Seven Minutes to Noon (20 page)

There was a pulse of silence.

“There are so many assumptions in what you just said, Alice, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Right. But what if—”

“Do you think you’re in danger?”

“I don’t know. He never tries to talk to me.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do.” Frannie’s voice was breaking up again and she spoke quickly. “If you see him again, you’ll call us right away. You’ll keep telling us everything.
Everything.
We’ll do the rest.”

Then her voice evaporated into whatever tunnel had swallowed the car she was in.

The next morning, Mike dropped off the kids at school, then returned home to wait for Alice to get ready for the ten o’clock appointment with Pam. She found him at the kitchen table, wearing clean but torn
work clothes, his eyes fixed on a single spot of the morning paper.

“Mike?” Her presence seemed to startle him. “You okay?”

“Fine.” He pushed the paper away and stood up. “Ready?”

“You weren’t actually reading the newspaper just now.”

“Can’t concentrate,” Mike said. “Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“That’s not like you.” They locked up their front door and passed together through the shadowy front hall. “We can’t both be insomniacs. That’ll never work.”

He smiled a little but didn’t laugh.

Alice reached up to tuck the faded tag back into the collar of his forest green T-shirt as he locked the building’s front door behind them. As she was about to move down the front stoop, he caught her wrist. “From now on, when I can’t go see houses with you, you’ll have Pam meet you and take you over. Okay?”

“Yes,” Alice agreed. There was a wisp of cool breeze in the air, a hint of the autumn chill that would soon swallow the last of summer.

“And we’ll get Maggie to bring you to work, or that Jason of yours—”

“Mike, I don’t need a babysitter! Frannie said to stay on busy streets and I will.”

“I don’t get it.” He was walking a little too quickly for Alice, who struggled to keep up. “How can I not worry? Worrying doesn’t belong only to you.”

“Mike, slow down.”

Quickness, a call to action, had always been his response to anxiety when upon rare occasion he succumbed to it. She wished he
would
leave the worry to her; she was better at it.

He walked faster.

“Mike, I’ve only told you what I’ve seen and heard. The facts. You’re the one always telling me not to embellish.” She wished now that she hadn’t told him every
nuance of her thoughts and fears, that she had trusted her instinct to hold things back.

She hooked her arm through his to keep him from racing ahead. “You’re the only person I know who gets more energy with less sleep.”

After a minute he allowed himself to fall into an easier pace. Arms linked, the two walked south along Court Street. It began to feel more like the old Carroll Gardens than the shinier, gentrified one that had taken hold the closer you got to Atlantic Avenue. Here, there were still unprepossessing storefronts, plain-vanilla hair salons offering discounts on ladies’ weekly styling, independent video stores, publike eateries with five-dollar hamburgers.

“It’s kind of nice down here,” Alice said. “Calm.”

Mike hummed agreement; the shift in neighborhood was having a good effect on them both.

They arrived early at the house on Third Place between Clinton and Henry Streets. It was a lovely, quiet block lined with simple brownstones set back behind the front yards that had given Carroll Gardens the second half of its name. The address Pam had scrawled on the page was a corner house with a flowering front yard that turned around the side of the house, connecting seamlessly with a backyard. It was an unusual layout. Massive clusters of antique red roses spilled over the front fence.

“Get a whiff of this,” Mike said, leaning in to smell the blossoms.

Alice stepped into the yard and leaned toward the delicious roses, whose scent indeed was a tonic. “You could really look forward to springtime here.” She pictured herself inside the house, standing behind one of the gleaming windows, waiting out winter for spring to come.

They stood in front of the three-story house, observing and discussing what little they could tell from the outside. It had the tidiness of recent renovation, they decided. The full-pane windows looked new, with wood
frames painted slate blue. The house’s facade was a rich, chocolaty brown. The front stoop was wide and solid with freshly painted black banisters in scrolling ironwork that led to an arched front door of polished oak. There was an air of peacefulness to this well-tended house.

“I like it more than any of the other houses I’ve seen so far,” Alice said.

“It looks good from the outside.” Mike turned a mischievous smile on her. “Which means it’s got to be a total wreck on the inside. Right? Poetic justice.”

