A Song in the Daylight (2009)

by Paullina Simons

  The streets are spotless, broom-swept clean. Not a thing out of place. Trash cans every fifty feet as required by ordinance. Flags on the lampposts. Nothing rusted or unpainted. Windex shine on all the glass in the stores, impeccable displays, cobblestones, pristine sidewalks, landscaped parks, sun shining. Everything like a picture. Like their house with the Christmas lights on and snow on the evergreens.

  He didn’t get back in his futility until noon, having lost all track of the hours. Emily was beyond herself. Asher, less enraged and more productive, had called up one of his friends and found a ride to his playoff game. Feeling himself a failure on all fronts, Jared scooped up a shoddily dressed Michelangelo and went to the baseball grounds downtown, where he stood blankly by the chain-link fence and when the other parents clapped or booed, he clapped and booed, while Michelangelo played on the playground, and Jack and Frank and Ted kept talking to Jared about Asher’s incredible pitching arm, and the Yankees’ terrible pitching. He heard none of it and all of it. He didn’t know how he continued to stand. Sitting in the field bleachers, in the fifth inning, with his son’s game tied and the entire season on the line, Jared called Larissa’s mother.

  “No, I haven’t heard from her,” Barbara said. “But why is that unusual? I never hear from her. Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Great.”

  “She did invite me for the barbecue on Monday. Do you want me to bring anything?”

  “What barbecue?”

  “What barbecue? The party you’re having on Memorial Day. Jared! What’s wrong with you today?”

  Oh shit, the barbecue. “That’s right. Thanks so much, wonderful, can you bring some of your potato salad?”

  “I always do. Tell the children I have something special for them.”

  “They’ll like that. Thanks, Barbara.”

  “See you Monday. Three?”

  “Three is great.”

  When he hung up, the other team had scored four runs off Asher. Jared clapped. “Yeah! Go, Wildcats!” Except he was standing in a sea of dismal parents, who were booing and not clapping. His own son glared at him from the pitcher’s mound as if to say, what’s wrong with you, Dad?

  What was wrong with him indeed. What time was it?

  One.

  O God.

  And at home, Ezra’s Subaru was in the drive, and Emily was storming out the side door, fuming, ready to castigate him, and before she opened her mouth, Jared took her by the shoulders and said through his teeth because he didn’t want to upset Michelangelo, who was still in the car, “Emily, you need to look around you and see what’s happening. Your mother is missing! Have you noticed this? I don’t want to hear another word from you unless it’s to help me, you got it? I don’t want to hear about your missed games, or your cello, or your volleyball, or anything. Your. Mother. Is. Missing. You got that?” He never talked to Emily like this. He left the discipline to Larissa.

  “I know,” she said sullenly but not particularly sympathetically. “But she’s going to come back, right?” Clearly she thought whatever was happening would iron itself out like most adult things, but that her volleyball practice might have to go on without her was an irrecoverable travesty. Jared held the car door open for Michelangelo, nearly closing it on his son’s hand.

  Ezra and Maggie were in his kitchen.

  Vacantly he told them what Tara had told him. He didn’t tell them that he stood in the middle of Summit, in the middle of the street and listened to the dried-up screams in his throat. Where was she? What had happened? He was afraid they would think he was losing his mind.

  When was the forty-eight hours going to be up? When could he file a report on a missing Larissa, and why would he want to engage Cobb and Finney again with their cold stares and presumptions of Jared didn’t even know what. And yet, what else could he do but file?

  Maggie and Ezra brought Dylan, who babysat Michelangelo along with Emily, while Maggie called their friends, asking them to daisy-chain the news that due to a short-lived emergency, the Memorial Day bash was unfortunately being cancelled this year. She even called Larissa’s mother.

  “You’re telling me not to come? But I just spoke to Jared, who told me to bring potato salad!”

  “Yeah, so sorry, Mrs. Connelly. Everyone just like that fell under the weather. Larissa will be in touch soon.”

  Detective Cobb called at three. Had she returned? Because no one at the surrounding hospitals and precincts had any information. Cobb said once they filed the missing persons report there was a chance the FBI, suspecting cross-state foul play, might get involved.

