Picture Me Gone (9 page)

I
f the person or persons who are living at Matthew’s camp is or are actually Matthew, then our hunt is over. If they are not Matthew, they may know where he is. Something tells me that he’s not here. I can’t explain the feeling. Something about Honey’s howl, the way her excitement waned, a dog following an old trail.

We will have to return.

It is three quarters of an hour back to the Mountain View Motor Inn, where we stop and tell them we will be staying another night. Then we head into town. We have time to kill and Gil needs to buy a new razor.

While he decides between the blue and the silver, I ask him for five dollars to buy a small stuffed moose.

We’re so far north here that you might say we’re inundated with moose. There’s the Mighty Moose Café in town and Moose Martin Antiques, in front of which is a huge wooden carved moose, almost as big as a real one. There are paintings of moose in the office of the Mountain View Motor Inn. The place we have breakfast, though not named after a moose, has a drawing of a moose on the menu.

I’d like to see a real moose. Given that I live in North London, I’m guessing it’s now or never.

We’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and already everything looks familiar. It’s a small town; you can walk from one end to the other in about ten minutes. It would be strange to live here for twenty years when in just a few hours it’s begun to feel like home.

Though I like being with Gil and having a mission and possibly being able to make a difference by finding Matthew, I’m also fairly homesick and there’s something nice about feeling that we belong here in this funny place. I fantasize about staying here forever. Marieka comes to join us and we buy one of the pretty wooden farmhouses on the road out of town, I ride a big farm horse to school every day, Catlin comes to visit in the summer, Gil works by a wood fire all winter and Marieka practices her violin in a cozy studio that used to be the dairy.

Then I turn off the fantasy because, really? I can’t see any of us living here at all.

Whenever I remember, I text Cat.
No fun without you
,
Missing your face
or
What’s the latest?
But she doesn’t answer. It’s hard to know with texts whether someone isn’t getting your messages or doesn’t like you or what. Maybe she’s gone back to her cool gang and doesn’t want to be my friend anymore or maybe she’s run out of credit and can’t ask her parents for money cause they’re getting divorced.

There’s a whole rack of cards in the bookshop and I buy some with silk-screened pictures of loons and owls for Marieka then wander next door to Ammo Depot, which sells big padded jackets up to size XXXL in camouflage green print and bright orange, and tartan wool duck-hunting hats straight out of an Elmer Fudd cartoon (complete with flaps you can unsnap to pull down over your ears), and other stuff like leather and rubber boots, hunting knives with bone handles, canteens, tents, groundsheets and duck whistles. I love this shop. Everything in it is so foreign. There’s a young guy lounging around among the tents and fishing rods, and he’s about to ask if he can help me but I look away quickly, shy in front of a stranger in this shop full of things I’d have no clue what to do with.

Then he goes behind the counter, unlocks a cabinet and starts straightening up boxes of bullets and it dawns on me that actually this shop is all about killing. Suddenly everything I notice is a skinning knife or a laser scope. I get freaked out and leave.

In the doorway I glance back and the boy is looking at me. At first I think he might have noticed that I’m interesting and foreign, but it’s far more likely that he thinks I’m a shoplifter. Who else would run out of a shop so fast?

Next door there’s a secondhand bookshop that might be full of treasures but isn’t, quite. I find a book about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real life, complete with actual photographs of her parents, and I kind of wish I hadn’t because I love her books and the photos of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real-life parents make them look like religious fundamentalists. The drawings of Pa with his beard playing the fiddle made him seem cheerful and warm, but the man in the photos looks cold and distant. And weird. Ma, who was beautiful and kind in the books, here just looks sour and old. Gil says that in the early days of photography it wasn’t considered proper to smile at the camera.

A few minutes later I find him at the other side of the shop staring at a book.

Look at this, he says. The book he holds is old and a bit damp, with brown spots on the pages, but he’s so excited that I’m excited too. He opens the cover to look for a price. The mark in pencil says three dollars.

What on earth is this book doing here? he asks, showing me the title. It’s an old translation of the book he’s working on now. What a strange coincidence, he says. Not exactly the sort of book you’d find just anywhere.

