My sentiments exactly, Jess thought, tucking her purse underneath her coat as she hurried through the lobby toward the revolving doors.
It was very cold outside. Those fearless Chicago weather forecasters had predicted an unusually bitter November, and so far they’d been right. The possibility of lots of snow for December, they heralded. Jess still hadn’t bought new winter boots.
She approached the bus stop at the corner, momentarily overwhelmed by what the darkness couldn’t hide: the bag ladies, wearing their lives in layers against the cold; the crazies, raging against invisible demons, wandering around aimlessly, bottles in hand, no shoes on their feet; the kids, so stoned they didn’t have either the energy or the inclination to pull the needles from their skinny arms; the pimps; the hookers; the dealers; the disenchanted. It was all there,
Jess knew, and getting bigger every year. Like watching a cancer grow, she thought, grateful when a bus approached.
She rode the bus to California and Eighth, took the subway to State Street, transferred to the El, all with a minimum of fuss and bother. If Don could only see her now, Jess thought, and almost laughed. He’d have a fit. “Are you nuts?” she could hear him yell. “Don’t you know how dangerous the El is, especially at night? What are you trying to prove?”
Just trying to get myself home, she answered silently, refusing to be intimidated by someone who wasn’t there.
The El platform was crowded, littered, noisy. A youth bumped into Jess from behind, didn’t bother with an “excuse me” as he hurried past her. An elderly woman stepped on her toes as she edged in front of Jess, then glowered as if Jess owed
her
the apology. Black faces, brown faces, white faces. Cold faces, Jess thought, her mind painting everyone in winter blue. Bodies shivering against the night. Everyone just a little afraid of everyone else. Like watching a cancer grow, she thought again, seeing her mother’s face suddenly appear in the front window of the approaching train.
The train stopped, and Jess felt herself being pushed toward its doors, barely conscious of her feet touching the ground. In the next instant, she was swept up and deposited into a cracked vinyl seat, squished between a large black man on her right and an elderly Mexican woman with a large shopping bag on her left. Across the crowded aisle sat a Filipino trying to keep a squirming white child on her lap. A whistle blew. The train lurched, then stalled. Torsos swayed to the rhythm of the moving train. Winter coats, like heavy curtains, fell across Jess’s line of vision. Hot breath filled the air around her.
Jess closed her eyes, saw herself as a small child, holding on to her mother’s hand as they stood on a platform waiting for the El. “It’s just a train, honey,” her mother had said, scooping the terrified youngster into her arms as the train barreled toward them. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Where was I when
you
were so afraid? Jess wondered now. Where was I when
you
needed
me?
“I
don’t need this from you, Jess!”
she heard her mother cry, tears streaking her beautiful face.
The train screeched to a halt at its next stop. Jess kept her eyes closed, heard the doors open, felt the exchange of passengers, the additional weight of more people pressing against her knees. The whistle sounded. The doors closed. The train began slowly resuming speed. Jess kept her eyes shut as the train raced through the center of the city.
She was remembering the morning of the day her mother disappeared.
It had been very hot, even for August, the temperature stretching toward ninety degrees before ten a.m. Jess had come down to the kitchen wearing shorts and an old T-shirt emblazoned with the head of Jerry Garcia. Her father was away on a buying trip. Maureen was at the library, preparing for her return to Harvard in the fall. Her mother was standing by the phone in the kitchen, dressed in a white linen suit, her makeup carefully applied, her hair neatly combed away from her face. She was obviously ready to go out. “Where are you going?” Jess had asked.
Her mother’s voice had emerged as if on pinpricks. “Nowhere,” she’d said.
“Since when do you get so dressed up to go nowhere?” The words reverberated to the rhythm of the train.
Since
when do you get so dressed up to go nowhere? Since when do you get so dressed up to go nowhere? Since when do you get so dressed up to go nowhere?
The train jerked, then twisted, and Jess felt someone fall across her knees. She opened her eyes, saw an elderly black woman struggling to regain her footing. “I’m so sorry,” the woman said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jess told her, grabbing one of the woman’s hands and trying to assist her, about to offer her her seat.
