Nobody Is Ever Missing

by Catherine Lacey

  I said it was tomorrow where I was and he said, yes, he knew it was tomorrow there.

  I have to go, he said, but maybe you should call again. We should talk again. We should be trying to fix this, whatever this is. I feel strange that I haven’t heard from you, but I feel strange talking to you, too. Actually, don’t call anymore. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

  Okay, I said.

  It will be better this way, if we just don’t speak until you can tell me you’re coming home.

  The calmness in his voice wasn’t at all convincing, and after I hung up the phone I imagined my husband told me he’d convinced the people in charge of the study to give him the information they’d gotten from me—the pictures of my brain, my answers, my data—and I imagined my husband saying this as if he was announcing a job promotion or that he had unexpectedly won a portion of a class-action lawsuit and as I walked back to Dillon’s house I wondered if maybe I hadn’t imagined my husband telling me this but maybe he’d really said it, really done it, and even though I understood why my husband might go to such anxious lengths to find out what, specifically, was wrong with me, this wasn’t a nice thing to hear or imagine hearing, and the little throbbing anger under everything my husband had said reminded me of how unfair feelings could be, of how our feelings had hunched up and backed away from us, left us looking at each other like strangers.

  Hours later, falling asleep on a floor, I couldn’t quite parse a difference between what I’d imagined him saying and what he had actually said and I looked at the photograph of my husband again, the baby him, the he that he was long before we met, before I had even been born, and I remembered that morning when he told me I had lost my mind.

  Okay, I said. You’re probably right. Do you want tea?

  The things I disagreed with the most adamantly were often the most true, so I wanted to see what would happen if I just agreed. Maybe if I agreed he would have to be wrong and maybe this was the trick of being married to my husband: agreement.

  I thought, for one nice moment, that I had discovered something, and then my husband asked if I was aware that I’d lost my mind or if it was something I was managing to overlook. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. He was never much of a kidder.

  You know, I think I’ll make some coffee instead of tea, I said. Would you like some?

  It’s a problem I’ve always had—doing the domestic things I didn’t actually want to do, but it always seemed to me that if I didn’t do them then they would never get done.

  I’m asking you a question, he said. And it’s an important question. And it’s important to me that you think about it, that you think about what I’m asking you.

  Okay, I said. You’re right.

  Agreement.

  I knew how he took his coffee, black and lukewarm, so I poured him a cup and I dropped an ice cube in.

  * * *

  On Dillon’s floor I tried to fall asleep by thinking of ice cubes melting in hot coffee and I thought of wild animals chewing smaller wild animals and I remembered what that nurse had said about the tubes of blood, that they always went to a safe place, and I wondered if my husband could have actually, in real life, talked to the neuroscientists from the study and I knew I didn’t want my husband to know all the facts about my blood and brain because that would give him another unfair advantage. I told myself that the neuroscientists had not, of course, told him anything, that they were trustworthy, that they kept their sides of agreements, and I remembered the tall, black-haired lab technician with the large, soft hands who had spread the cold jelly over my scalp and slid all the electrodes in between my hair, gently, like I was his child, and I believed he would never do anything wrong to me, the cold jelly on his fingers, a warm hand on my shoulder. As I fell asleep that night on a floor it didn’t matter what I feared or imagined my husband knowing or saying he knew because there was so much in me that he could never know and he would never know enough about me, and I wasn’t really certain of that, but See if I care, I whispered, to nobody, to my husband, to my own self, see if my self cares, self, see if it cares.

