“By the way, Nick,” Boney said. “Remember when I asked if Amy had friends in town—what about Noelle Hawthorne? You didn’t mention her. She left us two messages.”
I gave her a blank stare.
“Noelle in your complex? Mother of triplets?”
“No, they aren’t friends.”
“Oh, funny. She definitely seems to think they are.”
“That happens to Amy a lot,” I said. “She talks to people once, and they latch on. It’s creepy.”
“That’s what her parents said.”
I debated asking Boney directly about Hilary Handy and Desi Collings. Then I decided not to; I’d look better if I were the one leading the charge. I wanted Rand and Marybeth to see me in action-hero mode. I couldn’t shake the look Marybeth had given me: The police definitely seem to think it’s … close to home.
“People think they know her because they read the books growing up,” I said.
“I can see that,” Boney said, nodding. “People want to believe they know other people. Parents want to believe they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their husbands.”
Another hour and the volunteer center began feeling like a family picnic. A few of my old girlfriends dropped by to say hello, introduce their kids. One of my mom’s best friends, Vicky, came by with three of her granddaughters, bashful tweens all in pink.
Grandkids. My mom had talked about grandkids a lot, as if it were doubtlessly going to happen—whenever she bought a new piece of furniture, she’d explain she favored that particular style because “it’ll work for when there’s grandkids.” She wanted to live to see some grandkids. All her friends had some to spare. Amy and I once had my mom and Go over for dinner to mark The Bar’s biggest week ever. I’d announced that we had reason to celebrate, and Mom had leaped from her seat, burst into tears, and hugged Amy, who also began weeping, murmuring from beneath my mom’s smothering nuzzle, “He’s talking about The Bar, he’s just talking about The Bar.” And then my mom tried hard to pretend she was just as excited about that. “Plenty of time for babies,” she’d said in her most consoling voice, a voice that just made Amy start to cry again. Which was strange, since Amy had decided she didn’t want kids, and she’d reiterated this fact several times, but the tears gave me a perverse wedge of hope that maybe she was changing her mind. Because there wasn’t really plenty of time. Amy was thirty-seven when we moved to Carthage. She’d be thirty-nine in October.
And then I thought: We’ll have to throw some fake birthday party or something if this is still going on. We’ll have to mark it somehow, some ceremony, for the volunteers, the media—something to revive attention. I’ll have to pretend to be hopeful.
“The prodijal son returns,” said a nasally voice, and I turned to see a skinny man in a stretched-out T-shirt next to me, scratching a handlebar mustache. My old friend Stucks Buckley, who had taken to calling me a prodigal son despite not knowing how to pronounce the word, or what its meaning was. I assume he meant it as a fancy synonym for jackass. Stucks Buckley, it sounded like a baseball player’s name, and that was what Stucks was supposed to be, except he never had the talent, just the hard wish. He was the best in town, growing up, but that wasn’t good enough. He got the shock of his life in college when he was cut from the team, and it all went to shit after. Now he was an odd-job stoner with twitchy moods. He had dropped by The Bar a few times to try to pick up work, but he shook his head at every crappy day-job chore I offered, chewing on the inside of his cheek, annoyed: Come on, man, what else you got, you got to have something else.
“Stucks,” I said by way of greeting, waiting to see if he was in a friendly mood.
“Hear the police are botching this royally,” he said, tucking his hands into his armpits.
“It’s a little early to say that.”
“Come on, man, these little pansy-ass searches? I seen more effort put into finding the mayor’s dog.” Stucks’s face was sunburned; I could feel the heat coming off him as he leaned in closer, giving me a blast of Listerine and chaw. “Why ain’t they rounded up some people? Plenty of people in town to choose from, they ain’t brought a single one in? Not a single one? What about the Blue Book Boys? That’s what I asked the lady detective: What about the Blue Book Boys? She wouldn’t even answer me.”
“What are the Blue Book Boys? A gang?”
