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I began to worry that I would have no opportunity whatsoever to make the call, but after we had walked and shopped and had our lunch and shopped some more, my mother decided it was time to go back to the hotel, rest, shower, and spoil ourselves with bubble baths and facial creams she had bought in a beauty shop on Madison Avenue. She was doing so many things she normally did not do. I sensed she wanted to splurge and be extravagant and carefree to help us all forget, especially me, what she called the Pearson tragedy.
We had two full bathrooms in the suite. I waited for her to step into hers to take her bath, and then I took the tape recorder out of my suitcase. It was nearly four-thirty. I was afraid Karen's mother might not be home, of course. What would I, do if that happened?
We were to go to dinner and then the show. My parents would be with me all the time, and afterward, back in the suite, I couldn't risk playing the tape. They'd hear it for sure. I'd have to sneak out somehow and get to a pay phone, preferably outside the hotel. I did see one about half a block down near a magazine stand.
I hurried out to the elevator and was lucky enough to have it right there and waiting. Moments later, I was out of the hotel, charging down the sidewalk. I got into the phone booth quickly, my hands trembling so much I nearly dropped the recorder, too, but I finally got myself together enough to dial the long-distance operator and request the collect call using Karen's name. My heart was thundering in my ears as I waited for the connection and heard the ringing. I held my breath until Darlene Pearson said, "Hello." The operator announced the caller and the request. Karen's mother was quiet so long the operator had to repeat it.
"Yes, operator, I accept the charges. Karen?" she cried into the receiver.
I pushed the button on the recorder, and it played back Karen's message. Then, as she had instructed, I started to hang up before turning off the tape recorder. As I brought the receiver back to its cradle, I heard Darlene Pearson screaming, "Karen! You come home!"
My heart was pounding even harder. I believed Karen knew what she was doing when she asked me to do this. I could understand how it would take the pressure off us, especially off me, in the community, but I felt terrible about hurting her mother. She must be in a frantic state of mind now, I thought. However, there was nothing I could do. The deed was done, and as my father was fond of saying, the die was cast.
I hurried back to the hotel. This time, I had to wait for the elevator and felt my insides tumbling around with tension. After all, I had done something else that would stun my parents when and if they ever found out. When I got to my floor and to our suite, I took a deep breath and then entered, praying my mother was still in her bath. She was. I hurriedly went to mine and ran the water. Then I hid the tape recorder in my suitcase. My chest still felt like a tight-skinned drum upon which my thumping heart pounded.
Even soaking in a tub full of soothing bubbles didn't calm me or stop the quivering under my breast. Fortunately, my mother was too absorbed in everything she had done and everything we had bought. She didn't notice the tightness in my lips and the abject fear in my eyes as we both started to dress. She did distract me for a while when she shared some of her makeup with me and talked about dressing up our faces. This was also something we had rarely done together.
Shortly after, my father arrived and showed us all the things he had bought, too. We had to rush a bit to get to our early dinner and make the show. No one had any time to think about anyone else. We ate at one of my father's favorite New York restaurants, where both my mother and I feasted on lobster. My father insisted we all share a mud pie, which was really chocolate and coffee ice cream in a pie shell. I know I ate much more than my share. I saw how they were both smiling at me, happy I had an appetite, but I was eating to keep from crying and to stop the bees buzzing in my stomach.
The show we went to see was, according to my father, "the hottest ticket in town," Silk Stockings. I did enjoy it and watching the performances and seeing the glamour of a Broadway show took my attention completely away from everything that was happening around the Pearson tragedy. While I was in that theater, I even forgot Karen was back at our house, hiding in the attic. As we came out of the theater into the crowds pouring out of other theaters, seeing the women in fashionable dresses, men in suits and tuxedos, taxicabs everywhere, and more limousines on the street than I had seen in a year, the excitement remained with me and my parents. We held hands and walked all the way back to our hotel, and when I looked up at the lights and the great billboards and saw all the people and the traffic, I understood what Karen had meant when she talked about living in a city that never slept.
Would she ever really sleep again?
Would I?
It wasn't until we were back in the suite that the three of us realized just how tired we were. My big four-poster bed with its lusciously soft pillows appeared so inviting that I felt like diving onto it. I was undressed and ready for it in record time. The music from the show was still ringing in my ears. I cuddled up and wrapped the comforter about myself just as my mother came in to say good night.
"Did you have fun today, Zipporah?"
"Yes, very much."
"So did I. We've got to do more of this sort of thing With your brother, too," she added. "When he is generous enough to give us some of his precious time, that is. You know he's not coming directly home from college?"
"No, I didn't know. Why not?"
"He's visiting with his roommate's family for a week. They're all going to one of the Michigan lakes to a large cabin they have there. He was so excited about it I couldn't complain."
"That's nice," I said. I wanted Jesse home, but I was very, very nervous about him coming back before Karen left. This, at least, gave us more breathing space to prepare for that.
"We'll have a nice breakfast tomorrow and then take a slow ride back. Your father wants to look at a new car in Jersey. It's just a small detour, but one .of his friends has a friend who has a dealership. You know your father and his influential friends," she said.
We smiled. She kissed me good night and left. I cuddled the blanket and pressed my face into the pillow. I wanted to soak into the softness and disappear like a cherry sinking into whipped cream. I begged sleep to come, to take me away from my thoughts, but before it did, I conjured Karen back at our house, maybe watching television in my room or maybe even venturing outside in the darkness to get some air and feel less trapped, even though, for now, she was tethered to our house.
Where would she go when it was time to leave? I imagined her growing old in the attic, fading into a ghost herself, until I was no longer sure if she were there. She would dwindle like an old experience, harder and harder to recall, the details of it falling away until there was nothing left but a vague remembrance, something like my father's best friend in high school. He and his friend could pass each other on a street in this city and not know it.`Something might be stirred for a moment. They would both pause and try to think what it was, but the noise, all that competed for their attention in the present, would drive it away quickly, and that would be that. Gone forever.
Heaven forgive me, I thought, but right now, I longed for that. Even thinking such a thing made me feel like a terrible traitor, like some bird leaving the nest but leaving her broken-winged sibling behind to stare out at the world she would never touch until she fell out and tumbled to the earth. In my dreams, the overcast sky rained feathers.
My parents were up before I was. My mother wouldn't let my father wake me, but he made as much noise as he could, because he was anxious to get under way. I was deliberately slow to get myself moving. I knew that sometime toward the end of this day, I would have to face Karen's mother. When I finally did get up and dressed, my father hurried us along to breakfast. The appetite I had the night before was gone. I barely nibbled on a toasted bagel, and I know I looked half-asleep.
"I guess Zipporah can't take the fast life," my father joked.
"We'll stop at a really nice place for lunch," my mother promised.
I tried to be upbeat, but I couldn't put aside thinking about all that awaited me at home. When we stopped in New Jersey on the way back up to Sandburg, I was surprised to see the car my father was considering. It was a red convertible sports car that sat only two people. We had three cars in the family already, counting Jesse's car, but if we traded in either my mother's car or my father's for this, how could we three fit if we wanted to use it for a family trip?
My father decided to take a test drive and asked me to go with him instead of my mother.
"It's all right," she said. "Go on. I'll ride in it later."
