Unreliable

by Lee Irby

  I rush back inside to check my phone, and there I make a disturbing discovery. Staggering, actually, and completely unexpected. Lola’s phone is sitting right next to mine on the water-stained bedside table. The two devices are paired up, in fact, in a highly staged way, the edge of hers touching mine, a suggestive pose that I interpret as Lola’s attempt to convey consanguinity with me—yet I also find it unlikely that Lola would purposefully leave her phone behind, which points to a dreadful possibility.

  She’s been abducted.

  The horrible force of that idea pushes me down onto the bed, my head shaking in disbelief. It’s simply not possible. I was here and would have heard something, unless I’d been drugged. Again, that would have been impossible, since I’d only sipped water from the tap in the bathroom.

  Then for reasons I don’t really understand, I pick up my phone and collect yet another mystifying clue. Three hours ago, at 4:32 a.m., I received a text from Lola.

  Bye, Eddie. I need something more in my life and I think you know what I’m talking about. I’m going dark for a while. Off the grid—no phone, no contact. Into the wild! No one will find me, so don’t bother looking.

  I am stunned. It appears that she left on her own accord. She’s ending it with me. It’s over between us. She’s run off with that guy she met online (which might explain the “going dark” phrase), but her phone is right in my hand. I could easily retrace her footsteps and figure out where this guy lives and then…what?

  I drop her phone on the mattress and instead stare glumly at mine. There’s no point in calling or texting her anymore, so how do I propose to get in touch with her?

  Lola’s phone rings, and the tone startles me because it’s a shrill clang like from an old-fashioned rotary model and it reminds me of being a child. I look down to see who is calling.

  Mom.

  Her mom, my colleague, Nora Hicock, an ethereal woman with long black hair and sad eyes who headed up the college’s Women’s Resource Center and who at faculty meetings always had the same suggestion for the president: We should make the arts a vital part of the undergraduate experience, which no one disagreed with but no one knew how to fund. Still, I admired her doggedness as only a quitter can. Her beauty was on the wane, no doubt, but in her I could still detect the last gasps of her youthful bloom. I’d love to answer the phone and ask her questions about her daughter, as she must possess motherly insight into Lola’s impetuosity, the sting of which hurts mightily right now. Forsaken for another! For a stranger she barely knows, whose only redeeming attribute was a prodigious dong, but whose personality she described as “stupid,” whose company she didn’t enjoy—no, there’s no way she left me for Mr. Craigslist.

  I reread her text, trying to be as objective as possible. The “something more” might mean a relationship with someone from her generation, a guy who has an Instagram account, for example, or a gamer tag, neither of which I possess. But the references to “into the wild” and “off the grid” suggest a retreat into obscurity, an abnegation of the life we were going to spend together. She was going to be my wife and now she’s gone!

  I don’t know what to do. Minutes tumble past as I sit motionless on the bed, in my J. Crew boxers, staring down at her iPhone 5C, the security code to which I happen to know because I’ve watched her input it around six million times, but I can’t bring myself to plunge into her hidden world. It feels wrong, prying into her personal space, and at some point I’ve got to start respecting boundaries. I can’t just hack into her phone whenever I want to and peruse her correspondence, flip through her photos, scroll down her list of recent calls, and invade her social media accounts like a rogue marauder. No! It’s a complete and utter violation of her trust—but she’s missing. The phone might contain a clue of her whereabouts.

  I agonize, staring at her phone’s background screenshot, a group photo of kids from her dorm, including two guys she slept with…that’s it! That’s it right there! She got sick of my sickness…at one time she rather enjoyed showing me the dick pics of her hookups but she tired of it, resentment growing in increments indiscernible to the naked eye—and when I didn’t show much appreciation for her latest conquest, Mr. Craigslist, for whom she drove all the way down to Richmond, she turned on me and my perversion. I wasn’t grateful enough, or at all. Worse, I’d tried to end it! Yes, I did! I wanted out, but then somehow during the madness of yesterday I realized that I loved her more than life itself.

