Tilda's Promise Read online

  “That would be okay, I guess,” she said. They decided on the day, and since Bev lived in the Village, not far from the theater, they agreed to meet for lunch before the movie at a restaurant Bev liked. “It’s Italian vegetarian, if you can believe it, but it’s actually quite good. Good seafood, too, so it’s not actually vegetarian.”

  It was chilly but clear the day they met up for the movie. The week since their phone call had passed quickly. During that time, when she wasn’t thinking about Tilly, Tilda fretted about her decision to join Bev on this no doubt ill-conceived venture. She wondered if she would be too gloomy to be good company. She hated pity, even though she knew Bev wasn’t the pitying kind. She worried about the weather; what if it was terrible? What would she wear? What would still fit, after her “widow’s weight loss”? (There actually was such a term.) She had lost ten pounds within a few weeks after Harold died, and even though she was slowly regaining it, her clothes still hung on her, so much so that she was careful, especially around Laura, to always wear several layers with extra-full scarves that she looped around her neck and then let flow around her.

  But when the day arrived, there was no need to worry about the weather: the sun was shining, and it wasn’t too cold. Just a light jacket would do. No coats, scarves, or gloves would be required. She hoped Bev wouldn’t notice or comment on her weight. She simply wanted to enjoy the day.

  Walking to the train from her home, Tilda took in the fresh air, realizing how much of life she had been missing. On the train, instead of reading, she sat by the window and watched the towns and trees passing by. When the train made its stops along the way, Tilda eagerly looked into the faces of strangers boarding, feeling a little like a shut-in who had recently reentered the world. In fact, she thought, that’s what she was, with the exception of several outings with Laura and the fucking mall misadventure with Tilly.

  When the train pulled into Grand Central, Tilda decided she would take a taxi rather than deal with mass transportation. Today—her first real venture out—she didn’t want anything to disturb her sense of calm enjoyment. And she was enjoying herself. A strange but welcome feeling.

  After paying the driver, as she was getting out of the cab, Tilda caught a glimpse of an auburn-haired woman across the street. She was wearing a long dark green wool sweater, black leggings, and black ankle-length boots. The clothes and the hair, the look of the woman, were so familiar. Just then the woman turned into a storefront that looked like an art gallery. Tilda stopped and tried to shield her eyes from the glare, but she had lost sight of the woman, and she couldn’t make out the wording on the window. Had she just seen Amanda go into an art gallery? She felt in her bones it was true, but she couldn’t be sure. She heard someone calling her name. Tilda turned and saw Bev in front of the restaurant, waving her arms.

  At Tilda’s insistence, they took a table by the window. All through lunch Tilda kept looking out the window and across the street. Finally, Bev put her glass of pinot grigio down with a decided thud. “What is so interesting out there?” she asked.

  Tilda turned her attention back to Bev. She had been staring out the window into the bright light of day, and now she had to wait for her vision to readjust to the darker room before she could see the frown on Bev’s face.

  “Was I staring . . . out there?” she said evasively. “I guess I haven’t been out much lately, and this is my first trip into the city . . . in a long time.” This struck the right balance, she thought. It was true, if not entirely forthright. She didn’t want Bev to know the source of her distraction, that she may have seen Amanda, who was still AWOL from husband and daughter after a whole week. Bev already thought she was getting too involved in the plight of her neighbors, so why bring up what was probably an imaginary sighting?

  She picked up her glass of wine and commented on the lunch, which was, after all, quite good. She never drank wine during the day, and it was going to her head a bit, but in such a pleasant way that she was thinking about ordering another to go with the rest of her baked sole, something else she never ordered for lunch, but today everything was different. Her senses were alive and she took everything in: the fragrance of the lemon and Italian parsley in the white wine sauce, the crackling sound of the crisp bread as she tore pieces to dip into her plate, and of course the light reflecting on the glass of the storefront across the street, the one thing she kept returning to.

