Chapter 4

ADA

I fish my cell phone out of my bag, relieved to see I have reception, and dial Joanie.

She picks up after one ring. “Ada?”

“I’m sitting here in the houseboat,” I say. “And I can’t decide whether I love it or if I want to catch the next plane home.”

“Don’t do that,” she says. “Give it some time.”

A horn sounds in the distance.

“Is that a boat?”

“Yeah,” I say, looking out to the lake. It sparkles as if it’s covered in diamonds. “It’s a tugboat. I think.”

“Well, it sure beats traffic noise,” Joanie says. I can hear engines racing and horns honking on the New York City streets. And for the first time, I realized I haven’t heard a car horn since I arrived. I like that.

“Yeah,” I reply, walking out to the deck and sinking into the Adirondack chair. “I actually slept in this morning. I haven’t done that since . . .”

“Good girl,” she says. “Maybe you can ditch those awful sleeping pills. I read something in the New York Times last week linking them to a higher death risk.”

“Great,” I say. “So if insomnia doesn’t kill me, the sleeping pills will.”

“Well, it sounds like Seattle may be your antidote,” she says. “Maybe there’s something medicinal about living on a boat. I imagine it would lull you to sleep. Sounds relaxing, actually.”

I nod to myself. “A floating home,” I say, correcting her. “But yes, this place definitely has a different feel to it. So different from New York. It’s a slower pace.”

“Good,” she says. “You need that. So have you met any of the neighbors?”

“Just a guy,” I say.

“A guy?”

“Stop,” I say. “It’s nothing like that. He’s as old as my dad.”

“Oh.”

I change the subject. “I thought I’d go for a canoe ride today.”

“You should,” she says. “Remember how James loved kayaking?”

Panic floods my senses. My palms are sweating and my mouth feels dry.

“You OK, honey?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s just that I—”

“I know. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Did you see Lauren Cain on Today this morning?”

“They put her on?” Lauren is an assistant editor at Sunrise who desperately wants my job and has always rubbed me the wrong way.

“She wasn’t as good as you are on TV,” Joanie says. “She said ‘um’ a lot.”

Somehow this makes me feel a little better, though I am still second-guessing my choice to leave the only thing I did well, the only thing that kept me going. Part of me wants to grab my suitcase and head back to New York to reclaim my place at the magazine, to go back to the way things were. Was life really that bad? Was I really that miserable?

I say good-bye to Joanie and let my mind wander east, back to the life I left behind. I hear Dr. Evinson’s voice. “Don’t edit your thoughts,” he’d say. “Let them come.” So I do, even when it hurts.

One year prior

I’m sitting in a swivel chair in front of a mirror while a woman named Whitney dabs concealer under my eyes. The lights in the Today show dressing room are harsh and hot, and I wriggle in my chair a little. I know she can see my dark circles. Insomnia hasn’t been kind to my complexion.

“You should drink more green tea,” she tells me. “It’s good for your skin.”

I nod. I’m scheduled to be on-air in thirty minutes, where I’ll be talking about the top five travel destinations for family vacations. I don’t want to be here. To be fair, no one forced me. My editor in chief offered to send the executive editor if I wasn’t ready. Ready. What does that even mean? One thing’s certain: I’ll never feel OK about anything ever again. So why not just jump back into the numbness of work, the hamster wheel of TV segments and heels and chunky necklaces?

Whitney swivels my chair around so I’m facing the mirror. “There’s the gorgeous girl we know and love,” she says. I hardly recognize myself. It’s like she’s used her magic wand to banish my dark circles and erase puffiness. Any traces of last night’s tears are expertly hidden under a pint of foundation. I recall my old deputy editor at Real Living giving me advice during my years as an editorial assistant: “Fake it until you make it.” At the time, I rejected this sentiment. It just seemed wrong to me. But now, gazing at my improved reflection in the mirror, I find myself clinging to those words like a codependent lover. I study my face in the mirror, a woman with flawless skin. No hint of the pain that hides deep inside. Yes, I can fake it until I figure out how to live again.

Stacey, the stylist, spends the next ten minutes blowing out my limp hair into sleek locks that hang in perfect submission over my shoulders. A cloud of hair spray completes my transformation.

“You’re on in five,” the producer calls into the room. I barely hear her, but I nod and stand up, walking robotically in my heels to the green room. I scan the note cards that my assistant gave me earlier. The Horseshoe Ranch at Yosemite, with horseback riding for families. The Canyon Lodge in Wyoming, where every child gets her own private ski lesson. And . . . I feel a lump in my throat when I see the words on the next card. How could they? “Just a short jaunt to the coast of Maine, the Waterbrook Inn is nestled beside one of the most magnificent yet lesser known waterfalls in the world.”

The room feels like it’s spinning when the producer waves me into the studio. Matt Lauer is wearing a red tie and sitting on a high stool. “I’m so sorry to hear about your family,” he says. “It’s good to have you back.”

I nod automatically, the way I’ve done a hundred, a thousand times since the accident, then take my seat on the stool beside him.

I hear music in the distance, the scuffling of producers and cameramen, and then the lights brighten, and Matt Lauer sits up higher on his stool. “Welcome back to the Today show,” he says. “We’re joined now by Sunrise magazine’s Ada Santorini, who’s here to share her picks for the top five family vacation destinations this year.”

Pain pulsates in my chest, but I try to ignore it. I answer Matt’s questions and even tell him about the trail that leads up to the waterfall at the Waterbrook Inn. I smile and nod. I get through the interview. I fake it. And then when the segment ends and my mic comes off, I run backstage, down the long hallway to the restrooms in the distance. I can hardly breathe. And when I look into the mirror, I despise the woman who stares back at me.

I wipe away the tears on my cheeks and look out at the overcast Seattle morning. I take a deep breath. I can’t fall apart. Because if I do, I fear I won’t be able to put myself back together. But how do I keep going without a reason to wake up every morning? And then it hits me: I need to give myself an assignment. I think of the memoir I began writing months ago and remember why I came here. I stopped at twenty-five pages because the process was too painful. But now, after Joanie has uttered James’s name—James—I feel the urge to click open the folder again and pull up the document. I feel like writing.

I reach for my laptop and lift it out of my bag and onto my lap. I pull open the untitled memoir. A large boat must have traveled through the lake while I was on the phone, because its wake rocks the little houseboat gently; I feel like a duck bobbing on the water. I stare at the blank cover page, and I type.

Floating

A Memoir by Ada Santorini