The Vanishing Year (15 page)

CHAPTER
15

I leave Washington Square and hop on the F train at the West Fourth Street station. The subway is mostly empty because it is two o'clock on a Monday. In April, people walk. They've been confined to subways and cabs for four months, so come spring the sidewalks flood with people: no distance is too long. A lone violinist hunkers down in front of the subway door, his bow crying a haunting melody that I don't recognize, the upturned baseball hat at his feet is empty. When the brakes squeal at Twenty-Third Street, I bend down and fold two dollars behind the brim. He gives me a watery smile and returns to his swaying.

Once I emerge on street level, I join the throng of moving people and walk north for five blocks until I reach Manhattan's flower district. The street is filled with tall green trees, grass, even a large, tilting palm, potted in thick black plastic, its fronds cupping the hood of a Lincoln Town Car. The jungle street, we always called it. The macadam is wet from the misters, the damp pavement and lush greens providing a unique perfume. The early morning rush has dissipated,
leaving only the workers, the warehouse movers, designers, shop owners, and a few passers-through.

I hesitate outside the door, just long enough for Javi to spot me and whistle. His fishnet shirt is pulled tight against his bulging chest and he's paired it with white cutoffs and a pair of nude patent leather high heels. He slinks like a cat and, when he smiles, I can almost see the canary, caught and fluttering between his pointed teeth. I roll my eyes and straighten my back. Some ribbing will come.

“Well, well. I hardly recognize you,
guapa.
” He
tsks
at me and then calls over his shoulder, “Elisa! Eliiiiisa!”

When she appears in the doorway, she's wiping her hands on a black work towel that is clipped to her waist. Her blonde hair is streaked with white and secured with an oversize blue bow. She hovers in the doorway, framed by protruding pink orchids and purple lisianthus. A sixty-year-old Alice in Wonderland. She steps aside and motions me into the shop.

“Zoe. Lydia said you'd come. I didn't believe her.” Elisa has one tone. Clipped. Her diction always seemed slightly Eastern European to me, but years ago, she had family come to visit from Texas and Lydia swore they'd said she'd grown up there.

“Elisa,” I breathe out. I'm in her world now. This woman, who had on occasion reduced me to tears because the hydrangeas were not precisely the blue she'd “had in mind.” An image comes to mind of late nights in the warehouse, pulling leaves and bleeding as she towers over me, clucking with soft disapproval.

She straightens to her full five feet, her childlike hands patting down her pockets like she's forgotten something. Soft, thin lines pucker around delicately painted petal-pink lips. A pair of butterfly glasses balances on the bridge of her nose.

“Are you back to work?”

“Not today.” I don't feel as confident as I pretend but she nods, conceding. It's the first time I can ever remember controlling the conversation. “Today is a . . . visit of sorts. Is Lydia in?”

“She is. We are starting to prepare for the Krable wedding.” She twirls a headless stem in her fingers, studying me. I shift my purse from one shoulder to the other and pretend to study the industrial shelving lining the walls. It's new.

Krable? I cock my head to the side. “Norman?”

“His daughter, Sophie.”

I didn't know he had a daughter. Come to think of it, he likely has several, and possibly some he doesn't even know about.

She grins, all Cheshire cat. “I am surprised you are not invited.” She clucks and just like that, I'm reduced again. An outsider for life, an observer of certain circles, not a participant. Elisa with her award-winning designs and sought-after events. Henry with his charisma, a fat checkbook, and fluid pen.

The Saturday after Henry proposed, I had fled to the shop at six a.m., breathless and heady, in the clothes I'd worn the day before, my hair matted and bed-tousled, smelling of Henry's cologne and the warm, soft, slight musk of sex.

“I'm engaged!” I flashed my hand in front of Lydia's face and Javi snatched my finger, turning it one way then the other, whistling at the size of the diamond. We all squealed and jumped up and down, because of
Henry Whittaker.

“Zoe Whittaker is the most elegant name I've ever heard.” Javi jutted out a hip and glided around the shop, twirling a make-believe train in his hand. “You gotta act the part now, bitch. You are
not
cut out for grace like that. Look at your face. I see three holes, not including that big-ass mouth. What is that fine man thinking?” He pointed his long, filed nails at my eyebrow ring, my lip ring, and my nose stud, and held up three fingers.

