The Year of Fog (3 page)

A photograph of Emma appears on screen, last year’s school portrait. Her bangs are cut unevenly, and she’s wearing a blue barrette. She’s missing a tooth, front and center. I remember the day this photograph was taken. I helped her pick out the barrette, and she persuaded me to style her bangs with a curling iron. I placed my hand between the curling iron and her forehead to keep from burning her, the way my mother used to do, and as she chattered on about a boy named Sam who’d poisoned the class canary, I realized she was beginning to like me.

Leslie Gray frowns in a practiced way, forming a series of creases in her peach-colored makeup. “Anyone who may have seen the girl should call this hotline.” A number flashes on screen. I pick up the phone and dial. The girl who answers is probably no more than seventeen.

“Missing children hotline,” she says cheerfully. “How may I assist you?”

I want to tell her to please find Emma. I want to tell her that Emma loves potato chips with salt and vinegar, that she’s been taking cello lessons. I want to tell her that Emma made a perfect score on her last spelling test, and that I’ve been teaching her how to use a camera. Instead, my throat freezes and I say nothing.

“Hello?” she says. “Hello?” Her voice changes from perky to annoyed. “Hell
o
,” and the line goes dead.

6

F
OR WORK,
I have always used my Leica R8. It’s easy to manipulate, allowing maximum control over my images. But in the past few months, I began feeling that my photographs lacked something—some quality of depth I couldn’t quite define. I wanted to try a camera without gadgets, without special lenses and precision focus, which is why I chose the Holga for that day at Ocean Beach. With no focusing mechanism and only two f-stops, the Holga is the simplest kind of viewfinder camera.

It is the day after Emma’s disappearance, the middle of the night. Jake is out searching. Today, a few dozen volunteers fanned out across Golden Gate Park, with the intent of covering all 1,017 acres—the dense woods and enormous soccer fields, botanical gardens, lakes and playgrounds and equestrian rings. A woman named Bud with the Park Police led the search on horseback. I recognized her from a tour Emma and Jake and I took of the Presidio stables in the spring. On that day, which seems like a lifetime ago, Officer Bud showed Emma how to feed the horses carrots from the palm of her hand. There were several other children on the tour, and I was embarrassed when Emma, overcome with excitement, stealthily skipped to the front of the line. I didn’t remember ever having been that bold as a child, and I wondered, with a mix of amusement and unease, what forms Emma’s precociousness would take as she grew older.

For me, tonight, the search leads back to my apartment, to the darkroom with its chilled air and chemical smell. I take yesterday’s film out of the Holga, remove the film from the cassette, and wind it carefully around the reel. It’s something I’ve done thousands of times, yet my fingers shake. I drop the reel into the processing canister, put the cap on, and turn on the overhead light. I check the temperature of the developing fluid, pour the chemicals in, and gently rock the canister back and forth. Then I do the same with the stop fluid and the fixer, timing each action precisely, aware that I’m holding the most important film I have ever shot. Finally, I take the top off of the canister, run water over the reel, unroll the film, and hang the strips to dry.

It’s three in the morning when I cut the negatives into strips of three, slide them one by one into the enlarger, move the arm until the image is in focus, then lay the photo paper on the counter and expose the film, four seconds per print. Then the basins: developer, stopper, fix. Finally, the water bath.

Each photo captures the moment with some degree of accuracy, and yet I am struck by the inadequacies, the story the pictures fail to tell. One is a close-up, her face just inches from the camera, a big grin, a spot of flour on her face from our pancake-making adventure earlier that morning. In the second, she is a few feet away, bending to examine a sand dollar, caught in profile, her hair hanging down and concealing her face. The third is shot from behind. The photo shows a small, blurred figure in the left-hand side of the frame. If you were to come upon this photo in a gallery, or on someone’s living room wall, you might find it mysterious, pleasing: a child’s black hair, white fog, a vast expanse of beach.

Yet something essential is missing from the photos. What is missing is the truth, what is missing is the answer. Again and again, I scan them with a magnifying glass, looking for a dark figure lurking in the shadows. Within the grain, I search for some kind of clue, some hidden meaning or simple, obvious thing that has slipped my mind. I search until my vision goes blurry, unwilling to believe that there is simply nothing there. It’s seven a.m. when I leave the darkroom, sick with disappointment.

