The Mystery of Hollow Places

by Rebecca Podos

  “Because of—” Jeremy looks at Jessa, pale between us, and then at me. “Because of your dad being lost, right?”

  I turn to the wavering faces around the circle. Mike and Omar are watching me like I’m a bucket of water about to tip. And Chad. Chad is the worst of all.

  I cough the terrible mixture down, throw the cup back, then trip up the basement stairs, through the Prices’ perfect, shiny kitchen. Jessa’s slurred voice shouts my name from below, but through the spinning of the world on its strange new axis, I consider the time it will take her to stand, let alone crawl up the steps, and time is on my side. Pausing just long enough to make my unsteady hands, which no longer seem to belong to me, pick up my purse and coat, I spill out onto their lawn.

  Even in winter and in the dark, their grass seems painfully green.

  ELEVEN

  At eleven a.m. on the fifth day after my dad goes missing, I sit down on a bench at the Boston MFA, trying not to throw up on my sneakers.

  The squeak of winter boots on white tile floors, the echo of a man lecturing his wife on postmodern art, the bleats and barks of kids who’ve had culture forced upon them on their school vacation—all of it boils over in my brain. My stupid brain, which feels like a cracked egg. I drop my face into my hands and try to ignore the nausea I’ve been swimming in since I woke up this morning to the chiming of Jessa’s relentless texts, all of which I ignored, switching my phone to merciful silence. I was still in Jessa’s dress. My carefully braided hair was a ruinous heap, now scraped snarls-and-all into a bundle at the back of my throbbing head.

  I’ve seen Dad hungover. I know some of the tricks. Like, there’s a sleeve of low-fat saltless Ritz in my bag, smuggled out of Lindy’s diet cabinet in the pantry. And I’ve been guzzling water since I woke up; I stuck my face in the fountain by the museum bathroom until a mom behind me tapped her foot on the floor and muttered, “Leave some for the fishes.”

  Dad’s hangover ritual, other than flavorless carbs and sleeping till two under an Everest of blankets, is a single drink first thing in the morning. Once, he had this book party in Boston that he was contractually obligated to go to. This was just pre-Lindy, at the start of the last real bad time, and his agent had to put him in a two-hundred-and-something-dollars late-night cab ride home. Dad called me from the front steps so he could use me as a crutch to the sofa. The next morning, I watched him make a tall Bloody Mary, sweating and gray-faced. “Don’t breathe so loud, Immy,” he begged me. “I’m recovering.”

  “From being drunk?” I stage-whispered.

  “From waking up.”

  Unfortunately, Lindy was still around when I dragged myself out of bed this morning, and it was all I could do to keep my game face on when we passed each other in the hallway. “It’s a beautiful morning,” she chirped, though it was a hollow, preoccupied kind of joy, like an underpaid Starbucks barista might offer. Still, she probably would’ve noticed me mainlining vodka and Tabasco.

  I prop my chin up on my fist and stare at the painting across from me. A porcelain-pale woman hefts a baby boy. She’s supposed to be the Virgin—I’ve never been to church or anything, but the cloak and tiny Bible give that much away—so I guess that makes her kid Jesus. Except since this is the Renaissance Art of Northern Europe and Italy wing, he’s painted in that Renaissance style where it’s obvious none of the artists took a child-development class. None of them understood the head-to-body proportions of a baby. Take Jesus, who looks like a grim-faced elf, with a long body and dangling sausage limbs and a head the size of a tennis ball. In all these paintings, it’s as if the kids were never young; they were born miniature adults. Like instead of growing older, they just increased in length and height and weight. Which I bet would be a lot easier if it were true.

  When the wave of nausea peaks and passes, I push myself to my feet and keep moving through the interconnected rooms. The museum map shows me where I want to be, and after a few wrong turns I find the long room labeled Drawings and see it: just a little thing compared to the big art around it. Though my head is bobbing with the tiny boat in its inky water, I plant my feet and stare.

