Paul looked at Rosemary. Her head was bent so he couldn’t see her expression, but her cheeks were flushed pink. She picked at a torn fingernail and wouldn’t meet his eye.
“I don’t know what to believe,” his mother said slowly. “This week, David, of all weeks. Do you know where I was just now? I was with Bree, at the oncologist’s. She had a biopsy done last week: her left breast. It’s a very small lump, her prognosis is good, but it’s malignant.”
“I didn’t know, Norah. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t touch me, David.”
“Who’s her surgeon?”
“Ed Jones.”
“Ed’s good.”
“He’d better be. David, your midlife crisis is the last thing I need.”
Paul, listening, felt the world slow down a little bit. He thought of Bree, with her quick laugh, who would sit for an hour listening to him play, the music moving between them so they didn’t need to speak. She’d close her eyes and stretch out in the swing, listening. He couldn’t imagine the world without her.
“What do you want?” his father was asking. “What do you want from me, Norah? I’ll stay, if you want, or I’ll move out. But I can’t turn Rosemary away. She has no place to go.”
There was a silence and he waited, hardly daring to breathe, wanting to know what his mother would say, and wanting her never to answer.
“What about me?” he asked, startling himself. “What about what I want?”
“Paul?” His mother’s voice.
“Right here,” he said, picking up his guitar. “On the porch. Me and Rosemary.”
“Oh, good grief,” his father said. Seconds later, he came around to the steps. Since last night he’d showered and shaved and put on a clean suit. He was thin, and he looked tired. So did his mother, coming to stand beside him.
Paul stood and faced him. “I’m going to Juilliard, Dad. They called last week: I got in. And I’m going.”
He waited, then, for his father to start in as usual: how a musical career wasn’t reliable, not even a classical one. How Paul had so many options open to him; he could always play, and always take joy in playing, even if he made his living another way. He waited for his father to be firm and reasonable and resistant, so that Paul could give vent to his anger. He was tense, ready, but to his surprise his father only nodded.
“Good for you,” his father said, and then his face softened for a moment with pleasure, the frown of worry easing from his forehead. When he spoke his voice was quiet and sure. “Paul, if it’s what you want, then go. Go and work hard and be happy.”
Paul stood uneasily on the porch. All these years, each time he and his father talked, he’d felt he was running into a wall. And now the wall was mysteriously gone but he was still running, giddy and uncertain, in open space.
“Paul?” his father said. “I’m proud of you, son.”
Everyone was looking at him now, and he had tears in his eyes. He didn’t know what to say, so he started walking, at first just to get out of sight, so he wouldn’t embarrass himself, and then he was truly running, the guitar still in his hand.
“Paul!” his mother called after him, and when he turned, running backward for a few steps, he saw how pale she was, her arms folded tensely across her chest, her newly streaked hair lifting in the breeze. He thought of Bree, what his mother had said, how much they’d come to be like each other, his mother and his aunt, and he was afraid. He remembered his father in the foyer, his clothes filthy, dark stubble taking the rough shape of a beard, his hair wild. And now, this morning, clean and calm, but still changed. His father—impeccable, precise, sure of everything—had turned into someone else. Behind, half screened by the clematis, Rosemary stood listening, her arms folded, her hair, set free, falling over her shoulders now, and he imagined her in that house set into the hill, talking with his father, riding the bus with him for so many long hours, somehow a part of this change in his father, and again he was afraid of what was happening to them all.
So he ran.
It was a sunny day, already warm. Mr. Ferry, Mrs. Pool, waved from their porches. Paul lifted the guitar in salute and kept running. He was three blocks away from home, five, ten. Across the street, in front of one low bungalow, an empty car stood running. The owner had forgotten something probably, had run inside to grab a briefcase or a jacket. Paul paused. It was a tan Gremlin, the ugliest car in the universe, edged with rust. He crossed the street, opened the driver’s door, and slipped inside. No one shouted; no one came running from the house. He yanked the door shut and adjusted the seat, giving himself leg room. He put the guitar on the seat beside him. The car was an automatic, scattered with candy wrappers and empty cigarette packs. A total loser owned this car, he thought, one of those ladies who wore too much makeup and worked as a secretary somewhere dead and plastic spastic, like the dry cleaners, maybe, or the bank. He put the car in gear and backed up.
