Behind them a roar went up, long and drawn out, then dying mildly, probably the kickoff. None of them looked back. They walked down the middle of the road, silent and purposeful, like the last three people on Earth.
The next day she went to the river.
Wish List
The holidays settled on them like a spell, like the frigid weather forcing them indoors. The days were too short. At work Fran was part of the crew that hung the decorations, festooning the waiting room and the ER with green and gold tinsel, refilling the dish of miniature candy canes outside of their sliding window. Her doctor had taken her off Ambien after she woke up in the kitchen at three a.m., eating leftover macaroni and cheese with her fingers. The new prescription left her tired all the time, and she couldn’t drink. Cheerless herself, spreading the spirit of the season seemed even more important.
The songs bombarded her—at the office and in the car going home, in the grocery store and on TV—corny and reassuring, a link to her childhood. They nested in her head until she whistled despite herself. What a bright time, it’s the right time, to rock the night away. One seems to hear, words of good cheer, from everywhere, filling the air. In her distraction she sifted the lyrics for solace or inspiration and discovered they were hearty nonsense. You had to be happy to agree with them.
Around Halloween she’d foreseen the possibility of Christmas without Kim, and decided, with no hesitation whatsoever, that they needed to include her. Now when she told Ed they should go ahead and buy her presents, he paused as if giving her time to rethink the idea.
“Would you rather just not get her anything?” she asked.
“No.”
Then why did he act like it was bizarre, and wrong? She bought all of their gifts anyway. He didn’t have to lift a finger.
“What about stockings?” he asked.
That night she ventured into Lindsay’s room to deliver the news. She sat on the edge of her bed as Lindsay turned from her draft on the causes of World War I, tolerating this latest interruption as if she couldn’t spare a second. Like her father, she greeted the idea with silence, making Fran explain that Kim was still a part of the family. Now more than ever they needed to keep her in their thoughts.
“I do,” Lindsay said, flaring, and though she finally agreed, Fran knew she was alone in this hope.
It wasn’t the first time. She’d always been the one in the family who loved Christmas the most, or any occasion. She was the planner of parties, the arranger of vacations. Ed would have been satisfied staying home all summer, coaching the team and going out on his boat. She was the one who unfurled the map of the West on the dining room table and measured out the legs of the trip—not because she had some extravagant urge but because that was what families did. She’d grown accustomed to the role of motivator and organizer, as they had, surrendering to her, sometimes, as in this case, grudgingly. Afterward they might thank her (“That was fun,” Ed would admit, giving her a kiss), but now, at the beginning, they withheld themselves as if she was misguided and demanding.
Normally she just absorbed the slight and led them by exaggerated example, but between work and home and Kim, she hardly had time to shop. Saturday was dedicated to cutting and decorating a tree, a task that, at their best, tested their patience. Sunday they didn’t get back from coffee hour until one, and then she had to address all of their Christmas cards (they were using a picture from graduation, the four of them tall and smiling on the worn grass of the baseball field, meaning for the first time in a decade Cooper wouldn’t be in it). While she went through the stack from last year, Ed lay on the couch, watching the Browns. Lindsay, as always, was hibernating upstairs.
She promised herself she wouldn’t bug them too much, since they’d made it her personal crusade, but things slipped out. At dinner or before bed, over breakfast. “I still don’t have a clue about your mother,” she fretted, because Grace was impossible to buy for. “I’ll ask her,” he said. Twice, three times. It wasn’t conscious. She was prodding herself more than anyone else.
She didn’t know what she’d get for Kim. It wouldn’t be hard, once she started. When Kim had just discovered clothes, they’d go to the mall together, eating lunch at the food court, spending whole afternoons comparing their tastes. It gave Fran an opportunity to buy the nice younger stuff she couldn’t wear. It was almost like shopping for herself, a perfectly vicarious thrill. She took a mother’s pride in how good Kim looked, tall as a model at thirteen, with her own mother’s cheekbones. That was sheer happiness, finding something they both liked, but there was the fear too, watching the older girls cruising in catty packs, that these easy moments of closeness wouldn’t last.
Looking back, Fran was sure she’d spoiled her, as sure as she’d short-changed her later, her disappointment turning them into unflinching enemies. It was just a phase—she’d outgrown her own teenaged disdain and found her mother was a smart, competent woman people relied on. And yet it saddened her. She could see the same change happening in Lindsay, and felt helpless and overwhelmed, already stretched too thin. When Fran invited her to the mall, Lindsay turned her down, using her own all-purpose excuse: She didn’t have time right now.
No one did. On the radio they were counting down the days, and Fran still had gaps in her lists. Connie and Jocelyn were easy enough, but she had no clue about Rich or Carrie or any of the cousins. She was done badgering Ed for suggestions and went online to order a replacement for Grace’s L.L. Bean robe, paying an extra twenty dollars for guaranteed delivery, and though she could cross off another name, the whole process was unsatisfying. A gift was supposed to be surprising yet perfect, an indication of how well you knew the other person, and though Grace would never complain, Fran was ashamed when she recalled all the thoughtful gifts Grace had come up with over the years, especially for the girls, who grew harder and harder to please. A robe was the adult equivalent of underwear, utterly generic. Fran wanted to blame the situation but couldn’t entirely. In the past she’d always found a way to make Christmas nice for them.
