11

As soon as the bus from the plane pulled into the Philadelphia station, Lee jumped to her feet, crash-diving the contents of her purse onto the floor. She jammed everything back in and then stood quickly, moving amid the current of people to the outside, and then she was completely disoriented. The city looked familiar, yet something was vaguely wrong. The names on the signs seemed foreign. The air smelled burned.

“Taxi!” she called to a Checker cab prowling toward her. She got in and gave the driver the address she had looked up in the library two days before. Frank’s address. The cabbie was an old man, burrowed into a plaid cap, and hung from the rearview mirror was a huge green crucifix with a weeping Jesus entwined around it. “That road,” she told the cabdriver, but when he rounded the curve, the high school she and Jim had attended was gone. In its place was a brick apartment complex. “When did this happen?” Lee asked the cabdriver. “Wasn’t there a high school here?”

“Nope,” the driver said, “Never.”

“But there was,” Lee insisted. “I ought to know, I went there long enough.”

“I’m telling you never,” the driver said, and rounded the comer again. “You think I just started driving a cab yesterday?”

“But I remember it,” Lee said. “You’re wrong.”

“Lady,” he said, his voice an edge.

“Okay, fine, forget it,” she said, trying to keep her own voice calm. She made him drop her off at the end of the block. She felt seasick. Her legs kept buckling. Mosquitoes whined in the shimmery heat. At the far end of the block a small boy was riding a red tricycle around and around in dusty circles. When she passed, the boy looked up.

What was the worst that might happen? Frank could smash the door in her face. He could weep and embrace her. Or Janet could answer. Or another woman. That thought made her ridiculously hopeful.

There it was: 409. A large white colonial springing from the midst of a carefully manicured lawn. Hedges framed the yard, and there was a casual sprinkling of yellow and blue four-o’clocks. The flagstone was chipping a little.

Lee measured her steps up to the glass front door. Her reflection blurred back at her. Her hand hovered in midair, fairly floating on the air. And then she rang the door.

She could hear steps. “Hang on a sec,” a voice said, and then the door opened and there was Janet, looking exactly the same as the day Lee had left. Her hair was wet from the shower, dripping into points across her dress.

Lee stepped back. “It’s Lee,” she said.

“Lee?” Janet said. She leaned forward, peering into Lee’s face, starting to raise one hand before she lowered it again, dropping it against one hip. “Jesus,” she said, and then all the soft curves of Janet’s face grew suddenly rigid, and she drew herself up.

“Well,” Janet said finally. She studied Lee. “You look like hell,” she said coldly.

“I’ve been traveling,” Lee said.

Janet shook her head. “That sounds about right,” she said. She looked out past Lee, toward the end of the block. “So what kept you?” she said quietly.

“Could I please see my father?” Lee said.

Janet snapped Lee back into her focus. “I ought to slam this door right in your little face,” Janet said.

“I can wait someplace else,” said Lee.

Janet lifted up one hand. “Wait all you want,” she said. “It won’t do any good. If you had cared enough to keep in touch, you could have known. You could have saved yourself the trip.”

Lee stared at her. “Known what?” she said.

Janet rubbed at her forehead. “Frank died,” she said. “Last year.”

The sunlight was so bright, Lee could see individual blades of grass. She could see the diamond wedding band on Janet’s finger, the lean line of shoulder poking up through the blue shirt.

“Did you hear what I said? Or do you still not care?”

Stunned, Lee blinked up at Janet. “I always cared,” Lee said, and burst into ragged tears.

Janet didn’t move toward her, Instead she opened the door and stood back. “You come in,” she said. “If I keep this door open, it’ll bring the flies and the neighbors both, and I can’t say which is worse.”

She let Lee in, but she kept her body distanced. She led Lee into the living room, and right away Lee noticed that she didn’t recognize one single thing in it. Every piece of furniture she had ever sat on or stumbled against or leaned upon was gone. The new pieces were sharp and angular, as like Frank and unlike Janet as she could imagine. There was a Chinese black enamel desk. A black leather sofa. A gray canvas chair and track lighting. On one side of the room was a large white porcelain poodle. On the mantel was a studio portrait of Frank and Janet, but as far as Lee could see that was the only picture in the house. Lee sank down against the leather. It cooled her bare legs.

Janet sat down opposite her on the canvas chair. “Heart attack,” she said. “Doctor gave him a clean bill of health and two days later he was showing a house and—well, that was that.” She shut her eyes, stroking the bridge of her nose.

“When you ran off with Jim, it did something to him,” Janet said. “He got so angry. So hurt he couldn’t discuss it. Who did you think you were, a couple of wild kids running off like that? What the hell did you ever see in Jim anyway? He was like a big baked potato. No personality.”

“He had personality,” Lee whispered.

“Oh, really? Is that why you left him?” Janet flopped her hands into her lap. “Oh, hell. Frank would have come around, I think. But when you ran off again, you didn’t run to him, did you. It was like losing you twice.”

“He never made me feel like he was losing me,” Lee said.

“He was so furious with you,” said Janet. “And he couldn’t stand Jim. Thought Jim had ruined your life, and his right along with it. After a while he insisted he had washed his hands of you. Jim used to send us pictures of the baby, little locks of hair, booties. Frank would toss everything out into the trash, but then he’d go out later and dig it all out again.” She shook her head. “That little girl was so pretty. I would have liked to have a granddaughter running all around the house, but Frank didn’t want any reminders. I think he was terrified your daughter would look just like you. It was the only thing we really argued about. Sometimes in secret I’d buy a little present, a little dress or a soft toy, and write a card with both our names scribbled in. The only reason I never sent it is I knew how furious Frank would be, and the truth was he mattered more to me than any granddaughter, so I ended up returning everything or giving it to Goodwill.” She looked at Lee. “That matter to you any, that you have a daughter?”

“He never answered the cards I sent him from Baltimore.”

Janet shook her head, exasperated. “You think he didn’t love you, is that it?” She stood up and moved heavily to the Chinese enamel desk. She bent and pulled something out and then turned back to Lee. “You want the truth? I was the one who stopped loving you. But only after you left, only when I saw what it did to him. I loved you when you were around. And really, why I did is God’s mystery to me. You were this spindly mean little girl, and every time I moved to so much as touch you, you pulled away as if I had suggested we eat the cat down the street. Then you got wild.” Janet sat down opposite Lee again. “We could have been pals,” she said. “We could have sat up nights having heart-to-hearts about boys and school and life in general. You know, I was dying to take you shopping. Dying to buy you outfits for school, for dating, for whatever you wanted. Dying to take you to the best hairdresser in town with me.”

“I didn’t want a haircut,” Lee said.

“Maybe that was the problem.” Janet slapped a packet in her hand. She stopped talking. “Here,” she said. “Take this. Frank saved it for you.”

Lee took the packet. Inside was a bankbook. She looked up at Janet, “It’s yours,” Janet said. Lee fingered the bankbook, then opened it tentatively. There was ten thousand dollars in it. Quietly she shut the book.

“No one could have touched that money while Frank was alive, but then he died and I could have used that ten thousand.” Janet said. “You were declared legally dead.” When she saw Lee start, Janet half smiled. “Surprise,” she said, “Anyway, God knows I had some bills, I could have used a trip to Europe after Frank died.”

Janet stood up. “I lied before. I did care about you once, but it was never really love. It was secondhand. I loved you because Frank wanted it that way. And I saved this goddamned bankbook because Frank would have,” she said. “So take it, then I don’t have to have one single thing left to do with you. I don’t have to even think about you.”

