"She's clever."
"There's something you're not telling me, Sophy."
There was so much I hadn't told him that I didn't know where to begin or which of my omissions may have led to this moment. "She talked about her mother in Vietnam, and her father. I took her home. I watched her go in the door."
"Why didn't you call me when she was there? Or afterwards?"
"She asked me not to."
"That's the shabbiest reason-"
"I mean, I didn't tell you straightaway when you got to my apartment, but I was going to, and I would have, if the police hadn't called. How are the other children?"
"I can imagine Vicki going to find her mother, but why would she go to such lengths to find you? Why would she run away? If she wanted to speak to you, I'd have rung you up for her. Don't you think she knew that?"
"The heart wants what it wants," I said softly.
"What did you say?"
"When she came to my apartment yesterday, she brought me a card she'd made. It said she wanted me to live with all of you."
"Why didn't you tell me that?"
"I just told you."
"What else haven't you told me?"
"Lets see. My husband was dead for three weeks before anyone found him. He left me a dollar in his will. The woman he was married to twenty years ago is arriving tomorrow to plan his funeral in a Catholic church, though he stopped believing forty years ago. Should I go on?"
"I'm sorry."
"Call the police now. Maybe she's around the corner. I'll call you in the morning."
I drank down what was left of the wine, but that wasn't the only reason the room spun when I lay down to sleep.
I drew the extra down pillow to my side, listening to the sea whoosh and boom like Beethoven's Ninth, imagining my dear Vicki on a bus traveling up 1-95 to find me, imagining the other kids in all their terror and confusion in their little beds on Waverly Street. I gathered them around me and assured them that everything was going to be all right. The trick, my precious dumplings, I said, is to keep our eyes on the sky, not on the ground, and I described the endless blue sky over Swansea, how on a clear day you can see nearly forever, farther than Kansas and Oz and even Vietnam, and Vicki will be back home so soon, they would hardly remember she had been away. After that, I must have passed out. When I woke up the next morning, I was wasted, good for absolutely nothing, and Mavis wanted me to leave.
9. The Morning After
SOPHY, there's someone here to see you."
This was Swansea, that was Evan's voice outside the guest room door, and I was in agony. "Am I dead? Is it a condolence call?" I could barely speak, but even the phlegmy croak of my voice was deafening.
"It's Henderson."
"Henderson?" Was it possible that my eyelids hurt? There was thumping with a hammer in the place where my brain matter had been. Henderson was in New York. No, Switzerland. With his friend Bianca. So maybe all of this was a dream. That Will was dead, Vicki was gone, and I was hung over. "Is there coffee?"
"Open your eyes."
"I can't. It hurts."
"Open your hands."
"Can you hook up an IV with a caffeine drip?" I was whispering, I was stiff. It hurt to think. Words hurt. Sentences hurt more. Light, even the idea of light, was excruciating. A body sat down on the bed beside me. "Evan?"
"Yeah."
"Henderson's here?"
"Downstairs. See if you can tip your head up a little. The mug is hot."
With my eyes still closed, I pushed some pillows under my head and opened my hands, holding them out as if to cradle a cantaloupe, then an orange. The sensation of Evan trying to fit the mug into my fingers, and my fingers trying to grip it without burning myself, plus the thudding in my brain, made me think of the famous movie scene. "Wa wa wa wa," I croaked and finally took a sip. "What's that from?"
"What's what from?"
"I'm Helen Keller. You're Annie. This is water. I can speak."
He let out a tight, miniature chortle. "Not so loud," I whispered. "I'm the opposite of deaf. Every noise is fingernails against a blackboard. The ocean is too loud. Please turn it off." I felt Evan stand up and heard his rubber soles squeak across the bare wood floor. My hangover registered every beat of every breath, and what I heard in Evan's inhalation was annoyance. I opened my eyes a crack and saw him about to walk out the door, and maybe I detected or maybe I imagined a spike in his annoyance. "I fucked up, Evan. I know I did." I was still whispering. "I could hear you sigh as you walked across the room. I'm sorry. A thousand times. Flowers. Candy. Handwritten apologies on monogramed note cards." Silence. And more of it. "You have no idea how bad it is."
"I can see."
"It's worse than that. A friend's child-" I said, but stopped. Vicki's disappearance was too awful to mention to someone already burdened by the grimness of my last two days. "She's having trouble. Serious trouble. I found out late last night." I, who rarely expect anyone to hold open a door for me, had become a bad luck charm, an alchemist in reverse, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the difficult house guest who won't leave. "Thank you for the coffee. Tell Henderson I'll be down in a minute." Henderson, I thought, thank God. This is his territory, life at the pitch he's used to. He'll put up with my hangover jokes and know where to look for Vicki.
"Sophy?"
"She's in here," Evan said. He pushed open the door to let himself out and Henderson in. I could see him through my squinting and raised my hand for him to take as he leaned down and kissed my cheek. He sat at the edge of my bed as if this were a hospital and I was dying.
"You're looking very J. Crew," I whispered, "very Swansea in your khaki togs," and swallowed as much coffee as I could, trying to remember how many cups it takes for a headache like this one to run its miserable course. "Don't look at me that way."
"What way?"
"As if you feel sorry for me."
"Of course I feel sorry for you. Do you think I came here for the fishing?"
"What happened to your trip? Switzerland, the fat farm?"
"We taxied down the runway, and at the moment the plane was about to lift off, there was a massive noise that sounded like the George Washington Bridge breaking in two. I'll spare you the details, though there were no fatalities. I didn't get on the next plane they rolled out."
"For me?"
"Because I was scared to death."
"But what about Bianca and losing twenty-five pounds?"
"Twenty minutes before I left for the airport, I got a fax from her. Her doctor forbade her to lose another ounce. She proposed meeting me afterward in Milan. Frankly, Sophy, I wasn't looking forward to starving to death by myself. So I'll have to diet. You know, not eat too much. I can't bear it, it's such an ordeal. Jesus, look at you."
"How do I look?"
"Hung over. And very much the widow without portfolio. She's a popular archetype in homosexual circles. I just this second realized that I am trying stupidly to entertain you, being the magnanimous homo impresario funeral director that I am, but I haven't said a word about poor Will. And poor you. How ghastly the whole thing is. Evan filled me in. I'm sure you're still in shock. It lasts for days, months, if you're lucky."
"H., I fell off the wagon."
"I know, dear. It was in the Times this morning."
"It may as well have been. I made a scene at the clambake last night. It would have been obnoxious in New York, but here it was obnoxious and unforgivable."
"It happens to the worst of us. And the best."
I closed my eyes and was surprised to feel tears leak from below my lashes. "Daniel's daughter disappeared."
"I know that too."
"How do you-"
"She was on the eleven o'clock news last night." My aching eyes opened wide against their will. "If I hadn't met her at your apartment, I'd never have known there was a connection."