The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D (35 page)

Kate stretched her legs long in front of her. “How’d you get to be so wise, Max?”

“I spend a lot of time alone with bread.” He swept near her feet and noticed the bandage. “What happened to your toe?”

“Stubbed it on a rock.”

He grimaced. The phone rang and he glanced at it to see who was calling before letting it go to the answering machine.

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said. “Did Anthony call you? You really have to hear more about this place he’s launching.”

“Yes, I talked to him. I know all about it.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “I’m going to talk to the owners. There’s no harm in talking.”

He nodded. “You don’t really want it.” It was more statement than question.

“No, I do.” She could see herself working there. She could imagine all the aesthetics of a brand-new kitchen: the gleaming surfaces, the stainless-steel ranges and the stretch of metro rack shelving. She could see the spread of ingredients mounded in matching bowls, the crimson of berries in pooled sauces, and her plated finished product, crust peeling in flakes like mica. She could feel the bustle of the kitchen, the brisk efficiency of some of the best professionals in the world humming along and occasionally losing control. And when there was yelling and running and burning, she’d be settled in her space making beautiful things. Even the unpredictability was predictable. She missed that control in the eye of the storm.

But eventually, the storm would move to encompass her home as well. She would find herself forgetting show-and-tell days and unaware that James’s bike had been abandoned, not stolen, because of the damned wheelies he couldn’t do. And the control would be gone. She would resent the job at times and her family at others, but above all resent herself for whatever failing made her unable to split herself between the two.

“You don’t have to tell me you want the job,” Max said. “I’m not Anthony.”

“I do want it. It’s a great opportunity.” She picked at the grain of the wood on her chair. “It’s just not the best time.”

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s okay to say that, you know. It’s a great thing, staying home with your kids.” Kate looked from the corner of her eye for a sign of sarcasm or of a punch line to come, but there wasn’t. “You’re good at it.”

“If I were better at it I could handle both.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.” Max had little patience for self-flagellation. “It’s just what your tolerance is for letting stuff slide. Because something’s always gonna slide.” She raised her eyebrows but didn’t argue.

“There will be another restaurant when you’re ready,” he said.

“That’s kind of what I’m thinking.” She slid her thumb along the worn edge of the wooden island. “But that catering gig, that part-time thing in D.C. you mentioned a few weeks ago. Maybe you could give me the number if you still have it.”

“I think I could find it.” He leaned forward to rub a smudge of flour off the shoulder of her T-shirt. That was his way, small plucking touches. “You know, it’s not like by taking a few years off you’ll miss out on the latest research in pie-crust technology or something.” He turned to put the last of the utensils into their drawers. “Though
I
certainly wouldn’t hire you then if I were a top restaurant. You clearly are going to get soft on technique, and you’ll have to spend a lot of summer hours practicing here with me.”

That evening on the Internet she located contact information for five of the seven Michaels. She dialed each in succession. Three had never heard of Elizabeth. One thought she might have sat beside him in algebra, but didn’t remember anything else. The fifth expressed surprise that she’d married and had children, since he’d heard she dyked out in college.

Kate hung up the phone and stared at the glowing screen of the people-finder Web site. The loft was quiet and so was the shoreline; downstairs, there was only the faint hum of the television. She looked at the cursor, still blinking in the box asking for First Name. Again she typed Michael. But this time she left the Last Name box empty, and in the space for the city, she entered Joshua Tree.

Revise your search
, the screen prompted.
The boxes marked with asterisks are required
.

Her eyes stung, and she pressed her fingers into the sockets.

Somewhere there was a man who had known all of Elizabeth, been so accepting and understanding that she had driven away, but this time kept going. What would draw her to confide in him, what would signal that it was safe?

He would be inquisitive, Kate thought; he would be fascinated, each new fact conveying acceptance of the one before, and it would feel as if he would not give up until he knew all there was to know about her. That raw beginning with a stranger, the infatuation and excitement of rolling out the map for the first time—it was an easier place to begin than redrawing the landscape with someone who knew you best, yet didn’t see it all. She thought of Chris and his impatience when she balked at taking the Metro after the bomb scare. There was a force of momentum at work with a spouse, a vested interest in things as they were, and always had been. She was the mother of his children. She was the one who held things together. It was important that she be constant, competent, and strong.

She tried a fresh search, this time with only the letter
M
for first name, and then the state, California. She was being foolish, throwing a dart at a globe.

Where the cursor had been, a colored pinwheel began to spin and continued with no sign of stopping, giddy at the irrationality of the request.

K
ATE STARED AT THE
bedroom wall. Moonlight through sheer curtains created crosshatch designs on the whitewashed wood, a flat origami of tree limbs. Hours passed. Finally, she flung back the sheets and walked gingerly to the family room, feeling her broken toe with each step.

It had been a long time since she’d watched middle-of-the-night television. On one shopping channel jewelry shimmered, diamond chokers from the choicest South African mines, hers for absurdly low prices. Another station offered a vegetable juicer, providing vitamins and minerals guaranteed to improve her family’s mental acuity a thousandfold. The next channel extolled the value of educational recordings, miraculously raising the IQ through osmosis even as one slept.

