Although she felt uneasy about driving alone on such a long trip, she was glad to have the time to herself. Ralph had become increasingly moody since his forced retirement, like a successful greyhound who is forced off the track after a profitable career. And Catherine had been off-kilter for days, at least since the going-away party from her tennis team. Not so much that it was a surprise, for she felt that ten years as an anchor playing number one and then ten years as a floater meant something, but for its sentimentality. Younger women who had happily replaced her on the team roster showed up with heartfelt cards that sounded like they were directed to someone dying of a slow-growing, intractable disease. They wrote We’ll never forget you and Stay the course on ivory cards with serious cursive script. Women who had aimed overheads at her gut and accused her of tight line calls had drawn fanciful hearts with colorful ink messages: Friends forever, never apart / Maybe in distance but not in heart. And it seemed every woman Catherine had ever met in her life wanted to take her to coffee and talk about her move. To stop her in the grocery or drugstore and ask how it felt to be going south, as if she were embarking on a one-way trip to the moon. One had even asked incredulously: “I mean, do you even like shrimp and grits?” as if that were an imperative for relocating south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
After checking in at a roadside hotel in central Virginia and taking Karma for a long walk on a side road, Catherine had a pleasant meal at a Japanese steak house. Pieces of sushi and sashimi arrived at her table on a series of small plates. Because she’d forgotten her book, she kept pushing the ceramic dishes apart and together, trying to visualize what she’d learned about continental drift.
Back in her hotel room, she watched the local ten o’clock news. A young woman with shellacked hair and a strong Southern accent spoke of a recent rash of house break-ins in Albemarle County. She thought again of Amity and her bizarre inclination to wander through strangers’ homes. Catherine hoped she would find her again. She wondered what it would feel like to get out of her comfort zone. To stand on the edge of a tectonic plate as it was moving toward something else.
The next morning she woke up feeling a refreshing freedom and realized it had been twenty years since she’d last traveled alone. She’d met Martha in Las Vegas for a girls’ weekend and had gotten there a day early. It fell between her sister’s second divorce and third wedding, but what she remembered about the visit was not feeling free, but sweating by a crowded pool and feeling proud she was the only woman in the world who had not succumbed to a boob job.
After taking Karma out for a quick walk she went down to breakfast feeling a little giddy. Fake palms framed the entrance to the breakfast nook, an L-shaped alcove off the front lobby. When she walked in she immediately smelled the overcooked sausage and cheesy eggs in rectangular chafing dishes kept at a low heat for hours. Older couples populated most of the tables, as well as a few businessmen traveling alone, reading iPads or newspapers, making notes in Moleskine planners. She ladled crusted oatmeal into her bowl. For Karma, she wrapped several sausage links in a wad of paper napkins and carefully placed them in her purse.
When she sat down she saw the back of a man’s head with thick sandy hair. He had broad shoulders and appeared to be in his late thirties, though the farther she got from sixty, the harder it was to tell anyone’s age. She wondered who he was and if he had a family. Whether he called his mother every Sunday and was in love with his wife. If she and Ralph had had children when they’d first met and married, this might have even been her son.
At times like this she wished they had tried harder, wished she’d paid more attention to ovulation and folic acid supplements. She regretted thinking that jump-starting a family might be as easy as kicking a motorcycle into gear, naively believing that Ralph would be open to the possibility. If they had, they might have given birth to a child who grew up to sell insurance policies or safety locks or air bags.
After breakfast she moved to the single elevator in the lobby. The floor indicator appeared stuck on three for several minutes. Finally the doors opened and a family of five wheeled out a massive luggage cart as if they’d lived their entire lives in the hotel. Just after she entered and before the doors closed, the businessman she’d been watching walked in too. He and Catherine reached out at the same time to push the floor buttons.
“Pardon me,” he said. They pulled their hands back as if they’d touched the same hot stove.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Which floor?” he asked.
If she’d had a son, she and Ralph would have never grown apart. A gaggle of nearby grandchildren might have cemented them to Short Hills. They’d have more in common than the same wedding anniversary. “Four.”
He pressed the button for four and then hit five, the top floor. She wondered if the hotel had a conference room or cozy breakout area where they could talk. If this had been her son, they could have shared hot chocolate. Of course, he was too old to read to, but maybe she could hear about his job and they could watch the Discovery Channel. They could discuss the big bang theory.
“It’s snowing in Boston,” he said apropos of nothing, and the elevator started its slow ascent.
“Again?” Catherine hadn’t been following the weather patterns or the contour maps of meteorological pressure but wanted to keep the conversation going. It seemed sweet that he was intent on making a connection with her. “I’m glad I’m heading south.”
The elevator chimed as they passed the second floor.
“Pardon?”
“I’m moving to Savannah,” Catherine said, light-headed with her use of the first-person I. As in I’m alone. As in I have my own life. As in I never had children, but I can still feel love. As in I can start my life over any time.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, then turned to take a sudden interest in the elevator evacuation sign. The elevator chimed again.
