When Sarah was a child, her father gave her a password. She was to use it even if he knocked on their door and she asked Who is it? and it was her father saying It’s your father; she was to ask for the password with her half of the password, and if he didn’t respond with his half of the password, she was to never, not under any circumstance, let him in. Not even if they heard each other’s voice, he’d explained, were they to let each other in. When they traveled, he never allowed anyone to put their home address on their luggage tags, in case the baggage handlers saw the tags and decided to go rob their empty house. He didn’t believe in having food delivered, because what kind of person has a job delivering food? Do you want that person at your doorstep, getting a good look inside?
Whenever Sarah mentioned these … quirks, people inevitably asked, tentatively, if her mother had died by the hands of a criminal or if her father might have been a spy or involved in organized crime, and when Sarah responded that her mother hadn’t (congenital heart defect when Sarah was nineteen months old) and that he wasn’t (fluky and lucrative stint as the voice of Wrangler Denim, but a chemist, then a science teacher), all of these precautions seemed immediately and entirely crazy.
She thought of her father that night as she lay in bed after Sunday’s dinner and too much wine. There had been a time—when she’d gotten pregnant young with Leda by accident—that being her father’s daughter had served her. Before Leda, she’d been living a nocturnal, artistic, selfish life, subsisting on candy and bagels. But when she and Matthew decided to keep the baby, her days began and ended with the sun; she ate sweet potatoes, spinach, and yogurt. Soon after giving birth, she found herself sitting in the back of a local café with a group of exhausted women at least a decade her senior, each with a baby strapped to her body. She listened while they talked about feeding and sleeping; she shared her specific, now-long-forgotten fears and questions, and everyone looked ravaged and terrified. And in that moment she most understood her father. Sarah’s mother died when Sarah was a baby. There was nothing her father could have done. And yet … and yet. She unfailingly described him as paranoid and would regularly recount his vigilant antics with wry, superior laughter, but while sitting in that café, she secretly began to believe that his ideas were not only sane but wise. So much of life is beyond our control. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we possibly can to stay safe? To keep on living?
Everyone was so vulnerable. You were a fool ever to relax.
Of course by that point her father was dead.
And then the playing and the homework and the meals and the friends and the going to other kids’ houses and the ordering socks and filling out forms and forgetting the bags and the checking where Leda was and the checking in and just checking in! The checking and checking and checking—through it all, she’d deferred to her father’s voice.
But now?
She thought of her father now, wondering if even he’d agree that maybe it was time for her to stop doing all she possibly could. That maybe—at least for Sarah—such vigilance was useless? Would she and Matthew go right to the edge of hope every time they received calls from an unknown number? She hoped so. She didn’t want to ever give up the anticipation. But it unnerved them every time.
Nothing she could do; this was all too clear. The phone calls and the waiting and the daily mental exertions—this had the same effect as doing nothing. She could ease up. She could let go. There were ways to learn. And there was freedom in that; wasn’t there?
She went to the pink bathroom and drank water straight from the tap, pressed her fingers to her eyelids, and walked down the stairs.
Outside, under the stars dimmed by streetlights from town, in a yard she knew she’d envision over years to come, she stood and looked around. It was a lazy place, this place, but she didn’t feel lazy. Everything felt heightened, as if she were being watched, which, yes, she might be. He’d seen her. He’d been watching.
Maybe right that second her phone, long gone, could be ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing with the Chime ringtone, which might as well have been called Contemporary Despair. Or any moment Leda could simply reappear. She could skip the phone call and already be lying in the hammock; Leda might be watching. The air was still, and then—as if Sarah had willed it, like those string lights last night—a gust of wind came and went. The wind was warm and reminded her of Florida, five years old and alone with her father. She remembered saying, The air is so human, again and again. She’d said it for days before he’d pointed out that what she meant to say was humid. The air is humid. The air is human.
There was a human. He was there. She noticed that after the wind died down the hammock kept moving. She knew it was Arman, but for a moment she let it be Leda. And there she was, right there, several yards away. Sarah could actually see—could she?—the blond hair spilling over the edge and down toward the earth, down into the darkness. There was the fungal stench of a girl who’d been riding a bus all night long. Sarah would approach quietly. She would wordlessly climb into the hammock and Leda would be startled. Leda would probably scream. It would be awkward at first, of course it would. But then they’d lie side by side as they always had—shoulders, arms, and thighs touching together—and eventually fall asleep.
