Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel

by Camille Pagán

  The idea of having all of this back brought tears to my eyes. Yet I could not bring myself to say yes. I wanted a guarantee he would never again go back on his promises.

  “What can I do? Just tell me what it will take,” Adam said, searching my face.

  The words tumbled out before I considered them. “Prove it,” I said. “Find some way to show you’ll never hurt me like that again.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When Charlie called the next day and asked if I wanted to go on a bike ride that evening, I was still so mentally muddled by Adam’s visit that I almost said no. But even that one word seemed duplicitous; I needed to tell him what had happened. We agreed to meet at a riverfront park near my house an hour before sunset.

  “Hi,” he said, and kissed me lightly after getting out of his car. Then he pulled his head back and looked at me. “You okay?”

  “Me?” I squeaked, all too aware that I looked like someone had just taken a Super Soaker to my t-shirt. When Charlie’s eyes met mine, I blurted, “I saw Adam yesterday.”

  “So . . . this isn’t about me asking you to spend the night,” he said, slipping his car keys into the pocket of his shorts.

  My face crumpled. “Sort of? But not really?”

  Charlie sighed and leaned against the side of his sedan. “Okay. Let’s start with Adam.”

  There were dozens of semi-eloquent ways I could have described what had happened. Instead of choosing any one of them, I said, “He asked me to take him back.”

  He ran a hand over the top of his head. “Fantastic.”

  “I’m trying to be honest.”

  He glanced at his bike, which was on a rack fastened to the back of his car, looking as perturbed as I’d ever seen him. I wondered if he was debating whether to bother taking the bike off. He turned back to me. “I’m going to make a wild guess: you didn’t say no.”

  “I didn’t say yes,” I said, gripping the handlebars of the bike he had given me.

  “But again, you didn’t say no. Am I allowed to ask how this went down?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Am I allowed’?” I said defensively. “You can ask me whatever you want.”

  “That may be true, but between this and the spending the night thing, you’ve been putting up some fences lately.”

  “Given what I’ve been through the past year, is that such a surprise? Anyway, you might be leaving. Good fences make for good goodbyes.”

  He snorted. “Funny, but I didn’t say I was leaving. I said I was thinking about it, which isn’t the same. And if you’re so intent on keeping this,” he said, gesturing between us, “casual, what does it matter to you?”

  My eyes smarted. Like me, he was being honest, but it felt mean—maybe because his honesty highlighted the chasm between my words and my actions.

  Charlie sighed. “So Adam shows up and says . . . what? ‘I almost died, and it made me realize what a mistake I made’?”

  I stared at the tread on my bike wheel. “Pretty much. But the man just had a brush with death. I needed to hear him out.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he said firmly. “You knew any conversation you had wasn’t going to change the past. I mean, I’ve got to wonder if you’ve been waiting for him all along.”

  I could feel blood rushing to my cheeks. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? If you’re really done with him, then what’s the point of talking through things?” His dark eyes were boring holes into me. “But you’re not done, are you?”

  “Charlie!”

  He looked at me sadly.

  I had only known Charlie for four months, and much of our relationship had played out between the sheets; how could I really consider him a factor in whether to remarry my husband of twenty-seven years? Okay, so he liked to stroke my hair after we made love. And maybe we had long, interesting conversations about crop circles and global warming and the many iterations of Fleetwood Mac. But just as I had with Ian many years ago, I was on the verge of mistaking lust for love. I mean, even with a muted scowl on his face, my instinct was to touch Charlie somewhere, anywhere—maybe his stomach, as he liked when I ran my fingers down the plane of it; or his arms, though to feel them beneath my fingers was to morph into the sex-crazed teen I had not actually been—and speak to him in the language in which we communicated best.

  Charlie reached into his pocket again and retrieved his keys, and I understood that the only ride I would be taking this evening was back to my house. “I was okay with casual,” he said in a low voice. “I was ready to get more serious, but I was also willing to go at your speed so you stayed comfortable. But I’m not okay with being someone’s second choice.”

  “You’re not my second choice!” I protested. How could he be second, if I didn’t know who first was?

  “The thing is, Maggie, I didn’t make a big deal out of you going to be with Adam for his surgery. I tried to be understanding since it was a crisis and you needed to be with your kids. But I’m fifty years old, and I know where my line in the sand is.” We were in the parking lot, and Charlie pointed to the asphalt we were standing on. “This is it.”

  “I share two children with Adam,” I said lamely. “I can’t just send him a cease and desist.”

  Instead of answering, he put his head in his hands. After a moment, he looked up. “What do you want to do, Maggie? Tell me what makes sense here.”

  The park was just in front of us, and fireflies were rising from the grass and lighting up the yard with their aerial mating dance. They were the first of the season, and I watched them for a moment. “I don’t know,” I finally said.

  “I should go,” Charlie said.

  No, I thought.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Our eyes met, and for a split second I thought maybe I did know what made sense. Charlie reached forward and touched my arm so quickly it was almost as though I had imagined it. Then he stepped back and said, “Bye, Maggie. I’ll see you around.”

