The Vanishing Year (19 page)

“You didn't know, did you?” She cocks her head to the side. I pause. I'm so accustomed to self-sufficiency that it feels uncomfortable to relent, even with this small an admission.

“No. I didn't know.” I search the restaurant again and still don't see him. “He's been distracted. It's okay. For how long?”

“A week.” She gives me a comforting smile. “Henry is a tough man, Zoe. I've known him for a long time. I never thought he'd recover from Tara.”

“How so?”

“Oh,” she waves her hand around, her bracelets clattering together. She smiles guiltily and lowered her voice. “He was a mess for a while. Determined to find out who was driving the car. That sort of thing. He seemed to all but forget about it after he met you. You're very different.”

The wine warms my cheeks. “Did you know her well?” I tilt my head back and take the last swig, the red burning the back of my throat.

Muriel gives me a surprised look. “No, I never met her.”

“Really? Why not?” The back of my mouth goes dry.

She leans in, taps my shoulder once. “Tara was agoraphobic, dear. No one ever met her.”

•  •  •

Muriel moves on, circulates among the crowd. Eventually, I find Henry and hover next to him but somehow get pushed outside the circle. He doesn't make any gestures to include me, and I border on being ignored.

As the night wears on, I grow more and more angry. Why did he invite me? If he's leaving tomorrow, why not enjoy the night together? Why not
tell me you're leaving tomorrow?

Finally, I grip his elbow and drag him away. “You're going to Japan. You never told me that.”

“Relax, Zoe.” His tone is dismissive and his eyes narrow. “I was going to tell you tonight.”

“Muriel Young even knows. Reid Pinkman knows. I look like a fool.”

“You're being overdramatic. You don't look like anything. Everyone knows how busy I am.” He shakes loose from my grip and holds up his fingers to a waiter, indicating another drink. He turns back to me, his eyes dark. “Besides, I thought you'd know already. You're so cozy with Reid these days.”

“What does that mean?” I snap.

“Oh, I'm sure you know.” So Reid told Henry I was at the gym.

At that moment, Peter Young taps the microphone and asks everyone to sit for dinner. Henry places his hand on the small of my back, to guide me.

We file into two sides of a straight, long table. It's a larger crowd than I originally thought, about thirty people. Henry sits to my left and I expect him to pull my chair out but he turns to the man next to him, ignoring me. I've never seen Henry act so impolitely; he opens doors for women and carries grocery bags for little old ladies on the street. Reid sits on my right.

“No date tonight?” I raise my eyebrows and take a sip of water. Henry's back is inches from my face, an obstinate wall.

“Not tonight.” Reid has what is known as boyish charm. Round, pink cheeks, shiny like a newborn's bottom, and long, curling eyelashes so dark he looks like he's wearing makeup. I've seen women (girls, really) actually swoon from his smile. In this day and age of smartphones, he still keeps a little black book.

Reid is one of those people you meet and instantly know you could be friends. Almost everyone feels this way about
him. If you shake his hand, your mind spins with all the future memories you could have, all the mischief you could make. You could almost envision him, a grown adult, egging suburban houses and peeling away in his yellow Porsche. People get confused,
Have we met before, maybe when we were young?

Even now, as he talks, I find myself thinking back to the Cynthia night. The night before Musha Cay. The night he helped me, rescued me. I almost laugh at my own dramatizing.
Rescue me.

“I need to find a wife. I'm almost forty, you know.” He unfolds a napkin and takes a swig from his whiskey glass.

“No. I thought you were in your late twenties. Younger than me.” I'm honestly surprised.

“I'm an old man. Not in spirit, like your Henry. He's an old soul. But I'm not getting younger. Know of any single women who are looking for a husband?” He rests his chin on his palm and faces me, his apple cheeks red from the alcohol.

“In New York City?” I raise my eyebrows. “Are you kidding? We must have the highest available woman per capita ratio in the country. Wear a sandwich board and stand on the street.”

He snorts, a quick huff of air through his nose, and shakes his head. “Find me someone. I need a smart woman, independent. No plastic surgery. No fascination with measuring their thigh gap.”

