Then she went into the bathroom, to check her makeup, to reach back and unbuckle her bra. She didn’t need a bra in this dress, and suddenly she felt restricted. She pulled it out through the armholes by the strap and went to the bedroom, noticing a smudge on the window. She wiped at it with a tissue. Maybe he’d just go off for coffee by himself. Let him go to Starbucks and see their daughter there, nursing a crush on the man his wife had been sleeping with. Her stomach was tight. She was so foolish. It wasn’t guilt she was feeling, though she should have felt guilt, it was heat. The limbic system, she remembered, sex, food, fight. Hers was overactive, she was sure. She rubbed at the smudge on the window, but it wouldn’t come off.
“Hey,” said Charlie. She hadn’t noticed he’d followed her into the bedroom. “I like that dress.”
His erection was obscene through the jogging shorts, smooth yellow nylon from 1980-something when he’d last been a regular jogger. It was admirable, actually, he was admirable. She wanted to know what he saw in her, whether he could sense the lines of the dark red A under her skin. And she did love him, though she didn’t understand why he was home, for the first time without making some elaborate vacation plan, or some golf outing, in at least ten years.
“Hey,” he said again. Now he was pressing against her, feeling her breasts. She wanted to stop him; she wanted to tell him she’d cheated on him, but it was over. Her body, however, didn’t want anything of the kind. She had never lost her morning arousal, and as he reached around to rub her, she cried out, coming almost before his fingers started to work. The window wasn’t covered. She looked out at the street, at a bag of grass clippings from the Hopsmiths’ yard spilling out onto the sidewalk, at a fat robin hopping on one leg as if injured. She came again as he touched her and she wasn’t able to be quiet, she was yelling, but it felt as though someone else was making the noise, someone else was enjoying this. Charlie was, at least, he had pulled her dress up from behind, had entered her, was groping her with intensified intention.
“You like that?” he said. “You’re a little wild today.”
She couldn’t say anything, she might give something away. Could he tell her body was different? She thought she could smell Jordan, only it was her husband’s fingers in her mouth. And now he was pulling her hair, working against her and into her, and telling her she was bad, a bad girl, the way he often did, because he thought she liked it, only this time he was telling the truth.
They lay down on his favorite striped sheets. She was still dressed. She tugged her underpants back on and was thinking about whether or not she still had time to pick up the dry cleaning today. It kept her from saying anything. If she said anything, it might be the wrong thing. If she said anything, she might make a mistake.
“Well,” said Charlie. “You certainly made my day off.” He kissed her hands. She looked at the ceiling. They’d had it painted just two years ago, but already there was a web-thin crack around the light fixture.
“Are you okay?” He rolled over, looked at her face. She glanced at him, but it felt too dangerous to answer, so she just nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Jogging is clearly good for me.” He was flexing his legs now, enjoying his own muscles. Reeva laughed. It was a relief.
“I guess maybe we could go out to lunch instead of that coffee?” she said. When had they gone out to lunch last—a thousand years ago? She used to come in to Hackensack, to meet him at the mall for lunch. They’d discussed orthodontia and new bikes at the food court. Once they’d even gone to a matinee, but after he became partner, he couldn’t leave for that long and she’d stopped. She remembered the sweet sesame oil taste of the noodles he liked. She licked his fingers, which tasted of her.
He had been more aggressive than usual, he had been so purposeful. She wondered whether he’d planned the days off as sex days, the way they used to plan their sex for the tiny slot of time on Sundays when all the kids had playdates or pickup games. He called it Sunday school. She told him she needed to catch up on her catechism. Why had she forgotten all this? Why had she ever cheated on him, crumpled up their past like newspaper around dog shit? She started chewing on her fingernail, a habit she’d broken in grade school with Lee Press On Nails and desire.
“You know who I saw when I was jogging? Abigail Stein. She’s holding up pretty well, though they still don’t know where her daughter went.”
