by John Brandon
“Initially.”
“I was raised Church of Christ, until I wore out on it.”
Pauline took a handful of nuts from the birdfeeder. She sat in her camping chair and sifted for cashews and almonds.
“The preacher’s son used to touch my knees under the table,” said Mal. “I wore a skirt usually but he never went higher than right here.” She dragged a fingertip high across her thigh, and then something over toward the swamp caught her attention.
Pauline stretched up from her chair and saw a gawky bird striding toward them. The way his head lolled back and then stabbed ahead was vaguely threatening.
“You won’t fit on this porch, buddy,” Mal said. “You gotta get your own lunch.”
The bird stood still then, like it was waiting for Mal to say more. A breeze kicked up, thick with the scent of reptiles and blossoms. Mal’s stomach growled and the bird laboriously took flight, beating the air, scraping the weeds with its belly.
“You and I need a cookout,” Pauline said. “I’m getting a grill. I think I might go get it right now.”
“Can’t. I’m seeing this guy Tug later today. He’s named after a pitcher and that pitcher’s son is Tim McGraw, the country singer. He wears a bow tie.”
“Tim McGraw?”
“No, this guy Tug wears a bow tie. He came in the store while I was working and gave me a pin, only he called it something else.”
“A brooch?”
“Bingo.” Mal straightened her arm and admired her nails, each of which bore a green dot. “A beetle brooch.”
“That’s what I want,” Pauline said. “A guy in a bow tie who gives me a charming gift. Maybe that was my guy and you intercepted him.”
“You don’t have a workplace,” Mal said. “You don’t have a place where you’re stuck, where you’re out on display.”
“I guess that’s true. I guess there’s not much chance they’re going to randomly stop by my apartment.”
Mal yawned, stretching her legs along the banister and reaching her arms up alongside the wind chimes.
“Where are you guys going on the date?” Pauline asked.
“No idea. That’s up to him. I ain’t paying for anything and I ain’t driving.”
Pauline’s reflex was to tell Mal to be careful, to remind her that she didn’t know this guy at all, to advise her not to let him take her anywhere too secluded, but she kept her peace. Mal had made it this far. She wasn’t helpless. The girl knew how to do a lot of things Pauline didn’t know how to do, like change oil and sew up clothes when they got a rip. Maybe using men for pure fun was another thing she was skilled at. She didn’t need an amateur like Pauline nagging her.
“Hope he takes you somewhere nice,” Pauline said. She had nothing but peanuts left in her hand, and she stood and returned them to the feeder.
Pauline woke up late and worked most of the next day. She played Cyndi Lauper, covered her kitchen table with file folders and pens and her computer and her tea gear. She opened all her blinds and the sun-washed day cleared her head. She switched to some old Tom Petty, then a Motown mix. She ate a banana that was about to go bad. The time flew.
Pauline hard-boiled an egg and painted her fingernails. She took down a bag of trash and cleared the credit card offers and coupon books out of her mailbox. She walked past her car in the lot, and saw that Mal’s car was there too. Mal hadn’t been home all day. Maybe she was still on her date.
Back upstairs, Pauline dropped her blinds and turned on the overhead light. It was past three o’clock all of a sudden. She stretched out on the couch and started reading a book about the role of colonization in world cuisines. She read a chapter, then realized she hadn’t been paying attention to what she was reading. There was a big brown spider on the ceiling, but she was too lazy to get up and kill it. She watched it for a while, hoping it wasn’t on the move.
The next thing she knew, it was morning. She was still on the couch. She’d slept through the evening and through the whole night. The spider was nowhere to be seen. She got up, her hips stiff, and brewed some coffee; then she put the coffee in a thermos cup and drove down to the mechanic. Her car had been making a noise for weeks, laboring in the low gears, and she was finally going to take it in.
