by David Bell
“The room is an obstacle, Tom,” she said, no doubt using language she’d heard from Pastor Chris in one of his “counseling” sessions. “We can’t move on with it there.”
I categorically told her no. I left no space for argument.
And the room stayed intact.
Just before I left the house to go meet Susan Goff for the first time, I stopped by Caitlin’s bedroom. I went in there several times a month. I liked to sit on the bed or run my hand over the desk and the bedclothes, picking up the stuffed animals and putting them back down exactly where Caitlin had left them. In the first hours after Caitlin’s disappearance, I combed through the room, digging into the drawers, opening school notebooks, looking for anything that might give us a clue. Then the police took over that job, and they discovered the Seattle and Amtrak information that conjured the possibility of Caitlin being a runaway.
When I went in there before seeing Susan, something felt different. The space seemed foreign to me, almost forbidden, as though I were about to enter a room belonging to a stranger, one who wouldn’t want me intruding upon her world.
And while I stood there, my mind ran through the what-ifs: What if Abby and I had had another child; what if she’d carried that baby to full term? Would it have taken over this space? Would Caitlin’s memory have been effaced from our lives?
I pushed open the door.
The blinds were closed and little light entered, giving the room a gray, wintery cast. It smelled musty, as I’d expected. I ran my hand across the top of the dresser to my left, acquiring a thick layer of dust on the tips of my fingers. The floor squeaked beneath me as I moved across the carpet. A cluster of young adult books sat on a shelf; a group of stuffed animals lay at the foot of the bed. On a small shelf above her desk, two trophies from the two years she’d played soccer through a local youth group. She didn’t want to play and insisted, even in the car on the way to the first practice, that she wasn’t going to do it or go along. But go along she did, and she ended up loving it, and even talked of playing in high school someday, all of which amounted to a rare display of interest on her part in a group activity.
The bed remained unmade. I went over and sat on it, felt the springs bounce beneath my weight, and remembered the nights when Caitlin was small and too scared to go to sleep alone. Either Abby or I would take turns coming in and lying next to her until she fell asleep-her soft, whistling breaths assuring us we could go-but we always made sure to leave the door cracked so she could see the faint light in the hallway.
I pushed myself off the bed and went to the closet. This time, before this door, I didn’t hesitate. I pulled it open, then reached up and yanked the light cord. I took a step back. The closet was packed full. Her clothes were crowded together so tight they could barely move from side to side. I recognized and remembered certain things. A pink sweater we gave Caitlin one Christmas. A Fields University football jersey, girl sized and bearing double zeroes. At the far end of the closet, I came across Caitlin’s winter coat, a puffy red parka. I touched it, squeezed the soft sleeves in my hand, and with a stabbing ache was taken back to a winter day six years earlier when Caitlin and I had built a snowman in our yard.
The pain I felt was literal and real. It went through my chest and into my back. I closed my eyes, clenched them shut, and heard Caitlin’s laughter in the yard, a giggling trill. I felt the sting of the cold wind on my cheeks and the wet burning from the snow she’d dumped down the back of my shirt. For that moment, that one painful, glorious moment, she was there, Caitlin, and then just as quickly it passed. The pain eased; the memory receded. I opened my eyes and it was just me, a middle-aged guy standing in a closet, clutching a child’s coat.
And the child was gone.
The thought popped into my head, just like the memory of playing in the snow. I never thought it so clearly and with such finality. She’s gone. Caitlin is gone. And I knew, as time passed, the memories would fade, and the haunting, stabbing moments would come back to me with less frequency until, someday, they might be gone forever, and with them all tangible sense of my daughter.
I pulled the coat tight to me, pressed my face deep into its fabrics and folds. I inhaled. It smelled musty like the closet, but I didn’t care. I breathed deeply again and again, letting the musty smell fill me.
I took the coat and placed it back on its hanger, then started working it back in among the other clothes on the rod. I stepped back, my hand on the closet door, when I saw the flash of red. I thought it was a hat or glove. The weather had been cold in the days leading up to Caitlin’s disappearance, but on the day she disappeared, we’d experienced a brief late-winter warm-up, so Caitlin had left the house that day in a lighter jacket instead. I noticed that the red object looked fragile, almost papery, and parts of it fell to the ground.
I reached for it, and it crumpled more. It was a flower, a red carnation. It felt brittle in my hand, a handful of dust. A single stem, with no note or adornment. No ribbon or lace. I didn’t know where it came from, except that Caitlin must have gotten it in the days before her disappearance. Where she’d come across that red carnation, I couldn’t guess.
Chapter Nineteen
I saw them together in the parking lot. I’d gone to the grocery store looking for better food. My bachelor diet was making me feel sluggish and drained, a corpulent lump on the living room couch. I forced myself out into the world, out to where living people ate things that were green or yellow or red and not in a box or a can.