Still nothing: no shouts, no sirens. He geared into DRIVE and pulled away.
He hadn’t driven much, but it seemed to be a lot like sex: if you pretended to know what was going on, then pretty soon you did know, and then it was all second nature. By the high school, Ned Stone and Randy Delaney were hanging out on the corner, tossing butts into the grass before they went inside, and he looked for Lauren Lobeglio, who sometimes stood there with them, whose breath was often dark and smoky when he kissed her.
The guitar slipped. He pulled over and strapped it in with a seat belt. A Gremlin, shit. Through town now, stopping carefully at every light, the day vibrant and blue. He thought of Rosemary’s eyes, filling with tears. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but he had. And something had happened, something had changed. She was part of it and he was not, though his father’s face had filled, for just an instant, with happiness at his news.
Paul drove. He did not want to be in that house for whatever happened next. He reached the interstate where the road split and went west, to Louisville. California glimmered in his mind: music there, and an endless beach. Lauren Lobeglio would latch herself onto someone new. She didn’t love him and he didn’t love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight. California. Soon he’d be on the beach, playing in a band and living cheap and easy all summer long. In the fall, he’d find a way to get to Juilliard. Hitchhike across the country, maybe. He cranked his window all the way down, letting the spring air rush in. The Gremlin barely hit 55 even with his foot pressing the pedal to the floor. Still, it felt like he was flying.
He had come this way before, on orderly school trips to the Louisville Zoo and earlier, on those wild rides his mother had taken when he was small, when he lay in the backseat watching leaves and branches and phone lines flashing in the window. She had sung, loudly, with the radio, her voice lurching, promising him they’d stop for ice cream, for a treat, if he’d just be good, be quiet. All these years he had been good, but it hadn’t made any difference. He’d discovered music and played his heart out into the silence of that house, into the hole his sister’s death had made in their lives, and that hadn’t mattered either. He had tried as hard as he could to make his parents look up from their lives and hear the beauty, the joy that he’d discovered. He’d played so much and he’d gotten so fine. And yet all this time they’d never looked up, not once, not until Rosemary had stepped through the door and altered everything. Or maybe she hadn’t changed anything at all. Maybe it was just that her presence cast a new, revealing light on their lives, shifting the composition. After all, a picture could be a thousand different things.
He put his hand on the guitar, feeling the warm wood, comforted. He pressed the pedal to the floor, climbing between the limestone walls where the highway had been cut into the hill, and then he descended toward the curve of the Kentucky River, flying. The bridge sang under his tires. Paul drove and drove, trying to do anything but think.
IV
BEYOND NORAH’S GLASS-PANELED DOOR, THE OFFICE HUMMED. Neil Simms, the personnel
manager from IBM, walked through the outer doors, a flash of dark suit, polished shoes. Bree, who had paused in the reception room to collect the faxes, turned to greet him. She was wearing a yellow linen suit and dark yellow shoes; a fine gold bracelet slipped down her wrist as she reached to shake his hand. She’d gotten thin and sharp-boned beneath her elegance. Still, her laugh was light, traveling through the glass to where Norah sat with the phone in one hand, the glossy folder she’d spent weeks preparing on her desk, IBM in bold black letters across the front.
“Look, Sam,” Norah said. “I told you not to call me, and I meant it.”
A cool deep current of silence welled up against her ear. She imagined Sam at home, working by the wall of windows overlooking the lake. He was an investment analyst, and Norah had met him in the parking garage six months ago, in the murky concrete light near the elevator. Her keys had slipped and he had caught them in midair, fast and fluid, his hands flashing like fish. Yours? he’d asked, with a quick, easy smile—a joke, since they were the only two around. Norah, filled with a familiar rush, a kind of dark delicious plummeting, had nodded. His fingers brushed her skin; the keys fell coldly against her palm.
