The Year of Fog (5 page)

10

M
Y NEIGHBOR
Nell Novotnoy believes that books can save us.

She lives next door in the loft of her dead son Stephen. Six years ago, when he died at thirty-five, he left her the loft, which he had paid off during the gravy years of the dot-com boom. Now, Nell’s wrecked face gazes out from big banners attached to lampposts all over the city. She is a spokesperson for the AIDS Walk campaign, the Quilt of Hope, and the Mothers for AIDS Research Foundation.

She’s also a librarian and has worked at the Mechanics Institute Library on Post Street for thirty years. Every Monday, she stops by with a book she has chosen specifically for me. Thanks to Nell, I’ve been introduced to John Fante and Josef Skvorecky, Halldor Laxness and Lars Gustafsson, the diaries of Robert Musil and the essays of Edmund Wilson. Name almost any author, and she can name a title. Mention any year, and she can identify the winners of the major literary prizes.

Six days after Emma’s disappearance, I knock on Nell’s door. Her apartment is warm and smells unmistakably of her homemade macaroni and cheese. For the past week she’s been leaving casseroles and cakes at my door, offering to do my laundry, help in any way she can. Now, she ushers me to her kitchen table, pours me a cup of coffee.

“Talk,” Nell says, pushing a thick lock of black hair away from her face. “I’m a good listener.”

“I keep trying to figure out if there’s something I missed that day,” I say. “Something I saw or heard but can’t remember. Something that seemed insignificant at the time but could lead me in the right direction. I feel like I’ve got this key that will unlock the mystery, but it’s buried underneath tons of rubbish, and I have no idea how to find it.”

“Do you know what Saint Augustine said? ‘Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great…a large and boundless inner hall.’”

She gets up to take the macaroni out of the oven, fills two bowls, and hands me a fork. “Eat.”

I know in my mind it’s delicious—the same macaroni and cheese I would have dropped everything for just a week ago—but now it seems to have no taste, and I struggle to get it down.

“You’ve lost weight,” Nell says, spooning more macaroni into my already full bowl. “I know food’s the last thing on your mind, but you can’t run on empty.”

She finishes her own bowl, then goes to her bookshelves. “Memory is a science,” she says, rummaging through the titles. “Gobs of stuff have been written about it.”

Within minutes the kitchen table is piled high with books and file folders. There are books about how the brain stores information, photocopied articles on memory retrieval, writings on the art of mnemonics by Aristotle, Raymond Lull, and Robert Fludd.

“You’ve just got all this stuff lying around?”

Nell shrugs. “Once a librarian, always a librarian.” She flips through the books, marking a few pages with Post-it notes, showing me diagrams of the brain—the elegantly curved hippocampus, the almond-shaped amygdala, the mysterious temporal lobe. “It’s in here,” she says, tapping my head. “This is where you’ll find the answer. It’s well documented that traumatic or emotionally trying events wreak havoc with memory, so that information stored in the brain becomes very difficult to access. But the information is still there. You just have to figure out how to get to it.”

Late that night, sitting alone at my place with a pencil and notebook by my side, I delve into Nell’s books. In a recently published volume called
Strange Memory
, by a renowned professor of psychology named Stephen Perry, I come upon the story of Sherevsky, the man who could not forget. Perry references the classic work
The Mind of a Mnemonist
, wherein the Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria refers to his patient Sherevsky simply as S. It strikes me as odd that a man with so many memories would be reduced to a single letter.

What did S. remember? Every word of every conversation, stretching back into childhood. Every meal he had eaten, every sound he had heard, every feature of every face he encountered. While amnesiacs have no ability to remember, S. suffered the impossibility of forgetting. Any page of text, any conversation, was a minefield; a single word would cause an avalanche of memories that made it impossible to complete his train of thought.

Imagine a street in any city, on any given day. Now, imagine that a walk down this street leads to thousands of permanent memories. For you, there is no such thing as the short term, no such thing as the forgettable. You will remember every storefront, every person standing behind the glass, each individual stance. Say this street is home to a bookshop. Walking past the shop, you glance in and see a few titles on display. Forever after, you will remember not only the titles, but also the covers of the books, the order in which they are arranged, the woman standing in line to make a purchase, the tilt of her head as she turns and sees you. You will remember the color of her lipstick, red, the shape of her leg, slim and long, lifted slightly, the black leather sandal sliding off her heel. You will remember, too, the man behind the cash register, his haircut, the gold watch he wears. You hurry on ahead, aware, as you do so, that in the previous seconds you have supplied your memory with thousands of impressions you will have to carry with you until you die. Walking, contemplating this truth, you stub your toe. You look down and see the culprit—a raised spot in the sidewalk. This, too, will be your memory: the imperfection in the sidewalk, the painful sensation in the toe, the image of your own shoe in motion. And you will not be able to forget the fact that, on that particular day of that particular year, in that exact location, you were contemplating your own curse, your lifetime of remembering.

What is a search if not a dual exercise in hope and helplessness? It is hope that makes the search possible, helplessness that makes it simultaneously absurd. I want to believe that, buried deep within the gray matter, inside the complex folds of cerebral cortex and corpus callosum, hippocampus and amygdala, there exists a single detail, a minute piece of knowledge, a precise and crucial memory, that is sufficient to save a missing child.

