38. I have to stop writing now; it’s time for me to go. I hear Martin at the door, at last.
It was time for Esme to go, and yet: more waiting. She had called her voicemail; there was a message from Ida: she and Crystal were ETA five minutes. Her child had been having fits all day, and now that Crystal was in the game, insofar as Esme’s name had been pucked across every news channel in town, Crystal had refused to bide Ida while Esme raced to Cincinnati.
“I need another pen,” she said.
Martin gave her two. He was her only ally left, though ally overstated the extent to which he would have her back if called to testify. No doubt a hearing was in the works.
“What?” she said, because he was looking at her.
“Nothing.” And then: “You’ve got rosacea.”
“It’s called crying.”
Martin said, “You don’t have much time. The people downstairs can ID you if anyone asks.”
“No one’s going to ask until I’m long gone.” She appraised herself in the mirror. “Did you bring your kit? I need work here and definitely here”—and she touched the skin girding her eyes. It was less swollen now but still pink and almost translucent.
Martin was at it in seconds.
“Just natural,” she said. “Like me, but not ruined. Like a mom who’s ecstatic to see her child and has no other care in the world but her.”
“Right.” He stepped away. These figments of joy were not anything he could heap on the expression she wore now and had, in fact, worn every minute since Thurlow Dan kidnapped her team and stopped responding to the lead negotiator. Also, science says people will recognize a happy face before a sad one, but only if the happy face is congruent with the emotional context these people have experienced to date. So if Ida was going to register the sparkle in her mother’s look (beta lenses that pooled with light) or the bow tie of crow’s feet at both eyes (to simulate motion of the orbicularis oculi muscle, which engages when you smile for real), if Ida was going to see in his work indices of happiness, she’d have to have known something of happiness, which she manifestly had not. She was nine years old with one foot in the grave.
Try and fail, try again. He crimped gelatin into wrinkle lines; Esme flocked her chin; and together, in haste, they produced a face that was, if not ebullient, not a billboard of despair, either.
He packed up his kit. Esme turned on the TV. Thurlow Dan had not been heard from in hours. There was rumor of a ransom tape — Just tell us what you want! — and, circling overhead, choppers with boys humping the skids and gunning for this cult leader of national import. The hostages had been identified, their families called. Jim’s name had not come up, but already he had put the whole thing on Esme: Anonymous sources close to the White House say this has been a rogue intervention. It will be resolved amicably. The parties responsible will be brought to justice. Where are these parties? Hard to say.
“You want the Weather Channel?” Martin asked.
A blizzard was rolling in. Great time to hit the road. Visibility nil. Or at least the nil of snow pelting the windshield like rice when your ship clicks into hyperdrive. Nine hours to Cincinnati, going on 10, 15, 40. Reagan National had just closed.
“Animal Planet?”
She looked up and it was cops, and kittens who needed to eat. “No.”
He continued to flip until his flipping got on her nerves, so she said, “Give it,” only she was out of range, the remote didn’t work, and where the hell were Crystal and Ida? Then, at last: a knock at the door that returned her to the state she was in.
“Should I go?” Martin said.
“No. You can stay.” Though what this meant was, Please stay, because the reproach bound up in every word that would fall from Crystal’s lips, mingled with Ida and her needs — the audacity and insistence of her needs — would undo what chance Esme had to disarm the blast of fate that said she was going to give up on everything; why not start now?
“Mom!” The voice a squall and the child barreling into the room, headed for her mother but stopped short by the sight of Martin, who made her blushy and knock-kneed. Here was a man of such intimacy with her mother, she might have begrudged him the time except that maybe, for this intimacy, he was also her dad.
“Hey, kiddo,” Martin said, and tousled her hair, which was clipped on either side with ruby barrettes and not remotely inviting of a tousle, but what did Martin know? He had six brothers and an affenpinscher named Joe.
“Hi, muffin,” Esme said, and she twirled her finger in the air to encourage Ida to show off the new coat Esme had left for her this morning. Snow leopard with hot-pink satin lining. “You like it?” she said. “You look ready for Hollywood.”
Ida smiled but took off the coat and tossed it on the bed as though she’d caught whiff of a bribe. She was in blue leggings tucked into snow boots, and a cable-knit zip hoodie whose sleeves were too long and balled in either fist. Apparently, this was a stay against anxiety newly added to an arsenal of thumb sucking, teeth grinding, and rationing of her stuffed animals into family groups of three.
Esme tried to roll up her sleeves, but Ida demurred. Said, “This place is creepy. Why are we in a hotel?”
Esme looked to Martin, who was suddenly married to the reorganizing of his kit, and then to Crystal, still by the door, who smiled horribly and said, “I told Ida you’d explain everything when we got here.”
But how much was left to explain? And what were the odds Ida still didn’t know? CNN had been breaking revelations about the miscreant Esme Haas every five seconds. Ida was out of school, which meant Esme could not palm off the responsibility on some bratty kid calling her names and spilling the beans, because it was all the talk at breakfast and at dinner, too. In theory this should have come as a relief, but no. Esme didn’t want to be the one to tell Ida. Tell her what? Your mother is going away for a long time.
“Yeah,” Ida said. “There’s news vans on our front lawn. It’s kinda weird.”
Esme took her by the wrist but got sweater sleeve instead. “Did you talk to anyone? Did anyone take your picture? This is important, Ida. Tell me. I won’t be mad.”
She let go of the sleeve. She worried the vibrato in her voice communicated panic.
“Just one,” Ida said. “He was nice.”
“A reporter, honey? What did he look like?”
But Ida had grown shy. She toed the carpet with her boot and said, “I dunno,” shrugging and balling her sweater.
Esme asked if Crystal saw the guy. She had not. She was, she said, too busy patronizing the Helix coffers with her allowance to notice, not that Esme knew anything about it. Okay, so she was not just angry but hurt. And maybe even confused. The Helix was her first adult passion, and now it was being tested, and because in the nascence of any passion there was not supposed to be doubt, she felt cheated.
“Well,” Esme said, and she gestured for Ida to come sit next to her on the bed. She needed to regroup and adopt a suitable interrogation technique. “What did you do today, turnip? After skating, I mean.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Because I left you some DVDs for when you got home. They were on the kitchen table.”
Ida paused to recall which movies and did the thing Esme was hoping for, which was to establish a baseline for truth telling from here on out: she looked right and snarled her upper lip, which was already too thin and blanched to rank as an asset. Esme smiled. Amazing how the second you objectify someone you love, she becomes at once less and more beautiful.