Looking for Laura (16 page)

By the time Rosie had finished her cannoli, which left smears of cream and powdered sugar on her upper lip, the women had meandered through a discourse on Mix-masters, stock funds, stained-glass-window ornaments and architects who had obviously never cleaned a house, because if they had, they'd know not to make all those visually striking nooks and ledges that were impossible to dust. “Sally? We've really got to go,” Todd finally broke in.

“Well…yes, I guess we do. Thanks for the apple juice. It really was wonderful. Rosie, what do you say?”

“Thanks for the pastry,” Rosie recited, then added, “your dog is too small.”

“Do you think so?” Laura gazed at the dog, still perched precariously on the counter as if he were another high-tech appliance. “You're right. Maybe he is too small. I should get a bigger dog.”

“If you get another dog, I can take this one,” Rosie offered. “Maybe he's small enough that my mom won't mind.”

“We're not getting a dog,” Sally said. “Not even a small one. Laura, it was really sweet of you to let us take so much of your time….”

And the two women were off again, launching themselves into another sisterhood dialogue, lots of take-care's and be-good-to-yourself's and don't-let-that-architect-steamroll-you's. Todd set down his half-full glass of glorified apple juice and trailed the chattering women to the foyer, letting their babble splash past him like sea spray. A few more take-care's and it-was-a-
pleasure's and the front door was open. Escape was at hand, escape and an end to the incessant yakking.

Sally stepped outside, then hesitated and turned back. Todd clamped his mouth shut to keep from yelling at her that he was in no mood to stand around for another half hour while she and Laura rehashed the
Consumer Reports
rating on food processors one more time.

“I was just wondering, Laura—' she gave the woman a smile that was both shy and sly “—what you think of Sartre.”

L
aura Hawkes wasn't exactly sure who Sartre was. “Some philosopher guy, right?” she'd guessed.

Sally had already pretty well figured she wasn't the Laura they were looking for. For one thing, the woman was totally wrong for Paul: too cutting-edge, too urban, too expensive. Too nice. For another, she was married to Vigo Hawkes. Why would a woman married to Vigo Hawkes waste time with a small-town lawyer?

For a third thing, Paul would never have wasted his time with anyone who didn't know who Sartre was. He prided himself on his erudition. While he'd done the honorable thing by marrying Sally after she'd become pregnant, she had to wonder whether he would have been quite so honorable if she hadn't possessed at least a passing knowledge of the father of existentialism.

As they reached the City Hall Plaza, with its modern fortress of a building and its gray acres of concrete, Rosie announced that she had found Laura Hawkes's dog creepy. “He just sat up there on the counter,” she said. “He should have come down and played with me. I liked the lady's pastry much better than I liked her dog.”

“That pastry is called a cannoli,” Sally reminded her. “It's Italian. Aren't we near Boston's Italian neighborhood?”

Todd glared at her. He'd been silent the entire walk
back to the garage, staring at the sidewalk three paces ahead of him and stewing. “I think it's time to go home,” he said.

“But we're really close to the Italian neighborhood. What's it called, the North Side?”

“The North End. And we should be getting home.” He made a big production of checking his watch. It wasn't yet five o'clock, and while the sun was fading westward, the sky still held plenty of easy golden light.

“We could just stop in at a bakery and pick up some cannolis. What's the big deal?”

“I want cannolis,” Rosie chimed in. “I like them a lot.”

Todd paused. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, his arms pinning back the flaps of his blazer. A light breeze toyed with his hair, fluffing the dense black waves. His nose was a touch pinker than it had been when they'd left Winfield that morning. The evening was mild, the air fresh and pleasant.

“In fact,” Sally ventured, bracing herself for his resounding objection, “we could have dinner in the North End.”

“Can we have cannolis for dinner?” Rosie asked.

“No, but you could get spaghetti, if you liked. Or ravioli, or lasagna—'

“With eggplant?”

“If you'd like.”

“She eats eggplant?” Todd eyed Rosie skeptically.

“If we have dinner in the North End, you can see for yourself.” What she really wanted to say was,
Stop being such a crab
. They'd enjoyed a lovely day. The Swan Boat ride had been dreamlike, the boat gliding silently around the pond, the trees in the park trembling with new life. They'd seen a street performer and met a fas
cinating woman who happened to be married to Vigo Hawkes, and now it was time to celebrate with an authentic urban–ethnic culinary experience.

