Wish You Were Here (50 page)

“I thought you had them,” she said, and when he turned to her in stoned disbelief she was holding them up. “You are so easy.”

He inched up to the drop box, afraid of scraping the side, and then had to open the door to reach the slot. Above it hung Tracy Ann Caler's face.
PLEASE HELP FIND ME
, the flyer read, and gave all the information, and he thought unsteadily that if he were alone he would have taken it for himself, a sick keepsake. He'd have to shoot it with the Holga, a whole series.

“What do you think about some ice cream?” he asked Meg, to deflect any questions, but then at the Dairy Queen there was the same picture on the inside of the drive-thru. Five-five, 110 pounds. He had time to memorize it while the girl in the headset made change, cracking a roll of nickels on the drawer like an egg. He remembered Sam's tooth and asked if they had any of those gold dollars, but of course not.

“That's all right,” he said, his all-purpose reply, and she went to get the cones. Lise once told him it sounded phony, like he was trying to come off as a nice guy, and since then he'd been self-conscious about it, often stopping it halfway out of his mouth.

He could do one of every place that had a flyer—the hardware in Mayville, the Golden Dawn—and show her world that way. Her parents, the cops, everyone who was trying to find her—that was what he was doing too. He was part of the project, incorporated organically, as Morgan would say.

“I always think I see you,” Freedy sang with perfect timing. “Across the avenue.”

It was hard to shift with the cone in his hand, and Meg had to hold it until they were into fourth. His buzz was fading, and he felt the
day closing around him, the possibilities narrowing down, like the end of a date. For all his dread of her, he liked being with Meg. In some ways she was easier than Lise or his mother. She could take him back further than anyone, the memory of their rooms on Grafton Street a safe space to retreat to, the years ideal, nothing serious intruding on their after-school reruns of
Superman
and
Gilligan's Island,
nothing gone wrong yet. It was as false as the soft ice cream they were eating, and as comforting. Lise regularly told him to grow up, charged him with acting like a little kid. Sometimes he thought it was more than nostalgia, that he would actually be happier if he'd stopped around nine. Or no, later, a teenager, believing the lyrics from the records he taped from his friends, all of them falling for the rock'n'roll dream that if they went far enough fast enough they'd never run out of open road.

Meg had been his only role model, and he'd seen her disregard for convention as heroic. The world seemed very large then, and home very small, a place to get away from, their parents jailers. In college he'd stayed awake for days, read books that told him everything was possible, the systems that held everybody down were an illusion bound to crumble before the truth, but as he aged the world had solidified, become real. It was that excitement he missed, that freedom so closely allied with irresponsibility and nothingness. He had betrayed it or it him, or maybe it was just a stage, as he was tempted to see it now. He wondered if Meg was as baffled at how things had turned out as he was. Maybe that was just life. Their dashed hopes weren't a tragedy, just something they needed to get used to.

“Good idea,” Meg said, toasting him with her cone as if she'd read his thoughts.

His was dripping over his fingers, a spot dotting his jeans. The stiff little napkins were inadequate. The CD started again—“I know I've got a bad reputation”—and Ken stabbed at the eject button with a thumb.

“No,” Meg said, “I like that one.”

And so they listened to it again, and the next song, and the next, riding along through the dark, limitless night.

She didn't want him anyway, Sarah thought. He never loved her. He only said it that time so she would take her top off, let him slide the wet straps of her suit over her shoulders, and then he squeezed her breasts too hard, like they were baseballs, and she gasped and he pulled back and apologized, stood there as if she might send him away.

She didn't understand why she took his hands and placed them on her again. To prove she was tough, not as fragile as he thought. Because she had power over him then. He would do anything to touch them, and after a while she came to resent it, pulling him up by the tip of his chin so he would kiss her. She could make him do anything.

He didn't know how to touch her, cramming his hand down her jeans, his watchband tearing out hairs, and then fumbling around and her getting wet anyway, her hips turning to find the right pressure but then him changing, losing his place. She wanted to tell him to stay still, but instead she let him explore her, thinking it was early, that she could teach him.

