Authors: Katia Lief
“An elephant tusk. What do you think it is?”
“I look like such a dork!”
“You look adorable!”
It was our routine, every year: he pretended he didn’t want his school picture on display and I argued in favor of it. But I knew that if I didn’t put out the newest photo he’d feel I’d skirted a duty.
“Nice frame,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” No
way
would I tell him how I’d gotten it.
“I’m hungry.”
And so we ate. Over lunch we made a plan for the day. He would do homework all afternoon while I chipped away at unpacking – we still had unopened
boxes
from the move stacked in one corner of the living room and in my bedroom – and later we’d go out to dinner and a movie.
Unpacking is no picnic when you’re transferring stuff into an existing mess so I forced myself to clean and organize as I went. Despite gnawing fatigue from hardly sleeping last night I was happy, happier than I’d felt since before Hugo’s death, and managed to enjoy the project. Or maybe happy wasn’t the word. I felt
alive
for the first time in a year and a half.
The weekend flew by uneventfully: no dreaded contacts by Joe, nor any sign of Abe Starkman. I started to worry that the bones story would suffocate and die for lack of the kind of oxygenated information Abe could supply – if he came through as promised. I hoped he would; but it was beyond my control so I tried not to dwell on it. It was the weekend, I was home with my child,
I had a lover
. There were so many reasons not to worry about work.
Rich called my cell phone late Sunday morning. I’d been lying on the couch reading the magazine section of the newspaper and had to fly upstairs to my bedroom, where I’d left my purse, to answer it.
“I thought I couldn’t call you,” he said, “because I was worried about my name showing up on caller ID and what if Nat saw it and, you know. It shows
my
age that it took me this long to think of calling your cell phone.” It was because he was a teacher and an artist, someone who focused only on what he was doing and could not afford to make himself constantly available to everyone else. I on the other hand would have thought of calling a cell phone in about thirty seconds. It didn’t matter; he sounded as happy to hear my voice as I was to hear his.
“How’s the rest of your weekend been?” I asked.
“Good.
Great
. I’ve been painting. You?”
“Hanging out with Nat. Unpacking. We saw a really good movie last night.” I told him about it and we agreed, or hoped, we’d get out to the movies together soon. “Listen, Nat has an early rehearsal this Wednesday. He’ll be leaving the house at about seven. Want to have breakfast?”
“Absolutely. I have to be at school at eight fifteen so it won’t be a leisurely breakfast, but let’s do it anyway. Where?”
I didn’t hesitate: “Here.”
He laughed because we both knew what we’d have for this
breakfast
and it wouldn’t be food.
“So,” he asked, “any more creepy guy?”
“You mean Joe.”
“I remember his name; I just didn’t want to say it.”
“Nope. I guess he took a couple of days off. See? It’s probably just an innocent crush.”
“Darcy …”
“OK, it’s stranger than that. But I haven’t heard a peep from him since the photo, so don’t worry.”
“I am worried; it’s partly why I called. Have you thought any more about talking to the police?”
“Yes, but I still think it’s premature, and I still don’t want to screw things up at work.”
“I understand that, but please at least consider it.”
“I will. If it gets worse, I’ll call them.”
We chatted a little more before saying goodbye. It felt funny having a boyfriend after having had a beloved husband from whom I’d never imagined parting. Now I knew how it happened: how you
moved on
after a tragedy. I had always wondered how my parents had managed to endure life after the Holocaust – though my father’s survival had proved to be a drawn-out temporary solution to an inner death he could not ultimately overcome. A series of inner deaths; my mother’s
echoes
. My mother, though, had truly survived and now I understood how she had done it.
You didn’t forget anyone or anything. You remembered every moment, every feeling, every thought, every smell. You remembered details that would haunt you forever. But the conveyor belt of days and weeks and months and years moved you forward regardless of all that. You
moved on
, despite everything. And slowly, eventually, your senses and hungers reignited because that was what it meant to
be
alive. I understood that now and felt no sense of guilt toward Hugo, who was gone so completely it was hard to believe. But I did feel some guilt in regard to Nat, from whom I was keeping my affair with Rich a secret.
