I knew what flight she was on—American, number 827 from LaGuardia—and when it was due to arrive: 1:58 p.m. All morning I was hyperaware of the fact that she would be in Wisconsin by that afternoon. Moving through my routines, I felt as if I were watching myself from a distance, narrating my actions in my head. Now I’m folding laundry; now I’m reheating my coffee. And pushed right up against those things: She’s boarding the plane. She’s somewhere over Ohio by now.
I felt as I did when I’d had too much caffeine, my skin prickly, a buzzing in my chest.
I kept checking the flight on my computer, and finally, at 1:55, I saw “Arrived.” She’s here, I thought, and Now it begins, like it was some stern voice-over in a Dateline investigation. Standing in front of the refrigerator, picking out cashews from a container of kung pao chicken, I imagined how I’d make fun of myself to Erik later, but even then, I couldn’t stop: Now I’m in the kitchen and imagining telling Erik….
“What can I do?” my mother asked when I called her. I’d carried the phone outside into the furnace blast of mid-August heat and sat on the porch steps, the concrete warm through my running shorts.
“I don’t know what I need.” I laid my forehead against my upraised knees. “I wish these two weeks were already over.” Erik had phoned Kelly the day we got her letter, explaining that we’d been shocked to learn she had been chosen to teach the fellowship, that I’d planned to be out of town, that there’d been no setup. But he wasn’t sure she believed him. And why would she? He’d been lying all along.
“These two weeks will be gone before you know it,” my mom said.
The next afternoon, I went to Annabelle’s to watch the kids until Scott got home. She and Erik were attending a dinner for Kelly, held by one of the board members. “I can’t believe I’m going to be in the same room with KJ,” she kept saying. I was sitting on her bed, watching her scoop her thick hair into a loose ponytail. She looked pretty, gold chandelier earrings brushing her collarbones. But after the tenth time of her prefacing whatever she was about to say with “I know you probably don’t want to hear this” or “I know you dislike her,” I told her to stop. “I don’t dislike her, Annabelle. I don’t even know her anymore.”
The girls were watching the original Grease with Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, and after Annabelle left, I perched on the arm of the sofa and watched for a minute. Kelly and I had been twelve when the movie came out in 1978. We must have seen it a dozen times and played the album endlessly. She was Rizzo; I was Goody Two-shoes Sandra Dee.
I was too restless to watch, so I got Spencer to bake with me. He’d decided he was going to be a meteorologist and a chef when he grew up. We made applesauce cookies—no flour, no butter, no sugar, so he could eat them. My job was to read the instructions while he mixed and measured with the precision of a scientist. He looked so much like his dad, all elbows as he stooped over counters too low for his gangly body.
We played chess while waiting for the timer to ring, the room filling with the smell of spices. The sound of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John singing “You’re the One That I Want” echoed from the family room. I could remember so clearly being twelve. I never questioned that my life would be any different; I didn’t want it to be. I had the best friend in the world, we lived at the beach, and our parents adored us. I’d just gotten my first pair of high heels (for our seventh-grade dance) and on special occasions I was allowed to wear lip gloss, but I was still such a child. I used to arm-wrestle my dad, and on Sunday mornings when I stayed at Kelly’s, we’d have pancake-eating contests. Once after we ate a dozen pancakes each, I remember her mother telling us, “You girls don’t always need to eat until you’re full, you know.” Kelly just laughed and grabbed another pancake, but I remember feeling confused and embarrassed. Why wouldn’t you eat until you were full? Wasn’t that the point? I never could have fathomed then how betrayed I would one day be by my body, all the ways I would learn to not take up space in the world, not stand up for myself, not fight for what I wanted.
Ever since Kelly’s letter, I’d been thinking of those dark days after the first hospital when I’d been so desperate to bond with Lucy, and though Nick was always there, he never helped me. He never got down on the carpet with us and played Duck Duck Goose with her stuffed animals, never smiled at my attempted silly antics, never showed Lucy it was okay to love me again. He’d sit nearby skimming one of his surfing magazines, but the whole time, I felt his impatience, his judgment. Maybe he couldn’t join me, maybe he was doing his best, but why had I just accepted this? And where was Kelly? Or Nick’s mom? Or—and this was the most painful question—where was my mom? I don’t blame her—she was desperate for me to have time with my girl—but I blame myself: Why had I never once said, “I’m failing, and I need your help”? When and where did I learn to be so silent? It wasn’t just about the accident. I’d been this way my whole life.
