by Deb Caletti
Then again, every encounter I’ve had with Bethy and Kristen has prompted this same fashion crisis, along with those other self-destructive acts you commit right before a dreaded social outing. Cutting your bangs, for example. Spilling coffee on a just-ironed blouse. Some people just bring out every small part of you, all the little self-hatreds, and so the evil inner trolls take the scissors out of the drawer and chop the hell out of your hair. I swear to God, the more anxiety I feel about an imminent event, the shorter I cut my bangs. I’ve gone to many intimidating places looking like a nine-year-old on picture day.
When I look into my closet now, all of my clothes suddenly seem old and defeated. It’s the museum of my life—there are stretch pants in there and even (way back) a blue silk jacket with humongous shoulder pads. I need to find something that is not exhausted from history and pale from too many washings. I need energy and confidence; good luck, old clothes. Good luck to you. Jeans and a T-shirt, my standby pals? No. Bare arms are too vulnerable and unprotected. Tennis shoes? Too childlike. Boots are more authoritative. Ian’s daughters will want things from me I can’t give, like answers.
A time like this could bring Ian’s daughters and me closer in our mutual loss and fear, but of course this won’t happen. The usual suspicion in their voices has amped up now, and every time we’ve talked, their words have been cuts and slashes. It’s another form of the hatred that’s always been there, but still the animosity gathers in the center of my chest. It isn’t fair to feel this way about them, but years of sniping remarks and spiteful glances have worn me down. We need Ian between us. He’s both the cause and the solution to our rift.
That noise in my car is getting worse. I try to ignore it as I drive on the floating bridge over Lake Washington. You don’t go get your car fixed when your husband is missing. The waters of the lake are choppy on one side of the bridge and still as glass on the other, yin and yang. I pass the pricey lakefront communities and make my way toward the foothills of the mountains, which are now home to repeating, ever-multiplying suburban neighborhoods with names like The Highlands, High Point, Manor Grove—images of upper mobility and lofty outlooks. Did I mention that our old neighborhood was called “Tuscany”? What degree of self-delusion did it take not to laugh at that sign (with its cascading waterfall) every time we passed it? There’s a QFC and a Bartell Drugs right down the street. There’s a Supercuts.
Mary still lives in the house that she and Ian had owned in “Tuscany,” and Bethy has stayed close by. She now resides in a nearby apartment complex. It’s mildly shabby and has another grand name, Forest Ridge. I park under one of the carports and walk up the dim green stairs. It’s a place for people in transition—kids in their twenties and newly single fathers, one of whom, I’m guessing, is right then bringing out his recycling. He looks out of place in his elegant clothes and expensive shoes; I hear the wine bottles clatter into the bin. Bethy went to college for a year, but then she quit. She works at the same video-game company where her boyfriend, Adam, has a job. Ian helps pay for this place, this apartment where Bethy now lives with Adam and their cat, Missy, but it isn’t my business. I see Bethy’s and Kristen’s cars down below, parked next to each other. He paid for those, too.
Music is playing behind the door, which is marked with a brass 5. The sound is turned down at my knock. The clothes I’ve chosen (boots and a newish skirt and shirt) are doing nothing to help me. They are only clothes, after all, and I’m on my own. Bethy lets me in, and the smell of just-fried food makes a run for it out the door. The music had been from a video game, I see. Controllers have been set down in an abrupt muddle of cords on the coffee table, and the television screen shows two now-frozen futuristic warriors, one woman and one man, dressed in red and black and holding enormous complicated weapons at their sides. Remember how thrilled we were at Pong? I want to say to someone, but there is no someone here. Remember Kerplunk and Lite-Brite and Which Witch? There are losses upon losses, aren’t there?
“Bethy.” I reach out to hug her. She endures my embrace as if she’s being tortured but will never give up state secrets.
Adam doesn’t move from his spot on the couch. There’s a bag of Doritos open on the table and an empty plate with crumbs on it. Kristen sits on a bar stool at the counter, which divides the kitchen and the living room. She stirs something in a cup with the tip of her finger. “Hey, Dani,” she says.
I go to her, hug her shoulders. There’s hot chocolate in that cup, whipped cream on top, melting quickly into a white pool. She sucks the tip of her finger, wipes it on her sweatpants. We’ve had a few moments of connection over the years, a good conversation, a shared love for a book. It would give me hope until the next time I would see her, when she’d avoid eye contact and talk only to her father. Still, a friendship seemed possible, unlike with Bethy, who was older and closer to her mother. Maybe after years and years, Ian’s daughters and I could know one another as people and not players in a triangle. Maybe after years and years they wouldn’t move the camera so I’d be cut out of every picture they took of Ian and me.
“Hey, missus,” Adam says.
“Adam.” I never know what to say to him. He played football in high school, and he’s got one of those amused-but-snide jock grins. That’s how he is. Frat boy without the frat. His dark hair is cut cleanly, and Ian likes that. He thinks the haircut says good things about the kid. But the grin makes Adam seem arrogant, even as he shakes your hand and says all the right things. I can’t find conversational ground. I sound parental every time we speak. I don’t think he’s ever asked a question of me since I’ve known him. Same for Bethy, come to think of it.
