The Final Act Page 11

  “Do you think Ryan will leave me?”

  “Ryan’s not going anywhere, Faith.”

  “He says he wants three more children.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about your job?”

  “I’m on maternity leave till the new year. But I don’t think I should go back.”

  “Why not? I thought you loved teaching.”

  “How can I possibly handle twenty-five kids when I can’t take care of one?”

  Cindy watched ominous clouds gather in Faith’s eyes as she sipped steadily at her tea. “Well, you don’t have to make any major decisions right now.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “You have plenty of time.”

  Faith’s eyes filled with tears. “Ryan’s so busy these days. I hardly see him anymore.” She lifted her shoulders to her ears in a prolonged shrug. “When he first started working at Granger, McAllister, it was just this tiny firm. Now there are seven architects, secretaries, assistants, so many people, and they’re busy all the time. He’s always having to rush off somewhere. This tea is really good,” she said, finishing what remained in her mug.

  “Would you like some more?”

  “Oh no, thank you. I should be getting home. I promised Ryan I’d try to straighten things up a bit. He says the house is a pigsty.”

  “Why don’t you take a nap first?” Cindy suggested, hearing a car pull into the driveway. Julia! she thought, running to the door, opening it in time to see a cab backing into the street and her mother walking up the front steps as Elvis ran down to greet her.

  “What’s the matter?” her mother said, ignoring the dog. “And don’t tell me nothing. I can see it in your face. Who’s this?” Cindy followed her mother’s eyes to the woman standing behind her.

  “Mom, this is Faith Sellick, my neighbor. Faith, this is my mother.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Faith stepped outside, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Thanks again for the tea.”

  “You don’t have to leave on my account,” Cindy’s mother said.

  “No, I have to go. I have so much to do.”

  “First, you have to take a nap.”

  “Right.” Faith ambled down the steps.

  “There’s something not quite right about that one,” her mother remarked as soon as Faith was out of earshot.

  “She’s the one I was talking about yesterday. With the postpartum depression.”

  Her mother nodded. “So, are you going to invite me in, tell me what Tom was doing here?”

  Cindy led her mother into the kitchen, motioned toward the recently vacated chair. “I think you better sit down.”

  ELEVEN

  AT exactly 2:29 A.M. Cindy bolted upright in her bed and cried, “Oh no, I forgot!” She jumped out of bed and rushed into the bathroom, Elvis jumping excitedly into the air beside her, as if this were some great new game they were playing. Almost tripping over him as she lunged toward the medicine cabinet, Cindy tried to focus on the assorted bottles of headache remedies, half-empty boxes of Band-Aids, partially squeezed tubes of ointments, abandoned spools of dental floss, and discarded brands of hair gel that met her half-closed eyes. The detritus of everyday life, she thought, reaching into the cabinet, hoping she wasn’t too late. The doctor had warned her that if she didn’t take her pills at the same time every day, she would die. How long ago was that? Weeks, months, years? How long had it been since she’d last remembered to take her pills? Oh no. Oh no.

  “What the hell am I doing?” Cindy suddenly asked herself, coming wide awake and staring at her reflection, regarding the woman in the glass as if she were some alien being. “What is the matter with you? What pills?”

  Slowly, Cindy took stock of the situation, her panic gradually subsiding, her heartbeat returning to normal. She was standing naked in her bathroom in the middle of the night searching for pills that didn’t exist on the advice of a doctor who also didn’t exist. Obviously she’d been having another nightmare, although she couldn’t remember a single detail. “It’s that damn herbal tea,” she told the woman in the glass. “That stuff’ll kill you.”

  Her reflection nodded.

  Cindy watched the woman run a tired hand through her lifeless hair, her eyes filling with tears. “Would somebody please just shoot me now. Put me out of my misery.”

  In response, her reflection dropped her chin toward her chest, the silence buzzing around their respective heads like determined mosquitoes.

  “You’ve got to get some sleep,” Cindy muttered on her way back to bed, but even as she was climbing back under the covers, she knew sleep was lost to her, that the hours between now and seven o’clock would be spent in restless tossing and turning, that if she slept at all, it would be in fits and starts, and that she would wake up feeling even less refreshed and more tired than before. She closed her eyes, trying not to picture her daughter hog-tied and bleeding on the dirt floor of some abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere. “Please, no,” she whispered into the pillow, feeling it wet against her skin. “Please let Julia be all right. Please let this whole thing be nothing but a bad dream.” A terribly long, bad dream, Cindy thought, flipping onto her other side, hearing Elvis groan beside her, knowing that this nightmare was horribly real, and that if her daughter didn’t come home soon, she would most assuredly die, as the imaginary doctor of her dreams had warned.

