By midday they’d changed the locks. The mugging was already on several neighborhood blogs: a woman was punched in the face before sunset in Prospect Park near Ninth Street after a man demanded her belongings and she refused to hand them over. There was no mention of any other man, any husband.
“It’s like you weren’t even there,” she said, closing the laptop with an unsatisfying click.
“At least you weren’t actually punched in the face,” Matthew muttered. He’d stayed in bed with her instead of rising early, then brought her a latte and an almond croissant. “Fuck. Just…” He trailed off and paced a bit.
She flung her overnight bag on the living room couch, stuffed socks into running shoes. “Do you think I’ll want to go running?”
“You never go running.”
“Maybe we can run together?”
Matthew sat down on the edge of the deep windowsill overlooking their block, which was visually chaotic. Brownstones and Federals flanked one modern folly across the street with skinny wood slats all along the exterior, a home better suited to a eucalyptus grove. Farther down the block there were doors boarded shut, doors with peeling paint, and glossy painted doors with distinctly modern house numbers—what Matthew called renovation font. Their own door was glossy, but as of now their house had no number, and they might possibly move before getting around to choosing one. The block was constantly under construction. During the day, the only reprieve from the buzz saws, jackhammers, and shouting men came during earliest morning and right around dusk. Though buying this house had been their impulsively optimistic move after getting back together, Matthew would have been happy to flip it and buy something else, but they’d only been living there for a year and Sarah wanted to stay long enough to see what it was like without such a racket. The window was open: city air blew fresher than was actually possible; a far-off siren wailed, but aside from that, the street was weirdly quiet. Plus his knuckles cracking, his knee bobbing up and down, the dishwasher’s almost imperceptible hum from the open-plan kitchen—she took it all in and ran upstairs for a sweater. Downstairs again, she folded and refolded it and—
“You sure you still want to go?” he asked.
“I want to get out of here.”
“Don’t you think we should stick around in case—”
“In case what? We have the answering machine for the landline. If the cops really need us, they’ll call. I’m fine, and I want to get going.”
“I have to tell you,” he said from his spot on the windowsill, “you don’t really seem fine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, you look almost fine—which is strange—I was sure you’d have more bruising and the cut isn’t actually that bad, but—”
“You mean I don’t seem fine because I’m, what? Edgy? I’m edgy, okay? I admit I’m definitely edgy. But I’ll feel less edgy in the country.” She’d spent a good half hour working with concealer and powder, only to take most of it off. Now she swiped on some mascara without looking in the mirror, blinked several times. “So let’s go.”
“I just think—”
“Matthew? Let’s just go.”
HE BLASTED DJANGO REINHARDT, drummed on the steering wheel while driving north, annoyingly immersed in the music.
“Do you remember Leda’s essay?” she asked suddenly. They hadn’t spoken in a good forty minutes.
She knew he hated turning the volume down to listen, especially in a moving car, but today she didn’t care. If her injuries and possibly budding PTSD were bad enough that he’d suggested staying in the city, if he’d been solicitous enough to bring her a croissant and latte in bed, shouldn’t he try talking to her on the drive? She opened the window. He turned off the AC. She closed it immediately. He turned it back on.
She thought, We’re going to talk the rest of the way if I feel like it; I was basically punched in the fucking face.
“Do you remember Leda’s essay?” she repeated.
He turned the volume down. “Which one?”
“I kept it on the fridge?”
“From when she was little. You mean the one we should have seen as a red flag?”
“It wasn’t a red flag,” she snapped.
“I know. I know. I was kidding.”
Out the window on the highway there was a flash of a blue car glinting in the sun; it looked like a sapphire, like—she remembered—Kiki’s engagement ring.
“Please”—she kept her voice low and clear—“please don’t read into her childhood and turn everything into something it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t a red flag.”
“I said I was kidding. You know I was.”
“Well, you know I hate when you do that, so please just don’t.”
He nodded.
“It was a perfect essay.”
“I know it,” he said, and she instantly regretted taking him to task. She needed his levity; she knew she did. So why did she insist on fighting it?
If you had the chance, the fourth-grade teacher had asked, how would you change the world?
The essays were posted throughout the classroom on parents’ night. Ending world hunger was a popular response. So was more television watching and candy eating for humans under twelve.
It’s important to argue for change but it is impossible to bend another’s will, wrote nine-year-old Leda. This must be acknowledged and respected, do you see? BUT … If I could REALLY change the world, I would have everyone be happy and cheerful, but not TOO cheerful or happy because then there would be too much of it. Do you see? Everyone needs a conflict.
Maybe it was a red flag. It was all too possible that it was a red flag. What kind of nine-year-old craves conflict? The students had not yet been taught conflict as part of a good story, the teacher had clarified. At least not in those terms. “Where did she get that?” The teacher had laughed admiringly. Matthew and Sarah had laughed right along with Leda’s delighted teachers during those elementary school years. Leda dreamed of going to unusual places, not Tanzania or Marrakech but more like Tulsa, Cleveland. She loved to climb as high as she could. She was a beautiful child. Exceptional. She was completely normal. She was affectionate, funny. She had always been too intense.
“What made you think of that?” Matthew asked.
Sarah shrugged. “Who the hell knows.” She kept her eyes trained on the pines and weeds of one New York State highway, the pale nothing sky. “I’m disoriented.”
Kiki and Arman had both been so good to Leda. How could Sarah have let them go? She knew, of course. It went beyond their move to L.A. three years into sharing that garden (leaving Sarah and Matthew to meet new neighbors, build a fence, then move) and everyone’s ambitions and Sarah and Matthew’s parenthood and beyond how Sarah wasn’t great on the phone. She knew why she’d stopped returning Kiki’s calls and then her texts, in the same certain way that she knew she’d cry at some point during the weekend when she looked in Kiki’s eyes and saw pity. Arman would be able to mask it, but Kiki was too open: she had a face like a Flemish portrait, a face built to cry.
