They heard the doorbell ring. “That’s Daddy,” Jess said, desperate to escape her sister’s scrutiny.
Maureen’s eyes refused to release her. “Jess, I think you should talk to Stephanie Banack.”
Jess heard the front door open, listened as her father and Barry exchanged pleasantries in the front foyer. “Stephanie Banack? Why would I want to talk to her? She’s
your
friend.”
“She’s also a therapist.”
“I don’t need a therapist.”
“I think you do. Look, I’m going to write out her phone number before you go. I want you to call her.”
Jess was about to argue, but thought better of it when she heard her father’s footsteps on the stairs.
“Well, look at this,” her father bellowed from the doorway. “All my gorgeous girls together in one room.” He walked to Jess and engulfed her in his arms, kissing her cheek. “How are you, doll?”
“I’m fine, Daddy,” Jess told him, and felt, for the first time that day, that maybe she was.
“And how’s my other doll?” he asked Maureen, hugging her against him. “And my little dolls?” he asked, drawing them all together. He lifted Chloe from her mother’s arms, smothering her face with kisses. “Oh you sweet thing. You sweet thing,” he chanted. “I love you. Yes, I do.” He stopped, smiling at his own two daughters. “I said that to a bigger
girl last night,” he told them, then stood back and waited for their reaction.
“What did you say?” Maureen asked.
Jess said nothing. Maureen had taken the words right out of her mouth.
J
ess spent the first hour after she left her sister’s house driving around the streets of Evanston trying not to think about the things her father had said at dinner. Naturally, she could think of nothing else.
“I said that to a bigger girl last night,” he’d announced, sounding so calm, so pleased, so sure of himself. As if falling in love was no big deal, as if he made that sort of declaration every day.
“Tell us all about her,” Maureen had urged at the dinner table, ladling out the mock turtle soup as Jess struggled to banish the image of a child’s decapitated turtle from her mind. “We want to hear absolutely everything. What’s her name? What’s she like? Where did you meet? When do
we
get to meet her?”
No, Jess thought. Don’t say another word. Don’t tell us a thing. Please, don’t say anything.
“Her name is Sherry Hasek,” her father stated proudly.
“She’s just a little bit of a thing. Not too tall, a little on the skinny side, dark hair, almost black. I think she colors it. …”
Jess forced a spoonful of hot soup into her mouth, felt it numb the tip of her tongue, sear the roof of her mouth. Her mother had been tall, bosomy, her brown hair attractively sprinkled with gray. She’d always hated dyed black hair, said it looked so phony. Her father had agreed. Could he possibly have forgotten? she wondered, swallowing the urge to remind him, feeling the soup burn a path to her stomach. Pictures of headless turtles swam their way back up the path to her brain.
“We met at my life drawing class about six months ago,” he continued.
“Don’t tell me she was a model.” Barry laughed into his soup.
“No, just a fellow student. Always liked to draw, never had the time. Like me.”
“Is she a widow?” Maureen asked. “What’s the matter, Jess? Don’t you like the soup?”
She wasn’t a widow. She was divorced. Had been for almost fifteen years. She was fifty-eight, the mother of three grown sons, and she worked in an antique store. She liked bright colors, dressed in long flowing skirts and Birkenstock sandals, and had been the one to first suggest coffee after class. Evidently she knew a good thing when she saw it. Art Koster was definitely a good thing.
Jess turned a corner and found herself back on Sheridan Road, stately homes to one side, Lake Michigan to the other. How long had she been circling the dark streets of Evanston? Long enough for it to have started raining, she realized, activating the car’s windshield wipers, seeing one
of them stick, drag itself across the car’s window in what was obviously a Herculean effort. Rain then, not snow, she thought, not sure which she preferred. A fog was rolling in from the lake.
October was always the least dependable of months, she thought, full of ghosts and shadows.
People always raved about the glorious colors of autumn, the reds, oranges, and yellows that disrupted, then replaced, the omnipresent green of summer. Jess had never shared their enthusiasm. For her, the change in colors meant only that the leaves were dying. And now, the trees were almost bare. What leaves were left were faded, shriveled, drained of energy. Cruel reminders of their once buoyant selves. Like people abandoned in old-age homes, death the only visitor they could rely on. Lonely people left too long without love.
