John Saul - Midnight Voices

Seeing the disappointment in both her children’s eyes as they began to suspect that they might not be going anywhere at all — park or zoo — Caroline made one last attempt at escaping from Claire. “Can’t you call Kevin or Elise? The children and I always—”

The mask of cheeriness in Claire’s voice fell away. “No, Caroline, I can’t. Kevin and Mark went to Provincetown, and Elise has commitments.”

As if I don’t, Caroline thought silently.

“And, frankly, I’d think you’d welcome the chance to make a few dollars. Your sales haven’t been as good as they might be.”

Though the threat wasn’t made directly, Caroline could feel it as keenly as if it were a knife pressed against her throat. “Of course I can help out, Claire,” she said, trying to make her defeat sound as much like a gracious gesture as she could. “I’ll be there at one.”

She hung up the phone, but her hand lingered on the receiver. What else? she thought.

What else can go wrong?

It was as if the thought itself had cued the phone to ring, and she jerked her fingers away from the receiver as if they’d been burned. The phone rang a second time, then a third, but Caroline simply stood there, staring mutely at it. I don’t care who you are, she thought. I don’t care what you want. I can’t deal with it. I just can’t deal with any more. But even as the thoughts formed in her mind, she rejected them. I’ll get through, she decided. Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it. Steeling herself, she picked up the receiver once again. “Hello?”

“Caroline?”

She instantly relaxed as she recognized Andrea Costanza’s voice at the other end. Caroline had known Andrea since they’d met at Hunter College almost fifteen years before, and even though Andrea hadn’t approved when Caroline had dropped out to marry Brad Evans, they’d stayed friends, and become even closer in the last five years, after Andrea had taken an apartment only two blocks from her own. “Thank God,” she breathed now. “You have no idea how much I need to hear a friendly voice.”

“Well, how about three friendly voices, for lunch on Tuesday?”

“Three?”

“I just got a call from Bev. She and Rochelle are worried about you.”

Beverly Amondson and Rochelle Newman were the other two women Caroline considered her best friends — or at least she had until recently, when it seemed like she hardly heard from them anymore. “They’re scared,” Andrea had explained a month ago. “You’re single now. That makes you a threat.” She’d laughed at the look of shock on Caroline’s face. “Oh, grow up, Caroline! Why do you think I was never invited when Rochelle threw one of her cozy little dinner parties? They were couple deals, and I’m not part of a couple. Now you aren’t either. End of invitations.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! Why would I be a threat?”

“All single women are a threat to all married women,” Andrea pronounced. “You were the only exception — you never worried about me at all. And don’t get me wrong. I love Bev and Rochelle. But haven’t you noticed they never invite single women to anything if their husbands are there? I’m fine for lunch and girl talk, but that’s it. And now you’re part of that group. You watch.”

Andrea, it turned out, had been right: Within a few weeks after Brad died, the invitations from the Amondsons and the Newmans had begun to taper off.

“Well, you can tell them I’m alive, if not exactly kicking,” Caroline said now, and immediately wished she’d managed to sound a little more cheerful, no matter how she felt.

“Then this should make you feel better. Bev says we should all meet at Cipriani’s.”

Caroline burst out laughing. “ Harry Cipriani’s?” she repeated. “In the Sherry Netherland? You must be crazy — you could never afford it, and I sure can’t anymore!”

“Ah, but Bev and Rochelle can,” Andrea replied. “And they might live in their own little world of money, but they know we don’t. They’re footing the bill!”

“So I’m not only off the dinner list, but now I’m on the charity list?” Caroline asked, regretting the words the instant she uttered them. “Oh, God, Andrea. I’m sorry — I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“Who cares? It’s true — at Cipriani’s, we’re both charity cases. So what do you say? You sure sound like you could use a good lunch, and by ‘good’ I mean ‘expensive.’ Get away from your problems and let your hair down for a couple of hours.”

Caroline hesitated, but not for long; suddenly the idea of sitting in the sumptuous room with her three best friends was irresistible. “I’ll be there,” she promised. “Hey, I’m taking the kids to the park this morning. Want to meet us there?”

“God, how I wish I could,” Andrea sighed. “But I’ve got three kids in shelters that need foster homes, and four families to do background checks on before I can even think about matching the kids to the families.”

“Why do I suspect the city isn’t paying you to work on weekends?” Caroline asked.

Andrea uttered a darkly hollow chuckle. “Because you’re a reasonably intelligent human being. But the kids still need homes, so hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go. And if I don’t get to it, I’m not going to get done until dinner. See you Tuesday.”

As she hung up the phone and turned back to Laurie and Ryan, Caroline felt a little better, cheered by the prospect of seeing her old friends again on Tuesday. Unless, of course, the lunch turned into nothing more than a bitter taste of what life would be like if Brad hadn’t gone running in the park that night.

“Let’s walk down a few blocks,” Caroline said. They were at the corner of 77th and Central Park West, and even though the light had changed and the north-south traffic had come to a halt, Caroline stayed on the curb, clutching her children as if they were toddlers instead of near-adolescents. As she stared across the street to the spot where Brad had entered the park on the night he’d been killed, she told herself she was being stupid, that there was nothing threatening about the spot at all. Everyone who’d ever been mugged in the park had entered it somewhere; what was she going to do, avoid the park completely for the rest of her life? Keep herself and Laurie and Ryan penned inside the apartment because she was afraid to go outside?

“You don’t have to go with me, Mom,” Ryan said, trying to tug loose from her grip. “I know where I’m going. Why don’t you and Laurie just go to the zoo?”

Because I don’t want the same thing to happen to you that happened to your father, Caroline thought, but managed to let her voice betray not even a hint of the thought. Instead she smiled brightly. Too brightly? “Embarrassed to be seen with your old mother?” she asked, and saw by the flush of Ryan’s face that she’d hit the nail squarely on the head.

“All the other guys’ll be with their dads,” Ryan blurted out, and his flush immediately deepened. Then he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, in a not-quite-successful attempt to conceal their dampness.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Caroline squatted down so her eyes were level with her son’s. Suddenly he looked far younger than his ten years, and the pain in his eyes tore at her heart. “I know it’s not easy,” she said, resisting an urge to wrap her arms around him. “But we’ll get through this. I promise we will.”

Ryan’s jaw trembled, but then he bit his lip and drew slightly away from her. “I’m okay,” he muttered.

But it was so obvious that he wasn’t okay that for a moment — just a moment — Caroline considered letting him go on to the playground by himself. After all, it was one of the ball fields down at the south end of the park that they were going to, not the ones farther up.