Reeva bit her cuticle, and it started to bleed. “I hope it wasn’t an abduction,” she said. Abduction sounded like abortion. Maybe she’d been pregnant. That Abigail Stein was so hard to read, but it couldn’t be easy. Reeva remembered when she told Beth about Johnny’s ADD how Beth had nodded her head, so sage, so superior, and said, “Someday they’ll figure out it was something the mothers did when they were pregnant.” As if Reeva weren’t Johnny’s mother. As if that weren’t an accusation.
“They don’t know,” he said. “I was thinking we might need an alarm system. What do you think?” He was running his hands through his hair now, sitting up, looking in the mirror. Did he have a thing for Abigail Stein? Impossible. She was pretty enough, but far from his type. She hardly wore makeup, and her eyebrows were so thick. When did she start jogging? Reeva tried to imagine her neighbor in motion, those large breasts swaying as she moved. Jealousy nicked at her organs, a small, vicious animal. She looked at her husband, wondering. Had he been thinking about Abigail Stein while he was taking her from behind at the window? No—she was the cheater; she was the one who had thoughts like that.
“She’s holding up well,” he said again, and Reeva could imagine him then, holding up those big breasts. Her neck was stiff and her thighs were sore and even though she had come, several times, maybe she only enjoyed the idea of it; the actual action didn’t work as well for her as she’d hoped. He was her husband, for god’s sake, they’d had sex a million times at least (“Be specific,” Charlie might say. “Is it actually a million?”) and now he was talking about Abigail Stein, who was supposed to be part of her day, not part of his day. Sex made her want to weep, made her want to be moved, made her angry and anxious and satisfied all at the same time. Jordan would’ve left for town already; she was too late to be seen on her way to the Steins’ house. She was not going to think about him anymore, and she was not going to help Abigail Stein because clearly Abigail already had friends enough. Reeva pulled a bra from the drawer.
“I liked it without,” her husband said, leering at her. No, he was being sexy, he was being sweet.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” she asked, wrestling the bra back into place.
There was a clatter in the hallway; the heavy hoofbeats of one of her children come inside downstairs. Reeva left the bedroom before she could change her mind again.
“Ma,” said Tina, standing at the foot of the stairs, gripping the BLT in foil like a dirty diaper. “What’s in here?”
“Your lunch for tomorrow,” said Reeva, sighing.
“I already ate the carrots,” said Tina. There was chocolate on her chin. That, too, thought Reeva. Still, Tina was so clean, so unlined, so fresh in her terry mini and tank top. Reeva thought her daughter might have sex soon, and the thought made her want to vomit. She gagged a little.
“I can’t believe you wrapped it in foil,” said Tina. “It’s so wasteful. Why didn’t you just use cellophane?”
Reeva gasped, maybe because of the nausea, maybe because her daughter had used the word. Since when did Tina say cellophane? She said plastic wrap. She didn’t say cellophane. Only Jordan said cellophane. Her daughter turned away, eating her sandwich and swishing back into the kitchen. The skirt was too short. Her shirt was too tight; her beauty made it difficult for Reeva to fill her lungs with breath.
26 SYCAMORE STREET
Since the newspaper article, the teenage girls—and occasional sheepish boy—had hovered about the Stein house, leaving only between the hours of midnight and nine or ten, when they sat on the curb drinking coffee—and, upon occasion, smoking, which Abigai
l found contemptible. Who let their kids smoke—and out in the world? It was a vigil—Mom’s green-tea-jasmine-scented forty-dollar candles in hand, little bouquets of flowers from gardens or plastic blossoms from the Rite Aid clustered around an enlarged, laminated copy of the paper with the graduation photo. It reminded Abigail, nauseatingly, of a highway shrine.
In fact, she overheard Tina Sentry this morning, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk atop what was probably a two-hundred-dollar cashmere throw, talking to a friend who wore brown lipstick and teeny tiny shorts with a crop top, scarlet. “It is totally cool, I am so in favor of this—and you never know who you’ll see”—she flicked the pleated end of her skirt as the young man from Starbucks walked past, toward Mr. Leonard’s house—“but I like would have preferred, like, a shrine, you know, when you leave the stuff? I mean, it’s not like we couldn’t still check it out, but a vigil is like, all the time. It would be easier to maintain.”
