“He wanted you, too,” Lily said.
The other woman stiffened slightly. “That’s a revision. If he’s told you that, he’s telling you something he revised. And maybe he doesn’t—maybe he isn’t aware of the fact himself. I mean, he was only five. But he would’ve pined for his father.”
“I’m afraid,” Lily broke out.
“I am, too,” said Millicent. “Welcome to parenthood.”
Lily wiped the tears from her cheeks with the handkerchief.
“Look,” Millicent said. “There’s some trouble between you two, as a couple—and you’re not telling me all of it. I understand if it’s private, but I can’t very well give you advice without knowing more than that he’s—that you’re having a bad morning.”
They both looked at Mary where she slept on her stomach, in the bassinet. The gray, rainy light from the window gave a faint bluish cast to her hands and face.
“He has his father in him,” Millicent went on, “I’ve seen that a little. I have seen that. Geoffrey wasn’t exactly conscious of it all, you know—but that man was capable of the most vicious sweetness. That’s the only way I can describe it. He was very successful at containing his anger about something, but it would come out anyway in acts of noble mercy, gestures of his—his enduring tolerance of you, his willingness to overlook your many weaknesses. It drove me nearly insane.” She sighed. “Then I met Buddy, who had a wonderful way of being—you know how he was—he had a way of being, well, uncomplicatedly interested in me. At first, he was just friendly. That’s the truth. A nice man with a kind of—I don’t know—a—a kindly sincerity about him. I’d been far more comfortable in his company for such a long time before I realized what it was. I could—breathe with him. I could be myself, with all my little strangenesses, and faults, and peccadilloes, and with Buddy they didn’t require forgiving, any more than a summer shower requires it. I can’t tell you how much that meant—realizing that. I was young, remember, and it was a little like finding out something wasn’t so that I’d thought was so for the whole world. You could be with someone without feeling guilty for all the little ways you fell short of perfection. Anyway, one day I was on my way to see Buddy, filled with happy anticipation, and it came to me that I wanted to be with him all the time. We hadn’t even kissed yet. And I might as well tell you that it was me who initiated things, no matter how Buddy ever told the story. And I realized I wanted him at almost the same instant as I realized that nothing I could do, or try to make myself do, would stop me from going after him. It was like being in deep water and seeing the one lifeline. To me, there wasn’t any choice.”
Sheri had come from the entrance of the kitchen. She said, “Ah, the famous deep-water lifeline story.”
“Well, darling,” Millicent said, “you might hate the story, but be thankful it happened because you wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t.”
“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, Mother. I’m just sick. As a matter of fact, I like the story. A lot. I like to hear it.”
“Rosa said to tell you she was going into town when things let up.”
“They haven’t let up, and she’s sitting in here with me. I’ve been trying to get some saltines down and talking to her between upchucks. This hangover stuff reeks.”
“Maybe you’ll think of it the next time you want to overindulge.”
“I’ll keep some of what I throw up next time, to remind me.”
“As usual, Sheri has gone over the line.”
Sheri turned and went back into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her.
Millicent looked at Lily. “Let’s not say anything to Sheri for a time. I don’t want to worry her. She has her own problems right now, of course.”
“No—right.”
“Do you want me to try and talk to Tyler?”
Lily didn’t know how to answer her.
“I don’t know what I’d say.”
Lily was at a loss. “No,” she said, finally. “Please. Don’t say anything.”
Millicent sighed. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. His father used to get in these mysterious moods and once or twice I was worried about him, now that I think of it. Sometimes—I believe that sometimes poor Geoffrey wasn’t really happy unless he was suffering. Suffering impressed him. There was something about it that made him feel as if the world had been righted again, set back on its normal track. That man wasn’t made for prosperity. Nothing upset him like success. Black Irish—you know. I think he was proud of it. Anyway. You might think of getting pregnant again. I’ve known women who had a good deal of success getting back the attention and the involvement of a husband that way.”
Lily kept still while her mother-in-law went over to adjust the blanket on the baby’s shoulders. The baby was sleeping soundly. Sheri moved in the kitchen, dishes clattering. The rain had let up now, though thunder still brawled somewhere in the distance. Lily got up to leave. She felt hopeless and sick, and her eyes were edged with tears, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. Millicent was standing there gazing at her.
“You’ll tell me what else there is, when you can,” Millicent said. “I’m not taking it lightly, even though I may seem to.”
Lily caught herself shaking her head out of pure helpless defeat. She went over to the phone and dialed the dealership. The receptionist’s voice was deep, rasping with cigarettes. She said there was a meeting of the sales force. “I’d like to speak to Tyler Harrison,” Lily told her. “It’s important.”
“One minute,” said the voice.
