PAULLINA SIMONS
A Song in the
Daylight
HARPER
To Sara Belk, a mother, a thespian, a theologian,
a friend, a woman extraordinaire
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part I - The Stonemason
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part II - Scylla and Charybdis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part III - Everything Must Go
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Part IV - Miss Silver City
Chapter One
Epilogue
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Friday Night (Almost) Like Any Other
“Yes, it’s mainly desert lands, nothing but dry creeks,” Doug was saying, relaying to Jared his torrid experience in the Australian bush, “but when it rains five hundred miles away, you get an astonishing twenty feet of water pouring through the arid lake beds and salty playas. Doesn’t happen very often, though, the deluge. And even when it does, it quickly evaporates. The stasis is earth, waterless and scorched.”
“Hmm,” Jared muttered, impatient fingers tapping on the desk. He wanted to get back to their conversation about the Yankees’ middle relief pitching. But Doug had recently come back from a trip to the Australian outback and for weeks straight had insisted on telling Jared all about it.
Jared had had a busy afternoon of capitalization meetings before the long Memorial Day weekend, and at 3:30, his assistant, Sheila, said that Emily had called and needed him to call back right away. He was going to do that but he got swamped with a Tokyo call, an emergency round-up about a possible bankruptcy filing for one of their affiliates, a Hong Kong call, and finally the usual Friday-night banter from Doug, when at 4:45 the phone rang again.
“Dad!”
“Oh, sorry, Em. I’m snowed under. What’s up?” He motioned Doug not to leave; he had one more thing to add to their revolving argument on the dire pitching prospects for the Yankees’ sinking (stinking) season.
“What’s up,” Emily said with all stridency, “is I have a volleyball game today at five and Mom is not home to drive me!”
“Volleyball game when?” Jared’s hand with the index finger out was still raised.
“In fifteen minutes,” said Emily, apparently through her teeth. “And did I mention Mom’s not home to drive me?”
“Where is she?” Jared was waving to Doug, to say, wait.
“Dad? Are you even listening? I don’t know where she is. I’ve been calling you since 3:30!”
“I’m sure Mommy will be right back, Em. Isn’t Michelangelo with her?”
“I thought he was, but Tara just brought him home.”
“Who’s Tara?”
Emily drew a long breath. “Our neighbor two doors down. Our neighbor for seven years.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Apparently he had a playdate with Jen and Jess. So here we all are, except for Mom—who’s not here. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I have a MEET in fifteen minutes!”
Jared’s finger was still up for Doug, just one minute. “Call her cell.”
“Dad, what do you think, I didn’t call her five thousand times before I called you? And then Asher helpfully found her cell phone ringing on her makeup table in the bedroom.”
“She didn’t take her cell phone?” Jared put his finger down, and stared at his desk, instead of at the casually sitting Doug Grant.
“Correct-o.”
“Well, how far could she have gone?” Jared said. “You know Mommy never carries any cash on her.”
“Dad!”
“All right.” He shook his head. “I’m leaving right now. I’ll be home in thirty minutes.”
“Dad! I’ve got to be at the game in fifteen!”
“Can’t you call a friend on the team? Have another mom drive you?”
“Another mom?”
“Or wait for me. I can’t blink myself home, Emily. Either you wait for me, or you call someone else.” Jared didn’t know any of his daughter’s friends by name. “I’m sure your mom will be right back.”
“Back from where? Both her cars are in the drive!” With a massive harrumph on the other end, Emily slammed down the TALK button on the cordless phone.
Jared got up. “Sorry, Douglas. We’ll finish this another time.”
“Everything okay?”
“Oh, it’s fine.” He sighed. “Melodrama. Teenagers. Everything has to be done on their time.” He was throwing his news papers away as he talked; he stuffed his laptop into his leather bag, plus three annual reports in case he had time to work over the three-day weekend. “Larissa’s not home to drive Emily to the game so, you know, major crisis.”
“Can’t wait for my lovely girls to become cranky teenagers,” said Doug. He had two toddlers.
“Listen, I don’t want you to have the last word. But I’m telling you, the Yankees are doomed without middle rotation pitching. When you’re over on Monday for the barbecue, I’ll explain it all more thoroughly. You can bring dessert.” Jared grinned. “And bathing suits for Kate and the girls. We’re firing up the pool.”
“I’d love to, mate,” said Doug with an Aussie flourish in his New Jersey twang. “You know I like nothing more than to hammer home why you’re deluded about the Yanks. They’re getting old! They have too many injuries! They can’t hit! But I can’t do it. The wife and I are going away for the weekend. Our fifth anniversary.” Doug raised his eyebrows. “Atlantic City.”
“Ah. Well.” Jared nodded. “Good for you. Stay away from the tables.”
“Don’t worry, Kate will keep me straight. She hates to gamble. I’ll be lucky if I get an hour for blackjack. By the way, I’ve noticed that Jan, our troubled little deputy secretary, is much better lately. What’d you say to her? She’s sober every day, seems like. Nice work.”
