“We’re not allowed to talk about it, of course. The great myth of the Brahmin Hardcastles would be exploded. What’s that?”
“A glove, I believe.” She dangles it before her, a short tan kidskin number, a lady’s driving glove. “But that would have been ages ago, wouldn’t it? Before the war. The First World War, I mean. This was built in the thirties.”
“Around the time Frank was born.”
“So she would have been a grandmother already.”
“A young one.”
“Still. This isn’t her car, I’m sure of it. Which begs the question: Whose?” Pepper folds up the glove and places it back in the compartment. “There aren’t any documents here. So somebody’s hiding something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why else would you take the papers out of the car, silly?”
“I don’t know. Safekeeping.”
“Take the papers, but leave the cigarette butts?” She shakes her head and leans back against the seat again, with her eyes open this time, staring at the low beams of the roof. “No, there’s a secret here somewhere.”
“You’re so suspicious, Pepper. I’m sure there’s a straightforward explanation.”
“Tiny, darling. Everyone has secrets. Even you, I’ll bet.”
I flex my fingers around the steering wheel a final time, and let my hands fall into my lap. From the corner of my eye, I sense that Pepper has rolled her head to the side, watching me. I run my forefinger along the rim of the opposite cuticle. “Not as many as you do, I’ll bet.”
The edge to my words, the crisp emphasis on the word bet—especially on that final consonant t, scattering the dust—makes me realize, too late, how easy we’ve been with each other. How relaxed the air between us. How I’ve just hardened it, back into the familiar permafrost.
Pepper turns her gaze back to the roof beams and says in a worldly voice: “When it comes to secrets, darling, it’s not how many. It’s how big.”
I’m sorry, I want to say. I flatten out my palms and smooth away the wrinkles in my skirt. “Is that so.”
“Oh, that’s so, all right. Want to hear something funny?”
“I could use a laugh.”
“For a second there, I mean a moment ago, I almost called you Vivian.”
Do you know what? I really do laugh at that.
For all the car’s enormous proportions, its length and copious breadth, the cockpit has an intimate feel, a soft brown leather cocoon, edged in chrome and dirty glass. The sun’s moved on already, shifting its angles, and you can’t see the individual motes of dust any longer, the living quality of the air. I nudge my sister with my shoulder. “You really are a dope.”
We sit there, a pair, watching the shade progress until the last of the sun has disappeared behind some vegetable obstacle outside. Pepper lifts one elegant sandaled foot and places it against the dashboard. “So,” she says. “What did one dehydrated Frenchman say to the other dehydrated Frenchman?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“What do we do now, Pierre?”
A giggle slips out of me, and another. Pepper joins me, her pretty chest heaving with giggles, her sundress shivering, her perfect golden calf swooping into her slender ankle, like the fender over the front wheel of a vintage Mercedes-Benz roadster.
“Actually, I do have something you could help me with,” I say at last, placing my hand against my stomach to stop the laughter.
“What’s that, honey? Seducing someone’s husband? Arsenic in Constance’s tea?”
I place my two hands on the top edge of the windshield and heave myself out of the seat.
“I need you to help me sell some jewelry.”
• • •
You won’t be surprised—I certainly wasn’t—to learn that Pepper is an expert appraiser of fine jewelry.
“This bracelet here should do it.” She dangles it from her fingers. “It’s better to sell off a bracelet, anyway. They don’t usually notice.”
“You’re assuming Frank gave me the bracelet.”
“Didn’t he?”
“Well, yes. But it might have been someone else.”
She gives my injured air the old wise eye, and I think, This is what it’s like to have a sister.
“Anyway, it’s perfect. Valuable enough, but not too valuable. No engraving to give you away. Nothing particularly special.” She taps it with the other finger, sending it swinging. “Actually rather boring. What was the occasion?”
“I don’t remember. Christmas, maybe.”
“Well, next time send him out shopping with me.”
The day has grown sinfully warm, the morning dew burned thoroughly away, and I go so far as to put the top down on the car. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this is for,” says Pepper, examining her fingernails as we rush down the highway, a little too fast.
“Just a little temporary emergency.”
“Lost money at bridge?”
“Bite your tongue. I never lose at bridge.”
She looks out the side. “Of course not.”
There is a dealer she knows in Boston. Don’t ask why, she says, and I park the car obediently outside and don’t ask why. We seem to be getting along so well, after all. I set the brake with a flourish. Pepper takes the box from me as we approach the door. “I think you’d better let me handle this.”
“With pleasure.”
The building seems respectable enough, the storefront modest red brick, next to a bookseller on one side and a delicatessen on the other. A. R. GOLDFARB, says the lettering on the window. ESTATE JEWELRY. I follow a half step behind Pepper and admire the brilliant red highlights in her chestnut hair, the narrowness of her ribcage, the mannequin profile of her. She looks like trouble at any angle, Pepper, even in the harshness of noontime, even in her shabby beach clothes.
