Goodnight Beautiful

by Aimee Molloy

  The kettle whistles behind her and she stands up, makes a cup of tea, and returns to the home office she and Sam shared. Sam insisted on having everything custom-built: one side for her files, one side for his. She’s been going through his side for the last hour, page by boring page, amazed by the things he saved. A receipt for a computer he bought in 2001. The user manual for a vacuum cleaner, filed away in its own file labeled vacuum cleaner user manual. Tax returns for the last twenty years, on which he listed every single item he donated to Goodwill, trying so hard to be the good guy who plays by the rules, nothing at all like his dad.

  She returns to the open drawer and continues, still not sure what, exactly, she’s looking for, coming across two expired passports, one with a stamp from a trip to Honduras he apparently took in high school, a trip he never mentioned. Maybe this is what she’s looking for. Confirmation that Franklin Sheehy is right, that she never knew Sam Statler at all.

  Mom, Medical

  She spots the folder at the back, the words in thick Sharpie letters. Inside is a stack of Margaret’s medical records. The early symptoms. Deteriorating personal hygiene. Difficulty planning the day’s schedule. Frequent mood swings. The official diagnosis last March. Disease progressing quicker than expected; having hard time managing daily tasks.

  Patient has stopped speaking. Mutism may be the result of progressing disease.

  He can’t deal with it. That’s why he hasn’t been visiting his mother: a perfectly innocent explanation. He isn’t a pathological liar, he’s a scaredy cat, unable to bear seeing his mother in the state she’s been in—silent, expressionless—and too ashamed to tell Annie the truth. So he hid it from her, probably hating himself for being such a coward.

  You’re doing it again, Sam’s voice chides from inside her head. You’re believing in me when I’ve given you every reason not to.

  She pages through the rest of the papers in the file—insurance letters, six issues of the facility’s monthly newsletter, printed entirely in Comic Sans. She’s about to return the folder to the drawer when she sees an envelope tucked into the back, addressed to Sam. She pulls out a letter. Three pages from the attorney at Rushing Waters, “Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Margaret Statler” printed along the top.

  I hereby designate Sam Statler of Chestnut Hill, New York, my attorney-in-fact, in my stead and for my benefit. As my attorney-in-fact, Sam Statler shall exercise power as fiduciary, including the power to receive and deposit funds in any financial institute, to withdraw funds by check or otherwise pay for goods and services. If necessary—

  Alarmed, she flips to the last page, seeing Margaret’s signature at the bottom, next to a notarized stamp, dated two weeks ago. Signed, executed, and immediately in effect.

  No, she thinks, her skin suddenly clammy.

  His mother signed the papers. He got $2 million of his father’s money. And then he left. She laughs and then drops the folder and reaches into her back pocket for her phone. The call goes straight to voice mail.

  “Hello, dear husband,” she says, her voice breaking with anger. “You’re probably occupied at the moment, toying with whatever unknowing victim you’ve seduced this time, but I wanted to call and congratulate you. You did it, Sam, the one thing you tried so hard to avoid. You ended up just like your father.”

  Chapter 41

  Fuck.

  Sam stares at the patches of torn wallpaper clinging to the wall.

  Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck.

  He’s losing his mind.

  He can’t lie here anymore under the weight of these casts, confined to what he’s been told is the number-one-ranked mattress-in-a-box two years in a row. He can’t stand how badly his legs itch or one more day of pretending to love frozen crinkle-cut french fries, sweet-talking Albert to save his own life. But he especially hates the sorrow he feels, missing Annie like this.

  Well, maybe it’s time for Sam Statler to stop whining like a girl and do something about it.

  Sam opens his eyes and laughs out loud. Well, look who it is. Teddy from Freddy, talking down to him from a glass booth. “Gee, Dad, what a great idea. I’ll just stand up and walk out of here. Why didn’t I think of that?” Sam listens. It’s quiet. “What am I supposed to do?” he whispers.

  What any self-respecting man would do, his father whispers back. Man up and find a way out of that house.

  Sam takes a deep breath. “Hey!” he shouts at the hallway. “Creepy dude! You home?”