Jared shrugged. That last, successful chat with Jan had been months ago. But he couldn’t talk about it now; he had to run.
They shook hands, wished each other a fine weekend. Jared said he would see Doug bright and early on Tuesday morning.
Forty-five traffic-y and frustrating minutes later he walked into his house. Emily had missed her game and was sitting at the kitchen table crying. Asher was in the den watching TV and Michelangelo was coloring on the floor near the dog. As Jared looked closer, he saw his younger son wasn’t coloring near the dog, he was coloring the dog. Taking the markers (were these even washable?) away from the boy, he patted Emily’s back.
She bucked away from his hand like a wild horse. “Don’t touch me! Where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know,” said Jared. “I just got home. But don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry you missed your game.”
“You should’ve called me back, Dad. I called you so many times.”
“I was at work. I was busy.” Jared felt a stab of guilt. He was at work, and he was busy part of the time, but really, he could’ve called back an hour earlier, and didn’t. Larissa took care of home things; he never had to worry.
He called Maggie. “She’s not with me, Jared,” said Maggie. “I haven’t seen her since Tuesday. Maybe with Bo? Evelyn? Or call my husband. He’s working late tonight. Researching materialism or immortality or something. On a Friday night, too.” She scoffed mildly. “Maybe she’s at the theater. Saint Joan opens next week. They’re rehearsing every
day.”
“Materialism and immortality, they’re not one and the same?” Jared said jokingly before hanging up.
“Nah, I haven’t seen your wife, man,” said Ezra when Jared reached him. “She didn’t come in today for rehearsals. Which is disturbing since not only do we open next Thursday but we finally did the run-through without the epilogue, as she expressly wanted, and she wasn’t even here for it. What be up?”
“Did she call?”
“Didn’t. Maybe she’s gone out?”
“Yeah, with someone who has a car.”
“Weird,” said Ezra. “But I did have lunch with her two days ago, and though she was pretty chill, have you noticed your wife’s lost a ton of weight?”
“You think?” Jared had lost interest in the conversation. “She keeps denying it.”
“Oh, yes. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes, she says.” Ezra grunted. “Hey, listen, Lar and Maggie are doing a beer run tomorrow to get ready for the party Monday, but are we still on for tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, sure, why not? Let me find her first, though, ‘kay?”
“Like I said, she’s melted away.” Ezra chuckled. “She’s disappeared before our very eyes.”
“Till tomorrow, dude. She can’t have lost that much weight.”
Jared called Bo, who hadn’t spoken to Larissa since the week before.
Evelyn finally picked up. “I’m bathing all five kids at once, Jared,” she said. “I can’t leave them for long. What’s up?” She hadn’t heard from Larissa since her birthday dinner the month before. This surprised Jared. Larissa always made an effort to keep in touch with Evelyn, her college friend.
Six o’clock became seven.
The kids were hungry. Jared ordered pizza from Nina’s, then sat in the kitchen with them while they ate. For some reason he didn’t feel like eating. Finally he went upstairs to get changed, put on shorts, a T-shirt; he opened the bathroom, he opened her closet. Everything was neat, orderly, put away. On the bed were seven of his white shirts, still in sheaths of dry cleaner plastic; according to the ticket, picked up for him by her just this morning. The house was quiet. He looked inside Larissa’s closet again. Peculiarly, he looked inside her jewelry box. What was he looking for? She had many beautiful things. He ambled around the bedroom. Bed was made, patted down, hospital-cornered; clothes were in the closet; shoes in their boxes; books on the shelves. Diamond earrings he gave her for their fifteenth wedding anniversary, which she loved and never went anywhere special without. Everything was in its place.
Everything except Larissa.
PART I
THE STONEMASON
How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Samuel Johnson
Chapter One
1
Things Trains Bring
One sunny afternoon, on the dot of 12:45, from west to the east, after all the leaves had gone and the ground was frozen, into the concrete well of the Summit train station a shiny, stainless, steel-and-blue locomotive rolled in, the doors opened, and a smatter of people alighted.
Train tracks run through Summit, wind through it like the everflowing Passaic River. The station itself is brick and mortar, well kept, maintained by well-to-do people in a well-to-do town. You buy your ticket in a little office with white sash windows and red flowers on the sills, where a woman who wanted to retire ten years ago glares at you from behind the glass and her glasses as she sullenly sells you a one-way to Venice or a round trip to visit your lonely mother in Piermont.
To get to the train, you have to walk down forty concrete steps to the embankment where the train arrives and swishes open its doors for a few minutes. Neither the train nor the tracks can be seen from the road. Clearly this was the intent of the designers. Perhaps so that traffic wouldn’t crawl to a stop in a town of twenty thousand people every twenty minutes. But another reason could be that the train tracks, unlike a river, were not deemed by the architects and engineers to be aesthetically pleasing enough and were deliberately hidden below the cobblestoned street, remaining invisible to the town except for a small white-and-black RR sign on Maple Street, pointing that way. You could live your whole life in Summit, New Jersey, and not ever know your town had a train station that took people away—and brought people in.
And yet it did bring people in, every day, and this day also.
