The Winters in Bloom (20 page)

“Uh-oh.” He forced a smile. “Is this the scene in the movie when you tell me you’re really an alien?”

He wanted to cheer her up, but he also wanted to put a stop to this, though he couldn’t have said exactly what
this
was. Unfortunately, Kyra ignored his feeble attempt at humor. She looked into his eyes. “Do we really know each other, David? Do you think I know you?”

“Of course we know each other. Honey, we’re under an enormous amount of stress. It’s not the time to—”

“But there are things I haven’t told you.”

“Whatever they are, they won’t change how I feel about you. Please don’t worry about this now.”

She squeezed his hand, but she acted like she hadn’t heard him. “There are things I haven’t shared with you,” she said slowly, “and things you haven’t shared with me. I could tell when we were talking about Courtney, how sure you are that she took him, that there’s something you’re not saying. I understand, but I can’t help worrying what this means for us.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking away from her. “I just . . . I can’t discuss this. I need to go downstairs. I have to find out what they’re doing to find him.” He exhaled. “If anything.”

“It’s all right.” She nodded at the doorway. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and he meant it. He was sorry for saying the word
fault
, which seemed to have started all this. Of course it wouldn’t be Kyra’s fault if someone from her nonexistent family had taken Michael. He would never blame his wife for what had happened today. And though it was, in a sense, his
fault
that Courtney had taken his son, he saw no point in dredging up the past. He’d told Ingle the same thing when the man had pushed him to talk about the specifics of Joshua’s death—and he shrugged off the detective’s claim that this was somehow ironic.

“My field is the history of labor,” David had said.

“No interest in your own history?” Ingle said. “Don’t you think that’s even a little ironic?”

“Just find my ex-wife,” David told him, and Ingle thankfully dropped the topic. Later, David realized his fists had been clenched so tightly during that part of the conversation that he still had marks on his palms.

EIGHTEEN

C
ourtney had
spent a month and a half doing basically nothing but searching for a new job. She’d been aware that the economy was bad, but she hadn’t really understood what this meant until she started getting rejection letters that included apologetic things like “We had hundreds of qualified applicants for this position.” Hundreds of applicants? For a position as a technical writer at a tiny start-up company that paid less than half of what she was making before? And most of the companies didn’t even bother to send rejection letters because, as one recruiter explained, “We get so many résumés that we simply can’t respond to people we don’t intend to interview.” She forced herself to keep applying for any job she was remotely qualified for, even though she was incredibly discouraged. Her phone never rang.

Her phone did, however, play “Get Back” by her favorite rapper, Ludacris. She’d liked rap ever since college, when one of her professors had called hip-hop the future of poetry. “Get Back” was the ringtone she reserved for calls from people like Stefan, when he would call last year and tell her that the title of the painting didn’t mean anything, why was she being so bourgeois about this? Or Jordan, a friend of hers from high school, who liked to call every month or so and brag about her three fabulous children and her house in the Hamptons and her husband, the brilliant surgeon. Or Courtney’s mother, Liz, who’d inspired Courtney to download the ringtone in the first place because it was such a perfect fit:
Get back, mother-mother, you don’t know me like that.

The third word was not actually
mother-mother
, but close enough.

Liz used to call every few weeks, but now that she knew Courtney was unemployed, she called every evening, ostensibly to find out how the job search was going. Courtney knew better than to answer—and Luda warned her not to—but she kept picking up the phone, as if this time might be different. Admittedly, she was desperate to talk to someone after another day spent all alone. But she knew full well that one couldn’t really talk to her mother. One could only listen as Liz described her day in excruciating detail.

Her mother always sounded so breathless; Courtney even interrupted once to ask if she’d been tested for asthma. “I’m just excited, my dear child! You would be, too, if you got out of your house and experienced the wonders of this world!”

Liz was a former hippie who had not only been at Woodstock but had also done some political thing in the sixties in Italy that Courtney had never really understood. David, her ex-husband, the graduate student historian, had listened to it and said Liz’s role had been a lot less important than Liz seemed to believe. She still smoked pot occasionally and always had, as far back as Courtney could remember. And for the last few years she’d spent most of her days with her “life coach,” a woman whose job it was to see that Courtney’s mother “reached her potential.” One of the only things Courtney remembered fondly about Stefan was that he’d said her mother’s life coach was really a babysitter. “She keeps your mother busy and out of your father’s hair,” Stefan said. “What would you call that other than a babysitter?”

It was truer than Courtney had known at the time. Many of the activities her mother reported during these evening calls sounded exactly like something kids would do at camp. One day she went horseback riding out in Amish country. The next day she went to her finger-painting class designed to “free your inner child.” She had another class called “writing your soul.” She went on “adventure days” with other adults, exploring the woods or the shore. She also had what seemed like dozens of spiritual activities: from yoga to her sessions with her Buddhist counselor, who was helping her be more mindful and reflective.

Courtney couldn’t imagine when Liz had time to reflect. Her mother was gone all day, Monday through Friday, as if this were a job. In reality, it was costing her father thousands and thousands of dollars, but he never complained. He’d retired a few years ago from the insurance company where he’d been executive vice president. Maybe he really did want her out of his hair.

One afternoon in the first week of May, her mother spent several hours pretending to be an actress. That wasn’t how she put it, of course. It was yet another class, this one designed to help you “release the people who live within yourself.” Courtney thought the whole thing was the definition of self-indulgent, but that wasn’t what really bothered her. The class had taken place only a few miles from Courtney’s house in Bucks County, which gave her mother a perfect excuse to drop by unannounced.

