“I’ll make dinner,” she said.
He shook his head. “We’re out of everything.”
“I’ll shop. It’s not that late. I’d really like to cook.”
“I just—”
“Unless you’re starving.” Please don’t leave me. “Are you starving?”
“I’m not starving.”
“Can I have the new house keys?”
He looked at her blankly.
“You changed the locks. I forgot to take a set.”
“Oh, right, of course.” He fished around in his pockets and took out a key ring.
They’d come home from the country earlier in the day. Matthew had napped, but then Sarah insisted they get back outside. They’d walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and into Chinatown and back. They’d bought cheap sunglasses and hadn’t said much. And even though their walk had been at least three hours, he said, “I think I’ll keep walking.”
His expression still held a trace of what she’d seen when he’d stood on Kiki and Arman’s lawn, looking confused and suddenly old. “You were right.” He removed a set of keys and handed them over. “It felt good to get out.”
As Sarah took the keys from him, as she climbed the stoop and gave him a forced, cheerful wave, she had the odd thought that there’d been no mugging after all, only her own stupidity. That instead of being held up at gunpoint a couple of nights ago, she’d mistakenly thrown her keys instead of an apple core out the car window, or maybe she forgot them in a rest stop along I-95.
As she turned the key in the lock, she heard the much-contested landline ringing. Matthew would have liked to yank it out of the wall long ago. He argued that each time it was a telemarketer and not Leda, it was another form of torture. Even after opting out and entering their number onto every make-it-stop list, the telemarketers didn’t stop; they would never stop. So, Matthew argued, the landline had to go. But Sarah had prevailed—Leda knew the number by heart, they’d managed to keep the same number through several residences—and the phone was ringing right now in their kitchen, and Sarah’s heart raced with magical thinking as she ran through the house.
After Sarah’s frantic and repeated “Hello,” whoever was on the line hesitated and then hung up. The caller ID said this was a blocked number. Thanks for that useful tidbit, caller ID! Thanks so very fucking much! She slammed down the phone. The lights were off. Given they didn’t have central air, the house was remarkably cool. She picked up the receiver and took a breath. Hello, she practiced in her head, before saying it aloud. When she was growing up, other kids were trained to say their families’ names when they answered the phone—Zamora residence, Coleman residence—but not Sarah. She’d been instructed to never give her name or her father’s name to anyone who called. She usually tried not to think about her father and how her daily decisions—giving a stranger on the subway her home address right before taking a trip, for instance—might strike him. She tried with considerable success not to think of him and his suspicious worldview and how much he would have adored and been broken by Leda, but she thought of him right then with curious longing as the phone rang again.
When she heard her name, she was so startled that she flung her hand and knocked a glass off the counter. With her head cradling the phone to her shoulder, she turned on the lights and took the broom from the closet.
“Good evening, this is Officer Macavinta of the NYPD.”
She expected Officer Macavinta to say Leda’s name, but Sarah kept hearing her own name instead.
She heard a list of items that all belonged to her.
“And no phone?” she confirmed. She had to turn it into a question, as if asking might change the answer. “Got it. I’m coming.” But after hanging up, she just stood there—broom in hand—looking at the glittering floor.
Long before three nights ago, when they’d filed the report, they’d been familiar with their precinct. Before Leda was arrested for possession of marijuana and heroin as a high school senior, she’d been given a warning as a sophomore for smoking pot, basically right in front of the precinct, with two friends. Such an event now seemed quaint. Starting in sixth grade, she’d gone to a well-regarded private school, famous for not giving grades and valuing the arts at least as highly as mathematics. The two friends had also gone to this school, had done the same escalating drugs right along with Leda on the same timeline, but one was currently getting a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Cornell, and the other was the front man of a band whose second album had recently been reviewed in The New Yorker. According to several profiles, this musician friend (who’d loved Sarah’s tuna, lemon, and basil pasta and always forgot his hat, his keys, and his homework folders at their house) was living outside Nashville on a modest farm with a lovely looking girlfriend and hadn’t used drugs since his “messed-up teenaged years.”
How had these friends moved past those years unscathed? How were they healthy and successful while Leda had done little since that arrest aside from suffer?
It had occurred to Sarah that Leda was no longer suffering, and that maybe she had the ability to discard whatever didn’t serve her, and in this case what didn’t serve her was her parents. You mean, Matthew asked, when Sarah had mentioned this idea, like a sociopath?