  You know he’s not home, Teddy says. You heard him leave in his car a half hour ago.

  Sam stares at the door, his pulse quickening. “Okay, fine, fuck it. Let’s do this.” He sits up and pulls off the quilt.

  Good evening, folks, and welcome to tonight’s spectacle, his father sings in his ear. A chance for Sam Statler to prove he’s a man.

  Sam eases to the edge of the mattress and reaches underneath for the putty knife. Sliding it into the back of his waistband, he swings his legs off the bed and rests his plastered feet on the floor. He reaches for the headboard and hoists himself up, his eyes on his chair, six feet away.

  Gotta admit it, his dad says. I’m feeling pretty skeptical he can make it to that chair.

  Sam lets go and takes a step forward. Unstable gait, his father says. Sam takes another step. Forward propulsion is compromised. Annnnd . . . he’s down.

  Sam hits the ground hard. Pushing the pain aside, he hoists himself onto his elbows, dragging himself toward the chair. Okay, Teddy murmurs. He did it. He got there. Sam pulls himself onto the chair and propels himself toward the door. Winded, he removes the putty knife from his waistband, a girl’s name springing suddenly to mind. Rebecca Kirkpatrick, summer before sophomore year. She was two years older, and her family had a cabin on Lake Poetry, forty minutes north. Twice they skipped school and drove there in her yellow Jeep, where Sam would use the credit card Rebecca’s father gave her to pick the lock on the back door to the cabin.

  He slides the blade of the putty knife between the door frame and the lock, recalling how it worked. Rebecca sat on the grass, rolling a joint, as Sam concentrated on using the tip of the credit card to catch the edge of the lock and push it aside, opening the door to all the wonderful things that awaited inside that room—

  Well, by golly, would you look at that? Teddy from Freddy purrs as the lock clicks open. He did it. Ol’ Stats actually opened the door.

  “I did it!” Sam breathes, elated, imagining the roar of the crowd. “I fucking did it.” He tucks the putty knife back into his waistband and throws open the door to a hallway, giddy. It smells overwhelmingly of the pine-scented chemical shit Albert mops his room with three times a week. Sam propels his chair down the hall, which opens into a kitchen with apple-green walls, the back wall covered in the cascading leaves of at least a dozen hanging plants. He considers stopping to search the drawers for a knife but keeps going into the living room, where a large picture window offers a view of the sky he hasn’t seen in eight days. It’s raining. He’s imagining the feel of the rain against his dry skin when he arrives at the front door, and reaches for the knob.

  Strike one, Teddy says quietly to the hushed crowd.

  Sam rattles the doorknob. Nononononono.

  The guy locked him in. Teddy tsks. That’s some bad luck.

  Sam moves quickly to the table in the foyer and opens the slim drawer. He slides his hand to the back, extracting a single key on a bright orange keychain labeled “Gary Unger, Gary Unger Locksmiths.” Sam returns to the door and jams the key into the lock. It doesn’t fit, and Sam knows exactly why. It’s not the key to this door. It’s the key to Sam’s office, the same square key Sam has on his keychain. The key Albert is not supposed to have.

  “No big deal,” he tells the crowd, tossing the key on the floor and grabbing once more for the putty knife, his hand shaking. He did it once, he’ll do it again. He can taste the salty tang of the sweat on his lip as he jimmies the putty knife between the door and the frame, sliding
it up and then down—

  Snap.

  Strike two, Sam’s dad whispers.

  Sam holds up the wooden handle of the putty knife; the metal blade is stuck in the door. “No,” he whispers, reaching for the blade. “Come back.” He bangs the door, attempting to free the metal edge. It’s no use.

  Looks like it’s time for plan B, Teddy says.

  The window. Sam slides into the living room and uses the arm of the sofa to pull himself close to the window, getting a glimpse of Sidney Pigeon’s house through the hedges at the edge of Albert’s property. There’s smoke coming from the chimney. Someone’s home.

  Time’s running out.

  “Shut up, Dad,” Sam whispers, focusing on his options. I can break the window and scream for help. Someone at Sidney’s house will hear me.

