sink.
“Judith Arnold, Anne.”
“I’d like to schedule an abortion. As soon as possible.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I just want to get this over with.”
“You’re at approximately how many weeks?”
“Twelve.”
“Then we don’t have much time.” There’s a pause and then Dr. Arnold says, “How’s Friday at eleven?”
“Good.”
“See you then. You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’ll be a lot better after Friday.”
When Anne returns to the table, Farnsworth is standing with his hands on the back of his chair.
“I’m off. It was a pleasure seeing you both. Anne, let’s have lunch next week.”
“I’ll call you,” Anne says.
“And, Frances, if you ever want to make a little mischief…”
“Oh, be gone, you terrible man,” Frances says with a big smile.
Anne sits down and looks at her perfect little salad, which she can’t possibly eat.
“I swear John Farnsworth and your stepfather are cloned from the same DNA,” Frances says, taking a bite of her salad. “Superb salad. Anne, what is the matter with you? I know-Charles’s book. Well, darling, that’s what you get for marrying a man in the arts. Live by reviews, die by reviews. Now what’s the big news you were going to tell me?”
Anne takes a drink of water.
“Oh, that. Just that the Home website is up. It looks great. Sales are strong.”
“Why, of course they are. Oh, look, it’s Sadie Post.” An L.A. X-ray approaches the table in a shimmery white pants suit no self-respecting New Yorker would be caught dead in, even before Labor Day. “You naughty girl, you didn’t tell me you were going to be in New York. You know my celebrity daughter, don’t you?”
“Mother, I didn’t realize how late it was. I’m not going to have time for lunch.”
“Then you’ll join us,” Sadie says to Frances.
As she walks out into the reviving air Anne has only one thing on her mind-revenge. She takes her phone from her purse and calls Kayla.
31
As Charles’s Jaguar approaches the Newark Airport exit, Anne is taking a mental inventory of what she’s packed for her overnight trip to Chicago: jogging shoes for her run by the lake, a suit for her tour of a South Side textile factory she’s thinking of contracting, a dress for dinner, slacks and a shirt for the flight home. Usually these quick mental scans reassure her. Not this time.
Anne looks out the window at the airport approach road lined with squat, graceless buildings. Suddenly the world seems a bleak, senseless place. Dread sweeps over her. The day after tomorrow she’ll have the abortion.
She looks over at Charles. The other night, in the middle of a conversation, he forgot what they were talking about. She reaches over and touches his forearm. “I hate to be going away right now.”
“It’s only overnight.”
“Overnight can be a long time.”
“Anne, don’t worry,” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.
“I can’t help it.”
“What about the pregnancy?”
“It may just be that stress has been throwing off my period. You know how that sometimes happens to me.”
Charles pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“Oh, shit, give me one,” Anne says.
Charles hands her the pack and she lights one. He doesn’t.
The cigarette tastes hot and acrid, but she keeps smoking it. “I don’t understand why you fired Nina.”
“Let’s face it, Anne, she wasn’t delivering.”
“But she’s a friend.”
“I know she is. And I hope she can remain one.”
“Would you mind if I called her?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Look, Anne, it wasn’t easy for me. I think a fallow period would be best.”
“I don’t know if I can just let her go like that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Anne, the woman is losing her touch. And I’m not going to let friendship or anything else stand in my way.”
There it is again, that tone in his voice, that harsh, heartbreaking tone. It scares Anne.
“Your work’s going well, that’s the most important thing,” she says, almost to herself.
Charles pulls up in front of the terminal, they get out, and he retrieves Anne’s bag from the trunk.
“You can still surprise me, Charles.”
“I hope the trip is a success.”
Anne throws her arms around his neck and kisses him, long and hard, not wanting to let go.
“I’ll call you tonight,” Charles says.
“I love you.”
Anne picks up her bag and walks to the terminal doors. She turns and smiles at Charles. He smiles back and waves. She walks into the terminal and then turns for one last look. The car is gone…
As Charles pulls away from the terminal he reaches for his car phone and punches in Emma’s number.
“Hello?”
“Listen, Emma, I’ve got some appointments today, let’s take the day off. Don’t bother coming in.”
“But what will I do with myself?”
“I hope you’ll write.” Charles smiles-she’s at a loss without him.
“Of course.”
“I’ll call you tonight. I’ll try to make it down there so we can get a little work done.”
Charles listens to Miles Davis as he drives across Pennsylvania, propelled by his need to understand Emma, to discover what it is in her past that she guards so warily. He looked up Munsonville in his atlas and there it sat, surrounded by other small towns, black dots connected by red lines on a green background. It was there, in that western Pennsylvania town, that her life-and their book-began, and he needs to see it in three dimensions, to smell it, hear it, feel it, to find Emma’s place in it.
It’s afternoon when he exits the turnpike. The countryside is bleak-low hills littered with mobile homes and sagging barns. As he approaches Munsonville, the scene grows bleaker still, the small houses close together, aluminum-sided, painted dreary shades of light green or dark brown; the children playing in the ratty front yards look ill-kept and furtive, suspicious of life already. In the center of town, the houses give way to nineteenth-century brick buildings. The only businesses that seem able to survive on the beat, forsaken streets are bars and pizza parlors. Some of the empty storefronts have droopy For Rent signs taped to their windows; others just sit there, hollow and abandoned. A very pregnant girl wearing a dirty Palm Springs sweatshirt slowly pushes a young boy in a stroller.
Charles finds the palpable air of decay evocative, almost romantic. He thinks of Emma walking these streets, wonders which house she grew up in, wonders where her mother lives. Emma said she’d remarried. What’s the stepfather like?
Munsonville High is set on a rise just outside of town, an imposing American Gothic edifice built in a more