  Cross-state? Foul play? Jared hung up, his arms, his head, his eyes sore and hurting. Ezra fixed him a drink. Maggie fixed him some food. He didn’t eat, he didn’t drink. “I don’t understand what could have happened,” he kept repeating. “I simply don’t understand. Is there an explanation?” He raised his eyes, his palms.

  Ezra shook his head, his own palms opening, shoulders rising in rank bewilderment.

  “What makes sense?”

  “Nothing.” He and Maggie exchanged a glance.

  “What? What, you fear something? You suspect something?”

  “I suspect nothing.” Ezra took a deep breath. “But on Wednesday when we had lunch, Larissa was unusually distraught, not at all herself. She wouldn’t touch her food. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I’m thinking of it now. She was asking me weird questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Hypotheticals, she said, to help her deal with students.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…is there a right and wrong? How do you choose? How do you stop yourself from doing wrong? Are there absolutes in this, or is it a matter of perspective? She wanted to know about Jesus. And Epicurus.”

  “What’s so weird about that?”

  “How do you know what to do, she kept asking, if you don’t believe in God? What do you draw on? What else have you got? Aside from experience, aside from common sense?”

  Jared wanted to swipe all the glasses off the island; it was only through a crushing burden of his will that he didn’t, remembering his small son in the den, not wanting to scare him with noise. “What the fuck are you telling me?” he asked. “Ezra, what are you talking about? What does that have to do with this?”

  “I don’t know, pal,” Ezra replied simply. “But she was asking me for help in making tough life decisions, and now she is not here. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a coincidence.”

  “You’re damn right, it’s a coincidence. Ezra, you and she have been shooting the shit for twenty years. Religion, Epicureanism, principles of elocution, all you do is talk this crap. It’s like verbal handshakes with you two. What you’re saying is she woke up in the morning and brushed her teeth and now she’s gone, so maybe it has something to do with her brand of toothpaste!”

  Maggie tried to quell him. Ezra looked both deeply estranged and sympathetic. “There was a desperate quality to her questions.” He looked down into his hands, balled them into fists, pressed them to his eyes.

  “You only see it now!”

  “She lost so much weight, man.”

  “She really had, Jared,” said Maggie, her hand on Jared’s back, patting him. He wanted to thrust himself away from her. Being touched was suddenly painful to him, unholy.

  “A minute ago, you couldn’t imagine what could’ve happened. Now suddenly she’s losing weight and asking questions? And why are you talking about her in the past tense?”

  Before Ezra could reply, Michelangelo walked into the kitchen. He was hungry. Maggie made him a sandwich, made everyone sandwiches. The kids sat in the dining room and ate. Asher didn’t speak. Was he upset about losing his playoff game? Jared didn’t know. He didn’t speak himself. Jared didn’t know what to say to his children. What could he say? All of Ezra’s degrees, all of Maggie’s years in public education, all of Jared’s aptitude for investments had not prepared them for this, a missing mothe
r in the middle of one’s sacred life. Somehow three o’clock became four, and four became five, and then, because they forgot to call and cancel, there was a knock on the door, and Bo and Jonny strolled in, with a bottle of wine and a dozen cannoli for their Saturday night dinner. They came in the kitchen, all smiles—evaporated just like this when they saw Jared’s face, and Maggie’s and Ezra’s. Made Jared wonder who else they forgot to cancel, who would show up Monday expecting a raucous bash in the backyard.

  Maggie took Bo to a corner and (thought she) whispered, “Larissa’s missing.”

  “Missing?” Bo said (loudly). “What do you mean?”

  “What can one mean by this?” Jared said. “She is missing. We don’t know how else to explain it.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Why didn’t you call us?”

  “I did,” said Jared. “Remember, I called you yesterday and asked you where she was and you said you hadn’t seen her.”

  Ah, Bo mouthed, her brown eyes moistening. She surveyed the room in a way Jared found irksome; she remained so composed! How could one remain calm? If this wasn’t the time for shouting, for flailing one’s hands, when was? Wasn’t there anything that wasn’t sanitized, climate-controlled? All of them living in 72degF houses, no breeze, no bugs, always comfortable. The fridge at 45degF, the freezer at 37deg, everything crisp and clean and clam. Ah, he wanted to groan. A guttural sound signifying uncontrolled despair. Ah.

