The Missing (16 page)

Noreen aimed the remote control at Ronnie’s head like she wanted to zap him into oblivion. Maybe she was joking, maybe not. Noreen had a mean sense of humor. On the tube, American Maid, the super-hero cleaning lady, threw her magic stiletto heel into a bank robber’s back. Ronnie chuckled. Hands down,
The Tick
was the best cartoon
ever
. Then Noreen fired the re- mote’s beam through his skull, and suddenly
The Tick
was gone. In its place was Noreen’s favorite soap opera,
Gilmore Girls
. The camera was focused on a mother

and daughter who were laughing and crying at the same time. It was all so sad it was funny, or maybe it was so funny it was sad.

Not for the first time today, Ronnie missed Lois, who used to let him watch whatever he wanted. A realiza- tion that he’d been avoiding suddenly struck him like falling bird poop: Now that he was with Noreen, there was a whole lot of bad television in his future. “Aw, shit,” he muttered.

Noreen leaned back. She was grinning like she’d just tripped a blue-haired old lady. “Rory’s pregnant,” she explained, and then gulped noisily on her Puffin Stop root beer Slurpee. “Not in real life. Just on the show.”

There was something Ronnie wanted to say, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He took another drag off his blunt, which he guessed would solve the problem either way. Then he remembered.

Without his knowledge Noreen had submitted their picture and a wedding announcement to the
Corpus Christi Sentinel
. That’s how Lois Larkin had learned that he was marrying her best friend. “I feel bad about Lois,” he said.

Noreen’s smile fell. “I feel bad, too.” She was talking to him, but looking at the television. A clean-cut family so different from him and Noreen that they could have been Martians was exchanging wisecracks in a fancy seafood restaurant. They were eating oysters with tiny forks. Noreen kept talking, but he could tell she was more interested in the fancy people with the fancy forks. “We fell in love, you know? Any way she found out was going to hurt. So she read it in the paper. Prob- ably easier for her—this way she won’t have to choke back the tears in front of us.”

Ronnie half nodded. Well, that
sounded
true. Nor- een set her Slurpee down on the coffee table, where it would form a ring, which would fit in with all the other rings the table had collected over the years. She’d pretty much moved in, and as a result his roommate Andrew had moved to an apartment across town. In one way it was good; he didn’t have to put on pants if he wanted to see her. In another way it was bewildering, because one minute he’d been at the Dew Drop Inn, literally blind drunk, and the next thing he knew, his medicine cabi- net was filled with tampons and Stri-Dex.

The apartment smelled like foot cheese. Lois used to vacuum once a week and wash the dishes. He’d have married her if Noreen hadn’t come along and set him straight. At the Dew Drop Inn last month she’d clinked her apple cosmopolitan against his Jim Beam shooter and said, “You think you’re in love but you’re not. It’s convenience.” Then she’d swiveled her plump hips and pointed them at him like a weapon. “Take me and you, for instance. We’ve got more chemistry between us than anybody in this room. That’s what you base love on, not some girl who bosses you and does your laundry.”

Ronnie had been shocked—his parents loved Lois. He loved Lois . . . mostly. But after a few seconds, her words had seeped through his skull like lye. Lois
did
boss him, and lately he’d been thinking marriage might be a mistake. He wasn’t ready for kids. He didn’t want to be somebody’s daddy, and no way he was going to quit the sweet air. Besides, the sex wasn’t so good any- more. It was below average, so he was staring down a the barrel of a mediocre lay twice a week for the next fifty years, which suddenly sounded more like a prison sentence than a marriage.

“Tell me you haven’t imagined being in my panties,

Ronnie. You tell me that and I’ll stop talking. I’ll take this drink of mine and go over there.” Noreen had pointed to a crowd of guys shooting pool. She was a short girl, just about five feet tall, and she had cold gray eyes.

Lois had been at her mom’s house that night, ar- ranging seating for the wedding, which had sounded really stupid to him. Why couldn’t people just sit wherever they found an empty chair? Ronnie had never considered getting into Noreen’s pants, but once she set the idea loose inside his empty head, it bounced around until it found a sticking place. If he took Nor- een home, someone at the bar might tell Lois, and she’d dump him, so in a few days he’d be a free man. It was this thought, even though he’d been so drunk that he no longer remembered it, that had made him kiss Noreen Castillo. The kiss was bad, and not quite on target since neither of them had been sober enough to aim their lips. Dimly he remembered getting his hand caught inside her roomy T-shirt, but he didn’t know if that had happened before or after they left the bar. The next morning he woke up with a throbbing head and a fatty in his arms. At the time, he hadn’t been sure which was worse. Not long after that, he and Lois broke up.