  Leaving the restaurant, Tilda wondered if there was time for her to cross over to see if the store was a gallery and if indeed she had seen Amanda, who might still be there. She hadn’t seen the auburn-haired woman leave, and she’d been keeping her eye out all through lunch.

  “We’d better hurry. We don’t have that much time before the movie starts,” said Bev, as if she were anticipating Tilda’s possible defection.

  “You do still want to see the movie, don’t you?” asked Bev.

  “Yes, of course I do,” she replied as they both picked up the pace.

  But during the movie Tilda was distracted. Her second glass of wine had left her a little dizzy and drowsy, and she couldn’t stop thinking about Amanda. Every so often Tilda’s head would bob, and she would drift off, seeing Amanda waving to her from the store across the street. Then she would sit up only to feel Bev’s glance in her direction. Tilda would then try to focus on the film. In one frame she saw suffragists in long dresses and big hats from the early 1900s marching for their rights, looking determined and happy. In another, police hauled them off to jail. In one, the camera homed in on a political cartoon of a man with his foot on the back of a fallen suffragist, and the sympathetic caption read, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

  “No shit,” Bev muttered under her breath. Tilda looked in her direction and smiled, letting Bev know she was paying attention.

  In footage near the end of the film, the members of Pussy Riot, at their punk-rock-protest best, were attacked by Cossack militia members during the Sochi Olympics. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” the announcer intoned somewhat sarcastically, but then she made the point that men and women around the world had supported the feminist rioters. It was all very upbeat, followed by the usual there’s-still-work-to-be-done coda.

  “Sort of obvious, wasn’t it?” said Bev as they left. “I mean, yeah, there’s a lot to be done, but as far as I can tell, not much is happening these days.” She stopped and looked at her friend. “If you saw enough to form an opinion. You kind of nodded off for a while, didn’t you?”

  “The second glass of wine. I shouldn’t have had it, but I was with you, it, the film. I saw most of it, and yes, it was obvious, but also good, don’t you think?”

  They stopped for coffee at an old diner nearby to do a debrief of their own, from the ’60s to the present day, both wondering where and when the fire had gone out of the movement but agreeing there had been progress.

  “The fight now is equal pay for equal work. And don’t even get me started on the minimum wage. Unless women are willing to organize, to fight, nothing is going to change,” said Bev, ready to launch into the cause currently taking up her remaining volunteer phone time.

  Tilda, while sympathetic, decided not to encourage her. “It’s been a long day. I’d better think about getting home.”

  Bev walked Tilda to the corner where she would grab a cab to Grand Central. They hugged good-bye with promises to stay in touch, and Tilda watched as her friend continued on toward home. Instead of a taking a cab, though, she walked in the opposite direction, back a few blocks toward the store where she had first seen the auburn-haired woman.

  It was in fact an art gallery. Tilda walked in and began looking around. A young woman in black with matching big-rimmed black eyeglasses and a black asymmetrical haircut asked if she could be of service. Tilda didn’t quite know what to say but quickly decided to appear interested in acquiring some artwork.

  “I’m looking for the work of an artist I think you have. She may have been here earlier today, a medium to ta
ll woman with thick auburn hair?”

  “Oh. No, that’s not one of our artists, but there is a woman who looks like that who makes arrangements for one of our clients. Are you looking for the work of Emile Baptiste by any chance, the Saint Lucian artist? He lives in Brooklyn and exhibits in one of our galleries there as well. We have some of his work over here, if you’d like to see, this one hanging,” she said, pointing to what appeared to be a color photograph of a nude couple swimming in water of intense clarity. “And here are a few others.” She began walking in her stilettos to a far corner of the room, where she began pulling out works of island scenes, dramatically vivid, Tilda thought.

  “He’s one of the best hyperrealists around. Aren’t these striking?”

  “They’re beautiful, but I thought these were photographs. And the woman I’m looking for is a painter.”

