The Vanishing Year(48)

I remember why I’m there. “Can we talk somewhere he’s not?” I jerk my head in Javi’s direction. He’s giving me the stink-eye from across the room, whispering to one of the warehouse runners behind his hand, laughing in my direction. “What is his deal?”

Lydia shrugs and rolls her eyes. “You know Javi. He’s just a pain in the ass. He thinks you abandoned us. He’s wrapped his own insecurities around you, thinks that you think you’re better than us.”

“I did come back. I have come back to say hi. I was on a trip. For months. What the hell, Lyd?”

She leads me to a corner in the front of the warehouse and gives me a metal folding chair. We both sit so our knees are touching. Her foot bobs and I know she wants a cigarette, but when Elisa lurks around, you can’t just simply take a smoke break. I remember the drill, you wait for an errand you can conveniently volunteer for, otherwise Elisa’s eyes dart around like an eagle, performing a constant head count. “Come on, you know him. He’s got a stick up his ass. He thinks you’re a Richie Rich now, all judgy of his wardrobe. That you’re too good for his scene. I don’t know why—”

I cut her off because I can’t keep it in anymore. “I found her. Lydia, I found my mother.” I reach out and grab her shoulders without even realizing it and she looks startled.

“Wait. What?”

“I found my birth mother. She agreed to see me Friday. I got Cash, this reporter I’ve weirdly become friends with, to take me. Can you come with us?” I throw it out there, reckless and unplanned. I suddenly want a guard wall of friends.

“I can’t. It’s Cissy’s birthday.” Cissy is Lydia’s mom. A freckled, blonde version of Lydia, their faces identical. When I met her, in the kitchen of Lydia’s childhood home in Woodbridge, New Jersey, surrounded by rooster decorations and rustic signs painted with things like Fresh Eggs and Home of the Free * Because of the Brave, she’d just baked a pie. She wiped her hands on an apple apron and handed me a homemade chocolate chip cookie from a mooing cow cookie jar. Lydia always took umbrage with her childhood: It had been too happy to retain any sort of street cred, despite her piercings and tattoos. Cissy never batted an eyelash at her punk daughter, her full, fleshy arms wobbling as she hugged both of us at once, as though I was somehow included, too. She smelled like Jean Naté.

“Tell her. See if she cares.” I persist because now that I’ve told her, now that I’ve let Lydia in again, I want to share everything with her. I’ve been friendship starved, and now I want the all-you-can-eat, twenty-four hour buffet.

“Gawd, she’ll want to come.” Lydia curls her lip. “I can’t. We’re going out to dinner. Probably to the Golden Corral or something.” She can hardly stand the provinciality. She pulls my hand up to her face and studies my French manicure. “You’ll cut these, you know.” Little more than a year before, my nails were clipped down to the beds, raggedy and hang-nailed.

“I know. I’m ready for it. I want to come back. I want to be back.”

“And Henry says?”

“He’s fine with it. He wants me to be happy.”

“Will he let you come back every day?” She arches one penciled eyebrow at me, toeing my shin with a black, original Chuck Taylor.

“That’s a trick question. I don’t want to come back every day.” I’m pretty sure that’s true. I stand up, abruptly, dusting imaginary crumbs off my slacks. I’m pretty sure Lydia has never worn slacks in her life. But still, As you are woman, so be lovely darts across my mind.

“Are you leaving?” The snotty tone is back, with an unspoken I told ya so.

“Yeah. I want to be home for Henry.” I say this defiantly, daring her to make a snotty comment.

Instead she stands and gives me a hug. “Good luck Friday. Call me as soon as you leave. I’ll be waiting by the phone.”

I rest my cheek on her pointed shoulder, the tulle of her shirt scratching my skin, and breathe in her Lydia-ness. Patchouli and some kind of herbal hair spray. I forgot about having someone to call “as soon as you were done.” Henry could schedule a call down to the minute, but I could never call him “as soon as I left” anything. That was a girlfriend’s station, someone to dial as you were leaving a doctor’s office to tell her the sun spot was nothing, or send a picture of a new haircut, or text as soon as you got the job with lots of exclamations and smiley faces. The back of my brain skitters on the thought that maybe Caroline could be this person. I know what Cash said, and it has merit. But who’s to say we couldn’t be friends?

I promise to call and give a quick flitted finger wave in Elisa’s direction, who raises her chin and sniffs back at me, which is as good as I was likely to get. I didn’t bother going back into the warehouse, preferring instead to duck out unnoticed.

“See ya in a year!” Javi’s deep echo follows me out, chased by a chittering of laughter, echoing off the steel walls of the warehouse.





CHAPTER 16



The spread is not only above the fold, but spans two full pages in the Living section. Cash managed to hunt down and interview the board president of CARE, and true to his word the piece is entirely devoted to the charity. The event itself, a small subset of the entire article, was brilliantly tacked on at the beginning and the end to keep it in both the Living and Entertainment pages. He highlighted the organization’s purpose, our triumphs, where we’re lacking, what we specifically need funding for—our scholarship program, propelled by Amanda Natese—and some of the other success stories. I’ve been working on developing a program to improve book distribution in the city’s public schools, but I haven’t given it much thought in the past few days. Admittedly, the whole Caroline thing has taken up residence in my brain, edging out all else.