AS I HAD fled to Delhi, Sarah took to hiding in the inconspicuous town of Prescott, Arizona, to be near her mother, Romey, and where Sarah spent a peaceful two years of her turbulent childhood. Romey, with the maternal instincts of the rattlesnake who gives birth and quickly moves on, divorced and remarried three more times, moving Sarah in a modern wagon train from Chicago to Prescott to San Francisco. When Sarah was fifteen she caught Mr. Romey Number Three masturbating in her bed with her bra draped over “his hand and his thing.” Sarah ran from the house, jumped on her motorbike, and didn’t come home for three days. In the end, Romey blamed Sarah because she cut school that day, never thinking Number Three would’ve left work early. Romey gave her hell and packed her off to boarding school instead of tossing the pervert out on the spot. Sarah’s generosity of heart, how she forgave Romey for picking some creepy guy over her, is one of the many reasons why I loved her. Sometimes, when they fought in front of me, I wanted to ask Romey how she discarded her own daughter like used underwear, but Sarah refused to let me. She simply said, her hurt only given away by the slight nervous tic of her twitching neck, “She’s my mother. I accept her and all her faults. Until you, I had no one else.”
Which was true, Sarah had no father to seek and give comfort. After fading into the American wilderness of rootless ex-husbands, her father died when she was thirteen. It was only after she graduated from college that she and her paternal half-brother, who had never been welcoming, established a relationship. An adjunct professor of archeology at Arizona State University, he lived in Chandler, right outside Phoenix. Romey spent winters in Scottsdale, so ideally Sarah would have a glimmer of support.
I was afraid to send Sarah an email. I no longer trusted its safety. I had received too many nasty invasions from people calling themselves “Xtian Death” and “Four Horsemen.” I needed to warn her. I owed her that. And I missed her. For over fourteen years she was my confidante. My truest friend. We had shared so much, were still inextricably bound in our loss and mourning.
They were twelve and a half hours behind because, as a measure of independence, with the 82½ parallel splitting the country down the middle, India chose to be on a half-hour schedule when almost all the rest of the world rounded off to the nearest hour.
Her phone rang and rang until the machine picked up with the canned voice, “Please leave a message.” I called out and she picked up.
“Neil?”
I imagined her smell; the sweet fragrance of her sweat as we made love, her white-skinned breasts enlarging as she inhaled, her throat going taut, her hair twisted and tangled. What I once called the purity of her soul-smell.
“Yeah,” I heaved a sigh, releasing the claustrophobic air of guilt and anger, which continually welled in my chest. “Some journalists found me here. One works for the international edition of Time.”
“Oh.” I imagined the twitch in her neck, which always started when she was nervous, acting up. “I hoped you were calling to wish me an early Thanksgiving.”
“I have almost another week. You OK? Still taking the antidepressants and calling Debbie?” Debbie was her therapist.
“Yes, and still crying a lot. Thank god for Debbie and the drugs. She saved me from losing my mind. I talk to her all the time.”
“That’s good. Painting at all?”
“Not much. I canceled my next show. Barbara was fine about it.” Sarah trusted her dealer, Barbara Kugliani to be an exception to the rule of art dealer’s being heartless. “The Enquirer’s started bugging Barbara. They want to know why it took me so long …”
She didn’t complete the sentence. She didn’t have to. Neither of us wanted to relive aloud her missing hours.
“Neil, I really hoped you were calling to say you were coming home.”
“I have no home.”
“You do with me.”
“That home doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It can again, I promise. I’m so lonely, Neil.”
I didn’t answer.
“Have you met someone?”
“Many people.”
“Neil, you know what I mean.”
“No.”
“Tell me beneath your hate that you don’t love me anymore and I will never ask you again.”
I couldn’t and she knew it. I sidestepped answering by asking a dull question. “Are you going to your brother’s or mother’s for Thanksgiving?”
“Not sure. My mother’s been the evil Romey lately.”
I let that pass. Romey had never been anything but civil to me, never exhibiting any more interest in me than she had in anyone except her husbands. Over the years I kept my feelings to myself as best I could, until after the murder, when, despite my anger at Sarah, my own desire, and my eventual flight, Romey announced she was leaving New York the day after Castor’s funeral. She and I talked and she stayed for five more days, giving an outward show of support, but she remained frighteningly impassive, never visibly shedding one tear for her dead grandson or the pain in her daughter’s heart.
“I was invited to this artist’s, landscape painter. But she has kids and so do her friends.”
So did her half-brother. She couldn’t go to either place. “Sarah, I will think about a visit.”
I heard her tears, her nose clogging up. “OK, Neil. I have to go. Please call me.”
“I will.” I hung up, suddenly mad at myself. I wanted to be cold. Hard. Instead, I was hurt and guilty and I cried for her. Her pain. Knowing she lay sobbing alone in that vapid little town. And then I thought of her with Riegle while I tried frantically to save our son’s life and I hated myself for hating her again and less awful for loving her still.
Then I jerked off.