When She Was Gone

by Gwendolen Gross

  “Oh, Reeva!” Christine cooed, standing with the flock outside the doors of Wilde Elementary School. “How are you?”

  She smiled at them, Helena and Andrea and Mazie, and Beth Boris, of all people, wearing an odd red silk suit, as if she’d just come from a wedding where she’d been forced at gunpoint to be a bridesmaid. Beth, who was not part of the Group anymore, whose lipstick was much too plummy for that outfit.

  “That suit is really something, Beth,” she said. “Really brings out your complexion.” She hoped someone knew she meant the spider veins. She was feeling especially mean.

  Beth smiled, but she wasn’t looking right at Reeva’s eyes—she was gazing slightly askew, as if Andrea’s ear was very compelling.

  “Beth was just telling us how she’s sold two units on Gale Street.”

  Sold two units of what? Reeva wondered. Crack? Beth was a stay-at-home mom, for god’s sake. She still felt a little jilted, she supposed, though if she thought about it, she was the one who’d soured on Beth first.

  “I didn’t know you had your broker’s license?” said Helena, blessed Helena, who had left her harp in the minivan around the corner on Oak Street; Reeva had seen it on the walk over, angel instrument in a Toyota Sienna.

  “Just two months,” said Beth. “And almost two million in sales.” She gave Andrea’s ear that shit-eating grin. Reeva felt her stomach clamp. Her nose itched, too, and she willed herself not to sneeze, not to even think about sneezing. Reeva Sentry Wets Her Pants, she thought, feeling sorry for herself, feeling pathetic.

  “What do you think they could possibly have accomplished in one minimum day?” Helena was clearly trying to change the subject.

  “Have you signed up for soccer yet? And Scouts? I was hoping someone would co-mother a troop for Janey with me this year.” Mazie wore a trim little gray dress. She had clearly done the going-out-of-business sale at Laura Ashley.

  “Oh, look, finally,” said Beth, as if she hadn’t been reveling in the company. The children were issuing from the building, great hordes of wild things, all energy and flying backpacks. The air smelled of sour milk. Reeva suddenly felt very tired.

  Mazie was the first to step away from the group to greet her Janey. They walked together down the sidewalk like girlfriends.

  “She really dressed up for pickup,” said Beth, pretending this was innocent.

  “I know,” said Christine. “As if she hadn’t spent the morning shopping online and ogling the barista at Starbucks.”

  Reeva’s stomach churned. She couldn’t stop the heat from spreading across her cheeks. What did they know?

  “Oop,” said Christine. “Here’s my baby!”

  “Wow,” said Andrea, even before Christine had fully cleared earshot. “She is really just ballooning. Anyone think we should stage a Weight Watchers intervention?”

  “That’s not very nice,” said Beth, and for once, Reeva agreed. Reeva’s hips really hurt. It was somehow a familiar pain, a stretching. Had she been growing a tumor for months?

  “Oh, those are mine,” said Beth. She stepped out of the cluster and hugged her sons, gathering them to her like long-lost soldiers.

  Reeva pulled her day planner from her purse, looking for the little red dots she used to mark her cycle, so she’d know at her annual appointments, so she’d always keep tampons stocked, so she’d understand her weepy moods. She was counting on her fingers. Someone bumped into her left thigh. This was impossible.

  “Reeva?” said Helena, stroking her arm as if she were a patient. She felt the bump again, then looked over to see Johnny standing there, waiting for his greeting. “Oh, baby!” Reeva stuffed the book into her purse.

  “Crap, Mom, I’m not a baby!” Johnny had stepped away from her, mortified in front of his friends.

  “Of course not,” she said. Had Johnny said crap? Had Helena heard him? Never mind.

  “Want to get ice cream at Van Dykes? I think Leland and Mark are going with their mom?” Reeva asked, and then caught her breath. It was an awful recognition. The hip pain, the peeing.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I guess so.” Little man. As they walked down the sidewalk to the car Johnny was telling her something about reading, but she was watching the twins, Cody and Toby Stein, as they took turns riding their father’s back and play-tackling him in the field. They were headed for the shortcut through the woods, to walk home, the way Reeva had walked home with Steve when he was the only one in school. When she hadn’t been so worn away by all the work of days. Frank Stein looked old, his wild hair mostly gray. She was too old for this; too old to leapfrog back to Young Motherhood, too old to be pregnant, again.

