Home Safe (3 page)

She knocks on her daughter's door, and when Tessa opens it, she says, “Okay. So here it is.” She hands her the candle, and Tessa sniffs it appreciatively. “Nice,” she says. “Thanks, Mom.”

Tessa looks cute. She's wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, working in the same kind of outfit Helen used to work in, and her long blond hair is in a high ponytail. Helen is always trying to get her to curl her hair, but Tessa likes it straight.

“So, I'll see you later,” Tessa says.

She has not noticed the sweater and so Helen puts down her packages and straightens the collar, buttons one of the adorable buttons. “Do you want to come over for dinner Wednesday?”

“Sure.”

Helen pushes up one sleeve of the sweater. Then, slowly, the other.

“Okay, so I guess I'd better get back to work,” Tessa says.

“I just bought this sweater!” Helen blurts it out, much too loudly—the sound all but echoes off the walls. Then, in the absurd way that people do, she repeats it, in a lower voice.

“Oh.” Tessa nods.

“Do you like it?”

“It's cute. On you.”

“Do you want it?”

Tessa leans her forehead against the doorjamb, closes her eyes.

“Okay,” Helen says. “I'll see you.”

After she retrieves her car, Helen makes her way down Michigan Avenue, where the traffic is not yet terrible. She moves easily past Millennium Park, thinks again about what it would be like to live in one of the condos across the street from here, sees herself as a well-dressed woman with a mastiff walking briskly toward her place, then decides, as she always does, that she must have her garden and the quiet of her neighborhood. Also she must have the young girls across her street who play outside on their lawn all summer. Last August she looked out her study window as the youngest, aged six, danced on the sidewalk in her bathing suit with a broom. She moved as gracefully as a young ballerina in her bare feet, her head thrown back, her face full of longing; it brought Helen such pleasure to watch her. Later, the girl sat on her front porch steps eating a Popsicle and shouting out “I grant you
three wishes!”
to every passerby, then giggling into her hand if they noticed her.

It brought back to Helen one of her favorite memories of Tessa as a little girl. The summer her daughter turned four, she played exclusively with boys, although she did, in a nod toward femininity, wear her pink tutu every single day. One afternoon that summer, she came banging in the front door, a line of three little boys behind her. Beneath her tutu she wore blue jeans and one of Dan's T-shirts. Naturally, it swam on her, but Tessa loved wearing her father's T-shirts because, as she once told Helen, they left room for things. “What things?” Helen asked, and Tessa whispered, “You can't
see
them.”

On that day Tessa's feet were bare and muddy, and strands of hair, escaped from the ponytail she'd insisted on making herself, hung in her face. She carried a long stick under her arm and used it to point to a blueberry pie Helen had made earlier that morning and now was cooling on top of the stove.
“That's
what we're having for dinner,” she announced, and the boys stared wordlessly, admiringly, really, Helen thought. Then Tessa slapped the stick against her thigh as though she were General Patton with his riding crop and said, “Let's go!” and they all filed back outside. Immediately afterward, Helen heard Tessa yell, “Mom! Mom! Hey, Mom!” When Helen came to the door, she said, “Do you want to play with us?” Helen smiled and declined, even though she wanted nothing more than to abandon her housework and go outside with that group of free little beings. She regrets to this day the fact that she didn't do it.

Helen drives slowly, looking at all the Christmas decorations this city so enthusiastically puts up, the little trains laden with gifts atop the subway entrances, the tiny white lights on red branches in the medians of the streets, the glitzy displays in the store windows, the red bows on the evergreen wreaths around the necks of the lions that flank the entrance to the Art Institute. She almost regrets that the traffic is moving as well as it is. But when she reaches the entrance to the freeway, she sees that she has waited too long to leave downtown after all; the cars are going no more than twenty-five miles an hour and she knows it will only get worse. She loosens the muffler around her neck, turns on the station that plays only Christmas carols, and starts to sing along. But then she is ambushed by the thought of the holiday without Dan, and she turns on the CD that Tessa gave her last year and listens instead to Pink Martini, wishing she were drinking a clear white one.