  14

  Jaye was as temporary as me—a favor to Bill, the owner of the catering company who pinched her ass and called her the hottest transsexual flight attendant in Wellington, which raised the question of how many transsexual flight attendants were presently in Wellington. After a few weeks of these catering gigs that Dillon had helped me get, Jaye was the only person I had talked to for longer than the cursory where-are-you-from-where-are-you-going conversation. Outsiders recognize outsiders, I guess, though most of what she talked to me about was how being trans doesn’t make you an outsider in Wellington because everyone here is so welcoming and tolerant and fabulous, how no one talks shit to anyone and even if someone did try to start shit, someone else would fuck that person up for even trying to start shit or talk shit in the first place. This is just what Jaye told me. I didn’t hear anyone talk shit about anyone or see anyone else fuck someone up for talking or starting shit in the first place.

  A lady in a floor-length gown pointed at my platter—What is it?

  I have no clue, I said, smiling like a Cheshire cat who had been drinking a stolen bottle of champagne in a broom closet.

  You’re cheeky, she said with a little curl in her voice.

  Someone else asked, Is this vegetarian? Is it gluten? I don’t do gluten.

  It’s all poison, I said. The host is trying to poison you.

  I’d expected someone to report all my sassing, but they didn’t. Sequined dresses laughed, cuff links slipped me business cards, and by the end I was invited to their afterparties because there is a certain kind of person who, when insulted, will assume you have something they need.

  There will be many powerful men there, most of them at least partially eligible, a woman with too many teeth said as she scrawled an address on a soggy napkin. Understand? An ice sculpture of a sumo wrestler melted behind her; a dozen damp prawns bowed to it.

  A couple times each hour Jaye would pull me into the broom closet and we’d drink straight from our stolen bottle and eat the hors d’oeuvres too ugly to pass. Jaye told me all the gossip she’d overheard at the party, how someone’s third wife had come in the same dress as the first ex-wife and the ex-wife’s second husband was having an affair with the sister of the ex-wife’s first husband and it reminded me of the soaps, the useless drama of it, how it was just the same story of who someone had fucked or wanted to no longer fuck or wanted to fuck over or had already fucked over.

  Jaye said she knew I had secrets—

  I can smell a good secret, sugarpie, nothing gets past me. You’re running from something and it was just a matter of what. Spill it—was it a lover? Money troubles? Caught your man with some slut?

  I don’t know, I said, I had to leave, so I did. That’s all.

  Jaye said, Sluts don’t judge, honey. A true slut don’t ever, ever judge. She pursed her lips for a second and said nothing because she was the truest kind of true slut. Her hands were cradling my face like a blossom.

  He doesn’t know where you are, does he?

  I took a slug of the champagne then tried and failed to smile.

  I see people like you all the time in the air. You see them drinking too much of the little wine bottles, asking for doubles of tequila on a midday flight. There’s a spill on row seven, the girls say. Somebody’s spilled all over the place, you get me?

  Jaye laughed and apologized for laughing.

  I left a note saying I went to my mother’s house. I didn’t say why.

  Here’s a stupid question: Why don’t you just leave the mate? I mean really leave him, not just the country he’s in.

  Something is wrong with me, I said, smiling slack and champagne drunk.

  What I meant was I knew I had to do something that I didn’t know how to do, which was leaving the adult way, the grown-up way, stating the problem, filling out the paperwork, doing all those adult things, but I knew that wasn’t the
whole problem, that I didn’t just want a divorce from my husband, but a divorce from everything, to divorce my own history; I was being pushed by currents, by unseen things, memories and imaginations and fears swirled together—this was one of those things you figure out years later but it’s not the kind of thing you can explain to an almost-stranger in a broom closet while you’re mostly drunk and you barely know where you are or why you are there or why some people can smell secrets.

  Nothing is wrong with you, sugar, Jaye said, and I knew she thought that was true, but she didn’t know about that wildebeest that lived in me and told me to leave that perfectly nice apartment and absolutely suitable job and routines and husband who didn’t do anything completely awful—and I felt that the wildebeest was right and I didn’t know why and even though a wildebeest isn’t the kind of animal that will attack, it can throw all its beastly pounds and heavy bones at anything that attacks it or stands in its way, so I took that also into account. One should never provoke or disobey a wildebeest, so I did leave, and it seems the wildebeest was what was wrong with me, but I wasn’t entirely sure of what was wrong with the wildebeest.