She waited a long time. Finally Nick’s voice came through. “I didn’t get to talk to him. He took a new demo and he told one of the other salesmen he was going home.”
“Home?”
“Jeez, Lily, I’m sorry. I didn’t even see him.”
“Nick—” Her voice broke.
“He’s probably at your place.”
She couldn’t speak.
“Millicent and Sheri are there, aren’t they? You can’t talk.”
“Millicent’s here with me. Yes. I mean, I’m at Millicent’s.”
“Well, the salesman said he seemed okay. Why don’t you go back to the house. He’s there.”
“How long?” Lily asked.
“Fifteen minutes—twenty-five. He’s at home.”
“Thanks, Nick.”
When she hung up, she saw that Millicent had crossed the room, and was standing in the watery light from the big window, back turned, mostly shadow.
“He’s at home,” Lily said.
“I know,” Millicent said, as if the trouble were solved. “Why don’t you leave Mary here?”
5
TYLER WASN’T AT HOME. And he hadn’t been home.
The house was as she had left it. She walked through the rooms, searching for any indication that he had been there. She waited at the picture window, looking out on the rain and the road, expecting him to pull in. At last she called the dealership again.
Nick said, “Maybe he was going to Millicent’s.”
She tried to call Millicent’s, but there was no answer. She tried several times. Finally she drove back. The rain had picked up again, a heavy downpour, and when she got to the entrance of the long driveway, she saw that his car was not there. She stopped, peering through the pelting rain at the veranda, the double porch, the windows. It was possible that Millicent could see her here, and would be worried. She pulled in, and made her way to the door, her arms over her head. The rain was beating down, thousands of minute splashes on the black surface of the drive. Millicent opened the door as she reached it.
“What?” she said.
Lily stepped inside, dripping wet. She heard Mary crying in the other room.
“Sheri’s rocking her,” Millicent said. “For heaven’s sake, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Lily. “He’s not at home. I thought he’d come here. I tried to call.”
“The phone’s out. This storm.” Alarm, or the strai
n of resisting it, showed in Millicent’s face now. “Look—we don’t know that anything’s happened,” she said. “Right?” And when Lily didn’t answer her, she said, again, “Right?”
“Yes,” Lily got out.
“Then let’s not jump to conclusions. He’s probably getting something to eat.”
She nodded. The storm swung rain in at them, and there was a bolt of lightning and more thunder. The lightning forked across the whole raining sky and then left a kind of imprint of itself before disappearing.
“Do you want to come in and wait it out?” Millicent said.
“I’ll be at home,” said Lily. “I’ll—I’ll go wait for him there.”
In the car, she watched the windshield wipers displace the rain, and saw the smallest sliver of sunlight in the fog-and rain-heavy horizon. At the house she went in and busied herself folding laundry, and then trying to work. But it was impossible to give any real attention to anything. The rain let up again, became a drizzle, and then a moving mist, and finally it stopped. The sun came out, pouring through a crevice in the big, massed, angry clouds beyond the trees. The crevice widened, and blue sky showed through. Every surface shimmered and sparkled with sunlight, in beads of water. The house was as quiet as thought. Nothing stirred. She waited, and listened, and the day changed to a bright, sunny, cloud-billowing breezy calm, pile upon pile of snowy canyons, making moving shadows on the whole curve of the earth and over the trees. In the sky to the east was a stupendous pair of honeyed yellow bows spanning the entire horizon, with the air between the parallel curves showing the color of a deep bruise. She watched it, and remarked it as something to say to him when he pulled in; they could both be amazed by the rainbow, and in their amazement they could forget that they were coming apart. It was a childish little fantasy that she clung to, waiting for him.
But he didn’t come. He wasn’t at the dealership. He didn’t go to his mother’s house, or to the house of a friend. The sun sank below the level of the hills, and the night drew down, clear and moon-bright. Lily drove to the Galatierre house to bring Mary home. Millicent, Sheri, Rosa, and Nick were all waiting for word. It was too early to call the police. It hadn’t been long enough, Nick said. Rosa thought she had seen Tyler in town, making the turn out of the square. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, but it had looked like Tyler, and he had seemed perfectly at ease, one arm resting in the frame of the open car window. She’d honked and waved, but had rounded the bend before she could see whether he had seen her, or responded. So they all waited.
And no word came.
By the middle of the next afternoon, they had gotten the police involved. Lily and Nick rode into town and filled out forms at the police station. And the following day, two officers came to the house. They questioned Lily about her husband’s habits, about his problems, what might cause him to leave and not come back. They were not rude, and yet she felt the questions as rude and invasive, and of course she couldn’t spell it out for them—what she knew to be the reason for everything.
