“Okay, okay. I know. She’s asking a lot. But she did ask. And I almost called Tom, that’s her husband, at work today, but then I thought I’d give her more time. She must have a valid reason to do this, right?” He’s studying people at another table and Rachel wonders if he’s even listening. “Right?” she asks again.
“A few days head start on leaving him, covering her trail maybe.”
“No, Sara’s not like that, I’m telling you. I mean, they have their problems. She’s said a little here and there. But nothing big.”
“You’ve known each other for long?”
“We met in the eighth grade when she was intrigued with my messy haircut and divorced family. I was the dangerous friend.” She sips her wine and it goes down as easily as she needs it to.
“Do you have a picture of her?”
Rachel pulls her wallet from her shoulder bag. “It’s a couple years old, but it’s all I have. I forgot to leave it with the police report.” The photograph has been trimmed to fit into her wallet and shows a close-up shot of two women, one with shoulder length auburn hair and a multi-colored silk scarf tied around her neck. Their heads are tipped together, smiles grinning wildly.
“I was feeling sorry for myself one day after my husband died. She hauled me into an instant photo booth at the mall.”
Michael looks up from the picture, past her shoulder at a couple talking, then back at her.
She scans the nightclub with a quick sigh. “She’s always been there for me, so why didn’t she trust me to be there for her?”
“Maybe she does. Can I keep this?”
“What will you do with it?”
“Give it to the right people, put it into the system.” He tucks the photograph into his shirt pocket. “I checked with the department before I picked you up. Nothing fit her profile. No arrests, no Jane Does.”
“I thought the police couldn’t do anything at this point.”
“Let’s say you have a connection now. Anything else I should know about this Sara Beth Riley?”
“You’re very kind.”
“Kind?” he asks.
“I’m sure you have a life to get back to.”
“Maybe.” He raises his glass and after taking a swallow, scans a small group of friends entering the room. “And maybe we can’t always be too sure about people.”
She studies his face, considering. He shaved after work, but the day has been long. Shadows beneath his eyes hold either fatigue or his own stories. And she notices a bead of perspiration; he’s nervous now. “It’s late…”
“Tell me whatever comes to mind. Maybe something will click. A clue, an idea.”
“Sara was my Maid of Honor, my daughter’s Godmother. When Carl, that’s my husband, when he had his heart attack, I called Sara Beth after I called 911. And she drove over faster than the ambulance. She was six months pregnant, driving all crazy like that.”
“For you.”
“And for my daughter. She stayed with her that night while I sat at the hospital.” Rachel pauses, thinking back. “So am I repaying her now, being there for her? They say these girls’ weekends are about the bonding, and celebrating friendship. So is this what I’m supposed to do? Respect her wishes?” She holds up her wine glass in a toast to their long friendship. “In twenty-five years of stories, what’s scary is that none of them explains Sara Beth’s behavior today.” She also can’t explain how she suddenly wants to be where she can wait for the door to open or the telephone to ring. She needs to be in their room, purely waiting now.
“Do me a favor then. I know you’re tired. But think about those years of stories.” He pats his jacket pockets. “Do you have a pen?”
She finds a pen and pad of paper in her bag and watches while he jots down information. He folds the paper and slides it across the table. “That’s my home number in Queens and my cell. If you think of anything, let me know. Anytime. If she shows up, if she’s in trouble. Anything. And give me your number, too. You know. In case I have to reach you, okay?”
She does, watching him write it down, crossing out a number he writes wrong, glad for someone, at least, to know where she’s at.
Sara Beth drops her purse in the bathroom sink and digs her hands in, searching blindly for the aspirin bottle. Her headache is so bad, she could barely see straight at the registration desk, dropping the room key as the clerk handed it to her. Finally she dumps the whole thing, keys and wallet and makeup and cell phone and sunglasses, clattering into the sink. She fishes out the aspirin bottle and shakes three tablets into her palm.
