Fly Away Home (28 page)

“He’s in gym class,” said the girl behind the reception desk. Dismissal wasn’t for another twenty minutes, so Diana scribbled an excuse about a dentist’s appointment onto the sign-out sheet, and went to collect her boy.

The first grade was playing volleyball. Kids in red pinneys stood on one side of the net; kids in yellow on the other. Milo, pale and solid in his shorts, was on the sidelines, holding an ice pack against his nose. They’d made him take his hat off. She saw its pom-pom peeking out from his pocket.

She hurried over. “Mom?” Milo looked up at her, blinking, relief spreading over his face (relief and confusion, most likely, because he’d never seen her out of the house without her hair done and her face made up).

“What happened?” she asked, bending down to hug him.

“I got hit by a ball.” He paused. “It was an accident.” Diana guessed that it probably wasn’t an accident, that one of those little pinney-wearing fucks had done it on purpose. “Come on,” she said to Milo, who was staring at her wide-eyed. “Let’s go.”

She waved at the gym teacher, a Nazi in a tracksuit with a silver whistle dangling from his beefy neck. Grabbing Milo’s hand, she hurried him down the hall and out into the car, which she’d double-parked, hazard lights blinking, on the side of the street where the school buses lined up.

“Where are we going?” he asked, after Diana drove past the street that would have taken them home. Diana steadied herself, with her hands tight on the wheel. Ideally, she supposed, she and Gary would be doing this together … but the situation was a long way from ideal.

“Your dad and I are having some problems, and we’re going to spend some time apart. I thought that you and I would take a little vacation.”

“Problems?” asked Milo. His voice was small and frightened. “What problems?”

She waited for a red light and thought carefully about her answer. “Grown-up problems. None of it is your fault at all. We both love you.” She swallowed hard. “We love you very, very much.”

In the rearview mirror his face relaxed, but his voice was still wavery. “What’s going to happen? Where are we going right now?”

She pulled into a gas station, put the car in Park, and patted the empty passenger’s seat. Milo unfastened his seat belt and scrambled clumsily over the gearshift into the seat beside her.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” she said, even though that wasn’t true, she was almost entirely certain what came next, and it started with a
D
and ended with
ivorce
. “But what’s happening right now is that you and I are going to stay in a hotel.” Milo’s face lit up. He loved everything about hotels, from the miniature bottles of shampoo and body gel to the room-service menus and pay-per-view movies. “Tomorrow we’re going to drive to Connecticut to visit Grandma Sylvie for a while. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” he said, and when she squeezed his hand he squeezed back.

When she’d been making her grand descent down Doug’s stairs, Diana had decided that she and her son would spend the night at the St. Regis in New York City, a place she’d walked by dozens of times on shopping trips to Saks, or visits to the Elizabeth Arden salon with her mother. She’d once had drinks with Hal in the King Cole Bar, but she’d never spent the night. Staying in a place like that, as opposed to a cheaper hotel or her parents’ apartment, would make Milo feel, correctly or not, that they were on a kind of adventure.

In that spirit, Diana had treated Milo to lunch at McDonald’s. He’d almost fainted in delight when she’d said he could have a cheeseburger and fries. They’d stopped at a Target on Route 1 for toiletries and a DVD of
Monsters, Inc
. It was close to five o’clock by the time they arrived in New York City.

“One key?” asked the woman behind the high marble counter, and Milo, who’d been staring, entranced, at the bellmen in their green-and-gold overcoats, had dashed up to Diana, whispering, “Two, please.” (Among the hotel amenities that Milo especially loved were hotel key cards.) Diana slid her American Express onto the leather blotter. For one terrible moment she was convinced that Gary had canceled their credit cards, that he’d frozen their bank accounts, that maybe he’d even called the cops and told them Milo had been kidnapped. But the card went through. The woman handed Diana two room keys, and came out from behind the desk to escort them to the elevator.

