“You look cold,” Tom said.
I shrugged and looked him in the eye. “I’m not cold here.”
“Oh,” he said, looking down. He looked up and smiled a little. I saw it in his eyes then, the pity. I don’t know how I’d missed it in the first place, as clear and shining as it was. I could see everything now.
I said, “I’m not what people say. I’m not crazy.”
He shook his head. “No.”
Tell him, I thought. Tell him about the car. About the coat. Ask for his advice.
Instead, I lifted my chin and pointed at my cheek. “What does this look like to you? What do you see in it?”
Say the world, I thought. Say you see the world.
“Stevie,” he said, “are you okay?”
“I’m asking you what you see,” I said. “Do you see me at all?”
“I see you fine,” he said. “I think you look fine. But I think you better go home now. You need to take care of yourself.”
I said, “I’m going.” I hiked up my bra strap. For no reason—or maybe because I was thinking of that woman on the wall with the suitcase at her feet—I said, “In fact, I’m leaving town today. This’ll be the last time you see me.”
For a second, I hoped he would say, No, wait, or, I’ll come with you, but he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
My nose started to run, and I wiped it on my wrist. I was angry at myself and terrified of what I knew, of that coat under my bed, and of you, still missing. I pointed at his seahorse scar. “God. What happened to your face?”
He looked down at the counter. “Go on now, Stevie,” he said.
“That’s not my name,” I said.
He said, “Go on.”
As I walked out the exit, I saw the first missing poster. There you were, fluttering in the breeze, invisible tape across your perfect cheek.
I sat shivering in my car in the HealthCo parking lot for I don’t know how long. When the sun hit the horizon, I sat straight up and stared at the colors, which hovered and bled and shifted. I thought of the colors on my wall, that low canyon. I recognized it then, the gouge in the earth. I had seen it. It was real.
I drove to the old lake and stepped out to its emptiness. There was the gash at the bottom, the same one on the wall of my room. I looked at all the exposed cracked dirt in the bowl of the lake, and I wanted to protect it somehow, keep it safe, make it beautiful. The rocks and patterns took shape behind my eyes. I climbed down into the basin and started at the center. At the heart, and moving outward. That day I placed three stones. One for each day I didn’t tell. One for each day I didn’t chase after you. One for each day the red coat beat under my bed, poetic in its telltale fervency. One for each day I wish I’d known what to say to make it okay, to make you stay, to drive you home to safety. And I’ve placed one every day since. Marking the days: 6,669 as of last week, from the day we got the news. Circling, circling, feeling my heart expand even as I continue to live small.
It’s a terrible truth that I found my art when we lost you. I made the lake, with its 6,669 stones. I painted every room in the motel with its own themed mural: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Sunrise, Sunset. I painted the doors in bright citrus hues, restored vintage metal porch furniture, updated curtains and bedding to make each room its own. I turned my car into a mosaic, with bottle caps and wine corks and shards of colored glass. In “The Best of Indie Motels” in the latest Arizona Highways, there’s me, standing atop the motel in the rooftop garden, with a streak of purple dye in my hair, my whole face exposed to the world.
That painting in my room has faded in the last few years, its colors grown softer, less luminous, but it is still there. Still that woman stands on the precipice, looking into the distance. Is she you? Or me? I have never been sure what I intended. What does she see out there in the burning sky? What is she waiting for?
Today, I grab a felt-tip pen and sign my name in the lower right corner of the wall, near the woman’s foot. Prentiss. I haven’t called myself that in years. Not since the day I made this painting. Only Father Tom still calls me that. The pharmacist turned priest, the man who I believed saw me for the first time, who sees me now at the grocery store and waves, kindly, because he was always kind.
But it was you who saw me first.
Today, I see something else in the painting. This time, the woman does not look past the sky at the distance but sees herself inside the distance. A place where old dreams and desires rise.