But something happens when she reaches for the glass of water. Her reflection stops her. With it, a memory comes of her mother not in her seventies, but at this age, looking just like Sara. And she imagines the incredible lightness of talking to her, a lightness she could always float on, it is so beautiful, the closeness she shared with her mother. The idea could make a stunning abstract painting, the way her mother, the way family, can be sweet rays of light. The mirror frames her face. A Picasso, maybe.
So standing in the tiny bathroom with its pale green tiled wall, she looks again at the three aspirin tablets in her palm, then back at her mother in the mirror, imagining what she would say if she called her, pressed the phone tight to her ear.
“Sara?” her mom would ask, to be sure she was okay. Then she’d listen to Sara Beth telling how she had stepped out of her life, and rented this tiny room, and risked losing a dear friendship, and her mom would, well, she’d worry of course. First, there would be a long silence. Oh Sara Beth knew that silence. It happened when her mother didn’t really like something. “Well then,” she’d say. “We’re going to have to get to the bottom of this. And soon. I’m not sure I really understand what you’re saying. You know I can’t be there, and I think you’re strong enough to find your way without me. To finish the things we started. But walking out, Sara? Are you sure that’s the way to clear your thoughts?”
Looking in the mirror, her fingers light on her face like a painter brushing in the strokes, pulling her eyes up, her cheeks back. It wasn’t easy walking out on forty years of life today. One uncertain step at a time, right through the restaurant doors. She couldn’t go on the way she’d been, so tired, calling her mother daily, not moving forward. If she didn’t take these few days to find a way to change, she’d be no use to anyone.
But her headache. She pours a glass of water and swallows the three tablets. What if it’s serious? What if it’s a warning headache before an aneurysm? “A brain aneurysm is a bulge in the artery in your brain,” she recites quietly. “Unruptured, it presses on the brain, causing severe headache. More common in adults than children.” Who would know where she is? Would anyone help her? How would Tom know? And then she can’t breathe, gasping in a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, it’s her mother in the mirror.
“Oh but I love what you’ve done to your hair,” her mother might say if she saw her now, with her hair cut short, the new layers highlighted and tousled. But she wouldn’t see her. She would never see Sara Beth again.
Chapter Five
When she wakes up, through a wall, or ceiling, Rachel notices the muffled intonations of a man and woman talking. It’s hard to tell if it comes from another room or out in the hallway. But what she hears is the masculine drone of Carl’s voice and it brings her to tears. “For your birthday,” he had said one morning a few years ago. “Would you like that?”
She’d looked at him over a steaming coffee cup. “Paris in the springtime? I’ll bet it’s beautiful.”
“Paris or London. It doesn’t matter. Any birthday ending in zero is a big one. Let’s do forty up big.” But he never made it, to her forty or his fifty. He died at forty-eight.
This is the spring when Carl planned on taking her to Paris.
So she needed that sense of travel, of being away and returning home from a trip. Because what she knows is this: Intentions don’t die with the body. They are of the spirit. And fulfilling Carl’s inte
ntions enables her to let go, leaving no unfinished matters in their marriage.
She slips into her robe. Sara Beth might very well be in the next room, sitting on the tapestry sofa, a mug of coffee cupped in her hands, her face wearing an apologetic smile. They can still salvage the weekend. So Rachel puts on the right expectant face and opens her bedroom door. But there is no friend on the other side, only diffused sunlight bathing the fine furniture in a golden glow.
Standing alone, she’s not sure who her damn tears are for: Sara or Carl. “Couldn’t you have held on?” she asks, turning around. “I don’t know what to do.”
As previously arranged, Room Service arrives with breakfast. She and Sara Beth had it all planned out. First, a pot of coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, warm muffins, New York newspapers. Okay, okay. Then a stop at The Today Show, it’s totally tourist, but they’d have loved it, leaning against the railing, hoping the camera panned them, waving for Sara’s kids. Then a walk in Central Park before having their nails done for tonight. Teri Alexander, their high school classmate, had a singing engagement at The Metropolitan Room. Tonight is the big planned celebration of both their fortieth birthdays.
