Julia looked into the woman’s eyes.
“He might still be here,” she said.
The woman looked up at the big board of arrivals and departures. Julia’s eyes followed hers. She saw the flashing All Aboard for a Philadelphia Express.
“That’s it,” Julia said.
The woman’s voice rose. “That way! Past the McDonald’s.”
She ran.
36
Sitting in the back of the bus, I closed my eyes. I tried to picture the face I saw in the mirror. I tried to remember who it was. The harder I tried, though, the more diffuse the image became. The edges softened. The colors faded. Eyes turned gray. Hair turned drab. Skin turned to mist and floated away, leaving me with nothing but a shining silver mirror.
The axle rumbled softly below my feet as more passengers boarded. Many looked dressed for a night out, which surprised me. I looked down at my stained shirt and wondered what they must be thinking of me. The thought caused me to slink down deeper into the seat.
I dug the money clip out of my pocket. Slowly, I slipped the Pennsylvania driver’s license out. I stared at the small picture on the front, willing something to connect, some light to go off. But again, a stranger stared back at me.
I remember thinking in that moment about what I was doing. In a way, even then, it didn’t make much sense. Shouldn’t I have gone to the police for help? Really, I should have stayed with the doctor, gotten the help I needed. Though the thought wasn’t clear then, I think I knew, in a way, how serious head injuries could be. Yet all I wanted was for that bus to move. If I was being honest, it wasn’t that I just wanted to get home. More than anything in my life, I needed to get farther away from the city.
* * *
—
Julia flew. People parted before her and she sprinted to the gate for the Philadelphia Express. She was not twenty feet away from the bus when it lurched to a start, rolling away from the curbing.
“Stop!” Julia screamed.
* * *
—
My eyes shot open when I heard the scream.
“Stop!”
I turned, looking out my window at a woman. She somehow looked different from everyone else there. She wore a white shirt and capris. Around my age, she looked fit and perfectly put together, except for her eyes. I saw desperation there.
Her arms waved. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything else, for the engine roared and my bus lurched to a start. As it pulled out behind the one ahead, I remember staring at her. Although I had no idea who she was at the time, I can still close my eyes and see her there at the terminal, tears streaming down her cheeks. I’ll never forget that moment. Never.
* * *
—
Frantic, Julia tore her phone from her back pocket. She called Michael’s cell. Again, it went straight to voicemail. She stared at the bus, listening to the recorded message, the woman’s flat, robotic voice droning in her ear, as the Philadelphia Express rounded a corner and slipped from sight.
“No,” she whispered.
Hopeless, she tried his old number, his work cell. It rang once. Her eyes closed. Then it rang a second time. She startled, her eyes shooting open. She took quick steps down the sidewalk, toward the direction in which the bus had disappeared. The phone rang a third time and she could barely breathe.
* * *
—
I thought it was someone else’s phone. The ring was soft, almost tentative, as if it feared the unknown. My head turned as I tried to orient on the sound. It rang a third time, and I realized, then, that it came from my case. The phone inside was ringing. My phone was ringing. Someone was calling me.
I fumbled. My fingers felt like giant bags of sand trying to keep back my flooding emotions. When I finally got the case open, the phone slid under a stack of papers. I dug through them as it continued to ring. Finally, my hand wrapped around the cool metal. I pulled it up, swiping the screen. I paused, fighting the irrational wave of fear that prevented me from speaking.
“Michael?” a woman’s voice said.
My entire body seized up. The name came back to me like a heavenly vision appearing out of the darkness. Julia. It was Julia. Somehow, though the sound of her voice sparked no true memories, I knew it immediately. Yet the shock held me frozen for a second longer. I wanted to scream, to cry out my love for her. As I forced my mouth open, the word cracked and hissed before forming.
“Julia,” I said.
* * *
—
On the fifth ring, Julia heard a click. The line went silent.
“Michael,” she said.
Static crackled. She heard another click, followed by a piercing whine. Instinctually, she pulled the phone away from her ear. When she put it back, the line was nothing but silence.
37
Julia stared at the screen. The call was lost, but for just a second, she was sure, it had connected. In fact, she was sure he had answered. With a rush of adrenaline, she tried again. That call failed. So did three more. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“Damn it,” she hissed.
Before the word even got out, her phone rang. Her hope lasted nothing more than a split second before her home number appeared on the screen. The phone continued to ring. She stared at that number, and that briefest glimmer of hope faded away. She felt empty and alone. She felt utterly defeated. Yet she answered the call, thinking of Evan and Thomas.
“Julia,” her mother said.
Hearing her mother’s voice brought everything back. She spoke quickly.
“He’s alive, Mom. Someone saw him. He used his credit card.”
“Are you serious?”
“I called him. I think it connected. I think he answered . . . before the call died. He’s on a bus going to Philadelphia.”
