by Gian Sardar
“You’ve escaped, huh?”
“I have. I’m Abby. I’m on Benadryl.” Out of habit she extends her hand and watches as his fingers curl around hers. Betrayal shoots through her, though it makes no sense. “Do you remember me?”
“You were the first person I met here.”
This recognition, the memory shared after so long, somehow undoes years of his absence. Untethered. The feeling is there once more, and again she sees him that gray morning, the slight mist that pulled toward them as they neared the school. Suddenly the noise from the party grows louder, as if someone opened a door, and Abby turns in its direction. The song blared is familiar, but then the door swings shut, the beat dipped back into the chaos of the evening.
The line of her cleavage has snagged his gaze. Beneath the red fabric of her shirt is the scalloped edge of white lace—and he’s peeking at this, the lace and the hint of what’s beneath, when she looks back. Quickly he averts his eyes but catches one corner of her mouth raise briefly. Busted.
“So Benadryl,” he says. “Don’t most people take Valium or painkillers for these things?”
“Absolutely. And if I’d had any of those I would’ve taken them, too. But I have hives.” She turns to face him. “Had hives. I hope?”
He takes the moment to openly look at her, a normally forbidden act, but in the context it’s allowed. Each feature—her lips, the curve of her neck, the dip in her collarbone. She’s pretty—really pretty—and though he remembers this being the case long ago, he knows that somehow it’s changed, as if over the years she’s grown into a deeper beauty and what he’d seen before had been just a rendering. And she’s petite. That’s not changed, maybe five-three, red high heels that probably give her a few more inches when she stands, and though her hair is straight, there’s one spiral by her ear. Strangely she reminds him of someone, though he can’t remember who. Brown eyes with a ring of green. Her face is that of someone whose laughter is unrestrained, full and contagious, and for a moment he searches his mind for a joke just to see if he’s right.
“No hives,” he says at last. “You still live near here?”
“God no. I mean, do you?”
“About four blocks away.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
He smiles. “It’s not for everyone. Where do you live?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Ah,” he says, thinking of brown mountains, graffitied walls, and the reservoir encased in concrete his friend from college had been so proud of, a ragged evidence of nature. A sign had been posted on the fence that caged in the water—MISSING: TWO BLUE HERONS. “I was there once.”
“I’m sure you hated it.”
“No,” though he did. He breathes in—whatever she’s wearing reminds him of rain on a hot sidewalk, but with something else, like a crush of flowers, a twist of sweetness.
“Liar,” she says, and he smiles as she continues. “I spend my life in a car. Sitting in a car. Not even driving in a car, just sitting in a car. Coasting if I’m lucky. I went to college there,” she says, as if that explained it. “Easier to stay than leave.”
“I know that feeling. So what do you do? For a living.”
“Estate jewelry. Some reproductions, too, but mostly originals.”
“History. That must add something.”
She smiles. “For me, definitely. The stories. Or the imagined stories, depending on the case.” A pause—she studies him as if suspecting she can find the answer for the question she’s about to ask. At last, “You’ve never proposed?”
Though it makes little sense, a heat rises in his face. She sees it and her smile widens, a bit challenging, as if she’s caught the edge of a truth she wishes to pull free. He can’t help it; even though her eyes are steady on him, he glances at her hand. Ringless. Her smile, he notices when he looks back up, has grown.
“No, no proposals,” he says. “Though to be honest, most women I’ve dated would have cared less about story, more about size.”
In a beat she’s laughing, and he hears what he just said. The reddening in his face deepens and he aims his smile to his feet, but then looks back at her and finds he can’t look away, enthralled as she tries to settle herself, her shoulders still shaking—he was right about her laugh. To watch her entertained, he understands, is worth all the stupid things he could say.
“Aidan?”
Brittany. Heels clicking on the linoleum, a gold bangle on her wrist flashing like a warning. Irritatingly he feels caught, hurled back to the days when the discovery of him talking to another girl meant having to chase a hysterical Brittany down the street. Why he followed is beyond him.
“What the hell?” Brittany says, as if she suspected their laughter had been at her expense.
“I’m sitting.” He can still see it so clearly, her eyes bright with anger, hair flying as she’d storm off, only to stop again and take off her heels, a move he knew was meant to allow him time to catch up. He smiles, which she reads as an insult.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze slides to Abby, then back to Aidan. “Well, there’s a lot going on.”
“Do you know Abby?”
Brittany again looks at her, though squints this time, as if Abby’s a speck in the hall. “You were my neighbor. I didn’t think you were ever coming back. I’m Brit-tany. Remember?”
“I do. I’m Ab-by.”
Aidan stifles a laugh and Brittany spins back to him. “I’ll be in with the others.”
They watch in silence as she sweeps down the hall.
“In with the others,” Abby says. “She’s still sixteen. It’s amazing. I can’t believe you went out with her. Completely hollow. You always had so much more going on.”
“It was high school,” he says. “I’m actually sure I didn’t have much going on. So what she said, though, you haven’t been back in a while?”
“Second time since graduation.”
Now he’s really surprised. “You don’t have family here?”
