A Woman Lost Read online

  Sarah entered the apartment as I entertained the last thought.

  “Hello?” she called out, obviously surprised to find anyone home.

  “In the kitchen,” I shouted back. I poured a glass of wine and handed it to her as she walked in.

  “Oh, my God.” She looked at all of the food and then over at the table. “You got me flowers … you even lit the candles.” She looked flabbergasted.

  At first, I smiled. Then I saw Haley standing right behind her. Goddammit. I tried not to flinch. Casually, I grabbed another wineglass and poured some for Haley.

  “Someone’s feeling pretty guilty.”

  “Shut up, Haley! Lizzie … ” Sarah’s voice trailed off and her eyes glistened. “This is perfect,” she continued. “Haley and I were just talking about ordering in.”

  “Good thing I ordered enough for an army.” I smiled my best fake smile and indicated all of the food.

  Sarah looked radiant as the two of us carried the takeout to the table.

  Haley couldn’t contain herself. “So, what is it? An anniversary or something?”

  I took a deep breath. “No, I just thought it would be nice to have a quiet dinner with my girlfriend. I’ve been working too much, and I’ve missed our time together.”

  Haley either didn’t take the hint or chose to ignore it completely. She sat down and began heaping fried rice onto her plate.

  Sarah grabbed some silverware while I took a seat across from Haley. I knew I should have gone for the silverware, but I was seething over Haley’s behavior. She was quickly ruining my happy feeling.

  The three of us ate in silence for a few minutes. Sarah and I ate with chopsticks, while Haley-the-Barbarian used a knife and fork.

  “Where did you get the food from? It’s really good.” Haley broke the ice, mumbling through her mouthful of sesame chicken.

  I directed my answer to my girlfriend. “I ordered from that cute little place you introduced me to,” I told Sarah. “You mentioned it was your favorite Chinese place.”

  She smiled. It really doesn’t take much effort to impress her, I thought to myself. So why don’t I do it more often? I made a mental note to pick up a card to send to her at work. After all, I couldn’t mail it to her home, since she was never there. And I didn’t want to mail it here. No, definitely not here. That would have given her the wrong idea.

  “Wherever you got it from, it’s got my stamp of approval.” Haley stood up to snatch some of the egg rolls from across the table.

  Sarah quickly thanked me, as if she were trying to distract me so I wouldn’t hit Haley. They were just best friends, I told myself.

  “Hey, I set up an appointment this weekend to get wireless Internet.” I changed the subject. “They should be here between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., hopefully.”

  Sarah set down her chopsticks and stared intently at me. “But I thought we were serious about finding a new place together.”

  I panicked. “Oh, I thought of that … I made sure they could easily transfer our service. Besides, I thought it would be nice to be able to work from home more. And you could check your email and stuff … ” I had no idea what I was talking about. I never found out about transferring service. I saw an ad on TV that had mentioned it, but I wasn’t sure if that was the company I had signed up with.

  Sarah thought about it for a minute. Then she said, “So you will be home more?”

  Jackpot. Somehow, I hit the right chord. “Yeah … and you can too. Can you access your work from your laptop? We can both work at the same time.”

  Maybe that way she would spend less time with Haley.

  “That is a thought. And you said it was easy to transfer the service … hey we can look at homes online as well.” Her face lit up again.

  Well, Lizzie, you can’t win them all. “That’s a good idea,” I said, unconvinced. I didn’t even want to think about that.”

  Haley gave me a weird look. Did she know something? With any luck, she was just choking on an egg roll.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was 7:30 in the morning and I was already in my office preparing a lecture for the following week. Usually, I tried to stay two weeks ahead, but lately my life had become so chaotic that I couldn’t get ahead. Since I wasn’t teaching and I only had office hours from one to three, I decided to hole up in my office and put my nose to the grindstone.

  I briefly considered not checking my email. If Maddie emailed, would I be strong enough to resist chatting online with her all day? I checked it. Obviously not. No emails from her. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. No matter, I had work to do.

  Half an hour later, I heard the familiar chime that heralded a new email. My eyes darted to the screen and then quickly back to my mound of work. Screw it. I read the email.

  Maddie wanted to know if I could play hooky today. Of course, she knew I wouldn’t be teaching today, and that I had no classes of my own. Maddie was quick to learn my schedule.

  I replied that it depended on what she had in mind. Several minutes passed before there was a knock on my office door. Irritated that a student couldn’t wait until my appointed office hours, I gruffly answered, “Come in.”

  Maddie’s gorgeous face popped around my door.

  I was flabbergasted. “I-I-I just got an email from you,” I stammered.

  “I know. I got your reply.” She held up her phone and laughed. “You’re like a grandma sometimes. Cell phones are amazing these days. I can email from it.”

  That explained why she could always email me on the fly. I was glued to my work computer or my laptop all day and night. I briefly considered upgrading my cell phone, but I had made a big deal to Sarah that people had survived hundreds of years without twenty-four hour access to email. She would smell a rat right away if I suddenly bought a fancy phone to replace the cheap phone that came with my plan.

  “So what do you say, professor, do you want to play hooky today?”