  15

  Jaye told me where to be and when to be there, so I did what she said. I got there early and waited for twenty minutes, then she splashed into the park: gold heels, a tangle of necklaces, bangles, earrings, a purple minidress struggling over her thighs.

  Hello, my sunshine-doll-face-love!

  Hi, Jaye.

  So, last day in Welly, my little world traveler. I hope you won’t forget the little people here in Wellywood.

  She peck-kissed both sides of my face.

  I smiled dumbly at her and she kept talking, telling me everything we had to do and see in the few hours before my ferry left. We walked into a bakery with tiny white tiles on the floor and a ceiling fan that was barely moving.

  This place is run by a bunch of queers and queens and they make the best apricot slice in the whole fucking goddamn world. Can’t even smell one without gaining a thousand bloody kilos.

  She ordered an apricot slice and a drag queen handed it to Jaye wrapped in hot-pink wax paper. She took huge bites as we walked down the sidewalk, crumbs caked to her makeup.

  I decided then that I was in love with Jaye—not a romantic love or a friendship one or a sexual one—it’s some other kind that is clean and plain and harmless. It is a love made of an inaudible noise, like the noise that comes out of those whistles that only dogs can hear, or those little plastic things that people put on their cars so deer will hear them and get off the highway. But there is nothing to be done about the inaudible noise. It’s just something that is.

  And you’re going where next?

  Golden Bay. To that poet’s farm.

  Oh for fuck’s sake.

  What?

  It’s just—you know, there’s nothing better about living in a farm than living in a city. Tourists are always coming here shitting themselves over nature—oh, it’s so beautiful oh, there’s no pollution, oh, goblins and hobbits and some such—but it’s not a bloody magic show! It’s not a movie. What’s going to happen out there is you’ll see a fuckload of possums and you’ll be bored off your rocker. You can’t just go sit in a pretty landscape and bet on it changing you into a better person.

  I know, I said, because I had lost track of the hope I’d ever had to become a better person. I know it’s not a movie. I just want to be alone.

  I just don’t see what’s wrong with Wellington—you could stay here and do catering gigs, maybe meet a bloke or two—that’ll get your mind off hubby, won’t it?

  The plan has been to go to Werner’s. That’s the plan.

  Then what?

  I don’t know. I’ll just be there.

  For Christmas?

  I shrugged. It was hard for me to imagine Christmas happening in the summer after almost three decades of Christmas in the cold. Maybe Christmas didn’t exist this year.

  You should come up to Napier and see me and the fam. Mum has a humongous place up there and it’s always packed with weirdos and orphans for the holidays. You’ll fit right in, love, a proper holiday with a proper dysfunctional family.

  I hugged Jaye, falling into her hulking body. She patted my head.

  Oh, honey, you are such a mess.

  I’m fine, I said. I’ll be fine.

  Sure you will.

  Jaye held my hand and I heard the inaudible noise and it turned into a color and that shade soaked into everything and my whole life was much nicer for those few minutes, then the sidewalk ended and we reached a huge hill with a hole cut through the center that cars were driving through.

  You know I hate dirt, but I wanted to show you this trail so you know we have a little bit of nature here in Wellington, she said, pointing to a trailhead. You go ahead and have a wee tramp if you like—I’ll take the bus to meet you up top.

  When she told me she thought I’d want a little hike, I realized that a few minutes alone was exactly what I needed, something to make it possible for me to deal with the potency of the inaudible noise and of course Jaye would know that because all my real feelings and wants traveled in the inaudible noise, this current between us, so she could know things about me before I even knew things about me—this was what the inaudible noise could do. The trail was dark and had a thick, wooden smell in it. The trees were mythically large and sometimes looked more like art than life. Halfway up the hill I saw a man with a sack-belly hanging over red basketball shorts. He was leaning against a boulder, his face buried in the crook of his elbow as he was breathing heavily, like something terrible was happening inside his body.

