When She Was Gone

by Gwendolen Gross

  “Baby? Breakfast?” She rubbed his shoulder gently. Tina snorted.

  “It’s a garbage truck!” announced Johnny. Reeva felt herself clenching everything: jaw, biceps, hands, thighs, prepared for Tina to say something noxious about her brother.

  “Eat your breakfast, please?” She kissed the top of his head, which smelled of cinnamon.

  Johnny stuffed the corner of his toast into his twist-tie morass.

  “Eat, please,” said Reeva, hating the hardness in her own voice. Johnny sighed and pinched a tiny piece of bread off the slice. He smacked his lips as he ate.

  “He ate, Mom, you happy?” At least Tina didn’t attack him.

  “I ate,” said Johnny, grinning at his sister.

  Then they were gone, and Reeva felt their absence in her chest, a crushing sensation, her lungs constricted for potential pleasures and slights.

  The house hummed with machines: the fridge, the basement dehumidifier, the new brushed-steel dishwasher, which she shut with her hip—last night, as usual, her husband, Charlie, added his wineglass and didn’t reseal it, so it didn’t run and when she shut the window, switching on the central air, the kitchen stank of sour milk and onions from the stroganoff. She blamed Charlie. She loved Charlie, but maybe not enough to accept this habit of his of making everything just a little more annoying. The coffee grinds he spilled on the counter. The paper filter sogging halfway out of the garbage barrel, spilling its stain and drip onto her white tile floor. Charlie had been against white tile, but Reeva knew it brightened the room. She was still selling houses two years ago when they renovated the kitchen; she still had a visual library in her head of what worked, what brought rooms together so the houses looked like families, living and family and dining rooms holding hands, and what made them look like mistakes. Bright yellow kitchens, blue-flowered wallpaper, ceilings painted dark red—mistakes. Clean counters and floors, walls in Benjamin Moore’s classic whites, which really offered a drop of ocean, a pinch of woods, really not just white, or wallpapers that didn’t suck you in but expanded the space: small flowers, gentle tones; these were what made you want to buy and move in today.

  Reeva had an hour before the Group would be over. It was Tuesday, and she wished she’d asked her house cleaner to come on Monday instead of Wednesday so she wouldn’t have the lint of ordinary days to contend with before she had to contend with the women. She’d been thrown from her easy horse of order when Linsey had failed to show up to babysit for Johnny after camp yesterday—she’d come home from Jordan’s hovel just a few minutes late, but Johnny was sitting on the back step crying, locked out of his own house, because Linsey hadn’t met him there. Linsey had been so reliable; Reeva thought, for just a second, that she’d screwed up the schedule herself, but once they were inside and Johnny had a tall stack of apology Oreos, Reeva checked the calendar. It had been Linsey’s fault, and she didn’t ever answer her cell when Reeva called her for an explanation. Reeva didn’t have the parents’ number handy—they weren’t the type of neighbors whose number graced her bulletin board. She’d just suffered her small fury and moved on.

  Now here were Charlie’s leavings. The kids’ thousand plates. Only three kids, but they used twelve place settings for the few bites they consumed before their clattering departures.

  She wasn’t really in the mood. Never mind that she started the Group to begin with—just as she had started the Five back in high school. Her select few. Never mind that the weekly meetings kept her from changing the wallpaper in her own living room once a month now—like that postpartum-maddened woman in The Yellow Wallpaper—now that she didn’t have work to keep her distracted. Johnny didn’t need her as much as he used to. He was seven, and though he still had ADD, would always have ADD, he was getting by in camp, and in school. He had an IEP now, a plan to help him through the meltdowns and the times he sat at his desk lining up the bits of paper he’d torn from the edge of the holes on his notebook. No medication: Charlie had wanted to try it, so they’d tried it, and it made Johnny’s mouth dry, kept him up at night, caused him to gain six pounds—though it was supposed to impede appetite. He didn’t need that, to be chubby as well as distracted. He had always been beautiful: pale gold hair, when her other children were brown haired. Green eyes, the kind with the golden center and rusty flecks in the irises. She’d loved him as a baby, perhaps more than her others, not that she played favorites, but Johnny had been hard to soothe, he’d needed her so much; she’d despaired of ever not carrying him in the snuggly, and then he was three, and then because the teachers had hinted he had something wrong with him, she was taking him out of the extended-day preschool all her children had attended. Then the gym class where he was the only one who wouldn’t come to circle. The two-hour Montessori class was too much independence; he dumped paint on the rug squares when all the other children carried their Dixie cups and brushes with care. They didn’t disparage him there, but they did suggest that at four he might not be ready for preschool. Then specialists, then a diagnosis. The drugs when he was five. One month later she took him off, not really consulting with Charlie; not really caring if he cared.

