At the same time, I walked along through the warm summer night, skirting a chattering group of Chris’ friends, who smiled nervously, no doubt wishing to be invisible to parental eyes. Outside the car service storefront, I passed the South Asian drivers, smoking and lounging, who always pretended I was invisible myself.
I passed the laughing, Spanish-speaking teenagers on the corner, not so different from me and my friends hanging out back in the day, and the young professionals waiting to get into the glossy new Thai restaurant with its smells of garlic and curry calling to me as I went by. I waved to an acquaintance, calling, “Hi, got to run, I’m late.”
Summer night in a living city neighborhood.
It hit me, not for the first time, what a long way from home this neighborhood is for me. Only a few miles physically, but mentally, more of a leap than if I’d come here from North Carolina. I grew up on the other side of Brooklyn, blue collar Brooklyn, Italian, Irish, Jewish, filled with endless rows of semi-modern, identical attached brick houses, boring and charmless, though much loved by their owners. Children went to college locally, if at all, married, and moved nearby. I had happily expected to spend my life right there, where people mostly looked alike. Mostly thought alike too.
This whole odyssey across Brooklyn was financed by my young husband’s life insurance. After he died I became desperate to make a fresh start in a neighborhood completely devoid of his presence. Now a small legacy from my mother was making the desperately needed work on the house a reality.
I ordered myself to push all those all thoughts away. Tonight the here and now was more than complicated enough.
In a few minutes I was sitting in the patisserie, tossing back my iced coffee, heavy on the sugar and whipped cream, and waiting for my chronically late best friend. We met at a nursery school bake sale all those years ago, and instantly clicked over the chocolate cupcakes. I have no idea why. I don’t exactly understand her work—media research—what the heck is that?—and I’m a Brooklyn girl and she’s a Darien girl, and she has an MBA from Wharton and I started out as a social studies teacher, but—I don’t know—we turned out to be the friend we each didn’t know we were looking for.
She greeted me with a hug and sat down.“You don’t look well. In fact you look awful. Are you in shock?”
“Me? No, just tired. Well, maybe shock. I don’t know!”
She patted my hand. “Oh, honey, you’re in shock, and you have a right to be. Let’s order and I’m treating to wine, too. Call it restorative. Then tell me all.”
So I did. I must have needed to talk, because we were looking at the dessert menu before I suddenly stopped. I apologized for the monologue and Darcy said, “Don’t be silly. Ready for an éclair? Or two?”
“You are a bad influence.”
“Of course. Isn’t that what friends are for?” I nodded, still scraping up the last of my Cobb salad.
“So did I get it, that the cops took everything away and now you go back to normal?”
“I don’t know. They said to leave it alone so they can take another look if they want to. And I don’t know about back to normal. I don’t think either Chris or I will just forget about it. It was too…. it was a shock..…and you know Chris was already mad at me for making her work instead of going to camp. And the part about it being a young girl most likely…” My hand started to shake a little.
Darcy gently took the wine glass from my fingers and set it on the table. “I didn’t mean that you would forget. Even I won’t, and I’ve only heard it from you. No one who has teenagers could. Did they at least say they’d let you know what they learn? If they ever do?”
“Umm, not exactly, but I could get back to them. Badger them if I have to. She’ll haunt us otherwise.” I smiled at Darcy to let her know I was joking. Sort of.
“I’m sorry I can’t help with that. I don’t have any contacts to tap into in that world.”
That made me want to smile for real. Networking is like breathing to Darcy. In our decade of friendship she has found me a pediatric ophthalmologist, a termite expert, and someone to make a flower girl dress. I had no doubt she could find me samba lessons too.
“I’ll ask my dad, but I think it’s out of his sphere too. Oh!” she went on. “I completely forgot. Your discovery blew it right out of my mind. Speaking of contacts, could I set up a meeting with a friend of my dad’s?”