Ultimately she had no choice. She was too busy during the week, and so many of her coworkers had donated their sick days to keep her on the payroll when she was out that she didn’t feel right taking one now. When she told Ed she was going to the mall on Saturday, he froze, as if she expected him to come with her. He seemed relieved when she asked if he minded watching Lindsay. Though normally he argued the con side of that debate (she was sixteen, she didn’t need a babysitter), he snatched at the chance.
“It’s going to be a nightmare out there.”
“You forget,” she said, “I do this every year.”
The night before, she set the alarm for six. In the morning she dried her hair downstairs so she wouldn’t wake them. She gathered her lists and left the house while it was still dark, her breath like fog in the car, reminding her of when she used to smoke. Both of them did, two packs of Marlboros a day, lighting the first one with their coffees and stubbing the last out in the ashtray on their nightstand. She quit when she was pregnant, and while it had been twenty years, now, driving west out of town ahead of the dawn, it seemed another unexpected way Kim had changed their lives.
The four lanes of 20 were empty. The Premix plant was running third shift, lit like a prison, its loading dock lined with trucks. The streetlights showed her the gates of Greenlawn Cemetery, but the graves and the garish aluminum-siding cross were mercifully lost in the dark. Against her will, the blank face of North Kingsville Elementary stirred her memory. She fought it off, focusing on the road. Across a field, a giant star made of colored lights shone beneath the prefab steeple of the Living Water Baptist Church, the crusted snow holding smears of red and yellow and green. It must have been on all night, a shepherd standing watch over its flock. The idea pleased her. Wasn’t that what the season was about—heavenly signs and news of miracles?
Over the Ashtabula line, one by one, other cars joined her, all of them headed in the same direction, some passing her a
nd pulling away as if it were a race. She’d thought of stopping at Happy’s Donuts for a large coffee to get her going, but scrapped that plan, needing to keep up. As she turned into the mall the lot was already filling, early birds taking the spaces by the main entrance. The car in front of her split off, and she followed it around the side, counting it as an advantage.
The doors wouldn’t open for another fifteen minutes and it was too cold to stand outside, so they sat in their cars with their lights off and their heaters running while the sky lightened, the day breaking gray and drab. She went over her lists, envisioning her route and the major stops she’d make. As eight o’clock neared, the first few shoppers crossed the plaza. They were all women, alone or in pairs, none of them young. Rather than viewing them as her competition, Fran saw a sisterhood, wives and mothers, aunts and grandmas, providing for their families. She turned her car off, got out and walked over to wait with them.
She wasn’t dismayed that a few of them knew her from TV. As she told the small audience, it was heartening to know someone out there was listening. From habit she was wearing her pin and had a few extras in her bag that she passed around.
“I’d wish you a Merry Christmas,” one woman said, “but ...”
“Please,” Fran said, “we need all the good wishes we can get.”
“God bless you,” a bundled, cronelike older woman said, clutching her hand, and Fran thanked her. This was the elusive community the news always talked about—people she would have never met except for Kim.
Once the doors opened she saw them only in passing, all of them off on their separate quests, but throughout the day, no matter where she went, her reception was the same. At any second, waiting to pay or navigating the chaotic halls with her bags, she could become the center of attention. Cashiers and shoppers alike waylaid her to convey their sympathy and share their own stories of loss as if she would naturally understand. She found herself nodding, offering her condolences, and would have had no problem with it except that they took so much time. She was already behind.
She was okay when she focused on shopping, but just walking along she was hostage to every teenager, every girl, every mother and daughter. The main atrium was done up in cotton batting like the North Pole, complete with a waving elf driving a scale-model train. She’d stood with Kim in this same line of toddlers waiting to see Santa. They came every year. Lindsay had cried her first time, wary of the stranger behind the beard, where Kim never hesitated, taking Lindsay’s hand and leading her like a guide. In family lore the story served as proof of their contrary natures, but now, out of fairness, Fran resisted reading too much into it.
She couldn’t stop for lunch—the food court was a zoo anyway. She dropped her first set of bags at the car and grabbed a coffee at the Star-bucks (served by a girl Kim’s age who looked familiar) and started improvising on top of the list. She found a cute shrug for Lindsay at Fashion Bug, and some fun earrings at Claire’s, and at Radio Shack a speaker station for her iPod and a keychain with a digital picture frame she could fill with her favorite shots (she almost bought three of these, but held off). The back of Sears was quiet and had golfballs for Rich, and, in their auto center, for the family, emergency kits for both cars. The Discovery Store took care of the cousins, though the line for the checkout stretched into the shelves. Carrie she drew a blank on, but if she came up empty she could always do a gift certificate to J. Jill—and then she saw the Fiestaware pitcher at Pottery Barn. Her arms were full again, and so far she’d gotten nothing for Kim.