“I do. That’s why I came back—to look into family stuff.” A pause. “Last night I found a ring with a note. My grandmother’s ring. A mystery.”
He watches her, apparently lost in thought, or maybe falling asleep. It hits him how close he came to bringing Ashley. Right this minute they’d be in the auditorium, guys winking at Aidan behind their wives’ backs, Brittany combusting as she spotted him with a younger, kinder version of herself. He leans his head against the locker. Shit. A younger version of Brittany.
“So back at you,” Abby says, “with that question. What do you do?”
“Cop.”
“No you’re not.”
He smiles. “I am.”
“I did not see that coming. Must be crazy, with what’s going on.”
“It is. I’m lucky I’m here.”
A tilt of her head—she’s trying to figure something out. “So you really remember that? Your first day, meeting me?”
“Of course I remember it,” he says. Because he does. A twist of nerves and fear, a small thread of excitement. His mother watched him in the rearview mirror, but he wouldn’t move until she’d rounded the corner—and then he heard a voice. “We walked to school together. You were the reason I knew it was going be okay.”
To this, a flush lifts within her cheeks and she turns her head just slightly—and in this moment he also remembers her laughter in the hall, a sunlit sound he’d look for, and the way she’d hide her face when at last he found her.
10
Then
EVA’S BOUGHT A MAGAZINE for the bus, one she’s tempted to dive into, but instead she watches William drizzle syrup in a spiral on his oatmeal, listening to the clang of silverware and dishes, the sizzle from the kitchen, the swoosh of waitresses’ nyloned legs hurrying from table to table. He’s got a meeting in Minneapolis h
e can’t be late for, and has checked his watch six times since they arrived. But that doesn’t bother her. Since her confession this morning she feels buoyant. A tangle has been undone, a long-tethered ribbon finally able to lift into the wind.
“You’re not eating,” he says, motioning to her eggs.
“Too much pepper. But it’s okay, I’m not hungry.”
“Guess what I found in the garage?”
“Snowshoes. A garden elf. A bird’s nest. No, wait, a sled. A sled?”
He smiles. “Fishing poles, for our picnic. Next week.”
“No rain,” she says, crossing her fingers. Then, after a bit, she flips open the magazine—just for a second—to an ad of a couple picnicking on a blue blanket, trees stretched tall into a blue-white sky. A diamond is forever. All else can be forgotten, broken down, disintegrated, reclaimed by the earth, everything but this promise. She looks up at William. I told him, and he is still here.
Suddenly she remembers. “My work shoes. They’re at the house.”
He glances at his watch and then the clock on the wall, as if hoping it might disagree.
“I took them out when I was packing,” she says. “I can see them now by the bed.”
“Eva, we don’t have time.”
“I need them for work. Gerry won’t let us wear anything else. I’ll take the next bus. You go. I’ll be fine.”
Back at the house, she takes the stairs to the front porch two at a time. The next bus will get her to work late, so she first calls Gerry to let him know—Iris fell, she says, surprising herself with real tears—and then heads upstairs. Sure enough, there are her shoes, right by the bed. She stares at them, the incriminating size—not a child’s, not a man’s—and wishes for a moment she could leave them here, could leave anything here—a nightgown, a roller, an eyelash on the sink. Everything’s been taken up a notch—that’s how she feels. Now she wishes Claire would make a surprise visit to Rochester, that they’d be exposed, an impetus for change, for more.
Claire. Claire Ballantine. Elegant. Eva whispers it aloud a few times as she locks the door behind her, each utterance more fluid than the last, spoken with a mere flick of the tongue, versus Eva, all harshness and a bit too close to evil. She’s heard it before. Evil Eva, whispered by Michael Knutson after she let him kiss her, his chapped lips mashing against hers. In her mind she saw him in the field, setting gopher traps, a trickle of sweat on the back of his neck settling and spreading in a fold of skin as he stopped to look up at the flat, open sky. It was then she felt him turn from tentative to confident and an instinct rose within her, a limit reached, push away. And so she did. A tease. That’s what she’d been called, because though her want was genuine, the jolt of her memory was sudden and without warning, a reflex. Only she understood; it was hard to feel right after years of wrong. The difference was that Michael Knutson listened when she pushed him away. Why? he’d called as she strolled away. Of course she’d not answered, Evil Eva.
Maybe she is Evil Eva, she thinks as she closes the front door behind her. After all, it is someone else’s husband she wants, a fact that’s hard to get around. In the air is the scent of the neighbor’s lilac bush, thick and provocative, and it’s as she’s breathing in the scent that she sees a car door, a couple of houses down, open and shut. That no one got in or out makes her look to the driver.
Dr. Adams.
Bees hover near the lilac blooms and the air buzzes, a hum of anxiety. As calmly as she can, she turns around and continues in the opposite direction, holding her train case in front of her legs so he might not see it as clearly—if he saw her at all. She listens, and not once does she hear the car door open again. Had he been there to visit William? Did he see her? And if he did, did he notice which driveway she’d emerged from? Might he assume that what she carried with her were documents, papers that needed to be signed?