  Beside the drawing, the plaque reads:

  The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

  Gift of the estate of Mrs. Sarah Wyman Whitman through Mrs. Henry Parkman; acquired June 1909

  Artist: Eugène Delacroix, French, 1798–1863

  Medium: Pen, brown ink, and washes on paper

  According to the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ chooses the poor fishermen Simon, Peter, and Andrew as his first Apostles. They have been fishing unsuccessfully in the Sea of Galilee when Christ appears and tells Peter to let down his nets into deep water. They make a miraculous catch, so their boats overflow with fish. The tale of the fishermen has long been a popular subject among artists, many religious, but some with humbler motives. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes has been re-created by more than one painter living in poverty, poignantly expressing a starving man’s wistful dream of plentiful food.

  The fishermen’s shadowed faces don’t have much in the way of features, but they don’t look awestruck or burning with god fever. The slashes of their lips are straight, their squiggly muscles straining to haul in the catch while dark clouds billow in from the left. They seem nervous, in a hurry to gather the fish before the storm hits and everything they have is washed away forever.

  I’m leaning in as close as I can get to the canvas without bells or alarms or just a strained museum guide sounding off, when fingertips brush my arm from behind.

  “I wasn’t touching it!” I jump back, turning so fast it takes the room a second to catch up with me. But it isn’t a museum guide.

  It’s Jessa.

  “What the hell?” I press my hand against my thumping heart. “What are you even doing here?”

  “Ugh, don’t shout,” she groans through dry lips. Now that my vision has refocused, she does look rough, a whole rainbow of unhealthy colors. Her skin is practically green, and there are purple smudges under her eyes, red-rimmed and bleary. She pulls at the strings on her oversize sweatshirt, drawing the hood in like a noose. “Morning-me is really not feeling night-me. I thought I was gonna upchuck the whole train ride.”

  “You took the train in?”

  “Well, yeah. You wouldn’t text me back. Then I went to your house and saw your car was gone, so I got Chad to drop me off at the station on his way to work. And it was horrible. I’m not even kidding. The lady next to me was eating this sandwich out of a paper bag, so I asked if I could borrow the bag, you know? Just in case? And she gave me the stink-eye like I tried to rob her. Like, I was just asking.”

  “And you’ve been wandering around trying to find me?”

  She shrugs. “I just asked someone in a vest about a fish picture.”

  “Oh. I guess that would’ve been easier. . . .” I turn back to the drawing on the wall.

  “Any clues here?” Jessa asks.

  “Not so much.” Swallowing back a swell of nausea—maybe I’ve been staring a little too closely into the rolling waves of The Miraculous Draught of Fishes—I make for the bench in the middle of the room and collapse onto it, trying to tell myself this isn’t the end of the trail. It’s just the part in the mystery when the answers seem really far away; the depressing part that makes it all the more inspiring and kickass when the detective picks up the trail again. But I’m a little too hungover for that bullshit. “Being here just . . . helps me think,” I finish lamely.

  “I’m really sorry,” she mumbles, “about telling Jeremy. When you and Chadwick were busy measuring each other, Jeremy was whining about me not spending any time with him on my break. Because he wanted me to go to this college thing with him today, but I said I was helping you with something really serious, and he should shut up about it. And then he was like, ‘Is it herpes?’ He was being such a tool and I wanted him to feel like a tool, so I told him the truth. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t think he’d blab to the entire room and I’m so, so sorry. I�
�ll talk to my brother. Tell him to forget about it.”

  “Whatever.” It’s out of the bag already, and it’s too late to put it back. “Why are you going out with that guy if he’s such a tool?”

  She winces as a little girl across the room screams at a glass-splintering decibel, then sighs. “He’s not always. Like last semester, when I was fighting with my mom a bunch? And freshman year, when my dad was having stomach problems? And we thought maybe he had, you know, the C-word or something, so Chad was applying to Boston schools only? Jeremy was so sweet. He was always coming around to play stupid video games and make Chad feel better, and me too. That’s kind of when we started dating.”

  “What? I didn’t know any of that.”

  “Your dad had just gotten engaged to Lindy and you were kind of blah about it. I didn’t want to drag you down. You take things really seriously, you know?”

  “Oh.” That makes me sound like I really am a bucket of water about to tip. “I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me about that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know you care about me,” she says, and then, “Hey, Im? I have a question, but don’t get mad.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Have you told Lindy what we’re doing? What you think your dad is doing? I mean, maybe she would believe you.”

