Stay close

2

Megan Pierce was living the ultimate soccer-mom fantasy and hating it.

She closed the Sub-Zero fridge and looked at her two children through the bay windows off the breakfast nook. The windows offered up “essential morning light.” That was how the architect had put it. The newly renovated kitchen also had a Viking stove, Miele appliances, a marble island in the middle, and excellent flow to the family-cum-theater room with the big-screen TV, recliners with cup holders, and enough sound speakers to stage a Who concert.

Out in the backyard, Kaylie, her fifteen-year-old daughter, was picking on her younger brother, Jordan. Megan sighed and opened the window. “Cut it out, Kaylie.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m standing right here watching you.”

Kaylie put her hands on her hips. Fifteen years old-that troubling adolescent cusp between adult and childhood, the body and hormones just starting to come to a boil. Megan remembered it well. “What did you see?” Kaylie asked in a challenge.

“I saw you picking on your brother.”

“You’re inside. You couldn’t hear anything. For all you know, I said, ‘I love you so much, Jordan.’”

“She did not!” Jordan shouted.

“I know she didn’t,” Megan said.

“She called me a loser and said I had no friends!”

Megan sighed. “Kaylie…”

“I did not!”

Megan just frowned at her.

“It’s his word against mine,” Kaylie protested. “Why do you always take his side?”

Every kid, Megan thought, is a frustrated lawyer, finding loopholes, demanding impossible levels of proof, attacking even the most minute of minutia.

“You have practice tonight,” Megan told Kaylie.

Kaylie’s head dropped to her shoulder, her entire body slumping. “Do I have to go?”

“You made a commitment to this team, young lady.”

Even as Megan said it-even as she had said similar words a zillion times before-she still couldn’t believe the words were coming from her own mouth.

“But I don’t want to go,” Kaylie whined. “I’m so tired. And I’m supposed to go out with Ginger later, remember, to…”

Kaylie may have said more, but Megan turned away, not really interested. In the TV room, her husband, Dave, was sprawled out in gray sweats. Dave was watching the latest fallen movie actor bragging in some tasteless interview about the many women he’d bagged and the years of scoring at strip clubs. The actor was manic and wide-eyed and clearly on something that required a physician with a loose prescription pad.

From his spot on the couch, Dave shook his head in disgust. “What is this world coming to?” Dave said, gesturing at the screen. “Can you believe this jerk? What a tool.”

Megan nodded, suppressing a smile. Years ago she had known that tool quite well. Biblically even. The Tool was actually a pretty nice guy who tipped well, enjoyed threesomes, and cried like a baby when he drank too much.

A long time ago.

Dave turned and smiled at her with everything he had. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey.”

Dave still did that, smiled at her as though seeing her anew, for the first time, and she knew again that she was lucky, that she should be grateful. This was Megan’s life now. That old life-the one nobody in this happy suburban wonderland of cul-de-sacs and good schools and brick McMansions knew about-had been killed off and buried in a shallow ditch.

“You want me to drive Kaylie to soccer?” Dave asked.

“I can do it.”

“You’re sure?”

Megan nodded. Not even Dave knew the truth about the woman who had shared his bed for the past sixteen years. Dave didn’t even know that Megan’s real name was, strangely enough, Maygin. Same pronunciation but computers and IDs only know spelling. She would have asked her mother why the weird spelling, but her mother had died before Megan could talk. She had never known her father or even who he was. She’d been orphaned young, grew up hard, ended up stripping in Vegas and then Atlantic City, took it a step further, loved it. Yes, loved it. It was fun and exciting and electrifying. There was always something going on, always a sense of danger and possibility and passion.

“Mom?”

It was Jordan. “Yes, honey.”

“Mrs. Freedman says you didn’t sign the permission slip for the class trip.”

“I’ll send her an e-mail.”

“She said it was due on Friday.”

“Don’t worry about it, honey, okay?”

It took Jordan another moment or two but eventually he was placated.