Like Funes, the memory-laden hero of Borges’s famous story, the one thing S. desired most was simply to forget. What I want, above all, is to remember, to see with absolute clarity the events of that day on Ocean Beach. I would gladly trade a lifetime of memories—birthdays and Christmas mornings, first dates and splendid vacations, wonderful books and beautiful faces—for the one memory that matters, the one that would lead me to Emma.

11

T
HE COMMAND
post is housed in the Castro, in an empty shop space that was donated by a good Samaritan. Passersby are greeted by Emma’s eyes, staring out from dozens of flyers papering the windows. Volunteers sit at long tables, stuffing envelopes and answering phones. Everyone is wearing the same uniform: a white T-shirt with Emma’s face on the front, and under the picture, the words
Have You Seen Emma?
On the back, in large black letters, an 800 number, and beneath that,
www.findemma.com
.

Most of the volunteers are Jake’s students, but there are others: teachers, friends, a few people I know from the photography world, strangers who responded to our postings on craigslist.

One week has passed since Emma disappeared. While I’ve been out frantically searching the streets, running one direction and then another, Jake has been organizing the troops. His approach has been methodical, rational, planned—as is his approach to everything.

A grid map of the Bay Area, dotted with multicolored pushpins, covers most of one wall. Phones rings, voices rise and fall. A pimply kid with perfectly combed hair is giving instructions to a group of teenagers.

“Post these flyers anywhere you can in the shaded area,” he says. “Coffee shops, bookstores, supermarkets, you name it.” He passes around a shoebox filled with buttons bearing Emma’s photo. “Wear these. Take a few extra to pass out. We want her face to be on everybody’s mind.”

The group disperses, and the kid comes over and shakes my hand.

“Abby Mason,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I’m Brian.” He has the overconfident yet somewhat charming demeanor of a class president or chairman of the Young Democrats. “Do you want a canvassing zone, or are you here to see Mr. Balfour?”

“Both.”

Brian gives me a stack of flyers and a map. “Our Colma person didn’t show up. Had a track meet. You can fill in.” He produces a photocopied map, blocking out a tiny portion with an orange highlighter. Each square inch of the map represents ten square miles. I imagine my square as a vast maze filled with shops, apartments, houses. Ditches, Dumpsters, cars, bushes.

Jake spots me and comes over.

“Anything?” I ask.

“Not since we last talked.”

That was half an hour ago. We’ve been living on our cell phones. A constant back and forth, exchanging information, encouragement. There have been dozens of leads, but the cops don’t know which ones to follow. Some guy in Pescadero thought he saw her in a Chinese restaurant at the same time she was spotted by a jogger in Oakland, a 7-Eleven clerk near Yosemite, and a postal worker in San Diego. Jake’s ex-wife, Lisbeth, still hasn’t been located.

“I hope they’re together,” Jake told me when this whole thing began. “I never thought I’d say that, but, God, I hope they are. At least—”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but I knew what he was thinking. If his ex-wife was behind it, at least Emma would still be alive.

I’m remembering what Sherburne has said more than once, in regard to Lisbeth: “It’s not so easy to find someone who really doesn’t want to be found.”

Emma’s face stares back at me from Jake’s T-shirt. To me she looks like Emma, with her low, long-winded laugh, Emma who can go from happy to moody in five seconds flat, Emma who loves peanut butter and honey sandwiches on toasted sourdough bread; but to strangers she must look like any number of black-haired, green-eyed, dimpled girls. Do the phone calls draw us closer, or do they lead us farther away? Emma could be in Pescadero or Oakland or Yosemite, or she could be twenty yards from here, locked in someone’s apartment, drugged and dizzy. The flyers say “Black hair. Green eyes. 4'0''. Last seen wearing a red sweatshirt, blue pants, and blue Paul Frank sneakers with EMMA stitched onto the toe.” But the kidnapper could have easily cut and dyed her hair, changed her clothes. She could be with her mother, frightened but relatively safe, or she could be with some psychopath.

Jake surveys the room, then sits down on a desk and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. He must wish he’d never met me. I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him that I’m sorry, that I know we’re going to find her, but there are too many people, too much noise. As the hours drag on, as the search area grows, so does the distance between us.

When we first met, we were both astonished by the number of things we had in common. It went far deeper than a mutual affinity for the Giants and our ability to quote Woody Allen films. We each lost a mother to cancer. We each had a father who dropped off the map, albeit for different reasons: Jake lost his to alcohol, while I lost mine to his new wife and young family, his overwhelming desire, following the ugly divorce from my mother, to start over again.

On our fourth date—a visit to a William Eggleston exhibit at SF MOMA followed by dinner at the Last Supper Club—Jake and I talked in depth about our families. “When you’re an adult, you’re supposed to just accept that your parents are gone,” he said, “but it was never easy for me to do that. Being a grown-up doesn’t exempt you from feeling like an orphan. I think that’s one reason I was so devastated when Lisbeth left. I decided a long time ago that family was going to be my first priority, and when she left I felt like a failure. There Emma was, three years old without a mother, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was my fault.”