Abigail could feel the likes in her throat. She wanted to cut them out of the conversation. This wasn’t like anything, this was Linsey, missing. All these girls were playing parts. She didn’t recognize most of them; Linsey’s friends were in college. They were gone, too, only gone in a known way.
She’d always thought of her neighbor Reeva as a queen bee, but she felt the woman’s give and take, a little vulnerability, when Reeva told her about Linsey babysitting for her son. The neighborhood was like one of those books Linsey used to love—black-coated sheets with a rainbow beneath; you scraped away at the black with a stylus. Abigail had been irritated by the waxy crumbs, but she’d oooed and aaahed nonetheless.
Parenthood was waxy crumbs.
Reeva had said she would visit this afternoon. In fact, the past day had been a steady stream of visitors. Abigail wondered if every crisis prompted gifts of food—it felt like shivah, or a wake, and part of her wanted to see no one and part of her appreciated every covered dish, every broccoli-chicken-fettuccine casserole. Beth Boris had just come with seven pies—seven. Who made seven pies? She parked in back—temporarily disrupting the vigil as they parted to let her car through—and brought the pies up in three trips, then one more for a gallon jug of iced tea—mint!—because lord knows no one had time to brew during this crisis.
Beth was sweet, but she chattered on like a meandering stream. She told a story about how her husband had once had her followed, worrying that she was cheating. It brought them closer! she said. And she had cystitis. And when her last baby was born she’d had her tubes tied. And she was sometimes a substitute teacher! And she adored the elementary school kids but the middle-schoolers intimidated her! And did Abigail know Reeva Sentry? Reeva had been very weird—they’d been friends, but then Reeva dropped her, and Beth thought perhaps it was because they went to different churches. Was it like that with temple?! Beth put the pies on the counter.
“This is pecan; this is mincemeat, which sounds disgusting but is really good; this is chicken pot pie! Put it in the fridge when it’s cool. This is pumpkin! We all need our vitamins. This is creamy, creamy, chocolate peanut butter. You will loooove it. These two are apple. Apple pie. Did I tell you I had a great-great-great-great-something who was on the Nina? You know, one of Columbus’s boats? I have all this Massachusetts family. Oh, Abby,” she breathed, a huge sigh of breath, her body jiggly with breath, her slight second chin pink. “I’m so sorry, I keep talking about me. How are you holding up today?”
“I want to go somewhere. I want to DO something,” said Abigail. When Beth called her Abby, it made her whole body itch.
“I know,” said Beth. Now she was watching Abigail’s face. The stream had stopped suddenly and Abigail felt as though she needed to fill the gap.
“I feel guilty because I still like having sex with my husband,” she blurted out. “It’s a comfort.”
“Oh, honey!” Beth laughed. For a minute, Abigail was mortified. Would Beth take this about the neighborhood, news of Bereaved Abigail Stein and her Secret Sex Life? No, Beth wasn’t like that.
“I must leave you. You need some time to yourself. Please don’t forget to refrigerate the chicken pot pie. And I’ll call on you tomorrow.”
“Thank you for everything,” said Abigail, standing by the back door. I wish you would stay. I wish you wouldn’t come back.
She didn’t know who to trust, and suddenly everyone was talking to her.
Sometimes she forgot in her dreams, she had told Reeva this yesterday, though she couldn’t tell her husband because she felt as though she was betraying everyone—just the act of sleep was enough of a lapse, but then, she dreamed of the summer house her family rented on Lake Michigan one year when she was eleven, the breeze almost like a sea breeze, the white clapboards peeling, the little Sunfish sailboats just offshore made the size of children’s toys from the distance. In her dreams, she was with everyone, the boys, Linsey, with her first husband and her second; in her dreams, everyone was intact, and sometimes there was the baby boy she’d lost, too, Joseph Junior, sleeping in a bassinet with a bud mouth working on an invisible nipple. Then she woke out of the sunshine and into the shade-darkened bedroom beside Frank, who was breathing deeply, regularly, and she remembered where she was and that Linsey was gone and she ran to the bathroom to vomit.