He was about as romantic as a roll-on deodorant. He lied to her when he told her he would write. She wrote. He never wrote, only this:
I'm sorry. I hope you're not angry.
Two pages of excuses. Fuck him.

She thought of Saturday, and of not seeing him. Her mother would ask if there was something wrong, and then there'd be this big thing. They'd fight, which would frighten Justin, and she'd go to her room and close the door. She'd cry and rage and slam her fist into her pillow as if it were Mark's face, and it wouldn't change anything. He didn't want her. He'd found someone else better, someone who would pretend he was the sexiest guy in the world.

It was his plan from the beginning. He'd used the summer to break up, the days and weeks apart building up to the news. She'd done it herself with Colin last year, but now she saw how cruel and cowardly it was. Mark should have just told her in June instead of making her wait.

She lay there, Ella whistling through her train tracks beside her.
The door opened below, throwing a shaft of light up the wall, and Sarah rolled over, nose to nose with Ella. The room went dark again until someone clicked on a flashlight, a circle flying around like a trapped bat. She heard her mother and Uncle Ken giggling, trying to be quiet, and she wondered angrily if they were stoned. Ella slept with her mouth open; it made her look even more like a little kid, and Sarah thought she was lucky, not having to worry about guys hitting on her all the time.

The fucking prick. She could make him change his mind anytime. It wouldn't take much.

She wasn't that desperate.

They turned at the top of the stairs, the floor creaking under their feet. She closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing, waiting for them to step over her, to leave her alone again so she could think. Like it would do her any good.

Sleeping was not the problem, it was what flew through her head as she lay awake: the moments after the accident rendered in a blinding flash; Jeff making love to Stacey in their bed (the bed she still slept in, though she stripped it and sprayed the mattress every week with Lysol, as if that could kill the memory); the woman in rehab who screamed herself to sleep, exhausting all of them. This was her version of that, with visions instead of hallucinations, her demons real.

She'd been pinned in the car, her knee mashed under the dashboard and hurting, blood running down her face, flecking the cuffs of her shirt, wetting the front. For some reason she was off the road, a stretch of wire fence filling the passenger window. Her car had stalled but her lights were still on, the speedometer on zero. The other car sat attached to hers, T-boned, smoking, the other driver partially eclipsed by the air bag, a woman her age, her one arm rising and falling as if she were waving to
her, flagging her down for help. Her first conscious thought after the impact was ironically relieved—that she hadn't been drinking—as if the woman had caught her at just the right time. She didn't remember what happened, only that she'd been driving. It was not her fault.

She had a cigarette somewhere—knocked from her hand—and thought the cars might catch fire like they did in the movies. She could open her door. It swung free, and the cold and snow poured in, attacking from all sides. Her arms were fine, and her one leg, but the other wouldn't budge. She thought someone should be here already, the police at least. It was a busy road, even at this time of night.

“Help!” she yelled, but the snow seemed to swallow her words. The other woman waved her hand mechanically. On the road another car sluiced by. “Help us,” she said weakly. For Christ's sake, stop.

Of the moments in her life she would never forget, this one returned to her most often. It was the one she singled out as the turning point, the reason she decided to become another person, though Jeff never tired of pointing out—as she herself did, remembering—that she hadn't been drinking that night.

“I just as easily could have been,” she argued, until he no longer listened to her. That was when Stacey came into the picture, walking out of their bathroom naked, noticeably younger than her, perky and carefree, a lover Jeff might have dreamed up, jumping on the bed like a trampoline, trying to touch the stucco ceiling as he laughed beneath her, while Meg lay in her private room at Winding Trails, freezing under the covers, the stitches in her knee healing. Down the dark hall, night after night, she heard the woman pleading with Jesus, screaming for him to save her.

These were the secrets she didn't tell anyone but selfishly held on to, bringing them out in the last minutes before sleep to turn them over again, trying to glean some meaning from the awkward combination of the three. The woman in the other car suffered a serious spinal injury but survived. It had been the other woman's fault, the police report determined, she'd been driving too fast for conditions. The woman down the hall she never found out about. The screaming stopped after her first week, the room empty when she passed it, awaiting its next occupant. The third woman was herself (Stacey wasn't a woman, just a symptom), and there her analysis foundered, leaving only what had occurred, vivid and irreducible, meaning she was free to revisit the events anytime, which she did.

