Desire Lines (45 page)
“Look,” Jack says, breaking the silence, and Kathryn follows his gaze to a flotilla of geese several hundred yards away. As the geese glide across the lake, they fan out in a V, their heads and bodies perfectly aligned, like synchronized swimmers. The lake seems different to her now. It might as well be bottomless, the woods around it stretching to infinity. It occurs to her that she could go on searching for the rest of her life for something that can never be found—a promise, an answer, a sign. For so many years she’s been waiting, hovering above the moment, that she barely knows how to be.
Closing her eyes, Kathryn smells the pine and smoke in the distance, listens to the water as it laps the sides of the metal boat. She feels a strange quiet, the heat of her restlessness evaporating into the cold morning air. If Jennifer were anywhere, Kathryn thinks, this is where she would be. In her mind’s eye Kathryn can still see her. She’s leaning forward in the canoe, lifting an oar and then pausing, the oar poised over the water. She turns her head. She’s smiling. Has she forgotten something? Is she coming back?
“Hey, you didn’t answer my question,” Jack says. “Where are you?”
Kathryn opens her eyes. In the distance the geese rise out of the water, squawking and flapping, skimming the surface as they lift into the sky. She twists the gold ring on her finger, and then, almost without thinking, slips it off and puts it in her pocket. She stretches out her hands and looks at them. Her fingers are bare, unadorned; they look naked in the morning light. Reaching out, she touches the rough denim of Jack’s knee. “I’m here,” she says. It may not be much of an answer, but for now it’s the best one she can give.
T
he night Jennifer disappeared, fireworks lit up the sky above Bangor, Maine, for nearly an hour. Down in the harbor, graduating seniors on a boat anchored to its moorings danced to a rock band until the steely light of dawn washed over the Penobscot. In the shadows of Little City park, away from the buzzing streetlights, kids in leather jackets and awkward ties passed around a joint and tossed their mortarboards back and forth like Frisbees. Young couples fumbled in dark bedrooms in the rustic camps that ringed Green Lake, listening to the lapping of the waves on the rocks and the panting of their friends through plywood walls. Several teenagers, unaccustomed to the excitement or the alcohol, threw up, passed out, and found themselves at daybreak stretched out in the backseat of somebody’s brother’s Buick, or curled in a beanbag chair in a musty basement rec room, or tucked into their own beds—not knowing and not wanting to know how they got there.
The night Jennifer disappeared, a car full of seniors going up Essex Street hill on the wrong side of the road swerved to miss an oncoming truck and plunged into a row of mailboxes, landing in a ditch. They stumbled out of the fractured car bruised and shaken. The driver, Tommy Green, called his father collect from a phone booth near the overpass. “Everybody’s fine, Dad,” Tommy said into the stunned silence on the other end. “We’re okay, Dad. Honest. Are you there?”
The night Jennifer disappeared, she told her best friend a secret that her best friend didn’t understand. They were lying on the hood of Kathryn’s red Toyota, handing a bottle of wine cooler back and forth and watching clouds pass over a bright crescent moon. Below them, the black water of the Kenduskeag gurgled over a shallow bed of rocks.
“Did you ever do something—and you knew that even if it didn’t seem so weird at the time, someday it would change everything about you?” Jennifer said.
“What do you mean?” Kathryn turned to look at her.
Jennifer sat up slowly. “And you know there’s a path you’re supposed to be following in life—but that somehow, maybe because you wanted to, or maybe because it happened so slowly you didn’t even realize it, you’ve moved farther and farther away from it?”
“You mean, like, college?”
“Not exactly.” She looked down and scratched a spot on the hood with her fingernail.
“What are you saying?”
Jennifer looked at her distractedly. For a moment, it seemed she was trying to form the words in her head. Then she turned away. “Nothing, I guess.”
Kathryn took a deep breath and exhaled, puffing out her cheeks. Even now, all these years later, she doesn’t know whether it was the wine, or the giddiness of graduating, or some deep unconscious fear about what her friend might reveal, but something in her arose, impatient. “Come on, Jen,” she said. “Don’t get deep on me. We’re supposed to be celebrating.”
When the rest of the group showed up, they built a fire down by the river. Will, Jennifer’s twin brother, picked at his guitar, Rachel poured vodka and orange juice out of a Thermos and passed plastic cups around, and Brian and Jack played hearts for quarters in the flickering yellow light, moving closer to the fire as the air grew cool.
After an hour or so Jennifer stood and stretched. “I guess I’ll be going,” she said.
They squinted at her lazily. “You can’t be serious,” said Will.
“I’m really tired.”
“It’s a federal offense to sleep the night of your graduation,” Brian said.
She gave him a wry smile.
Kathryn sighed and struggled to her feet, pulling out the car keys. “Come on, then,” she said. “I’ll take you.”
“It’s almost midnight—much too late to be roaming around by yourself,” Jack said. “Stay here with us, just a little longer. Here.” He patted the ground. “You can share my blanket.”
“It’s okay,” she said firmly, backing away. “I’ll be fine. It’s not far. The walk will clear my head.”
“Jennifer, you pain in the ass,” Will said.
“Will.”
“I could walk you home, I suppose …” he started.
“I kind of want to be alone,” she said, and smiled. “Really. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
THE NIGHT JENNIFER
disappeared, her four closest friends and her brother sat around a pile of dying embers and watched her walk out into the darkness.
I’ll be fine.
Those were the last words she said—or the last anybody ever admitted to hearing.
M
y husband, David Kline, and my agent, Beth Vesel, were indispensable in the writing of this book. My editor, Claire Wachtel, kept me going through the thick of it. I am grateful for the support and guidance of my parents, Bill and Tina Baker, and my sisters, Cynthia, Clara, and Catherine. Mark Trainer, Katie Greenebaum, Elissa Schappell, and Cathi Hanauer gave generously of their time and advice. Special thanks to Alicia Anstead, Tom Webber, and Jeanne Curran of the
Bangor Daily News,
Lieutenant Edward Geissler of the Bangor Police Department, and Bangor High student Maggie Beiser, who should receive much of the credit for the details I got right.
Finally, I want to acknowledge Danny Staples, Bangor High School Class of ‘81, whose spirit pervades this book.
ALSO BY CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
Sweet Water
(a novel)
The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk About Living Feminism
(with Christina L. Baker)
Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother
(editor)
Copyright © 1999 by Christina Baker Kline
Excerpts from “Missing You” (J. Waite, M. Leonard, C. Sandiford) copyright © 1984 Paperwaite Music, Fallwater Music, and Markmeem Music. All rights for Paperwaite Music administered by Alley Music Corporation and Trio Music Company, Inc., used by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from “Sweeney Agonistes” and “The Cocktail Party” from
Collected Poems
1909-1962, copyright © 1936 by Harcourt Brace & Company, copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02082-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kline, Christina Baker, 1964–
Desire lines: a novel / Christina Baker Kline.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-688-15107-8 (alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3561.L478D4 1999 98-19509
CIP
FIRST EDITION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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