Leda had been able to braid hair so elaborately that in high school she started charging for it. She ate frozen waffles out of the freezer, claiming they tasted better that way. She would dive off any rock, cliff, or board without hesitation. When she shaved off her long hair, when she went swimming in the icy Atlantic in December on a dare, when she stood up to a teacher who accused her of cheating, Sarah and Matthew had thought she was brave. And she was brave, no question. Leda was brave. Even after she became addicted to heroin. Maybe especially then. The things she did. The places she went. When Sarah said this at Family Day during one of the several excruciating Family Days Matthew and she went to—Florida, Arizona—people acted as if she were Susan Sontag saying the men who flew planes into the World Trade Center weren’t cowards.
Sarah ascended the stairs of the precinct, repeated the same information to several people, signed papers, and accepted her bag. Everything but her wallet and phone was still inside: now-useless keys, hardcover book, lip gloss, Advil, tampon, coral lip and cheek tint, even the pamphlet about scheduling a mammogram that she’d been using as a bookmark.
She said thank you.
She walked out.
The longer she walked, the farther away she had to hold the bag. It may as well have transformed into a live serpent right there in her hand. She remembered a friend coming back from Japan and marveling at the beauty of that country, the citizens’ pride, how efficiently life unfolded. According to this friend, there weren’t public garbage cans, as it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to discard their waste in public. How wonderful, Sarah had agreed, but secretly she’d thought, How oppressive. How terrible to feel so constantly responsible. How unfailingly small and tidy and good could a person possibly be? She was glad for the wire can on the street corner. She dropped in her bag with all of its contents and kept walking.
Hi, Leda had said during the last phone call, the one that had brought Sarah to Baja. It’s me.
Please, please. Please just tell me where you are.
She’d expected Leda’s refusal, just as she’d expected some tears. But there were neither. Leda said she was sorry for causing any pain. She said she was ready for a visit. Sarah took down the information and was on a plane to Baja the next day.
Now it was almost nighttime. She’d planned to buy groceries on her way home from the precinct, but as she left, she thought, why not go a bit out of the way to the much-better market where she could buy fresher produce and still get home with enough time to cook? Sarah would make a simple and healthy and virtuous dinner, a meal to recharge and revive. Also, the bar (or restaurant) owned by the son of the old man from the subway was on a street near the much-better market. This was not why she was going there; Sarah would not be stopping for a drink at St. Ivo on her way home, though nothing would have been wrong with that. When Leda was in elementary school, Sarah had a mom-friend who had one drink by herself every day before coming home from work, and she seemed like one of the sanest people Sarah had ever known. And what would it hurt to take a look at the place? To see if St. Ivo did serve food and if the old man had been telling the truth about his son being the owner? She had no reason to think he’d been lying, but she couldn’t stop thinking about her father. Let’s say you go to a restaurant. Let’s say you order the fish. Unless that fish comes out with a head and tail, unless it’s a distinct fish, one that you’re familiar with—let’s say salmon—that fish can be anything. You think you know what fish you’re eating? You don’t know.
She and Matthew only ever went to the same four restaurants; they needed small changes, different places. She decided now that she had to give each day more effort. She could call this research and return with Matthew some other night if the place was appealing. He worked hard; she forgot that most of the time.
You are a good mother.
The man on the train had said this. She was sure of it. She knew it was silly but this was the only reason she had to go to this bar, why she had no choice but to at least try to see him again.
There was an alley to the side of the building, unusual for the neighborhood. She saw a man stacking trays of glassware. She watched as he stacked, as the glasses piled up. Sarah wasn’t sure why she watched him, but she told herself she’d walk away after the last tray.
But then he finished. He checked his phone, he pressed his fingers to his temples, and there she still was, motionless. He went inside the bar through the side door. Almost immediately, he came back out again, this time with the old man from the subway. It was so strange to see him again; it was just as surprising as it would have been to discover that she’d imagined him. The two men were speaking low, in Czech, which she was familiar enough with to recognize but not to understand. Also, they had an urgency, or maybe it only seemed that way because what was she doing there, watching? The old man looked different—more gruff?—his movements were quicker; he hastily lit a cigarette and the younger man waved the smoke away.
If she’d had a phone, she knew it would be dinging with a text from Matthew right about then, that he wanted to go ahead and order in, that it was getting late. If she’d had a phone, she would have felt compelled to text Kiki and Arman, thanking them, apologizing, thanking them again. Sarah knew she was much warmer over texts and e-mails than in person. But since she had no phone, Kiki and Arman were spared her compulsive apologizing, and Matthew had no way of reaching her. There were no texts, no calls. There was nothing but time going by, the slight twinge of hunger pangs.
