The last time Mike had set foot in Rowley was about a year and a half ago, the day of Jess’s mother’s funeral. After the funeral, Jess thanked him for coming and invited him to stop by the house. He did, partly out of respect for Jodi Armstrong but more so for Sarah. It was around that time his memories were starting to blur. Maybe seeing a place where Sarah had spent so many weekends and holidays would stimulate that part of his mind responsible for holding onto her.
A light snow was falling when Mike pulled into Jess’s driveway. He shut off the truck, grabbed the flowers from the passenger seat, got out, and jogged up the walkway and onto the porch, about to open the door and rush in when he remembered his new position in her life. He shut the door and rang the doorbell. A moment later, the front door opened in a whoosh.
For a half second, he didn’t recognize her. Jess had blond highlights in her hair, had cut it short, thick and messy as if waking up from sleep, and while she wasn’t dressed up by any means—she wore stone-colored khakis and a white shirt—he had the feeling that she was clearly expecting someone else. The smile on her face turned into a look of surprise, maybe even mild shock, when she saw him standing there with a bouquet of flowers.
“Father Jack called me,” he said.
Jess’s eyes dropped to her shoes as she opened the storm door.
“I tried calling you on your cell phone, then here.”
“I shut my cell phone off and went out for a bit,” she said. “I just got back a few minutes ago. Come in.”
The foyer was warm and eerily quiet—no TV or radio was on—and filled with the unmistakable smell of spaghetti sauce, Mike remembering the pleasure she took from this task, an Irish girl making homemade sauce from scratch. Two black suitcases, gifts he had given her one Christmas eons ago, sat on the white-tiled floor, near the foot of the stairs.
She shut the door. Mike handed her the flowers.
“Calla lilies,” she said. They were Jess’s favorite flower. “They’re beautiful.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The phone rang.
“Excuse me for a second,” Jess said, and Mike watched as she walked into the kitchen, placing the flowers on the counter, then plucking the cordless phone from its wall-mounted base.
Confession. That was the only reason Jonah would have stopped by to see Father Jack. Despite his defrocked status, Jonah was still a devout Catholic—Mike had heard that Jonah went to the six a.m. mass every Sunday at St. Stephen’s. Funeral preparations could have been neatly handled over the phone, so for Jonah to stop by like that, in person, meant he must have wanted to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. You couldn’t do that over the phone. To stop by like that,out of the blue, meant that Jonah knew he had only a few days left.
Or hours.
“Of course I understand,” Jess whispered from the kitchen. She picked up her wine glass, took a long pull and quickly swallowed. “I’m fine, honest. Don’t worry about it.”
Mike knew that tone. Jess was angry but didn’t want the person on the other end to know it.
“I’ll just meet you at the airport…. Right,me too. Bye.”
Jess hung up and walked briskly back into the foyer, doing her best to hide her disappointment.
“Going someplace warm, I hope,” Mike said, pointing to the suitcases.
“Five week trip to Paris and then Italy.”
“Going with one of your sisters?”
“No,” Jess said, her smile thin. “Just a friend.”
The way she said friend meant a male friend, a boyfriend or something more serious.
“Good for you,” Mike said, and meant it. Jess seemed uncomfortable, so he changed the topic. “Your mother always talked about going to Italy.”
“My mother always talked about doing a lot of things. Last week, I was cleaning out the spare bedroom and found a lump under the carpet. Guess what I found? Envelopes full of savings bonds dating back to the fifties. I’m talking stacks of them. She could have bought and paid for this house three times over.”
“Your mother always thought the next Great Depression was a day away.”
“She was hoarding all this money and for what?” Jess blew out a long stream of air and shook her head. “I made lasagna. Would you like to join me for dinner? And no, you’re not intruding.”
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she wanted him to stay. He didn’t want to have dinner with his ex-wife and revisit the life he once had. He started to sort through a list of possible excuses while another part of his mind calculated all the times Jess had picked up his drunk ass from McCarthy’s Bar;the times she had cleaned up his vomit and all the broken fragments of the glasses,mugs, plates he had thrown against the wall because he was drunk, because he was terrified for Sarah and because his marriage was dissolving and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do to stop it—and let us not forget the months she had stuck by him when it looked like they might lose the house, all the money they had saved now going to bail and lawyer’s fees. Jess had any number of reasons to bail and she didn’t.She had hung in there with him,and while she was entitled to half of everything they owned, she wanted only two things in the divorce settlement: copies of the pictures and videos of Sarah; and items that had belonged to her mother.
“Dinner would be great,” he said.
A pan of lasagna was on the stove, the island countertop set with a pair of crystal wine glasses, a bottle of opened red wine and two plates. Jess had been expecting company.
Mike took off his jacket and draped it over the back of one of the island chairs as Jess picked up the plates. Above the kitchen sink was a window overlooking the three-season room. The backyard lights were on, and Mike could see the monstrous jungle gym set, a birthday gift from Jodi when Sarah turned two. He stared at it, thinking how lonely it looked, neglected and forgotten.
“How’s work?” she asked.
“Busy, as always. You still a secretary for that accounting firm in Newburyport?”
“Still there. The pay’s better than teaching, believe it or not. And the politically correct term, just so you know, is administrative assistant.” She smiled as she handed him a plate, and then opened up the refrigerator and came back with a cold can of Coke.
