She discovered that she longed to go back to work, to lose herself in the world of other people. Her patients were her only relief, their sessions the only time she was able to withstand her own thoughts, and she felt overwhelmed with gratitude. She needed them as much as they needed her, maybe even more.
But each evening she was trapped at home, hopelessly angry at him, and she couldn’t stop crying, the tears fat and hot on her cheeks, her shoulders heaving, immobilized by grief. Pinioned in place on the toilet, in the shower. On the floor of the living room.
Her mind veered constantly back to that day on the mountain, remembering that she’d nearly taken a different path entirely, that for an infinitesimally brief moment she’d considered just leaving him there — choices that would have saved her from having to endure this pain.
None of which — the crying, the questions, the choices, her memories, her body’s memories — changed the fact that he was gone.
Every morning her eyes were swollen, deformed, and her throat cracked and salty. One Friday she woke to find the world blanketed in snow — the last storm of the year, surely. In the pale early light she called her answering service and asked them to cancel all her appointments for the day. Then she put her skis in the car and headed west to Gatineau Park. Snow was falling lightly as she sped along the highway. She used to go to Gatineau with Mitch, so long ago it seemed like another life. She had never been there with Tug.
Her goal was to wear herself out in an enormous swath of white, blank calm. She started off fast, making long strides, her quads tight, her breath coming fast, her heart galloping in her chest. Though she was exhausted from lack of sleep her body felt strong, rich with stamina. She always felt like this right before her period, though it was late this month, probably due to stress. A suspicion blinked in her mind like a distant neon sign, then went out, then came back on again. It was possible; it wasn’t impossible. She wasn’t a teenager. She was always careful. Of course, as her mother had always told her, every method has its percentages.
Thinking about this, she messed up a turn and almost crashed into a tree, correcting wildly at the last minute, her right pole flying up beside her. She found herself skiing hard down an incline into a grove of skinny birches, and then she was through them and into a clearing, all by herself in a pocket of space and snow.
She stood there to catch her breath, leg muscles twitching, nose running. Twenty yards away, a fox raced to safety. She turned to Tug, to point it out to him, as if he were there. In that moment, she believed he would always be next to her, always the first person she wanted to tell about any miraculous or ordinary event, always the one whose reactions she sought, always the voice in her ear.
“Tug,” she said out loud. Then she knelt down and washed her face in the snow.
Two weeks later she was standing in the bathroom with a pregnancy test in her hand — the stick’s plus-sign result only confirming the changes she had already detected in her body — when the phone rang. She let it go, not caring. She hardly knew how to react. She’d always planned on it in some general sense; at the start of their marriage, before things went wrong, she and Mitch had discussed it, and once, on a trip out west to see her parents, she couldn’t resist buying, in an upscale craft shop, a tiny, hand-knit purple baby cap. With the divorce and its aftermath any thoughts of parenthood had lost their immediacy, but now added to this month’s turbulence was the idea that she could have a child.
Whoever was calling wouldn’t stop. The phone kept ringing. She put the stick down and went into the living room to answer it.
It was Annie’s mother, hysterical, her voice blurring the words, asking, “How could this be? Where did she go?”
Grace listened, barely able to make sense of what she was saying. Annie had run away, apparently, and left a note saying she was leaving and never coming back, that they shouldn’t try to find her.
“How could she do this?” Annie’s mother demanded.
Grace murmured some vague response, such consolation as she could muster. She was so distracted that she could hardly concentrate.
“I just don’t understand,” Annie’s mother was saying. “People don’t just do this. People don’t just disappear.”
Grace spoke the right words, the comforting words, and they were on the phone for an hour. But throughout the call she was thinking, Yes, they do. People disappear all the time.
TEN
Los Angeles, 2003
WHEN ANNE RETURNED from Edinburgh, there were five voice-mail messages from her agent, Julia, each more frantic than the last.
“Darling,” the last message went, “this is big. Call me today or else, I swear to God.”
Anne stood in the hot, dusty apartment, her unpacked bag on the couch. Though most signs of Hilary and Alan had been removed, the place still didn’t feel like hers again. She walked around opening windows, glanced inside the empty fridge, and found a dead potted plant in the bedroom, tucked behind a curtain on the windowsill. Hilary must have bought it.
Besides Julia, she had no one to call to say she was home.
In the early morning, she ran five miles and was back at the apartment, showered and staring at the clock, by seven thirty. Since Julia never got in before ten, she went for a walk around the neighborhood, bought some groceries, and had a manicure. It was a beautiful late-August day, warm but not humid. Tributes were starting to go up, flowers and photographs, notices of ceremonies, everyone seeming a little teary and brave and on edge, the anniversary bearing down. Anne noticed these things only insofar as she wanted to disassociate herself from them. If she could have managed not to register the date at all, she would have. But as it was, she thought about Hilary’s due date and knew that it had passed.
Back at the apartment, she called Julia, whose assistant put her through right away, an unprecedented act.
“Darling girl,” Julia said, “where the fuck have you been?”
“I told you. Scotland, in a play.”
“You and your plays,” Julia said, trying to sound fond, though her disgust was obvious. Julia was about toothpaste commercials, modeling if necessary. She was about getting your face out there. “Fortunately for you, they waited. You must’ve really done a number on that guy.”
The first guy who came to Anne’s mind was Sergio, sprawled on the unforgiving cobblestones, his eyes flashing when he rose up again to hit her, his anger laid bare. Then she refocused and said, “What guy?”
“Michael Linker,” Julia said, as if everybody knew who this was. “He saw you in that godforsaken thing on Long Island.” At the time, Julia had called the godforsaken thing a masterpiece of contemporary drama.
“Whatever,” Anne said.
“Not whatever! He just got promoted to a new studio-exec position and wants you to audition for this pilot that sounds amazing. Gritty family drama, lots of sex. It’s a cable show. You need to be on a plane to Los Angeles today. Call me back with your flight info and I’ll get you a car on both ends.”
Anne had been telling Julia for months that she didn’t want to leave New York, that she wasn’t interested in television, that independent films were the only projects for which she wanted to be considered. Standing in her apartment, the air conditioner wheezing asthmatically, she realized that nobody cared what she wanted.