“I was in the bathroom. I fell asleep in the tub.”
“Why didn’t he just say that?”
“He was being discreet.”
“You’re my mother. Does he know that?”
“Of course he knows.”
“Why was he answering the phone? Why didn’t Dad get it?”
“Maybe Dad was busy, maybe Dad didn’t hear it, he doesn’t hear as well as he used to. We’re old, you know.”
“You’re not old. Who is this Ray character anyway? How much do you know about him?”
Her mother doesn’t say anything.
“Mom, are you there? Is he right there? Can you not talk because the guy, the guest, the visitor, Ray, is right there?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Yes, of course, he’s there? Can he hear you? Can you not talk because he can hear you?”
“No, not at all.”
She stops for a minute, she takes a breath. “I feel like the SWAT team should be setting up next door with sharpshooters and a hostage negotiator. Are you all right? Are you safe?”
She overhears a mumbled conversation: “Oh thank you. Just milk, no sugar, thanks Ray.” There is a slurping sound.
“Where does this Ray sleep?”
“Downstairs, in your brother’s room. What train are you planning on taking?”
“I think I can get out early, two o’clock.”
“We’ll look forward to seeing you. Stay in touch.”
She hangs up.
“When are you leaving?” Steve asks.
“Early afternoon—I’ll go straight from the office.”
“Should we talk?” he says.
“Are you seeing somebody?”
“No. Are you?”
“No. Then we don’t have to talk.”
She walks into the bedroom. “This is how we’re having a conversation, yelling back and forth between rooms?”
“Apparently.”
“Is this how Bill told you to do it?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“There’s some man living in my parents’ house. Can’t the rest of it wait?”
“Do you want to have a code word so you can tell me if something is really wrong?”
“I’ll say, it’s unbelievably hot. And that means call the police or something.”
“Unbelievably hot,” Steve says.
“And if I say my toes are cold, that means I’m confused and you should ask me some more questions.”
“Hot house/cold toes, got it.”
In the morning, Wendy’s desk is too neat.
“Did she quit?” asks Tom, the executive who shares Wendy with Susan.
“She just needed a day off; the computer got to her.”
By nine there’s a temp in Wendy’s place, a woman who arrives with her own name plate—MEMORABLE TEMPORARIES, MY NAME IS JUDY.
“Worst thing is not knowing someone’s name, looking at her and wondering, Who is she? How can I ask her to do anything—I don’t know her name. Now you know, it’s Judy. And I’m here to help you.”
“Thank you, Judy” she says, going into her office and closing the door.
“I have an appointment outside—I won’t be back,” she tells Judy at one-fifteen, when she emerges, wheeling her suitcase down the hall.
“Have a good weekend,” Judy says with a wink.
The train pulls out—she has the sense of having left something behind, something smoldering, something worrisome—Steve.
The train pushes through the tunnel, rocking and rolling. It pops out over the swamps of New Jersey, and suddenly instead of skyscrapers and traffic there are swamps, leggy white egrets, big skies, chemical plants, abandoned factories, and the melancholy beauty of the afternoon light.
She takes a taxi from the train. Directing the driver toward home, she descends into a world that is half memory, half fantasy, a world so fundamentally at her core that it is hard to know what is real, what is not, what was then, what is now.
“Is there somebody home?” the driver asks, pulling up to the dark house.
“There’s a key under the pot,” she says, giving away the family secret.
It is twilight. She stands in the driveway, with her suitcase at her feet, watching light fade from the sky, wondering why she came home. On the telephone line above her, four crows sit waiting. The trees press in like dark shields, she listens to the breeze, to the birds still calling. Across the way she sees Mrs. Altman moving around in her kitchen. In the house that used to belong to the Walds, someone new is also doing the dinner dance.
She stands watching the sky, the branches of trees blackening against the dusk. There is a rustling in the woods beyond the house. She glances at the brush, expecting to see a dog or a child taking a shortcut home.