The Year of Fog (34 page)

Tomorrow is the twenty-second of June. Tomorrow, I’m going home.

80

A
COOL GULF
Coast afternoon, waiting for the storm. Three p.m. and the sky was dark as evening. Hurricane Bertha was on her way, and my mother had sent me and Annabel to the grocery store for supplies. Our cart was filled with gallons of distilled water, cans of Campbell’s soup and Starkist tuna, bottles of Gatorade, two new flashlights, and a dozen batteries. The shelves had been ravaged, and the aisles were bustling with customers in that giddy pre-hurricane state. The checkout line stretched all the way to the meat counter in the back of the store. The guy in front of us, whose cart was filled with ramen noodles, Heineken, several rolls of silver duct tape, and a box of tapered white candles, turned and smiled at me. He had black hair, cut very short, and was wearing a University of Arizona T-shirt.

“Excited?” he said.

“About what?”

“The hurricane.”

Annabel rolled her eyes and pinched me on the elbow. I shrugged my shoulders. “Not so much.”

“My first,” he said. “Just moved here from the desert.” He kept glancing down at my legs, and I knew he was old enough that he shouldn’t be looking at me that way. “Got any advice?”

“Boards,” I said, “not duct tape.”

He looked confused.

“For the windows,” Annabel chimed in, in a tone that was clearly meant to indicate that he was the dumbest guy in the world.

“You put plywood on all the windows,” I explained. “Duct tape’s just a shortcut.”

He shifted his weight to one foot, and as he did so his T-shirt raised slightly, revealing a patch of hair sliding in a straight line down his belly, into the waistband of his jeans. He caught me looking, grinned. “Anything else?”

My face felt hot, but I didn’t care; I was enjoying the game. I plucked the box of candles from his basket. “What’s this for, a romantic dinner?”

He winked. “You fishing for an invitation?”

“You offering?”

Annabel crossed her arms over her chest. “Please,” she said, snapping her gum.

“Seriously,” he said, leaning in close to me. “What’s wrong with the candles?”

“It’s no picnic when the lights go out. You want hurricane lamps and flashlights.” I dropped the candles back into his cart and picked up his only jug of water. “And you’ll need more than this unless you’re planning on drinking out of the neighbor’s pool. Last time, we had no water for nine days.”

The line moved. He bumped his cart forward with his hip. “I’m clearly unprepared,” he said. “What I need is a personal hurricane coach.”

“How much does it pay?”

“That’s negotiable,” he said, laying his warm hand on my shoulder, allowing one finger to slip beneath the skinny strap of my tank top.

“God,” Annabel said. “She’s not even fucking legal.”

“Don’t pay attention to my sister,” I said. “She worships Satan.”

A few minutes later he was standing by the station wagon, helping me load bags into the back. Annabel stood off to the side, arms crossed, glaring at both of us. Above the parking lot, birds careened in confused circles, while the traffic lights on Hillcrest Road snapped back and forth in the wind. When all the bags were in the car, he shut the door and held out his hand. “Ramon.”

“Abigail.” His hand was hot, and he held on tight for a couple of seconds before letting go.

“So,” he said, “can I go to jail for asking for your phone number?”

Annabel held her stomach, bent over in mock agony, and pretended to vomit.

“Why don’t you give me yours instead?” I knew that if he called my house, my parents would have questions I wouldn’t be able to answer.

He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a leather wallet, from which he extracted a business card.
Ramon Gutierrez,
the card said.
Portrait and art photography.
I slid the card into my pocket and opened the driver’s side door.

“Get in the car,” I said to Annabel, who looked like she was about to haul off and punch him.

She flipped him off one last time and said, “I’ve got two words for you, mister. Jailbait.”

Ramon ignored her. He waited until Annabel was in the car before he rubbed a spot of oil on the ground with the toe of his boot and said, quietly, “You’ll call?”

“Yes.”

I did not understand then that I was at the beginning of something, that each choice leads to some other choice, and another, and another, so that a single, seemingly meaningless decision reverberates through an entire life. I did not know it was a moment in time that would help to shape the course of my life, that I would spend the decade and a half after Ramon’s death searching for someone who could love me as completely as he did. Only now do I understand that it was this search that led me to Jake, and therefore to Emma.