Jess sat down, picked up a linen napkin and spread it across her lap. She picked up her fork, put it back down.
“He held the door open for me.”
Mike rubbed the back of his head and neck.
“He was standing there with this … this sick grin. ‘You’re looking real good, Mrs. Sullivan. Life in Rowley must really be agreeing with you.’Then he held the door open for me. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“What could you have done?”
“I could have driven you home.”
“And if you came to the parking lot, you’d have been in violation of your probation. All Jonah had to do was see you through Father Jack’s office window and they’d be hauling you off to jail. That’s our great legal system at work.”
“I’m sorry, Jess.” Mike not quite sure what he was apologizing for: her visit with Jonah or for all of it.
She waved him off, telling him she was over it.
“You have any idea why Jonah was there?” he asked.
“You’d have to ask Father Jack.”
“I tried that. He wouldn’t tell me.”
Jess picked up the wine bottle and poured the wine, the glug-glug sound reminding him of Jack being poured over ice, of those evenings where he couldn’t wait to get home and have that first long slow burn hit his stomach.
She saw him looking at the bottle. “I don’t have to drink.”
“It’s fine. Why did you go to see Father Jack this afternoon?”
“To say goodbye.” She put the bottle back on the table and folded her arms. “I’m moving.”
“Where?”
“New York. The city.”
Mike put down his fork, fear brushing against the walls of his heart.
“A friend—a friend of a friend, actually—his business is moving to Japan,” Jess explained. “He owns this beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side and is letting me sublet it for a few months. It’s a beautiful place—and a rare opportunity.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“It is. But I have the money my mother left me, and now the savings bonds. The apartment’s on the fifteenth floor and it has this amazing view of the city. It’s just so beautiful.”
Yes, you’ve mentioned that twice now. He said, “Why New York? Why not go to San Diego? Be close to your sister and the kids?”
Jess paused, licked her lips. “Do you ever feel like packing up and starting over someplace where nobody knows the first thing about you?”
“I’ve thought of it, sure.” In fact, that night on the Hill, I actually wished for it, Mike added privately.
“So why don’t you?”
He picked up his fork, thought about it for a moment. “One morning, it must have been about six months after your mother had moved in here, I was having coffee with her. I was telling her how much I liked the house and she said, ‘There are no memories here, just echoes.’ That always stuck with me.”
“It’s not just about people staring,” Jess said. “When my father died, he left her two life insurance policies and a nice sum of money so my mother wouldn’t have to worry. She bought this house, figuring me, Rachel and Susan would live close to her and keep her busy with grandchildren. Then Rachel moved away, and Susan, well, she never wanted kids to begin with, and when Sarah disappeared, my mother … she just kept wishing for a different life. I don’t want to become that person. Being afraid all the time because I wished things were different. Can you understand that?”
“Sure.”
“You think you’ll ever sell the house?”
Mike shrugged. “Someday.”
“She’s never coming home,” Jess said gently.
He picked up his Coke and took a long sip, feeling it burn its way down his throat. He was getting angry and wasn’t sure why. It didn’t have to do with her comments about Sarah or selling the house. She had said them before, so why was he getting mad now?
It was New York. His only remaining connection to Sarah was moving away.
Mike put his can back on the table, rubbed his thumb across the label. “Can you still see her?”
“I haven’t forgotten her. I think about her all the time.”
“What I mean is, when you close your eyes, can you see her the way she would look now?”
“I remember Sarah the way she was.”
“I can’t see her face anymore. I can hear her voice just fine, and I can remember the things Sarah said and did, but her face is always a blur. I didn’t have this problem before.”
“When you were drinking.”
Mike nodded. When he drank, he’d lie on Sarah’s bed and close his eyes and he’d see her as clear as day, and the two of them would have the most amazing conversations.
Jess said, “Today I was in a bookstore and this boy, he couldn’t have been any more than four, was in line holding a copy of Make Way for Ducklings. You remember the first time you read her that story?”
“Sarah was around three. You purchased the book as a Christmas gift. It was Sarah’s favorite book.”
“The first time you read it, Sarah begged us to take her into Boston to see the ducks, remember?”
Mike felt a smile reach his face. He remembered how disappointed Sarah was to learn that the swan boats inside the Public Garden weren’t actually real swans. That disappointment had nearly turned into tears when Sarah saw the bronze statues of the mother duck and the baby ducklings. These aren’t the ducks from the story, Daddy. These ducks aren’t real. It was during the ride home that Sarah came up with an explanation: I know why the ducks are made of metal, Daddy. It’s ’cause so people can’t hurt them. Those kids were sitting on the backs of mother duck and baby ducks, and if I had people sit on my back all day my back would hurt too. They’re made of metal during the day so they won’t get hurt. At night when everybody’s at home in bed sleeping, that’s when they turn into real ducks and go swimming in the pond with the real swans. Sarah had been sitting in her car seat in the back of the Explorer when she said those words. The back window was down, and the wind was whipping her blond hair around her face and Sarah wore a white sunhat and a pink sundress, both birthday gifts from Jess’s mother, and Sarah had a chocolate stain on the dress. Sarah’s face blurred again and started to fade, no, please, Sarah. Please don’t leave me.