Any Minute: A Novel Read online

  She worked her skirt down over her hips inside the bathroom stall, which wasn’t the easiest thing to accomplish considering the tight space. She lurched out of the stall, balanced on one foot to remove her shoe from the other. By the time she made it to the lavatory mirror, she was fastening her jeans, which meant a sort of chicken dance as she straightened her spine, sucked in her stomach, and drew up her zipper. Precious seconds ticked past as she worked her toes into her sneakers.

  Definitely the smartest thing she’d done all day, bringing her Cubs-wear to the office. She hauled the T-shirt over her head and tried not to think of the clock. Everything had taken longer this afternoon than she’d intended.

  The last half dozen phone calls, each of which she’d ended with, “I need to let you go. I’m running behind.”

  Her final session with Leo, where she’d reminded him she needed info on the energy sector in the morning, which meant he’d spend the wee hours doing research.

  The time she’d spent tapping her toe behind the young woman at Starbucks who couldn’t find enough change to pay for her iced tea. Anytime Sarah’s energy started to slump, she managed to get a large coffee with an extra shot of espresso from Starbucks.

  “Excuse me,” Sarah had insisted, practically pushing the woman aside and moving forward in line. “If you can’t pay for that, do you mind letting someone else go ahead? You’re holding everyone up.”

  By the time she’d sent off the T-Bond info for Rothman, the first pitch had already gone out at Wrigley Field. She could still get to the game, but she was glad she’d warned Joe she might be a little late. If traffic wasn’t backed up along Lake Shore Drive, she’d still be able to find her seat without missing much.

  Sarah employed both thumbs at once, pecking out a text to Roscoe that she’d departed for the night. TR IN IMPORTANT MEETING, came the word from Roscoe’s secretary, Rona. DOESN’T WANT INTERRUPTIONS. CAN IT WAIT?

  Yep, Sarah answered. She smiled at the irony. Thank heavens would have been more appropriate.

  She ended up on the marble ledge between the faucet and the soap dispenser, doing her best to tie her shoes. When she hit the door running, she winced at the mucky smell that had picked tonight of all nights to drift in off Lake Michigan. The air was so thick that she could almost see the smog.

  The minute Sarah pulled out of the parking structure and headed toward the ballpark, traffic boxed her in. Before she ever left The Loop, she got stuck behind a catering truck whose driver seemed to think he was entitled to two lanes. She veered to the right to pass him, only to zoom up behind a CTA bus dropping off passengers at the curb. She found an opening and darted left again, just in time to screech her tires to avoid hitting a delivery van that swerved out of the alley.

  “Come on.” She drummed her fingernails against the steering wheel in frustration. She glanced at the clock in the Lincoln. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  Rush hour had passed, but bumper-to-bumper traffic still clogged the city. Remarkably, Sarah darted to the far left and the lane opened for the next few blocks. The boulevard made a curve toward the waterfront. That’s where Sarah saw the boat moving up the river toward the bridge.

  No. Not now.

  No no no no no.

  It was her fault. She never should have cut this so short. Sarah felt the beginnings of a headache as her neck and shoulders tightened from the stress she felt.

  The light turned green, and the race was on again. She bolted into the middle lane and made some progress that way. She glanced from the road to the boat in hopes she might be gaining. But by the time she made the corner, the boat had beaten her. The signal flashed red ahead. The barricade began descending.

  Tires squealed. Sarah waited, fuming, while she watched the bridge begin its leisurely rise. She counted taillights in front of her and decided at least three more cars could have crossed if only someone had had the guts and the barrier hadn’t gone down. The Windy II, a sailboat on voyage from Navy Pier, drifted forward as dozens of merry pirate-clad passengers waved from the deck. She watched the stanchions part in front of her to make way for the tall boat to pass along the river. Her nagging headache had grown into a full-blown migraine. She dug inside her purse, searching for aspirin, acetaminophen, anything to dull the pain. She found the plastic bottle and fiddled with the lid. She shook it, frustrated by the childproof cap. Empty. Why was she always running out of these things, anyway? She reminded herself that she needed to go to the doctor for something stronger than over-the-counter pain relievers. She had put it off a long time, but her head was hurting more and more these days.