“What in the world is a thigh gap?” I blink, twice. I'm not sure I want to know. The concerns of half my gender baffle me. In Henry's world, there is no shortage of beautiful, wealthy women who behave like teenagers with limitless bank accounts.

“See? Don't you have any friends who are like you? Conscious of the world? Grateful? That's our problem. No one is fucking grateful anymore. Look at you, with CARE. You're grateful. I bet you were poor growing up, right?”

I shift in my chair. At that moment, the sashimi is placed in front of me, beautiful with its brightly colored fish and green vegetables, and a swirl of scarlet miso on the square, white plate.

“You don't have to answer that. Don't you have friends? I need to find someone like you.” He slurs the
like
and the
you
together. At that moment, I realize that Henry has turned around and is paying close attention to our conversation. I meet his gaze and his eyes narrow. He snaps open his napkin in one quick wrist motion and gives a short shake of his head, staring stonily ahead to some point on the far wall. I imagine it's one of Henry's most marketable skills: the stonewall. His face smooths out, perfectly unlined, like chiseled marble. A
David
statue of my husband and just as cool to the touch. While anger heats most people up, buzzes them and makes them hyper, it has the opposite effect on Henry. He becomes cold and still, his flesh hardens. A corpse taken straight from the morgue refrigerator.

Reid blathers next to me, his words skipping and sliding into each other, oblivious to the undercurrent between Henry and me. I lean to my left, nudge Henry with my elbow, press my fingertips into his quadriceps, he doesn't flinch.

The sashimi plates are replaced by dinner plates, large and gleaming with impossibly small portions. Four courses come and go, with Henry smiling at Muriel across the table and Reid chattering to anyone who will listen. At dinner's conclusion, while everyone is drinking dessert wine and sherry, Henry stands, his hand on my elbow, and with a wide apologetic smile ushers me to the waiting car.

In the car, the radio plays classical music at low volume, like Henry always instructs the driver to do. The city street passes silently by, life on mute.

“Say something, please.” I run my fingernail along the window edge, inexplicably damp with condensation.

“I don't want to worry about my wife and other men. I'll say that.” His hands are clasped across his knees, his back rigid. The ball joint of his jaw trembles underneath his skin.

“Is this about Cash or Reid?” I feel my shoulders droop. I'm so tired of this conversation, for no reason. I want to bring up the blonde but I can't. It's a big new door and the room behind it is filled with unknowable variables. I'm so tired. “I've never given you any reason to worry. That's your own doing.”

“Zoe.”

In the apartment, he says nothing and goes right to his office. The door closes with a heavy click, a hushed echo in the marble hallway. I go to bed, knowing, acknowledging for the first time, that we are in trouble. Our life, not what I expect or want, but just the way it is. I realize that tomorrow Henry is leaving for Japan and I don't know for sure when he's coming home. It occurs to me that maybe he won't be. That our marriage will be over.

I spin the charm bracelet around my wrist. Such a unique, creative gift, so out of character for Henry. Just last weekend, he'd been windblown and free. Loving. Writing poetry, or at least copying poetry. And now, back in the city we call home, he's this other man again. Cold. Calculating.

I feel the bed move underneath me. The blankets pull back and Henry's hand, soft as silk across my skin. He pulls me against him and my stomach swoops with relief. We've always done this, we've always made up, made love, nothing has ever been permanent. I was silly to think otherwise. His breath flutters, hot in my ear.

Before I know it, his hands push up my nightgown and he's on top of me, in me, hard and pressing, his wet gasps against my collarbone come quick and his hand grips my hip as he grunts, once, twice. It's over in a minute. He pants quietly next to me, his palm smooths my hair off my forehead.
In the dark, he stands up, the moonlight reflecting off a sheen of sweat on his skin and I realize that he is naked. That he came to me for one purpose and I've served it. He's leaving. He pauses in the doorway, his hand resting on the doorknob, a thin, white line of light reflected down his back and leg. His face is turned and in the half-light, his mouth opens and closes, like he wants to say something, and still, stupidly, my heart catches on the unspoken maybe.

