He's Gone (14 page)

Not every woman feels this kind of thrill, I’m sure. Some are probably even offended by that kind of chivalry and machismo. Maybe only some of us are drawn to valor, we who already feel defenseless in the world for whatever reason. When I met Mark, I was emerging from a childhood of divorce and uncertainty, where there’d been crying and upset, where the mighty oak that was my mother had been felled. Long after their marriage was over, the moods under that roof felt dangerous. I wanted out of there. I was a butterfly, thin and transparent, and if you looked, you could see my heart beating.

Mark looked, and he saw. He saw my heart beating, and he saw my jeweled tissue wings. A butterfly wears its skeleton outside its body. Men can love this idea as much as women do, maybe
more. They can love to rescue. They can need it as much as we do, propping up their own strength with it, same as we do ours. Being a man, being a woman, being a human being—it all hangs on such fragile architecture.

I’m especially embarrassed to admit that I loved how Mark smoked cigarettes. It was heedless and incredibly sexy. He wore those jeans and that white tank undershirt. What a cliché, but,
God
. He had curly black hair and Elvis eyes and he spoke in velvet undertones. He’d smoke while leaning against his car on a hot summer day, and then he’d put out the orange-lit tip with the toe of his boot and it all made me feel safe, ironically or not, subconsciously or not, fated or not,
safe
, and so I married him. I could blame my age, but even at twenty-two you know when you are hiding things from yourself. Still, Mark and I married right after college, and I licked the envelope closed. There. The rest of my life. So I thought.

It went like this: I wanted him to be larger than me, and so he was. And when he was, I didn’t like it. And when I didn’t like it, I broke the contract. When I broke the contract, the one that said I’d be smaller than him, he lashed out. I’d signed, though—the large print had said,
Me, weak. You, strong
. But I wanted a caveman only every now and then. You realize this. I wanted to be able to be small but large, too. I wanted to be both. These were the themes of our relationship: Dominance, control. Abuser, victim. It’s what you get when you give up your power, when you don’t realize that your strength is your self-respect. No one has the right to abuse you, sure, but no one should hand over that right, either.

I should have known better is all I’m saying. With Ian. I’d let myself be rescued before, and look what happened there.

“White shirts,” I say. “Blue, black.”

“They all look the same to me,” my mother says.

No. Not at all. I can picture Ian in each one. This is when I see him most clearly, looking at his shirts. I can see thirty Ian’s all in a row, draped from every hanger. The blue button-down is a favorite of his. In it, he leans forward over me in bed, blue shoulders, smelling like shaving cream, kissing me good morning before he takes off for work. That orange one—sitting beside me on the airplane during our trip to Sante Fe. That white shirt—he married me wearing it.

Abby returns to her place on the bed as she reports on the call. “Evan Lutz? Another friend of Ian’s.”

“Employee.” I picture Evan with his red hair and beard, his office decorated with his collection of Happy Meal toys.

“He’s got a lot of friends,” my mother says.

“Mom?” Abby has an odd look on her face. Oh, no. She holds that book again with both hands.

“Tell me.”

“Evan said his girlfriend was sure she saw Ian at Bagel Oasis yesterday.”

I put my hand to my heart. I’m not sure I can breathe.

“Yesterday?” my mother says.

“That’s what he said.”

“Did you tell him to call that detective?”

“I did.”

I am holding the sleeve of an olive 100 percent cotton number. Terrible to iron. I am holding it by one cuff. It might look like we are holding hands. Olive shirt: romantic dinner date at Mario’s. The candle kept blowing out, and the waiter returned repeatedly to relight it.

We are all silent. It is great and horrible news. I feel sick. My
mother tries to lift some stain off her jeans with her fingernail. Abby just looks down at that book.

“We don’t know,” my mother says finally.

Abby opens the book at random. She gazes down at an image, which proves too remarkable not to share. “Wow,” she says. She holds it up, shows us. It is breathtaking, all right. Lush, velvety blue wings rimmed with soft corduroy brown.
“Ulysses,”
she reads.

“Well, isn’t that perfect,” I say. “Ulysses. Maybe Ian’ll be back in twenty years, too.” Shock—it’s quickly being replaced by anger.

“I don’t know about you guys, but when I see something beautiful like that, all I want to do is trap it and suffocate it.” My mother rolls her eyes. She huffs with disgust again.

A hand over a mouth. Arms pinned back. A struggle to breathe
.

It’s not here. His favorite T-shirt. I can see him in that shirt perhaps most of all, sitting across from me on that picnic blanket on one sunny summer afternoon. It’s funny what becomes a favorite shirt. My own is a big white cotton thing, beloved because it’s big and white and cotton. But his—it’s got a guitar on it, with wings. It was a promotional item from a product release from the company he used to work for. He’s had that thing forever.

I grab the stack of T-shirts, toss one aside and then another. I look through the laundry hamper pile, already dumped out.

“There’s a T-shirt. It’s not here. A pair of running shoes, too.”

“Okay,” Abby says. But she doesn’t write anything down. She just closes
One Hundred Butterflies
and sits there with a worried face.

“Pollux,” I say.

“What?” Abby looks confused, as if maybe Pollux is being unjustly accused of making off with Ian’s stuff.

“He’s been too quiet for too long.”

It’s that mother sense you develop. That never-ending surveillance for potential disaster that is always, always working after you have a child. It ticks steadily behind the scenes, no matter if you’re cooking dinner or if you’re on the phone or if you’re checking your missing husband’s closet for clothes he might have packed when he left you.

There’s a crash in the kitchen. It’s the sound of a knife dropping on the floor, at least. Something else thudding, too.

I dash in there, and Abby and my mother follow. Pollux has pulled down a corner of Saran wrap with his teeth, and he has banana-bread crumbs on his beard.

