by Stone, Jean
Zoe looked out the car window. “The thought has crossed my mind, yes.”
Marisol steered under the ramp marked Departures. She wedged the car between a valet van and a limo. “So that’s it, then.”
“What’s it?”
“You’re going to look at another school for Scott. A cheap one, maybe. You’re thinking of sending him far away.”
Zoe opened the door. “Marisol, please. I’m not going to send my son away.”
“Not even to that one back east where William went? I’ll bet you could get them to give you some kind of discount.”
Zoe picked up her carry-on bag. “I’m not going to look at any school for Scott. I’m going away for a few days. Period. End of discussion.”
She opened the car door.
“Will you call me?” Marisol asked.
“Yes. Of course I’ll call.”
Zoe got out of the car and stood by the curb, waiting for assistance with her bags. A porter came. She showed him her ticket and he wheeled her bags away. She leaned back into the car. “Well, I guess I’m off.”
Marisol put her hand on Zoe’s arm. Zoe looked down at the tired brown fingers, the swollen knuckles, the closely trimmed nails rimmed with gray traces of clay. All that Marisol had in her life was her pottery, Zoe, and Scott. Upsetting that balance for Marisol would be devastating to her friend, and yet Zoe had to take that chance.
“Zoe, can you stand it if I ask just one more question?”
Zoe looked into her friend’s dark eyes. “As long as it has nothing to do with where I’m going.”
Marisol turned her head and stared out the windshield. “Does this have anything to do with Eric Matthews?”
Zoe felt a chill envelop her. Marisol knew her too well. But this wasn’t fair. Zoe needed to do this alone, and she deserved her privacy, her right to think and act things through on her own. She stood quietly a moment, then straightened up. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “Take care of Scott.” She slammed the car door and walked with anger, determination, and more than a little guilt, toward the terminal.
Once inside LAX, Zoe ducked into the ladies’ room and put on her disguise. This was not the time for adoring fans to surround her; this was not the time to answer questions of any kind. This time was for Zoe. Not for Scott, not for Marisol. Certainly not for her fans.
She stopped at the newsstand and picked up a copy of the latest New Yorker, then located the gate of the flight departing for Minneapolis. There were no available seats on the commuter to Hibbing; she’d have to rent a car and drive the long drive. But it would be worth it. She hoped.
She boarded the plane, found her seat without being recognized, and settled in, the magazine spread open, close to her face, a position she maintained throughout the three-hour flight, except for a halfhearted attempt to eat the tasteless lunch and a brief trip to the rest room. She had decided not to think about Eric until the plane landed in Minneapolis: there would be enough hours on the drive north to plan what she would do, what she would say, if she found his parents, if she found him.
But as the plane banked for its final descent, Zoe’s mind drifted, drifted to Eric, and couldn’t find its way back. She set down the magazine and gazed out the window at the murky sky. She thought about the way he had loved her, about the way she had loved him. Young love, perhaps, but it had seemed so right at the time. It wasn’t as though they weren’t together long, didn’t know each other well. Seven years. Seven years of setting up housekeeping, seven years of living as man and wife. Looking back, Zoe knew that the first two years had been the best, when neither of them could get jobs, when meals consisted of leftovers Eric brought home from the restaurant where he bused tables, when all they could depend on was each other, and their love.
Then Tin Danahy discovered Zoe. And slowly, as her career escalated, Eric retreated. The night she got pregnant with Scott, Eric had come home drunk, a situation that had become more and more frequent as Zoe’s name became more and more visible. Caught up in her growing fame—busy, exhilarated, and heady with optimism—Zoe hadn’t felt his love diminish. She’d thought she was doing everything for them.
The rivers and streets and houses and buildings grew larger now as the plane tipped, then leveled toward the runway. And as she felt the wheels thump down beneath her, Zoe suddenly knew why she needed to find Eric so badly, and why she needed to do it now: she couldn’t get on with her future until she came to terms with her past. Alissa Page had simply stirred up what had been meandering through Zoe’s veins for years. Sooner or later, with or without Alissa, Zoe knew she would have tried to find Eric. If not for the sake of love, then for revenge. For as much as she deserved privacy from Marisol, privacy from Scott, Zoe deserved to know why Eric had left her. Why he had left her virtually to die.
