Some of the edges of the glass weren’t quite soft enough; he didn’t cut himself, but he pressed his finger against them for the feeling—almost breaking the skin. He squeezed the last of his bottle of craft glue onto the black and stuck in a white moon-shaped piece. Then he went upstairs to see if he could find more glue without alerting his mother to his absence of work on his room cleaning.
“You know”—he could hear her voice on the phone—“it isn’t like him.”
When he was younger, he always assumed him was himself. Now he worried it might be his father. What his father might say about the bruise—why else would Mom be so strange? Geo trod up the stairs, toe to heel, being careful to step once only on each step.
“He won’t,” she said. She sighed. He had been hoping she would make lasagna for dinner, but she probably wouldn’t, now that it was hot out. Oven plus air-conditioning equals waste. Sometimes Geo wouldn’t mind a little waste. Why was she harping on his room instead of worrying about his bruise? Had Linsey Hart changed everything?
Mom kept glue in a cabinet in the hallway, along with medicines, and towels, and paper clips, barrettes, and buttons. She was allowed to know where everything was even if there was no conventional order. Why couldn’t he do the same with the just-washed bottle caps drying on his rug?
There was no glue in the cabinet, so Geo looked in his parents’ room. His mother had a crafting table in the corner, but she usually only used it to pile up books and magazines. She was worse than he was, really, her disorder. He wished he could point this out to her, but instead he walked into her room, squinting with grief at the squeak of the floorboards as he reached the table.
“Aha,” he said to himself, collecting a little jar of rubber cement. Underneath it he saw the note he’d run through the wash. She’d said she was giving it to the police, so why was it still here, on her table? He would take it down and remind her. No he wouldn’t; she’d tell him to clean his room.
“Bye,” he heard her sing into the phone.
Geo stuffed the note into his pocket, but he wasn’t fast enough—Mom was on the stairs.
“Geo,” she said. “If you clean your room, you can choose what we have for dinner.” How did she know his mind?
“Bribery?” he said, trying to distract her from the fact that he was leaving her room, not his own.
“Bribery,” she said.
“Fine. Lasagna.” Geo went into his own room and closed the door. He opened the crumbling note.
Underneath the bed he found his magnifying glass, the big one with a handle that came with the two-book condensed Oxford English Dictionary his father loved. You needed the magnifying glass to read the tiny type, but Geo also needed the magnifying glass for other sorts of work. Like reading the note.
At first he could only make out the words he’d seen before: Mom (this could be to anyone), and new, and the letter L. Maybe ins. Maybe he just thought it was ins because he wanted it to be Linsey’s note. But then, it could be. Everything could be evidence and everything could be nothing. Still peering, fingering the paper, the fibers that had warped with the water and heat of wash and dry, he saw there was a ghost of writing on the folded page, a word that had been written but not inked. There was a C and an A. There was an F. Café? No, there were more letters. He thought of Timmy telling him to make a list of suspects. It was here, in his notebook. Timmy would be gone soon, too—he’d make him something, he thought abruptly. It wasn’t that he wanted to be constantly remembered, or even thanked, in particular. He wanted to show that he’d paid attention. It was kind of a reverse mark, like these letters.
Timmy told him Linsey had applied to other schools, schools that would keep her close to Timmy. Why didn’t Timmy keep loving her? There were no flaws Geo could see, nothing not to love. He remembered when Timmy told him Linsey should be on her own list of suspects, as if Linsey was capable of crime. Linsey, he’d said, just Linsey. What if she did something wrong? What if she stole something? What if she’d hurt someone herself? Timmy was moving away, maybe that was the only crack between them. He held the note up to the ceiling light and peered more closely at the soft white paper. And there was the word ghosted on the washed note—he could read it now.
DAY FOUR
36 SYCAMORE STREET
School was starting early this year, before Labor Day. It was the last day of summer, and it felt like a cheat, even to Reeva, who looked forward to the orderly chaos of classes and practices. Summer was a different pace; in summer she was less of a mechanical nagging shuttle bus.
