Maybe it was. She had spotty follow-through and mixed results. She was doing well with Agnes Lee—whom she’d be meeting the following day, at long last—and felt sure she could get a book out of her, but she could feel herself caving to Miles. Maud sipped her Scotch and thought about Clemmie’s face and sweaty head and about Heidi’s unwashed hair. Something tickled her arm. Automatically she swatted at it. Dammit, it was a ladybug! She picked it up and set it on a blade of grass. Please be good luck.
She went back upstairs and pulled her red dress out of her closet. She fiddled with her hair. She painted defiant black lines under her lower lids. Why would she ever consider seeing him again? When they first broke up, her grief had been all-consuming. She’d been miserable and made bargains at every step. If I do not cry, he will come back. If I see three white cars in a row, he will be on my doorstep. If I picture us together, we will be. But in spite of all her concentration, Miles stayed away. So Maud changed. Incrementally. She was one person, and then she was another, not entirely different but enough so that she wasn’t a person who loved Miles Warren anymore. A doppelganger. A tougher twin. Naming the world, naming the buildings, her old strong self. Cornice, balustade, plinth.
It wasn’t that she did things so differently that people noticed. She kept the same schedule with the exception of the holes left open by Miles’s absence, but they’d become few and far between anyway and it wasn’t hard to fill them. Ironically, she was more like Miles post-Miles. More cool-headed and decisive. As a result of her buffered internal rearrangements, the world around her changed. After years—a whole life—of being careful and watchful, of figuring out how to fly under the radar, get the teachers to like her, land the job, keep her mother on track, sustain a relationship with her judgmental, bossy, shallow father, she’d ended up nearly alone, except for Clemmie. Miles had left her for a woman four years younger. She’d gotten too old for him, too demanding, not adoring enough. Her stomach had sprouted a few stretch marks during pregnancy. She was… wifelike. And he already had one wife.
No matter what he said about never having loved his wife, he stayed. Maud finally understood—he was never leaving her. Why should he? She took care of him, the house, the children, their social life, their money, their vacations, their reality. Miles had his professorship and his occasional publications. Who would forgo that deal unless there were something truly awful going on at home—and there wasn’t. He was bored by her, she told the stories of her day in a childlike manner, and then and then and then. They didn’t have a sensual connection anymore. Typical married-man-having-an-affair complaints. Now she knew—if a man said he’d never loved his wife, he was reinterpreting his story, and he’d do so again whenever he wanted something new.
Going would be strong, not weak. And she’d have a night out on the town, in a dress. Some fun before rumbling with Agnes Lee. From what she’d gathered, there’d be no call for dresses on Fellowship Point.
Maud was in sore need of some amusement. That was the deciding factor. She was tired. Heidi had been slipping all summer. She came downstairs less and less and was dreamy and forgetful when she did. Once Clemmie had walked up to her and stroked her arm and said, “You are real,” as if she weren’t sure without the physical evidence of touch. A baby’s keenness.
When Maud was small, she’d loved Heidi so much that she named her favorite doll Heidi. Maud followed her mother around and watched with amazed rapture how Heidi folded the paper towels for napkins and pressed the seam flat. She watched her iron her white eyelet skirt, spending hours working between the cutouts until the material was crisp and flawless. Heidi smelled like fresh mineral-rich water and sunny skin. She wore bells around her ankles and put bells around Maud’s and taught her to pretend they were a herd of goats prancing gracefully down Waverly. She was tough, and cool, and fun when she was well.
Yet Heidi also got in bed sometimes and didn’t get up. Maud sat on her bed and read to her, inventing before she knew what the words were, and then later, once she learned phonetics, reading books way above her level of comprehension. She read Housekeeping, which Heidi loved because the odd people were the good people; The Handmaid’s Tale, which she understood was terrifying even if the details were fuzzy; Giovanni’s Room, which made her sigh, because people were so stubborn; The Professor’s House, which she loved for the spooky dress form and Tom’s trip to the old Southwest; and Anywhere But Here, which was Maud’s favorite, because it starred a girl. All of this helped until it didn’t. When Heidi was getting depressed, she succumbed to a series of thoughts and images, the same every time, that had to do with children and animals out alone at night in the snow. Panicked and freezing, they’d run back and forth, calling for help without anyone hearing them. Heidi pictured this in different places all around the world, even in hot countries. In the logic of depression there was snow in the desert, too.
She’d told Maud about this when Maud was five. They walked over to the river and sat on a pier looking across at New Jersey and down into the water.
“I have to tell you something,” Heidi said. “A few things, actually.”
Heidi had always talked to Maud as if they were equals.
“First thing is, Moses is going to go live in another place.”
“Where?” Maud asked. She wasn’t upset yet.
“Close enough that we’ll still see him. You will.”
A couple they knew, two burly guys, stopped to chat. Then the talk resumed. Maud had had time to think about it. “Why is he moving to another place?”
“Because he wants to live with another person.”
“Not us?”
“Not me. He isn’t moving away from you. He is tired of how sad I am. This other lady isn’t sad.”
“You’re not sad.” Maud knew that wasn’t true, but she had to defend Heidi.
Heidi kissed her where her hairline met her forehead, as she always did. “You will have to be a detective now,” Heidi said. “If I start talking about dogs who are cold or children who are hungry or frogs on a hot road, you need to call Moses. Then I’ll go away for a rest and come back.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“We’ll see. You could also stay with Moses.”
Maud shook her head. But she had ended up doing so. Many times. Kimmy was an idiot, but all right. Maud’s half siblings were innocent children, and they had the sense to think Maud was cool.
She still called her father when Heidi had an episode, but now she got in touch after Heidi was in the hospital, all arrangements set. She’d made the call the week before to Payne Whitney, where Heidi was well known. Heidi had tried to kill herself several times. She couldn’t help it. Those incidents were frightening and horrific, and Maud and Heidi both wanted to get her to the hospital before Maud had to cope with a real emergency. Maud felt awful leaving her there, but Heidi knew there was no choice and always thanked Maud for helping. In turn, Maud thanked Moses for handling the insurance and picking up the tab. She loved Moses while being aware of his selfishness. He had primed her for a man like Miles. Moses, Miles. Denial is a river, and she had floated down it for a long time. No more.