I had never gotten used to the official rush hour of the suburbs, which revolved around school’s letting out and parents in their cars lined up outside. In the years since I’d had children coming and going, the curbside pickup, fueled by stories of abduction, had increased in popularity. Still, as I edged my way down the street where Lemondale Elementary School sat, I was happy to see at least three or four yellow buses pulled up to the curb.
At Crescent Road, I was stopped by a matronly crossing guard with a white sash and a whistle-the full effect. I watched a mass of children-the “primaries,” they were called at Lemondale-walk in front of my car in a swirling pattern that reminded me of shifting clouds on a TV weather map. Only a few kids walked by themselves, heads bent, knapsacks towing their shoulders down. The others ran or pulled at one another’s coats and shirts, dropped their knapsacks, and yelled names and taunts across to those on the other side.
I drove on.
I passed the old music store, which was now a shop called The Ultimate Cupcake, where I had once purchased Emily’s much-despised clarinet. I thought of how when the girls were growing up, their friends would thunder through my house and think nothing of having me make sandwiches to order. This one liked mayo, but this one would have only mustard. One of Emily’s friends, disappointed in her sandwich, had stood in the kitchen and pointedly explained the difference between jelly, which she had requested, and jam, which I had given her.
The most convenient train for Sarah to take from Manhattan stopped in Paoli. This way she could avoid switching in Philadelphia and arrive via Amtrak. Instead of crossing the bridge to the side where the passengers were let out, I checked my watch. I counted out the minutes and double-parked outside Starbucks.
I walked briskly into the station and over to the Amtrak counter. I asked for a current schedule for the Northeast Corridor. On the way past the local SEPTA booth, I took two or three of their schedules as an afterthought. I did this by rote, as I had done my stretches, as I had packed my duffel bag and stowed it in the garage. My brain had divided in half, half focused on the tasks of normalcy-picking up my daughter from the train-and half focused on escape.
I got back into the car and turned it around. Driving the red rental car made me feel even more conspicuous, but it had sat in the driveway, blocking any other choice. I thought of the promise I had made to Hamish-that I would see him tonight-and wondered if I was insane. I pictured Natalie in a crossing-guard outfit, holding a stop sign and blocking my way.
Sarah was standing at the top of the platform stairs, scanning the parking lot. She had on a ratty sheepskin coat, beneath which I saw an old pair of my Frye boots that she had confiscated on her last trip home. “These are so urban hippie retro,” she’d said. “I can’t believe you wore these.” When I told her that apparently she was now going to be wearing them, she said, “Yeah, but not seriously.”
Her hair was braided into two pigtails that reached to her waist, and clustered about the crown of her head were what seemed an infinite number of rhinestone barrettes. She would not recognize the car, and so I cruised up beside her, ducked my head across the passenger seat, and called her name.
“Mom, oh my God, this is a horn-dog car!” she said as she threw her bag in the backseat and got in beside me.
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It carried a shock, as if she had been rubbing her feet on carpeting.
“Sorry,” she said.
We left the parking lot.
“How was the train?” I asked.
“Is this, like, a midlife crisis thing?” she said. “Go out and get a sports car? I thought men did that.”
“Women get Botox,” I said.
“Right, so what gives?”
“Actually,” I said, “this isn’t my car. It’s a rental.”
“The smell. I should have guessed that! Where’s yours?”
We were stopped at a light across from Roscoe Automotive and the Mail Boxes Etc. store. Cars and mail, I thought. Trains.
“Your head looks like a disco ball,” I said.
“Don’t avoid the question.”
“My car is in the garage, and your father is asleep in my bed.”
I could not help baiting her. It was a game we had played since her childhood, who could get the other’s goat, who could create the best exaggeration. Sarah, I knew, had hoped to make this early skill into an art. She was a child of embellishment and stylish turns. What Emily had in stolid substance, Sarah possessed in her ability to distract everyone from the main topic of conversation. That way, no one ever thought to get a real answer to the question of how she was doing. It was what she’d carried into voice classes like a blank check. She could sing well enough, but-and the “but” held everything, both a buoyant magnetism and what I feared might be her incipient version of the family’s insanity.
“Tell the story,” she said.
We passed the hospital, and I picked up speed. I could tell she was feeling good. Her cheeks were flushed as if she had just come from a run. But Sarah didn’t run. She didn’t exercise. Not for her what she called my “gym crucifixion.” She starved sometimes, and sometimes binged. She drank and smoked, and I was sure did other things.
“There is a lot to tell,” I said. “I’d rather not go home just yet. Your father needs to rest anyway. It might be easier if it’s just the two of us.”
“I sense intensity,” she said.
“We’ll go somewhere,” I said, “then I’ll tell you all you want to know.”
“Yow!” she said, but she did not follow up with anything else. As we passed Easy Joe’s Restaurant, I saw her check each rhinestone barrette with her hands. She took its shape between her thumb and forefinger and then tested it to make sure it held.
“Why the braids?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. My hair was wet. Like or not like?”
“They remind me of your grandmother.”
“Not like, got it.”
I knew where I was headed. Hamish had been the first person I’d gone there with in years. In the daytime the farmland invited the eye, and then the towers between the treetops stopped it cold.
As we passed by the Ironsmith Inn and turned left to crest the hill, Sarah sighed loudly.
“No Schlitz?” she asked regretfully.
Without looking in my rearview mirror, I threw the car into reverse and swung backward into the general store’s lot.
“Cash and carry,” I said. “Make it quick.”
“I’m liking this new you,” Sarah said, all lit up. She grabbed my purse from the floor and headed inside. No one could claim that when I broke bad news, I didn’t make sure people had something to prop themselves up with.
I could see her through the window, talking to Nick Stolfuz at the counter. She was using her hands to make a giant circle over her head. Nick laughed and handed her a six-pack with her change. When she reached the door, she turned to wave good-bye.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“I was telling him about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”
I backed out of the lot and got onto the road. Sarah popped the tab on a can of Schlitz and slurped the foam with her mouth.
“What led you to that?”
“I told him I lived in New York. He’s always wanted to go up for the parade.”
“The things you don’t know.”
We passed under the keystone tunnel and onto the other side.
“You have to take an interest, Mom. Nick is single, you know.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Damn,” she said, and punched her thigh. “I could have had my own bar. Are we going to the towers lookout?” she asked, getting her bearings.
“Yes.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” she said. An expression I had taught her.