Sarah put her fingers to her eyelids and pressed. She opened her eyes and crept toward the trees. As she grew closer, the blond hair spilling over the edge became dried-out overgrown weeds. The hammock continued to sway and her heart continued its beat and she knew she should speak up, that she could literally give Arman a heart attack (none of them—not even Arman and Kiki!—were young anymore), but somehow Sarah just couldn’t. She couldn’t call out. She stood several feet from where his head would be. He would lie facing the creek, not the house.
“Arman,” she finally said. Her voice was faint at first, even hoarse. When he didn’t pop up, she said it louder. Still he didn’t move.
Why didn’t she turn around and go back inside? Why didn’t she take his silence as a clear message to leave him alone? She came closer. The parched tall weeds didn’t sway. Nothing moved. She reached for the hammock and gripped the edge. Without intending to, without making a choice, she touched his thick hair. She heard him shift, obviously startled, but he didn’t cry out or speak. It was dark, she was fumbling, she hadn’t made any decision, but there she was with her hand on Arman’s head. She kept it there, her hand, as if it were separate from her—maybe a bug that had landed and trapped itself. She waited for the bug to make its way out. She watched the creek and waited.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
When she realized it wasn’t Arman, she retracted her hand but didn’t scream. “I thought you were my husband.” She worked to catch her breath.
“No, you didn’t.”
He didn’t rise from the hammock.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“I’m here to talk to you.”
“You need to leave.”
He didn’t move from his spot in the hammock. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” Sarah glanced back at the house. “Yes, I do.”
“Nah.”
She wondered if he was drunk. “You don’t belong here.” She checked across the creek. Were there more people? The house was dark. Was that even his house? “You don’t belong here and you need to leave.”
He went to sit up, not without struggle, wincing as if from an old injury.
She moved away from the hammock, looked back at the house again. Her heart plunged into her stomach; she could swear someone was sitting at the outdoor table now.
“I don’t belong here,” he acknowledged.
“Listen, I’m married and you need to get out of here.”
“Right,” he said, more quietly now. “Got it.”
She turned and nervously retreated toward the house, praying he wouldn’t follow. She made it as far as the outdoor table and she was right, she hadn’t hallucinated, there was Arman, outside again, with his head resting on his arms. He hadn’t been sitting there when she came outside mere minutes ago. Had he followed close behind, saying nothing? Now he looked as if he might even be asleep, but he raised his head and squinted, as if to place her. She should have told him a stranger was in the hammock, a stranger that—if he was to be believed—lived in the house across the creek. Be careful, she should have said. But what two words were more useless?
“Who were you talking to?” Arman asked.
“Me,” the man said, and he was suddenly there and Arman was on his feet and they were all standing around the table.
“What the hell?” Arman yelled. “Wait—we talked about the telephone wire. You live over there.” Arman recovered slightly or was at least making an effort to appear more at ease.
The man nodded. “We were talking,” he said calmly. “Her and I were talking.” She could feel the weight of him standing next to her. His voice was deep, congested.
“What is going on here? What are you doing in our yard?” Arman asked sort of lightly, as if maybe he were dreaming or overreacting and this strange middle-of-the-night convergence could still turn out to be a neighborly misunderstanding.
“You know what?” asked the man. “People do nothing. People talk a big fucking game about being citizens, being brave, but then? What?” He made a show of looking around. “Fuckin’ crickets.”
“Listen, man,” said Arman, “I’m not sure what your problem is, but it’s the middle of the night and you’re on my property.”
“Ain’t your property. You’re renting. You came up here and—day one—I knew something was messed up. When you asked me about that phone wire, you should’ve seen your face. As if you have any right whatsoever to be so goddamn demanding. I mean, it’s you who doesn’t belong here. It’s you who doesn’t belong. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Sarah said, “Listen—”
“Do you?”
“I’ve already heard this,” said Arman, “so you can spare me. I’ve heard it all before.”
Well, Sarah thought, so much for sympathy toward racial resentment.
Arman put his hands in the air as if to surrender, as if he’d do anything not to strike this guy but that he was getting close.
“I told you,” Sarah told the man. “You need to leave. Right now.”
He came around the table. He moved quickly, surprisingly so, and before Sarah even registered what was coming, he leaned into Arman and said, “You disgust me.”
“Get the fuck out of here, I mean it.”
“If you do anything to him,” Sarah warned the man, “you’ll be charged with a hate crime. Do you get that? Do you? ‘You disgust me.’ What is wrong with you?”
“Hate crime? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. He can’t just beat you.”
“Excuse me?” balked Arman.
“What?!” Sarah cried. She was starting to shake with impatience.
“He hits you.” The man pointed at Arman. “I know something like that? I don’t stand by.”
“This is unbelievable,” said Arman.
“What are you talking about?” cried Sarah, then she finally understood:
Who’re you hiding from?
