Body in the Big Apple

KATHERINE

HALL PAGE

BODY

in the

BIG APPLE

To my mother,

Alice M. Page,

with love and joy

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

—HENRI BERGSON

Prologue

Memories are our waking dreams.

Certain scenes recalled fill our minds with the immediacy of the present, though the event is long past.

We hear words and are convinced we are remembering what was actually said. We see a room in exact detail.

The particular drapes at a window—the fall of the fabric, the texture of the cloth. The flowers in a vase, their fragrance tenacious. The taste of a perfectly ripe pear, its juice sticky and sweet. Not the vague recollection of someone, but his very presence. Warm skin—in need of a shave, the feel of the slight bristle against the caress of a cheek.

Yet other memories can be revived only obliquely.

These tend to move persistently out of reach, slipping further and further away as we struggle to remember them. Tantalizing. How old was I? Which house was it?

Who was that person? They retreat until it is only the face and the place in the photograph we are holding in our hands and not real memories at all.

Ephemeral, fleeting—perhaps dreams have the advantage over memories. Certainly bad dreams do.

Even our worst nightmares diminish over time. But the waking terror of a vivid recollection is with us for life.

It comes unbidden, not merely an uninvited guest, but an unwanted one. We’re in the shower, driving, reading, talking, and suddenly these scenes push everything to one side, and, hostages, we can only watch helplessly, forced back into the past. The voices are too loud to ignore. The words repeat over and over again.

This tale is that kind of memory.

—Faith Sibley Fairchild, 1999

One

“Is there a back way out of this apartment?” the young woman asked anxiously. The caterer turned in surprise.

It was a line she had heard only in the movies. “There’s a service door past the maid’s room,” she answered, indicating the direction with a wave of her hand, still clutching the pastry tube she was using to pipe florets of dilled mayonnaise onto timbales of smoked salmon mousse.

The woman’s next line, although equally surprising, was not from a script.

“Is that you, Faith? Faith Sibley?” It was.

Faith put the tube down and focused on the person in front of her. Startlingly large deep blue eyes, chin- length burnished red-gold hair, skin like veritable alabaster. It was a measure of the kind of concentration that Faith brought to her work not to have recognized Emma Morris, now Emma Stanstead, immediately.

They’d spent most of their school years together, in school and out.

“Emma!” Faith flung her arms around her friend, mindful of Emma’s black Ralph Lauren evening suit and the dark mink over one arm. “Emma! It’s been ages.” Emma hugged her back. No air kisses, just a good, hard hug. Air kisses—on both cheeks if it was a really, really close friend or celeb—the greeting of the eighties.

“But what are you doing in the kitchen?” Emma asked.

Faith would have thought her white jacket, checked trousers, and toque supplied the answer, yet Emma, while not stupid, had tended to approach life at a slower, more gentle pace than that of her fellow classmates.

“I’m a caterer now, with my own company, Have Faith. Surprisingly, I’ve gotten only a few calls from people looking for an ‘escort’ service—or God. Most of the calls are to do parties like this, and things have been going amazingly well.” Faith stopped. She was gushing; plus, she was getting absolutely no response at all from her audience. Emma was listening with the air of a woman who is sure the ringing phone is going to be her doctor with news of a fatal diagnosis. Faith surreptitiously rapped her knuckles on the table for the continued prosperity of her fledgling business—and for her friend’s well-being.

Her impression was confirmed by Emma’s reply.

“That sounds like fun. The food was lovely. Some little shrimp things?” Emma’s voice trailed off and she looked in the direction of the exit. The earlier note of fear in her voice was back—full force.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Faith asked, putting her hand on Emma’s arm and pulling her away from the kitchen bustle and over toward the windows.

Outside, the stars were obliterated by the lights of New York City, several million watts, brighter than usual at this holiday time of year. It was bitterly cold and those below on the sidewalk walked quickly, heads bent.

Emma seemed momentarily transfixed by the view—or some other view in her mind’s eye. She looked very much the same as she had when they were in high school together six years earlier—extremely beautiful and not much older. So far as Faith could tell, the only changes were that she was a bit more slender, had cut her hair—and was terrified.

She released her grasp and faced her friend, repeating the question more forcefully. “Emma, do you need some help? What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” Emma said.

Faith’s query had dropped a penny in the slot, and Emma began to move. She shrugged on her fur and pulled gloves from a pocket, dropping a Christmas card she’d been holding in the process. Faith bent down to retrieve it for her, but Emma swooped—all but knocking Faith over—grabbed the card, and was out the door in an instant. Since she was Emma and had been raised properly, “Thank you so much. Lovely to see you” floated back.

Faith stood staring after her, puzzled. Emma’s perfume lingered, at odds with the fragrance wafting from the tray of bite-size wild mushroom quiches one of Faith’s assistants was transferring to a serving dish.

“Put some of the crab cakes with those and they’ll be ready to go,” Faith instructed, focus back. Emma receded.

Except Emma was back, and once more Faith was startled.

“Could you meet me tomorrow? At the Met. Inside the front entrance at noon?” she whispered in Faith’s ear.

“Tomorrow?” Faith found she had lowered her voice in response to Emma’s tone. Then noting the desperate look on Emma’s face, she said, “I’ll be there.” Emma nodded and vanished. This time, apparently, for good.

Focus now totally shot to hell, Faith tried to think what could be going on with Emma. They’d lost touch when Emma transferred to boarding school for her senior year, and then they’d ended up at colleges far apart, seeing each other sporadically when home.

Faith had been invited to Emma’s wedding when she’d married Michael Stanstead, a lawyer—two, or was it three years ago?—but Faith had been in Europe at the time.