“You can sit down.” Bethy gestures to an old lounge chair, the kind where the footstool pops out, probably something from Adam’s parents’ basement. “Kristen!” Bethy jerks her head toward the couch, indicating that Kristen should be sitting in the living room with us. Something about this (the huffy frustration, the older-sister toss of the hair) makes me realize how young Bethy still is and how hard she’s trying to manage an unmanageable situation.
Kristen slips off her stool. In her pink socks and too-long sweatpants, she, too, looks like the near-child she is. She pulls her sleeves down over her hands. She sits on the couch with Bethy and Adam. The couch springs lost their virility long ago; Kristen sinks down into the cushions. Adam is trying to grow a goatee, but it’s a scrappy, weed-filled parking lot. And Bethy—her fingernail polish is chipped. There’s a stain on her shirt that her mother probably could get out. I see it clearly: Ian’s daughters are harmless. I had given them so much power, but they’re just kids. Kids who are as scared about their father’s absence as I am.
I feel a sudden softness toward them and a deep regret for all that’s passed between us. “I haven’t heard anything,” I say. “His phone is still off. Nothing on our credit card. The detective says they’re doing everything they can, there’s not much to go on. Have you guys—”
“No. Not a word. I think he’d call us if he was going to call anyone.” Bethy picks at her polish.
“Maybe he can’t …” Kristen’s voice wobbles.
Grief creeps up my throat, tightens it. I need to be the grownup here. I need to keep it together. “Oh, honey.” I reach forward to hold her hand, which is still tucked up into that sleeve. It’s a good idea, but the execution is awkward, and so I only end up patting her covered wrist. “I know, sweetie. But we don’t need to go there yet. He could be anywhere. Let’s not go down that road yet.”
“He’s been gone a week,” Kristen says. “A week seems like he’s dead—”
“Don’t,” I say. “Please.”
Adam leans forward now, too. He puts his fists on the knees of his jeans. “Mrs. Keller made us a list of all the places he might be. We’ve spent the last few days driving around and driving around.” I’m confused for a moment—Mrs. Keller. That’s me, but not me. Mary hadn’t changed her last name. Now we share it.
“Give anything you can think of
to the police,” I say. “Any ideas.”
“Well, that’s what we want to talk to you about,” Adam says. “That’s why we called you here.” I sit back. Adam’s voice has become authoritative. He’s suddenly become the one in charge.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Bethy says.
I can suddenly see that they have a plan. They’ve discussed how this will go. The softness I felt toward them—it’s hurrying the hell out of there. In its place comes the uneasiness you feel alone on a dark street or in an elevator with the wrong kind of stranger.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I agree.
“His car is still there. Where’d the dude go without his car?” Adam’s dark eyes bore into mine. I can imagine him on the football field, staring at his opponent through the eyepiece of his helmet. The funny thing is, he reminds me of Mark.
“You said you went to bed. You got up and he was gone,” Bethy says. “It doesn’t make sense. You would have heard something.” She’s repeating herself. My uneasiness is growing. I am on that dark street, and now there are footsteps behind me. I am on that elevator, and now the stranger is standing too close. The smell of whatever they cooked is making me feel sick.
“We had this late night, wine—”
“How do we know he got home?” Adam puts his index finger in his ear to scratch an itch, twists it like a screwdriver. This manages to make him look both idiotic and threatening. Adam is like one of those chimps you see at the zoo (chimps: frat boys of the primate world), throwing their shit one moment, and then eyeing you in a way that makes you think they’re capable of pulling a knife.
“Because I said he got home.”
“Do you realize there’s a scratch on his car?” Adam says.
“Yes. I saw it.”
“It wasn’t there when we saw him last,” Bethy says.
“He keeps that thing immaculate,” Adam says.
“What are you suggesting? It could have come from anywhere. You know what it’s like on that street.”
“You would’ve heard him if he left. He wouldn’t disappear without you knowing.” Bethy’s voice is rising. I am shocked to find myself in an interrogation, and the shock has opened a door onto a blank, empty room in my mind. I have no idea what to say.
“That’s exactly what happened.” My voice is desperate. Even I can hear it.
“People don’t just disappear,” Adam says. “You were with him. It looks like that car was driven down some forest road—”
“I don’t like what you’re implying. I know we’ve had a rocky history—”
“That’s besides the point,” Bethy says.
“That is the point,” I say.
“You’re not exactly giving us a straight answer.”
“I don’t have an answer, Adam. If I had an answer, I’d know where your father is.”
“I know where my father is,” Adam says.
You can want to slap someone, you really can.
“We have some questions. His car is still there, and it’s scratched.” Bethy ticks the points off on her fingers. “His phone isn’t working. None of his clothes are gone. You were the last one with him. I, for one, don’t get how you didn’t hear him leave.”
“This is ridiculous. This is crazy. If you have concerns—”
“Oh, we have concerns, all right,” Adam says. He leans back now, too. His legs are open, and one arm is draped across the back of the couch. Dare me, his body says.