That night he left a message on her machine. Norah’s heart had quickened, stirred at his voice. Still, when the tape ended, she had forced herself to sit down and count up her affairs—short-lived and long, passionate and detached, bitter and amicable—over the years.
Four. She had written the number down, dark blunt streaks of graphite on the edge of the morning paper. Upstairs, water was dripping in the tub. Paul was in the family room, playing the same chord over and over again on his guitar. David was outside, working in his darkroom—so much space between them, always. Norah had walked into each of her affairs with a sense of hope and new beginnings, swept up in the rush of secret meetings, of novelty and surprise. After Howard, two more, transitory and sweet, followed by one other, longer. Each had begun at moments when she thought the roar of silence in her house would drive her mad, when the mysterious universe of another presence, any presence, had seemed to her like solace.
“Norah, please, just listen,” Sam was saying now: a forceful man, something of a bully in negotiations, a person she didn’t even particularly like. In the reception room, Bree turned to glance at her, inquiring, impatient. Yes, Norah gestured through the glass, she would hurry. They had courted this IBM account for almost a year; she would certainly hurry. “I just want to ask about Paul,” Sam was insisting. “If you’ve heard anything. Because I’m here for you, okay? Do you hear what I’m saying, Norah? I’m totally, absolutely, here for you.”
“I hear you,” she said, angry with herself—she didn’t want Sam talking about her son. Paul had been gone for twenty-four hours now; a car three blocks down was missing too. She’d watched him leave after that strained scene on the porch, trying to remember what she’d said, what he’d overheard, pained at the confusion on his face. David had done the right thing, giving Paul his blessing, but somehow that too, the very strangeness of it, had made the moment worse. She’d watched Paul run off, carrying his guitar, and she’d nearly gone after him. But her head ached, and she’d let herself think that maybe he needed some time to work this out on his own. Plus, surely, he wouldn’t go far—where could he go, after all?
“Norah?” Sam said. “Norah, are you okay?”
She closed her eyes briefly. Ordinary sunlight warmed her face. Sam’s bedroom windows were full of prisms, and on this brilliant morning light and color would be shifting, alive, on every surface. It’s like making love in a disco, she’d told him once, half complaining, half enchanted, long shafts of color moving on his arms, her own pale skin. That day, as on every day since they’d met, Norah had intended to end things. Then Sam had traced the shaft of variegated light on her thigh with his finger, and slowly she’d felt her own sharp edges begin to soften, to blur, her emotions bleeding one into another in mysterious sequence, from darkest indigo to gold, reluctance transforming, mysteriously, to desire.
Still, the pleasure never lasted past the drive home.
“I’m focusing on Paul right now,” she said, and then, sharply, she added, “Look, Sam, I’ve had it, actually. I was serious the other day. Don’t call me again.”
“You’re upset.”
“Yes. But I mean it. Don’t call me. Never again.”
She hung up. Her hand was trembling; she pressed it flat on her desk. She felt Paul’s disappearance like a punishment: for David’s long anger, for her own. The car he’d stolen had been found deserted on a side street in Louisville last night, but there had been no trace of Paul. And so she and David were waiting, moving helplessly through the silent layers of their house. The girl from West Virginia was still sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the den. David never touched her, hardly even spoke to her except to ask if she needed anything. And yet Norah sensed something between the two of them, an emotional connection, alive and positively charged, which pierced her as much, perhaps more, than any physical affair would have done.
Bree knocked on the glass, then opened the door a few inches.
“Everything okay? Because Neil’s here, from IBM.”
“I’m fine,” Norah said. “How are you doing? Are you okay?”
“It’s good for me to be here,” Bree said brightly, firmly. “Especially with everything else that’s going on.”
Norah nodded. She had called Paul’s friends, and David called the police. All night and into this morning she had paced the house in her bathrobe, drinking coffee and imagining every possible disaster. The chance to come to work, to put at least part of her mind on something else, had felt like sanctuary. “I’ll be right there,” she said.