She moved to the desk. “I’ll write down where he’s buried. You can go there if you like.” She gave Lee a sharp look, then stood up, smoothing down her skirt. “Well, I have things to attend to,” she said. The light from the window suddenly caught and flickered in Janet’s earrings, the same small diamonds Lee’s father had courted her with. She wondered if Janet ever took them off, if all she had to do was touch them and feel Frank’s Angers gently tracing her lobes. “You can use the phone to call yourself a cab,” Janet said.

“I want to walk some,” Lee said, and Janet nodded.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” she said. She wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it, folded, to Lee. Then she opened the door, blinking at the sun. She waited until Lee was at the end of the flagstone. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re still gone,” she called out, her voice pulling. “To me, you never came back.”

“I did come back!” Lee cried.

Janet shut the door.

Lee couldn’t remember how long she walked. She wasn’t sure of the direction, but when she got to a street she hailed a cab back to the airport. She’d never come back here. She crumpled the piece of paper. She didn’t need to see his grave to remember him. All she’d have to do was shut her eyes and she’d see him. All she’d have to do was think his name.

Lee spent the rest of her week in a Philadelphia hotel, and the whole time all she did was cry. She wouldn’t allow the maids in to clean her room or give her fresh towels. She kept going over and over in her mind what she might have said to Frank, how he might have looked, how it might have felt to hold him. He might have forgiven her everything the moment he saw her. If only she had made this trip just a year ago, or two years ago, or any time other than right now, when all that was left her was some strange hotel room and her grief.

At night she dreamed of her father. She was standing with him in the middle of a house, a shell really, just one huge empty room with a door at the end. There was no furniture in it except a big oak clock, ticking so loudly she could hardly hear Frank. He was older, in a soft blue suit, and he was holding up blueprints for her to see, pointing things out to her, smiling. “And this will always be your room,” he told her, showing her the biggest square on the paper. “Blue, your favorite color,” he told her. “When do you want to move in?” he said.

She looked around her anxiously. The ticking boomed in her ears, and she put her hands over them. “Today,” she said. “I can move in today.”

He grinned, “That’s my girl,” he said.

She leaned forward to hear him over the ticking. “Come on, pussycat,” he said, “I’ll show you.” He took her elbow and led her to the door at the far end. “Ta-da!” He beamed as he opened the door. The room was filled with thousands and thousands of broken clocks.

“Frank!” she cried, but when she turned to him the room was empty again. The clocks were gone. And then she bolted up out of bed, turning on the TV, swinging open the cheap fiberglass curtains, switching on every single light in the room. She was drenched with sweat. She stood against the wall, panting, drowning in panic. And then she grabbed at the phone.

She remembered the number by heart. She punched down the keys, and then it rang, once, twice, and a recording stuttered on. “I’m sorry,” a male computer voice said noncommittally, “but the number you dialed has been disconnected.”

Lee’s bones filled with ice. She was pressing the receiver so deeply into her cheek, she’d later have a bruise there. Her hand shook. It was the right number. She knew it. She had dialed it enough times. People didn’t just pack up in the night and leave without a forwarding number—not unless they were her. Not unless something so terrible had happened, you might want to disappear. Joanna, she thought, and then she forced her hands to unclench. She forced herself to dial the O with her thumb, tensed for the operator. “There’s some problem on the line. Will you dial it for me?” she said.

The operator sighed, but she dialed it, and Lee leaned forward into each ring. Please, she thought. Oh, please. The line rang and rang, seven times. It was late. People were sleeping. And then suddenly it caught. “Yes?” Jim said in a low, sleepy voice.

Lee started to cry with relief. She cupped one hand over the receiver. “Who is this?” Jim said, and then Lee gently hung up the phone. She lay across the hotel bed and closed her eyes and cried some more. She thought about that voice, and thought about Joanna, and fleeting across her mind, too, she saw Karen, running across a newly tarred road toward her. And then she got up and steadily began to pack.

She left the hotel the next day, arriving in Baltimore while it was still morning. She tried to imagine what her daughter looked like, but all that kept coming into her mind was Karen—and then herself, seven years old, in second grade, wearing a yellow quilted jumper over a purple blouse, her wild hair unraveling from careful braids.

As soon as she saw the house, she felt catapulted back in time. She was seventeen again, her life wrapped about her like a tight itchy sweater she couldn’t remove. She was angry at Jim again, angry at Janet and at her own stubborn self.

The front yard was empty when she got to it. It confused her. She quietly made her way to the backyard. A bright red swing set was planted in the damp grass. Marigolds and four-o’clocks bloomed by the side of the house. On the back walk was a large red ball festooned with white stars. She didn’t touch it.

She came back around front. She couldn’t just climb the stairs and jauntily ring the bell. She couldn’t rap on the window or toss small stones the way she used to when she was dating Jim. Jesus. Jim. She couldn’t imagine anything stranger than seeing him. She felt dizzy with fear. She stood sideways on the flagstone, paralyzed.

The front door suddenly opened. A woman was backing out, rushing, a heavy black leather purse slung across one shoulder. She was in a nurse’s uniform, with those awful white crepe shoes, the white stockings that paled your legs bloodless. She finished locking the door and peered anxiously down at a large red Mickey Mouse watch banding her wrist. She had bright shiny red hair and bangs so long that Lee could hardly see her eyes. Someone in the house must be sick, Lee thought, starting to panic.

“Jim,” Lee said. Startled, the woman with the red hair looked up at Lee. All that crazy motion suddenly stilled. “Is Jim here?” Lee repeated, her mouth dry.

“He’s at work.” The woman seemed frozen to the steps. “Who are you?”

“Andrea Banrett,” Lee said, backing away onto the street. “I… I used to go to school with him.”

“Andrea,” the woman repeated. She gave Lee a hard long look, then abruptly pulled herself from the steps. She strode toward the car. “I’ll tell my husband you were by,” she said. She jammed the keys into the car, idling, staring at Lee, not pulling out of the drive until Lee started walking away from the house.

Lee was halfway down the block when the sedan drove by. It felt as if the car slowed as it passed her, but she kept her head bowed, almost as if she were praying.

As soon as the car was out of sight, Lee circled back to the house, her heart bumping fitfully inside of her. Husband. Jim was married. He had a wife who sat down to dinner with him nights, who rubbed his back and might have been calling Lee’s daughter hers for years. Lee stood on the steps of the house, fingering the wrought-iron railing, picking at the rusted pieces with her fingers. She felt a sudden queasy stab of fright. She looked up at the top of the screen door. Once, when Jim was studying late at night, he had wired a makeshift alarm to keep intruders away. “You have to feel like your home is safe,” he told her. When he knew the baby was coming, she had had to talk him out of bars on the windows. She ran her fingers along the top of the door. The wire was still there.

She rang the bell, hoping for a sitter, but no one answered. It was past three. Her daughter would be out of school. Her daughter could be anywhere. She glanced at the house next door. The drive was empty; the house looked dark. She remembered the woman who lived there. Maureen, a nosy neighbor who had taken to Jim as though he were her own son, who had joked with Lee and invited her shopping, until finally Lee’s refusals had dampened her enthusiasm.

She could come back here, but she didn’t want to have to face Jim’s wife again, to see that sharp, sudden look on her face again. She wanted to find Jim and explain. And she wanted her daughter.

There were local pharmacies. She could get a phone directory and a roll of quarters. She could call until she reached him, and in reaching him she’d reach her daughter. She thought of the woman suddenly. Jim had always told her he hated short hair on women. He had liked wrapping hers about his hand as though he were smoothing a skein of wool.

She remembered where the library was. They had a directory. She could sit down and write out names, and no one would bother her. She refused to think any further. On the way to the library, she kept seeing children. Every small face made her jolt. Any one of the little girls might be her own.

There were over forty pharmacies listed in the Yellow Pages. In despair Lee scribbled ten numbers at random. She’d disguise her voice, make those calls, and then come back and make ten more, and no matter who answered she’d hang up as soon as she knew he was or wasn’t there. She needed to see him in person.

