Lipstick Jungle

Oh, thank God. She was free! She hurried through the swinging doors to the waiting area. There was a throng of people, but right up in the front, just as he’d been instructed, was a uniformed driver with a cart and a sign that read “Ms. Healy.” She rushed toward him, waving her hand . . . And then another man stepped forward. He was wearing a dirty trench coat and he was bald, with a few strands of greasy black hair combed over his pitted scalp. “Wendy Healy?” he asked.

Oh God, she thought grimly, this was it. The bearer of bad news. She was right all along, something dreadful had happened to Shane and the kids. And her knees began shaking with fear.

She couldn’t speak.

“Are you Wendy Healy?” the man asked again. He had a fuzzy voice, the kind of voice a stuffed animal might have if it could speak. She nodded mutely.

“Thank you,” he said, handing her an envelope.

He turned and disappeared into the crowd. Confused, Wendy opened it.

“State of New York, Probate and Divorce, Healy vs. Healy,” she read quickly, skimming the lines. “Summons for Divorce . . . charged with abandonment . . . Children shall remain in the care of their legal father, Shane Healy, until such decision of the court . . .”

She felt a dizzying relief—the children weren’t dead, at least not to her knowledge at that moment—it was nothing after all, just another one of Shane’s stupid tricks.

Damn him.

The driver suddenly rushed forward and whisked her away. “That’s a low blow,” he remarked indignantly. “Serving your wife with divorce papers right when she gets off a plane. If I’d known what that guy was gonna do, I would have prevented it.”

“Mmmm,” she said noncommittally. This couldn’t really be serious, could it?

“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing,” she said, with what probably sounded like an inappropriate and eerie coldness. “It’s nothing,” she repeated. “Just another thing I’m going to have to deal with. My husband is insane.”

The driver helped her gently into the car. “If you need some tissues, there’s a box of Kleenex in the console.”

She shook her head dismissively. She wasn’t going to cry. It was always astounding how, at moments like these, you didn’t cry. Instead, there was just a dull, sickly yellowish blankness in her head. Well, well, well, she thought. So that was why Shane wasn’t answering the phone. He was afraid.

It was all too bizarre and pathetic for words.

The night guard looked at her strangely when she walked into her building.

“Is my husband home?” she asked.

The guard looked away and when he turned back and shrugged, there was a slightly hostile expression on his face, as if he was expecting an argument and trying to warn her not to attempt one.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think they mighta gone away for the weekend.”

Away? This was not possible. Not on top of everything else. Her heart began thumping again in panic.

“You think or you know?” she demanded, pressing the button for the elevator.

“I didn’t see them today. They left yesterday afternoon with suitcases. But I don’t know nothing.”

The elevator opened into a dimly lit hallway with textured cement walls. There was a door at either end; to the right was her apartment. Walking down the hallway, she had the sensation of being out of her body, of following a script that someone else had written. Her own door looked unfamiliar to her, and this too seemed inevitable as opposed to surprising; when she took her key out to fit it in the lock, she saw that the housing for the lock itself was wrong, shiny and new and brassy. She saw the whole terrible scene before her: She would try to fit her key in the lock and it wouldn’t turn, and then in confusion she would think that she was at the wrong door and try the other lock, and then it would dawn on her that Shane had changed the locks. She tried her key anyway, and it was as she imagined: The key slid halfway in and would go no farther, and because she had to exhaust every possibility, she did walk to the other end of the hallway to try her key in the other door. This didn’t work either, and making one more hopeless attempt, she jammed her key in the new lock.

It just stuck there, mocking her.

A wash of despair and helplessness swept over her, and out of this black wash of feeling came the irrational but unquestionable knowledge that something was lost and would never be found again. The day had come, then, she thought; the day she’d been dreading her entire life. She was a complete and utter failure. It couldn’t be denied. She had done everything wrong. She had let everyone down, most of all her children.

The guilt was almost unbearable. She stumbled away from the door, and, bent double in pain, put her palm up against the rough cement wall for support. What was she supposed to do now? Call a locksmith, she supposed, or a lawyer . . . or the police? A terrible sense of inertia overcame her at the thought of all this effort. Or she could just give up and lie down in the hallway. Eventually, Shane would return and find her there.

It was just like her dream, she thought, sinking down to a squat. That dream where she was lying helpless and dying in the hallway, unable to move. She pressed her hands over her eyes, opening her mouth in a silent scream.

She took a deep breath, moving her hands across her face. She must breathe and she must think. The first thing to do would be to call a locksmith—it was what the script demanded—and then she would get into her apartment and look for evidence as to where Shane might have taken the kids. She stood up and picked up her bag. It was simply a waiting game now. She would wait for the locksmith, and then she would find her kids.

She took out her phone and looked at the screen. It was blank. The battery was dead.

So it was going to be that kind of scene. Frantic mother loses kids and is thwarted by circumstances at every turn.