  “Why? Do you believe me?”

  “Sure,” she says, toying with her hair. “I guess. Like, I don’t really get all these clues . . . but I’m not smart like you. And I don’t know your dad the way you do, obviously,” Jessa hurries to add.

  “Right. You’re just helping because you’re my best friend.” I pause to consider this. “You might be my only actual friend.”

  “That’s not true,” she says, but it’s a pretty soft protest.

  “Still, thanks, anyway. For helping. You know, Lindy wants to put up posters in Stop and Shop and all over. So if we don’t track him down soon, everyone will find out.”

  “Is that such a bad thing? Like, you keep saying it’s your job to find your dad. But I don’t get it. You’re not a detective. You’re not a superhero. I don’t remember you becoming, like, ‘one with the night.’ It is literally the police’s literal job to find him. So shouldn’t we tell the cops what we know? They could look up your mom’s, I don’t know, criminal record and stuff.”

  “Why would my mother have a criminal record?”

  “Robbed a bank? Stole meatballs from Sweden? Who knows? No offense, Im, but it doesn’t seem like your mom was the most . . . well-adjusted person in the world, right? If you’re sure your dad’s going after her, they can find them faster than we can.”

  She’s probably right about the police. She’s definitely right about my mom. But the thing is, I don’t want her to be found. I want to find her. I stumble over my words to make Jessa understand.

  “You mean you want to find him, right?” She frowns. “You mean your dad? ’Cause I thought that was the whole point. Find your mom because that’s where your dad’s headed.”

  “It was,” I answer slowly. “But now . . .”

  I want to explain to her that for other girls, a mother is a makeup lesson in the master bathroom, a set of pearls at junior prom, a handwritten letter every Valentine’s Day. For me, a mother is a small body always out of frame in old photos. Just flashes of dangling hair, the toe of a shoe, the tips of outstretched fingers. A wistful dream of plentiful food. And it isn’t enough to keep me going anymore. My mother is half of who I am, and I don’t know her at all.

  But the only way I can explain it is, “I just keep thinking about being in a room with them. Walking into, I don’t know, a crappy little breakfast diner, the kind with a jukebox that only plays the old songs no one remembers, and seeing them at a booth, and then I go sit in the booth with them and . . . there we all are.”

  “Okay.” Jessa speaks up after a long moment, saving me. “So we’ll keep looking.”

  We sit quietly, watching a cluster of noisy preteen boys. They push each other and pull on each other’s coats in front of a woodprint of a saint being stretched by his limbs between four men on ink-black horses. “Observe.” I scowl at them. “The male of the species at play.”

  “Next comes the poop-flinging and penis-fencing.”

  I laugh even though the sound of it hurts.

  I feel the last little wisps of anger go out of me as I remember a free period Jessa and I shared when we were both new in high school. It was in the school cafeteria, where all underclassmen spent their study halls. Early on we staked out the corner table behind the vending machines. Optimal territory for whispering, plus we could get a Vitaminwater whenever we wanted without having to ask permission. Partly because of the vending machines but mostly because Jessa has been gorgeous and perfect forever, freshman boys would circle our table like summer gnats. Matthew Biltz in particular had a five-hundred-ton crush on Jessa. With ears like teacup handles and a chronic case of BO (the consequence of an uncircumcised penis and frequent masturbation, Ashley Griffin was heard to speculate), he leaned on a mean sense of humor to get girls to look at him. He’d drift over to our table on the pretense of buying a SunnyD and, because he loved Jessa, he’d turn his mean on me to attract her. Slamming shut my trig textbook, tweaking my bra strap through my T-shirt, shooting rubber bands into my ponytail, pulling his eyes down and to the side like mine. Moves worthy of Casanova. He’d do this each free period until the day Jessa invited him to sit with us, to spread out his work so the supervising teacher would think we were studying together. The wattage of his smile could’ve powered an auto plant, until Jessa took a huge swig of Vitaminwater, leaned over, and emptied a warm and gelled mouthful right onto his classroom-issued copy of The Merchant of Venice. Matt used his spit-rippled book the rest of the semester, because what boy would dare complain and let it be known he’d been slapped down by Jessa Price?

