It was four o’clock in the morning. Summer was long gone. It had been an unseasonably warm fall. Apocalyptic was a word that often came up in conversation while merely discussing the weather. Winter was coming, and surely these habitual walks would stop, though for now, while unable to sleep, she hit the pavement. She was often out in the middle of the night. It was mid-November. She was not sleeping with Alex the bartender or anyone aside from her husband. What to send Sylvie for Christmas and Hanukkah? Should she send two separate presents? Matthew mentioned he’d sent another check to their new address in Jackson Heights, Queens. A casting director had hired Arman for a national gig. Kiki had texted a photo of Sylvie on Halloween, dressed up as a fox.
Sarah walked not toward the park but through the neighborhoods: down the hill, across the canal to the storage facility, where she considered visiting their unit. It was open 24-7. So good to know, she remembered joking with Matthew when they first rented the space. Can there be a sadder time than the middle of the night to deal with one’s possessions? She imagined nodding to the receptionist, taking the elevator, walking the fluorescent-lit corridor. She could sit on the cold and dusty floor with the plastic tubs of stuffed animals and photos and irrelevant documents. She could cry over carefully folded baby clothes. Always an option. She could cry over the fact that she might never have grandchildren. Or that if she did have grandchildren, she wouldn’t know them. But she kept walking all the way to the waterfront, to the pier with its scrabbly rocks that seemed to beckon a climb.
On her way there she’d walked quickly, barely noticing her surroundings, but on the way back, she took it slow. When she reached the canal, she stood on the bridge, alone under the scant moon and glaring streetlights, fearful of who might be out at this hour, but also marveling at how the stench from the polluted canal was absent. The air smelled so clean. On the other side of the bridge stood a lush patch of sunflowers. She always wondered who tended such an impressive garden, one that grew more elaborate each year, seemingly left alone to flourish. She thought, as she always did, how Leda had loved this bridge and this garden and how she—in a parallel universe or maybe even in this one—would enjoy being with Sarah there, right then. She thought of how they both loved small pockets of wonder, sought beauty in rough places. Leda had berated her for pointing out their similarities, but it had been so long, Sarah realized, since anyone else had done so. Then she crossed the bridge and looked more closely at the garden and—preposterously—saw a young junkie passed out in the sunflowers, streetlight shining brightly on her acne-scattered face. Dyed-green hair, nose pierced, cheek pierced, eyebrow pierced, and there Sarah was, seized with such revulsion that she turned away and ran onto the bridge, gripping the railing and dry heaving as she had done during all of her pregnancies, trying and failing for some kind of release into the foul water below.
Dear Caroline, I’m embarrassed it’s taken me this long to thank you for our lunch.
When she walked up the hill and through the familiar pattern of streets, she realized dawn was breaking. She pictured the lake upstate and wondered when it would freeze. She still wondered what had happened to the woman who’d flopped around in the shallows. For a while she’d felt strangely guilty for not getting involved that day. It was as if, in her imagination, that woman had become Leda and Sarah had abdicated her clear responsibility to get her out of the water, that demeaning situation. But at some point Sarah had started telling herself another story. In this version, the woman at the lake was an excellent swimmer. She was faking it. She was playing him for reasons only she could understand.
Dear Caroline, I’ve been thinking it over.
Dear Caroline, You may be right.
Sarah took her phone from her back pocket.
Two months ago, the young man at the Apple store had plugged in her new phone. She’d seen all her contacts for Leda and immediately started weeping. The young man at the Apple store had kindly looked away. Then he’d asked for her credit card.
She didn’t dial Leda’s old numbers.
As she scrolled her phone’s contacts, Sarah worried about waking her, even though she’d been assured many times that this was a good time to call.
“Hi,” Kiki answered on the second ring.
“Good morning.”
“You okay?”
Sarah looked around. Pearly sky, dull security grilles. “I am.” She breathed in and smelled yeast from a bakery up the block. “What are you working on?”
“It’s my fifth day on this new line. I’m using India ink. Lots of circles. I’ve been getting up every morning at four thirty.”
“You’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
“I know.”
Sarah stood up straighter and looked across the street. A cheery neon sandwich blinked from a bodega window. “Is Sylvie still asleep?”
“She is,” Kiki whispered.
Sarah smiled easily and felt a loosening in her chest. “Whatever you’re doing is definitely working.”
“You think? I don’t know. It’s working this week.”
“What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Oh, it was so good.” Kiki laughed. “You know that’s what motivates me to get out of bed.”
“I do.”
“So I put leftover rice in a bowl with some spinach. I heated that, topped it with a fried egg and chopped avocado, sesame oil and soy sauce.”
“Yum.”
“Oh, and hot sauce.”
“Tell me about the India ink.”
“Oh, and toasted sesame seeds.”
“Tell me about the circles.”
MATTHEW WOULDN’T FALL back to sleep because once he was up, he was up. He’d make his way through the apartment and, when he failed to find Sarah, would find a scribbled note. He always would. She would never make him wonder. Then he’d suit up for his run, his sneakers hitting the pavement as she made her way home. Out and back, in and out, both of them moving through their life.
The anguish of death is different from the awareness of self-destruction.
You saw her alive on a beautiful beach just over a year ago.
There’s hope is what he said.
There’s time.
THEN THEY WENT for weeks without mentioning her.
Sarah bought Matthew an extravagant watch, not unlike the one that Arman had worn in the water. Matthew surprised Sarah with tickets to a show he knew she wanted to see. When the lights went down in the opulent theater, her pulse raced as if she were due onstage.
Dear Caroline, No, I haven’t. I haven’t been thinking it over. I’m not there. At least I’m not there yet.
As the lights went down, Matthew leaned over as if he were going to whisper to her, but he didn’t. She put her hand on his thigh. Her gratitude became something else and she breathed in his ear, suddenly sick with desire. The set was a stark brick wall. The actors onstage looked lit from within. At first it seemed unintentional, as if one of the costumes hadn’t been properly cleaned, but then it was unmistakable: sand—or, wait, ashes—spilled from all of the actors’ sleeves each time anyone moved. The sand, the ashes, they also floated upward in the spotlights while simultaneously falling. When Sarah lay down at night, when she finally closed her eyes, it felt something like this. His thigh, her hand, awake, alive. In the theater, in their bed, she suddenly grabbed Matthew’s hand. She often saw Leda’s new teeth. She stroked Matthew’s thigh; she clutched him. She left the house they shared. She came home. Mi vida mi vida mi vida. The teeth flashed like shells on the shoreline. They were breaking apart. They were coming together. They came and went with the tide.