by Karen Ellis
She settles herself into the driver’s seat and watches him walk toward the house, the open door, the mother and the son, and almost jumps out of the car to run and join him despite their agreement. His argument that she should peel off until he needs her again is logical, humane even—she’s moved by his sensitivity in understanding what’s going on with her father—but a kid is missing, and stepping back feels wrong.
About to push open the door, she remembers how her sister once accused her of being “codependent, controlling.” A harsh thing to say, Elsa thought at the time (and definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black), but probably accurate. Detective Lex Cole is a grown man and a seasoned investigator; the truth is, he doesn’t need her supervision, not at this stage.
He turns, catches her eye, waves.
She wills herself to stick with their plan, starts the motor, and drives away.
It’s fifteen minutes from Forest Hills to Ozone Park and the house where Elsa grew up. The Whitelaw Street clapboard with its gambrel roof and arched entrance is in need of fresh paint, and the bushes separating it from the sidewalk have grown spiky and full, showing the neglect of Roy’s absence. Her late mother’s once-lush garden was long ago reduced to grass that her father could easily maintain by mowing it every other week, grass now decimated by thirst and heat. How quickly an empty house returns to the wild, Elsa thinks, annoyed that a car is blocking the driveway, forcing her to continue around the corner to find parking on the next block.
She walks the long way, in the opposite direction, unable to resist the chance to stop in at the corner store and see if Mr. Abramowitz is still there. He ran it every day of the week all through her childhood, and as soon as she started going back and forth to school on her own, she would stop by in the afternoons. Mr. A. would chat with her and anyone else who happened to be there. The red sign read DELI but it was unlike any city delicatessen she ever knew, then or now. Along with the usual sliced meats and hot drinks were toys and flowers and random electronic accessories, books and coffee mugs and bags of the potpourri that Mrs. A. used to make at the back of the store. Mr. A. hated the smell of the potpourri and would cover it by burning incense. The place had a unique smell, an olfactory dissonance made stranger by the chalky odor from the white seams of boric acid that ran between the floors and walls in the never-ending battle against cockroaches. Elsa hasn’t stepped foot in the corner deli for almost twenty years.
The door swings open with the same old ding, and the air is still lush with the weird patchouli of this place. The shelves are packed with familiar miscellany. Even the linoleum floor is as it was decades ago, only more stained and cracked. She expects to see either Mr. or Mrs. A. behind the counter, locked in time, but of course neither one is there. They had to be in their sixties when Elsa graduated high school. Instead, a young Korean man smiles and nods in greeting.
“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Elsa says.
The man smiles and nods again.
“Mr. and Mrs. Abramowitz?” she tries.
“Ah, yes, we buy from them. Three, four years.” Ago, he means. The business must have been thriving, since the new owners don’t seem to have changed anything. That, or they’re too cheap to restock until the shelves have emptied on their own.
Elsa peruses the offerings tiered at the front of the counter and reflexively chooses her favorite childhood treat, a small bag of corn chips. The door dings and eases closed behind her. Walking toward home, she rips open the package, pops a chip into her mouth, and is overpowered by the foul taste of rancid oil. She spits into a napkin and tosses it all into the nearest garbage can, suddenly uneasy about the presumptions that both kept her away for so long and brought her back now.
All the windows are dark. She walks up the driveway along the left of the house to the rear of the lot, where she and Tara used to abandon their bicycles on their sides, race past Deb’s gardens, and run through the back door directly into the kitchen. If their mother, who was a teacher, was home before them they would likely find her starting an early dinner, organizing ingredients, often sautéing onions in oil and infusing the downstairs with a rich aroma. Elsa was rarely hungry for her mother’s cooking, though, and would escape upstairs to her room. It was Tara who would linger.