A horn blares and a man next to her gives her the finger; she has strayed from her lane. “Sorry,” she mouths, but the man misinterprets her, and from behind his closed window she can see him yelling so loud his neck cords stand out.

She slows down to let the man get ahead of her, and now the driver behind her begins to blare his horn. She blinks away tears and reflexively whispers, “Dan.” She knows he would be able to make her laugh at this. It starts to snow, tiny flakes. She watches them drift down, touch her windshield and disappear. Here comes Joni Mitchell on the CD, singing, “I wish I had a river I could skate away on …” Just before her exit, Helen sees that she is even with the man who yelled at her. She taps her horn, and when he looks over at her she smiles gloriously and waves. He, having forgotten who she is, waves back, looking confused, but smiling.

three

A
T THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, HELEN IS NAPPING WHEN SHE IS
awakened by what sounds like footsteps on the stairs. She sits up quickly, leaving behind a dream of a snow tunnel, of being in a hollowed-out, white place tinted with blue, where she had hunkered down for warmth and found it. She listens; nothing, now. She lies back down, wondering whether or not to try to recapture sleep, that little blessing. She remembers red mittens in the dream, black boots, the clarity of those colors. She closes her eyes, but she's wide awake; she'll get up.

She goes to the bathroom and washes off her face, then looks at herself in the mirror. Her expression is as blank as her life these days. She feels as though mostly what she does is eat, sleep, and eliminate, eat, sleep, and eliminate, like some basic life-form one step up from a paramecium. At least paramecia get to have fringelike cilia all around their bodies, which seem sort of lively and fun. It's been a very long time since Helen felt lively or fun.

Now she hears the noise again:
Is
it footsteps? Her pulse quickens, her breathing stops. “Dan?” she calls, her hand to her throat. He's not there; of course he's not there, but if the killer thinks a man is there, he might leave. Only last week, she read in the local paper about an intruder who was frightened away when the woman who was at home (in the bathroom, no less!) called out her husband's name. She moves to the top of the stairs. “Dan?” she says again, louder.

Nothing.

Oh, what to do? She stands still and then hears noise again, but now she sees that it is coming from outside and is not footsteps at all—it is a piece of equipment someone is using against the side of their house. The phone rings and she stares at it until the message machine picks up. She hears a man's voice and listens for a while without being able to identify who it is. How lovely to hear a man's voice in her house. Then she recognizes her accountant, going on about some discrepancy and asking her to call him back.

She doesn't want to call Steve Parker. She doesn't want to talk about finances. She wants a different message. What? What does she want to hear?

Nothing.

Well, not true. She would like to hear, “Helen? It's Dan. Don't tell I called you, it's not allowed.” That is a message she would like to hear; that is a call she would like to take. Even if he could never call again, if he could just call once and say, “I'm all right, it turns out everything after death is just great. I'm here waiting, sweetheart; take your time, but I'm here waiting for you.”

Late afternoon in November. If it were a song, it would be a sad one. What will she do tonight? Take a bath. Make herself a nice dinner. At the notion of this, her spirits lift in the smallest of ways, like an ancient dog lifting his head at the sound of the word “walk.” Recipe books spread out on the kitchen table: myriad choices, all for something good. It's a welcome diversion. She has a pork tenderloin. She has apples and potatoes. She has green beans. She is armed with groceries.

A few hours later, Helen sits at the head of the dining room table finishing the rather lavish meal she prepared: roast pork with cinnamon apple chutney, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans with crispy shallots. She made an apple crisp for dessert, but she's too full to eat it and doesn't really want it anyway; she just wanted to smell it baking.

When she carries the dishes into the kitchen, she notices the light on her phone blinking. It's not Steve; she erased his message when she came down to make dinner. Then she remembers that when the roast was in the oven, she brought the garbage out to the curb and stopped to talk to her next-door neighbor, Joanie—probably the call came in then. She presses the button and hears a young woman saying, “This is Amy Burken calling from Anthropologie? I understand you were in the store to fill out an application, but you had to leave before you could interview? I wondered if you'd be able to come to the store tomorrow at one. I'll assume you'll be there unless I hear otherwise.”

