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She lifted her feet, tucked her legs against her chest, and let the water hold her. She felt like an egg in a pot of warm water, buoyed and surrounded entirely. "Yes," she finally said, and paddled with her arms until she'd turned around, and by Lewis's side she paddled back toward the shore.
Later, sitting on top of a picnic table on the beach, wrapped in a musty blanket Lewis had unearthed from the trunk of his car, she said, "You asked me before what I regret." "This was before our dip?" he asked, as if the salt water had obliterated his memory. "Yes," said Ella. "Before. But I want to tell you the truth now." She breathed deeply, remembering the feeling of the water all around her, holding her up, making her brave. She remembered being a little girl and swimming out farther then any of the other kids, farther than any of the grownups, so far that Emily would later swear that she was barely a speck in the water. "I regret that my granddaughters are lost to me." "Lost to you," Lewis repeated. "Why?" "When Caroline died, their father took them away. He moved them to New Jersey, and he didn't want me to keep in touch. He was very angry ... at me, at Ira, at everyone. Angry at Caroline, too, but she wasn't there to be angry at, and we were. I was." She wrapped the blanket around her more tightly. "I don't blame him for that." She looked down at her hands "There was a part of me that was ..." She breathed again. "Relieved, I guess. Caroline was so hard to deal with, and Michael was so angry, and it just felt safer not to have to deal with any of them. So I took the easy way out. I stopped trying. Now they're lost." "Maybe you should try again," said Lewis. "Maybe they'd be glad to hear from you. How old are they?" Ella didn't respond, even though she knew the answer. Maggie would be twenty-eight, and Rose would be thirty. They could both be married, with husbands and children and different
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last names and no use for an old woman, a stranger, barging in with a heart full of sad memories, and their dead mother's name on her lips. "Maybe," she repeated, because Lewis was looking at her, sitting cross-legged on top of the picnic bench with his hair still damp from the water. And Lewis had nodded, and smiled at her, and she knew she wouldn't have to answer any other questions that night.
THIRTY
Princeton was not going to be a problem. But money was. Maggie realized that her math skills weren't the greatest, but two hundred bucks, minus the twenty or so she'd spent on food at the Wawa during the days she hadn't been able to sneak into a dining hall or a study break offering free pizza or Thomas Sweet ice cream, plus stolen credit cards that she was too afraid to use, did not equal enough to fund a new life. It wouldn't even be enough for a plane ticket to California, let alone a deposit on an apartment, and head shots. There must be more money, Maggie whispered to herself. It was a line from a short story she'd read in another abandoned book, a story about a little boy who could ride a rocking horse and see the winners of real horse races; and the more urgently he rode, the louder his house seemed to whisper. There must be more money. She considered her options as she sat inside the Student Center, nursing a ninety-cent cup of tea. She needed a job that paid cash, and the only possibility she'd seen was printed on a flier that she'd pulled down from the library wall. She set her mug aside and carefully unfolded the sheet of yellowing paper. "Housekeeper Needed," it read. "Light cleaning, some errands, once a week." Then there was a telephone number starting with 609
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Maggie pulled out her cell phone—the one her father had bought her, the one where the bills for the charges went directly to his office—and dialed. Yes, an old-woman-sounding voice informed her, the job was still open. Once a week, easy work, but if Maggie was interested, she'd have to provide her own transportation. "You could take the bus," she said. "Right from Nassau Street." "Would you mind paying me in cash?" asked Maggie. "It's just that I haven't gotten my checking account set up here. I've got an account at home ..." She let her voice trail off. "Cash will be fine," the woman said crisply. "Assuming you work out." So Thursday morning Maggie got up extra early, creeping like a mouse through the silence of the library before any of the lights came on, making sure her things were tucked out of sight. She hid in the first-floor bathroom and listened to the security guards unlock the front doors. Ten minutes after the library opened for business, she walked out the door, and was on her way to Nassau Street. "Hello there," called the woman on the porch. She was short and thin with white hair flowing past her shoulders, and she wore what looked like a man's oxford shirt with a pair of leggings underneath it, and sunglasses, even though it was cloudy outside. "You must be Maggie," she