  Is that a joke? Ted murmurs. No way anyone will hear him, all the way up here.

  I can break the glass and jump out the window.

  But then what? his father scoffs. Find himself with two broken legs and covered in glass shards and caught in a rosebush? That’s what I call a lose-lose-lose situation.

  Sam scans the room, noticing the details. Bright-blue walls, crowded with large abstract paintings. A soft white rug. Floral couches. Admittedly not the design aesthetic Sam expected. What’s Statler doing? Teddy from Freddy whispers. He’s got five minutes to save his life, and he’s sitting there thinking about paint colors. Sam keeps going, through a series of rooms—a formal dining room with mauve walls and a large chandelier. Another sitting room, two plush chairs in front of a fireplace. Along the far wall he sees a set of pocket doors, and makes his way over to open them. It’s a library. Quite a magnificent one at that. Floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves, a ladder on a rail. It smells like a real library, one of his favorite places that his mom took him to as a kid, and he moves slowly toward the shelves and pulls out a book. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, first edition.

  He puts the book back, searching for a sign of a telephone, and spots a row of framed photographs on a nearby shelf. They’re all of the same woman. She has bright red hair and a wide smile; this must be VeeVee, the mother Albert has mentioned. Behind the frames sits a row of cheap purple binders, he notices, out of place among the fine books.

  Don’t do it, his father warns him. Sam can feel the weight of the crowd’s eyes on him, urging him to ignore the binders and keep going, but his curiosity wins out. He moves the photographs aside for a better look. The name Henry Rockford is written on the spine of the first binder, and Sam pulls it out. There are pages of photographs in plastic sleeves—two men, one older and one younger, standing side by side, and it takes Sam a second to realize that the younger man is Albert, who looks to be in his twenties in the photographs. Sam flips ahead, finding pages of notes. Medical conditions. A family tree.

  Sam closes the binder and pulls out another. Lorraine Whittenger. She’s got white hair and is confined to a wheelchair, and in these photographs Albert is wearing the same blue apron embroidered with the Home Health Angels logo that he wears when he comes into Sam’s room. Angelo Monticelli, Edith Voranger—Sam keeps going, putting it together. All of these people were his patients.

  Linda Pennypiece

  Sam sees the name toward the end of the row. Linda Pennypiece? Albert’s “friend” from Albany?

  He grabs the binder.

  Facts about Linda: A list

  She loves the Olive Garden

  Mary Tyler Moore and Frasier reruns to calm her before bed

  She turns ninety in March; organize a party!

  Linda was a client.

  He turns the pages—notes about her stroke, “Linda’s Famous Salisbury Steak Recipe”—arriving at a paper with the seal of Albany County, New York, on the top. “Temporary order for protection against stalking, aggravated stalking, or harassment. Linda Pennypiece vs. Albert Bitterman Jr.

  “You, Albert Bitterman, the adverse party, are hereby notified that any intentional violation of this order is a criminal violation and can result in your immediate arrest.”

  A restraining order.

  Sam flips the page. “Home Health Angels, Inc. Termination of employment. This letter confirms that your employment is terminated with immediate effect. Any further contact with any clients or staff of Home Health Angels will be reported to law enforcement.”

  I am not liking where this is going. Teddy from Freddy lowers his voice. And if I were Sam Statler, I would definitely not look to see whose name is on that last binder—

  Dr. Sam Statler.

  Sam’s hands tremble as he pulls it off the shelf and opens it to the first page. “Twenty Questions with Sam Statler.” He turns the page and sees a copy of the flyer Sam had found under his windshield that day.

  Office space for rent in historic home, perfect for a quiet professional.

  Willing to renovate to suit. Contact Albert Bitterman.