  I smiled. “I was planning on getting a lot of work done today.” I gestured to all of my books and journals.

  Maddie was undeterred. “Bring it along, if you must. You can do it where we are going.”

  Instead of asking questions, I packed up my things. Maddie wasn’t one to divulge all of her information at once. She was a strictly need-to-know basis type of gal. Telling me the plan was superfluous. On leaving my office, I stuck a post-it note on my door, canceling my office hours for the day.

  Maddie led me to her car. I knew it was going to be a long day when she turned the car onto the highway and we passed a sign for Estes Park. Estes was forty-five minutes away, so people didn’t drive there just to run errands for a minute or two. It was one of the many tourist traps in the Rocky Mountains and sat at the base of the Rocky Mountain National Park.

  Neither of us spoke much on the drive there. I watched the scenery flash by‌—‌horses, cows, and fields reeling past like an old-fashioned movie, all surrounded by an immensity of space.

  When Maddie pulled into Estes, it was obvious she knew where she was going. We would be hanging out at a bookstore, and one I had gone to on several occasions.

  We camped out at a large table to accommodate all of my books and notes. After ordering a chai, I sat down while Maddie wandered through the store. She returned with several interior design books and flipped through them quietly.

  From the way she was thumbing through them, I knew her mind was elsewhere. But where? I had no idea. She jumped out of her chair and wandered back to the bookshelves.

  Half an hour later, she came back to the table with a copy of The Thorn Birds, another coffee, and a pastry.

  There she sat for hours, reading the book, only getting up to go to the bathroom or to get something else to snack on.

  That was how we spent the entire day. It was heavenly. Not only did I catch up on my work, but I also got a little ahead. The only dark cloud was Maddie. She seemed out of sorts. I couldn’t tell whether she wanted to talk, or whether she wanted to stew in
company. I figured she would talk if she wanted to.

  She wandered around some more, this time returning with a CD. “Look what I found.”

  It was an Aerosmith CD, one of their greatest hits compilations. I glanced at the song titles but said nothing. I couldn’t think of a song of theirs that I knew. Smiling, I handed it back to her and then took a sip of my chai.

  Maddie started to laugh. “Oh goodness, don’t tell me you are another one. All your brother listens to is the news, and market updates.”

  “I don’t give a crap about the stock market,” I said.

  “Then what type of music do you listen to?” she asked.

  “You know … whatever is on the radio.” I couldn’t think of any of the music Sarah liked.

  “Wow! What a cop-out answer. Can you name some songs?” She crossed her arms and stared at me.

  I paused. There was no way I could bullshit my way out of this situation. We were sitting too far away from the music section for me to see any titles. “I don’t listen to the radio much.” I gestured to the books spread around me.

  “Do you listen to anything? Or do you just read?”

  Why did she have to put it that way?

  “Hey, now! No reason to be snotty … I listen to things. But they happen to be books.” I tried my cute smile.

  “You listen to audiobooks?” She tried not to laugh.

  “Yes … yes, I do. You were reading The Thorn Birds earlier,” I said meekly.

  “I didn’t find it on CD, so I had to resort to the old-fashioned method,” she retorted. “When do you listen to them?”

  “When I go for walks, or hikes, or sometimes on my bike.”

  “Not in the car.”

  “Rarely. Sarah is usually with me in the car.”

  “What? Are you saying Sarah isn’t as hip as you?” That time she couldn’t help it; she started laughing. “I thought only grandparents listened to books on tape.”

  “Watch it, missy. They now come on CD.”

  “So, do you download them onto your iPod?”

  “No. Not exactly.” I fidgeted in my chair. The last ounce of my feigned coolness melted.

  “You still have a discman? Get out!”

  “It still works, you know. And most of the books come on CD. Why download them?”

  She laughed again and then stopped. “Hey, wait, most of the books. Do you still listen to books on tape?”

  I took another sip of my chai. “Well, the library does have some audiobooks on tape.”

  “Wow. Well, that’s a whole different ball game, now isn’t it, grandma? You even have a sweater vest on today.”

  I stared at her and she chuckled. Then she wandered away from the table again. Looking down at the vest Sarah had purchased for me, I wondered if my girlfriend intentionally dressed me like a stodgy old fusspot. At first, I had loved the vest. My office was so cold and drafty, and sometimes I found sweaters too confining. The vest was the best of both worlds: warm and freeing. Now, I wanted to tear the vest apart.

  At around four, we packed up our things. Maddie purchased The Thorn Birds and the Aerosmith CD, and we headed back to Fort Collins. Again, she was silent, except for one instance when she asked if it were possible to have a happy marriage if one person was never around.

  Alarm bells jangled in my head. How was I supposed to answer a question like that?

  I uttered a few ums and ahs. Then I asked if everything was okay with Peter. I didn’t want to know, truly. The less I talked or thought about Peter, the better, but I couldn’t just ignore her mood.

  “Yeah, everything is good. You know, he just works a lot.” Then she said cynically, “Just like your father.” She gripped the steering wheel as if she wanted to strangle it.

