Remember Me Like This

by Bret Anthony Johnston

  She’d never told Eric that she volunteered under her maiden name. She hadn’t wanted to risk his feelings, his questions or wounded silence; nor had she wanted to try explaining why she used Wallace in the first place. Would he believe that she’d never actually made the decision to use it? It was true. When she’d first signed up to volunteer, she’d written Wallace on the information sheet without thinking. A careless slip, the result of overeagerness. And yet she understood how tempting it would be to read more into the mistake. The seemingly sound logic was seductive in a shrink-y way: Since Justin had vanished, she hadn’t felt like herself, like the wife or mother she’d been, so she’d found a way to erase her identity. What’s more, in the last three years she had never corrected the error. She’d perpetuated it. She’d chosen to obscure herself, to free herself during each shift from the dreary connotations of her life. Laura knew how easily her position could be dismantled, and she’d always felt shallow and spineless when she wrote her old name. But she kept using it. If the choice afforded her anything beyond anonymity, it was simply this: the chance to believe that lost things could be found again.

  And yet, the reason she hadn’t told Eric about Rudy owed little to protecting herself or his feelings. She didn’t understand what his using her name meant. She couldn’t figure why it left her sweating and short of breath, and she worried that talking about it would wipe out her hopes of comprehending whatever there was to comprehend. Did it mean others knew too? Were there implications beyond Marine Lab? Surely not. Surely she was just being paranoid, her mind focusing on this tiny mystery to avoid thinking of Dwight Buford being, for all purposes, a free man. To avoid thinking of how Justin must despise them, how they deserved his anger, how he’d suffered indignities that made her long to be sick. So maybe Rudy had seen her on television or in the paper. So maybe she’d accidentally signed up for a shift using her married name, having written Campbell as carelessly as she’d once written Wallace. So one part of her existence was infringing on another, the past colliding and collapsing and crushing into the present. So she’d never successfully divided her existence after all. So what? So what, so what, so what?

  Each time she volunteered she hoped to see Rudy, and when he didn’t show, she searched the schedule to see if he’d signed up for future shifts. He was nowhere. It was frustrating, overshadowing. Thwarted. That was how she felt. Thwarted. Like when the postcard came from California and the detectives hardly gave it a second glance. Like when the 800 number would ring and the caller would hang up as soon as she answered. Away from Marine Lab, she did her best to put Dwight Buford and Rudy out of her mind. She plucked the dandelions and crabgrass that were taking over the backyard—sometimes one or both of the boys joined her—and she sorted through materials she would need to homeschool Justin in the coming fall. (She tried to mask how thrilling the prospect was. Both Griff and Eric would be back at school, so it would be just the two of them at the kitchen table, reviewing what he’d read the night before and solving equations. The image was so charged that it felt like a gift she had to wait months to open.) She gave Rainbow a bath with the hose, then another one when the dog, after the first wash, raced under the house and wallowed in the dirt. At work, she cleaned behind the machines, folded and bagged orders, flipped through the racks of clothes and called delinquent customers to remind them to pick up their clothes.

  Justin was rearranging his room, trying one layout for a day, then changing it when he woke the next afternoon. On Wednesday, she and Griff helped him slide his desk to where his bed had been. They joked that they’d gotten so much practice in the last week that they could start their own moving and interior design company. Mom’s Moving, they would call it. Their logo would incorporate Rainbow and Sasha.

  “We could have an ad with a dog carrying boxes,” Griff said.

  “And a cartoon with Sasha stretched out like a ramp from the truck to the ground,” Justin said.

  The normalcy of the afternoon was intoxicating, buoying. The ratio between pressure and privilege was, in the moment, livable. They were all sweating. Justin took off his shirt and fashioned it on his head like a turban. Griff followed suit. Their hairless chests and arms and elbows and farmer tans were almost identical, and they looked so sweet that Laura flitted through the house to find her camera. The boys posed in mock strain, pretending to lift Justin’s desk. Everyone agreed the picture would make a great image for the side of a Mom’s Moving truck. They decided to move the desk to where the dresser had been.