She checks her voicemail then pours herself a cup of coffee. Doesn’t Sara Beth remember this? Isn’t she thinking of her as the day begins? Sara specifically ordered the apple crumb muffins. Rachel curls up on the sofa and through the large window she sees not New York, but home in Addison, and the coffee shop at the corner of Main and Brookside.
Whole Latte Life. It’s a tiny place, like a delicate china cup tucked snug on the corner and facing the town Green. A place to sit and mull over their lives. Its windowed front looks out on a manicured lawn and clusters of maple trees. There are wooden benches and barrels of flowers. Locals ride their horses around the perimeter. A whole latte perfection.
They call it their salvation, meeting for coffee twice a week after Sara gets the kids off to school. Because there is always something behind the talking, some pulse being taken. How’s your life? it says. Let me press a vein, take a look at your heart. They circle tag sale ads for antiques while considering going back to college; they plan early bird stops at the farmers’ market for baby tomato plants and impatiens and herbs while debating daycare for Owen. It’s like they’re quilters weaving pieces of their lives into a patchwork quilt, their everyday stories a different patch stitched with the telling, the listening, the tears and laughter.
She sips her coffee now and looks out at Manhattan. Did Sara Beth sleep last night? Or eat? Is she still in New York? She picks up the remote and finds The Today Show on the television. Finally the cameras pan out on the Plaza, showing throngs of women holding signs, talking, arms linked. Friends, everywhere she looks there are friends. She pictures the sign she should have made. Sara Beth! Call me! The camera moves along the crowd as she watches for that auburn hair falling across Sara’s forehead, tucked behind an ear. There are so many signs today! Is one from Sara? Does it say she’s okay, don’t worry? Tom planned to tape this so the kids could look for them after school.
If it wasn’t for her note, for that Please don’t call Tom, please Rachel, that call would’ve already been made. But she decides to give Sara Beth what she wants, for now. That privacy. While Sara Beth does…what?
Which makes Rachel go straight for her cell phone. Sara Beth is at risk, because, really, this is proof enough, this imagining desperate signs at The Today Show pleading for contact, and her husband should know. She checks her watch, then her phone.
A knock at the door interrupts her and when she rushes to open it, hoping to see Sara Beth standing on the other side, there is only this: the same Room Service Porter. “Excuse me again. This should have been delivered with your breakfast.” He hands her a small package. “Sorry for the mix-up.”
“Thank you,” she tells him, her heart beating fast enough to get her attention. The package is four inches square and neatly addressed in Ashley’s handwriting. Rachel closes the door and unwraps it right there to find a book inside. Her finger trails the inscription.
Dear Mom,
I know we had dinner on your birthday last month. But consider this a surprise party. I didn’t want you thinking I forgot about you and Sara Beth. Happy B-Day! Enjoy the book and the city!
XOXO,
Ashley
Brief verses and sweet anecdotes fill the tiny book about mothers. She skims Ashley’s margin notes written on dogeared pages. It’s like her daughter reads over her shoulder, pointing, Oh look! Her words do that, her Sounds like us, Mom. Or remember that café we went to, at the beach? They reach over her shoulder.
And that is exactly when Rachel decides she will celebrate her birthday today. Ashley had arrived in spirit, and maybe thoughts of their planned evening on the town will lure Sara Beth back to The Plaza, to her life. That’ll be her plan. She’ll give her friend until tonight.
After a shower, she brushes her hair back, touches up her makeup, grabs her jacket and steps in front of the mirror. Her hands slide flat along the black skinny jeans hugging her hips, considering a single forty-year-old woman unexpectedly alone in Manhattan for a long weekend.
The thing is, she’s not really sure how to be single again. And is she even ready to leave Carl’s memory this way? After all, she went bowling with a stranger last night. Her guilt brings on that gosh darn twinge in her heart. The one telling her how much she’d love to tell that bowling story to her missing friend, sharing details between sips of espresso. And getting a second opinion.
