by Dani Shapiro
“So what have I missed?” Clara asks Laurel as they turn onto Eagle Lake Road, past the multicolored Christmas lights still strung along the roof and windows of the Perettis’ house.
“Oh, not a whole hell of a lot,” Laurel says.
“Mommy?” Emily pipes up from the backseat.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Can Sam sleep over this weekend?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Em. Sammy’s mother has been away for a long time—she probably wants her all to herself.”
Laurel keeps her eyes on the road. Slows to a rolling stop at the intersection of Sound Drive and Route 102, concentrating—Clara thinks this—probably more than she needs to. Carefully avoiding eye contact. Avoiding any possibility of intensity or discomfort.
“Hey, Sammy,” Clara says. Knowing better. “Tell me what’s been going on at school.”
“Nothing.”
This is always the hard part. Getting the dribs and drabs, the pieces of the puzzle of a nine-year-old girl’s life. Sometimes Sam volunteers a lot. Other times, she talks in monosyllables. The thing is, Clara isn’t sure how far to push.
“Oh, come on. Something must be going on!”
She sounds like an annoying mother, and she knows it.
“I told you.” Sam’s voice raises, and Laurel’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly, a ripple across her brow. “Nothing.”
“Fine,” Clara says softly. Sammy never speaks to her like this. Especially not in front of other people. “Never mind.”
They fall into silence, the mothers and daughters. After a few minutes, Laurel bends forward and fiddles with the radio dial. The local weather report crackles through the truck’s old speakers. Well, folks, looks like we have some snow headed our way. Boston already has… The broadcast fades into static, so Laurel switches it off.
“Really?” Clara asks. “How much are they guessing?”
“Not much,” says Laurel. “A couple of inches overnight.”
Clara thinks about Jonathan; he’s probably spent the day in his workroom. Whole days, as he solders twenty-four-carat gold around semiprecious stones, as he cuts slices of watermelon tourmalines and dangles them from the most delicate wires strung with seed pearls. His eyes covered with goggles. His head filled with his favorite lotech music from his iPod. At the end of such a day, he emerges as if from a long involved dream. Blinking his way back into reality—sweet, spent, emptied out.
As for reality, Clara is just trying to hold on. Reality feels a bit out of her grasp at the moment—her daughter is unfamiliar to her, whispering and giggling in the backseat. Suddenly the sharer and keeper of secrets. She lowers her sun visor and tries to get a glimpse of Sam in the mirror. Is it possible that Sam’s face has changed in the past few weeks? She appears less girlish. The bones of her face are more prominent, angular.
And Jonathan—Clara knows she should have told Jonathan she was coming home. She should have said it on the phone last night—it was stupid, really—but he’s been so angry at her. His voice had nothing left for her—no sympathy, none of his usual gentleness. She thought it would be better if she simply showed up. Back home for good.
“So, I noticed that Jonathan redid his windows,” Laurel changes the subject.
“Yeah? Are they good?”
“His windows are always gorgeous. It’s like an underwater reef—and all the jewelry is coral.”
“There are pearls too,” Sammy pipes up from the backseat.
Clara swivels around. “Did you help Daddy with the windows?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “It’s pretty cool. We tried to make it look like a shipwreck.”
Even though Jonathan’s business caters almost entirely to the summer crowd, he takes great care with his windows this time of year. It’s his little contribution, his attempt to inject some beauty into the dismal gray stretch of mud season. For the regular folk on the island, his stuff is too expensive even for special occasions. Jonathan has tried to produce some less pricey lines: silver and copper pieces imported from Bali. But those haven’t sold well. Year-rounders don’t tend to have extra money for luxuries, and if they do they buy a new tricycle for their kid or upgrade their snowblower. Fancy jewelry—well, that’s for the people who drive across the causeway on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, their Range Rovers packed with tennis rackets and golf clubs, titanium bicycles hanging from a rack, wheels lazily spinning in the breeze.
“Here we are.” Laurel slows to a stop in front of their house. Clara hears the click of Sammy unbuckling her seat belt, the rustling of papers as she gathers her books. And Clara—Clara sits still for a minute, gripping the handle. She takes a deep breath. She is surprised by the beauty, the solidity of her own house standing tall and proud in the blue-gray dusk. The wide front porch—painted with a fresh coat of white last summer—its wicker furniture pushed to the side and protected by heavy green tarps. The boxwoods on either side of the steps to the porch, wrapped in burlap for the winter months. The yellow light pouring from the tall windows of the living room. Home. The caw of seagulls as she opens the truck’s door. Home. The brackish smell of the harbor. Home. Her heart seems to beat the word over and over again.
“See you tomorrow,” calls Laurel, as she pulls away from the curb.
“Thanks again!”
Clara stands with her arm around Sammy, waving goodbye.
“They’re such good people,” Clara says. She’s buoyed for a moment, by a sense that all is well. She’s back where she belongs.
But then Sammy shrugs. “I guess. Whatever.”
“Samantha, what has gotten—” Clara starts, then stops. What has gotten into you? She can’t ask the question. And the brief wave of optimism rolls away from her, back to sea.