The danger with going out to the car was that she knew she couldn’t leave. It was past three and the light was fading, making her think of dinner.
Inside, the carols pursued her from store to store. She should have eaten lunch; she was dragging and had a headache, her attention scattered. At Old Navy she saw an embroidered skirt that was a possibility but finally not right for Kim. She stalked the housewares aisles at Kmart, hoping to find something for her dorm room, and realized she had no clue what Kim might need, though she did pick up a new laundry basket for Lindsay, which she then had to lug around.
By then she’d almost completed her circuit of the mall. She’d put a serious dent in her list, though there were still things she’d have to make special trips for, like Ed’s fish finder, which only Dick’s sold, or a new googly-eyed steak for Cooper at Petco. The stocking stuffers she could grab at the CVS after work; that was easy. She had tons of stuff for Lindsay but not a big gift, and as every year when she needed something special, she naturally gravitated to the jewelry counter at Penney’s.
They were reliable, and cheaper than Kay’s or Zales. She could always find something for the girls. She’d bought their first pearls here, and Kim’s good watch, and her butterfly, which she never took off, not even to shower.
The pendant was one of a dozen charms in a designer line. Fran had chosen it over the others with hardly a thought. It just fit Kim at sixteen. Now, leaning over the display case, she tried to pick one for Lindsay but nothing jumped out. The ladybug was too childish, the angel too pious. Gull, seahorse, shell, sand dollar—all wrong. It had to be something simple. Not the clover or the rose. In the end she was left with the moon, the star and the heart.
The heart was the one she would have liked to give her. The star actually fit Kim better, her bright, fiery personality. To be true to Lindsay—the distant, changeable night owl—she had to go with the moon.
Her mind was made up, yet she lingered over the butterfly, desirous, as if she could replace the original. She’d never burden Lindsay with it, and to buy it for Kim again made no sense. She herself wouldn’t wear it, since it wasn’t hers, and yet she wanted it.
How could she explain it to Ed? She’d have to hide it, sneaking the velvet box out of her dresser in solitary moments, opening the lid to admire it like a talisman, as if it had the power to recover its wearer.
“Can I help you with something?” the salesgirl asked—in her twenties, plain but well-dressed, with the unfortunate name of Crystal. Fran was grateful she didn’t recognize her.
“I was looking at the moon.” She pointed through the glass.
“I like that one too. That’s solid twenty-four karat, not gold plate.” She reached in and pinched the crescent out, holding it on her flattened palm.
Fran turned it as if inspecting the workmanship and read the price off the tiny tag. She didn’t remember Kim’s being so expensive.
“We have some nice chains for it over here.”
Fran had already noted that they had the right one, a box weave, but made a show of looking through them, ignoring the girl’s pitch. The chain itself cost fifty dollars. When she doubled the price, she couldn’t justify it.
“Do you need some time to think it over?” the girl asked, because she had customers on the other side and couldn’t let her keep the moon.
“Thanks,” Fran said, and then stood there empty-handed, staring at the display, cross with herself. It was late and her feet hurt and she was far from done. She had nothing for dinner, and Ed wouldn’t take it upon himself to order out. They’d be waiting for her, housebound and helpless as shut-ins after she’d battled the crowds all day.
All she wanted was this one thing. Like a child denied, she argued with the universe. It wasn’t fair. She’d been so good. She wasn’t asking for that much.
When the girl came over to check on her she asked to see the butterfly, as if holding it in her hands might be enough. It was thin as a razor blade, and she thought of the gold against Kim’s skin.
“I’ll take both of them,” she said.
She put them on her Penney’s card so Ed wouldn’t see the bill, and was glad she did, because at Williams-Sonoma, as she was paying for Connie’s and Jocelyn’s hand-painted dessert plates, her MasterCard bounced. She covered it with her Visa, but didn’t dare risk anything else.
On the way home, passing the star and the school and the cemetery gates in the dark, she puzzled over how she could buy hers
elf something so expensive when she didn’t get anything for Kim. Finally, maybe, it came down to the fact that she was here and Kim wasn’t. All along, she thought, the gifts she’d wanted to give Kim were never for her, but, like the butterfly, for herself.
Later, when she told Ed she’d changed her mind, he paused as if waiting for an explanation.
“Don’t get me anything either,” she said. “I already have everything I need.”
But of course, being a good husband, he didn’t listen to her.
America’s Most Wanted
He hated the phone, the ring waking him from his thoughts like an alarm. He didn’t want to talk to anyone; it could only be bad news. He kept the machine on, letting the message kick in, straining despite himself to hear the foreign voice emitting from the kitchen.
In the living room, Fran picked up—a mistake. He cocked his head, trying to gauge her tone, bright but measured, endlessly reasonable. “Yes,” she said, pacing by the doorway, “that would be fine.”
He turned back to the game. A minute later she was standing behind him with the calendar.
For their end-of-the-year recap, the Star-Beacon had picked Kim as their top story. She seemed pleased by this. Saturday they wanted to send a reporter out to interview them, and a photographer to take pictures.
Why did she have to ask when she’d already said yes?
Songs for the Missing Page 24