  Reeva met with the school social worker once a month or so. Things were under control. They didn’t even know at camp, hadn’t needed to know, which she considered a coup. The neighbors didn’t know; her mother-in-law didn’t know. Her sister knew, but her sister had breast cancer, which had murdered their mother, so she was deep into her own battle and didn’t help or hurt much for knowing. The Group didn’t know. She’d thought about telling them, but it felt like giving away a part of Johnny, her golden boy.

  By the time the women rang her doorbell and came in, not waiting for Reeva to open the screen door for them, more comfortable in her house then their own (or at least that was her intention), Reeva had vacuumed, put brownies none of them would more than nibble in the oven (except maybe Christine, who was getting a little rounder than her usual plump size fourteen these days), emptied the dishwasher, set out cups and half-and-half in a pitcher and pink and blue packets in a bowl, and dusted invisible cobwebs from the mantel and the windows. She’d noticed the margins of dust behind the couches and made a note to tell the cleaning lady to be sure to clean there. She was a wonderful Brazilian woman, but she was a bit bossy—easier to instruct by note than in person. When Reeva was working, she had someone come in twice a week, but now once was enough. She never got the panes on the built-ins in the dining room clear enough to suit, no one ever did except Reeva. Charlie called her obsessive-compulsive. It used to be a loving joke.

  The women started talking about the time the sewer main burst and the street was closed for a week. The men had parked the cars on Lake and they’d all trudged on the snowy sidewalks holding their noses and cursing the neighbors who shoveled thin pathways instead of investing in snow blowers.

  “And Beth’s car got sideswiped,” said Christine.

  “You know,” said Reeva, handing out mugs, wishing it wasn’t too early to drink wine. “I don’t think Beth Boris lived here then.”

  The women sat around her new kitchen table, admiring the newly landscaped backyard—the weeping cherry with its tag still festive around the narrow trunk, the spindly, hopeful forsythias—and accepted their mugs. The “I Love Mommy” mug Tina made when she was five went to Helena; Two Mexican daisy mugs from Reeva’s honeymoon for Andrea and Mazie, who were about equal in her affections; the slightly-too-heavy mug with the cracked copper glaze that had appeared in their house, too beguiling to toss, too mysterious to like, about a month ago, to Christine. It hadn’t just appeared, in fact, this mug: she’d somehow acquired it from Jordan, strange and desirable, living in that little carriage house behind the Hopsmiths’ until he decided what he wanted to do with his college degree. It seemed so bizarre from this angle, her body with his.

  “Oh no,” said Christine. “Beth did, she’s been here longer than any of us.”

  Reeva didn’t like it when the women tried to tell her neighborhood
history. Especially about people like Beth. They’d had a little falling-out, Beth and Reeva, so she would prefer not to hear about her neighbor with the pool except when said pool was clogged with tannic oak leaves, or when her toilets backed up. Not that she was vindictive, not really. She looked at the half-and-half she’d set out for her friends, but didn’t pour any. Black coffee gave her a horrible acid stomach, but she couldn’t afford to gain right now.

  “No,” said Reeva, “I don’t think so. Beth moved in after us.” But now she was going to be gracious and let it go. This was the weekly meeting of the Group. They were meant to be working out schedules for playdates, the very lax and unofficial babysitting co-op; they were discussing the teacher assignments for the fall again—something that bored Reeva at this point, having sent three through already.

  “I can’t believe they haven’t replaced Mr. Leonard with a full-time music teacher,” said Helena. Helena played the harp in a professional orchestra. She performed at the Episcopal church and had her own recitals in a series in Upper Saddle River. Reeva always went, though she didn’t love harp music. She did enjoy watching her friend transformed from the straggly ectomorphic mother of three, who looked like she fed them all her food and went hungry, into an angel in a halo of hair, a pale, almost colorless blond. She wore soft makeup that made her eyes dramatically cerulean.

