I offered Jennifer a weak smile, then said, “I just need time to figure everything out. To focus on... To be honest, I don’t know what I should do. But I can come in part-time to get some things off the deck…” I paused, aware of the unintended pun.
Tharren said, “That’s not necessary, Nicole. In three months, you’ll come back, and you’ll, umm… Truman was… is… a great guy and…” He cleared his throat, then turned to Jennifer. “Give Peter the annual report. Give the new girl, what’s-her-face—”
“Bridget?” Jennifer said.
“Yeah, her,” Tharren said. “Give her the molecular immunotherapy piece.”
As Jennifer and Tharren reassigned my workload to other teammates, my breathing quickened. The runaway train in my mind gained speed, and I closed my eyes and forced myself to run ahead of it, to pass the engine, to race ahead of the grill. Soon, the train grew smaller behind me... smaller… so small that I could no longer see it. Safe again, I exhaled, and opened my eyes.
Tharren and Jennifer were staring at me.
I cleared my throat, and whispered, “I’m okay. It’s just…” Hysteria. I forced myself to smile. “Bridget will be good. She really knows the CelluTech voice.”
“Great.” Tharren stood from his chair. “We’ll be thinking about you, Nic. Let us know if you need anything, okay?” To Jennifer, he said, “Stay a moment.”
I didn’t say anything else as I trudged out of that office. I didn’t stop in my step until I reached my car.
24
Asphalt re-tarring on the Sepulveda Pass made my drive back to Beachwood Canyon more treacherous than usual. I didn’t think of anything as I, along with three lanes’ worth of cars, crammed into one lane. I pressed the brake when lights blinked red. Pressed the gas when lights blinked green. My skin burned and itched as though I had rolled on a carpet made from potato chips and smoldering wool. My head hurt, and my stomach growled since I had forgotten to eat breakfast. Again.
On Rockcliff Drive, a car had hit a possum, and now, the animal’s bloody gray corpse was melting into the concrete. I drove past the mess, smelling the creature’s death as I drove up the hill to my house. Poor possum. Couldn’t get out of Death’s way.
No one stood on the front porch.
Maybe tomorrow.
Each time I came home, my heart pounded with hope and expectation. Because maybe this time, Truman would be standing at the door, waiting for me. He would smile sheepishly, and say, “Can’t find my keys.” He could never find his keys. Or his BlackBerry. Or his eye drops.
A man wearing red sweats and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt darted in front of me as I pulled in front of my house. A chocolate Labrador retriever bounded by his side without a leash, but stopped in its trot once I climbed out of my car and rushed to the porch. The Lab stared at me with unblinking dark eyes—you almost hit us—then, he growled.
Anxious, I aimed my key in the vicinity of the lock and missed.
Up ahead, the jogger shouted, “Come, Max!”
The dog glanced at its master, looked back at me, then raced up the hill.
I saw that Jake Huston’s living room windows burned bright with light—he was home. Since the accident, he had left countless voice-mail, e-mail and text messages on my home and mobile phones.
Call me, Nic. I’m—
Hey, Nic. I’m—
If you need—
I never listened or read his messages in their entirety. Didn’t really care what he had to say. So I deleted them, and refused to return his calls.
Undaunted, Jake had knocked on my door a few times.
But I never answered. I’d stand in the foyer, my arms pinned to my sides, mere feet away from him, willing him to just leave me alone, wishing that we had never met.
I shoved the key in the lock and pushed open the door.
The house was cool. Dark. Quiet.
Truman used to shout, “Hey, babe,” when he’d come home. He’d find me on the couch in the upstairs den, or cooking dinner in the kitchen. He’d kiss my forehead three times, retreat to his office to connect his BlackBerry to its charger, then return to my side to talk about our day.
Nothing happened now. No one kissed me. No one called me ‘babe.’
I leaned against the closed front door and slowly exhaled, exhausted by the day.
Something thumped against the floor.
I reached for the doorknob, tempted to walk back out and not stop until I reached the Sunset Marquis and its twenty-four-hour staff. Hand on the knob and holding my breath, I said, “Hello?”
