Whole Latte Life

by Joanne DeMaio

  Chapter Four

  You know how to play, right?”

  Rachel looks from the illuminated bowling lane before them back to Michael beside her, his words reeling her away from thoughts of her friend. But isn’t that the purpose of all this? Frames and strikes and pins and gutters? “Roll the ball, knock down the pins?”

  Michael bends to tie his bowling shoes. “Did you know that Manhattan is where the colonists first played this game? Lower Broadway. Place still called The Bowling Green.”

  “You sure know bowling,” Rachel says, scanning the music video playing above the lane. “Bet they didn’t keep score on plasma TVs.”

  “No.” That’s it. Nothing else. She feels him watch her and it makes her touch her hair, the feel of his look.

  “What?” she asks finally.

  “Nothing. And it’s not really bowling I know. It’s more the city stuff.”

  “Colonists bowling on Broadway?”

  He walks to the ball return and picks up Rachel’s ball. “You didn’t get one that’s too heavy, did you?”

  She reaches for the ball but he steps back. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not going to throw out my back.”

  “It’s happened, is all I’m saying. Now are you a lefty or righty?”

  “Righty.”

  “Okay, so cradle the ball in your left hand. Never pick it up with one hand. You can hurt your wrist.” He gently places the ball in her hands.

  “Do you know how old I am?”

  “It’s just, well I don’t want you to get hurt.” Michael takes a seat laneside, waiting for her to start the frame.

  Rachel turns and pauses, bringing the ball up, then running and releasing it to knock down seven pins. “I’m a little rusty,” she says.

  “Given the circumstances, I’m impressed. But watch your timing.”

  They bowl quietly for a few frames until Rachel sits beside him on the settee.

  “You know,” she tells him as they watch the other bowlers around them. “I changed my mind two times today about coming here.”

  After a few long moments, she begins to wonder if he didn’t hear her over the noise, the music and balls rolling. “I’m glad it wasn’t three,” Michael finally answers. He motions for two cold beers from a waitress. “To friends, old and new,” he toasts, right before he touches his glass to hers.

  Okay, she has to take stock. So this New York City mounted police officer knows their bowling alley outing is only keeping her busy while she waits out her friend, that’s it, hoping that after the game, after they get back to The Plaza, Sara Beth will feel better and return to the hotel too.

  “A little more trivia before the next frame?” Michael asks. He settles in his seat, his head tipped low, toward hers. “In World Wars One and Two, soldiers shipped out from The Chelsea Piers, which is where we are.” He takes a drink of his beer and looks out at the bowling alley lights flashing, pausing long enough to make her wonder if that’s the end of the trivia. “But the Piers are actually noted for something else, besides the wars. Any ideas?”

  She contemplates the bowlers around her. A lot of couples, some families.

  “And no hints.”

  Rachel sips her drink and thinks about it, this whole trivia thing, this whole cop thing as he rubs his left shoulder beside her. “Hurt yourself?” she asks pointedly.

  “No, wise guy. You playing New York trivia or not?”

  “Yes, but.” She pauses and searches his eyes. “Wait a minute, it sort of feels like something’s riding on this?”

  “Could be. Have anything in mind?”

  “Well. Not off hand. You?”

  He gives her another long look. “Dinner? I don’t know, maybe tomorrow night? If your Sara’s not back? Guess Pier 59’s claim to fame and it’s my treat.”

  “And if I lose?”

  Michael offers a handshake. “Nice knowing you?”

  “Yeah, right,” she says, shaking his hand, feeling his grip linger a second. “I’m really not a history buff, so I can only guess.” She leans forward with her elbows on her knees. Runways of blinking lights line the lanes. The Piers. In her mind big steamships come rolling in, immigrants wearing long, dark clothes, women with scarves wrapped over their heads, steam trunks beside them, leaning on the rails as the new world approaches. “Does it have something to do with bringing immigrants over? To Ellis Island?”

  “Four-star, or how do they say it? Cozy and off the beaten path?”