She went to the classical-music-playing market, bizarrely determined to make dinner for Matthew, even though he would happily have eaten cereal or a take-out burrito. She bought mahi-mahi and bok choy and avocado. She bought cardamom ice cream. While she speed-walked home, leaves blazed green under streetlights; flyers stapled to telephone poles curled up at their fraying edges.
YOU’RE ALLOWED TO COME HERE? she’d asked Leda on that deserted beach, after teasing her about the cartwheels.
Allowed? I’m not trapped. We’ve gone over this.
You know what I mean.
Come on, Leda said. Let’s walk.
How many miles is it?
Who knows.
Leda had had her teeth fixed, Sarah noticed. They looked a little too white but it was still a vast improvement. Sarah wondered if the group had paid for it. Maybe it was one of the ways they’d lured her. Sarah and Matthew had offered to get her teeth fixed after she’d been sober for a year, but Leda had decided to go to L.A. instead. How Leda’s teeth had looked when they’d found her that last time before she’d gotten clean: as though her mother had not made appointments and kept them; as though a mother had not diligently taken her daughter to a dentist and orthodontist until the daughter’s nearly perfect teeth were actually perfect, not so long ago. Leda, age thirteen, had terrible canker sores along her bottom lip; the sores were so bad that she’d cried daily. When Sarah asked the orthodontist what could be done, the orthodontist recommended that Leda toughen up, and Sarah lit into the orthodontist amid a waiting room full of people. She yelled, My daughter is in pain. Do you hear me? My daughter is in tremendous pain.
SHE PREHEATED THE OVEN and became inexplicably thirsty. Had those painkillers been the beginning? Sarah hated that question. She had asked it too many times to count. She had been told by myriad professionals that, no, she did not cause her daughter’s addiction. She could recall that orthodontist’s waiting room perfectly, though, and the recollection made her feel slightly sick. She gulped down water, prepared the fish, began sautéing bok choy. She scanned her memory for every conceivable point of contact, though none of them had been fruitful for at least two years. Her top three numbers: landline of a house out in Rockaway where Leda had lived with a boyfriend (and his senile grandmother) after barely graduating from high school; cell phone of the cold and intelligent sponsor from the first stint in rehab; cell phone of the roommate during the brief golden era following the second stint in rehab. Sarah had even met this roommate; she’d helped Leda move into the Ditmas Park apartment as if they were any normal mother and daughter. The day had been especially windy, and when Sarah had left the apartment and was nearly swept sideways, she remembered thinking how the weather itself was resetting the course of their lives, shoving pain and despair into the gutter along with the trampled ginkgoes and garbage.
When Matthew came into the kitchen, she said, “I want to call the numbers.”
“Can we just catch our breath?” He reached up across her and turned on the stove’s fan, turned it up as far as it could go.
“I have them written down.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said over the fan’s whirring. “We’ve had a streak of crazy. Or haven’t you noticed? Have you noticed?”
She poured more water and drank it down. “Do you remember once when we called the numbers there was that girl—the roommate—who hesitated before saying no when we asked if she’d heard from Leda? It was like a millisecond but we both heard it. Remember?”
“I don’t remember half of what you remember. You know this.”
“I do.”
Sometimes Sarah and Matthew blocked their own numbers, revealed their numbers; they each did the math and traveled through time zones, imagining where Leda might be. Sometimes they called all of them—one after the other.
She began riffling through the drawer below the phone, looking for the notebook.
“Just stop, Sarah.” He sounded severe. “I need you to stop.”
The bok choy, the fish, the pot of rice. The diced avocado in the small blue bowl.
She realized she was nodding, biting her lip so hard it hurt.
“Why can’t you back off from it right now? Was it the mugging? I’m sorry you got hurt.” He put his hands on both sides of her face. “I’m sorry.”
“You are, I know you are. And I’m not sure what else I would have wanted you to do.”
“But you are sure.” He didn’t let go of her face.
“What are you talking about?”
“You wanted me to beat him up.”
“What?” She laughed. “That’s insane.”
“You wanted me to kill him.”
She shrugged off his hands. “Of course I didn’t want you to kill him.”
He backed away from her but nodded calmly. “That’s what you wanted. It’s what you still want.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
Her face flushed.
He stopped nodding.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine, I did.”
“Listen”—he leaned back on the counter—“you need to figure out what you’re going to do.”
“About what?”
“About you. About anything. Start with Caroline. You have an agent who still believes in you. She cared enough to make the suggestion.”
“Are you kidding? That’s what you think is most important right now?”
“You need to do something.” It seemed as if he’d say more, but instead he opened the refrigerator. He took out a beer and twisted off the top, let it fall to the kitchen floor. “Sarah, she’s not coming back. Maybe one day she will, but it won’t be anytime soon.”
