my sensible slacks and floral-sprigged blouse. When she hugged me, I could feel the tiny bones in her back through the fabric of her dress and had to stop myself from shivering. She tittered and fussed around me as I settled down at the table, and she sat down only when I had a napkin tucked onto my lap and a glass of water at my elbow.

  David offered a polite handshake and then turned his eyes back to the wine list. He didn’t get up.

  I realized I was nervous. Now that I was there, what was I supposed to say? I could feel a flush coming on, the sweat pooling in the small of my back and dampening the armpits of my blouse. I took a sip of water and forced myself to calm down. “How was Portland?” I asked finally. I hoped they didn’t notice my hand shaking when I put the glass back down on the table.

  “Just precious,” Amanda said, beaming. She tucked a honey-colored lock of hair behind her ear. “All of those little shops along the harbor are adorable!”

  I nodded in agreement. “It’s a cute little city. They’ve got some nice restaurants down there, too. James Beard winners and everything.” Not that I’d been to any of them, but I’d read about them in the paper.

  She gestured around the room and smiled. “Well, I’m sure here will be wonderful, too. The menu certainly looks exciting! There’s so much to choose from . . .” She picked up the laminated bit of paper and studied it with a furrowed brow.

  I didn’t need to look at it myself. It was the same as it had been for the past fifteen years—duck confit and cassoulet and escargot for the adventurous. I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but now that I was sitting there surrounded by the smell of garlic sautéed in butter, I realized I was starving.

  The waiter arrived and we ordered. Steak for David, beef bourguignonne for me, and a frisée salad for Amanda. “Aren’t you going to be hungry?” I asked, even though I suspected it was rude to mention it. They probably had a whole ream of etiquette rules they followed, and I was sure I was breaking most of them. I wondered briefly if Ally had known them.

  She let out a tinkling laugh and continued to shred the bread roll she’d been working on for five minutes but had failed to take a bite of. “It’ll be plenty for me,” she demurred.

  David ordered a bottle of wine—red, expensive—without asking what either of us would like and then settled into his seat and pulled out his phone. “Just need to check a few things at the office,” he said, frowning into the dim screen light.

  He was a handsome man, David. There was no denying that. Amanda was pretty, of course, but David had the bones, even if there was a little extra meat on them now. I could see Ben in him clearly, at least from the pictures I’d seen. Same eyes. Same jaw.

  Amanda grasped my hand in hers and smiled at me. “I’m so glad we’re doing this,” she cooed. “Your daughter was very special to me, and losing her and Ben . . .” Her eyes dampened, and she dabbed at them
with her napkin. “It felt like losing two children at once.”

  I fought to keep my face neutral. Ally had been my daughter, not hers. I swallowed my anger with a mouthful of wine. “You two were close, then?”

  Her face took on a dreamy look. “We spent every Thursday afternoon together wedding planning. Oh”—her hand grasped mine again, and I fought not to pull it away—“you should have seen the things we had planned. She was planning on having a dress made for her, though there was a gorgeous Vera Wang she had her eye on, and we’d reserved Torrey Pines for the reception. White roses, candlelight . . .” She sighed. “It was going to be a beautiful wedding.”

  “Sounds very nice,” I said. I tried to picture Ally in a fancy white dress, gliding down a candlelit aisle. She and I had never talked about weddings much—she hadn’t been one of those little girls who dreamed of a big white wedding. I’d always had the impression she didn’t care much about marriage, period. But then again, things change. “I didn’t know anything about it.”

  She gasped and raised her hand to her mouth, which had shaped itself into a perfect pink O. “Maggie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even stop to think about—”

  “It’s fine,” I cut her off quietly.

  She placed her hand over mine. “Allison told me that the two of you weren’t on the best of terms.” I could see that she was choosing her words carefully, and shame swept over me. She knew that I’d failed as a mother. “I was hoping that things might clear up before the wedding. I’m sure she would have wanted you to be there . . .” The words hung above the table. She didn’t believe what she was saying, and neither did I. We both knew my daughter hadn’t wanted anything to do with me.

  I placed my napkin on my plate and pushed out from the table. The hot flush had returned, and I could feel the sweat gathering in my hairline. I needed to get away. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to run to the bathroom.” Amanda watched me, stricken. David’s eyes barely flickered from his screen.

  The ladies’ room was painted a garish pink, with a tufted stool tucked in one corner. I turned on the taps and ran cold water across my wrists. In the mirror, my face looked mottled and too shiny, like I’d just run for a bus. The mascara under one of my eyes had smudged, and my hair had escaped its clip, strands of it standing on end around my head like a halo. I looked like a crazy person.

  I couldn’t get rid of the image of Amanda and Ally cozied up together on a sofa, their heads dipped low over wedding magazines, their blond hair mingling. Had Ally gone dress shopping with her? Had Amanda sat in one of those plush reception rooms and waited for her to emerge in some frothy white creation? “Your daughter was very special to me.” Had Ally thought of Amanda as a mother? Had she so expunged me from her life that she’d sought out a replacement?

  I thought of Amanda’s pretty, sweet face, and her tinkling laugh, and the warmth of her hand on mine. If Ally had, I couldn’t blame her. I hadn’t deserved Ally, not after what I’d done. I felt a sob threatening to build in my chest and blinked away the first tears.

  I placed my forehead on the cool mirror. “Pull yourself together,” I whispered to my reflection.

