St. Ivo by Joanna Hershon

Author:Joanna Hershon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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THEY EMERGED FROM THE WOODS behind Kiki and Arman’s Honda onto a spit of sand. It looked like a makeshift parking lot, and some piled-up charred logs were also off to the side—someone’s forgotten campfire. The Honda was idling; they were still inside. Kiki was sitting in the back seat next to Sylvie. Had Sarah done that with Leda? Sat in the back next to the car seat? It seemed a little much. But she must have. They’d rarely driven in the city. She remembered driving with Leda as a baby while taking that first trip to L.A.—the film premiere, her leaky boobs, drinking dirty martinis. She’d carefully pumped her milk and poured it out, watched it circle the drain and disappear, several stories above Sunset. They’d driven on location with Matthew when Leda was a toddler, and later—when she no longer needed a car seat—while on vacations. All of Sarah’s car memories involved straining her neck. Just use the mirror, Matthew had told her, knowing she’d complain later on, but she always had to go and yank herself around, either to watch Leda sleeping, to hand her a snack, to look her in the eye while making an important point. But did she sit beside Leda when she was a newborn? She must have. Right? Of course she must have. Or else she hadn’t. And for all she knew that could have been the missing piece.

“Right, what?” Matthew asked, as he cut the engine.

She looked at him blankly, not realizing she’d spoken.

“Right, what?” he repeated. They were both looking at the lake, more impressive than she’d pictured—a matte blue-green.

“Did I sit next to Leda in the car when she was a baby?”

He shrugged.

“I mean, I must have.”

“I don’t remember.” He didn’t say it was useless to wonder, but he was obviously thinking it. “I just want you to consider something,” he tentatively began. “She’s alive.”

“As far as we know,” countered Sarah, but she was nodding.

“You saw her alive on a beautiful beach just over a year ago.”

Sarah looked out the window. As she registered a parked truck with a man sitting on the edge of the flatbed, she had a burst of vigilant energy. Oddly, the man was facing their cars and not the lake. His legs were swinging. She sensed his threatening presence as she riffled through her memories, trying to come up with some tangible proof that she’d sat in the back seat with her own baby.

“‘The anguish of death…,’” Matthew said. “We can’t—”

“I know,” said Sarah firmly. “I know. ‘The anguish of death is different from the awareness of self-destruction.’ We read the same book.”

She reached out and rubbed his neck, made a sincere attempt at softening her tone. This coincided with a wave of what they referred to as beach exhaustion (Sarah’s overwhelming urge, upon arriving at any body of water, to fall asleep in the car). But she forced herself to snap out of it. As Matthew got out, she made sure she did, too.

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