As she traipsed through the terminal searching for the least expensive car-rental agency, Zoe did a quick mental review of her finances: not the overall picture—God, that would be too much to bear—but the current cash on hand, in purse, right now. She’d allowed herself only six hundred dollars for the trip, and thanks to the latest round of airfare wars, she’d been able to buy a round-trip coach ticket for only four hundred dollars. That left two hundred—for a car, a room, and food. One ninety-seven, she corrected herself, because she’d already given a three-dollar tip to the porter. Zoe had been out of touch with the real world for so long, she wasn’t even sure if $197 would be enough. She stopped at a counter marked Discount Rent-A-Car, and wondered if her fans would ever believe that Zoe had been reduced to counting single dollar bills.
A few minutes later Zoe climbed into the cheapest car she could get: a four-passenger tin box that had roll-down windows and an AM radio. But it was only sixty-nine dollars for four days, including insurance. Things were looking up.
She pulled out the road map the car-rental clerk had provided, started the tinny, pathetic little engine, maneuvered the car through the maze of on-off-arrival-departure ramps, and, propelled by a heart filled with fear, headed north, to Hibbing, birthplace of the famed folk-turned-pop singer, Bob Dylan, and of the Hollywood film-sensation-turned-legend, Zoe. She wondered what it would feel like to be home.
The countryside didn’t look familiar. As she made her way up Highway 35, only the names of some of the towns brought back filtered memories: North Branch, Pine City, Sandstone. She remembered not the towns, but the signs, from her family’s twice-a-year trips into Minneapolis for clothes and shoes and a taste of civilization. Zoe checked her watch. She should make it to Hibbing by nightfall.
She stopped in Cloquet for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, then turned off to join Route 53, which would take her into Virginia. She remembered buying a pair of jeans in Virginia at the Woolworth store. They’d been light blue with rust-colored top stitching. Eric had told her they made her look sexy, so they had become her favorite pair. She’d taken them to L.A.; she’d worn them long after she could afford new ones. She’d worn them for him. After he’d left, she’d thrown them away, along with his high-school picture, the program book from West Side Story, the rabbit’s foot he left behind. She’d thrown it all away, as he had done with her.
Virginia was the first town that looked familiar. It was also the first time Zoe saw a sign that read: Hibbing. The arrow pointed west, on Route 169. Her heart began to pound as she turned left at the sign and, for the first time in twenty years, headed home.
The forests were still there. She traveled for miles, seeing nothing but enormous trees, taller than she remembered, more dense, interrupted only by an occasional house. She smiled when she saw the first Forest Fire Danger indicator standing at the side of the road. The dial was pointed to Moderate. It was a familiar, comfortable sight. She sighed and tried to relax on the stiff, cheap car seat.
And suddenly there was the gas station. The landmark on the edge of town. But something was different, Zoe noted. It was cleaner, newer. The three-bay garage was gone. In its place was some sort of convenience stor
e. And the gas pumps all read Self-Service.
She checked the gauge and decided to pull in. She parked beside a pump and got out. No one was around.
She went into the store. A lone female clerk was behind the counter, watching television.
“Good evening,” Zoe said. The girl looked up and half smiled, then returned to her program. Zoe noticed that she wasn’t a Nordic blond. She had red hair and freckles. Integration, Zoe thought. Integration finally arrives in the Midwest. But it had arrived too late for the dark-eyed Jewish girl who had run away to California before she was swallowed by prejudice.
She poked around the aisles, then decided on a bottle of iced tea and a package of fat-free cinnamon cookies. They probably tasted like cardboard, but it was better than Twinkies or Ring-Dings, although that was certainly what she’d prefer.
She went to the cash register and placed the items on the counter. “I’ll need some gas, too,” she said as the clerk rang up her purchases. “How can I get it?”
