The Other Widow (33 page)

Karen and her friend look around the room, and Dorrie stares down at her hands on the pockmarked tabletop. It's almost as if they sense her here, as if they feel her staring at them. They stand up, hesitating at their table, talking, and then they walk to the doorway.

Dorrie takes a long time with the tip, counts out two bills, which she sticks neatly under her plate. On the sidewalk, just outside the door, Karen and her friend stop and chat a minute longer. They take tiny steps away from one another, wrap their woolen scarves around their necks, and slip their hands into their pricey leather gloves.

They walk off in different directions, both of them moving fairly quickly along the sidewalk, and Dorrie struggles to keep up in the shifting mass of people, to keep Karen in sight, ducking now and then behind a crowd, tilting her head down toward the sidewalk, staying invisible, staying several steps behind. She adjusts her sliding sunglasses, wraps her scarf more tightly around her neck. Her hands are naked, chapped and red, and she shoves them in the pockets of her coat. She looks around, glancing at the faces of passersby, and, despite the irony, she still can't shake the feeling that she's being watched. Again she feels dread surround her like a shroud.

Karen turns in at the train station and heads down the stairs in leather boots that cling like velvet to her legs. Her heels are high, and for a second Dorrie sees her teeter on the concrete steps, but then she grabs the handrail and continues down and down until she's standing on the platform. Dorrie's close behind her, but there are so many people, and Karen is preoccupied, bending over, staring at her cell. Her slender fingers poke and scroll. The train arrives, and, without even looking up, Karen glides across the threshold, into the last car, where she stands for several seconds just inside.

And then, as the doors slide closed, as the train jerks and wheezes—at that exact instant when it's suddenly too late—Karen turns and looks straight at Dorrie. She reaches for the doors as if she can open them, as if she's changed her mind, as if she'll die if she can't get off the train. She looks up at Dorrie again, and her face is frantic. Small lines are etched beside her mouth; wrinkles crease her forehead. She's saying something Dorrie can't hear with the din inside the station, with all the arrivals and departures, squeals of brakes and echoed shouts. She points at something behind Dorrie and her mouth is moving, her eyes huge and distressed. She looks as if she's screaming. Even over the racket, Dorrie thinks she can hear Karen's voice, but, with all the clamor, she can't make out the words.

Dorrie takes a step toward her and a slide show of streets and faces, voices and Joe's hand on the steering wheel—it all floods through her, electrifying. Shocking. She reaches out toward the train window, toward this woman who loved Joe, too, and lost him, who was loved by him. She reaches toward the window as the cars thwack and shift, and Karen's mouth is still moving, shouting, still screaming.
Run
.
Run,
she says, she mouths. She tilts her body to her right. To Dorrie's left.
Watch out,
she mouths, her lips wide, distorted. Her face is pressed against the glass.
Run!

Dorrie gathers all her strength to dive toward the steps, and then she feels herself moving, as if a gust of wind were pushing her. A forceful, gentle wind, light, yet strong, pushes her toward the stairs to the outside, to Park Street. She feels her mother's arms around her, hears her mother's words, the words she knows are really her own thoughts, the rational and realistic side of her, her left brain kicking in to save her, the essence of a mother. The memory of a mother.

XL

KAREN

K
aren wakes up that Wednesday morning knowing this will be the day she turns her life around. This will be the outing that will change her. She knows this. It's time. She'll meet Alice at The Queen of Cups, as she's done nearly every Wednesday for the past ten years, and afterward, she'll be herself again. It's something she feels
in her bones
, as Lydia used to say. She'll simply decide to be back on track and it will happen. It's a choice, she thinks. To a large extent, happiness is a choice.

