by Dan Lopez
She laughs, violently nodding her head in agreement.
“That’s my girl,” he says. “How does a cheeseburger sound?”
SHE RECOGNIZES THE SONIC DRIVE-IN BY THE EAST-WEST Expressway. They’ve passed it three times already. They’re like balls in a pinball machine, she thinks, bouncing around the metropolis, always ending up in the same spot.
“We’re not having much luck, are we?”
“No.” Peter frowns. “We’re not.”
It’s been hours since the day care called and explained how a man claiming to be Steven attempted to pick up Gertie shortly before she disappeared. The description fit Thaddeus exactly. The police thought so, too, when they all spoke down at the precinct. She’d wanted to remain at the station following the initial questioning, reasoning that since it was the nerve center of the entire search, staying nearby would allow them to better assist the police should any questions arise. But Peter had been reluctant, claiming that they stood a better shot of finding Gertie if they let the police do their job unencumbered. Plus, he’d said, they could help by conducting their own search. His logic made a certain kind of desperate sense; after all, what parent could realistically be expected to sit idly by while their three-year-old daughter was lost somewhere on the road? But at the same time, she suspected the purity of his motivations. He’d been altogether too accommodating with the police, neither criticizing their bureaucratic coolness nor hassling them to issue an Amber alert. (She was more than happy to pick up the slack.) His entire disposition changed when he spoke to the police; his vestigial scowl was replaced by a servile grin that she didn’t like at all, and when he wasn’t being addressed he’d been visibly uncomfortable. Despite her reservations, she relented to his authority as the parent, the dueling drives of mother and grandmother silenced for the moment if not entirely reconciled.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” she says, but Peter doesn’t answer.
The light changes and they continue down Semoran Boulevard. On the last pass she thought she spotted Thaddeus’s car. Peter came up right alongside it and rode the horn hard until the car pulled over onto the shoulder. But they didn’t find Thaddeus or Gertie inside, only an angry mom with a young child. They apologized. A mistaken identification, they explained, and then they quickly drove away. That’s been the closest they’ve come to finding them.
“I’m glad this happened. It’ll show Steven he can’t just disappear like this.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “That didn’t come out right. I’m not glad this happened. What I mean—”
She rests a hand on his forearm. “It’s okay. I know what you mean.”
A wry smile creeps onto his face. For a moment they share an intimacy. She wants to hold his gaze, but the rawness of his stare embarrasses her, so instead she lets her focus drift to the traffic outside. Plenty of cars travel up and down Semoran. Any one of them could be Thaddeus’s.
“I feel like a monster for even thinking that.”
“You’ve spent all day tracking down your daughter,” she reminds him.
“You’re not worried?”
“Of course I am, but she’s with Thaddeus, and while he’s not perfect, I don’t believe for one second that he would let anything happen to her. And the police will find them soon.”
She plays with her ring as she talks, glancing at him occasionally. A nervous, desperate sort of expression hangs from his face. Their hands find each other on top of the gearshift. Fine hairs give his pale skin a silkiness she hadn’t anticipated, but other than that his hand feels cool and hard.
“Look, Thaddeus screws up a lot, but he always does the right thing in the end. Am I worried? Yes, but not because I think Gertie is in any real danger with him. He won’t let anything awful happen to her. You can count on that. I’m worried because I’m always worried when the people I love are out on the streets. It’s a mother thing.”
He cringes, and she wonders if perhaps she should’ve left the last part out, if it came across as an insinuation on the depths of his affection.
He switches into the left lane and hunches over the steering wheel to get a better look down a hidden driveway. Not finding anything, he straightens up and speeds along. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a bigger failure.”
“We’ll find them, or the police will.”
He withdraws his hand and places it on the wheel. He glances at the instrument panel. “We’ll need gas soon,” he says.
She tries Steven again, but he doesn’t answer. A moment ago Peter indicated that Steven regularly disappears and she wants to ask him about it, but she fears she won’t be able to suppress the judgment in her tone and that Peter will feel criticized. She’s not willing to take that risk. Men’s egos are fragile; they tend to lash out when they feel attacked, then shut down. And the last thing she needs is another man holding her responsible for the failures of this family. They’ll find Gertie. She believes that. But as the fuel gauge drops Peter grows increasingly sullen and irrational. He turns down roads with no discernible plan, then speeds through neighborhoods without even a glance. It’s as if he’s trying to see all of Orlando in a single moment. A few times she prompts a conversation, but the most she kedges out of him is a terse grunt. Eventually, she gives up and switches on the radio. They pull into a station to refuel. He gets out without a word and goes to the pump.
The car jostles and the nozzle makes a muffled clang as it slips into place. A keypad pings in concert with the muted electronic tinkle of a dozen or more digital pumps cycling through the steps of a sale. A receipt prints. A pickup truck starts up. Gasoline flows in a steady chug. Before her the road stretches uninterrupted, and though it couldn’t be more than ten yards away, she feels insulated from it under the gas station’s canopy of bright lights. Just past the far shoulder, thistle and weeds cover an undeveloped lot. They’ll build a drugstore there, she thinks, and won’t that be convenient? This area could use it. The police will call soon with good news. Her responsibilities fade away. Soon this will all end. Thaddeus and Gertie will both be home by nightfall.