Sarah had been the one to suggest naming her Leda. “It’s just a beautiful name,” she’d insisted, a quarter century ago. The name meant “joy” in Greek, but there was also no denying the association with the ancient myth, the poems and paintings from Yeats to Botero dedicated to the kinky seduction: Zeus took the form of a wild swan, seducing the queen of Sparta. Matthew had wanted to avoid such dramatic connotation. He’d argued against marking their daughter with that story—that rape. But Sarah had prevailed. It was interesting, she’d argued. And swans were beautiful. What a dope. She’d told herself countless times that a name could not dictate a life, but it nagged at her. Matthew had wanted to simply name her Joy; it was the least they could have done.
“I can’t believe you don’t have more bruising,” Matthew said again. He seemed to be stuck on this fact.
“I’m sore in weird places. It’s like the first time I waited tables.”
“And that urgent-care doctor told you that you didn’t need an X-ray.”
“You were there. That’s what he said.”
“Are you sure he was a real doctor? He introduced himself as Eric.”
She felt herself softening; she might have grinned. “He did, didn’t he? ‘Hey, I’m Eric.’”
“I just would have felt better if—”
“What would make me feel better would be to turn off this music.”
“Come on.” He laughed. “It’s the best driving music. Doesn’t it make you feel awake?”
“Honestly, when I listen to gypsy-jazz guitar, what I mainly feel is prone to yelling.”
“But in a good way, right?”
That earned a real smile from her, even some unforced laughter.
He turned the music off.
Before urgent care, they’d gone to their local precinct. She’d wanted to leave when she realized she’d been to this same precinct for Leda, but Matthew insisted they stay. The policemen and women could not have been nicer. They gave Matthew a T-shirt, as his running tank was soaked with Sarah’s blood. They were treated to mug shots of solely young black men: “Is that him? How ’bout that one?” She assured them the man hadn’t been black and there was no way she could ever identify the assailant—it happened so fast, he was wearing a mask—but they’d kept it up anyway.
“I’m just so glad you’re okay,” Matthew said.
Silence spread throughout the car, summoning the quiet of the previous night and the deep clean breathing of Matthew at rest. Her limbs had felt heavy and eventually she must have slept because then she bolted awake with the room still so dark that for one brief moment she didn’t know where she was. She relived the smell of the metal and the blood in her mouth and scrambled to find her phone to tell her the time. But, of course, she had no phone. She looked at the clock on Matthew’s side: it had been only twenty minutes. This went on for hours—in and out of sleep—until she gave in to being fully conscious, sat upright in their bed that faced the windows, watching the darkness bleed into dawn.
She stood up slowly and carefully out of consideration for Matthew, sure, but mostly she stood slowly and carefully because she had zero desire to speak to or even acknowledge another soul and maybe especially not him. She crept toward the window and stood between the drawn linen shade and the glass. She loved the garden, so pallid right then, save one red cardinal taking flight. How the leaves on the neighbors’ massive maple spilled over their fence and swayed in the slight breeze created by that bird. How, beyond the shimmying leaves, a beat-up wicker couch and table were offset by overgrown English laurel. She loved how it looked from this vantage as though theirs was a peaceful life.
In the car heading north, the silence between them became its own kind of noise. “I mean,” she started, “just—”
He waited a while before acknowledging that she’d cut herself off before finishing anything close to a sentence. “‘Just’…?”
She kept her gaze on the horizon. “What are we going to tell them?”
Matthew changed lanes three times.
“Watch it!” she cried.
“About yesterday?”
She shook her head. “Not about that.”
“We’ll just tell them,” he said quietly. “They’re good people.”
“I know. But—”
“A friend’s a friend.” He shrugged. “Even if it’s been a long time.”
“You have a wider definition of a friend. You make friends all the time.”
“Okay”—he smiled—“this is true. But so is what I’m saying.”
“You’re saying they’ll understand. We don’t understand.”
“It’ll be fine.” He kept his eyes on the road.
THEY DROVE AROUND A LAKE, hugging the pine-tree shoreline. Out the window: shadow play on the open road; no signs of public access to the dark and glittering water. There were only houses and docks, boats and privacy. Privacy breeds mystery. Who said that to her? Low and naughty. About their time apart: she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to hear from Matthew what he had or hadn’t done and with whom, and she’d never tell, even if he asked. But she imagined enumerating her experiences to Kiki late at night, on a deck, while throwing stones in the water below. All of the strangers—they blurred together as if they were merely part of a recurring and disturbing dream in which she was strangely powerful. Why she recalled power was unclear. Her memories were—more often than not—of being more than vaguely uncomfortable.
She hoped Arman and Kiki had one of these houses—a house with access and mystery. She’d dive in the water immediately. Forget about greetings or a bathing suit. Forget holding the baby. She’d get Kiki and Arman to jump in with her. They’d swim and swim and—
“It’s not one of these houses.”
“What?”
“I was just looking at the map, so don’t get your hopes up. They’re in town.”
“How did you know I was hoping?” This question was rhetorical. Anticipating expectation (and its dark twin, frustration) was one of Matthew’s specialties. It was no small part of what made him an in-demand DP and now a successful commercial producer. He was also accommodating. He did his best to make people (and, yes, including her) happy. He said yes with so little resistance, so that when he said no—and with how he said it—you didn’t question him. You believed that whatever you wanted was not remotely possible.
“Do you know what?” Sarah asked, as they made their way down another winding road and the lake disappeared in the rearview. “I realized recently that of all the things that I find funny, enraged people rank highest.”
“Should depend on who’s angry.”