Megan knew that she should be grateful. Girls die young in her old life. Every emotion, every second in that world, is almost too intense-life raised to the tenth power-and that doesn’t jibe with longevity. You get burned out. You get strung out. There is a heady quality to that kind of action. There is also an inherent danger. When it finally spun out of control, when Megan’s very life was suddenly in jeopardy, she had not only found a way to escape but to start over completely anew, reborn if you will, with a loving husband, beautiful children, a home with four bedrooms, and a pool in the yard.

Somehow, almost by accident really, Megan Pierce had stumbled from the depths of what some might call a seedy cesspool into the ultimate American dream. She had, in order to save herself, played it straight and almost talked herself into believing that this was the best possible world. And why not? For her entire life, in movies and on television, Megan, like the rest of us, had been inundated with images claiming that her old life was wrong, immoral, wouldn’t last-while this family life, the house and picket fence, was enviable, appropriate, celestial.

But here was the truth: Megan missed her old life. She was not supposed to. She was supposed to be grateful and thrilled that she of all people, with the destructive route she’d taken, had ended up with what every little girl dreams of. But the truth was, a truth it had taken her years to admit to herself, she still longed for those dark rooms; the lustful, hungry stares from strangers; the pounding, pulsating music; the crazy lights; the adrenaline spikes.

And now?

Dave flipping stations: “So you don’t mind driving? Because the Jets are on.”

Kaylie looking through her gym bag: “Mom, where’s my uniform? Did you wash it like I asked?”

Jordan opening the Sub-Zero: “Can you make me a grilled cheese in the panini maker? And not with that whole grain bread.”

She loved them. She did. But there were times, like today, when she realized that after a youth of skating along slippery surfaces she had now settled into a domestic rut of dazzling sameness, each day forced to perform the same show with the same players as the day before, just each player one day older. Megan wondered why it had to be this way, why we are forced to choose one life. Why do we insist that there can only be one “us,” one life that makes us up in our entirety? Why can’t we have more than one identity? And why do we have to destroy one life in order to create another? We claim to long for the “well rounded,” the Renaissance man or woman inside all of us, yet our only variety is cosmetic. In reality we do all we can to smother that spirit out, to make us conform, to define us as one thing and one thing only.

Dave flipped back to the fallen movie star. “This guy,” Dave said with a shake of head. But just hearing that famous manic voice brought Megan back-his hand twined in her thong, his face pressed against her back, scruffy and wet from tears.

“You’re the only one who understands me, Cassie…”

Yes, she missed it. Was that really so horrible?

She didn’t think so, but it kept haunting her. Had she made a mistake? These memories, the life of Cassie because no one uses a real name in that world, had been kept locked up in a small back room in her head all these years. And then, a few days ago, she had unbolted the door and let it open just a crack. She had quickly slammed it closed and locked it back up. But just that crack, just letting Cassie have a quick gaze into the world between Maygin and Megan-why was she so sure that there would be repercussions?

Dave rolled off the couch and headed for the bathroom, the newspaper tucked under his armpit. Megan warmed up the panini maker and searched for the white bread. As she opened the drawer, the phone rang, giving off an electronic chirp. Kaylie stood next to the phone, ignoring it, texting.

“You want to answer that?” Megan asked.

“It’s not for me.”

Kaylie could pull out and answer her own mobile phone with a speed that would have intimidated Wyatt Earp, but the home phone, with a number unknown to the Kasselton teenage community, held absolutely no interest to her.

“Pick it up, please.”

“What’s the point? I’d just have to hand it to you.”

Jordan, who at the tender age of eleven always wanted to keep the peace, grabbed it. “Hello?”

He listened for a moment and then said, “You have the wrong number.” And then Jordan added something that chilled Megan: “There’s no one here named Cassie.”

Making up some excuse about the delivery people always getting her name wrong-and knowing that her children were so wonderfully self-involved that they wouldn’t question it anyway-Megan took the phone from her son and vanished into the other room.

She put the receiver to her ear, and a voice she hadn’t heard in seventeen years said, “I’m sorry to call you like this, but I think we need to meet.”