  FLIGHT 808

  He was absolutely fine until they were over Winnemucca, Nevada. The woman next to Timmy was gorgeous, olive skin and sea green eyes, and a teal silk blouse on a long plane ride. She was in her third year at Stanford, and Timmy let her attention distract and engage him. They laughed about the lettuce in the for-purchase snack sandwiches, limp and impotent lettuce. They exchanged numbers, typing “Woman on Plane” and “Man on Plane” in contacts as though they were in a spy movie.

  “I thought it was only trains, you know, the pretend-he-is-someone-you-know bit, so they’ll assassinate the wrong man.”

  “You’d do that? You’d sic them on me?”

  “You know, stand by your man,” she said. “Sit by your man. You could have typed in ‘Sylvia.’ My name is Sylvia.”

  “Okay,” said Timmy.

  “Okay what?” said Sylvia. “That’s where you say your name.”

  “I was being mysterious, and hoping to avoid the inevitable comment about the diminutive.”

  “Look,” she said. “We’re over Winnemucca, Nevada.” She pronounced it “Winne-mewka,” and pointed to the screen on the seat back, which told them travel speed and location.

  “Winnemucca,” said Timmy, suddenly nauseated. He excused himself and went to the bathroom to vomit.

  Winnemucca. Where they’d found Linsey, trying to hitchhike after her ride dropped her off when she didn’t have as much money as he’d hoped. She met him online, a guy going to California, a friend of a friend of a friend, which was enough to infuriate Timmy. She wasn’t that dumb, she didn’t hate herself that way.

  He wiped his mouth with a paper towel but wretched again into the silver bowl. It reminded him of kitchens, of mixing bowls. He was going to work in Berkeley—his uncle had several possibilities lined up, but he didn’t want a desk job, he wanted to make something. He’d even be a busboy, but he’d like to be in a kitchen.

  When he left, no one had spoken to her yet. It was Barq who found her, following some texts and the friend, whose friend had a friend—he’d found out that her ride was already over the state line in California, but Linsey was left behind. He’d walked home from the Steins’ knowing this, and beauty became painful. The early moon, two geese, the locust buds on the tree.

  He didn’t like the idea of Linsey left behind. The truth was, he’d thought he was being noble, but maybe he was really being stupid. He let her think it, that she loved him more, that they were unequal—that uncountable infinity—that it was hers for him. But really, he loved her more. He knew her time with him would end when she grew out of him—it wasn’t just the body, his lust, why he pretended to himself that he needed to let her go. It was because even if she didn’t, he thought she needed time to grow up, to become without him, and at the same time, he knew he loved her more, that he had to let go before she left him.

  Timmy cleaned off his face. She’d been in a bar in Winnemucca, Nevada, searching for change in an ashtray to try the slot machines. He was disgusted at the thought, at the sudden desperation, but still, she’d been going west, toward him. Why hadn’t she just called someone collect? What had she imagined when she arrived? Would they have moved in together? He could smell her hair, he wanted her hips against him. He wouldn’t call—he’d let her belong to her family again. He’d let her go. He rinsed his mouth and went back to
his seat, to Sylvia.

  ABIGAIL

  Everything was easier in the light. The streets were clear as they pulled off Route 66 and into the little town where they were supposed to find the dirt road. Barq had a map and handwritten instructions, though the rental car had a navigation system. The police had brought her in, like a criminal, like a runaway, only she wasn’t a flight risk, so they’d let her go with a respite worker—a woman who volunteered herself in emergencies. Last night Abigail had called from the airport, and the woman had answered first.

  “I’m Lila,” she said to Abigail. “Your daughter is lovely. She’s helping my boys with the horses.”

  “With the horses?” It sounded odd, and Abigail pictured a carousel.

  “We keep ten of ’em. We’re short staffed, so she’s helping with feeding and grooming.”