Peter approaches her window. Stubble shades his gaunt face. His slacks are wrinkled from sitting in the car all day. His shirt fares better—the cuffs buttoned and the collar stiff. On the pump, the gallons slowly tick by.
“I keep thinking about her out there,” he says.
“That’s normal.”
“I don’t think I was really prepared to be a father.”
She laughs. “Nobody ever is.”
He frowns and picks at a loose thread. “It’s different with us.”
“You mean being a gay parent?”
It’s the first time she’s ever acknowledged it so directly. She’s had her difficulties in the past—Thaddeus and she both have—with Steven’s sexuality, but that’s all behind them now. She doesn’t have a problem with homosexuality. It’s just gay. The word lacks heft. It embarrasses her to say it with such seriousness. Gay is something frivolous and campy, like drag queens and young men in glitter, something innocuous yet bawdy and often in bad taste, an escape, not something burdened with the charge of reproduction and family and all that comes along with a more serious life.
“I don’t know how to reconcile everything I’m supposed to be.” He pauses before continuing. “I think every man feels that way at one point or another. We just bring it out in each other more, Steven and me, and maybe I’m mad at him because of it. Maybe he’s mad at me, too. Maybe we’re both just so mad at each other we don’t even know what to do anymore.”
“That sounds like marriage to me.”
He grins and drapes his hand over the window. The sloping knobs of his knuckles hold an ardent sway over her. Her fingers clasp his and the longer they touch the more intense her desire becomes. She flashes back to her fantasy in the shower of his strong, assertive grip—was that really just this morning? She finds herself slipping around the webbing of his thumb and squeezing his palm.
“Sometimes I bolt out of bed
in the middle of the night afraid that I’ve already screwed her up, and on those nights do you know what Steven is doing? Steven is snoring right next to me, and all I want to do is kill him.” With a thud, the gas finishes pumping, but he doesn’t immediately return to the nozzle. He lingers at her window. “Today was supposed to be a break from everything.”
She squeezes his hand and smiles.
“Now you think I’m a monster.”
“Don’t be silly.”
He slips his hand free and tends to the pump, then climbs back into the driver’s seat. He fidgets with the gearshift, picking at a bit of residue on the leather cover.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Please don’t think bad things about me.”
“I couldn’t.”
His lips are like elastic and she thinks that she’d like to kiss him.
“The truth is having you around has kept me sane these last few days. It’s such a relief to spend time with someone I am in no way whatsoever accountable for. I can just be myself. It’s rejuvenating.”
She blushes. “The feeling is mutual.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m rambling.” Now he’s on the verge of tears. “I’m a raw nerve today. And poor Gertie... I’m an absolute horrible father.”
“Peter, please—”
“How could I have let this happen? What was I thinking?” He casts around, swinging the car keys in the air. “Where could they be?”
“Peter, you really have to calm down.”
“How am I supposed to? I’ve failed my family. This is all my fault.”
“Stop.” Her forceful tone has the desired result. He regains his composure. “Now, listen. This is not your fault. It’s Thaddeus’s.”
“I’m the father—one of the fathers, at least—it’s my job to protect her.”
She shakes her head, but he continues.
“I didn’t do my job. It’s as simple as that.”
“No. That’s crazy.” Her voice is cutting and curt. “I’m going to tell you something, and I say it as a loving mother and wife: you are without a doubt the best thing this family has going. Understand? Thaddeus and Steven, they are who they are, and they have their strengths, and I love them both, but they’re very insular and selfish. You are reliable. You’re the father that girl needs, and she’s damn lucky to have you. As for these... these feelings you’re having, they’re normal.”
He smacks his hand across the steering wheel. “But we have to be more than normal.”
“Then do it!”
There’s not much to say for a long time after that; a pregnant silence balloons between them. Peter starts the car. He merges back onto the road. They look at each other infrequently now, his attention, like hers, more and more focused on the heat wave mirage of the road and the occasional pedestrian beating along the sporadic sidewalks as the day darkens.
“For a while after my procedure,” she says sometime later, “I met with a group of women who went through the same thing. It was very informal, but it was nice. The companionship... it helps with those feelings you get of being isolated.” She fidgets with her ring, unsure of what to do with her hands. “It was only for a little while. Just long enough to understand, to really know where it all fits in. People overlook that, that humans need to fit in.” She smiles weakly. “I’ve always believed you can cope with anything as long as it has its place.”
He nods and a weight seems to slide off him like water. She pats his thigh.
“You’re probably right,” he says. “I don’t think Steven knows how to compartmentalize like that, though. Between the shelter and Gertie, he’s crippled by fear.”
“Does he say that to you?”
He shakes his head with a faint smile. “He never would, but I can tell. He’s just petrified to make a mistake with her, you know? To teach her the wrong thing or set a bad example. We both are. No offense, but neither one of us wants to emulate our own childhoods, so it’s tough figuring it out.”
