Anna goes over to her dresser and starts opening and closing drawers. Zoe returns to clicking through mountainscapes, trying to picture her mother in that environment, flown from the brown flat land to hide among the trees, with Zoe’s baby brother who has turned four without his sister. It’s amazing how you get used to living with a stranger, how you learn to ignore each other in such a tiny space. She hears the noise Anna’s making, primping to go out or whatever she’s doing, choosing a different T-shirt, but she’s also removed from it, as though Anna were doing these things on a television Zoe wasn’t watching.
After a while, Anna heads for the door. “See you later,” she says. Zoe senses a brief hesitation, as if she’s debating asking Zoe whether she wants to come along. To the coffee shop, the club, the movie, the apartment shindig. But she doesn’t ask. She goes. The trouble with pushing people away is sometimes they don’t come back.
Zoe sits at her desk, imagining mountains, waiting for her mother to call.
Wrong Number
Today is my birthday. I was sure Lucy would call. I’ll get back to you, she said. But no. I was waiting but pretending to myself that I wasn’t, sitting in my armchair beside the table that holds the phone, it and my detective novels and my old Rolodex and a notepad and a jar of pens and a lamp. I had a book but the book wasn’t holding my attention—I could guess who the killer was, and my ability to guess filled me with a disproportionate despair. Even at this late date I still want to be surprised.
“Oh, hell,” I said, and I picked up the phone to call her. But I was stopped by something that was either anger or grief. Or pride. I can’t keep begging. Why do I have to beg? Just because she owes me nothing. Just because there’s nothing I deserve. I sat with the phone in my hand until the busy signal began to sound.
The instant I hung it up, it rang, startling me. Pleasing me, too, because I was sure it would be Lucy—that as reward for resisting the urge to call her, she’d called me. But after I said hello, I heard what I thought was Jennifer’s voice, except that her hello came back in a tone of wary confusion.
“Jennifer?” I asked.
A startled, indignant no. Then a long pause. “I’m actually calling for Jennifer. Does she live there?”
“No one lives here but me,” I said.
“But someone called me from this number.”
“Not I,” I said hastily. I don’t know if it was the right course to lie. Given time to think, perhaps I would have told the truth. Every locked door has a key that will open it—sometimes it’s a lie, sometimes a lie’s opposite. It’s perhaps the most valuable skill a detective has, knowing which to employ. This according to the books I read.
“When you picked up you said Jennifer,” she said.
“You sounded like someone I know.”
“Someone named Jennifer? Jennifer Carrasco?”
“Jennifer Carrasco?” Lie or truth? It was so hard to decide. “I think you mean Jennifer Young.”
“Jennifer Young.”
“Yes.”
“Young’s her maiden name.”
“Well, that’s what she goes by now.”
Silence. “So you do know her.”
“Yes,” I said. “She gives massages.”
“You’re one of her clients?”
“That’s what I am. And who are you?” Though of course I knew.
“I’m Zoe,” she said. “Jennifer Carrasco is my mother.”
It was an odd way to put it. Most people, I think, would’ve said, “I’m her daughter,” but maybe that’s a title Zoe is reluctant to claim. “Hello, Zoe,” I said. “I’m Margaret Riley.”
“You’re sure we’re talking about the same Jennifer?”
“I’m sure.”
“So she told you she’d changed her name. Why would she change her name and then tell people?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else does she tell people?”
I said, carefully, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
But she didn’t respond to that. “She must have called me from your house. Why would she call me from your house?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I doze off after a massage, and she waits for me to wake. Perhaps she did it then.”
“I guess,” Zoe said.
“Is it so strange for her to call you?”
“You don’t know how strange,” Zoe said. Oh, the sorrow in that last sentence! I was expecting anger in this girl. A righteous indignation. A crusader in a vengeful fury. In response to her sorrow I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry I called so much,” she said. “I thought it had to be her number. I hope I didn’t freak you out.”
“Of course not, my dear. I didn’t hear it. Sometimes I turn off the ringer. Telemarketers.”
“Oh,” she said.
“They’re so insistent.”
“Is this your cell or a landline?”
“This is my home telephone,” I said, and then she began to tell me about the Do Not Call Registry, which she said I could join very easily online—this girl who rang my phone off the hook, telling me how to stop other people from calling. I interrupted to say that I didn’t have a computer and shocked her into silence.
“I’m old,” I said.
“My grandparents have computers.”
“I’m older than your grandparents.”
“How old are you?”
“Ninety-one,” I said. As of today, I didn’t add, so as not to oblige her to acknowledge my birthday.
“Wow” was her response. “That’s impressive.”