In the end it took her thirty-four quarters before she found Jim. The druggists she spoke to were always annoyed that she didn’t have a prescription to call in. “There’s no Jim here,” voice after voice told her.

Perfunctorily she called Labber Pharmacy. “Yes,” a clipped young voice said. “Jim Archer,” Lee said. “Hang on,” said the voice, and Lee slammed down the phone, so exhausted she had almost forgotten which number it was she had just dialed.

She didn’t recognize the name of the pharmacy. It was on the far end of town, too far away from the house for Jim to walk it. She cabbed over, but she made the driver let her off more than three blocks away. “Jesus, lady, Spend the extra fifty cents,” he told her. “I can get you right to the door.” She fit the fare into his hand and got out.

The heat slammed against her. It was weather where anything could happen. The sidewalk shimmered before her. She took her time walking toward the drugstore, but as soon as she stepped on the black pad by the door, the door swung open. The pharmacy had mahogany shelves and a large center area that seemed devoted to cosmetics. A woman in a red dress was leaning toward a small mirror, gingerly dabbing pink cream into her cheeks. In the back was an old-fashioned soda counter. Her heart raced, ramming up against her ribs. She propped one hand along the smooth wood for balance. In the back a little girl was sipping ice cream, twirling on a chair. She had light brown hair, and Lee felt herself unraveling. “Anna,” a woman said, and daubed the girl’s face with a napkin. And then there, in the back, was Jim.

She saw him before he saw her. He had on an open white smock coat over a blue shirt, and a tie and jeans, He looked the same as the day she had left him. Her mouth moved, soundless. He was leaning across the counter, talking earnestly to an old woman, pointing to something on the back of a bottle. His hair was very blond. His face looked older, and she suddenly felt sick with nerves. Her shirt was pasted along her back. She braced her hands along the wall, and when he looked up and saw her, she took a step back, as if the force of his stare were too much for her, as if all she might want to do was get on the highway again. She pushed forward, trying to keep her voice steady, jamming the words up out of her.

“Hello, Jim,” she said.

Lila had already left Joanna off with Maureen and had been rushing to get to work when she noticed the blond woman in the front yard. Another boring survey taker, she thought, or worse, a Jehovah’s Witness trying to trick her into talking about Jesus. It wasn’t until Lila got a good look at her that she felt a slam of fear.

She waited until the woman had walked off, and then she drove to the pay phone by the Thrift-T-Mart and called Jim, “Honey, I’m swamped. Let me call you later,” he said. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but it sounded so corny and flat that she skipped right over it, blurting, “Andrea Banrett was by. She said she went to school with you.”

“Andrea?” he said. “I don’t know any Andrea.”

She wanted to tell him Andrea was blond. She wanted to unload the details so he could shape them into any other story than the one that was forming in her mind. Lots of women were blond. He knew lots of his customers by their first names. Lots of them called him by name, too. Lots gave a friendly honk of their horns when they drove past him on the road or stopped to chat in town.

She wasn’t kidding one single person but herself. She was almost sure the woman was Lee. Nursing had trained her to be observant, to recognize detail, to remember. And even if she hadn’t seen all those photos, she would have been able to shape a person from Jim’s descriptions. And the worst of it was that after all this time she wasn’t sure what Jim would do with a ghost who had suddenly sprung back to life again, and she wasn’t sure what she would do, either, and most of all, she didn’t think she wanted to find out.

Reality shift. It was a phrase Jim remembered from high school, when he had sat behind some of the boys who did drugs. It was when everything seemed suddenly to tremble and then shift, when alternate universes seemed possible, and it felt as if you were hovering between the two.

Jim saw Lee standing in front of him, and everything transformed except for her. The air seemed suddenly solid. It seemed to be moving, spinning lazily about him. Lee was unsmiling and very still. It was as if time had traveled back, as if he were seeing her again, during that first heartbreaking instant, when she was the long tall blonde illuminated on the highway, so mesmerizingly lovely that he hadn’t been able to think of anything but getting her in his car beside him.

“Lee?” He moved toward her, coming out from behind the counter, passing the old woman who still held the pill bottle in her hand. The whole time he couldn’t quite believe it was really she. He resisted blinking, as if that split second could make her disappear again. In a kind of heady daze he moved toward the corner where she was. He leaned forward and then clasped her bare arms in his hands. The feel of her warm skin was a shock to him.

“Don’t cry,” she told him.

“You’re alive,” he said in wonder. He couldn’t stop touching her. Her hair. Her back. The slope of her hips, His smile kept changing shape.

“You’re all right.”

“I’m fine.”

He held her for a moment, so tightly he swore he could feel her heart beating through him. She peeled herself apart from him, sweating faintly. “What happened?” he said. “Lee. What happened, Lee? Where were you?” He gestured blindly. “All this time,” he said. “Where’ve you been? My God.”

She swayed on her feet. “Wisconsin,” she said finally.

“Wisconsin?” He wet his lips. “You were in Wisconsin?”

“Jim—there’s too many people here to talk.”

He looked around. “I don’t care.” He stared back at her. “I can’t let you just walk out, meet up with you later. I can’t do that.” He put his hand on the side of her face.

“What happened to you?”

“I left,” she said. “Once I started, I couldn’t stop leaving.”

He frowned, “You just left?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“You never said one thing to me,” he said in amazement. “I never had a chance to talk you out of it.” He looked back at the counter. The other pharmacist was leaning over the counter toward a young woman, his face so close to hers they seemed to be sharing a secret. Jim looked at Lee. “How could you leave us? How could you leave your baby?”

“It wasn’t just the baby.”

Something moved in his face. “What?” he said. “What? Why couldn’t you even let me know you were alive?”

She was looking at the floor, her hair half covering her face. “I didn’t feel alive,” she said.

He gripped her shoulder, his face flashing. “People leave all the time, but they keep in touch. Didn’t you love us at all?” He shivered involuntarily. “You know what I went through? You understand?”

“Please,” Lee whispered.

“I loved you. I would have done anything for you.”

“Don’t,” Lee said. “You don’t have to do this now.”

“I was a suspect, Lee. Couldn’t you have at least sent me a postcard? ‘Jim, I’m all right. Not coming home. Don’t wait up. Lee.’ Just to let me know I wasn’t crazy, just so I could stop reading every goddamned newspaper in the goddamned country looking for you, worrying. Couldn’t you have done that?”

Her head lifted. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting one hand on his arm, but this time he whipped around, stalking from the pharmacy, banging out the front doors into the bright hazy sun. Panting, she struggled to keep up.

She clipped her fingers to his sleeve. He stopped short and faced her. “Do you know what I did? Do you know how I lived, what I went through?” he said.

“No, I don’t know,” she said.

“Where were you, Lee?” he cried, “The hospital didn’t fuck up. You weren’t kidnapped. And you told me it wasn’t just the baby. It was me. You took out our money and you left on your own. I thought maybe you were just scared, that you’d come back. I used to think if only I could see you, I could convince you to come home to me.” She tried to take his hand, and he struck it from him. “I mourned you, Lee.”

She couldn’t look at him. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I was afraid—I couldn’t think about it.”

“I thought about it,” he said stiffly. “All the time, every goddamned moment. It’s a wonder I didn’t implode. And then one day while I was thinking about you, I met someone else, I fell in love. That’s right. You think it couldn’t happen? Stupid Jim, who’d want him when you didn’t.” He slapped his hands together. “Dissolved. That was our marriage. Like it never happened. You were declared dead. I remarried. I started a new life that has nothing to do with you.” He began walking again, and then stopped abruptly.

“You look exactly the same,” he said, pained.

She was pinned to her patch of sidewalk, and then instantly he was upon her, shouting, “Where are you going?”