“What pump you at?”
“What pump?”
The girl sighed and came out from behind the counter. She peeked out the window. “Number Three,” she said.
“Number Three?” Zoe didn’t understand. All the pumps looked the same to her.
“I’ll turn it on for you. Just pop your cap and pump it in. How much you want?”
“I don’t know. Fill it, I guess.”
“Then you’ve got to give me fifteen dollars now.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cuz I can’t have you running off, now, can I? My boss would have my hide.”
Zoe gave her the fifteen dollars.
“Come back when you’re done. We’ll square up then.”
Somehow Zoe managed to pump her own gas. She splashed some on her hands, spilled some on the fender. She wondered how much money she had wasted. A dime’s worth maybe? A quarter’s? She jammed the nozzle back into the pump and told herself she was being ridiculous. A quarter or a dime wasted would not put her on skid row.
Would it?
The girl owed her $2.35. While she was taking it from the register, Zoe saw an opportunity. She took a deep breath and braced herself to sound casual—interested, but not too interested—for she remembered that northern midwesterners guarded their own.
“Do you know if the Matthewses still live around here?” she asked, although her phone call from the spa already had given her the answer.
“The old people? Sure. Pop and Mrs. Matthews live over on the State Road. Where they always did, I expect. You from around here?”
“No,” Zoe said a little too quickly. “My father used to do business with Pop Matthews. Does he still own his general store?”
The girl shook her head. “Nope. That’s been gone a long time. Most folks go to the shopping centers now. Or stop in here.”
The girl was surprisingly free with information. Zoe decided the new generation played with their own set of rules, even in Hibbing. She took a step closer. “I remember the Matthewses had a son. Do you know if he still lives around here?”
“Eric? Sure. Not in Hibbing, though. He owns the luncheonette over in Chisholm. My sister’s a waitress there.”
Zoe tried to hold back her excitement, tried not to alter the expression on her face. Eric was there. Close by. He had come back to Minnesota, after all. And now she knew where to find him. “Oh,” she said, brushing back a strand of blond wig and trying to sound unfazed. “Well, is there anywhere around here I can spend the night?”
“Back in Virginia, maybe. There’s a motel on the highway. Nothin’ around here.”
“Well,” Zoe said as she scooped her change from the counter and dropped it in her oversize bag. “Thanks.”
Outside, the sun was setting. But even though Zoe knew she’d have to drive all the way back to Virginia to get a room, there was something she had to do first. She got back into the car and, instead of heading back east, drove on into Hibbing. The Matthewses still lived there. On the State Road. Zoe hadn’t had to ask the address: it was half a mile from the house where she grew up.
She drove slowly through the center of town. The buildings, though older and grayer in the north-country twilight, seemed the same; the businesses were different. There was still a barbershop, still a library, which appeared to have the same dirt encrusted on its windows from two decades ago. But where Eric’s father’s store had been—where Eric worked and saved their run-away money—there was now a True Value hardware store. And the movie theater where they’d once held hands and kissed in the dark was now a discount drugstore.
Zoe took a right, past the old high school. She tried to recall the feeling of being there. She couldn’t. It is too painful, she thought. Living in Hibbing had been too painful for a dark-haired Jewish girl who had never fit in. That was when Zoe wondered if this quest to find Eric was more than she’d thought. Maybe there were more ghosts than Eric she needed to dispel. Maybe she needed to put all the pain behind her once and for all.
She slowed the car when she came to her old house, the place where Zoe Naddlemeyer had been raised. She looked to the left. It was still there, though badly in need of paint, sadly in need of repair. She wondered if the people who’d bought it from her parents still lived there. She studied it in the dim dusk. The house seemed smaller than she remembered. Or maybe the trees were bigger. Whatever it was, something was out of sync. Something told her she didn’t belong. Any more than she ever had.