said, tilting her head in Maggie's direction. She put one hand on the railing for balance and held out the other one for Maggie to shake. Blind, Maggie realized, and shook the woman's hand carefully. "I'm Corinne. Come on in," she said, leading the way into a large Victorian house that already seemed scrupulously clean, and precisely organized. In the entryway hall, there was a stark wooden bench to the right and a series of cubbyholes hanging above it and a pair of shoes in each cubbyhole. A raincoat and a winter coat hung on adjoining hooks; an umbrella and hat and mittens were laid neatly on a shelf above them. And next to the empty coat rack was a white cane. "I don't think you'll find the work too difficult," said Corinne, taking careful birdlike sips from a cup of coffee in a lemon-yellow
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mug. "The floors need to be swept and mopped," she began, ticking off the tasks on her fingers. "I'd like you to organize the recycling, the glass and paper in particular. The laundry should be sorted, the dishwasher needs to be emptied, and . . ." Maggie waited. "Yes?" she finally asked. "Flowers," said Corinne, and tilted her chin up defiantly. "I'd like you to buy some flowers." "Okay," said Maggie. "I'm sure you're wondering why I want them," said Corinne. Maggie, who hadn't been wondering, said nothing. "Because I can't see them," said Corinne. "But I know what flowers look like. And I can smell them, too." "Oh," said Maggie. And then, because "Oh" seemed somehow insufficient, "Wow." "The last girl said she brought flowers," said Corinne, pursing her lips. "But they weren't real ones." Her lip curled. "Plastic. She thought it wouldn't matter." "I'll find some real flowers," said Maggie. Corinne nodded. "I would appreciate that," she said.
It took Maggie less than four hours to do everything Corinne had asked. She wasn't an experienced housekeeper, because Sydelle had never trusted the girls to do anything right and had employed an anonymous army of housekeepers to maintain the pristine state of her glass-and-metal-filled rooms. But Maggie did a good job, sweeping every mote of dust from the floors, then folding the laundry and returning dishes and silverware to their shelves and drawers. "My parents left me this house," Corinne said while Maggie worked. "It's the house I grew up in." "It's beautiful," said Maggie, which was true. But it was also sad. Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a vast staircase that curved through the center of the house, and the only resident a blind woman who slept in a single narrow bed with a single flat pillow,
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who would never appreciate all of the space or how the sun looked as it spilled through the wide windows and pooled on the hardwood floors. "Are you ready to go to the market?" Corinne asked. Maggie nodded, then remembered that nodding would do her no good. "All set," she said. Corinne used her fingertips to extract a single bill from her wallet. "This is twenty dollars?" she asked. Maggie inspected the bill and said that yes, it was a twenty. "That's all the money machine gives out," said Corinne. Then why are you asking me? thought Maggie. Then she realized that it was possibly a test. And, for once, she'd managed to pass on her first try. "You can go to Davidson's market. It's right up the street." "Do you want a flower with a smell?" asked Maggie. "Like lilacs or something?" Corinne shook her head. "No smell will be necessary," she said. "Use your discretion." "Do you need anything else while I'm there?" Corinne seemed to consider this. "Yes. You can surprise me," she sa id.
Maggie walked to the market, thinking of what she might buy. Daisies, for starters, and she was lucky to find bunches of them clustered in a green plastic tub out front. She wandered the aisles, considering and rejecting plums, a pint of strawberries, a bundle of green-smelling spinach, a half-gallon of milk in a heavy glass bottle. What would Corinne like? Something that smelled seemed too obvious, especially since she'd been so quick to reject scented flowers, but Maggie wanted something . . . She groped for the word, and grinned when she found it—sensual. Something that had a feel to it, a weight, a heft, like the glass milk bottle, or the satiny feel of the daisy's petals. And suddenly, there it was, right in front of her, another glass jar, only this one glowing amber. Honey. "Orange Blossom Honey. Locally Produced," read the label. And even
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though it was $6.99 for even the smallest jar, Maggie added it to her basket, along with a bumpy-looking loaf of twelve-grain bread. Later, back in the large, clean house, when Corinne sat across from Maggie at the kitchen table, slowly munching a slice of the toasted bread spread thick with honey and then pronouncing it perfect, Maggie knew that she wasn't just paying her an empty compliment. She'd passed her second test of the day by finding exactly the right thing.
