Run Away

Chapter Three

Simon stared out the window, letting the familiar green of the park blur in front of him. When the driver made the left off Central Park West onto West Sixty-Seventh Street, he heard Hester mutter, “Uh-oh.”

Simon turned.

News vans were double-parked in front of his apartment. Maybe two dozen protestors stayed behind blue wooden-horse barriers that read:

“Where’s your wife?” Hester asked.

Ingrid. He had completely forgotten about her or what her reaction might be to all this. He also realized that he had no idea what time it was. He checked his watch. Five thirty p.m.

“At work.”

“She’s a pediatrician, right?”

He nodded. “At New York — Presbyterian at 168th Street.”

“What time does she finish?”

“Seven tonight.”

“Does she drive home?”

“She takes the subway.”

“Call her. Tim will pick her up. Where are your kids?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call them too. The firm has an apartment in midtown. You guys can stay there tonight.”

“We can get a hotel.”

Hester shook her head. “They’ll find you if you do that. The apartment will be better, and it’s not like we don’t charge.”

He said nothing.

“This too shall pass, Simon, if we don’t feed the fire. By tomorrow, the next day at the latest, the loonies will all be on to the newest outrage. America has zero attention span.”

He called Ingrid, but with her working in the emergency room today, it went directly into her voicemail. Simon left her a detailed message. Then he called Sam, who already knew all about it.

Sam said, “The video’s gotten over a million hits.” His son seemed both startled and impressed. “I can’t believe you punched out Aaron.” Then he repeated: “You.”

“I was just trying to get to your sister.”

“Everyone’s making it sound like you’re some rich bully.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Yeah I know.”

Silence.

“So this driver, Tim, will pick you up—”

“That’s okay. I’ll stay with the Bernsteins.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it okay with his parents?”

“Larry says it’s no problem. I’ll just go home with him after practice.”

“Okay, if you think that’s best.”

“It’ll just be easier.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. If you change your mind though...”

“Right, got it.” Then Sam said in a softer voice, “I saw... I mean, Paige in that video... she looked...”

More silence.

“Yeah,” Simon said. “I know.”

Simon tried his daughter Anya three times. No answer. Eventually he saw on his caller ID that she was calling him back. When he picked up though, it wasn’t Anya on the line.

“Hey, Simon, it’s Suzy Fiske.”

Suzy lived two floors below him. Her daughter Delia had been going to the same schools as Anya since Montessori when they were both three.

“Is Anya okay?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s fine. I mean, don’t worry or anything. She’s just really upset. You know, about that video.”

“She saw it?”

“Yeah, you know Alyssa Edwards? She was showing it to all the parents during pickup, but the kids had already... you know how it is. All the tongues wagging.”

He did. “Can you put Anya on, please?”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea, Simon.”

I don’t give a shit what you think, he thought, but wisely enough — learning curve after his earlier outburst? — he didn’t actually say it out loud.

This wasn’t Suzy’s fault anyway.

He cleared his throat and aimed for his calmest tone. “Could you please ask Anya to get on the line?”

“I can try, Simon, sure.” She must have turned away from the phone, because the sound was tinnier now, more distant. “Anya, your dad would like... Anya?” Now all sound was muffled. Simon waited. “She just keeps shaking her head. Look, Simon, she can stay here as long as you need. Maybe you can try later or maybe Ingrid could give her a call when she’s off work.”

There was indeed no reason to push it. “Thanks, Suzy.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“I appreciate your help.”

He pressed the End button. Hester sat next to him, staring straight ahead with her ice cream sandwich.

“I bet you wish you’d taken that ice cream when I offered it to you, right?” Then: “Tim?”

“Yes, Hester.”

“You have that extra ice cream in the cooler?”

“I do.” He handed it back to her.

Hester took out the sandwich and showed it to him.

Simon said, “You’re billing me for the ice creams, aren’t you?”

“Not me personally.”

“Your firm.”

She shrugged. “Why do you think I push them so hard?”

Hester handed the ice cream to Simon. He took a bite, and for a few seconds, it was better.

But that didn’t last.

The law firm apartment was located in a business tower one floor beneath Hester’s office, and it showed. The carpets were beige. The furniture was beige. The walls were beige. The accent pillows... beige.

“Great interior decorating, don’t you think?” Hester said.

“Nice if you like beige.”

“The politically correct term is ‘earth tones.’”

“Earth tones,” Simon said. “Like dirt.”

Hester liked that one. “I call it Early American Generic.” Her phone buzzed. She checked the text. “Your wife is on her way. I’ll bring her up when she arrives.”

“Thanks.”

Hester left. Simon risked a peek at his phone. There were too many messages and missed phone calls. He skipped them all except the ones from Yvonne, both his partner at PPG Wealth Management and Ingrid’s sister. He owed her some sort of explanation. So he texted her:

He saw the little dots showing Yvonne was writing him back:

Yvonne’s reply was some comforting emojis telling him that there was no pressure and that all would be good.

He scanned the rest of the messages.

None from Ingrid.

For a few minutes he paced around the apartment’s beige carpeting, checked out the view from the windows, sat on a beige couch, stood again, paced some more. He let the calls go to voicemail until he saw one coming in from Anya’s school. When he picked it up and said, “Hello,” the caller sounded startled.

“Oh,” a voice Simon recognized as belonging to Ali Karim, the principal of Abernathy Academy, said, “I didn’t expect you to answer.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Anya is fine. This isn’t about her.”