It was then that she saw him.
“My God!”
“Did I hurt you?” the old woman asked. “I’m really sorry. The train jerked so suddenly, I lost my balance. Did I step on your foot?”
“I’m fine,” Jess whispered, pushing the words out of her mouth, staring past the woman at the sneering young man who stood several feet behind her, arms at his side, stubbornly refusing to hold on to anything, his defiance supporting him, holding him up.
Rick Ferguson stared back. Then he disappeared behind a wave of bodies.
Maybe she hadn’t seen him at all. Jess thought, peering through the crowded car, trying to relocate him, recalling her experience with the white Chrysler in front of her brownstone. Maybe she hadn’t seen anything. Maybe it was her imagination having cruel fun with her. Or maybe not.
Definitely not, Jess told herself, tired of pretending things were other than the way she knew them to be. She pushed herself to her feet. Immediately her seat was occupied by someone else. She worked her way to the other side of the car.
He was backed against the door, wearing the same blue jeans and brown leather jacket he’d worn to court that morning, his long, dirty blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, his eyes an opaque brown that contained his entire past: the broken home, the abusive father, the alcoholic mother, the soul-destroying poverty, the frequent trouble with the law, the succession of backbreaking factory jobs, the frequent dismissals, the failed stream of relationships with women, the anger, the bitterness, the contempt. And always the smile, tight-lipped, joyless,
wrong
.
“Excuse me,” Jess whispered to a frail-looking gentleman blocking her path, and the man immediately backed out of her way. Rick Ferguson’s smile widened as Jess stepped directly into his line of vision.
“Well, well,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”
“Are you following me?” Jess demanded, her voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the crowded car.
He laughed. “Me? Following you? Why would I be doing that?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he said, looking over her head toward the window. “My lawyer said so.”
The train slowed in preparation of its next stop. “What are you doing on this train?” Jess persisted.
No answer.
“What are you doing on this train?” she said again.
He scratched the side of his nose. “Takin’ a ride.” His voice was lazy, as if the act of speaking was almost too great an effort.
“Where to?” Jess demanded.
He said nothing.
“What stop are you getting off at?”
He smiled. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I want to know where you’re going.”
“Maybe I’m going home.”
“Your mother lives on Aberdeen. That’s the other way.”
“What if I’m not going to my mother’s?”
“Then you’re in violation of your bail. I can have you arrested.”
“The conditions of my bond state that I have to live with my mother while I’m out on bail. They don’t say anything about what El trains I can, or can’t, take,” he reminded her.
“What have you done with Connie DeVuono?” she asked, hoping to catch him off guard.
Rick Ferguson looked up toward the ceiling, as if he might actually be considering a response. “Objection!” he suddenly taunted. “I don’t think my lawyer would approve of that question.”
The train lurched to a stop. Jess moved to secure her feet against the sudden motion, to reach for something to grab on to, but there was nothing, and she lost her belance, falling forward, crashing against Rick Ferguson’s chest. He grabbed her, his hands gripping the sides of her arms so hard Jess could almost feel bruises starting to form.
“Let go of me,” Jess screamed. “Let go of me this instant!”
Rick Ferguson lifted his hands into the air. “Hey, I was only trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“You looked like you were headed for a nasty fall,” he said, straightening his jacket and shrugging his shoulders. “And we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Not now. Not when things are just starting to get interesting.”
“What does that mean?”
He laughed. “Well, what do you know?” he said, looking past her again toward the window. “This is my stop.” He pushed his way toward the door. “See you around,” he said, sneaking through the doors of the train just as they were closing.
As the train pulled away from the station, Jess watched Rick Ferguson waving good-bye from the open platform.
She was sitting on the bed, naked, her clothes laid out carefully beside her, unable to move. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting like this, how much time had passed since she’d emerged from her shower, how many minutes had elapsed since her legs had gone numb and her breathing had become labored and heavy. “This is ridiculous,” Jess told herself. “You can’t do this. Everyone’s expecting you. You’ll be late. You can’t do this.”