Emily stood at the sink, sipping, not a hint of a breeze filtering through the screen. Here was the day they'd been waiting for, warm, the sun already sharp on the rhododendron, threatening a breathless heat. The brightness held everything in place, the only motion the bees that patrolled the Lerners' trumpet vines. The humidity under the trees promised thundershowers, but not until dusk, a brief, steaming reprieve. It seemed a different season altogether, the last few days erased. They'd have to get out early and wear some headgear, rub on sunblock. She couldn't imagine how bad it would be in the city—roasting, an absolute sauna—and pictured Louise going out to water her roses.

She hoped her postcard would arrive tomorrow. She was beyond worrying about it now.

She unearthed a white visor in a pile of baseball caps Henry kept for the boat and found her clip-on sunglasses in a dish on the mantel. The boys were relentless, playing video games in their pajama bottoms. She didn't feel up to ruining their good time and went into the kitchen and rinsed the stray dishes from last night and wiped down the counters before taking her coffee outside, Rufus sticking close to her, worried. He stopped at Arlene's car, pointing at the door and wagging his tail as if they were going somewhere.

“My,” she said, “we
are
antsy, aren't we?”

The lawn bristled with dew, the new light angling between the tree trunks, laying the black stripes of their shadows along the garage and across the Lerners' yard. Overhead, the birds were busy, all talking before the noise of the world drowned them out—chirps and whistles and trills, the lonesome two-toned hoot of a mourning dove. The lake was still, a skin of cottonwood fluff glazing the surface. Walking out onto the dock was like taking the stage, and she was pleased to see she was alone, no neighbors to wave to. She stubbed her toe on the raised lip of one section,
spilling her coffee, and swore, the chain reaction almost comic. Rufus stopped when she stopped, as if he'd done something wrong, but she just held the dripping cup away from her, unhurt, more amused than embarrassed by her own carelessness.

She decided against the bench, set the cup on the dock and lowered herself to the edge, her feet dangling inches above the water. Rufus folded himself down beside her uncertainly. She wondered if he knew she'd be gone all morning, the familiar golf bag a tip-off. And after she'd left him alone the whole day yesterday.

“Is that why you're acting so goofy? Huh? You poor neglected dog.”

He regarded her solemnly, then, slowly—all the time watching her, as if for permission—listed until he was flat on his side, his one eye wide open, keeping her in sight.

“You are something,” she said, thumping his ribs, and heard the echo of Henry in her words.

The basement was cool in summer, and Rufus had a spot in a corner of his workshop, the concrete floor delicious. She was convinced Rufus missed him. Sometimes he would nose around the house, sniffing the ruffle of Henry's chair or the half-filled shoe rack in his closet, and then come to her looking puzzled, as if to ask where he'd gone. “I know,” she'd say, but—it was so silly—she couldn't bring herself to tell him, sit down with him as you would a child and patiently explain everything. And maybe he was asking something completely different, maybe she was just projecting her loss onto him. So she said “I know” and left it at that.

She wondered if Marcia had emptied the dehumidifier like she'd asked her. A day like today it would fill up quick. Last year she'd let it go and then Emily had had problems with mold, her best gloves and scarves musty, the new fleece vest Kenneth had given her for Christmas mildewed. Things like that were maddening, so easy to prevent.

She used two hands to drink from her cup, as if it were winter. The birds hadn't shut up. A pair of swallows dueled, zipping across the water, then sailing high and stalling, falling again, veering away when they came too close to her. Their sudden cutting made her appreciate her own stillness. She wished she had the ability to absent herself, to become part of the dock and watch without intruding. She could happily sit here forever, a morning like this. The peace of the day became hers, quieted her
mind, if only for a moment. At home it was impossible, any daydream leading to Henry or the children's old rooms, the past flashing like a photo album, but here she was justified, the setting—the spirit of the place—designed to let visitors forget time, open oneself to larger contemplation. The same was true of golf, she thought. She ought to get out more. She'd have to badger Louise.