Despite having put extra effort into drying her hair, into taming her brows, into all the routines that had become more exhausting and more necessary in the recent terrible years, Sarah arrived early to the meeting. Looking around the aggressively charming room, she was overcome with a scrubbed-clean sensation that she couldn’t immediately identify. Sarah reminded herself that there was no reason for this surge of positive feeling, that she’d surely have heard something over e-mail or text if there were any real reason for it. But when Caroline arrived in a burst of clashing patterns, with her thick black hair upswept in a jade-green banana clip that looked improbably fashionable, Sarah recognized the feeling; it had been a while: hope.
“Oh, honey,” Caroline said, with an enviably unrestrained hug. “I can’t believe it’s been a year.”
“I know.” Sarah nodded. “I know.”
“It always goes so fast, doesn’t it?” Caroline sat and whipped out a pair of plum-colored cat-eye reading glasses, quickly scanned the menu, and placed it facedown.
This year, Sarah thought; nothing fast about it.
“So,” Caroline began, “I don’t think you’re actually interested in what you sent me.”
“I’m not?”
“No. I’m sorry but you’re not. That’s not where the fire is. But,” Caroline said meaningfully.
“There’s a but.”
“I expect the world of you and always will. You know that?”
Sarah nodded dutifully.
“I have a suggestion. Are you open to hearing it?”
“Of course,” Sarah said, exasperated. “Of course I am.”
The waiter appeared. She became flustered while ordering—“I’ll just have what she’s having”—as if she needed Caroline to see any more evidence of her inability to think clearly. And of course Caroline insisted on ordering a bottle of Sancerre. Sarah had originally loved Caroline’s penchant for daytime drinking, and at the outset it always sounded like a great idea, but Sarah always felt slightly paranoid after sharing a bottle with her, as if she’d spoken too candidly or else had said too little.
“You look so nervous,” Caroline said, as the waiter walked away. “You don’t need to look like that. Not with me.” Her mouth twisted like a little fist before offering a smile more practiced than all the smiles that had ever preceded it.
This lunch, Sarah realized, might be our last.
Caroline leaned forward. “I think you should revisit the other script.”
Sarah felt a pulsing in her temples. “I told you I couldn’t do that.”
Caroline nodded. “I know you did.”
“When I was working on that script, Caroline—it was as if I had no choice.”
“Exactly.” Caroline nodded. “That is what I’m saying. That’s how it read, even then, when it was so raw.”
“I still can’t believe I showed it to you. It was a mess.”
Caroline nodded. “It was.”
Sarah shrugged. “Even though it was a mess, I thought that script had a beginning, middle, and end. I didn’t realize that the story I was telling—that was just the beginning.”
“So, this is what I’m trying to tell you: You have perspective now. You know where it can go.”
“I know where it went. But I can’t write about it. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to. Not with this ending.”
When their salads arrived, Sarah made sure to take a few bites. The beets were too vinegary, the greens too spicy; she took several sips of wine.
Caroline shrugged. “You don’t need to commit to reality. The story can be whatever you want it to be. And maybe making a film about it—”
The wine suddenly tasted cloying; heat flushed Sarah’s arms, her face. She nearly spat it out.
Caroline touched the napkin to her mouth and held it there for a moment.
Then this woman of unshakable nerve, this person who had believed in Sarah when no one else could see her talent, her agent of over twenty years, her one remaining connection to a professional reality, closed her eyes before placing the napkin gently on the table. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
ON THE TRAIN BACK TO BROOKLYN, Sarah bit her nails down to the quick, after a summer of successfully growing them out. Never would she have imagined ending up as someone who rarely wrote more than an occasional fragment, or for whom the shame of not working was so familiar. She tried reminding herself that she still taught a class (Film Aesthetics 1 & 2) each semester at New York Film Academy and she sometimes returned to the screenplay idea she’d sent Caroline, but Sarah knew what working felt like and what it took out of her, and this was not it.
Nearly a decade ago she had promised Caroline a second screenplay. It was the reason for this annual lunch; every year, the Friday after Labor Day, they met to discuss her progress. She hadn’t any new screenplay to deliver, but she had sent five pages of notes and ideas about Queen Victoria’s daughter Alice, who breastfed her child against her mother’s wishes only to have her infant daughter reject her milk and then, after securing a wet nurse, decided to breastfeed the wet nurse’s son. Up until Sarah had sent the e-mail, the fragments of this story lived only in a document on her laptop entitled “third project,” as if Sarah were so entirely uncommitted to Queen Victoria’s forward-thinking and emotionally complicated daughter that she couldn’t even bother with a working title. Regardless of how polished or unpolished those pages were, a period film would be too expensive to produce even if she could call in some final favors with her stylist friend or get the wardrobe sponsored. She knew it was a nonstarter and yet somehow she’d sent it anyway.
Sarah had made one film, over twenty-five years ago. It had been lauded as strange and beautiful. She’d made this film quickly and cheaply, never imagining its success and certainly not imagining that it would be the best thing she’d ever do. She’d spent her youth writing stories and had made this one film out of a desire to escape and to conjure, but she couldn’t do either anymore.
To use one’s imagination for art or even for leisure: this seemed like the world’s greatest luxury.
Here was the thing she couldn’t get used to: she had only one story now. It was obvious to everyone who knew her.
She closed her eyes and tried to let these thoughts roll by, to shift her focus to something good. She’d felt real and true excitement a couple of months ago, hearing Kiki’s voice for the first time in eight years. Her old friend had left a voice message, then e-mailed within the hour. Both times she said she realized it had been years since they’d spoken, but she just had to tell Sarah and Matthew about the new arrival.