The kids were all out with their friends, wrapped in the arms of fleeting freedoms. The girl was still missing and Reeva felt as though her safety was always uncertain now, the door left unlocked was inviting some sort of loss—of Tina, of Johnny, of secrets. She hated thinking of it, but if Linsey was kidnapped, she’d almost certainly been raped, maybe murdered—it was disgusting. Men were disgusting, the whole idea that someone’s child could be touched—it hurt her skin. She found herself checking on Tina several times a day; she looked in on Johnny and wondered how she ever thought she could protect him from the world. What would happen when he got to high school and was still weird? What would happen when he was supposed to get himself up in the morning, when he had to make his own sandwiches? Would he lie on the couch growing thin and old? Would they all come back after college and any freedom she’d found would be crowded back in with people who needed her but didn’t necessarily want her around?
The sun wasn’t strong enough to etch its way through the smear of clouds, but it was hot out, and chattery with the incessant calls of crickets and cicadas after mates. Dressed for a walk, Reeva was making first-day lunches for tomorrow: Steve liked ham and cheese on the challah rolls from the bakery in Fair Lawn she went to only for challah rolls, Johnny had peanut butter and strawberry jam on white bread—oh, how she hated the sweet chemical smell of white bread—with the crusts cut off. He only ate peanut butter, even though Reeva knew she shouldn’t send it in because of all the allergic kids, but there was no other choice. She peeled and sliced his banana, sealing the little container that had held a thousand bananas for her children over the years. She tried to make the slices even. A little box of Yoo-hoo, a concession, because he was supposed to have milk or juice, no sugar except after his homework was done. She was making little concessions now, from waking until sleep she was trying to build a case for forgiveness, trying to insinuate her goodness into the slumbering minds of her family, in case she needed them to let her in again.
Reeva made lunch for Tina, who would probably wad the BLT wrapped in aluminum foil into a fat ball of waste and lob it into the trash. This year, Tina and her friends would have free lunch period once a week; they were allowed, as high school freshmen, to go off campus and into town. Open Campus, it was called. Last year Steve had used his free lunches to shoot baskets or ride the ramps at his friend Andy’s house; Andy’s father had built a skateboard haven in his backyard, half guilty, Reeva was sure, because he’d divorced Andy’s mother but managed to keep the house and now she lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Waldwick so close to the bowling alley you could hear the hum of the pin-setting machines even with the windows closed (Reeva knew because she’d tried to sell Andy’s mother a studio condo in Ridgewood. It was overpriced, but would’ve kept her closer to home). The other half of the guilt was because Andy had been addicted to heroin for three months during the divorce proceedings, and it took his arrest for the father, an architect who designed the great gray landscapes of Toys “R” Us and Kmart malls, to notice. Andy had a sister with cerebral palsy who lived in a hospital care facility. Andy’s father made a game room in the basement, pinball machines and cappuccino dispensers, a home theater with angled seating; he’d torn out the mother’s former rose and dahlia garden and put in the skateboard ramp.
Steve told his mother he went to Andy’s or the Daily Grind, the one remaining nonchain coffee shop in town, during Open Campus, but once last year she’d se
en him sitting on the corner of Pine and North Dyke Street with the kids who sold pot and test answers, smoking cigarettes. North Dyke, where a client once saw a spectacular old Victorian with a new kitchen and new windows and a finished basement playroom and a mother-in-law suite that was selling for below market value because there’d been an accident in the backyard with one of the contractors and a circular saw and everyone knew and the homeowners were superstitious, and the clients had asked, staring at the listing sheet, “Has anyone ever petitioned the city council for a name change for the street? I mean, North Dyke, it’s horrible—that would certainly be a factor—”
People were so pathetic. There was Steve on North Dyke. She’d stopped her car. She’d been the mortifying mother who dragged her son away from trouble by the ear, literally, his flaccid ear that drooped as it always had, since infancy. Steve told her he’d been smoking for six months, just cigarettes, but he wanted to quit anyway for track. She watched him until he did.