Catherine noticed his Italian shoes and slacks pressed with a center crease so tight he might have had a personal valet waiting for him. She smelled smoked hickory and momentarily imagined it was his musky cologne. Then she realized it was just the sausages in her purse. “I don’t know if you’ve studied much science, but it’s like we’re all just floating on icebergs, not knowing where or when they might break and plunge us into the sea,” she blurted out. He turned to her and blinked rapidly, an actor in a community theater production who pretends to have something in his eye. The elevator chimed and the doors opened. He put his hand out to hold the door for her.
She wanted to tell him that life is short. That people change over time and without warning. That indecision influences outcome. That roads become slippery when wet. That bridges ice before roadways. That before he knows it, he’ll want to retire to a gated community himself.
His hand remained on the elevator door, waiting for her to exit. Another chime, faster and lower and angrier as if the elevator were losing patience. “We’re at four,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Good luck,” she answered as she exited.
When Catherine arrived back at the room she took a long, hot shower. Afterward, she wrapped one towel in a turban around her hair and another towel around her body and moved to the window and the pleated curtain. She could see the back of a strip mall and a discarded mattress rotting in the woods. To the right, cars had started to merge onto an access road that led to the interstate. In the parking lot below, a woman led an anorexic greyhound to the far corner, where he sniffed the ground excitedly and peed. And then the man—the man who might have been her son—emerged from the building rolling a small overnight bag, a serious briefcase resting atop it. She put her hand up to the window. Felt the cold glass against her palm. As she pulled it away she saw the outline in the shape of a turkey. She considered tapping on the window to wave good-bye to him, to tell him to be careful driving in the snow and to remember to call his mother.
But she knew he wouldn’t hear. They were all in space. Her future and her past spinning away from her. T
hirty-eight years of marriage. She went back to the bed, gave Karma the sausage from her purse, and that’s when she started to cry.
chapter 11
My cheaters. That’s what Lissa called them.
There was nothing particularly memorable about her eyeglasses, just oval tortoiseshell frames that she used for perusing restaurant menus, admiring photos of Danielle and Tommy, and completing daily Sudoku puzzles. For years they hung from a jeweled strap and rested on the quiet place between her collarbone and breasts. But as Fred went through the dozens, really hundreds, of Lissa’s personal items that needed to be sorted, it was the glasses he kept coming back to.
Of course he saw the symbolic significance. He didn’t need grief counseling to understand that he was somehow transferring his attachment from his wife to her glasses. After all, in a literal way, they were how she saw the world and how the world saw her. They were on the bedside table when she went to sleep and around her neck by the time she’d found her slippers in the pink morning light.
On the night Lissa had died, Fred removed two things from her neck: the glasses and a gold necklace he had bought for her in Istanbul. It wasn’t an expensive piece, and perhaps wasn’t even gold at all, but she’d admired it as they’d wandered the narrow halls of the Grand Bazaar, which could have passed for the Mall of America had it not been for the piquant smell of cardamom. On the shiny surface of the pendant an Arabic engraving had been translated loosely as Patience and compassion.
After the funeral, Lissa’s sister swooped in and took care of the scented moisturizers, eye makeup, and bath salts. All manner of feminine widgets—hair dryer, hot roller set, foot spa—went into a deep cardboard box for the Humane Society thrift shop. Meanwhile, Lissa’s friends dropped off her dress shoes, pantsuits, and abundant collection of Gucci silk scarves at the women’s shelter. Fred hoped a few of her possessions would live a new life of their own. He was heartened by the idea of children in Effingham County playing dress-up in Italian neckwear.
Most of her belongings would probably be tossed. Fashions changed. Technology improved. No one needed an orange floral jumpsuit anymore, except at a costume party, and there was only a distant possibility anyone would find a use for her Presto popcorn maker. He knew that, as with a disappearing rabbit in a magic trick, perhaps it wasn’t so important where the items went, just as long as they were gone.
AS HE SAT at his desk, running his fingers along the bridge of Lissa’s eyeglasses, he felt the deepening curve to his shoulders. He hadn’t gone to the gym in weeks, maybe months. He’d even resigned from his tennis group because he’d had to deal with so much—the required minimum distribution of Lissa’s IRA, the unpaid hospital charge for oxygen, the notification of a lifetime’s worth of distant schoolmates. He spent most days at his desk, except for the hour he took Sequoia to the dog park, so perhaps he was depressed. He’d seen the commercials. How could he not? It was as if the ads were produced just for him, as they played on every late-night channel he watched. Fred recognized the symptoms: decreased energy and irritability. Certainly he had trouble concentrating. But that was only natural. As Hunter might say, “An appropriate grief response.”
Fred looked out toward the open screened window and wooded tangle behind his house. Beyond a disordered clump of overgrown hickory and palms, he could see the outline of patio homes on the adjacent street. He knew one of the distant windows belonged to his neighbor Ida B. Childs, whom he’d called about computer service. After he’d talked to her, he’d found himself humming the melody “Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider,” an old vaudeville tune his mother had favored and one he hadn’t thought of in years. Coincidentally, Comcast had reset the computer connection shortly after their conversation so he hadn’t needed to follow up, yet he’d kept her number on a pad by his desk. She seemed pleasant and friendly.