I was leaving the store when I saw Abby and Pastor Chris getting out of a car together. He waited for her, even went so far as to place his hand on the small of her back as she walked by. I stopped where I was and watched them. I held my plastic bag in one hand, the car keys in the other. It took them a moment to see me. They walked close together, leaning in toward each other as though sharing secrets.
Chris saw me first. Something crossed his face-momentary guilt? — but just as quickly his happy mask snapped into place. His smile grew wider than normal and he called out to me like we were old friends.
“Tom!”
His hands fell to his sides, stiff and straight as tent stakes.
I didn’t say anything. I watched Abby. She looked away, first at the ground, then at the sky; then, when left with no choice, she looked at me.
“Hello, Tom,” she said.
“Hello.”
They stopped, and for a long moment the three of us stood there, Mexican standoff style, while shoppers pushed their carts past us and minivans full of kids and groceries navigated the lanes.
I tried to keep my voice level.
“You two look awfully domestic together, don’t you?”
Chris kept smiling. “Just buying groceries,” he said. “We have a youth group meeting tonight at the-”
“Shut up.”
He blinked his eyes a few times, a hurt puppy.
“Come on, Chris,” Abby said.
“Yeah, go on,” I said. “Go on with another man’s wife. Isn’t there a commandment about that? Or does your church not do the commandments anymore? Is that why people like it so much?”
“Now, Tom,” Chris said, bringing the smile back. “I don’t think there’s any need to say these things to me.”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”
Abby took Chris’s arm and pulled him toward the store.
“Go home, Tom,” she said. “Think about what I said about getting help.”
I managed to switch my keys from my right hand to the left, leaving me free to reach into my pocket. I pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, the kind with a zipped top. It held the remains of the flower I’d found in Caitlin’s closet.
“Do you know what this is, Abby?” She stopped and squinted at the bag, confused. “I found this in Caitlin’s closet. It was in her coat pocket.”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything.
“It’s not over, Abby. I know you want it to be over. I know you want to move on. Appa
rently, you have moved on. But it’s not time yet.”
Abby stared at me for a moment. I thought she was going to say something-anything-but she just turned and started for the store, leaving Chris behind her.
“She had a miscarriage,” I said to him. “Our baby, about a year after Caitlin disappeared. And she didn’t tell me.”
Chris pursed his lips. “It was a difficult decision for Abby,” he said. “I counseled her about it. We prayed about it. She decided it was the best thing to do, to keep it from you.”
“You knew?”
But he was already gone. Having given me a little wave good-bye, he hustled to catch up with Abby, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the parking lot.
Courthouse Coffee sat on the opposite side of the square from the police station and served a very different clientele. During the day lawyers and businesspeople stopped there for lattes and cappuccinos, and at night college students congregated there with their books and laptops. At least once a month, Courthouse Coffee hosted a poetry reading, and a rotation of local artists hung their work on the walls. Because I considered it a student hangout, I didn’t spend much time there, and my awkwardness at entering the coffee shop was exaggerated by the fact that I had no idea how to identify Susan Goff. I had hung up with her without asking how we’d know each other. But as soon as I walked in, I heard my name.
“Dr. Stuart? Tom Stuart?”
I looked around. Most of the tables were occupied, but only one was occupied by a woman who was halfway out of her chair, waving at me. She called my name again and continued to wave, and it felt as though everyone in the room had turned to look at me.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s me.”
I crossed to her table and took her in. She wore her gray hair short and a little mannish, and a pair of half-moon glasses sat perched on her nose. She took the glasses off when she stood to shake my hand, and I saw that she was wearing beige cotton pants, white sneakers, and a loose, baggy shirt. Her grip was firm, and her no-nonsense appearance seemed in opposition to the cheeriness of her voice.
“I recognize you from TV,” she said loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Lucky me.”
“Do you want a coffee?” she asked. “I love the coffee here.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
We sat on opposite sides of the small table. She maintained a wide yet sympathetic smile, and her gray eyes studied me as though I were the most fascinating person she’d ever met. I placed her age in the midfifties.
“Well,” she said. “You’re on quite a journey.”
“Like I said, Tracy Fairlawn sent me your way.”
“She’s on quite a journey, too.”
“Have you been able to help her?” I asked.
“I listen to Tracy a lot,” Susan said. “I think she needs that.”
“And you think that helps her?” I asked.
“Why don’t I tell you a little more about what I do, and then you’ll understand where I’m coming from,” she said. “Like I told you on the phone, I’m not a professional. I’m a volunteer. I’m not a therapist or a licensed counselor. About ten years back, the state realized there were people falling through the cracks. They may have suffered a personal tragedy of some kind, and they may have been reluctant to seek remedies through traditional mental health venues like a therapist or counselor. Volunteer Victim Services was created to fill that gap. It’s just people like me helping people like you. The police or other social service agencies dispatch us if they think there’s a need. We know how to spot larger troubles if they’re there, and we know where to refer people whose problems go beyond the scope of what a volunteer can do. Believe me, we know our limits, and we’re overseen by social workers who know them too. Otherwise, we’re here to listen and help people cope with the transitions tragedy brings to their lives. Does that make sense to you?”