Today it discharged a friendly woman with a baby carriage, two bags and a small girl; an older woman with a wheeled suitcase whose gray unsmiling husband was tensely waiting for her on the platform, as if distressed by her arrival; a young man with a ratty duffel bag, a leather jacket, a baseball cap.
The young man strolled out clacking the pavement with the metal heels of his black riding boots, looked around, squinted, pulled down his sunglasses and whistled for the conductor to open the oversize hold compartment, from which he rolled out a motorcycle.
“Some bike you got there,” the conductor said, sliding closed the doors. “Like a stallion. But why’d you store it when you could’ve ridden it cross country?”
“Bike’d be stolen in five seconds.” The young man grinned. “And I’d be robbed and killed.” He had a crooked smile, frizzy hair, stubble.
“Robbed for what?” the conductor muttered. “After they took your bike, what would they want with you?”
“They’d have to kill me to separate me from the bike.”
“Ah.” The conductor shrugged. “But I thought you was headed to Maplewood?”
“I am. This isn’t it?”
“No. It’s Summit. D’you hear me calling it out?”
“Nah. I was sleeping. Damn.” He smiled unperturbed. “How far to Maplewood?”
“Six miles. You wanna get back on?”
The young man shook his head.
“Or two minutes on that thing if you’re going fast.” The conductor enviously tipped his cap. “All aboard!” The train slowly pulled away.
The biker was left standing on the platform, breathing in the freezing air, one hand steadying his bike, duffel between his legs. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He decided to drive around town for a few minutes, get a bite to eat, relax, and then head to Maplewood. It would’ve been better had he come in the spring, like he’d planned. Still. Fates, all kneel before ye.
He got his bike up to the street on an elevator. After driving around the sleepy subdued Summit and not finding any place he wanted to stop, he looked instead for a street where he could ride the bike a bit. It was real cold, too cold for him in the long term, but he was so happy to be out and about. He wanted a sandwich. On Route 124, he raced up to seventy for a few brief seconds before the light turned red, already out of Summit and in another bare-treed town. “WELCOME TO MADISON.” He saw a large supermarket, an empty parking lot. “Grand Opening,” the sign read, “Drive-through Pharmacy, Starbucks, Fresh Sushi Daily.” That’s the ticket, the young man thought. A box of raw tuna won’t be as good as Maui tuna, but still, a box, maybe two, five minutes in the saddle under the sun in the empty lot. He’d been on the trains too long. He needed air.
2
Che
We are never alone for a moment. We are deceived into loneliness, into solitude, by our pride, by our pretensions. And yet all Che wanted was a child of her own. To never be alone again. She wanted to be renewed by childbirth, and yet it looked like that was never going to happen. Forget the clock. The boyfriend was the problem.
On the outskirts of south Manila, through the wildly populated isthmus between two warm-water bays, on the edge of a rice field in Paranaque, near Moonwalk, in a thatched hut amid a thousand other thatched huts, at the end of a long afternoon when the palm trees were still dripping from the monsoon that had drenched the huts and the mud roads and made going out difficult, near a window and a mirror, a petite Filipino woman sat at a desk dressed in hiking boots, army fatigues, a pink scarf, red lips, tattoos, ebony hair spiked up and streaked wh
ite, cigarette dangling, ash falling, and scribbled a letter.
Larissa,
My one true friend, please come and visit your old best friend Che. I’ll teach you how to make rice pudding and patties. I’ll give you excellent cheap wine. I’ll introduce you to Father Emilio and to Lorenzo, if we’re still together, God help me. I can’t believe last time I saw you was before you were ever pregnant. I like the last picture you sent, though I don’t think you’re right, that your boy looks like an angel. His eyes are too mischievous. He looks like he rules your house. And angels don’t look like that, like kings. I should know. Lorenzo looks like that, and he’s definitely not an angel.
What Che didn’t write to Larissa, but which was the impetus for the letter and the slight anxiety underneath the placid epistolary demeanor, was that the night before, Che thrashed herself awake from a terrible black vision in which she saw Larissa in a yellow dress, walking away, while Che was running, calling, Larissa, Larissa… Finally out of breath she caught up with her fair friend and grabbed her by the arm. Larissa spun around. Her face was pallid and wizened, more like the face of a flightless bird long dead. Che cried out, and then Larissa spoke, not in her voice, but a dead stranger’s voice. She said, “Che, what if everything in your life had turned to ashes?”
Che could only shake her head.
“Everything,” Larissa repeated. “Every good thing, every terrible thing, just burned to the ground?”
No, Che mouthed.
“What if there was nothing left?”
That’s impossible, Che wanted to say. There is always something left. She reached out. Always.
But Larissa, like fine wet sand, shivered and dissolved to the earth, in a small damp heap of blackened shavings.
Che screamed—in the dream, in real life. For a long time she couldn’t get back to sleep and, because of that, today was exhausted. Nothing in Larissa’s previous letter gave Che any indication that everything was not, as always, joyous. The dream was incongruous. Che couldn’t put it out of her heart.