“True.”
“I have to say, I never find your anger funny.”
“Never?”
He shook his head.
“Well, that’s probably because I’m so scary.”
Here came Matthew’s wry half smile, the one Sarah teased him was born in East Texas, where he had lived until he was eleven. His Texan half smile tended to emerge when they were at least two hours outside the city. He claimed this was absurd; but there it was.
THERE WAS A RIVER—or was it a creek?—running under a footbridge that led into town. The houses overlooking the water were built fairly close together, some more ramshackle than others. The drooping telephone wires, the creek and the footbridge, the fat mutt lying in a driveway and a seemingly forgotten ladder overturned on a browning lawn, the leathery skinny woman, smoking and pushing a baby stroller full of groceries—it was all offset by lush ferns, daylilies, old stone walls. It was an enervated aesthetic, a bit of a dump. She liked it.
Arman and Kiki’s rental was a white farmhouse with a small barn and a shed on about a quarter of an acre. Matthew parked on the street and they got out of the car; he took both of their bags from the trunk. The sound of a lawn mower was mildly irritating, as was the smell of fertilizer. There’d been a patch of lawn in the Brooklyn garden they’d shared years ago. It had pooled with rain or sometimes had been brown and scraggly, but there was at least one spring day that Sarah remembered when the grass had been green and not too buggy and Leda had stretched out, not caring about soiling a purple dress. She’d pointed up at the laundry lines that remained throughout the neighborhood from the days when no one had dryers.
Suddenly Sarah could hardly stand. Though Kiki and Arman had seen plenty of photos and videos of Leda over the years, they had last seen her in person as an animated eight-year-old who still had some baby teeth. Though perhaps Leda had video-chatted with Kiki a few times on Leda’s laptop when she was in ninth or tenth grade, Kiki and Arman had last heard her voice—face-to-face—as a child’s voice, not the scratchy, admittedly sexy, sometimes plaintive murmur that had perhaps started as a teenage affectation but had long since become an intractable feature. Just as her hair—the golden cascade of girls’ drawings—would always be a part of her, no matter how many times she’d cut it off. And her eyes would remain hazel and feline, which was particularly ironic given how much she hated cats. Kiki and Arman’s cat Twyla used to attempt a rub against little Leda’s leg, and she’d run inside, begging Kiki or Arman to shoo it away.
Mom, she had yelled, that day on the beach, in the wind, gripping Sarah’s shoulders as if she might start shaking her. You’ve got to stop crying.
Sarah leaned on the car for a moment. “I’m okay,” she assured Matthew, anticipating his concern. “I just need a second.” She looked up at the second floor, where lace curtains were drawn closed.
“Does anything hurt?”
“Oh, you know,” she said flippantly, “everything.”
“Seriously?”
Her hands stung slightly, right where she’d broken her fall. The shadow beneath her left eye was just now darkening into a bruise and pulsed now and then. She was most aware of the cut on the bridge of her nose. “No, no. Just a little vain.”
“Come on. You look fine.”
One of her least favorite expressions: you look fine. This was undoubtedly adolescent, but she’d rather look wretched. Who’s ever comforted by fine? Wrecked or stunning—was that too much to ask? And, okay, to Arman and Kiki she’d appear not only duly battered by time, but also actually battered. Maybe it was better this way; there’d be no pretending. She looked up the driveway’s slight incline at the yellow-painted door.
After knocking several times, Sarah started to worry that amid all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, she and Matthew had somehow messed up the day or the time. They left their bags on the porch and went around to the back of the house, where an overgrown lawn led down to the creek. No one was in either of the two hot-pink Adirondack chairs at the water’s edge, nor under the café lights at the outdoor dining table, laden with the detritus of what looked like lunchtime. Across the creek there was a house next to the footbridge. Someone had strung up a faded flag as a makeshift shade over several plastic chairs. Thinking it could be a Confederate flag, she felt immediately ill, but she also realized it could be any flag; the sun had blasted it beyond recognition. She’d become paranoid and on edge long before yesterday; the mugging merely gave her a more concrete reason to be wary beyond the day-to-day national news. The sound of the creek was faint but vaguely wholesome. It was, she realized, a beautiful day.
“Where are they?” she wondered aloud.
Just then, two boys came charging out from behind a stone wall, shooting their bright orange Nerf guns.
Sarah screamed.
Matthew called out, “Whoa!”
The boys ran past them—“Sorry! Sorry!”—the way only kids can pull off apologizing, exuberance somehow trumping insincerity. A hammock hung between two oak trees. It was the kind she’d seen in Baja—solid fabric, like a big sheet—great for napping. A woman popped up and a man laughed while still lying down.
“Well,” the man said, “guess y’all won that round.”
The boys collected their Nerf darts and ran back toward the creek, talking.
“Little devils,” said the woman.
“They’re all right,” said the man.
“Oh, crap!” the woman cried, noticing Sarah and Matthew. “I’m so sorry! Was that you?” She awkwardly unfolded herself from the man. She flopped out of the hammock. “I heard those screams and assumed it was our friend. I’m really sorry—we didn’t see you! I’m Heather.”
“Hi,” Matthew said; Sarah might have nodded.
Was the woman a babysitter? She had messy platinum hair, a diamond in her nose; running shorts and an undershirt and the man stretched out in the hammock. “I’m Karim,” he said, not getting up. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sarah showcased her face with a flourish of her hand. “This was just—a crazy accident.”
“Oh—no, I didn’t mean—I hadn’t noticed that. Sorry, though. What I meant was—you screamed loud!” He was smiling warmly, but also as if he was trying to figure out just how unstable she was. “You came from the city?”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah now rushed to say, “but do you know Kiki and Arman?”