  “Oh God.” Cindy sat up only to flop back down. She rolled onto her other side, sat up, turned on the light, reached for the paperback novel on the nightstand beside her bed, and glared at the phone. Undoubtedly Tom and the Cookie were having no such trouble sleeping. She pictured the cottage on Lake Joseph, the large, rustic bedroom she’d once shared with Tom, the long, side window open to allow the cool Muskoka breezes entry. The image of her former husband in bed with his young wife pasted itself across the pages of her book. Cindy brushed it aside with a disdainful swipe of her hand, accidentally ripping off the top corner of the page. She read, then reread the first few paragraphs of the chapter before tossing the novel to the foot of the bed in defeat. How could she read when she couldn’t concentrate? “Where are you, Julia?”

  Had she really considered her parents’ elopement so romantic? Was it possible she might have pulled the same stunt herself? With whom?

  Just come home, Cindy prayed. Please. Come home.

  When she comes home, Cindy vowed silently, I’m going to buy her those brown suede boots she was admiring in David’s, the ones I told her were way too expensive.

  When she comes home, I’m going to take her to her favorite sushi restaurant for dinner. And lunch. And even breakfast, if that’s what she wants.

  When she comes home, I won’t yell or complain or get on her case about inconsequentials. I’ll be more understanding of her problems, less judgmental, more patient, less critical. I’ll be the perfect mother, the perfect friend. Our lives will be perfect when she comes home.

  When she comes home, Cindy repeated hopefully in her head, as she’d been repeating for so much of Julia’s life.

  She’d already lost her daughter once. She wasn’t about to lose her again.

  Cindy pushed herself out of bed, slipped a pink cotton nightshirt over her head, and tiptoed down the hall to Julia’s room, Elvis at her heels. She stood in the doorway, and peered toward Julia’s bed.

  “Is someone there?” a voice asked, cutting through the darkness like a laser.

  Cindy gasped as a figure sat up in the bed, reaching for the lamp on the night table just as Cindy flipped on the overhead light. “Julia!” she cried, arms extending into the room, then dropping heavily to her sides, her feet coming to an abrupt halt, as if she’d just waded into cement.

  “Sweetheart,” her mother said softly, getting out of Julia’s bed and walking slowly toward her. “Are you all right?”

  Cindy shook her head, dislodging a steady flow of tears. “I’m sorry. I forgot you were here.” Her mother
had insisted on spending the night after Cindy confided that Julia was missing. “Did I wake you up?”

  Her mother led her to the side of Julia’s bed, sat down next to her. “Not really. I heard some kind of noise a few minutes ago. I thought it might be Julia coming home.”

  “That was probably me. I woke up in a sweat because I’d forgotten to take my pills.”

  “What pills?”

  “There are no pills.” Cindy raised her hands helplessly in the air. “I must be losing my mind.”

  Her mother laughed.

  “Something funny about that?”

  Norma Appleton took Cindy’s hands in hers. “Only that I remember going through a very similar experience years ago, constantly waking up in the middle of the night, convinced I’d forgotten something terribly important. I think it has to do with menopause.”

  “Menopause? I’m not in menopause.”

  “Close.”

  “No way. I’m only forty-two.”

  “All right, dear.”

  “That’s all I need to worry about right now.”

  “You’re missing the point here, darling.”

  “The point being?”

  “The point being that I think this is pretty common in women of a certain age.”

  “Mother. . .”

  “I used to call it the OFIFs.”

  “The what?”

  “The OFIFs—’Oh, fuck—I forgot!’ ”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What—you think you’re the only one who knows words like that? Close your mouth, dear. A bug will fly in.”

  Cindy stared at her mother in disbelief. So that’s where I get it, she thought.

  Here comes the mouth, Tom used to say at the start of any argument. You and that mouth, he used to say.

  Sorry for the language, she’d apologized to Neil earlier.

  What language? he’d asked.

  “What are you thinking?” her mother asked now.

  “What?”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “I am?” God, her mother didn’t miss a thing. “Must be gas.”

  “She’ll come home,” her mother said, her eyes on the distant past, her voice heavy with experience. “You’ll see. Tomorrow morning she’ll come waltzing through the front door as if nothing’s happened, amazed at all the fuss, angry you were worried, furious you called the police.”

  A flush of shame bowed Cindy’s head. “I put you through hell when I ran off with Tom,” she acknowledged.

  “You were young and in love,” her mother said generously.

  “I was willful and self-absorbed.”

  “That too.”

  Cindy shook her head. “What was I thinking?”

  “I don’t think you were.”

  “I was actually angry at you for having worried?”

  “You were livid. How dare I call your friends! How dare I embarrass you like that! How could I involve the police? You were gone less than forty-eight hours! You’re a grown woman! A married woman, no less! What was the matter with me? Oh, you went on and on.”

  “Is it too late for me to apologize?”

  Her mother draped a protective arm around Cindy’s shoulder, hugged her to her side. “It’s never too late,” she whispered, kissing her daughter’s wet cheek.

  “You think this is payback time? God’s idea of poetic justice?”

  “I like to think that God has better things to do with His time.”

  “Do you think Julia could have eloped with some guy?”

  “Do you?”

  Cindy shook her head. When Julia spoke about getting married, she talked about Vera Wang dresses and a photo spread in People magazine. “It’s not her style. Besides, she broke up with her boyfriend.” She thought of Sean Banack. “You don’t think she was overly upset about that, do you? I mean, upset enough to do something stupid.”