“I’m looking for Mr. Goldfarb,” she tells the man at the counter, a tall fellow in his early twenties or even younger. His loose brown suit hangs from the bones of his shoulders, hoping for more.
He speaks up in a faulty tenor. “I’m sorry, Mr. Goldfarb’s in the back. Can I help you?”
The brilliant Pepper smile, the one that can’t be denied. She places the box on the counter in front of her. “I’m afraid I absolutely must speak with Mr. Goldfarb.”
Ten minutes later, Pepper and I climb back into the sun-warmed Cadillac, together with one thousand four hundred dollars in neat crisp Franklins, folded into a corner of my pocketbook. I turn the ignition. Pepper loops the yellow scarf back around her hair. The pocketbook sits on the bench seat between us, loaded with cash.
I put the car in reverse, back up, and put on my turn signal, preparing to enter traffic.
“Something wrong?” Pepper asks, when the car doesn’t move.
I change gears and pull out. “Nothing.”
“Come on. Tell me. Are you in trouble?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Because I’m an expert. Trouble’s my middle name. My first name, if you think about it.”
I slow down for the red light ahead. “Nothing, I said.”
“That kind of trouble, is it?” She lays her forearm along the side of the car, right along the slit of the rolled-down window, and fingers the triangle of glass at the corner of the windshield. “You know, we could just take off.”
The light turns green. I press down on the gas pedal. “Take off?”
“Split. Evacuate. Disappear. We’ve got the cash. We’ve got the car.”
At the word disappear, my fingers squeeze the steering wheel. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m not joking. Not exactly.”
“What makes you think I want to disappear?”
“Just a guess. I’ve been thinking, over the past couple of days, that maybe my sister’s perfect little life i
sn’t so perfect after all. That maybe you’ve finally figured out that your world-class husband isn’t worth what you’re paying for him.”
“That’s just stupid.” I glance down at my pocketbook. “Anyway, I already tried disappearing, and it didn’t work so well.”
“Really? When was that?”
“A long time ago. Sometimes, Pepper, you just have to face your problems. To accept what God’s given you and make the best of it. Give up and grow up.”
Pepper doesn’t reply. The car floats through the hot sunshine, down the long road. The buildings shimmer by, the other cars, the other people, limping down the sidewalks under the weight of the building heat. I’m wearing a large-brimmed hat to keep the sun from my skin, and it flutters in the draft, almost but not quite ready to blow off.
“So why do you want to disappear?” I say. “Speaking of perfect lives. Working for a hotshot senator. The high life in Washington and New York.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
“Pepper . . .”
“Stop here,” says Pepper.
“What?”
“Pull over, right here.” Her voice is urgent.
I swerve the car to the curb. Someone lays on the horn, long and hard.
“What is it? Are you all right?”
Pepper points her long finger to a storefront just behind us. “It’s a garage.”
“What?”
I follow her finger. JOE’S GARAGE, says a grubby sign above a wide carriage entrance, AUTO PARTS AND SERVICE. DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. An old-fashioned gas pump sits outside. Probably a box of buggy whips in the basement somewhere.
“I don’t need any auto parts,” I say.
“Yes, you do,” she says. “Gas, oil. Repair manual. God knows what. Or Joe. Joe knows what.” She giggles.
I gaze at her laughing face in bemusement. The pretty, wagging ends of her yellow scarf. Her unguarded nose, kissed by the sun. “Are you talking about the Mercedes? The Mercedes in the shed?”
Pepper spreads out her hands. “Sure, why not? If we’re going to disappear, we might as well do it in style.”
“But you don’t know a thing about fixing cars.”
“We’re a couple of smart girls. How hard can it be?”
“You,” I say, “are completely nuts.”
She picks up my pocketbook and peels off a hundred-dollar bill from the wad. “That’s why they love me.”
Caspian, 1964
Cap rose from the sofa and found his drink on the windowsill. He finished it off and held the glass against his stomach. “Depends, I guess. On what you mean by disappear. And who.”
“Me.” Her voice was determined. Clear of tears.
He needed another drink. He took his glass to the kitchenette and refilled it. When he turned, Tiny was still standing in place, swiveled to follow his progress. She’d unfolded the handkerchief again, and it dangled like a doll’s bedsheet before her, held up at each corner by her elegant fingers.
“Cold feet?” he said.
“No. I don’t know. It’s been building for a while. All my life.”
“You’ve wanted to disappear all your life?”
“Yes!” She collapsed back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, pressing the handkerchief into her ribs.
He propped his shoulder against the doorway to the kitchenette. “Then why haven’t you?”
“You don’t know. You don’t understand.”
“Of course I don’t know. We’ve only just met this morning.”
“But you’ve been watching me all month, at the coffee shop. Watching me carefully.”
Cap shrugged his other shoulder. “So I like watching pretty girls. Sue me.”
Tiny lifted her head and looked at him. “Why do you do that? Pretend you’re someone you’re not.”
He snorted. “Glass houses, Tiny.”