“Going?” she said, astonished. “Do you see me going?”

He shook her. “Are you going away again?” he demanded. “Are you going to disappear?”

“I came here to see you!” she cried. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just want to make things right.”

He stared at her, stupefied. “Make things right?” he said. “Are you crazy? What do you take me for?”

“Please, can’t we just sit down somewhere,” Lee said, She looked around, searching out a coffee shop, a cafe, a bench where she could get her bearings; but he whipped her back around toward him again.

“What did you come back for?” he interrupted. “Are you in trouble? That must be it. Trouble. You think you and me, we’ll just get into a souped-up hot rod and drive, is that it? You think you’ll stay just long enough for me to get used to you and then go off again?”

“No,” she said, Inside of her, a speck of fear took hold.

“You need money? More of my money?”

Lee stepped back from him. “No,” she said. “No. I want to see Joanna.”

“Joanna,” he said suddenly, amazed. “Why, you’re just a photograph in an old album to her. Little Red Riding Hood has more reality than you do.” He blinked. “And anyway, she thinks you’re dead.”

She flinched. “Are you going to let me see her?”

“I don’t want you around my family,” he said.

Lee pulled out a piece of paper and a stub of pencil and with a tremble of fingers scribbled her hotel number. She fit it into Jim’s pocket. “You can find me here,” she said. “Please. I’m not going to be around your wife, I just want to be around my daughter. I have a right to see her.”

“You have no right. You gave her up the moment she was born.”

“She’s my daughter,” Lee said.

“Really?” Jim said. “How do you figure that?” He turned from her to push back into the pharmacy, where it was familiar, where he had some control. “According to the law, you don’t even exist,” he said. Just before the door swung shut again, he realized he still really didn’t know why she had left. He didn’t know whether she intended to do anything more with Joanna than see her. He turned back to Lee, his head reeling, but although he looked and looked, she was nowhere to be seen.

He left work shortly after that, and the whole drive home he was rigid with rage and longing and fear. He drove the way he had when he was seventeen, wild with need, his heart smashing against his ribs, his breath ragged. He kept waiting for an accident to happen. He kept angling the car toward every slick and dangerous weave of the road. He kept his body braced against the sticky leather seat, arms stretched, legs so starchy they made his whole body ache. He banged the horn at a car that took a millisecond too long to make a right turn. He beeped so many times at a woman crossing the street that she began deliberately to take her time, stopping to delicately scratch her ankle, all the while giving him a smug, sly grin.

It seemed imperative to get back to Lila fast. He had to keep slamming Lee out of his mind with chips of memories about his wife, image fragments of Lila so vivid they didn’t leave room for anything else. He remembered how as simple a gesture as her hand placed on the small of his back could stir him, how every time he saw a poster advertising Bermuda he was caught in a tangle of fear, relief, and absolute gratitude. He had no doubt that she had saved him.

He parked sloppily outside the house. He wasn’t halfway to the walk and he could hear their new dog barking. He stepped through the door. The house was an assault. Lila was racing toward him, in a stained white T-shirt and frayed too big jeans, her hair shored back with a child’s cheap red plastic headband. She stuffed the shirt into her jeans and flashed him a grin. “I got home late,” she said. “I’m sorry. Maureen took Joanna to see a movie. I thought you and me could have a real grown-up romantic dinner out, but I need half an hour.”

“Joanna’s gone?”

“Just to the movies, I told you.” Flustered, she tugged the band from her hair, scrutinizing the plastic teeth. She began to bite at a thumbnail.

“Stop that,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

Surprised, she put her hand down. “You all right?” she said.

“I’m hungry.”

“I just need half an hour.”

“Fine, so I’ll just walk the dog.”

“He was just out,” Lila said. “And it’s hot.”

“Dogs don’t know time from shit,” Jim said, and clapped his hands for the dog.

She planted her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Why are you sniping at me like that? Do you want to hit the dog while you’re at it?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he snapped. “And I’m not sniping.”

“Fine, you’re not sniping,” she said. “I’m going to shower.”

It was hot outside. He had to walk ahead of the dog and pull him. The dog’s name was Fisher, a wheaten terrier they had just bought for Joanna’s birthday because her year had been so rough. Jim was practically racing, trying to wear down his anger, and Fisher’s doggy ramblings annoyed him. The dog snuffled in some hedges, and he yanked at the leash. The dog glared at him accusingly, took three lazy paces, and began snuffling again. Jim yanked him forward, almost dragging him across the ground. He gave one final tug and the dog suddenly pitched forward, vomiting on someone’s petunias.

They ate dinner at a small Italian restaurant they both liked. Lila was in a new red silk dress and silver earrings, and every time she leaned forward he caught a drift of roses. He hated himself. He loved Lila. She had spent enough time worrying over Lee; she didn’t need to anymore. He could handle whatever had to be handled. He stroked her hand on the tablecloth. “Gee, you look pretty,” he told her, but, helpless, he thought suddenly of Lee, her blond river of hair he could no longer touch.

Lila picked at her lamb, “It’s funny, that woman coming by. Andrea,” she said. “I told her you were at work.”

Jim pronged a string bean and studied it.

“Did she find you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jim said.

“Really?” Lila stopped eating.

“Really,” Jim said, and put down his fork. “This place is famous for their desserts,” he informed her. “Let’s eat ourselves sick.”

“I don’t know if I’m hungry for dessert.”

“I’ll get a menu,” said Jim, lifting his finger like a flag.

Lila knew Jim wasn’t sleeping, She heard him wandering around. Or she’d wake and find him standing over her bed, his face so terrible it frightened her to see it.

“Bad dream,” he said. He was angry and edgy. He got into bed beside her.

“I’m right here,” she told him. He sat slowly on the bed beside her, pulling her up against him, rocking her. “Shh,” he said. “It’s okay.”

He didn’t eat the dinners she prepared for him. He studied her and he studied Joanna, and he watched the phone, and every time it rang he jumped up to grab it.

She was going to confront him. She planned to pick up Joanna from school and drop her with Maureen and then sit down with Jim, Wordsworth Elementary was only two blocks from the house, but she still got there a little late. She parked the car and started walking around the back, where the kids were streaming out. The crossing guards, little girls with white belts strapped across bright plaid and flowery dresses, were making a string of smaller children stop before a crosswalk on a perfectly empty street. They had those poor little kids marching just like little Nazis.

Joanna was always supposed to wait at the back. Even from here Lila could see her, in a red corduroy dress, rocking on her heels. Joanna used to have lots of friends. She had been inseparable from her friend Denny, but ever since she had been skipped ahead a grade, she was almost always alone. When Lila asked about Denny, Joanna just shrugged. “She’s a baby,” she announced, but her face was miserable. The few times Joanna was with another child, it was always someone who was as ostracized as she now seemed to be. Just last week she had brought home a girl named Sandy who had waddled into the house in a fizz of crinolines, her hair artificially brightened into an icy gold. There was Merilyn, who was so overweight Lila could hear her gasp when she walked. Joanna didn’t seem very happy with these girls. She played school or read aloud to them or played with her Barbie doll, and when one or the other of these girls left, summoned by the honking of her mother’s car horn out front, Joanna didn’t even look up to see them leave her.

Lila waved to Joanna. Maybe on the way home she’d stop at Hit-Or-Miss and let her pick out a new dress.

Joanna, leaning against the chain-link fence, saw Lila edging toward her. Resigned, she pulled herself from the fence. She had a note in her pocket from the teacher, but before she had even left the school she had gone into the girls’ room and read it in the stall. Another conference.