She had hoped to be first in line when the place opened, but when she got there the lot was already a hive of activity. She waited awhile until her car could be looked at, then waited while the guy at the desk, in over-explanatory terms, told her she needed a tune-up and a belt and some kind of gasket and also her front brakes could stand some attention. Pauline settled into the waiting room and flipped through magazine after magazine at a steady but unhurried pace, registering each advertisement and headline. Across the way there was another shop, one for gleaming, tricked-out hot rods, and Pauline watched the men over there gathering around the front ends of the cars to lean in and admire the engines, childlike satisfaction on their faces. She wondered if she ought to go stand outside where she could be seen. Maybe one of them would come over and speak to her—maybe the slow-moving, tall one with the parted hair. Maybe he’d look at her like she was one of those shiny engines. Of course she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go out there in the sun and pose. She’d stay stuck on her ratty vinyl chair.
The morning after that, Pauline spent an hour clearing old junk off her computer’s hard drive. She wanted someone to go to a late breakfast with, but Mal still wasn’t back. She hadn’t heard a peep from the girl. Pauline sat on the balcony, watching a gauzy cloud slowly disassemble and listening to the different calls the birds made. She wiped off her windowsills and shined the air conditioning vents and folded some laundry she’d let pile up, and then after that she had nothing else to do. Her apartment was spotless and organized. She made a bowl of cereal and ate most of it, then fetched a trash bag and took it to her closet, where she began scrutinizing each shirt or skirt or pair of pants one by one. She needed to do a Goodwill haul and thin out her wardrobe, she decided. The rule was supposed to be that if you hadn’t worn something in a year, it could go, but Pauline hadn’t worn most of her clothes in the past year. There was no reason to wear anything nice in Palatka. She was staring indecisively at a sleeveless chiffon blouse when it hit her that she was worried about Mal.
It had only been three days, but Pauline had a bad feeling in her stomach. Mal had never been gone three days. She didn’t like sleeping over at other people’s places—she always said that. She was fine, probably, off somewhere having fun, but the bad feeling wasn’t something Pauline could get rid of by will. It annoyed her that the girl couldn’t find the consideration to make a simple phone call. Mal was under no obligation to report to her or anything, but was a quick phone call too much to ask? She’d taken off somewhere with that guy Tug, and while she was having fun Pauline had to sit here and worry. What else was new?
Pauline went and got her phone off the arm of the couch and tried Mal’s cell. It went straight to voicemail. About ten minutes later she tried again, with the same result.
The next day, Pauline chewed up several hours going in and out of antique shops and thrift stores looking for pieces for her apartment, end tables and lamps. After all this time, she still didn’t have near enough furniture. A framed picture. Maybe a hat rack. She chatted with all the owners, but wound up buying nothing but candles and teacups and the like. She stopped at a liquor store on the way home for a bottle of wine, and as soon as she got into her apartment she opened it and drank down a big glass. She poured another glass right away but only stared at it, feeling very alone. She had felt alone when she’d first moved here, but that loneliness had felt natural and she’d waited it out proudly. She’d known it was part of coming to this place. What she felt now was close to defeat. She went out to the back balcony and went over to Mal’s side and peered in the window. There was a light on back where she couldn’t see, back in the bathroom or something. The place wasn’t a mess, nor was it particularly neat. Pauline scanned the interior of Mal’s apartmen
t and couldn’t find anything noteworthy, not that she knew what she was looking for. There was a big plastic pitcher sticking up out of the sink. There were a couple remote controls on the waist-high wall that divided the kitchen and the living room. A hairdryer on the kitchen table. An empty vase. The ceiling fan was spinning.
Pauline slept restlessly that night, using her blanket as a pillow, and as soon as it was morning she went down and looked into Mal’s car. She saw nothing in there but a pair of purple sunglasses and a thing of hard candy sticking up from the console. Probably the candies had melted into a single block at the bottom of the box.