Megan dropped off Kaylie at soccer practice.

She was, considering the bombshell call, fairly calm and serene. She put the car in park and turned to her daughter, dewy-eyed.

Kaylie said, “What?”

“Nothing. What time does practice end?”

“I don’t know. I might go out with Gabi and Chuckie afterward.”

Might meaning will. “Where?”

Shrug. “Town.”

The nice vague teenage answer. “Where in town?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” she said, allowing a little annoyance in. Kaylie wanted to move this along, but she didn’t want to piss off her mother and not be allowed to go. “We’re just going to hang out, okay?”

“Did you do all your homework?”

Megan hated herself the moment she asked the question. Such a Mom moment. She put her hand up and said to her daughter, “Forget that. Just go. Have fun.”

Kaylie looked at her mother as though a small arm had suddenly sprouted out of her forehead. Then she shrugged, got out of the car, and ran off. Megan watched. Always. It didn’t matter that she was old enough to enter a field by herself. Megan had to watch until she was sure that her daughter was safe.

Ten minutes later, Megan found a parking spot behind the Starbucks. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes until the meet.

She grabbed a latte and found a table in the back. At the table to her left, a potpourri of new moms-sleep deprived, stained clothes, deliriously happy, all with baby in tow-were yapping away. They talked about the best new strollers and which Pack ’n Play folded up easiest and how long to breast-feed. They debated cedar playgrounds with tire mulch and what age to stop with the pacifier and the safest car seats and the back baby sling versus the front baby sling versus the side baby sling. One bragged about how her son, Toddy, was “so sensitive to the needs of other children, even though he’s only eighteen months old.”

Megan smiled, wishing that she could be them again. She had loved the new-mommy stage, but like so many other stages of life, you look back at it now and wonder when they fixed your lobotomy. She knew what will come next with these mothers-picking the right preschool as though it were a life ’n’ death decision, waiting in the pickup line, positioning their kids for the elite playdates, Little Gym classes, karate lessons, lacrosse practice, French immersion courses, constant carpools. The happy turns to harried, and the harried becomes routine. The once-understanding husband slowly gets grumpier because you still don’t want as much sex as before the baby. You as a couple, the you who used to sneak off to do the dirty in every available spot, barely glance at each other when naked anymore. You think it doesn’t matter-that it’s natural and inevitable-but you drift. You love each other, in some ways more than ever, but you drift and you either don’t fight it or don’t really see it. You become caretakers of the children, your world shrinking down to the size and boundaries of your offspring, and it all becomes so polite and close-knit and warm-and maddening and smothering and numbing.

“Well, well, well.”

The familiar voice made Megan automatically smile. The voice still had the sexy rasp of whiskey, cigarettes, and late nights, where every utterance had a hint of a laugh and a dollop of a double entendre.

“Hi, Lorraine.”

Lorraine gave her a crooked smile. Her hair was a bad blond dye job and too big. Lorraine was big and fleshy and curvy and made sure that you saw it. Her clothes looked two sizes too small, and yet that worked for her. After all these years, Lorraine still made an impression. Even the mommies stopped to stare with just the proper amount of distaste. Lorraine shot them a look that told them she knew what they thought and where they could stick that thought. The mommies turned away.

“You look good, kid,” Lorraine said.

She sat, making a production of it. It had been, yes, seventeen years. Lorraine had been a hostess/manager/cocktail waitress/bartender. Lorraine had lived the life, and she lived it hard and without any apologies.

“I’ve missed you,” Megan said.

“Yeah, I could tell from all the postcards.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

Lorraine waved her off, as if annoyed by the sentiment. She fumbled into her purse and pulled out a cigarette. The nearby mommies gasped as though she’d pulled out a firearm. “Man, I should light this thing just to watch them flee.”

Megan leaned forward. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you find me?”

The crooked smile returned. “Come on, honey. I’ve always known. I got eyes everywhere, you know that.”

Megan wanted to ask more, but something in Lorraine’s tone told her to let it be.

“Look at you,” Lorraine said. “Married, kids, big house. Lots of white Cadillac Escalades in the lot. One of them yours?”