We had a baby, Kiki had written. A girl. I hope I’m not wrong in thinking you’d want to know.
Sarah had called back. She left her own voice mail, then wrote an e-mail asking for pictures. Of course of course of course. Of course I want to know. THANK YOU. I’m thrilled for you. And I can’t wait to hear everything.
Kiki wrote back with the weekend invitation. Make it a long weekend, she wrote. Stay till Monday if you can. She suggested, to Sarah’s relief, they dispense with the back-and-forth and just catch up in person. She sent the address and a P.S.
We sold our house in Silver Lake and rented this house, sight unseen, in a town we’d never heard of. Kiki included three overtly tense rectangle-smile emojis, but, knowing Kiki, what she was really saying was It’s an undiscovered gem. You’ll see.
Moving from Los Angeles to upstate New York seemed a particularly strange choice, given Arman’s acting career. If it were any other couple, it might have sounded depressing. But because it was Kiki, because it was Kiki and Arman, moving to an unknown town in upstate New York with an infant seemed straight-up glamorous.
None of the four of them—amazingly, Sarah supposed—were on any social media. Matthew had a presence for his company, but that was different. When she searched out Arman and Kiki, Arman was on IMDb, and Sarah had turned up some reviews of a few films he’d been in. Kiki’s textile company had a website—which had popped up about five years ago during one of Sarah’s semihabitual Google searches. Kiki’s designs were made with ink and watercolor, the patterns abstract and lush.
Sarah kept her eyes closed and pictured one of Kiki’s underwater-kingdom images. What was she going to get the baby? She’d already made a special trip to a store in Boerum Hill, where she’d become overwhelmed with choices: tiny fleece vest? Exquisite ash-and-maple stacking blocks? The felt crowns and natural-fiber dollies and mobiles made from locally sourced tree branches sent her into a minor panic. It was such a perfectly curated aesthetic of how to raise a person. She hadn’t bought or made anything like this for her own daughter. Would any of it have helped? A silly thought—how could it have possibly?—but she did wonder. She questioned everything.
While gripping a Ghanaian beaded gourd-rattle, she’d felt her shoulders tense and her whole self grow suddenly, inexplicably hostile at the sight of perfectly folded onesies in shades of beige, gray, and celery, colors too chic and muted for anyone under thirty. She’d almost taken a cab straight to Target for a more mainstream selection, but if the haute-hippie baby store had so undone her, she shuddered to think how she’d react in this mood to that toxic plastic morass. She’d gone home instead and congratulated herself on having the good sense to take a bath sprinkled with vetiver oil. Afterward, from the comfort of her warm home, which she was unreasonably fortunate to have, she ordered a monogrammed L.L. Bean sail bag in a cheerful Prussian blue, only to realize at checkout that she didn’t remember how to properly spell the baby’s name, and though she scrolled through her e-mails, she couldn’t find any message from Kiki with that information (even though she felt sure she’d received one). E-mailing Kiki to ask how to spell her baby’s name would seem somehow inexcusable, as if Sarah hadn’t been paying close enough attention.
AND HERE SHE WAS NOW, on a subway with her eyes closed, reliving the boozy lunch with Caroline, wincing yet again at Caroline’s suggestion. It occurred to Sarah—not for the first time, not by a long shot—that she’d become a difficult person.
She opened her eyes and opened her book.
Having barely finished a page, she heard:
“I see you are an intellectual.”
She continued reading without looking up, offering the same curt smile she reflexively gave to men on the street who said things like Baby, you looking for me? Sarah startled easily. It was one of the first things her husband had noticed about her, how uneasy she was. She had never been able to decide if the observation bothered her or if she appreciated it. He’d also liked her hair—long, dark blond, and straight, with blunt bangs—which she basically hadn’t changed in thirty years.
“It is unusual,” the voice said, “to see someone with a hardcover book.”
She sneaked a glance across the car. He was somewhere between professorial and homeless. He was older—grandfatherly—with a worn tweed coat too warm for an early-September day that still felt like August and a full head of gray hair that hadn’t been recently combed. From his accent she guessed that he was Eastern European.
“I’m no intellectual,” she said.
He asked what she was reading and Sarah said it was a novel, and when this didn’t satisfy him and he asked what it was about, she said it was about baseball.
“You are a sports enthusiast?”
“No.” She explained in an irritated rush how she loved books and movies about sports but never the sport itself.
“You’re not a fan?” he asked, as if the word itself was amusing.
“Never,” she found herself saying. “I’m distrustful of teams.”
“I understand,” he said, which caught her off guard. She smiled.
Why was she chatting like this? She had never spoken to a stranger on a train. Once, on the F, many years before, a Chinese woman had reached into a cloudy glass container, pulled out a hard-boiled egg, and handed it to Sarah’s toddler. Sarah was both disgusted and touched and had let her child accept it. She thanked the woman, who didn’t speak English, so they’d just smiled at each other periodically for several stops until the woman got off at East Broadway.
“Are you a professor?” the man asked.
“I told you I’m not an intellectual.”
“And not all professors are, I am afraid to say.”
“Mmn.”
“Are you … an actress?”
“An actress?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Professor to actress? Funny jump. Never mind—I’m neither. How about you? Are you a professor?”
He laughed and then started coughing.
“I’ll take that as a no?”
“Are you a doctor?” he countered, his cough petering out.
“I guess I’m a filmmaker.” Immediately she wished she’d lied. “Although I haven’t made a film in years.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “And why is that?”
“Not telling.”
“I see.” He raised his eyebrows; she felt a fresh wave of shame.