“Poof,” she says, snapping her fingers, and Antoine barks. “Right, Antoine?” He barks again. Lately he's stopped growling at her, and when he starts to nip her hand, he stops himself before his sharp teeth actually connect with skin. They've bonded over the break-in, the smashed glass in the little downstairs room. They've learned to share the bed, Antoine at the foot and Karen with her toes stuck underneath the spot where his plump body warms the covers. She lets him out while she makes herself a cup of coffee and back inside before she walks to the bathroom to peer into the mirror again, to blend in her foundation with her pinkie. Working for Alice has been fun; it's kept her busy, kept her mind off everything that's happened. For years, it kept her mind off the blankness she had let her life become. But now she wants more. She wants Joe's place at the table; she wants her husband's half of the company. In essence, she wants to be who she once was—capable and business savvy. Respected.

She takes her time getting dressed. She stares at a pile of sweaters on the shelf she had Joe build for her on one side of the closet and decides on a green pullover. It's nice. It's cashmere. Soft. A Christmas gift from Joe. It hadn't been the most festive holiday this year, no huge tree, no enormous pile of presents. It wasn't a particularly memorable Christmas. They'd had the usual, the gift exchange—the things they'd bought ahead of time and stashed away, things Karen found on sale after Halloween, or in the summer. She sighs. The holidays went by so fast, were eclipsed by grief in the next weeks, so she sometimes feels as if it should be autumn and she should only now be dealing with the holidays, cheeks pink in the brisk wind as she presses forward toward Bloomingdale's and Macy's.

She props up her magnifying mirror and pokes at her eyebrows, scrutinizes her face. She still hasn't actually read Tomas's text. She's saving it. She'll relish it, the compliments, the admiration. She sighs. If only he were someone else, if only
she
were. Or if she were . . . something—younger, maybe, more naïve—if she could bring herself to think love turned the world, could make herself believe that she and Tomas could not only pull together, tight as magnets, but stay that way for more than just an afternoon. Maybe at some point they can. Or maybe that one afternoon is all that matters. She grabs her coat and checks her watch. If she hurries, she'll make the next train.

“So how's Tomas?” Alice says, and Karen looks up, slides her empty plate to the edge of the table.

“Fine,” she says. “I guess.” She looks around the small restaurant, cramped, now with brightly painted chairs and tables. It's grown since they first started coming here eons ago. It's so much larger, with the additions the owners have built on over the years. She looks around and feels a chill up her spine.

“You haven't seen him?” Alice tries to push away the relief in her voice.

“Not since the night of the play . . . How's
your
love life these days?”

Alice shakes her head, looks down at her hands. “Nil.” She bites into a chocolate cupcake. “You were lucky to have Joe. I know at the end you two got off track, but you had all those good years.”

Karen nods. And, for a minute, she feels the memories without remorse. She sees Joe, smiling in the hospital when the boys were born, sharing Belgian waffles at a diner up the street on lazy Sunday mornings, lying on the tarred hot roof of an ancient sixth-floor walk-up in the summertime, can almost hear the street sounds drifting through a propped-open window in the spring, the dip of a mattress, the smell of coconuts and ocean air.

“Listen.” She leans forward. “I've been thinking about this for a while now. “Why don't we take a trip up the coast this spring? Maine. Canada. You could close the shop and I—well—I'll have the insurance money by then, and who knows when I'll be back at Home Runs. I've been thinking I might just work from home. Do what Joe did without going in town to the— I don't know if I'd want to be there, in that office, where Joe and his—”

“I
love
it! The idea of a trip.” Alice takes her glasses off and then she puts them on again. “I really do! We could . . .” She stops.

“Then why don't we drive up the coast and see . . .
What?
” Karen says. Alice's eyes are wide, darting around the room. “What's wrong?”

“Don't you feel it?” Alice says.

“Feel what?”

“Like someone's watching us?” She backs away from the table; her chair makes scraping noises on the wood floor. Alice prides herself on sensing things that others don't, and she is nearly always right.

Karen nods. “Yes, actually.” She gathers her things together, slips into her coat.

When they leave, they stand up slowly, cautiously. They stand in the small, crowded aisle and talk as if they're waiting for someone to come back from the bathroom or pull out a cell phone or make a sudden, unexpected move. They look toward the door, as if there will soon be a face in the window or a figure pushing in rudely, a customer they hadn't noticed throwing bills down on a table with a heavy, angry hand.