  “I can’t believe they’re giving Jordan Miss Elephant. I just finished her with Chuck,” said Christine.

  Reeva had started when she said Jordan, though Christine’s Jordan was a common topic. She’d been anxious lately. About Jordan, about Charlie, about the mugs and the landscaping. She missed checking the new multiple listings. She shouldn’t have retired.

  “She’s not so bad, Miss Elephanten,” said Helena, kindly.

  Even if there were teachers she liked more than other teachers, Reeva wasn’t the kind of mother to put up a fuss—not anymore, anyway. When Steve had been in first grade, he had the vindictive Mr. Peterson—the man had simply mistaken Steve’s shyness for reticence or rudeness. A few meetings with the principal had straightened that out, at least enough. They were all happy when June came, but at least Mr. Peterson had stopped giving Steve completely inappropriate detentions, and Steve had never lost his place on the football select league for absence after school.

  “No,” said Andrea to Mazie, privately. They were a little too quiet, talking together and not for everyone, but Reeva let it go.

  Mazie looked up. “This woman I called to sit Janey?” she explained, caught out. “I told her I couldn’t pay eighteen an hour for a sitter. Twenty an hour for a cleaner is fair, after all, toilets and everything, but sitters don’t have that much to do. Especially at night.”

  “Who do you use now?” Mazie turned to Reeva. Reeva sighed. She was tired of this conversation, too. “Cleaner or sitter?”

  “Or dentist!” Christine was slightly hysterical. “I’m looking for a new one. Dr. Needleman—I should have known just from the name! He didn’t match my color very well with this veneer.” She bared her teeth. Reeva was this close with Christine. Ever since Christine had asked her for Linsey Hart’s number, and then booked Linsey for the dinner they were both going to at Indian Trails Club for the Cancer Research Society—calling her as soon as she opened the invitation. It was morally reprehensible. Friends don’t steal friends’ babysitters. Christine had had a live-in for six years and she’d just let her go, since her boys were eight and ten now, and Christine wasn’t really working. She was an agent, too. Sold mostly condos, so they’d never really been competition. Christine looked annoying in her little white BMW, too small for anything except work—her enormous boys, and Reeva meant enormous, Christine should’ve stopped trying to feed them so much once they passed the one-hundred-pound mark; they couldn’t fit in the little jump seat at the back of the Beemer.

  “Actually, I use Dr. Needleman,” said Reeva. “I gave you his name.”

  “I’m happy with Schwartz, in town,” muttered Helena, but with a sweetness that allowed Reeva to forgive her.

  “Oh, I heard he had an affair,” said Christine.

  “Why would he do that?” Helena looked up from her cup. She glanced at Reeva; they were in collusion for less than a second. “His wife works in the office, doesn’t she?”

  “Accounting,” said Reeva.

  “It just isn’t right,” said Christine, tapping her teeth, then opening her mouth for everyone. She looked slightly feral. “Don’t you just hate making your kids brush? I know we’re supposed to, but don’t you all just let them get away without sometimes?” She looked around the table. This is where the women were supposed to say oh, I know. This is where they were supposed to open the arms of normalcy to make Christine feel less alone in her oversight, in her negligent parenting.

  “God, no,” pronounced Reeva, relishing the no.

  “That’s really not fair to them, is it?” said Helena. Reeva knew she was on her team.

  Andrea and Mazie looked nervous, as if they’d just witnessed a hit-and-run. The old lady was down. Should they come to her rescue, or call 911, or just pretend they hadn’t seen and let someone else cope with the blood, the broken drugstore sunglasses?

  “And considering their diet—my God, no brushing . . .,” said Reeva, going in for the kill. “You wouldn’t want them toothless by twenty, now would you?”

  Mazie laughed nervously. She looked at the clock—an antique, Charlie’s mother’s bequeathal. Too tinny, the tick. Christine went orange under her makeup. Reeva never trusted her color, always wondered about tanning booths. The self-tanners were enough, even if they faded fast. No one used tanning booths now—such an indulgence. And skin cancer. She thought of her sister and softened for a second.