“Yeah.” Karim laughed. “Yeah, she’ll be back. Arman had to go, but she and Sylvie are here.”
Arman had to go? Sarah resisted giving in to insecurity so deep it felt akin to vertigo. Maybe they’d forgotten? Maybe Kiki hadn’t actually thought that Sarah and Matthew would show?
Matthew introduced himself and Sarah, too.
“Are those your boys?” Matthew asked.
“Yep,” Heather answered.
“And Kiki is … inside?” Sarah asked.
Heather nodded. “She’s putting the baby down.”
Sarah pictured Kiki and Sylvie Jane Simonian, eight months old; Sarah could almost smell the room: the sheep’s-wool-and-grease scent of lanolin, the talc-smelling blankets, so impossibly soft.
Karim finally roused himself from the hammock and asked Matthew about their Prius, ensuring the kind of conversation Sarah instinctively tuned out. Heather went toward the boys and their possibly escalating argument. Sarah surveyed the messy table and started to gather other people’s forks and knives and stack their dirty dishes, grateful to have a familiar task. She could just as easily have imagined lying down in the overgrown grass, but the thought of doing nothing gave her a sense of dread, as if lying down might somehow prevent her from ever getting up again.
She had readied herself for the weekend with Kiki and Arman—prepared for an accounting of the years, for Kiki’s eyes welling with new-mother tears. Sarah had tried to steel herself for Matthew’s matter-of-fact descriptions, because sharing was Matthew’s way. It didn’t cost him; he told facts without reliving everything. She couldn’t do that, doubted she ever would. She’d been prepared for Arman’s reaction: how he’d say the right things but still seem removed. Even his own stories—while articulate and animated—had always sounded as if he were talking about someone other than himself. She’d prepared herself for how this strange quality always reeled her in because she never knew if he was going to seem close or distant. Sarah had prepared herself for all of this.
She hadn’t envisioned other people.
Heather returned from the Nerf war down at the creek and took a stack of plates. “Do you have kids?” she asked, as she led the way into the house through a screechy screen door.
“I do. One.” If this weren’t Kiki’s friend, if getting caught were not so likely, Sarah knew she would have lied, just as she had with that man on the train. She would’ve said no, and she wouldn’t have stopped there. She would’ve added that she’d never wanted them.
“Boy or girl?”
“Girl.” Sarah flashed to Leda’s pale skin and the scars on her arms.
“You’re so lucky.”
Inside it was much darker and Chet Baker was playing softly, moody and blue. The kitchen walls were red; the wineglasses green, standing in rows on an open shelf, glinting in the dim light.
“I mean, I know I am, too,” Heather continued, testy but quiet. “I know I’m lucky. Sometimes I just get so angry at my kids.”
Sarah nodded, setting down the dishes. She felt pressure to stay quiet, not to wake the baby.
“I’ve never gotten so mad at other people,” Heather said, scraping food into the garbage.
“Not even their dad?” Sarah offered quietly.
“Karim’s not their dad.”
“Oh.” Sarah turned on the faucet, waiting for the water to warm. “Well then, what about Karim? He doesn’t make you as angry as your kids do?”
“Did you think he was their dad because he’s black and my kids are black?”
“Um”—Sarah rinsed the dishes, nervous about offending Kiki’s friend—“I guess I thought he was their dad because you seem like you’re together, and I don’t know, you’re young and the kids are young and, I mean, you’re lying in a hammock taking care of your kids together.”
“Well, he’s not.”
“I’m sorry for assuming.”
Heather shrugged, placed the dishes in the sink. “It’s fine.”
Sarah took another look at Heather, who was older than Sarah had first presumed. “I’m sorry,” she insisted, despite herself. She knew she should stop apologizing.
“Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
“Shit.” Sarah put her hand to her face.
Heather grabbed a cloth napkin from the counter. “It’s clean,” she said, handing it over.
Sarah pressed the cloth to her face. It smelled like the inside of a shell: cool, slightly salty. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” said Heather, as though Sarah were still apologizing for making assumptions when actually she was apologizing for … what, now? Bleeding?
She stepped back outside through the screen door, and Heather followed, back into the light-shot day. “Matthew,” Sarah called out toward the car. “Listen,” she asked Heather, “I’m just curious—did Kiki mention we were coming?”
“Did she—I mean, I think so.”
Matthew and Karim came around the house.
“Matthew, my nose is bleeding. Maybe we should go.”
“Wait a second.” He rushed toward Sarah, searching her eyes, his fingers gently touching her bruise—checking, checking. “Go?” he asked, obviously trying to gauge whether she was overreacting to the nosebleed or to other people being here, or to something else altogether. It enraged her that he assumed she was overreacting, even as she felt she was.
“I don’t feel too great,” she explained to whoever might have been listening, but right then they heard the simultaneous cries of a baby and the screechy door and the straightforward excitement of Kiki’s “You’re here!”
Kiki rushed forward with the baby on her hip, the baby whose screams showed no signs of stopping and of course Sarah wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m so sorry,” said Kiki, through Sylvie’s screams, as she embraced Sarah with one arm and then began to laugh while hugging Matthew. “Oh my God,” Kiki cried, cracking up, and as she continued laughing, Sarah reflected on how, if their positions were reversed and it was Sarah with the screaming baby, Sarah’s laughter would have been out of embarrassment and discomfort, but Kiki’s seemed genuine. Her laughter seemed to acknowledge that her baby’s crying was so intense and insistent that it bordered on ridiculous and who were we as human beings if we couldn’t acknowledge how such a greeting of utter chaos, especially after so many years, was nothing if not funny?
“She’s beautiful,” Sarah said, because that’s what one said, but in this case it was true: the dark hair swept up in stylish whorls, the clear blue eyes all glassy with tears.
