Into Thin Air (40 page)

The front door suddenly opened. A woman was backing out, rushing, a heavy black leather purse slung across one shoulder. She was in a nurse's uniform, with those awful white crepe shoes, the white stockings that paled your legs bloodless. She finished locking the door and peered anxiously down at a large red Mickey Mouse watch banding her wrist. She had bright shiny red hair and bangs so long that Lee could hardly see her eyes. Someone in the house must be sick, Lee thought, starting to panic.

“Jim,” Lee said. Startled, the woman with the red hair looked up at Lee. All that crazy motion suddenly stilled. “Is Jim here?” Lee repeated, her mouth dry.

“He's at work.” The woman seemed frozen to the steps. “Who are you?”

“Andrea Banrett,” Lee said, backing away onto the street. “I… I used to go to school with him.”

“Andrea,” the woman repeated. She gave Lee a hard long look, then abruptly pulled herself from the steps. She strode toward the car. “I'll tell my husband you were by,” she said. She jammed the keys into the car, idling, staring at Lee, not pulling out of the drive until Lee started walking away from the house.

Lee was halfway down the block when the sedan drove by. It felt as if the car slowed as it passed her, but she kept her head bowed, almost as if she were praying.

As soon as the car was out of sight, Lee circled back to the house, her heart bumping fitfully inside of her. Husband. Jim was married. He had a wife who sat down to dinner with him nights, who rubbed his back and might have been calling Lee's daughter hers for years. Lee stood on the steps of the house, fingering the wrought-iron railing, picking at the rusted pieces with her fingers. She felt a sudden queasy stab of fright. She looked up at the top of the screen door. Once, when Jim was studying late at night, he had wired a makeshift alarm to keep intruders away. “You have to feel like your home is safe,” he told her. When he knew the baby was coming, she had had to talk him out of bars on the windows. She ran her fingers along the top of the door. The wire was still there.

She rang the bell, hoping for a sitter, but no one answered. It was past three. Her daughter would be out of school. Her daughter could be anywhere. She glanced at the house next door. The drive was empty; the house looked dark. She remembered the woman who lived there. Maureen, a nosy neighbor who had taken to Jim as though he were her own son, who had joked with Lee and invited her shopping, until finally Lee's refusals had dampened her enthusiasm.

She could come back here, but she didn't want to have to face Jim's wife again, to see that sharp, sudden look on her face again. She wanted to find Jim and explain. And she wanted her daughter.

There were local pharmacies. She could get a phone directory and a roll of quarters. She could call until she reached him, and in reaching him she'd reach her daughter. She thought of the woman suddenly. Jim had always told her he hated short hair on women. He had liked wrapping hers about his hand as though he were smoothing a skein of wool.

She remembered where the library was. They had a directory. She could sit down and write out names, and no one would bother her. She refused to think any further. On the way to the library, she kept seeing children. Every small face made her jolt. Any one of the little girls might be her own.

There were over forty pharmacies listed in the Yellow Pages. In despair Lee scribbled ten numbers at random. She'd disguise her voice, make those calls, and then come back and make ten more, and no matter who answered she'd hang up as soon as she knew he was or wasn't there. She needed to see him in person.

In the end it took her thirty-four quarters before she found Jim. The druggists she spoke to were always annoyed that she didn't have a prescription to call in. “There's no Jim here,” voice after voice told her.

Perfunctorily she called Labber Pharmacy. “Yes,” a clipped young voice said. “Jim Archer,” Lee said. “Hang on,” said the voice, and Lee slammed down the phone, so exhausted she had almost forgotten which number it was she had just dialed.

She didn't recognize the name of the pharmacy. It was on the far end of town, too far away from the house for Jim to walk it. She cabbed over, but she made the driver let her off more than three blocks away. “Jesus, lady, Spend the extra fifty cents,” he told her. “I can get you right to the door.” She fit the fare into his hand and got out.