  She kneaded her temples with her fingers. As long as she’d lived, she’d never seen anything move as slowly as this boat.

  Sarah fumed. Just to let everyone know how frustrated she felt, she laid on the horn. The guy in the Beamer turned and eyed her like she’d gone out of her mind.

  She’d just picked up her cell to text Joe and say she was on her way when yet another call rang through. T ROSCOE, announced the screen.

  No.

  In the hairbreadth of a second, her instincts whispered: Don’t answer it. You’re off the clock. Leave well enough alone.

  Sarah could do a great many things, but never this: She hadn’t acquired her lofty position by ignoring a ringing phone.

  She hooked up her earpiece. “Hey, Tom. What’s up?”

  Ahead of her the boat began to progress. The haze in the air made the gaping bridge and the sluggish craft appear to shimmer around the edges.

  She listened.

  “Oh, congratulations, Tom. That’s great news about Cornish. There’ll be a write-up on Bloomberg for sure.… Of course it makes sense. It makes sense they talked to all those people and narrowed it down to you.… You actually did that? You showed them today’s financials?”

  He continued talking, and she continued applauding his good fortune until he got to the part where he told her he’d included her in the bargain. Anyone watching Sarah in her vehicle would have seen her smile begin to broaden. At least until she realized Tom wanted her to drop what she was doing and meet him and the Cornish brothers for dinner. She gripped the steering wheel. Her face paled with distress.

  “Oh. No. I didn’t realize that’s why you were calling. I thought you were just calling to share the good news.… Tonight? I’m afraid that’s impossible. Tom, I can’t.… It’s such short notice,” she said. “What about tomorrow? Could we set it up for then?”

  If only she could make him understand! If only he would let her out of this! But without really hearing her, her employer launched into a hearty accounting of the numbers. “It’s asking a lot, Tom. I really don’t see how I can do it. You see, I have plans with my family.”

  Success always involved trade-offs, Tom reminded her. She was one of the lucky few who still had a job in the financial district. If she wasn’t delighted by her schedule, at least she and Joe had what they needed.

  Sarah thought of the responsibility of the jumbo mortgage in East Lake Forest they had to think about, their faltering retirement account, and their gas bills in this unsteady economy, the upkeep on the Lincoln, the lease on the garage in Bucktown where Joe installed racing engines in Miatas. They were still paying off some of her college loans, and she was determined to pay off the balances on their five credit cards. She knew the extra income from an account of this stature would make a huge difference for them.

  The pressure felt enormous. They were so much worse off now than they’d been a year ago. She really did not understand it, but it seemed the more money she made, the deeper in debt they became. The nanny was expensive, the cleaning lady she needed to keep up with the house was expensive, and the clothes she needed in order to be impressive were also expensive. At that moment Sarah felt as if she were being pulled apart. She didn’t want to disappoint Joe and Mitchell, but she didn’t want to disappoint Tom Roscoe either—and she definitely wanted to make more money and have more prestige on the job. She vaguely realized that not
only did her head hurt really bad, but she felt a bit nauseated too.

  For the first time that day, Sarah wasn’t the woman with the power job and the personal digital device and the private nanny.

  She was only the mother and the wife who wanted to get to the ballpark, the woman who felt like she was being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. “How much time do I have?” she asked, and he told her.

  “Right now?” she asked. “Right now I’m stuck at the Lake Street Bridge.

  “If I come back, could we compromise? Could it only take a few minutes to meet with them and let me be on my way?… Of course I understand. I know it’s important, Tom. It’s set, then?” she asked, keeping her voice even. “The Everest Room?”