“You cannot step in the same river twice,” Heraclitus said. Since the composition of the river changes from one moment to the next, it is never the same river. Everything in the universe is in a constant state of flux. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same.

Once a moment has passed, it is gone. Any choice you could have made has already been made. I want to step again into the river. I want it back—the time, the choice, the tiny, irretrievable seconds.

81

A
PLAYDATE
. That’s what Jake calls it. He’s on the other end of the line, and there’s a lot of noise at his place: television, dishes clattering, Emma’s voice in the background.

“I thought maybe I could take her somewhere,” I say. “Like shopping, or the zoo.”

I’ve tried to see them every day since returning from Costa Rica two weeks ago. Twice, I went over to his place for dinner. Emma ate silently, while Jake and I made awkward conversation about work. It struck me as the kind of conversation my parents had after everything went sour, when they were no longer connecting, merely pretending. The last time I was there, Jake walked outside with me at the end of the evening. The front door was slightly ajar, and he kept looking back at the house, as if Emma might slip out at any moment.

We were standing by the car, and loud music was playing at a house down the block—a high school party, probably, with the parents out of town. I pulled my jacket tight around my shoulders. The lights of the avenues were reflected in the fog. I took a step toward him and leaned into his chest. “I miss you.”

He didn’t say anything.

I put my arms around him. “Maybe we could try again.”

There was a long pause. His body relaxed a little. For a moment I felt hope, a sense of possibility. “Abby,” he said. My name. That was all. There was a heaviness in the way he said it, a resignation. I got in my car and drove away.

That was five days ago. Now, I’m trying to sound cheerful, like the happy platonic friend, calling for a casual outing with the daughter. “I’d love to take Emma somewhere fun. I’ve seen so little of her since she…came back.”

There’s a pause. I imagine him moving out of Emma’s earshot. “For a playdate?” he says quietly.

“You’re invited, too,” I add. Something smells off, and I realize the eggs are burning on the stove. I rush into the kitchen, turn off the burner, dump the blackened eggs into the sink, and open the window.

“Everything okay over there?” he asks.

“Fine. Just a little accident in the kitchen.” Then I wish I hadn’t confessed. Each small mishap is further proof of my incompetence, my irresponsibility, every mistake added up and jotted down in his mental ledger, one long list of evidence that I have no business spending time with Emma.

I can hear him pacing. “When were you thinking?”

“This weekend, maybe? Whenever it’s convenient.”

“Okay.”

On the appointed day, I spend two hours getting ready. I change my outfit four times. I keep putting my hair up, then down, then up again. I call Annabel, whose due date is just over a week away. I’m flying out to see her on Wednesday, and will stay until the baby is born.

“Help,” I say. “I’m losing my mind. I’ve tried three different shades of lipstick.”

“Take a deep breath,” she says. “This isn’t the Miss America pageant. It’s the zoo.”

The zoo. I’m not thinking about tigers and giraffes, reptiles and penguins. I’m thinking, instead, about how many square acres the zoo inhabits. How many nooks and crannies, how many bathrooms, how many dangerous places.

“I’m terrified.”

“You’ll do fine.”

I want to believe her. I remind myself that I was the one who found Emma. My instincts were right, my determination paid off. Surely this means something to Jake.

At his place, I ring the doorbell. For about a minute, nothing happens, so I ring it again. I can hear movement inside, footsteps on the stairs. The door opens.

“Hi,” Jake says.

I look past him into the living room. “Is she ready?” The television is tuned to TV Land. It’s
Bewitched,
one of the old black-and-white episodes.

“Listen, Abby.” He doesn’t have to say it. I already know what’s coming. I can feel my heart deflating. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. One hand is on the doorknob, and he makes no move to let me in. “Emma’s not, she’s not feeling so good.”

I glance up the stairwell and see her, standing half out of her bedroom door. From here, she looks fine. “Hi, sweetheart,” I call up to her. She smiles and gives me a little wave. Jake comes outside, closing the door behind him.

“What does she have?” I ask, trying to control the emotion in my voice.

“Pardon?”

“What is it? The flu? A fever?”

“Her stomach’s been hurting. Probably just something she ate.”

“I could stay here and help out.”