“How did you get involved with this?” I asked.
“My children are grown, and my husband and I split up about five years ago,” she said. “I retired from the school system around the time of the divorce.”
“You were a teacher?” I asked.
“No, a secretary. Sorry, an administrative aide. I worked in the superintendent’s office. When I retired and got divorced, I was looking for something to do, some way I could help people. I didn’t want to just sit around living off my pension and gardening. It sounds really corny and noble, doesn’t it?”
I had to laugh. “It does. It really does.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want anything? I was just about to go up for a refill.”
“Okay. Coffee.”
While Susan went up to the counter, I studied the crowd. Normal people having a normal day. I recognized a former student who didn’t look over at me, and a colleague from another department who waved and went back to his laptop. And there I was talking to a complete stranger about the most important thing in my life.
Susan returned and placed a mug before me. “So,” she said, “what’s it been like since you were on TV?”
“Not what I was hoping for,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She just held that steady, considering gaze on me, the one that said she was ready to hear anything and everything I might have to say. Before I knew it, I was saying more.
“The sketch and the press conference led to a lot of crank calls and not very helpful information. People claiming to see Caitlin’s ghost, or perverts saying they had Caitlin with them right there. I know it’s not unusual for that to happen.”
“No, it’s not,” Susan said. “It makes people feel important, even the pranksters.”
“Has anyone in your family ever been the victim of a violent crime?” I asked.
“We’ve been lucky.” She sipped from her mug. “We don’t have to talk about your daughter,” she said. “We can talk about other things. We can talk about your job, for example. I saw in the paper you teach at the university. What’s that like?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “No one wants to hear about that. I’m writing a book on Nathaniel Hawthorne. That should tell you all you need to know.”
“I love to read,” she said. “I was a literature minor-”
“I don’t want to waste your time,” I said. Despite Susan’s openness, a discomfort gnawed at my insides, a raw rubbing I couldn’t shake. Being there and talking felt unnatural to me. “Maybe this isn’t the best thing for me. It’s unusual-” I stopped and turned away from Susan, letting my gaze wander out the window to the traffic circling the square. I felt muddled and unfocused. “You’re a complete stranger, and I’m somewhat of a private person.”
“I understand that this is difficult,” she said. “We can talk about the weather if you’d like.”
“I don’t know. It’s just. . this sketch, the drawing of this man. It’s the best lead we’ve had, you know? But in some ways it’s making things worse for me.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Susan Goff didn’t say anything. She just sat there, coffee mug before her, waiting.
“I’m afraid,” I said finally.
“Of what?”
I paused. “I’m afraid if I admit my doubts, they’ll become reality.”
She kept her steady gaze on me. “What are you afraid of?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t say it. I refused to say it.
“Are you afraid she’s dead?” Susan asked.
“Jesus Christ. You can’t just say that to somebody. You can’t just be so cavalier about it.”
Susan straightened a little in her chair. “You’re right,” she said. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus.”
“Maybe I’m overstepping too soon.”
“Maybe.”
“But I was just trying to give voice to what you were already thinking.” She cleared her throat. “You’re here because you want to know something about yourself. You feel guilty. And you want
to know if it makes you a bad father to allow yourself to think the worst. It’s not an unusual response. I worked with a woman a few years back. Her sixteen-year-old son had been killed in a car accident. Sixteen. About a year after the accident she decided to give his clothes to Goodwill. She felt so guilty and like such a bad mother, she practically collapsed. She went to bed for a week. I had to go and talk to her in her bedroom. Do you see how this can affect people?”
“I guess you’re right.” My voice sounded thin and distant even to my own ears.
“Why would you think she’s dead?”
I felt small in the chair, like a child. “It’s been four years. With no real advances in the case. Even the recent events, this man-”
“This is the man from the strip club? The one in the sketch in the paper?”
“Yes.”
“The man who Tracy saw.”
“Has she talked to you about him?” I asked. “Has she said anything about this man?”
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t say,” I said. “Or you won’t say. Which is it?”
“If one of your students came to you and asked about another student’s grade, what would you say?”
“I get it,” I said.
“Let me ask you this-why would it be such a problem to admit that your daughter is in all likelihood dead?”
“I’m not supposed to. I have to believe she’s not gone.”
“Why?”
“I’m her father.” It was the best and simplest answer I could summon.
“But you don’t really seem to believe this. I can tell. You’re full of doubt. And that’s why you’re here, right? That’s why you’re talking to a complete stranger after all this time, when I know you’ve had plenty of opportunities to talk to shrinks and social workers. You’re here because you’ve been playing the big, strong man all this time, and now the doubts are starting to win. Right?”