Lydia threw a bucket of clippings at him. “Shut up, Javi. You're just jealous.”

“Who is jealous of whom?” Elisa stood between the shop and the warehouse, her sleeves rolled up.

“Henry asked Zoe to marry him,” Lydia supplied, and there was a beat of silence.

“Henry . . .
Whittaker.
” Elisa shifted a bucket of blooms from one hip to the other. “Engaged?”

“New York's most eligible bachelor is no longer,” Lydia singsonged.

Elisa onced me over, head to toe, and then crooked her finger. “Come with me.” She pointed at Lydia and Javi. “You two, stay.”

I had followed her into the warehouse, a wide-open seemingly endless bay of stainless steel and concrete used to assemble millions of dollars' worth of arrangements a year. Elisa plunked the bucket onto one of the long tables and turned to face me.

“Your courtship was what? A month?”

“Almost four.” I had five inches on Elisa and I used them. My chin hovered around her forehead.

“That is nothing. You know nothing about each other. Henry is . . . a complicated man, Zoe. I don't know him well, but I've known him for a few years now. He wants a wife, he's made no bones about that.”

“He loves me.” I had meant it to sound strong but it dribbled out, like weak spittle.

“You have talent. You have a future here. Do you know that?” Her voice was soft, but stern. Her eyes, over the brim of her glasses, flared.

“I'm not going anywhere, Elisa.”

“You say that now. Henry's wife will not work as someone he, himself, could hire. These people, they don't operate like that.”

“You have Nolan.” Elisa's partner for the past thirty years was wealthy, in real estate. Prior to Henry, dating him,
loving him,
I'd never tried to attract men from these circles. Too high profile, too public. Henry, with long, strong hands, veined and powerful, molded me into someone new. Like putty.

“Nolan is not in the same league as the likes of Henry Whittaker. Believe me. You've been to their parties, their benefits, their galas. It's a pretend world, Zoe. All diamond and glitter facade.” She moved closer to me, her breath hot on my face, her fingers wrapped around my bicep. “Made of glass and just as fragile.”

“I love it here. Okay?” I'd shaken my arm out of her grasp and she'd stepped back, shaking her head.

“Don't lose you.” She stared at me, her eyes slits above the top of her glasses.

Who was that, exactly? She'd patted her hair back into place and huffed to the back of the room.

Henry and I married three months later. Shortly after that, I'd quit to travel the world, believing that the choices I was making had no repercussions, that my leaving would affect no one but me.

Now, Elisa is poised in front of me, a reminder that she is forever right. I am back to grovel for my position. Javi bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet in barely contained joy, his head bouncing back and forth between us, like he's about to witness a fight. She points him to the back room and inside the small shop front, points to a chair. “Sit.” Javi shuffles through the metal double doors, and I'd bet my wedding ring he's hovering, ear pressed to the crack between them.

The storefront is barely a store. It doesn't serve to walk-ins, just by appointment only. It contains a desk and a large glass-front cooler. You can order small bouquets, exotic arrangements, mostly castoffs. If you know Elisa, she'll make you anything. If you don't, she'll turn the door sign.

She busies herself pulling together blooms by color, as they arrive to the warehouse bundled by type and color. “You haven't been gone so long.” Creamy peach roses mingle with apricot tulips, and I close my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I have no qualms with welcoming you back, Zoe. You've always shown huge promise as a designer. You have an impeccable eye for incorporating modern trends with classic looks.”

I nod. I've never gotten a compliment like this from Elisa. Ever, ever. Wait until I tell Lydia, if she still even cares. I can't believe I had to wait until I was no longer working there to hear it.

I can hear Javi singing, his Barry White voice echoing off the concrete walls. I hear other voices, employees I no longer recognize, hired to process, leaving the design work to Elisa and Lydia. I know from experience that they've been at it since the wee hours of the morning. Weeks of large events, celebrity weddings, city galas, and once a mayoral ball: the days start at three a.m.

“What I'd like to know,” Elisa continues in her even, flat voice, “is why now? Why will Henry let you come back now? Will you just up and leave again when he says so?”

