Tomorrow There Will Be Sun Page 4

  “Yeah, I’m a pro who can’t finish her fourth book.”

  “Come on. You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  This is Peter’s way of trying to sound encouraging, but he doesn’t see that he can often come off as dismissive. On some level I’ve always suspected that Peter sees me as a housewife who found a hobby that occasionally nets her a modest income. That the challenge of writing a book for young readers isn’t a real challenge, because people who write for young readers aren’t real writers. When I’ve tried talking to him about this, how it feels diminishing, he accuses me of projecting my own insecurities onto him.

  I’m not going to carry your baggage for you is one of his favorite comebacks.

  “What happened to Ingrid’s jewelry business?” I ask him. “Why doesn’t she just stick with that? She made beautiful jewelry.”

  That’s how Solly and Ingrid met. Solly hired her to design a bracelet for Maureen. It was supposed to be a gift for their tenth wedding anniversary, but by the time the piece was finished, so was the marriage.

  “It shouldn’t matter to you if Ingrid wants to write a book. Live and let live. And I’m sure you’re right about Solly’s analysis. What does he know? But really, it has nothing to do with you or what you do and you shouldn’t let it threaten you.”

  “It doesn’t threaten me.”

  Peter raises one eyebrow.

  “Okay. Yeah. I get it. But I’m not going to send it to Laurel. I know that’s what Ingrid is after, but I wouldn’t do that to Laurel. It isn’t fair. Laurel has to deal with more than her fair share of shitty submissions.”

  “Fine,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a good excuse if it comes to that.”

  “And it’s not like Ingrid needs the money. Not that there’s much money in publishing anyway. But what little there may be, she doesn’t need any of it.”

  “I thought we were done.”

  “We are.”

  “And I thought you liked Ingrid. I thought you two were friends.”

  “We are.” I do like Ingrid. I really do. Despite the fact that she broke up the marriage of a couple I adored, despite the fact that she thinks writing a book is easy, despite her paranoia about lead in her dinner plates, I really do like her. Most of the time.

  Peter slides closer to me so that our bodies are touching, then he puts an arm around me and pulls me closer. He presses his face into my neck and kisses me there. Then he puts his mouth to my ear and he whispers, “I know this is our first night here, and it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m really tired. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  He rolls away from me and turns off his reading light. “Consider yourself on notice,” he says. “You are not getting off this easy tomorrow night.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I’M NOT A GOOD SLEEPER. This wasn’t always so. I started having trouble around the time I turned forty, when my doctor kindly told me to get used to it, that poor sleep goes hand in hand with growing older, like growing older wasn’t already a raw deal. At home I partake in the occasional puff of medicinal marijuana, and that does help somewhat, but for obvious reasons, I didn’t bring any along with me to Mexico.

  Peter is snoring away. He’s dodged the middle-aged insomnia like he’s dodged many of the other afflictions of aging. He isn’t getting soft in the middle. He doesn’t need reading glasses. Even with the white hair, he still looks like a boy.

  I watch him in the dark. The rise and fall of his chest like a metronome. His breath goes in two beats, out two beats. Steady Peter. Dependable Peter.

  Most of the worries that keep me up at night are either irrational or insignificant—they grow in the dark and shrink in the light of morning. Did I say the wrong thing to that mother of Clem’s friend or Did the electrician overcharge me or Did I remember to roll the windows all the way up in the Prius? I think of my subconscious as a storage shed for worries—most are useless, throwaways, but hidden in there are some real gems. What if my cancer comes back? Who was Peter really talking to?

  I check the clock on his bedside table. It feels like it should be later, but it’s only 11:47. And back home it’s only 9:47. So I guess it’s no wonder I’m still awake.

  Next to the clock sits Peter’s iPhone.

  Maybe I’ll be able to sleep, I figure, if I can just put to rest my stupid paranoia. If Peter were awake, and he knew I couldn’t sleep, he’d probably show me the phone himself to prove to me that, yes, it was Jonas from tech who called in the middle of the cocktails and mini shrimp tostadas on the balcony.