  I waited until he had driven away. Then I wheeled my bike through the grass toward the water. When I reached the shore, I laid my bike in the grass and sat on a boulder stationed at the water’s edge.

  I sat there until it was almost dark, even though the mosquitoes were making a meal of me and I would have to walk home because I didn’t have a light for my bicycle. Charlie had said he was ready for something more serious. I, however, was not—otherwise I would have stopped him from leaving.

  As the river rushed before me, I thought of the Tiber in Rome, which then made me think of Jean. She said she was happiest by herself. Maybe my indecision indicated I would be, too. Well, perhaps not happy. But I would be safe—and that was almost the same thing.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I once read that the recipe for a good life had but three ingredients: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.

  I had my children, Gita, and Rose to love. And now that I was volunteering at Second Chance, I had something to do. Felicia had asked me to put in five hours a week, but there was enough work to fill forty, and I had already told her I would gladly double my shifts.

  It seemed again, however, that I had nothing to look forward to. For a long time after Adam left, the only good thing I could anticipate was a glass of wine at the end of the day. That had begun to turn around for me in Ann Arbor, even though my future remained a murky cloud on the horizon. I had Charlie to thank for some of that; life was brighter when I was with him, and when I wasn’t, I was always looking forward to the next time we would be together.

  Beyond Charlie, though perhaps partially because of him, I had begun to recover from the divorce. Finally, I was able to get excited about what was around the corner—whether my morning coffee run or the kids’ upcoming visit to Ann Arbor. It was like I had slowly begun to remember what it was like to be the old me, even if I had not reinhabited her.

  But now I was starting to slide backward, away from myself and toward the unknown.

  This time, however, I kne
w how to do this. I knew how to claw my way out of the dark.

  The first thing I did was throw myself into work.

  Felicia set me up in a brightly lit office in the small bungalow that was Second Chance’s headquarters. “You’re my only career counselor right now, so make yourself comfy,” she told me, and though I wasn’t sure why I was bothering sprucing up a space that I wouldn’t spend more than a few months in, I brought in a few houseplants and a couple pictures of the kids.

  The work itself was all-consuming, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it. As I had learned as a social worker decades earlier and was again reminded at Second Chance, it was impossible to focus on your own worries when those of the person in front of you were so much greater.

  There was Elizabeth, who had shot her abusive husband in an attempt to save her own life and was rewarded with a prison sentence for firing an unregistered gun. Elizabeth did not trust anyone, but especially not men, she told me. If I could not help her find a job where she wouldn’t have to be around them, then she wouldn’t keep coming to see me. This sounded like an impossibly tall order, but I promised her I would do my best.

  Another client, Tonya, had robbed a 7-Eleven, netting ninety-six dollars and a twelve-year prison sentence. She was lucky to get out two years early, she said, but now she felt hopeless. “My kids were practically babies when I went away. Now they’re in high school, and I don’t know what to say to them,” she said, her voice void of affect.

  I suspected Tonya was grappling with depression, but when I suggested she talk to Felicia, who was a certified counselor, or see a psychiatrist affiliated with Second Chance, Tonya told me she didn’t believe in voodoo or witch doctors. And when I started talking about potential jobs that might be a good fit, she stood up and walked out on me. “I’ll be back when I’m ready,” she said.

  Then there was Crystal. A wisp of a woman, she stomped into my office one afternoon and stared me down from across my desk. Her hair was bleached blond, and she was wearing a t-shirt so large it threatened to swallow her whole; her bra, which was the color of dishwater, was visible through the armholes. “Don’t you have my record?” she retorted after I asked her why she had been in prison.

  “Sure, but I want to hear your story from you,” I said.

  “Drugs,” she said.

  “And?”

  “That’s it.” She was staring at me like I’d been the one to put her away in the first place. “What makes you think you can help me?”

  I searched my mind for a reason that would not offend her and failed to find a single one.

  “Exactly,” she said, looking me up and down. “As far as I can tell, you can’t.”

  My defenses were on their way up, so I took what Gita called a cleansing breath, which neither cleansed nor calmed me. I wanted to remind Crystal that I was not her parole officer; she was at Second Chance by choice, not obligation, and at no cost to her. But even more than I wanted to clarify, I wanted to help her. I pasted a smile on my face. “I don’t know what you’ve been through. What I do know is that you need a job, and I have a list of leads for you.” I pushed the paper in front of me across the desk toward her.

  She peered down at the list I had printed out. “I don’t know shit about baking. And I sure as shit am not cleaning toilets.”

  “It’s up to you to decide what you want to pursue. Just keep in mind that the baking position provides on-the-job training; you don’t have to know anything. The pay is decent, and you could work early mornings so you’d be home for your daughter in the afternoon. In your paperwork, you mentioned that was a top priority. Is that still true?”

  “I guess,” she said, and looked out the window.