To any problem there is a solution: it’s something my mother told me as a child, and I’ve lived my life believing it. But now that old aphorism falls flat—just an optimistic deception with no practical application. The one thing I know is this: there is a girl, her name is Emma, we were walking on the beach. She was there, and then she wasn’t. There is no way to retrieve that moment, no way to rewrite the script; I looked away. It cannot be undone.

7

T
HE PHONE
rings and rings. I see myself as if from a distance: the receiver clutched in my fingers, the emerald engagement ring on the hand that holds it. Everything feels impossible, like some terrible scene from someone else’s life.

Finally, a man with a high, strained voice comes on the other end. “Nine-one-one,” he says. “Do you have an emergency?”

“I lost a little girl,” I say, my voice trembling.

“When did you realize she was missing?”

“Thirty-five minutes ago.” I’m staring at my watch, unbelieving. Thirty-five minutes. What can happen to a child in thirty-five minutes?

“Where did you last see her?” the man asks.

“Ocean Beach. I went back to the parking lot to look for her, but she wasn’t there.”

“The important thing is to remain calm,” he says.

But I know he is wrong; to be calm implies some sort of rest, sitting back and waiting.

“Where are you now?”

“The Beach Chalet.”

“Speak up,” he says. “I can barely hear you.”

“The Beach Chalet.” The volume of my voice startles me. People in the restaurant turn and stare: a man in an apron rolling silverware into napkins, a heavily tattooed couple sharing an omelet by the window, a group of German students contemplating the menu. The restaurant’s hostess, a prematurely maternal woman with a thick Russian accent, stands in front of me, wringing her hands.

“Is the little girl your daughter?” the voice asks.

“No, my fiancé’s daughter.”

“How old is she?”

“Six and a half.” The volume of my voice rises again. “Please send someone. When are you going to send someone?”

“You need to stay calm, ma’am. I’m dispatching a patrol car.”

“How long will it take?”

“Five minutes. Stay right where you are. The officer will meet you there.”

He sounds so sure of himself, not the least bit nervous. I feel vaguely comforted by the tidiness of protocol, imagining the dispatch going out over the airwaves to be picked up by a coterie of well-trained officers. Within seconds they’ll be racing toward Ocean Beach, sirens wailing, and within minutes, surely, Emma will be found.

“I get you some coffee,” the Russian woman says. She disappears into the kitchen.

The silverware man comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “What’s her name?”

“Emma. Emma Balfour.”

He unties his apron and tosses it on the counter. “I’ll check the park.”

I fight off a mental image of Emma with some stranger behind the trees on a rocky path. I check my watch. Thirty-nine minutes. She could be anywhere by now.

The tattooed couple wolfs down the last bites of their omelet. “What can we do?” the girl asks, pulling on her jacket.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t think.”

“We could go back to the parking lot,” the boyfriend says. “We could take down license plates.” He seems eager, almost excited, as if he’s caught up in some movie, the role of his life.

“Here, take this.” I hand him my Holga. “There are only five shots left.”

“We’ll bring it back when we’re done,” the girl says. She slaps a twenty on the counter, and they head out the door. The German teenagers keep glancing up from their menus and whispering, as if this is somehow part of the entertainment, a play staged just for them.

The Russian woman returns with a thick mug of coffee, a little pitcher of cream, two sugar packets, and a spoon. “Your daughter,” she says, “we will find her.”

I pick up the phone again and dial Jake’s cell, almost hoping that he won’t answer. I imagine calling him a little while later, after I’ve found her. Part of me thinks that, in a few minutes, all of this will be over, and life will return to normal. Emma is simply playing hide-and-seek, or she ran off to find a bathroom, or she got lost in the fog and it took a while for her to get back to the parking lot. She’s probably standing by the car right now; she must be. I should have stayed there and waited for her.

Jake’s phone rings twice, three times. I know that in the moment I tell him, the nightmare will become real. On the fifth ring, he picks up.

“Abby?”

I hear voices in the background, sports announcers, the ambient noise of a crowd. I don’t know how to begin.

“You there?” he says.

“I have to tell you something.”