“That’s how everybody feels. I’d be worried if you didn’t feel that way. It just means you’re being good parents.”
He switches on his blinker and passes a truck, then slips through an intersection as the light turns red.
“I get stressed out but I can manage. At the end of a long day when I’m just too tired to care about Gertie, or Steven, or any of it, I can fall back on the work and say, ‘Well, Peter, you’ve worked your ass off today for your family,’ and I can feel better about myself. In the abstract I can still care even if in the moment I’m being selfish. I don’t know if Steven feels that way, too. He never talks to me about that stuff. He just disappears some nights. I worry about him, and not for the reasons you’re probably thinking. We have an arrangement—”
“I don’t need to know about that,” she says quickly.
They come to a stoplight, and he brakes. She surveys the opposing traffic as it streams by, but there’s no sign of Thaddeus. An arrangement?
“At any rate,” he continues. “I don’t care what he’s doing. I just need to know where he is in case of emergencies.”
She grunts. “He’s being very irresponsible. Just like his father.”
“He’s scared and insecure. I don’t suppose I can blame him for that.”
“And you’re being too understanding.”
Peter shakes his head, and she recognizes the softness in his expression. It’s the same softness she has for Thaddeus, and it’s a softness that forgives too easily.
“He’s threatened,” Peter says. “That’s all. We both are, I suppose.”
“By what?”
He shrugs. “Assimilation? Losing something essential?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s life. You make sacrifices.”
An arrangement?
SHE SCROLLS THROUGH AN INFINITE FEED.
Unfocused. Scanning. Awash in images and silent video. Her consciousness comprises little more than light striking rods and cones. No need for the brain at all. Until something familiar—a curve of an elbow? A shadow on skin?—in the cascade of bright pixels triggers her attention and she pauses to investigate.
Nothing important.
Just a colleague and his wife taking in a baseball game in Tampa. She resumes scrolling. The higher functions of her brain again recede. All the knowledge she’s acquired over the years, all the reasoned opinions, all the nuance, switches off. The animal brain takes over, filtering through the endless data in search of a signal in the noise: Alex.
How many times in the past week has she tracked the engagement of a post, comparing stats across platforms in the vague hope that doing so would reveal some clue, would point her in some fruitful direction? Everybody leaves digital footprints. Tracking somebody down should be far easier than this. A fleeting sympathy for the NSA colludes with a push notification on her screen to disrupt the animal mind. Bill Philips has left her yet another voice mail. That makes five since she skipped a shift two days ago without bothering to call in.
She ignores the voice mail and resumes scrolling.
Every dinner. Every night at the club.
Every catch from every weekend fishing excursion.
This far down the stream the images are digital fossils. Still, she returns here with some regularity, always uncovering something new interspersed among familiar posts. Algorithms are impish things. No telling when they’ll surprise you. If asked to she could construct a comprehensive chronology of several people’s recent lives without the aid of time stamps. Where others might count sheep, she’s developed a game of recalling certain snapshots in proper sequence. The game offers no challenge. It merely passes the time as she lies in bed, trying in vain to sleep.
For all its insidious creep, vast tracts of a person’s life escape the social media dragnet. This is especially true of Alex, whose lax attitude toward his digital brand puts him at odds with his peers. His posts, when he does post, tend toward sketches of clothes he hashtags #urbodycouture and #thesecondcoming. The son of
a sort of celebrity. How many others in his position have parlayed a tangential connection to fame into a career? Khloe and Kendall. Jaden. Miley. Alex Morales, reality TV star. A frightening prospect, but at least then she’d know where to find him. Just follow the drama.
Instead, she sits in her living room in the dark, pupils shrunk in the blue light from her phone, and slightly cold as the a/c nears the end of its brief cycle. Old take-out containers stand sentry on the coffee table. Junk mail speckles the counter in disorganized piles. Pairs of jeans dominate the floor like drunks at the beach. Nearby her purse trawls a string of items including birth control, wallet, and earbuds across the carpet. In a few hours it’ll be Alex’s eighteenth birthday and she’s no closer to finding him.
She fires off a text. The seventh today. The seventh he’ll ignore.
Feeling philosophical around lunch, she sent him a long message saying she understood his silence was an outcropping of the deep sense of loss he feels for their father. Our grief, she wrote, is shared, so too must be our healing. He ignored it.
Her loquacity devolved throughout the day:
I’m sorry. Please come home.
In addition to feeling fruitless, the stream makes apparent the uncomfortable reality of her solitude. Her contributions to the feed consist chiefly of reposted baby animal videos, inspirational memes, and, most depressing of all, photos of whatever pharmacy she happens to be covering on a given day, often bearing a caption that is some permutation of “stop by and say hi if you’re in the area.” Nobody ever does. The techs in the district tease her about her lack of a social life, assuming she puts her career before dating. It’s true she’s a hard worker, which makes dating more difficult, but not impossible. She’s hardly the only pharmacist with a demanding schedule. She seems to lack an aptitude for men. The closest she’s come to a serious relationship was the year she spent fooling around with a married guy, and even that ended three years ago.