Goodnight Nobody (16 page)

Part Two

The Ghost Writer

Twenty-One

It was a six-hour flight from London to New York, and I'd gone a little nuts in the duty-free shop, buying two paperback novels with candy pink covers, comically bewildered British heroines, and the promise of a happy ending by page 375; four glossy magazines; three Cadbury milk chocolate bars; and one half-bottle of red wine I was fully prepared to slip into the bathroom to chug. I had a silk eye mask and a pair of Scottish wax earplugs. Finally, in case of dire emergency or an unexpected crying jag, I had two of the prescription painkillers I'd saved from the summer before when I'd had my wisdom teeth pulled.

On the plane, I'd slipped off my shoes, pulled the blanket up to my chin, unwrapped the first candy bar, and flipped open one of the magazines when a tall, stooped man with a pleasant, narrow face sat down beside me.

"Hi."

He was about my age, and his voice, and orthodontically perfected teeth, were unmistakably American. I gave him a faint half-smile, nodded, and turned toward the window with the magazine spread open in my lap. "Your Most Intimate Health Questions Answered," read the headline. Evidently the editors of British
Cosmo
believed that many of my most intimate health questions involved itches in places you couldn't scratch in public.

The guy was undeterred by my cold shoulder and the words "yeast infection" in large pink letters on the top of the page. He stowed his laptop underneath the seat in front of him, wriggled out of his leather jacket, and inquired, "Is that any good?"

"I'm learning a lot." I ostentatiously flicked another page and wondered whether I'd actually have to scratch myself to get him to leave me alone.

He clicked his seatbelt closed. "Are you from New York?"

I made a noncommittal noise.
Why, God? Why me?
I eased one of the painkillers out of my pocket.

"You look so familiar," the guy continued. I turned and looked at him: brown eyes, close set, underneath thick black eyebrows. Beaky nose in a thin face, and a nice-enough smile, narrow shoulders and knobby wrists. Nobody was ever going to mistake him for a pop star.

"Just one of those faces, I guess." I slid the pill into my mouth and washed it down with a slug of bottled water.

"You know, one thing I never get used to over here: no ice in the water."

I half nodded and turned toward the window. Ten days with my mother had given me a bunch of new diva tricks--the dismissive yawn, the vacant stare, the sudden switch to another language.

"You have to ask for ice if you want it in your water," he continued. "You go out to eat, they pour you a glass half full of warm water. Who wants to drink that?"

"Look," I said, deciding that if I didn't take proactive steps, I'd be listening to this dolt talk about his beverage preferences until the drugs kicked in.

He mistook my movement for friendliness, smiled, and stuck out his hand. "Ben Borowitz."

"I have a gun," I replied, and opened my purse to show him.

He pulled back, thrusting both hands in the air as if I were a cop who'd told him to stick 'em up. Of course, the instant the words were out of my mouth, I felt guilty. I touched his wrist gently. He jumped in his seat.

"Hey."

He ignored me, grabbing the in-flight magazine and flipped to a feature about Memphis barbecue.

"I don't really have a gun," I said, opening my purse wider. "It's just a compact. My mother bought it for me on Portobello Road." Reina and I had spent an afternoon shopping, with my mother striding grandly along the rainy street in ankle-length skirts and a necklace of gumball-sized pearls, waiting to be recognized; me in jeans and a bulky raincoat trailing after her, praying that if she was, she wouldn't introduce me.

He risked a glance sideways, and I pulled out the compact to show him. "See?"

"I can see that you don't want to be disturbed," he said, with his gaze fixed rigidly on his magazine.

"Yes, but I shouldn't have scared you. I'm sorry. I've just..." Oh, God. I felt my eyelids prickle and my throat start to close. "I've been going through kind of a hard time."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. An actual cloth one that smelled clean and felt starchy when I pressed it beneath my eyes.

"I'm sorry I bothered you," he said. "It's just that you really do look familiar."

I shrugged and sniffled, readying myself for a game of Jewish geography or New York City where'd you go/who do you know. "I grew up on the Upper West Side and I went to Pimm for high school."

"Did you live on Amsterdam Avenue?"

I nodded, turning toward him.

"Did you ever take saxophone lessons?"