The phone started ringing again as she stood, and Norah let a rush of weary anger push her through the door. She would not let Sam rattle her, she would not let him ruin this meeting, she would not. Her other affairs had ended differently, swiftly or slowly, amicably or not, but none with this element of uneasiness. Never again, she thought to herself. Let this be finished, and never again.
She hurried through the lobby, but Sally stopped her at the reception desk, holding out the phone. “You’d better take this, honey,” she said. Norah knew at once; she took the receiver, trembling.
“They found him.” David’s voice was quiet. “The police just called. They found him in Louisville, shoplifting. Our son was caught stealing cheese.”
“He’s okay, then,” she said, releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding all this time, blood rushing back into her fingertips. Oh! She’d been half dead and hadn’t known it.
“Yes, he’s fine. Hungry, apparently. I’m on my way to get him. Do you want to come?”
“Maybe I should go. I don’t know, David. You might say the wrong thing.” You stay here with your girlfriend, she almost added.
He sighed. “I wonder what would be the right thing to say, Norah? I’d really like to know. I’m proud of him, and I told him that. He ran away and stole a car. So what, I wonder, would be the right thing to say?”
Too little, too late, she wanted to say. And what about your girlfriend? But she said nothing.
“Norah, he’s eighteen. He stole a car. He has to take responsibility.”
“You’re fifty-one,” she snapped. “So do you.”
There was a silence then; she imagined him standing in his office, so reassuring in his white coat, his hair alive with silver. No one seeing him would imagine the way he’d come back home: unshaven, his clothes torn and filthy, a pregnant girl in a shabby black coat by his side.
“Look, just give me the address,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“He’s at the police station, Norah. Central booking. Where do you think, the zoo? But sure, hang on. I’ll give you the address.”
As Norah was writing it down, she looked up to see Bree closing the front door behind Neil Simms.
“Paul’s okay?” Bree asked.
Norah nodded, too moved,
too relieved, to speak. Hearing his name had made the news real. Paul was safe, maybe in handcuffs but safe. Alive. The office staff, hovering in the reception room, began to clap, and Bree crossed the room to hug her. So thin, Norah thought, tears in her eyes; her sister’s shoulder blades were delicate and sharp, like wings.
“I’ll drive,” Bree said, taking her arm. “Come on. Tell me as we go.”
Norah let herself be led down the hall and into the elevator, to the car in the garage. Bree drove through the crowded downtown streets while Norah talked, relief rushing through her like a wind.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I was awake all night. I know Paul’s an adult now. I know in a few months he’ll be off to college, and I won’t have a clue where he is at any given moment. But I couldn’t stop worrying.”
“He’s still your baby.”
“Always. It’s hard, letting him go. Harder than I thought.”
They were passing the low dull buildings of IBM, and Bree waved at them. “Hey, Neil,” she said. “Be seeing you soon.”
“All that work.” Norah sighed.
“Oh, don’t worry. We won’t lose the account,” Bree said. “I was very, very charming. And Neil’s a family man. He’s also, I suspect, the sort who likes a damsel in distress.”
“You’re setting back the cause,” Norah retorted, remembering Bree in the filtered light of the dining room long ago, waving pamphlets on lactation.
Bree laughed. “Not at all. I’ve just learned to work with what I have. We’ll get the account, don’t worry.”
Norah didn’t reply. White fences flashed and blurred against the lush grass. Horses stood calmly in their fields; tobacco barns, weathered gray, were set against one hillside, then another. Early spring, Derby time soon, the redbuds bursting into bloom. They crossed the Kentucky River, muddy and glinting. In a field just beyond the bridge a single daffodil waved, a bright flash of beauty, gone. How many times had she traveled this road, the wind in her hair, the Ohio River luring her with its promise, its swift and undulating beauty? She had given up the gin, the windswept drives; she had bought this travel business and made it grow; she had changed her life. But a realization came to her now clearly, suddenly, like a harsh new light in the room: she had never stopped running. To San Juan and Bangkok, London and Alaska. Into the arms of Howard and the others, all the way to Sam and to this moment.