Last year, when the teacher told her she was being skipped ahead into third grade, she had been so excited she could barely wait for summer to pass. She had insisted on getting to school her first day nearly half an hour before the janitor. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t bored. She could open a math book and be wonderfully puzzled by formulas and equations. She could open up a science book and find pictures of stars and moons and planets. She loved school, but it didn’t take her very long to see that there seemed to be something wrong with loving it. Denny began to avoid her. “You think you’re so big.” Denny accused, and even though Joanna was baffled, Denny ended up being best friends with Trina O’Shea, who wasn’t even in the first reading group, who still couldn’t add without using her fingers like an abacus. The two girls linked arms. They whispered every time they saw Joanna. She tried to make friends in her new grade, but she was so much smaller than the other kids. The teacher put her right in the front row. Worse, when she announced to the class that Joanna had been skipped ahead, instead of admiration, the class groaned. Her excitement with learning only irritated the class. Every time she raised her hand, stretching it up, waggling it frantically into the air, Rosie Gordon who sat behind her would whistle loudly through her nose. When she went to the blackboard Billy Shearer would throw spitballs at her. She got good at hiding her report card from the other kids. She lied easily when Rosie asked her in a scornful voice if she got all A’s again. “No,” she said, trying to be equally scornful. She didn’t mention the A minus. Jo-A-na, they called her. They didn’t choose her for a partner in gym even though Jim had shown her how to hit a baseball in the backyard, even though Maureen had taught her tennis. She didn’t understand it. She was too ashamed to tell her parents, who treated her report card as if it were a trophy.

She kept trying to make new friends. She invited girls over, but they seldom came. Once Rosie approached her, and for a flash second Joanna actually had hope. “So what day is it?” Rosie asked. “Thursday,” said Joanna, and then Rosie had screamed, “Wrong!” and gripped the edge of Joanna’s skirt and flung it up high to her waist. “It’s Dress-up Day!” Rosie cawed. “Dress-up Day!” And all the other girls had giggled at the flash and ruffle of Joanna’s white panties, at her burning face.

She gave book reports on books no one else had ever heard of, let alone could read. A High Wind in Jamaica. The Secret Garden. The other kids were giving oral reports on books like Lad, a Dog, and they gave her fishy stares when she recited, their faces turned hard and angry.

Her only ally was the teacher, a young lanky woman named Miss Tibbs, who had long frizzy black hair and always wore short skirts. She kept clapping Joanna on the back. She gave her special books and special lessons, but when she mentioned that maybe Joanna could be skipped ahead again, Joanna began to get headaches so terrible she sometimes spent afternoons lying on a white table in the nurse’s office with a cool cloth on her head.

She was lonely. She began purposefully to fail, to have more and more headaches. She began biting her nails with a vengeance. Miss Tibbs sent a note home saying Joanna was clearing her throat every five minutes.

She began to retreat more and more into what her father called “the zone.” She could mesmerize herself so that she didn’t see the spitballs flying toward her. She didn’t hear the other girls whispering about a pajama party she wasn’t invited to, the other girls asking her if she ever combed her hair. And she didn’t have to hear her parents’ concern.

Lila honked the horn. She parked by the curb, idling the motor, and then, suddenly, she saw the same blond woman who had come to the house, crouched down by the fence, fingers hooked through the wire rungs, staring over at a corner. She was better groomed than the first time Lila had seen her. She was in a short red dress and black heels, her blond hair piled into a ponytail. Lila watched the blond woman unhinge her legs. She was focusing wildly, her gaze stuttering from small face to small face. “Mom!” cried Joanna. The woman looked toward Joanna, frowning, and then she spotted Lila, and abruptly she looked back at Joanna, her face flooding with color. “Hey!” Lila called, and began striding toward the woman. She bolted in the other direction. “Wait!” Lila called. She knew that face. She remembered the photo Jim had shown her. “Lee!” she suddenly called out, stunned by her own audacity. The woman looked at her for a moment, alarmed, and then kept walking.

“Who was that?” Joanna said.

Lila yanked open the car door. “No one,” she said firmly. “Just some crazy lady. If you see her again, you stay away from her.” She pulled the car into gear. “So,” she said, trying to be cheerful. “How was school?”

“Fine,” said Joanna, turning her face from the school.

Lila was furious with Jim. She waited until Joanna was in bed and then she strode into the living room. He was sitting in the rocker, leafing through the newspaper, and when he heard her he looked up. “When were you going to tell me?” she said quietly.

“Tell you what?” he said.

She felt her anger spreading through her body, rising like steam. “About Lee,” Lila said, a hollow wave of nausea washing through her. No, it’s not Lee, he could say. Lee is dead. You must be imagining things. “She was on our front lawn. She was at the school yard.”

“Lila,” he said.

“I know it’s Lee.”

He sat up straighter. “I didn’t want you upset,” he said finally.

Her heart bumped. “Are you crazy?” she said. “What happened? What does she want?” Lila slumped onto the couch, pulling at the tufts of fabric the dog had chewed out.

She angled her body so he’d look at her, but instead, head lowered, he got up and moved to her, cupping her head in his hands.

“Why’d she come back?” Lila said.

He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know exactly. She says she wants to see Joanna.”

“See her?” Lila stood up. “What else?”

Jim looked suddenly weary. He rocked Lila. “She’s not seeing anyone,” he said.

Every time Jim thought of Lee, she suddenly appeared. He would be talking to a doctor on the phone in the pharmacy, and suddenly he’d think: Lee. And there she’d be, curled around a stool at the soda fountain, sipping something frosty and dark from a parfait glass. Or he’d be walking over to the school to fetch his daughter and he’d see some tiger lilies growing wild in the scrubby grass and he’d remember how Lee had loved them. When he got to the school there would be Lee, walking away from him, the bottom of her dress floating up in the wind, like a wave. Once, he saw her sitting on one of the child-size swings, staring up at the sky, barely moving in the empty school yard. She hadn’t seen him, but he had stood there until she had gotten up and walked out of the yard.

He didn’t know how, but the world had stopped being ordinary. The air crackled with possibility. If he had seen the March Hare lope into his pharmacy, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Memory floated on every surface, rising up over the present, obliterating it until he’d feel himself metamorphosing, nine years back, the old Jim again, an old life starting up again. He’d remind himself that she hadn’t come back for him, her face lit up when she saw Joanna, not him—and he…well, hadn’t he stopped waiting the day he had married Lila? He told himself it was just the past, these flickerings of the old desire, as keen and yearning as the day he had met Lee, and as impossible.

He struggled for balance. He didn’t want her around, but when she wasn’t he somehow missed her. He ate himself up worrying how she might go to his house. She might confront Lila, she might somehow win his daughter, who, despite all the hugs and attention he and Lila showered her with, still sometimes seemed starved for affection. He didn’t want Lee out of his sight, and he began to encourage her to come to the pharmacy, where he could at least watch her, where he could torture himself in the bargain. Oh, how he hated her. He loved her. He felt nothing and everything and a supreme, overriding anger.

“Let me have time with Joanna,” she asked him. “I won’t tell her who I am. Not until she’s used to me.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s good. And I don’t want you disturbing Lila.”

“Lila,” Lee said. She thought of that woman, her red hair flashing, her eyes dark. “Have I been to the house since the first time? Have I called her? I haven’t even walked by the house.” She lied about that. She didn’t tell him how some nights when she couldn’t sleep she walked silently down her old street, and every time she stepped over a roller skate or a toy, she’d have to stop and touch it, wondering if it belonged to her daughter. She’d look at her old house and imagine the life going on in it. She didn’t feel anything toward Jim except a sad regret, but she wondered, if she had stayed, would she? If she had given it the time Jim had begged for?

“She loves Joanna,” he said.

Lee stiffened. “So do I,” she said.

“Hah, You love her. What do you know about love?”

Lee felt herself collapsing. “I know something,” she said.