  I slide out of bed. The tiled floor is cool on my bare feet. I pick up his phone. It’s powered down. I turn it on and wait for it to come to life, making sure it’s on vibrate so it doesn’t wake Peter with an errant ding. His lock screen is a picture of the two of us in sunglasses and baseball hats with toothy smiles. It’s from a hike we took up Runyon Canyon on New Year’s Day. I push the home button and punch in his four-digit security code—Clem’s birth date and month—the same code I use on my own phone.

  I touch the green icon. The list of recent calls pops up.

  On the top of that list, the most recent call, the one that came in at 7:04 p.m. and lasted for almost eleven minutes, not an inexpensive conversation considering we don’t have an international calling plan, did not come from Jonas in tech.

  It came from Gavriella Abramov, Peter’s beautiful twenty-eight-year-old assistant.

  SUNDAY

  Puerto Vallarta sits in the middle of the Bay of Banderas, surrounded on three sides by mountains, with a prevailing wind pattern from the southwest—all of which makes it a rare target for hurricanes.

  The conversation about where to go to celebrate the big birthdays began more than a year ago, when Peter turned forty-nine. After much back and forth, we settled on Puerto Vallarta, taking into consideration the substantial bang for your buck, a glowing endorsement from my friend Sarah, and the minimal time difference (we wouldn’t want to mess with Ivan’s fragile sleep routine). We did not factor in susceptibility to hurricanes, though if we had, it would have been another check in the box in favor of Puerto Vallarta.

  Because I’m a planner, and I consider a six-month lead time nothing short of reckless procrastination, we had the house booked and the deposit paid by August, a full eight months in advance.

  Then, in October, shortly after that sit-down conversation with my doctor, the most powerful hurricane on record threatened to hit Puerto Vallarta, with sustained winds clocking in at 200 miles per hour and gusts approaching 250. The distinction between winds and gusts is something I still don’t understand, despite developing a hurricane obsession over those few days. I watched its every move from my kitchen in Los Angeles, on a weather-tracking website, while the sun shone outside my window. It was a welcome distraction from WebMD, every dark corner of which I’d already exhausted. Of course I worried about the people who lived in Puerto Vallarta and the fragile infrastructure of a town not accustomed to such violent invasion, but I also felt for the tourists who had maybe spent more money than they ever had before, who had probably been looking forward to the vacation for a solid eight months and who were now being forced to evacuate, rushing off to the airport, where more than five hundred flights had been canceled.

  The hurricane ended up making landfall near Cuixmala about 180 kilometers south; Puerto Vallarta was spared the brunt of her wrath. Back home, I looked up from my computer and out my kitchen window at my orange tree heavy with fruit, and my freshly mowed backyard, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  Now here I sit, alone at the dining room table at Villa Azul Paraiso, at half past seven in the morning, drinking a cup of excellent coffee, glued to the same weather-tracking website. There’s another storm, just upgraded to tropical cyclone, hovering over the eastern Pacific basin. Though she is not predicted
to impose any threat to our temporary home on this placid bay beyond the possibility of some unseasonable showers, I am watching her carefully and anxiously, because if back in October the experts were off by 180 kilometers, who’s to say their calculations won’t be off again?

  Roberto arrives with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder and a woman who must be Luisa, though I never did meet her yesterday. I found the kitchen empty this morning, and the coffeemaker fully loaded and ready to go, with a Post-it note attached: Please push button for coffee and a smiley face.

  “Good morning,” he says and then says something to Luisa in Spanish. She hurries off toward the kitchen. “You are up early. We will make for you the huevos. Unless you like something else?”

  “I can wait for the others. Really. I don’t typically eat breakfast right away. I like to ease into my day.”

  “More coffee? I get for you.”

  “No, no. It’s okay.” I want to tell him to relax, to put his bag down and ease into his day, too, but I worry that will sound condescending, or worse, like an order.

