Seven Minutes to Noon (4 page)

“LaGuardia.” Behind him she heard an echoing announcement about an outgoing flight. He sounded short of breath, talking on his cell phone and walking at a fast clip. “I’ll be in Brooklyn in twenty minutes. Is Austin with you?”

“Yes, he’s fine. Listen, Tim, Maggie’s been calling the hospitals.”

“So has my secretary.”

“And?”

“Lauren hasn’t been admitted anywhere,” he said. “Has anyone been to the apartment?”

“Maggie’s on her way now,” Alice said. “I’m expecting to hear from her any minute.”

“Okay, Alice, here’s a taxi. I’ll see you very soon.”

He hung up before she had a chance to ask him if he was coming right over or stopping at home or... where? Where do you go when your wife disappears? What do you do?

A few minutes later, Maggie arrived, talking before she was even through the front door. “Hasn’t checked
into any hospitals
or
been in touch with her doctor. No call back from Pilates. Her apartment’s quiet.”

Alice shut the front door and followed Maggie through the foyer into her living room. They went straight to the kitchen, where they could keep an eye on the kids. Just now, the boys were revving their toy trucks along the sides of the sandbox. Nell sat on the edge, kicking heaps of sand over her brother’s favorite miniature fire truck, evidently trying to bury it but to no avail; his little hand was too quick at digging it out.

“Lauren’s such a neatnik,” Maggie said. “She’s already unpacked and they only got back five days ago.”

Alice leaned against the counter. Normally she would have responded with a quip about how long it took Maggie to unpack whenever she went away, but not today.

“What now?” Alice asked instead.

“I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “Did you reach Tim? What did he say?”

“He doesn’t know anything either. But he’s back. Just caught a cab at LaGuardia.”

They carried trays of barbecue supplies to the yard and were setting up the grill when Mike got home. He came down the deck stairs in the cloud of sawdust that seemed to swirl around him at the end of every workday. His ripped blue jeans and stained T-shirt gave new life to the idea of distressed clothes; Alice sometimes joked that he’d make more money selling his clothes to a perennially misguided fashion industry (the same one that kept Blue Shoes alive), than designing and building furniture for wealthy aesthetes. It was an argument that held no sway; money was no longer the objective of either one of them. When they were eighteen, young college lovers, they had made each other an idealistic promise to never abandon their dreams.
We’ll never sell out to The Man,
they had vowed one midnight, curled together in Mike’s dorm room bed.
If we’re still together in twenty years, let’s stop whatever we’re doing and start over again.
It was a precious intention they soon forgot
as they forged together into the adult world of life, work, marriage and family. Nineteen years later, Mike was the creative director of a large Manhattan advertising agency, spending long hours of every day at the office, earning big money and never seeing his children before they went to bed. One day, when Peter was a baby and Alice was preparing to return to the commercial film editing business she had built over her own long career trajectory, she remembered the promise. Within a month she decided to sell her business and stay home with her children; she would get to know their every detail and resume work later, in a different way. Mike’s memory took longer to ignite, but when it did, it was absolute. They calculated they could afford three years each to pursue a new venture; they would take a stab at ditching the corporate economy for independence, creativity and a more coherent family life. They would honor their own youthful promise to themselves in pursuit of the essential American dream of happiness. Blue Shoes came first, followed shortly thereafter by The Brooklyn Furniture Company, which Mike had established in an old warehouse in Red Hook with one part-time helper. So far, he was doing remarkably well.

“Daddy’s home!” Nell and Peter called in unison as soon as they saw Mike. He winked at Alice as he jogged past her to chase the kids in circles around the sandbox — even Ethan and Austin joined in — until laughter buckled them onto the grass. Mike tickled each of the four children, and finally came over to Alice and Maggie at the grill. His sawdust-powdered brown hair was kinked as always by the half-dozen cowlicks that gave him a distinctive appearance of being hyperawake at all times.

He came in close to Alice, sliding an arm around her shoulders, kissing her on the top of her head and divesting her right hand of the spatula, all in one move.

“Me take over grill.” He tapped his chest with his other hand. “Me man. Me cook meat.”

“Don’t you want to shower first?” Alice asked him.

He quickly smelled both his armpits, drawing a loud, shocked laugh from Maggie.