He bends down to pick up a pizza delivery flyer someone left on the doorstep. “Look, it’s just not a good time.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll stop by tomorrow?”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. He won’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I need some time.
We
need some time, just Emma and me.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. She’s so confused—about Lisbeth, about Teddy and Jane, everything.”

He pats me on the shoulder once, awkwardly, then goes back inside, shutting the door behind him.

I can hear his footsteps inside, moving up the stairs. I turn to walk away, but then can’t. I head back up the walkway and ring the bell. No answer. Then I’m banging on the door, like some lunatic version of myself. I know, even as I’m calling his name, that he’s not going to open the door.

I’m aware how absurd I must look, how desperate. Leaning against the door, I feel an old familiar panic. But for this panic there is no plan of attack, no systematic method by which I might go about setting things right. Jake has made his decision; this time, it’s out of my hands.

I would like to think that, months from now, he will think of me as the one who didn’t give up, the one who persevered after the search grew stale, after the command post shut down and the police gave up and an empty coffin was lowered into the ground. I would like to think that, eventually, he will find a place for me in his life. But in truth, I know that’s only a false hope. The moment of elation when I called and told him that Emma was safe will always be overshadowed by the months of anguish and fear. To him, I will always be this: not the one who found Emma, but the one who lost her. The one who looked away.

I don’t know how long I stand on the tiny square of front lawn, staring up at Emma’s window. The ground feels unsteady, as if at any moment the grass beneath my feet might shift. And then, just briefly, it does. Nothing more than a shudder, a whisper inside the earth. So soft, so subtle, they won’t even mention it on the news or in the paper. But somewhere, in a bright building filled with equipment, a needle bounces, recording the arrival. Perhaps the seismologist, alone in his humming room, has drifted off to sleep. Perhaps the machine beeps, waking him. He gets up from his chair and goes over to the seismograph. Maybe he makes notations, celebrating in his scientific heart the complexities of plate tectonics.

After a while I get in my car and drive out Lincoln toward the ocean. I turn right on the Great Highway and go past the Beach Chalet, up the hill, past the Cliff House, and into the parking lot at Land’s End. In the fog, I walk the rocky path down to the old Sutro Baths. The tide is out, and inside the old holding tank is a pool of murky water in which things float—beer cans, a Nerf ball, a wrecked buoy strangled by seaweed. Wandering among the ruins, I’m thinking about the drowning I witnessed at Gulf Shores when I was nine. I remember how, driving home, my mother cried softly in the front seat, turning around every few seconds to look at us. Annabel was sleeping, her sunburned legs stretched over my lap. I remember feeling very exposed, as if my parents were seeing us, really noticing us, for the first time. I became aware of some uncomfortable shift in our relationship. I felt in that moment as if our parents loved us too much, and that love seemed too heavy for me to bear.

Of course, I was only nine. How much of this did I perceive at that moment, and how much do I supply now, from a distance of twenty-four years? Twenty-four years, and I cannot shake the memory. Not just the images—the dead boy laid out on the sand, his weeping mother with her enormous breasts, the bit of bright white suntan lotion on the dead boy’s nose, the crowd of women standing around the destroyed family on the beach—but the emotions as well. All of it is perfectly clear to me, as if I had experienced it only moments ago.

And I wonder what memories will stay with Emma two decades from now, what moments will stand out in her eleven months of absence. Will she remember the fear, or merely the confusion? When she is older, will she look at the bare chest of her lover and think of Teddy, the tattoo that curls delicately, like a wave? Will she remember the interior of the van, the smell of the cheese the kidnappers always kept in Saran wrap in an Igloo ice chest? Will the ocean be for her a treacherous place where unpredictable things happen? Or will she someday take a trip to Costa Rica with her own children, and feel a sense of peace, of belonging? Maybe she’ll look for the little restaurant where she used to sit with Teddy and Jane, drinking mango shakes.

