Don't Try To Find Me: A Novel

by Holly Brown

  No, that’s what’s different. All my secrets are out. There’s no “gotcha” moment pending. I’m still standing, breathing, and free. And for the first time in a while, I feel hopeful. I’ve got a plan. It’s not Paul’s plan. It’s not Candace’s or Strickland’s or my new lawyer’s. It’s all mine.

  But I can’t say for sure how long I’ll be free, so I need to get right to it. I’ll pull an all-nighter like it’s college, and I’ll talk to Marley. Not like that crap note that I wrote her. No wonder that didn’t bring her home. It was so obviously manufactured for that very purpose. It’s like when someone tells you, “Calm down”; you never do. You do the opposite. So when I posted my Candace-approved letter, of course it failed to connect. It was practically written in opposite-speak.

  I’m ravenous. Standing up at the kitchen island, I eat like I haven’t since this whole thing began. Paul picks at a sandwich.

  He says he’s tired, he’s going to bed. I want to tell him that I love him but I feel like it would ring hollowly. I must love him, though, or I wouldn’t hate seeing him so beaten down. I wouldn’t have thought about him so much of the time at the station, when I should have been thinking about how to prove my innocence. I wouldn’t have gone back over those draft e-mails in my mind, empathizing with his paralysis. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if he’d sent them.

  We go upstairs together and I take a right instead of a left. “Could you help me with something, please?” I say. He looks surprised as I open the door to Marley’s room. It’s just as she left it. Untouched, because neither of us has had the heart to go in.

  The various surfaces of her furniture are empty or tidy. The bottles of perfume she never wore are lined up neatly. Her iPad is at the center of her desk. The bed is made, and there’s a stuffed animal on top of it, Bernard the Bear. Somehow, when I went through here the last time, I didn’t even recognize that she must have pulled him out of a box in the attic and set him here. She hasn’t slept with Bernard in years.

  But if she’s sending a message through him, I sure can’t read it.

  “What do you make of it,” I ask Paul, “that she cleaned up before she left?”

  “Do you really want to know what I think?” He sounds sad.

  “Of course.”

  “Sometimes I think you just tune me out. It’s like you wind me up and get me talking so that you can go somewhere in your head. Maybe that’s because of the pills, I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  “What I think is that you’re a hard person to reach. For me, and for Marley.”

  That wasn’t exactly an answer to my question, but okay. “And you think that’s why she left?”

  “I haven’t got a clue.” He gives me a sudden crooked smile. “You know I always wanted a boy.”

  I laugh. He always said that boys are way less complicated. At the ultrasound when we found out we were having a girl, he took my hand and kissed it and said, “Oh, no, we’re in for it now.” The tech laughed along with us. We were infectiously happy. At the time, I thought we’d have another child someday, try for a boy, but being a mother took so much out of me. All that worry, all that emotional energy. I didn’t know how I’d have enough for two. I suppose I could have hired help—we had the money—but that was like admitting I wasn’t good enough.

  “I was telling the truth in the press conference,” he says. “That I know I’ve made mistakes and I want to work on things. I want to make it right with you.”

  There are tears in his eyes, and now there are tears in mine. “You still feel that way, after hearing about the pills? About everything? Because that is everything. There are no other skeletons in my closet.”

  “All of this, the website and Facebook and Twitter and the press conferences—I did it to find Marley, obviously. But I was also thinking that if the worst happens, if we never do find her, that you would know how much I love her.” He swallows hard, like he’s gathering his courage. “I thought that if I did all this, you wouldn’t hate me anymore.” It’s the draft he finally sent.

  “I’ve never hated you.” I feel enveloped by shame, thinking of all those talks with Michael, letting Michael dissect Paul and his motives and my buying in.

  “You haven’t liked me in a long time.”

  “Well, you haven’t liked me either.”

  “What we have,” he says, his lips curving slightly, “is a chicken-and-egg problem.”

  I laugh. “I respect all you’ve done to find Marley, but . . .” I debate whether to say it and decide to go for broke. “You know it’s not just about Marley and me. There’s ego in it. You like being the Guy.”