Silence.
I shouted, “Truman?” then cocked my head to listen.
The low thrum of the refrigerator. My own staggered breathing.
The living room furniture hid in the dim light. The telephone sat on the coffee table. Its antenna blinked red—a message. The telephone had become my constant companion. If I sat, I placed the phone on my lap like a Pomeranian. If I showered, I lay the phone on the counter within reach. Each time it rang (and it wasn’t Jake calling), I’d say ‘Hello’ with the hope that Truman was calling to say, “You’ll never guess what happened to me.”
But that hadn’t happened. Yet.
I flipped the foyer’s switch, and light filled the small space. That day’s mail lay scattered beneath the mail slot while five days worth sat on the small wood table. Magazines, credit card offers, bills, not-opened greeting cards that offered comfort and consolation. What would a card say? Did Hallmark publish limbo cards? Best wishes for finding out about your situation so you can know and then deal.
A flat box the size of a child’s blanket leaned against the wall. It held a mandala brocade that Truman had purchased in Tibet. Wherever he traveled, he would bring back arts and crafts. Teddy bear paintings from Paris, a framed mola from Panama, a pan flute from Peru. “For Little Trumanita, whenever she comes,” he’d say. Each piece sat in the guest room, waiting to be displayed in our future daughter’s bedroom.
I grabbed the telephone from the coffee table and returned to the foyer. Called a number I now knew by heart. “Flex, it’s Nicole.”
Flex paused, then said, “Hello, darlin’.”
“Did you all go out today?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Are you giving up?”
“Of course we’re not.”
“Could he still be alive?”
He let out a long sigh
I knew his answer—I asked him these same questions every day—then swallowed nervously. “Thanks, Flex. I’ll talk to you later.”
Newspapers towered in a separate pile on the foyer floor. Heavier than mail, I had kicked them to the side, opening only one with a headline that had captured my attention. Network Executive Missing After Dive Presumed Dead. Despite that word—dead—my future with Truman remained undetermined. ‘Presumed’ offered hope. ‘Presumed’ offered possibility. And I held on to that word like gold.
Since Truman’s accident, time passed in muddy slices of silence. I’d sit on the chaise in the bedroom, on the couch in the living room, or in the kitchen until the light changed in that room, until the telephone rang and brought me back to the present. I avoided Truman’s spaces—the state-of-the-art den downstairs and his home office upstairs. Each time I neared the closed doors to either room, my skin prickled, my mind clicked as though God had installed a Geiger counter near my heart.
Sometimes, I’d forget my life’s new circumstances, and I’d call the house or Truman’s office without remembering. Truman would tell me to leave a message, and promise to call back as soon as possible.
Sometimes, I would stumble across a random thing—a tub of half-empty Cherry Garcia in the freezer or a Post-It note filled with Truman’s scribbling in the bedroom—and I’d stare at that thing, for hours it seemed. Even though Truman wasn’t there in the house, he was still there, in the house.
25
Monica had kept me company since the night Truman didn’t come home. We ate (or Monica ate and I watched he
r eat) and she’d jabber about the celebrity host who had fallen off the wagon and had cursed out her staff, of the ridiculous demands of her richest clients, about old college friends she had found on Facebook. I would smile on cue, offer grunts, “oh reallys” and “wows” but my focus would remain on the phone: willing it to ring with news of Truman’s return from the coral beds of Farnsworth Banks. Monica would go home close to midnight, leaving behind Tupperware filled with spaghetti, chicken or chili. She was my Food Fairy.
And just as she had every night, she set out cartons of food on the coffee table. “Hope you feel like Thai again.”
Leilani flounced through the front door. “I was on a call,” she announced, slamming the door behind her. She wore a tight black skirt set with her latest acquisitions—DD breast implants— draped in black crepe. Dressed for Mourning.
Leilani was the total opposite of her brother. After graduation, she had moved back into her parents’ home with the plan to earn a Masters in Social Work. At home, her ambition quickly waned. Tuna casserole and Salisbury-steak dinners became her Kryptonite. With her parents’ support, she quit her jobs as an administrative assistant at Universal Music; as a management trainee at MetLife; and as the assistant secretary at her family’s old church.