  It was like a conversation from space. Abigail wanted to know what her daughter’s hair looked like, whether she’d had a shower, who were these boys? But the woman was just a volunteer, just a free hotel, just a kindness. Abigail could use to offer the world more kindnesses, she thought. Not cupcakes. She needed to volunteer. Proximity to New York had made her selfish. Or maybe she was selfish all along.

  “We’ve got a new one, a flea-bitten gray, and he really likes her.”

  A flea-bitten gray? “Can I talk to her?”

  “They’re out, but they’ll be back soon.”

  Like land of the lost. Abigail signed off, knowing she wouldn’t get to talk with Linsey until they arrived, until morning.

  They stopped at a tiny general store. Barq wanted coffee, though Abigail just wanted to go, go, go. The woman with a bloody apron behind the meat counter wrote out instructions for her on a slip of butcher paper while Barq sipped, and Abigail climbed back into the car feeling ready, calm, her daughter would be there.

  Barq yawned and stretched and she noticed his uneven stubble. She hadn’t imagined he’d be a redhead. His hair was faded a bit with age, gone more pinkish. He had a ruddy face and kind eyes. He said “God bless” all the time in person, too; he’d met her in the airport at the transfer in Chicago and he’d known who she was before she knew he was himself. He wasn’t just Barq, he was Miles Barq, but she had a hard time calling him Miles. They sat side by side on the plane, each respecting the armrest, so neither could let their elbows down.

  “We have to go—” But she said it so quietly he didn’t hear her. She left the store and sat in the car revving the engine, because Linsey was out there, or at least someone who was named Linsey, who had looked like Linsey. She honked twice into the quiet. Three times more.

  “Sorry,” Barq said, getting in. She pulled out so fast he spilled a small splash of coffee onto the lid of his cup. A drop on his lap. Then she calmed. She might have burned him. And she needed Barq right now, even if it didn’t seem that way, minute to minute. She needed this man, this hired help, as much as she needed Frank to be at home with the boys, to be Frank, waiting for her with his barrel chest and the slight smell of pickles on his breath. Without her, Frank would serve them salads for breakfast, salads and doughnuts. He required her, in a way Joe never had.

  This was why Barq had to come with her. Because alone, she wouldn’t have found the house, she’d have driven in circles through the night. Because alone, she wouldn’t have been able to stanch the wound of her own sobbing.

  The road was so rough, Abigail’s teeth hurt.

  “It’s pretty here,” said Barq, gripping the oh-my-gosh handle so she could see how tense he was. “The birches, the cardinals, the stupid scenic deer.”

  She grinned a little despite herself.

  “We used to go up to a house near Lake George. Rented, but it felt like it belonged to us. Once I hit a deer. I don’t think my kid ever forgave me—even though the deer ran away, she’d seen it bleeding, and she was about six, right smack in the Bambi phase.”

  “I hate that movie,” said Abigail. “And Snow White, too. You have a kid?”

  “I have three.” Barq with three kids. Abigail tried to imagine them, redheads with amber eyes. “I hate the way popcorn kernels stick in your teeth. You’re at the movies, and your kids are there, so you have to surreptitiously pick at your teeth and not let them see.”

  “Oh,” said Abigail. “I’d let them see.”

  • • •

  “Here,” said Barq, his voice as raw as his red eyes. “Turn here.” She would’ve missed the little wooden sign.

  The house was closed, even the shades drawn tight, but Abigail had been so certain Linsey would be inside she kept knocking. There was no bell, as if no one ever came to visit. She stepped up on a planter filled with black-eyed Susans, almost all dead, and tried to peer in the top of the door.

  “I’ll try the windows,” said Barq. He fished out a pocketknife and tried to pry open the double-hung windows in the front, but they were metal, and only bent.

  “HELLO!” screamed Abigail, as if whoever was in there was just deaf. The ride she’d accepted had just been a boy. Some twenty-something who had apparently gotten mad that Linsey didn’t have that much money, or that Linsey didn’t want to sleep with him, when they were this close to California. It was Abigail’s own fault, whatever Timmy said, it was because she tried to pry them apart that Linsey went after Timmy, even if Timmy had been at home, hoping to help find her.