  As they were figuring out where to put the dresser, Eric called from school. The battery in his truck had gone dead while he was teaching, and he needed her to give him a jump. This too felt comfortingly normal, the beautiful everyday problems of an unscathed family. Such comfort was fleeting, Laura knew, and she knew she’d worry about leaving the boys alone as soon as she reversed out of the driveway, but she didn’t cave. She told them she was leaving as nonchalantly as she would have told them to wear sunscreen. Justin said, “Mom’s Moving. Where Mom’s always on a union break.”

  The sky was lazy with sunlight. Driving, she kept watch for Buford, but there were only the tourists and fishermen and surfers making their way to the beach. Women walked around with visors and jute beach bags. Children licked ice cream cones.

  In the parking lot of Southport Junior High, Eric was sitting on his truck’s tailgate, swinging his feet in small circles. He looked young, like the last student waiting to be picked up. The easy problems of ordinary life, the effortless solutions: Your husband is stranded? Go pick him up. Battery’s dead? Bring out the jumper cables and turn one key, then the other. She felt a brief rush of accomplishment for having temporarily shut the door on her grief, a rush of normalcy again, and of something like hope, the transient sense that people were capable of being rescued.

  ALICE HAD AN INTESTINAL INFECTION. THE VET CONFIRMED IT. Normally, the problem wasn’t serious, but given the weight she’d lost and her diminished appetite, Paul was concerned.

  Laura had volunteered three times in as many days, two murder shifts and one early evening. Rudy never appeared. Most of the current volunteers were new, a cadre of marine biology grad students from Corpus. They were serious-looking, a little arrogant. She didn’t like how they talked about Alice; their language was too clinical and their voices lacked affection. They seemed more fascinated by the infection than the dolphin, so much so that at times she wondered if they weren’t hoping for worse symptoms. She didn’t think they were as invested in Alice or her recovery as they should have been. If Paul called in the middle of the night because a volunteer had failed to show, she doubted any of the students would drive to Marine Lab to cover the shift.

  Which was why, at one on Sunday morning, she dialed Paul’s home phone number. If Rudy was, as he claimed, the first person Paul called to fill in for no-shows, she needed to cancel early enough for him to make the drive from Refugio.

  When Paul answered, she almost hung up.

  “Hello?” he said. “Hello?”

  “It’s Laura Wallace. I’m sick,” she said. An hour later, she was on the road.

  And, as she’d hoped, Rudy’s 4×4 was parked beside the dumpster at Marine Lab. The lot was vacant otherwise, bathed in the lurid light from the single lamppost. Laura’s heart was pulsing; she could feel her arteries widening. For a moment, she considered swinging a U-turn in the parking lot and driving home without ever confronting Rudy. But then she was cutting the ignition and walking toward Marine Lab. Insects knocked against the lamp. Frogs gurgled in the swamp grass.

  The warehouse’s exterior was humidity-slicked. With the night’s heat, the door had swollen in its frame, so Laura had to use her shoulder and all of her weight to force it open. When it finally gave, the noise was a metal-against-metal screeching, as harsh as a car’s brakes being slammed. Rudy spun around on the observation deck. He looked pissed.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  “I thought someone had crashed into the building.�
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  “Just me,” she said.

  She closed the door softly. Water from the rehab tank was sloshing onto the floor, likely because Alice dove low with the noise and sent the water up and over. Laura’s cheeks were warming. The light in the warehouse was intensely bright, garish against all the metal. She wondered if Paul had replaced some bulbs or if extra fixtures were switched on. A tall fan was oscillating, but the air was heavy and stagnant. Every surface was sweating. The wooden steps up to the observation deck were drenched. Laura held on to the guardrail, just to make sure she didn’t flub up again.