THIRTY ONE
"I'm worried about your sister," Michael Feller said without preamble. Rose sighed and stared at her cup of coffee, as if Maggie's face might appear inside of it. So what else was new? "It's been eight weeks," her father continued, as if Rose had somehow lost track of time. His face looked as pale and vulnerable as a peeled hard-boiled egg, all high, wide forehead and sad little eyes above his standard-issue gray banker's suit and subdued maroon tie. "We haven't heard from her. You haven't heard from her," he said, his voice rising at the end of the sentence, turning it into a question. "No, Dad, I haven't," said Rose. Her father sighed—a typical Michael Feller sigh—and poked at his dish of melting ice cream. "Well, what do you think we should do?" Meaning, what do you think I should do, thought Rose. "Did you try all of her ex-boyfriends? That should have taken you a week or two," she said. Her father was silent, but Rose could hear reproach in what he wasn't saying. "Did you call her cell phone?" she asked. "Of course," said Michael. "Her voice mail's working. I leave messages, but she doesn't call back."
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Rose rolled her eyes. Her father pretended not to notice. "I'm really worried," Michael continued. "This is a long time for us not to hear anything. I wonder ..." His voice trailed off. "If she's dead?" Rose supplied. "I don't think we're going to get that lucky." "Rose!" "Sorry," she said, not very sincerely. She didn't care if Maggie was dead. Well . . . Rose pulled a handful of napkins out of the dispensers. That wasn't true. She didn't want her awful little sister to be dead, but she thought she'd be perfectly happy if she never saw or heard from her again. "And, Rose, I'm worried about you, too." "Nothing to worry about," Rose said, and started to fold one of the napkins into a pleated fan. "Everything's fine." Her father's voice was dubious as he raised his gray eyebrows. "Are you sure? You're okay? You're not having ..." "Having what?" Her father paused. Rose waited. "Having what?" she asked again. "Some kind of trouble? You don't want to, um, talk to someone or something?" "I'm not nuts," Rose said bluntly. "You don't have to worry about that." Her father raised his hands, looking helpless and upset. "Rose, that wasn't what I meant ..." But of course, Rose thought, it was exactly what he meant. Their father never talked about it, but she knew it had been on his mind as he'd watched his daughters—especially Maggie—make their way toward womanhood. Are you cracking up, are you losing your mind, are those bad strands ofDNA starting to speak up, are you looking into taking a short fast drive around a tight, slippery curve? "I'm fine," Rose said. "I just wasn't happy at that particular law firm, so I'm taking some time to figure out what I want to do next. Lots of people do it. It's very common." "Well, if you're sure," her father said, and turned his attention
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back to his ice cream—a special treat, Rose knew, as Sydelle hadn't allowed anything more caloric than ice milk and Tofutti into their house since the early 1990s. "I'm fine," said Rose. "You don't have to worry about me." With heavy emphasis on the me, to make it clear who her father did have to worry about. "Could you call her?" Michael asked. "And say what?" "She won't talk to me," he said sadly. "Maybe she'll talk to you." "I don't have anything to say to her." "Rose. Please?" "Fine," Rose grumbled. That night, she set her alarm for one in the morning, and when it went off she groped through the darkness for her telephone and punched in Maggie's cell phone number. One ring. Two. And then her sister's voice, loud and cheerful. "Hello?" Jesus! Rose made a disgusted noise. She could hear party sounds in the background—music, other voices. "Hel-lo!" Maggie trilled. "Who's this?" Rose hung up. Her sister was like a fucking Weeble, she thought. She'd wobble, she'd screw up, she'd steal your shoes and your cash and your guy, but she'd absolutely never fall down. The next morning, after her first round of dog walks, she called her father at his office. "She's alive," she reported. "Oh, thank goodness!" her father said, sounding absurdly relieved. "Where is she? What did she say?" "I didn't speak to her," Rose said. "I just heard her voice. The prodigal daughter is alive and well, and has lived to party another day." Her father was silent. "We should try to find her," he said. "Feel free," said Rose. "And give her my best when you do." She hung up the phone. Let her father try to track down his wayward daughter. Let Michael and Sydelle try to sucker her into coming home. Let Maggie Feller be someone else's problem for once.
