The Wonder Test

by Michelle Richmond

  “Oregon?”

  She nods. “We were on the same dorm floor my freshman year. We weren’t great friends or anything, but we saw each other around a lot. We hooked up a few times during college and again the year after. A few years after graduation, I got injured, and I needed surgery on my shoulder. Coach wanted me to see this doctor at Stanford, best in the country.

  “I heard Travis had been living out here for a while. I didn’t know anyone else in the area, I was broke, and he’d always wanted it to go further than it did with us, so I emailed and asked if I could stay with him. It was a big ask, with my surgery and all. Maybe I was using him, but he didn’t mind. He said it was no bother, he had plenty of room.”

  “What brought Travis to California?”

  “He had degrees in engineering and chemistry and had come here to do research at Applied Materials. In school, he was the smartest guy I knew.”

  “Where’s the house?”

  “Four acres in the hills over Montara, a big rancher that he was renovating. He put in a gorgeous new kitchen, new bathrooms, a whole new foundation, turned out the old one was rotten. And he had goats, lots of goats. In the beginning, I’ll admit, it was amazing. It was close to the city and the hospital but felt like the country, so it was a great place to recover from my surgery.”

  “Was he different than when you’d known him in the dorm?”

  She picks up the Prefontaine book and thumbs through it, sets it down again. “Sure. He used to just be this super-smart Oregon hippie nerd. He grew up along the coast, had normal parents. He’s a brilliant chemist. He loved the work at AMat. He told me he made a lot of money those first couple of years, and he put it all into buying and fixing up his property. But it’s a big piece of land, and the renovation turned out to be crazy expensive, so he had to take out a huge loan. When I moved in, he told me he’d been laid off from his job a while back.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He didn’t elaborate, but I got the feeling he wasn’t getting along with his coworkers. Which didn’t surprise me, because he can really rub people the wrong way. After he lost his job, he was at risk of going underwater with the property. So he borrowed more money but not from a bank. And once he’d borrowed the money, things went downhill. He had to do someone a favor; that’s how he presented it to me.”

  “Why did you agree to it?”

  She sighs. “Look, I owed Travis, okay? He didn’t only let me stay at his place. He took care of me. Cooked for me, helped me get up and walk around. For a few weeks there, it was like we were married, like we’d skipped the whole dating phase and transitioned into domesticity. He made me soup, fluffed my pillows. No one had ever done anything like that for me.”

  She frowns, activating the parallel lines between her brows. “But eventually it went sour. He set up a lab for the guy he owed. Travis just needed to cover the debt, he said. Then he started to like it. After that, he turned into a dick. It happened so fast. The drugs brought out this huge ego.”

  “He was taking meth?”

  “No, he said meth was for losers. He did coke. He liked being productive.”

  “What about you? Did you ever do drugs with him?”

  She shakes her head adamantly. “Hell no, I was too smart for that, or so I thought. I’m an athlete. But the doctor prescribed Oxy after the surgery, and she kept prescribing it. The surgery hadn’t gone exactly as planned, and she had to go in a second time, so I was on Oxy and Dilaudid for nine months. Totally messed with my mind, up and down, blissful highs and crushing lows. I was always tired and jittery, my muscles shrank, I lost my appetite. I got scary thin. I was in bed for months, watching TV. In the beginning, Travis was so nice. I couldn’t have recovered without him. But later, when I stopped medicating and my body had begun to heal, and I started talking about running and swimming and getting my life back together, he got weird.”

  She bites her lip. She doesn’t like remembering this, doesn’t like showing her vulnerability to a stranger.

  I get up to refill our water glasses, give Ivy a little space. “Weird how?” I ask from the sink.

  “One night, when I told him I wanted to move back to Eugene, he started threatening me. I’d been helping package the product, as a way to repay my debt to him. Then he started to need me. He didn’t want me to leave. So when I told him he didn’t have a say in the matter, he beat the shit out of me. It was bad. It was embarrassing. I wasn’t like I am now. I could barely move my arm. I weighed a hundred and seven pounds. Oxy will mess you up.”