She couldn’t do anything.
She couldn’t move.
“Come on, Jess,” she said. “Don’t be silly. You have to get moving. You have to get dressed.” She looked at the black silk dress that lay beside her. “Come on. You already know what you want to wear. All you have to do is put it on.”
She couldn’t. Her hands refused to leave her lap.
The panic had started as a prickly feeling in her side as she stepped out of the shower. At first she’d tried rubbing it away with her towel, but it had quickly spread to her stomach and chest, then to her hands and feet. She became light-headed, lost the feeling of her legs, was forced to sit down. Soon, it hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.
Beside the bed, the phone began to ring.
Jess stared at the phone, unable to reach for the receiver. “Please help me,” she whispered, her body shivering from the cold. “Please, somebody, help me.”
The phone rang once, twice, three times … stopped at ten. Jess closed her eyes, swayed, felt her fear rising in her throat, like a mouthful of saliva. “Please help me,” she cried again. “Please help me.” She stared into the mirror across from her bed. A small, frightened child stared back. “Please help me, Mommy,” the little girl wailed. “Promise me I’ll be all right.”
“Oh God,” Jess moaned, doubling over, her forehead touching her knees. “What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me?”
The phone began ringing again. Once … twice … three times.
“I have to answer it,” she said. “I have to answer it.”
Jess forced herself back into an upright position, hearing her body crack, like a corpse stiff with rigor mortis. Four rings … five. “I have to answer it.” She willed her hand toward the phone, watched it as if it belonged to someone else as it brought the receiver to her ear.
“Hello, Jess? Jess, are you there?” the voice demanded, not waiting for a hello.
“Maureen?” Jess expelled the word from her mouth in a desperate whisper.
“Jess, where have you been? And what are you doing at home? You’re supposed to be here!” Maureen sounded vaguely frantic.
“What time is it?”
“It’s almost eight o’clock. We’ve been waiting since seven. Everybody’s starving, not to mention worried half to
death. I’ve been calling and calling. What’s going on? You’re never late.” The sentences emerged almost as one.
“I just got home,” Jess lied, still unable to feel her legs.
“Well, get right over here.”
“I can’t,” Jess told her.
“What?”
“Please, Maureen. I just can’t. I’m not feeling very well.”
“Jess, you promised.”
“I know, but …”
“No buts.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Jess …”
“Please tell Dad I’m really sorry, but I’ll have to meet his lady another time.”
“Don’t do this, Jess.”
“Honestly, Maureen, I think I’m coming down with something.”
She could hear her sister crying.
“Please don’t cry, Maureen. This wasn’t anything I planned. I have my dress laid out and everything. I just can’t make it.”
There was a second’s silence. “Suit yourself,” her sister said. The line went dead in her hand.
“Shit!” Jess screamed, slamming the receiver back into its carriage, her crippling lethargy suddenly gone. She jumped to her feet. What the hell was going on? What was she doing to herself? To her family?
Didn’t she hate when people were late? Didn’t she make a point of always being on time? Wasn’t she always the first one to arrive? Eight o’clock, for God’s sake! She’d been sitting on her bed for ninety minutes. Sitting naked, her clothes laid out beside her, unable to put them on, unable to move.
Ninety minutes. An hour and a half. The worst attack yet. Certainly the longest. What would happen if these attacks were to spill over into the courtroom, paralyze her during an important cross-examination? What would she do?
She couldn’t take that chance. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to do something. She had to do something now.
Jess walked to her closet, pulled out her black slacks and fished through the pockets, locating the slip of paper on which her sister had scrawled the phone number of her friend, Stephanie Banack.
“Stephanie Banack,” Jess read out loud, wondering whether the therapist could be of any help. “Call her and find out.”
Jess punched in the appropriate buttons, suddenly remembering the lateness of the hour. “You’ll just get her answering machine.” Jess was debating whether or not to leave a message when the phone was answered on its first ring.