“All those guys got laid off from the Blue Book plant last winter. No severance, nothing. You see some of the homeless guys wandering around town in packs, looking real, real pissed? Probably Blue Book Boys.”
“I’m still not following you: Blue Book plant?”
“You know: River Valley Printworks. On the edge of town? They made those blue books you used for essays and shit in college.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“Now colleges use computers, whatnot, so—phwet!—bye-bye, Blue Book Boys.”
“God, this whole town is shutting down,” I muttered.
“The Blue Book Boys, they drink, drug, harass people. I mean, they did that before, but they always had to stop, go back to work on Monday. Now they just run wild.”
Stucks grinned his row of chipped teeth at me. He had paint flecks in his hair; his summer job since high school, housepainting. I specialize in trim work, he’d say, and wait for you to get the joke. If you didn’t laugh, he’d explain it.
“So, the cops been out to the mall?” Stucks asked. I started a confused shrug.
“Shit, man, didn’t you used to be a reporter?” Stucks always seemed angry at my former occupation, like it was a lie that had stood too long. “The Blue Book Boys, they all made themselves a nice little town over in the mall. Squatting. Drug deals. The police run them out every once in a while, but they’re always back next day. Anyway, that’s what I told the lady detective: Search the fucking mall. Because some of them, they gang-raped a girl there a month ago. I mean, you get a bunch of angry men together, and things aren’t too good for a woman that comes across them.”
On my drive to the afternoon search area, I phoned Boney, started in as soon as she said hello.
“Why isn’t the mall being searched?”
“The mall will be searched, Nick. We have cops heading over there right now.”
“Oh. Okay. Because a buddy of mine—”
“Stucks, I know, I know him.”
“He was talking about all the—”
“The Blue Book Boys, I know. Trust us, Nick, we got this. We want to find Amy as much as you do.”
“Okay, uh, thanks.”
My righteousness deflated, I gulped down my giant Styrofoam cup of coffee and drove to my assigned area. Three spots were being searched this afternoon: the Gully boat launch (now known as The Place Nick Spent the Morning Of, Unseen by Anyone); the Miller Creek woods (which hardly deserved the name; you could see fast-food restaurants through the treeline); and Wolky Park, a nature spot with hiking and horse trails. I was assigned to Wolky Park.
When I arrived, a local officer was addressing a crowd of about twelve people, all thick legs in tight shorts, sunglasses, and hats, zinc oxide on noses. It looked like opening day of camp.
Two different TV crews were out to capture images for local stations. It was the July Fourth weekend; Amy would be squeezed in between state fair stories and barbecue cookoffs. One cub reporter kept mosquitoing around me, peppering me with pointless questions, my body going immediately stiff, inhuman, with the attention, my “concerned” face looking fake. A waft of horse manure hung in the air.
The reporters soon left to follow the volunteers into the trails. (What kind of journalist finds a suspicious husband ripe for the picking and leaves? A bad low-pay journalist left behind after all the decent ones have been laid off.) A young uniform cop told me to stand—right here—at the entry to the various trails, near a bulletin board that held a mess of ancient flyers, as well as a missing person notice for Amy, my wife staring out of that photo. She’d been everywhere today, following me.
; “What should I be doing?” I asked the officer. “I feel like a jackass here. I need to do something.” Somewhere in the woods, a horse whinnied mournfully.
“We really need you right here, Nick. Just be friendly, be encouraging,” he said, and pointed to the bright orange thermos next to me. “Offer water. Just point anyone who comes in my way.” He turned and walked toward the stables. It occurred to me that they were intentionally barring me from any possible crime scene. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
As I stood aimlessly, pretending to busy myself with the cooler, a latecomer SUV rolled in, shiny red as nail polish. Out poured the fortysomethings from headquarters. The prettiest woman, the one Boney picked as a groupie, was holding her hair up in a ponytail so one of her friends could bug-spray the back of her neck. The woman waved at the fumes elaborately. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. Then she stepped away from her friends, let her hair fall down around her shoulders, and began picking her way over to me, that stricken, sympathetic smile on her face, the I’m so sorry smile. Giant brown pony eyes, her pink shirt ending just above crisp white shorts. High-heeled sandals, curled hair, gold hoops. This, I thought, is how you not dress for a search.