“I'll see you in a week, Zoe.”

CHAPTER
19

The Japan trip has eased some of the pressure. I could not have reasonably told Henry about Caroline if we were a) barely speaking and b) he was out of the country. Maybe. Who knows? I've decided not to care. The weather has suddenly gotten hot, in the eighties, and today, it's all anyone can talk about. Cash's neighbor, the gas station attendant, even Cash himself. I'm meeting my mother for the first time and all I can think about is whether she will look as much like me as her picture? Will she have the oddball habit of tugging on her ear when she's nervous? Will she bite her thumbnail cuticle? And yet, all I seem to be conversing about is temperature and humidity.
They say tomorrow is supposed to be even worse!
Even as I hear myself say the words, I can't fathom anything about tomorrow.

We take the subway to Queens and walk to his mother's house from the station. His childhood home is a square clapboard, smooshed in on the sides like someone had taken it between their palms. The street is lined with similar structures, variations of dinginess, and yet there are flowers in the window boxes (some are plastic) and well-worn but
not tattered American flags hanging from the flagpoles—the kind that stand tall, not the suburban idea of a flagpole that hangs jauntily from the porch post, usually draped with a nylon slip of fabric silk-screened with a smiling cat,
Have a Mawr-velous Day!
The lawns are shorn, bare in some spots, but maintained.

His mother's house is empty. She's working, he says, a doctor's office receptionist, and I nod. Cash waves his hand around and mutters something about the neighborhood, how it used to be better. It's the way the middle class always feel around the rich: apologetic. I'm used to the excuses, the explanations. Truthfully, there's no appropriate response. My money is not mine. We are the same, Cash and I. But to say that denies the privilege that comes with Henry's influence. Instead, I nod and smile. We climb in Cash's late-model Honda and head onto I-87 North.

The city recedes and Cash turns on the radio to a Top 40 station that plays music I've never heard. I think about how that's possible, that I'm thirty years old and I'm not familiar with contemporary pop music. Lydia would be appalled. Our apartment in Hoboken was never quiet, always bursting with underground punk, hard-core rock, and then sometimes just blasting the latest Pink song. Lydia lived her life in music. Loud, harsh, thrumming beats for Saturdays and soft jazz for Sunday hangovers. The past year of my life has been outlined in shades of silence.

“What will you say?” Cash turns the volume down on the radio.

“I have no idea.” I shrug.

“What do you want from her? A mother?” He avoids my gaze and taps the steering wheel to a softly thumping beat.

“No,” I'm quick to reply. Maybe. “Do you know what it's like to have no one?”

“You have Henry.”

“Henry's not around. He's in Japan. I didn't even know he was going.”

“You were the model couple at the benefit.”

The benefit seems like ages ago. We
were
the model couple then, what was that—two and a half weeks ago? I remember his hands flitting across my shoulders, fastening the solitaire diamond, and then hovering there, reluctant to let go. Everything has gone downhill since the benefit. Molly McKay and Gunther Rowe. Henry's erratic behavior, his violence and mood swings. I can't reconcile this man with the Henry in my memory. But now, removed from Henry and Lydia without the pressure to be one person or the other, the transformation is a bit clearer. The day Henry gently suggested that a nose stud was juvenile.
You're too beautiful for these teenager endeavors. Like you're thirteen and trying to piss off your mother.
I took it out because I was twenty-seven and felt immediately silly. It was impulsive anyway, Lydia's influence, my newly short hair spiked magenta. Piercings. Attempts to hide, but at the same time discover who I would become, with Lydia's help whether she knew why or not. That night, I popped it out, tucking it under the sapphire necklace he'd given me as a replacement in my jewelry box.

Or maybe it was how he'd taken my short, spiky lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger:
This is such a beautiful color, is it natural? I bet it would be knockout if you let it grow.
Subtle comments here and there about my clothing, how they reflected my spirit but
not my intelligence
.