  The Windy II, only a third of the way through the passage, sounded its horn. The guy in the Beamer gave up and turned off his engine. Sarah unfastened the earpiece and stared at it like she wanted to deposit it in the depths of murky river.

  She drummed out a short, apologetic text to her husband, entering the letters in much the same rhythm as the pounding in her head. She adjusted her rearview mirror and signaled, taking note of the curious onlookers in line behind her.

  Indignant, she narrowed her brows and flared her nostrils at these complete strangers. What do you think you’re looking at?

  Sarah maneuvered the SUV into a slow, sad U-turn and headed back into the city.

  Chapter Three

  You think she’s going to miss the game again?” Mitchell asked, and the little boy’s eyes seemed suspiciously glittery in the stadium lighting. Beneath his little glasses, Mitchell looked perilously close to tears.

  “Maybe she’ll get here. She promised us this time, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Mitchell said, dubious. “But it might have been another one of those days.” He turned around and scanned the walkway above them. “Maybe she can’t find us.”

  “Oh, she’ll find us. She’s got her phone. She’ll let us know when she gets here.”

  Joe would look back at this months later, at his halfhearted attempt to watch the game while he lost hope in Sarah, as the moment he might have realized their lives were falling apart and he was helpless to do something about it. But he felt no strong hint of that now, only a vague relief that something up in the sky had come along to distract Mitchell from the absence of his mother.

  “Look at that guy! There’s a man way up there, Dad.”

  Joe shaded his eyes and peered into a setting sun so fierce that it made his head hurt. The glare blinded him.

  Chicagoans reveled in the lore of their ancient green score-board, how it had never been hit by a batted ball (although Bill “Swish” Nicholson and Roberto Clemente came close a half-century ago), how it stood where Babe Ruth had once called his ’32 Series bleacher shot and slammed his longest homer ever, how every other team had succumbed to progress while the Cubs clung to tradition: their time-honored board with a man hiding inside, climbing from spot to spot on a labyrinth of catwalks and steps, posting numbers by hand.

  “The scoreboard guy. He’s up there, Dad. See him? Right there.”

  “Where?”

  “There. Looking out through the hole in the eighth inning.”

  Joe hated to admit it, but he’d never really given these scoreboard stories much thought; he’d never really seriously considered he would see the guy. He took for granted that the score would go up correctly and instantaneously, the way it went up on the computerized displays at every other stadium he’d ever visited. Flags snapped overhead. Ropes clanged against the pole in the breeze. Joe squinted, trying to see.

  “He’s right there, Dad. See?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I don’t.”

  At that exact moment, uncanny how it all worked, really, one of the flags curled aloft, caught by an updraft off the lake. It streamed across the sunset, briefly casting Joe’s face in shadow. For one instant, Joe caught a view of the board.

  “Mitchell, there’s nothing there.”

  “There is. Right there.”

  “Better let me have a look through your glasses then. Maybe I need them.”

  Mitchell handed them to Joe, and Joe peered at a distance through the lenses.

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  Mitchell’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. And by the way he described the fellow, how he sat high overhead with his forearms crossed and his head inclined toward them, how his small amount of gray hair kept blowing across his scalp, Joe had to be impressed by the boy’s imagination. He was being confronted with so much disappointment right now about his own life that he found himself feeling slightly jealous of Mitchell’s childlike imagination. Right now I would like to escape reality, Joe thought.

  “You think he lives up there?” Mitchell asked.

  “Who?”

  “That guy up there.” Then, “Oops, he knows I caught him,” he told his dad. “He went back inside.”

  Joe figured it out; he’d heard how kids used imaginary characters to deal with stress. Mitchell must have invented this crazy game because of his mother’s absence. “I don’t know, son.” Best at this point to play along. “Of course he doesn’t live up there. He only sits up there during the games and keeps track of the teams and watches. He keeps score.”

  “He keeps track of all the teams?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So if I see him and you don’t, maybe he’s like an angel. Maybe he’s helping God,” Mitchell said. “Because he sits up high and keeps track of everything. Maybe that’s why I’m the only one who can see him.”