  After several minutes, she said, “Lizzie, you really don’t listen to music? Can you name one song that you like?”

  “The ‘Monster Mash.’”

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye as she navigated around a pothole in the road. “Really? The ‘Monster Mash’?”

  “It’s a graveyard smash.”

  “Can you sing any of the lyrics? Come on, bust it out Ms. Crypt-Kicker-Five.” She smiled to encourage me.

  “Sorry to disappoint, but I can never remember the words to songs.” I shrugged.

  “Recite the Gettysburg Address.”

  “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” I continued the speech in its entirety, even though I knew she was making fun of me. It was better than the awkward silence.

  “Wow. That was impressive. Do you know any others?”

  “Just the usual.”

  “The usual?”

  “You know, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance, and stuff.”

  “Oh … of course.”

  She paused. “So what do you do in your office all night by yourself?”

  “You can’t expect me to reveal my dark side to you. Besides, what do you think I do all night?”

  “To be honest, I picture you in front of a microfiche machine browsing through World War II newspapers.”

  “Wow … that was harsh.” I tried to smile.

  Maddie slapped my leg. “Chin up, tiger, now I know you listen to the ‘Monster Mash’ while you do it.”

  “What does Peter do all night?”

  Her face clouded over. “Ah, that is a very good question.”

  I asked if Maddie wanted to grab some dinner, but she said she had to get home to Peter. I was sure Maddie was lying, but I didn’t say anything. The rest of the ride home was silent. When I wanted to be alone to think, I wanted to be alone. I figured she felt the same way. And I didn’t feel comfortable pushing her on anything.

  Chapter Twenty

  I beat Ethan to the coffee shop, so by the time he arrived I already had my chai. I watched him walk in the door, all the while pounding away on his phone. He walked up to the counter and ordered his coffee and I peered over my book and noticed the back of his neck was a vivid purple.

  He sat down, looking as if he wanted to explode.

  “Trouble with the missus?” I closed my book and set it on the table.

  Calm gradually washed over his face as he sipped his coffee, which, as always, he had spiked with a ludicrous amount of sugar. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Well, your face looks like an eggplant.”

  “It’s just hot in here.” He tugged at his collar.

  “Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that.”

  I stared at him but he turned away, looking towards the back of the store.

  “What have you been doing?” I asked.

  Ethan stared at me long and hard. Then he shook his head. “You know, I don’t know. And to be honest, I don’t care anymore.”

  His apathy troubled me. I missed the young grad student who once bubbled with energy and enthusiasm; there was just an empty shell left.

  “Alrighty, then. You are coming with me to shop for CDs.”

  “Really, Lizzie, I’m not in the mood to pick out audiobooks.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.

  “Why does everyone associate me with audiobooks?”

  “What’s on your iPod right now?”

  “I don’t have one.” I stuck out my tongue.

  “Oh good lord! You still have a discman, don’t you?” At least this image got a smile out of him.

  “That isn’t important right now.” I flipped some of the pages of my book. “I want you to come with me to pick out some music. I printed some stuff off, but I thought you could help me round out my selection.”

  I handed over my list.

  “So, Maddie likes music and you want to impress her.” Ethan continued to stare at my notes of must-have albums.

  “Oh whatever, Ethan.” I waved the idea away.

  “You should get tickets to Iron Maiden.”

  “Wh
at? Maddie bought an Aerosmith CD. Do I need to add Iron Maiden?”

  Ethan sniggered. “So it is about Maddie. I figured.” He shuffled through the papers. “What did you do? Google ‘must-have albums’ or something?” He looked over the names. “Do you even recognize half of these bands?”

  I nudged his foot under the table. “No, that’s why I need you. So drink your coffee … we have some shopping to do.”

  * * *

  “What are you listening to?” Sarah shouted from the front room. I hurried out of the kitchen to greet her, carrying a cup of hot chocolate. Steam danced around me.

  “Hey, I thought you would be shopping all day.” I kissed her on the cheek. Then I grabbed the stereo remote and turned down the music.

  “Are you listening to Pink Floyd?” Doubt and surprise were both evident in her tone.

  “Yeah … at least I think that’s the CD I put in.” I picked up the CD case. “Yep, it’s Pink Floyd.”

  “Since when did you start listening to Pink Floyd?”

  “Ethan and I went to the music store today.”

  She burst into laughter. “Music store? Who still says music store?”

  I shrugged and sipped my hot chocolate. “I guess I do.” Then I smiled. “Can I get you a drink or something? Here”‌—‌I handed her the cup‌—‌“you must be cold.”

  The wind had been howling all day. I went into the kitchen to make another cup. A few seconds later, as I was filling the kettle again, Sarah bounded in. “You bought twenty-something CDs?”

  “I think the number is twenty-seven.”

  “And not one of them on this receipt is an audiobook.” She stared at me in disbelief.

  “Do you want marshmallows in your hot chocolate?”

  She nodded.

  I put the kettle on the stove and lit the burner. “We have large and small ones.” I stuck my head out of the pantry. “Which would you prefer?”

  “What?” She scrutinized the receipt.

  “Large or small marshmallows?”