Ten Girls to Watch (41 page)

I nodded as efficiently as she had.

“You did a good job,” she added.

I wasn’t sure whether she meant tonight, or today, or with everything. Whatever she meant, I knew, coming from XADI, that she’d just given me what was probably her best compliment.

I nodded again and bowed my head a little.

After that, I followed Helen back to her room. She’d graciously offered to let me use her cell phone for the rest of the evening, rather than racking up crazy hotel phone charges. While I used her bathroom, she changed out of her tuxedo and into pajamas and the plush hotel robe. Even though I’d lived in her backyard for two months, this was the first time I’d ever seen her in night clothes. It felt a little like the time she’d said “Call me Helen.” I mean, you don’t just wear your pajamas around anyone.

“Helen, I haven’t even asked how you’re doing,” I said as she sat down on the bed.

Her face went through a range of expressions, starting with a smile like she was going to laugh, but the laugh never came, and she finally settled into a crooked half grimace that didn’t reach beyond that one corner of her mouth.

“The book is doing well. I’m working on some exciting glass projects. The seminar I’m teaching on the women’s suffrage movements in the US and UK is coming together. Everything is great. But I think you mean how am I really doing.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.” I turned the desk chair all the way around so I was fully facing her.

“We’re not just separated. We’re divorcing.”

I waited for her to go on.

“We were married for twenty-three years.”

She didn’t say it, but no math required—they’d been married as long as I’d been alive.

“Like I said, Dawn. Life gets more complicated.”

I nodded as if I understood.

“Sometime I’ll really tell you about it,” she said.

We sat there quietly for a second. “The house feels too empty,” she finally added, “but I’m adjusting.”

“Not that this will help all that much,” I offered, “but I’d love to invite myself up for another weekend, this time with a more reliable transportation plan.”

“I’d love that.” She smiled.

We sat for a long, good moment, and then she put her hands on the bed to push herself up. “You must be exhausted. And you still have some calls to make.”

I stood up with her cell phone in hand. “It’s true, I do.”

She walked me to the door and gave me a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” I squeezed her hand.

“Sleep tight,” she said, squeezing back.

It wasn’t as if I’d suddenly become Helen’s confidante, and there was a good chance she’d talked about what was going on with her, albeit briefly, as much for my sake as hers. But still, I took the elevator to my room feeling glad to have had at least a moment where it was about her, not about me.

Back in my room, I wrapped myself up in a warm hotel bathrobe and turned on my laptop to search my e-mail for phone numbers. I jotted them on the hotel notepad, then started by dialing my sister at home.

“It’s Dawn,” I said when Sarah answered.

“Hey. Where are you calling from?” she asked.

I’d called in the middle of Pacific time zone toddler bedtime, and as I told her what had happened, I listened to the machinery of her evening seize up, with all the grating and yowling of gears thrown off the tracks.

“Hold on,” she said. I heard her mumble something to her husband and then heard the girls shriek and bawl as she walked out of the room.

And then she was someplace quiet, and she asked me everything: Exactly what happened? Where was I? Was I okay? Had I gotten anything out of the apartment? What was I going to do? What did I need from her? After just a few of my answers, she decided what I needed from her was a rescue visit.

I hadn’t felt like I could ask her to fly out, but now that she had offered, I cried and said yes, please.

Sarah put the phone down for a few minutes to go back to the girls’ room and talk with her husband, and when she came back, she kept me on the phone while she booked her ticket. She’d be arriving at JFK the next afternoon. Peter was going to take a few days off work to stay home with the kids. All the grandparents were around too. She was sure it’d be fine.

“Have you called Mom or Dad yet?” she asked.

“I was going to call them next,” I said.

“Do you want me to call them instead?” she offered.

Just when I’d thought I couldn’t be any more grateful to her than I already was . . . The answer was yes, I wanted her to call them. I didn’t think I could describe the whole thing again, let alone twice again, and there was a good chance their reactions would be either over-the-top or underwhelming, neither of which was exactly what I needed. But I stopped before I said yes to Sarah’s offer. Part of treating my parents as if their stories were over was seeing them as fixed characters, as if they would always react in perfectly predictable ways. I should call them. I should give them the chance to surprise me.

“It’s okay, Sarah. I’ll do it. But thank you, seriously, thank you.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow,” Sarah said.

“See you tomorrow,” I answered, with warm, leaky tears.

First, I called my mom. When I said “fire,” her voice went red with panic. She asked if I’d been to the hospital to get checked out. She asked if I’d saved my immunization records, which I took to be her panicky stand-in for important papers of all sorts. She asked where I was staying that night. The more questions I answered, the calmer she became, and it was only a few minutes until she was comforting me instead of the other way around. I told her about losing her letters, and how it wasn’t even the biggest deal, but how I felt so sad about it.

“Sweetie,” she answered, “I just want to hug you and sing you to sleep. I’m hugging you right now. Can you feel it?”

I really
could
feel it.

“I can be on the first flight in the morning,” she said. I knew this wasn’t really true. Some Mary Kay ladies drive pink Cadillacs, but some, like my mom, were lucky if they could pay their health insurance every month. She wasn’t in the position to buy last-minute plane tickets.

“Sarah is coming tomorrow,” I told her, realizing I should have let her know that very first thing.

“I’m driving over there tonight with some things for you, then,” she said.

“That’d be great,” I said. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Old clothes or banana bread or a Mary Kay face mask. But whatever it was, I’d be happy for it.

When I called my dad, as soon as I told him what had happened I told him Sarah had already booked a flight.