  “I’m right?”

  “Close enough. It is about a ship. And there were immigrants aboard.”

  Surprising relief is what she feels when she sits back, relief at the promise of company the next evening. Because it works. Time passes. “Wait a minute! I know it.”

  “What?”

  “The Titanic?”

  “It was scheduled to pull up to the White Star Pier at the end of her first voyage, April 16, 1912. Only the survivors were brought here, a few days later,” Michael says as he stands to pay for a tray of cheese nachos delivered laneside. “I think it’s your turn now. And try not to loft the ball.”

  When she turns back at his admonishment, he holds up a nacho and winks at her. “Good luck,” he mouthes.

  Tom thought the Backwards Dinner would keep the kids distracted from the fact their mother hadn’t called from New York, even though he lied and said she called when they were at school. So sue him, he had a lot to learn about his kids being savvy, seeing through his breakfast-for-dinner, wearing their clothes inside out. This wasn’t his gig, hanging out with them. His thing was working on cases in his study with Sara Beth scrambling the eggs.

  After an hour of Owen spilling his sippy cup, and Kat keeping a log of the two days that passed without talking to her mother, and Jenny having an attitude so big it might as well take a seat beside her, he canned the breakfast dinner and settled the kids down with bowls of fudge swirl ice cream, clouds of whipped cream and thick curlicues of hot fudge. With sundae perfection, life was good.

  For the moment. Later, the girls beg Tom to call Sara Beth at the hotel.

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Jenny asks, incredulous.

  “She’s probably at a show,” Tom stalls her.

  “Why can’t we call her cell?” Kat asks.

  “I did call her cell, all day,” Jenny answers. “And it’s never on.”

  “A week ago right now, Mom was still here,” Kat says.

  “In the morning then?” Jenny presses, ignoring her sister. Her irritation at Kat’s time log is plain as day. A minute from right now I’m going to kill you, her glare says.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, that early. And quit being so dramatic.”

  “Then why not try her cell again?”

  “Because I said so. And her phone’ll be off in the theater. After school tomorrow.”

  “But Aunt Melissa said we could sleep over her house, since it’s Friday,” Kat reminds him.

  “So what. Chelsea won’t even be there,” Jenny says.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s going to some Coffee House thing at the Rec Center.”

  “Can’t you go too?”

  “Come on, Dad. You have to be in high school to go.”

  “Well she won’t be out all night.” He sees how edgy the girls are without their mother calling. “Get to bed now. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He softly closes their door in a way that mimics Sara Beth and walks past the baby’s room where the nightlight’s glow falls on the crib and he keeps on walking, straight downstairs to the liquor cabinet. Still he gives her this chance. This time. Still he believes Sara Beth will call them, call him, from New York. Still he doesn’t think things are that bad.

  Holding a glass of Scotch, Tom walks back upstairs and pulls down the attic ladder. The builder had laid the electrical work there and rough framed the walls but Tom finished the rest. Working with his hands satisfied him in a way legal work didn’t. And with a family of five, he thought so
meday the kids might use an attic corner for a playroom or clubhouse. Funny, Sara Beth beat them to it, pilfering the corner for her stray antiques. White sheets shroud the pieces.

  Sitting in the dark attic now feels the same way it did the time she climbed into the attic three years ago.

  “What?” he asked then, smiling at her odd expression. “Sara?”

  “It’s a boy.”

  He had been sitting in the same stenciled chair as he was now, going through a box of paint scrapers while Sara Beth went out with her sister Melissa. The garage trim was peeling then and needed a coat of paint before they listed the house. “Your sister’s pregnant?”

  Sara Beth shook her head. “I had an ultrasound today.”

  “You?”

  “It’s a boy, Tom.” She stood in a shaft of dusty light, pulled a small thin printout from her pocket and held it out to him.

  Tom studied it in the light beside her. A swirl of complicated soundwaves surrounded the fetus. “What’s going on?”