“Henry never asked me to quit. That was my idea,” I interject. It's a true statement. We'd been traveling, sometimes weeks at a time, Paris, Rome, Madrid. Henry wanted to show me the world, and it was impossible to keep a schedule. Was I supposed to just tell him no? Madrid can wait—we have the Bankers' Ball!

I had
done things.
I heard “Ave Maria” performed by a hundred-member a capella choir, in the Pantheon. I'd met the pope, shaken his wizened hand, his eyes kind behind papery, lash-less eyelids. Yes, I'd given up my little job in a fancy flower shop. No, I no longer dyed my hair fuchsia and purple. Were people not allowed to grow?

“People change, Elisa. I'm young. I had an opportunity
to
do something
with my life. Outside of this city. When we came back, I decided to use my newfound money for something good and got involved in CARE. I'm
allowed
to do these things. Not you, or Henry, can change that.”

Elisa pulls out a large bundle of yellow roses and, mumbling to herself, she throws them in the large, green plastic trash bucket.

“Is it
your
life, Zoe? All I ask is that you make sure of that.” She waves me away, back toward the warehouse, where I can hear a boom box blasting “Respect.” I hold up my hand, palm out, tired of her cryptic morality messages.

The warehouse is overwhelmed with color, an overabundance of light pink. I spot Lydia in the corner, instructing a small dark-haired woman on what to look for in a bloom. The girl is nodding and fidgeting with her apron string. Lydia sees me and flashes me a grin, nodding in Javi's direction. I shake my head. She motions to the girl, who nods and continues to strip leaves, slicing the stems on a bias with a sharp knife. She stops every few minutes to examine her thumb. I look at my own thumb, the skin still tough and lined with the fine, delicate scars. I run my index finger over the pad and feel the healed incisions. When I flip my hands over, palms down, the skin on the top is newly smooth and creamy, groomed by manicures and coddled with expensive lotions.

“I don't think it's even possible to cut my skin anymore. It has to be made of leather by now.” Lydia stands in front of me, her eyes bright and blinking, her mouth curved in a genuine smile. Gone are the double entendres and chilly pretenses from last week. She radiates warmth.

I remember why I'm there. “Can we talk somewhere
he's
not?” I jerk my head in Javi's direction. He's giving me the stink-eye from across the room, whispering to one of the warehouse runners behind his hand, laughing in my direction. “What is his deal?”

Lydia shrugs and rolls her eyes. “You know Javi. He's just a pain in the ass. He thinks you abandoned us. He's wrapped his own insecurities around you, thinks that you think you're better than us.”

“I did come back. I have come back to say hi. I was
on a trip.
For
months.
What the hell, Lyd?”

She leads me to a corner in the front of the warehouse and gives me a metal folding chair. We both sit so our knees are touching. Her foot bobs and I know she wants a cigarette, but when Elisa lurks around, you can't just simply take a smoke break. I remember the drill, you wait for an errand you can conveniently volunteer for, otherwise Elisa's eyes dart around like an eagle, performing a constant head count. “Come on, you know him. He's got a stick up his ass. He thinks you're a Richie Rich now, all judgy of his wardrobe. That you're too good for his scene. I don't know why—”

I cut her off because I can't keep it in anymore. “I found her. Lydia, I found my mother.” I reach out and grab her shoulders without even realizing it and she looks startled.

“Wait. What?”

“I found my birth mother. She agreed to see me Friday. I got Cash, this reporter I've weirdly become friends with, to take me. Can you come with us?” I throw it out there, reckless and unplanned. I suddenly want a guard wall of friends.

“I can't. It's Cissy's birthday.” Cissy is Lydia's mom. A freckled, blonde version of Lydia, their faces identical. When I met her, in the kitchen of Lydia's childhood home in Woodbridge, New Jersey, surrounded by rooster decorations and rustic signs painted with things like
Fresh Eggs
and
Home of the Free * Because of the Brave,
she'd just baked a pie. She wiped her hands on an apple apron and handed me a homemade chocolate chip cookie from a mooing cow cookie jar. Lydia always took umbrage with her childhood: It had been too happy to retain any sort of street cred, despite her pierc
ings and tattoos. Cissy never batted an eyelash at her punk daughter, her full, fleshy arms wobbling as she hugged both of us at once, as though I was somehow included, too. She smelled like Jean Naté.