  Are you okay?

  He gasped and stood up straight.

  I’m fine, he said, but he didn’t sound fine.

  I heard something moving in the leaves.

  I can get you help— Do you have a phone? I can go call someone for you. I have a friend at the top and—

  I’m fine, he said, but sweat was rushing off his face. You can just leave me alone. I’m fine.

  It was only then I noticed a younger man crouched on the ground beside the boulder. There was dirt on his face and he was sweating, too. His mouth made some kind of smile and his eyes spun as if he was a toy designed to look that way. I kept hiking up.

  My love-face-darlin’-sweet-pea! Jaye arched her back around the bench at the bus stop. So did you have a lovely time with the nature? Did you eat bugs and see the birds fucking the bees and all that fabulous shit?

  I decided not to tell Jaye about the men. We stared down at the white houses and the blue ocean licking the rocky coast.

  After Jaye walked me to the ferry station she insisted, again, that I come up to Napier because she had gotten Christmas and New Year’s off this time—

  You have to suck a lot of dick for that, I can tell you, but there’s no shame in it, she said. I get what I want. They get what they want. Who can tell who is getting used?

  She laughed that thick, syrupy laugh that seemed to rise up from her toes, like every cell of her body was making a tiny, deep laugh and they were all adding up.

  So, I’ll see you for Christmas? New Year’s?

  I’ll try.

  You won’t try; you’ll be there, she said, and I was mostly certain that she was wrong.

  * * *

  Over the loudspeaker the ferry captain said, Good afternoon, all! Welcome to Tuesday afternoon! Tuesday! All day it’ll be Tuesday, all afternoon, make no mistake! I felt like Tuesday afternoon was his home and we were his most anticipated guests and that was a nice feeling, the feeling of being in someone’s home just by being alive on a Tuesday.

  There was a bar on the ferry because whenever people are testing gravity (in planes or ships or from great heights) something has to happen to diffuse the tension of being a human and breakable, of knowing no one gets to see all the spaces and times they would like to see in this life. Everyone at the bar had the same bitter, dumb look in their eye. The ocean rocked us.

 
I took the last stool, beside a man who was finishing a beer. He put down his glass, wiped his mouth, looked over his sleeve at me, and nodded a nothing nod, which was good because I didn’t want to deal with a something nod. I wanted to deal with the ocean because the ocean was making the ferry sway, making liquid slosh out of all the pints held in nervy hands. I put my hand on the bar and into a puddle of something, wiped it on my leg, then put my needing eyes on the bartender and she came over, a porcelain-faced woman, a tender tender. She poured beers so gracefully that it seemed like a dance and she brought the beers to the nothing-nod man and me without any questions or mentions of money because that is what a tender thing she was.

  I will go on loving her for the rest of my life.

  I went outside after my beer and looked down into the ocean and saw a stingray flapping in the water, a jagged C torn into his body and ribbons of blood running out, same color as mine, as anything’s, and I knew that stingray had been chewed by something because that is all the ocean is—a big hole full of things chewing each other—and it’s odd that people go to the beach and stare at the waving water and feel relaxed because what they are looking at is just the blue curtain over a wild violence, lives eating lives, the unstoppable chew, and I wondered if any of those vacationing people feel all the blood rushing under the surface, and I wondered if the fleshy, dying underside of the ocean is what they’re really after as they stare—that ferocious pulse under all things placid.

  16

  I got into the car even though it was exactly the kind of car they say to avoid. Doors all dented. A long-haired, bearded driver with a cigarette pinched in his thin lips. This looked like the beginning of a porno or slasher movie and I didn’t want to be slashed or porned, but I did need to get about a hundred miles west of this parking lot and the sun was nearly setting and this car was the only one making an offer and I have always been unable to decline anyone’s offer of almost anything.