She saw my bafflement and said, “Sorry to change subjects, but just listen. He’s advising on a deal involving Brooklyn development and he asked me about how to get a quick tutorial on the issues. I’m probably the only person in Brooklyn he knows. I thought, who better than you?”
“Uh, I’m not such an expert. Not yet.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter. Now listen, here’s my thinking. Seriously. He would be a useful contact for you. He’s a golf buddy of my dad and he is very connected.” She added quickly, laughing, “The proper kind of connected, not the crime kind, as in Deerfield, Princeton, family names on old banks. That kind. More to the point, his family is on museum boards. You work in a museum. And he’s a nice man, too. Plus, there would definitely be a consulting fee. I’ve already laid that down with him.”
She added, “Come on, Erika. Think. People in his world support museums. He supports museums. They all know each other. They put in good words for people they like, and they put them in with the people who are at the top of the pyramid. Getting it now?”
I was, sort of. And even if I didn’t entirely, like I said, my buddy is the queen of networking. Maybe my judgment was softened by the éclairs, because I said yes.
She whipped out her phone, speed dialed and said, “Steven, Darcy here. My friend Erika said yes, she’ll make the time for you. Call her.” She added my number and turned back to me.
“And wear something nice? And some makeup? It makes a more professional impression.” I started to protest, but she said firmly, “No, not office clothes, but not those ratty gym shorts you wear at home, either.” I sighed. She knows me too well.
“Erica!”
“What?”
“Your eyes are closing. Come on, let’s get home.” She walked me out, hugged me and said, “No nightmares tonight,” and I hopped a bus home. Suddenly the walk seemed too much. All the way home, I dreaded dealing with my moody child, even with Darcy’s words still in my head. “She’s a teenager. She’ll be grown up someday. Trust me on this.”
There was a note from Chris. “Went to bed. Please don’t make noise coming up! Uncle Rick called. I told him everything. He wants to change our locks and said to tell you he’s coming for dinner tomorrow and he’ll bring pizza. Wants a full report.” Good, I thought. Rick was the very person I most wanted to see.
Before I went up, I glanced into the dining room, where the bright yellow police tape seemed to shine in the dark, and the dusty sour smell seemed to have spread through the first floor. Then I checked on Chris, who was already sound asleep, and went to bed, finally, wondering if I would dream all night about that sad little skeleton. That body had been hidden, buried carefully, it seemed, but hidden. Had there been a terrible accident?
Or—I finally had to say the ugly words I’d been trying to keep away all evening. Had someone killed her?
I met Chris in the hall as she was making a middle of the night trip to the bathroom. She asked in a voice still hoarse from sleep, “They said the bones were a girl’s, didn’t they? Like, a teenager?”
I nodded. “Honey, is that upsetting you?”
She shook her head, mumbled, “Back to sleep,” and disappeared into her room. When I came out of my room in the morning, ready to leave for work, she was sitting on her bed, laptop open, pointedly ignoring me until she gasped and said, “Come look!”
The screen had a headline proclaiming, “Real Life Mystery in South Slope?” It was followed by a couple of paragraphs beginning, “Why was NYPD removing what looked like a body bag from 2007 13th Street? Sources on this shabby block at the border of the Slope, tell us it is the home of a mother and teenaged daughter, and no one else is known to live there. Yet the body bag was seen being removed yesterday afternoon and there were cops in and out. Was there an accident during the ongoing renovation? And why is no one saying anything? Neighbors are naturally curious and even concerned.” It was signed with a screen name.
“Who could possibly have written this? And what the hell is this anyway?”
“It’s a bulletin board, Mom,” she said defensively. She must have heard my reaction in my voice. “Brownstone Bytes. You know, neighborhood news, gossip, restaurants, star spotting. I once saw a picture of Jennifer Connelly right there on Jamie’s block.”
“That’s not the point! This is a…an intrusion writing about us and our home.”
“Yeah. I’m like….” She looked at my angry face and finished with what I suspected was a second thought. “I’m really creeped out.” I had a hunch her first word might have been “excited.”