  “I never even noticed. Between the night classes and antiquing. And the girls’ games and Kat’s dance class and getting the house squared away before we sell.” She took a long breath. “When I got sick the other morning, I checked the calendar.”

  “We’re having a baby?” he asked, taking her arm. She just stared at him, no smile, nothing. He pulled her closer.

  “Tom, I’m thirty-eight. The girls are practically teenagers and we have to start over with a baby? Damn it, I’ll be feeding and cleaning till I’m fifty.”

  “Wait, Sara. Maybe this is good. That’s why you didn’t have your tubes tied after Kat. Remember?”

  “That was before. Things change.”

  He reached his hand beneath her chin and tipped her head up to him. “Right,” he agreed. “And this changes things too. Another baby, Sara.”

  “But we were going to sell the house. I planned to start selling antiques on the side. I don’t want to give that up.” She pulled out of his hold and sank to a crouch, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  He moved into the light and looked at the ultrasound picture again, at his baby.

  “Dr. Drake? When she saw I wasn’t happy, she asked me about an abortion. But we weren’t sure how far along I was. That’s when she ordered the ultrasound and nixed the abortion. I’m in the third month,” Sara Beth said, still crouched.

  “Come here,” Tom whispered and when she didn’t move, he knelt before her. A hindrance to her was like a blessing to him. This changes everything. Including their marriage.

  “It’s all right. We’ll keep the house. There’s plenty of room here. And you can still do the antique stuff. Just not right now.”

  He never forgot her head resting heavy on his shoulder, her body leaning into his as though her own personal plans stood no match against their busy marriage and kids and new babies.

  Their lives changed then. Sometimes that scares him, the way days move along right on track and then take a sudden turn in an opposite direction. Now he wonders if it’s happening again, that about-face. He checks his watch and hears Kat’s child voice, Ten thirty and still no call. The desire to talk to his wife suddenly consumes him. He wants to say the words he assured her in the attic, “It’s all right, Sara.”

  Instead he makes his way down the attic ladder with a small box of old baby books and right in the hallway, opens the carton and lifts out a book. Sara Beth read this story to the girls so often, and Owen needs her to do the same with him.

  He slides the rocking chair close to the crib and sits there, watching. Before you know it, Owen won’t be a baby; this peaceful time in the night won’t happen forever. Tom hears the sigh of his son’s breathing and then he does what he’s been doing more and more for the past year: He figures out how to do this reading thing, how to fill in for his wife, his voice whispering about ducks and happiness and spring and puddles.

  After a few pages, he pauses, closes the book, then opens it again. “Raindrops begin falling from a cloud…Shit, Sara Beth. What are you doing?”

  He props the cardboard book on the nightstand beside the crib so that Owen will see the fluffy yellow duck when he wakes in the morning and his first impression will be a happy one.

  Then he walks downstairs, sits in the home office, picks up the telephone and dials first his wife’s cell, which she doesn’t answer, then The Plaza. He has to talk to her and hold her and make love to her. To bring her back. She has to come home first thing tomorrow. Rachel will have to understand. He can’t do this all alone. He’s not sure what to do with the kids.

  “I’m sorry, sir. No answer. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Could you try her room one more time?”

  After a half dozen rings, he hangs up. Then he goes back in the attic to retrieve the other box of books.

  Each frame Rachel’s allowed herself one more cell phone check, hoping for a text message or voicemail. But now this doesn’t feel right, sitting in the glitzy 300 New York bowling alley, watching an incredible number of people cranking, rolling and dumping balls. With the special effect purple and pink lights flashing, it looks like a high-tech radar, like the whole place is searching out Sara Beth.

  Michael stands in front of her finishing a handful of peanuts. A faded scar runs along his jaw and his eyes look tired. She cannot even imagine what his day entails. Even though he has a way of easing her worry, casting his New York magic, it’s always there, that he’s a cop she found for a reason. With another futile cell phone check, the reality of Sara Beth’s disappearance drops over her in a sensation, a cold sweat she’s known only once before.

  “Sara,” she had said into the phone, cupping it urgently to her mouth.