  Linsey had just left with this ride, this friend of a friend, or come to him, or however she got here, there had obviously been some deception, and Abigail, sitting down on the planter and starting to sob, knew it was her own fault, because she’d made her daughter break up with Timmy, because she’d been so worried about being left in the most ordinary way—college—she hadn’t had time to notice what was going on right in front of her.

  “There are tire tracks,” said Barq, rubbing his toe on the grass like a bear tracker.

  “I get no signal here.” Now he was holding up his phone.

  Horses shuffled like shadows in a paddock behind the house. There was frost on the grass. It was four in the morning.

  “This isn’t the house!” said Barq. He took her hand and they ran like children down the dirt track until a farmhouse popped out of the dry landscape like a desert flower.

  “Welcome,” said Lila, opening the door wide. “I’ve just put on coffee.” She wore a plaid shirt and jeans and Abigail could see her collecting eggs and rounding up cattle and she felt ridiculous in her clothes, ridiculous in her body, this stranger who had given her daughter a roof was full and flesh and helpful.

  “I get it,” she said. “One of my boys left last year—he didn’t go far, just to work in Vail at a ski place—a ski place! He came home on his own, but I get it. They grow up, but they’re always babies. Come in.”

  “Thank you,” said Abigail, looking past the woman into the house. She wanted to see Linsey, she wanted to leave.

  She was weeping now, fully weeping, crying for her daughter, who she’d expected to have in her arms now like a baby. Only Linsey hadn’t been a baby for so long, even when she let Abigail brush her hair, even when she let Abigail straighten the prom dress she wore when she went as Timmy’s date her junior year, and Abigail had wished she hadn’t shown so much cleavage, but had only said, You’re so beautiful, and Linsey had given her that awful embarrassed look, even then, Linsey hadn’t been her baby for so long. Abigail had been the needy one, the negative part of the equation.

  “Abby.” Now Barq was holding her, turning her forward. It was okay for him to call her Abby.

  “God bless,” he whispered.

  Her impossibly tall daughter was walking down the hallway, wearing someone else’s pajamas, someone’s old blue terry-cloth robe, holding her arms around herself. She had an odd, deep purple bruise on her cheekbone. Oval, like a thumbprint. She shined. Abigail pulled free of Barq, rushed down the hallway, because Linsey was waiting for her mother the way she’d waited after kindergarten, holding herself together, waiting to be collected.

  DAY TENr />
  22 COTTAGE PLACE

  Geo’s photo of the vigil—before the pie—had made the front page of the Bergen Record. Tina Sentry’s face was eerily lit with candlelight, and a boy was laughing behind her. It ran with an article about how the private investigator had tracked Linsey down more than halfway to California, and the headline said “Girl Gone Missing Coming Home.” Geo knew there were other possible headlines, and luck made this one right. He wanted to be like the PI, someone who brought people together again. He wondered what it had felt like to run away from the plan, to escape the ordinary possibilities—though he was glad she was coming back, was going on to college, was in the time line intended for her. He thought about how Timmy had helped him sort through photographs, how people choosing to love other people was so much riskier than the requisite love of family.

  Mrs. Sentry was sitting in the metal chair beside her husband, her hands wrapped through his with the determination of a dowager holding her purse on the subway. Mr. Sentry was unfamiliar to Geo, just the man in a dark blue suit with weary eyes. Mrs. Sentry’s face was oddly sweet, open in a way he hadn’t seen before. Perhaps the music opened her. Geo could tell it called to Mr. Sentry, who might not weep, but clearly wanted weeping. Geo’s parents held his hands, one on either side, as though they’d known Mr. Leonard well. He wished he had his camera. The Sentry children were at school, only a smattering of other kids sat in seats performing their rituals of distraction—nose rubbing, jittery legs—he thought it would have pleased Mr. Leonard, students at his last recital.

  Jordan House played the music without a hint of anxiety, without losing his way. Geo felt the gift of each movement as Jordan’s bow etched the notes into the air. Geo felt him. The strange apricot and amber smell of the old man, the smooth and brittle skin, the passion, the great size of it, the density of pleasure and loss made palatable, made comprehensible.