Pauline went up and knocked hard on Mal’s door, knowing it was a silly thing to do. She pressed her ear against the wood and heard nothing. She dialed Mal’s cell phone number again, listened as it went right to voicemail. She had the number to Mal’s landline on a scrap of paper in a kitchen cabinet, and once she’d found it in there she dialed that number, too, knowing it was useless but not knowing what else to do. She listened to the ringing through the wall. Mal didn’t have an answering machine for the landline. She’d gotten the line and the cordless phone free with her cable and Internet, she’d told Pauline. The ringing from next door was measured, aloof. It was hard for Pauline to bring herself to hang up and stop it. She had been reasonable for several days now, and had ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach, but maybe the feeling was right. The girl was so young and so tiny. It was hard to imagine her safe. She had made it this far, tempting fate all the while, only due to dumb luck. She’d enjoyed more than her share of benevolent fortune and now it had run out.
The next afternoon, Pauline sat outside a taco joint staring at a plate of stuffed peppers. She would feel better, she knew, only if she decided on a course of action. She’d give it one more night. She’d watch TV like a normal person, would try to distract herself with political news or cooking programs. And in the morning, if she still hadn’t heard from Mal, she’d call someone. Maybe not the police, but someone. That was a semblance of a plan.
The landlord, a man who wore a thin leather jacket in the Florida heat, owned a bunch of minor rental buildings and seemed to live in constant acute fear that his tenants would abscond in the night. When Pauline met him on the stairs, he had a vindicated air about him. He wanted to know what kind of mess Mal had left in the place, what kind of drugs he’d find in there. He pushed the door open and Pauline rushed ahead of him to check the bedroom and bathroom, her eyes working clumsily, finding nothing out of the ordinary. The bedroom seemed very still, like places did when you weren’t supposed to be in them. Sitting on the dresser was a tall cup of tea Mal had abandoned, the ice long ago melted. Pauline left it where it was. The bed was made sloppily, the way Mal would make a bed. The bathroom offered nothing. The hall light was on, and Pauline turned it off.
“Never heard of dusting, I guess,” the landlord called. “If you don’t own it, why take care of it, right?”
“She could be in trouble,” Pauline said, coming out into the main area. She saw Mal’s biscuit pans on the kitchen counter. There were a couple empty shoeboxes on the floor. The cordless phone was in its cradle.
The landlord nodded absently, his attention now on a bowl that held a nutcracker and a corkscrew. Pauline’s urgency was not rubbing off on him.
“Anything could have happened to her,” she forced herself to say. “Anything.”
“She won’t be back,” said the landlord. “That much I can tell you.”
The landlord’s casualness was making Pauline crazy, and she heard herself tell him that Mal could be dead for all they knew. It was true, but it was strange to hear herself say it.
The landlord looked almost amused for a moment, then he let out a long, beleaguered breath. “They’re never dead, okay? If it helps you any, they’re never dead.” He did something to the buttons on the cuff of his jacket. “Deadbeats maybe,” he said under his breath. “Anyway, she’s not dead in this apartment. We agree on that, right? I came over and we looked and she’s not here and the place looks about how one would expect.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Pauline said. “‘How one would expect.’”
She went over and looked in the refrigerator. Nothing in it was opened. A jar of pickles, a package of butter, some ready-to-bake cookies—all with the seals unbroken.
When she closed the refrigerator door, she saw it. Up on top of the fridge was Mal’s purse, the yellow one, the one she always carried, sitting up there sadly like a child’s forgotten baseball mitt. Pauline pulled it down and unsnapped it, turning toward the light coming in from the back window. The purse didn’t have much weight to it and there wasn’t much inside. About a dozen cheap lipsticks and, beneath them, Mal’s fake ID. No wallet, no cash. There were a bunch of inside pockets that held nothing but nickels and old concert stubs.
The landlord had walked up next to her. “Let me guess,” he said. “She took all the important shit with her.”
Pauline stepped away, closing the purse defensively. “Why would she not just take the purse? Why would she take her wallet out and carry it?”
“Now I’m supposed to read her mind? I don’t know, maybe she has more than one purse. I can’t read my own mind sometimes. I know I can’t read hers.”