“Are you going there?”
“My car is across town. I won’t make it. I need to talk to the police, let them know.”
Julia heard talking in the background. Then her mother relayed what she had said to someone else. She heard a shuffle and then Evelyn was on the line.
“Oh, my God,” Evelyn said. “That’s great!”
“You’re still there?”
“I just brought the kids back. Tara’s taking them to the movies in half an hour. Look, you go talk to the police. I’ll head up to Philadelphia and be there when the bus arrives. What’s the number?”
“Evelyn, I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Shut your mouth. I’m doing it.”
Julia gave her the bus number. “You don’t even know where the bus station is.”
Evelyn laughed. “The Internet does.”
Julia paused. She felt so overwhelmed. It was hard to believe her friends would do so much for her. How could she ever repay them?
“Thanks,” she said. She meant so much more than that, but it was the only word that would come out.
* * *
—
Julia sat in a chair at a desk inside the police station at Newark Penn Station. A woman sat across from her, taking notes on a computer as Julia told her every detail.
“Are you okay?” the officer asked.
“Me?”
She nodded. “Have you slept?”
Julia shook her head.
“Eaten?”
“No.”
“Wait here,” the woman said.
She disappeared from the small office. Julia let out a breath. It left her feeling empty and exhausted. She had not thought about herself since the news broke the night before. That fact was not melodramatic. It was simply the truth. And the officer’s questions brought her needs to the front. In a way, she wished the woman hadn’t even opened that door.
Not five minutes later, the officer reappeared. She carried a cup of coffee and what looked like a cherry Danish. She placed it in fron
t of Julia.
“I’m not sure if you like this sort of thing, but maybe you should eat.”
Julia didn’t, not before. But in that moment, it all looked like ambrosia to her. She dug in without even thinking about the fact that someone was watching her eat.
“We’ll have an officer at the terminal in Philadelphia before the Express arrives. I’ve faxed the picture you gave me to them. They’ll find your husband and get him home. I promise.”
“Thank you so much.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“Oh . . . I have to get my car. I think it’s at the police station in Weehawken.”
The officer smiled. Something about it seemed sad to Julia, and she didn’t understand that.
“I’ll drive you down there.”
“Thank you,” Julia said, and realized she’d said that a lot lately.
PICKET FENCE
The police officer returned Julia to her car. Within minutes, she was back on the highway, heading to Pennsylvania. As she drove to her children, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, her mind wandered to the past, to a time when they were first making a home. She and Michael had been married for almost four years before they finally decided to try to start a family. Her schedule made it difficult. As promised, the governor hired her as his policy adviser on social issues. She spent long hours at work, capped off by nightly events. The only saving grace was that she worked in Delaware, a state that stretched a hundred miles long and fifty at its widest. Travel rarely involved anything beyond her Honda Civic.
Luckily, Michael had his dream job. He had grown more and more involved in the city’s minor-league baseball team. Although his primary responsibility was ticket sales and marketing, he’d found a knack for putting on the countless contests and skits that ran between innings. He gave play-by-play over the sound system as middle-aged men scurried in tight circles with their foreheads resting on the end of bats, or as preteens tried to throw an oversized baseball through a hole in a sheet of plywood in the shape of a catcher’s mitt. On special nights, he would introduce the paid acts, maybe a cowboy who trained a monkey to ride on the back of a dog or a man who danced with four puppets dressed as the many stages of Michael Jackson. In a way, Michael Swann became a quasi celebrity in the city of Wilmington, and he ate it up like a slice of humble pie.
“It’s now or never,” Julia said one night, looking at her calendar.
“Huh?”
Michael sat in a recliner watching the Phillies. His team had road games for the rest of the week, and the governor was on his yearly vacation to Bethany Beach. Since it was one of the few nights in weeks that the two were home at the same time, it might have seemed like they should be out living it up at some bar downtown. In reality, due to their schedules, they both wanted nothing more than a quiet night at home. Together.
She looked at him, askew. “You’re not getting any younger, Mr. Swann.”
“Thanks.”
“Stop being so thick,” Julia said with a smile.
“Okay.” Michael’s eyebrows danced. “Tonight?”
Julia laughed. She moved to her husband and fell into his lap. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They made love that night on the recliner while the Phillies game played on the television. To the best of their knowledge, it was a success all around.
* * *
—
Four months later, Julia’s pregnancy showed. She took to cradling her belly in her hand as she moved around their apartment, tidying up as she went. Each surface she dusted or sock she picked up off the floor left her more and more restless. Suddenly, everything felt too small. She cleaned, but it made no difference.
One Saturday afternoon, her husband came home from a meeting at the park to find her painting their bathroom.
“Really?” he asked.
Julia shook her head. “I felt claustrophobic.”