“You don’t even know her,” Jim said. “Did you sit up with her when she was screaming with an ear infection? Did you help her learn to read or listen to her cry or patch up her scrapes?” He dug his hands in his pockets. “We’re a family, Lee.”

“I know.” Lee heaved a breath. “Look, what do you want me to do? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

“You think you can just flash in here and confuse Joanna and then flash out again?” Jim demanded.

“Nobody’s flashing anywhere,” Lee said. “Come on. Sit down with me someplace, Jim. Let’s just talk. Come on. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“The truth?” he said. “No bullshit?”

“The truth,” Lee said.

They walked over to a nearby park and sat on a bench, and almost as soon as she was settled, she started to talk. He spent two hours with her, talking about the past, about why she had left, about what she had been doing, and the whole time he only half believed what she told him. “That didn’t happen,” he kept interrupting her. He kept watching her eyes to see when she didn’t meet his gaze; he kept her mouth in sight to see what it wasn’t telling. It seemed to him that she remembered everything wrong, that she had left on a complete falsehood about him. “How was I stopping you from doing anything?” he demanded. “Didn’t I tell you to go back to school? I never stopped you.”

She looked at him. “Yes, you did.”

“You wanted the baby.”

She shook her head, but when she told him about the two failed abortion attempts, he stood up, pacing. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “This conversation isn’t really happening, is it? We still could have worked things out,” he insisted. “If you had let yourself, you would have loved me so much you never would have left.” He roughly brushed his hair from his face. “Don’t you think that’s true?” he said.

I don’t know, Lee said. It’s like we’re talking about a different person now—” She saw him flinch, and then she quickly touched his shoulder. “I know, though, that if you had been able to find me, you would have been able to convince me to come home.”

“That’s love,” he said. “You can’t tell me it isn’t.”

“You know what else?” Lee said. “If I had seen Joanna for one moment, I never would have been able to stay away.”

His mind reeled. He kept reimagining his daughter’s birth. All he had had to do was gently tilt Lee’s face toward the baby’s when she was born. All he had had to do was sit by her hospital bed with the baby so that they were the first two things she would have seen. None of this would have happened.

“Why did you come back now?” he said.

“I had time to work things out,” Lee said.

“Great. It took you nine years to work things out.” He stood up to leave and then sat back down again. “How did that happen? What do you do in Madison?”

He kept asking her questions about her past without him. He thought she’d tell him about nights so lonely that she’d go to all-night supermarkets just to have some company. He thought she’d tell him about food stamps and typing jobs and clothing picked from Kmart. A little regret, a little need, all snowballing, leading her back to him. But instead she told him about finding her first friend, finding a job she could do well, a man whom she used to see. Everything she revealed ended up somehow hurting him, and then he was instantly sorry she had told him anything at all.

“What’s she like?” Lee said quietly.

He knew she meant Joanna, but he suddenly felt mean and small, as if his heart had atrophied to the size of a peach pit. “She’s a nurse,” he said. “And she’s wonderful.” Lee blinked, surprised at how such a thing could nick at her and hurt. She wondered suddenly what he and Lila talked about at night, if he brought her flowers, if he loved her one-tenth of how much he had loved Lee when she was just seventeen and absolutely impervious to anybody’s love, especially his. Lee shook off the image. She had no right to care.

“We could be the same person, we’re so close,” Jim said.

Lee leaned forward so that they were almost touching. “Are you going to let me see Joanna?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“I’m not going to blurt out to her that I’m her mother,” Lee said. “I just want to get to know her, give her time to like me a little first.” She touched Jim’s sleeve. “I know how to act with kids.”

“Really?” he said. “How?”

She was suddenly silent. “What?” he said, but she just shook her head. “Look,” she said finally. “What’s to stop me from just going to see her myself?”

“Abandonment’s a crime, isn’t it?” he said coldly. He felt like a fool. He’d never call the police.

“I’m going to see her,” Lee said.

He waited, he kept watch, but she didn’t call the house or show up. She stayed away from the school, and she came to the pharmacy a few times, when she knew Joanna would be at school. She came, he thought, to see him. She sat at the old cherrywood counter like a work of art. He could look up from his work and see pieces of her, a prism of shining hair, a section of her blue dress, refracted among the aisles of shampoo or a sudden rush of customers. Sometimes, when he was counting pills, he was so concentrated on her that he would give a customer three pills too much or twelve too little.

If she couldn’t see Joanna, she could have news about her. She asked Jim about Joanna as a baby, about Joanna in kindergarten, about every period of her life except what was going on now. And she asked him for photos.

“You weren’t around for the real thing, what makes you think photos’ll do it?” he said. He was determined not to bring her one thing, and that morning, when he dressed, he riffled through the photos for a moment. He used to have all these pictures of Lee. Lee in a light summer dress, her hair skating down her back. Lee pregnant, looking thin and frightened, her arms around her blooming belly. He had kept those photos hidden away in a shoebox in the attic because he didn’t want to upset Lila, and, too, he didn’t need to upset himself, to keep pulling open that wound. He hadn’t looked at them in years, but now suddenly he climbed up to the attic and plundered through the debris. He couldn’t find the box at first. He had to plow through some old skirts of Lila’s, some toys of Joanna’s she refused to let anyone throw out because she “was saving them for her own children.” When he found the box he felt something unraveling in his stomach. He opened the lid and stared at the first photo, Lee sitting in cut-off denim shorts and a T-shirt on their porch, smiling up at him lopsidedly. She looked so young, like the teenage daughters of some of the families on the block. Like a memory. He closed the box and shoved it back under Lila’s skirts.

He thought he’d just bring a few pictures, because he was so angry, because he’d show her how he had had a family, how she was no longer a part of it. He picked the ones with Lila in them, with Maureen or his mother, with all the women Joanna knew and loved.

“My pride and joys,” he said, handing her the pictures. She looked at the shots. They seemed like the photos of a stranger. The small baby face turned toward the camera could have belonged to the woman in front of her at the Shop Rite yesterday. The toddler in overalls and a flowered hat could have been the neighbor’s, not hers. Only the recent photos gave her some comfort. She could at least recognize her daughter in them. She could recognize Lila and Jim.

She tried to listen to what Jim was telling her about each picture, but the more information he gave her, the more confused she became.

“Mrs. Mannama took that shot,” he said, holding up a picture of Joanna, recognizable in a paper pilgrim collar.

“Who?” said Lee.

“The mother of one of her schoolmates.”

“Oh,” Lee said. She tried to imagine it. She had never once noticed the school the whole time she had lived here. She couldn’t remember even driving past it. School. An image flashed. Karen carrying a cardboard hand she had made in kindergarten. She felt something wrenching inside of her. “Well, look at you,” she said, showing Jim a photo of himself in a tuxedo, Lila in a gown. “Big night,” she said.

He looked at the photo thoughtfully. “Yes, it was,” he said, but he didn’t tell her how.

It wasn’t until Jim was nearly through the pictures that Lee decided to steal some. All of them of her daughter. One from each year. She waited until he went to attend to a customer, a woman who wanted to know if her itching salve might work on her cat. And then she quietly slipped a few photos into her purse. And when he came back toward the counter, she gave him an open, innocent smile.

She wouldn’t look at the pictures until she got to her hotel. She spread them across the white chenille spread, her hands trembling. Jim had told her what each picture was, but here in her hotel she couldn’t remember. She got up and got the small nail scissors she had bought on a whim, a ridiculous buy since she bit her nails to the quick. She carefully scissored out all the other women, Lila in a red bathing suit, that nosy Maureen in a flowery housedress no one wore anymore, Jim’s mother, who had never once met Lee. She threw all those faces in the basket and then ferreted through the pictures of her daughter again, the jagged edges catching against her skin. She lifted up a black-and-white picture of a baby on a blue blanket, surrounded by lawn. Where had Jim said this was? She turned the print over, hoping for a faint scrawl, a way to place the image in time. The back of the picture was blank. She lifted up another picture. More recognizable. Joanna, her long hair in knotty pigtails, dressed as a cowgirl. Halloween, Lee decided. She could show this picture to people and say, “This is my daughter at Halloween. This is her cowgirl outfit. Look, we both have long hair.” It seemed such a stingy thing to have so little to say about a life.