“Thank you.” Kiki bounced Sylvie around. “Oh, you cleaned up. Thank you—” Kiki called after Heather, who was already back inside the kitchen.
Sarah took up the tablecloth, started to shake it out.
“Stop. Please stop. You just arrived. Please. Just sit with me.” Kiki and the crying baby took the hammock, and Sarah pulled over one of the wicker chairs. “What happened with your—”
“Face? It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. I’m fine.”
“You look gorgeous as ever, you have somehow not aged, but—”
Sarah shook her head. “Stop. I mean, don’t worry, no one’s been beating me up.”
“I was gonna say,” Karim quipped, before roping Matthew into helping him with the boys, down by the creek.
The baby still cried and screamed, and when a sudden spell of silence began, Sarah realized Kiki was nursing under a voluminous blue-and-white wrap that brought to mind a prayer shawl.
“So,” Kiki said, after Karim and Matthew were out of sight, “you met Karim and Heather.”
“I did. And those kids?”
“Heather’s kids?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What happened?”
“No, nothing.”
Kiki started laughing.
“What?” Sarah asked. “What?”
“You’re such a misanthrope.”
“I’m—excuse me?”
“No, I love that about you. I’m so happy you haven’t changed. It always made me feel special because I knew exactly how much you liked me.”
Sarah tried not to smile. “So we’re just skipping the chitchat? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I am.” Kiki nodded. “I’m saying let’s skip it.”
“Okay, so those kids are hellions,” Sarah said with a gust of laughter.
“They are not,” Kiki insisted, but she was also laughing, as if maybe Sarah was onto something. “They’re cute!”
“And their mother, your friend, she seems prickly.”
“Prickly?”
“Nice, maybe. But prickly, yes.”
“Well … it’s a long story and it wasn’t my intention to have them while you’re here and I’m sorry—but they’re staying the night.”
“Oh. Well, that’s fine. I mean, of course.”
“They’ll leave tomorrow morning. It was a last-minute thing.”
“You don’t have to explain. It’s your house, and, I mean, it looks like there’s room for everyone.”
“There is, basically. We’ll get a little creative.” Kiki shrugged. “Thanks for understanding.”
“Of course.”
Kiki sat up and stretched her neck, readjusted her position; Sylvie squirmed and went back to feeding.
“I had such a hard time,” Sarah found herself saying.
Kiki looked at her, puzzled.
“With nursing. In the beginning.”
“I thought you nursed Leda until she was two.”
“I did.” Sarah shrugged.
These were the kinds of memories she’d never imagined could fade, but they had. So many others had emerged between then and now that were more visceral and so much more important. No matter how Leda screamed and no matter how exhausted Sarah was, Sarah had wanted her close at all times—this was a pleasant, easy recollection, even though at the time she’d felt so desperate, so in love and yet falling apart. Matthew would invite people to stop by for a drink, for coffee in the morning—“Just come by whenever,” she’d hear him say before hanging up the phone. “Everyone needs to leave,” she’d whisper to Matthew, too soon after the guests’ arrival. She’d take Leda into the bedroom and shut the door, her gaze shifting between the ravenous pissed-off baby and her ravaged nipples. She often conjured the soft parts with longing, but it wasn’t all soft. It was pie for breakfast, it was up all night; it was leave us the fuck alone.
But even all of that—it seemed sweet now. Innocent. She’d been twenty-four years old.
Kiki was twenty years older than that.
Even though, at forty-four, Kiki was technically an older mother, and even though she did have noticeable shadows under her eyes and more freckles and lines, nothing seemed old about Kiki. She was petite, stacked, with skinny arms and legs—the kind of figure that everyone wants in high school and can become dumpling-like with age, but Kiki’s extra baby weight and time only served to make her seem younger.
When Sarah had been pregnant, people cited all kinds of great reasons to be a young mother. She’d grown more and more excited as her pregnancy progressed, smiled broadly when complete strangers offered their blessings. She’d been a young mother; young! So full of promise! Had she been more energetic as a new mother than Kiki was right now? Doubtful. Would she get to have more time with her daughter as an adult or get to have grandchildren for longer? She could not consider these questions.
Sarah took in all the different trees, busying her mind with guesses at classification: sycamore, maple, a few white pines. “This is such an immediately relaxing spot. And, you know me, I’m rarely relaxed.”
Kiki nodded and laid her head back. “It really is. I’m not sure exactly why. It’s certainly not the prettiest.”
Sarah didn’t protest.
“The week after Sylvie was born, Arman got an HBO show—”
“How great,” interrupted Sarah.
“Yeah, it was great. Very exciting. Great part. The show was shooting in New York, and since we’d always talked about moving back, we decided—what the hell—to just go for it, to sell our house and come back East. It all happened really quickly.”
“Wow. So here you are.”
“Yes. Here we are in this strangely relaxing, not-so-pretty spot.” Kiki looked up into the tall tree shading them both.
“So what’s the part? What’s the show?”
“The show isn’t happening.”
“Oh.” Sarah was careful not to sound too crushed. “I’m sorry. What a bummer.”
“Yep.” Kiki nodded. “But”—she kissed the top of Sylvie’s head—“that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
Sarah heard the screen door open and close; she could hear the music in the kitchen had been changed to electronica, the volume turned up. “Do you always have a lot of people around?”
“Do I—?” Kiki interrupted herself, and Sarah could tell she was annoyed. “Yes, I guess I do.”
“I mean—”
“It’s one night,” Kiki said quietly, as the door opened again. “We’ll have a good time.”
Holding the screen door open with her hip, Heather balanced a platter of cheeses and green olives in one hand, and a bottle of wine and an opener in the other. Sarah leaped up to help, a touch more warmly inclined toward Heather after having criticized her to Kiki. Sarah took the wine and the opener, glad it wasn’t a twist top, grateful for something to handle.
