The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan Page A

P.J. was calling. She ignored it.
    “What airline?” the driver asked.
    “Air France.”
    When Delphine discovered the truth about P.J., she went straight to a hotel. She could not stand the thought of spending one more night in his apartment. For two weeks, she lay in bed, never eating or speaking to a soul, feeling herself coming unglued. She was a middle-aged woman, but somehow she felt like a child, as if at any moment she could yell out for her father and be saved.
    Her phone rang again now, and once again she ignored it.
    The taxi slowed down at a red light. They were in an ethnic neighborhood she didn’t recognize, packed with low apartment buildings and storefront churches. The fire hydrants had been turned on. Children splashed around in the spray.
    Her phone vibrated in her lap. A text message:
What did you do to my apartment? WHERE IS CHARLIE, you crazy bitch??
    She switched the phone off, and tucked it into the pocket of her suitcase.
    Inside the airport a few minutes later, Delphine passed a Muslim woman in a headscarf and smiled. She thought of how many Americans must hate or distrust her on sight, and wanted to tell her,
They hate me too, as soon as I open my mouth
.
    She got her ticket from the machine and took her place in the security line. Most of the other travelers wore sweats or pajama pants. Delphine smoothed the front of her blue dress.
    A man in a uniform was shouting, “Remove all shoes, jewelry, belts.Remove all shoes, jewelry, belts.” Over and over again. He seemed to be getting a lot of satisfaction from telling them what to do.
    Delphine took off her watch. Drawing her hand away from her wrist, she realized with a sickening sensation that the ring was gone.
    She stepped out of line, then retraced her steps to the door, with her eyes on the ground. Nothing. She sat down on a bench outside and unzipped her suitcase, even though she knew it couldn’t be there. She searched the entire thing and shoved her fingers into the pocket where she had put her phone. She felt cool metal, and with it came a rush of relief, but when she pulled the object out it was only a penny.
    Delphine felt frantic, searching the floor a second time, getting down on her knees at the ticket machine.
    Maybe the ring wasn’t in the airport at all. Maybe she had lost it even earlier.
    She tried to remember the last time she saw it. It had probably been hours. Had it gone down the garbage chute? Into the fireplace? Her fingers had gotten so thin that it might have slipped off anywhere. She let herself ponder insane scenarios, in which everyone was suspicious.
The doorman had been overly friendly. Perhaps the alleged father from Connecticut was actually a pickpocket and had slid it off her hand as they ex“I’ve lost my ring,” she said to a woman now pressing buttons on the machine, but the woman didn’t even turn around.
In Delphine’s version of justice, all innocent parties would leave this situation with what they brought: the Jews would keep the violin, and his family would get their ring back. Now she had lost it, and what was theirs would be gone. Delphine felt sorry for P.J.’s mother, but worst of all for his father, who had saved up to buy it all those years ago.
    While visiting P.J.’s parents in Ohio a few weeks earlier, the trip that had set their demise in motion, she had learned more about him in two days than she might have otherwise learned in a year. His parents, James and Sheila, were perfectly kind people, but Delphine had little in common with them. They had no books in their house. They kept the television on at all times, the voices of conservative news pundits and sports announcers a constant backdrop to every conversation. They drank too much diet soda, and ate chips straight from the bag. They had voted for George W. Bush.
    She didn’t want to be a snob, but their decor was incredibly tacky: bric-a-brac on every stationary surface, porcelain figures in the shape of frogs and flowers and