  “They’re paintings, not photographs. And no, Ms. Esmond, if that’s who you mean, is Mr. Baptiste’s rep. She may paint as well, but we don’t carry her work.”

  The woman turned sharply and walked back to her desk.

  Tilda did not notice the woman’s loss of interest. She was focusing on one word, Esmond. Tilda had found Amanda. Surely this was more than coincidence. Tilda didn’t believe in fate, but what were the odds, she wondered, that she would have found her missing neighbor on her first full day out of the house and into the city since Harold had died? She left the gallery prepared to make a parting comment about the vivid paintings, not photographs, but the woman in black barely looked in her direction as Tilda left. Brooklyn, she thought. She hadn’t been there in a long time.

  October continued to be mild and pleasant, just as it had been the week before when Tilda and Bev met in the city. Since then, Tilda had started taking long walks in the park, the spice-colored leaves in the sunlight and the riot of the goldenrods tugging at her heart. Harold had never tired of the change in seasons, always calling Tilda to his side to look out the window with him at whatever sign had captured his attention. In spring it was the forsythia, in fall the goldenrods.

  Her melancholia persisted but not her depression. Her grief was becoming more a companion to be accommodated than an enemy to be feared. These long walks were both sad and comforting, a distraction from the troubled world she encountered whenever she turned on the news, which was rarely, but one did have to keep up. At least that brave Pakistani schoolgirl had not only survived but had persisted in her fight for education in the face of unspeakable ignorance. Tilda, remembering her teaching days and her dismay when students failed to value their educations, was particularly drawn to Malala Yousafzai’s story. And this month she had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Speaking to Laura, Tilda had said, “Who am I to feel sorry for myself when that child can be shot in the face and then show the world she won’t be stopped? It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Laura had conceded it was, but then she turned the topic to Tilly.

  “You need to come by more often, Mom. She’s not ignoring you, you know. She’s just busy with her life. The longer you stay away, the worse it gets, this impasse.”

  Tilda felt her chest tighten. She didn’t want to make too much of it, but Tilly’s rejection was unfounded, she thought, and she could not bear it. The subject upset her, and she struggled not to let it, but here was her heart struggling for space in her chest.

  “She may not be ignoring me, exactly, but she has shut me out, don’t you think? I mean, she definitely doesn’t want to go out or come over anymore, and when I’m there, she finds any excuse to leave the room.” The more Tilda thought about it, the worse she felt, but then another thought came to mind. Maybe Tilly wasn’t doing so well after all.

  “How is she doing, really?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? She’s fine. I never should have said anything—she’s fine. No more incidents, if that’s what you mean.”

  Tilda thought about this. She was relieved to hear it, but not entirely certain that what her daughter said was true. Laura seemed to be treading lightly, not so much hiding information as maybe not wanting to believe anything was wrong—or not knowing.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  “I’m right. There’s nothing going on, and you need to come over more often.”

  Tilda agreed, and they settled on Friday night.

  “We’ll have Shabbat together.”

  “That would be nice. I’ll see you then,” said Tilda, hoping it would be, and then she said goodbye.

  There were several days remaining before the Friday night dinner. Tilda knew it was useless to argue with Laura. And Tilda had to believe her when she said all was fine. If not, she would have packed Tilly off to counseling by now. Her daughter never saw a problem that couldn’t be cured with a little intervention, and her efforts now were directed at getting grandmother and granddaughter together again.

  Tilda, on the other hand, didn’t have much to do until then, and she hadn’t been able to get Brooklyn out of her mind. Ever since she had seen Amanda in the gallery, she knew she would have to go—to see for herself what had become of her neighbor. When she thought of Darren, she became uneasy, wondering if she should let him know what she had uncovered. But she also worried that she might be lifting the lid from something she could not control. Who knew what Amanda was up to—or with whom? She didn’t want to be responsible for unleashing a domestic confrontation gone wrong. No, she would find out more before deciding what to do next. That was that, then. She would go to Brooklyn. And why not? She had a right. The weather was good. She needed to get out more, and she hadn’t been there in years—to the place where her mother and father had met, married, and started their family. The old family home had been at the juncture of Williamsburg and Greenpoint—not far, it turned out, from the gallery where Emile Baptiste exhibited his work. It was amazing what a little online researching could reveal.