My husband.
“Just get off my property,” said Arman.
Now Matthew was slamming the screen door and running outside, and Kiki was right behind him, taking photos of the man with her phone.
“You’d better leave,” Matthew told him.
“She told me you hit her,” he said to Arman, sounding—for the first time—unsteady.
Neighbors’ lights were coming on. Soon, the cops might arrive.
“Why would I say that?” countered Sarah. “Apologize to him.”
“You want me to apologize to your husband.”
“That’s not my husband.”
“But—”
“This is my husband.” She took Matthew’s arm.
“Ah, I get it.” The man pointed to Matthew. “You. You are seriously fucked.”
Matthew only said, “Get out of here.”
“And burn your flag,” Sarah said. “That flag makes me sick.”
“My grandfather gave me that flag.”
“Oh, I’m sure he did.”
“It’s Russian navy. You think this is the first time I heard this ignorant shit? It’s a similar design but it’s not a Confederate flag and I’m not taking it down. I’m no racist.” The man cast a glance at each of them and landed on Sarah. “I came here—Jesus—I wanted to protect you.”
“To protect me?” She looked straight into the man’s eyes, which were light and strange, with flat dark lashes and a thick brow. She stood up taller and didn’t look away. “No.”
“Sarah,” Matthew demanded. “You need to tell us what’s going on.”
In the dark, looking so lost, she could imagine him older—no, old: exposed scalp and loose skin and memory fully shot.
“I met him today,” she said matter-of-factly. She knew enough to know she couldn’t afford to appear sheepish. “We met in the woods while you were swimming.”
“Right,” Matthew said. “Of course you did.”
“He must have seen my cut and bruises and … I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
The man muttered something, then walked away. They stopped their arguing to watch him. Just like that: he made his way toward the street—gone.
Kiki and Arman went inside.
“I was upset,” Sarah finally said, turning her attention from Kiki and Arman to Matthew. “I was really upset. I think the mugging … Look, with that guy—I was evasive.”
“Did you lie?”
“I may have.” She nodded. “Sometimes I feel like lying to everyone about everything.”
The man appeared on the footbridge and they watched him slowly cross it. He entered the dark house and turned on a light.
“Do you never have that impulse?” she asked.
Matthew looked up at the burned-out-negative clouds before finally shaking his head. “What I think of as my life—I think it’s over.”
She nodded.
“So I guess,” Matthew continued, “I’d like a new one. A new life.”
“Without me.” Dawn was coming. Violets and browns were outpacing the darkness; she wasn’t ready.
“Not you like this.”
She nodded, feeling calmer than she had any right to. “I’ve never thought of myself as someone who blows it all up.”
“I’ve never thought of you like that either. But … people change.”
She swallowed, hard. Would he actually leave? She thought of the man on the subway.
Do you think people ever really change? The orange-pink light. The dark glow of the underground.
“What?” Matthew asked, abruptly gripping her shoulders. She didn’t flinch. “Do you disagree?” He dug his fingers deeper. “Do you not see how much you’ve changed?” When he began to shake her, it was hard.
She felt her chest heaving up and down; it was as if her internal organs were jockeying for position.
“Harder,” she said.
He let go.
“I mean it. Please.”
“Sometimes”—he sat down at the table—“I don’t really know if the person I knew—the one who made, you know, films, but also made meals and appointments and who just generally got shit done with a lot of energy and was really dynamic and—you know, that person—did I invent her?” He stood up again, looked at her straight on. “Was that you? I mean, it had to be you, right? You did all those things. You were also just … lovely.” He grinned the most miserable grin. “You were thoughtful and you were fun.”
“I was not.”
“You really were. I mean, at least most of the time.”
She moved closer, lightly touched his shoulder. It was as if, for a moment, they were at a crowded party and he was simply someone she knew.
“We should check on them.” He nodded to the house.
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
“But still.”
“No, of course.” She rose to her feet and started to follow him. They had once sat in the shade of an oak tree in Madison, Wisconsin. He’d cracked all his knuckles and sheepishly smiled.
“I met someone on a subway recently,” she said. “It was a strange conversation.”
He turned back to face her, looking down the slight incline. “A man, I’m guessing.”
She shook her head. “I mean, yes, a man, but old.”
“Right, okay. And?”
“I think we should hire another investigator.”
“Honey,” he sighed.
“I don’t want to give up.”
“I know.”
Then he resumed walking toward the house.
She stayed outside alone, and just like that, dawn was turning to morning. The same leathery skinny woman that she’d seen the other day—the one smoking, pushing a baby carriage full of groceries—she was crossing the footbridge toward town. Still smoking, still pushing that carriage, but this time it was empty.
