Free Surprise Me by Deena Goldstone Page B

notes, try out bits of dialogue, talk to her characters. Eli, sitting next to her reading The Wall Street Journal, would glance over from time to time but not intrude.
    Or she would write postcards to Daniel, quick notes as the train sped toward Manhattan, telling him she was working, planning her next chapter. Once in a while she’d get a cryptic card back with no salutation or signature— What if Melanie used a horse for her getaway instead of a car? A horse so black he couldn’t be seen in the night? Isabelle laughed out loud as she read that one—a horse in the middle of the city?
    At her desk, in her father’s sterile law offices, when she felt stupefied by the statistics she was compiling for some case or another, she would log on to the office’s AOL account and e-mail Daniel. Stefan, who still had had no luck finding a job, turned out to have the savvy to set up an e-mail account for Daniel (and not coincidentally himself) at the house. Don’t worry, Daniel wrote to her after she had complained one day that she was stuck, at sea with Melanie’s story, it’s okay to get lost . She contemplated every sentence he wrote because she knew he was trying to nudge her toward the unexpected. Surprise me.
    How is it possible to know someone so well, as she now feels she knows Daniel, and know almost nothing about his life? Of course, she knows his son and that Daniel suffers each day with his agoraphobia, but outside of that she knows nothing. Does he have other children? What happened to his marriage? Why was he at Chandler? Was he working on another book? Whom did he vote for in the last election? She couldn’t have answered one of those questions, and yet there is a certainty within her that she knows him.

    At the beginning of their second week of travel, her father puts aside his paper and begins to talk. Anyone watching the two of them sitting side by side in the crowded, stuffy, rapidly warming train car would have easily guessed they are father and daughter, the resemblance between them so apparent—the same light brown eyes that are almost hazel, the same long limbs, the same graceful hands, the same air of apology which hangs from their shoulders and hunches them inward. Ruth’s constant admonition to “stand up straight” throughout Isabelle’s childhood never really took. She is her father’s daughter and has learned to bow her shoulders against all possible onslaughts, just as he does.
    That morning at breakfast Eli and Ruth had made sure to flagrantly ignore each other, the air between them sizzling with more resentment than usual. Isabelle and her brothers ignored the ignoring.
    “Your mother’s having a hard time right now.” Eli starts the conversation as the train gathers speed away from the Rockville Centre station.
    Isabelle mumbles, “Hmmmm,” and continues typing, her laptop angled so her father can’t read the screen.
    “I’m worried about her.”
    “Oh, Daddy.”
    “No, really, this is different.”
    And at that Isabelle feels compelled to close the computer, turn, and have a conversation she doesn’t want to have.
    “She’s a creative person, Isabelle, and she doesn’t have an outlet.”

    So am I! Isabelle wants to yell but doesn’t. Being home in the Rothman realm, she feels as though some entity is holding a hand over her mouth, muzzling every sentence she longs to shout.
    “That’s why she gets depressed, you know. And snappy. She’s been searching so long without finding the right thing.”
    “Maybe she isn’t a creative person, Dad.” Isabelle knows she sounds snappy herself. She tries harder to be gentle. “Maybe she wants to be but really isn’t.”
    Eli thinks about that for a moment as the train stops at the Valley Stream station and he watches crowds of men, already sweating through their light-colored shirts, their suit jackets over their arms, push into the aisles, raising the temperature in the car just by their bodily presence.
    “Well, that would be