  I gesture to my computer. “I’m a little worried about the weather.”

  He looks out at the cloudless morning sky, the calm waters, the palm trees standing perfectly still. He’s puzzled. “It is beautiful, no?”

  “Yes, but . . . I’m watching this, here.” I point to the screen. He comes closer and leans in. “It isn’t predicted to come our way, but it could. Because these so-called experts are really just in the guessing business.”

  “It is only a tormenta. No worry.”

  “A tormenta? That sounds bad.”

  “No. It is okay. A tormenta—it is only a storm. Not a hurricane. And it does not come here. You will have sun.”

  “Actually, they say that even though it probably won’t come here, we might see some rain as a result.”

  “Okay. Maybe some rain. But rain, it does not last long. It is quick and then there is sun.”

  “I don’t care all that much about sun. Too much sun is bad for your skin.”

  “You do not want sun? This is why you worry?” Now he really looks puzzled.

  I shut my laptop. “Maybe more coffee would be nice.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I get for you.”

  I hear Ingrid’s voice coming from upstairs. It starts as a whisper-shout. “Ivan? Ivan?” By the time she’s in the dining room, messy haired and wild eyed, she’s dropped the whisper. “Ivan? Jenna! Have you seen Ivan?”

  “No,” I say. “I assumed he was still asleep.”

  She’s wearing a white V-neck T-shirt through which I can see her nipples and boy-short-style underwear. “No, he was in our bed, but I just woke up and he wasn’t there and he’s not in his room and, oh, God . . .”

  “Calm down,” I say, even though I know it’s the very worst thing you can say to anyone in a panic, especially a mother who can’t find her child. “This house has three living rooms. Let’s check them all. The one on this floor has the satellite TV, maybe that’s where he’s gone.”

  We rush to the living room. It’s empty. I send Ingrid down to the ground floor and I run back upstairs to check the main living room and the bedrooms. The master door is open; I can see a Solly-sized lump in the massive bed. Ivan’s door is open and his bed is untouched. All the other doors are shut. Everyone is still asleep. He’s not on this floor.

  I run to the top floor, with the Jacuzzi and the chairs for stargazing. I haven’t been up here yet. It would be a great place to have cocktails, there’s a palapa-style bar and some fairy lights, but no Ivan. I hurry back down through the house and into the kitchen, where Roberto sits at a table grating a block of cheese while Luisa stands at the stove.

  “Have you seen Ivan?” I ask. I put my palm at about waist height to indicate his short stature. “The little one? We can’t find him.”

  Roberto jumps up and follows me downstairs. The pool, thank God, is clear. Too many stories end this way, and truth be told, I volunteered to go upstairs to search because a part of me feared what I might find at the bottom of the pool. The gate to the beach is open. I can hear Ingrid, screaming now, “IVAN!!! IVAN!!!”

  “What’s going on?” I look up two floors. Peter and Solly are standing at the balcony off the main living room, the place where just yesterday I stood and watched Clem sunbathe with her back to the Bay of Banderas. How could I have let something so small, so inconsequential, bother me?

  “We can’t find Ivan,” I shout up at them. They both disappear from view.

  “IVAN!” I hear Ingrid shout from the beach again, but there’s a different tone to his name. It’s not panic; it’s discovery. It’s eureka! It’s relief, with an undercurrent of fury. She’s found him.

  I pass Roberto on my way out the gate. He pats me on the shoulder. “It is okay,” he says. “He is there on the beach.”

  Ingrid is on her knees in the sand, clutching Ivan, who is trying to wriggle out of her embrace. Malcolm stands next to them with a bright-red bucket in his hand.

  “What were you thinking? What the hell were you thinking?” Ingrid is screaming again. Not at Ivan. She’s screaming at Malcolm.

  “I . . . I . . . He came into my room and woke me up,” Malcolm says. “He wanted me to take him to look for starfish.” He holds out the bucket and points up the beach, where the cove ends. “We just went over there. Near the rocks.”