“If you have concerns, you should take them to the—”
“Oh, believe me,” Bethy says. “We definitely—”
“You guys!” Kristen shouts. “Stop!” Her face is red. She’s crying. My heart is beating so hard I think I can hear it. “Stop!”
I get up. A twist of hatred has broken loose, and I feel capable of the worst, wrong words. Forever words. “I think we’re done here.”
Adam stands. He folds his arms. It’s another junior high school bully move, a jock move, a Mark move, a move to remind you that he’s the big guy. I look at the warriors on the television. I suddenly remember that Adam has been in trouble with the law, something about a break-in. A “scrape.” Before he’d met Bethy, supposedly.
Bethy’s eyes are hard, and now those children don’t look so harmless, not at all. I notice that her shirt has silver cat hairs on it, and I can smell the animal’s litter box.
“Wait,” Adam says. “Bethy …”
They look at each other. Bethy hesitates.
“There’s one more thing,” Bethy says. She glances at Adam again.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” Adam says. “We’re already into the next month.”
“Dad writes a rent check,” Bethy says.
Kristen pulls at those sleeves. “Car payment.”
“He sends them the first Saturday of every month.”
The first Saturday was the day of the party. The day of his meeting with Nathan. The day he usually sends money to the children who have sided against him.
Sometimes you look at someone and you see your whole history together, right there. The life between you flashes before your eyes, all right. I looked at Bethy then, and Kristen, too. I understand their hurt and anger; I have for years. But I’ve given every outreach and showed every kindness to make up for my wrongs. I have done everything I can to understand and understand and understand. Still, I will never understand their cruelty, especially to their own father.
“We need a check,” Bethy says.
It’s dangerous in there. Bethy’s cat comes in and jumps onto the couch and walks across Kristen’s lap. That cat has green eyes. It starts to scratch at the woven fabric of the couch, its claws catching in the threads. Kristen swats at it to stop. The cartoon warriors hold their weapons. The space between us needs only a lit match for things to blow up, I can tell that. I know I’m sealing my fate with what I do next, but I don’t care anymore. You reach a point where you’ve had enough.
“Go ask your mother,” I say, and I slam the door behind me.
“Really? That’s your response?” Abby is talking on her phone. She turns her back to me when I come in and then disappears down the hall. “If you’re not going to be supportive, this conversation’s over.”
Pollux is hopping around in reunion joy, his toenails making too much noise for me to listen in. I pick him up so we can be better spies. “Shh,” I whisper to him.
I can make out a few words. Police say. That won’t help. Grandma’s been. A questioning lift to her voice includes the word Vicki. Abby is talking to Mark. Vicki is the woman he’s been seeing for more than a year now.
One of the disappointing truths about divorce is that when you have children together, you are never free of the one you’ve tried so hard to leave. Never. You have to tolerate their presence at graduations and weddings; you hear about a birthday gift they’re about to get; you catch their murmurs on the other end of a call. You feel them there but not there. Their partner is mentioned in regard to some restaurant they all went to (she ordered the veal), and you hear that your old father-in-law’s in the hospital for some liver problem (he always did drink a lot) when you phone your child just as they’re heading over to see him. In small snippets and snapshots, you witness the ex’s aging and feel the past receding and the ways he’s different now yet still exactly the same. You see him in a photograph from a vacation your child took with him and his partner; his hair is thinning and his waistline has grown, but it’s still him. You see the gifts he gives your child and the relationship she has with him, and then you hear about some nasty comment he made—it’s still him, all right. Every now and then this distant proximity allows sentimentality to sneak in, but, thankfully, it’s quickly squashed. People keep being who they are, and you can tell that even from snippets and snapshots.
“Sorry,” Abby says when she appears again. “Dad.”
You hear about him, so of course he hears about you, too. He’s there in the wings of this crisis, reveling in my misfortune, I imagine.
“Don’t even tell me.”
I can only guess what he would have to say. Mark has never been one to “wish the best” for me, his former wife, “the mother of his child.” Some divorced people use these terms, though to my trained ear it sounds like more of the self-serving campaigning that divorced parents are so fond of. See how well behaved I am with that asshole? See how generous I am to that bitch? Maybe Mark’s just more honest. People talk about co-parenting and open communication and not talking bad about the other parent, but look closer and listen for the edge in their voice. I’ve come to believe that co-parenting is one of those mythical creatures like Sasquatch, which some people swear they’ve seen but that likely doesn’t exist. Most often, co-parenting actually means that one person is especially adept at keeping their mouth shut. But in our situation, well, Mark doesn’t even bother with good intentions or illusions. He’s kept his vitriol at hand. He hasn’t eased his victorious grip on it over the years, not one bit. He’s forgotten all about the battering. For him, it has somehow faded off into some inconsequential bit of married life, toothpaste-cap squabbles. Instead, he throws around my wrongdoings like cartoon bad guys crashing carts of melons so that the police won’t catch them.
My anger lately … It was wrapped and bound in silk threads all those years. But now what lies beneath is apparently growing too big for its soft-spun manacles.
People don’t just disappear, Adam had said. And Detective Jackson had asked about anyone who might wish to do Ian harm. It seems overly dramatic, TV movie-ish. But I think about this question as I set old Poll boy back on the floor. I really think about it.