I didn’t like to hide anything from my son. But on the other hand it seemed a worse option to flaunt a new relationship in front of a child who would have his own feelings and expectations, and possibly disappointments, about Mommy parsing out love to someone new. And then what if it didn’t work out? How would that affect Nat? Luckily Rich had the same concerns and so it was implicit between us that our children would not be a part of this – not yet.
Nat and I took a long walk late Sunday afternoon, ending up in Dumbo where we ate brick-oven pizza for dinner followed by a dessert of homemade ice cream, which we ate slowly on a natch overlooking the East River as the sun descended behind us, casting the Manhattan skyline in a haze of lavender light. It was beautiful. I wanted to hold my son’s hand but checked the urge. At thirteen, the only hand he’d want to hold would belong to some other lucky girl. After a long, slow walk home Nat read alone in his room and I did my thing on the bed with my laptop.
What I found waiting for me in my inbox would change everything.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 6
SARA HAD SENT
me another email:
“Hi, honey, hold on to your hat, because all that with Joe Coffin? It gets worse. I tried calling you but you weren’t home and this I can’t leave in a message. I called your cell but it isn’t on. And now we’re taking the kids to Jean and Larry’s for dinner so I’m going to hit you with this in an email. Sorry.”
I looked at the top of her message: written about an hour ago.
“I opened the box. I see why he didn’t want to keep it at home in case his mother found it. There was stuff in there about different women going a few years back, things like fuzzy pictures taken from a distance and really obsessive love letters he wrote and never sent and also little objects, stuff like a dusty old box of little marzipan fruits and a pair of
scuffed
white high heels and a 1989 yearbook from a high school in Texas. Stuff that didn’t make a lot of sense to me and here’s the worst: two pairs of women’s underpants that don’t look clean … But I’m avoiding what I really need to tell you. He had a big fat scrapbook
all about you
. Everything. All your articles and the same kind of fuzzy distant photos of you and Hugo and Nat and even you and
me
and at least ten of those unsent love letters. There’s also a framed photograph of him with his arm around a woman but he cut
your
face out of another picture and pasted it on the woman’s head. Darcy, he’s out of his mind. He
is
stalking you and has been for at least two years by the look of this box. He probably followed you to New York. HE IS CRAZY and probably DANGEROUS.
Go to the police NOW
. Call me first thing in the morning and tell me that you will. If you don’t
I
will stalk you until you do!”
Stunned, I read the email through three more times. First time to get the gist of it. Second time to double-check that I hadn’t imagined any of it. Third time to convince myself of what Sara already believed: that Joe was a bigger problem than I had realized or admitted to myself.
And then, as if he had been hovering and listening and watching and knew that now was the time to drive home the onerous reality of the box – the
contents
of the box – twenty minutes later the phone
started
to ring. And ring and ring and ring. After each set of ten rings the voicemail picked up. I listened to the first message: “Hi, Darcy, it’s Joe. Hope you had a great weekend. Mine was quiet. Did you get the gift I left you? Give me a buzz when you have a minute.”
As if we were friends! As if I would even consider calling him back! He
was
out of his mind. I no longer doubted Sara’s or Rich’s wisdom that it was time to call the police.
But first I called Rich. He wasn’t home and he didn’t answer his cell phone. He must have been painting. So I forwarded Sara’s email to him and left a message on his voicemail: “It’s Darcy. You were right. Check your email. I’m going to the police in the morning.”
The phone rang seventy-three times before finally stopping. Nat came in and out of my room, asking what was going on and trying to accept my lame explanations about unsolicited salespeople not knowing when to give up. Finally, he threatened to answer it himself. I had to stop him.
“Sweetie, sit down.”
It was late; we were both in our pajamas. He sat on the edge of my bed, turned to me and waited. I took his hand and he didn’t flinch it away, maybe because we were not in public or maybe because he was scared. Weaving my fingers through his, I began.
“There’s a guy at work who’s been bothering me.”
“Who?”