"No. Voice." I took another sip of water, imagining I was already starting to feel drowsy. "But there were saxophone teachers in my building."

"I took sax lessons," he said. "Maybe I saw you."

"Maybe you did." I tried to give him his handkerchief back.

"No, keep it. It's yours," he said, and smiled. "But you'll have to give it back. Will you have dinner with me?"

I nodded. He had a nice smile, I thought...or maybe that was just the medication talking. Then I closed my eyes, and when I woke up, we were on the ground at Kennedy Airport and my head was on Ben Borowitz's shoulder. He'd tucked my blanket around me and was having a quiet consultation with the pretty British flight attendant about the best way to remove drool from his leather jacket, which he'd bunched up and placed under my cheek. "Sorry," I murmured thickly. "No, no," said Ben. "Don't worry." He had a car waiting. Could he give me a ride home?

I let him put me in the car. A week later, we went out for sushi. I asked the right questions about his life, his job, his friends, and his hobbies and made myself nod and smile in all the right places, and I only slipped into the bathroom twice to check my messages at home to see if Evan had called.
Suitable,
I thought, leaning across the table to clink sake cups with the man who, two years later, would become my husband. He is a suitable man. We'll have a suitable life together. I knew that what I felt for Ben wasn't even close to the passion I'd felt for Evan. But look where passion had gotten me. Suitable, I figured, would suit me just fine.

Ben and I honeymooned in Saint Lucia and moved into his apartment, two bedrooms at Sixty-fifth and Central Park West, and for three years we were happy. Well, I was reasonably content, with my job and with Janie. Being married felt a lot like being single, with the addition of a very large, sparkly diamond and the very minor issue of being unable to date other men. Not that I was seeing much of my husband. Ben appeared to have spent all of whatever free time he would ever have wooing me. Now that he'd sealed the deal, he worked nights, weekends, and all summer long, except for the occasional weekend when he'd drive out on Saturday to visit me and Janie at Sy's house in Bridgehampton, spend the whole day poolside, and drive back Sunday with his entire face sunburned, except for the patch of white around his ear where he'd held his cell phone.

Then came Sophie. Ben went back to work two days after she arrived. I didn't complain, but it was hard not to notice that Janie and my father both took more time off than my husband did (Reina flew in long enough to kiss the baby, then flew back to Rome). After ten days, my father went back to the orchestra, Janie went back to
New York Night,
and I was left alone, exhausted and bewildered, with an eight-and-a-half-pound shriek machine and a supercompetent baby nurse who, regrettably, spoke only Russian.

When Sophie was twelve weeks old, I went to visit Dr. Morrison for my twice-postponed postbirth checkup.

"How are you doing?" he asked genially as I stuck my feet into the stirrups.

"Uh..." Honestly, between dealing with a cranky newborn, a husband who was never home, a mother who kept promising to return, then changing her mind, and Sveta the baby nurse, who communicated via grunts, gestures, and angry shakes of her head, I was having a hard time stringing together more than two words at a time.

"Knees apart, please. What are you planning on doing for birth control?"

I laughed weakly. "Never have sex again?"

He chuckled twice as he rummaged inside me. Then his eyebrows drew down. "Huh."

"Huh what?" I asked. I knew I should have been more worried, but honestly, lying on my back with my colicky baby thirty blocks away was the most restful experience I'd had since Sophie's arrival. It was all I could do not to doze off.

"I think we should step into the ultrasound room."

I struggled to think. "Why? Is there, um, something still in there?"

"Follow me," he said. Five minutes later Dr. Morrison had smeared goo on my belly, pressed the ultrasound wand against it, and located not one but two heartbeats. "Congratulations, Mom!" the nurse had had the nerve to say. Lucky for her, she had quick reflexes. The shoe I threw at the ultrasound monitor barely grazed her shoulder. I'd gone running out of the office and down the hall and into the elevator with my pants pulled on but not zipped or buttoned, my sneakers shoved onto my feet, unlaced, and the examination gown flapping in back and sticking to the ultrasound gel in front.

Ben had answered his phone on the third ring. "Ben Borowitz speaking."