Noreen burped meatily and then rubbed her belly. She was kind of gross, which at first he’d thought was cool, because it meant she’d lay off about his table man- ners and the mold on half the food he kept in his fridge. But now he wasn’t sure it was such a great thing that both of them were slobs. Switching one girl for the other had never been his plan. He’d planned to become a free agent, and instead he was in serious soup: an- other wedding! This thought set loose a nest of wasps in his stomach, so he took another couple of drags to

calm down. Then he grinned, because he remembered something good. With Noreen, he’d never have to give up his grass.

They’d been talking about something, but he couldn’t remember what. Oh, right, Lois. “I think I should see her.”

Noreen didn’t answer. She grabbed his joint and goo- bered Slurpee juice all over it, then handed it back to him. “Lois had you by the balls, Ronnie. She didn’t care about you, and if you go over there she won’t be nice. You wouldn’t believe the way she used to com- plain about you. Just stay clear of her and thank God you got out when you did.”

Like most of the things Noreen said, it sounded right until he thought about it. Lois didn’t have a mean bone in her body. He looked at the television, where a man wearing a black suit was driving an SUV through the arctic to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Free.” It looked fun in the arctic. He thought he’d like to visit one day. Except, did the arctic exist anymore?

“I’m gonna go over to Lois’s house,” he said, and as soon as he said it, something rare happened: He was certain. He needed to see Lois. He needed to explain. He needed her forgiveness, because what he’d done had been eating him for so long now that even the pot wasn’t making him forget.

Noreen frowned like he was the biggest loser on earth, and he knew he’d better get used to that look. “If you’re going, I’m going. You can drop me off at work after. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.” She smiled like she was joking, but he knew she wasn’t.

W

hen Jodi Larkin swung open the front door, the first thing Ronnie noticed was that she hadn’t

been drinking. He could see the whites of her eyes. “Mrs.

Larkin . . . er, Jodi,” he said, because he’d never been comfortable with either. At least now he’d never have to call her “Mom.”

Noreen’s greasy hand was inserted firmly into his. Jodi glared, so he tried to make her let go, but she wouldn’t. “Is Lois home?” he asked. He couldn’t think of anything worth saying, so instead he smiled, like maybe if he pretended to be in a good mood, it would be contagious.

“What do you want with her?” Jodi asked. “We want to explain,” Ronnie said.

Jodi looked at him for a while, but he didn’t say any- thing else. Unhappiness had worn cross-hatched lines above her lips and under her eyes. She didn’t look old, just haggard. “You know about James Walker?”

“What about him?” Ronnie asked.

“Good. You don’t need to. Don’t mention that school or her rivets’ll come loose . . .”

Ronnie was confused.
Rivets?
But he didn’t like talking to Jodi, so he didn’t ask. “Okay. Can we see her?”

Jodi shrugged. “She’s not making any sense. Not that she ever did.”

“Thanks, Jodi!” Noreen said. She was smiling like life was an all-night Pink Floyd laser light show. “We’d love to see Lois!”

Jodi stepped aside, and the three of them walked into the front hall. It was dark and smelled like gin. The fabric on the rug was so worn that he could see the brown mat holding it together. The place was clean, though, which meant that Lois had been keep- ing it up.

Jodi led them down the hall to Lois’s room. “I’m re- ally sorry about everything,” he said. Jodi kept walking. She was a lifeless thing, withered and small. He’d never

seen her smile, and maybe she was angry with him now, but maybe she was just generally miserable. She opened Lois’s door without knocking, which he thought was pretty obnoxious.

The room was cold. Like a pocket of deep lake wa- ter that cramps your toes. It smelled like skunk musk. The sun was setting against the drawn shades, which tinted the white walls red. He couldn’t see her face. Just a mop of jet black hair that spilled across her pil- low. It reminded him of the Indian room at the Maine Heritage Museum. Warring tribes used to keep each others’ scalps as trophies, and the museum had dis- played a bunch under glass for people to view. As a kid he’d wondered: Who wants a reminder of some- thing
that
bad?