  “I thought you were sick,” Rudy said.

  “You called me Mrs. Campbell,” she said.

  “Do what?” He watched Alice circle the tank. She was moving fast, banking onto her right side, peering up. The water was still sloshing a little.

  “The other night in the parking lot. You called me Mrs. Campbell.”

  He met Laura’s eyes. She saw how tired he was. He looked thrown, too, squinting and cocking his head, trying to reconcile the data confronting him: Laura canceling, then showing up to chastise him for having called her by her rightful name a week prior. Rudy opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He was cowed. He seemed to be considering not his response but the accusation. Laura waited. Alice swam a lazy lap. She exhaled a fine mist.

  Finally Rudy said, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re asking, Mrs. Cam—”

  “How do you know my name? I’ve never introduced myself to you that way, never signed up for a shift with it.”

  He swiped sweat from his brow with his forearm. Alice pushed herself against the orange rope in the pool, sawing herself forward, and Rudy made a mark on his log sheet. He looked at Laura, then leaned back in his chair, thinking.

  “I guess I thought you’d told me your name at some point, or maybe I thought I’d seen it on the sheet, but I can’t remember that ever happening. I apologize. I never meant to—”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m a cop,” he said. “Over in Refugio. I’ve been with them for going on five years now.”

  All sound peeled away, a steady quieting that left Laura feeling small and desolate. Woozy. She was suddenly aware that she could fall into Alice’s pool. She put her hand on the deck’s railing, stepped away from the edge.

  Rudy stood and unfolded a metal chair. “Here,” he said. “Sit.”

  She waved him off. She leaned against the railing, watching Alice. The dolphin kicked her tail once underwater, and the motion reminded Laura of a flag snapping in the wind. Alice was propelled forward, rising to the surface and issuing a loud breath. Rudy noted it. Laura’s mouth tasted of copper, and though she desperately wanted some water, she didn’t want to move. Her scalp burned.

  “I saw you on the news or in the paper,” Rudy said, nodding, remembering, his eyes still on Alice. “An older photo, I think. Your hair was shorter.”

  “We haven’t done any press yet. We’re trying to keep things low-key while Justin adjusts. The reporters have been good about it. They mostly focus on the Bufords.”

  “You caught a break there,” he said. Then he started nodding again, energetically, and said, “It was the day I filled in for my wife. She was sick. I came home after having seen you and I saw some report. I told her I’d just volunteered with you.”

  “Probably,” Laura said.

  “It was. I’m positive,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You know what’s crazy? I knew about him being found before I showed up for that shift. If the news had been public yet, I would have mentioned it.”

  “You knew then? You knew before I did?”

  Rudy kept nodding. He seemed to be getting worked up. Laura expected him to stand and pace, but he stayed where he was, nodding and nodding. He said, “I always listen to the radio when I’m driving, even when I’m off duty, and I remember the dispatcher saying he’d been found. She didn’t give any more details, but I remember that coming through the speakers. I remember knowing it was true, but not believing it. If that makes sense.”

  “I think I will sit down,” Laura said. Rudy stood and arranged the folding chair beside his, angled it toward the pool so she could see Alice. Presently, the dolphin was poking at a pink ball that Laura hadn’t noticed before, nudging it along the tank’s wall. Laura saw this, but she also understood that none of what she perceived at that moment was fully registering. Not the drone of the pool pump, the smell of chlorine or salt or heat trapped in the thick air, not the inflatable alligator in the corner by the life jackets. She was incapable of taking in anything else.

  “Paul’s not coming back for another couple of hours, if that helps,” Rudy said. “He went home to nap.”

  “Okay. Okay, that’s good to know,” Laura said. “Five years?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’ve been a cop for five years?”

  “Almost five, yes.”

  “You started just a little before he went missing.”

  “I remember hearing about the case in briefings, and I remember seeing the age-progressed images.”

  “He hated the pictures we used.”

