When a computer finally opened up in the teen section, Maribeth swooped over to it just before a young girl with pink bangs and a pierced lip got there. “Hey,” the girl said, angrily. “You’re not allowed over here.”
Maribeth ignored her and launched Gmail. She had not gone this long without checking e-mail since she’d had e-mail, and the anticipation and fear were sending waves of panic through her. It was so much worse than that time after she’d gone offline at Tom and Elizabeth’s retreat. She could only imagine what Jason had written as the days of her absence added up. And oh, god, what if her mother had found someone to send an e-mail for her?
It was almost a relief when the first screen was all junk: ads for Black Friday sales, credit card offers, pleas for year-end charitable donations. She deleted them and brought up a fresh page of messages. There were notices about Career Day at BrightStart, endless threads about the best organic baby food on TribecaParents, and double jog strollers for sale on the twins’ e-mail list, but nothing from Jason.
She went back five, then ten, then fifteen screens’ worth of messages. Two, three, four weeks. There was nothing from Jason. She did a search, for both his personal and work e-mail addresses. The last e-mail from Jason Brinkley was from late October. Two days before she’d come to Pittsburgh.
She had left, in precarious health, two and a half weeks after having emergency bypass surgery. And he had not e-mailed her once. Not to ask: Are you okay? Not to yell: Fuck you. Not to beg her to come home or order her to stay away.
She started to laugh, only it wasn’t really a laugh, because two seconds later, she was crying. The snarky teenagers were looking at her with something like concern now.
“Are you okay?” the girl with the pink hair and the pierced lip asked.
“He didn’t fucking e-mail me.”
The girl looked startled. Maybe it was the profanity. Or maybe she’d never seen a grown-up so spectacularly losing it before. But after a second, the teenager regained her equilibrium and rolled her eyes. “Guys are such dicks,” she said.
36
Friday night, she stewed. All that trouble—paying cash for everything, keeping herself hidden, the false identity—for what? She was playing hide-and-go-seek . . . with herself. Nobody was looking.
By Saturday morning, though, she had convinced herself, they had to be. She had missed an e-mail or it had gone to her spam folder. Given when she had left, how she had left, why she had left, surely, someone would send up a flare.
She returned to the library that afternoon. It was less crowded and she got a computer right away. She logged onto Gmail, paging through each screen. There was nothing. She checked her spam file. Nothing. The trash. Nothing. She checked her work account in case he’d accidentally e-mailed her at the wrong address, but there was nothing from him there either. She logged on to her Facebook page. Old get-well messages and random tags from people unaware of what had happened, but from Jason or Elizabeth, nothing.
It was like she didn’t exist.
She sat there refreshing the screen, unable to comprehend this. She told herself she would wait until three o’clock, and if there was no message, she’d leave. Three o’clock came. Then four. Then five.
Nothing.
By the time the librarians blinked the lights to announce closing in ten minutes, her sorrow had iced over. One month gone and not a word. She opened a new message window. She began to type in his name. Google autofilled it.
I was under this crazy impression that in spite of everything you might actually give a shit.
The cursor blinked at the end of the message. A little voice in the back of her head warned her not to do it. It was the same voice she’d heard more than twenty years ago, when she was about to send Jason a drunken e-mail after she’d found out about the new San Francisco girlfriend. Didn’t let the sheets get cold, did you? she’d written.
He never replied to that e-mail, and she’d regretted sending it. But that didn’t stop her from sending this one now.
37
Maribeth ran into Sunita on the stoop as she got home from the library that day.
“Hey, we just got back from the Holiday Market,” Sunita said.
“The what?” Maribeth asked.
“That Christmas thing. I texted to see if you wanted to go.”
“Sorry. I was at the library.”
“Did you get any books?”
“Oh, I was just using the computer.” Using probably wasn’t the right word. Staring glazed in front of it, like those old ladies in front of the nickel slots. “How was it?”
“Lame. But next week is Handmade Arcade, which is awesome. It’s like Etsy in a convention center,” Sunita said. “You should come.”
“We’ll see. I might have to go back to the library.”
“If it’s a computer you need, you’re always welcome to borrow my laptop.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Could I maybe borrow it now?”
“Of course.” Sunita went into the apartment and returned with her laptop. “The Wi-Fi should work from your place.”
Furtively, as if she were about to watch porn, Maribeth brought the computer into her apartment. She launched her e-mail program and left it open all evening, refreshing the page while she attempted to distract herself with a short story collection, and when that didn’t work, resorting to the TV again. There was a Modern Family marathon on but the show’s irreverence was making her murderous so she changed to a Friends rerun but that depressed her, because it reminded her, in its bright-TV version, of her old existence with Elizabeth. (Well, they had a loft. And they were young.)