Love Among the Ruins

by Robert Clark

  Virginia laughs. Perhaps it is the first time she has laughed in the last three days. She says, “Well, I must go. Thank you.” She thinks of asking the nun for her blessing, but she cannot at that moment think whether it is appropriate to ask a nun for a blessing or whether she is entitled to it, despite having told the nun everything in her heart, the things she could not tell Edward and was sure he could not in any case hear.

  Through a kind of curious symmetry of gender, just as it had been up to Virginia to interview Monica Reardon and talk to the nun, so it had been Edward’s duty to deliver photos and visit the bus depot. Now it fell to him to question Jim Donnelly, Edward being not only the liaison to male persons, but Jane’s proxy in their investigation. Edward drove over to the Donnelly residence in the late afternoon, the hour for him already now redolent with quinine and lemon and gin. He walked past the infamous Pontiac (hunkered beneath a huge and diseased old elm from whose height various robins and starlings had applied a not inconsiderable impasto of guano to the vehicle’s roof), went to the door, and rang the bell. It was answered by the young man himself, and he agreed without any demurral to tell Edward whatever he wanted to know.

  Jim and Edward sat on the porch step together, and the boy was every bit as large as—perhaps even a little taller than—the man. Edward thought this was the damnedest thing, having no experience of sons or of young men since he himself had been one; and he could not say whether he was a little intimidated or perhaps simply nonplussed at that freak of nature which is the human male in its late adolescence. He explained who he was and his connection to William, and the boy seemed already to know all that. Then, without quite coming out and saying that the children had run away, he asked if William had ever said anything to Jim about the possibility of doing such a thing.

  “Well, no,” said the boy. “Not really.”

  “What do you mean, not really?”

  “Well, he might have talked about doing something like that, but it would have just been . . . talking.”

  “You mean just shooting the breeze, b.s.-ing.”

  “Yeah. I mean we talked about driving the Beast”—Jim indicated the car under the tree—“to California, but, I mean, come on . . .” He looked up and shook his head. “Or Bill was going to get a new GTO. Right. Sure.”

  “Was he kind of, well, obsessed with going to California?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, everyone talks about California.” The boy turned towards Edward and opened his hands as though to elucidate a particularly difficult concept. “But maybe not the real California. More in the way of California just being wherever isn’t here.”

  “So he wanted to get away from here?”

  “I suppose. But then, it’s like California. Everybody talks about getting away. About being free. It doesn’t mean they’re really going to. Or maybe even want to. You know?” Edward nodded. “Besides,” the boy continued, “I think he was more interested in the north woods.”

  “More interested in going there than going to California?”

  “Maybe not going. Just talking about them.”

  “But he’d never really gone?”

  “He went to camp. Two summers ago, I think.”

  “Yes,” said Edward. “I think that’s right. And he was interested in woodcraft.”

  “In what?”

  “Camping out. Living off the land.”

  “Oh. Yeah. He was.”

  “But he’d never really done that either.”

  “No. But he had all the gear.”

  Edward decided he ought to make his questions a little more pointed. The boy was willing, but willing in an insouciant manner that was a little hard to read. “So he never said anything like ‘I’m thinking of taking off’?”

  “No, not like ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ Not like that.” Now Jim was genuinely trying to explain something which he understood completely but could not precisely articulate: that he and William or any other young person in that time and place might talk about freedom as their fathers might talk about money. They might have endless discussions about how to acquire it and what they would do with it if they had it, but it did not follow from this that any particular plans were afoot or were even being considered. (Jim’s father talked about what he would do as the owner of a quartet of McDonald’s franchises, but went right on working as a sales manager for the Toro Lawn Mower Company until his retirement.) At the same time, these meditations were in no way mere pipe dreams: They were in deadly earnest.

  “So when was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Maybe three weeks ago. We weren’t really hanging out together so much.” The boy paused. “He was, you know, pretty much always with . . . Emily.”

  “And how was he then?”

  “Fine, I guess. He was mad about losing his job.”

  “So he was unhappy?”

  “I don’t know if he was . . . unhappy. I don’t know if that’s really it. He was just bummed out. About everything.”

  “About everything?”

  “Yeah. Like the whole society. The draft. The war. The cops.”

  “The cops? So he had run-ins with the police?”

  “Bill?” The boy laughed. “No way. I mean, just the cops hassling people. Or beating up protesters and students. Like in Chicago.”

  “That bothered him?”

  “Sure. The whole system bothered him. I mean, it bothers everybody. Not letting people be free. Not letting anybody change anything.”

  “I guess I didn’t think things were so . . . dire.” Edward shrugged. “Like the end of the world. So rotten.”

  “Maybe not so much rotten as not really . . . real,” the boy said. “Does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know. This . . . here isn’t real?”

  “No. Not the way you’d want it to be.”

  “I guess I’ll have to think about that.” Edward stopped and then he said, “Listen, Jim. Don’t take this the wrong way. But that really was the last time you saw him? Or Emily?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because you have a car, so maybe they would have asked you to take them somewhere. Maybe you just took them to the fair or something.”