Looking back, I think that night was the first time I allowed myself to consider the word
love,
the first time I accepted how deep my feelings for Jake were. After that, everything moved so quickly, and suddenly we were talking about marriage, and it seemed like the most natural step in the world.

In the weeks before all of this happened, the wedding was foremost in my mind. Now, of course, it no longer matters. Yesterday, the subject came up for the first time, and Jake and I agreed that the wedding should be postponed. The word neither of us spoke aloud was
indefinitely
. All of our hope is concentrated on some unfixed point in the future, the precise dot on some invisible timeline when Emma is found. In the moments after she disappeared, I was certain that point would come within minutes. As the day stretched on, I amended my hope to allow for hours. By the next morning, I had prepared myself for days of desperate searching, days of unknowing. And now, as those days proceed with no sign of her, no clue, we are left with the unfathomable possibility that this horror may go on for weeks.

As I leave the command post, a stack of flyers tucked into my bag, a song comes on the radio, some catchy number I can’t get out of my head, a Wilco tune that’s been everywhere the past couple of weeks. Even though I’ve been humming the melody, I never before noticed the lyrics.

“Every song is a comeback,” the voice sings. And then the chorus repeats over and over, so catchy and so depressing, “Every moment’s a little bit later.” I look at my watch and do the calculations, pi times radius squared, a series of numbers ticking off in my head.

I
haven’t set foot in Colma in years, for good reason. It’s nothing but endless second-rate shopping centers and chain restaurants, four-lane roads and no sidewalks. I post flyers at Burger King and Cost Plus, Pier 1 and Home Depot, Payless Shoes, Marshalls, and BevMo. The clerks, for the most part, are friendly and concerned. At Nordstrom Rack, a pregnant woman asks for extra and promises to put them up in Westlake. “Those poor parents,” she says, running a hand over her enormous stomach. “I can’t imagine.”

Around midnight, after talking to hundreds of shoppers, showing Emma’s picture to anyone who will look, I come to Target. It’s the only place in Colma that’s open this late. The store is alarmingly bright. At the door, a greeter pushes a basket my way, and in exchange I give her a flyer. She takes a pair of glasses out of her pocket, pushes them up her nose, and says, “Cute kid. Breaks your heart. It’s been, what, a week? She’s probably in a ditch somewhere.”

I wander the wide aisles, giving flyers to a dozen late-night shoppers. At some point, I find myself standing face-to-face with Dream Time Barbie, who is dressed in a flannel nightgown and fuzzy slippers, a clear plastic bag slung over her arm. The bag contains a comb, shampoo bottle, and tiny eye mask. I put Dream Time Barbie in my basket. Suddenly, all the plastic and garish colors that would have seemed crass to me just last week look wildly appealing. I add a red Nerf ball, a clear jump rope filled with purple glitter, the board game Operation, and a battery-operated dog that barks, rolls over, and fetches. Even the gender-specific toys I’ve always hated are suddenly enticing: the Easy-Bake Oven, Barbie’s Malibu Mansion, a microphone and speaker set featuring the Spice Girls.

I’m carrying my loot to the checkout when a television in the electronics department catches my eye. Emma’s picture appears in a small box to the right of Leslie Gray. “Martin Ruiz, a former English teacher at the school where Jake Balfour teaches, has been brought in for questioning. Ruiz was admitted to the psychiatric ward of Kaiser Permanente last February and later released.”

I know Ruiz, who attempted suicide following an ugly divorce—thus the bout in the psych ward. Jake invited him over for dinner a couple of times. Ruiz struck me as a deeply depressed man attempting to hide his sadness with jokes and a bit too much alcohol. I immediately liked him, as did Emma, for whom he built an impressive house of cards on the living room floor after dessert. I’m sure he’s got nothing to do with this—nothing about him struck me as strange or untrustworthy—but then I realize I can be sure of nothing. I was certain Emma would be safe with me, certain that when Jake came back from his trip we could be a happy family. Everything I’ve known, all the basic rules, have been rendered meaningless.

A boy of about sixteen is standing in the headphones aisle, watching the televisions, dressed in Target red. His name tag says Pete. “Need help finding anything?” he asks.

“No, thank you.”

Pete looks at the television. “My mom can’t get enough of this story. She thinks the dad’s involved, says it’s just a little too convenient that he was out of town the day the kid disappeared. My money’s on the crazy English teacher. What about you?”

The store starts to swirl, and I lean against the counter.

“You okay?” Pete says, reaching over to steady me.

I leave the basket and make my way toward the exit. “Hey,” Pete says, following. “Hey, you want this stuff?”

The parking lot is nearly empty. Neon signs cast eerie shapes on the glistening asphalt. A woman walks toward the door, pushing a row of shopping carts. There must be twenty or more, a long red snake, rattling as it goes. A car full of kids speeds through the lot and swerves just in time to avoid the carts. The woman shakes her head and curses, the driver shouts something obscene in response, and a snippet of music wafts from the car windows. It’s that Wilco song again.