It’s the town, I think, welcoming us with little gifts.

When I was eight I found a violin in a garbage bin that turned out to be worth £9,000. I just caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye as I walked home from school and of course felt sorry for a violin thrown in a bin no matter how terrible it might be, but when I pulled it out of the rubble I knew at once it was something special. I could feel it through my fingers. Something made lovingly and with care feels different from something made by machine. Something old glows in a way that something new doesn’t. It’s not one characteristic but a thousand—a thousand tiny stars slowly forming themselves into a constellation.

I look at Matthew’s message one more time.

I’m nowhere

I haven’t answered it. I don’t know what the right answer would be, or if there is one.

W
e eat lunch late. I order a chicken club sandwich on white toast and it arrives with toothpicks holding it together. Gil asks for toasted ham, cheese and tomato. We both get little white paper tubs of coleslaw. Like most meals in America, my sandwich is gigantic. I give up less than halfway through and wrap it up in a napkin for Honey. Gil says my eyes are bigger than my stomach and that all these leftovers are making the poor dog ill. Like this has nothing to do with him.

The waitress says she likes my accent and wants to know where we’re from.

London, I say, and she says, London, England? You’re so lucky to come from a place like that, and I think, She’s right, I am lucky.

It’s getting late and if we’re going back to the camp today we should set off soon. As I sip lemonade out of a tall glass, I look outside and nearly choke.

Dad, I say, and point.

Oh my god, Gil mutters. It’s April.

The waitress catches this last comment. Nothing at all strange about snow in April, she says. Had a blizzard at Easter once that shut down the whole state for nearly a month. Which is saying something around here. Nobody blinks about snow in April. June, you might get a few surprised looks. You might. Or you might not.

But it’s been so warm.

She shrugs.

Holey moley and heavens to Betsy, Gil says.

The waitress doesn’t notice this departure from regulation BBC English but I throw him a look. Don’t turn native on me now, I whisper when she’s gone. You’re my last link to normality.

No such thing, he whispers back, raising an eyebrow.

You’re the best I’ve got.

Ditto, says he.

We pay for lunch and go out to fetch the car.

Hey, Cat
I text.
It’s snowing! Get over here fast!

And she bleeps back almost at once,
Wish I cud
, which I can’t help reading as fairly mournful. But at least it’s an answer, so maybe she’s not not-talking to me after all.

The snow isn’t sticking but it’s whirling down so thick and soft that it’s only a matter of time. We set off at a crawl and for once I don’t blame Gil. He doesn’t much like driving in any weather much less this weather and his face is nearly pressed to the windscreen in an attempt to see. I get the feeling we’ll be up to our eyeballs quite soon but in the meantime I like the way it sweeps sideways and then straight up, not actually
falling.
You can squint at it and pretend you’re in a snow globe.

It takes more than an hour to reach the camp and by the time we arrive the world is covered over white with no sign of it stopping.

There’s a little red car parked just where we parked this morning. Gil and I look at each other. We stop next to it and I get out to brush the snow off the windows. Peering in, I see a pair of shoes in the backseat, hiking boots in a small size, a box with book CDs in it (
Anna Karenina
read by a posh actress) and greatest hits of James Taylor. Plus a bag of dried apple rings. I’d call it 100-percent female except for a dark-blue baseball cap on the backseat with a Mets logo, which looks distinctly male.

I don’t think it’s Matthew, I say to Gil, and he nods.

Honey jumps out of the car and lands gingerly in the snow without looking particularly surprised. Once again, I’m wondering how Matthew left Honey behind. He obviously knows how Suzanne feels about his dog, knows she won’t be lavishing Honey with affection and care. Which makes his leaving her even stranger. He loves her. He must, given how much she loves him. Has he gone somewhere he couldn’t take a dog? On a plane?

Come on, says Gil, pulling his jacket around him and tucking his chin down into the collar. We head down the path once more. A bit more hesitantly this time, in case folks round these parts shoot first and ask questions later. You never know with Americans.