  “I have to go,” said Mazie. “Sorry. Allergist.”

  “Me, too,” said Andrea. She didn’t get up, though. She sipped her coffee again. Reeva made delicious coffee.

  “I know a dietician for children,” Helena said to Christine, and Reeva adored her.

  “Never mind,” said Christine. She was getting up. She hadn’t said why she had to leave, which was the Group’s convention.

  Suddenly all the women were leaving, except Helena, who was clearly going to stay for the deconstruction after they’d gone. At the door, holding her purse like a weapon, Christine turned to them, Helena and Reeva, the new team.

  “Did you hear about Linsey Hart?” she asked. She’d saved something. It was going to be the big coup at the end of the meeting, when everyone was leaving for lack of conversations. She had planned to be important, Reeva could see.

  “She was supposed to sit yesterday—I can hardly ever book her, and then she didn’t even show up, or call,” Reeva said. She couldn’t let that go.

  “No, I mean, she’s disappeared.”

  “What?” Helena leaned in. She did the unthinkable; she wiped a crumb off Christine’s shoulder, an act of forgiveness.

  “Might have run away. It’s only been one day, but I heard from Beth Boris at the Whole Foods that the police came and everything.”

  Beth Boris, Reeva thought, I should’ve known. They had probably planned to meet up at the Whole Foods. Then it hit her—disappeared. Her chest suffered with the effort of breath. Linsey didn’t show here—or anywhere. This was not a girl who would run away, though honestly, Reeva didn’t know much about her family, just that she was hard to book as a sitter, just that she had been reliable and then failed to show. This didn’t happen to teenage girls in this town—they got in trouble for smoking pot, or they had sex too young, or they crashed Mommy’s Prius, but they didn’t disappear. All the dangerous possibilities closed in on her as the group digested this idea and fiddled with their key chains. Rape, murder, kidnapping—beautiful Linsey Hart, whom Steve had secretly loved since he hit puberty. She knew by the way he swiveled in the backseat of the car when they passed her on her bike, her long hair like a flag, waving under her helmet. She wore a helmet, Linsey—she wouldn’t get in a car w
ith a strange man. She was going to some good college, wasn’t she? She never overcharged for babysitting.

  Perhaps her mother wasn’t particularly neighborly, but little-girl Linsey had come to the door at Halloween: a cat, a puppy dog, a bird—always an animal. She’d opened her own door for Reeva’s kids as she grew older—handing out three mini Snickers, a whole handful of M&M’s packets, generous with chocolate and grins.

  What do we know of any of our neighbors? Reeva wondered, as she stood in her doorway, seeing off the Group. She imagined Linsey Hart, who was beautiful, who was young, who had parked out in front of Reeva’s house sometimes in her boyfriend’s little car and kissed and kissed as if there were no windows on Reeva’s house. For a second, her heart hurt for Linsey’s mother, a tiny, loud woman she didn’t particularly like. Divorced. Remarried to a Jewish man, remade herself a bit, as if being Jewish could be acquired. Someone she would never have invited to the Group, but still. She stuffed awful ideas back in their box—the girl was about to leave for college; that time made kids vulnerable and brash, a final senior skip. Probably Linsey had just gone overnight to friends. Her heart closed again. But she forgave Christine, just the tiniest bit. It was big news, after all; she’d be watching for that tiny car in front of her house, she’d think about it until the girl came home. Or was found. Which had to be soon. She shivered, refusing to allow thoughts of search dogs and bones.

  Reeva felt a special connection to Linsey, not only because she was patient when she babysat, not only because she saw Linsey taking Johnny for a nature walk through the woods that afternoon when Linsey was babysitting and Reeva was looking out the window of the carriage house at 61/2 Sycamore and maybe, just maybe, the young woman had seen her through the glass. Reeva wasn’t sure whether she should hire her more or less after that; she went for more. Linsey wasn’t the kind of girl to get into trouble, and even if she did know more about Reeva than Reeva might like, she was an excellent babysitter. Responsible. Safe as houses, she thought. Safer, probably, than her own Tina. She wondered about her own girl for a minute, off at high school, more concerned with her friends than anything in her home. Reeva went back inside and shut the door.