  “The Guy?”

  “The Guy Who Gets Things Done. The Guy Who Brings His Daughter Home When the Police Have Failed. You know, the Guy. The way you are at work. And at home.”

  “I do like being the Guy,” he concedes.

  “I won’t argue with you that I can be hard to live with. Hard to reach, those were your words. But you’re hard, too.”

  “Agreed.” He looks around the room. “Other than that bear, there’s not a lot of childish stuff in here. This could be her dorm room in college. It could be her first apartment.”

  There aren’t any posters or magazine cutouts on the wall like in her old room. She didn’t bother, or she outgrew it. Or she wasn’t planning on staying.

  “I’m glad you came in here with me,” I say with a smile. “But now I need you to leave.”

  “What’s going on, Rachel?” Distrust curls around the edges of his words like calligraphy. I should expect that, after the day we’ve had. He thinks I might be a drug addict. But I hope he believes me about not loving Michael.

  “I want you to set up the webcam for me,” I say. “I want to sit on Marley’s bed and talk to her. It can broadcast in real time.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not like only Marley will see it. Everyone will be able to.”

  “So? I don’t care about everyone.” I feel my old annoyance setting in, despite the conversation we just had. He always thinks his idea is the best. Anything else is inferior. He’s always shutting me down.

  “You haven’t done that well in real time.” He’s not taking any pleasure in saying it, but it hurts.

  I did struggle on the morning show, but I was doing pretty well in the press conference. Until I got run over by a truck.

  “This is different,” I tell him. “There are no secrets anymore.”

  But I don’t need to convince him. I’m going to talk to my daughter, and it needs to be in real time. It needs to be uncensored. Unmediated, so to speak. My gut tells me that’s the only way I’ll reach her. By being the opposite of me. That’s the real opposite-speak.

  I’m considering explaining that to him, even though I don’t think he’ll understand, when he looks right at me, right into my eyes, and says, “You’re right. I want to be the Guy. I want to control things and tell you not to do this. That’s exactly what I want.” He pauses. “I’ll get the laptop.”

  He returns and hovers over the laptop, getting everything set up. He doesn’t think this is a good idea, doesn’t fully trust me, and yet, he’s doing it anyway, like he did with the move. Because I’ve asked him to, because I need it. We’ve been trying to find Marley his way for a while now; it’s time to try mine.

  He’s been playing by the rules: monitoring every site, responding to every negative comment. Meanwhile, I’ve said little, revealed little, unless it’s been before a firing squad. So we’ve both been doing just what Marley has expected of us her whole life. We’ve been trapped in our roles, and it’s time for me to go off script.

  I feel energized. I feel like Rocky before the big fight. I’m ready to go ten rounds to bring my daughter home.

  It occurs to me that it could be withdrawal from my pills. Is euphoria associated with withdrawal? No time to Google it. Paul’s got the webcam ready, and I need t
o get in the ring.

  I suddenly want a Klonopin desperately. I see myself on that screen, looking decrepit and wild-eyed, and I can’t imagine how this is going to help anything. How Marley could see that crazy woman and want to come home. This could be a colossal mistake, just like the move. I might bring more humiliation on all of us, and push Marley farther away, if that’s possible.

  “It’ll be fine,” Paul says. “We’ve always told her that effort is what’s important. She’ll see you’re trying.”

  Everyone knows that’s bullshit. Results are what matter. You get into UC Berkeley with your grades, not your effort.

  But maybe in relationships, effort is what matters. It matters to me that Paul is supporting me, even though he thinks I might be a drug-addicted slutty lunatic.

  “What’s funny?” he asks.

  “My first webcam,” I say. “Here goes nothing.”

  He shows me how it all works, and then he steps away. “Go get her,” he says with a dorky sort of rah-rah fist, and then he shuts the door behind him.

  So it’s Marley and me now, and whoever else has decided to spend their free time on our website. That could be a lot of people, fascinated by the evolving story from the press conference. It could be journalists. It could be trolls, looking for cheap shots.