She crosses the overgrown back lawn and tries her key in the kitchen door, not surprised that it no longer works. The yellow curtain, now faded, that her mother had hung on the glass half of the door is still there, obstructing any view in. Elsa goes around to the side of the house, hoping that her father never fixed the gimpy old window lock that used to allow her and Tara to climb in late at night when they were teenagers. She slides her fingers under the bottom of the wooden frame, pushes up, and hears the telltale pop. The window eases open—and Elsa is shocked by what she sees.
The interior of the living room has been effectively demolished. The dining room and the kitchen, also demoed—there’s nothing left of the room where her mother was killed. Bookshelves and kitchen cabinets are gone, doors ripped off their hinges; the wallpaper is hanging in shreds. The new owners have come in early. Without a permit from the buildings department they shouldn’t have done any work, and they couldn’t have gotten a permit this fast, but apparently they didn’t let it stop them. Elsa’s insides rumble. A lump rises into her throat as she mounts the stairs.
On the second floor, where the three bedrooms bloom off a single short hallway, nothing has yet been touched.
The brown wall-to-wall carpeting, worn thin in places.
The single bathroom the family used to take turns using.
The master bedroom, now empty, looks too small for her parents’ queen-size bed and double dresser.
Tara’s room; smaller than Elsa’s, because she was younger. The pale pink color she chose when she was little still evident where posters were ripped down, otherwise faded to almost white.
At the far end of the hall, Elsa’s room. Blue. In place of the paper lantern that used to cast light from the middle of the ceiling, a bare bulb now dangles from a cord. On the wall above where her desk once stood, a bright rectangle surrounded by faded paint reminds her of the name sign she made in art class when she was nine: ELSA in hand-carved wood letters glued to a board, each letter a different color—red, orange, green, purple. Her closet door hangs open, spilling shadows; she can smell the sharp mustiness of the enclosed space from across the room. She kicks the door shut. The familiar snap as the latch closes triggers a feeling of dread. She turns away.
3
Elsa has to blink away tears to clear her vision, she’s laughing so hard at the David Sedaris download that has entertained her en route back to Sleepy Hollow. Interstate 87 flows steadily northward. In the silence following the comedy, the preoccupations she’s depended on Sedaris to help her avoid come tumbling into the front of her mind.
The lingering taste of that rancid corn chip, and her disappointment at never having said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. A.
The state of the house. Agitation twists; she still doesn’t feel finished there.
And Ruby, especially Ruby. She can’t stop picturing how carefree the girl looked in the moments before she vanished.
How improbable and painful it is that someone at the center of one’s life would suddenly not be there anymore.
The different ways people go missing all the time. From their own lives. From their families.
Her father. Dying. How one day soon he’ll also be gone. The reality of that, coming at her like a hungry demon.
Memories of her mother’s murder, when Elsa was sixteen, still raw as the cookie dough seamed under her fingernails (because she had to make those cookies for her father, she couldn’t refuse him). The hollowness of the kitchen in the moments when Deb lay, suddenly, dead. The headline that appeared every day—“Home Invasion in Queens”—until it finally petered out and became an annual rite in which the cold case was revisited in print, although eventually even that ended.
Elsa had plann
ed to stop at a Mexican bakery and buy some almond cookies to bring to the hospital, but after leaving Whitelaw Street it gnawed at her, her father’s wish to taste his late wife’s recipe one last time. And so she made another detour, home to Brooklyn, and stopped at the grocery store to pick up the ingredients her phone had snared online: flour, butter, raw almonds, vanilla, powdered sugar. Cinnamon, also, since her mother and, later, Tara always added that. Elsa already had salt. Just salt. She never baked; that was Tara’s thing. Their mother had been an excellent baker. Elsa couldn’t stand the taste or even the smell of the butterballs but this was something she could do for her father, one last thing.