If only her doorbell had played the Ludacris rap she could have prepared herself. Instead, she went to the door in her black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt that was so stretched out it hung to her knees. Her coffee table was littered with Diet Coke cans and her yogurt cups from lunch and dinner the night before. Her bed pillow and blanket were on the couch, where she’d been lying down, watching a
Law & Order CI
marathon.

“You look awful,” her mother said. Liz was dressed in tight white jeans and a paisley halter top. Courtney wondered if it was possible that after two facelifts, a tummy tuck, a butt lift, and continuous Botox, her sixty-seven-year-old mother actually looked better than she did.

Courtney stepped back to let her in. What choice did she have?

Her mother walked through her living room and dining room to the kitchen in the back of the row house. Courtney didn’t bother to follow. She could hear her mother opening the refrigerator. A moment later, Liz was standing over her with a bottle of water.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said.

Courtney was back on the couch, lying on her side with half her face hidden by her pillow. She’d only muted her TV. She could see Detective Goren tilt his head to face the suspect.

“Just tired,” Courtney said.

Her mother went to the window and pulled up the blinds. “You need some light in here. It’s depressing.”

It was already seven o’clock. Courtney hated watching the sunset, but she didn’t resist.

Her mother plopped down in the leather chair across from the couch and proceeded to tell Courtney all about the acting experience. Apparently, she’d discovered a young boy, an angry toddler, a slutty teenager, and a sarcastic old woman—all living inside herself. “The experience of letting them have a voice was simply amazing! You have to try this, Court. It’s one of the most liberating experiences I’ve had in my life!”

Courtney nodded. Her mother was fond of the word
amazing
. And everything she enjoyed was “liberating,” though Courtney was never sure what she was being liberated from.

By the time her mother was finished, Detective Goren and his partner had gotten the suspect to confess and another hour of the show had begun. Courtney recognized the new episode. It was about an angry chef who killed a woman, though she could no longer remember the motive.

“So you’re just lying around feeling sorry for yourself, is that it?”

“More or less.”

Her mother crossed her toned arms. “As the seventh Dalai Lama said, ‘Who has magnificent self-confidence, and fears nothing that exists? The man who has attained to truth.’”

Courtney nodded again. It was much easier than asking questions, because then she and her mother would end up in an argument. When she was younger, she’d been willing, even eager, to fight with her mother, but for years she hadn’t had the heart for it. Really, no one argued with Liz if they could help it. The woman had so much energy. Courtney felt exhausted just looking at her mother’s excellent posture as she sat in the leather chair, guzzling down her water.

“Remember what the man says, Court.” Her mother gesticulated with the empty water bottle to emphasize her point. “ ‘We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.’”

“The man” was Carlos Castaneda. He was one of her mother’s favorite writers; Courtney had heard this quote a hundred times. She nodded and said she had to go to the bathroom. As she walked upstairs, she thought, you can either go to the bathroom or put up with a full bladder. The amount of work is the same.

When she came back downstairs, her mother was sitting at her dining room table. Courtney’s heart started pounding as she got closer and saw what Liz was up to.

“You know I don’t like it when you do this.” She hoped she sounded calmer than she felt. She reached up and closed the lid of the laptop. “My email is private, Mother.”

“Amy Callahan.” Her mother stood up, with one finger to her lips. “Callahan. Why do I know that name?”

Courtney thought about lying, but she knew her mother would remember soon enough. Liz had read about David and Kyra’s marriage in the paper. She’d even ever so helpfully called Courtney to tell her all the details.

“Amy friended me on Facebook.” Courtney forced a shrug. “She’s some kind of long-lost relative of David’s wife’s.”

“Really? Why on earth would she write to you?”

Courtney went back to lie on the couch. Her mother followed and sat down, but on the edge of the chair now. Her voice was even more breathless than usual. “I asked you a question. Why did she write to you?”

The truth was that Facebook had suggested Amy befriend Courtney, probably because Courtney and David still had enough college friends in common to fool the program into thinking they were connected. Amy sent a message that she was trying to reach David and his wife, but they’d ignored her friend requests so far. “They don’t seem to use Facebook much,” Amy said. Courtney wrote back with the truth. She said that though she’d been married to David, she had no connection with him now other than being friends with his mother. She also admitted that she’d met his wife and child only once. “Actually, the word
met
is too strong,” she wrote, refusing to lie about even the smallest detail. “I’ve seen David’s wife and son, but I haven’t spoken to them.”

She expected Amy Callahan to disappear then, but she didn’t. Her new correspondent wrote back the next day, and the day after she wrote back using Courtney’s personal email, not Facebook. And that was when it occurred to Courtney that Amy might be the
mysterious stranger
the psychic had predicted.

True, mysterious strangers arrive all the time on Facebook: people who want to friend you without even knowing you, to raise their number of friends. And Courtney had gotten several new friend requests since she’d become a fan of the Workplace Bullying Institute—her rather pathetic attempt to send a hint about Betty Jean to her former colleagues. But something was different about Amy Callahan. She was smart and funny and so honest about herself that Courtney couldn’t help but look forward to her emails. Amy said she needed help, but when Courtney asked if she could do anything, Amy said she just needed a friend. “I don’t feel like I belong in life right now, know what I mean?”

God, did Courtney know what she meant.

She tried to explain to her mother the way Facebook recommendations worked, but Liz interrupted, “Have you told David about this?”