“So have you and Gerald chosen a name?”
“If it’s a girl, I like Simone, and if it’s a boy, I want Daniel. Gerald says he’s fine with that.”
“Daniel, that’s Gregory’s middle name.”
“That’s why I chose it.”
“I’m proud of you, Lauren.”
“Mom, you know this wasn’t the plan.”
“You could have made a different choice.”
“Not now. I couldn’t imagine a different choice.”
“And Gerald, he’ll be a good father. That’s all that matters now. You two aren’t broken, you didn’t fail at anything. You’re just making a family. The way families, quiet as it’s kept, have always been made.”
“I still love him a little.”
“Good, then you’ll be able to one day forgive him for not being ready to be everything you felt you had to have. Do you want to go to the Museum of African Art first or Macy’s?”
When the phone rang, Diane rose from the plush deck chair, regretting that even for this moment she had to leave this late morning sun, a sun that had not just warmed her but blossomed a fullness within her that she held fast to as she hurried inside to answer the phone. Leaning against the wall in the kitchen, already slightly annoyed, fearing that she would hear the voice of a Saturday morning telemarketer, Diane heard instead the voice of Leah Temple informing her that half an hour ago it was discovered that Gregory was missing. He had apparently left Somersby. The building had been thoroughly searched, and Gregory was gone.
Gone. The word landed, a rock from space, a sudden blow, a groin-tightening fright. There it was, despite her best efforts standing in her kitchen to erase it, slithering cold and wet.
Leah’s voice was apologetic, straining to be clinical and composed as it narrated what could be an impending disaster. She summed up all the steps taken after it was discovered that Gregory was missing. All the rooms were checked. All the residents were taken from the building and the rooms checked again. Diane imagined a huddled mass of the elderly, some in wheelchairs, some on walkers in the parking lot, monitored and calmed by nursing assistants as everyone from Leah, to the receptionist and cooks, looked for Gregory again.
“Are you there, Mrs. Tate?”
“Where else would I be?”
“I know this is terribly upsetting for you. We’ve contacted the police, who’ve issued a Silver Alert.”
Diane heard the echo of all the Silver Alerts she had seen on news reports about missing seniors. Grainy photographs of an elderly man or woman, the white hair, the face that looked like everyone’s grandmother or grandfather.
And here she was now. In hell. She nearly gagged as her throat clogged and then constricted, her body urging her to release it all, what she had been told, what she knew, did not know, what she feared. To her amazement, she heard herself ask, “How could this happen?”
But she knew how it could happen, saw again herself in bathrobe and bare feet that early morning before the sun rose, chasing Gregory down their street, calling his name, willing him to stop, slow down, to hear her call. The human will can outwit even the most rigorous surveillance. But she had put Gregory in Somersby, convincing herself that this could never happen.
To forestall telling Lauren even for a few moments, driving to Somersby, thoughts of suing the facility, of Gregory never being found, of Gregory found, Diane asked again, “How could this happen?”
Diane couldn’t drive fast enough and yet despised the idea of arriving. Maybe, she thought foolishly, crazily, grasping for a way out, a mistake had been made. By the time she and Lauren arrived, Gregory would have been found, somehow overlooked by the staff, not found in the two and possibly three checks of every room, every space in the building. All her training in the law codified for her the tangible, the real, the myriad of “realistic” possibilities, yet all her years in the law, her years as a judge, had taught her, too, that there was a higher law. The law of the unexpected, the miraculous. The law of the saving grace.
At every stoplight, she allowed herself to turn from the road ahead and scan the streets, crowded on this sumptuous summer morning with people. Ordinary people, she thought, not people like her who have, with one phone call, had their lives upended. People shopping, walking into and out of stores, waiting at bus stops, hailing taxis, clutching their children’s hands as they steered them across the street. She was looking, too, scanning really for a sighting of Gregory. She caught sight of a gleam of white hair, a tall man in khaki pants, striding quickly, racing really, to catch an oncoming bus.
Diane nudged Lauren and shouted, “Is that him?”
“Mom, I saw that guy a minute ago. That’s not Dad. He’s not as tall as Dad, and he’s darker. He was wearing sneakers. Dad never wears sneakers. He was wearing thick-rimmed glasses.”
“He looked like him.”
“Mom, trust me, it’s not him.”
Leah had told her that Gregory was dressed in khaki slacks and a light blue shirt and a baseball cap. So she was willing him, conjuring up the missing mate, seeing him in every tall, white-haired man. After the man who was not Gregory boarded the bus, after he rode away, out of reach, out of the possibility of questioning and further examination that might prove Lauren wrong, an ocean swelled between the two women, a stretch of emotional territory that separated them from the husband and the father neither would admit they already missed as if he had been declared gone for good.
Disappeared. Missing Person. Gregory had slowly descended into all those personas. Diane gratefully sank in to the silence that bound her to Lauren, finding in it a balm temporarily stilling the eruption of fear.
