One Cold Night

back.
    “I remembered how you used to fight with Mommy about your clothes. I thought you got to sass her because you weren’t adopted, and since I was, I had a whole other set of rules.”
    “I never knew you thought that.”
    Just last weekend Lisa had announced that she was considering a search for her birth parents. It worried Susan. The triangular relationship between Lisa, Susan and their mother, Carole, had always suggested faults. Carole had worked hard to conceal them, and Susan had followed suit, but Lisa wasn’t the type to conform. What she wanted, she sought.
    This past year had given Susan a glimpse of their mother’s sacrifices and frustrations; that, and so much else. Lately Susan had begun assessing her past with an almost narcissistic abandon, like a teenager herself, peeling back the layers of her finely constructedadulthood, recalling her early youth and with crystalline precision remaking old decisions. Their mother, she now suspected, had sent Lisa to her for this very reason.
    “What does your day look like?” Susan asked Dave.
    His dark eyes, set slightly too close together, veered up from the newspaper. “I thought I’d go to the gym, then head over to the library later this morning.” If she checked e-mail enough for both of them, then he did all their reading; a diagnosed-too-late dyslexic who never read for pleasure, Susan had been startled at first by how keenly Dave consumed books, magazines and newspapers. “I don’t have to be at the precinct until four.”
    She hated when he rotated into the late shift in the detective squad. Her workdays started early in the morning and she was zonked by evening. When he worked late, they hardly saw each other.
    “Any chance you could squeeze in an hour to paint the yellow line?” Susan had been asking him for months now. “Yesterday someone double-parked me in, and Jackson was two hours late with a delivery to Manhattan. It was the second time. I nearly lost the account.”
    “I’ll try to do it today, my darling.” He folded the newspaper, stood up and leaned over to kiss her. “I promise.”
    “‘Promises, promises!’” Lisa’s voice rose in what she called her “Broadway boom.” She was learning all kinds of voice techniques at her specialized public high school and didn’t hesitate to share the riches at home. Susan mostly liked it, but sometimes the sheervolume of Lisa’s prodigious vocalizations took her by surprise.
    Dave laughed and walked down the hall toward their bedroom. When the door shut, Susan lowered her voice; she had often found this worked best when she wanted Lisa’s attention.
    “Any chance we can talk later today?”
    “How about now?” Lisa came around the counter and slid onto the stool Dave had just abandoned.
    “Can’t now, actually. I have to get to the factory — we’re making a thousand chocolate truffles for a benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow night. How about after dinner?”
    “I’ve got rehearsal at seven. After?”
    “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”
    “Cool.” Lisa scanned the front page of the newspaper but found nothing of interest. “I’ll be home by ten, definitely. Hey! While you wait for me, you could start the puzzle I gave you.”
    Beneath the riotously colorful birthday wrapping, the puzzle’s box was plain white. There were five hundred pieces and no clue to what picture they would construct.
    “I will,” Susan said. “And then when you get home, we’ll talk.”
    The clock on the stone mantel read 10:02. Susan sat at the collapsible card table between the living room’s two large windows, facing west and the river — she kept the table set up for the puzzles and games the family always had going — and worked on the plain blue edge of Lisa’s gift. The TV was on across the room. The news announcer had just run down the night’s headlines — war, floods, a simmering volcano— earthly disasters that should have trumped anyone’s petty concerns. At the first sound of the front door locks snapping open, Susan crossed the room and picked up the remote control from the coffee table, clicking off the Nightly News.
    Lisa dropped her canvas bag, with its purple-andpink paisley design, by the front door. She sloughed off her denim jacket, kicked off her sneakers and walked into the living area, where Susan had curled herself into a corner of the sofa. Lisa draped herself over the back of an overstuffed armchair.
    “Don’t stop