A Night at the Operation

by JEFFREY COHEN

  My options, as I saw them, were limited. Gregory had reappropriated his cell phone, so calling the police would be a problem. I could ask one of the neighbors if I could use their phone, but it was one in the morning, and I don’t actually know any of my neighbors. This didn’t seem like the time to make friends. I could close the door and ride away, but that wouldn’t help me find out who was inside my house—plus, that someone might have information on Sharon’s whereabouts. No, this was a time for me to go against every instinct, every personality trait, every gene in my makeup, and be brave.

  Besides, it was cold, and I was sick of being cold.

  I pushed the door open, doing my best not to notice when it creaked on its hinges. I’d just have to hope the intruder wasn’t listening very closely.

  Stepping inside, I put the bike down in the hallway as gently as I could. Yes, it made a noise too, but there wasn’t much I’d be able to do to an intruder while carrying a bicycle in one hand. You make choices and you have to live with them.

  The hallway is exactly twelve feet long; I had to measure it once when some shelves were being delivered. The living room was a ninety-degree turn at the end of the hallway, the stairs to the bedroom just in front of me, and the kitchen ahead and to the right. No one could see me before I reached the entrance to the living room.

  That meant I couldn’t see them either, of course, and as I crept down the hallway, I noticed every creaky board in a floor that couldn’t be more than ten years old. They don’t build ’em like they used to.

  Unfortunately, the hallway is about as bare of furniture as the rest of the place, so I wasn’t able to pick up the usual fireplace poker, socket wrench, or ornamental sword that always seem to be handily available in the movies. Not even a baseball bat—I’ve never understood the utility of having one if you’re not going to play baseball, although Sharon is an advocate of the old Louisville Slugger as a defensive weapon. I could have taken off the bicycle’s front wheel and used it as a discus, I suppose, but that would have been very noisy, and in all likelihood would have succeeded only in making me look silly.

  I stopped breathing about five feet from the corner, and tried to move even more slowly. Through the heavy knit hat, I could hear voices—more than one, for sure—in the living room. Just a few more inches now, and I’d be able to see . . .

  Seated on the humiliating furniture in my living room were my parents, Meg Vidal, and Leo Munson. The floor was completely free of discarded DVDs and videocassettes, and the futon cover, which had been slashed and gutted, was gone, replaced by extra pillows and blankets from my bedroom closet. The answering machine was back in its traditional place, and the red light was, in accordance with tradition, not blinking.

  “For crissakes,” I said, “you people almost gave me a coronary.”

  15

  IT took a while to sort out the various stories, but after the initial shock, I wasn’t averse to sitting and listening for a while. Made me glad I didn’t own a baseball bat, because I most certainly would have ended up cracking the skull of someone who was just trying to do me a good turn.

  What had happened was:

  Meg (who had, after all, told me she’d be at my place, if only I still had a working mind) had decided, until such time as a formal agreement could be drafted to “lend” her to the Midland Heights police, to make my town home her base of operations, so she could use the phone, fax, and computer. She’d have done so at Comedy Tonight, but she also wanted to feel her fingers and toes again, and the current state of our heating system wouldn’t allow that. But before she could leave the theatre, she’d been accosted by Leo Munson, patron saint/eternal pest of Comedy Tonight, who was there to see if we’d have a showing that evening. Leo has an eye for the ladies.

  On hearing about the mess that had been made of my prized comedy collection, Leo volunteered to come by and try to sort it out, something Meg would never have been able to do on her own. She’s a lovely woman and a smart cop, but she doesn’t know her Wheeler and Woolsey from her Martin and Lewis. Meg was happy to have the help, and gave Leo a ride to the town house.

