by Cote Smith
Her father’s voice grew louder.
“Nothing,” her mother said, in a weary whisper. “There’s nothing wrong with pretending.”
There was a knock on her mother’s door. “Alison,” her father said. “Are you in there? Is everything all right?”
A breath into the receiver.
“I have to go, Apple. Be smart.”
* * *
After the phone call with her mother, Lia made up her mind: She would tell the story. Forget the missing link. She had a source who put Moyer, a renowned neuroscientist, at Menninger, a mysterious research facility. She had an interview transcript with a patient who benefited from a mysterious cure. She knew enough to deduce what was going on. She would tell the story, finish her internship, and if school no longer wanted her, she would fly back to the States and get a job at a radio station. It would be difficult without a degree, and she might have to start at the bottom again, but she would at least have the Menninger piece to point to, to show a producer what she was capable of.
The meeting with Wiley went smoothly. Lia could tell Wiley envied her in some ways. He saw something in her that he knew he would never have. He saw something in most people that he knew he would never have. It wasn’t youth, or confidence; it was belief. That what you did mattered. That you, an individual, could make a difference.
* * *
The story would air on Friday. Lia spent the rest of the week cooped up in her closet, writing and revising. She studied the transcripts of her favorite DJHK shows, taking note of their structure and pace. By the time Friday arrived Lia still wasn’t sure what she’d written was ready, but Wiley took the script and reminded her that it was public radio and no one was listening anyway.
Wiley read the script beautifully, surprising everyone—including himself. Lia admired the crispness of his pronunciation, his assured tone. He made the story feel inevitable, as if there were no missing link. When Wiley cut to commercial, Lia smiled at her reflection in the glass.
The phone began to light up shortly after. There weren’t many calls—there were never many calls—but what the callers lacked in number they made up for with excitement. One person simply stated they really enjoyed the story, that it reminded them of a show they’d seen as a kid. Another listener had already heard of Menninger and shared his own theory as to what happened there. Things were going well enough that Wiley invited Lia into the booth to answer follow-up questions. Lia put her hand over her chest, trying to steady her heart as she took the first call. A man wanted to know if any of the doctors involved with the experiments still practiced. The man had a troubled brother, whom he was desperate to help. Lia apologized, saying that to her knowledge, none of the men—including the deceased Dr. Moyer—were still involved in the medical field.
“All right,” Wiley said, “one final caller. This is Penelope and she has a question for Lia, is that right?”
A woman’s voice came to life.
“Yes, thank you. I was curious, Lia, do you know of any facilities similar to Menninger back home?”
“Back home?”
“Yes, you’re obviously from the States. Kansas, I’m guessing.”
Lia reddened. She should have recognized the voice immediately.
“Where exactly? Kansas City?”
“Lawrence.”
“Ah,” Penelope said. “Lia from Lawrence. Well, what do you think, are there any secret facilities like this where you’re from?”
Lia recognized that strident voice.
“Not in Kansas,” Lia said. “Not that I know of anyway.”
“What about that place where all those people disappeared? Limestone?”
“Limetown,” Lia said, and she felt a startle in her throat, like she’d been exposed. She glanced at Wiley, who returned a puzzled look.
“That’s right. Limetown. You don’t know anything about that?”
“Not really.”
“Not really? So you know a little? Why don’t you do a story on that?”
“I’d have to do more research first. There are still a lot of questions.”
“Of course,” Penelope said. “You wouldn’t want to speculate. Although, why not? Seems to me you’re quite good at it. Jumping to conclusions with little proof.” Wiley tried to break in, but Dr. McNellis talked over him. “How exactly did you connect these so-called miracle workers to Menninger?”
Lia took a deep breath. She tried to remain calm, even as she felt the story falling apart. “As the piece mentioned, I spoke to an eyewitness who was at the facility when it was still operational.”
“Yes, I heard,” Dr. McNellis said. “Your unnamed source. Did this source work at Menninger?”
“I can’t reveal that.”
“Were they a patient? A doctor?”
“I can’t reveal that either.”
“How convenient,” Dr. McNellis said. “Fortunately, for the sake of your listeners, I can.”
“No,” Lia said.
Wiley tapped her on the arm. What the hell is going on? he mouthed.
“Your source, whom, in the name of professionalism, I won’t name either, never set foot in that facility. He was a vagrant, really. And a fool if he let you drag him into this mess. He lurked outside, but he never dared go in. Isn’t that right, Lia from Lawrence?”
“No,” Lia said. “I mean, yes, but it’s obvious that—”
“What is obvious?”
“The secret lab. The mysterious doctors who cured people when no one else could. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Lia looked at Wiley for help, but he put his hands up, not wanting to dirty them with Lia’s mess.
“Someone wanted me there,” Lia said. “They sent me that address. I’m not making this up.”
There was a deep gulf of dead air. Lia’s words replayed in her mind. She imagined the few listeners sitting there, laughing at this girl from Kansas, wherever that was, who had no idea what she was doing. She imagined Zeke picking up his radio and throwing it into the woods.