Please don’t talk to me, lady.
“Hi, Nick, I’m Shawna Kelly. I’m so sorry.” She had an unnecessarily loud voice, a bit of a bray, like some enchanted, hot donkey. She held out her hand, and I felt a flick of alarm as Shawna’s friends started ambling down the trail, casting girl-clique glances back toward us, the couple.
I offered what I had: my thanks, my water, my lip-swallowing awkwardness. Shawna didn’t make any move to leave, even though I was staring ahead, toward the trail where her friends had disappeared.
“I hope you have friends, relatives, who are looking out for you during this, Nick,” she said, swatting a horsefly. “Men forget to take care of themselves. Comfort food is what you need.”
“We’ve been eating mostly cold cuts—you know, fast, easy.” I could still taste the salami in the back of my throat, the fumes floating up from my belly. I became aware that I hadn’t brushed my teeth since the morning.
“Oh, you poor man. Well, cold cuts, that won’t do it.” She shook her head, the gold hoops flickering sunlight. “You need to keep up your strength. Now, you are lucky, because I make a mean chicken Frito pie. You know what? I am going to put that together and drop it by the volunteer center tomorrow. You can just microwave it whenever you want a nice warm dinner.”
“Oh, that sounds like too much trouble, really. We’re fine. We really are.”
“You’ll be more fine after you eat a good meal,” she said, patting my arm.
Silence. She tried another angle.
“I really hope it doesn’t end up having anything to do … with our homeless problem,” she said. “I swear, I have filed complaint after complaint. One broke into my garden last month. My motion sensor went off, so I peeked outside and there he was, kneeling in the dirt, just guzzling tomatoes. Gnawing at them like apples, his face and shirt were covered in juice and seeds. I tried to scare him off, but he loaded up at least twenty before he ran off. They were on the edge anyway, those Blue Book guys. No other skills.”
I felt a sudden affinity for the troop of Blue Book men, pictured myself walking into their bitter encampment, waving a white flag: I am your brother, I used to work in print too. The computers stole my job too.
“Don’t tell me you’re too young to remember Blue Books, Nick,” Shawna was saying. She poked me in the ribs, making me jump more than I should have.
“I’m so old, I’d forgotten about Blue Books until you reminded me.”
She laughed: “What are you, thirty-one, thirty-two?”
“Try thirty-four.”
“A baby.”
The trio of energetic elderly ladies arrived just then, tromping toward us, one working her cell phone, all wearing sturdy canvas garden skirts, Keds, and sleeveless golf tops revealing wobbly arms. They nodded at me respectfully, then flicked a glance of disapproval when they saw Shawna. We looked like a couple hosting a backyard barbecue. We looked inappropriate.
Please go away, Shawna, I thought.
“So anyway, the homeless guys, they can be really aggressive, like, threatening, toward women,” Shawna said. “I mentioned it to Detective Boney, but I get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much.”
“Why do you say that?” I already knew what she was going to say, the mantra of all attractive women.
“Women don’t like me all that much.” She shrugged. “Just one of those things. Did—does Amy have a lot of friends in town?”
A number of women—friends of my mom’s, friends of Go’s—had invited Amy to book clubs and Amway parties and girls’ nights at Chili’s. Amy had predictably declined all but a few, which she attended and hated: “We ordered a million little fried things and drank cocktails made from ice cream.”
Shawna was watching me, wanting to know about Amy, wanting to be grouped together with my wife, who would hate her.
“I think she may have the same problem you do,” I said in a clipped voice.
She smiled.
Leave, Shawna.
“It’s hard to come to a new town,” she said. “Hard to make friends, the older you get. Is she your age?”
“Thirty-eight.”
That seemed to please her too.
Go the fuck away.
“Smart man, likes them older women.”