The heat slammed against her. It was weather where anything could happen. The sidewalk shimmered before her. She took her time walking toward the drugstore, but as soon as she stepped on the black pad by the door, the door swung open. The pharmacy had mahogany shelves and a large center area that seemed devoted to cosmetics. A woman in a red dress was leaning toward a small mirror, gingerly dabbing pink cream into her cheeks. In the back was an old-fashioned soda counter. Her heart raced, ramming up against her ribs. She propped one hand along the smooth wood for balance. In the back a little girl was sipping ice cream, twirling on a chair. She had light brown hair, and Lee felt herself unraveling. “Anna,” a woman said, and daubed the girl's face with a napkin. And then there, in the back, was Jim.

She saw him before he saw her. He had on an open white smock coat over a blue shirt, and a tie and jeans, He looked the same as the day she had left him. Her mouth moved, soundless. He was leaning across the counter, talking earnestly to an old woman, pointing to something on the back of a bottle. His hair was very blond. His face looked older, and she suddenly felt sick with nerves. Her shirt was pasted along her back. She braced her hands along the wall, and when he looked up and saw her, she took a step back, as if the force of his stare were too much for her, as if all she might want to do was get on the highway again. She pushed forward, trying to keep her voice steady, jamming the words up out of her.

“Hello, Jim,” she said.

Lila had already left Joanna off with Maureen and had been rushing to get to work when she noticed the blond woman in the front yard. Another boring survey taker, she thought, or worse, a Jehovah's Witness trying to trick her into talking about Jesus. It wasn't until Lila got a good look at her that she felt a slam of fear.

She waited until the woman had walked off, and then she drove to the pay phone by the Thrift-T-Mart and called Jim, “Honey, I'm swamped. Let me call you later,” he said. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but it sounded so corny and flat that she skipped right over it, blurting, “Andrea Banrett was by. She said she went to school with you.”

“Andrea?” he said. “I don't know any Andrea.”

She wanted to tell him Andrea was blond. She wanted to unload the details so he could shape them into any other story than the one that was forming in her mind. Lots of women were blond. He knew lots of his customers by their first names. Lots of them called him by name, too. Lots gave a friendly honk of their horns when they drove past him on the road or stopped to chat in town.

She wasn't kidding one single person but herself. She was almost sure the woman was Lee. Nursing had trained her to be observant, to recognize detail, to remember. And even if she hadn't seen all those photos, she would have been able to shape a person from Jim's descriptions. And the worst of it was that after all this time she wasn't sure what Jim would do with a ghost who had suddenly sprung back to life again, and she wasn't sure what she would do, either, and most of all, she didn't think she wanted to find out.

Reality shift. It was a phrase Jim remembered from high school, when he had sat behind some of the boys who did drugs. It was when everything seemed suddenly to tremble and then shift, when alternate universes seemed possible, and it felt as if you were hovering between the two.

Jim saw Lee standing in front of him, and everything transformed except for her. The air seemed suddenly solid. It seemed to be moving, spinning lazily about him. Lee was unsmiling and very still. It was as if time had traveled back, as if he were seeing her again, during that first heartbreaking instant, when she was the long tall blonde illuminated on the highway, so mesmerizingly lovely that he hadn't been able to think of anything but getting her in his car beside him.

“Lee?” He moved toward her, coming out from behind the counter, passing the old woman who still held the pill bottle in her hand. The whole time he couldn't quite believe it was really she. He resisted blinking, as if that split second could make her disappear again. In a kind of heady daze he moved toward the corner where she was. He leaned forward and then clasped her bare arms in his hands. The feel of her warm skin was a shock to him.

“Don't cry,” she told him.

“You're alive,” he said in wonder. He couldn't stop touching her. Her hair. Her back. The slope of her hips, His smile kept changing shape.

“You're all right.”

“I'm fine.”

He held her for a moment, so tightly he swore he could feel her heart beating through him. She peeled herself apart from him, sweating faintly. “What happened?” he said. “Lee. What happened, Lee? Where were you?” He gestured blindly. “All this time,” he said. “Where've you been? My God.”

She swayed on her feet. “Wisconsin,” she said finally.