And then came the waves of gifts, cashmere, silk, Versace, and Donna Karan. Thick, draping fabrics. I'd stand in the closet and hold the softest silk to my cheek, like a child's security blanket. Fabrics I didn't even know existed, much less thought I could own, their colors vibrant and buttery rich. Suddenly, my thrift store plaid skirts and lace tops felt pop-bubblegum. Cheap. Evelyn used to say that
it takes a
lifetime to grow into the person you'll become.
As I stood in the closet, facing all this glorious elegance, she all but whispered in my ear.

Then, gradually, I started wearing Henry's clothes to the flower shop. Then I wore them all the time. Eventually I bagged up all my old stuff and gave it to Penny to donate to Goodwill until the last of me was gone. At the time, I didn't feel sad; the parts of me that were old, torn, ratted, and worn were being shucked away in plastic bags. The best parts of my life were yet to come. Hemingway once said that bankruptcy happens “Gradually and then suddenly.” Maybe that's how I became Henry's wife.

“You're not the same person,” Lydia scoffed one day as we processed, sliding the stems through our fingers, slicing the bottoms on a bias with our knives, shearing off leaves.

“No one is ever the same person. Stagnant people are boring.” I was defensive.

“So you're saying I'm stagnant? I'm boring?” She stopped cutting and stared at me, her nostrils flared, an angry horse about to charge.

“No. I'm saying I was bored. With me.” I plunked a gangly zinnia into the nearest stainless water bucket.

“But what you're really saying is that you're bored with
us.”
Javi stood behind Lydia, his hands resting on his hips. “Will you come to Paula's show later?” Javi asked the question with a sarcastic sneer. Paula, Javi's partner, played bass in a punk band in the basement of a bar on Tuesday nights. Except that night, Henry had opera tickets. I raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth, unable to verbalize the rejection. “Yeah. We didn't think so.” He turned and stomped off.

I shrugged in Lydia's direction, like
What's his problem?

She twisted her mouth. “I'm with him here, Zo. You're too . . . something for us.” She clicked the knife closed and tossed it, clattering, on the stainless steel table.

That night, Henry comforted me, assured me that yes, I had changed a bit, but yes, that was okay. “This is what life is about, Zoe. No one stays the same person forever.” At the time, I snorted through tears. Truly, how many people can one person be?

Now as I sit here in Cash's hot car, the windows down, the warm eighty-degree air rushing my cheeks, I can't help but wonder, am I yet again destined to become someone else? It seems impossible that I will arrive home tonight the same Zoe that left the apartment this morning.

Cash steers the car off the highway and through an elaborate maze of suburban streets. The sign on the side of the road reads
Welcome to Danbury
. It seems like a nice place to live: tree-lined cul-de-sacs, backyards with wooden play gyms, winding driveways with glossy SUVs or black BMWs. He makes a sudden left, sliding the Honda behind a navy blue Audi. The clock on the dash reads 10:55. “We're here.”

•  •  •

I stand just behind a palm fiber doormat printed with a glass of red wine and the words
Welcome! I hope you brought wine!
in a jaunty sideways script. The porch holds two rocking chairs, but they're for show, not function, as evidenced by the thick layer of dust and pollen that coat their seats. The house is large and looming, a mix of sunny yellow siding and brick facade. The gardens are sculpted out of arborvitae and impeccably round topiaries.

The door swings open before I ring the bell. Caroline blinks twice at me, as though I were a FedEx man without a package.

“Who's in the car?” She squints toward the driveway.

“I, um, had a friend bring me, but he thinks maybe we should talk alone.” I shift my weight from one foot to the other and hitch my purse higher on my shoulder. I use the opportunity to study her face: clear, with only the barest hint
of crow's feet at her eyes. It's possible that we look the same age.

She opens the door a crack and motions me in. The foyer is grand, thirty feet high, with an imposing chandelier. She closes the door quickly and quietly behind me.

“We can sit in here.” She brushes past me and I follow her into a sitting room. The windows are floor to ceiling and the room is flooded with light. The carpet is white, the furniture is white. I squint.

She sits to face me and we study each other curiously. She's slighter than I am, almost waif-like, and dressed in jeans and an oversize long-sleeved T-shirt. Her hair is long, just as lustrous and thick as my own but pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. We have the same watery, cerulean eyes, the same long but slightly too large nose. The same thin, curved upper lip, but pouty lower lip.