A wild cheer goes up from the crowd, and Jake lets out a whoop. “Delgado just hit a home run!”

“Jake, you have to come home,” I say. Even as I say it, I’m calculating the time it will take him to drive the 270 miles if he leaves right now, if he goes over the speed limit and doesn’t have to stop for gas, if there isn’t much traffic.

“What?”

“You have to come home. It’s Emma.”

“I can hardly hear you.”

“Emma,” I say.

The tone of his voice changes. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s gone,” I say.

“What?”

“Emma. She’s gone.”

His voice strikes a high, unfamiliar note. “What do you mean?”

“We were on the beach. We were walking.”

How to finish the conversation? Nothing about the moment seems real. I know there must be some appropriate words to utter, but I have no idea what they might be. This is a glitch in time, a mistake, a joke. At any moment Emma will walk through the door.

“What do you mean?” he says again.

“There was this dead seal, a pup. I looked away for a few seconds, I swear it was only a few seconds. Then I looked up and she wasn’t there.”

“But…where is she now?”

Where is she? A valid question. The obvious question. How to answer?

“Lost,” I say. As if she simply strayed, the way children do. As if she is standing patiently at some fixed point, waiting for me. “The police are on their way.”

On the other end, several seconds of silence. A stranger’s voice says, “Hey, man, you okay?” I will later learn that this is the voice of the hot dog vendor. Jake’s legs have given out. One moment he’s standing, mind on the game, holding up two fingers to indicate that he wants two hot dogs. Then he’s sitting on the ground—no, not sitting but kneeling, knees to the cement.

“This isn’t possible,” Jake says. “Abby, how could you?”

In the background there is the smack of a baseball bat, the roar of the crowd.

I
met Jake a year ago at the high school where he teaches. I was doing a slide presentation on the landscape photography of the Southwest for a group of juniors and seniors. Before I cut the lights, I saw a man sitting alone in the back row, looking a bit out of place. He had wavy black hair, glasses with thin silver frames, and he wore a blue button-down. When the lights came back on, he gave me a thumbs-up.

I opened the floor for comments. There were none. The art history teacher, an anorexic brunette with very short bangs, asked a couple of predictable questions to make up for her students’ lack of interest. When the bell rang, the students rushed the aisles, jostling each other and shouting. The sudden activity stirred up unpleasant odors of adolescence—cheap perfume, hair spray, sweat, and pent-up lust. When the din cleared, the guy from the back row was standing in front of the platform.

“You were pretty good up there,” he said.

“You’re just being nice.”

“Really, they’re a tough crowd. You held your own.” He reached out to shake my hand. “Name’s Jake.”

“Should you be wandering around without a hall pass?”

“Last period was my lunch break, and this is my prep time. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in the teachers’ lounge.”

Just then the lights went off, plunging us into darkness. “Budget cuts,” Jake explained. “All the lights are on automatic timers.” The auditorium was empty save for the two of us. We both reached for the shutoff switch to the slide projector at the same time, and when our hands touched, there was a quick fuzz of static electricity.

“Sparks,” he said.

I smiled.

We pushed through the crowded hallway, a chaos of backpacks and cell phones and iPods, a hothouse of colliding pheromones. The place felt unpredictable, unsafe, as if at any moment a gun might be drawn or a knife fight might break out. A skinny kid in a sagging sweater gave Jake a high five, and a girl in a vinyl miniskirt blew him a kiss. Several students shouted his name. I wondered how he’d managed to earn their trust. I’d never liked teenagers, even when I was one myself. I assumed the feeling was mutual; surely they could see right through me, could sense my dislike and smell my fear.

“What subject do you teach?” I asked, swiveling to avoid a television being wheeled through the hallway by an obese, balding boy.

“Philosophy.”

“Do you like it?”

“To be honest, I only get one section of philosophy per year. The rest is soccer and American History.”

“A renaissance man.”

“More like a hired gun,” he said. “Who roped you into this?”

“During a moment of weakness I volunteered for Artists in the Schools. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind; I had visions of cute little third-graders in jumpsuits and pigtails.”

“What kind of photography are you into?”

“Whatever pays the bills. Mainly corporate events and weddings, with a sideline in photo restoration.”

