Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn (32 page)

“I think she'd rather live next to you,” I finally say.

“Oh, come on.”

“Really. You drooled all over her.”

Elizabeth pulls herself out of it and I pepper her with questions about how long it will take to check references and move and sell my house. I'm more interested right this second in how to get from point A in the suburbs to point B in the city than in living below the Feminist of the Year, thank you very much. Elizabeth assures me it's a done deal unless Sally the Wonderful discovers my felony murder arrest record or decides I won't fit into her backyard barbecue cycle.

We banter like this without even moving the car. Elizabeth suddenly hops out and decides that we need to walk the streets and get the feel of the neighborhood, even though we have both been here before for everything from book signings to wild wine-tasting parties. It's different, we decide, to walk and think of actually living here. She's on fire. I decide to appease her; after all, I did drag her through several apartments from Hell.

“Would you move?” I ask her as we look into windows and order coffee at a small café with a patio in back.

“I've actually been thinking about it. Really. The boys come home about once every month, and they don't stay very long. When I'm down here in the city, I feel as if my feet are on fire. Maybe we should buy our own house? Share the space, you know, up and down. Maybe we should ask Jane too. What do you think?”

“You're asking me—the Queen of indecision?”

“Not lately. Look at yourself.”

“I know this feels perfect for me. I like the hum of the city. I won't be able to hide here. I can meet new people. It feels pretty damn alive down here. You're right. Let's think about it.”

I put my hand on her knee and squeeze it hard. “I have to do this alone first for a while, but what you are saying makes sense. It might happen. Give me this first.”

Elizabeth has her legs crossed at the ankles and her feet are resting on the spare chair. I've always wanted to be like her. Since the moment I met her. I've never known anyone as alive and sure.

“Are you prepared for how much your house will sell for?”

“Haven't thought of it.”

“You'll shit in your pants. It's going to be close to $350,000. Maybe more.”

My mouth flops open. I had no idea.

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying you have more options than you think you have. Maybe you'll want to buy something. Or take a year off. There are still things you have to decide. Let me roll it over in my head too. As you know, sweetheart, lots of things can happen in a year.”

No shit, Elizabeth. I've even started to swear.

“I'm afraid to stop right now. I don't want a rest really. I want to run. Do you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“But I'm also exhausted.”

“I wonder why.”

We spend the rest of the day like this, walking in and out of stores, buying books, just standing and looking around. Elizabeth sees four people in different places whom she knows, and just like that I have the phone numbers of four people who may end up being my new neighbors.

Wow, Elizabeth. Wow.

By the time I get back home, Sally the Wonderful has left a phone message that will set the tone for the launch into the twenty-ninth phase of my new life. The apartment is mine. The yard is mine, one parking spot in the driveway that will have to be juggled to fit into two other schedules is mine and a space at the back of the garage for anything I may want to store outside and a washer and dryer space in the basement, which also includes storage space. Mine.

I share this news with no one, but immediately begin ticking off days in my head so that I can organize what to do to keep pace with my move-in schedule. While I am doing this, a dark van pulls up in front of the house. A man dressed in a blue blazer gets out, pounds a sign into the front yard and leaves very quickly.

“What the hell?”

It is almost dark when I walk outside to look at the sign. Katie is working, I imagine Bob is picking geraniums, and my son is most likely scrambling to finish the summer term and prepare for finals. I am alone on the front lawn, bending down to read the words on the sign. FOR SALE. The sign looks good. It's in a lovely spot and Bob had agreed to find a realtor. I just had no idea it would all happen so quickly.

My house is for sale.

I'm moving.

I'm getting divorced.

Within weeks I will be living in the city.

I own a cottage by the sea.

I hate my job.

I don't mean to cry. I really don't. I'm happy. I am finally pushing the world, just a bit, and the world is not pushing me, but when I put my fingers on the side of the sign to make sure that it is straight, something shifts a little bit. There is an ache alongside of the bone that runs from below my neck and down to my belly button that brings me to tears.

It is the root of me, I think, the root of me getting ready for a fast transplant. A move. A new life. And yet the roots, even here, in the center of the lawn I have always hated to cut, even here the roots run deep and linger as I try to pull them out.

Three weeks ago I would not have lain down on the front lawn and cried as cars passed and the neighbors looked out of their windows. A month ago I would never have cried at all. I would have gone inside of the house and busied myself with another load of wash, an e-mail to my colleagues in Brazil or France, who are always in bed when I am at work, or a phone call to my mother.

A year ago I would have gone right for the wine or the vodka. I might have cooked dinner and then read for two hours wondering what time Katie would get home or if Shaun would show up for dinner. Maybe about two
A.M.,
sleepless again, I would have walked through the house and tried to remember what it was like to wake up before dawn and make love.

A week ago, just a week ago, I would never have lain on the lawn with one hand touching the FOR SALE sign, remembering how I caught Katie kissing a boy one night under the porch light when I heard something funny and decided to check. I would not have rolled over on my side and looked through the last light of a July afternoon into windows that I would never wash again and a roof that someone else could now shingle and into the upstairs bedroom, where I would never spend another night.