  I return to the table. Ivy takes a long sip of water.

  “How did you get out?”

  “That beating was my wake-up call. After that I cleaned up my act, got healthy, waited. Then Travis had a situation. A disagreement about money with some guy you don’t want to have a disagreement with. It was scary. We had to leave the house, lay low, stay in this crappy cabin in Moss Beach for a while. Travis slept with a gun under his pillow. Then the thing with the kid came up, and the guy told Travis that if he did him the favor, they would be clear.”

  “Where does Murphy fit in?”

  “Murphy was one of Travis’s first clients, owed him a bunch of money. Travis wanted me to do the real work, get the kid back to shore, make sure we didn’t get caught. If I did that, Travis promised he would consider us even. If I did him that one favor, I’d never have to hear from him again.”

  I’m silently diagramming in my mind, keeping track of favors granted and favors owed, and how it all leads back to an emaciated, shivering Gray Stafford on the beach.

  “He called it an opportunity,” Ivy continues. “I didn’t know anything except that I was returning the kid. Honestly, he made it sound like a good deed. Somebody needed to get the kid back to his family. Once I did my part, the kid would be safe and I’d be off the hook.”

  “Were you?”

  She rubs her face with both hands. “I never went back to the house to find out. The whole thing scared the shit out of me. I slept in my car for a couple of weeks. I was lucky to find this place. I work online all day, graphics, web design, virtual assistant, you name it. I’m saving up to go back to Eugene. I want to show up fit and healthy, with some money in the bank.”

  “So, do you know who asked Travis for the favor? Who did Travis owe?”

  “No idea. He didn’t tell me or Murphy anything. It was all supposed to be anonymous.”

  “Where was Gray Stafford coming from?”

  “I’m telling you, we had zero information.”

  “Did you get paid?”

  Ivy wipes some imaginary crumbs off the table. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Never mind. I don’t need to know. If you asked Travis who set it up, would he tell you?”

  She lets out a hard, cold laugh. “If I saw Travis, he’d probably shoot me. He’s a wreck. Paranoid with a capital P. He gave up the business entirely, and now he just sits on his land with his stupid goats. I’m telling you, he’s not the same guy I used to know.”

  I sense Ivy has no more to tell me. She looks at me with the rare kind of intensity you see in certain people, the kind of intensity she demonstrated when she swam against the current at Montara Beach. I understand how she almost made it to the Olympics. Although she has given me a lot of information, she hasn’t told me the one thing I really need to know: Who orchestrated the kidnappings?

  Ivy is staring at me, red-eyed. “I will do absolutely whatever you want. I will make this right. If it kills me, I don’t even care.” Tears are rolling down her cheeks now, but she doesn’t look away. “I am so, so sorry.”

  I take my notebook and pen out of my bag. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Travis. I need his address, phone numbers, email, spending habits, where he gets gas, where he shops, date of birth, personality traits.”

  She tells me everything, and I write it all do
wn.

  “Lunch,” I say. “Where does he go for lunch, and when?”

  “He used to eat lunch at noon every day at La Bamba in Mountain View. He’s a creature of habit, picky eater, so I bet he still goes there.”

  “I need photos.”

  She opens her laptop, pulls up Travis’s photos on password-protected sites, and emails them to me.

  I stand to leave. “Thank you. You’re doing the right thing.”

  Ivy looks confused. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. We’ll talk. We’ll work it out. Don’t say anything to anyone. Seriously. No one.”

  Driving back along 280, I have a feeling of something accomplished, something gained. But too many questions remain: Who took Gray Stafford and the twins? Where were they kept? Who was Travis working for?

  And the most important question of all: Where is Caroline?