Helen stands with her half-full plate in her hand, thinking. What would be so terrible about taking a job just for the holidays? The reality is that it's six-thirty in the evening and she's in her pajamas—again. It might do her a lot of good to get out of the house and be with people, despite the fact that they're nowhere near her age. In fact, working with mostly young people might show her that she has more in common with them than she thinks. They might really like her; she might become their pet. Their affection might impress Tessa. Never mind the negativity she was suddenly seized by in the store this afternoon. If nothing else, an outside job would get her mind off her inability to work at home.

Helen picks up the phone, hesitates, and then calls Tessa. When her daughter answers, she says, “I have an interview at Anthropologie tomorrow.”

“Mom,” Tessa says. “Mom. Mom.”

“It's just for the holidays. Think of the discount!”

“Don't do it.”

Helen watches the second hand moving around the face of the kitchen clock. Looks out the window and sees only her reflection. “Thanks for your support. I'll let you know what happens.” She hangs up, then picks up the phone and hangs up again, harder. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks the phone.
“What am I supposed to do?”

She starts to go upstairs, where she intends to read until she falls asleep, then remembers she's not brought in the mail yet. There are bills, catalogues, and a large envelope from her publisher, overkill for what it holds: one letter. Helen sits at the table to read it.

Dear Helen Ames
,

You don't know me, but

A fan letter. Exactly what she needs right now. Helen puts the letter in her robe pocket. She'll look at it after she's read a few chapters in a novel she bought yesterday. These letters aren't coming so often as they used to, and God knows that unless she gets another book out soon, they'll stop altogether. What a relief it will be to read that letter and apply the psychic balm that is a stranger's approval.

four

“S
O
!”
THE MANAGER AT
A
NTHROPOLOGIE, NAMED
S
IMONE, SAYS
. “Why don't we talk here?” She gestures to a sofa, the same one where Helen filled out the application, and she and Helen sit at either end. Simone is a very friendly type, wide-eyed, loud-spoken. She's about thirty years old, with a chic, asymmetrical haircut and the overly shiny hair that many people have these days. It is Helen's opinion that hair can be too shiny and teeth too white, but what does she know. Simone wears an outfit that might very well have come from the store: nubby black and white wool pants, a whimsically patterned top, a wrap cardigan sweater. “Thank you so
much
for coming down here!” she says, and Helen sees the flash of a tongue stud. A tongue stud! Right in the middle of her tongue! Don't popcorn kernels get stuck on there? Can she chew gum? Is it true that those things enhance one's sex life? Do you take them out for funerals? She wills herself to stop this, to pay attention, to act like an interested candidate, worthy of hiring.

“First off,” Simone says, “I have to tell you that the woman who read your application knows your work? She told me that you were
ridiculously
overqualified. I know your name, but I haven't read your books. I think my mom has, though.”

“Oh, uh-huh.” Helen doesn't want to talk about her books. She wants to forget about the fact that she's a writer. Was. She sits up straighter to say, “In terms of the job, I guess I should tell you that I won't be here December twenty-first through the twenty-sixth. I should tell you that right away. I imagine that's prime time here, huh?”

“Well, I mean …
Yes
.”

“I'll be at my parents' house, I go to their house in Minnesota every year at that time. My daughter and I will be going. On the train, you know, it's nice to travel that way. Do you ever take a train when you travel?”

Simone shakes her head no.

“Well,
anyway,”
Helen says, “I wouldn't be able to work those days. And also … I'd prefer not to work the evening shift.”

“I'm afraid we do require our part-time employees to work some evenings? And weekends.”

“I see,” Helen says.

“We only bend the rules for exceptional applicants?”