After Heather arranged the snacks and darted inside the house again, Kiki made a silent face of excitement—Sylvie had fallen asleep—and Kiki inched herself off the hammock and onto her feet, in what looked like an exaggerated pantomime of trying not to wake a sleeping baby. I’ll be right back, she mouthed.
Sarah had logged plenty of hours in the middle of the night and in darkened daytime rooms, and even though it had been nearly twenty-five years since that relatively short time in her life, she knew it was too late to be putting a baby down for a nap. Kiki was going inside to tell Heather something, and this was fine but not fine. It didn’t feel fine at all.
“Is this her bedtime?” Sarah asked, and Kiki shushed her loudly, shushed her in a way that produced a surge of unwanted anger—fury even—for wasn’t it a bit hypocritical to shush her so loudly? And why should they have to be so quiet? Why? When it wasn’t even dusk—too early for a bedtime!—and when Sylvie obviously was or wasn’t going to wake up but wouldn’t be bothered by noise—not so long as she was conked out on breast milk, her mouth still attached to her mother’s nipple.
Kiki went in the house, Karim and Matthew continued to play with the boys down by the creek, and amid a small property full of people, Sarah found herself alone at a table now laden with snacks and wine. She heard a faraway screech of tires, a closer swarm of yellow jackets, and became engrossed with encouraging a ladybug to crawl from the tablecloth onto her finger. She hadn’t realized Matthew was standing behind her, but she felt his hand on her head and, for whatever reason, she didn’t startle; she didn’t even flinch. His hand felt immediately calming.
“We should just tell her,” Matthew said quietly. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Sarah nodded. “We’ll just get it out of the way.”
The already-familiar screen-door screech announced Kiki again, this time without the baby, and Sarah was reminded of how Kiki always carried herself as though late to a music festival—her hips going, her arms swinging—in a bouncy kind of rush.
“So where’s the proud papa?” asked Matthew.
“Oh, right—I forgot to mention—he’s in the city working. But he’ll be back first thing in the morning.” Then, upon sensing Matthew’s obvious disappointment: “He’s really sorry. It was another last-minute thing,” Kiki said pointedly, to Sarah. “A film.”
“That’s great,” Matthew insisted.
“Being marginally associated with your husband has been personally fulfilling for us,” Sarah said, piercing the cork with the wine opener, twisting and starting to pull. “Do you remember,” she asked Matthew, “how we started freaking out when we saw him that first time?”
“In Reason?” Kiki asked.
“I wish we had a video of our reaction,” Matthew said, nodding. “It was like we’d spotted a unicorn.”
“You were that surprised he was working?” asked Kiki, her smile slightly fading.
“No,” said Sarah, “no! It was just this amazing thing after losing touch, to see him like that—and in that kind of role.”
“No, I get it,” Kiki said. “It just would have been great to hear from you.”
Sarah looked out at the creek beyond the stone wall, the empty wine bottles lined up like art or for target practice. She looked at the flag strung up as a shade. “Who lives there?” she asked, filling the silence.
Kiki shrugged. “Some guy.”
“Have you met him?” asked Matthew, always doing his best.
“Arman has, briefly. He said he was macho and not too friendly. I guess they spoke once about the telephone wires? We keep different hours. I’ve never even seen him.”
“It’s amazing to me how you can live next door to people and never once lay eyes on them, and other people you see constantly, even if you aren’t neighbors.”
Kiki grinned tightly.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said.
“Why?” asked Kiki.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch when we saw Arman in Reason. That was a really big deal for him and I’m sorry.”
“We’re really sorry,” Matthew added. Though as far as Sarah was concerned, it would have been great, sure, if Matthew had let Arman know he’d seen him on-screen, but reconnecting all together like this, so many years down the line—for both men this didn’t seem particularly notable. Matthew went years without talking to people that Sarah knew he considered close friends. This was about Sarah and Kiki, but really about Sarah because their loss of friendship was her fault. Because they hadn’t lost touch. Kiki had made an effort.
“Anyway, you’re here.” Kiki leaned forward. “So? How’s our girl? What’s she up to? I’m dying to hear everything about her. But I think I need to go slow because I can’t even deal with the fact that she’s twenty-four. She’s twenty-four, right?”
“Her birthday was last month,” added Matthew. “She—”
“She’s twenty-five.” Sarah cut him off. She tasted the sting in her mouth where she’d bled the night before.
“What’d you do? Did you celebrate with her?”
“We rented a boat,” said Sarah.
Some kind of fog lifted. Some kind of bottom fell out.
She ignored Matthew’s foot pressing down on hers. All she saw was Kiki’s gray eyes. Soon it would be nighttime. Soon enough she would lie in a strange bed, consumed with anxiety, made worse by the lie she’d just told and the many more she was sure to tell now that the first lie was out there. Soon enough she’d be nothing but a feeble cage for her thundering heart, but for now she was looking into Kiki’s eyes, shining with pure interest. “We rented one of those boats downtown. It was a little tacky but great.”
“Fun,” said Kiki. “Do you have any photos? You must.”
“She lost her phone,” Matt blurted, racing toward the opportunity to say something true. “I never seem to take photos anymore.”
“Both of our phones were stolen,” Sarah corrected. “Yesterday, actually.”
“Oh no.” Kiki poured the wine. “That’s such a drag.”
“We were mugged,” Sarah said. “At gunpoint.”
“What? Yesterday? You were mugged at gunpoint yesterday?”
Sarah nodded. “That’s how this happened.” She gestured to her face, as Matthew shifted in his chair.
“No,” Kiki said. “What happened?”
“Well”—Sarah was determined not to be maudlin—“it was just inside the park on Prospect Park West, and it wasn’t even dark out. This guy just showed up out of nowhere and pointed a gun in my face.”