Hello! calls Gil when we get to the clearing, and I hope someone answers soon because my shoes are soaked and my hair has begun to drip. If the snow decides to stick around for any length of time, I’m going to have to kit up.

The door is closed but there are lights on, and I can see gray smoke climbing out of the chimney. A woman comes to the door and looks out at us. Her expression is puzzled and for an instant the same thought flashes through my head and Gil’s: We’re at the wrong house.

She’s wearing a denim apron over a long skirt and a heavy dark-blue Norwegian sweater with white flecks in it. She wipes her hands and stares out at us.

Honey stands close beside me, the snow landing but not melting on her coat. She’s leaning a little on my leg. I’m watching and watching and even though it’s only seconds in real life, time slows down so it feels like ages.

All of a sudden the woman raises one hand to her mouth, flings open the door and runs out into the snow to embrace Gil, who hugs her back.

What in god’s name are you doing here? You’re getting wet, she laughs. Don’t just stand there, come in, come in!

When she unhugs him at last, she turns to me and I notice that her eyes are slanted up a little at the outside, like a cat’s, so it’s Mila-dog meets anonymous-cat and I wonder whether we’re going to bristle at each other and she’s going to hunch up her back and start hissing, but she just grabs Gil’s arm and mine, and half drags us inside out of the cold.

Then she stands and looks at Gil, at me, back to Gil.

Mila, says Gil, this is Lynda. A very old friend of mine and Matthew’s. From way before you were born.

About a century ago, Lynda says and smiles.

We stand there, the three of us, Gil and I dripping on the floor of her tiny house, Lynda looking at Gil as if she can’t get enough of him. At last she breaks the spell, hurrying off to a chest of drawers from which she pulls an armful of towels. Dry your hair, she says, handing me a blue one, or you’ll catch cold.

It’s so warm in the camp that we start to steam. Gil ruffles my hair with his towel and I ask Lynda if it’s OK to use mine to dry Honey, who’s snuffling around every nook and cranny like we’re playing Find the Rabbit.

She’s not dirty or smelly, I say, and Lynda says, Of course she’s not. So I start to dry her coat. Honey stands patiently till I get to her head, then steps away and gives a big dog shake in an attempt to unruffle her fur. I can almost hear her say,
Enough.
In my head she has a slight New York accent which takes me by surprise. I look at Lynda. She’s younger than Gil, her hair shoulder length and dark with hardly any gray in it and she’s tall. It occurs to me that she could possibly be the girl in the picture from so long ago, the girl Gil and Matthew both loved, and I wonder if Matthew is keeping her hidden away up here like Rapunzel in a tower.

What a crazy day, Lynda says. Snow! At Easter. And now you turning up out of the blue, Gil, how completely—she stops, searching for a word strong enough to do justice to it all—
astonishing.

Gil just stares at her. Well, he says. You’d better tell me what you’re doing here.

I’ve been living here since we came back from Scotland. Nearly three years ago. What on earth are
you
doing here?

We’re searching for Matthew, says Gil. You heard he disappeared?

What? Lynda blinks. What do you mean, disappeared? How would I have heard?

He set off a few days ago, taking nothing special with him, no money, passport, clothes. Just his car. And that was it. He didn’t come home. We thought he might have come here.

He didn’t, she says, we haven’t seen him in months. And she opens her palms in a gesture that suggests we look around under the bed or in the drawers if we don’t believe her.

We haven’t seen him in months.
Which suggests
we
did see him before that? And by the way, I’m thinking, Who’s
we
? I suppose it could be another man, currently hiding in the woods, but there’s a T-shirt draped on the back of a chair with the name of a band on it, an empty box of M&M’s in the bin and a plate on the floor with the remains of breakfast, all of which suggests some version of kid.

Gil sighs and then seems aware that he’s being ungracious. Never mind, he says. As surprises go, I couldn’t ask for a nicer one.

You’re shameless. Lynda smiles. But it’s lovely to see you. And Mila! She drags her attention away from my father. That’s the trouble with breakups, she says. You lose everyone else too. But your father and I always got along. I always suspected I chose the wrong friend.

Breakups. The wrong friend. So she
is
the girl in the photograph.