INSIDE, ARMAN WAS making a pot of coffee. “So,” he said flatly, “we’re really tired. I think you should maybe head out after breakfast.” Then he cleared his throat and looked at them as if they were stragglers at a party that had ended several hours before.
“Of course,” Sarah said.
They headed upstairs to collect their things. She realized that, astonishingly, Sylvie was still sleeping. Midway up the stairs, she looked down and saw Arman and Kiki locked in obvious disagreement. She followed Matthew into the bedroom and silently gathered their belongings. Matthew stood in the middle of the room, opening and closing his hands as if they’d fallen asleep. On the way downstairs, Sarah abruptly sat on a step and Matthew joined her. She buried her face in his shoulder.
Their duffel bags tumbled down the staircase.
“What happened?” cried Kiki.
“It’s okay.” Matthew sounded as if he were broken and his voice could no longer hide this fact.
Arman picked up the duffels and brought them to the threshold. He dropped the bags but stood there, as if he was considering opening the door and heading out himself.
Kiki walked over and looked up at Sarah and Matthew. Kiki sat on the bottom step, facing the front door. It seemed as though she might go talk to Arman. But when she finally spoke, it was quietly and it wasn’t to him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with Leda?”
“She’s a drug addict,” Sarah said to the back of Kiki’s head. “Heroin.”
Kiki looked up to face them and burst into tears. She put her face in her hands. From their vantage they could see, under the gray cotton garment that she’d barely removed all weekend that somehow worked equally well as a nightgown or party dress—the rise and fall of Kiki’s narrow back.
“It’s okay,” said Matthew, though it was not it was not it was not. “She’s sober now.”
“Fuck,” said Arman, coming over and leaning on the balustrade. “Fuck. But she’s okay?”
“She cut off contact with us,” said Sarah, her eyes fixed on the tar-black-painted stairs.
In the lobby of a Scottsdale hotel she’d recognized a fellow visitor to the rehab facility. They’d given each other weary smiles and started talking. The woman was young and slight. She wore a delicate heart necklace. Her ex-marine husband had gotten hooked after returning from Afghanistan. It’s lucky your daughter never started in with the black tar.
The words lucky. Black tar.
“But,” asked Kiki, “her birthday? And the boat?”
She had to know the answer by the silence that followed. She’d wanted the missing piece and now she had it.
“Four years ago,” Sarah finally said, “after she’d been sober for a little more than a year, she left on a yoga retreat. When she didn’t return our calls or e-mails, we hired a private investigator, who eventually figured out that the yoga retreat was connected to some kind of empowerment project in Pasadena, run by a couple who’d been investigated by the FBI years before when they’d run a similar program in Florida.”
“Are you serious?” asked Arman. Sarah thought he might kick the newel. “She’s in a cult?”
“She packed up her purple duffel bag and flew to L.A., and I thought, ‘How great is that? How great is it that she’s taking such good care of herself?’ Remember?” Sarah asked Matthew, with the kind of bitter laughter she hated most about herself.
Without any internal warnings, Sarah suddenly needed to move. She stood, walked quickly down the stairs as if she were rushing somewhere specific. She went into the kitchen, filled a glass with water even though she wasn’t thirsty. When she came into the living room, they were all waiting. “At first, when I heard she was in this group, I thought, ‘Okay,’” she continued, as if there’d been no interruption. “I thought, ‘Sure, fine. So she may be a bit addicted to yoga and she might need to follow some kind of strict health regime,’ but I wasn’t about to start in about how any addiction was an addiction. If we had a yoga-addicted, maybe vegan, maybe-a-little-too-earnest daughter? If she lived a clean and sober life? You would never hear me complain. You’d never hear me make one stupid joke. Never.”
“Of course,” said Kiki. “But how—”
“At the time, when we found out that the group’s headquarters was in Pasadena, I thought, ‘Well, Matthew travels so much for work that it doesn’t really matter where we live,’ so I found a rental in Pasadena. Then I tried, almost every day for weeks, to talk to Leda, but it became very clear that she was discouraged from speaking with us. When I did see her, I tried to say anything I possibly could to get her away. This accomplished nothing except that she distanced herself further. At some point I tried to step back and really understand what she was doing, and when I asked the most basic questions, she responded that the integrity of the group’s intellectual property was so important that in order to protect their trade secrets, which had been, you know, developed at great time and expense, she wasn’t allowed to talk about anything. She actually said—with a completely straight face—that she wasn’t allowed to disclose the group’s proprietary methods and materials. So then Matthew hired a very expensive deprogrammer, who couldn’t even get Leda to talk to him, which led to Matthew not coming back to Pasadena.”
