When We Were Friends (35 page)

In response, Molly gazed up at me and pulled the phone to her
mouth, and I let her suck on it while I listened to Sydney cooing her love, her wishes and her regrets, sentiments that could have been my own. Spoken in lilting, mothering tones, to my daughter.

Alex didn’t come home Wednesday night, or the next night either. No calls, no explanation, and I lived those days in a sort of limbo, trying not to think but unable to stop thinking.

What if he’d bumped into news coverage about Molly? He might turn on the TV, maybe even drive past a billboard with Molly’s face and start to notice the similarities. Here I felt reasonably protected from reality but out there, anything could happen. What if he’d already realized who Molly was, and was now trying to figure out the full truth of the situation before he decided how to handle it? What if he’d stayed away this long so Molly and I would have a few last days together before he turned us in?

I should’ve realized this life was too good to last. That there’d be consequences for my actions. Star was a firm believer in karma; you’d think she would’ve warned me.

In desperation, I started searching for something that might give me some clue as to where he’d gone, an address book, a letter with a return address, the receipt for a plane ticket. He’d locked his bedroom door, as if he’d known I might go scavenging, so I searched all the kitchen drawers and the drawers in his computer desk. But everything personal was gone, including the notepad I’d found on my first night here, with its various renditions of apologies and professions of love.

I looked through his computer files, but found nothing with a title that seemed remotely personal. I tried unsuccessfully for almost an hour to guess his Outlook password, even looked through his website history: book review sites, credit card and bank links and various Wikipedia articles. The only interesting links I found were following a Google search he’d done on “child abuse” and
“custody.” Was he trying to help me? To see how hard it would be for me to gain custody of Molly if I stopped running and turned myself in? Oh he must be, of course he was. I turned the computer off.

That afternoon I started a mural on Susie and Jack’s living room wall, trying to keep myself distracted. I sketched ocean waves with a pencil, listening to Susie play Peek-a-Boo with Molly, Molly’s laugh every time Susie pulled her hands from her face.

I stepped back from the mural, added another beach umbrella, then started cracking open the cans of paint. I tried to lose myself in the splay of colors, mixing just the right shades for shadows and sun. Normally this was the kind of mural I loved to do, both absorbing and meditative, but my heart wasn’t in it. The painting felt empty, just graffiti splashed on the wall, and for the first time ever I found myself thinking about the meaninglessness of it all. Who cared if I never painted another mural? All this work I was putting in, and whose life would it change?

Finally I put down my brush and turned to Susie. “Alex left,” I said, apropos of nothing. “The morning after the party he left, and he’s still not back home.”

“Ah.” Susie glanced at me. “I wondered why you were being so quiet.”

“And I don’t have any idea where he went.” I stared down at my palette. “Do you know anything at all about his girlfriend?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think that’s where he is? All I know’s that he met her before he moved here, and that he used to travel to see her every month or so, but over the past year I think they had a falling-out. Alex doesn’t like talking about his personal life much, which I guess you’ve already realized.”

“I just want to know if I should be worried,” I said. And more than that. This is what I wanted to do: I wanted to ask Susie to tell me
everything
, replay every conversation she’d had with him ever, and every tidbit he’d told her about his past. To tell me who he was.

“Could he be with his mother?” I said. “Do you know anything about his family? You mentioned awhile back that something had
happened with his mom and sister, that escaping it was one of the reasons he came out here.”

She frowned at me, then reached for Molly and set her on her lap, started jiggling her knee. “He didn’t tell you.”

“No, he pretty much never talks about them.”

“Well, I guess nobody really knows the whole story. He only mentioned it one time that I know of; we’d all had a little too much to drink and we started talking about our dysfunctional families, and all at once Alex got all distant and upset.” She rested her chin on Molly’s head, then said, “I guess we were all pretty drunk or we never would’ve pressed him but you know, we’d all divulged our dark secrets so we kept insisting. And he finally gave in and told us. The gist of it was that he saw his father and sister die. He was seventeen, his sister Camelia was home from college and his dad was driving him to hockey practice with Camelia in the front passenger seat. I guess he overadjusted for something in the road because he somehow ended up hitting a ditch and flipping. Alex wasn’t hurt at all, just whiplash, but his dad and sister were killed instantly.”

“Oh …” I whispered, thinking of the family photo on Alex’s shelf, his parents with two young girls and Alex as a baby.

“And his mother made things even worse. They got in a huge fight that year when he told her he wanted to go away for school; it started with her saying he was deserting her when she needed him most, and it ended with her blaming him for their death, since he was the reason his dad and sister were in the car.”

What would that do to a kid that age? What would it do to the rest of his life? I thought I had ghosts from the past haunting me, but something like that must seep into every single corner, every memory and thought and interpretation. I remembered suddenly our conversation the night he’d convinced me to stay, when I’d told him how heartrending it was that he felt responsible for the whole world, and he’d responded that he felt responsible only for the things he really had done. Was this what he’d been referring to?

“His mother distanced herself from him completely. I guess losing her husband and daughter sent her over the edge. Alex ran away
from home pretty soon after, he was gone for months hitchhiking across the country, and when he got back she completely shut him out. I don’t think they talked for years after. He had a hard time with his other sister too, I guess because she had to choose sides and so of course she chose her mom. His relationship with them’s still strained.”

So this was why he never mentioned his family, and maybe it explained the awkwardness I’d sensed in my conversation with Posy, as well as Posy’s reference to an accident. I wondered suddenly if my pulling away from him the other night had echoed against the rejections he’d faced from the other women in his life, if maybe that’s why he’d reacted by leaving me.