Finally, Wiley intervened.
“Well,” he said, “this has taken a rather embarrassing turn. Penelope, you’ve been very helpful. But I’m afraid we’re out of time.”
“How do you know,” Lia said. She held her hand up as Wiley tried to cut her off. “Penelope, how do you know my source never went inside?”
Another long pause, but the line crackled with life. Lia’s mind crackled too, as she realized why Dr. McNellis called in, how she could know so much about Zeke, and how she could know for certain that Lia had never found a link between James, Moyer, and Menninger.
“I could tell the world your name, you know. I could say it right now. Because something happened there, the same way something happened to your husband. And maybe you had nothing to do with either, but you’re the only person I know who’s connected to both.”
Dr. McNellis sighed into the receiver. In sixty seconds, as soon as they were off the air, Lia knew she would be fired. In a week, Lia would say good-bye to Julie and board a plane headed back to New Hampshire. And a month after that she would receive a call from her college advisor—her former college advisor—informing her that she’d been expelled. Too many absences. Too many mistakes.
But right now, she had a lead.
“Penelope,” Lia said.
“Because I was there too. Because I was one of them.”
And then the line clicked dead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emile
On the six-year anniversary of his escape from the Eldridge, in the fall of 1985, Emile ducked out of the rain and into the movie theater where he worked in Eugene, Oregon. The lobby lights were still off inside. Emile shook out his umbrella and nodded to the concessionist as she dumped last night’s leftover popcorn into the popper. She was a couple of years younger than Emile, and cute. She’d even asked him out once, but Emile had declined, lying to her face and to himself. “Sorry,” he had said. “I’m seeing someone.”
T
he truth was that he never heard from Claire after she rescued him, though he never stopped wondering about her. “Keep out of sight,” she had said. “Keep out of mind.” This, when she left Emile in Boise, Idaho, dropped him off in front of a run-down motel that boasted free television. The television, he learned upon check-in, was in the lobby, featured two channels, one of which was perpetually fuzzy. Claire paid for his room through the month, then walked him to his door, though she insisted on saying good-bye outside. She gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, wrapped him in her yellow scarf, and told him it would be a while, but someday, when the time was right, she would take him back to the movies. It was painful to think about that promise, even now, years later, when he knew for certain he would never see her again. Claire, the woman who—when he was feeling particularly lonely—he would let himself think of as his first love. He often thought it would have been easier to move on, to forget her, if she wasn’t his first, or even if she’d just been straight with him. This is it. I’m leaving. I’m never coming back. Instead, she left him to wonder.
* * *
Emile had a theory about motels, which came to him the night Claire left. They didn’t want you there. They needed your money, yes, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it. And it damn sure didn’t mean they had to make you comfortable. How else to explain the lumpy, mystery-stained beds, the off-yellow wallpaper, the indifferent help up front? They wanted you in, out, and if you dared complain, they would remind you of their unreasonably low rates, and how they didn’t raise an eyebrow when you paid in cash under a fake name. The more time passed, the fonder Emile grew of the motel’s unromantic, cynical view of life, which presented a welcome contrast to the idealism that surrounded the Eldridge.
He shared his theory with the private investigator he hired in Boise, whenever they spoke over the phone. Larry would ask him about the new digs and didn’t seem to mind when Emile described the various idiosyncrasies he encountered at each stop. He understood that Emile was lonely, and Emile understood that Larry, a widower, was lonely too.
Emile had spoken to Larry that morning, before he went to work at the theater.
“Larry.”
“Mr. Haddock.” He always addressed Emile this way, despite the fact that when they first met, Emile wasn’t even eighteen. “How are the new digs?”
“You wouldn’t believe the towels.”
“Try me.”
“The owners used to live on a commune.”
“How does that affect the towels?”
“There aren’t any.”
“You’re kidding.”
“They want to keep things as organic as possible, which means I have to air-dry.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah,” Emile said. “You got any news?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“They don’t believe in chairs.”
“Well that’s okay,” Larry said. “Because I’ve got nothing to report.”
It had been some time since Larry had an update worth sharing. Recently, out of guilt, he halved his monthly rate and expense fees, which, he admitted, consisted mostly of subpar coffee and pastries, a habit leftover from his police days. Emile took his no-news to work with him, worrying a little less about keeping his head down these days. In the beginning of their professional relationship, Larry suggested that perhaps Emile might be paranoid. Why would anyone follow a seventeen-year-old kid? Emile didn’t tell him anything about his past then, only that after a year of living in the same Boise motel, it was time for him to move on. He didn’t tell him that he was going to look for his brother, whom he hadn’t heard from in nearly a year and a half.
“Where are you going?” Larry had asked. “How do I reach you?”
Emile answered only the second question. “I’ll call you.”
“That’s it?” Larry said.
“That’s it.”
All Larry had to do was keep an eye on something for him. Check in with the woman who ran the motel, to see if a friend of Emile’s ever came by. Before Larry could turn down the request, Emile gave him a month’s retainer and a description of Claire.