  It could be Marley.

  “Hi, Marley,” I say. “It’s Mom. I’m in your room.” I smile nervously. On-screen, I look awful. Why didn’t I brush my hair before I started this? Put on concealer? “It’s so clean in here. I can see your floor.” Lame, lame, lame. I’m going to crash and burn. “I don’t know why you decided to tidy up before you left, but it was nice of you. Considerate.” Paul said I was hard to reach. I need to be accessible. I need to be real. Stop being such a mom. “Well, I’ve had a hell of a day. It was my first time in a police station.” Go big or go home, as they say. “I got my first lawyer, too. Yep, big day.

  “The thing is, it’s so much like TV. It’s almost like you can feel a camera on you, kind of like now, and you can imagine what the viewers at home would say. You wonder if it makes you look guilty to ask for a glass of water. Even though I’m innocent—you know that better than anyone, Marley—I kept wondering what innocent people do when they’re wrongly accused. I kept thinking about how I was supposed to act.

  “That’s not all that different from my life in general, to be honest. I’m always thinking about how I’m supposed to be. What’s pleasing to people.

  “When you were here, there were a lot of things I wanted to say and I didn’t because I thought I was supposed to be a certain kind of mother. I was supposed to be loving and supportive and I wasn’t supposed to make you worry about me or about my marriage. I never wanted to be like my mom, always complaining about her problems, asking my own kid to feel sorry for me. Above all, I never wanted you to worry.”

  Two minutes in, and here come the tears. Be strong enough to stay honest, that’s all I can do.

  “But I spend my whole life worrying. It’s exhausting. And that’s where the pills came in. At first, I just mentioned to Michael that I had a panic attack, and he wanted to help. In retrospect, it wasn’t a good idea for either of us, but that’s how it happened.” Am I incriminating myself? Incriminating him? For once, I’m not going to worry about it. “He’s a doctor, and he knew that I had an anxiety disorder. I’ve had it my whole life. It didn’t seem like we were doing anything wrong.” That’s true. I’m not going to say one thing that isn’t true tonight. “That’s how it started, with the panic attack, but then I started taking the pills for other reasons. I took them because I felt tense so often, and with the pills, I got to feel different. More relaxed. Not worried every minute of the day. God, it was such a relief. You have no idea.

  “My whole life, I’ve worried that something big would go wrong. I thought I couldn’t handle it. I’d break apart. And now you’re gone, and there’s nothing bigger that could ever go wrong. I’ve broken apart sometimes, but for the moment, I’m okay. I’m here with you.”

  I wipe at my tears. I really am okay. “I haven’t taken any pills for the past six hours. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s big for me. And it’s the truth. I’m not lying to you anymore, Marley. Never again.”

  Where do I go now? I was planning to talk all night, talk until Marley had to come home just to shut me up, and I’m already running out of material.

  I look around for inspiration. “The thing about your room, Marley, is that it doesn’t say anything about you. Your old room did. But since we moved, you didn’t put anything on the walls. I think that was a sign. I think you were trying to tell me something was wrong. I didn’t pay enough attention or look deeply enough. I didn’t ask enough questions.

  “Part of that was the pills. They kept me from thinking too hard. That’s no excuse, though. I let you down. So I’m sorry about that.” I pick up Bernard and cradle him in my arms. “And I’m really sorry that it came out in the press conference that you’d worked with Dr. Michael. I’m sorry you’re getting so exposed, right along with me. It should be your choice whether to share that. But I hope you don’t feel ashamed about it in any way. You should be proud. You worked so hard with Dr. Michael, and you were able to make yourself better. You did the work, while I just took pills. You should know I’m really proud of you for that.

  “I’ve spent so much time thinking about where you are and why you might have left and it’s this rabbit hole. I don’t get anywhere. I think you might have had a boyfriend that you never told me about, and you’re with him. I’ve asked your old friends but they don’t know who he might be.