  41

  Two houses in Florida share a back fence, yet the residents must drive more than seven miles to go from one house to the other. In 250 words or fewer, describe how this situation reflects both the most significant advances and the greatest challenges in urban planning over the past century.

  It’s a quarter past midnight on Friday morning when I get home. Mister Fancy is sitting on the porch. I leave the front door open, but he doesn’t follow me inside. When I return with a bowl of milk, he gives me a dismissive look. If I could hear him speaking again, I imagine he would tell me to get my head in the game.

  Rory is asleep beneath a blanket on the living room sofa, television on. I shake his shoulder gently to wake him. “You’re home,” he mumbles. The way he says it, I realize he was worried about me.

  He sits up, making room for me on the couch. “Mom, I keep looking at that last text Caroline sent me. Don’t worry, Friend. All is well. It doesn’t sound like her, it’s not something she would say. Tonight, when I was rereading Martin in Space, I realized it’s a line from the book.”

  “It is?”

  He pulls the blanket around his shoulders. “At one point, Martin has dinner in Stockholm. One minute he’s eating potatoes with chives and sour cream, and the next minute he wakes up alone in an unfamiliar room. The room is all white and it has no door, no windows. There’s just a bed, a chair, and a desk with a note on it. The note says: Don’t worry, Friend. All is well.”

  “Was Caroline reading Martin in Space too?”

  “I gave it to her a couple of weeks ago. The book is so long, so strange, the line didn’t stick out until I read it again. What could it mean? Do you think Caroline was trying to send me a message? Is it some kind of code?”

  I don’t know what it means. But it gives me chills. I put my arm around Rory’s shoulders. “We’ll find her.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.” And I realize, as I say it, that it’s the first time I’ve made a promise to Rory I’m not sure I can keep.

  A few hours later, over a breakfast of bacon and biscuits, Rory complains, “I’m so tired of the Wonder Test.”

  “Just do your best.”

  He looks up and gives me a look I can’t read. “Like my life depends on it?”

  When I get home from dropping Rory off at school, our street is crowded with parked cars. I realize the culprit is an open house three doors down. A Mercedes is blocking my driveway, so I double park and walk up to the open house.

  The grass is so green, the trees so manicured. Everything is almost too perfect. A woman with long black hair greets me at the front door. Her suit is well cut but revealing, more automobile expo than high-end real estate. I’m about to ask her if she knows who the owner of the Mercedes might be when she thrusts an iPad-size gadget into my hands. “Here’s your personal walk-through with Harris Ojai,” she says brightly. “You can pause it whenever you like and swipe left on any screen to call an attendant.” The screen is blank. I feel around, but I don’t find a button to turn it on.

  “Oh, you’ve never used one of these?” she asks.

  She leans over and speaks into the screen. “Begin the tour.” In response to her command, a hologram pops up from the screen, six inches high, full color. It’s a mini Harris Ojai, doing a little dance to some techno-beat music. The hologram declares exuberantly, “I’m Harris Ojai. Welcome to my open house!” His feet tap on dots that appear on the screen as he instructs: “Press here for a 3D layout of the house, press here for listing details, and press right here to send me a message!”

  “Nothing better than having your own little Harris Ojai to walk you through!” the woman exclaims.

  I wander through the foyer into the living space. The house is like a centerfold from Architectural Digest. Two dozen prospective buyers are walking around with their brokers. In the kitchen, a chef I recognize from local television is arranging appetizers on a platter. A young man in a catering uniform hands me a glass of champagne.

  Beyond the dining area is a media room, where the 49ers’ old Super Bowl victory is playing, larger than life. Steve Young is nearly nine feet tall. As Dwight Clark makes the catch, the room comes alive on all sides.

  I wander upstairs and then upstairs again, the champagne buzz heightening the sense that I’ve wandered into a dream, Alice in Real Estate Land. I’m not even sure why I’m here. It’s as if Harris Ojai willed me up the block and into the house. But I feel drawn to it, as if the secret of Caroline’s disappearance, the secret key that will unlock this town, might be somewhere in this mansion.