“They have no right to give our address there.”
“Uh, they do, mom. We had it in American history last year. First amendment?”
That’s what you get when you struggle to send your child to an excellent private school. Better educated back talk.
“Nonsense. Give me that URL. I’m sending them a complaint as soon as I get to work.”
“Mom!”
“What? I have to get to work.”
“Could you wait maybe, until we can do it together? I’m afraid you might go too far? You seem, um, pretty upset?”
That stopped me. I was annoyed, but I should not seem out of control to my daughter.
“Ok.” I dug up a smile. “You think I might embarrass you?”
She looked so relieved to be understood, I almost laughed.
“You can be a little impulsive sometimes.” She managed a tiny smile of her own.
“We can work it out later. But really, Chris, don’t you see why it isn’t a good thing?”
She admitted she did, sort of; I reminded her to check in if she went anywhere, and that Joe would be there soon to get back to work. I had to get some real work done myself, work as in, at my job.
After a long day buried in meetings and reports I came home at last to an empty house and a note “At Melissa’s—invited to dinner, watching a video. Cops here, went over the fireplace again, but said we could take down tape.”
It felt like a reprieve. I would have complete silence, dinner, a glass of wine, and the paper I hadn’t had time to read in the morning. Before any of that, though, I felt I had to take a look at that fireplace.
It must have been a lovely one when it was new. It had glazed green tile on the surround, plus a floral tile border and pressed metal trim. All the inside work was gone, gas jets or andirons or whatever had been there at the beginning. Perhaps it was removed when the body was put there. I flinched, unwillingly picturing it. The questions came back. Why was it put there? Buried? Hidden? Was the fireplace walled over then, to hide it all? Or had that been done years earlier, when it stopped being used, and then the wall was ripped out and put back?
My appetite was gone. I poured a glass of wine and escaped to the deck. If I lit the candles out there on the table, I could read the paper, too. I wanted to think about the impersonal world outside my house, this refuge that no longer felt so safe, where a girl my daughter’s age had seemingly disappeared a long time ago. I didn’t want to think about who must have been looking for her way back then, or the terrible sadness if there was no one to look.
Actually, I felt a sudden need to hear my own daughter’s voice.
“Hey, Joan. It’s Erica. Is my child there and available?’
“Sure.” Instant relief. “They’ve finishing the dishes. Erica, she was so helpful tonight, and such good company. She’s a sweetie.”
“Are we discussing the same child? Chris, the one who only grunts at me? When I’m lucky?”
Joan laughed. “She’s wonderful here.”
“Oh, yeah, and Mel is wonderful at my house, too. What’s she like at home?”
She sighed. “The demon seed, of course. I’ll get Chris. Hold a sec.”
“Mom?”
“Hi, hon. Just wondering when you’ll be back. Should I wait up? How will you get home?”
“Mom, I’m fifteen, and I’m a whole six blocks from home. Both of Mel’s parents and her brother are right here. What more do you want?”
“I want know how you are getting home, if it will be late.”
“Don’t know, but someone will walk me. Stop babying me!”
“It’s a legitimate question for a mother to ask, and I don’t appreciate the whining. Joan told me how wonderful you are and I asked her who she was talking about.”
A long silence, then in slightly more civil tone she said, “It’s all good, mom. I’ll get home safe.”
“All I needed to know.” I banged the phone down, but I was relieved. She was exactly where she said she would be, safe and happy.
Later, I happened to look out the front window from upstairs, as she came up the block with Melissa, their two heads bent together in serious conversation. They were squeezing in as much girl time as possible before Mel went off for a month at art camp. That was the summer Chris wanted too, but there was no way I could pay for it.
Mel’s parents followed a discreet distance behind, arm in arm, a couple out for an evening stroll. All of them together looked like a family. I wondered with a pang if Chris felt that way too, as if this fulfilled some idea of family for her. Was that why she spent so much time there? Would it have been different if her father were with us?