So she’d heated up her oven and poured almonds onto her kitchen counter and pounded them with a hammer until they were nearly dust. Tara always pulverized them in a food processor but Elsa didn’t have domestic tools like that because she didn’t need them; she worked, mostly just worked, pretty much all the time. As she kneaded the thick dough with her hands, she heard an echo of her mother’s voice: Elsa! Do you think you can hide from me? The salty-sweet buttery smell grew nauseating as Elsa rolled ten little orbs in the palms of her sticky hands and arranged them on the piece of aluminum foil that would serve as a cookie sheet. In the bathroom, she retched into the toilet, but nothing came up. While the cookies baked, she threw away the remaining dough and tossed the dirty bowls into the sink. Then she dusted those ten little almond time bombs with powdered sugar, zipped them into a plastic bag, put them in the trunk of her car where the smell couldn’t reach her, and headed upstate.
Driving now, thoughts spinning.
Afternoon, flying past.
The air, growing chillier.
Solitude, that gaping throat, swallowing her.
She turns on the radio and listens to a report about the search for Ruby: how on a quiet street in Queens, friends and neighbors are gathering; how social media is spreading the word and now strangers are arriving to help, followed in short order by the real media, the tech-muscled press corps; how, with the news triggered by the Amber Alert going viral, the search party is growing exponentially from a makeshift headquarters at the family home. It troubles Elsa to think that, as she speeds away from Ruby’s disappearance, others speed toward it. Now that she’s involved in the case, she feels guilty about the extent to which she’s allowed herself to become distracted by her personal concerns. But she isn’t going far, she won’t be gone long, and her phone is always with her. Even so, maybe Lex Cole is right. Maybe she should take a leave of absence. Be there for her father. Conduct her personal quests on her own time, not stuck into the margins of a case. Yes, she probably should. But the thought of it makes her mind go numb and she reaches the same conclusion: not yet.
Eventually she finds herself alone on the road. She accelerates past the poky speed limit of fifty-five until she’s sailing at eighty. She can not-think better in the quiet of this fast pace. She opens her window all the way, the fresh air invigorating against what little of her skin is exposed. Drives faster. Eighty-five. Ninety. When the car begins to shake, she slows to seventy-five and holds it there the rest of the way.
The wide hallway on the fifth-floor oncology ward is empty except for an unfamiliar nurse wheeling her well-stocked cart out of a patient’s room on the right side. Elsa makes a point of not looking in; here, every open door is a view into someone’s possibly terminal illness, a cliff overlooking a personal abyss, and the breach of privacy feels almost obscene. When she’s halfway down the hall, a movement draws her attention to one of the utilitarian rooms on the left—the kitchen, where someone is foraging in the common refrigerator.
The fridge door swings closed, and there is her younger sister, Tara.
“You look terrible,” Elsa greets her.
“Thanks.” The sisters embrace. But it’s true: Tara—who is profitably divorced, doesn’t work, and is the mother of sixteen-year-old Mel—looks pale, her highlighted hair matted, purple bags under her eyes. Her gray cashmere sweater is buttoned all the way up against the chill hospital air, an extra layer that Elsa doesn’t need with her long sleeves.
Elsa asks, “How’s Dad doing?”
“Not great. He just woke up and he’s hungry.”
“Did he eat his meals?”
“Nope. I’m looking for a snack.”
Elsa pulls the bag of cookies out of her purse. “Look no more.”
“You made those? You?”
“Dad asked for some, and you were already on the road, so…”
“Will wonders never cease.”
“Mel here?”
Tara sighs. “She was, but I dropped her back at the hotel so she could have an early night. Guess what I found out yesterday? She has to start summer school—tomorrow.”
“What?”
“She failed Algebra Two. I can’t believe it. How am I going to deal with this right now? I can’t be in two places at once.”
“They didn’t give you much notice.”
“Mel knew this was coming, she just didn’t tell me, and my mind was on Dad. And of course Lars is out of town, so—”
“Don’t worry.” Elsa slings an arm around Tara’s shoulders. “Mel can stay with me as long as she needs to, okay?”