“My mom was a photographer,” Jake said. “Trains, landscapes, abandoned streets. It was just a hobby, but she was pretty good. I’ve often wished that she’d passed that talent on to me.”

We emerged from the damp, fluorescent interior into sunlight. From the parking lot I could see the ocean in the distance, and the fog line circling the city, a bright white necklace around a patch of brilliant blue. Jake loaded the slide projector into the trunk of my car, shook my hand, and said, “I guess this is where we part.” He seemed to be waiting for me to disagree, but it had been so long since I’d approached a guy for a date, I couldn’t remember how it was done.

“Thanks for the help,” I said, silently willing him to ask for my number. Instead, he gave an awkward salute and started to walk away.

I was turning the key in the ignition when he reappeared at my open window. He placed his hands on the windowsill and leaned toward me. “Hey, busy tomorrow night?”

“Actually, I have two tickets to the Giants game.”

Jake was surprised. “Really?”

“Meet me by the statue at six-thirty.”

“I’m there,” he said.

I waved goodbye in my best I-do-this-all-the-time fashion. Driving home, I couldn’t stop thinking about his hands on the windowsill and the endearing way his right foot turned slightly inward when he walked.

When I arrived at the Willie Mays statue the next night, Jake was already there. Over a dinner of hot dogs and garlic fries, he asked dozens of questions, somehow charming me into revealing a comprehensive list of my past employment, the lengths of my former relationships, the contents of my CD collection, even the name of a champagne-colored cocker spaniel I had when I was seven. Neither one of us paid much attention to the game.

As the eighth inning came to a close, I dusted crumbs off my lap and said, “I feel like I’ve been through a job interview.”

He shrugged. “I just ask the important questions.”

“Am I hired?”

“Depends. Do you want the job?”

“I don’t know much about the company.”

By then, the Giants were up by eight. “Did you drive?” Jake asked.

“I took Muni.”

“Good, I’ll drive you home.”

Later, we stood outside my apartment for a long time, making small talk, neither of us knowing quite how to end the date. After a few minutes he put his hands in his pockets, looked at the ground, and said, “How do you feel about kids?”

I laughed. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? You haven’t even kissed me yet.”

He put his hands on my waist, pulled me in, and unsteadied me with a long, slow kiss that left me wanting more. “There,” he said. “Now that we’ve crossed that hurdle.”

“You sound like Alvy in
Annie Hall
,” I said, “that scene where they’re walking home from their first date and he kisses her just to get it over with, so it won’t be awkward later.”

“That’s my favorite Woody Allen film,” he said. “No, second favorite, after
Crimes and Misdemeanors
.”

We just looked at each other for a few seconds, smiling awkwardly, and I had that surprised, happy feeling you get when you realize you’ve connected with someone.

“Seriously, though,” he said. “What about kids?”

“I can honestly say you’re the first man who’s ever asked me that on a first date.”

“I like to get things out in the open.”

“Sure, I want to have one someday. But I don’t hear my clock ticking, if that’s what you mean.”

He kissed me again, longer this time, one hand pressing into the small of my back while the other cupped my elbow in a sweet and familiar way. It had been a year since I’d broken up with my previous boyfriend. The relationship had ended badly, with late-night phone calls that went on for months. As Jake kissed me, I felt some wall inside me crumbling.

He took my hair in his hands and flipped it over my shoulder. “Say you were to meet an intelligent, funny, handsome guy.”

“Know any?”

“Say this guy had a daughter. Could you still fall for him?”

I searched his face for some sign of a joke, but there was none. “You’re serious.”

“She’s five years old. Her name is Emma.”

I remember clearly the image that flashed through my mind just then. It was a silly image of Jake and me and a little girl. We were in a park, and I was pushing the child on a swing. Her hair flew out behind her as she rose higher and higher. I found something pleasing and surprisingly comfortable in this idea of a ready-made family. Then I realized the picture was incomplete. “Her mother?” I asked.

“Lisbeth took off a couple of years ago. She met some guy in a band, got caught up in a weird scene. Then one day I came home from work and she was gone. That was probably the worst day of my life. By then, things were pretty bad between us, but I still loved her. Or maybe I just thought I could rescue her, help her go back to being the person she was when we met.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.