It was the first day of school for the boys tomorrow. They were supposed to have taken Linsey to college this weekend; she’d been gone four days and Abigail wept in her daughter’s room at night, but she still knew she’d come back, the way she knew her own heart would keep beating despite the weight on her, the thousand thousand pounds of the empty room, of the whole house, of the boys bickering, of her husband trying to find anything, calling, calling, his voice quiet and calm, his heavy arm trying to hold her to the bed at night. She wanted to thank him, wanted to fold herself into him, but mostly, she couldn’t forgive him for sleeping, and then she was doing the same, letting them all down by lapsing into it, by falling.
She’d been trying to talk with Joe for two days, after the first call when she told him their girl was missing—a tender call at first, a reasonable bout of terror together. In that one tearful conversation since Linsey went missing, he’d been so supportive, they’d been so connected, and then at the end he questioned her mothering abilities and told her Linsey was probably just out with friends and she should keep better track.
“Out with friends?” she’d said. She knew she was screeching, but she couldn’t help it. “Out with friends?”
Joe paused. Joe didn’t mind silence if it helped him in an argument. Abigail couldn’t bear it.
“Joe?” she asked.
“You wait twenty-four hours to call her father?”
“You’re too busy screwing underage soccer players to answer my messages?”
It hadn’t been her finest moment, but she couldn’t help it. She almost suspected him of being part of this, of knowing something she didn’t—his relationship with Linsey had always been slightly opaque to her, and though she did her best to respect it, now she couldn’t. She’d asked Barq to check him out, the rotted-apple taste of betrayal rising in her mouth as she made her request. Nothing, so far. Joe was booked for parents’ weekend, as she’d suspected, but nothing else.
But that was it. Barq said to keep in touch with him, but the one time Joe picked up his cell phone, he said, “Abigail, unless you have news, I can’t talk now.” And he’d hung up. What if she’d had news?
She was actually looking forward to talking with Reeva again today. She should be talking to Margaret, or one of her real friends, but somehow Reeva and the neighbors felt safer, more anonymous. Reeva had started telling her something about her periods—it was probably another perimenopause story, and Abigail found those annoying, but the running narrative kept her from falling into her own deep pond. She’d be here soon, and Abigail would probably gush with overflowing information about how she broke up Linsey and Timmy, how she had dug up the seedlings of their relationship. She wanted to confide in someone.. Her house sm
elled like chicken pot pie with dill. She disliked dill, but the pie would still be delicious. Her mouth was sour; she should keep her business private, there’d already been too much invasion.
Standing by the front window, just out of the line of sight for the vigil clump, Abigail watched a form making his way up Sycamore. She knew that walk: Timmy. Her house was quiet—Frank had taken the boys out for lunch, and had invited her, but the thought of eating made her run into the bathroom for dry heaves. Camp was done. Everyone was home. Linsey should be home.
Her cell phone, turned to maximum, rang and buzzed.
She answered before looking.
“Margaret,” she said, interrupting her friend’s hello. “God, I’m sorry. I really can’t do anything about work now—I have to tell you—”
“Stop,” Margaret interrupted in turn. Her voice was sharp. “Honey. Do not keep things from me.”
“Oh god,” said Abigail. She felt trembly now, weak.
“I don’t have a Linsey,” she said, “though I desperately wish I did. Don’t not let me help.”
Abigail was not going to cry. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry. Look up the train schedule for me; I’m coming.”
Margaret was on her way, which made it all real. It was all real. I desperately wish I had a Linsey, Abigail recalled; Margaret had always said she was happy without children.
Abigail had been holding a tea mug all morning—the bergamot of Earl Grey was cold perfume, but she didn’t sip. Timmy was a hero with the gaggle holding a vigil on the lawn. Older from just a few weeks ago, when she’d seen him at graduation, he held his sadness like a man, full fleshed, no more of the boy she’d seen wrapped around her girl, vine around tree. She couldn’t see the things that hurt her before, the way he’d been proprietary, the way he’d owned space, and Abigail had worried he was taking Linsey’s as well.
When She Was Gone Page 16