were loading the dishwasher when my phone rang, the electronic tones of “All That Jazz” filling the kitchen. I dried my hands and glanced at the caller ID. “It’s Emerson,” I said to Ian. “Do you mind if I take it?”
“Of course not.” Ian was even more addicted to his BlackBerry than I was. He had no room to complain.
“Hey, Em,” I said into the phone. “What’s up?”
“Have you spoken to Noelle?” Emerson asked. It sounded like she was in her car.
“Are you driving? Do you have your headset on?” I pictured her holding her cell phone to her ear, her long curly brown hair spilling over her hand. “Otherwise, I’m not talking to—”
“Yes, I have it on. Don’t worry.”
“Good.” I’d become überconscientious about using a cell phone in the car since Sam’s accident.
“So have you spoken to her in the past couple of days?” Emerson asked.
“Um.” I thought back. “Three days ago, maybe? Why?”
“I’m on my way over there. I haven’t been able to reach her. Do you remember her talking about going away or anything?”
I tried to remember my last conversation with Noelle. We’d talked about the big birthday bash she, Emerson and I were planning for Suzanne Johnson, one of the volunteers for Noelle’s babies program … and Cleve’s mother. The party had been Noelle’s idea, but I was overjoyed to have something to keep me busy. “I don’t remember her saying anything about a trip,” I said.
Ian glanced at me. I was sure he knew who we were talking about.
“Not in a long time,” Emerson said.
“You sound worried.”
Ian touched my arm, mouthed, “Noelle?” and I nodded.
“I thought she was coming over last night,” Emerson said, “but she didn’t show. I must have—Hey!” She interrupted herself. “Son of a bitch! Sorry. The car in front of me just stopped for no reason whatsoever.”
“Please be careful,” I said. “Let’s get off.”
“No, no. It’s fine.” I heard her let out her breath. “Anyway, we must have gotten our wires crossed, but now I can’t reach her so I thought I’d stop in on my way home from Hot!“ Hot! was the new café Emerson had recently opened down by the waterfront.
“She’s probably out collecting baby donations.”
“Probably.”
It was like Emerson to worry. She was good-hearted and caring, and no one ever described her without using the word nice. Jenny was the same way, and I loved that my daughter and the daughter of my best friend were also best friends.
“I’m in Sunset Park now and about to turn onto Noelle’s street,” Emerson said. “We’ll talk later?”
“Tell Noelle I said hi.”
“Will do.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Ian. “Noelle was supposed to go over Emerson’s last night and never showed up, so Em’s stopping by her house to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Ah,” he said. “I’m sure she’s fine.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better go and let you take some food up to Grace.” He leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Thanks for dinner, and I’ll pick up the rest of Sam’s files in a couple of days, all right?”
I watched him leave. I thought about heating up a bowl of the pasta for Grace, but I doubted she’d appreciate it and I frankly didn’t want to feel her coolness toward me again that evening. Instead, I started cleaning the granite countertops—a task that I found soothing until I found myself face-to-face with the magnetized picture on the refrigerator of Sam, Grace and myself. We were standing on the Riverwalk on a late-summer evening a little more than a year ago. I leaned back against the island and stared at my little family and wished I could turn back time.
Stop it, I told myself, and I started cleaning the counters again.
I pictured Emerson arriving at Noelle’s, giving her my greeting. I talked to Noelle a couple of times a week, but I hadn’t seen her in person in a while. Not since she’d shown up at my door on a Saturday evening in late July, when Grace was out with Jenny and Cleve, and I was sorting through Sam’s desk in our den. I’d found combing through his desk agonizing. Touching all those things he’d so recently touched himself. I had piles of papers on the floor, neatly stacked. I would give them to Ian, because I couldn’t tell if the documents and letters were related to any cases Sam might have been working on. Ian was still having trouble making sense of Sam’s files. Sam was sloppy. His desk was a rolltop and we’d had an agreement: he could keep the desk as disorganized as he liked as long as I didn’t need to see the mess. I’d give anything to see that mess right now.
I realized only later why Noelle had come that night. She’d known from Emerson that Grace was out with Jenny. She’d known I would be alone, on a Saturday night, when it felt as though everyone in the world was part of a couple except me. The summer was hard, since I didn’t have my teaching job to throw myself into and I wasn’t involved in any production at the community playhouse. Noelle had known she would find me sad or frustrated or angry—some emotion that made me too vulnerable to be around other people but safe with her. We were all safe with her, and she was always there for us.
I’d slumped in Sam’s desk chair while she sat on the love seat and asked me how I was doing. Whenever people asked me that question, I’d answer, “Fine,” but it seemed pointless to pretend with Noelle. She would never believe me.
“Everyone’s tiptoeing around me like I’m going to fall apart any second,” I said.
Noelle had been wearing a long blue-and-green paisley skirt and big hoop earrings and she looked like an auburn-haired Gypsy. She was beautiful in an unconventional way. Pale, nearly translucent skin. Eyes a jarring, electric blue. A quick, wide smile that displayed straight white teeth and a hint of an overbite. She was a few years older than me, and her long curly hair was just beginning to glimmer with the random strand of gray. Emerson and I had known her since our college days, and although she was beautiful in her own pale way, it was the sort of look that most men wouldn’t notice. But there were other men—sensitive souls, poets and artists, computer nerds—who would be so mesmerized by her as they passed her on the street that they’d trip over their own feet. I’d seen it happen more than once. Ian had been one of those men, long ago.
That night in my den, Noelle had kicked off her sandals and folded her legs beneath her on the love seat. “Are you?” she asked me. “Are you going to fall apart?”
“Maybe.”
She talked to me for a long time, guiding me through the maze of my emotions like a skilled counselor. I talked about my sadness and my loss. About my irrational anger at Sam for leaving me, for putting new lines across my forehead. For turning my future into a question mark.
“Have you thought of finding a widows’ support group?” she asked after a while.
I