Zoe drove on. And suddenly, there was Eric’s house. The porch on the side, which had been made into a bedroom for him, where Zoe had sneaked in many nights, where they had quietly made love until dawn. There was an old pickup truck in the yard. Zoe would have sworn it was the same truck his father had owned twenty years ago. Only now it was rusted, and it had no license plates.
A soft light glowed behind the lace curtains at the living-room window and illuminated the front porch. The familiar glider was still there. Where she and Eric had sipped lemonade and touched each other in secret places when no one had been looking. But there were other things in the front yard now. A child’s bicycle. A toddler’s jungle gym.
Zoe studied the scene. Surely Pop and Mrs. Matthews didn’t have young children. She glanced at the mailbox at the side of the road. “Matthews,” it read. Then an eerie thought crept into Zoe’s mind: They must have grandchildren. Eric’s children.
This is what I gave up, she thought. This is the life I turned my back on the day Eric and I left for California. And for the first time in many years, Zoe felt grateful to Eric for giving her freedom. Grateful, and yet a little sad for the roots and the hometown she’d never really had.
She sat a moment longer, then put the car in gear and made a U-turn in the direction of Virginia, and a night’s sleep. Tomorrow she would decide what to do next. If anything.
She hardly slept. In the morning Zoe walked to a doughnut shop across the street from the run-down motel and bought a corn muffin and a cup of coffee. She carried another cup back to her room.
As she peeled the lid from the plastic container, Zoe wondered if she would even recognize Eric. Fifteen years was a long time. Surely, if he’d seen her before she’d gone to the Golden Key, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Maybe he looked different, too. Maybe he was fat, as she had been. Maybe he was bald.
Maybe he’d had a stroke and was paralyzed on one side. But the part of her that wished that was true was scolded by the part of her that didn’t.
She blamed him. She still did. If he hadn’t left her, she probably wouldn’t have had the stroke on the day Scott was born. But, then, she’d never asked the doctors if that could be true because the doctors weren’t aware—no one but William and Marisol were—of what had really happened in her life, or that Scott was not William’s son.
Yes, she blamed Eric. It had to have been his fault. It certainly couldn’t have been hers.
She sipped the steamy coffee. It tasted like plastic.
And now she needed to se
e him. To have him see her, to show him she’d survived. Physically. Emotionally. She set the coffee down on the laminated nightstand. But now, as much as she had wanted revenge, Zoe wanted to thank him. For enabling her to have the wonderful years she’d had with William. For giving her life beyond Hibbing.
But first, she wanted to call Marisol.
As she dialed the numbers, she hoped Marisol wasn’t angry with her. She hoped she wouldn’t be angry once she knew where Zoe was. Something told her that wouldn’t happen, but Marisol had been right: they were best friends, confidants. She needed to share what she was doing with her—not with Meg Cooper, not with Alissa Page, but with Marisol. The one who had been there for her when no one else had.
“I knew you were up to something stupid like that,” Marisol shouted into the phone. “He left you, honey. Have you forgotten?”
“Marisol, wait.” Zoe tried to get a word in edgewise. “I needed to come here. I know why now. It’s not because I want to get back together with Eric. It’s because I have to thank him …”
Her friend laughed. “Thank him! For what? For dumping you? For making you cry every day and every night for how many nights, I can’t remember, though God knows I should because I was there for every one of them, and don’t you ever forget it.”
“Marisol …” Zoe stared at the torn vinyl chair that sat in front of faded plastic drapes. She shuddered to think that her home might have been decorated that way if she’d stayed in Hibbing.
“And what about Scottie? Have you thought what this is going to do to him? He worshiped William and you know it. After all these years why drag this up now? It’s only going to hurt him, Zoe, it’s only going to hurt him big-time, and he doesn’t need to be hurt anymore. He may be taller than the both of us now, but he’s still a little boy deep down inside where it counts, where the hurt always comes from.”
Zoe let her friend ramble until she needed to catch her breath. Then she quickly said, “Marisol, I’m not going to tell Scott. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I left to come here, but now I know. There’s no need to tell him. Not now. Not ever. It’s just like we decided a long time ago. Me. You. And William.”