She slips into her jacket, walks through the living room and locks the door behind her. There are things to do, after all, things that keep her from picturing Sara Beth right now, in memory or imagination. Memory feels too sad and imagination is just too scary.
Now Michael knows what Rachel felt like yesterday searching for her friend. He’s been scanning faces all morning, hoping to see her walking down the avenue or stepping out of a cab. It gets to be maddening. Did Sara Beth return? Is Rachel still in the city?
Traffic jams up a couple blocks away and by the time he gets to the heart of the congestion, the obstacle is gone but drivers are backed up. He turns Maggie and she nods hard, like she’s telling him I know, look how they drive. So he scans the pedestrians for Rachel, or Sara Beth, then motions for the cars on 53rd to start moving, eyeing back Sixth Avenue drivers. The one limousine trying to slip through stops with a verbal warning. One more inch and he’s writing a ticket.
When the traffic flow eases, Michael moves in the direction of Joe and Lena’s delicatessen. The precinct radioed him a message to stop by the deli and Lena steps outside with a coffee and doughnut, bribing him with food, so he knows something’s wrong. Apparently Lena saw Summer on her way to school and his daughter was upset. The news is that his ex-wife wants to move her out of Queens.
Now, a few blocks further, freshly painted crosswalks spook Maggie and she balks, sidestepping the lines. No amount of clicking, neck rubbing or stern commands budge her over the lines. He finally has to dismount and walk the big brown horse back a block to a street vendor they passed. Maggie begrudgingly nibbles at the hot dog cart umbrella as though this is his fault, snorting and waiting for a piece of bread. “You could win an Oscar,” he tells her. The vendor gives him a roll which he breaks in half. They both need the break.
After downing a hot dog and a bottled water, he rolls a kink out of his neck then holds out his flat hand for Maggie. In one swoop, her velvet lips lift the second chunk of bread before he mounts her. They make their way back down Sixth Avenue, this time stepping over the freshly painted crosswalk with ease.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he asks the horse, and her ears tip back to his voice. He pats her neck and moves into traffic, checking his cell for messages as he does. No sooner does the driver of a van ask about city parking does Maggie nod hard and slip in a sidestep prance. He pulls sharp on the reins and decides to end his tension, which his horse is obviously feeding off of. Maneuverin
g her over to the curb, he checks his cell again and dials Rachel’s.
“Mrs. DeMartino,” he says, surprised at the noise wherever she is. “It’s me, Michael. NYPD? I wondered if you had any word from your friend.”
Rachel pauses, then, “No. Nothing.”
Maggie fidgets, turning into the traffic until he pulls on her reins and turns her back. “Where are you? It’s really noisy.”
“Okay, hear me out. You’ll probably think it’s really dumb, you know, what a tourist. But I’m at The Today Show. It’s just that we—”
“You’re out searching for her then,” he interrupts.
“Yes, I am.”
“Why don’t you call her husband? It’s probably time.”
“No. Not till after tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“We had plans, and I’m thinking she might show up there.”
“You feel like company? I don’t know, maybe you want to cash in that dinner bet?”
She’s quiet first, then says, “You know, company would be great. I really don’t feel like doing this thing alone. We’re seeing a friend at The Metropolitan Room. She’s got a gig there.”
“Okay. That’s decent. I’ll pick you up early and pay up the wager. We’ll eat at Bobo’s. Little place in the West Village. It’s a little better than bowling, if you know what I mean. And listen, Rockefeller Plaza is a real central thoroughfare. If you sit on a bench and watch the people, maybe she’ll pass by.” He digs in a heel against the horse’s side when she starts another sidestep into traffic, pulling her back hard. “But be aware of who’s around you. And leave your cell on, okay?”
Chapter Six
No present could ever match what her mother had given her. The package arrived by courier on her fortieth birthday, shortly after the kids were on the school bus and Tom had left for work. It was a complete surprise, getting a present delivered like that months after her death.
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