“Why not?” Anne said. “I could go away for the weekend!”
“Sure you could. Get crazy. Dye your hair purple.”
“Or not.” Anne giggled, her mood lifting. “But I could call a realtor. I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get a cancellation.”
“From some lawyer who had to stay in the hot city.” Willa laughed, and so did Anne.
“Sucker.”
“Totally.”
Then Anne remembered Mel. “But I have a cat. I can’t leave him.”
“I guess I could sit for a cat. I like cats. I could sketch a cat.”
Anne hesitated at the thought of letting a stranger into her house, since what had happened with Kevin. But Willa was a woman, and she seemed honest and, most importantly, not a psycho. Anne, who had never given a thought to going down the shore, now could hardly wait to get there. She could work like crazy, and she’d never seen the Atlantic Ocean. She was pretty sure she could find it. “Please, would you cat-sit for me this weekend, Willa?” she asked.
“Okay, I’ll sketch the cat, and maybe even the fireworks. If you’re near the Parkway, your place’ll have a great view.” Willa’s walk slowed to a standstill. “You want to go now and beat the traffic? I’ll finish my run on the way to your house. I can clean up at your place.”
“Great!” Anne pressed the clear button. “To hell with this! I’ll run tomorrow morning on the beach, in the fresh ocean breeze! Or maybe I won’t! Ha!”
Anne had scored both Mustang and seashore rental by the time she made it home, hurrying in gym clothes to her Fairmount neighborhood, which lay just outside of Philly’s business district. It was a gentrified section of the city, characterized by art museums, the Free Library, and the family court, interspersed with blocks of colonial town houses with repointed brick facades and freshly painted shutters. Bennie Rosato owned a house in the area, and Fairmount was a quiet, safe neighborhood, which was all Anne cared about after her move east. Parking she could live without.
The house she rented stood three-stories high but was downright anorexic; only one-room wide, it was a cozy, two-bedroom trinity, which was what Philadelphians called houses with one room on each floor. Anne hit her front door running, ignoring the bills and catalogs spilling through the mail slot and onto the rug in the tiny entrance hall. She locked and latched the door, dropped her briefcase and purse on the living room floor, and tore upstairs with her gym bag.
“Mel! Mel! We won our motion!” Anne called to the cat, which confirmed for her she’d been living alone too long. She bounded into her bedroom and dropped the gym bag on the floor, startling into wakefulness the chubby brown tabby curled at the foot of her unmade bed. Mel flattened his ears in Attack Cat until he realized it was only her, then relaxed, blinking his large, green eyes slowly. Anne went to the bed, cupped his furry face in her palms, and kissed the hard, spongy pink of his nose.
“We won, handsome!” she said again, but Mel only yawned, his teeth bright white spikes. When he closed his mouth, the tips stayed on the outside, and he morphed into Halloween Cat. Mel was acting very scary today, and Anne wondered if he had his holidays mixed up.
“Mel, the good news is that we won. The bad news is that I’m going away, but you’re going to be fine. You’ll meet a very nice girl who wants to draw your picture, okay?” Anne gave him another quick kiss, but he didn’t purr, which told her he was worried about being left alone with a total stranger who dyed her hair blue. Mental note: People project all sorts of emotions onto their cats, and cats like it that way.
Anne gave Mel a final kiss, hurried to her messy bureau, and pulled out clean undies, two T-shirts, a denim skirt, and an extra pair of shorts. She plucked her leopard-print mules from the bottom of the closet, because they always made her feel festive and she was celebrating.
“Did I mention that we won our motion, Mel?” Anne asked, stuffing the clothes into her gym bag. She’d shower at her new apartment at the beach, though she hurried into the bathroom, fetched her Kiehl’s shampoo, conditioner, and grapefruit body lotion, as well as her makeup in its
“I’m outta here, Mel!” she sang out as she hustled back to the bedroom, but Mel had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up when she stuffed the toiletries into the bag and zipped it closed, or even when the doorbell rang. It had to be Willa, and Anne slung the bag over her shoulder and scooped up the slumbering cat, who draped his stripy front legs on either side of her forearms and permitted himself to be carted downstairs. Sedan Chair Cat.
“Coming!” Anne called out when she reached the first floor and went to the peephole, just to be sure. The action was automatic at this point, even though Kevin was in jail a zillion miles away. She dreaded the day he got out, but that was two years from now. Standing on the front stoop was Willa Hansen, huffing and puffing in her workout clothes.
“Come on in!” Anne unlatched and opened the door, and Willa cooed the moment she saw Mel.
“Oooooh! Isn’t he just so pretty!”
And Anne and Mel knew everything was going to be just fine.
Cars, minivans, and pickup trucks stretched in three lanes as far as the eye could see, with brake lights that formed dotted red lines. It was just another example of random, and Anne resigned herself to not getting to the shore until way after dark. She put the Mustang convertible in park and leaned her head against the black headrest. The night air blew cool and blessedly free of humidity. The sky was deepening to a rich sapphire, the stars brightening slowly, diamonds in relief.
A blue Voyager minivan next to her had two kid’s bicycles strapped to a rack on the back, their spokes laced with red, white, and blue crepe paper, and the rear compartment of the van had been packed with Acme grocery bags, folded sheets, and a Big Bird doll, his beak smashed against the smoked glass. Anne could barely make out the family inside, but here was evidence of them—kids bouncing on the seats, and a mother and a father in front.
She looked away and flicked on the radio, suddenly restless. She scanned but there was nothing on but oldies older than her and sports scores, which reminded her of exercise. She turned it off. The night fell silent except for the idling of three thousand minivans bearing happy families to the shore, undoubtedly poisoning the air of women refusing to be lonely in their Mustang convertibles. Anne plucked a can of Diet Coke from the cupholder and raised it in a toast. “To carbon monoxide, and to me,” she said. She took a sip of warm, flat soda, then got an idea:
She had won, and there was one person she could tell. She didn’t stop to wonder why—for once didn’t pause to observe herself observing herself—or to make even a single mental note. She was just going to do it. Just do it!
She set down the soda can and rummaged in her purse for her cell phone and little red address book, and opened both. She had to hold the address book up in the headlights of the car behind her to read it, and she thumbed to the M listings and found the phone number. There were five old numbers before it, all crossed out, and she didn’t know if the most recent number would work. It hadn’t for a few months, but it was all she had.
She pushed in the area code for L.A., then the phone number. It would be dinnertime there. The tinny rings started, one, two, three rings, with faint crackling on the signal. She waited for the call to be picked up, and despite the fact that she just had a slug of soda, her throat went suddenly dry. After a moment, the rings stopped and a mechanical voice came on:
“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check your records . . .”
Anne felt her heart sink, a reaction she hated as soon as she had it, and gritted her teeth. She was determined not to be a victim, a wimp, or a total loser. So she let the mechanical voice drone away in a continuous loop and delivered her message anyway:
“Hi, how are you? I thought you might like to know that I won a very important motion today in court. I thought it up by myself, and it was a little crazy, but it worked. Other than that, I’m fine, really, and don’t worry about me.” She paused. “I love you, too, Mom.”
Then she pressed End and flipped the cell phone closed.
3
Seagulls squawked over a greasy brown bag in a trash can, and dappled pigeons waddled along the weathered boardwalk, their scaly pink-red feet churning like so many wind-up toys. Saturday morning had