And he might need to contact her again. When his computer did act up, he was never sure if it was his hard or soft drive. He didn’t understand the modern way people connected and communicated. The last time he was in the grocery store, a man ahead of him in line wore an earpiece strapped to his head and spoke in a low, serious tone, as if he were manning a NASA space mission while picking up a six-pack of beer.
After paying a few bills, Fred fiddled with the computer mouse. In the center of his screen was a small spinning circle of color. He punched in Command-Shift, Command-Control, Command-Option. All the things his wife once recommended. He even typed in SOS, thinking maybe the computer programmer had a sense of humor. No luck. Fred was imagining the pinwheel as belonging to a lost child at a carnival when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
He heard the muffled voice of Danielle, who seemed to be on another call. Then his grandson, Tommy, chirped in the background, his nine-year-old chipmunk voice easy to recognize.
“Danielle?!” Fred kept calling her name, louder each time, and eventually she answered.
“Dad?”
“Hi, honey.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“You called me.”
She laughed. “Sorry. I must’ve butt-dialed you.”
“Pardon?”
“You know, called you with my butt.”
Fred felt the weight of Sequoia’s head on his slippers. Lately the Great Dane had hardly touched her food, and Fred wondered if the dog was just mirroring the exhaustion he felt. “I see.” He’d made progress processing his grief, then felt overwhelmed that he couldn’t remember his wife’s voice.
Don’t be so dramatic. I’m right here. It’d been almost a week since he’d heard from Lissa.
“Dad, listen, I’m in the car.”
Tell her to pull over. Tell her not to talk while she’s driving.
“Be careful,” Fred said. Then he heard Tommy again. He imagined the boy strapped in the backseat, air bags ready to deploy at the first sign of uneven pavement. When Fred was a child, his brothers and sisters had been sardined into the back of their Chevrolet sedan. His mother had had a cigarette in one hand and a highball in the other. They didn’t need reinforced nylon safety belts to go to the end of the driveway. “So where are you off to?”
“Soccer, then Augusta. I’ve got a few errands and our local store is out of free-range eggs.”
Fred wanted to remind Danielle about marketing. About how a chicken was a chicken. It didn’t need a PhD and a gym membership to produce edible eggs. About how dairy-free yogurt and vegetarian pork rinds and cruelty-free carrots were just elaborate merchandising.
Don’t do it, Lissa warned.
“I see,” Fred said. “How’s the weather?”
“Coolish, but not too bad. I think you might enjoy living up here.” He heard the sound of a blinker. “What about you? How’s Sequoia?”
“Sequoia is fine.” Fred might have mentioned his dog’s moodiness. Her tail used to thump the floor whenever he reached down to stroke her from his desk. Now it just fluttered momentarily. Dogs couldn’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps as people could, and he wondered if Sequoia might be suffering from clinical depression. The good news, Fred thought, was that a visit to the Seven Oaks dog park was the canine equivalent of attending a support group.
“I told you Tommy had a scrimmage last weekend. Did you watch the video I sent you?”
Just tell her yes.
But the truth was Fred hadn’t checked his email for several days. And he probably wouldn’t have watched it anyway. The last time his daughter had sent a link, he’d been directed to a six-minute video of dogs playing water polo. “I’ve had some problems with my Comcast connection.” It was the truth, after all.
“Do you even know how to open a link?” she said. Had it not been for Lissa’s shadowy presence, Fred might have pushed back or responded with something constructive. He might have suggested, once again, that a photograph and brief note would suffice. What happened to the concrete simplicity of sending two or three glossy pictures? What made her think he needed to sit through twenty minutes of
footage of nine-year-olds chasing a ball? He felt this email-linking business was the modern equivalent of the chain letters he used to get as a kid: This letter originated in Africa and has gone around the world twenty times. He just didn’t have the energy anymore.
“Dad, he scored a goal.”
Tell her you care. Tell him you are proud.
Lissa’s ethereal instructions reminded him of the party lines on telephone wires when he was growing up in the Berkshires. If his mother picked up the phone and asked, “Is it icy by the Turnpike?” she’d get a half-dozen road updates.
“We’re so proud!” Fred blurted out, immediately sorry he’d said we instead of I.
His wife used to take care of these things. She was the cheerleader. She waved the grandparent pom-poms. The last time Fred and Lissa had been to Lewiston, Tommy had led them up to his bedroom with a sticky hand. At the top of the landing, they turned right into his room and Fred had been disconcerted, even embarrassed for the boy. Medals and ribbons and etched acrylic awards lined the bookshelves. On the walls hung team photos of a dozen or more small boys wearing identical uniforms looking like Lilliputian soldiers in a comical army. There were framed citizenship citations and even an award that read MOST CHEERFUL. Statuettes of boys in midmotion—kicking balls, throwing Frisbees, swinging bats—crammed the bedside table. The child had won an award for every breath taken.
“Tell Grandpa about your goal,” Danielle directed her son. “He wants to hear all about it.”
Good Karma Page 6