Even with going a block out of her way, the bus station is a short walk from the house. When she gets there, she buys a ticket and takes a seat in the far corner. The magazine is forgotten, already a token from a carefree time—when I bought this, everything was all right. She stares at the scuffed wall, the pinprick of worry pressing deeper with every minute.
What she needs to do is warn William. Let him know she was spotted, afford him time to concoct an excuse, just in case. A little under two hours for him to get to Minneapolis, another hour and a half for his meeting, some time to drive to his house—Eva keeps a tally until she thinks he might be home, and then later, at work, asks Gerry if she can make a call, just to check on Iris.
“Quite a spill she must’ve had,” he says, waving her to his office. “Never good at that age.”
The phone number she’s memorized, gotten from the operator hours ago. “PRospect 5-9833, please.” As it rings, Eva pictures the signal traveling through miles and miles of black wire, bounding through hills and diving deep into forests, ending where? The imagined two-story house with the wide front door no longer rings true, and now she sees a long driveway flanked by daffodils, a fountain in the center of the lawn.
“Ballantine residence,” announces a woman with a thick accent.
“Mr. Ballantine, please.” She will call herself Iris if asked, he will know.
“One moment.”
She waits. Where will he be? Does he have a den? Is he wearing slippers?
“Hello?” the woman says again.
“Yes, Mr. Ballantine, please,” Eva repeats, and it’s in the pause that follows that she realizes this was not the person who’d originally answered the phone. This was a different voice, without the accent, and as Eva realizes what she’s done, Claire speaks again.
“I know who this is.”
Eva hangs up.
A clock on the wall ticks, outpaced by the fury of her own heart. At first there’s nothing, no thoughts, just a hum within her, a drone of panic. Then all at once her mind snags a theory—Claire could’ve been talking about someone else, had been waiting for a call, perhaps, and Eva misunderstood, her own guilt placing the accusatory intonation . . . or she really knew. I know who this is.
“You look worried sick,” Gerry says when she returns to the kitchen.
“I’m fine, thank you. Iris is sore, that’s all.” I know who this is. If only she’d not hung up, if only she’d stayed on the line to hear what came next: I know who this is, but he’s not available. May I take a message? Or I know who this is, and he won’t be donating more to the foundation. There are so many ways the call could’ve gone, but Eva will never know.
“You’re a good girl, Eva Marten,” Gerry says, handing her a stack of menus. “She’s lucky to have you.”
I know who this is, and he is not yours.
Was it her? And if it was, what does it mean, that she’s called the house? The sun is confident and blaring outside, and Claire’s forced to shade her eyes as she steps down the path. In the side yard Ketty hangs linen napkins to dry on the clothesline, limp ivory squares like a string of white flags, a banner of surrender.
“Ketty,” Claire says. “You put a woman on the phone with me who was calling for William.”
“I could not understand her,” she says, shaking out another napkin. “He will be home soon?”
“No, his meeting’s been delayed.” Claire knows full well that the woman spoke clearly. Did Ketty suspect as well? Notes found in trouser pockets, lipstick on a collar. “Did she by chance leave her name?”
Ketty shakes her head.
Next door, Edith grows geraniums like ground cover, red blooms haphazard along the brick path. Normally Claire takes her time, studying that startling, tempestuous red, wishing to capture it in a glaze, but now her steps are hurried and her knock on the door determined. She needs to voice her worries, hoping against hope she’ll be told her suspicions are invented, wild ruminations from a mind that’s never been easy on its owner. A fear that’s kept sil
ent, her father used to tell her when she was little, back when the wheels of his mind were not rusted, grows like a weed. But a fear that’s spoken is out in the open, and that can be yanked! He’d snap the word yanked, his teeth clanking shut, his eyes wide as if to scare her, and she’d laugh until her mother told her to settle down.
Claire knocks again. The neighboring houses are mostly shut tight, curtains drawn, latches and locks secure. Vacationing time. Was it her?
At last there’s Edith in an ivory silk robe and a full face of makeup.
Claire averts her eyes. “He’s having an affair.”
“Well, we can’t do anything about it from the door.”
“Did you need to change?” Claire asks as they enter the parlor.
“It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. Mathilde was running me a bath. Though to be honest, I’ll be wearing the same thing afterwards.”
Atop the piano is the butterfly cage, placed on a crisp white sheet, and as usual Claire leans in to check on the inhabitants. At least a dozen jadeite-green chrysalises hang from the roof of the container, little dots like gold leaf on their crests. Nature’s jewelry, Edith once said. Four small crystal vases are filled with milkweed and the leaves are bent with the weight of the caterpillars.
“Where are the children?” Claire asks, taking a seat.
Edith opens the cage. “Left just this morning with Frank. Learning to fish off in the wilds of North Dakota, as if they couldn’t do it right here.” Carefully she reaches in between the chrysalises and gently pulls a caterpillar off the screened top. “They can’t fend for themselves,” she says, motioning to the chrysalises. “Completely helpless inside their shells, sitting ducks for predators or troublemakers. This guy keeps bothering them.” She holds the offender in the palm of her hand, its stripes expanding and contracting as it takes a few steps toward her thumb. “Last chance,” she tells it, “and then it’s solitary confinement.” She places it back inside, in the far corner.