Certainly her father deserved to find love, Jess thought, turning right and finding herself on a street she didn’t recognize. She looked for a sign, didn’t see one, turned left at the next corner. Still no street sign. What was the matter with people who lived in the suburbs? Didn’t they want anyone to know where they were?
She’d always lived in the heart of the city, always in the same three-block radius, except during her marriage to Don. When she was little, and her father had worked as buyer for a chain of women’s clothing stores, they’d lived in a duplex on Howe Street They’d moved when she was ten, her father then the successful manager of his own store, to a fully detached house on Burling Street, only a block away. Nothing fancy. Nothing particularly innovative or compelling in its architecture. Decidedly no Mies van der Rohe or Frank Lloyd Wright. It was just comfortable. The kind of house one felt
good about coming home to. They’d loved it, planned on staying in it forever. And then one afternoon in August, her mother left for a doctor’s appointment and never came back.
After that, everybody went their separate ways—Maureen back to Harvard, Jess back to law school and into marriage with Don, her father on increased buying trips to Europe. The once loved house sat empty. Eventually, her father worked up the necessary resolve to sell it. He could no longer bear to live in it alone.
And now her father had a new woman in his life.
It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, Jess realized, turning another corner and finding herself back on Sheraton Road. What was truly surprising was that he had waited eight long years. Women had always found him attractive. True, he was only average in appearance and his hairline had receded into nothingness, but there was still a twinkle in his brown eyes, and a ready laugh in his voice.
For a long while, there had been no laughter.
In the days, even months, after Laura Koster went missing, Art Koster had been the chief, and only, suspect in his wife’s disappearance. Despite the fact he’d been out of town on a buying trip when she’d vanished, the police had refused to rule out his potential involvement. He could have hired someone, after all, they pointed out, delving into the couple’s marriage, asking questions of neighbors and friends, probing into his business and financial affairs.
How had the couple been getting along? Did they argue? How frequently? About money? The time he spent away from home? Other women?
Of course they argued, Art Koster had told them. Not often, but possibly more often than be realized. Not about
anything important. Not about money. Not about his occasional business trips. Certainly not about other women. There were no other women, he told the police. He insisted on taking a polygraph test. Passed. The police seemed disappointed. Ultimately, they’d had no choice but to believe him.
There had never been any question as far as Jess was concerned. Her father was innocent. It was that simple. Whatever had happened to her mother, her father had had nothing to do with it.
It had taken Art Koster years to resume the rhythm of his daily life. For a time, he lost himself in his work. He drifted apart from old friends, then away. He rarely socialized, didn’t date. He moved to an apartment on the waterfront, spent hours staring at Lake Michigan, seeing only Jess and Don and Maureen. Everyone coaxing everyone else. Come on, it’ll be good for you. You need to get out. We need to see you. We’re all we’ve got.
It was probably the combination of Maureen’s marriage and Jess’s divorce that brought Art Koster back to his normal pace. He’d been as upset by the news that Jess and Don were separating as he’d been by their engagement. Not that he didn’t like Don. He did. Very much. He’d just wanted Jess to wait a little while. She was still so young. She was just starting law school. Don was eleven years her senior, already so well established. Jess needed time to be on her own, he’d told her, echoing her mother’s sentiments, as he always did.
Still, he later confessed he’d been grateful that she’d had somewhere to turn after her mother vanished. It had taken some of the burden off him. And Don had taken good care of Art Koster’s younger child. He was genuinely sorry when
the marriage ended. Sorry, but supportive. As always. There for Jess when she needed him, resuming the fatherly role, taking her to dinner, the theater, the opera. Making sure she didn’t hide out in her apartment, that she didn’t bury herself in her work, as he had done. Trying to see that she ate properly. A losing battle.