She pulled a cell phone out of her giant chartreuse handbag, laughing. “Come here,” she said, and pulled an arm around me. “Give me a big chicken-Frito casserole smile.”
I wanted to smack her, right then, the obliviousness, the girliness, of her: trying to get an ego stroke from the husband of a missing woman. I swallowed my rage, tried to hit reverse, tried to overcompensate and be nice, so I smiled robotically as she pressed her face against my cheek and took a photo with her phone, the fake camera-click sound waking me.
She turned the phone around, and I saw our two sunburned faces pressed together, smiling as if we were on a date at the baseball game. Looking at my smarmy grin, my hooded eyes, I thought, I would hate this guy.
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
DIARY ENTRY
I am writing from somewhere in Pennsylvania. Southwest corner. A motel off the highway. Our room overlooks the parking lot, and if I peek out from behind the stiff beige curtains, I can see people milling about under the fluorescent lights. It’s the kind of place where people mill about. I have the emotional bends again. Too much has happened, and so fast, and now I am in southwest Pennsylvania, and my husband is enjoying a defiant sleep amid the little packets of chips and candies he bought from the vending machine down the hall. Dinner. He is angry at me for not being a good sport. I thought I was putting up a convincing front—hurray, a new adventure!—but I guess not.
Now that I look back, it was like we were waiting for something to happen. Like Nick and I were sitting under a giant soundproof, windproof jar, and then the jar fell over and—there was something to do.
Two weeks ago, we are in our usual unemployed state: partly dressed, thick with boredom, getting ready to eat a silent breakfast that we’ll stretch over the reading of the newspaper in its entirety. We even read the auto supplement now.
Nick’s cell phone rings at ten A.M., and I can tell by his voice that it is Go. He sounds springy, boyish, the way he always does when he talks to her. The way he used to sound with me.
He heads into the bedroom and shuts the door, leaving me holding two freshly made eggs Benedicts quivering on the plates. I place his on the table and sit opposite, wondering if I should wait to eat. If it were me, I think, I would come back out and tell him to eat, or else I’d raise a finger: Just one minute. I’d be aware of the other person, my spouse, left in the kitchen with plates of eggs. I feel bad that I was thinking that. Because soon I can hear worried murmurs and upset exclamations and gentle reassurances from behind
the door, and I begin wondering if Go is having some back-home boy troubles. Go has a lot of breakups. Even the ones that she instigates require much handholding and goo-gawing from Nick.
So I have my usual Poor Go face on when Nick emerges, the eggs hardened on the plate. I see him and know this isn’t just a Go problem.
“My mom,” he starts, and sits down. “Shit. My mom has cancer. Stage four, and it’s spread to the liver and bones. Which is bad, which is …”
He puts his face in his hands, and I go over and put my arms around him. When he looks up, he is dry-eyed. Calm. I’ve never seen my husband cry.
“It’s too much for Go, on top of my dad’s Alzheimer’s.”
“Alzheimer’s? Alzheimer’s? Since when?”
“Well, a while. At first they thought it was some sort of early dementia. But it’s more, it’s worse.”
I think, immediately, that there is something wrong with us, perhaps unfixable, if my husband wouldn’t think to tell me this. Sometimes I feel it’s his personal game, that he’s in some sort of undeclared contest for impenetrability. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“My dad isn’t someone I like to talk about that much.”
“But still—”
“Amy. Please.” He has that look, like I am being unreasonable, like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.
“But now. Go says with my mom, she’ll need chemo but … she’ll be really, really sick. She’ll need help.”
“Should we start looking for in-home care for her? A nurse?”
“She doesn’t have that kind of insurance.”
He stares at me, arms crossed, and I know what he is daring: daring me to offer to pay, and we can’t pay, because I’ve given my money to my parents.
“Okay, then, babe,” I say. “What do you want to do?”
We stand across from each other, a showdown, as if we are in a fight and I haven’t been informed. I reach out to touch him, and he just looks at my hand.
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