  Dad had lent her his key to the town house. But when you engage Dad in anything, Mom finds out about it, and while she doesn’t often descend upon my business or my home (preferring to pretend that Sharon and I are still married, and I’m simply between jobs), when she heard that two people were about to visit my home without me (and, I can only assume, horrified by the thought of what must surely be living in my refrigerator in place of food), she hopped—as well as Mom hops these days—into her car and headed for the town house, stopping along the way at a deli that makes sandwiches by the pound. No matter what else Meg and Leo were to find at my house, they would certainly encounter heartburn.

  I was told there was a half a salami on rye in the fridge, which would otherwise be sent to Africa to feed an entire village of starving people. I decided to spare the villagers the dangers of excess cholesterol, and was eating part of the sandwich as I gathered all the previous information. This took longer than you might think, as no one in the room was at all shy about interrupting when a detail was missed or a possible punch line wasn’t being properly accentuated. It was quite a group performance.

  “I can’t stand it,” my mother said, to no one in particular. If she’d really been up to her usual form, it would have been a performance worthy of the Yiddish theatre, or at least an early Charlie Chaplin movie, with her hand to her forehead and some serious “oy vey,” to go with the moan. But I understood. I was worn out, too.

  I had to get up and move around to keep from falling asleep, and I didn’t want to fall asleep with guests in the house. “You did a huge job here, Leo,” I said, admiring the way he’d organized the comedy collection.

  “I never saw so many movies in one place before, Elliot,” he said, his voice just a little too excited, like he was trying to think of a way to come back and watch lots of those movies whenever he wanted. “You didn’t have an inventory or anything, so I had to improvise.”

  I shook my head with some admiration. “You did a better job than I did the first time,” I told him. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me to organize by decade as well as by comedian.

  Suddenly, I remembered: “Meg, you said you found something out.”

  Meg nodded. “It doesn’t answer anything, but it might help. There were some new hits on Sharon’s card—her debit card, this time.”

  “That sounds more like Sharon,” I said. “She hates owing people money, even MasterCard. Where were they?”

  “First, a parking receipt at the hotel where she had the drink with your mystery man,” Meg answered. “Then, at a Sunoco station on the New Jersey Turnpike.”

  Everyone else in the room, myself included, asked, “What exit?” We Jerseyans measure everything in exits.

  “It was at fifteen-W, just where the turnpike meets Route Two-Eighty,” Meg said. “Then, there was a debit of seventy-eight dollars, at a supermarket in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, late this afternoon.”

  Tunkhannock! There was something about that name . . . and then I got it.

  Meg Vidal’s eyes narrowed. “You know why she’s there, don’t you?” she said.

  “I don’t know why, but I might know where,” I admitted. “Sharon’s family has a vacation house, a cottage really, near there, in a town called Lake Carey. She used to go there when we first met, especially during her residency, when things got too heavy for her to handle. So I’ve got to go up there.”

  “Why don’t you tell Barry?” Meg asked.

  “Because I don’t want the local cops going up and asking her what she’s doing. I don’t want this to be about how everyone here is freaking out over her not being around. And if she’s up there dealing with guilt over Russell Chapman, I want her to hear from me that he might not be dead.”

  “What if she’s not alone?” Meg wanted to know.

  I’d thought of that. “If I see any evidence that she’s being held a
gainst her will, I’ll call the police. Can I borrow someone’s cell phone? I’ll make sure to case the cottage from outside before I ever consider going in.”

  “What if she’s not alone intentionally?” Meg asked.

  I hadn’t thought of that one, and wished I didn’t have to now. “Then I’ll turn around and come back, without ever going inside. Either way, if you don’t hear from me within four hours after I leave, call the local cops.”

  Mom lowered her head a little and bit her bottom lip. “You’re going up there now?” she asked.

  I nodded. “But I’m going to need a car,” I said.

  “I’ll drive you,” she said.

  “No, you won’t. I need to do this alone.”

  My mother gave me a look.

  Did I mention she’s really good at the passive-aggressive stuff?

  16

  SUNDAY

  “IF you get a speeding ticket, will it show up on your record or mine?”

