He’d lingered, his nose pressed into my hair. My head was near his chest, and I smelled Irish Spring and a musky aftershave. After a childhood full of Celia’s and my attempts to ditch her little brother at the playground—I didn’t want him to move one single inch.
I looked up and examined his features. Forehead: smooth, his hair trimmed short. Eyes: blue-gray, almost translucent. Eyelashes: blond and blinking. Nose: straight and somewhat broad, but well proportioned. Upper lip: razor stubble. Mouth— I kissed him. Without interruption he kissed me back. The sadness tried to wiggle its way through so Beck kissed harder. I didn’t stop him, because that pushed away everything else. After minutes, or maybe it was hours, I stopped, but kept my hands on his chest. I unbuttoned one button on his shirt and he lifted my face with his hands and kissed my nose and chuckled, but not in a way that made me self-conscious—his voice deep in a way that steadied me, as if I were on a rocking ship that had just been towed into a calm port.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I was sure. It didn’t matter what we did or didn’t do, Celia would still die.
That began the best and worst months of my life.
Chapter 4
TAP TAP TAP.
I heard it again. Tap tap tap. Then the sound of paper sliding under the door. I sat, my muscles sore the way they always were when I stowed away for a night or two on the couch/guest bed/kitchen of my parents’ Winnebago. My jaw clenched from a dream I’d forgotten, or maybe it was from everything I remembered. Chance, Shayna, art show, contest, Beck, wine. The wine! On the counter sat my glass with a respectable—or shameful, depending on your point of view—amount missing from the bottle. My dress hung over the arm of the rocker.
I loved that dress, with its ribbons of vertical blues and contrasting orange stitching. Celia had always said blue was my best color, so when in doubt, I wore blue. A smile tugged at the sides of my mouth and I was grateful for the little moment of joy. I experienced them infrequently now, those specks of time where I forgot Celia was gone, that I couldn’t talk to her later. Gone was a given.
After breakfast I would visit Celia’s grave.
I’d never been there. Not after the funeral, when I should have been tossing a small shovelful of dirt into the earth. (I had been busy breaking my lease and packing my bags.) And not for the “unveiling” a year later, when I should have seen the headstone before retreating to Chance Hall for lox and bagels with Celia’s family. (I was busy managing a photo shoot in Santa Monica.) I blamed my job for keeping me away.
The note.
The note was scribbled in dark pencil on a torn piece of sketch pad paper.
I scampered back to the bed and dug under the blankets. I toggled the switch to turn my phone on. Beeps meant Annie. Chimes meant Shay. It was different, being with Shay on her home turf. When we met up each summer in Chicago, I’d whisk her around the Hester, arm in arm for our weekend adventure. The staff knew her as my niece and I’d never corrected them. Since the summer she turned seven, I’d flown to Chicago from wherever I was working, while Miles had driven to Chicago with Shay. Then he stepped back for forty-eight hours into his complimentary room (or so he thought), allowing me and Shay quality girl time in my suite and beyond.
In Chance, Shay was showing me things and showing me off, taking the lead in both good ways and bad. She’d planned our morning. I didn’t know what would happen, who I would see, or what I would feel. A haze of worry unsteadied me. I grabbed on to the dresser. When these feelings had tapped me on the shoulder over the past six years, I’d shoved them into drawers in one city and moved on to the next, because everywhere and nowhere was my home.
I imagined that if Simon had it his way, I’d call San Francisco my home. I also imagined that if Simon had it his way, I’d call him my husband.
*
The early-morning air hinted of the humidity that would later stifle the county. I swore I could feel my hair frizzing at my scalp, but I left it down anyway. I tiptoed across the porch and down the four wide wooden steps, as if everyday footsteps would wake the neighborhood. I skittered to the other side of Lark Street like a car was zooming toward me, but the only sound was the whoosh and whirl of the automatic sprinklers next door.
I stared at the house, grand in its appearance, simple in its comforts. Looking through the viewfinder, I zoomed in. The white paint on the banister had tiny chips at the edges. Was that from use or from time? Was it an oversight? I moved the camera away from my face.
At work, I scrutinized everything. I captured images and then created perfection. I also stole morning moments like this one to experience the hotels’ mountain views or beach sunrises without any filters, without making any adjustments. I was still taking pictures just for me, beauty stored on a memory card. I didn’t do anything with them, but I held on to them. Like one of those harried parents who had given up on the grand idea of a scrapbook, I’d stopped saying someday.
In world-class cities, I sat in our hotel lobbies sipping coffee from a monogrammed paper cup, a folded newspaper in my lap, and watched as the world awoke in slow motion. I loved the way that high-heeled footsteps ticked on marble floors, the way rolling suitcases hummed or bumped along with a broken wheel. And I loved to watch men and women stride ahead, all purpose and intention, on their way to … somewhere.
Today it was my turn. I sashayed down Lark wearing my light blue sundress, as if I were the star of an elaborate tampon commercial. All that was missing was the voiceover. I seemed to be the only person outside. So much for walking around the block and seeing everyone twice.
At a Hester hotel, someone was always up and about and milling around, tidying up from one event, getting ready for the next retreat or wedding or bevy of families on vacation. There were always people around, yet I was almost always alone. This was different.
I turned right onto Main Street, stopped, and my mouth dropped open. “Close your mouth before you catch flies,” my mother would say.
Main Street splayed in front of me as if in a Hallmark movie. I lifted my camera and watched through my lens where the world existed only within the frame. Men and women ran through Chance Square, doing laps on the perimeter, stopping to stretch, to chat, to guzzle water. Women with ponytails pushed strollers up and down both sides of the street, some with an extra mini-me trailing behind, wearing plastic sunglasses and carrying a sippy cup as if it were a latte. A yoga group was setting up just out of the way of a climbing wall.