“Well,” Helen says, laughing. She's not an exceptional applicant. The truth is, she's not overqualified, either; she's not even qualified. She's never worked retail, unless you count the time she was twelve years old and sold hot dogs on a golf course. All the way downtown this morning, she prayed she wouldn't have to learn how to work the register. Or lift anything heavy—she has occasional back problems. Or be the one to greet people at the door; she's too shy to do that, she'd stand there like an idiot, her hands clasped tightly together, feeling like she was failing an audition with every “Hi, welcome to Anthropologie!” Also, she does not want to work until closing because she doesn't want to have to stay late to restock the floor, which Tessa, when she called this morning, told her she would have to do. Tessa also said, “Mom. Mom. Try this. Out loud, say, ‘Can I get you that in another size?’ over and over. Seriously, can you see yourself doing that?” Tessa giggled quietly, not unkindly—Helen could tell she'd pulled the phone away from her mouth in an effort not to be heard.

No, was the answer. What Helen wanted was an imperative for getting out of her house so she could stop chewing on her paw, as Dan used to call it. “Take a walk!” he would tell her when she got a little tangled up inside herself—though he never saw her as bad as she is now. “Remember the world!” he would say. And she would get pissed off at him but also she would remember the world and take a walk and it helped. It helped to see leaves on trees, loaves of bread in the bakery window, mothers holding hands with toddlers on their way into the library, butterflies making their slow rounds of flower gardens.

It used to help Helen to iron, at such times, too; to lose herself in warm, cotton-scented labor, to have the satisfaction of starting and completing a task in one sitting, a task that was not weighted with anything else, but was instead its own simple, declarative self. Helen thinks menial labor is greatly underrated and could probably cure a number of ills. But ironing has not helped her, lately, nor has folding towels or alphabetizing spices or chopping vegetables or organizing closets or photo albums. She needs to be away from her house, her old routines. What she would really like to do at Anthropologie is sit at a little table and watch people.

She tells Simone, “I wonder if I could just … I guess what I'd like to do is work a couple of days a week, or, you know, even one day a week. That would be fine, one day a week. Doing something like gift wrapping. Just gift wrapping. Would that be a possibility?”

Simone shifts on the sofa. “Remember how you came down here and filled out an application and didn't stay for an interview?”

“Right, the traffic. I was trying to beat the traffic.”

“Well, we hired so many people that day”—and here she leans in closer to Helen as though they are confidantes and nearly whispers—“we
overhired
. So … we kind of have a
problem
. We thought some people would drop off? They always do? But this time no one did. So we're actually … We really don't need anyone right now.”

Helen feels a great lifting inside; a wonderful relief, mixed with a vague confusion. If they have enough people, why didn't they call her and tell her not to come? “I see.” She stands, shoulders her purse, buttons her coat. “Well, thanks anyway.”

“Of course,” Simone says. “And thank you
so much
for coming down.”

Helen walks quickly out of the store and down the sidewalk. She will go home and call Tessa and she will say, “I didn't get the job.” Then she will call Midge and confess that she has apparently fallen a bit farther down the rabbit hole. Then she will read the letter she never got to last night. She fell asleep lying on top of her bedcovers, in her robe and slippers, her glasses on. When Dan was alive, he would find her like this sometimes, and he would gently remove her glasses, take off her slippers, and cover her with a quilt. Sometimes he awakened her with his ministrations, but she never let him know. She kept her eyes closed and waited for the little puff of air just before the quilt settled on her, waited for Dan's lips to press lightly against her forehead. Sometimes after he did that he would stand watching her sleep; she could feel it. The next time Tessa asks her mother why in the world she should ever get married, Helen will answer by telling her that.

It's cold in the house when Helen comes in, dark, too. She turns on lights in the kitchen and the living room, boosts the heat, and then sits at the table with her coat on. She stares into space, recalling the “interview” she had with Simone, and wonders again why the woman asked her to come in. It must have been that, soon after meeting Helen, she decided she didn't want to hire her. Helen really must get a grip on herself, and stop trying to get jobs she doesn't even want. Surely her need and desire to write will come back soon; in the meantime, why doesn't she simply enjoy the break? Why can't she sit at the breakfast table taking in the angle of the morning sun, the sight of birds at the feeder? Why can't she visit a coffee shop and eavesdrop for the simple pleasure of hearing another's syntax, vocabulary, accent, problems? Afternoon movies can be a wonderful diversion: why doesn't she walk over to the Lake Theatre, buy herself a heavily buttered popcorn, and lose herself in someone else's story? Because she wants to write her own stories, that's why. Because she misses having that elemental need satisfied. She feels like a junkie, jittery with need, unable to focus on anything but obtaining that fix, that fix, that fix.

