In a Perfect World

had a wife? It had somehow never occurred to Jiselle that he might. Thinking back now of his hands on his knees as he listened to her, she was sure there had never been a wedding ring there.

She went to the front door again, squinted toward the end of the driveway, and past that to the other side of the road—the place Sam must have dashed to, the place Joy never made it. From her side of the screened-in door, the silence and the stillness out there seemed accusatory, like the nail above the mantel where the wedding portrait had been—that protected square of wall that had stayed pristine through all the years that had passed while the portrait hung over it, while the rest of the wall darkened and faded at the same time around it.

Greater than nothing. That empty space made Jiselle feel like a voyeur, an interloper, a rubbernecker, a nosy neighbor:

If you’re so curious, come out here yourself and see.

What choice did she have?

Jiselle walked out of the house in her bare feet, down to the end of the driveway, where she stood very still before she stepped into the road, thinking, Here.

She looked down at her feet and then behind her.

No one.

Nothing.

She seemed, herself, not even to be casting a shadow in this place. In this shaft of space and light, she seemed to cease to exist. She turned around, and then turned around again, looking for that shadow, but if it was there at all, it was managing to stay behind her, to sneak away when she turned to look, shifting out of sight when she tried to find it. She turned around so many times she finally grew dizzy, and felt foolish—what if Brad Schmidt was watching from next door?—and went back into the house.

Part Four

CHAPTER TWELVE

The night before Valentine’s Day, Jiselle took the children, for the second time, to meet her mother for dinner at Duke’s Palace Inn. Mark was in Munich, but he was scheduled to be home in time to take Jiselle out for a romantic Valentine’s dinner the next night. They had reservations at the Chop House. She’d seen, in his sock drawer, a small package wrapped in red tissue with her name on it. For him she’d bought cuff links— gold, simple squares with his initials.

An ice storm was predicted for the evening, but by the time Jiselle left with the children for downtown Chicago, the sky, although dense with dark blue clouds, was spitting out only a bit of thin snow. It glazed the windshield of the Cherokee, glistened in the bare branches of the trees, shone palely in the light of the early moon, but it melted by the time it hit the pavement.

Sara wore a plaid skirt, like a Catholic schoolgirl, except that the skirt was so short it barely covered her panties. White knee socks. There was a black garter around her right thigh. Jiselle had asked her to wear something “appropriate” when she’d come upon her lounging on the couch in a T-shirt that read, Fuck You, Justin Timberlake, but when she came out of her room in the plaid skirt, her white blouse unbuttoned down to the snap at the front of her black bra, Jiselle had not had the energy to ask her to change. There was, she felt certain, nothing Sara would find to wear that would not horrify her mother, but if Sara did not come along to dinner at all, her mother would note the absence, taking it as proof of Jiselle’s impossibly foolish choice, marrying a man with such a daughter.

“You can wear my shoes,” Jiselle had said, looking at Sara’s bare feet.

Sara had rolled her eyes but didn’t object when Jiselle brought out the beautiful shoes she’d bought in Madrid. They slid perfectly onto Sara’s feet. Even Sara looked down at the shoes in appreciation.

They’d driven about forty miles from the house and were still ten miles from their freeway exit to downtown when Camilla, in the passenger seat beside Jiselle, pointed out how dark it was, except for the moon’s white light bleeding between cracks in the clouds. “Why aren’t the streetlights on?” she asked.

Jiselle leaned forward to scan the distance beyond her windshield.

Yes. The streetlights were completely dark against an ever-darkening sky. The signs that usually lit up the billboards were off. The only light besides the shredded bits of moon overhead came from the headlights streaming toward them on the other side of the freeway.

Why?

Then Jiselle noted not only the absence of streetlights but also the absence of traffic headed into the city. It was all headed out.

“Weird,” Jiselle said, more to herself than to Camilla.

She kept driving until they reached their exit, ten miles later, and pulled off the freeway to find that the city streets were nearly empty. No pedestrians. All the store and restaurant windows were dark.

Jiselle was just slowing down outside Duke’s Palace Inn, noting the unlit sign outside, when her cell phone rang. The Caller ID read, MOTHER.

“Don’t tell me you drove all the way into the city. For God’s sake, Jiselle, don’t you listen to the radio?”

No, she didn’t. It was impossible, in one car with Camilla, Sam, and Sara, to find a station, or even a CD, they could agree on. They always rode in silence.

“No,” Jiselle said. “I’m here.”

“Well, go home, and hope your power’s on. I’m on my way back. Unlike you, I heard it on the radio and turned around.”

“Oh,” Jiselle said. “Should I—?”

“You should go home,” her mother said. “All the sane people are on their way home. Nothing will be open in the city.”

Jiselle said goodbye then, and Happy Valentine’s Day, and that she would call in the morning—by which time the power would be back on, surely, and she and her mother would, perhaps, make plans to meet somewhere for lunch. She flipped her phone closed, cleared her throat. “Okay, kids,” she said, looking first to Camilla, who’d rested her head with her eyes closed against the fogged window, and then into the backseat, where Sam was twiddling his thumbs across his Game Boy, utterly absorbed. Sara was scowling. “Power outage,” Jiselle said. “I guess we’re heading back. Let’s hope we have power at home.”

But getting out of the city was nothing like getting into it had been. Everyone was headed out, back to the suburbs and the small towns beyond them, where they lived. Hundreds, thousands, of cars were idling in a line that began a mile or two away from the ramp.

The frozen rain had begun to fall even harder, ticking and snapping onto the windshield and roof of the Cherokee. The traffic was a confused jumble of vehicles driving less than a mile an hour, but in a frantic rush, like a marathon for snails, nearly unmoving or moving imperceptibly. The squeaking of bad brakes. The impatient revving of motors. Emergency lights blinking.

Jiselle kept the defroster blowing, because her breath, mixed with that of the children, was beginning to condense on the windows, fogging everything. She glanced behind her. Only Sara was awake now. She was still staring out the window with an angry smirk. Sam was slumped against her shoulder. Beside Jiselle, Camilla was breathing steadily, eyes closed, rosebud lips parted, oblivious.

It took a full hour to get to the freeway. By then, Sara was asleep, too, her eyeballs twitching back and forth beneath her black-painted eyelids.

Jiselle rubbed her own eyes, trying to stay awake herself, finally passing that red Yield triangle at the entrance to the freeway, and spilling with the other cars out of the congested queue. Although the traffic here was