  I saw that the entrées had arrived when I got back to the table. David and Amanda had left theirs untouched, and my napkin had been neatly folded into a fan and placed on my chair. David poured a second glass of wine for himself and filled our glasses another few inches. I took a sip and felt my cheeks flush an even deeper red. I’d never been much of a wine drinker, and it was making me feel hazy and slow witted.

  Amanda’s eyes were on me, watchful. “I’m so sorry if I upset you,” she whispered, bending her head toward mine. Her fork was poised above her plate of frizzy lettuce, frozen.

  I tucked the napkin around my lap and waved her away. “You didn’t,” I said. I attempted a bright smile. “It’s fine.”

  I felt her eyes still on me as I cut into the meat. “I know,” she said, shaking her head sympathetically, “I know. It just comes over you sometimes, doesn’t it? There are mornings when I wake up and for a split second, I forget what’s happened. And then I blink and it all comes rushing back.”

  I raised my eyes to hers. I expected there to be something in them, some glint of calculation, but they were clear and blue and searching. “It’s like living it all over again,” I said finally. It felt good to admit it, and good, too, to see the understanding in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, it’s exactly like that.”

  David’s phone started ringing, making all three of us jump. He snatched it off the table and hurried out the door without a word to us. Amanda gave me an apologetic smile. “You’ll have to excuse him,” she said. “He’s under a lot of pressure at work.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Ben’s death hit him very hard,” she whispered. “It’s been such a . . . difficult time.” I glanced over at her. Her fork was still balanced on the edge of the plate, her salad untouched. She looked like a lost little girl, waiting for her mother to pick her up and take her home.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “What sort of business is David in?”

  “Oh, something to do with finance,” she said, brushing the word away as if it were a bad smell. “I don’t really understand it.”

  I nodded. “And you? Do you work?”

  She let out a little tinkling laugh. “No, not for years. I’m on the board of the San Diego Museum of Art, and I have a few pet charities. Enough to keep me busy.”

  “I understand Ally wasn’t working when she was with Ben,” I said carefully. “Do you know why?”

  Amanda looked at me indulgently, as though I was a small child who needed her hand held crossing the street. “She didn’t need to,” she said. “Ben had more than enough to make her very comfortable.”

  I pushed a mushroom around my plate with my fork. Could it really have been that simple? Ally hadn’t had to work, so she hadn’t worked. It was so alien to the way we had raised her, so at odds with the young woman I’d known. I wondered if she’d at least kept her own money. I’d always told her how important it was for a woman to be independent. Even if your relationship is solid as a rock, I’d said, it’s always good to put a little something aside for yourself, just in case. I thought about the empty wardrobe. Had she kept anything for herself in the end? Or had she really been left with as little as it seemed? I put my fork down and sighed. It was now or never.

  “Do you know what happened to Ally’s things?”

  Amanda pushed a lock of hair off her forehead with a manicured hand. “What do you mean?” There was the flicker of something behind her pale eyes and I knew then that she was playing dumb.

  “I went to the house in San Diego.” My heart was pounding in my chest and I wondered if she could hear the nerves in my voice. I felt like a kid confessing to the teacher about cheating on a test. “I was curious,” I explained. “I wanted to see where she lived, maybe take her things back with me.”

  “You should have called,” she said coolly. I could see from the way she held her jaw that she was angry, and I felt my own anger surge once again. The warmth that had built up between us evaporated instantly.

  “I think you know I tried, but you didn’t seem to want to answer the phone,” I said pointedly. “Anyway, I went to the house and none of her things were there.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t keep much there.”

  “I don’t think you’re understanding me,” I said, though I was damn sure she did. “Her clothes, her jewelry, her books—all of it was gone. There wasn’t a trace of her in that place.”

  Amanda smiled tightly. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “I’m asking you to tell me what’s happened to my daughter’s belongings.” I was speaking deliberately slowly, but still my voice was shaking. “She was my daughter, which means her things belong to me now. I want to know where they are.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that s
imple, I’m afraid. Allison merged her life with my son’s life and—not to put too fine a point on it—she was completely dependent on him.” She spoke like she was explaining the idea of bedtime to a truculent child. “She was living in a house that was owned by Ben, and everything that belonged to Ben—including the contents of that house—are now tied up in probate until the will has been settled. So,” she said, spreading out her hands, “my hands are tied.”

  I stared down at my plate as the humiliation swept through me. I’d let myself be taken in by her, and for what? What was I doing there, sitting across from this woman, asking her about Ally like a dog hunting for scraps, when she clearly wasn’t going to give me a damn thing? I’d had too much wine, and my head had already begun to throb. I wanted, very badly, to go home.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard Amanda say, and then her fingers were on my wrist. The hard edge had dropped away from her voice again, back to its pillowed softness. “I’ve upset you again.”

  I kept my eyes on my dinner. I didn’t want her to see that they were filled with tears. I could bear a lot of things in this world, but I couldn’t bear letting her see me cry. It was what she wanted, I could feel it in the way she was studying me, like I was a lock she was determined to pick. “I’m not feeling very well,” I managed to say, and then I scraped my chair back from the table and got steadily to my feet.

  There was a burst of warm air. David walked through the door and settled himself back at the table. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, fixing his napkin back in his lap and picking up his fork. “It was the office.”

  We both watched wordlessly as he started working away at his steak.

  “Maggie isn’t feeling well, sweetheart,” Amanda said, putting a light hand on his wrist. “She’s going to go home.” He glanced up at me and frowned.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like me to get you a cab?”

  I shook my head. “I’m okay to drive myself home.”