This year it was Tina’s turn, and the sad news for Reeva was that Tina would go where all her girlfriends went, and that where was Starbucks. She hated the thought of Jordan eyeing her daughter, of her daughter checking out her ex-lover, of the cross purpose of secrets. She tucked a Toblerone bar from her own secret stash into Tina’s lunch bag. Concessions.
This morning Reeva had waited for Charlie to get out of bed, to crack his knuckles and his neck, to gargle and preen and go, but he hadn’t. She mumbled, she rolled around in the bed; she tugged at his cocoon of striped cotton sheet.
She loved Charlie. She loved how he brushed his teeth, scrubbing with the battery-operated brush like a five-year-old demonstrating his prowess for the dentist. It wore at his gums, that concentrated attention. And he’d given her that same attention; when they were dating, he wouldn’t leave her alone. When they’d been in college, in statistics class together, she’d known he was watching for her when she entered the stadium classroom designed for the one hundred-plus students fulfilling their requirement while chewing Dentyne gum and checking their day planners for the rest of the day’s pursuits. He could see her from the front row, without turning, but he turned, he always turned toward her like a plant drawn to light, like an infant’s fingers wrapping to touch. He’d come to her dorm room, one of the few all-women’s dorms on campus, and he’d stood by the buzzer waiting to be let in, every single day after they started dating, every day until his appendix burst, and he called her from the hospital before surgery, because he’d listed her as next of kin on his intake forms and wanted her to know.
Maybe that’s what she missed, maybe she missed Charlie more than she missed Jordan, maybe it was just that she hadn’t been in someone’s absolute vision, someone’s necessity, for so long. Last had been her baby Johnny, and now even he didn’t need her, even though his needs extended past the ordinary scope of arms.
Charlie didn’t move. Charlie, who was always up early, even when they went on vacation. Charlie, who slept through every night feeding of every child but rolled over and began popping his joints at five forty-six without fail. Now, he was failing. At first, she was irritated. She had wanted him to leave so she could fall into the deeper sleep she had when she had the bed to herself. And then she wanted him to leave so she could think about Jordan in the half-lit mind of early morning that allowed her to touch herself without guilt. It was just the work of the body, it wasn’t any real intention.
Jordan, Jordan, she thought. Charlie would be crushed about Jordan, he must never find out about Jordan. She loved Charlie too much to have done what she did with Jordan. And then she felt it, desire. Because even though she’d banished him from the workings of her waking day, Jordan was very real in her imaginary sex life, and it wasn’t her fault entirely, it was her limbic system. Maybe she had an appendixlike evolutionary impetus.
“Charlie,” she finally said, whispering as if someone else was sleeping with them. “You’re going to be late.”
“What?” Charlie stopped breathing. He’d been nose whistling. Not quite snoring.
“You’re going to be late,” she said. Then added, “Honey.” She patted the striped sheet near his arm.
“Not going,” said Charlie. “I told you, I took a few days off this week. Slow.” He grunted and rolled over to her, his arm across her shoulder. Close to her breast, not touching. His breath was strangely sweet, like Johnny’s grape toothpaste. For a minute, she let herself imagine her husband kissing her son’s mouth, the transfer of glittery grape. Ick. Not her fault, her restless mind. She wasn’t enjoying her body’s betrayal; she was warm, she was horny, she was used to sex now, to lots of sex, and she was thinking about Jordan’s legs as Charlie swung his atop hers.
“But I think I’ll go for a run,” he said.
“You’ve been running a lot,” she said, just noticing now. When had it changed from once or twice a month on the weekend? This summer? Charlie hadn’t exercised at home in years, preferring the gym at work, where she imagined him tugging away at the pulleys and levers of ancient exercise equipment, a towel around his neck, the clock on the wall erasing the potential of that singular billable hour. He brought home his gym bag once a month, and the sweatshirt and sweatpants hardly bore evidence of great effort. But still, he was in decent shape, for his age. He ran once a month or so, weekend warrior, and she always thought of it as an excuse to not ferry the kids to their practices and games; to not accompany her to Stop & Shop, which he did sometimes, lagging behind her cart like an eight-year-old, tossing fried onion rings into the basket to piss her off. Maybe to tease her.