Sarah picked up the bottle top from the floor and threw it across the kitchen.
“Jesus!” cried Matthew.
“No matter how many times you say this, I will never believe it. So you don’t need to say it anymore. You can stop. You can stop saying she’s not coming back. You can stop saying she’s gone. Do you understand?”
“I heard from her.”
“You—”
“I heard from her.”
“But you swore—”
“Because I didn’t think you could take it. I still don’t think you can take it, but you know what? Neither can I. Because no matter what I do in the name of protecting you, it’s always useless. So I guess I’m saying, screw it.” He ran his hand over his face. “I heard from her.”
“When.”
“Two months ago. She said she was going to Mexico City with some people from the organization. She asked me not to tell you. She said she was building an internal civilization and having it manifest in the external world.”
“You heard from her.”
“Yes.”
Sarah sliced a lime on the cutting board. She squeezed it over the diced avocado. Then she turned off the oven and the stove; she turned off the fan.
“Sarah—”
She grabbed her sweater from where she’d tossed it on the banister and walked back out into the night.
NOTHING ABOUT THE BAR, which was just a bar (No food, old man, sorry), was distinctive: Waylon Jennings on the stereo, twinkly lights, a tattered American flag. The bartender was presumably the old man’s son; she’d seen him stacking the glassware, waving his father’s smoke away. Sarah realized why she’d continued to watch him go about such a mundane task: he was attractive. She almost laughed out loud. The man’s appeal hadn’t struck her at first, but it seemed pretty obvious now.
She ordered a Manhattan, her voice sounding shrill and shaky.
He rubbed his eyes and squinted. “What was that? Can you speak up?” He didn’t have a trace of an accent.
She repeated herself.
He nodded. “Got it. Sorry.”
“No”—Sarah shrugged—“I’m a low talker.”
“I’m just really beat.” He poured bourbon into a shaker.
“Me too.”
“Is that right? Rough day? You got a baby at home?”
“No,” she said, hard.
“I don’t know why I asked that. That’s none of my business. This neighborhood just seems colonized by babies and their attractive parents.”
“I’m a little old for that.”
“Well, now you’re just fishing.” He looked at Sarah and she didn’t look away. She willed herself not to flush at the base of her neck, where she could feel the blotches blooming. She was not half-naked; she was not acting impulsively. She was a grown woman sitting at a bar, making conversation.
“So, last night I cut off this guy when I realize how drunk he is. He gets belligerent. I tell him to go home, and he immediately passes out. I spend the rest of the night getting him to a hospital and answering questions.”
“Sounds rough. But … he’s okay?”
“Oh, he’s fine.” The bartender was evidently in no hurry to mix her drink. He balanced a cherry on a spoon, held on to it. “I mean, job hazard, I realize, but this is exactly the type of bullshit I was hoping to avoid when I opened a bar on the fringes of a bourgeois neighborhood. Not dealing with this bullshit is what I tell myself I’m getting in return for ponying up this kind of rent every month.”
“And the attractive parents.”
He dropped in the cherry, placed the glass on the bar. “Well, of course. That goes without saying.”
She took a sip. It was cold and smoky, completely delicious. She wondered why she ever bothered with wine. “You know, bourgeois drunks are still drunk.”
“Wise woman.” He cracked his first real smile. “And you’re neither.”
“How can you tell?”
“No system. It’s just a guess.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. I think the bruise on my face is making me more interesting.”
“Wait. Wait, I recognize you.”
Sarah felt a jolt of fear that he was a former classmate of Leda’s. This was irrational because he had to be at least thirty-five. But maybe he’d been a teacher? A neighbor? “Probably from this bourgeois neighborhood?”
“Maybe.” He seemed slightly deflated. “Probably.”
“You must see a lot. Between people, I mean.”
He shrugged. “I don’t pay attention.”
“Somehow I don’t believe that’s true.”
“I drove a cab for a summer on Long Island. That was crazier.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah. Sure. People need to talk.”
During the first of many pregnancies after Leda had turned two, Sarah had been invited to speak at a film festival in Glasgow; on the way to JFK, she and the Sudanese taxi driver had spoken at length. He told her proudly that his wife was pregnant. He already had a toddler, a girl, who was exactly Leda’s age. He revealed the due date, which was also Sarah’s secret due date; the coincidence was too much, and so even though it was early and she’d not yet said it aloud to anyone besides Matthew, she told the driver that she was pregnant, too. They wished each other well; she miscarried on the flight home.
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve heard?” Sarah asked now.
“It blends together. Y’know?”