The Q train shot across the Manhattan Bridge. Orange-pink light and the old man’s face. The sun was far from setting; his jaw was strong beneath sagging skin. As he’d shifted his body to listen to her, there’d been a whiff of something. If he’d been younger, she might have registered this smell as unhealthy and antiseptic, but because he was old, because he was wearing a worn tweed jacket, her brain came up with camphor, moors, a splash of wet wool.
“So,” he persisted, “your films; are they documentaries? Sagas?” He smiled.
“No, I made two feature films. The first one I wrote and directed. The second one I was hired to direct.”
“How wonderful. And were these films shown in theaters?”
“Yes”—she blushed—“but it was a long time ago.”
“This is wonderful,” he repeated with such delight it was as if he’d made a bet with someone that very morning that he could find, while riding public transportation, an acclaimed filmmaker.
“My first film did well, actually,” she felt compelled to add, though for whose benefit she wasn’t sure.
He clasped his hands together and nodded. “This must have been very exciting.”
“I guess it was.” It was hard not to feel touched by his seemingly genuine interest. “I mean—it was. But I was so young and I really had no idea how unusual it was for a first feature to make a profit, or to get into the good festivals, be reviewed—all of it.”
“This film that … ‘did well’—as you say—what is it about?”
“I just meant in comparison to the other one.” It was misguided, she had learned, to assume she couldn’t seem arrogant to others just because she held a low opinion of herself. “It’s about a young white woman from South Africa under apartheid. She moves to Iceland to work in a fish-processing factory.”
He didn’t respond and she wondered if he’d heard her.
“I don’t know. It was the nineties. It’s almost like it happened to someone else. Though my husband shot it—he was the cinematographer—so I know it happened; I mean, he can verify that I was there, that I was … in control.” She laughed a little anxiously. “Do you ever feel that way about some of your memories?”
“Do I feel as if my life has been determined by another? Do I feel as if someone else has made certain decisions and has—look—taken this action or that one? Yes, of course. But this is a very common feeling, no?”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is.” He waved his hand as if to cast away any notion of singularity. “And, this … this story—why did you write such a thing?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve always said it came from seeing a photograph of these women in Iceland removing their snowsuits and revealing chic dresses underneath, around the same time as reading many articles about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Cape Town, but to tell you the truth I’m not sure how the idea started. I mean, I know I’ve seen that photograph, but I think the story might have come first. I met someone at a party who was visiting from Reykjavík.” Sarah shrugged.
They were underground again. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the grimy black of the subway window, with those under-eye circles still new enough to give her pause. “I don’t remember whether I met the Icelandic woman or saw that photo first. Anyway, it’s not autobiographical—the film—in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. I do not make stupid assumptions. In addition, you are clearly an American.”
“Glad to hear it.” She was suddenly grinning and friendly, if also insulted by being clearly American. She was teetering on the verge of actual joy simply by talking to someone who knew nothing about her and her constricted little life. “Are you visiting?”
He nodded. “And you?”
“Me? No.” It was pleasant to imagine she was visiting New York. That she could pick up and return to another life, her real one. “No, I don’t travel much. Although I’m headed out of town for the weekend.”
“Somewhere nice?”
“I’m visiting old friends.” She suddenly realized that when she had envisioned this visit—walks in the woods, swims in a lake, wine in a spacious kitchen—there was no baby.
“Good friends, I think?”
“She was a good friend.” Sarah nodded. “He was, too, in his way. But it’s been a long time.”
The man shrugged and waved his hand again, as if he were now dismissing the notion of time itself.
“My husband travels so much for work; when he’s home, we usually end up staying put. And you? Do you travel a lot?”
“You know,” he said, taking his time, “when my wife was alive, she always wanted to go to this place and that place and I did not want to go anyplace. I thought I hated to travel. As it turns out, I enjoy it very much.”
“Well, that’s great. I mean, I feel kind of bad for your wife, but—”
“Don’t,” he said sharply.
“What?”
“You needn’t feel bad for her.”
“Okay. No, I only meant—”
“It is very humorous to me when people use this expression: ‘Do you think people ever really change?’ Because of course they do.”
“I agree,” she almost whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said I agree.” She cleared her throat. “People change. People definitely change. We tell each other these lies all the time, every day. Like ‘You look the same.’ No one looks the same. We tell ourselves so many lies about time. The way we deal with time. We’re all just—hurtling toward death. But it’s like—‘Oh, people don’t change’ and ‘You look the same’…”
Her words shredded the air with their shrillness. She should have kept reading.
The foreign man said, “I am a visitor here. You are a little bit strange and I am grateful for your conversation.”
“I am a little bit strange.” She settled into a smile. “It’s true.”
“As am I.”
“And where are you from?”
“I live in Washington.” As if he’d just remembered. “Washington, D.C.”
“And before that?”
“I come from Prague.”
“Oh! I love Prague.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been several times. My husband had a fellowship there a long time ago, soon after Havel was elected. He shot a film. He was a filmmaker, too, I mean, back then,” she found herself explaining; was she boasting again? “The crew was Czech.”
“I see. It was a good place for foreigners at this time. Our beautiful buildings, our young idealistic people.” He smiled archly. “And of course the low cost of filming.”
She shook her head. “No—I mean—it was so much more than that.”
“Yes?” He looked into her eyes, and for a moment she didn’t know quite how to respond. His eyes were bottle green, his eyebrows and stubble stark white.
“It was more than that. Everyone was so knowledgeable and passionate and—”
“You were young. Yes? You were very young.”
She laughed uncomfortably. “Well, sure.”