Before leaving the house, she had quickly briefed Lauren on all that was being done, the Silver Alert sent out to radio and TV stations. Soon Gregory’s picture would be on the news. Reverse 911 calls would go out to residents living in communities near Somersby, letting them know that an elderly person with Alzheimer’s was missing and might be wandering in their neighborhood. It was Lauren who, sitting beside her in the car, Googled wandering seniors with Alzheimer’s and told Diane that if not found within twenty-four hours, up to half of them could suffer serious injury or death.
“Most likely, we’ll find him. We’re near downtown Silver Spring. There are police cars everywhere and those police officers have his picture.” This was what Leah, harried and concerned, told them moments after Diane, Lauren, and Sean, who met them at Somersby, settled in her office.
Downtown Silver Spring, a phalanx of stores, restaurants, theaters, malls. Everyone hurrying by, everyone in their own world. Who would notice Gregory? What if he was mumbling? Got violent when a concerned person approached him? But wasn’t that better than walking along the empty streets of the neighborhoods around downtown? Middle-aged homeowners inside, the few young children indoors playing video games? No one to see Gregory walking down their quiet streets.
“How could this happen? Where was the staff?” Diane asked, seething and so anguished she could barely remain seated.
“I wish I could say it isn’t so, but no facility is fail-safe,” Leah said with a shake of her head.
“What my mother wants to know,” Sean said coldly, “is literally, how this could have happened.”
“At this moment, I’m sorry to say we simply don’t know. No one that we’ve talked to on the staff or among the residents saw him leave.”
“I told you a few weeks after we brought Gregory here about finding one of the doors unlocked,” Diane said.
“We took care of that, Mrs. Tate, and the person responsible had a poor security record and was fired.”
“It seems some others need to be fired as well,” Sean said.
“There will be a review and an investigation, I assure you of that.”
“Why would he wander now? Did anything unusual happen?” Diane wondered aloud.
“I think it’s because his friend Wallis was hospitalized for a lung infection yesterday. Since she was taken to the hos
pital, Gregory has been agitated.”
“Does he know where she is?” Lauren asked hesitantly, “I mean can he know?”
“We explained that she had to go away, but that she was coming back.”
“So he’s looking for Wallis?”
“That’s my best guess.”
“We have to go look for him. We can’t just sit here and wait. Your father is lost. He needs to be found.”
Two hours earlier, Sean watched his mother and Lauren walk away from Somersby, each searching for Gregory in different sections of the nearby residential neighborhoods. They would all keep in touch by cell phone.
Sean drove to the commercial area along Colesville Road, parked his car, and walked along the nexus of glass office buildings, looking through the wide windows at security guards inside pacing the deserted marble and chrome lobbies. Praying for a sighting, a vision of his father.
After a while, all the lobbies began to look the same with the same black security guard, and he had even searched the Metro station, purchasing a card, and going through the turnstiles, walking the length of the platform in both directions. He had entered the restaurants and shops along Georgia Avenue that had resisted upscale gentrification—the music store that sold R&B albums and CDs from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the store that sold sheet music, the Korean nail salon, the comic book store. He even went into the fire station and told the men there to be on the lookout for his dad.
The heat, the frustration, the fear that this was all in vain—it wore him out. Now he sat at a Greek diner waiting for a gyro plate. He hadn’t heard from his mother or Lauren and wondered where they were. He had texted them to update him, told them where he was and to meet him here. No news was supposed to be good news, but it wasn’t in this case.
As the waiter brought his plate, his phone vibrated. It was Diane: Any luck? He hated to think that was what they were depending on. Luck. He thanked the waiter and texted back, Not yet.
Lauren walked along the residential streets, searching for her father. The houses were shuttered against her, residents huddled inside their air-conditioned rooms. She had opened the gates and walked past the picket fences of several houses, knocking on doors where no one answered.
She’d try one more door. The neat, solid, two-story brick house beckoned her. Was it the sight of a bicycle resting on its side? The balls and Hula-hoop scattered around? Maybe it was her thirst, the heat penetrating the broad straw sun hat she wore, her blouse matted to her skin, the hunger taking root in her stomach. She was suddenly desperate to hear another voice, even if it was one telling her they had not seen her father.
An elderly woman answered the door, her olive-toned face framed by a hijab. Lauren saw the woman’s thick black brows and burning brown eyes fill with unease in her presence, for she was a stranger.
So quickly, before the door closed, the words tumbled out: “I’m sorry to disturb you, but my father is an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s and he’s left his assisted-living facility. I wanted to know if you have seen him.”
Lauren held up her cell phone and showed the woman a picture of Gregory. Then two young children, a brooding little girl in shorts and a pink shirt and a boy with an open, curious face, came up behind the woman, whose arms found their shoulders and brought them close to her body. Then a younger man came to the door, tall, with the same skin and eyes. The woman spoke to him in Arabic.
“Papa, she’s looking for her father. Her father, he’s lost,” the boy said.
“Come in, come in,” the boy’s father said. “Sit, please.” The words both an invitation and requirement as he gazed at her stomach.
Lauren sat eyeing the Koran on the glass coffee table, a news anchor speaking in Arabic on the TV and felt safe in the room with all the dark rich colors, gold and green and red. “This is my father, he’s elderly. He has Alzheimer’s. He’s lost, and my family is looking for him.”