"Motherfucker!" I'd yelled so loudly that the flock of pigeons on the corner had taken flight and the homeless guy going through the garbage can and mumbling to himself had looked up and said, quite lucidly, "Lady, you nuts."

"What?"

"I'm pregnant," I said, and started crying. "Again. With twins!"

"You got pregnant..." His voice trailed off. "I didn't think you could get pregnant when...I mean, it's so soon!"

"Tell me about it," I sniffled.

He cleared his throat. "So what are we going to do now?"

I shoved my hair back from my cheeks and pulled the gown tight against my shoulders. "Have three kids, I guess. But you're going to have to help me."

"I will," he promised.

"You can't just say you're going to come home early and not come home, or that you're going to do the laundry and not do it. I'm..." I wiped tears off my cheeks with the hem of the gown. "I'm kind of not making it here."

"I'll help you, Kate. I promise I will."

He'd meant it at the time. At least, that's the belief that I'd clung to after the boys came along and the baby nurse returned and my mother was once again missing in action. Ten days after my C-section, Janie and my father were once again back at work and I was alone in the apartment with a very unhappy eleven-month-old and two newborns. The trouble was, as Ben patiently explained to me over and over again, he was building a business, cementing his reputation, setting himself up for the halcyon, hazy days somewhere in the future when he wouldn't have to work every day and most nights and almost every weekend. "I'm doing this for us," he'd say, and I'd nod and say, "I understand."

As long as I had New York, and my father, and Janie, I thought I'd be fine. The kids would grow up eventually. They'd go to nursery school, then school school. Someday I'd get to the point where I could talk to them and they'd answer back. I could work part-time. I could reclaim my pre-baby life and have some kind of balance again.

Then I got stroller-jacked.

The kids and I were on our way back from the Museum of Natural History, where we'd spent twenty educational minutes inspecting the exhibit on life under the sea, an equal amount of time changing diapers, and forty-five minutes in the gift shop. It was unexpectedly warm for February, with a clear blue sky and a gentle breeze that promised the joys of spring. Sam and Jack, who'd emerged from my womb good-natured and easygoing and hadn't changed much in the intervening years, were in their stroller, fast asleep. Sophie, who'd emerged from my womb red-faced and shrieking inconsolably and hadn't changed much either, was wide awake and standing on the board I'd affixed to the back of the stroller.

"Mommy, why are wheels round?" she asked as we strolled along Central Park West.

"Because if they were square, they wouldn't turn!"

Sophie considered this. "Why?"

"Well, they turn because that's what wheels do! That's how they get you places!"

"But why--"

But before Sophie could finish, a man in a stained baseball cap popped out from behind a dumpster, grabbed the stroller's handlebars, and wheeled it swiftly into a dark alley I'd never noticed before.

"Hey!" I screamed as Sophie hopped nimbly off the board and wrapped her arms around my legs.

"Be cool, be cool," he said, pushing the stroller against the dumpster and fumbling in his pocket. My heart froze as I saw the gun.

"Gimme your bag."

I peeled Sophie off my legs, held her against me, bent over, and fished the diaper bag out from underneath the stroller.

"No, your
purse.
"

"I don't have one!" I said. "I don't carry a purse, I just stick my wallet in the diaper bag." I thrust the bag out at him, feeling dizzy and sick. "Please don't hurt my babies."

He dumped the diaper bag out on the pavement. Wipes and diapers and boxes of raisins came tumbling down, along with my wallet, which he shoved in his pocket. "Jewelry." I handed over my watch and bracelet, and tried to yank my wedding band off while forcing myself to look at him, his face, his body. He was five ten or so, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds, a pale white guy with dirty blond hair in faded jeans and a leather jacket.

"Now give me the stroller."

"What?"

He glared at me. "Get the brats out of there and hand it over."

"Stand still," I whispered to Sophie. She grabbed my legs again, and I lurched forward and unfastened the boys with shaking hands, still unable to quite believe that this was happening.

I lifted the boys into my arms. The thief pressed the red button underneath the handlebars. Nothing happened. He peered at the print on the foam grips.

"This says, 'Easy one-hand fold.' "

"Yeah, well..."

He pushed the button again and jiggled the stroller up and down. Still nothing. He kicked the cross-braces.