  “I went to the fair. Four times. But never with them,” and the boy looked deeply at Edward as he said this. “Machinery Hill. It’s really cool.”

  “Tractors and combines? That interests you?”

  “Sure. They’re really cool.”

  Edward stood. “Well, it’s very good of you to talk to me.” He moved off the steps, and then he said, “Let me ask you one more thing. Where do you think they might have gone?”

  The boy put his fingers on his lips. “Well, they could have really gone to California. Or to the woods.”

  “Maybe the woods in California?”

  “I think those are more like mountains. And they have snakes. Bill doesn’t like snakes.”

  “But those are the likely places. California or maybe the north woods. Maybe up near where he went to camp.”

  “I don’t know about that. I mean, that was only up as far as Brainerd or something. I think he’d want to go further. Somewhere really up north.”

  “Like the Lake of the Woods?”

  “I don’t know. I mean really, Mr. Byrne, they could have gone anywhere. Or California.”

  “Same thing, right?”

  “I guess.”

  Edward shook the boy’s hand and went to his car, and the boy went back inside his house. His parents were not home, and he had wondered what he would have told them if they had been at home, or had come home while Emily’s father was there. He might have told them Mr. Byrne was Mr. Byrne, or that he was a private eye, looking for these kids who had run away, about whose flight everybody already knew; or at least Monica had known and she had told her brother Mike, who had told Jim, oh, maybe two or three days ago.

  It was on the third night, the Thursday after the children had gone to the fair, that Jane called the man that used to be her husband.
She was not much accustomed to making long-distance telephone calls, and when the phone was answered and the familiar voice answering sounded not much farther away than Minneapolis, she was caught a little off guard.

  “Frank?” she said. “Is that you? It’s Jane.”

  “Well. Well. Well,” the voice said, deep and round and insinuating (Jane had always felt her husband was insinuating something, but had never quite determined what it was). “Are you out here, or back there?”

  “Back here. But Billy’s—this is why I’m calling—not. He’s run away. We thought—I and the police and the parents of the girl he’s with—he might go out there. To you.”

  “Jesus Christ. He’s run away? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s something they all just do. That’s what the police told us.”

  “Well, Jane, they obviously all don’t just do it. That’s an exaggeration.”

  “The point is, he has, and he might come there. To you or somewhere out there. San Francisco or something.”

  “Jesus, Jane. I’m worried sick.” Jane did not believe he was worried sick. She did not believe anyone in California was capable of worrying overmuch about anything. She pictured his house, his yard. The steaks on the grill. The salad on the redwood table under the cabana. The palm leaves crisping in the sunset, in the smog. The water lapping in the pool. The woman, fifteen years younger than Jane, lying beside the pool.

  Frank’s voice shifted from concern to annoyance (not, however, because he did not, in fact, have a pool or, at present, a girlfriend). “How did this happen, Jane? I mean, where were you?”

  “I was in Chicago. No. I wasn’t in Chicago. I had been in Chicago, at the convention. I came back. Everything was fine. And then a week later, he and his girlfriend said they were going to the State Fair and they just disappeared. Two days ago.”

  “How, Jane, could everything have been fine? Obviously things weren’t fine, or they would not run away. It kind of defies logic, doesn’t it?”

  You, Jane thinks, defy my sanity.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Jane said. “The point is, they may come in that direction. They may even come to you. I want you to be aware of it. I would like you to be helpful.”

  “You are the custodial parent, Jane. I’m just trying to point that out. That as such, you have some responsibility. The responsibility.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me about responsibility.”

  The phone was silent. “Look. I’ll keep an eye out. Of course. Maybe I should go to the police here. Alert them.”

  “The police here are supposed to have sent them the missing-person report.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad somebody’s on top of this stuff. And I’ll do anything I can.” His voice became soft, urgent. “I mean, I would die for that kid.”

  Jane said nothing in response, nothing at all. The triumph, the irrefutable retort of her silence, came down the line and crushed him more or less flat. Or Jane surmised. “Look,” he said at last, “just keep me posted, okay? And vice versa.”

  “Sure,” said Jane.

  “And hey, Jane. I’m really sorry. Okay? You must be going nuts.”

  “Yes. I am. I mean, sure.”

  “Goodbye, Jane.”

  “Goodbye, Frank.” Go to hell, Frank.

  5

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, AS IS HER CUSTOM, VIRGINIA goes to visit Emily’s grandmother. She is Edward’s mother but she could easily be Virginia’s. Not when she was young, perhaps; certainly not when she was raising her children (which she did with a certain casualness Virginia’s own mother would have found rather lax); but now, in her capacity as the repository of the past, as the white- and frizzy-haired sun around whom her grandchildren revolve like merry planets, as the venerable saint whose daily attendance at mass (until last year, when her hip went) and ever-ready rosary are quietly saving the world. This is who Virginia is going to lie to.

  Virginia has not decided to lie when she enters her mother-in-law’s house, but it is, anyone would have to admit, a good bet that she will. For Granny Byrne, within a minute of hobbling back to what she calls the “parlor,” after settling herself in her chair and raising her feet onto the ottoman (which also serves as her desk and telephone table), will ask, “And how are the children?”