  “If you’re with him right now, I hope he’s treating you right. I hope you won’t accept anything less. I’ve accepted less sometimes in my life. Your dad, though—he’s . . . I’ll tell you a little story. If you’ve been following the coverage for a while, then you know I’ve been a public relations disaster. There was this morning show interview, and then everything went haywire at the press conference earlier. Your father is great at all that stuff, of course. A total natural. You and I both know how he likes to be in charge.

  “But when I told him that I wanted to do this—that I was going to sit here and talk all night, no script, no PR people to advise me—he set up the camera and left.” I smile, remembering his rah-rah gesture. “He can be sweet, your father. Sometimes I forget that. I don’t know if you get to see it enough.”

  I lean into the camera, ignoring the magnifying effect on my crow’s-feet. “I should have worked harder on my marriage, because you were watching. That’s your model for how relationships are, and your dad and I could have been better models.”

  I’m surprised to find how much I’m warming to this medium. I like monologue. I’ve spent so many years repressing and representing that it feels good to let go. My day at the police station has apparently rid me of my inhibitions. Which reminds me of Strickland. Is he watching right now? What about Michael? Well, I’m not talking to either of them. This is between Marley and me.

  “When Dad and I said in the press conference that we’re going to work harder, he was telling the truth. It wasn’t just PR. To be honest, I didn’t know that for sure until a little while ago. Your father does put a lot of effort into managing his image. But then, I do, too. It’s just that he’s done a much better job.” I bet the trolls are going to have a field day with this little tangent. I can’t worry about that. “Anyway, he meant it, and I mean it, too. We’re going to try. Not that that’s any guarantee. Because obviously, I’ve been more unhappy than I’ve wanted to let on, more unhappy than I wanted to admit to myself.”

  I actually hope Michael is watching. I’d like him to see that he’s wrong about Paul, though I don’t know if he’d ever admit it.

  I don’t know how to feel about Michael. He did try to help Marley and me. But I’m not sure what constitutes help anymore. He showed me love and compassion, but since he’s been in my life, I’ve actually felt less confident than ever.

>   He made Marley feel better about herself, though, didn’t he? She seemed happier after treatment. But still, his methods, what he said about Paul, how he “validated Marley’s reality” . . .

  I take a deep breath. “Sorry I drifted off there,” I say. “I was about to tell you about Dr. Michael and where he comes in. Your father and I were not in a good place. I can’t blame Michael for that, or for my choices. He made me realize some uncomfortable things, things I wanted to run away from, and that could be where the pills came in, too. I don’t exactly know.

  “But I know that when you asked me if I could imagine a life without your father, I lied. I told you no. I should have trusted that you’re old enough to hear the truth, as complicated as it is. Because you didn’t believe me anyway, did you? I’ve been trying to seem happy, and failing.” I sit back and brush the hair from my shoulders. “No wonder you wanted to get out of here. It wasn’t a very happy place to be, and it wasn’t a very honest place, either. But that’s all going to change. I promise you that.”

  I want to say more in Paul’s defense, to try to undo what I fear Michael might have done. I’ll do that later. I don’t want to overwhelm her. But she deserves a chance to see this new side of her father, the side that Michael never predicted.

  I’m not used to talking about myself, not to Marley. Where do I go now? How do I fill our time together?

  It’s a stretch, but I tell Marley, “Hold on. I’ll be back in a second.” I return with my iPod. “I call this my ‘Teen Angst’ playlist.” I feel a little self-conscious, which is something I should have been feeling for the last twenty minutes. Somehow, it seems more revealing to go back to my teenage self, though it also seems right.

  The music starts. The guitars are loud and furious, the vocals more like screams. “This is what I listened to when I was in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I still don’t. This was what I felt inside, while outside, I was doing everything I was supposed to. I didn’t want to give my mother any problems. For one thing, if I had, I would have had to listen to her: ‘Like I need this! Lord, what did I ever do to You to have a daughter like this?’ It seemed easier to do what I was supposed to, and listen to my music, and fantasize.