* * *
Emile grabbed the booth key. He liked being a projectionist, a profession, if he could call it that, he cobbled together after it finally sunk in that Claire wasn’t coming back. He’d wandered into a small theater in Boise, thinking of his first and only date with Claire, and overheard the assistant manager complaining about how they needed help. A felix culpa, Max would have called it. Emile was hired that day. He had to work his way up, from the concession stand to usher, to the box office, and finally, to the projection booth, but once he did he had a job that he could take with him wherever he went as he looked for Jacob. The money was terrible, but it was enough to afford the worst motel each town had to offer, with just enough left over to pay Larry.
His current theater, in Eugene, recently switched to semiautomatic projectors, a breeze compared to the enormous machines he’d threaded in the past. He only had to make one switch, and since it was a small theater with only two houses, he spent a lot of his time in the booth reading, writing, or flipping through the postcards he’d collected the past few years. He bought a postcard everywhere he went—Idaho, Utah, Oregon—and would give them to Jacob when he finally found him, proof of his search, that he’d never given up looking for his brother, though he no longer thought his brother could say the same.
Larry was always trying to persuade Emile to open up, arguing that he could track Claire down, instead of just waiting around, or help Emile find whomever he was looking for, if Emile would tell him the whole story. That was the problem with most of his clients, he explained. They’re so afraid of making themselves look bad that they leave out details crucial to the case.
“I’ll tell you, that’s what you regret the most when you lose a loved one,” Larry said, throwing down the widower card, “all the things left unsaid.”
“We’re not married, Larry.”
“I know,” Larry said. “This distance is killing us.”
Emile threw him a bone on his and Larry’s one-year anniversary, when Emile called him from a motel in Salt Lake City. He didn’t have to tell Larry that he still believed he was being followed. That on more than one occasion he’d returned to his room to discover things not quite where he’d left them. Before he left Boise, Emile started leaving traps. He began taking pictures of his belongings with the Polaroid camera, so that when he returned from work he could prove he wasn’t crazy. He plucked a strand of hair from his head and with a little lick strung it tightly across the top of his closet door, so that if someone opened it, the strand would snap. It was something he saw in a spy movie.
“That’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Larry said. “Did it work?”
It did, which was one of the reasons why he had packed his things and headed to Utah.
“Why Utah?” Because that was the last-known location of his brother.
“Your brother? That’s who you’re looking for?”
He had taken a bus down to Salt Lake, found a room not far from the university Jacob had planned on attending when he left Emile at the Eldridge. Emile remembered Claire’s warnings that they would be looking for him there, but he was bitter enough that ignoring Claire’s advice felt like a small victory. He got a job working at a drive-in theater on the outskirts of town, and looked on with jealousy as college kids held hands and watched horror films from their parents’ cars. During the day he walked the picturesque campus, where the same kids laughed and complained about their classes. After college they would leave this bubble and make another, with spouse in tow, and there was a slow realization building inside Emile, that as long as he was alone, as long as he couldn’t find Jacob or Claire, he would be outside every bubble, looking in.
He didn’t tell Larry any of this. He only said that he never saw his brother at that university. Emile befriended a lonely girl from a small town who worked in admissions. He spent
a few days with her, looking inside her head and comforting the thoughts that needed comforting (You are smart, you are pretty, you belong here) but in the end, when he asked her to look through the university’s records, she could find no record of Jacob having attended the university. There was a track team, but not one of several track members he purposely bumped into had heard of Jacob either.
What happened to Jacob? An ocean of possibilities swam across Emile’s mind. Some of the explanations were simple. Jacob arrived, decided he didn’t like Salt Lake, and transferred to a nearby college before classes started. Other explanations were darker, more complex. Jacob went to college, but once Emile escaped, breaking his agreement with Vince after less than six months of work, the Eldridge came after him. They took away his tuition and erased his enrollment, threatened to do more if Jacob didn’t tell them where Emile was. Jacob didn’t know. So, he ran.
Emile called Larry every time Emile moved.
“Where are you now?” Larry would ask. And, “How are the digs?”
After Salt Lake, there was Provo. There was Ogden. There was Portland and Corvallis. There were months in between each destination. Sometimes a year. Sometime more. Time wasted mustering the courage to start over, to continue the search. Time wasted saving enough money so he could move on to the next bubble town, where he wandered yet another college campus, hanging on to the sliver of hope that Jacob had transferred after Emile left the Eldridge and his funding ran out. He knew he was looking for a needle, and most days the cynicism that grew every day after Claire left overwhelmed him. Still, on occasion, when the weather was particularly pleasant on a campus stroll, or after he threaded an unapologetically sappy movie at work, he let himself imagine what it would be like to see his brother again. Perhaps Emile would be walking down the street, head down, eyes on his feet, when a familiar wave washed over him, and he would look up to see his brother in a coffee shop window, deep in thought. Well, maybe not deep.