“We have to be brief. I have . . . an appointment.” Her eyes flick to the clock on the far wall and back to me. She picks at imaginary lint on her jeans. “You kept your name. I didn't think Evelyn did that?”

“She didn't. She named me Hilary. I changed it to Zoe when I moved east.”

She looks startled. “Why?”

“Um . . . it seemed easier somehow. Than taking a third name, I guess. I was escaping my past life. It's a long story.” I scan the room, white and glass and sleek black art. It's all so cold.

“Zoe. Are you in trouble now?” Her expression is so intense, I almost want to laugh.

“In trouble? No.” I wipe my upper lip delicately with my index finger. “I'm married. To Henry Whittaker, do you know him?”

She shakes her head. “Should I? Is he famous?”

“In some circles.” The conversation is so inane, so civil,
like I'm chatting casually with a bank teller. I run out of words then, and the silence seems to take over the room. I'm not sure what to do with my purse. I sit it on my lap but feel very prim, so I move it to the side and tuck it between me and the white leather arm of the sofa. Inside, I can see my phone has a waiting text message, from Cash. It pops on the locked display.
Everything okay?

“Zoe. What do you want from me?”

My head snaps up. Why does everyone keep asking me that? Cash, Lydia, now Caroline. “To know, I guess. A friendship at best. A meeting to remember, at worst. I guess I'm having a bit of an identity crisis.” I'm surprised by the truth in that, considering I hadn't thought it exactly that way before.

She leans forward, places her hand on my arm. We have the same hands, long thin fingers, with short nail beds. “We can't have a relationship, Zoe. I'm going to tell you a story, not to hurt you or to scare you off, but because it's the truth and I've come to terms with it. Would you like a glass of water?”

I nod my head and she stands up to get it. With her out of the room, I peek into the adjoining room, a stark contrast to the sterility of the one I'm in. It's richly decorated with warm shades of brown, and there are children's toys and books scattered on the floor. One of the couch cushions has been unmoored and lies cockeyed on the floor.

“I don't have any lemon . . .” She bustles in, handing me a glass and perches on the edge of the white leather chair, opposite the couch I'm sitting on. She smooths out her jeans with the palms of her hands. She has the posture of a dancer, straight and confident. “So, the story. Well, when I was seventeen, I fell in love with a boy named Trout Fishman. Not his real name, of course, his real name was Troy. But everyone called him Trout. Get it? Fishman?”

I nodded in the way one does when they've just learned their father was named Trout Fishman.

“Well, he was in a band, played the drums and had a chin dimple. There's something about a chin dimple, right?” When I don't answer, she gives a little cough and continues, “We met the usual way, and dated. I loved him, probably more than he loved me, but I think that's typical in high school. He was a good kid, stayed out of trouble. Until he got his girlfriend knocked up.”

She pauses and for a split second, it occurs to me that he's out there somewhere. Another link, another tether. Someone else to find.

“There was the usual drama at first. Our parents cried, the kids at school whispered. But I hadn't been the first girl to get in trouble and Lord knows I wouldn't be the last. Our parents talked of helping us, so we could finish high school, maybe even go to community college. Trout took electrician classes at the vo-tech school. We were
excited.
But not always. One night, we fought. I was riddled with insecurity, thought I was holding him back. I was a burden. I was seven months pregnant and hormonal. He left, slamming the door behind him and went to blow off steam with his friends. He ended up at some druggie's house, a guy we didn't talk to in school because he was going nowhere. But then again, I was a teen pregnancy statistic so who was I to judge? This guy gave him a handful of quaaludes and told him it would erase all his cares. To a seventeen-­year-old kid, staring at fatherhood and dealing with a hormonal girlfriend, with no job? He couldn't have said anything more perfect. Trout took the whole handful at once. They laughed, thought he'd be stumbling around bumping into walls, they weren't really known to kill you back then. It was the eighties. But Trout had a weak heart, as it turned out. He just couldn't handle a street drug. He had a heart attack that night. Fell into a coma and died a week later.”