6
PART OF THE HELPLESSNESS born out of the disappearance of a person is a dread that runs so deep into the psyche that the psyche recoils from it, clinging to the possibility of a return, of some sort of harmless explanation, or, if the absence becomes prolonged, of a miraculous recovery. This dread becomes indurated and leaden as despair, and causes all the symptoms of grief, because it contains the ever-growing suspicion, resisted with all the energy of the mind and heart, that the one who is missing will never be found.
By the third day, they were all expecting the worst.
Lily, between bouts of worry and anxiety, was seized by waves of anger at Tyler, a kind of floating rage, beyond reason. The anger rose up in her gullet like a fit of nausea.
Because she couldn’t do otherwise, she took the baby over to the Galatierre house in the morning, and waited with everyone. Millicent greeted her with a desperate, dazed look, though she cooed at the baby and flitted about the living room making things ready for her—putting a gate across the entrances to the kitchen and the downstairs, and laying toys around on the soft carpet. Rosa came in from the kitchen with breakfast on a tray.
“I don’t know what I thought I could eat,” Millicent said, and began to weep. Rosa took the tray back into the kitchen.
“Where’s Sheri?” Lily asked.
Millicent seemed bewildered. “Sheri?”
“Went to work,” Rosa said from the kitchen doorway. “Nick’s at the police station.”
“Oh, God,” Millicent said, wringing her hands. “God.”
Toward the middle of the morning, Nick called. The police had located the car Tyler had driven away from the dealership. It was parked by the river, under the overpass. It had been driven off the road and down the embankment. The keys were in the ignition. Apparently it had been left running; it was out of gas. There was no sign of Tyler.
“Lily,” he said, in a broken voice. “The police are talking about dragging the river.”
Lily wept, holding the handset tight, unable to believe any of it.
“Lily?” said Nick on the other end of the line. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He’s not in the river, Lily.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
“I know it, Lily.”
7
THEY ALL WAITED for more news. They lived through the hours, the hideous waiting, fearful of thought itself, anything that might lead them to contemplating the unimaginable, answerless future, with its long blank. Lily kept waiting for some change, and the pressure to reveal what the crux of Tyler’s trouble had been was becoming all but unbearable. Yet she refrained; there was always the chance that he would come home. And she understood, too, that a component of this desire to unburden herself was selfish: it would be such a relief to get it all out at last, the truth, no matter the results. Moreover, she saw how Millicent was suffering, and was fairly certain that the knowledge of Tyler’s rage and despair over patrimony would relieve the older woman’s sense of being the proximate cause of this desolation. Yet in the instant of having this thought, a disagreeable little turn of her mind told her that in very important ways Millicent was the reason for it all. If she hadn’t abandoned Tyler in his infancy, perhaps he would have been stronger. There were also signs—little comments about Tyler’s happiness, or the lack of it, in the marriage; a certain grudging tone with Lily—that Millicent held Lily responsible. And so Lily felt the resolve rise in her: if Tyler was in the river, she would bear their secret to the grave for him.
She understood full well the trap she was in: it had been only three days. Tyler might simply be trying to punish her, and if she told them everything and he returned, things might end up even worse. Mixed with her fear that he had harmed himself was her continuing wrath, a stubborn feeling that he was doing it all with purpose, and out of malice.
They were in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Rosa had prepared spiced shrimp, and a salad, but no one had eaten much. Outside, the afternoon sun blazed on the pool, the trees, and the lawn. There was no wind. The sky was a perfect merciless unblemished blue.
“He talked about joining the army,” Millicent said. “Can’t we call the army?”
“Can a person just walk up and join the army?” Nick wanted to know. “Abandon a car and join the army?”
Sheri said, “Why’re you asking us?”
He gave her an exasperated look, but said nothing. She returned a penitent and supplicating expression, and he rose and went to the phone. They all listened to him request the number of the nearest army recruitment center from the information operator. He disconnected, punched in the numbers, and waited. Roger Gault was seated next to Millicent, and he held her hand. Lily couldn’t look at them, couldn’t look at anyone. She was feeding strained pears to Mary, who spat them out, making little screeches, slapping the high chair’s miniature table surface with both chubby hands.
Nick spoke in a murmurous tone, like someone in a funeral parlor, but they
could hear him. “Is this the army recruitment center? Yes, I was wondering—if you don’t mind. I wondered—if you had a record of someone enlisting in the army, if there was a way to see that record.” In the pause, Mary emitted a happy cry, and put her hands together, fingers clasped tightly, so that she had to pull hard to unclasp them. This delighted her, and she did it again, as Nick’s voice came to them: “Well, actually, it could be a police inquiry—a—a missing-person inquiry.”
Hello to the Cannibals Page 61