Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,12

the wall, one bare foot flamingoed to her calf, working a Twizzler across her lips.

“Then stay up. You want to play a game?”

“No.”

“Want me to come read to you?”

“Ha,” Ida said, and she threw herself on the couch. She was wearing cotton pajamas—green with white stripes—that had banded cuffs at the wrists and ankles. It was hard to reconcile the scorn in her voice with the dress of her choosing, but so be it. Esme thought this conversation ranked among their finest in days.

“I’ve got work, honey bun. But you can stay. Tomorrow I’ll take you to dance class.”

Ida nose-dived for the files. Flipped one open. Stared at Ned. “Nope,” she said. “Too young.” She rolled on her back, legs in the air.

“For what?”

“For Dad. Duh,” and she grabbed at the next file, which Esme had in hand and wouldn’t let go.

“Mohhm. Give it.”

“Okay, this is not playtime, and we’re not looking for your dad.”

“Are, too,” Ida said. And, as though buffeted by the fury of it all, she lifted herself from the couch and sailed out of the room.

Esme shook her head. She had not done the easy thing of telling Ida that Thurlow was dead, just that he had vanished when she was a baby. And because she had never elaborated or furnished the story with verisimilitude—what he did for a living, what he looked like, where he was last—Ida must have known she was lying. But who was to say what went on in the mind of a nine-year-old? She was so much like her father, the passions accreting with each year. Sometimes Esme looked at her and thought, How do you even have the room?

She put her files away. Tried to relax. The years without Thurlow were cairned in her heart for the life they never had, but just because she’d grown used to the weight did not mean that it wasn’t heavy or that sometimes she could not bear it.

And to think it was her job that had brought them together. They’d known each other since they were kids, but their first real encounter came after she’d been assigned to him. And he never knew. He still didn’t. And now, a decade later, she was still following him around. Five minutes at a Laundromat. A few hours in North Korea.

Under her bed was a queen-size strongbox instead of a box spring. It was designed to conceal thirty-five rifles and seventy handguns, though she used it for DVDs and letters. Four hundred eighty-two letters from Thurlow. A thousand DVDs. She grabbed one from last year, marked 11/04, right after the election. She had filmed that night herself; the weather had been awful—a storm, a flood—but everyone still came.

She popped the DVD into her computer and closed her eyes. Thurlow’s voice was enough for her; she knew the rest by heart. He’d been wearing jeans and a long-sleeved polyester crew that hung off his shoulders. His hair was mopped across his face because he’d just showered and that was what conditioner did to it. His skin was pale and freckled, which gave him an injured, boyish look that made the traumas issuing from his lips seem all the more unjust. He had put his hands on the lectern, and she could make out the swollen knuckle that had never healed from when he fell off his bike at age twelve. He thanked everyone for coming. Three hundred in the audience? Four? A drop in the bucket.

“Now, listen,” he said. “A lot of people think solitude comes from a deep need attached in our social history to the dread of convention. Or even just the dread of belonging. How can I belong? I live in darker registers of inquiry and feeling than anyone else on earth. Does that sound familiar?”

Esme was mouthing the speech with him. She’d heard it and the others a thousand times. She remembered that this one went on for hours. And that somewhere in the middle, the rain stopped, and the wind died. And that by the time Thurlow was done, the sky was fledgling blue.

She turned off her computer. It wasn’t that she didn’t agree with Thurlow. Loneliness was a pandemic, and she had only to look at herself to see the proof. She had spent more time alone than anyone she knew, despite her daughter, whom she loved but whose presence was not companionship. Ida was just a child. Sometimes she was even an affront. So, the premise—Thurlow had that right. It