  The hands opened, someone touched his back, someone got him a beer, someone else patted him. Someone let Riot out and someone ordered Chinese because the children and the soldiers of the vanished had to eat. Lo mein came, shrimp with lobster sauce, fried dumplings. Jared, who hadn’t eaten all day, took one look at the food, one whiff of the sweet soy sauce odor, and left the kitchen to void the void in his stomach. Afterward he didn’t feel any better. Bile kept bubbling up to his throat.

  “I can’t think,” he said when dinner was done and the children dispersed to be entertained by Dylan. “I can’t figure it out. Like I’m missing something.” Besides my wife. “Like there is a piece of the puzzle I’m not seeing.” That infernal puzzle again! The missing piece was now a missing wife.

  He searched the faces of his intensely worried friends, for comfort, for answers. In Ezra’s eyes he saw another Epicurean attack, and snapped. “Ezra, this is not a theoretical coffee-hour discussion about materialism.”

  “I don’t think it’s theoretical, man,” Ezra said grimly.

  “I don’t care that she was pale and without appetite. Tell me what you think. Could she have died?”

  It was possible, Ezra agreed, silently distressed.

  “Was she kidnapped?”

  No one thought she was.

  Perfect. Finding out what happened to Larissa by committee.

  “Someone say something. What else?”

  Dylan put Michelangelo to bed, and Jared put the older kids in front of a movie before someone answered his question. The person who answered him was Ezra.

  “Dude,” he said heavily, “is it possible she could’ve left you?”

  “Left and gone where?”

  “I don’t mean that—” Ezra broke off, glancing at Maggie, as if for strength, staring at Jared for silent understanding. “I mean, left you.”

  Jared sat back in his chair. “Like up and left?”

  Ezra nodded.

  Now it was Jared’s turn to search Maggie’s face, Bo’s face, Jonny’s face.

  “You tell me,” he said at last. “Is that possible?”

  After an agonizing pause, they agreed it wasn’t possible.

  “It’s not likely,” he led them. “Right? Not likely?”

  After a terrible pause they agreed it wasn’t likely. And yet…not a trace of her anywhere.

  “Left me why?” Jared said.

  They said nothing.

  “Do you mean left me?” Jared said. “Or…left me for someone else?” He almost laughed when he said it. If she hadn’t vanished, he would’ve laughed when he said it.

  “It happens, man,” said Ezra.

  “Yes, to other people,” said Jared. Bo and Jonny looked into their drinks, into their hands.

  “No, I agree with Jared,” Maggie said staunchly. “Not our Larissa. It’s unthinkable.”

  “She is not here,” Ezra said. “That’s also unthinkable.”

  “Besides, I would’ve known,” continued Maggie. “She couldn’t have kept it from me. Or from Bo. Right, Bo?”

  Bo nodded with uncertainty. She wanted to say something but, glancing at Jonny, reconsidered.

  “Call Evelyn,” said Maggie. “Call Tara. Dora. Call any one of her friends. They’ll all tell you the same thing. It’s not possible.”

  “And yet…” said Ezra.

  “Stop it!” Maggie cried, expressing what Jared wanted to express. “Stop, Ezra! You’re only causing more trouble. Until we know, let’s not speculate. It’ll just show how ludicrous you are when you’re proven false.” She turned to Jared. “Are you sure she hadn’t told you she was going away?”

  “How could I forget something like that? She runs this house. How could I forget she wouldn’t be here for Memorial Day weekend, for the kids?” The kids! Jared allowed himself a small smile. “Ezra, look, even if what you’re saying could be true, even if she could leave me, she couldn’t leave her kids, could she? It’s Larissa we’re talking about.”

  “You’re right about that, man,” said Ezra, finishing his beer, reaching for another, reconsidering, pulling on Maggie to get up. “It’s Larissa we’re talking about.”

  They stayed with him as long as they could. But short of staying overnight, eventually they had to go. Soon forty-eight inconceivable hours would’ve passed without a word from her.

  “She must’ve left a note somewhere,” Jared said. “It must’ve blown away, or fallen on the floor, was swept into the garbage.”