  I feel an arm around my shoulder. It’s Peter. He pulls me close and I let him.

  “Are you okay, Ivan?” Ingrid holds Ivan at arm’s length and looks him up and down.

  “Ding dong.”

  “Ivan. Answer me. Are you okay?”

  “Ding dong.”

  “Ivan!” She shakes him just a little bit.

  Solly runs out onto the beach. “There you are, little guy! You gave us a scare!”

  “I was with Malcolm,” Ivan says.

  “Yes, I figured. I looked in Malcolm’s bedroom and he wasn’t there so I guessed you two were together.”

  I should have checked the bedrooms. Then again, Ingrid should have checked the bedrooms. This isn’t my fault, but I feel bad because if I’d checked Malcolm’s room, he wouldn’t be standing there looking so wounded.

  “Malcolm took him out to the beach,” Ingrid says, not screaming anymore, but not doing much to contain her rage either. “He took him out to the beach without telling me, without telling anyone where he was going.”

  “It was early,” Malcolm says. “Everyone was still asleep.”

  All eyes are on Solly. What I want Solly to say, what I try to send him a telepathic message to say, is this: Malcolm is Ivan’s brother. You don’t need permission to take your little brother out hunting for starfish.

  Instead Solly says, “You probably should have let us know, buddy.”

  Malcolm looks down at his bare, sandy feet. He walks over to Solly, hands him the red bucket with the starfish in it, and heads back into the house through the gate. This time he doesn’t stop to rinse his feet in the faucet.

  * * *

  • • •

  WE ALL RETREAT to our corners for a while. Clem comes into our room and I catch her up on what happened. She texts Sean while I’m talking, filling him in on the drama of the morning. This is a habit she has that I can’t stand, texting while listening, but I forgive her today because she is my only child, and I cannot fathom how I’d ever recover if I lost her.

  This has all thrown a bit of a wrench in my plan to talk to Peter. Saying I have a “plan” might be an exaggeration. At some point I just figured I’d find a quiet moment to ask again about the call last night and give him an opportunity to tell me privately what he didn’t want to say publicly when it was clear I’d had more to drink than I’m accustomed to. That it was Gavriella on the phone. It was Gavriella on the phone even though I’d specifically asked him to tell her not to call
while we were in Mexico.

  It’s well established that I’m uncomfortable with the idea of Gavriella. What wife wouldn’t resent her husband’s gorgeous, needy young assistant? At first Peter laughed it off and even seemed to find my jealousy cute, but as the months have gone on, he has found it less so. He’s stopped reassuring me, stopped laughing at the absurdity of a young woman who looks like that having any interest in a white-haired married father pushing fifty. I’m not going to carry your baggage for you. Instead he’s taken to minimizing any mention of her and, yes, trying to hide when he’s on the phone with her during off-hours.

  So when I saw that the most recent call was not from Jonas in tech, I wasn’t terribly surprised. It wasn’t a gotcha moment. It was more of a disappointment. He said he’d tell her not to call on our vacation. So either he never told her, or he did tell her and she chose to ignore him. But bringing up the phone call now, while recovering from the scare of Ivan having gone missing, seems petty and small.

  “Poor Malcolm,” Clem says. She’s wandering around, sizing up the ways in which our room might be slightly better than hers. “He was just trying to be nice. Why did Ingrid have to go and get all mad at him?”

  “It’s hard for you to understand, because you don’t have a child,” Peter tells her. “But the love we parents have for our kids defies all reason. I really don’t think Ingrid meant to lash out at Malcolm. She was just having a primal moment.”

  However true that may be, this strikes me as yet another example of Peter’s deference to Solly. It extends to Ingrid, and to making excuses for her inexcusable behavior.

  “Well, I think it’s because Malcolm is black,” Clem says, sitting down at the edge of our bed.

  “What? Why would you say something like that?” Peter gets up from the armchair in which he’d been sitting and goes to stand in front of her. It’s almost, but not quite, threatening.

  “Because it’s true,” Clem replies.