“It’s not like that. We were talking about Diwali, and how it’s a festival of lights, same as Hanukkah, which starts any day now.”
“It started two days ago, actually,” Maribeth said.
They all looked at her, surprised.
“What? I’m Jewish.”
Todd, Sunita, and Stephen exchanged a funny look.
“What?” Maribeth said.
“The Mystery Woman reveals a clue,” Todd said in a movie trailer voice.
“Mystery? What’s a mystery? My last name is Goldman.”
“We wouldn’t know,” Sunita said. “You don’t get any mail.”
“And what about your first name, M.B.?” Todd said.
Stephen raised an eyebrow.
“I’m just giving you shit,” Todd said, “I think it’s cool. Everyone we know overshares everything all the time. You keep it close to the vest. I appreciate that.”
“I’m really not that mysterious.”
“We thought you were a drug dealer,” Sunita said.
The cockle Maribeth was prying open flew out of her hand. “A drug dealer?”
“Always paying with hundreds. A cheap burner phone you didn’t know the number to,” Sunita said. “And no computer of your own.”
“And you said you were a consultant,” Todd said. “What kind of consultant doesn’t have a computer?”
“I have a computer, just not with me, and I’m not a drug dealer.”
“We figured that out,” Todd said. “No one ever comes here.”
“Also, drug dealers don’t e-mail so much,” Sunita said.
“That’s what young lovers do,” Todd joked. “Or older ones.”
They all looked at Stephen, who was coloring slightly. “M.B. communicates with me strictly by text,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “I don’t even have her e-mail address.”
“Oh?” said Sunita, not getting it.
“Oh,” said Todd, getting it.
“Yes,” said Stephen, who must have gotten it all along, must have suspected at least, that there was a family out there. And a husband.
“Excuse me,” said Maribeth. And with that she ran outside.
STEPHEN FOUND HER out on the stoop. She wasn’t wearing a coat so he draped his over her shoulder.
“You should be more careful,” she said. “I am an escaped prisoner from Cambridge Hall.”
“Cambridge Springs,” he corrected.
“Whatever. I’m armed and dangerous.”
“I don’t know about the armed,” he said. “And I’m no shining star.”
“You’re the shiniest star in the whole sky.” She pointed up to show him, but it was cloudy.
“You were a patient. I blurred the lines.”
“M. B. Goldman was a patient. That’s not really me.”
“So who are you?”
“A fuckup. A runaway. A person with terrible judgment,” she said.
“Terrible judgment? I’m the doctor who kissed his patient.”
“The patient kissed you first.”
“And I’m glad she did.”
“I’m glad she did, too.”
The first time she had kissed him. The second time he had kissed her. The third time, they kissed each other. And this time, it felt wrong. She pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said.
“No, I’m sorry,” Maribeth said. “I guess I’m not good with blurry lines, after all.”
“No,” he said. “Nor am I.”
BACK INSIDE MARIBETH’S apartment, Todd was furious, and taking it out on her dishes.
“Easy there,” she said, as he slammed a plate into the sink.
He didn’t say anything, just attacked the plate with the sponge.
“Todd,” Maribeth touched his arm, but he whipped it away.
“His dad left his mom for his secretary,” Sunita said, hunting around the cabinets for Tupperware. “He hasn’t got over it.”
Todd was now attempting to commit murder with steel wool.
“Here, stop,” Maribeth said. “Before you kill that poor pot.”
“You shouldn’t cheat,” he muttered.
She sighed. “Stephen is my doctor.”
“Your doctor?” Todd asked. He’d dropped his surly posture and seemed genuinely upset. “Are you sick?”
“No, but I was.” She told them then, about her heart attack, her surgery, leaving out the fact that this had all happened in another city, another life.
But then Sunita asked, “If you’re all better, why are you still, you know, seeing him?”
The better question was, if she was better, why was she still here?
“And,” Todd asked. “If you haven’t been e-mailing with him, who have you been e-mailing with?”
That one she could answer.
“My husband,” she said.
59
Dear Liv and Oscar,
When I left home, I did not bring very many things with me. Mostly clothes and medicine. I left in a hurry, which is what people do when they are running away.
I did take a photograph of you. Maybe you noticed the empty frame? It was from last summer right around your birthdays, when that man took our picture. Do you remember that day?
The man had been a famous photographer, known for his portraits of celebrities’ kids. Elizabeth had thought it would be great to show how he did with “real” families and Maribeth volunteered because Elizabeth said it would only be a small photo in the spread and she’d get a $10,000 family portrait out of the deal.
The photographer had wanted to shoot them in Battery Park, in the afternoon light, on a stool, with the Manhattan skyline behind them. “Nice and easy,” he’d said. Famous last words.