The next day, Erik left early for the opening-night gala, his tuxedo in a garment bag. He hadn’t talked much to Kelly the night before, he said; they’d been seated at opposite ends of the table, but he didn’t think there was anything to worry about.
I spent the afternoon pacing and glancing at the clock in our bedroom. It seemed to move in impossibly tiny increments: two minutes, three minutes, five. I’d flat-ironed my hair and put on jewelry, but it was too early to get dressed.
In front of the large mirror over the bureau, I stared at myself, trying to see what she would see in a few hours. I was wearing one of Erik’s T-shirts, and though I could take in the details—silver teardrop earrings, matching necklace, mascara—I felt I was looking at a stranger. My dress was laid out on the bed, the same dress I’d worn at my Chicago opening last week. It was the most expensive piece of clothing I’d ever bought, a navy gown so covered in beads, it was heavy. “Like those lead vests you wear at the dentist when they’re doing X-rays,” I’d commented as Erik zipped me up the week before. I’d felt regal in that dress, and happy and successful—the show had been amazing!—but now, I worried. Maybe the dress was too showy. I didn’t want Kelly to look at me and think my life was wonderful—How dare you!—didn’t want her to think I’d gotten over Lucy, whatever that even meant, because I hadn’t.
“Stop it,” I told myself. “What are you supposed to do? Wear a mourning veil, rend your sleeves?”
Yes, a small voice inside of me insisted. Yes.
I thought about the sumptuary laws Eva—or maybe Erik—had mentioned one Saturday night. I forget why it came up, but whoever it was—probably Eva—described how, during Shakespeare’s time, there were laws restricting the “sumptuousness of dress.” It was a crime to dress like someone of a higher social class, a crime to pretend to be someone you were not. We laughed—such quaint customs people had! And then the discussion devolved into Gabe and Erik ribbing Scott for being such a fastidious dresser—ironed jeans (“You could injure someone with those creases, dude!”). We were all laughing, but I remember thinking that behind those laws was real fear, the fear that someone wasn’t who they said they were.
I felt off-balance, that feeling of stepping down to find there is no stair. I told myself that once I got through the reception, once Kelly and I saw each other and whatever was going to happen either did or didn’t, I would get my equilibrium back. Except this wasn’t about Kelly, was it? It was about the fact that there were two versions of me—Claire then and Claire now—and I couldn’t align one with the other. Who was I?
I checked the clock again. Eva and Gabe were picking me up. I took a deep breath and glanced around the room. Everything was in its place: the bed made, clothes put away, my normally haphazard pile of books in a neat pyramid on the nightstand. I’d even dusted the photographs on the bureau: Erik and me on our wedding day; the kids on the trampoline midjump; the six of us this summer on Eva and Gabe’s back deck, the sky orange with dusk. The men in Hawaiian shirts, Annabelle, Eva, and me in sundresses. I loved these photos, our happiness captured and framed, though I wished Lucy’s picture were here too. I knew it wasn’t possible. The girls would demand, Who is that baby? And I’d end up lying yet again, the lies like bright scarves pulled from a magician’s hat, one after the other after the other, endlessly.
And I didn’t need a photo. I had hundreds in my head: How she’d be sitting in her crib in the mornings with her wild hair swooping so preposterously in different directions that I’d burst into laughter. Or how she’d fasten her big unblinking eyes on mine when she was nursing, the damp weight of her starfish hand on my breast. Even when there weren’t specific memories, I felt her presence. And I saw her. Everywhere. In the cluster of blond sixteen-year-old girls at the mall or with their boyfriends at Kopp’s, getting off school buses in field hockey or track or soccer uniforms, ordering fancy coffees at Starbucks.
I paced back to the mirror and stared once more at my reflection. I was jittery but no longer filled with dread. I wanted to see Kelly. I wanted her to see me. That was as far as I could get. If she spoke to me, I had no idea what I would say. Everything sounded wrong. “It’s good to see you” wasn’t exactly true, and “I watched every episode of Widows” sounded too fawning.
Maybe just “I can’t believe you’re here.”