The next day she walked over to the pharmacy around four, seating herself at the counter and ordering hot chocolate. She didn’t get up to try to talk to him. She sat quietly reading from a paperback she had in her purse, until it was almost closing time, and then she approached him. “Let me take you to dinner,” she said.

“My wife’s cooking dinner,” he said.

“I just want to see Joanna,” Lee said.

“Not tonight,” he said, and ushered her outside, leaving her standing there on the sidewalk. He kept his neck so rigid that he couldn’t have turned around to look at her even if he had wanted to.

He knew Lila was worried about Joanna. “Tell her to leave,” Lila said. “She doesn’t deserve to see Joanna. She’ll only confuse her.”

“I know how Lee is,” he said. “She’ll be leaving soon.”

He didn’t tell her that he was worried, too. Every time he saw her walk into the pharmacy, he thought he should go to the phone and call a good lawyer, get a restraining order. And then he thought about Joanna, and then he thought about what damage a journalist could do, covering a simple custody case, digging a little deeper, and rediscovering that whole weird disappearance years ago, back when Jim was a suspect.

He didn’t know what to do, didn’t have a clue what was the right thing to do, for Joanna or anybody.

One day, when Lila had to work, he picked up Joanna after school and brought her to the store. “Can’t she stay with Maureen?” he said. He didn’t want to tell Lila that sometimes Lee was there.

“Maureen’s got a cold,” Lila said.

The whole ride in the car, Joanna kept looking at houses. “Why don’t we move?” she said. She found the schools, pointing them out to him. “That would be a nice school,” she insisted. “Look at the kids! They look great!”

“You go to a nice school,” he said, but Joanna pressed her face to the window, straining wistfully around to see the kids streaming into a sunny courtyard.

He parked the car in back of the store. Joanna straggled into the pharmacy, and as soon as he was in the door he saw Lee, sitting on a stool, and as soon as she saw Joanna she bolted off her stool and began smoothing down her dress, straightening her hair.

“Hello,” she said. Joanna looked up, cautious.

Jim tried to orchestrate, to make things seem casual, almost normal. “Well, want to read in the back?”

“My name is Lee,” Lee said suddenly.

“Joanna.”

“I know,” Lee said.

“You do? How?”

Jim put one hand on Lee’s shoulder.

“Magic,” Lee said.

He could see a line at the pharmacy, too much for the assistant to handle. He looked toward the counter again. “I’ll watch her,” Lee said. “We’ll stay right here.” She touched his arm. “Right in sight. It’s okay.” She pressed at his shoulder. “Please. We won’t talk about anything but the weather.”

He hesitated. “Can you read?” Joanna said to Lee.

“All right,” he said.

It was nearly impossible to concentrate. He spent half the time watching them. Lee and Joanna were both at the ice-cream counter, poring over one of Joanna’s books. The two of them ignored him. He kept expecting something sudden to happen. Lee bolting out with Joanna, Lila walking in, off her shift early, thinking to surprise her husband and daughter. He miscounted theophylline tablets and had to start again. He heard a customer’s question about over-the-counter cough syrup and found himself handing her a bottle of Maalox.

He couldn’t wait for closing time. Usually he liked to linger a little, straighten up, survey what he considered his kingdom. Tonight, though, he rushed through the last bits of paperwork. He locked up the restricted drugs so clumsily that any addict could have had them.

“Well,” he said, approaching Lee and Joanna, “ready to go, pumpkin-head?”

“Can Lee come to dinner?” Joanna said. Flushed, she turned to Lee. “We’re having spaghetti and cake,” she promised. “Chocolate cake.”

“Not tonight, honey,” he said.

Joanna looked up at Lee. “Another time,” Joanna said with a queenly air.

“Another time soon,” Lee said.

He had just gone into the shower, just for a minute, and when he came out Joanna was telling Lila about Lee. “She knew the books I know,” Joanna said. “I wish I had hair like hers.”

Lila looked as if she had been struck. She seemed to lengthen along the refrigerator, bracing against it as if for balance. “Who’s Lee?” she said haltingly.

“She’s just a lady who was in the pharmacy.”

Jim put one hand on Lila’s shoulder.

“I liked her,” Joanna said.

In bed, they talked. “What are we going to do?” Lila said.

“We’re going to have to tell her,” Jim said.

Lila sat up, bunching the covers about her. “You think it’s good for a kid to know her mother walked out the day she was born? You think that’s a pretty thing to hear?”

“No, I don’t think that’s good,” Jim said. “But it’s the truth.”

“And what if she leaves?” Lila said. She lowered herself back down against the pillows. “What if she wants Joanna?”

“I won’t let her take Joanna,” Jim said.

“Can’t we wait to tell her, let her be a kid a little longer?” She looped her arms about Jim.

“All right,” he said. “For a little longer.”

Jim hated himself, but every time he began his drive home, he ended up going to Lee’s hotel. The road suddenly switched right when he was driving on it. His hands on the wheel swerved left instinctively. Seeing her hotel, he thought he might as well go in, might as well try to convince her to leave, convince her to let them all alone. And then, for a moment, sitting in the car, the motor idling, he imagined her disappearing again, as seamlessly as she had at first. He’d start panicking. He’d rush inside, his resolve wavering. She looked fresh and lovely; she was always happy to see him.

One night she made him soup on her hot plate. He took the bowl and tasted it. “Whose is this?” he said. “This is delicious.”

“It’s mine,” she said, laughing. “I cook now.”

“You?” He remembered half-frozen TV dinners because Lee hadn’t turned the stove up high enough, peas served in the water they were boiled in. “How did this happen?”

“Lots of things happened you don’t know about,” she said.

“You live alone in Madison?”

She nodded.

“No gentlemen callers?” He fumbled a grin.

“One,” she said. She sat on the edge of the bed.

“Still?”

“I don’t know.”

He sipped the soup, studying her. “I feel like I’m supposed to say ‘Now you know what it feels like, being left.’”

“I know what it feels like,” she said. Andy flashed in her mind, and she felt suddenly undone. She looked up at Jim’s sad, serious face. “I made a mess of things, didn’t I?”

“What are you going to do?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Lee said.

“What does that mean, ‘I don’t know’?” Jim’s stomach churned inside of him. He put down the soup and stared at it. There was something green and flaky dusting the top, making a swirling pattern. “Are you staying or leaving?” He felt suddenly sick. “Do you have a lawyer, Lee?”

Startled, she put down her own soup mug. “No,” she said. “Do you?”

He picked at the chenille spread on her bed. “What happened to us, Lee?” he said suddenly. “Sometimes, when I was looking for you so hard, I used to rack my brains trying to think of the one thing to say that might bring you back. I don’t know what I would have done if I had actually found you, what I would have said. I just kept thinking of us at home, happy.”

“I used to worry that you’d find me,” Lee said slowly. “Every time I saw a blond head, I’d freeze.” She frowned. “You just wanted so much. But there was nothing there that I could give you.”

“Oh, yes, there was,” he said.

He looked at Lee’s phone. He suddenly wanted to call Lila, wanting to hear her voice, speeding across the wires to him, reconnecting.

“What do you want with Joanna?” he said.

“She’s my daughter,” Lee said. She washed one hand over her face. “It’s not too late for us to know each other, is it?”