  My mother was white-knuckling the passenger’s door handle because I was daring to exceed the speed limit on Route 287 heading north in her 1992 Oldsmobile Toronado, a car so large you could land aircraft on its roof. I had insisted on driving for this very reason: With Mom behind the wheel, we’d get there sometime in February, instead of making the trip in, according to MapQuest, two hours and forty-three minutes. MapQuest is very specific about such things.

  I had tried—believe me—to avoid this lineup. I have a friendly arrangement with Moe Baxter, the Midland Heights magician of body work and mechanics, to test drive cars whose repairs he’s completed when I need a ride somewhere, and I suggested to my mother that I call Moe. But it was barely daybreak when we set out, and my arrangement with Moe isn’t that friendly.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll take the rap for you.” You can go ninety on Route 287 if the traffic is flowing, and still make the case that you’re just keeping up with the pack. I’ve seen state troopers go for that argument.

  Meg had offered to come along, too, but I’d declined, saying I wanted her at my home base in case any other information came in while I was out, and that she could call Mom’s cell phone (yes, my mother is more technologically advanced than I am) if necessary. What I didn’t say was that it would be better if the law enforcement officer was not along for the ride should I have to commit breaking and entering, or any other infraction she might otherwise feel compelled to report. Meg hadn’t put up much of an argument.

  Dad decided to stay at the town house and try to get some sleep—he wanted to be back in the theatre supervising repairs as soon as possible. Leo made noises about going home until I told him that as payment for his hard work, he could watch as many movies as he liked on the flat-screen TV until I got back. I thought that might annoy Meg, but she grinned at the thought, and said she’d see if IHOP does take-out (turns out they do). Leo and Meg were starting to bond over my movie collection and simple carbohydrates.

  By the time we were on Route 80, I asked Mom to try calling Sharon again. As had become the custom, Sharon’s voice mail picked up immediately, only to say it was full and we should “try again later.” It had been worth a shot.

  The knot that had been growing in my stomach for three days tightened just a little bit.

  What if I found Sharon with another guy? It had happened before, after all, so I had a set of behaviors I could kick back into gear. But this time, I would be the ex-husband, not the current husband, and that meant less righteous indignation, mostly because I had no right to any kind of indignation. Sharon was divorcing Gregory and, despite our plans to go to dinner on our wedding anniversary, was not planning on returning to me. She was a free agent—as was I, theoretically. What if I found out that she was off on a romantic weekend? That would make for a jolly two-hour-and-forty-three-minute drive back to Midland Heights, wouldn’t it?

  “Do you want to stop for breakfast?” my mother asked.

  I chose to ignore the question, and pondered—very briefly—how much the gas this thing was guzzling would cost to replace.

  “Breakfast?” Mom repeated.

  “Mom. We’re on a mission. We’re trying to find Sharon. This is not an afternoon visit with Aunt Selma, okay?” She was puncturing my sense of purpose, somehow.

  “Of course,” Mom answered. “I was just asking.”

  Stopping for breakfast only added an hour to the trip. I didn’t eat anything, partly because my stomach was still in motion and partly because I could give the ol’ passive-aggression myself when pushed, and I wanted Mom to know I wasn’t happy about the pit stop. I called Meg from the diner to let her know the clock was on pause while we were off the road, and she didn’t have to call the Lake Carey police just yet.

  Mom ate, I had a soda, and when the bill came, I snatched it from the table faster than Mom could reach. She protested, but possession of the check is better than nine-tenths of the law, and besides, her arms were too short to grab it out of my hand. Score one round for me.

  Then I realized I had virtually no cash on me. I couldn’t concede the victory to my mother (this passive-aggressive thing is really inconvenient at both ends), so I took out my “last resort” credit card and handed it to the waitress. Score round two for me.