He rooted around in his jacket pocket and produced a torn piece of paper. There was a scribbled address, the words St. Ivo. “Are you familiar with this restaurant?”
“Here in Brooklyn?” She was disappointed that he didn’t want to know what she loved about Prague. “I think so. But I don’t think it’s a restaurant.”
“No? He told me that it was.”
“Who did?”
“My son. He is the owner.”
“Oh. Well then, I guess it is.” She paused, as if he’d caught her in a lie. “I thought it was a bar. I’ve passed it but I haven’t been inside.”
“Do you have children?”
“Children? No.”
“Ah. I see.”
“That’s right.” She smiled, showing all of her teeth. “It’s just my husband and me.”
“I see.” Then, after a moment: “Is this my stop coming up?”
“You’re meeting your son at his restaurant? Then yes.”
“You are a filmmaker. I should like to see your films.”
“Well”—Sarah tried not to sigh—“as I mentioned, there are two. One is terrible. One might just hold up. They … exist.” She told him her name. “The first one might have actually been dubbed in Czech.”
“I’d prefer to see the original,” he replied sternly. “I see plenty of English films, you know. And I read in English quite well.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, rushing, “your English is excellent.”
He rummaged around in his pocket again and took out a small notebook and pen. “Write your name.”
She did. “There’s only one of me.” And when he looked confused: “My name. It makes things easier online.”
“Oh, I do not use the Internet.” The subway slowed. “Please, write down your address and your telephone number, and this way I may telephone or write to you if I cannot find your films.”
That a stranger would ask for her home address so earnestly, without any sense of self-consciousness—it was so old-world, so wildly out of step with their time.
What Sarah suddenly wanted: to be in Prague in spring with her daughter. To sit in the unremarkable café that was remarkably still there each year they’d returned. To order pastry after pastry. To talk about the various museums and castles they’d surely visit the next day, the day after. To listen as her daughter came up with a theme—Mythological Creatures, Death, Kafka—and to sit side by side, by her side, playing the same game they’d played while traveling since she was ten years old: you write a sentence and fold the paper over, and the other person writes a sentence, and together, without seeing what the other person has written, the two of you tell a story.
She wrote down her phone number.
The subway doors opened; he was going to miss his stop.
She scribbled her home address.
He grabbed the notebook and looked at her. His green eyes were clear—insistent, even.
“What?” she asked, not exactly uncomfortable.
“You are a good mother.”
“But—”
“You are.”
Then he disappeared into a rush-hour crowd. Watching him from afar, he looked younger, almost rakish. She felt genuinely stunned and as if someone were watching her.
Maybe she’d misheard him. Maybe he was one of those people who thought women’s lives were incomplete without having a child, and—having assumed she was much younger—had said, You’d be a good mother.
But his tone, that insistence, had suggested he’d known she was lying. And also suffering.
Kiki had once said something about how Sarah’s face invited projection. During one of their first late-night talks, Kiki had declared—in her intimate way, initially so destabilizing—“People must assume they know you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No signifiers. You could be from so many different worlds.”
Sarah had laughed, even as she felt judged. “Are you saying I’m—what? Generic? A blank slate? Neutral?”
“I just bet you’re familiar to different kinds of people.”
Sarah remembered feeling unusually comfortable in that moment with Kiki. It was true. People did often think they knew her. And she’d never thought to question why.
This was probably why the Czech man had started speaking to her on the subway. Or he understood she was vulnerable and was somehow trying to con her. He had singled her out, flattered her, and it had worked. She’d told him—a complete stranger—that she was leaving town for the weekend; then she’d written down her home address. Sarah reflexively checked that her wallet was in her bag. She opened her wallet to make sure all the money and cards were there.
She jogged up the station steps, sat on a park bench in the oncoming dusk, and typed St. Ivo, Brooklyn, into her phone. She scrolled through Yelp reviews, blog mentions; was she searching for proof that he’d been telling the truth? Verifying that this bar had food service? That someone with a Czech father worked there? And who was St. Ivo? She found, through the oracle of Google, that he was the patron saint of lawyers and a sometime symbol for justice. St. Ivo was also the patron saint of abandoned children.
The cloudless sky thrummed with pearly light, and a text came in from Matthew—How was seeing Caroline? Where are you?
Where was she?
She went over the lunch and the subway ride, unwittingly weaving together two sets of images and phrases, until she forced herself to think of anything else, and a group of kids—maybe eight years old—popped into her head. They took Wilderness Skills classes in Prospect Park and she often saw them here, dismissed around this time. The kids were so cute and also easy to mock: Wilderness Skills in Brooklyn! But it wasn’t too difficult to imagine how, when autumn came and when the park’s entrance became a dark mouth blowing bitter air, the idea of knowing how to use a compass would seem pretty shrewd.
She imagined a son—a boy named Alex—his expression as she approached. He was lanky and freckled, with a mop of dark hair; big feet, dazzling smile. Even though she always picked him up from the park, his face lit up every time.
She supposed she wasn’t the only person who daydreamed these glimpses: other children, other husbands, other lives. She dreamed of the children she might have had, if this or that pregnancy had taken, if this or that man had been hers.
Sarah once met a woman in the support group who was significantly older than she, and though the woman looked tired and sad, she also looked stylish. Sarah remembered a blush-colored bouclé sweater and what solace Sarah had taken in the care the woman clearly showed herself. She’d been frank about cutting off her daughter. “I’m done,” she’d told Sarah. “It’s over. She’s not getting any more money. I’ve already given; do you know what I mean? I gave at the office. I gave at the door.”
Where was she? Where was Sarah?