“I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
He placed both his hands on the bar. “I’m Alex.” When he noticed her reaction, he smiled tightly. “What? What was that face for? Do you have a cute expression for every thought or something?”
“What did I do?” she blurted, and almost said, I have a son named Alex. A beautiful imaginary son.
“You have a very expressive face.”
“I do not. In fact, I’ve always been told the opposite.”
“Not sure what blind jackasses you’ve been talking to.”
She was too flustered to say anything else.
“So … is Alex your husband’s name or something?”
“No. No. My husband’s name is Matthew.”
“Aha. Okay.”
The door opened and two couples came in, bringing with them a trace of moonlight. Beyond them was the same street she knew, a slice of inky sky. Cars and trucks took this corner too fast, and Sarah imagined being in one of those cars, driving out of the city, out of her life entirely. Leda’s absence, she realized, was the center of her life. She’d chosen to make it so. She watched as the couples deliberated and Alex attentively offered them tastes of what was on draft, giving a lengthy description of a local IPA. He rolled up his sleeves with particular care; she expected some ink but there was none. By the time he made his way back to Sarah, she’d finished her drink. She smoothed bills down on the sticky wood.
“Going already?”
She nodded. “Did you ever serve food here?”
“Why? You hungry?”
She shook her head and looked over at the couples, laughing and touching each other’s arms. “I met your father. That’s why I came in here. He recommended it. I met him on the subway and he asked me for directions.”
“You met my father on the subway?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t mention it right away.” Alex’s eyes were brown, his skin many shades darker than his father’s. “He seemed like a nice man.”
He nodded. “My father—”
“I was in a strange mood when he struck up a conversation”—she leaned forward—“but, actually, he seemed like more than a nice man. He seemed like a remarkable person, and—”
“My father has dementia,” Alex said matter-of-factly. “He’s not supposed to leave his house in Yonkers without the attendant. He shows up sometimes, but he doesn’t remember. He thinks that I’m a world-class chef.”
“Oh.” Sarah could feel her lips pressing tightly together. For one brief moment, she had to close her eyes. “Oh.”
Leda was gone. She knew this. Stop making me say it, Matthew yelled, the night she returned from Baja, his voice hoarse with tears. After a lifetime of shunning exercise, he started running the very next morning.
“That must be painful,” she said.
“Of course it is. It’s also a pain in the ass.”
It was quiet between them and then it was silent.
“I’m Sarah.” She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Sometimes she thought she had nothing left: no more despair, no more desire. She was always wrong.
SARAH HAD BEEN BREATHLESS on that beach. Mainly from so much walking and the sun and wind, but also the phenomenal beauty. The sky was the same bright Pacific sky that loomed above her Pasadena rental, but it looked entirely different next to the jutting cliffs, next to the lush palm groves in the distance, so dense they looked black.
It’s enough, Sarah had said.
She didn’t know if Leda had heard her. Leda had hurled herself toward the sand and done five cartwheels after all. Then she lowered herself to the ground. She knelt for about a minute with her eyes closed. She did a slow and perfect headstand.
It’s enough, Sarah had repeated, louder now. But Leda didn’t come down. She was standing on her head and, from the looks of things, could have stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon.
It’s time to come home.
Leda folded her legs into her body and slowly, effortlessly, sat upright again. Please, Sarah had said. Just please.
Please, what?
You think you’re the only person who craves escape? Sarah cried. Sweetie, you are not.
Leda laughed.
Sarah sat down next to her in the warm sand. You know what Spanish expression I love? Sarah picked up the sand and let it run through her fingers. Mi vida. “My life.” People say it the way we say honey or sweetie. Pass the salt, my life. Call me when you get there, my life. It’s so much more honest. English endearments are about sweetness, which is ridiculous. Because “my life” is what we really mean, at least with our children.
I wasn’t aware you spoke Spanish, Leda said bitingly.
You aren’t sweet. And neither am I.
We’re not the same.
I’m not saying we are. I’m saying you are my life.
You’re saying we’re the same. You think we are. And I can’t believe you think it’s some big secret that you crave escape.
I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ll always tell you anything.
But, Mom. Leda turned toward Sarah and, in one terrifying moment, stared her down. I don’t want it. I want to be separate. Then Leda fixed her focus on the waves, which were closing out on the shoreline.
I’m staying here, Leda finally said.
These people. Leda, these people are unhinged.
These people are fine. I’m happy. I invited you here to tell you that. So you could let me go. You’ve got to let me go.
Never.
But Sarah had flown back to New York and returned to her life, which was the life of their family, which wasn’t a family without their daughter. She was forty-eight years old. Leda was twenty-four.