There were two chairs at Mal’s kitchen table, and Pauline pulled one of them out and sat on it. She dropped the spare change and ticket stubs and whatnot back into the purse. She rested it on the table but didn’t take her hand off it. Mal wouldn’t have purposely left her purse. That just didn’t make sense. And why would she set it on top of the refrigerator?
“I was hoping you’d know what to do,” she told the landlord. “I don’t know how to deal with something like this.”
“I’m generally not a wise choice,” he admitted, “for pinning your hopes on.” He picked up a magazine and looked at the model on the cover, then returned it to its stack. He said he had to go to the bathroom before he hit the road.
The moment he was out of sight, Pauline found herself up out of her chair and stepping over to the door that led to the balcony. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what it would accomplish, except that she wanted to be able to get back in here if she needed to. She didn’t want to have to call the landlord again. She turned the deadbolt sideways, opened the door an inch and then reclosed it. She looked out the window—the exact same view she had, of course, but somehow it seemed broader, less pinched. The sunlight looked thinner than she’d ever seen it, the air without its usual weight. When she heard the toilet flush, she hurried back to the table.
The landlord emerged and went to the front door. He stood there making a face that meant it was time to go, and then issued a grand sigh. “How you deal with something like this, I’d say, is wait,” he told Pauline. “People take off and then a couple months later, by hook or by crook, some news of them will filter back. You find out they went out west or something. Giving the landlords out there some fun.” He dug something out of his eye, then blinked deliberately. “One of these days I’m going to get rid of this business and dig ditches instead. Deep ones.”
The cops opened a file on Mal, but only because the fact that she was under eighteen forced them to. Pauline admitted there were no signs of struggle at the apartment. The police already had a backlog of violent crimes to work on, violent crimes that had definitely occurred, they told her, with blood and weapons and such. Mal wasn’t a native, so they figured she’d wised up and headed home. Putting her on file was all they would do right now.
Pauline didn’t have any pictures of Mal, so they used the one from her Florida driver’s license, promising to circulate it within the system. They weren’t going to come poke around the apartment building, didn’t care about the car as of yet. They weren’t compelled by Pauline’s secondhand description of Tug. Pauline felt surreal at the police station, like she’d entered an old TV show or something, like what everyone was saying had been decided ahead of time. She turned Mal’s deflated-l
ooking yellow purse over and the cops accepted it indifferently and found a cardboard box to rest it in. They smiled at her humanely, waiting for her to leave.
There was no extended family Pauline knew of, no one beyond Granny who had passed away. She didn’t know the names of the people Mal always talked to on the phone. Pauline called the appliance store where Mal worked, but they didn’t have anything to offer, either. The woman who owned the place said they’d been wondering if she was going to show up again or if she’d had enough of retail. The woman seemed amused, like Mal was pulling a stunt. She said Mal reminded her of herself as a kid. She said Mal would always have a place at her store, if she wanted it.
Pauline herself still half expected Mal to clomp up the stairs outside in a new dress and with another offbeat manicure, a knowing smirk lipsticked across her face. The police had told Pauline to let them know if anything changed, if anyone came for the car or anything. That was their line—let them know if anything changed. They told Pauline to continue with her life. They told her that fretting wouldn’t help anything.
For the next few days, Pauline ate nothing but the occasional slice of bread. She kept her teapot continually heating and drank cup after cup of peppermint tea. She scoured the balcony floor and the banister, scraping off some mold that was thriving and a battalion of tiny off-white snails. She stole a glance now and again at Mal’s unlocked door, knowing it would do no good to venture past it. She almost wanted to lock it again.
Pauline was justified for believing Mal needed guidance, for always wanting to warn the girl about the way she conducted her life, but that validation was only making her feel small and cynical. That’s what a realist was: a cynic. They were one and the same. And what was the prize for it, for all the accurate cynicism? Here she was cleaning, killing snails. The world was a perilous place where fun had a price, and what would understanding that get Pauline? Her landlord and the cops and the lady at the furniture store thought nothing bad had happened to Mal, and they were going on with their lives; they were believing what was convenient for them. Pauline had been right, and now she was left to feel hollow and stymied in her prudence.