  I don’t approve of book abuse. But he never bothered me again.

  Jessa tips her head onto my shoulder. “Who needs boys, anyway?”

  Resting my cheek on the top of her tangled hair, I try to smile. “Definitely not us.” I tuck my hands into the pockets of my coat and feel the crunch of butcher paper.

  “What is that?” Jessa asks as I pull out the folded drawings.

  I figure it’s time. Together, we peer down at a skeleton, a cloaked vampire, a bull-headed minotaur. Probably from Mom’s how-to-draw books; she’d clearly tended toward the monsters. The lines are clean and confident, except for a shakier sketch of a girl among them. Her facial features are undecided upon, fingers and shoes unfinished. Scrawled in the bottom corner, in numbers that match Lil’s handwriting on the Post-it Note: Sidonie Faye, 1991. Mental math tells me my mom was fourteen when she drew this . . . what would you call it, a self-portrait? I trace one finger over the still-greasy pencil of a werewolf’s claws.

  “She was really good,” Jessa whispers.

  “She was something,” I whisper back.

  “Okay, so . . . now what? We know your mom was working in an eye doctor’s office five years ago, right? So we make a whole bunch of appointments in Connecticut?”

  “No.” I rise carefully from the bench with the beginnings of an idea. “But maybe we do need a grown-up.”

  TWELVE

  “Come on, make one phone call in your big-boy voice,” Jessa pleads through the white cloud of her breath. “It will take you two minutes, and then you can go back to teaching grown adults how to fall down a hill. Do it for Im!”

  I inspect a piece of lint on the sleeve of my coat, unable to look Chad in the eye. The blurred memory of him over his playing cards, the sympathy on his face, makes my skin feel too tight.

  “It’s not like I don’t want to help you, Imogene.” He frowns, pushing off the hood of his jacket and stomping the heavy powder off his boots in the doorway of the lodge. He’s just come off the Blue Triangle course at the Marple Slopes, a little more than an hour northwest of Boston.

  The lodge seems crowded for a Monday, everybody in
their bright zippered ski gear, swish-swishing as they raise their arms, clomping heavy-footed in their boots toward fake log tables. This is how other kids spend their February breaks: riding ski lifts up the slopes, inhaling Cokes and French fries, hurling soaked ski gloves at each other like nylon grenades. Chad guides us to a quieter spot by the garbage cans outside the Marple Grill. The smell of meat and sauerkraut curls around us, and though I thought the long drive had given me time to regroup, I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Jessa looks similarly grossed out. Raising a pale eyebrow wet with snow spray, Chad scoffs, “Not feeling so awesome, are you? Let it be a lesson. You go sailing with the Captain, sometimes you get thrown overboard. Next time, listen to me.”

  “Ugh, never mind, Chadwick,” Jessa says, clearly wrestling her gag reflex under control. “Just please do it?”

  “Can’t you tell me why I’m lying on the job? Is this . . . is this about last night?”

  “Chad, just leave it alone,” Jessa cuts in, an uncharacteristic growl in her voice.

  Her brother trains his eyes on me and I lift my chin, bracing for more questions, for a repeat of last night’s pity party. Instead he peels off his gloves and wipes a hand down his face, flushed from the cold. “What do you need me to say?”

  If he’s willing to let it go, so am I. More than willing. Gratefully, I tell him how on the drive over, Jessa looked around and found an optometrist’s office called Lionel Sorbousek Eye Care in Torrington, Connecticut. It’s the closest match to Lil’s guess at my mother’s former employer. And I explain my plan. “But we need a grown-up.”

  A familiar dimple punctuates his left cheek.

  “I mean we need someone who sounds like a grown-up.”

  I follow him into the office off the ski shop while Jessa stands watch outside. Not that this is a high-risk mission. The young employees in the lodge seem more interested in sharing epic stories of their epic weekends than in whatever’s happening in their third-rate ski slope’s tiny back office. Chad sweeps aside a collection of giant slushie cups on the desk and sits in the rolling chair, reaching for the phone. “I’ll put it on speaker, okay? Just keep quiet.”