Through the glass panels by the front door, Clara sees a shadow moving. Of course, Jonathan is home waiting for Sammy to be dropped off. It’s after five. He’s expecting Sammy, but not—
The door opens and Jonathan fills the frame. The bulb in the porch light has blown; he squints down the front walk, his eyes growing accustomed to the twilight. Tall and rangy—Clara has always loved his largeness—in his jeans and T-shirt. Longish gray waves tucked behind his ears. The glint of his wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Jonathan. Home, home, home.
“Hey, Dad!”
Sammy takes off, bounding up the steps to him.
“Hey, lovey. How was your day?”
Clara’s still standing there. She feels the oddest sensation. As if she herself is invisible. As if Jonathan is looking straight through her body at the McCulloughs’ house across the street. Maybe she’s lost her mind. Maybe she’s gone completely insane—she always wondered if she might—and really she’s still back in New York. Sitting by Ruth’s bedside. The soft white sheets, the amber plastic bottles, the vague and constant stench of urine—
“Well, well, well.”
Jonathan’s voice. Directed at her. His eyes—exhausted from painstaking attention to his work—finally focusing on her. Taking her in.
“I’m here,” she says.
“I see that,” he says.
Sammy is looking back and forth between them, her antennae set to the highest frequency. How much of the tension between her parents has she picked up on?
It takes Jonathan four long strides to reach Clara. He wraps his arms all the way around her, pulling her close to him. Enveloping her. She is small in his arms—fitting neatly into his chest, her head tucked beneath his chin—like two pieces to a puzzle. Hasn’t she always marveled at that? The way she seems to just click into his body as if she had been made for him? But now—now the puzzle is more complicated, the pieces harder to sort out.
“This doesn’t mean everything’s okay,” Jonathan whispers. “It just means I love you.”
Tears spill down Clara’s cheeks, and she wipes them on Jonathan’s T-shirt. She doesn’t want Sammy to see her cry.
“Where are your bags?” Jonathan asks.
“I don’t have any.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t bring anything with me,” Clara says.
“Oh,” says Jonathan. “So that when you go back—”
She pulls away from him. Looks into his green eyes—she has always felt able to see all the way into him—and speaks slowly. Wanting to say it only once. Wanting the words to sink in.
“I’m not going back,” she says.
NEW HAVEN. Clara was eighteen years old and constantly afraid. Fear wasn’t new to her, but this was different. She felt jostled and bumped, as if passersby couldn’t see her. She felt as though she might have melted, or somehow crumbled into nothing. The Gothic steeples and spires of the Yale campus rose gray and menacing all around her, piercing the soft blue membrane of the sky. The students walked in packs, oblivious of the girl wandering around by herself. They hugged their books to their chests, deep in conversation. Clara watched them—with envy, with greed, with something like remorse. She could have been one of them, next year—if she had stayed home, if she had finished school. If she had put her college applications in the mail instead of ripping them into shreds and feeding them to the incinerator.
She was jumpy, anxious—her whole body tensed like a sprinter’s at the starting gate—waiting for the sound of a gunshot, ready to take off. Every time someone caught her eye, she was sure Ruth had sent them to spy on her. Of course, no one was looking at her. No one at all. With her hair spiky and jet-black, fifteen extra pounds on her delicate frame, and a silver stud in her nostril, even the most dedicated art student would have had a hard time recognizing Clara as the little girl in the photographs of Ruth Dunne.
But it wasn’t just that. Surely, Ruth would have called the police.
My daughter Clara is in grave danger, I’m certain of it.
How old is she, ma’am?
Well—she’s eighteen.
Sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
Every professor, every man in a suit, looked like a detective. Clara kept reminding herself that she wasn’t a kid running away from home. She was an adult. She had a right to do whatever she wanted. And what she wanted was to disappear. Didn’t she? After a lifetime of being stared at—the second glances, the frank appraisals—she was finally invisible. She hardly knew what to do with herself.
She is living on Tamara Stein’s floor. Tamara had been a year ahead of Clara at Brearley, and honestly they hardly knew each other. Clara chose her precisely because Ruth wouldn’t even know her name. Tamara—the math geek—would not be on the long list of people whom Ruth would certainly call, frantic, searching. Tamara’s parents were professors of religious studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
On her third night, Clara is lying on her makeshift bed of blankets when Tamara rolls over and switches on the light.
“So why did you do it?” she asks abruptly. She isn’t one for social graces. Too smart to waste time on small talk.
“Do what?” Clara has been hoping that Tamara would just leave her alone.
“Run away.”
“I didn’t run away. I’m eighteen.”
“But you quit school.”
“Yeah,” Clara says.
Tamara waits. Expecting more.
“Yeah, well, I just couldn’t handle being at home anymore.”
Tamara sits up in bed. Her hair is a halo of curls. Everything about her is round: her face, her belly, even the calves poking out from beneath her nightgown.
“Because of your mother’s pictures?” she asks, her voice gentle.
Clara’s throat constricts. Tamara Stein’s expression—the grave empathy—is almost more than Clara can bear. She pushes herself up on both elbows, grinding her bones into the hard floor, willing herself not to cry. So Tamara—even Tamara—knew about the pictures.