  “Rachel? Is that you? What’s wrong?”

  “Carl’s on the floor near the bathroom. I just came home and he’s on the floor.”

  “What do you mean? Did he fall?”

  A beat of silence passed. “I don’t know. He can’t talk.”

  “Oh my God. Is he breathing? Is he?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m pretty sure.” Rachel heard her own voice then, some sort of cry, low and disjointed, as though it came from someone else. It made her first look at the phone, then cup it tighter to her mouth, containing the sound. “But his face, oh Sara, his face.”

  “Rachel, listen. Is an ambulance coming?”

  “Yes. But I need you, too.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming right now. As soon as I hang up the phone. You go sit with Carl, okay sweetie?”

  She nodded, tears wetting her face, the phone pressed close.

  “You have to hold his hand.” Her friend’s words were so kind. Why did the kindest words hurt so much? “Don’t let go. And speak softly to him. Tell him you love him.”

  And that cold reality washed over her: Her husband lay dying. He was leaving. That same feeling comes now. Something is very wrong.

  All that matters is that she find her friend. Or talk about her. Or think, or plan. She touches Michael’s arm. “Do you think we could leave?”

  When their eyes meet, hers must have said it all. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll get you back to The Plaza.”

  “You don’t mind?” she asks, gathering her handbag. As if she wouldn’t leave alone if necessary. A few deep breaths of the fresh air outside make her feel more optimistic. They stop at Billy’s Bakery on 9th Avenue on the way.

  “Listen, if she’s back, you both have some hashing out to do. Billy’s cupcakes, I don’t know, maybe they’ll make it easier.”

  Walking into the bakery, with its sweet aromas and pale cream brick walls, feels like walking into someone’s charming home. They stop in front of a glass case, each shelf filled with trays of cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla, frosted in browns, yellows, whites, pinks. The mere sight of all those sweet pastries does something to her, lifts her somehow. They’re little puffs of happiness. Cupcakes.

  “Let me have a couple Yellow Daisy, three Red Velvet, and a Chocolate. Throw some sprinkle
s on a few, would you?” Rachel stands behind him, watching, and he catches her eye. “Food helps,” he whispers.

  After walking a few blocks trying for a cab, Michael, holding the bakery box, breaks their long silence.

  “Twelve thousand five hundred miles.”

  “To where?”

  “Around the city. That’s how many miles of sidewalk are in Manhattan. One of the busiest transportation systems in the world. Don’t you think so?”

  “What I think,” Rachel says as Michael snags a cab, “is that Sara Beth better be back. She better not disappear in a twelve thousand mile maze, of all places.” What she doesn’t say is that Manhattan is where they drank their first cup of coffee together. On an eleventh grade art class field trip, sitting at a tiny table in a shop-front window, leaning sixteen-year-old close, they watched the city go by. Doesn’t Sara Beth think of that walking past the city cafés?

  At The Plaza, they stop at the front desk to see if there’s any word, any message, any indication that Sara Beth had been there to get in touch with Rachel. But there’s nothing.

  Rachel turns to Michael. So now there’s this: It’s nighttime in the city and it’s different. She doesn’t know what to do.

  “Do you want to go somewhere quiet? Talk a little?” He takes her gently by the arm and they walk to The Plaza’s nightclub. “I’ll buy you a glass of wine before I leave, if you want.”

  Contrary to the dim lighting, an undercurrent of energy moves through The Oak Room. Low voices, tinkling glasses and impeccable waiters moving about charge the room perfectly. After tasting her wine, Rachel scans the patrons. Maybe Sara Beth is as close as this. Maybe she hasn’t the nerve to wander much further alone at night.

  “Do you really think she’d be here?” Michael asks. He shifts his seat over so that he can see the doorway into the club and sets the cupcake box off to the side.

  “I don’t know. I can’t picture her alone out in the city, either.”

  “Have you called her husband?”

  “Almost, but she asked me not to in her note.”

  Michael raises his eyebrows. “Rachel.”