Pushing Upward (18 page)

I let out an
Aaahhhh,
like a lion's roar, to release the tension from my lungs. I did it again, louder this time:
Aaahhhh.
And again:
Aaaahhhhhhh
.

As I continued the
Aaahhhh
's, a force of energy catapulted me from Emma's chair. I shot up from the high-back, wrestled the furniture to the sides of the room, and began a ballet routine I'd memorized from dance class when I was twelve. I began with an
adagio,
extending my limbs, stretching my arms in a slow, fluid movement, followed by the quick
petit allegro.
Then I launched into my favorite—the
tour jeté
—where I ran, jumped, did a midair split, turned in the air, and landed in the most exquisite arabesque, looking out over my right hand, which was extended out toward the sun. I turned again and ran into a
grand jeté,
leaping straight ahead—and plummeting into the table lamp I thought I had moved far enough away.
Ouch!

Ring
.

I picked up the lamp (which thankfully had not broken), replaced the shade, and returned to Emma's chair to pick up the phone.

“Hello?” I said, breathless.

“Hola, ¿cómo estás?”

“Rachel? Is that you?

“Sí, estoy aquí.”

“Oh my God. Where the
hell
have you been? I've been trying to reach you for weeks! Months!”

“¡Buenos Aires, mi hija!”

“Buenos Aires? Where are you now?”

“I'm at my apartment.”

“The one I drove by umpteen times? The apartment that no longer has a phone with a working number?
That
apartment?”

Just then, Emma opened the door and teetered into the living room, also out of breath, and gave me a startled look. I wasn't sure if she was startled because I was sitting in her chair or because the living-room furniture had been pushed back against the walls. I wiggled my eyebrows, waved my fingers, and immediately got up to return the furniture back to its proper place. Emma went into the kitchen. Rachel kept talking.

“I just came back to my apartment to pick up the rest of the boxes.”

“What do you mean? Where are you going?”

“It's a long story …”

“God, Rachel. What is going on? Can you meet for lunch today?”

“
Sí,
Restaurante Brasserie.”

“Give me ten
minutos.
”

“I'll see you in ten. Ciao!”

“Ciao!”

I put down the phone, quietly thanked the universe for Rachel's return, and started toward my room. In record time, I had someplace to go. Then, remembering my manners, I stopped and peeked back into the kitchen.

“Hi, Emma. Where've you been?”

Emma headed toward her high-back, sat down, opened a large manila envelope, and pulled out a huge script. “Mr. Slabowski, one of the neighbors, stopped me at the mailbox, told me his wife was dying of cancer. He needed someone to talk to.”

She put the script down on the side table and reached for her bifocals.

“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that … I'm, ah … just on my way out to meet my friend Rachel for lunch.”

“How do you know this Rachel?” She looked at me curiously.

“Oh, we met at an audition when I first came out here.”

“Why don't you invite her
here
for lunch?”

I started back down the hall to the bathroom, delaying a response.

“Uh, well, I haven't seen her in so long. And you know how girls are. Gab, gab, gab! You'd be so bored.”

I put on some blush and lipstick and combed my hair, remembering Rachel's smile and the way her whole body shook when she laughed, as if the whole universe was contained inside her. I'd missed her sense of humor, her sarcasm, her batik outfits. I couldn't wait to see her.

I grabbed my purse and walked to the door, knowing Emma did not want me to go.

“Have a nice time, dear.”

She didn't mean it. If she had, she would have looked up at me and smiled. But she kept her eyes down and pretended to read the paper.

“I won't be gone long.” Hand on the doorknob, anxious to get out, I remembered: “Oh, Emma, Bert called. He wants you to call him—something about a party he's having. 'Bye.”

Chapter 17

The high plateau is dry and unsuitable
for the wild goose.

Whenever we dined at the Brasserie, which on our budgets we could only afford once every few months, Rachel and I always gravitated toward the room with the fireplace. It was in this room, where the lights were soft and the sounds were muffled by thick, plush carpet, and dark mahogany walls that we shared our catastrophes and our triumphs; where we cursed and cried, and recovered from our personal tragedies

I missed our intimate talks, and swept the room looking for her over a sea of heads, huge ferns, and Tiffany fixtures hanging low. Half a hundred bodies were in the Brasserie, but Rachel was nowhere to be found. I looked back at the entrance in hopes of catching her coming in late. But only men in black suits with slick dark hair stood there, executive types, looking pointedly at their watches as they waited for the maître d'. I turned back to the dining room and scanned it again.

Someone in the back, sitting behind a tall, slender Italian vase, caught my eye. I looked again. She was the right height, but the details were wrong, the moves weren't right: the way she tilted her head, the way she slid her sunglasses up over her forehead, perching them on top of her blonde hair. She wasn't twisting off broken ends from her hair, shifting her weight in the chair every second, like Rachel
always
did. This woman was calm and purposeful. She wasn't wearing batik. She was wearing a pink Ann Taylor suit with a matching silk scarf. Rachel wouldn't be caught dead in Ann Taylor. And Rachel had … well, I had no idea what color her hair was this week.

I moved closer, skirting the wall, not wanting the woman to notice me staring. There was something about her. With the help of a sudden brightening of light through the windows and a waiter who had moved aside to give me a better view, my pupils enlarged when I realized: she was indeed Rachel.

I wanted to become invisible, get as close as I could without her knowing I was there. I wanted to absorb all the changes from a distance. As I moved closer to her table, I noticed that her complexion was flawless. The heavy makeup she used to wear had been replaced by a natural iridescent glow, untainted by packed-on rouge. Her eyes sparkled and her nails were polished. She looked radiant. What the hell had happened to her?