“That’s terrifying,” Kiki insisted.
“It is.” Sarah nodded. “It was. But I wasn’t scared. I was … pissed.”
Matthew put his hand on her shoulder. She knew this was a gesture of affection—even protection—but it didn’t feel that way. It was as if he were doing what little he could to stop her from saying or doing one more reckless thing. Matthew shook his head, smiling, as if this had all been an elaborate gag. “You should have seen her.”
“What’d you do?”
“Matthew was so calm. It was amazing. He just handed over everything.”
“That’s what I would have done,” Kiki said.
“How do you know?”
“What?”
“How do you know what you would have done?”
“Well, I don’t. You’re right. But I have a strong feeling. Like I always knew I’d be a great candidate for bed rest. Then I was put on bed rest with Sylvie for two months.”
“And how’d you do?”
“I loved it.”
“Did you really?”
“Of course I did. I read. I watched movies. I had friends stop by. I didn’t have an illness and I was so grateful for that. I just had to rest.”
“I’d hate bed rest,” said Sarah.
“How do you know?”
“Ha. You know what’s funny? When I saw the gun, my first fear was that Matthew would lose it on the guy. But as it turns out I had no reason to worry.” Sarah took a sip of wine.
Kiki said, “You don’t know what the person is on, what they’re capable of. Matt, you definitely did the right thing.”
“No question,” said Sarah. “But—”
“What?” Matthew stopped her.
“I don’t think that gun was real.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think the gun was real.” Sarah realized this had been nagging at her.
“Why does that even matter?” Matthew began to lose patience. “You think that, in the moment, this would have been worth pointing out?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Do you need to go lie down or something? Seriously,” said Kiki, “I would probably need to just stay in my bed for a while after something like that. I kind of can’t believe you’re here.”
There were so many noises in this quiet place. Insects and birds trilled; somewhere overhead was the low thud of helicopter blades.
“Sarah?” Kiki asked, reaching across the table for her hand.
Sarah shrugged off Kiki’s concern, looking at Matthew, who would not look back. Sarah knew that no matter how bad he felt about how she’d been thrown to the ground, he would still be furious with her for lying about Leda, for putting him in the position of having to lie, too.
“I probably am still shaken up … You know what I really want to do?” Sarah said, forcefully brightening. “I want to get in that creek.”
Kiki scrunched up her face. “I haven’t seen anyone in it. It’s so close to town and it just looks a little iffy, y’know?”
“There must be a good swimming hole around here,” Matthew said.
“You’d think. We’ve basically spent most of the last month trying to find one. But the checkout girl at the supermarket told me yesterday that Friday the 13th was filmed at a nearby lake, so, you know, there’s that.”
“And the checkout girl was telling you this in order to … generally freak you out?”
“Of course. She was giggling with her friend as I left.”
“I’ll bet it’s a pretty good spot,” Matthew said. “Right? At least worth a shot?”
“I was getting there. I thought we’d go tomorrow. That’s my big plan. Maybe before Sylvie’s nap? Or after, if you want to sleep in. If you can sleep in. She’s a bit of a screamer. I may have mentioned that in the e-mail?”
“I’ll just get my feet wet for now,” Sarah conceded, heading toward the creek.
She left them sitting at the table. The path to the creek was uneven and weedy and she had to focus on her footing. Standing at the water’s edge, she knew she was still close to the house, but it felt miles away. She took off her sandals and stepped in the water, shuddering from the initial cold. If she could shut out her surroundings—the footbridge, the not-so-picturesque beginnings of town, the faded flag that she was starting to suspect was indeed Confederate, and the empty bottles and plastic furniture across the way—if she could shut it all out, she knew the water would feel clean and lovely.
I knew you’d appreciate this spot, Leda had said on that deserted beach in Baja, where sand created a stream of shallow water refilled by high tide. Her daughter jumped over the stream and shouted nonsense to the empty beach.
Are you going to do cartwheels? Sarah had asked. Leda had spent several summers as a child obsessively cartwheeling and demanding an audience for each one.
Shut up, her daughter had said, her smile bright. The sunlight hit her directly in the eyes; she didn’t even shield them.
Sarah would probably always wonder if the rest of the trip might have gone differently if she hadn’t been sarcastic about the cartwheels. It was absurd, she knew it was, but what would have happened if she hadn’t pointed out—no matter how gently—how Leda always needed an audience? Because who cared if she needed an audience? Sarah was and would always be desperate to be in it.
She bent down now and chose a stone from the water. She watched it fade, as it dried, from dark brown to tan. She checked back to where Matthew sat with Kiki at the table. They were busy talking intently. She realized that, from where they sat, they probably couldn’t even see her. She turned back to the creek and lobbed the stone as far as she could.
Maybe he was telling Kiki the truth. Maybe that’s even what Sarah wanted, and why she’d insisted on walking away. She watched as they rose and started to clear the table. She wondered if Matthew was attracted to Kiki now, though she remembered him agreeing when they first met that she was pretty but not his type. She had pressed him, flirty. Am I your type? How could he not be seduced by a woman in the throes of that new-baby love?
Soon the lights would be turned on and the bugs would come out. Dinner needed preparing. She knew she should get up and help them, but she didn’t. Nor did she sit in one of those jaunty pink chairs. She stood in one spot with her feet in the creek. She watched the empty bottles and bleached-out flag and how no one there seemed to be home. The greens were turning black, the lavenders gray. By now Sarah’s feet were freezing and she began to shiver. She turned around and checked on the house. The lights came on in the kitchen. There was the sound of chatting, laughter. No one came for her. She wished Kiki’s friends would go home right this second, that she could close her eyes again and hear their car drive away. Then again, she also wasn’t sure what she’d say once she had the chance to be alone with Kiki. It had taken about a year before she’d said anything of significance at her support group. That was over five years ago. It had seemed so weird to reveal intimate details to strangers, most of whom were emotionally wrecked themselves, but life had a funny way of reversing itself, and now she couldn’t imagine talking to anyone outside of that room of people—Matthew included—about the details and the questions that continued to haunt her.
