The last time, at the last meeting Sarah had gone to, Jane had wanted to talk to her and Sarah had said she was in a hurry and Jane had talked to her on the way to their cars, thanking Sarah for going to the Mayor’s office, a trip Sarah had been trying to forget, so Sarah had not dwelled on the point and had simply told Jane she was welcome.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Jane had told her. They had stood by their cars. Sarah’s car was on Jane’s left, so Jane was standing by her own open door and looking across the top of Sarah’s car at Sarah.
Had Jane glanced down, then? Sarah wondered now. Because Jane had said, then, “It was really unexpected. It was nice that you tried.”
And had Jane paused before she said “tried?” Had she said it was nice that you tried? Or had she said it was nice that you… tried?
She kept driving in the direction she hoped Dan’s house lay.
She found it. Without getting lost she managed to get herself into the neighborhood and recognized it as Dan’s neighborhood, and then found, in relatively quick fashion, Dan’s house.
She hesitated only a moment before pulling into the driveway and picking up the package and opening up her door and getting out into the cold again. If anything, it was windier than it had been when she’d come outside. Colder. She felt her breath pulled from her mouth by the wind as it whistled past and knew that she would sound breathless when she went up to the porch. She walked around the car, and onto the small cement block that served as the house’s front stoop.
There was a lengthy crack between the sidewalk and the stoop, a widening, raw-edged crack in the cement. The sidewalk was pulling away from the stoop.
She knocked on the door, then noticed the doorbell to the side and briefly paused to consider whether knocking and then ringing the doorbell would be too much. Before she could ring the bell, she realized that she did not know whether Dan would even be home. She had not stopped to wonder whether he would be off work today or home. It was unlikely that he would be here at all, she thought.
She rang the bell, hoping for Dan to open the door and invite her in. It was getting colder and she hugged herself with one arm, the other still holding the package out from her. Then she wondered, if Dan was home, would he be sick? Would he have someone here?
She did not ring the doorbell again but stood there in the cold. She was about to turn away and go back to her car, with a feeling of defeat and disappointment mixed, in her chest, with emotions like relief when she heard “I’ll be right there! Hang on!” from inside the house and steps, heavy booted steps.
The door opened and Sarah tried to smile. She did not quite achieve the effect and as Dan stepped back a little, surprised, she fumbled for what to say and how to say it, thrown out of any situation she’d ever been in and for a moment, unlike herself.
She held out the package. “Hi,” she said. “I’ve got a package.”
Dan would later think that she had planned that line, that she must have driven over determining what to say in order to come across as friendly and clever. He would not tell her that was what he thought, that he’d decided that she wanted to impress him and be funny, and that she’d achieved that. But he would think it and he would like thinking that she must have done that to make him like her.
“Hi. Um. Hi. God, it’s cold. Come in.” He looked over her shoulder at the car. “Anyone with you?”
She shook her head. He was wearing a thick plaid shirt, the kind of shirt that doubled as a jacket for men who go outdoors a lot but don’t want to wear jackets at their job. He had, she could see, a few shirts under that outer shirt, as well, and he was wearing jeans, black denim jeans, that were too large for him but yet somehow did not appear to be hanging loosely. He had on those work boots he’d worn the first time she saw him, this time fully laced up. There was a pair of gloves on the back of the couch, which faced the television, which was tuned to the local news.
“Watching the news?” she asked.
“What? No. Getting ready for work. Actually. I was getting ready for work and just had it on. As background noise.”
He glanced at the clock.
“Oh, I’m keeping you. I’ll come back.”
“That’s okay. Come on in.” She was fully inside now, but he meant it, she knew, as further invitation, to take off her coat, to sit down. Did he want her to sit down? She felt the oppression of being late pressing on her now, a strange feeling on her day off. His time, his hurry, had transferred to her.
Dan seemed unbothered, though, and motioned with his arm. She opened up her coat a little, still carrying the cold from outside with her, waiting for the cold and the house’s temperature, which was not quite warm, to mingle and even out.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m an excavator,” he said.
She did not follow up. She stood behind the couch. The news anchor was describing a cooking segment coming up. Dan stood by her, near the couch, hand on his work gloves. Seeing them made her feel intrusive. The package sat under her hands and she looked down, looking at her hands rather than at the package. The cooking segment was about pasta and how to keep it from sticking together. The anchor mentioned it as helpful for the holidays. Sarah felt that the reference to holidays was loose, anchorless, out of place.
“Would you like some coffee?” Dan asked.
She shook her head and looked at the house. It was still bare.
Dan looked at her.
She looked up and saw him looking at her and then looked back down and smiled, embarrassed.
November 15:
She suspected that she knew who “Ivy Lee” was, even though the person who had called on the phone had never identified herself. She knew, too, that it “Ivy Lee” had to have some connection with Dylan.
Those two things, one suspicion and one piece of knowledge, had made her finally take the package out of the drawer where it had sat next to the engagement ring’s box, and made her put the package on her passenger’s seat, just in front of the scrap of straw wrapper that still lay there, untouched, and she sat in her car for a moment letting it warm up in the unusually cold November day, a day that felt like the temperature was below freezing but was probably in the teens, with a wind that whipped against her face the moment she walked outside the door and made her eyes water. She sat in her car for a moment as the car warmed up and she waited to turn on the heater, the vents pointed up and away from the seat, and the straw wrapper, and she thought about how the package had kept her, for over a month, from opening the drawer to look at the engagement ring.