Of course, there are other things she might remember. Things that are emerging slowly, things the therapist tells Jake about. Sometimes, Teddy and Jane would get in terrible fights, screaming matches that ended with punches and, once, a trip to the hospital, where Jane had to have a broken arm set in a cast. This must have been terrifying for Emma, who was accustomed to Jake’s calm, mild-tempered ways. Once, to punish Emma for some small disobedience, they left her alone in a friend’s cabin for an entire night and day, with nothing to eat but a box of macaroni and cheese. Emma told the therapist that she mixed the pasta and cheese with hot water from the tap, because she knew she wasn’t supposed to use the stove. That was one of Jake’s rules that stuck with her: never use a stove without adult supervision.

On a few occasions, Lisbeth showed up and told Emma her own warped version of the story—that she never wanted to leave Emma in the first place, that Jake had sent her away when he met me. Over time, Emma must have begun to believe the lies.

Here is what I know: these memories that Emma must endure are of my making. We were walking on the beach. It was a summer morning, foggy and very cold. I looked away, at a dead seal. In that moment, the clock was set in motion, and Emma’s mental map was permanently altered. This is the truth. There is no getting away from it. I think of S., the man who could not forget. In some way, we all share his burden. Memory is the price we pay for our individual personalities, for the privilege of knowing our own intimate selves; it is the price we pay for both our victories and defeats.

I imagine my own memory of this past year as a tumor, lodged deep in the hippocampus. A tiny black thing that will neither grow nor go away, a hard knot inside the graceful maze of the brain. Tiny as an almond, but exerting a constant pressure.

A few days ago, I went to the public library and returned the books on memory that Nell had checked out for me. They were several months overdue. It would have been cheaper to replace them instead of paying the fine, but I did not want to keep them. I would prefer to simply forget everything I’ve learned about memory, for none of it is knowledge that I can possess in the impersonal way one knows the names of foreign capitals, the number of rings circling Saturn, the date man touched down on the moon. No, it is a body of information that will always be associated in my mind with those long months of Emma’s absence; it is tainted knowledge.

If possible, I would cleanse my mind of Aristotle and Simonides, Sherevsky and the anonymous N., and all the events that have transpired since that day on Ocean Beach. During the last few years, scientists have discovered that memory is linked to certain genes; the manipulation of these genes may hold the key to controlling what we remember and what we forget. In the future, it may be possible to take a drug immediately following a traumatic event—something like a morning-after pill—that will eliminate the memory of the event altogether. There will be no need to remember rape or robbery, car accidents or kidnappings. A child’s mind could be pharmaceutically conditioned to forget the day she was snatched away from her parents, or the moment she broke her arm, or the day she saw her dog run over by a car. And why stop there? Perhaps entire units of memory could be extricated—a painful divorce, a humiliating job, a lengthy academic failure. This voluntary amnesia wouldn’t have to be limited to individual grief. I imagine thousands of victims of natural or national disasters—earthquakes or terrorism, tornadoes or the assassination of a president—lining up at clinics the day after a terrible event to take their forgetting pill. We could become, then, a nation of forgetters, a culture without memory, without grief, without regret.

To the right of the baths, a dirt path leads to a viewing platform that leans precariously over the ocean. At the turn of the century, you could stand here and gaze out at the Pacific, or watch the swimmers diving off wooden platforms into one of seven sea-fed swimming pools. The entire structure was encased in a dome of glazed glass. Today, the view of the Pacific is shrouded in fog. On the eastern edge of the viewing platform is a narrow brick staircase, bordered by a rusted side-rail, large sections of which are missing. The stairs plunge steeply to the bottom, where two large rectangular holes are cut into the cement. From the top of the stairs, I can see the drop through the holes, down to dark water and sharp rocks. The last time I was here, I took these stairs to the bottom and gazed down into the pits, looking for Emma.

S. had no choice but to remember everything. The rest of us remember the highs and lows—moments of great happiness, as well as the things that pained us most. While the day-to-day falls away, while faces blur and rooms where we once lived lose their shape and color, we cannot escape our worst memories. This city will always be full of trapdoors that remind me of the search. Metal Dumpsters and dark alleys, shops and bars and libraries. There is no way to revisit these places without remembering the most terrible things. In every neighborhood, on every street, I have looked for Emma. I would like to think that these memories might someday fade. But even now, on a moment’s notice—in the darkroom, in a store, on a bus—my mind will return of its own accord to that day. Invariably, the feeling of panic returns, my mind begins to spin, and my stomach churns. The mind plays tricks.