I’m with our daughter again, Matthew. And everyone calls you Matt except for me.
You’re making lush short films that no one will see because it’s the dawn of the 1990s and there’s funding and interest and no Internet for the foreign man on the subway to ignore, and I am with our daughter. I’m sitting on the pine floors of our kitchen in Prospect Heights a million or twenty-four years ago after feeding the baby breakfast, and I’m seeing the grooves in the honey-colored planks, the bits of food that are stuck in those grooves that I need to remove with a special knife kept specifically for this purpose. I’m with our daughter—twelve, thirteen years later—different apartment, different world—as she laughs so hard at the TV that I think something is wrong with her (could something be wrong with her?) and then I start laughing, too, because her laugh is contagious and, yes, just a touch scary, the way the best laughs are.
She rose from the bench and started walking. Maybe she was being followed. She walked faster, developing a stitch in her side. If Matthew had just texted her, it meant he’d finished his long run, which he did most Friday afternoons when he wasn’t on a shoot. Despite the side stitch she began jogging toward where he usually finished, suddenly eager—frantic—to see him.
HE WAS STRETCHING HIS CALVES, standing on the curb, lowering one foot at a time. He looked strong in his gray running tank, but when he stopped midstretch and took a swig from his water, ran a hand over his unshaven face, he looked instantly exhausted. Unsettled, she tried to imagine what she’d think if she saw him right then for the first time.
He was looking into the park and didn’t see her until she was almost at his side. His face lit up; it did.
“Surprise,” she said. She wasn’t being followed. She felt both relieved to realize this and also a bit silly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I know it’s pathetic, but I always need an excuse to get myself to the park.”
“So I’m your excuse?” He put his hand on her neck.
“You are.” She gave him a kiss. “Except I’m tired just looking at you.” She licked his faint salt taste from her lip. “How many miles this time?”
“Ten.” He took another swig of water. She’d bought Matthew his hydration belt—an awkward transaction that should have been conducted online, because when the JackRabbit salesman had used the term hydration belt she’d cracked up inappropriately (not an unusual occurrence during that period) and he’d clearly taken offense. She’d bought this gift over a year ago in an attempt toward thoughtfulness, toward acting like the kind of woman to whom Matthew might want to stay married. She hadn’t imagined his running habit would stick. This seemed ridiculous now. Equally ridiculous was how she almost hadn’t bought the hydration belt because she hadn’t wanted it to seem as if she were pressuring him to keep up the running. He’d never been in shape. He was the big, tall guy who could get away with never exercising. Between the two of them—and granted this wasn’t saying terribly much—she’d always been the athlete.
“Do you feel like Superman?”
He had crow’s-feet fanning his eyes when he smiled. He’d always had them, even when he was twenty-two. “I’m creaky.”
“Well, I’m impressed.” Her gaze wandered inside the park, scanning the meadow, the hill. “I really am.”
“Thanks.” He twisted to crack his back. He winced before saying, “So tell me about Caroline.”
“I will.”
Had the Wilderness class come out of the park yet? Had the kids been carrying those orange fishing rods, or compasses, or assorted unwieldy sticks? That’s what she wanted to ask. Whether he ran six miles or twenty, it was all the same. Matthew had asked about Caroline. Did he, too, have another, truer question?
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep looking into the park.”
“I don’t.”
“You were just looking into the park.”
“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you were looking over my shoulder in that direction.” He was still smiling. “You’re being really cagey.”
“Cagey?” She laughed a little. “I’m being cagey? What, like I’m actually waiting for someone else? I came here to meet someone who isn’t you, even though I knew you’d be right in this very spot?” She laughed, in a forced way, she knew, but it was still laughter. Their arguments were mostly over strange looks, a funny, weird expression that might pass across his face or hers. They could go back and forth about a sideways glance. It was oppressive. And inane.
“Let’s stop this,” she said.
“I’m stopping.”
“Let’s go.”
“I’m going.”
She raised her eyebrows in annoyance but said nothing more. They walked over the stones of Prospect Park West. The streetlights came on early, set for fall, wasting electricity. She pictured the months to come; she hoped for the same changes as always. She pictured phone calls, relief, the smell of burning leaves. This weekend she would say to Kiki, My phone is an actual appendage, and Kiki would be ready to commiserate about technology and how it spiritually breaks us down or fucks us up, and then—midsentence—Kiki would realize what Sarah had meant. What it felt like to wait for a phone call; the one that had to come but didn’t come.
But.
To be in a car with Matthew on a highway going somewhere in the name of fun. To see Kiki and Arman after so many years. She took Matthew’s hand and held on tight. She admonished herself to be grateful. We’re reconnecting with friends, she thought, as she took his arm. Will you please stay focused on this welcome surprise?
“So,” she said, “when are we leaving?”
“Aren’t we going tomorrow morning?”
“Well, that’s how I left it when I hung up the phone. But Kiki being Kiki said to come whenever.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I guess it means we could drive up tonight if we’re feeling inspired. She did seem genuinely relaxed about it.”
“You always thought Kiki was so relaxed.”
“That’s because she was.”
“Okay, so she was the most relaxed person I’d ever met, you’re right. But that was a long time ago. They have a baby now. I’m sure she’s not relaxed and I’m sure they need to know when we’re coming.”
“I can’t believe they have a baby.”
He didn’t say anything.
She silently counted to five.
“After so many years of not having and not wanting one,” she continued. “They really didn’t want a baby. Do you remember? So they changed their minds. I don’t know why I’m surprised. It happens, doesn’t it? I mean, more often than not, people end up changing their minds.”
“I guess.”