Kate slouched in a daze as each spokesperson reached new heights in promises made. Late-night television preyed upon the desperate, those out of sync with the sleeping world at an hour that played tricks on the mind and made a person susceptible to a gleaming product, a beautiful face, an authoritative vow. The subtext was clear.
If you buy this you will look better, you will feel better, you will be better
. She clicked the channel one more time.

A man stood beside a mansion on a beach, waves crashing to his
left beyond an enormous wraparound porch. This was not a house, he was saying; this was the physical manifestation of positive thinking, the great success and material wealth it could bring from the generous universe. “This is
truth
,” he said. “This is
knowledge
.”

Kate hobbled to the kitchen and took two ibuprofen tablets from the bottle on the counter. The man’s monologue continued. “Truth and knowledge are not only attainable, but
unavoidable
, if you make a commitment to
dig
for your greatest potential.”

As she filled a glass with water, she glanced at the papers piled by the sink. Chris had left his travel magazine open on the counter. A tall cactus stretched across the double-page spread, branching across the headline, “California Mysticism Blooms Anew.” The words were printed in a tall, narrow typeface that faded in a wash at the tops of the letters. Bleeding Cowboys, Kate thought. Vielkalahizo.

The voice of the man on the infomercial continued.

“When you think you’ve got nothing left, when answers continue to elude you, you must
dig
to the bottom,” he said, “then dig again.”

The trunk sat in the loft where she’d left it, repacked and ready to return home with them. Kate lifted out the first stack of journals, then the second, and the third. She fanned out the books in front of her looking for anything she might have missed, but they all looked familiar. She separated the journals from one another with a small shake, one at a time.

A piece of paper fell from between the covers of two notebooks. It was a letter folded in thirds addressed to Elizabeth’s daughter.
Happy third birthday, Anna Danielle!
Kate skimmed the page, which seemed intended for a baby book, or part of a collection of letters.
I love your spirit, roping everyone into conversation in the grocery checkout line. The world embraces friendly, confident people. You can do anything you want to do!
  This was the Elizabeth Kate had known. The optimism, the cheerleading.
Kate refolded the note and tucked it into the back cover of the last notebook.

The bottom of the trunk was covered in thick striped paper like the rest of the interior, but torn in places. There were a few scraps of paper loose on the bottom. She lifted out one ripped sheet, a shopping checklist for Christmas 1998. There was a Post-it note, a list of gifts received from a baby shower. Along the left side of the trunk a photograph was stuck in the seam. She pulled it out and saw a young girl eating ice cream, long brown ponytails curling over her collarbones. The picture had been cut in half; a sliver of a red shoulder remained of whoever had been sitting beside her, someone only slightly larger, with long blond hair over the edge of the red shirt.

Elizabeth might have cut herself out in anger, fueled by thoughts of fault and blame. Or maybe she’d cut it that way because it would be easier to perch on the side of the canvas while she painted. There was no way to know what Elizabeth had thought, not anymore.

The child was seated on a bench in front of a red barn, her eyes half closed and sleepy, or deeply content. She doesn’t exist any longer, Kate thought; she was real and she was loved and now she is gone, along with everyone else in her family. She could have been an aunt. She could have been a confidante. Instead she was a void, and an absence that would not allow for forgiveness.

Kate itched to put the photo in her pocket, but it was not hers to keep. She put it back in the side of the trunk. Then she wondered how difficult it would be to find the cemetery, to walk among the headstones unnoticed with a bag of tulip bulbs.

She was about to close the trunk when she saw that at the bottom, caught in the folds of ripped lining, was a small business card. Kate pulled it out, turned it over. The Aura Institute, it read, in letters the color of sand. One Saguaro Way, Joshua Tree, California 92252.

The Web page for the Aura Institute was muted and simple, as if it were designed with people in mind for whom too much clutter
might be disturbing. At first glance it appeared to be a spa. There were photographs of people meditating, doing yoga, dining at a communal table. One showed a woman sculpting, and another, drawing. Kate clicked from image to image in the gallery looking for a thumbnail of people painting, hoping to find a mention of visiting artists, seminars, retreats. It might yet be true about the workshop with Jesús.

A box in the center of the page had an arrow designating a video clip.
Join Us
, the caption read. Kate clicked.

The film appeared at first to be an interview. A woman in her thirties sat on a couch holding two small children on her lap. The camera zoomed tightly on her face, faint smile lines wrinkling the corners of her eyes as she talked about the energy level required to care for her children. As she wiped at her eyes, the children’s heads bobbed under her chin, animated and oblivious. Then she pulled off her hair.

Treatments, she said, had left her exhausted and losing the will to fight, dispirited about the future she would never share with her family. Until she discovered Aura.

The scene abruptly changed from the woman’s chintz couch to a sweeping desert vista—sand and sky and swooping hawks set against a soaring instrumental sound track. The video quality was extraordinary, the stuff of nature documentaries; Kate could see this even on her old laptop, its screen covered in smudged fingerprints.