  So, she told herself, she had every reason to go—two, actually. And the visit to her old hometown provided cover for the other, if less fully formed, motive—finding Amanda.

  The day after the phone call with Laura, Tilda took the train to Grand Central and then the subway to Williamsburg. When the train arrived, she took a moment to get her bearings, and then, as she was coming up the subway stairs into the old neighborhood, she was surprised by, she realized, the absence of feeling. There was no sense of coming home. She had told Laura she would be gone for the day, visiting the place where her parents had lived and where she and her younger sister had been born. And it was true, that’s what she was doing. This was the neighborhood where her parents had begun their lives together as a married couple. But she had few memories of the place. Her only pleasure would come from trying to picture her parents walking these streets, but the Italian neighborhood of her parents’ time had changed dramatically with trendy shops and assured young people everywhere.

  This neighborhood was also very near the street where Emile Baptiste’s paintings were exhibited, in a gallery just off Metropolitan Avenue. And that gallery, it was clear, was Tilda’s true destination. In the two weeks since Amanda’s disappearance, Tilda had continued to make herself available in case Darren and Lizzie needed her. She had prepared dinner for Lizzie several times, and they’d played Scrabble together. Tilda had challenged her use of za but had to concede. Lizzie had been right. “It’s an accepted shortened form of pizza, Mrs. Carr.”

  “Please call me Tilda,” she had responded.

  “Okay,” said Lizzie, adding up her winning score, “but just Tilda, not Miss Tilda, the way kids are supposed to say today. I think it’s so lame.”

  “That’s fine.” But Tilda didn’t think it would stick. Lizzie seemed like the kind of kid who would always call adults by their last names.

  They didn’t talk all that much during these visits, and Lizzie preferred to stay away from the subject of her missing mother, although she still seemed confident her mother was fine, just not wanting yet to be found. Tilda didn’t know how she could be so sure, but s
he found Lizzie’s certainty to be reassuring.

  A subject she did want to raise with Lizzie was Tilly, but she restrained herself, not wanting to take advantage of her new friendship. Occasionally Lizzie would mention Tilly herself.

  “Tilly’s in my math class. Did you know that?” she had asked during their last dinner together.

  “No, Tilly didn’t mention it. She’s been so busy with dance and her schoolwork, we haven’t had much time to talk.” She looked at Lizzie, hoping she would say more.

  “Yeah, she is pretty busy—with friends, too. I mean, she hangs out with the whole dance team, and the cheerleading and football people, but she’s also friends with the people in black . . . well, that’s what I call them.”

  Lizzie went on to explain that she didn’t hang out with either of these groups, her friends being among the vanilla people, another of her own terms, Tilda thought.

  “And who are the vanilla people, and who are the people in black?”

  “The vanilla people are people like me, sort of bland, I guess. I mean, we don’t try to be one way or the other. We’re just us. But the people in black are very serious. They dress in dark colors, and some have belly button piercings. Tilly’s friend Andrea has one, but not Tilly, I don’t think.”

  Now Tilda began to worry again—not only about Tilly but also about the company she was keeping.

  “Is she very serious, Andrea, and Tilly, too?” she ventured.

  “Well, I guess, sort of. Maybe sort of artistic, too. Andrea writes poetry.”

  “Oh, that’s kind of serious,” said Tilda, relieved.

  “Yeah, and it’s apocalyptic and weird, actually. And they’re anti a lot of stuff, but they like art and culture, too. I can be anti sometimes, actually, but they’re way more intense than I am.”