“What?”
“No, I guess I just assumed it was an accident; they’re younger than us, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Sarah said. “By a few years, they are.”
“What’s funny?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re grinning.”
“Am I?”
“What?”
“No, it’s just that it hadn’t occurred to me that it was an accident.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—her tone of voice? That she seems really, crazily happy?”
He nodded vaguely. Sarah felt him disappear. Even though this happened often enough, she was always unprepared.
“Maybe they tried to have a baby for ages. What would we know?” She heard her voice rise and fall, catching on a jag in the center of her throat as if she’d swallowed a pit. “Eight years was a lifetime ago.”
THE SUMMER LEDA TURNED FIVE, Matthew found a garden apartment that shared its outdoor space with neighbors because the fence between the yards had been destroyed during a hurricane. Sarah had just finished shooting the second film, the studio film she was hired to direct, which she already knew was terrible. She wasn’t in the greatest mood. They signed a year lease without meeting the neighbors, who were away for the month, and hoped they (a) wouldn’t be crazy and (b) wouldn’t mind that Leda rose at 6:00 a.m., desperate to run outside. Several weeks after Leda had colonized the backyard with her assorted dolls and their accompanying castles and ballet schools and hospitals and movie theaters, the neighbors returned from their trip and introduced themselves that same night with a bottle of limoncello. After learning they’d come from Rome, where Arman had had a small part in his first movie and the two of them had taken the rest of the month to travel, Sarah marveled at how they’d had the energy to be friendly after a transatlantic flight; she would never have managed to be so polite, so social. This was how the friendship took root: Arman and Kiki were always better behaved; they always led the way. When Arman emerged from the apartment, he was usually fresh from a shower and a shave. He remembered to drag Sarah and Matthew’s garbage to the curb if they forgot, and Kiki cooked but it didn’t even seem that she was cooking. What are you making? I don’t know, I’m just slicing these sweet potatoes really thinly. What will you do with them? I’m not sure. And they’d be sautéed and served along with exotic greens and cheeses and there’d be bread and wine and Leda would taste everything, eat slowly in a way she rarely did with anyone else. Kiki was a public high school art teacher. Sarah remarked how Kiki’s students must adore her. She and Arman both played with Leda—not only patiently but with engagement—and didn’t seem to mind the collection of plastic toys inevitably strewn around their cool, childless area of the garden with its mod thrift-store table and chairs and heavy marble ashtray. Sarah had imagined they were interested in having kids one day, but a week into their friendship Kiki offered up her disinterest in motherhood in the same guileless manner that she prepared meals. Sarah found this disarming and felt a surge of affection toward Kiki, a sensation that may have stopped short of sexual attraction but was easily as primal. Sarah could be (she knew) a bit easy-come-easy-go about friends, but she recognized that her feelings were not remotely neutral toward this person. Her immediate attachment to Kiki took her by surprise, but she didn’t question that Kiki felt the same way. Maybe because of this deep and unfamiliar certainty, Sarah finally stopped apologizing for the mess, for not cooking, for Leda’s singing at the top of her lungs with tremendous cheer as if she were auditioning for Disney or pretending to be a dog for hours at a time. Sarah stopped insulting her work on the studio film, stopped insisting the only reason her first film had been any good was because Matthew had been the DP. She stopped making self-deprecating remarks about how she’d been pregnant at Sundance when her first film premiered, so each photo of her was a fat photo, and how she’d been no fun. She stopped making dark jokes about how young she’d been when she’d found herself pregnant with Leda.
She started to relax. One night in late summer—or maybe early fall—they let Leda fall asleep under the table while in character—Good night, doggy—and she slept for three hours. Everything seemed heightened, their laughter more hysterical, as if Arman, Kiki, and Matthew were all daring Sarah to keep having fun. She knew they should have carried Leda up to bed, but the night was warm and Leda was sleeping, wasn’t she? What had they laughed so hard about? Which stories had they told?
SEPTEMBER IN THE CITY was still her favorite time. The hard shine of the afternoon began easing itself into something softer. The sweat of her schlep to the city and back had dried and disappeared. Families were making their way out of the park and toward the subway, the bus; some would go away for the weekend. Matthew ran a hand through the thin, graying hair she was grateful he still had. She wasn’t supposed to care about these things—after all they’d weathered, how could she possibly? But she did. She felt a stab of tenderness, but as she began to tell him about Caroline’s suggestion that she write a script about it all, she realized, too late, that she should have kept it to herself.
“Have you ever?” Matthew asked.
“Have I ever…?”
“Have you ever thought about making this your next film.”
“A film about Leda?”
“Yes, about Leda. About us. Have you ever thought about it? I know you’re not into autobiographical material, but I also know you recognize a good story. I know how your mind works.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I do. And I would not be surprised if you thought about writing something. Even if you never intended to make it. You’re a filmmaker. I don’t care if you never make another film, I will always think of you as one.”
“Well, that’s dumb.” She shrugged, tears brimming. “Or maybe just sad.”
Why had she told him? She had no interest in his open-mindedness or his sympathy or disgust at the idea of fictionalizing and likely sensationalizing Leda and their family, or—least of all—what she realized he was working up to right then: how maybe it was worth considering.
“I can’t believe you think I should do that,” she said. “I really can’t.”
And just like that, she didn’t care about the light or the season or the Wilderness camp or even Matthew. She turned from him and could, in that moment, have walked off forever. She remembered the beginning of their separation. With no daily need to maintain a display of hope, something about being alone had been distinctly not sad. With nothing between her body and the sensation of loss, she realized she’d been protecting him from precisely how dark she’d become. She was relieved to be free from that charade, from him.
