The curtains dropped back into place.
Michael went back to the bed, sat down, and took up the pad of paper and pen he had been using. Late last night, while watching Letterman mug his way through a Top Ten List, it had occurred to him that maybe the best thing to do at this point in time was to make a list of his own. He had started with all the people who had been their friends or acquaintances at the time that Gabe had disappeared.
It turned out to be a longer list than he had ever imagined, and he was embarrassed to find that while his mind was able to bring forth an extended line-up of faces, it hadn’t done nearly as well with the names that went with them. Even so, the list had eventually filled out two pages.
This morning, he had begun looking them up in the telephone book, one by one, putting aside those names without a listing, calling those who were still living in the area, scratching off those whose numbers had been disconnected.
He had quickly learned two things. Ten years was a long time. People he had once considered close friends were strangers now. While he had been away, their lives had marched merrily onward through divorce and re-marriage, through step-children and graduations, through promotions and layoffs. The world did not stand still. Not for a moment. Not for anyone.
And he had learned something else. He had learned that almost all of Teri’s old friends had eventually drifted away. Not for any specific reason, or at least not a reason they could find it in themselves to express. But, as he heard time and time again, just because “life goes on.”
Those were the same words he had expressed to Teri the night before he had left. “Life goes on, Teri. We’ve both got to face the fact that Gabe’s not coming back. It’s going to eat us alive if we don’t accept it.”
Michael heard these words echo in his mind, and looked down at the list of names on the pad of paper in his lap. He circled the next name to call, then picked up the phone and dialed the number.
[80]
Her name was Cynthia Breswick, though back in the old days everyone had called her Cindy (and sometimes Flower). Her maiden name was Kutras. She had come to Berkeley from somewhere in Southern California, on family money that had always seemed easily accessible in those days. She was intelligent and happy and easygoing, and she had liked to make bracelets and necklaces and sell them on the streets. In her last year at Berkeley—she had dropped out at the end of her junior year and moved north with the group—she made a perfect 4.0, then burned her grade slips and sent the ashes to her parents. Cindy did not get along with mommy and daddy. They were successful professionals, who lived and breathed their work, and Cindy was an only child, who had spent most of her childhood fending for herself. It had made her a strong woman, but it had also left a hole somewhere inside her. She had always been in search of the perfect family. No one had ever told her that there was no such thing.
What Teri remembered most about Cindy was the stark contrast. Intellectually, she was an independent free-thinker, someone who could hold her own with a professor in a debate on situational ethics. Yet emotionally, she was a little girl, always in search of someone to take care of her. For the most part, she had been able to keep the two in balance and properly separated, but every once in awhile, she would let herself get swept away by a professor who seemed to fulfill both of those needs at once. Those had always been the dangerous times, the times when Cindy had been a little girl lost.
Teri knocked on the front door and stood back. The house was a beautiful Italian-style villa, built in the 1920’s. The front courtyard was cobblestone, with a small lawn surrounded by a knee-high hedge and several flower gardens. Standing in the doorway, the house seemed enormous, and Teri marveled at how dramatically Cindy’s life had changed since their days together at the commune.
The Palladian doors opened, and Cindy stood there, not at all the person Teri had expected to find. She was wearing a peignoir set, with a negligee underneath and a long silk robe hanging freely from her shoulders. Her hair, which had been honey-brown in the old days, was champagne blond now, cut short and permed. In her free hand, she was holding a wine glass, half-full.
“Yes?” she said.
“Cindy?”
There was a moment when her expression was an empty slate, left completely in the dark. Behind those eyes, though, she must have been searching her memory. It had been a long, long time after all, and Teri had changed, too. More, in fact, than she would ever want to admit. “Teri? Teri Cutler? Is that really you?”
“Hi, Cindy.”
“Oh, my God.” Cindy stepped through the door and gave her a warm hug. There was the smell of wine on her breath. It mingled in sharp contrast with the scent of a perfume that Teri didn’t recognize, and she wondered briefly if the contrast in fragrances was anything like the contrasts that had played prominent in Cindy’s past. “Well, come in, come in.”
She showed Teri past the dining room, which was off to the left, and into the living room. It was huge and airy and full of light. There was a piano in one corner, an incredible marble fireplace in another. Cindy motioned to her to sit in the nearest easy chair, which was done in a warm, white velvet.
“I was just thinking about you the other day,” Cindy said.
“Really?”
“Strange, isn’t it?” She sat on the sofa, which was covered in damask, crossed her legs and stared across the open space between them. It was almost as if she were trying to see inside Teri, to see if she was the same person she had been all those years ago. But that wasn’t what she was doing, and Teri knew it. She was sizing her up, that’s what she was doing.
She took a dramatic swallow of her wine and pinched her face in a smile that required an effort. “So what brings you around after all these years?”
“It has been a lot of years, hasn’t it?”
“Definitely.”
“Almost a lifetime ago,” Teri said flatly. She didn’t think she liked this woman sitting across from her. Cindy Kutras, she had liked, even when she had been a fragile little girl following a new professor around like a lost puppy. But Cynthia Breswick, there was no lost little girl in her. The alcohol, Teri suspected, had drowned that little girl a long, long time ago. What was left was…
“I know what you’re wondering,” Cindy said.
“Oh?”
“You’re wondering what happened to me.”
That thought had, in fact, crossed Teri’s mind. She thought she knew a little bit already, and she thought it went something like this: Cindy had found herself a man who liked to treat her more like a daughter than a wife. He liked to think for her and to take care of things for her and even spoil her. And in her mind, Cindy liked to think of him, not as her husband, but as her daddy, the one she had always been looking to find. And for a good many years this arrangement had worked well for both of them. But eventually things had changed, and now Cynthia wasn’t sure who she was or how she had managed to end up like this.
Hence, the booze, Teri thought.
“Well, it’s not what you think.”
“No?”
“Well, maybe some of it is.” Cindy grinned and took another dramatic swallow from her glass. It was empty now. She held it up against the daylight shining through the windows and gazed at it as if she couldn’t believe there was no wine left. Then she climbed off the sofa and moved across the room to the bar.
“But not all of it,” she added, pouring herself another glass.
“What happened, Cindy?”
She chuckled, and made her way back to the sofa, where she plopped down and immediately returned to her glass. “Cynthia. It’s Cynthia these days. And I don’t know what the hell happened. That’s what makes life so interesting, isn’t it? No matter how smart you think you are, you never really know why anything happens. It’s all a game of guessing.”