“Your butler will show you to your room.”

“Butler?” Milo whispered, his eyes wide beneath the brim of the hat he’d worn to school, and Diana smiled as he slid his hand in hers. No matter what else she’d lost, she hadn’t lost her son.

The butler who met them on the eighth floor turned out to be a woman, a woman in a tuxedo who showed them how to control the temperature, how to open the curtains, and how to use the remote to get the television set, which was concealed in the bed’s footboard, to rise up. “I would be happy to bring you complimentary coffee or tea, and press any items of clothing,” she said.

“Hot chocolate?” asked Milo, and the butler said she thought that would be all right.

Milo spent the next ten minutes making the set go up and down while Diana called Gary’s cell phone.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Oh, I’m great,” he said, in his clogged foghorn voice. “I’m just fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Milo’s fine.” She paused, unsure of what to say to him, how much she should try to comfort him. “We’re in New York. I thought we’d go to Connecticut for a few days and visit my mother.” Gary sighed and said nothing. “Do you want to talk to him?”

She could picture her husband, slumped in front of his laptop, trying to pull it together. He’d minimize the screens filled with YouTube videos and sports news and gossip, he’d sit up straight and roll up his sleeves. “Of course I want to talk to Milo.” Diana handed over the phone, then sat on the blue satin couch, sipped at her cup of tea, and thought that at least she had this tiny piece of her future planned out and under control.

Later, after they’d shared a room-service dinner of pizza and ice cream and watched
Finding Nemo
on the pay-per-view, Diana fired up her laptop, and pointed and clicked until she found what she was looking for. “Hey, Milo,” she said—he was lying under the covers, thumbing through one of his insect books. “Want to see where we’re going?”

Milo propped his chin on his hands and studied the photographs she’d found on the town of Fairview’s website, which displayed a single shot of the big white house on a bluff overlooking the ocean. His finger traced the edge of the water. “It’s probably too cold to go swimming.”

She stifled a sigh—was the glass always half-empty with this kid?—and said, “Yes, but I bet it’s cozy. There’s fireplaces. And Grandma Sylvie’s up there. She’s excited to see you.”

Milo’s face brightened at the thought of his grandmother, who’d been considerably more liberal with her entertainment and snack options than Diana herself was, and was known to carry chocolate-covered pretzels in her purse. “Why is she there? Is it because of Grandpa’s mistress?” he asked.

Jesus. “Where did you hear about that?”

“Dylan Berkowitz.” Milo settled himself onto his pillow with a very Gary-like grunt.

But of course. Dylan’s mom was a spray-tanned gym-bunny who lived on gossip and rye flatbread. “Do you know what a mistress is?”

He yawned and closed his eyes. “Like a girlfriend, only when you’re married already. So it’s bad.”

Diana considered giving a little more explanation and context to the subject of mistresses, but decided that it had been a long day and he’d already heard enough. “I love you miles and miles,” she said instead.

“Miles and miles,” he agreed. She kissed his cheek, pulled up the covers, turned out the light, and sat cross-legged on the bed beside her serious, dark-haired boy until she knew he was sleeping. She was certain that she wouldn’t be able to sleep—there were so many things she needed to plan for, like finding a lawyer and figuring out whether she wanted her old job back, and where she and Milo would live, and how she would live without Doug. She pulled off her clogs and slipped under the covers next to her son’s warm body.
Just for a minute
, she thought, and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again it was morning, Saturday morning, with Milo frowning at the weather report on TV and the housekeeper knocking gently at the door.

“Is this Grandma’s house?” Milo had asked as she’d cruised up the crushed-shell driveway to the house she hadn’t visited in over a decade.

Diana nodded, and put the car in Park. “I used to come here when I was a girl.”