“Okay,” Simon said. Ali Karim was one of those academics who wore it — tweed blazers with patches on the elbow, unruly muttonchops on the side of his face, balding with too-long shocks of hair on the crown. “So what can I do for you, Ali?”

“This is a bit sensitive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s about the parent charity ball next month.”

Simon waited.

“As you know, the committee is meeting tomorrow night.”

“I do know,” Simon said. “Ingrid and I are co-chairs.”

“Yes. About that.”

Simon felt his hand tighten around the phone. The principal wanted him to say something, to dive into the silence. Simon didn’t.

“Some of the parents feel it’s best you not come tomorrow.”

“Which parents?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Why not?”

“Simon, don’t make this harder than it has to be. They’re upset about that video.”

“Aww,” Simon said.

“Pardon?”

“Is that all, Ali?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

Again he waited for Simon to fill the silence. Again Simon didn’t.

“As you know, the charity ball this year is raising funds for the Coalition for the Homeless. In light of the recent developments, we feel that perhaps you and Ingrid shouldn’t continue as co-chairs.”

“What recent developments?”

“Come on, Simon.”

“He wasn’t homeless. He’s a drug dealer.”

“I don’t know about that—”

“I know you don’t,” Simon said. “It’s why I’m telling you.”

“—but perception is often more important than reality.”

“Perception is often more important than reality,” Simon repeated. “Is this what you guys teach the kids?”

“This is about doing what’s best for the charity.”

“The ends justify the means, eh?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“You’re some educator, Ali.”

“It seems that I offended you.”

“More like disappointed, but okay, whatever. Just send us back our check.”

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t make us co-chairs because of our winning personalities. You made us co-chairs because we donated big bucks for this ball.” He and Ingrid hadn’t given the money strictly because they believed in the cause. Things like this — it’s rarely about the cause. The cause is a by-product. It’s about sucking up to the school and the administrators like Ali Karim. If you want to support a cause, support a cause. Do you really need the enticement of some boring rubber-salmon dinner where you honor a random rich guy to get you to do the right thing? “Now that we’re no longer co-chairs...”

Ali’s tone was incredulous. “You want to take back your charitable donation?”

“Yep. I’d prefer if you overnighted the check, but if you want to send it two-day express, that’s fine too. Have a great day, Ali.”

He hung up and chucked the phone onto the beige pillow on the beige couch. He’d still give the money to the charity — he couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite — just not via the school’s fundraising ball.

When he turned around, Ingrid and Hester were standing there, watching him.

“Personal rather than legal advice,” Hester said. “Don’t engage with anyone for a few hours, okay? People have a tendency to be rash and stupid under this kind of pressure. Not you, of course. But better safe than sorry.”

Simon stared at Ingrid. His wife was tall with a regal bearing, high cheekbones, short blonde-to-gray hair that always look in vogue. In college she’d worked a bit as a model, her look described as “aloof, icy Scandinavian,” and that was still probably the first impression, which made her career choice — pediatrician who needed to be warm with kids — a bit of an anomaly. But kids never saw her that way. They loved and trusted Ingrid immediately. It was uncanny, the way they saw straight to her heart.

Hester said, “I’ll leave you guys to it.”

She didn’t specify what “it” referred to, but maybe she didn’t have to. When they were alone, Ingrid shrugged a what-the-hell and Simon launched into the story.

“You knew where Paige was?” Ingrid asked.

“I told you. Charlie Crowley said something to me.”

“And you followed up. Then this other homeless guy, this Dave—”

“I don’t know if he’s homeless. I just know he runs the schedule for the musicians.”

“You really want to play semantics with me now, Simon?”

He did not.

“So this Dave... he told you that Paige was going to be there?”

“He thought she might, yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know for sure. Why upset you if it was nothing?”

She shook her head.

“What?”

“You never lie to me, Simon. It’s not what you do.”

That was true. He never lied to his wife and in a sense, he wasn’t lying here, not really, but he was shading the truth and that was bad enough.

“I’m sorry,” Simon said.

“You didn’t tell me because you were afraid I’d stop it.”

“In part,” Simon said.

“Why else?”

“Because I’d have to tell you the rest of it. How I’d been searching for her.”

“Even though we both agreed that we wouldn’t?”

Technically he hadn’t agreed. Ingrid had more or less laid down the law, and Simon hadn’t objected, but now didn’t seem the time for that kind of nuance.

“I couldn’t... I couldn’t just let her go.”

“And what, you think I could?”

Simon said nothing.

“You think you hurt more than I do?”

“No, of course not.”

“Bullshit. You think I was being cold.”

He almost said, “No, of course not” again, but didn’t part of him think that?

“What was your plan, Simon? Rehab again?”

“Why not?”

Ingrid closed her eyes. “How many times did we try...?”

“One time too few. That’s all. One time too few.”

“You’re not helping. Paige has to come to it on her own. Don’t you see that? I didn’t ‘let her go’” — Ingrid spat out the words — “because I don’t love her anymore. I let her go because she’s gone — and we can’t bring her back. Do you hear me? We can’t. Only she can.”

Simon collapsed on the couch. Ingrid sat next to him. After some time passed, she rested her head on his shoulder.

“I tried,” Simon said.

“I know.”

“And I messed up.”

Ingrid pulled him close. “It’ll be okay.”

He nodded, even as he knew it wouldn’t be, not ever.