  Moments later, the waitress returned, saying my credit card had been declined, and she was required to destroy it rather than return it to me. Idiot that I am, I’d forgotten the credit card company had cancelled the card when Dutton and I called about the charges in New York. They were mailing me a new one, which I was sure would be a comfort to me in five years, when I’d want to use a credit card again.

  Game, set, and match to Mom, who grinned broadly while paying, and then got in a good couple of lecture points on maintaining a healthy credit score. And I’d thought this was going to be a difficult trip.

  Back in the car, Mom read from the MapQuest directions, and after a few eternities, we finally reached Tunkhannock.

  I knew my way around from years before. Sharon had taken me up to this spot a number of times early on in our marriage, even when she didn’t need to get over a bad day or an especially difficult diagnosis.

  Lake Carey is just that: a lake, with houses ringing it. Most of them are strictly for summer vacations, but some, like the one belonging to Sharon’s mother’s family, were winterized and usable year-round. I approached the house slowly, and not just because I suddenly wasn’t in a hurry to see what I had driven all this way to see.

  There is no garage behind the house, but there is a driveway, and sort of a carport area that opens to the kitchen door in the back. I parked Mom’s car in front of the house next door, so that I wouldn’t be detected if someone were watching from inside the house.

  “This is it?” my mother asked, ever the arbiter of what is and is not acceptable. She seemed to think that a hundred-year-old lake house should look like I. M. Pei had just gotten finished with it.

  “Yeah. This is it. Now, let’s not talk for a while. You stay here, and . . .”

  She was already opening the car door. “I didn’t ride all the way up here to sit in the car,” my mother said.

  I love my mother I love my mother I love my mother . . .

  No vehicles were in the driveway, but the frozen ground showed tire tracks. I’m no expert, but they weren’t especially large, and didn’t have a very wide tread. I was guessing they weren’t from an SUV, at least not one of your more absurdly macho ones. They could have been from Sharon’s Volvo.

  I felt foolish keeping my head down as I walked toward the rear of the house. It was so Man from U.N.C.L.E., but it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t want to be seen through the windows before I was ready.

  Luckily, Mom is small enough that she wouldn’t be seen from the windows if she were walking on stilts.

  “Why aren’t you going to the front door?” she asked, much more loudly than I would have liked (in fact, having asked her not to talk, any volume was much more loudly than I would have liked).

  “Mom!” I hi
ssed. “Keep your voice down! I’m not ringing the doorbell because if Sharon’s being held here, I don’t want to alert anyone that we’re here!”

  “Oh, that’s just silly,” my mother said. But she followed me up the driveway.

  The ground floor of the cottage is essentially two rooms: a front room with a fireplace and some old, beat-up furniture (no television, and therefore no movies: I always felt that spending time here was a way of showing Sharon how much I loved her); and the kitchen, with its picnic-style table and benches, a stove that Julia Child had probably watched her grandmother cook on, a refrigerator that could keep things slightly cool, and about one-tenth the necessary amount of countertop and cabinet space. Anorexics couldn’t get by on the amount of food you could store here.

  We crept (only one of us intentionally) up onto the carport to look through the kitchen window, which was closed (of course) and locked. There wasn’t anyone in the room, and no food or cleaning products out on the counters. From this viewpoint, there was no sign anyone was here now, or had been for some time.

  “Isn’t spying on people illegal?” Mom asked, once again in a voice that could be heard in the third balcony. Ethel Merman herself would have been envious.

  I ignored her.

  I walked around to the far side of the house (thinking as I did of the Monty Python bit where an older woman shows a younger woman photos and narrates “this is your uncle behind the house; this is your uncle on the side of the house,” only to have her younger relative tear up each snapshot as it is handed to her) and found two tires in the driveway next door.

  Mom was content to wait on the back porch, as she said it was “ridiculous” to do anything but go through the front door. It took five minutes of tense whispering (on my part) and passive-aggressive braying (need I say?) to convince her not to go back around and knock. I told her I’d be right back.