Lies She Told(42)

I nod as though I agree with everything my fellow author is saying. In my head, I only hear Beth.





Chapter 10

I can’t go home. Nothing is there except an empty bed with cold sheets. A dark room. That’s too much for my ruthless imagination. Instead of the back of my eyelids, I’ll see Colleen with my husband, flaunting her prechild body. Laughing at me.

The sprinklers tick their countdown to daylight. I flee the spray as fast as I can in my heels. Though the moon is only a quarter full, the city is as bright and beckoning as ever. I walk toward the center of it, a bug to a black light, following the traffic signals and restaurant signs until I find myself at the Chambers Street subway entrance.

The underground is lit up like the inside of a refrigerator. I slide my metro card through the turnstile and follow signs to the J train, letting my subconscious lead the way. My waking mind doesn’t know why I want to head east toward the outer boroughs. All I’m aware of is a need to get away—far, far away. Away from my lonely apartment. Away from Tyler. Away from myself.

I pass through the sliding door into an empty car. Midnight is an in-between hour in Manhattan. People are where they planned to be. Few are ready to go elsewhere, yet. The train screeches down the track, rumbling beneath me, lulling me into a half-conscious state. I am here, sitting on this hard plastic seat, listening to the doors rattle as they open and the PA system tell me to be wary of them as they close. I am also not here. My mind has escaped to a not-so-distant past.

Jake and I are at dinner, a restaurant near Gramercy Park that looks like a cross between a posh townhouse and a train station. The tables are intimate affairs beneath oversized crystal chandeliers. Our table is beside a demilune window. It’s the best seat in the house, and Jake has requested it special. He wants to discuss something important.

I sit across from him, dressed in something yacht-worthy. Tight and white. The kind of unforgiving ensemble I wore before Vicky kicked out my lower abdomen and stretched apart my hips. I’m nervous beneath my meticulously applied makeup. My husband seems more serious than usual.

He places his hand on mine. The ball of his palm is calloused from hours lifting weights at the gym, another consequence of the hair loss. If he can’t have a mane like a twentysomething, he’s damn sure going to have a body like one. He strokes the diamond on my left hand.

“I’m ready.”

I stare at him, waiting for elaboration. He smiles at me as though I’m dense or defective.

“A baby.” Again, he grins. “I know you’ve wanted to try for a while and I’ve been back and forth. But I realize that it’s not fair to make you wait any longer. You will be a great mom, and you deserve a child. And I really want to be a father. So what the hell? Let’s make a baby.”

In retrospect, the memory isn’t as sweet as I’d once thought. At the time, I’d leapt from my chair and landed in his lap, covering his squinched face with kisses. His admission had seemed to validate our whole relationship. I’d told him to forget a full meal. We should eat oysters and get to the fun part. I didn’t think, until now, about the notes of surrender in his speech. It was almost like Jake had felt I’d earned the right to a baby, whether or not he was prepared to have one.

The train slows to a stop. A mechanical voice informs me that I’m on Marcy Avenue and Broadway, which is disorienting since Manhattan’s Broadway lies three blocks east of my apartment, and I’ve traveled in that direction for the past twenty-five minutes. Brooklyn, then.

I exit the car and ascend the steps. There’s a park to my right. Dark with plenty of trees to hide behind. I hurry past it, more jogging than walking. Ready to run. Tyler’s not popping out from a bar to save me this time.

I hear the highway on my left. I cut right, traveling down Division Avenue into the Jewish section of Williamsburg. A kosher grocery and liquor store dominates the corner. The Star of David marks a synagogue up ahead. Half the signs are in Hebrew. Car horns cut through the quiet like a machete. I veer right, instinctively heading toward the noisier, non-family-friendly side of area. That’s where she lives.

Eventually, I hit Ninth Street. I’m drawn toward the East River and the apartment that she told Jake in an e-mail “overlooks the water, for now.” Instead of a park lining the river, a massive construction zone flanks the bank, cordoned off by a chain link fence and makeshift cardboard wall. Through the mesh wire I see flattened dirt and the line of excavators that will dig down to the bedrock beneath the river, ensuring that the skyscraper-to-be is bolted to a foundation stronger than sand. Man-made dirt hills, as tall as a person, are located at the edge of the property. They’ve already started digging.

I cross to the sidewalk beside the future luxury apartment complex and turn to face the building across the street. It’s a squat warehouse, illegally converted, no doubt, into loft apartments and artist spaces. Multipane factory windows overlook midtown. Some are lit, revealing their open floor plans and brick interior walls, betraying that their owners are inside watching television or entertaining, not making matzo or chocolate or whatever the factory was originally slated to produce.

I count floors, trying to remember Officer Colleen’s apartment number. It was one something. Usually, that would denote the first floor, but things are wonky in Brooklyn. Maybe the basement counts.

One of the dark apartments blooms to life. The light reveals a white L-shaped couch with a kitchenette steps behind it. A naked woman walks to the eating area and straddles a stool at the breakfast bar. She must know people from the street can see her. Perhaps she’s gotten used to the construction site being vacant at this hour. More likely she enjoys voyeurs.