The lump in the bed stirred, and Ronnie’s throat tightened. Right then he wished he could take it all back. He wished he’d never kissed Noreen. He wished he’d married Lois, if only to prevent having to stand here and face what he’d done.

“She’s sick,” Jodi said. Then she shivered, and wrapped her hands around her waist, “Boiler’s broken. Too bad there’s not a man around to fix it.”

He wasn’t sure if she was insulting him or asking for help. Before he had the chance to think it through, she pulled a chair up to Lois’s bed and sat.

He and Noreen came closer. Lois’s breath was wheezy and wet, and he guessed she had the chest cold that was going around. Jodi pulled down the blanket, and he saw her strikingly pale face. The blood was gone from her lips so they looked blue. He made a sound, even though he didn’t mean to. He moaned.

“Lois?” he asked.

Jodi shook her by the shoulders. She tried to be gentle but she didn’t know how. She squeezed Lois

hard. Lois had a rash of red dots scattered like sand across her skin. Ronnie was tempted to carry her away from this place. But then again, he wasn’t. She was a delicate, white-nightgown kind of a girl. Somewhere in this town was a guy who wanted that, but that guy wasn’t him.

Lois woke up. Her pupils were dilated and black like she was high on angel dust. She’d lost weight in her face, so by contrast her teeth looked enormous. He wanted to smile at her, because this was his sweetheart, with a kind word for even her worst enemies. But he didn’t smile. He was afraid.

“What do you want?” Lois asked. She didn’t say,
Hello
, or
How you been, Ronnie?
She was still pretty; it was impossible for Lois Larkin
not
to be pretty. But now she was damaged, too. He wished he’s smoked a bowl before ringing her bell. He wished he’d smoked ten.

Noreen came to his side, and he felt a little better. “We’re getting married,” she blurted. “It was an acci- dent. We never meant to hurt you. But we fell in love.” Even Noreen sounded unsure of herself.

“We wanted to say we’re sorry about the article in the paper. We should have told you in person,” Ronnie said.

Lois’s chapped lower lip was bleeding a little. She tucked it into her mouth and sucked. “Ummm,” she said, like it tasted really good. The gap between her teeth had narrowed. Was she using night braces again?

“It sleeps during the day, because it’s used to being underground. I mostly only hear it at night,” she said.

“What?” Noreen asked. She and Ronnie exchanged a look. They’d expected an emotional hug or two, and a round of sorrys, all capped off by a “See ya at the Dew Drop!” They’d expected easy forgiveness, and maybe a

slice of Lois’s cherry pie. It didn’t look like that was go- ing to happen.

“I told you. Girl’s outta her gourd. Needs a shot of gin.” Jodi scowled.

“What do you hear?” Ronnie asked, but Lois wasn’t paying attention. It surprised him, even though he should have guessed that things were different. When they’d been dating, she’d hung on his every word like without his voice she’d drown.

“I fight it but I don’t know why. It’s not worth it, what I’m fighting for,” Lois said. Then she coughed, and a gob of phlegm landed on her chin. No one came closer, or handed her a tissue, not even Jodi, so she wiped it on her nightgown, where it glistened.

She looked up and smiled. “I need a steak and a man. But you’re not up to it, are you, Ronnie?” she asked. “Let’s face it. You never
were
up to it.”

A shelf in Ronnie’s stomach dropped like he was rid- ing the Freefall at Six Flags, and God help him, even though this was sweet Lois Larkin (
No, it’s not!
Every- thing inside him was screaming that it wasn’t Lois at all), he clenched his right fist like he was about to throw a punch.

“Lois, please,” Jodi pleaded. She wrung her hands while she spoke, and left red wrinkles from pressing too hard. It occurred to him that Jodi hadn’t kicked booze because her daughter needed her. Nothing scares a drunk sober like terror.

Lois turned to him. Her eyes were like lasers cutting him open. His guts were falling out all over the floor. He didn’t look, but he could feel them, out in the open. He felt ashamed, like he was naked. His guts making a mess on the wood. “Do you believe in the soul? I think mine is dying,” she said.

He wondered if he’d driven a woman crazy just by

jilting her. His friend Andrew would have been proud of something like that, but Ronnie just felt bad.

“It planted its seed inside me and I’m trying to starve it out. I’m trying to starve your seed, too, Ronnie,” Lois said.