“Oh,
please
go shower
immediately
!” Maggie said.

“It’s not too bad.” Mike looked at Maggie, keeping his expression as serious as he could. “Have a sniff.” He lifted his arm and approached her.

“No!” Maggie backed off.

“Simon coming?” he asked her.

“Well, I didn’t invite him,” Maggie answered. Then, to Alice, “Did you?”

Alice shook her head. “That’s your department, Mags.” The truth was, Alice always missed Simon when he was excluded from the gathering of friends, but the right of invitation was left up to Maggie. She was typically inconsistent about it.

“No Simon?” Mike scowled. “No shower! Need man cook meat.”

“Give me that.” Alice took back the spatula. “Just go take a shower, okay? You can do the grill when you come back down.”

“Where Tim?”

“Stop it,” Alice said. “It’s getting annoying.”

Mike leaned in close to Alice and lowered his voice to a near whisper, meant to elude the children’s radar. “Seriously, did you hear from Lauren yet?”

He smelled like fresh-cut wood. “Nope,” she whispered back. “Tim’s on his way back to Brooklyn.”

Mike was uncharacteristically quiet a moment, fiddling with something in his pants pocket. “She’s okay, though. Right?”

“Right.” Maggie ripped apart a sheet of soft hamburger buns.

“So, where’s that notice you got today?” A shadow seemed to drift over the natural glint of light in his eyes, and Alice knew he was worried too.

“Upstairs, in my purse.”

Twenty minutes later — ample time both for a shower and a look at the bad news of their Thirty Day Notice — Mike reappeared. In clean jeans and a white T-shirt, all
scrubbed and fresh, he looked five years younger than his thirty-nine years. Alice watched him as he strode across the yard toward the children, the neck of a chilled beer dangling between two fingers. He settled down on the side of the sandbox, apparently forgetting all about the man-meat equation, and peppered the children with questions and jokes that elicited bursts of giggly disbelief.

“He’s good at that,” Maggie said.

“He is.” Alice flipped a sizzling turkey burger with the spatula. She knew exactly what Maggie meant. “That’s partly why I fell in love with him. He reminds me not to take myself too seriously.”

“He’s sexy too, you know.” Maggie raised her eyebrows. Alice turned around to look at Mike with the four children. He had gotten into the sandbox with them. She supposed he was sexy, though volatile pregnancy hormones along with the wiles of time tended to let her forget that.

Maggie took the spatula from Alice’s hand and nudged a hot dog along the grill; she liked hers cooked bubbly black on all sides. In the moment they didn’t speak, Alice felt the downward shift of the late afternoon sun dragging away whole degrees of heat. A damp coolness settled on the air.

“So?” Alice said suddenly. “Where is she? Why hasn’t she called? When will Tim get here?”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Maggie said. “I admit it’s strange she hasn’t called. But she’s almost nine months pregnant. I’m
sure
she had the baby today. I’m
sure
we’ll hear from her any minute. Aren’t you?”

“I’m just as determined as you are to believe that, Mags,” Alice said.

Alice covered the long picnic table with a red and white checkered oilcloth she had bought years ago at Manny’s Variety, the Dominican sundries shop Blue Shoes had displaced. Maggie counted out enough paper plates to include Tim and Lauren,
just in case.
Mike marched the children into the house to wash their hands while the
women served up the food. Alice set down a small tray of hot dogs nestled in buns, then turned to Maggie.

“What do we say to Austin?”

“We tell him the truth,” Maggie said. “We say Lauren will call any minute. We say she probably had the baby today and Daddy’s with her.”

Alice nodded, muttering, “Okay, then.”

But Austin didn’t ask. He had lived his entire young life with the three families melded in nearly every way, and being without his parents in the Halpern family backyard was not unusual.

Finally, just past eight, Alice’s cell phone rang. She pulled it from her shorts’ pocket and immediately saw that it was Tim.

“I’m outside. I’ve been ringing the doorbell but I don’t think you heard it.”

“I’ll be right there.” She flipped shut her phone.

“Want me to go?” Mike began to shift himself off the bench, but she stopped him.

“It’s okay,” she said calmly, though she felt anything but calm. Heart pounding, she walked up the stairs onto the tiny iron deck and passed through the kitchen, living room and into the hallway to get to the building’s foyer. In the half-moon window toward the top of the house’s front door, Alice saw Tim’s sharp profile, looking distractedly toward the street.