Milo looked the house up and down—the sloping lawn, the wide wooden porch with the glider where Diana loved to sit and read. The leaves had turned from green to fiery orange and crimson, and the ones that were fallen had been raked into drifts at the base of the trees. Six pumpkins marched up the steps, and there was a basket full of apples and gourds by the front door. “It looks like the Haunted Mansion,” he said, sounding thrilled, which was no surprise. She and Gary and Milo had made the obligatory family pilgrimage to Disney World for Milo’s last birthday, and Milo had liked the Haunted Mansion better than any other ride, squealing in delight when their car spun around in front of the mirror and the special effects made it look as if there was a ghost in the backseat. Although, to be fair, Diana remembered as she climbed up the porch steps, Milo hadn’t actually gone on many other rides. He’d nixed Space Mountain once he read in the guidebook that it was “too intense for young children,” and, after forty-five minutes spent studying the faces of the people coming down the log flume, he’d announced that the ride also looked too intense. Gary, who’d planned on doing all the roller coasters with his son, had pouted for the rest of the day, and when Milo had asked to go on the spinning teacups on their way back to the car, Gary had said, “You’re too old for the baby rides.” Milo, hot and tired, had started to cry, and Gary had muttered, “Oh, great. That’s just great,” as Diana had thumbed through her guidebook, trying desperately to figure out where in the Magic Kingdom one could obtain an adult beverage.

She knocked. A minute later, the door swung open, and there was Sylvie, wearing a bathrobe and socks and a startled expression. “Diana?” she said. Diana wondered how she looked. She was wearing the clothes she’d left home in, the sweater Gary had wept upon, the leggings she’d pulled on to tell her husband they were through (and had her lover tell her the same thing). Her hair was uncombed, her face unwashed; and she hadn’t put on makeup since before her ill-fated Sunday brunch, before she’d almost killed a little girl, before everything had fallen apart.

Maybe she could change her life up here. Maybe she could treat the Connecticut house like one of those spas she was always meaning to visit, if she could ever find the time, the places that had workshops on managing your stress and improving your diet and finding balance and joy in your life. Aside from Doug—and that hadn’t turned out well—and Milo, there wasn’t much joy in Diana’s life. She worked so hard, and every penny she earned was spent almost before she’d finished earning it, gone to pay for the mortgage and the insurance and the property taxes, the private-school tuition, her dry-cleaning bill and the highlights for her hair, manicures and pedicures, the Internet and the cell phones and the cable. Maybe she could simplify;
simplifying
was a big theme at the spas that charged you three thousand dollars for a four-day retreat where experts would tell you about all the things you didn’t need. She could find another job, one with normal hours. She could try meditation. She could learn to throw pottery or strip floors or hang wallpaper or do découpage. She could finally make her house the cozy, safe nest she’d always dreamed of. She could …

“Diana?” Her mother was staring at her. Diana cleared her throat.

“Hi, Mom.” Her voice was still a little husky. She forced herself to stand up straight and tried out a smile. “We’re here!”

LIZZIE

Lizzie had had the foresight to take a heating pad from the bathroom cabinet in New York so when she showed up in Connecticut and explained to her mother that she’d hurt her back and had been ordered by a doctor to stay in bed and rest, there’d be a prop. In the bathroom, she found that the spotting had stopped, and she didn’t feel crampy or achy or any of the other ways the doctor had warned her she might feel. She spent the weekend visualizing herself walking slowly, with a bit of a limp, one hand clutching the affected area. On Tuesday morning, the intercom buzzed and Derek told her that he was downstairs waiting.

She listened to music for most of the drive, and woke as they were cruising up the steep driveway. She got out of the car, taking a deep breath of the cool air, then knocked on the door and stood waiting under the bright blue sky for someone to let her in.

Someone turned out to be Milo … and Milo meant Diana. Lizzie felt unease settle in her guts. Why hadn’t her mother mentioned that Diana would be there, too?

“Auntie Lizzie!” Milo cried, his pale face breaking into a smile at the sight of her. He threw himself into her arms, with the bill of his baseball cap bumping her midsection. She hugged him hard, then stepped back, remembering what the doctor had told her about lifting anything.