And then Maureen had given birth to his first grandchild, and suddenly everything seemed to fall into place. Maybe it was just a question of time, Jess thought, continuing her drive north, away from the city, away from her problems. Not that time was the great healer that everyone promised. Just that time did indeed have a way of marching on. Ultimately you had no choice but to march with it. And now her father was in love.
The campus of Northwestern University appeared suddenly on her right. Jess passed the observatory with its giant telescope looking off into space, the frat houses, the drama building, the art center, the rain-soaked tennis courts. She continued past Lighthouse Beach, squinted past her defective windshield wiper at the old lighthouse that had once warned sailors of dangerous rocks, then turned left on Central Street, drifting the few blocks to Ridge Road, slowly ascending to the top of the steep incline, past the El stop, which Barry claimed was transporting crime back into the suburbs, past the hospital, past the municipal golf course, over the bridge at the Chicago River, past Dyche Stadium, where the Northwestern University football team served as perennial losers to a variety of visiting teams, past the kosher hot dog outlet known as Custard’s Last Stand, till she reached the Evanston theaters, all in a tour of less than a mile.
The street was crowded with parked cars, Jess had to circle the block before she found a parking spot. It was almost ten o’clock. The pizza parlor down the street was half empty, the ice-cream store deserted. Not exactly a night for ice cream, she thought, recalling the taste of Maureen’s exotic pear mousse with raspberry sauce.
No, she wouldn’t think about Maureen, she decided, jumping out of her car and running toward the movie theater. She didn’t know what movies were playing. She didn’t care. Whatever was playing beat going home and having to deal with the revelations of this evening. Her sister’s life was her own, as was her father’s. She would have to let them live their lives as she had demanded the freedom to live hers.
“Which movie?” a young girl in a pink-and-white striped shirt and oddly angled red bow tie inquired as Jess pushed her money across the wicket.
Jess tried to focus on the list of films printed in white letters on the black slate behind the girl, but the names blurred, then ran together, disappearing before they reached her brain. “Doesn’t matter,” she told the girl. “Whatever is starting next.”
“They’ve all already started.” The girl managed to look bored and confused at the same time.
“Well, then, you pick one. I’m having trouble. …” She stopped, allowing the thought to dangle.
The girl shrugged, took the money, punched some figures into her cash register, and handed Jess a ticket.
“Hell Hounds
. Theater one, to your left,” she stated. “It started ten minutes ago.”
There was no one waiting in the lobby to take Jess’s
ticket, no one to ensure she didn’t wander into the wrong screening room, no one who cared what she did.
She opened the door to theater one and plunged into immediate, total darkness. Whatever was happening on the screen had to be happening in the dead of night. She couldn’t see a thing.
Jess waited a few minutes for her eyes to adjust, was surprised by how little of the auditorium she could make out even after the screen filled with light. She proceeded slowly down the aisle, peering across rows of bodies, searching for a seat.
For a few minutes, it looked as if there weren’t any. Sure, Jess thought, she sells me a ticket to the one movie that’s all sold out. But then she saw it—a single seat in the middle of the fourth row from the front. Of course, it’s Friday night, she reminded herself. Date night. Everybody a couple, she thought, carrying her aloneness like a bright neon sign as she tried to squeeze her legs between recalcitrant feet to get to the vacant seat.
“Will you sit down,” someone hissed from behind her, a command, not a question.
“Jeez, how long you gonna take, lady?”
“Excuse me,” Jess whispered, stepping over knees that refused to budge.
In the next instant, she was in her seat, afraid to take off her coat, lest she create a further disturbance. Around her, angry voices fluttered like autumn leaves, then settled into stillness.
On the screen, a young man whose blue eyes were pierced through with fear was fleeing an angry mob. The mob, individual faces contorted with rage, raised fists pummeling the
air, was shooting obscenities at him, laughing when he tripped and fell, setting their snarling pit bulls after him. Seconds later, the dogs caught up to the hapless young man as he was clambering to his feet and dragged him screaming back to the ground. Jess watched as a giant claw scratched across the young man’s jugular, blood spurting from the wound to soak the screen. The audience cheered.
What on earth was she watching?