  Sam pages forward, through dozens of photographs of himself. The day he moved in downstairs. Arriving for work. Getting into his car at the end of the day. He keeps flipping, through scribbled lists (“Things I’ve Lied to Sam About”; “Reasons to Remain Happy, Despite Sam’s Bad Mood”), the bills he had hidden downstairs in his desk, an Excel spreadsheet Albert made, keeping track of Sam’s debt:

  Visa: $36,588

  Chase Sapphire Select: $73,211

  Mortgage: $655,000

  Next are pages of notes and observations about people with odd names:

  Skinny Jeans

  The Mumble Twins

  Numb Nancy

  Sam scans them quickly. “Numb Nancy has been married for sixteen years. She is the director of development at Meadow Hills.” That’s Nancy Neumann. His client. These are all his clients. Sam feels the rise of a giggle as it dawns on him—not only was Albert up here listening, he was taking copious notes—and he worries he’s going to start laughing and never stop, but then he turns the page.

  Community search for Sam Statler! Meet at the bowling alley! Dress warm!

  They’re looking for him! Right now, probably. Sam imagines them, out in this rain, searching for his car—wherever the hell that thing went! Which means it’s only a matter of time before they find him and—

  Missing Chestnut Hill Psychologist Discovered to Be in Significant Debt at Time of Disappearance.

  Chief of Police Franklin Sheehy says investigators will continue to pursue all credible leads, but in light of the recent discovery of Statler’s debt, which is believed to be upward of $100,000, and kept secret from his wife, law enforcement officials are increasingly considering the possibility that his disappearance was not accidental.

  No.

  He feels sick to his stomach, and yet he turns the page to another sleeve of photographs. It’s Margaret, in her room at Rushing Waters, cheek to cheek with Albert.

  He’s been visiting Sam’s mother.

  And here we go, folks, Teddy says. Statler’s on the move. Sam drops the binder and heads through the pocket doors. Back in the living room, he studies the picture window again, wondering if it’s worth the risk to throw an end table through the glass and do his best to jump, when something clicks in his head. He turns his chair around and gets himself back to the kitchen, to the wall covered in the cascading leaves of the hanging plants. He yanks a handful of leaves, bringing a plant crashing to the floor. Yes! He was right. There’s a sliding glass door behind these plants. He swipes at the leaves, pulling the plants down, one by one, leaving a carpet of dirt on the floor.

  Looks like Statler found a way out, his father observes as Sam stares at the sliding glass door that opens onto a small stone patio. He reaches for the lock on the handle. He slides it up. It works. A lock in this house that actually unlocks. Sam yanks the door open. He gazes at the backyard, and with one deep breath, he throws himself off his chair, onto his stomach.

  Would you believe it? He did it, Ted Statler purrs as Sam crawls out the door into the cold and wet backyard. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this kid’s not co
mpletely useless after all.

  Chapter 42

  The cute woman behind the bar shoots Annie the perfectly normal smile of a person pretending not to know she’s the one married to the hot guy who went missing, his face smiling from the missing flyers still hanging on in some places. “What can I get you?” she asks, setting a menu down in front of Annie.

  “A job with a living wage and a restored faith in humanity,” Annie says.

  The woman makes a face. “What do you think this is, the Netherlands?”

  Annie laughs for the first time in eight days. “Gin martini with five olives.” She pushes the menu away. “That counts as dinner, right?”

  Annie watches her mix the drink and she can feel the chill off the glass when the woman sets it down in front of her. “Happy anniversary, asshole,” Annie whispers, raising the glass to the empty stool beside her. She takes a long swallow and considers the idea again: this is part of the chase. He’s playing a part, the most fucked-up one yet: the Missing Husband. She imagines him, his feet up in front of a fire at an Airbnb in Saugerties, their favorite town in the Catskills, relishing it all. He’s been taking his meals at the diner, sitting in front of a sausage scramble and bottomless cup of coffee, reading the articles about his disappearance. He’s probably busy planning his return right now, in fact, when he’ll burst through the front door disheveled and unshaven, his face artistically streaked with mud for the big reveal. “Honey, guess what? I’m alive!”

  He’ll take a seat at the kitchen table and spin a story about the fugue state he’s been living in for eight days, brought on by a concussion he doesn’t remember getting. How he hitched a ride home from New Orleans with a dude in an eighteen-wheeler who chain-smoked the whole way. She’ll break down in tears and tell him how much she missed him, and the inevitable sex will be so hot she’ll regret not having thought of the scenario herself.