She saw me and stood up. I quickly moved over to her table, bumping into the backs of chairs and a few waiters on my way. When I reached her, we embraced. We stood there looking into each other's eyes, oblivious to the traffic jam around us. We could've stood there for hours, hugging, only one of the waiters asked us to sit.

No matter how mad I'd been that she hadn't called and had disappeared for months, the bitterness dropped away the second I was in her presence.

“Oh my God, look at you. You're completely … transformed!”

“Look at
you!
” she replied. “You must have lost twenty pounds … Turn around. Your buns look really firm.”

“Well, if you ran six miles a day, swam twenty laps, and sweated for an hour doing calisthenics, your buns would look really firm, too. But Rachel—come
on,
you're a whole different person.”

“I'm more than
a
whole different person. I'm two people. I'm pregnant.”

“What?!” I could hardly contain my excitement as we settled in our chairs. I took a second look at her waistline. There wasn't anything showing yet, but … well, maybe a little roundness.

Then Rachel showed me the ring. Excuse
me
, the diamond
rock
on her third finger. “Holy shit! It's beautiful!

“Thank you. It's all kind of unbelievable to me, too. Where should I begin?”

“Begin with that bump I'm not quite seeing yet.”

“Well, I think I need to start
before
the bump.” We both took a couple of deep breaths, picked up the menus, and looked around for a waiter. “I stopped singing telegrams and decided to go to nursing school.”

“
Nursing?
When did you ever want to be a nurse?”

“It's something I started thinking about when my father died.”

“Your father died? When … Rachel, I'm so sorry to hear …”

“I'm okay now, but it was a shock. I hadn't heard from him in years, and then Kathleen, his new wife, calls me and tells me my dad had a stroke.”

“What a shocker! What did you do?”

“I flew to Nevada to see him. I fed the man, bathed him. He even apologized for not being in my life. We cried. And then he died the next day. Just like that. Gone. It was so bizarre. When I left their house, it was like I had no identity. No clue what I should do with my life. He left me more money than I knew what to do with. I thought about traveling—I didn't know where, I just felt like I needed to get away. I ended up going to South America. I always wanted to see the Andes and learn the Tango. I met Armando, and that's when this nursing thing came up even stronger for me.”

“Why didn't you call me and tell me any of this?”

“I guess … I just needed to hear my own voice. I had so many decisions to make. I didn't want to burden you with my stuff.”

“I love your stuff.”

“I'm sorry I didn't call. I just needed the space.”

The waiter came to take our order. I ordered a bacon-and-cheese omelet with French fries and a Tab. Rachel asked for a chef's salad, with no cheese, and an iced tea.

“What? No triple-cheese omelet?”

“Remember when we met at the Lake Shrine and vowed to learn how to cook? Well, I've been reading a lot about nutrition. And, let me tell you, the human body is not designed to digest animal protein, especially milk products. You wouldn't believe how many people are lactose intolerant. Almond milk is very high in protein, and tastes delicious. You should try it.”

It was hard to believe that only months before, this woman had sat in this same room, ordering cheese balls rolled in walnuts, onion soup
au gratin,
a milk shake, and marshmallow-swirl ice cream for dessert.

“Thanks for the advertisement.” Then, relenting, “Rachel, I'm really glad you were able to clear things up with your dad. There's no way, this side of a miracle, I could ever clean up
any
of the relationships in my family. So … tell me about the baby's papa!”

“It's your turn first. Tell me, how is it living with Emma? Did you learn how to cook?”

“A little. I'm still working on it. Finish your story, and then I'll tell you about Emma.”

“I met Armando in Argentina. He sat down at a table next to me at an outdoor café. This hunk, with dark Mediterranean skin and sparkling brown eyes, says ‘Hi' and my knees started shaking. I thought I'd fall off my chair. Anyway, we started talking, we went out, and … well. I totally fell in love. I find out later he not only has a place in Buenos Aires—he has a house in L.A., and in New York.”

“Let me guess. He's a doctor?”

“A lawyer.”

“Of course.”

“Right now he's in New York working with his father. His dad has a pretty substantial law practice on both coasts, and in Argentina. He's being trained to work with the firm. You'll like him, Sandra. He's kind, sensitive, and smart.”

“And rich! God, it's a storybook fantasy.”

The waiter came with our food. There was silence while we ate.

“So,” I asked, coming up for air halfway through my greasy omelet, “you're really happy?”

“I'm very happy. Look, I've stopped biting my nails.” Rachel showed me her manicured hands.

Manicured hands!
My stomach gave a little lurch. Unbelievable! Never in a million years would I have imagined that my outrageous, frizzy-haired friend would have turned into this polished creature before me now.

“We're going back to Buenos Aires in a few weeks to get married,” Rachel said with a ladylike smile. “You wouldn't believe how many relatives he has.”

“Aren't you going to have a wedding in the States?” I asked, hoping to celebrate the union at some point.

“Probably not.” She could tell I was devastated. “We'll have some kind of party, don't worry. Okay, enough. Tell me about Emma.”

I took a big gulp of my Tab, as I tried to rebuild my self-esteem and share my story. “Well, she's amazing, supportive, caring. She has this incredible eye for detail. I don't know where she gets it. Very disciplined. She certainly helped me get into shape. She's been really good for me.”

“Sandra. There's something else going on here, I know it. What's underneath the words of gratitude?” Rachel might have changed in many ways, but her insight into the workings of my brain was still operative.