“I’m not saying that; I’m not. Slow down. I’m just saying—”
“You’re just saying?”
“I’m just saying. Has it ever occurred to you that it might even help?”
“Help?”
“Yes.”
“Help? Help with what exactly?”
“Look”—he shook his head—“I don’t know. It has crossed my mind that it might help. If you could make a film…”
Despite her being too furious to speak, she stared at him, moved by his desperation.
“Forget it.”
She nodded.
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“That’s clear.”
“It’s a suggestion that—” He stopped himself.
“What?”
He shook his head and she waited it out. His expression said this was her doing, that she was forcing him to say something they’d both feel uncomfortable hearing out loud. “Look, I’m surprised she hasn’t suggested this before now. She’s your agent. It’s a suggestion. It doesn’t mean you have to write the thing.”
“I know that. I know she’s my agent.” She turned toward the trees.
“Where are you going?”
She didn’t know. She turned farther into the park. They’d been back together over a year now, and the memories she’d held on to from their two-year separation were overwhelmingly the sad ones, marked with shame and regret. The men she’d encountered—they’d been placed inside the narrowest stairwells and smallest bathrooms and corners of her memory palace at the end of a long dark hallway. It wasn’t as if she never walked down that hall and peered inside, but doing so had become depressing. But with a spike of righteous indignation, she remembered: it hadn’t all been sad.
“Sarah.” He raised his voice; she slowed down but didn’t stop; he caught up to her side.
“I’m not interested in my own stories. You know that.”
“Maybe you should be. Or maybe you should stop pretending you want to make another film. Maybe you should—” He stopped himself, shook his head.
“What?”
“Pivot.”
“Pivot?”
“Instead of putting yourself in the position of lying to Caroline every year. Instead of being in a constant state of not doing what you think you’re supposed to do.”
She surprised herself by not lashing out. “You’re right,” she said softly. She took a deep, exaggerated breath and slowly let the air out. “I should have taken that foundation job.”
“I, too, was a storyteller,” he said lightly. “Remember that? I won a couple of prizes. I had the grant. I thought I’d be an auteur.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I pivoted.”
“You did.” She nodded, bit down on the inside of her mouth. “One of us had to. It’s not like either one of us had any reason to think we could actually make films for a living, right? I mean, who gets to do that?”
“I’m not saying I didn’t want to pivot, but—”
“You supported us. You’re still supporting us. You can’t have any idea how grateful I am.” Her voice sounded raw and too intense. “Also,” she added, lightening up, “you happen to like money.”
“Everyone likes money.”
“Some people like it more than others.”
He ran his hands through his hair again and over his face. “It’s work.”
“I know it is. And you know, Matthew, that I’m not afraid of work.”
“I know you think—”
“You don’t, actually,” she said, low. “You don’t know what I think. Why do you suppose Caroline’s suggestion bothers me so much?”
WELL OVER A YEAR AGO, Sarah had met Leda at the bottom of the Baja Peninsula, off a bumpy road scattered with horse dung and broken glass. The parking lot had been swarming with flies; giant scorched palms framed a broken gate. Her daughter led her over a muddy path. The ocean roared in the distance.
It’s not how I pictured, Sarah had said.
Is it ever?
Leda walked ahead to where the thicket of palms opened up, and when Sarah stood beside her and saw the beach, Sarah gasped. The ocean was cobalt, the sand was white fading into gray as the ocean pulled itself back and back again, revealing the wet sand below. Two wild horses galloped a safe distance away; the two women headed toward a rock outcropping a quarter mile down the beach.
Leda wasn’t wearing sunglasses or a hat. Sarah suppressed the urge to mention yet again how Leda would ruin the unlined, unfreckled fair skin that she had inherited from Sarah’s side of the family and that would—Sarah promised!—be etched with lines and scattered with liver spots seemingly overnight.
Please, she remembered telling her daughter, amid all this absurd beauty, please, please, come back. The wind was making Sarah’s eyes water. She fought the urge to shout, You are killing us. What she said instead: I’ll find you a job.
Leda had laughed in one hard peal. What if I don’t want one?
Sarah willed herself not to react. She said calmly, I will find you something.
You will?
What does that mean?
Mom. Leda came close and took hold of her mother’s shoulders. They were exactly the same height. When’s the last time you had a job?
“I’M NOT SAYING YOU’RE AFRAID OF WORK,” said her husband now. “What I’m saying—if you actually listen to what I’m saying—”
When? Leda had asked, with her fingers tightly gripping her mother’s shoulders.
When Sarah saw Matthew’s face go from frustration to what looked like fear, she thought he might be having a cramp in his ribs and silently congratulated herself for not assuming he was having a heart attack. But then she registered the gun in her face, and it was so shocking in its clarity, its heightened crisp quality: metallic, gray, gunmetal. They were walking under trees in the park; they would eventually head toward home. The smell of charcoal heating up, potato chips, sunscreen, garbage, urine; the progression toward dinner; even the argument: it was—if not exactly comforting—familiar, pacifying, even boring. She’d turned into the park, asked Matthew a question that was more indictment than question, he had tried to defend himself, and there was the barrel in her line of vision. Gunmetal. Used that shade on her toes for years. The gun was in her face; she found it difficult to swallow; a wave rose up inside her and she was going under.
“Jesus,” said Matthew. He’d been behind her and now he was grabbing her upper arm, as if she were a child about to run into traffic. “Okay,” he told the man in front of them, “okay.”