I watch the woman on the wall. I see myself letting go of the wheelbarrow that strains my back, whose handles leave deep marks and splinters in my palms. I see myself letting go of the rocks I carry so carefully in the curves of my arms. I stop marking the days. I stop trying to cover the injured earth. Stop trying to save it, transform it, make it beautiful again. I see myself turn away from the edge. I see myself turn toward a new horizon.
Go on, Father Tom said to me that day.
Maybe I can. Maybe I can go now.
Thank You for Calling
Maud waited. For the first time in years, she took vacation, letting a sub cover her route. For the first time in years, Maud hadn’t wanted to keep moving. She wanted to keep still. For two weeks now, she had stayed on the sofa. She sat, reclined, lay down flat. She rose to use the bathroom and to get snacks from one of the many containers people had dropped off, but mostly she stayed still. She slept, on and off, kicking her blanket on and off. She watched television. She watched the walls. She watched her hands and feet. She watched the driveway, waiting for Gil Alvarez to arrive with the news. She watched the clouds, the mailbox, the oil stain under her sedan. She watched the window itself, where the husk of an insect hung from a spiderweb in the corner. The same window where she’d watched and waited on the last night.
That night, she’d woken with a start, groggy, the room gray and dim, the sky nearly dark. 5:10 p.m., the stove clock read. The hard rain had turned to a drizzle. She found Jess’s note and sat on the couch with a sigh. Frustration tinged with relief. At least she’d left a note this time. Her headstrong, independent girl. Tomorrow, they’d go get a Christmas tree. Pull out the decorations buried somewhere in the storage shed. She still needed to buy presents. She’d been too upset and distracted to shop. Maud flipped the porch light on, and then she took a shower to shake off the bleariness and chill in her bones. She even took time to diffuse her hair with the blow-dryer.
At six thirty, she put out fixings for their dinner. Grilled cheese and tomato soup: warm food for a rainy night. She dumped the soup in a pan and put it on the stove to simmer. She slapped thick slices of cheddar between the bread, buttered one side—extra butter for Jess’s sandwich. She checked the window. The rain was a mist now, seeming to float rather than fall. She held her elbows. Almost two hours. She should be home now. Her stomach began to flutter with worry, even as she told herself, Come on, Maudly. She’s fine. She’s a smart kid. Out for a walk. Maybe she’s with a friend.
Except Jess didn’t have any friends. Not now.
At seven, she began to make calls. She called the Patty Melt, but it had already closed. She called Hector Juarez. No, Jess wasn’t with Angie. Angie and her friend Rose were there, watching a movie. Wait, Rose had seen her earlier. At the Patty Melt. She’d come in for fries. Around five. Maud called Esther. No, Esther hadn’t heard from her—she’d call if she did, and she’d call and check back. Maud called Iris. No, Jess hadn’t been to the orchard. She’d keep an eye out and call if she saw her.
Around seven thirty, Maud turned off the burner under the soup, covered the buttered bread and cheese with foil. She grabbed her keys. The flutters in her stomach had turned to clenching, even as she assured herself she was being overprotective, paranoid, worried for nothing. Any second Jess would walk in the door. She left her own note: “J-bird: went out to look for you. Worried, dang it. Stay put.”
She drove the short way to town, down Roadrunner to Quail Run instead of her normal route, the longer
back way that would dump her out on the other side of the District near the post office, avoiding campus traffic. Coming up on a low dip in the road, she stepped on the brakes as her headlights showed a slash of water in the road. She turned on her high beams. The stream was low and running slow, more mud than water. Must have been rushing through at some point but then slowed once the rain let up. That was the way of flash floods: come in a flash, gone in a flash. She let off the brake and drove across it at good speed, the tires splashing but firm on the pavement.