  I type in the code and unlock her privacy. A quick check reveals that the only person she’s texted or called since yesterday has been me, and she hasn’t replied to the texts from others like her mother or Dahlia. She’s sent no e-mails that I can discern unless she has a different account somewhere, which is entirely possible because I see no record of her communicating with anyone from craigslist. But she might have relegated that exchange to a Yahoo account…unless there never was a guy from craigslist and she’d invented him just to rub my face in it, to draw some blood…it feels too creepy to be examining her life in this manner. Damn her! Things were perfect until she started telling people like Dahlia, and now I’ve got nothing. Just her phone.

  The thing is, she didn’t simply forget or misplace her phone. She abandoned it, which means she isn’t coming back. She’s off on some great adventure to the nether reaches of the unreachable world—Alaska? An island near Vancouver? I would’ve gone with her! But she chose to forego my companionship. This conclusion sends me rushing outside again in a desperate search of the parking lot. The cold air has caused condensation to cling to the glass that resembles a sheen of winter frost…Lola left at 4:32 a.m. or shortly thereafter, more than three hours ago, and by now she’s either on a plane or crossing into Tennessee or Maryland or North Carolina, grinning from ear to ear to be rid of me. Repudiation! Negation! Disavowal!

  Just so she’s alone. I can abide by her picking solitude over me, but if she’s with that dipshit from craigslist…or somebody else…

  I stagger to the bed and fall face-first into it, my nose landing on her phone, cracking the screen Lola protected with the ferocity of a lioness. There’s a cut/abrasion now on the hard bridge of my ugly nose, the nose I long dreamt of having surgically removed—I look terrible, taking stock of myself in a motel bathroom. Flabby middle, no muscle tone, and skin a sickly shade of white: Herman Munster looks healthier and more robust than I do. My body would serve a fitness club well, as the perfect “Before” model in an advertising campaign.

  I slink away from the mirror, engulfed by desperation. Should I sign up for an Instagram account? Would that win her back? Or just alienate her further? Let’s put it this way: did the soul patch I grew win me any affection from Bev? (Igor also sported such facial hair.) No! It turned her off even more, my opaque attempts to curry favor. Lola would react similarly, perhaps with less exasperation and more ridicule…she’s gone and I have to accept that.

  Except that…

  My phone rings! And because hope is a weed that no pesticide can kill, I rush over to it thinking Lola has come to her senses and is standing at a pay phone, maybe for the first time in her young life. She might not even know how one of those artifacts works.

  But it’s my mother. My mother!

  “Good morning,” I sing out sweetly, with my teeth suddenly chattering. Christmas in July! Soon I’ll be a snowman.

  “Eddie, where are you? Where did you go?”

  “I had to take care of something and it was all the way across town, and so I got a hotel room instead of driving home. No biggie. What’s up?”

  “I have been worried sick! You could have left a note or something.”

  “I thought I was coming back first thing this morning. I’m sorry, I know I screwed up. I’ll never do that to you again.”

  “Mead needs your help with the boxes. Graves won’t get up, the little punk, I swear.”

  “I’m on my way. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “What were you doing in the middle of the night a
cross town?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I’m coming home right now.”

  “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Why did you take one of Mead’s guns last night?”

  I cringe at her soft voice, velveteen and gentle, careful to spare my feelings when she should be letting me have it with all she’s got, the fury of a mother whose only son has squandered his many gifts. “I was spooked about Leigh Rose…listen, let me get going and I promise we’ll talk later, but I don’t want you to worry because this is your big day.”

  “Okay.” She pauses, wheels spinning as she mulls over my specious explanation. “But you hate guns, though.”

  “I still do, more than ever. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Mead really needs your help. He hurt his back playing football in high school and he shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy.”

  None of us should, Mother, not a single one of us should try to pick up the weight of the world that consists mostly of misery. Nothing heftier than a feather! Look at the strain I’m under, saddled with a burden of my own packing. “I’m glad to help,” I say, “and tell him to wait for me. I’m literally walking out the door.”