“And it wasn’t just his father and sister,” Susie said. “I think there was also a little boy who died. He had this photo he used to keep in the living room with his other pictures, this baby wrapped in a blue blanket. Until I asked about it, not in a nosy way, just curious, and he got all upset, said … I don’t remember exactly what, but something about the baby being hurt. And then suddenly he snapped at me, basically told me to mind my own business; it was the first time I ever heard him mad. And the next time I came to visit, the photo was gone.”

“A younger brother?”

“That’s what I assumed, yeah. I’ve pictured him in the backseat with the baby, trying to give it CPR or stop its bleeding.…” She tucked her fingers against Molly’s palms, held them there, then said, “So he obviously has issues he needs to work through, and that’s one of the reasons I was so glad he has you here, because I worry about him. He might be more willing to talk with you because you have this air about you, you just feel completely safe. Like a person could tell you anything and you’d still see the goodness in them; it’s part of why everybody here likes you so much.”

I felt a little hop of pleasure, despite myself. “I just know what it’s like to want to hide from your past,” I said, “and keep people from seeing it. But he didn’t tell me anything about any of this, and now … I just wish he’d call to say he was okay.”

“I know you’re worried. But it’s not the first time he’s disappeared without telling anybody. This situation’s different, I guess, since you’re staying with him and he should realize he owes you an explanation, but I’m sure he’ll be home soon.”

I looked down at my paint-smudged hands. “I know,” I said. But the truth was, I didn’t know; I wasn’t sure I knew anything about him. Despite the conversations we’d had over the past weeks about our philosophies of life and dreams and disappointments, I probably knew even less about Alex than he knew about me.

It was Saturday, sometime before midnight but only barely, that I heard a car pull up the drive. I slipped a robe on over my nightshirt and went downstairs, making it to the landing just as Alex opened the door.

We watched each other silently before I said, “You’re back.”

He looked drawn, unshaven, his clothes rumpled and hair unkempt. And I’m sure that after several restless nights, I didn’t look much better. “Yeah,” he said. “How’s Molly?”

“She’s fine. Everybody’s fine.” I hesitated, then said, “Except me. I didn’t know if you were ever coming home, Alex.”

“I’m sorry.” He dropped his bags, his arms hanging limp at his sides. “I should’ve called, I realize that.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you should’ve.” And then I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. We’re not married. You don’t owe me anything.”

“No, I did owe you. I know what it must’ve been like having me disappear.”

“So are you going to explain it?”

“Yes. I mean I don’t know.” He squeezed a hand at the back of his neck, looking dazed. “It’s just there are a lot of things going on right now that I needed to figure out.”

I felt a hollow disappointment. But what had I expected? That he’d tell me he’d been so tortured and heartbroken after I’d run away Sunday night that he’d run away himself?

“I knew I couldn’t call you without giving some kind of explanation,” he said, “but I’m not ready to explain it to anybody yet. I can’t.”

I hesitated, then said, “Were you with Erin?”

He blinked quickly, surprised, then shook his head. Not the kind of head shake meant as an answer, but the kind that implied there was no answer. Which meant, probably, that yes. That’s where he’d been.

“It’s okay. It’s not my business.”

“I wish I could tell you what’s going on with me, I really do. But there’s just too much at stake.”

“You’re talking like I should be scared of you.”

“I don’t know.” His face was utterly expressionless. “Maybe you should.”

I clutched the sides of my robe, cinching it tighter around me. “What if I told you I could say the same thing? And that if you knew some of what I’d done you’d think of me differently?”

He studied my face, searching, before he said, “Whatever you think you did, it’s not the same. You wouldn’t do anything wrong unless you didn’t have a choice.”

I felt a sudden wariness, a dark mass in my chest. “I can forgive anything,” I said slowly. “I know what you’ve been doing for us, and what kind of person you are.”

“Leah.” He squared his shoulders and reached for his bags. “I’m sorry, it’s late. It’s been a hell of a week and I’m completely exhausted. Just forget I said anything, okay? It’s nothing you need to worry about, and I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise.” He walked past me, toward the stairs, leaving the front door open behind him.

I watched him climb to his bedroom and then turn back to the doorway, looking out like there might be answers somewhere in the trees, the night air. What the hell could he be talking about? What did he do? Had he killed someone? Dealt drugs? Sold uranium
to terrorists? It felt like he’d opened a door, let me look through just long enough to see the squirming surface before he slammed it in my face.

I closed the front door slowly, then climbed the stairs. I wouldn’t think about this now. All that mattered was that he’d come back.

Alex’s bedroom door was closed. And seeing it, wondering what he might be hiding, I thought of all the parts of my life I’d probably never tell another soul, things I’d done and thought and things that had been done to me, which shaped me and my view of myself irreparably. I had a sense that Alex would understand, and part of me wanted to run to him now and tear myself open so he could see all the ugliness, maybe tell me it wasn’t so ugly after all. But of course, no one ever did that. Not just because the ugliness was shameful but because those parts were, in a way, the most important parts. And to lose their ugliness would be to lose myself.

Instead I went to my own room, pulled off my robe and began to hang it in the closet. And then, my door opened.

I spun around and there he was, his eyes bloodshot, face red. He made a tight sound and strode forward, took me into his arms so abruptly that I lost my footing and fell back against the clothes in my closet, onto the floor. I glanced over at Molly’s crib just long enough to see she was asleep, before he pulled me against him, yanking up my nightshirt to press his palms against my bare back, his mouth biting against my cheek, my chin and then my lips, so fierce I felt like I was bleeding.