Men—Truman, too—often took care of Leilani’s needs so she never had reason to hold a job. Her latest caretaker was a guy named Jonathan, one of her kinda-boyfriends-but-something-no-one-could-figure-out. Neither Monica nor I knew much about him. Not his last name. Not his educational background. Leilani had told us that he was a born-again Christian who read his Bible during breaks (breaks from what, we didn’t know). But Jonathan’s eyes, always red and rheumy, testified to worship of another spirit.
Truman hated Jonathan, a man who had never worked a sixty-hour work week in his life. A man who lived off a settlement against Food-4-Less, and thought that his ill-gained wealth (we’re convinced that he had staged his fall) made him worth anything. Leilani thought different. Jonathan was her type: a pretty boy with wavy hair, hazel eyes and access to every controlled substance snorted, smoked or shot up in the Northern Hemisphere.
Leilani plopped on the couch next to me and brushed her bronzed cheek against mine. “I talked to Flex today. He said that you two had your daily call.” She slipped off her sunglasses and dropped them into her giant Balenciaga bag.
“He didn’t tell me anything new,” I said.
“The case is closed, Nic,” Leilani said. “That’s why he has nothing to say.”
The police department had not conducted a criminal investigation surrounding Truman’s accident. They had easily determined he had drowned, that we weren’t scamming the system to collect insurance money, and that we weren’t trying to dodge the I.R.S. Two days after the accident, Harvey Feldman, our estate attorney, had petitioned the courts on my behalf. With no body or signs of foul play, a probate judge had declared Truman Baxter as “presumed dead,” and at ten o’clock on that morning, I had officially became a widow.
Harvey had called me after the ruling with a lift in his voice, as though I had reason to celebrate. I thanked him for his help and hung up. A courier had dropped off a large manila envelope stuffed to capacity. Harvey had written the note clipped to a thick sheath of legal papers. Don’t know if you have the latest…
I had never liked discussing wills, estates, and life insurance with Truman. The thought of him dying made me shudder, made my brain freeze. But once he started climbing up and jumping off of things, I had no choice.
Early in our marriage, Truman and I had enjoyed hiking the trails in Griffith Park. On Sunday mornings, we would set out with the sun high above us in a cloudless sky. Hawks searching for food drifted on invisible waves while lizards sunned themselves on rocks. At the top of Mount Hollywood, we’d enjoy the 360-degree view of Los Angeles. We’d share bottles of water and granola bars. We’d kiss, talk, swat at dragonflies and bees.
Truman became bored with the park, with those trails and that view. He wanted to tackle something more challenging. Something more vertical.
I had joined Truman on his earlier excursions to lesser mountains and to tourist-trap caves—not to climb or spelunk beside him, but to enjoy a novel, the hotel and the hotel spa. I stopped tagging along before his first true cave exploration to Moaning Cavern, where the Centers for Disease Control had just alerted spelunkers to an outbreak of bat rabies. Truman left without me, and promised to run from the first bat he saw.
Days before his ascent up Mount Whitney—his first “real” mountain—I had read a news article about a climber who had slipped off Whitney’s slope and had fallen to his death. Truman and I had a great argument that night, awesome entertainment for our neighbors. In the end, he promised to turn around if the climb got too rough. But he didn’t turn around, even after he had broken two fingers and cracked a rib.
I stopped fighting him on this—each adventure he took spoke to his unwavering determination, and each journey symbolized the Black Man’s Struggle. He had something to prove—to the world, to himself. Moaning Cavern would be his last spelunk, and Mount Whitney would be his last climb, then we’d return to Griffith Park and watch the sun set over the Pacific.
But Mount Kilimanjaro followed (19,340 feet high and in Tanzania), and then a larger, more dangerous cave in Peru. We took fewer vacations together since he allocated most of his salary and off-time to climb, crawl and jump.