“I hardly know him, but he used to live on the Vineyard, and he saw me at work and was very friendly. I didn’t think anything of it at first.”
“So, like, he wants to go out with you?”
“If
you
wanted to go out with a girl, would you call her a zillion times like that?”
“No way.” Without hesitation.
“Right. I’m not sure why he wants my attention so badly. It’s a little unusual. I’m talking with the Human Resources guy at the office tomorrow so they can ask Joe to stop.”
“His name is Joe?”
“Joe Coffin.”
“
Nice name
.” It was what he had always said, growing up on the Vineyard, when he encountered the name
Coffin
on a street sign or mailbox or school roster or anywhere else.
Nice name
. “What’s human resources?”
“The office that deals with employment related things, like making sure you get your benefits and stuff like that.”
“And firing loser jerks who bother people at home.”
“You got it.”
He thought it over a moment. “So they’ll fire him and he’ll stop calling?”
“Hopefully. They might give him a warning first, you know, to give him a fair chance to improve his behavior before they do something as drastic as firing him.” Though even as I said it I knew it was never going to be enough to deter Joe and I
knew
it was necessary that I summon real help. But I would not tell Nat about my decision to contact the police. I wouldn’t even call them tonight, when he was home; I would wait until he left for school in the morning. I could not let him become any more concerned than he already was about the strangeness of the situation or the vague possibility that it might involve some kind of threat to his only remaining parent.
Soon after Hugo died, Nat asked me what would happen to him if for some reason I also died. “I’d be an orphan,” he said. “Who would I live with?” The possibilities had fled through my mind at that awful thought and I understood how high the stakes were for him now that he was fatherless. We both knew that my mother was unfit for caretaking a child, and Hugo’s parents were already gone. He had a brother in Florida, a man who lived alternately on welfare or as a transient farmhand; a man who was over forty yet hadn’t “found himself” or anyone else who could tolerate his perpetual adolescence. He wasn’t much of a grown-up and he would
not
do to raise my son. So who? “Sara,” I told him. “Sara will always be there for you, Nat.” That very day I asked her
permission
to list her in my will as Nat’s guardian and she readily agreed.
“It’s gonna be OK,” I told him now. “Stuff like this happens sometimes.”
“It does?”
“Sure. There are some pretty strange people out there, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed! Like Mr Strolene?” And he was off on a rant about his gym teacher, a man he had spoken of quite a bit lately and who either had a great sense of humor or was certifiably insane. I looked forward to meeting him and finding out.
After a while he went to bed. Mitzi curled up beside me, a purring ball of white fur, while Ahab, tabby investigator, sniffed around my room for the umpteenth time. I listened to the messages left on my voicemail: all from Joe and all pretending we were great friends. Later, as I lay awake in the dark, my cell phone rang and my heart jumped … but it was only Rich. I answered and we spoke briefly, in whispers; but not about our lovely time together on Friday. He was anxious for me and I repeated my intention to call the police.
In the morning, as Nat got ready to leave for school, I peppered him with reminders I knew would annoy him but I couldn’t help myself.
“Do you have your cell phone with you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it charged?”
“Yes.”
“Is it turned on?”
“
Yes
.”
“And you have your house keys?”
“Mom –
yes
! I’m all set.”
“I just need to know—”
Standing at the open front door, he leaned in to kiss my cheek. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry so much.” He didn’t mention last night and neither did I. Was he thinking about Joe, now that he knew about him? Or had he already moved past it in his young, flexible mind?
“Call me when you get to school this morning and when you leave at three and when you get back to the house.”
He stared at me, deadpan. “You’re joking, right?”
Was I? Hadn’t my mandate been to give him more freedom, not less?
“I’m not sure.”
“Great. That’s a big help. See ya, Mom.” He stepped through the inner door, into the vestibule, through the iron gate and into a bright autumn morning. Standing in the hall in my nightgown, cool air flowed over me; but it didn’t feel refreshing or good, as it normally did. Today the chilly air made my exposed skin feel raw and so I rubbed my hands
up
and down my arms, more to feel protected than to warm myself.