  “A note saying what?” asked Ezra.

  “Maybe she needed to go away and think.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” Jared paused. Maggie left the kitchen. He heard her crying in the den, then calling for Dylan. “You really think she could’ve left me, Ez? This isn’t how people go. They say something. They pack. They take their children. This isn’t what they do.”

  “You’re right, I’m an idiot. I’m sure there’s a very good explanation.”

  “Ezra…” Jared was standing but felt like he was falling. “Left me for…someone else?”

  “I don’t know, man. I’m so sorry.”

  “But wouldn’t I have known? That doesn’t happen in a vacuum, there’s no way to hide something like that. I would have known!” Jared exclaimed. “There’d be a thousand signs.”

  Ezra said nothing.

  “What? Did you and Maggie talk about it last night?”

  “About nothing else. We didn’t sleep till sunrise.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what? Were there signs? She has been very distracted for months. But I do know that to do rehearsals, you’ve got to be completely into it to put on even a mediocre play.”

  “But could she have been hiding in plain sight? Behind plays, rehearsals?”

  “Possibly. Maggie says for some time Larissa hasn’t been engaged in her life.”

  “She’s only saying this now!”

  “No, dude. Maggie kept saying it and saying it. Something is not right, she kept saying: I’m so sick, I feel so bad, and she can’t remember from one day to the next what’s wrong with me.”

  Maggie came into the kitchen with Dylan, her eyes red, wet.

  “Did you say this, Mags?”

  “I did, Jared.”

  “But you didn’t say it to me!”

  “We didn’t want to pry. Especially since winter, when she looked like she was having some trouble coping. We were sure you were working it out whatever it was.”

  They talked about this standing up, near the door, their car keys in their h
ands. Eventually they had to leave him, and he was again alone. Jared didn’t know how he would get through another night. He heard a noise at the front door, he ran to it. It was just wind. He heard a noise at the back door, he ran to it. It was just Riot. The children were asleep, the house silent. He thought of taking Larissa’s Ambien. She said it helped her sleep; it might help him. But he was afraid. What if the phone rang and he was out of it? What if the cops came, and he was unable to talk to them? What if the kids needed him and he was all strung out on drugs? He couldn’t do it.

  Why did Larissa need to take Ambien anyway? Why couldn’t she sleep? He hadn’t questioned it. She had said she was having a little trouble getting to sleep, and he didn’t want her to have any trouble. When she started sleeping better, she was happier, and therefore he was happier. But why couldn’t she sleep?

  With the house unbearably silent, Jared sat on the couch in the den. He put on the ballgame he had TiVoed earlier, muting the sound, then turning it up nearly full volume. He held a beer in his hands, and all the lights were off except the dim ones in the kitchen, except the cold blue flicker from the HD T V. Riot was by his feet.

  What in the name of God was happening?

  She did sometimes seem a little distracted, but gently distracted, as if she were thinking about plays and lines and scenes. She would always get like that when she was hip-deep in staging, rehearsing. It wasn’t unusual.

  She had lost weight lately; it was hard not to notice. She said she had been too busy to eat, always running around. In front of him a few weeks ago she ate a slice of cheesecake and a lemon meringue. They laughed about it, her becoming fluffy round like a lemon meringue herself.

  She stopped shopping, stopped buying things. Was that proof of her restless heart?

  Did they make love less? Jared didn’t think so. Maybe a little less, he had to admit. But they were busy. Life intervened. She never asked for it, but she never refused him either. If he got busy and tired, and was sometimes too quick, too functional, that wasn’t her fault, it was a product of their full and busy life. On vacations, during anniversary weekends, in the summer in Lillypond, they more than made up for the utilitarian approach to their physical intimacy. For the last sixteen years this was how they lived, ever since the kids came. Sometimes when he looked down at her, her eyes were closed. But so? His were closed too. She was so sexy, to control himself, sometimes he didn’t want to open his eyes and gaze at her. She kissed him, she did the things that good wives do. She made his lunch and picked up his shirts, she made him dinner, dressed his children and bathed them, she was the perfect hostess on Saturday nights and let him watch baseball without complaining (too much). This is how she had been and that is how she was. Nothing in her recent demeanor suggested she was living a double life.