Lynda smiles again and gives me a look to show that she’s not serious about the wrong-friend thing, though it strikes me with some force that she is.

I check Gil to confirm this impression and yes, there is something. My father is attracted to this woman, this old girlfriend of Matthew’s. I narrow my eyes, but neither of them is looking at me.

Matt didn’t tell you I was living here?

Gil shakes his head. We’re not great at keeping in touch. Even less since Owen died. The occasional e-mail, not much else. Suzanne thought he might have come here. Gil looks anxious. You know he’s married?

Of course.

But Suzanne doesn’t know about this arrangement?

I never asked, says Lynda. But on the evidence, it would appear not.

Even with my lack of worldly knowledge, this strikes me as a bad idea. Should Matthew be keeping this sort of secret? And why, exactly, is their relationship such a secret if she was his girlfriend a hundred years ago?

Look, Lynda says, please sit down, sit down. Let me get you something warm to drink. You must be freezing.

It’s warm in here and we aren’t freezing, but we both sit at the wooden gateleg table and watch as she heats coffee and milk on her little gas stove.

I teach English at the local high school, she says. Doesn’t pay fabulously but they like me. Matt visits occasionally and sends money though I tell him not to. I keep meaning to move into a more sensible house but he doesn’t charge us to live here. Basic as it is, that counts for something.

I glance at Gil, who acts as if there’s nothing wrong with this picture. We just happen to be here in Matthew’s camp with his secret ex-girlfriend + one, who Matthew sends money to and doesn’t charge rent, and none of this has any bearing on our mystery?

Lynda bends down and puts her hand out to Honey, who is standoffish and withdraws as much as possible without moving her feet. Most dogs would sniff the hand.

She’s Matt’s dog, Gil says. Her name is Honey.

Lynda nods. I thought so. We’ve met, actually.

Gil’s eyes widen for an instant. Of course you have, he says. But he looks wrong-footed.

Honey backs away and resumes sniffing every corner of the room. Every once in a while she stops and tries to inhale a particular object. Matthew may not have been here for some time, but Honey’s sense of smell is a lot better than mine. The house remembers him, whispering his name at a frequency only dogs can hear.

And then she stops, having collected all the information available. She’s still damp, Lynda says, digging around in the bottom of a drawer and pulling out an old gray blanket. She puts it down by the stove and Honey steps over carefully, sniffing to make sure there’s no trick, then turns in a circle and lies down. Maybe the blanket smells of Matthew too.

So. Lynda frowns at Gil. Why exactly have you got Matt’s dog?

It’s kind of a long story, he says.

He left her behind? That’s not like him.

Gil sighs.

Unless he was going somewhere he can’t take a dog?

We kind of hoped he’d be here. But you’re right.

Could he have gone back to England?

We have no idea, Gil says. Though why would he? When he knew we were coming.

Lynda says nothing, setting coffee on the table for Gil and hot chocolate for me.

Gil and I are both trying to take all this in and Gil looks at me questioningly. I shrug and wonder how much he sees and whether he thinks Matthew has been here recently. I have as many questions as he does. Maybe Matthew is having an affair with Lynda and just visits occasionally? Is she the reason he disappeared? And, if so, where is he now?

I look around. Bowls and saucepans are cordoned off in the kitchen corner with the tiny old-fashioned gas cooker. On the other side, corduroy cushions are piled next to a collection of duck decoys, two ancient folding chairs, and piles of books. It’s just one rectangular room, divided into sections that confirm the idea that more than one person lives here. The partition wall at one end must have a bed behind it, and a large gray sofa takes up most of the middle of the room along with a small desk pushed against the wall and a scarred leather armchair. The floor is almost entirely covered by an old Persian rug, faded and threadbare. Lynda has arranged a bunch of lilies of the valley in a glass by the window and the sweet smell of it fills the house. She must have picked them before the weather turned psycho.

Lynda slides half a carrot cake onto a large blue-and-white plate and says she’s glad we’re there to help her eat it.

Despite it being the wilds of northern New York State, you wouldn’t know it by the sound of our little group of three representing Scotland, Lancashire and London.