In town, she drove slowly through the puddled streets, wrapping her arms around the steering wheel and peering through the windshield. No one out walking. She drove onto the high school campus, onto the Syc campus, turned around in the Woodchute’s parking lot, deserted but for one car. She stopped at the Pickaxe, even though Jess wouldn’t have been allowed in. Neither the bartender or any of the three people nursing drinks had seen her. She stopped in the one fast-food restaurant open near the highway. No one there had seen her, either. She drove through the neighborhoods. She stopped in front of the Newells’. No porch light. No Christmas lights. Dark house. No sense in knocking on that door.
Back home, she flew inside and called out Jess’s name. No answer.
No blinking button on the answering machine, but she pushed play anyway. No messages.
She waited until midnight, Jess’s official curfew, to call the police. Seven hours after she went out, five hours after she said she’d be home.
At midnight, she opened the front door and stood on the threshold, calling her daughter’s name.
No answer.
No answer ever again.
As she waited, sometimes she answered the telephone, which had been ringing like gangbusters. She told the callers, No, thank you, I’m fine. I appreciate that. No, I don’t need anything. Thank you for calling. She told the newspaper, No comment. When Gil called with updates about what stage the forensic anthropologists had reached, she listened and said, I see, and, Okay, good to know. She told him, I appreciate it, Gil. Thanks for calling. Sometimes she held the phone up to her bad ear so all she could hear was the vibration of voices against her cheek. She thought about the calls she’d made that long-ago night, the calls she’d received from Esther and Iris and Hector, checking in. She thought about how phone calls themselves had changed: caller ID, voice mail, ringtones, cell phones that fit into front pockets. She thought about the bulky answering machine and its tin-can message. You know what to do, so do it. Maud did know. She waited.
About the waiting, people said, This must be so hard, but after eighteen years, a few more days were a drop in the bucket. She’d been through it before. Whenever bodies were found in Arizona, or across the United States, Jess’s file came up in the Missing Persons database. Most of the first tests ruled her out—the timing, the sex, the age. One time, Maud did have to look at the objects of a young female victim to see if she could identify them. A necklace with a gold half-heart. Jess would never have worn such a thing. No, the hard part had already happened: the years of not knowing even though, deep down, she knew. The years of hoping, of imagining otherwise, despite every intuition to the contrary. Hope: humans’ greatest strength and their greatest flaw. Hope had saved her, but it also kept her in limbo, kept her from moving forward. Kept her right here, waiting.
This time, Maud wasn’t really waiting. She already knew. She knew the moment she kneeled in the dry wash with Gil and saw the bone protruding from the earth, and again when she returned and walked through the wash. Some part of her had always known. The part of her that knew the sun would rise and set each day, perhaps, or the part that understood the earth was spinning on its axis even though she couldn’t see it spinning, couldn’t feel it move at such stunning speed.
Jess wouldn’t have run. Maud had always known that. Of course she would be nearby.
Gil had said they couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to identify the body. He noted how much time had passed, the harsh sun and hard rains, mineral and acid levels, the tendency of animals to dig and scatter bones. He’d raked his fingers through his hair and said, “We don’t know if we’ll find answers, Maud.” He’d reached out and touched her shoulder in his calm way.
Maud had her answer, whatever the tests revealed. It was what she had known all along.
Jess wouldn’t have run.
The phone rang again. Again, she said, Yes, no, I appreciate it, thank you, thank you so much for calling. She ate a blueberry muffin from the box Esther had dropped off. She watched the monsoon clouds gather on the horizon. Afternoon already. The clouds looked weaker now, here in late August. The monsoon would fizzle soon, and the sky would dry out like a cotton sheet on a line. Come September, it’d be blue for weeks.
She heard the mail truck before she saw it; even with her ears, she knew the low stop-and-go hum. She went outside and waved at Luz Navarro behind the wheel. Luz stopped and called out, “Hey, mamí, how are you? How you holding up?”
“Fine, Luz, thanks for asking. I’m all right.”
“We’re all thinking about you. My mom’s got you in her prayer circle, for what it’s worth,” she said. “Father Tom, too.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Let us know if you need anything.”
“Thanks. I will.” Thank you for calling.