  That—quotidian as the cup of Sanka Virginia will volunteer to brew for Granny Byrne five minutes into her visit—is the occasion of sin. The rationale for it is twofold, one very good reason and one very bad reason, whose intentions can only nullify each other, leaving the sin—which is itself no more than a nullity in motion, numskull privation staggering about its business like the walking dead—still a sin.

  The good reason is that any other answer to her habitual query than “Fine—couldn’t be better” would worry her; and the actual truth would probably kill her, Emily being her “special pet,” her “Emmy-bug” and other such endearments which bespeak Emily’s role as the Biblical sister Mary who sits at Granny’s feet while Susan’s Martha polishes the silver and slides a baking sheet of meringues into the oven for what Granny is still pleased to call “tea.”

  The bad reason consists of Virginia’s conviction that she will be blamed: not simply for Emily’s disappearance, but for an entire chain of faults and defects leading up to and away from it, starting with the fact of her being Emily’s mother and ending with the fact of her not being Granny’s daughter; of on the one hand being what will in ten or so years be called Emily’s chief “role model,” and on the other being the alien element in Emily’s bloodline and thus the likely source of all things inexplicable or disagreeable in Emily’s demeanor and behavior.

  A decade later she may learn to believe that she finds herself in this position because she is a woman: mother, wife, and daughter-in-law. But it is too soon for that, at least for her. The closest she can come to it is the inkling that her position has something—perhaps everything—to do with her not being Edward, and of Edward’s position in the world of being, vis-à-vis his family, responsible but not accountable; of being charged with providing for and protecting them without being held much liable for the net results, for how the children “turn out,” for the burden of what will be their history.

  That, she senses, is deeply unfair. Then, after Granny does indeed ask the question and Virginia does indeed tell the lie, while she is in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil for the Sanka, she reflects that the lie might need to be confessed. She imagines herself saying, “Father, I confess that my daughter ran away from home,” and knows that the priest would offer her consolation for her predicament, not impose a penance. And it would go without saying that he would not ask her to avoid the occasion of sin. For the occasion of sin in this case is that of being Edward’s wife; of being Emily’s mother; of being, unlike Emily, the daughter who is Martha rather than Mary.

  She knows Edward has his burden, but it is a burden that entails doing rather than, in her case, merely being—merely standing by as the agony of the cross is imposed—and everyone at the moment agrees that there is nothing to be done. So Edward gets off scot-free, while she—and Virginia notes this with an emotion heretofore almost unknown to her, bitterness—is pierced through the heart by a sword.

  On Friday afternoon, at the end of the day, Edward found reason to drop by William’s mother’s apartment. For one thing, he had a little news—or rather a little more evidence for the conclusions they had already reached. For another, a woman who was facing such an ordeal alone, without (unlike him and Virginia) benefit of spouse, of family, of church, deserved a little support. For a third, he felt he could use a drink. On account of the heat, the length of the day and the toll of its labors, and the perpetual overcast of worry, fear, and longing; but also because of a novel sensation, a weight at the back of his throat, a shortness of breath, a hunger that was—what? He could not name it even as he felt it like a boulder in his gut—being able, really able, to use a drink.

  This was something that Jane understood
in a way that Virginia, he imagined, did not. It seemed to Edward that Jane’s house was more or less consecrated to being able to use a drink; that where St. Luke’s Church had a tabernacle for the Eucharist and 919 Furness had, say, a breadbox, 475 Laurel had an ice bucket. It was likewise furnished in the service of being able to use a drink, right down to the music Jane played, which evoked nothing so much as longing and need; right down to Jane herself, who in some way Edward could not yet put his finger on might very well cause one to be able to use a drink.

  Jane answered the door and greeted him without apparent surprise. “Ted,” she said. “Come in. Come into the kitchen. Let me fix you something.”

  “Gladly,” Edward said. “With pleasure.”

  After they had gone down the hall and Edward had sat down and watched Jane busy herself with the lemon and the paring knife, with the ice and the gin, they began to talk. “I don’t really have any news,” Edward said. “I talked to Billy’s friend, the Donnelly boy. Nice enough kid—a little vague, I suppose, but who isn’t?”

  Jane made no response, and Edward continued, “He just kind of confirmed what we’d been thinking: that nobody said anything about going off, that there was no particular reason they might have gone off, but that that was no reason for them not to. So they probably did.” Edward sighed. “All very helpful.”

  Jane sat down opposite him and put his drink down in front of him. He took it, drank, and said, “Virginia talked to Emily’s best friend. She didn’t know anything either. But then they hadn’t been talking much lately. Apparently she felt she had been thrown over when Emily got involved with Billy.”

  “Girls feel that way,” Jane said. “With reason. A girl meets a boy and forgets all about her friends. Then, afterward, you realize one decent girlfriend is worth any six men you could find.”

  “That’s rather sad.”

  “Well, I suppose it doesn’t work out that way for everyone. But for me it did. Speaking of which, I spoke to Billy’s father. No sign of them. But he said he’d keep an eye out, that he’d alert the police there.”

  “How did he react?”