Todd continued to scrutinize Rosie. It would seem that his entire decision hinged on whether he wanted to witness her consuming eggplant.

“What would you be doing tonight if we went home?” Sally asked. “Zapping a frozen entrée in the microwave?” Casting aspersions on his cooking ability wasn't really fair; the man knew how to roast a chicken. But she couldn't help goading him.

“Maybe I have plans for the evening.”

A date? The thought had never occurred to her. She supposed he had a social life. There were no doubt a few women in Winfield who would want to date the eligible publisher of the region's largest newspaper. Tina thought he was cute, and given that she was on a tattoo basis with her boyfriend, she shouldn't even have noticed Todd. If Tina could think he was cute, other women must think so, too.

Then again, his plans for the evening might entail watching pro-wrestling on cable and drinking Jack Daniel's straight from the bottle.

“If you had plans, you wouldn't have invited yourself along on this trip,” she said, emphasizing that it had been
his
idea to accompany her and Rosie to Boston, and therefore he wasn't in any position to dictate their departure time.

He lifted his gaze from Rosie to Sally. His eyes were opaque. She wished she knew whether something specific was bugging him or he was just a generic grouch, fed up with a day spent on a mission that hadn't produced the desired result. Or if he
did
have a hot date waiting for him back home. Or if he wanted to go home
because Sally's presence offended him, and Rosie grated on him, and he couldn't bear an extra minute with either of them.

“All right,” he said. “We'll eat in the North End.”

 

Two and a half hours later, Todd paid an exorbitant fee to ransom his Saab from the garage, and they drove out into a velvet-soft evening. Rosie had gorged herself on eggplant parmigiana at a cozy trattoria. Sally had eaten calimari, the mere thought of which Todd evidently found grotesque, and he'd had some Italian preparation of steak. One thing he and Paul had in common, she concluded, was a deep and abiding affection for red meat.

After dinner, they'd strolled past the Old North Church, which Sally had explained to Rosie was where Paul Revere had received the two-lanterned signal that the British were coming by sea. Then they'd stopped at a bakery and bought half a dozen cannoli—two plain and one each chocolate, chocolate chip, amaretto and blueberry, because Rosie wanted to compare it with a blueberry scone. They'd traipsed back to the garage, settled Rosie in the back seat with the bakery box and Sally's sun hat, and rolled out into the jammed traffic surrounding Quincy Market.

“We're not listening to that animal CD on the way home,” Todd announced, then hunched forward and squinted into the distance where the traffic had snarled around a complicated intersection.

“And I veto Nirvana.”

“There are other CDs in there,” he said, waving his hand toward the glove compartment.

She lowered the door and pulled out the small stack of CDs inside. He inched the car forward, braked and
glanced at the pile. Before she could stop him, he slid one CD from her hands and popped open the case. “Cream,” he told her.

She wasn't sure she liked Cream. It was a band that predated her birth, music her mother had listened to. Flower-power music, LSD music, music from the sixties, which survivors of the sixties seemed to think was vastly superior to anything written before or since—which would include Sarah McLachlan and Johann Sebastian Bach.

The CD came on, filling the car's interior with a twangy guitar, a catchy beat and a surprisingly sweet voice. “Eric Clapton's second band,” Todd told her. “Or—I take it back—his third. He was in the Yardbirds, and then with John Mayall, then Cream.”

So Todd was one of those rock-music-trivia buffs. He built model cars and knew Eric Clapton's résumé. For not the first time, Sally pondered the odd fact that he could have been Paul's best friend. They'd had so little in common—other than Columbia University and an attachment to red meat. And other guy stuff, she supposed. They'd enjoyed meeting at Grover's and whining over the vexations life tossed at them or basking in their professional achievements. They'd liked being big fish in the small pond that was Winfield. They'd understood each other on some level Sally would always be denied access to.

She listened to the music that filled the car, the fierce rhythm, the gliding melody. “This is good,” she conceded. Evidently, some sixties bands were worthwhile.

“I thought you didn't like rock music.”

“I never said that.” She peeked over her shoulder at Rosie, who drummed her fingers against the padded
crossbar of her booster seat in time with the music. “I'm not a big Nirvana fan. Their songs are so negative.”