  After seven bedrooms, a slew of marble bathrooms and cedar closets, I try to find my way out. A concrete staircase leads down to what Harris Ojai unapologetically calls the maid’s quarters. I escape to the backyard with mini Harris Ojai looking up at me and imploring, “Error! Don’t you want to see the wine cellar. Error!”

  “Stop,” I command, but I can’t turn him off.

  A chorus of elementary school children in matching green outfits sings “California Dreamin’” beside an enormous, glittering swimming pool. The real Harris Ojai materializes beside me. He’s wearing the same shiny suit as his hologram. “Error!” mini Harris repeats. “Don’t you want to visit the wine cellar?”

  The real Harris Ojai takes the gadget and speaks to his doppelgänger as if to a disobedient child. “Go to sleep,” he says, and the hologram disappears.

  He points to the children’s choir. “Listen to the way their voices echo off the marble inlays on the patio!” He cups a hand to his ear. “Beautiful, yes?”

  “Yes, but I’m surprised they’re here on a school day.”

  “Ah, it’s the unique synergy of our little town. What is good for Greenfield is good for the children. What is good for the children is good for the town. Strong property values lead to strong schools. Strong schools lead to strong property values. We are all in this together! Selling houses is my art, Lina. One day, you and I will make a masterpiece.”

  42

  Which major American rivers have been least addressed in American literature, and how has this lack of recognition influenced local cultures and economies?

  La Bamba is located in a strip mall in Mountain View. Ivy told me Travis eats lunch here every day at noon, so I arrive at 11:30. Judging from the line of workers in fluorescent orange vests stretching out the door, it must be good. I wait in line and order a burrito with chicken, black beans, cheese, guac, no rice.

  I take my tray out back to a corner table with a view of the entire place. At 12:10, I spot a guy who looks like the photos Ivy showed me, minus twenty pounds, give or take. The odd ridges in his face hint at mental illness, palpable paranoia. He finds an empty table, peels the aluminum foil from his burrito, and digs in. He eats like a feral animal. I imagine he’s a shadow of the University of Oregon chemistry student he once was.

  I walk over to his table and set my drink down. “Mind if I join you?” This is the ideal place to engage. It’s public, and he’s
not expecting me. If he goes off, the situation will be easier to contain than if we were alone.

  “Yes, I mind.”

  “Thanks, I’ll sit anyway.” Confused, he sizes me up, determines I’m not a threat, and returns to his burrito.

  I pull out the chair and sit. “Travis.”

  Now he meets my eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “You’re going to need to focus, Travis. I’m going to say something, and then I’m going to ask you some questions. This conversation will have a profound impact on the course of your life. Do not underestimate me. Understand?”

  Fear flashes across his face. He’s made so many bad decisions in the last couple of years, he’s probably trying to figure out which specific bad decision brought me here.

  “One year ago, a person asked you to arrange the return of a teenage boy.”

  The fear morphs into panic. “What?” He looks around frantically. “Is this a joke? Did someone put you up to this?” He sets down his burrito, breaking into nervous laughter.

  “Up here.” I snap my fingers to get his attention, waiting for his eyes to meet mine again. “We don’t have much time.”

  It’s crucial to set parameters for any confrontational conversation, especially with someone who has a limited ability to focus. “This meeting ends in only one of two ways. One, you answer my questions, all of them, you answer honestly, then you go home and you never mention this conversation to anyone, ever.”

  “Yeah, what’s the second way?”

  “Federal agents, search warrants, you in jail, and Mom and Dad trying to scrape together two million for bail.”

  Travis leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, appraising me. My suburban mom outfit seems to throw him off. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I reach into my bag, pull out my creds, badge side up, and slide them across the table underneath my palm, uncovering them only long enough for Travis to see. His eyes dart down to the badge, back up at me. “How do I know it’s real?”