Ah, well. She'll read the fan letter now and that will make her feel better, it will erase some of the indignity of the day. It will remind her that she is a respected author, with a lot to be grateful for, despite her present woes.

She takes off her coat and boots, and goes upstairs to pull the letter from the robe pocket. She perches on the edge of her bed to read it, but the room is cold—some draft has developed somewhere. She comes back downstairs and lays the letter on the kitchen table—she'll read it here, with a cup of hibiscus tea, how civilized, how very pleasant. She puts the kettle on and slides out the page. It's a short letter, only one paragraph, but many times Helen has gotten a letter brief in content yet full of feeling.

Dear Helen Ames
,

You don't know me, but I've been wanting to write to you for a long time
.

Usually when people start this way, they go on to say very specific and gratifying things about one of Helen's titles—or many titles. She reads on eagerly.

I can't tell you how surprised I am by the quality of your books. I was given the first by a friend who told me I really had to read it; it was your novel
Telling Songs.
I did read it, and I must say I wondered about my friend when I'd finished—I enjoyed nothing about that mawkish and clumsily written book. But then I thought, Well, maybe it's a fluke; my friend—whom I normally admire—is so fond of you; and so I checked a few more of your books out of the library, only to find that I didn't like them, either. Who
are
you to have had these novels published? Your prose style is not “deceptively simple,” as one reviewer wrote, but insipid. I feel compelled to write this to you because I am so frustrated by what passes for literature these days
.

Margot Langley

Against all better judgment, Helen reads the letter again. Then a third time. She smells it: nothing. Then she puts it on the table and folds her hands in her lap and stares straight ahead. When the teakettle whistles, she makes herself a cup of tea. A better woman would laugh at such a letter. Or be empowered by it; a better woman would think,
Oh yeah, well watch this!
and immediately turn out seven pages. Or she would show the letter to her friends, and they would rush to her defense, and that would make her feel better. Or she would stop reading the letter halfway through, throw it in the trash, and move on to something of worth.

Helen reads the thing yet again, then goes to get her stationery and writes:

Dear Margot Langley
,

You ask who I am. That is a question I've been asking myself a lot lately. And the conclusion I have come to is this: not a writer. Not anymore. I hope this news will gladden your day, which will be in diametric opposition to what your letter did to mine
.

She signs her name, and reads her letter again. Then she tears it up and throws it in the trash. The letter from Margot Langley, she keeps. She puts it in her kitchen junk drawer, beneath the rubber bands, the take-out menus, the extra keys and birthday cake candles. Even as she does this, she wishes she wouldn't. Bad enough that she will parse the attack over and over in her mind; must she also let the evidence live in her house? But for some reason, she feels she is not finished with it.

Later that evening, she eats a dinner of saltine crackers with peanut butter and great dollops of grape jelly. Then she puts on her pajamas and crawls into bed. She calls Tessa, who does not answer, and leaves her a message. “I didn't get the job at Anthropologie,” she says. “Maybe you already heard and you're out celebrating.” She pauses, and makes her voice more cheerful. “Hey!” she says. “I got your email with the video of that guy doing the Tim Gunn imitation. He sounds
just like him
.” Another pause, and then, “Want to see a movie tomorrow night? I could come downtown. We could go to a five o'clock in case you have plans for later on. … Let me know.”

She hangs up, opens the novel she began last night, closes it, and lies staring out the windows into the dark. It is six-forty Tomorrow morning she will call Midge and say, Help. I'm serious. Help me. She will not tell Tessa or Midge about the letter. She will not tell anyone. She closes her eyes and Margot Langley's words float back into her brain; she has the letter memorized.

She opens the novel again, reads one page, another. Then another. And finally, everything in her own life surrenders to the one being presented here. An uneasy pain thins, lifts, disappears. Dan once had a friend who died from metastatic cancer. Toward the end, Dan visited him with some frequency; and each time he would call before going, to see what his friend might want or need. Each time, his friend requested the same thing: books.