“You’re a lifesaver, sister.” Tara manages a weary smile. “They’re letting her take a night course that only meets a couple times a week. It’s part of a pilot program some of the independent schools are trying out with a handful of kids, letting them take night classes instead of having them do full-time summer school. So at least she can come and go between here and the city. Which is something. Can you spend the night?”
“Unless I get summoned back to the case Marco stuck me on today.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Let’s go see Dad.”
The light is off and the shade is drawn, immersing the private room in a dim haze. Roy half sits, cockeyed and frail, against a stack of pillows.
“Look what I brought you.” Elsa plucks a tissue from the bedside box and places two cookies on it. She swivels the tray in front of her father and then leans in for a kiss. His cheek feels thin and cool.
“Did you make these?”
“That’s exactly what Tara asked. Do you guys actually think I’m not capable of baking cookies?”
“You’re capable of doing whatever you want.” Exactly what he’d argued years ago when he hoped she’d choose just about any profession other than cop. He couldn’t understand why she wanted to do it so badly—no one on either side of her family had ever been police—and she was unable to explain it to him adequately. She’d felt restless. Something important yet vague needed doing and she wanted to do it. Or maybe it was just another impulse toward control; the uniform of her early years, the gun, buttoned up tight and always prepared.
Roy’s spindly fingers lift a butterball to his mouth and powdered sugar rains onto his blanket, his neck, his chin. He closes his eyes while he takes the first bite. Elsa watches his eyelids quiver and wonders what this means to him, exactly. Is he imagining her—Deb, his wife, the mother of his children? Tumbling backward into remembrances of a life that packed love in right beside some serious wallops? What is it like to face death? To stand on the brink of what will be your final days?
She recalls her mother on her last day, still vibrantly alive until the very moment that death took her. The panic in her eyes. The disbelief. Elsa inhales a sharp breath to plug the memory and turns away to see her sister slinging her big purse over her shoulder.
Tara says, “Call me if you need me to come back, okay?”
“You’re leaving?”
“Since you’re here now. And Mel’s alone at the hotel. Do you mind?”
Elsa looks at Roy, still savoring that first taste, and realizes that no, she doesn’t mind. In fact, she prefers it. What if this turns out to be their last chance to be alone together? Every opportunity has to be seized.
“If you don’t hear from me,” Elsa tells her sister, “go ahead and sleep in
tomorrow.”
“I won’t be able to, but thanks.” Tara pauses in the doorway to blow them both a kiss.
Elsa pulls a chair close to the bed, and Roy gestures at the remaining cookie, offering it to her, but then checks himself. “You’ve never cared for these.”
“Nope.”
“Thank you.” His hand crawls through the air until she catches it in hers. She squeezes lightly, not wanting to crush him. “You didn’t have to, you know.”
“You asked.”
“All my desires these days are rhetorical.” He smiles.
“Well, they don’t all have to be, Dad. This was easy.”
“There’s something I need to say to you.” He struggles to right himself against his stack of pillows. Elsa leans in to rearrange them behind his head. “I’m sorry.”
She listens.
“I don’t think there’s a parent alive who doesn’t have mistakes he regrets.”
An uncomfortable feeling tries to push itself to the surface and she forces it back. “Dad.” She doesn’t know what to say, not at this point, when it’s effectively too late to change anything. “You did what you could. What you had to.”
“It’s just…” He blinks. “You’ve spent your whole life trying to outrun your childhood. You can stop now. Especially with the house sold, there’s no need to look back. Let it go.”
“The new owners already started demolition.” Anxiety rising, she struggles to control the pitch of her voice.
“So soon?”
“The entire downstairs is basically gone.”
Heat blossoms on his cheeks, color spreading back to his ears, up to his pale receding hairline. “This is what I mean, Elsa. When I’m gone, all of it goes with me. All those difficult memories. There’s no need to go back there now.”
“But Dad—”
“I always took care of you, didn’t I?”