The man studied the photo on Lauren’s cell phone and then handed it back to her. “I have not seen this man. You have of course told the police?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like something to drink, to rest for a bit?”
“Thank you.”
When the man left the room, Lauren’s sobs spilled forth. All day she had felt that to give into the tears might portend all she feared. Now she sat in a stranger’s house weeping with a shattering abandon, not caring who heard or saw her display. When she could cry no more, she sat both renewed and overwhelmed by a fatigue she felt embedded in her bones. She couldn’t stop looking. They had to find him.
The man padded quietly into the room. He placed a glass of water and a small plate of meat pies on the table. “Eat. Replenish yourself,” he told Lauren with an authority both compassionate and firm. “Then you will join me and my family in prayer for your father’s safe return.”
She always swallowed the big frog first. Working with families in crisis all these years and being the child of a family in crisis herself had taught Diane not to be afraid to enter the darkest space first and then circle back to the promise or even a flicker of light.
Fortified by the fact that the darkness had not yet swallowed her resolve, that in the darkness she still heard her heartbeat and the hum of her breathing, that in the darkness the world did not crumble beneath her feet, or if it did, she could pull herself out of the rubble, she had learned to make of the darkness a promise yet to unfold.
So, walking to the Greek café where Sean had texted her and Lauren to meet him, she moved with a stalwart heart that was already broken, a heart that she had repaired and mended because if the worst was yet to come, she would need a strong heart. She would be prepared for her heart to break over and over as it must.
She was too stunned for tears, for this was beyond all her fearful imaginings. In the novels she loved, the march of life was relentless, the shocks and surprises unfolded right up to the last page. If only her life were a text, one that she could let slip from her hands as she fell asleep reading in bed, the book shoved, harmless and inert beneath the sheets.
Their deepest fears for Gregory’s safety had so far gone unspoken between the three of them. Now, she had been buffeted, tossed, her brain and senses and feelings scrambled.
The big frog was widowhood. She and Gregory had prided themselves on not being afraid to talk about death:
“If something happens …”
“If something happens to me before you …”
“… this is what I want you to do …”
“… this is where the important papers are stored …”
A therapist friend told her once that the process of grieving a spouse took an average of seven years. Seven years, Diane had wondered. Who had done the polling? What questions were asked? How could you tell when the grieving was done? She still grieved her mother, her brother, and the father she had not known. Had grieved them all her life.
Gregory had gone looking for the woman who had replaced her in his mind as his wife. But she was his wife, would be his wife beyond “till death do us part,” for the parting was nothing more than a new beginning.
They had to find him. She had allowed herself the folly of thinking that there was some moving on because her husband was broken. There was no moving on, could be no moving on even as she lay in Alan’s arms, laughed at his jokes, and beamed in the joy and comfort of his friends. She would be lodged in this space, the wide circumference of love that took in everything, all of them.
Gregory is engulfed by all the sounds in the world. Adrift in a roaring sea of dissonance.
Standing on the corner of Colesville Road a few feet from the entrance to a Ruby Tuesday, the crowd swoons around him. When he left Somersby, now two miles behind him, he strode the streets with a determined gait and one thing in mind—to find Wallis. Now, standing on this street, he feels only fear—agile, alert, freezing him in place.
He knows that there is only one person who can help him to find her. His best friend. His par
tner. Mercer. A headache nests at the base of his skull. Thankfully, it has not yet launched a full attack. But fear roils his stomach and several times it has taken all his strength to push back, push down against the terror that is a muscle poised to gush up and out from his insides.
So many people. Too many people. Immobilized in their midst, he has been bumped, cursed, and is near tears. But stubbornly, he decided that he would not drown. Not if he can find Wallis. Not if he can get to Mercer, who will help him find her. All these months, all this time, this is where he was headed anyway, to meet Mercer. Past and through the stop signs that have hijacked his mind. He just wants to get to 1213 U Street. Their office.
Out on the street, alone, hurrying away from Somersby before they realized he was gone, he was exultant, flush with courage. Courage he has longed to call forth. It was like taking baby steps: walking the first block away from Somersby, then the second block, and all the blocks that followed. Through the sea of cars, the sun, steady and hounding. He nearly tripped, for no reason that he could see, other than that suddenly, in these first moments of the freedom he had longed for, freedom overwhelmed him, freedom literally took his breath away. He stopped at each light, the memory of the place he was headed for blazing more brightly in his mind than even the flashing green and red lights telling him when to stop and when to go. He hurried across each street, for the cars were like animals he cannot trust. There was nothing around him that looks like what he knows, the one thing and the one place he remembers: 1213 U Street.
The voice of doubt huddles in his brain and he hears it throb with ridicule: Where? Who?
All that walking and here he is, forsaken, deserted on the corner of Colesville Road. How can he go farther? But he is a brash, eager young man who believes in himself, who has become an architect, designing buildings in the year of 1978, in the city of his birth, the nation’s capital. He can do this. This remembrance, that he is more than the despair that now plagues his days and nights, activates his voice, and his first request for help.
The Wide Circumference of Love Page 22