“Wisconsin?” He wet his lips. “You were in Wisconsin?”

“Jim—there's too many people here to talk.”

He looked around. “I don't care.” He stared back at her. “I can't let you just walk out, meet up with you later. I can't do that.” He put his hand on the side of her face.

“What happened to you?”

“I left,” she said. “Once I started, I couldn't stop leaving.”

He frowned, “You just left?”

“It's complicated,” she said.

“You never said one thing to me,” he said in amazement. “I never had a chance to talk you out of it.” He looked back at the counter. The other pharmacist was leaning over the counter toward a young woman, his face so close to hers they seemed to be sharing a secret. Jim looked at Lee. “How could you leave us? How could you leave your baby?”

“It wasn't just the baby.”

Something moved in his face. “What?” he said. “What? Why couldn't you even let me know you were alive?”

She was looking at the floor, her hair half covering her face. “I didn't feel alive,” she said.

He gripped her shoulder, his face flashing. “People leave all the time, but they keep in touch. Didn't you love us at all?” He shivered involuntarily. “You know what I went through? You understand?”

“Please,” Lee whispered.

“I loved you. I would have done anything for you.”

“Don't,” Lee said. “You don't have to do this now.”

“I was a
suspect
, Lee. Couldn't you have at least sent me a postcard? ‘Jim, I'm all right. Not coming home. Don't wait up. Lee.' Just to let me know I wasn't crazy, just so I could stop reading every goddamned newspaper in the goddamned country looking for you, worrying. Couldn't you have done that?”

Her head lifted. “I'm sorry,” she said, putting one hand on his arm, but this time he whipped around, stalking from the pharmacy, banging out the front doors into the bright hazy sun. Panting, she struggled to keep up.

She clipped her fingers to his sleeve. He stopped short and faced her. “Do you know what I did? Do you know how I lived, what I went through?” he said.

“No, I don't know,” she said.

“Where were you, Lee?” he cried, “The hospital didn't fuck up. You weren't kidnapped. And you told me it wasn't just the baby. It was
me
. You took out
our
money and you left on your
own
. I thought maybe you were just scared, that you'd come back. I used to think if only I could see you, I could convince you to come home to me.” She tried to take his hand, and he struck it from him. “I
mourned
you, Lee.”

She couldn't look at him. “I couldn't,” she said. “I was afraid—I couldn't think about it.”

“I
thought about it,” he said stiffly. “All the time, every goddamned moment. It's a wonder I didn't implode. And then one day while I was thinking about you, I met someone else, I fell in love. That's right. You think it couldn't happen? Stupid Jim, who'd want him when you didn't.” He slapped his hands together. “Dissolved. That was our marriage. Like it never happened. You were declared dead. I remarried. I started a new life that has nothing to do with you.” He began walking again, and then stopped abruptly.

“You look exactly the same,” he said, pained.

She was pinned to her patch of sidewalk, and then instantly he was upon her, shouting, “Where are you going?”

“Going?” she said, astonished. “Do you see me going?”

He shook her. “Are you going away again?” he demanded. “Are you going to disappear?”

“I came here to see you!” she cried. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just want to make things right.”

He stared at her, stupefied. “Make things right?” he said. “Are you crazy? What do you take me for?”

“Please, can't we just sit down somewhere,” Lee said, She looked around, searching out a coffee shop, a cafe, a bench where she could get her bearings; but he whipped her back around toward him again.

“What did you come back for?” he interrupted. “Are you in trouble? That must be it. Trouble. You think you and me, we'll just get into a souped-up hot rod and drive, is that it? You think you'll stay just long enough for me to get used to you and then go off again?”

“No,” she said, Inside of her, a speck of fear took hold.

“You need money? More of my money?”

Lee stepped back from him. “No,” she said. “No. I want to see Joanna.”

“Joanna,” he said suddenly, amazed. “Why, you're just a photograph in an old album to her. Little Red Riding Hood has more reality than you do.” He blinked. “And anyway, she thinks you're dead.”