  “Julia hurt herself over a man?”

  Her mother’s question was answer enough. “Then what’s happened to her? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I do know you need to get some sleep or you’re not going to be in any shape to yell at her when she comes home. Come on,” her mother urged, pulling down the covers on the other side of Julia’s queen-size bed. “Why don’t you sleep with me tonight? I could use the company.”

  Wordlessly, Cindy climbed into Julia’s bed, burrowing in against her mother’s side, her mother’s arm falling across her hip, as Elvis flopped down between their feet. The lingering aroma of Julia’s Angel perfume on her pillow filled Cindy’s nostrils. She closed her eyes, sucked at the scent as if she were a baby at her mother’s breast. When Julia comes home, Cindy recited silently, I’ll buy her the biggest bottle of Angel perfume they sell. When she comes home, I’ll get her a Gold Pass to the film festival, so she can attend all the galas. When she comes home, I’ll hold my tongue, hold my temper, hold my baby in my arms again.

  When she comes home, Cindy repeated over and over again in her mind, until she fell asleep.

  When she comes home. When she comes home.

  *

  “MOM? GRANDMA?” Heather asked from somewhere above their heads. “What’s going on?”

  Cindy opened her eyes, saw Heather looming above her, the pull of gravity distorting her sweet features. Cindy pushed herself up against the headboard, rubbing her eyes as Elvis bounded over to lick her face.

  “My heavens, what’s that?” Cindy’s mother asked, as the dog poked his nose under the covers. “Get out of here,” she groused as Elvis’s long tongue flicked toward her lips. “He stuck his tongue in my mouth! Get away from me, you silly dog.”

  Heather shooed Elvis off the bed. “I didn’t know you were here, Grandma.”

  “I was in bed before you came home.”

  “I thought Julia was back.”

  Cindy felt her heart cramp. “No. I take it you haven’t heard anything. . .”

  Heather shook her head. “Why are you sleeping in here?”

  Cindy and her mother shrugged in unison. “What time is it?” Cindy asked.

  “Almost nine o’clock.”

  “Nine o’clock?” When was the last time she’d slept till nine o’clock, even on a weekend?

  “What’s the matter?” Heather asked. “Do you have to be somewhere?”

  “No,” both women answered.

  “But I have a lot to do,” Cindy added quickly.

  “Like what?”

  Cindy brushed the question aside with an impatient wave of her hand. “Is Duncan still asleep? I need to talk to him.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where is he?”

  Heather shrugged. “Not here.”

  “Heather. . .”

  “Look, Mom, I’m real sorry, but I don’t know where Duncan is every minute of the day.”

  “Really sorry,” Cindy and her mother corrected together.

  “What?”

  “It’s an adverb,” Heather’s grandmother explained.

  Heather nodded, backing slowly out of the room. “I think I’ll take Elvis out for his walk now, if that’s all right with the grammar police.”

  Cindy smiled. “Thank you, darling.”

  “I made coffee,” Heather said.

  “Thank you,” Cindy said again, marveling at her daughter’s easy grace. Even dressed in tight, low-fitting jeans and a navel-baring, candy-apple-red tank top, she somehow managed to look elegant.

  “She’s a very sweet thing,” her mother said after Heather had left the room.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Like her mother.” She kissed Cindy’s forehead.

  Cindy felt her eyes fill with tears. “Thanks for being here, Mom,” she said.

  *

  BY TEN O’CLOCK, Cindy had showered and dressed and was on her fourth cup of coffee.

  “You should eat something,” her mother advised.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You should eat something anyway. You have to keep
up your strength.”

  Cindy nodded, irritation beginning to mingle with gratitude. While it was nice to have her mother here, to feel her love and support in this difficult time, Norma Appleton had an annoying tendency of taking up more than her fair share of oxygen. Prolonged exposure to her company rendered breathing increasingly difficult. Grown women had been known to run screaming from the room, overcome by intense feelings of suffocation. Was that how Cindy made Julia feel? As if there weren’t enough air in the room? “Don’t feel you have to stay here with me, Mom,” she said delicately. “I’m sure you have a million other things to do.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s more important than this?”

  Cindy shook her head in defeat, finished the coffee in her cup, poured herself another.

  “You should eat something,” her mother said.

  Cindy pulled several crumpled pieces of paper out of the pocket of her gray sweatpants, glanced at the phone.

  “What’s that?” her mother asked.

  “Just some phone numbers I found in Julia’s room.”

  “Whose are they?”

  Cindy studied the numbers on the scraps of paper, tried willing them into familiarity. “I don’t know.”

  Her mother reached across the kitchen table, turned the pieces of paper in Cindy’s hand toward her so that she could read them, then repeated the numbers out loud. “Are you going to call them?”

  “Should I?”

  “Might as well.”

  “What’ll I say?” Cindy crossed the room in three quick strides, then lifted the phone to her ear, her fingers already pressing in the first of the numbers.

  “Start with hello.”