The Forgetting Time(40)
They sat silently in the car. Janie watched her son in the rearview mirror. His expression was unreadable to her.
“Well,” Anderson said at last. “Here we are.”
“They’re rich,” Janie said suddenly. “Tommy was rich.” She felt it like a blow.
“It seems so.” Anderson managed a tense smile.
Well, no wonder Noah wanted to come back here, she thought. Who wouldn’t? So what if the house was poorly designed—who could be happy with a small two bedroom on the garden level when you’d had this?
Anderson turned toward Noah in the backseat and his face and voice softened. “Does anything seem familiar to you, Noah?”
Noah looked back at him. He seemed a bit glazed over. “I don’t know.”
Anderson nodded. “Why don’t we go in and find out?”
Noah seemed to rouse himself. He unlatched his car seat himself and scrambled from the car and up the stone path.
A man in a polo shirt and crisp khaki slacks opened the door. He had a ruddy, exasperated face and limp red hair, and looked at them all with the dismay of a diabetic facing a troop of cookie-bearing Girl Scouts. Janie tried not to stare at him or at Noah, who was inspecting the man’s boat shoes. She restrained herself from saying, “Sweetie, is this your daddy from another life?” and then almost started giggling from sheer nerves.
The man glowered at them. “I guess you all ought to come in,” he said at last, stepping back and holding the door partially open so that they had to angle their bodies to enter. The foyer was the size of her living room in Brooklyn. “Just so you know, I’m not on board with any of this,” he continued. “So if you’re expecting any compensation, let me tell—”
“We don’t want negotiations,” Anderson said firmly. Janie realized that he must be nervous, too. He was gripping his briefcase tightly in his hand.
The man squinted. “Excuse me?”
“I meant—compensation.”
“Right.” He waved them into an expansive great room. Janie tried to relax and simply breathe; there was the scent of something sweet baking in the air, and also something citrusy and antiseptic underneath that caught in her chest. From somewhere deep in the home a vacuum cleaner hummed.
The room was decorated in a tasteful, neutral way with luxurious beige furniture and framed prints of flowers on the walls. Through the sliding glass doors in the back of the room she could glimpse a large pool covered with a heavy gray tarp. It looked like a scab in the middle of the backyard.
“You’re here!” A tiny blond woman smiled at them warmly from a balcony overlooking the room. She was balancing a hugely plump baby of about a year on her hip as if he were made of air. She was pretty, with a round face and fine, delicate features.
The woman joined the three of them standing awkwardly in front of the fireplace. She smiled graciously at Janie and Anderson, as if they had come for tea, and gave each of them in turn her soft hand. Her hair was held neatly at the nape of her neck with a cloisonné hair clip that, Janie noted, perfectly matched her silken, canary-yellow blouse.
“Thanks for coming all this way,” she said. “I’m Melissa.”
Melissa turned to Noah and extended her hand to him as well. He shook it solemnly. The whole room watched them without breathing, the skeptical husband from the doorway, the two anxious adults. Noah scuffed his feet shyly against the carpeting, and Janie noticed unhappily that his left sneaker was sprouting a little hole near the toe. Yet another thing she hadn’t been able to stay on top of.
Melissa smiled sweetly at Noah. “Do you like oatmeal raisin cookies?” Her voice was light and high, like a preschool teacher. Noah nodded, looking up at her with wide eyes.
“I thought you would.” She adjusted her grasp on the baby, jiggling him in her arms. “They’ll be ready soon. I made mint lemonade, too, if you’d like some.”
She was so appealing, with her bright blond hair and wide smile … like Noah. Any stranger would assume she was the boy’s mother. She was the mom you’d pick from a catalog: I want that one. Anyone would want to go back to this big house and sweet-faced, cookie-making mom. Janie crossed her arms. The skin on the backs of her upper arms was slightly nubby, a medical condition that never quite went away. Noah had the same problem. She wanted to reach out and feel the familiar roughness on his upper arms. He’s mine, she thought. There’s the proof.
“Sit down, won’t you?” Melissa implored, and they all sank as one into the curving couch. Melissa put the baby on the floor, and they watched him pull himself around the furniture on his pudgy, wobbly feet. Noah pressed himself against Janie, subdued, his head bent down, eyes unreadable beneath half-closed lids. She tried to soak in the warmth of his body against hers.
Anderson opened his briefcase and took out a piece of paper. “I have a list of statements that Noah made, if you wouldn’t mind going over them to see what corresponds—”
Janie glimpsed the page:
Noah Zimmerman:
—unusual knowledge of reptiles
—can score a baseball game
—likes the baseball team the Washington Nationals
—speaks of a person named Pauly.…
Melissa picked it up and looked at it, blinking a few times.
“I must admit—I was skeptical when you e-mailed me. I’m still skeptical. But there are so many … similarities.… And, well, we try to remain open-minded, don’t we, John?” John said nothing. “Or at least I do. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching since.…” Her voice trailed off. Janie felt her eyes moving automatically out the window, to the covered pool. When she looked at Melissa again, the woman was gazing at her with intense, misty eyes. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She flicked away a tear and leaped to her feet. “Hey. Why don’t I go get those cookies? Keep an eye on Charlie, will you, hon?” John nodded curtly.