  “Yeah.” Joe had gotten somewhat distracted, looking for his wife in the crowd again. But he realized what he’d said and corrected himself. “No. Definitely not like an angel. Nothing to do with God. Because this is only a baseball game.”

  “You think he can see clear to the lake from up there?”

  “Who?”

  “That man up there. Does a guy stay in the scoreboard at every ballpark or just here? Does he make the clock run up there too?” (Which Joe might have answered, “No, Mitchell. The clock runs on its own. Each second takes care of itself. He doesn’t do that part.” But this barrage of questions overwhelmed him, and he didn’t know where to start.)

  “Does anybody ever see how he gets up there, Dad? Does he have a ladder? Does he have a trap door or something?”

  “You want to stop asking so many questions?” Joe removed Mitchell’s hat and punched it inside out to make it a rally cap; it seemed the Cubs always needed rally caps. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  Scores were being posted for every team playing that day. On the scoreboard, Joe noticed that the sign for the Marlins came in two pieces, Flori and da. Somebody ought to make you take a class when you get to be a parent. He had no idea what he ought to say. “And it isn’t heaven where he’s sitting, Mitchell. It’s just the scoreboard at Wrigley Field.”

  A passing vendor came by, clanging his cooler lid. “Water. There’s water here!” which started people passing dollar bills along the row. The bottles dripped cold on Joe’s knees as he passed them back. “You want water?” he asked Mitchell, but his son shook his head, looking unusually serious.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  As soon as Joe settled into what was left of the game (he’d given up watching for Sarah any longer), Mitchell took off the paw. Joe looked down, surprised, when Mitchell grasped his hand.

  “What is it, buddy? What’s wrong?”

  “If that guy’s up there helping God,” the little boy said, “maybe he could help Mom show up for things too.”

  Mitchell’s words sent up an instant alarm. “I don’t know, kiddo.” Because to Joe, it seemed like nothing could ever change Sarah. Because he hadn’t wanted Mitchell to sense how bad things had gotten between them. It exhausted Joe, having to pretend that all was well for Mitchell’s sake.

  He needed to talk to Sarah, to give her some ultimatum, to make her understand how hopeless and overwh
elmed he was beginning to feel. And if there was anything that made Joe more nervous than Mitchell asking all these questions, it was Mitchell asking all these questions about God.

  Joe didn’t want to stand here with his son chitchatting about the spiritual well-being of the world. Joe had gotten dragged to church way too often back when he was a kid. He’d listened to all the same stories Mitchell listened to and, with that same simple logic, had believed them.

  All that had changed now. Even though he and Sarah still attended services at their popular church in Lake Forest, Joe knew his adult convictions weren’t much to brag about. He had a hard time taking all this “relationship with God” stuff to heart. You grew up. You got hurt and disappointed and couldn’t figure things out. You forgot to ask for help or, when you did ask, you never got anything you asked for.

  Somewhere along the way, you realized you were as lonely as one of those Great Lakes shipwrecks, rattling around inside yourself like old artifacts, rusting into oblivion.

  Somewhere along the way, you figured out there weren’t guardian angels waiting around every corner anymore. After all, how could a person believe God was managing everything in the world and angels were watching over us when everything felt so painful and out of order?

  The chant began behind them, and soon the whole crowd had taken it up. “Let’s go, Cub-bies! Let’s go, Cub-bies!” The lady behind him whooped it up, stabbing him in the shoulder with her unwieldy sign: It Could Happen.

  “Do you mind making that not happen?” Joe said to her.

  The announcer introduced the seventh-inning stretch, the fans stood and cheered, and someone handed the performer a microphone. Just as the organ began to play, Joe’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he had one last jolt of hope. A phone call! She’d come! Sarah had gotten to the ballpark and was trying to find them! But Joe flipped his Nokia open to find that it wasn’t a phone call at all, only a text message.