“She knows her mother.”

“She has to know!” she cried. “What if I went to a lawyer? What if I wanted some kind of custody?”

“Custody,” Jim said, suddenly angry. “What are you talking about, custody? You can be put in jail. That’s what you can do.”

Lee took his empty soup bowl and brought it into the bathroom sink. He heard the rush of water, and when she came out her eyes looked red. “You think I’m not in jail now?” she said quietly.

Lila couldn’t relax until Joanna was home. She didn’t want to tell her own daughter to shut up, but it was difficult hearing her talk about Lee. It was worse when Jim began to be late. It didn’t take that long to close up the pharmacy. There were no emergencies he needed to stay open to handle, no problems with closing up. He had always joked with her that she was lucky she was marrying a pharmacist and not a doctor. He had clientele, not patients, and they never called at one in the morning because they couldn’t breathe. He blamed his lateness on the buses, or sometimes he said he had to talk to the assistant about some matter or other. And once he told her he had been to dinner with Lee. He said it so matter-of-factly that it stunned her. “I need to find out what she’s planning to do,” he said.

Lila rubbed her hand through her hair. It felt suddenly flat in her hand, vaguely greasy and boring, “She’s a criminal,” Lila said.

“I just need to get things straight,” he told her.

She tried to be busy, to carry on her life as if she didn’t care. She pretended she didn’t see him looking at an old photo of Lee or studying her with such pain that she had to go into the kitchen and busy herself so she wouldn’t cry. When he didn’t touch her in bed, she pretended he was just tired. And when he did reach for her, with a touch that felt almost desperate to her, she pretended there wasn’t another woman right there in bed with them, rolling in between them as easily as air. When he came in the house she was watching a movie on the TV or so engrossed in a book that she wouldn’t rise up to meet him. “Hey,” he said, bending to kiss her. She always held her breath. She didn’t want to smell Lee.

One night he came home at three. She was sitting on the chintz chair by the light, a magazine in her lap, her face drawn, and as soon as she saw him she felt a swoon of nausea loosening her pride.

He stood by the door. “I would have called, but I was arguing.” He looked exhausted.

“Why can’t you get a lawyer to argue?” Lila said.

“You want Joanna in court? You want lawyers?”

“Are you going to leave me?” she said. She was instantly ashamed.

He sat on the edge of her chair. He lifted up a ribbon of her hair. “Come on. Don’t be silly.”

“Are you?” she said, “Are you still in love with Lee?”

“No,” he said. “And I’m not going to leave you.”

Lila tried to tell herself that things would work out. She was married to Jim. He loved her. She tried to imagine herself in Jim’s position and decided she could never forgive someone who had disappeared like that. Second chances were for the movies. It didn’t make her feel any better.

She tried to lose herself in work, but everything seemed to remind her of what she might be losing. She walked into a patient’s room, a twenty-five-year-old woman getting her nose done, to find a man nuzzling in the bed with her. She spotted a man wandering the halls, his coat bundled in his arms. She wouldn’t have even noticed him except he was humming the same lullaby she sang to Joanna at night. The man seemed to walk faster, and when he whipped about a corner she saw a small blue bootie.

The pay phones reminded her that Lee could be calling Jim. The terrible hospital food jarred an image of Lee eating lunch in a hotel room or, worse, dining with Jim. Get hold of yourself, Lila’s mother used to warn her, but Lila couldn’t seem to find a grip. She kept trying to recall herself back when she had felt in control, back when she had been simply Lila, a woman in love with a profession and not a person, a woman whose worst dreams didn’t earthquake into reality. She wanted to go back in time, before she had ever stood poised at the threshold of Jim’s room, half in the harsh hospital bright, half in the soothing dark.

Lila didn’t know whom to turn to for advice. She didn’t want anyone at work to know, and when she called home, weeping, her mother told her to smarten up, to go out and get herself the best lawyer in town. “I’ll pay for it,” she told Lila.

“It hasn’t come to that stage yet,” Lila said.

“Oh, please,” her mother said. “That’s what they all say.”

Lila’s father was no better. Slowly, deliberately, he told her to go out and buy a backless dress. “A dress?” Lila said, mystified. “Yeah, and wear heels,” her father said. “Bright red, as high as you can walk on them.” He advised her to throw dinner parties, to serve the kinds of foods men liked. “Men foods?” Lila said, baffled. “What are men foods?”

“You know,” her father said, talking to her as patiently as if she were five years old. “No fancy icings. Those crescent cookies. The kind your mother makes. You listen to her, she’ll give you the recipe.”

Her mother, on the other line, sighed. “Get a lawyer, honey,” she said.

Lila didn’t get a lawyer. She walked around with emotion surging inside of her, struggling to keep her shell cool and efficient and intact.

Every time she looked at Joanna, the child seemed to be dimming right in front of her. She reached for the hand Joanna tugged away. She kept touching Joanna’s hair, her smooth skin, the hem of whatever dress she had on, and everything she touched felt somehow different. It chilled her. She began coming to school early so she could whisk Joanna away before Lee had a chance to see her.

She thought up reasons why Joanna couldn’t go to the pharmacy to see Jim. She kept remembering a spate of newspaper stories and magazine articles all about women taking kids into this kind of underground railroad, never to be found again. These kids were raised in trailer parks or high rises, in ranches so far west they weren’t even on any map you might find. All Lee would need was a fast car and a box of hair dye and scissors for Joanna. Lila began checking up on Joanna, calling the school so many times that Joanna’s teacher finally requested that Lila come in for a conference if she had such doubts about the school.

“No, no, it isn’t that,” Lila said. “I’m just a worrier.”

Still, Lila couldn’t help it. She found excuses to call, excuses to take a break and drive like a maniac down to the school just so she could make sure Joanna was all right and that Lee wasn’t there. She saw Joanna’s panicked face when she drove up, she saw the other children giggle. And when Joanna came home, she wouldn’t talk to Lila.

Her thinking began to change. She sometimes imagined herself taking Joanna into hiding herself. She’d have to make up a story. She’d have to say she was the mother. She believed that was true. She had been such a fool. She had never even thought to press Jim about adopting Joanna.

She ended up walking into a legal aid clinic two cities away from her own. She was still in her nurse’s uniform, so she kept her blue raincoat buttoned to her throat. She gave them a fake name and began asking questions. Could a mother who had abandoned her child reclaim her? The lawyer who was listening looked younger than Lila. She had long black hair clamped back with silver, but she wore an expensive dark suit and polished high-heeled shoes.

“Well,” she said to Lila. “It isn’t likely, but judges do favor the mothers.”

“They do?” Lila said. She stood up. The room tilted, and Lila braced one hand along the table.

“Are you all right?” the lawyer said, and Lila nodded.

She paid fifty dollars for the advice.

In the end she confided only to Maureen, who had always been her ally. The two women sat out in Maureen’s yard, and Lila would finally break down, crying in her hands, sluicing the tears from her face until the top of her blouse was damp.

“It’s just the pull of the past,” Maureen soothed. “And there’s nothing to do about it.”

She made Lila come inside. She gave her a cool, clean cloth and ice-cold lemonade and sat with her, rubbing the back of her neck. “Don’t you worry,” she told her. “Jim’s no fool.”

Maureen, though, had her doubts about that. The whole thing made her furious. She waited until Lila was out of the house one morning to barge over to Jim’s. He grinned when he saw her.

“You’re making a big mistake,” she told him.

“Oh, yeah? About what?”

“I’m talking about Lee,” Maureen said. “I hear she’s back.”

He shifted uneasily. “No one’s making any mistake.”

“They had better not,” she said coolly.

He picked up his coffee cup. “Is this your business?” he said.

“Gee, it sure seems like it, doesn’t it?” Maureen said, and walked out of his house.