Chapter 7
CHAPTER
ON THE WAY home, my phone buzzes. It’s Oscar’s Restaurant. My heart lets out a celebratory whoop. He didn’t forget! I pick up on the Tesla’s speaker.
“Hello, is this Mrs. Bruce Stone?”
“It is,” I say with a grin, wait for the man to confirm we have a reservation for tonight.
Maybe I’ll wear the black sling-back high heels Bruce says make my legs look longer.
They’re hard to walk in, but tonight I’ll be his girlfriend.
When we get home, I’ll slip into the negligee, pull my hair from its chignon, pretend I’m a hot librarian.
Bruce and I have never role-played but it might spice things up, set us on a new course.
“Mrs. Stone? Are you there?”
“Oh. Sorry. Yes, I’m here.”
“Your husband left his credit card.”
“Pardon?”
“Yes. He left it after lunch.”
Can’t tonight. We’re opening a new office in Chicago …
“Mrs. Stone?”
“How did you get my number?”
“Our bookkeeper, Claudia Weeks, recognized the name.”
Claudia’s daughter is on Circe’s cheer squad. “I’ll swing by and pick it up.”
Oscar’s is on Nob Hill with a gorgeous view of the Bay.
The parking lot is almost empty when I arrive.
A flagstone path leads down a tree-lined walkway that twinkles with tiny white lights at night.
I push through the ornate iron-and-glass door.
Inside, chairs are stacked on tables and a young guy with a ponytail mops the wood floors.
Plush red-velvet banquettes and wooden tables set beneath crystal chandeliers look garish in the bright light of day, but at night there’s no place more romantic.
Bruce took me to Oscar’s the day we married at city hall. It was way too expensive back then, but we splurged to mark the occasion, ate shrimp cocktail and fettuccini alfredo, and shared a tiramisu for dessert. We’ve only missed one anniversary since—the year he had an emergency appendectomy.
I head to the polished bar where a gray-haired man in a white button-down and black trousers washes out glasses at a small sink, his back to me. “Excuse me, I’m Mrs. Stone. My husband left his credit card?”
“Ah,” he says, drying his hands. “Yes, I’m the one who called.” He reaches into a drawer and pulls out the card and a gray cashmere cardigan. Turning, he hesitates for a split second, or maybe just straightens up after being bent over the sink, before handing both over.
I glance at the black credit card. It’s Bruce’s. But the sweater isn’t. The floor beneath my practical leather shoes shifts and rolls.
“Did you feel that?” I ask the bartender. Tiny earthquakes happen all the time in San Francisco.
“What?”
“Nothing. Thank you.”
Once in the car, I check the sweater’s tag: Zara—cheap chic—size extra small.
I smell it and recognize Sweet Nothings from a recent shopping trip with Circe.
My daughter wanted to pick out her first bottle of perfume—Emi and Charlotte already had theirs.
I gave her a forty-dollar price limit, and she picked the light, woodsy scent.
My hands grip the steering wheel as worries flutter like moths to a flame.
But Dr. Bob says that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.
Bruce has always been a devoted husband and father.
Carelessly, I toss the cardigan onto the passenger seat, put Bruce’s card in my wallet for safekeeping, and drive away. But the past nips at my heels …
Tell me the one about Icarus, I begged Mama J.
She made shadow birds on the wall of our tent using her hand and a cigarette lighter, then began …
Daedalus, Icarus’s dad, was an inventor held captive by King Minos on the island of Crete. To escape, Daedalus made two sets of wings out of feathers and wax. Before they jumped out of a window and left the island behind, he warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun. But the kid did anyway.
Why? I asked.
Arrogance.
What’s that?
Believing the rules of this world don’t apply to you. Anyway, Icarus’s wings fell apart, and he plummeted to the earth and died.
If you made me wings, I’d listen to you, I promised.
That’s BS, Penny. You think you’re special, too. One day it’ll bite you in the ass.
“That’s BS,” I now tell Mama J, then pull into the garage of our home and carry the sweater and groceries inside.
Before starting on dinner—it never hurts to have a fallback—I work a bit more on my computer program.
Parsing data always settles my nerves. After an hour, I’m ready to prep the backup meal and make tiramisu.
Just in case. After putting the potatoes in the oven for the gnocchi, I mix a spice rub and slather it on the raw lamb, then wash my hands at the kitchen sink.
Outside, the sun has begun her descent, and the Bay is a sparkling obsidian blanket.
I have so much to be thankful for and tonight will be perfect, no matter where we have dinner.
Something dark flutters in the corner of my eye.
It grows larger and larger as it hurtles toward me.
I leap back, shocked, as it smashes into the window like a bullet.
The kitchen is filled with sharp crackles as fractures in the glass spread, then radiate out in a spiderweb pattern.
At its center is an ugly blot of bright-red blood and torn black feathers.
“Will you walk into my parlor?” said a spider to a fly. Mama J cackles.
The line is from an old poem she’d memorized as a child, about a cunning spider who used flattery to trick a silly fly into landing on his web, then trapped her in silk threads and ate her alive.
Clearly, the angst I’m feeling about my marriage is resurrecting unsettling memories.
Mama J only repeated that poem when she was high.
I head out the kitchen’s back door. A large crow lies in the grass, neck broken. Its claws twitch, and the bird’s beak opens and closes, like it’s trying to tell me something. One beady eye watches me for a few seconds, rolls, then glazes over.
“Poor thing,” I say.
A crow means bad luck, Mama J reminds me.
The weight of a shadow lands on my shoulder. Heart thudding, I whirl. But there’s no one there. I take a few slow breaths to ground myself. “Birds fly into windows all the time.”
Using a kitchen towel, I gently pick up the broken bird and bury it below my garden, then head back inside to finish making Bruce’s favorite dessert. More than ever, I’m determined to set my marriage back on track and return the memories of Mama J to the deep waters where she’s buried.