“I hope not.”

“We should probably take it anyway,” he said. “Take it no matter what. Just move.”

“You sound like Maggie.”

His eyes shone and she knew what was coming. Mike did voices, impressions, and was very good at it. “’Twas an annus horribilus, ’twas.” With a hand on Alice’s lower back he tugged her closer. They melted into a hug and shared what felt like well-deserved laughter.

Half an hour later, Pam still hadn’t arrived. Alice called her office number but her voice mail came on, and the machine answered at her home. Alice left messages in both places. Then, as a last resort, she tentatively walked up the front stoop and rang the bell. She could hear its faint chime behind the door, dissolving into silence.

As soon as Alice got home with the children that afternoon, she picked up the phone and dialed Pam’s office. All day at Blue Shoes her calls to Pam had gone unanswered, routed through Garden Hill’s voice mail system to Pam’s mailbox. She never called, as hoped, to describe some scheduling mishap. An errant alarm clock. Crossed appointments. Run-down cell phone batteries. Something to explain her absence at the Third Place house. As she listened to the phone ring, Alice assumed the voice-mail system would answer again. Instead, this time, she was greeted by a human voice, “Garden Hill Realty.”

“I’d like to speak with Pam Short.”

“Hold on, please.”

Another woman’s voice, this one deeper and a little coarse, came on the line. “This is Judy Gersten.”

Alice recognized the name from the storefront’s window:
JUDITH GERSTEN, LICENSED BROKER.

“I’m filling in for Pam today. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Alice Halpern. She’s been showing me houses. We had an appointment this morning at ten and she didn’t come. I was surprised—”

“Yes, Alice, Pam mentioned she was showing you the Third Place house. I couldn’t find your number. I’ve wanted to call you all day.”

“Is Pam sick?”

Judy didn’t answer. Then, “She had an accident.”

“Is she all right?”

There was another pause, this one longer, and Alice knew in that instant that something was terribly wrong.

“What happened? Where is she?”

“Alice, dear.” Judy’s voice lowered to a grainy whisper. “Pam was fond of you — she told me that.”

Was.

“I heard your voice mails today. I’ll help you with the Third Place house.”

“Please tell me what happened.”

Judy sighed deeply. Alice could see her sitting at the far right desk, the one cluttered with knickknacks, beneath the framed needlepoint legends that might have read
OFFICE SWEET HOME
or
TODAY IS A NEW DAY,
reminders not to mourn what couldn’t be changed.

“A neighbor found her in her car this morning, with the motor running. The man smelled gas coming from behind the garage door.”

Alice could see the black-painted scrolling door of Pam’s garage, an urban rarity for which she had seemed remarkably lucky.

“But that’s impossible,” Alice said. “Pam
wouldn’t.”

She saw Pam’s lips curling in humor, heard her shout of laughter, smelled the baby powder wafting off her skin. The woman had so many projects and plans. She never would have sent Alice to the house this morning, if she had known....

Unless. Had Pam sent her to that house, knowing she wouldn’t be there, knowing Alice would love it and be on her way? Was it a parting gift?

Alice had no experience with the parameters of suicide, neither the slope toward it nor the promise of its obliteration. All her assumptions aside, she had no real idea if one approached it logically or blanked out by despair. She recalled the illegible scrawls on today’s page from Pam’s date book; there was no way anyone but Pam could have discerned her intentions for the day. Alice reminded herself that she barely knew the woman; everything she believed about Pam was based on assumptions.

“We’re all in shock,” Judy said softly. “Pam’s at Long Island College Hospital, if you want to send flowers or a card.”

“I don’t understand,” Alice said. “Do you mean she’s alive?”

“Barely. We’re hoping.”

Alice jotted down the hospital information on her kitchen calendar, which reminded her that it was Thursday. A simple fact. Another Thursday.

She felt suddenly sick, as if two opposing currents were at war in her body, one surging up from her stomach, the other pressing down from her mind. She quickly said good-bye to Judy and hung up the phone. Peter was playing on the rug with his little fire truck, guiding it through a maze he had built of boxes and wooden blocks. Grateful for his concentration, Alice rushed past him en route to the bathroom, where she flung up the toilet seat in the nick of time.