Oscar had misunderstood the phrase shoot a photo for getting shot with a gun and had been hysterical. Liv had missed her nap and had been tyrannical. In order to get the kids to calm down, Jason had started doing handstands on the grass and Maribeth had attempted her first cartwheel in two decades. Oscar stopped crying. Liv stopped ranting. They’d started doing somersaults. The photographer halfheartedly shot a few frames of their acrobatics before the light died.
“Nothing we can use here,” the photo editor had scrawled over the few prints she’d put in Maribeth’s inbox. Maribeth got it. The photos were chaotic. Oscar’s suit was dirty, Liv’s underwear was showing. It was not a Frap kind of picture.
I think that picture of you two doing somersaults might be my favorite family photo ever. Which might be a strange thing to say because it’s not the whole family, only the two of you. But somehow, it really is the four of us. I can see me and Daddy off to the side, walking on our hands. That’s the funny thing about pictures. Sometimes what you see only tells some of the story.
I love you both.
—Mommy
60
At Maribeth’s next swimming lesson, Janice made two important announcements. The birth narrative was ready and they might have it by tonight. Monday latest. And with almost equal gravitas, she proclaimed Maribeth ready to graduate from the kickboard. “It’s time to put all the pieces together,” she said.
At first, it had seemed like another disaster. Maribeth’s arms windmilled one way, out of sync with her breath. Her legs went too fast, then too slow, her knees bent. She couldn’t get the air fast enough or then she gulped too quickly and wound up hyperventilating. It felt like she was attempting to sew a dress from many different patterns. Nothing fit right, and she was certain she looked ridiculous.
“It’s not working,” she told Janice.
“Keep trying.”
She did. Again and again. It got no better. The school-aged kids having a lesson were swimming circles around her. She watched them in a sort of awe. Swimming sometimes felt as complicated as landing an airplane in a snowstorm. Not that she had any experience with that.
“I’ve had enough,” Maribeth said.
“Give it five more minutes,” Janice said.
It was in those last few m
inutes that it happened. She didn’t know whether it was because she’d stopped working so hard or because she knew her time was almost up. But all of a sudden, she wasn’t thinking. She was just listening to the sound of her breath and the gurgle of the water; there was something so womblike about it that she zoned out. And then, she was no longer fighting the water. She was gliding on top of it. There was effort here, exertion, there must’ve been, but she didn’t feel it. It wasn’t hard. Not at all.
When she stopped, Janice was watching her, beaming.
“You just swam four lengths,” she said.
“Really?” Maribeth replied.
Janice nodded.
Maribeth was elated. The vaunted endorphins flooding her.
“I lost track of it,” she said. “I lost track of everything.”
Janice nodded, as if Maribeth had discovered a secret.
As they dressed, Maribeth was giddy. She couldn’t believe it. She knew it was silly to get this goofy about swimming four lengths, but she’d thought swimming was meant to be hard, harder than running. That was why it was good for you.
Janice laughed when Maribeth told her this. “It’s only hard when you do it wrong.”
ON THE WAY out of the club, the manager intercepted them at the front desk.
“I heard from Dr. Grant,” he said, smiling. “He sent over his blessing to use the steam room.”
“Did he now?”
The manager was almost obsequious. “I didn’t realize you were a friend of the Grants’. Well, I suppose it’s just Dr. Grant now.”
“Yes. He’s my cardiologist.”
“Right, of course,” the manager said. “We don’t see him often these days. His wife was one of our favorite regulars and she is much missed. Tell me, will you be joining us as a member?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Janice had given Maribeth her five guest passes. They were enough to get through the year. Janice had offered her passes for next year. Stephen said he was going to cancel his membership, though he also said he’d been threatening that for a while.
“Now is an excellent time to join. We have a new member’s special. Joining fee is waived. First month is free.”
“I really don’t know how long I’ll be here.”
“We have different membership levels. Annual or month to month. If your passes run out next month, say, you could just have a membership for a month or two. What do you think?”
She didn’t know. All her life she had been such a planner, a plotter, a plodder. She planned meals the week before so she knew how to shop. She planned vacations a year in advance so they could save on airfare. She planned the feature stories at Frap six months in advance. She had the calendar memorized: who was going where, eating what, writing what.
But now? She didn’t know what would happen next month. She didn’t even know what would happen next week. She didn’t know what would happen with Jason. With Stephen. With her children. With her birth mother. A year ago, so much uncertainty would’ve killed her. Her lists, her plans—they were her parachute, the thing to keep her from total free fall.
She was in free fall now. And it wasn’t killing her. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she might’ve had it backwards. All that fixating on the fall . . . maybe she should’ve been paying more attention to the free.
61
Janice called her that afternoon. “I have it! I have the report! It’s parent-teacher night so I can’t show you now, but first thing tomorrow.”
“Can’t you just read it to me?”
“No. I won’t open it without you. Come over first thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I know. But you’ve waited this long. You can survive one more day.”
Maribeth wasn’t sure she could. She knocked on Todd and Sunita’s door.
“Please tell me there’s a game on,” she said. “Something. I need to be occupied.”
