Hi Tessa! It’s Barb. I’m off to find Regina’s girlfriend. Want to meet me at Café Collage after?
I glance between the text and my friends, bunched again, the conversation returned to the neighbors jackhammering their way into the canals.
Claire has moved on. The other mothers have moved on too. My husband. The police. Barb hasn’t moved on. She can’t. She won’t. I can’t. I won’t either—not until I figure out how my son knew the womanwho died outside our home. And not just died. Though Barb never said it, it was on the tip of her tongue. Both our tongues. Regina was murdered outside my home. There is no moving on until we find out what happened to her. I tell Barb I’ll meet her at 1:30, after I drop off Jasper at Claire’s.
Chapter Twelve
Barb
I stare up at Regina’s building, grimy and salt stained. The fire escape that snakes up the side of the three-story building appears so rusted, I doubt the ladder could be lowered in an emergency. As I scan the four windows on each floor, wondering which belonged to my daughter, I can’t fight the disappointment that this isn’t somewhere I would have wanted her to live. She never brought me here when I visited. It wasn’t somewhere Regina wanted to show me either.
In the front alcove, there are six buzzers. I run my hand over the names, stopping atGeller, and press the buzzer. It rings and rings. I don’t want it to end, but it has to, and when eventually it does, this feels like another small death. How many more times can I lose her?
I press the button forRosenthal, chuckling to myself. I’d wanted Regina to go to temple to meet a nice Jewish boy. Instead, she went to Venice Beach and found herself a nice Jewish girl. At least, I hope she’s nice. I hope she was good to my daughter. It rings twice, then she buzzes me in without inquiry.
Maisy’s apartment is 3B, so I mount the stairs, sending piercing stabs through my right knee. Though I’m in good shape, I’ve been walking too much. On the second floor, the police have blocked a door with crime scene tape. A few pairs of sandals are lined againstthe wall beside a mat with a typewriter on it. I check under Regina’s mat. There’s no key. I take my shoes off and slip my feet into her plastic sandals. Grains of sand itch my toes through my nylon socks.
A woman’s voice echoes from above. “It’s the third floor.”
I climb up, wondering who Maisy thinks she’s buzzed in. There’s no world in which she knows she’s about to talk to Regina’s mother.
An Asian woman materializes at the top of the steps in a ribbed tank top and shorts so short they may as well be underwear. Her straight hair is ear length and greasy. She has a ring in her nose and lilies grafted onto her arms. Thick liner engulfs her dark eyes.
“You have my food?”
“You’re MaisyRosenthal?” I ask uncertainly.
“My dad’s Jewish,” she says, unfazed, though it’s the kind of moment that would show up in the sensitivity training videos I had commissioned for my company. “My food?”
Her impatience quickly shifts to discomfort as she realizes I’m not the delivery person.
“I’m Barb Geller.” For years after Isaac and I divorced, I debated returning to my maiden name, to sever the most symbolic way I had belonged to my ex-husband, ultimately deciding against it because I wouldn’t have had the same surname as my daughter. When I sayGellernow, it isn’t Isaac’s last name. It’s Regina’s. “I’m—”
Maisy thunders down the stairs and thrusts her arms around me so tight, I can feel her rib cage contracting and expanding as she starts to cry. She smells ripe, sweaty. I let her embrace me. It’s the closest I’ll get to holding Regina ever again.
“Sorry.” Maisy pulls away from me. “I don’t know what came over me.”
She wipes black tears off her cheeks. They leave streaks, little dark lines like wrinkles. I squeeze her arm, trying not to cry myself.
“I’m sorry too. I know you were close with her.” It’s odd, consoling this woman I don’t know over my daughter’s death. I can tell by her blotchy face, her bloody nail beds, her stench, that she needs someoneto comfort her. I can be this person. I tell myself it’s what Regina would have wanted.
“Do you want to—” Maisy motions up to her apartment. “I should warn you, I’m not neat like your daughter.”
Regina, neat? In high school, no square of Regina’s carpet was spared from dirty clothes, no inch of her desk free from water glasses or empty plates. When she stayed at her father’s, I would clean her room. She’d return, say nothing about the now-orderly space. We never fought about it. Instead, she’d proceed to create as much chaos as she could until she left for Isaac’s and the cycle began again.
Maisy isn’t exaggerating. Her apartment is as bad as Regina’s room ever was as a teenager. Clothes bury the furniture. Record jackets are opened and tossed across the living room floor. Puddles of burnt candles are scattered about. This mess has a bohemian vibe to it, one that almost seems intentional.
Maisy clears enough space for me to sit on the couch. I flop onto it, not expecting the cushions to be quite so soft. I’m already dreading having to stand back up.
Her intercom buzzes, and she presses the button to let the delivery person in.
“Can I make you some tea?” Maisy scampers into the cluttered kitchen, tossing a pot into the already crowded sink to make room for the kettle on the stove. She opens a nearly empty cabinet. “Let’s see, I have—” She pulls out a box of Irish breakfast, frowning as she shakes it, then returns it empty to the cupboard before continuing the same routine with a box of chamomile and a tin of something called Sleepytime. There’s a knock on the door, and she retrieves a bag with a receipt stapled to it.
“Is water okay?”
“Water’s fine.”
Except the Brita she removes from the fridge is empty. “How about wine?” she asks, holding up a half-full bottle of something white.