A pale woman in a turquoise sweatshirt stopped on the footbridge and made a phone call. Sarah heard nothing but “Fine”—loud, exasperated—before the woman continued into town. Sarah looked back toward the house again. Like a beacon, the outdoor lights switched on. She half expected a flash sequence, a message from Matthew: Get yourself back; get back. When they did flash, she was so startled she had to catch her breath, even though she knew it had to have been a wobbly circuit.
“I was just about to go get you,” said Matthew, as Sarah walked into the kitchen, where preparations for dinner were well underway. The two boys were playing some kind of game that involved yelling and eating Pirate’s Booty. Kiki was chopping tomatoes and onions. She looked up at Sarah with tears streaming from her bloodshot eyes.
“Let me take over for you!” Sarah insisted.
“No, it’s fine.” Kiki wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“You’re weeping! She’s weeping!”
Kiki backed away from the onions, as if surrendering. “Why do I insist on doing things that I am clearly not meant to do? Will someone please explain this to me?”
“Drama queen.” Sarah smiled, taking the knife from her. “Maybe you’re punishing yourself?” She picked up the task where Kiki had left off.
“No, I don’t think so.” Kiki opened a beer. “I’m too selfish for that.”
“You’re the least selfish friend I ever had,” Sarah said matter-of-factly, not pausing the chopping, but when Kiki didn’t reply, Sarah stopped to glance up. Kiki looked surprised—presumably by Sarah’s intensity—but Sarah was ill-equipped, somehow, to make light of anything just then. “I mean it.”
Kiki placed the beer on the counter. Her face looked inscrutable.
Heather and Karim came into the kitchen freshly showered. She was wearing no other makeup but her lips were bright red. Her hair dripped all over the countertop as she began to count hot dogs. Karim offered Heather a beer and she shook her head. Before opening his own, he put the cold bottle against the back of her neck and she squealed, laughing a touch too hard. Then she held up the hot dogs and, with bizarre urgency, asked the room at large, “Do you think the boys will each have two?”
“Sarah,” asked Kiki, “do you want to go see your room?”
Did Kiki realize how annoying her friend was? Or had Matthew told Kiki everything when they were alone outside at that table and, now that Kiki knew that Sarah had lied, was having a hard time focusing on anything while Sarah was in the room?
“It’s fine,” said Sarah. “I can finish this.”
“Look down,” said Karim. “I’d say you’re finished. Are you a sous chef or something?”
The onion was already diced and her eyes were now tearing, too. “No,” said Sarah, suddenly self-conscious, as if she were actually crying. “Just hungry.”
“Have a carrot.” Kiki pointed to a small yellow bowl, with the tone one might use with a toddler. Kiki began sautéing the onions and garlic, and within a second of those fresh tomatoes and herbs hitting the pan, Sarah went from hungry to ravenous. Though Heather had laid out that platter earlier, Sarah had been too unsettled to taste anything and realized she hadn’t eaten since morning, which felt like a year ago. Why had she been in such a rush to get here? Sarah crunched on carrots as Kiki explained where Sarah and Matthew would be sleeping. Then Sarah walked toward the stairs, passing the two boys, who were finally quiet and lounging on the couch, bathed in the glow of an iPad.
The upstairs landing had bookshelves and, in between the bookshelves, a mini-daybed below a picture window. It was the kind of spot she’d always loosely dreamed of having if she ever owned a house in the country. When she looked out the window, she was met with only her reflection. She thought of the subway and the Czech man and St. Ivo. You are a good mother, he’d said. She knew she’d never tell anyone about that moment. It was too strange and it was all hers. She also somehow knew that shabby formal man would contact her. It filled her with calm. She followed Kiki’s instructions to their room for the night but passed it by, continuing on down the darkened hall to the master bedroom. She sat in the dark on the unmade bed beside the heap of a rumpled duvet. She caught Kiki’s scent—bergamot, lemons, woodsmoke—made out the shapes of small bottles and books sitting by Kiki’s side of the bed. Arman’s side was tidy, with a stack of papers and a pair of headphones. She thought she heard the baby.
Across the hall, the door was open. She opened it farther, slowly. It was cooler in there with the fan going, and soothing, with a small machine emanating patterned light and the sound of heavy rain. There was no other light, no monitor. The baby lay silent on her back in a zip-up sleep sack, her arms flung above her head as if she’d landed in slow motion right there in the poppy fields of sleep. The sour milky smell was almost sweet, and the appropriately stark crib had no adorable and potentially hazardous pillows or blankets, no plush lambs or bears. The baby’s dark hair curled in little wisps. Her lips were pursed as if she’d stopped sucking just a moment ago.
As if Sarah were watching herself, as if her hunger had risen and shown its true focus and relentless velocity, she witnessed how she reached down into the crib and picked up the sleeping baby. She held Sylvie in her arms, and as her little body squirmed just the slightest bit, Sarah whispered the solid stream of shush, the hum and kisses until Sylvie snuggled and relaxed, let her softest cheek rest on Sarah’s cheek. The feeling was so extraordinary and instantly familiar. It was as if all of her life had temporarily been siphoned away into this one creature’s breath. Sarah focused on the muffled sounds of all the people in the kitchen, the clatter of a meal coming together. She stood with the baby by the window. The leaves brushed the glass. Beyond the curtain, the moon: halfway to full, a bone-bluish white. Same same same.