“Maybe a college game,” Sunita said. “We’re going to the movies in a while. A double feature. You’re welcome to come.”
“The genre is action adventure,” Todd said. “If your heart can handle it.”
At first she thought he was being serious, but then she noted the wicked grin. Somewhere along the line, she had been promoted to Sunita treatment. She found this thrilling.
“A movie sounds perfect,” she said.
“We don’t have to leave for an hour,” Todd said, gesturing toward the computer. “If you need something to do, why don’t you go e-mail your husband?”
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: You at work?
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: You at work?
I’m working from home. Want to Gchat?
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: You at work?
I believe we are officially too old to Gchat. Our computers will melt if we attempt it.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: You at work?
You know I like to live dangerously, Grandma.
A few seconds later, a notice popped up that Jinx would like to chat.
Jinx. That made her smile.
5:40
Jinx: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Jinx: Look at us, Gchatting like kids.
Me: Next thing you know, we’ll be Snapchatting.
Jinx: I don’t know what that is.
Me: No. Me, neither.
5:47
Me: So the report is in. About my birth mother. I see it tomorrow.
Jinx: !
Jinx: How do you feel?
Me: Mostly sick.
Me: In a nervous kind of way. Not heart-related.
Me: What if she’s dead? What if she died of a heart attack? What if she was a horrible person? What if she was raped? It could be so many dreadful things.
Jinx: Maybe knowing definitively will ease the fear.
Me: Or increase it.
Jinx: I don’t know. There’s something about facing your fear head-on. Like when I read your note, it was horrifying but reassuring to see my fears echoed by someone else. It was like proof that I wasn’t crazy.
5:52
Jinx: You still there?
Me: Yeah.
Jinx: Thought I scared you off.
Me: No. I was just wondering how to tell you that I don’t remember what I wrote in the note, and when you sent it to me, I freaked out and deleted it.
Jinx: Really? Why?
Me: I thought you were throwing it back in my face. That first line . . . It’s so hysterical.
Jinx: “I’m scared I’m going to die.”
Me: Please don’t. I remember that part.
Jinx: But not the rest?
Me: Let’s just say I wasn’t my best self when I wrote it.
Jinx: I probably wasn’t my best self when I sent it back. I was pretty pissed off so I guess I was kind of throwing it back in your face. You leave, then nothing for a month, then that hail of accusation. But mostly I wanted you to see, in your own words, what you’d asked me to do.
Me: I’m sorry.
5:57
Jinx: That’s okay. FWIW, I didn’t think you were being hysterical. I thought you were being truthful. And obviously, it was a shared fear. I was also scared you were going to die.
6:01
Me: Jase? Would you send me the note again?
Jinx: Now?
Me: Now. Can you e-mail it to me?
Jinx: I can attach right here if you want. We can read it together.
Me: Really? Okay. Do that.
An attachment popped up right in the chat window. Maribeth clicked on it and read the words she’d written on that worst of days.
I know you think I’m fine but I’m scared I’m going to die.
And it’s not the death that scares me. All I can think about is the twins, and them
being too young to not have a mother and what would happen to them if I died now.
And then I think of that night when they were newborns and they were sleeping in their carriers on the table. Do you remember that night? I felt so overwhelmed with love for them that I couldn’t stop weeping. You laughed and said it was hormones, but it wasn’t. It was terror. I felt like my skin had been turned inside out. How could you love someone this much? It made you too vulnerable. That’s when I figured out the ugly secret of a mother’s love: you protect them, to protect yourself.
But how can I do both? Protect them and me. Protect them from me.
So I have to go away. To take care of me. You take care of them.
I’m sorry. Don’t hate me. Let me do this. Leave me be. You said you’d give me a bubble. I need it to be bigger.
—Maribeth
6:09
Jinx: You still there?
Me: Yeah.
Jinx: You okay?
Me: Yeah. Are you?
Jinx: Yeah.
Me: Do you hate me?
Jinx: I’ve never hated you.
Jinx: Do you hate me?
Me: If I did, I don’t anymore.
6:17
Jinx: Maribeth?
Me: Yeah?
Jinx: The kids and I need to hit the road.
Me: Oh.
Jinx: Are you okay?
Me: Yeah.
Jinx: You’ll let me now know how tomorrow goes? I’ll make sure to check my e-mail.
Me: Yeah.
“Were you Gchatting?” Todd asked, peering over her shoulder. “With your husband?”
Maribeth closed the window.
“You little hussy,” Todd said.
THEY LEFT FOR the movies. Fritz, and the elusive Miles, would be joining them for the second feature.
“I finally get to meet Miles,” Maribeth said.
“He works a lot,” Todd said. “It’s not like I’m keeping him secret or anything.”
“Really? You sure about that?’ ”
“Mostly. But if you’re nice I might let you talk to him.”
“I’m always nice. Maybe I’ll even buy the popcorn.”
Todd grinned. “Then I might let you sit next to him.”