“Hey, big guy. Take it easy, okay? I hurt my back.”

Milo nodded, but he looked so forlorn that she bent over and gave him another squeeze. “What are you doing here?” she asked, as Derek carried her bags into the foyer.

“My mom and dad are having grown-up problems,” he said.

Lizzie nodded, thinking that the grown-up problem was very likely named Doug Vance. Only why was Diana up here, and not in Philadelphia with her boyfriend? From what she’d glimpsed, it sure seemed as if they were getting along.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said, as Milo, grunting, heaved her duffel bag into his arms and tottered toward the staircase. “Are you having fun?”

“It’s boring,” he said and dropped her bag with a thud. “All the books are grown-up books, and the water’s too cold for swimming.”

“True,” said Lizzie. “But I can show you how to play Frisbee for one.”

“I don’t know that game.”

“Of course you don’t. I invented it. You throw your Frisbee into the water, and if you time it just right then the waves bring it back to you.”

Milo sighed. “My mom just stays in bed all the time.”

Lizzie was surprised. Diana in bed? She’d never known her sister to sleep past six in the morning. She pictured herself and Diana, bedridden. She’d wait to make sure that the bleeding had stopped, and Diana would wait for … whatever she was waiting for. She left her bags where Milo had dropped them and walked slowly into the house, looking for her mother.

Sylvie was at the kitchen table, with a mug of tea beside her and a magazine with pictures of food spread open in front of her. Lizzie stared, blinking, until she confirmed that her impeccably groomed, meticulously dressed mother was, in fact, wearing yoga pants and a zippered hooded sweatshirt, and that there was a stretchy terry-cloth headband, the kind never intended for an outside-of-the-bathroom appearance, holding her hair, which was softly curling and streaked with gray, off her forehead.

“Hi, Mom.”

Sylvie jumped up and hurried to hug her. “Lizzie!” With her mother’s arms around her, her mother’s familiar scent of perfume and Camay soap in her nose, Lizzie found herself on the verge of tears. She held her body stiffly, hoping Sylvie wouldn’t notice anything different. She’d gained just five pounds, but her shape had changed, along with her center of gravity. She made herself grimace as Sylvie pulled away, hissing and grabbing at her back.

“What is it?” asked Sylvie. “What’s wrong?”

“I slipped on the sidewalk a few days ago, and I hurt my back. It’s no big deal,” she added quickly as alarm spread over her mother’s face. “It’s just a strained muscle, but they want me to stay in bed for like a week. Maybe two.” Sylvie hurried to usher her into a chair at the kitchen table, to get a pillow from the living room, to ask if she wanted tea or Tylenol, if hot baths or ice packs were recommended, if there was anything she could do.

“I’m okay,” said Lizzie. “I’m really fine. I just need to rest.”

Sylvie insisted on holding one of Lizzie’s elbows and helping her up the stairs and into the bed in the bedroom closest to the landing. “Diana’s down the hall,” she said, pointing to a closed door behind which, presumably, Lizzie’s big sister was hiding. Lizzie wondered again what she was hiding from. Had Gary walked in on her and Doug together? She smiled, then ducked her head to hide it, trying to imagine what her brother-in-law would do in such a situation.

The bedroom was clean and spare—a single bed, an oval braided rag rug with strands of red and blue and gold on the floor, a white-painted dresser, and a wooden desk by the window. Sylvie went downstairs, then came back up with a vase of daisies, a pot of tea, and a plate of butter cookies for the little table by the bed. Lizzie winced and grunted in what she hoped was an appropriate manner as she got under the covers and curled up on her side. Her mother pulled the covers up to her chin and smoothed her hair off her brow. “It’s good to have you here,” she said, and Lizzie smiled, then closed her eyes. Her heart was beating too fast—anxiety about the bleeding, fear of being found out—but otherwise, she felt exhausted, wanting to do nothing more than curl up and sleep.