Outside, they talk for a moment more before they part ways. Karen pulls her coat tighter around her and ducks her head against a sudden unexpected gust of wind. She walks quickly to the Park Street Station, feeling someone there behind her, even in the crowds of people crossing streets and hailing cabs. She is not like Alice. She is not the least bit spiritual. Karen lives her life in black and white. And yet she feels a presence like she feels the cold around her, like she sees the snowflakes swirling in the air.

She walks faster down the sidewalk, nearly falls on her way down the steps to the subway. She grabs the railing, rights herself. She looks behind her at the throng of commuters heading home. She's stayed too late in town; the train will be packed.

She pulls out her cell. She could call someone. Edward. He's only up the street. He could be here in five minutes. He could drive her home. She thinks about it, but then the train is there, screeching into the station. The brakes squeal. She'll call Tomas, listen to his soothing voice, his compliments. She needs them now. She'll ask him about the notes.
Was it you?
she'll ask him, even though she's certain that it was, that he meant the message to be comforting, empowering.

She finds his number in her list of contacts, but the call goes straight to voice mail. She doesn't leave a message. She scrolls down to his work number, the one she added while she stood in his apartment, while he waited for her to join him in the shower. She smiles—that lovely afternoon when they made love. There it is—she's put it under “WORK.” Anonymous enough, in case she loses her phone, too, at some point. She presses her thumb down on the number, probably for the nurses' station. She'll ask for Tomas. She'll leave a message if he's with a patient. Just this once. She doesn't even have to see him. His voice will be enough.

“Hello?” A man answers, someone with a heavy accent. There are strange sounds in the background, loud, banging sounds. “Hood's Garage.”

“Oh,” she says. “I'm sorry. I must have the wrong—” But they'd called him only days before.
Work
. He'd had the number listed in his phone as
Work
. “Does Tomas still work there?” she says. “Does he still moonlight there?”

“He is our best mechanic,” the voice says. “Since he come back from Honduras, he is here more time.”

“Oh,” she says. “Really? Is he
there
? Can I speak to him?”

“Not today. He took the day off today. Personal business, he told me. I don't ask him what.”

She ends the call. She doesn't leave her name. She scrolls to his text message from yesterday.
Call me!
And now there's another from this morning, when she was on the train. With all the noise, she hadn't heard it when it came in.
My darling Karen. I will tie up the loose ends to make sure you are safe and then I will go back home to Honduras but you will be always here with me in my heart
.

The heavy doors slide shut. She looks up and suddenly Dorrie stands on the platform, staring through the window of the train, leaning toward the door, her arms outstretched. And then she sees Tomas move quickly through the station, straight at Dorrie.
Run!
Karen screams.
Watch out! Run!
She beats against the glass.
Stop the train!
But it just keeps lurching, starting to move, and Tomas is heading straight for Dorrie like a charging bull. The impact alone will knock her onto the tracks.
I will tie up the loose ends
.

“
Run!
” she yells again, and she leans far over to her right, trying to make Dorrie move, get out of the way. In a split second she'll be—

The train lurches forward.
Run!
She yells it one more time, takes one last look as the train picks up speed. Suddenly a dark-haired woman, a young, small woman, pushes Dorrie, shoves her hard toward the stairs. And then Karen can see nothing. Only tiled walls and the darkness of the tunnel as the train squeals down the track.

XLI

DORRIE

D
orrie sees a strange man running. His heavy coat is open, flapping out around him. His hands wrestle with air, but still his body keeps moving, keeps pitching forward toward the tracks as if he is a crazy overburdened bird that still thinks it can fly. “It was for you, Karen! Everything! It was all—” And then something smacks into him from the side. Another body zips through space.

Brennan?
She rams into him, knocks him down on the concrete several feet from Dorrie and only inches from the edge of the platform. Something flies out of his coat and falls onto the tracks.