“Gimme your shit,” said the man. He wore a ski mask and gloves—must have been sweltering—he wasn’t white, not black, not Asian nor Hispanic. He was tall, big; he was a gun. Matthew almost never lost his temper, but she was instantly afraid that in a panic he might go off, punch this man, land them both in further danger.
But he’d already handed over his phone and his watch. “Here,” said her husband. “Take it.”
“Fuck that,” said someone.
“Gimme your bag.” Did she detect a speech impediment? Slightly slurred?
“Fuck you.”
She hadn’t recognized her voice as her own. Her heart was racing fast—faster than the third and last time she tried cocaine, years ago. “No,” she cried out, as he waved that gun at her. “I’m not giving you anything.” Matthew had handed over all he had. It was Sarah shouting “no,” Sarah gripping her bag as the gunman grabbed the skinny strap.
“Gimme the bag.”
“Enough,” said Matthew. “Jesus, Sarah,” yanking her bag.
“No!” she yelled, fighting him now, too, both sweat and a chill prickling her skin, egging her on to scream at the top of her lungs, but she didn’t scream; she bit down on the insides of her already chewed-up mouth. “No.”
“Give it!” the stranger shouted.
Matthew successfully tore the bag from her and tried to hand the man everything, but Sarah reached into it, scrambled and failed to grasp her phone.
Then a spike of pain—unprecedented in its shock if not its intensity—pain that sent her off the pavement of the path and onto the damp, cool ground. The man with the gun had shoved her; her face—left side—had hit the pavement. These facts struggled to make themselves clear, to rise to the top of her consciousness and meet with the throttle of pain itself, as she registered heavy treads of rubber soles rushing away. She heard the sneakers through her own high-pitched wheeze on top of coughing; for a moment she struggled to breathe. She saw nothing but staunch gray bark. Undulating green. I am a big old tree, she’d sung to her baby daughter, stuck in the ground is me. She sat up too quickly and felt blood running down her right arm, which was confusing because her arm felt fine. The blood was coming from her arm? Her eye? Her nose. The blood was coming from her nose. It was gushing from her nose and down her arm.
Matthew came into focus. “Jesus, Sarah,” he repeated, keyed up. “Are you okay? Honey?” Taking her face in his hands, looking, checking. “Here”—he took off his running tank—“bleed on this.”
“I’m okay,” she said, after what felt like a full minute, but still she wasn’t sure. “I’m all right, I’m fine.” She touched the tank to her nose—there was tingling, throbbing, but most unsettling was the blood.
“Let me see it again,” he said, and she moved the tank away.
He gently put his fingers at the bridge of her nose; she flinched but didn’t cry.
“I don’t think—” she started to say. Two dogs were barking in the distance. Blood wasn’t exactly gushing anymore. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“Jesus. But, yes, I think you’re right.”
She’d been mugged at gunpoint. Their assailant had shoved her hard, her hands were scraped and stinging, but here she was: still breathing. Her face hurt but not enough that she was worried. She should take an Advil, though. She always kept a bottle in her bag in case of bad cramps, because despite the expectation that her period would begin tapering off—she was almost forty-nine, after all—no such tapering had occurred. As she reached for her bag, she realized that of course the Advil was gone, because her bag was gone and, most important, her phone.
“We have to get some ice on this,” Matthew said, and helped her up to start walking.
“It’ll be fine.” She nodded. “I’d know if something was broken.”
When she’d been threatened, her heart had raced. When her face hit the pavement, it amped up more. Now, in the aftermath, she could barely feel her heartbeat at all. She thought to herself, He won. This clarity was grounding. Her uncle had been mugged on the Upper West Side in the mid-1970s at knifepoint. His reaction was to look the mugger in the eyes and say, “I know you’re scared, man. Here’s what I’m proposing: I need enough money to take the train back downtown. I’m giving you everything else. Don’t be scared. Okay?” The mugger had nodded, put away the knife, taken all but the subway money, and sent Uncle Dave on his way.
She’d secretly thought she might be that kind of person. But here was proof that she really and truly was not. She was shocked that she’d fought back.
“He didn’t know who he was dealing with,” Matthew said. “Jesus Christ. He really didn’t.”
She nodded, annoyed—furious really—at how her vision was blurry with tears. She was fine. There was plenty to weep about, but not this. She recalled the gun so close to her face, how the man in the mask was bigger than Matthew. She’d bitten down on the insides of her mouth hard enough to draw blood there, too; the taste of it was nauseating. “What was I thinking?”
“I mean”—Matthew nodded, he kept nodding and nodding—“Jesus, you really didn’t want to quit.”
She took a deep breath and then took another. Why did he keep saying Jesus?
“Christ,” he muttered.
“I can’t tell”—she heard her voice wavering—“if you’re amazed or disgusted.”
“Amazed,” he answered quickly, standing slightly apart, ready to catch her if she fainted. “I’m definitely amazed.” She could tell he wanted her to know he was thinking solicitously—watching her closely, taking extra care. She felt strangely fine other than for her sudden urge to push him over.
In the distance, a group of teenagers walked into the park. A few carried what looked to be lanterns. Was she hallucinating? They were dressed in black and walked in total silence. She noticed two girls holding hands. Their mouths, she realized, were taped closed.
But Matthew was watching them, too. “A protest.”
She wanted a bowl of pasta and a big glass of wine. She wanted to climb the nearest tree. She wanted to stick her face in a bag of ice and head straight to Kiki and Arman’s. She also wanted to rip the tape off those soft, young mouths. “We have to call the cops, Matthew. We need to file a report.”
He nodded quietly.
“You were so calm,” she said, before he could say more. “I mean, really. Thank God you were so calm.”