  Alice nudged the pink ball again, then submerged herself, which Rudy noted on his log sheet. He said, “How’s he doing? If it’s okay to ask.”

  She could have told him what she told everyone—Justin’s doing very well, better than anyone could have hoped, more progress each day—but instead she said, “I don’t know.”

  He offered a small, kind smile. It made Laura feel as though she’d gotten the answer right. He said, “Well, he’s doing miles better than he was.”

  “It’s like we were all on a sinking ship and now we’re each in our own lifeboat, floating away from each other. Every few days I’ll catch sight of one of them, or maybe they’ll see me, but then we roll over the horizon and disappear again.”

  “Y’all have another son, right?”

  “Griffin,” she said. “He’s currently avoiding his girlfriend, which makes zero sense to me. Eric, my husband, tries to act like everything is hunky-dory normal. Justin sleeps all day and watches television all night with a snake draped around his neck. The other night I dropped a skillet and scared him half to death.”

  “And what about you?”

  “Me?” she said. “I’m here, watching a sick dolphin swim in circles in a humid warehouse.”

  “My wife and I have kept you in our prayers.”

  Laura averted her eyes to Alice. Whatever part of her was starting to open up to Rudy closed a little when he mentioned praying. When she’d gone to the support groups in the church basement, people were always advising her to pray. They made it sound as if the frequency and intensity of her prayers correlated to whether her son would be found alive. Once, after a woman said Justin’s life was in God’s hands and Laura only needed to trust His wisdom, she’d looked the woman in the eye and said, “Fuck God.”

  Maybe Rudy sensed her hesitation because he added, “And we’ve talked about you a lot, especially with the baby coming. We just can’t imagine. And now, with the alleged abductor out, I don’t want to think about what I’d do.”

  “Alleged?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit.”

  Alice swung herself around and reversed her direction. The surface of the water had calmed and was only slightly disturbed when she breached to exhale and draw breath.

  Rudy said, “I’d been wondering if you’d keep volunteering, if I’d see you again.”

  “I’ve been wondering how much any of us can take.”

  “The worst is behind y’all,” he said.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Really, once the worst happens, it’s always happening. It’s never not happening.”

  Rudy sat quietly, watching Alice swim, then said, “Maybe talking to someone would help.”

  “Justin sees a social worker. She’s a nice woman who will probably always know more about my son than I do.”


  “What about the rest of y’all? You and your husband and Griffin?”

  She’d been wondering if Griff should see a therapist, maybe even Letty. Maybe, she’d thought, at least one of us can survive this. She hadn’t broached the subject with anyone. She was afraid—afraid he would need therapy, afraid he wouldn’t and bringing it up would make matters worse. As for Eric, she suspected he believed what she did: that they deserved all of the pain and sadness and guilt that was constantly marauding them. They deserved it for as long as it lasted and to seek any kind of relief would be craven and gutless.

  Now she said, “You’re right. It might not be a bad idea for us.”

  “There’s no shame in—”

  “Does anyone else here know?” she said. “Does anyone else know who I am? Paul or any of the other volunteers?”

  “I think he’s too wrapped up in Alice to notice much of anything,” he said.

  “I use my maiden name. I don’t know why.”

  “It is what it is,” Rudy said.

  “What would you do?”

  “Say again?” Rudy said.

  “You said you don’t want to think about what you’d do if it happened to your family. What would you do?”

  The pool pump chugged. Alice glided against the rope. Laura thought Rudy was about to confide something private and true, but his only response was to shake his head, the motion slow and tight as if he were just then in great pain.

  OUTSIDE THE WAREHOUSE, IN THE MILKY PREDAWN LIGHT, PAUL Perez tried to make sense of Laura Campbell’s car being parked next to Officer Treviño’s truck. He was still groggy from his too-short nap—despite having driven from his house since waking up—so he wondered if he was dreaming her car. He knew he wasn’t, but that didn’t clear anything up.