  I followed her gaze. It was a beautiful June day, clear and crisp and bright. The weather was perfect for a bike ride, or a picnic for two, I thought with a pang as I turned back to Crystal.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said after a minute. “They’re not going to want me, though.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “’Cause I didn’t get the last four gigs I applied for. Didn’t the woman who worked here before you tell you that?”

  I tugged at my ponytail, which suddenly felt far too tight. “No, she didn’t. I just started volunteering here, and whoever was here before was already long gone. Would you like me to help you fill out the application?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Like I said, let me think about it.”

  I told her the job could be filled by next week, but if she wanted time, we could revisit it when she came in again. What I did not tell Crystal was that I was beginning to think waiting was often the worst idea. Sometimes the longer you thought about something, the harder it became to make a decision.

  I had not spoken with Adam since he showed up at my door in May; the ring he had pressed into my hand was in a sealed envelope in my sock drawer. But he had been emailing what he must have thought of as the proof I had requested since the week after he left. His messages were brief missives that were addressed to me, but never signed:

  Saved a client from a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit.

  Sold the firm to Michael; half the profits from the sale go to you. My lawyer will reach out.

  Was offered a full-time position at the Innocence Collaboration. Think I’m going to take it.

  Clean bill of health from my surgeon.

  Took the offer.

  Have started meditating.

  Each time one of these messages arrived, I thought, Is this enough?

  And each time, I didn’t know.

  It seemed to me that Adam was, as he had sworn, a changed man—and that he was still changing. Yet there was something about the situation with Jillian that didn’t sit right with me. Sometimes I wondered if she existed at all; other times, I felt she had a key to my husband’s secret heart.

  She made me feel like I had options. Like I could make a change anytime I wanted to, he had said. But why? Was it her youth? Her adoration for him? If I figured out what it was about Jillian that had made Adam feel like he could change, could I take that knowledge and apply it to my new relationship with him in order to keep him from flip-flopping again?

  One morning in mid-June, I stopped at Maizie’s before heading into Second Chance. Leah, a barista I was friendly with, was making my coffee, and I stood to the side, waiting for her to finish. As I waited, a tall, thin man wearing a suit strolled up to the counter. I immediately recognized him as Adrian Fromm.

  “Large latte, two extra shots, please,” said Adrian, typing furiously on his phone. My mother, who had worked as a waitress off and on for years, had always said that you could tell who a person really was by watching the way he treated someone serving him. That Adrian had said “please” without actually looking at Walter seemed to sum him up perfectly.

  “That’ll be three fifty,” said Walter agreeably.

  Adrian reached into his back pocket and handed Walter a gold credit card without looking up. He signed the receipt Walter handed him, then shuffled to the side while typing—walking right into me in the process.

  His fingers froze and he glanced up. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Then he immediately began typing again, perhaps updating his vast social network on the middle-aged woman he had just looked through.

  “You don’t recognize me,” I said.

  His head rose. Still, for a moment there was nary a light behind his eyes. Finally he said, “Maggie! Hello. Funny seeing you here.”

  “Hi, Adrian. How are things at CenterPoint?”

  He made the same duck face he had made during our interview. Then he said, “Good, good. Everything’s right on track.” Then he surprised me and said, “What about you, Maggie? Where did you land?”

  “I’m working as a volunteer at Second Chance. It’s an organization that helps women transition back to everyday life after leaving prison. Ever heard of it?”

  “Can’t say that I have, though it sounds like a great place. Volunteering,
though? Wouldn’t coming to work for CenterPoint have made more sense for your career?”

  He was wearing tortoiseshell glasses, and even inches from my face, the lenses did not distort his eyes in the slightest, making me wonder if they were non-Rx frames intended to lend him the gravitas he thought was required in order to convince people to hand over their cash.

  “In theory?” I said. “Definitely. But I’m in a somewhat transitory period in my life, and I wanted to do the thing that interested me most, rather than the one that offered the safest path.” I smiled; I had not quite thought of it that way until I said it out loud.

  “Maggie?” called Leah from over the bar. “Your cappuccino is up.”

  I thanked her and retrieved my coffee from the counter. Felicia had recently told me that Second Chance could offer far more programs if only they had additional funding. Adrian had said the ability to raise capital was arguably the most charitable endeavor a person could undertake. Well, I was about to undertake it.

  I turned back to Adrian. “If I recall, one of CenterPoint’s main missions is to secure financing for charitable organizations, yes?”

  He nodded and took his coffee, which had just been called, from the counter.

  “Would you mind if I gave you a call later this week about Second Chance? We have a literacy program and a housing initiative that we desperately need funding for, and I have a feeling our director would love to have a conversation with you about a possible partnership.”

  Adrian stared at me for a moment. Then he smiled. “Call me anytime, Maggie. We’ll get a meeting on the books.”

  I told him I would. Then I went outside and sat on a bench, thinking that I might have just seen the faintest glimmer of the light Gita had spoken of.

  TWENTY-SIX

  At the end of June, Zoe and Jack flew in for a weekend to celebrate my birthday. I wasn’t big on birthdays, at least not my own; it was really an excuse for me to spend time with my children, whom I missed as much as I ever had.