“That’s not true,” Matthew said quietly.
“It is. It is.” Sarah remembered his saying Leda was no longer a child. That she was sober now and it was her life, her choice. She remembered this because she remembered thinking but not saying that maybe he was right. “It is true.”
Matthew continued to shake his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said. “She moved with the group farther south, then across the border and off the grid, and then she completely cut off contact.”
“At least you saw her again,” said Matthew.
“It’s true. I did. I saw her once, over a year ago. Matthew and I had just gotten back together. He was across the world when she called home and said she was ready for a visit. I flew to where she was then—who knows where she is now, we can’t find her anymore—and she said she wanted to tell us in person that we needed to let her go. That she was healthier and happier not being in touch with family. She said she harbored neither anger nor ill will. She wanted us to see just how well she was doing. It all sounded as if she’d been given a script.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kiki said.
“By the time I flew down there, only a week or so later, the whole operation was gone,” Matthew said. “They must have picked up and left right after Sarah did. No one in the town around there knew who I was talking about. It was like they’d never been there.”
“Jesus,” said Arman. “Jesus.”
“These days”—Sarah swirled ice in her glass—“here’s what I think with some frequency: ‘Fuck yoga.’ Just, seriously? ‘Fuck yoga.’ Isn’t that stupid?”
Matthew picked up their bags.
“But you can’t go now,” Kiki cried. “Please don’t go.”
Sarah felt a smile coming on, cracking her face wide open. “‘Please don’t go,’” she repeated, and felt the smile in her chest, her toes. “‘We’ll eat you up—we love you so.’”
“What?” Arman asked, baffled, mirroring her smile.
“Maurice Sendak,” said Matthew. “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Kiki and Arman stared back at them, uncomprehending. They hadn’t yet spent hours and hours reading books to their child, hadn’t watched that child relish the repetition of her favorites. They didn’t yet have boxes of children’s books with which they couldn’t bear to part. They had it all ahead of them.
“I’m sorry I lied,” said Sarah. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about your neighbor and about—” She shook her head, unable to continue, and reached for Kiki’s hands. Sarah pulled Kiki into a hug, trying and failing to catch her breath. She was taller than Kiki but Kiki’s arms were longer, and she wrapped those pale arms around Sarah, holding her tight. They stayed there together and Kiki smelled like flowers and powder and slightly sour milk. Sarah let her vision blur and didn’t worry about how she was wetting Kiki’s perfect, chic pajama dress with stupid, pointless tears. How could a person cry so much? She supposed it was similar to eating and drinking and sex; it felt novel every time.
Sarah finally pulled away. “You were my best friend, too.” When Kiki laughed, Sarah didn’t. “Did you think I was going to leave without saying that?”
“I did, actually.”
“Well, you were wrong, all wrong.”
Matthew put his hand on Arman’s shoulder and told them, “I’ll be in touch. Please don’t worry.”
When Leda had done her first cartwheel on that deserted beach in Baja, the sun had blinded Sarah as her daughter flipped upside down. During the second cartwheel, Sarah felt one moment of pure relief when Leda’s pink T-shirt fell over her head and revealed not only a cute yellow bikini top and a fleshier but still-thin belly but also no more belly-button piercing. In that moment of dumb relief that her daughter no longer had a belly piercing, Sarah came closer. She couldn’t take her eyes off Leda: young, lovely, no longer sick with addiction. Then she caught her breath.
Sweetheart, what is that?
Leda was out of breath, smiling. What is what?
Did you get burned?
Leda’s expression changed. She held down the hem of her threadbare shirt. Why are you scrutinizing me?
I’m not. Did you get burned?
No.
Above your hip?
No.
Is it a tattoo?
No.
Let me see it.
Why? You’re being creepy.
Sarah came closer. Behind her daughter, the crashing waves. The nearly blinding sunshine. Leda lifted her shirt with an extravagant gesture. Whether she was being defiant or carefree was impossible to tell.
A square of raised pink skin, a small square, looked—on closer inspection—like two snakes or maybe someone’s initials.
She’d been branded.
SARAH LOOKED OUT the window of the moving car. She remembered again the day she got glasses. A child with a blue suede case. Don’t worry, Matthew had said to Kiki and Arman. It was what he always said. She’d taken off the glasses. She’d returned them to their case.
She wondered what had happened to that woman by the lakeshore. Would she ever learn to swim?
Should Sarah have confronted the man? Told him to stop?
To stop what? Teasing?
Outside: the trees, their blurry green leaves, the endless nothing sky.
There were so many things they didn’t talk about anymore.