In the mailbox, mixed with bills and mailers, she found “Thinking of You” cards from co-workers and folks on her route. Soon, her box would be flooded with “In Sympathy” cards, her doorstep busy with flower deliveries. She knew this, too. She already knew.
The phone rang again. Maud picked up, but no one responded.
“Hello? Anyone there?” she said.
She was about to hang up when someone spoke.
“Is this Maud?” A man’s voice.
“Who’s asking?”
After a pause, the man said, “Adam Newell.” He paused again. “Please don’t hang up.”
She didn’t say anything at first, but then she sighed. “I guess I’ve been waiting for this. I guess I knew you’d call again eventually.”
“I’ve tried. Many times.”
“I know. What do you want?”
“I promise I won’t call again. I promise I’ll let you be after this. But I’ve been wondering something, and I need to ask you. I need to know the answer. Okay?”
“Ask,” Maud said.
He sighed. “She ran away because of me, right? Because of what I did?”
Maud held the phone away from her ear. She looked at the holes in the receiver and then out the window. She stared at a dark cluster of clouds. The sky had been darker that long-ago afternoon. She’d been sitting on this same sofa.
“Maud? Hello?”
“I’m here.”
When he finally spoke, his voice had grown soft, barely audible. “It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault. I just wanted to tell you.”
She nodded in the stillness of her living room.
“Maud?”
“Here.”
His voice sounded shaky, thin. “I know it’s not enough to say I’m sorry. I know that, too.”
Maud said, “She didn’t run away.”
“I don’t understand. She ran off.”
“No. She went out, but she was coming back. She left a note, remember?” Maud didn’t need to look at the slip of paper she’d taped in the notebook. She recited it from memory. “ ‘I’m going out for a walk. I need to clear my head. I’ll be back in a couple hours. Don’t worry. Love, J-bird.’ ”
“I know.” He paused and then let out a hard breath. “But I assumed she changed her mind.”
“That’s like you. To assume.”
“I’m saying I’m the reason she changed her mind. I’m trying to say something here.”
Maud said, “No. She didn’t change her mind. She wasn’t running away. She went out for a walk. That was the plan. Back in a couple hours. She was coming home. To me, not to you.”
He didn’t answer. The silence
strung across the line.
Finally, he said, “I wish you’d talked to me about it. I wish you’d told me more.”
“I’m sorry, do you think I owe you something? Do you think I owe you explanations?”
He raised his voice. “I wish you talked to me,” he said. “Jesus Christ. All this time, I believed she’d run away.”
“Fuck you, Adam. She was running. Emotionally, anyway. She couldn’t sit still because of what you did.” She dropped her head onto the sofa cushion.
He breathed on the line.
Maud grabbed one of the muffins from the box and squeezed it until it squished out between her fingers. She thumped the cushion, smearing crumbs and grease on the fabric.
“I was asleep,” she said. “When she left. I had no idea she’d go outside. Why in the world would she? I woke up, and I wasn’t even worried at first. Exasperated, maybe. You know what I thought? I thought, Tomorrow, we’ll go get a Christmas tree. We’ll get a tree and we’ll decorate it. We’ll get out all the decorations! All of them!” She realized she was yelling, and she stopped.
“It’s not—”
“Don’t say it,” she said. “Don’t you say another word.”
His voice cracked. “But it’s not your fault, Maud.”
“Of course it’s not.” But of course it was. Deep in her heart, she’d always known the truth, even when she couldn’t look at it in the face. She was the mother. She’d failed to protect her. She’d failed to do the bare minimum: be awake. She wanted to yell, No, it’s your fault, because it was, ultimately, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“Maud, I loved her,” he said.
“No, I loved her,” she said. “I did.”
“Can’t it be both?” he said. “Can we both have loved her?”
Loved. Past tense.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Maud, wait. Please. I know I have no right to ask this. I know I don’t.”
She tightened her grip on the phone. “Say it,” she said.
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