She called the hospital three times that night and each time was told that Pam was in intensive care and could receive no visitors other than family. It would have to be enough to know she was alive.

Alice decided she could appease her desire to help by doing the neighborly thing. She would bring a chicken stew over to the house for Pam’s husband, Ray; after all, the man still had to eat. She pulled a chicken out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost overnight. Then she assembled ingredients on the counter and went into the garden for a sprig of fresh rosemary.

She could hear that the kids were out of their bath downstairs and were busily getting themselves ready for bed. Alice had been on dishes duty tonight, Mike on bedtime. In a lull of activity, Mike came up the stairs into the kitchen.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He stood back and watched Alice finish her preparations, finding the last can of crushed tomatoes at the back of the cupboard, pulling carrots and potatoes out of the fridge.

“Are you cooking
now
?”

“I thought I’d get it started right after the kids go to school in the morning.” She took two onions out of the fridge drawer.

He squatted in front of the corner cabinet, reached in for the big, heavy soup pot they had received as a wedding gift, and carried it over to the stove. Then he came over to hug her. “All of this,” he whispered. “It’s going to be all right. It has to be. Okay?”

Was he reassuring her? Or asking her to reassure him?

“Okay,” she whispered into his salty-smelling neck. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll just take the kids and go, okay? Anywhere. We’ll just leave.”

He nodded. And so it was agreed. They wouldn’t fight this battle for long.

“I’ll get the kids into bed,” Mike said.

“I’ll join you,” she said, and turned off the lights.

Pam’s brownstone looked just as imperial and peaceful as when Alice had first seen it, the basement-level garage door shut tight as a sleeping eye. The roses out front were a sea of fragrant yellow that made Alice’s heart weep. She still couldn’t believe Pam had tried to take her own life. They had been together just two days ago and Pam had seemed better than fine. She had seemed utterly, perfectly herself.

Alice rang the bell and waited with Jason on the front stoop. She had requested his help carrying over the
heavy stew, without mentioning Mike’s insistence that she go everywhere now with an escort — or, more precisely, a bodyguard — until the limo driver was picked up by the police.

A very old woman answered the door and squinted at them from behind thick glasses that magnified her eyes to twice their normal size. She was so thin her veins were visible beneath her skin, wrapped tight on sinewy muscle. Her hair was teased into a 1950s-style beehive, and she wore thick blue eye shadow. The psychedelic retro Mary Mekko dress was the real giveaway.

“You must be Pam’s mother,” Alice said.

“Do I know you?”

“I’m Alice, a client of Pam’s, and this is Jason.”

“I’m Esther. That looks heavy. Give it over.”

Esther took the container out of Jason’s hands and carried it through the living room and into the kitchen. Alice followed, understanding where Pam got her determination but not her size. Jason, meanwhile, waited in the vestibule for Alice to complete her errand.

“You know Pammie’s husband, Ray?” Esther slid Alice’s stew onto the kitchen counter next to a small mountain of other pots and pans and containers of neighborly food. A diminutive man with a shaved head, wearing baggy olive-green shorts and a black T-shirt, sat on a stool at the marble-topped island.

Sitting across from him were Frannie and Giometti.

It was a shock to see the detectives out of context, in Pam Short’s kitchen where they couldn’t possibly belong. Alice stood dumbly at the kitchen threshold, not knowing what to say. Ray twisted around to look at her, the stranger in his kitchen, and she knew she had to explain herself.

“I’m Alice. Pam was helping me find a house. I’ve been spending a lot of time with her lately and I was just shocked when I heard—”

“Oh yes, she mentioned you!” Ray lit up, and turned to the detectives. “Pam was hell-bent on finding this lady a house. She never gave up on anyone. You see? That’s
what I mean. It never made any sense to me that she would do such a thing to herself.”

Alice’s expression must have shown her confusion, as Ray now turned back to her and spoke as adamantly as he had to the detectives.

“It’s not Pam’s style,” he said. “She isn’t repressed enough to kill herself.”