“I thought maybe you didn’t—”
“Oh,” said Tamara, “everyone talked about it.”
Clara’s friends at Brearley always used to tell her how lucky she was. You’re famous, the other girls would say to her—that is, the ones who didn’t jealously turn their backs. Certainly, Brearley had its share of big-deal girls—Caroline Kennedy had been a student years earlier, and each class had a smattering of the children of well-known artists and actors. It wasn’t unusual for a Brearley girl to perform in the Christmas production of The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center or fly off for the weekend on her family’s private jet. But somehow, Clara—or the image of Clara—captured the imagination of her classmates. You’re in your mother’s photographs; that’s so cool. Did you know my uncle bought one at Christie’s last week?
“It was horrible,” Clara whispers—to Tamara Stein, of all people. “I wanted to die.”
“I’m sure you did,” Tamara says.
“What?”
“Want to die. I mean, it’s sort of like your mother was”—Tamara struggles to get the words out—“abusing you.”
Even though Clara is on the floor, she feels like she’s tumbling through the air in free fall. Some part of her wants to defend Ruth. Some other part of her wants to hug Tamara Stein.
“I used to wonder if you had any choice,” says Tamara. “I mean—did your mother pay you? Did she make you do it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Clara says. “Please.”
She lowers her head back down to the floor and hopes Tamara will stop. She focuses on a poster, thumbtacked to the wall above Tamara’s desk: Albert Einstein, his white shock of hair, his gentle smile.
“Of course,” Tamara says. “Sorry.”
She leans over to her bedside table and switches off the light. The creak of bedsprings as she settles herself. Her fat little body, Clara thinks. And then—she was only trying to understand. Down at the other end of the dorm, somebody’s having a party. The clink of beer bottles. The steady thump of music.
Tamara’s voice floats in the darkness. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Clara—but I always felt sorry for you.”
And so Clara wandered the campus of Yale University, surrounded by real people, as she thought of them, living real lives. She herself had forfeited that right—or perhaps she’d never had it at all. Perhaps it simply wasn’t possible for her to find some sort of normal terrain. Was there a place in the world for someone like her? A special place—a lost land of child muses? These were the kinds of thoughts that buzzed through Clara’s head as she blended into the fabric of New Haven life.
Days turned into weeks turned into months. She looked very much like a college student. She borrowed Tamara’s library card—the librarian didn’t so much as glance at the photo—and spent hours in the stacks, comfortable there, picking through this and that. Kant, Nietzsche: shelves full of answerless questions. She abandoned philosophy in favor of psychology—in particular, child psychology. Here was D. W. Winnicott on the subject of the good-enough mother. Had Ruth been a good-enough mother? Clara saw Ruth’s face, superimposed, a transparency, everywhere she looked. The pale skin, the angry curve of her lips, her accusing eyes. How could you do this to me? How could you?
Last week—worn down by loneliness—she found herself feeding coins into a pay phone. Calling home. She hardly knew what she was doing as her fingers dialed the numbers she had known all her life.
Studio, an intern’s voice said, young and fairly bursting with self-importance. Studio. A bit more forceful this time. Hello—who is this?
And Clara—Clara gently replaced the pay-phone receiver back on its hook. She stood still for a moment, trying to regulate her breath. Ruth was okay. Ruth would survive. Ruth had found another eighteen-year-old to take Clara’s place.
She is sitting at a long library table, looking through an atlas of North America, when she hears a voice behind her. So startling—to hear a voice at all.
“Plotting your escape?”
A man’s voice, not a boy’s.
She jumps in her seat, turning in the direction of the voice.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Jonathan Brodeur.” He extends his hand.
“Clara Dunne,” she says, without thinking—then instantly regrets it. What if he—but he doesn’t. No blink of recognition. No sense of a reaction at all.
“Nice to meet you, Clara Dunne.”
She waits—suddenly, strangely calm—to see what he’ll say or do next. Why has he come up to her? He doesn’t seem to want anything. He’s just standing there, his arms loosely folded. Taking her in.
“May I sit down?” He gestures to the empty chair next to her.
It’s a free world. Whatever.
Tough-girl phrases bubble up inside of her, but she stops them. Holds them in her mouth like something to be spit out.
“Sure,” she says. She slides the atlas farther down the table. She had been looking at the western states—Montana, Idaho—but he doesn’t need to know that.
“So, seriously,” Jonathan says, “why are you looking at the map?”
Clara shakes her head. Slightly worried now. Is there any possibility that this guy has been sent by Ruth? He doesn’t look like a private investigator—in Clara’s mind, private investigators wear poorly cut suits and have potbellies—but you never know.
“I’ve been watching you,” he goes on. “You’ve been sitting at this table every day staring at that thing.”
“So?”
“So, nothing.” He stops. “Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Clara says. But she doesn’t entirely mean it. Maybe she should get out of here. She pushes her chair back, the wooden legs scraping loudly against the floor—ready to flee, to race down the aisles of this cavernous room and out the glass doors of the library into the bright sunlight.