  Not literally. I have to get dressed and gather my things first. I shove mine and Lola’s phone into a front pocket, the closest we’ll ever be again in all likelihood. The “I Have Issues” hat is pulled firmly down to shield my eyes from the sun. Now I’m ready to depart and blast off to the Great Beyond.

  It takes no time before I encounter my first obstacle, a police car in the parking lot. The sound track here should jump to an ominous bleating of bassoon, if only to stir up the notion of danger. Perhaps the film director might next cut to a close-up of me, mouth grimly set, stubble barely visible, before pulling back to an overhead shot of me descending the stairs, luggage in hand. In the office I can see that the cop is speaking with the manager, and they both clearly look over at me and my luggage. Have I finally reached the end? Is this it, my long-awaited and well-deserved doom? I won’t put up a fight. When have I ever? I’ll hold out my hands and let the cuffs get clapped on. I’ll confess right here and now, just ask me.

  The cop turns back around and continues his conversation. I soldier on, curious why I’m not being detained for questioning. Could it be for the simple reason that I’ve broken no laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia? Catch me if you can, copper! I feel like Edward G. Robinson right now, but also strangely deflated. The show must go on even when the actors have tired of their roles.

  Once inside the Honda, I lack the energy to put my key into the ignition. After doing so, I find that shifting the gear stick into reverse takes sustained effort. Did I even sleep last night? I must have, given that Lola was able to slip away, right through my fingertips, without me stirring. Therefore, I had to have drifted into a deep slumber, but one that wasn’t restful, because I don’t recall ever being this exhausted. Even during the worst of the divorce proceedings with Bev, whose lawyer went for my jugular, while my “hired gun” fumbled around to string two sentences together, when it seemed like I never slept, I still felt the “life force” of Swedenborg animating me to endure the spiritual pain. But now, I can’t lift my hand to change the radio station from AM to FM or to plug in my phone so I can queue up some morning tunes. Not even music moves me! That’s never happened before. Silence falls like netting, and the more I struggle to free myself of it, the more entangled in the mesh of solitude I become.

  —

  At some point Lola will contact me using someone else’s phone, so I should expect a call or text from an area code that I don’t recognize…assuming Lola has memorized my cell number, which I tend to doubt. Hence, e-mail will become her only means of reaching me, e-mail that I haven’t checked recently, since I was contacted by the dean, but now I have to peruse it or else I won’t hear from Lola again until…when? Will she ever return to Ithaca? Or will she hide out in Richmond, the city I fled? That would be a hoot, as my mother likes to say.

  —

  As I drive south on the Boulevard, a little voice inside my frazzled head tells me, in an innocuous whisper: “Go to her, go to her.”

  Meaning Leigh Rose.

  I actually begin to laugh like a madman, gripping the steering wheel like it’s a carnival ride whirling me about. My fellow motorists must regard me as an accident waiting to happen, and that’s not far from the truth. Why would I go back to Leigh Rose’s house? What good could possibly come from that? What would I even say to her? This urge, this drive, this compulsion, makes no sense at all, yet few irrational acts do. Without question I seek solace from Leigh Rose to salve the wound inflicted on me by Lola, but I’ve barked up that tree already.

  There’s no one I can turn to now. Ergo, I must go home.

  —

  A U-Haul truck is parked in the driveway, its orange snout pointed at Traylor Drive like a vigilant watchdog. Mead is nowhere in sight. The garage door is open, exposing the innards of the basement, the boxes that must get safely stowed. It seems somewhat negligent to expose these weapons without adult supervision, but Mead has yet to convince me of his competence.