But she’d wanted to this morning. She’d desperately wanted to open up the drawer and look at the engagement ring today and had finally done so, pulling the box out quickly without looking at the package, or trying not to look at it. It was slightly larger, she thought now (in the car, now looking at it), than a compact disc case, and heavier than it should be.
She’d pulled the engagement ring box out of the drawer and sat down on her bed, and then looked where her top drawer, the drawer that on most dressers is slimmer than the others, as though the makers had run out of space at the top and decided to put in a drawer for… what? She used it for sundries, as she thought of them: her wallet, with its multiple categories and holding areas and divisions (cash, credit cards, ID cards, shopper’s cards and discount club cards and club membership cards all each in their own section). She was a member of three different grocery store card-clubs, and also carried her mother’s cards with her now, in their own special section: health insurance card, her mother’s discount cards and point cards and credit cards, too. She also kept some other items in that drawer: keys, things she had to mail out, some important papers (like the envelope with Mom’s health care directives and powers of attorney and other papers that Sarah had taken her to have done nearly a year ago, telling her that “yes, it’s probably unnecessary” but it still needed to be done. Mom had protested that she was not very ill and did not need those things, but Sarah had felt the hesitation before Mom had said it, and knew that Mom felt it, too. Mom had not even paused, then, on her way to get her coat to go meet with the lawyer that Tammy had said she should go talk to.
Sarah had sat on her bed with the engagement ring and looked at her open drawer, with the package in it, and had then stood up and closed the drawer and then sat back down again. She opened up the engagement ring’s box and looked at the ring, sitting in its holder and sparkling and catching the morning light. She was off of work today and had woken up and showered and dressed and realized that she had not one single thing she needed to do. She would go see Mom, of course, but beyond that there was nothing that needed attending to, no tubs to clean, groceries to shop for, sidewalks to shovel, books to return to the library.
She should go talk to Jane, maybe, but not today. She did not let things that could be done intrude on the pleasant blankness of a day with nothing in it.
She had taken the ring out. She held it up to the light and turned it back and forth and looked at it. She tilted it and saw brief momentary dazzles of light thrown onto the ceiling above her as the diamond caught the sunlight from her bedroom window and tossed it playfully back out at the room.
She had put it on her finger, sliding it slowly on. It was a little too large at this point, her finger slightly smaller than it had been months ago. She did not need to twist or turn or pull or push. The ring slid on smoothly and easily and sat on her finger, her other fingers applying slight pressure to hold it in place.
She had stretched out her hand and looked at the ring and watched it on her hand.
It should have, she thought, been joined by another ring. She let herself think that and then before she could grow sad, she had gotten angry, instead, angry at the package for lingering in the back of her mind, for sitting in her drawer, for being there.
She could put two and two together, she thought angrily, as she got up and put the ring back in its box and then opened the drawer and took out, with her right hand, the package while her left hand carefully put the ring back in the drawer. She took the package out of her room and into the kitchen, where she allowed herself a second cup of coffee while it sat on the counter.
Ivy Lee the package said on its return address.
She knew that “Ivy Lee” had to be the woman who called.
The return address on it she had looked up on the Internet and found that it was on the Las Vegas Strip. She had never been to
Especially now that she knew that Dylan lived there.
“Ivy Lee” sounded in her opinion like a stripper’s name.
She had stared at the package sitting on the counter and sipped her second cup of coffee.
After she finished her cup of coffee she had taken the package and put on her coat and walked outside and gasped in surprise at the cold. She did not, though, pause to button up her coat, instead getting into her car and starting it up and letting it warm up. She was parking her car on the driveway these days because Mom’s car was in her garage where she’d had Peyton move it. Mom did not have a garage at her house, which Sarah went to every other week to water the plants in and dust and vacuum a little. Mom’s house was like a showcase home from years ago: everything untouched and unruffled, but old and used.
She now put the car into gear and backed out. She had nothing she needed to do today. She drove slowly up the street and did not look at the package because she was driving. She didn’t know where she was taking the package, not for a few moments, until she realized that she was driving in the general direction of Dan’s house. The one whose fence I hit: she decided to describe him to herself that way, because when she thought of him as Dan she felt uncomfortable. She drove more or less towards the area of the city where she knew he lived, on the outskirts of the actual city of
She would take the package to Dan’s house.
He had, after all, brought it into her house in the first place. It seemed appropriate right now to do that.
When she turned a corner just slightly too fast she heard a box slide across her back seat and she bit her lip and thought Damn to herself and realized that she had never actually hung up any of the fliers that Jane had given her to hang up. She also then realized that she had parked next to Jane at the last meeting, the last meeting she had gone to, anyway, which was two meetings ago. Sarah had not gone to the last October meeting and was probably not going to go to the November meeting, either. Jane had left no messages on her cell phone or home phone, either, which was a change for Jane in that she had called Sarah at least one time per month since they’d met.
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