She opened the door. Tim walked in and at first said nothing. Medium height, and lean from his weekend hours at the gym, he was dressed in one of the beautiful suits he always wore to work. His thick blond hair was wavy, tucked behind his ears; normally he kept it shorter than this. When he looked at Alice to speak, she saw, in the dimming evening light, that his skin was ashen despite his recent beach vacation.

Tim sighed and lifted his eyes to Alice. For the first time in all their years, she saw how truly green they were. Just like Austin’s. Bright, lucid green.

“They said to wait until morning, see if she comes home tonight.”

“They?”

“The police at the Seventy-sixth Precinct. I just came from there.”

Alice didn’t know what to say. What about Ivy? This made no sense.

“I’ll go back in the morning,” he said, “first thing. I thought it might be better if Austin stayed over here tonight.”

“Sure,” Alice said. “But I don’t understand.”

“I think it might make things worse if he comes home and she’s not there.” Tim’s eyes teared up. “Don’t you think so, Alice?”

“I don’t really know what to think.”

“Will you tell him I had to work late? He’s used to that. He won’t question it.”

“But what do I say about Lauren?”

Tim stood in front of her, clearly unable to offer advice. She felt her heart plunge through her body, into the floor, to the center of an ancient earth. Stepping forward, Alice took Tim in her arms. He held her fiercely, crying.

And Alice knew. She just knew.

Lauren was not coming home.

The next day a dark blue sedan eased up to the curb in front of Blue Shoes. Two people got out, a tall man with a gray-speckled buzz cut, and a young woman. Alice recognized Frannie immediately. Without putting a quarter into the meter, they crossed the sidewalk to the store. Frannie first, the man following. She pulled open the door, which tinkled to announce the arrival of a customer, and he walked in behind her. She stood there looking around at the posh, renovated space.

“So this
is
your place,” Frannie said. “When I heard Alice Halpern and Maggie Blue, I wasn’t sure.”

Alice came around the counter, glad for a diversion from the troubling morning. Maggie stayed behind the counter, distracting herself with receipts, having joined Alice on her alternate Saturday shift. They had spent all morning worrying about Lauren. Making incessant, unanswered calls to her cell phone. Unraveling possibilities until they were depleted. Finally, they had walked the neighborhood, posting
MISSING
signs they had made at the store and printed on bright yellow paper.

MISSING

Lauren Barnet

36 years old, long brown hair, pale blue eyes,
red birthmark on back of neck. 8
¹
/
₂
MOS. PREGNANT.
Last seen on Carroll St. leaving P.S. 58
Friday, Sept. 8, at 8:45 a.m.
Please call with
any
information.

Just above her name, a photo of Lauren smiled beneath the paper’s yellow haze.

After posting a hundred signs, Alice and Maggie had returned to the store, unsure of what to do next.

“It’s our place,” Alice told Frannie. “Like it?”

Frannie glanced down at her worn black sneakers and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess shoes aren’t really my thing. It’s strange. I don’t even recognize this place and I’ve been coming here my whole life. I always got my Halloween costumes at Manny’s Variety when I was a kid. Penny candies. The works.” She shook her head.

“Sorry,” Alice said, receiving a sharp glance from Maggie, who hated it when Alice apologized. Maggie believed the neighborhood’s gentrification was inevitable, while Alice couldn’t help feeling guilty for being part of the spit and polish that was rubbing out so many old-timers. Like Manny’s Variety. And Frannie’s childhood memories.

“Listen, I hate to do this.” Frannie dug into her back pocket and withdrew a thin billfold, which she flipped open. “I’m here on business.”

Alice was stunned to see the identification encased in the billfold Frannie was showing her. A badge emblazoned with
NYPD.
And a card reading
DETECTIVE FRANCESCA VIOLA, 76TH PRECINCT, DETECTIVES UNIT.

Frannie was a
police detective
?

“This is Detective Giometti.” Frannie tilted her head toward the large man who stood behind her. Alice nodded hello to him and was immediately struck by an unusual steadiness in his gaze, a lack of wavering. He had long eyelashes, she noticed, a softness that contrasted with the masklike quality of his skin. Teenage acne, she guessed, though he was attractive despite it.