“I’ll come too,” he said.

Maybe this is exactly what I should have expected. What kind of parents don’t offer to fly across the country when their daughter is in real need? But I hadn’t actually thought they’d be so ready to get on a plane. Not that they didn’t love me, just that I knew traveling wasn’t a matter of whipping out the frequent flyer miles or the platinum card for them. But deeper than that was a feeling that had started with their divorce and then intensified when I’d gone so far away for college and stayed so far away after: I’d stopped thinking that I could count on them. Yet here they were, proving just how much they were still there for me. They weren’t going to buy me an apartment or serve as my healthy-marriage role models, but they loved me and Sarah, and they were good people worth emulating in plenty of ways.

I talked my dad out of coming. I told him maybe next week, after Sarah had to go home.

Finally, he said, “Do
you
want to come home?” He’d had to work hard, waiting so long to say it.

I paused and considered. What
was
keeping me here? Not friends or love or the pain of packing. I was free to go. But as I thought about leaving, my brain jumped to an image of the night on the Brooklyn Bridge with Elliot. Scratch him from the picture, and the edges of the city still stood bright against the water, doubled in their beauty. The taxis still trailed over the bridge and zipped up and down the avenues like golden fireflies. The glittering lights still felt like countless pinpoints of potential. So much could happen for me here.

“I want to stay,” I finally answered quietly.

“Okay,” he said in a sweet, soft voice. Like he was finally accepting it, not just for this moment, but for good.

I hung up feeling like an overwatered flower, all droopy with love and fatigue.

I should have gone to bed then, but I decided to make one more phone call. Up-in-flames apartment buildings overrode friend breakups, or so I figured.

I didn’t have to look at my notepad to dial. I knew Robert’s number.

I counted the rings. Three, four . . . voice mail.

What sort of message was I supposed to leave? My apartment building (sob) burned (sob) down (double sob)? I considered it, then I just said, “Call me, will you?”

I’d imagined he might not answer, and for that reason, I’d also jotted down Lily’s number. It was late, but I dialed anyway.

Three rings, four rings . . .

“Dawn, what a surprise,” Lily answered. The way she said it, it didn’t sound like a happy surprise.

“Oh, hi. Sorry, I’m not calling too late, am I?”

“No, it’s fine,” she said, but again it didn’t really sound like it.

Usually Lily was more of a firecracker of friendliness.

“Well, I’m actually trying to track down Robert. He wouldn’t happen to be with you, would he?” I tried to sound casual.

“Funny you should ask. I guess that means he didn’t tell you he dumped me.”

“Uh, wow, no, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” And then I added, as if I needed to explain further, “We haven’t really been talking lately.”

“Yeah, well, we actually broke up earlier tonight,” she said. “I thought he might have called you.”

“No, he didn’t.”

On the other side of the phone, she sniffled, and I was pretty sure she was crying.

“Lily, are you okay?”

“What a stupid thing to ask,” she scoffed.

She sure was good at speaking her mind.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . are you all by yourself tonight?”

“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice broke as she said it.

That morning at five o’clock when I’d been huddled in the bodega on my corner watching my second fire of the day, if you’d asked me how many bars I was planning on hitting up that night, I would have said zero. Apparently, the answer was two.

An evening of magnanimity from Regina Greene, Gerri Vans, XADI Crockett, Helen Hensley, and my sister and parents had primed me for generosity. After a few more minutes, Lily conceded that yes, she could—sniff, sob—really use some company. I changed out of my bathrobe and back into my black dress and hailed a cab, grateful once again for the cash XADI had given me that morning. I’d never expected to be in the position of comforting Lily, but here I was, headed her way.

Chapter
Eighteen

P
redictably, Lily lived on the Upper East Side, and although the plan was for me to meet her at her place and then take her out for a drink, as soon as she opened the door it was clear from the mascara dripping off her chin that we wouldn’t be going anywhere.

It was also clear that I’d underestimated the size of her trust fund. The apartment sprawled in all directions, including a sizable terrace off the living room.

“It’s three bedrooms,” she said, following my eyes. “I know, it’s ridiculous, but my parents thought I should have ‘room to grow.’ Do you know what Robert said when he broke up with me? He said he thought I was too dependent on my parents.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from him,” I said.

“That’s what I said!”

We sat down on the couch together.

“So what’s the plan? Rogue Taxidermy?”

“I haven’t gotten that far yet.” She laughed. “Though we should definitely look up their latest offerings. Pickled sheep brains might be just the thing.” Then she looked toward the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Well, maybe something like hot chocolate,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. “Or hot chocolate with bourbon.”

We went to the kitchen and heated up some milk over the stove. Lily took a box of Kleenex with her, and as we leaned against the cupboards, she proceeded to wipe her tears with tissue after tissue, dramatically wadding each one and throwing it to the ground when she was done. By the time the bourbon cocoa was ready, the floor was covered.

We finally got around to what was going on with me, and I started with Elliot.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she said. Then her outrage seemed to crystallize. “You’re going to write an article back. Even just a letter to the magazine. You have to. He does not get the last word in print.”

“I might get around to that eventually,” I said, “but I probably have some other things to take care of first. Uh, well, uh, my apartment building also burned down this morning?”

I said it like a question. Like I wasn’t sure it was actually true.

She slammed her bourbon cocoa on the counter and gave me an openmouthed look of incredulity, with a cocked eyebrow that said “You’re crazy.” Not so much that she didn’t believe me, more that she couldn’t believe I’d told her about Elliot first.