“You don't like negative music?”

“I don't like negative anything.”

He sent her a quick look, then rolled the car forward another inch. “Paul never told me that about you.”

She felt a pinch between her shoulder blades at the comprehension that another thing Paul and Todd had in common was their willingness to talk about Sally behind her back. Of course they'd talked about her—they'd been best friends, at least until the Laura letters had turned up. But contemplating specifically what Paul might have told Todd about her—beyond the condition of her car—made her uncomfortable. Had he listed all the things he hated about her? All the things he resented? Or maybe nice things, things that kept them together even though theirs hadn't been a soul-deep love match?

What exactly did Todd know? What had he learned about her through the filter of Paul's biases? She wanted to ask, but she wasn't sure she'd like his answer.

“Whatever Paul told you about me you ought to take with a grain of salt,” she suggested.

“So far, everything he's told me about you was pretty accurate.” They were moving faster now, having gotten past the bottleneck and reached the ramp onto the expressway—which was locked tight with traffic, cars backed up waiting to merge onto the road—so their brief flirtation with third gear came to a swift end.

“All right.” She sighed. After another quick peek into the back seat, where Rosie was bongoing away on her car seat and ignoring the adult conversation, she fixed her gaze on Todd. “I'll bite. What did he tell you?”

Todd slid his eyes sideways so he could look at her without moving his head. “You can guess.”

“No, I can't guess. Did he say I was a miserable shrew? A certified crackpot?” She lowered her voice slightly, just in case Rosie snapped out of her Cream-induced trance and decided to pay attention to their discussion.

“The second. Not the first.”

“He thought I was a crackpot?” The bastard!

“Well, you are, kind of,” Todd argued.

“He was the one screwing around with a woman whose letters are more effective than Ipecac.”

“Ipecac?”

“It's a syrup that causes vomiting. You give it to kids if they drink Windex.”

His upper lip twitched in distaste, then relaxed into a grin. “All right. He didn't choose his pen pals wisely. But you're still a crackpot, Sally.”

“Give me three examples.”

“Three?” The traffic began to move, slowly. “He told me you have this yarn thing hanging over Rosie's bed.”

“A dream catcher. There's nothing crackpot about that. It's a beautiful wall decoration, and it's supposed to bring happy dreams and help you remember them.”

“You never wear pants.”

“That's not true!” What the hell had been wrong with Paul? Why would he have lied to his best friend about Sally's wardrobe? He'd never said anything to
her
about it. “I do wear pants sometimes. I just prefer the way skirts feel, the way they float around my thighs, all free and soft.”

Todd swallowed and grimaced at the traffic.

“Three,” she pressed him. “Three examples.”

“You painted your front door orange.”

“And it looks gorgeous. The color of a sunset. People are always commenting on our front door.”

“I bet they are.”

“Positive comments,” she clarified. “Why should everyone's house look the same? Why not do something a little different?”

“See, that's the way crackpots think,” he said, as if she'd proven his point.

“I don't think I'm a crackpot. I don't know why Paul would have said I was. I'd never call
him
a crackpot, even though he was very different from me. You're different from me. Do you think I should call you a crackpot?”

“No—because I'm not one. You
are
one.”

“That's ridiculous. And Paul was a jerk to say so.”

“You carry more stuff in your tote bag than most freighters carry in their cargo hold. Tell me that's not a crackpot thing to do.”

“It's practical. When Paul was alive, half the stuff I carried around in my bag was for him. Guys love to ridicule women about how much they carry in their purses, but then, when they're done sneering, they always ask us to carry their wallet, or their eyeglass case, or snacks for the road, or toys for the kid. Men mock us, and then we get stuck lugging around all their junk.” She thought about that for a moment, trying to savor her indignation, but it vanished in a small laugh. “You're right. Only a crackpot would carry around her husband's junk after he'd made fun of how much stuff she was carrying around.”

A song came on, slow and easy. The singer crooned that it was sleepy time—actually, sleepy-time
time
, which, if they were going to bandy about the word
crackpot
, seemed like a crackpot lyric to Sally. But the
song was teasing and drawling, soothing and subliminal. They'd reached the Mass Pike and the car was sailing along at a steady speed. When Sally turned to check on Rosie, she saw the child's eyes were closed, her head sagging against the upholstery.