“So you decided to paint the bathroom.”
As had become habit, she touched her stomach. “I thought a lighter color . . .”
He put a hand out. “Come on.”
She looked at her hands, speckled with beige paint. “But . . .”
His fingers wrapped around hers. “Come on.”
She let him lead her out of the apartment and down to his car. As they pulled out of the complex, he glanced at Julia.
“I thought pregnant women weren’t supposed to paint.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, a man probably came up with that one. I opened all the windows. It was fine.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And where are we going, anyway?”
“For a drive.”
“Where?”
“Around.”
She laughed. “Fine.”
He took her to a neighborhood north of the city. When he turned in, she grew suspicious.
“You know someone here?”
“Maybe,” he said.
Squat brick houses with flat roofs and narrow windows peeked out from front yards lined with mature oaks and maples. She heard children’s voices and noticed six or seven kids playing kickball at the adjacent public park. Their shrieks of excitement harmonized with the singing birds as they rolled toward the end of a cul-de-sac. That’s when Julia noticed the open house sign and laughed.
She looked at Michael. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Hand in hand, they strolled up the walk and through the front door. Julia slowed, taking in the ’70s slate floor and the olive-green paint. She squeezed his hand.
“Hello?” he called out.
She wanted to turn and run, but he was having too much fun.
“Hello?”
A woman in expensive clothes and sunglasses perfectly nestled atop her head in a mass of yellow-gold hair appeared from a hallway to the right. Her jewelry rattled as she hurried toward them.
“Hi, hello,” she said, offering a hand. Michael shook it. Julia nodded. “My name’s Emily. I’m the Realtor. You want to have a look around?”
“Sure,” he said with a huge smile.
They moved together from room to room. The Realtor pointed out every selling point she could. They included running water and a large eat-in kitchen. Emily pretended not to notice the orange Formica counters or the banana-yellow powder room with flashing gold fixtures. When they reached the living room with its popcorn walls and purple shag carpet, Michael simply plopped down on the white leather couch.
“Much traffic today?” he asked the Realtor.
She nodded. “Quite a bit. A couple of families were very interested.”
“I bet,” he said.
She cleared her throat. Julia touched Michael’s sleeve. “We need to go.”
“Oh, okay,” he said.
“Are you feeling okay?” the Realtor asked.
“Sure, yeah.”
She rushed them from the house and back to the car. As they pulled away, Julia burst out laughing. “That place smelled like a zoo.”
“Yup,” he said.
* * *
—
After they visited a few more houses, much of the amusement faded away. Each one seemed less right than the last. Politely, she asked if they could stop looking. At first, Michael thought it was over. But he’d come home and catch her watching house-remodeling shows and searching the Internet for sales listings. Whenever he asked to help, Julia would just shake her head and change the subject.
One afternoon, while sitting in front of her computer looking through a particularly frustrating set of listings, she leaned back and rubbed her eyes. Checking her watch, she noticed the time. She had twenty minutes to make it to the lunch she had scheduled. It was with a woman whose husband worked with her father at DuLac. They had met years ago and had run into each other a half doz
en times. During the last, they decided to meet up.
So, she shut down the computer and walked out of her office, stopping at the secretary’s desk.
“Going to lunch. I should be back in an hour.”
“Okay.”
The place they had chosen was just two blocks from her building. She arrived in plenty of time to find the woman already seated. Walking up to the table, Julia had to remind herself that her name was Tara.
“Hi,” Tara said, getting up and giving Julia a hug.
“How are you?”
“Great, great.”
They both sat. After they ordered, the conversation lulled for a second, so Julia mentioned that she had been looking for a house.
“Oh, that can be crazy,” Tara said.
“I know. At first, it was fun. Then it just turned . . . kinda awful.”
She laughed. “I know what you mean. But keep at it. I remember when we were looking, I’d almost given up. Then we stumbled into GBA and I just fell in love.”
“GBA?”
Tara laughed again. “Oh, sorry. Glen Brook Acres. It’s our neighborhood.”
“Oh.”
“It’s really amazing. So many kids. And the schools are great.”
Julia leaned forward. “Where is it? North Wilmington?”
“No, Pennsylvania.”
Tara went on and on about GBA. Julia listened, but once she heard “Pennsylvania,” the conversation lost some weight. For her job, she had to live in Delaware, so they hadn’t even considered something like that.
Lunch ended and Tara hugged Julia good-bye.
“Hey,” she said. “If I hear of any houses going up for sale, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks,” Julia said. At the time, though, she thought nothing of it. But that night, before Michael got home, she searched the Internet for Glen Brook Acres. The houses had been built in the past ten years. They had vaulted ceilings and great open floor plans. Every yard she saw in the pictures looked immaculate. Like Tara had said, it just seemed perfect.
The Real Michael Swann Page 13