She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling, knowing that she needed a plan. First, she would wait to see if the bleeding had really stopped. If she had a miscarriage, she’d handle it herself, and her mother would never need to find out … and would Lizzie really be disappointed if the pregnancy ended? She decided that the answer was yes. Her whole life she’d been drifting, in and out of schools and jobs and rehab. A baby would anchor her. It would mean she’d have to stay in one place, it would give her a job—mother—from which she could never be fired. Over the weeks since she’d discovered her pregnancy, Lizzie had found those things increasingly appealing.

Her mother was still looking at her. Even with her eyes shut, Lizzie could feel her watching. “Are you all right?” Sylvie asked. “Do you need anything else?” She sounded sincere, which was new. Normally, Sylvie sounded as if Lizzie was an unpleasant task to be gotten through, a duty to be discharged.

“I’m fine,” Lizzie repeated, opening her eyes. “Just sleepy.” She yawned to prove her point, and shut her eyes again, and when she opened them it was dark outside her window, silent except for the sound of the waves. Her mother was bustling into the room, carrying a tray. Lizzie smelled chicken, which made her stomach roll over, her mouth flood with saliva, and her eyes spill over with tears.
I can keep everything warm
, Jeff had said, with that sweetly hopeful look on his face.
You’ll come back, right?

“Hi,” she managed. Sylvie set the tray down, then sat on the edge of Lizzie’s bed. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Lizzie pushed herself upright. She wiggled her toes—the only part of herself that she could move without arousing suspicion—and wondered what was coming.

“That young man who … who bothered you while you were babysitting,” Sylvie began.

Lizzie sat up straighter. “What? What about it?”

Sylvie was twisting her hands together, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap. “I’ve been feeling for the longest time that we—your father and I—that we let you down. That if we’d done something more, we might have …”

“Might have what?” Lizzie asked, her tone sharp. She could see chicken and mashed potatoes and carrots on the plate, and felt both queasy and ravenous as she wondered who had cooked it.

Sylvie looked at her hands, knotted at her waist. “I don’t know,” she said. “That we could have spared you a lot of pain.”

Lizzie didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t want to answer. She wanted to be anywhere but the place she was, trapped in the soft bed in the cozy room with her mother talking about something she didn’t want to discuss or even remember. She flung the covers back and gingerly swung her feet to the floor.

“Get back in bed,” said Sylvie.

“I have to go to the bathroom!”

“Lizzie …” Sylvie put her hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. Lizzie wriggled away.

“Look. I appreciate what you’re saying. But it was a really long time ago. And I’m fine. I’m okay now. Really.” Lizzie made her way slowly across the room. What she really wanted to do was go to the bathroom to see if there was any more spotting, then go down to the kitchen and find something to scrub, a dishwasher to empty, a floor to mop. She wanted to walk along the beach for hours while the waves licked against her boots. She wanted to move, and she couldn’t. The doctor had said so. For the baby’s sake, for the baby’s safety, for once in her life of running and hiding, of ducking for cover underneath the candy cloud of painkillers, she had been well and truly halted.
You can do this
, she told herself. She took a breath, exhaled, then walked slowly to the bathroom, where she was heartened to see that the bleeding appeared to have stopped.

She washed her face and hands, brushed her teeth with one of the new brushes, still in its wrapper, that her mother had left out, and climbed back into bed. She tried a mouthful of potatoes, a single circle of carrot, chewing carefully, making sure each bite stayed down before attempting another. After a minute, Sylvie sat down beside her again. A minute later, Lizzie felt her mother’s hand on her hair, stroking gently. “I’m so sorry,” Sylvie whispered, in a soft voice Lizzie had never heard. Lizzie said nothing, holding her fork, concentrating on the baby inside of her, the size, maybe, of a raisin, a pencil eraser, a grain of rice.