  I park in my usual spot, in the ditch, leaving my luggage in the car as I don’t know where I’ll hang my hat tonight. Lola still might come to her senses. Stranger things have happened and one can’t preclude any remote possibilities. Call me desperate and deluded, but I maintain that Lola will return. On what do I base this prediction? Certainly not evidence, all of which points to the contrary. My feet shuffle along the gravel drive, kicking up little clouds of dust with each step. Our land is parched and withers in agony. Next will come a plague, and then the end of days…

  Mead emerges from the basement, wearing a heavy-duty back brace that belongs on a cyborg. Already he is drenched in sweat, face reddened, hair matted down. He waves and I nod, not exactly détente but more cordiality under duress.

  “Your mother was worried about you,” he says bitterly, wiping his brow with a hand towel from my bathroom. Had he been snooping around in my lair, searching for clues of my depravity? Fruitlessly so, as all my secrets are kept under lock and key.

  “I spoke to her this morning.”

  “It didn’t help very much.”

  The blame game has begun…when the wedding crashes and burns, I’ll become the main culprit of the debacle. I’m guilty of many crimes, but not of being unsupportive of my mother. “I’m very sorry to hear that. You didn’t need to tell her about the gun. I’m sure that didn’t help her relax very much.”

  “I’m not going to lie to her, about that or anything else.”

  “There’s no point in arguing. Let’s get these boxes out of here before they cause more trouble.”

  “What trouble have they caused, Eddie? Besides you stealing from me?”

  I don’t like his tone but decide to ignore him. I just don’t have the energy to offer verbal combat. Lola has sapped me of the little strength I had. “What boxes go first? Or does it matter?”

  “These are all legal, by the way. Every single item in my collection I have clear provenance of.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, okay? I just want them out of here before, say, your Russian friend stops by again.”

  “I can handle him.”

  “Good for you, now let’s get started, shall we? I haven’t even had coffee yet this morning and I might keel over at any second.”

  “There’s some brewing upstairs. Maybe you can say good morning to your mother.”

  I bite my lower lip hard enough to feel a dull pain. From his position on the moral high ground, Mead is shelling me with grenades of disapproval. Let him think what he wants. I’m not the one taking advantage of an older woman who’s fallen for his dubious vows of love. Like many reprobates, Mead is turning his guns on me as a way of deflecting attention from his own misdeeds. The sooner this wedding takes place, the sooner I can get out of here. Tonight even
. Where will I go next? Home to Ithaca, where my enemies await my arrival? Maybe I can hide in one of these crates that will get sent to Central America, where I can slip unnoticed into the jungle.

  —

  My mother rushes over to me as soon as she sees me come up from the basement. “Oh, Eddie!” she cries in a voice hoarse from insomnia. “Are you okay? Tell me the truth. What’s going on? Where were you last night?”

  I hug her, and remorse bubbles up inside me. Hurting her was never my intention, and the only balm I can offer her now is what she most desires, which is the truth. Some of it, anyway. Bite-size morsels of honesty. An entire meal would sicken her. “I went to find someone.” I sigh, sinking down into a chair at the table. She sits by me, a comforting hand resting on my stooped shoulder.

  “Who? A woman? Leigh Rose Wardell?”

  “Not her. Someone else.” My head drops in shame. “I don’t even want to tell you because you’ll think less of me, and I hate the idea of disappointing you even more than you already are.”

  “I’m not disappointed, Eddie! No, you’ve never disappointed me!” She pulls me close and kisses me on top of my head.

  “I haven’t come home in two years. I’m a jerk.”

  “Not at all. You were just sad and depressed because of the divorce. I don’t blame you, for what that awful woman did to you.”

  “It wasn’t just Bev’s fault. I share much of the blame, too. Most of it, in fact.”

  “Please. She’s the one who left you for another man.”

  “I don’t blame her one bit.”

  “Eddie, listen to yourself. So who were you looking for last night?”

  “Can I get a cup of coffee? I really could use one.”

  “I’ll get it, you sit.” She springs up and in a flash places a steaming mug of java in front of me. But the acid in my stomach is raging and I suddenly can’t imagine drinking or eating anything. So I cradle the warmth of the mug in my cold hands. It’s like I’m still in the hotel room, freezing, alone, and afraid.