“Not only is all of this expensive,” I had complained, “it’s also dangerous. You can get infected with something, or break another rib or… You could die, Truman. What would you do then?”
“Nothing,” he had said. “I’d be dead.” He had smiled and squeezed my hand. “If I wanna climb the ladder at work, I gotta do more than play company softball. It’s what they do, Nic, and if I’m with them, I’m right there when they decide to hand out promotions. We were about to jump off that bridge near San Luis Obispo when Keith offered me the E.V.P. slot, remember?”
“I understand the importance of networking and schmoozing,” I had said, “but we shouldn’t hang from bridges since they just stopped hanging us from trees.”
Truman rolled his eyes.
“Since 1922, more than 200 climbers had met their fates on Everest.”
He had cocked an eyebrow. “Did you do some Googling to prepare for this argument?”
“Yes, I did since you’re a numbers guy. And I’ve read Into Thin Air four times.”
He had sighed. “You’re right. It is dangerous. I’ll be careful. Speaking of Everest—”
“Don’t even… Get it out of your… No. No way.”
“Just hear me out, Nic. You won’t believe the idea I had.”
And I didn’t.
For a year, a camera crew would follow a quartet of FSNers (including Truman) as they prepared for a climb up Mount Everest. Then, they would telecast the climbers’ attempt to summit.
He had grinned. “What do you think?”
I had crossed my arms, fixed my jaw and said nothing.
Truman’s bosses had loved the plan.
Climbing made him happy, though, and I knew that he would scale Everest without my support. I also knew that he’d be distracted by my disapproval. And being distracted meant missing a step, neglecting to check oxygen…
Crap.
To show my support, I had jogged beside him as he prepared his lungs and legs for the climb. And a month before the trip, I had presented him with a gift-wrapped trash bag.
“What’s this?” he had asked, poking the bag.
I had shrugged and smiled. “Open it.”
He had peered at me for a moment, then glanced at the bag again.
“It’s not a bomb,” I had said. “Open it before I change my mind.”
He had torn away the paper to find a down parka and a down sleeping bag. He had gawked at me.
I had swiped at my tear-filled eyes. “I don’t want your important bits getting frost-bitten up on the highest mountain in the world.
”
Truman had left for Nepal on the first of May. I didn’t sleep much in anticipation of late-night or early-morning phone calls that would announce either his death or his decision to turn back. I hated the telephone. Its ring had pin-balled and echoed throughout our cavernous house, striking bare walls and Mexican tile floors, only stopping once I answered—another reminder that I lived there alone until my husband, God willing, returned to the States.
Fear (of robbers, of rapists, of everything) had also kept me awake. Since we were anti-gun, Truman had bought a 22-inch machete as a weapon, and while he was away, I had slept with it beneath the mattress. The television had played all night, and every light in the house had burned bright, and I never (not once) watched news stories about young women being raped, stabbed and murdered in parking lots, in their garages, in their beds.
I checked into the Sunset Marquis on nights when the wind had shrieked beneath the house’s eaves and the neighborhood dogs had barked nonstop, and I glimpsed phantoms out of the corner of my eye everywhere I turned. Once, Truman had arranged to have a strawberry cheesecake and a bottle of champagne delivered to my room. The message on the dessert plate: Sweets not shrieks. Luv u. T.
On his tenth day away, I found a PostIt note he had slipped into my Day Planner before leaving the country. Damn, it’s cold up here w/o U. Tru.
I thought about him constantly. During meetings. While taking showers. And I scrutinized every entry Truman’s team had posted on the network’s website.
Tuesday. Hitting base camp today. In great spirits. Never been so cold in my life.
Wednesday. A Dutch climber had to turn back. Pneumonia.
And I had read Truman’s entry more times than I could count.
Hey, everybody. It’s Friday, and we’re resting at Camp Two. Weather’s good. Besides a few aches, doing great and have begun prep for the Big Push. Heading up to Camp 3 tomorrow (fingers crossed) and then, to summit. Check in tomorrow as we start up the hill. I love you, Nicole!
Peace and we’re out!
Truman Baxter at Camp 2
The View from Here Page 9