“No. I’m the black GMC Acadia.”

Lorraine nodded as though that answer meant something. “I’m happy you found something here, though, to be honest? I always thought you’d be a lifer, you know? Like me.”

Lorraine let out a small chuckle and shook her head.

“I know,” Megan said. “I kinda surprised myself.”

“Of course, not all the girls who end up back on the straight and narrow choose it.” Lorraine looked off as though the comment was a throwaway. Both women knew that it was not. “We had some laughs, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

“I still do,” she said. “This”-she eye-gestured toward the mommies-“I mean, I admire it. I really do. But I don’t know. It’s not me.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m too selfish. It’s like I got ADD or something. I need something to stimulate me.”

“Kids can stimulate, believe me.”

“Yeah?” she said, clearly not buying it. “Well, I’m glad to hear that.”

Megan wasn’t sure how to continue. “So you still work at La Creme?”

“Yep. Bartending mostly.”

“So why the sudden call?”

Lorraine fiddled with the unlit cigarette. The moms went back to their inane chatter, though with less enthusiasm. They constantly sneaked glances at Lorraine, as though she were some virus introduced into their suburban life-form with a mission to destroy it.

“Like I said, I’ve always known where you were. But I would never say anything. You know that, right?”

“I do.”

“And I didn’t want to bug you now either. You escaped, last thing I wanted to do was drag you back in.”

“But?”

Lorraine met her eye. “Someone spotted you. Or I should I say, Cassie.”

Megan shifted in the chair.

“You’ve been coming to La Creme, haven’t you?”

Megan said nothing.

“Hey, I get it. Believe me. If I hung out with these sunshines all day”-Lorraine pointed with her thumb at the maternal gaggle-“I’d sacrifice farm animals for a night out now and again.”

Megan looked down at her coffee as though it might hold an answer. She had indeed returned to La Creme, but only once. Two weeks ago, near the anniversary of her escape, she had gone to Atlantic City for a mundane training seminar and trade show. With the kids getting older, Megan had decided to try to find a job in residential real estate. The past few years had been all about finding the next thing-there had been the private trainer and yoga classes and ceramics and finally a memoir-writing group, which in Megan’s case had of course been fiction. Each of the activities was a desperate attempt to find the elusive “fulfillment” that those who have everything crave. In reality, they were looking up when perhaps they should have been looking down, searching for enlightened spirituality when all along Megan knew that the answer probably lay with the more base and primitive.

If she were asked, Megan would claim that she didn’t plan it. It was spur of the moment, no big deal, but on her second night down staying at the Tropicana, a scant two blocks from La Creme, she donned her clingiest outfit and visited the club.

“You saw me?” Megan asked.

“No. And I guess you didn’t seek me out.”

There was hurt in Lorraine’s voice. Megan had seen her old friend behind the bar and kept her distance. The club was big and dark. People liked to get lost in places like that. It was easy not to be seen.

“I didn’t mean…” Megan stopped. “So who then?”

“I don’t know. But it’s true?”

“It was only one time,” Megan said.

Lorraine said nothing.

“I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

“Why did you come back?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me,” Lorraine said. “But a cop found out. Same one who’s been looking for you all these years. He’s never given up.”

“And now you think he’ll find me?”

“Yeah,” Lorraine said. “I think there’s a pretty good chance he’ll find you.”

“So this visit is a warning?”

“Something like that.”

“What else is it?”

“I don’t know what happened that night,” Lorraine said. “And I don’t want to know. I’m happy. I like my life. I do what I please with whom I please. I don’t get into other people’s stuff, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“And I may be wrong. I mean, you know how the club is. Bad lighting. And it’s been, what, seventeen years? So I could have been mistaken. It was only for a second, but for all I know it was the same night you were there. But what with you back and now someone else gone missing…”

“What are you talking about, Lorraine? What did you see?”

Lorraine looked up and swallowed. “Stewart,” she said, fiddling with the unlit cigarette. “I think I saw Stewart Green.”