“Look. Can I just have the other Caspian back for a second, please? I can’t explain anything to this one.”
The rush of adrenaline caught him by surprise, filling his bones with air. He ducked back to the kitchenette and set his glass on the counter, breathing slowly, in one, two, three, out one, two, three. His brain was already giddy with vodka. Empty stomach. They hadn’t offered him anything to eat at the police station.
He picked up the broom and dustpan and stepped around the corner to sweep away the shards of Tiny’s broken glass. The bin was empty, the garbage put out this morning before he left, a lifetime ago. The thousand pieces shivered against the bottom.
“All right,” he said, returning to the living room. Tiny occupied the sofa, cradling his handkerchief in her hands, her dress bright against the old olive-green upholstery. He sat down next to her. “Why do you want to disappear?”
“No. Say something to me first. Something real.”
He picked up her left hand. “I still have your engagement ring in my pocket. Do you want it back?”
“Oh, my God! The ring!” She straightened herself and looked down at her empty hand. “I’d forgotten all about it!”
“How could you forget a rock like that when it’s missing from your finger?”
She fell back against the sofa cushion, but she didn’t pull her fingers away, even when he placed his other hand on top, sandwiching her inside. She said, “Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Maybe I didn’t want to remember.”
“Cold feet,” he said again.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Haven’t you ever felt—” She paused, collecting her thoughts. Her lashes were long and curling, a natural black, since she must have cried away all her mascara into his shoulder. He wanted to take her picture, to capture the extraordinary shadow of her eyelashes on her skin, the angle of her cheekbone in the slanting afternoon sun. “Haven’t you ever felt trapped inside yourself, like you want to do something else, be someone else, and you can’t break free, you can’t loosen yourself from the—I don’t know—this thing you’re supposed to be, this public facsimile of yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He ran over the words again. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
“You don’t want to hear all this.”
“I’m used to it. All the other guys used to come to me with their stuff. Don’t know why. I was the goddamned father confessor out there, sometimes. The things I heard, hell.”
“You see? That’s what I thought, when you walked in the shop that first day. I knew I could trust you.”
“Just by looking at me?”
“Well, you were different from everyone else. You were reading Thomas Hardy. I thought, any guy that size who reads Thomas Hardy of his own free will, in paperback, curling back the cover so no one can tell, well, you can trust a guy like that. And then the waitress said—”
“Em?”
“Yes, Em. The dark-haired one. She said you were a good guy. A gentleman, she said. She also said you liked me.” She nudged him with her elbow.
“Well, hell. That’s the last time I tell her my secrets.”
“So you do like me?” Tiny asked the ceiling.
“I’m crazy about you.”
There. Crazy about you. The words were out, floating in the air, no sucking them back in.
“Oh, my God.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is happening. I’m going to hell, aren’t I?”
“Nothing’s happening, Tiny. Nothing’s happening unless you say so.”
And for God’s sake, say so.
She absorbed this information, turning it this way and that inside her perfect head, examining its possibilities and nuances. “Okay,” she said at last.
“Okay, what?” he said, trying not to think about having sex.
“Okay, that makes me feel better. Even though it shouldn’t matter, feeling better. I mean the point of all this, the point of disa
ppearing, is to get away from that.”
“From what, exactly?”
“From what everyone else expects of me. From worrying about pleasing everyone. Playing my little role. Living up to their expectations. Letting their expectations become my expectations, until I can’t tell what’s real, what I really want, because it’s all wrapped up in my wanting what they want. A big, exciting life, the wife of a big, exciting man.” She paused. “Does that make sense?”
“Sort of.” He lifted away his topmost hand, his right hand, and propped his elbow on the back of the sofa. Maybe that would help him focus on something other than Tiny’s nearby skin.
“I mean, why did you join the army?”
This was firmer ground. “Because I liked it. Because I knew it. Knew I could do it well. Suits me. My father was a soldier. He stayed on after the war, made a career of it.”
“But did you really want to be a soldier? Or had you never considered anything else? I mean, did your family want you to sign up, or did you want to sign up? For yourself?”
He thought about Granny and law school. “The opposite, I’d say. I don’t have much to do with Dad’s family, he was an only child. But my mother’s family . . . well, I wouldn’t say they disapprove, exactly. But they think I could do better. Be more ambitious.”
“Oh.” Her forefinger rubbed against his forefinger. Did she realize she was doing it? Did she feel the same friction of nerve endings, all the way to her backbone? Her gaze traveled back to the wall of prints. “What about your photographs? Did you ever think of doing that instead?”
“I am doing that.”
“But if you had to make a choice. Between photography and the army. If the army told you you couldn’t pick up a camera again, ever, what would you choose?”
He returned the caress of her finger. He couldn’t help it. “What are we talking about, exactly?”
“When you walked into my coffee shop, a month ago—”
“Your coffee shop?”
She opened her eyes—she’d held them closed, all this time—and tilted her head to look at him. “Yes, my coffee shop. I’ve gone there for years, during breaks between classes.”