Never.

I would never have slipped to my knees to kiss the grass and hold a large sign a day ago, a mere day ago, and the thought of what I must look like, bare legs flung one way, shoes another, head on my hand and the sweet knowledge of how glorious it felt to lie with my face pushed against the old dandelion heads and my heart racing ahead of me—finally ahead of me—made me weep even more.

I lay there for a very long time. No one stopped me. Not a soul. And what I felt slipping away was a past that I would remember and eventually embrace and a world that I would now very carefully hand off to the next person who asked for the keys to the front door and was bold enough to walk into my old living room.

Then a horn beeped and I heard a car door slam, but I still did not move.

“What the hell.”

It was not a question, and I recognized the feet before I heard the voice.

Jane.

“Did your Clapper break?”

“Fuck you.”

She laughs and then I laugh.

“How stupid do I look?”

“I could make money off of this.”

She knows. She knows without me saying a word, and her hand reaches down and I think she is going to pull me up, but instead she touches me gently and drops to the grass and curls around me like a grass snake winding its way around a tomato plant.

“It's time,” is all she says, and her face in my hair is the scent of fabulous friendship and I think how lucky I am to be a woman, how goddamn lucky.

1990

Vandy came back on a Friday morning and the first person she saw was Meg Richardson dropping off her kids at Meadowbrook School, where she had come herself to catch a glimpse of her boys.

“Meg!” she shouted, and then motioned for her to come over to her car. “Have you seen the boys?”

Vandy Hanson looked like hell. She'd been “missing” for three weeks, and all anyone knew was that she had left her four boys with her mother while her husband was on an assignment in Australia and she just disappeared. No one knew if it was true or not, and there she was, whispering to Meg on a sunny morning in February.

Meg was startled to see her and she had no idea why the sight of this woman made her jump.

“They're fine,” she told Vandy. Then she quickly added, “Do you want to talk?”

Vandy had circles under her eyes the color of Shaun's old dark blue snowsuit. Her hair was pulled under a baseball hat, and Meg could swear that the clothes she was wearing were the same clothes she had on the last time Meg saw her on the playground just before she took off.

“Can you?”

“I can be late. An hour?”

“Get in, okay?”

They drive off without Vandy bothering to look for oncoming cars and almost broadside a red Toyota.

“Jesus!” Vandy shouts. “I'm sorry. I'm a fucking mess.”

“Want me to drive?”

Vandy looks at her as if Meg has slapped her across the face.

“Trust me. We'll get some coffee.”

They drive to McDonald's and sit in the back beyond the slides and games. Meg can only wonder what this woman wants, where she has been, where she is going. Meg closes her eyes for a moment and feels her days close around her. Breakfast. Kids to school. Work. Phone calls at lunch to drop off homework. Girl Scouts. Soccer. Endless movement. Endless. She imagines slipping away for a day, a week, three weeks, and she wants to fall across the table and rest her head on Vandy's long arms.

“Sit.” Vandy commands. “I have absolutely no one to talk to.”

Meg has talked to Vandy dozens of times. Their sons share a teacher. They live two blocks apart. They wave after school. Last year they both bought the same gold jacket. Meg knows absolutely nothing about her. Nothing important, anyway. Nothing that could cross the line between waving and knowing.

“What are people saying?”

Meg takes such a large sip of coffee, her entire throat burns and she has to suppress a tight scream. She says, “No one knows anything. All we heard, from your mother, is that you left a note and took off.”

“My mother.”

“She hasn't said anything. Vandy, what is it?”

Vandy looks at her, eyes wide, hat pulled close to the top of her eyebrows, and when she pushes back her hair, Meg can see that her hands are shaking.

“I think I'm losing my mind. Brad is never here, the kids, the house . . .”

“Vandy,” she manages to say softly. “What can I do?”

“Can you just listen for a little while?”

“As long as you want. I can listen.”

The story is not that complicated. There are no secret lovers. No bag full of drugs. Nothing sinister. Just this terrible well of unhappiness that makes Vandy wonder if and how she can make it through the month, the year, the next twelve years until the boys are gone.

“That's how you see it? Just waiting for it to be over?”

“I feel like I've never belonged here. When I close my eyes, I see the desert and miles of highway, a stretch of water, this piece of sky that is endless, and I just want to go there.”

Meg thinks of the ocean. An island where it rains once every ten years and never snows and where you wake up tan, eat fruit all day and no one calls your name or asks you anything for weeks and weeks and weeks.

“Where are you staying?”

“Edge of the city. A hotel, Dreamer's Way, that should be condemned, right off Highway 32. I call the kids every night. They think I'm helping someone move.”

“What
are
you doing, Vandy?”

“I'm hiding.”

She says it without hesitation, her hands jumping as if she has been drinking coffee for a solid twenty-four hours.

“From what?”