Then he was standing, stretching his sinewy legs, bending with the stiff effort of a man who had just been sleeping. He was wearing only boxer shorts, and she was watching him, the extra fat that had settled around his belly, the hairy mole on his back where it bent. He was bouncing, making curt, old movements. His eyes were slightly crusty and the hairs on his thighs were at least half gray. He was bouncing, and she imagined his muscles tearing a little with each brittle tug. His shorts were red tartan and worn, and the fly gapped open as he put his hands on his hips, tugged his waist forward and back, a stiff old gym teacher. She could see his penis moving against the fabric, the remnants of a morning erection making the little mouth of the opening talk to her.
Finally, he was gone. She wasn’t horny anymore. Or if she was, she didn’t deserve to be. She was out of bed and seeing the kids off to their pursuits. She was drinking coffee and sorting out the fridge, almost as though her husband had gone off for an honest day.
And there she was in the kitchen when Charlie came home with his shirt damp, his legs looking younger for their work. He leaned on the counter and looked at her; she could feel herself blush under the scrutiny.
“Would you like coffee?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how she would make it through this day with him, what they would have to say to each other. She’d had plans. Ordinary plans, perhaps, but plans nonetheless. She’d planned to go to the bank, to stop by Lord & Taylor for bonus days on her favorite cosmetics. She’d planned to walk down Sycamore, almost past 61/2, but not quite that far, because although she hoped Jordan might see her, she didn’t want to see him—this same theory held for parking at the bottom of town and walking up to the bank, past Starbucks; she wanted to be seen through the tinted glass, but not to engage—and besides, she was going to stop by the Steins’ house. She wanted to see how Abigail was holding up. She had dressed in her pink and green dress from the Lilly Pulitzer store she’d bought with a gift certificate Charlie gave her—a Chamber of Commerce certificate, so unspecific he hadn’t even chosen a store, for god’s sake. Still, the dress looked good on her, in a WASPy, I’ve got something you want but I probably won’t give it up willingly sort of way. She liked that, with lipstick ordinarily too dark for the end of August. And while it was sexy in a way only certain men understood, it wasn’t inappropriate to wear to call on a neighbor in crisis. Which Abigail was. There was something about the way she’d leaned against Reeva
’s door frame, when Reeva had told her about Mr. Leonard, that made her want to talk more, to unravel, to be someone to lean on. She didn’t care about the gossip or the details in particular; she honestly wanted to help someone. It might make her a better person.
She sighed as she stuffed old spaghetti into the disposal. Charlie flipped through the newspaper, but she could tell he wasn’t reading.
“Want to go out?” he asked. Reeva felt a prickle at the backs of her knees and reached down to scratch. But it wasn’t an itch, it was something familiar, a specific sort of surprise, almost arousal, she used to feel around Charlie. Her skin tense with the possibility of touch.
“Out? Oh, I had somewhere to go—” She left him at the counter, bending his knees back, stork.
“I thought we could go to Starbucks,” her husband said. “We could sit and drink coffee and talk, like grown-ups sometimes do—” He was watching her, but she couldn’t turn to meet his eyes.
“Hmm,” she said, striding up the stairs. She should say yes, she should. Small concessions. She stopped at the landing, turned. Charlie was in the living room now, doing backovers, pressing his yellowish toenails into her carpet. There was something about all that exertion that made her proud of him, and she reached, trying to remember what it was like to feel proud of him as a man, not a partner, not a father, not just the moneymaking part of the team. His back was long and powerful; he didn’t really look old. He wasn’t old. She wondered how other women saw him.
When She Was Gone Page 15