He runs over to the back door when he sees us. He lies down, as if to convince us he’s been there all along.

“Goddamn it,” Abby says. “Look at this, you bad boy!” He’s gotten a few cookies, too. “Come here!”

Of course, he doesn’t. He gets up and starts to woof and trot around, back and forth and back and forth in front of that glass door, wild-eyed with wrongdoing. He is not innocent and we know it, and there is nothing for him to do now but bark and bark at that dark night.

7

I try to call Evan Lutz at his Happy Meal office the next morning, but he doesn’t answer. I am tired of waiting around and doing nothing. Minutes are now posing as hours, and hours as days. The crew calls in: Paula, Ian’s secretary; Simon Ash; Bethy; my father. No one has any news. I call our bank again to see if there’s been activity on our account. I open Ian’s laptop for the hundredth time and look at that damn password screen in frustration until I slam it closed once more. I call Detective Jackson but only get his voice mail. I picture him on the other line right then, speaking to Ian, delivering a stern message about his bad behavior. This feels great, even if it’s only happening in my own head. Ian is susceptible to humiliation, and Detective Jackson is really hammering into him. There, you bastard. Bagel Oasis? You go into hiding, you at least ought to do it right. You go to the Caribbean or something, you asshole. Not some cheap sandwich shop a few blocks from your very own office building.

It occurs to me: I’ll lose the help of the police now, won’t I? It’s unclear what exactly Detective Jackson has been doing as he waits to open a proper investigation, but I’ve been mostly grateful he’s around, regardless. His presence has felt like action when
there’s been no other forward motion, no leads, no calls about our posters, nothing. So what do I do now? I should freeze my bank accounts, that’s what.

“Going to BetterWorks,” I tell Abby. She’s eating cereal, and I can see her five-year-old self there at the table. She’s still the same determined little person with those intent brown eyes. Years ago, I’d be getting up to make her lunch. Sandwich, fruit, treat, and a love note written on a Post-it. I’m struck with a heart stab of longing for that time.

“Want me to come?”

“No.”

“You okay to drive? You look like hell.”

“I’m fine.” Oh, how we love and overuse
fine
, our all-purpose little evasion.
Fine
means
not fine. Fine
means
Pity me. Fine
means
Don’t ask
.

“Last night, you were—”

“I know. Bad dream.”

“Same one?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe we should try that Jim Beam again tonight. I won’t pour so much.”

“Wasn’t it Johnnie Walker?”

“I get all those alcohol men confused.”

“Wait. Jack Daniel’s.”

“Isn’t he a country singer?” She chuckles at herself.

Pollux sees the jacket and the keys. He waits for the magic words but gets the other ones instead. “You stay with Abby,” I say to him.

“God, don’t look so disappointed, Poll. You’re making me feel bad.” Abby plucks a bit of cereal from her bowl and gives it to him.

“Poor you, left behind,” I say.

I am failing at this, I think, because I’m supposed to be sure of something here. Sure that he’s left me. Sure that he’d never leave. Sure that he’s fine, or not fine. Alive, or not alive. I’m supposed to have some kind of knowing, deep in my bones. But I have no knowing. I am sure of nothing. Deep in my bones, there is only hollowness. I am so hollow that I can feel the wind outside whipping through me as a truck speeds by, driving too fast on our street. I can feel my body shudder—that’s how empty it is. The wind has upended a bit of trash on the street. It’s a piece of paper, which scurries end-to-end, corner-to-corner, for a few brave feet. It’s making a run for it, and I run, too, to catch it. Suddenly that paper seems potentially important. Everything does. Everything might be. It has critical information, I know it. I pick it up. It’s only someone’s old dry-cleaning receipt.
Aloha Fine Dry Cleaning. Silk blouse (2). $14.99 plus tax = $15.65
.

Ian and I—we made love for the first time in a forest. It was in that spooky park, which didn’t seem so spooky once you got out and walked down some of the trails. It was beautiful in there, really. It was the beginning of summer, and light filtered through the trees, making lace-doily patterns against the boughs. We weren’t the type for some motel. I guess it felt more honest that way. Nature was more authentic than renting some cheap room for a few hours. We didn’t want it to be like that. You had to separate yourselves out of the cheapness of it all somehow—give some dignity to what was otherwise tawdry.

He carried the blankets. I carried a bag with a few snacks and drinks. Premeditation. We assumed we’d walk down the trails, same as we had a few times before, and that some perfect spot
would call out to us, some flat, leafy glade that would both welcome and hide new lovers. But off the path there were only ferns and bushes with stout, sturdy leaves and thorny trails of blackberries that stuck to your skin, making pinpricks of blood. I tried to joke, because Ian was thrashing this stick back and forth as if it were a machete and we were in the Amazon. He was so serious right then. He didn’t laugh or make some crack back at me. I felt guilty about this, like I wanted what was about to happen more than he did. Every branch that snapped under my feet sounded as loud as a cracking spine.

Eventually there was a spot of soft ferns, well away from the trail and any eyes that might see us. Ian laid down the blanket with his usual precision. He reached his hand out to me and I went to him. Finally he smiled, though his eyes still looked solemn. I knew that this was a momentous occasion, less because it was a transition for us than because it meant the breaking of his vows. His, not mine. The crisis always seemed to be about his marriage, his loss. I felt a curl of resentment that I ignored. And the truth was, I
didn’t
feel the guilt of that vow-breaking in the same way he did. My vows had felt broken since the first time Mark raised his hand to me. They had been broken again when he threw me to the ground and kicked my ribs. Why do they always say a marriage is
crumbling
? It sounds so gentle, like toast. Mine didn’t crumble. Big chunks fell off and crashed into the sea, causing tidal waves to rise. I wanted Ian. I wanted him to make love to me. I wanted that
union
.