He's Gone (32 page)

The night smells like deep lake water and damp earth. I love the smell of night; even right now I still love it. I walk as softly as I can down the dock. There are so many people not to wake. I can hear the low moan, the shivery cry, of a cat about to fight.

Ian’s car is solitary and still under the streetlight. I check up and down the road, but the street is quiet. Everything is shut up tight for sleep, cars and houses and Pete’s Market. If anyone sees me, they might misinterpret the way I bend down and peer at the driver’s side door, the way I run my fingertips along the thin white thread.

Of course Ian would have noticed it that day when he got back to the car, and of course he did not mention it, for his own reasons. He would have opened my door for me that evening, and I would have gotten in, and I would have gone to that party with my usual cluelessness. We will have to provide an explanation for this, though. The explanation will lead to other questions. Because, yes, there is damage here. I could never do this, could I? Drag a jagged key against a smooth, perfect surface? This is the sort of anger I’ve always been afraid of.

But I understand that anger, the desire for it, the desire to succumb to it. I, too, have wanted to gouge and scrape. I had felt the urge that night with my own fingertips on his skin, as he stood on that grass and glared.
Not everything about me is your business
. Oh, I could have dug my nails farther in and made my own thin scar on his flawless skin.

It is the sort of anger I have always been afraid of, yes. But it is in me, too. Ian is and isn’t Paul Hartley Keller. And I am and am not Isabel Eleanor Ross.

14

Here is the great irony (or just deserts): You find your soul mate, you go through hell to be together, and then your soul mate becomes riddled with distrust. If I was dishonorable enough to do what I did
with
Ian, I was dishonorable enough to do what I did
to
him; that’s what he thought. His paranoia was the secret lover of his guilt. They were bound together by betrayal and circumstance. But the suspicion wasn’t there only because of our history, was it? I was becoming more and more clear about that. It was there because Paul Hartley Keller had gutted Ian’s self-certainty. He’d done it sure and clean as you gut a pumpkin with the edge of a spoon, and now Ian was sure he could never truly be the sort of person who could have what he most wanted. Every day he set out to find proof of that.

We were in bed one morning, legs entwined, sheets tangled. Abby was with Mark, and so it had been two days of making love and eating in bed and making love again. We hadn’t yet reached that point with each other where sex became tired, where your bloated stomach after a too rich dinner took precedence over passion. I was still competing, maybe, and maybe so was he. His first wife, my first husband—you let thoughts in like
that or you didn’t, and if you did, everyone was game: your first high school boyfriend, that girl he loved in college, his mouth on other mouths, your hands on other asses. If it got spoken between you (and, in our situation, how could it not?), jealousy might grow to need its own room in your house. It would make demands for its favorite meal, but the sex would be good. The sex would be
great
. You didn’t dare let up, because comfort might mean defeat. Well, we were making up for a lot of time of not feeling alive, too.

My head rested on Ian’s chest. It was one of those times I felt close to him (confident about my victory?), relaxed, and at peace. We could lie in bed too long, though. We could go from rested and snug to restless and irritated. You had to know when to get up and make coffee and step outside. If you passed that point, it felt too hot, and your lower back complained, and you needed a shower, and someone would say something that could be taken the wrong way. Too long and you could be headed for one of those lengthy discussions that never get anywhere.

Do you know what a sphragis is?
He murmured this into my hair.

Something Catholic, right?
He knew about all that stuff. He knew all the intricate jargon, the underground pathways of that particular dungeon. He understood transubstantiation, stations of the cross, mortal versus venial sins. In spite of the catechism classes I took when I was eight, all I basically knew was that Baby Jesus was born in a manger on Christmas. I was even hazy about the whole Easter thing, to tell you the truth—the rock, the cave, the there-not-there. Definitely hazy about the palm branches and about the ashes on the forehead. I looked like that after I cleaned out the fireplace.

Catholic, yeah. But that’s not what I mean
.

No. I don’t know, then
.

It’s a plug that some butterflies create
.

I hate that word, plug. It’s one of the ugliest words
.

Other animals make one, too, but butterflies can take it further
.

From where my head lay, I could hear his heart beating in there. The sound of a heart always disturbed me. If you were aware of its beat, you were aware of its ability to stop beating.

What kind of plug?

Male butterflies—they make the sphragis out of their secretions. It’s like a glue that shuts the female’s genitals. Some male butterflies cover her entire abdomen with it. An iron chastity belt
.

I sat up. I didn’t like where this was going.
Kind of disturbing, if you ask me
.

It’s nature. It’s natural. It’s what he does to protect what’s his
.

She has to wear that thing around?

Yeah. It’s pretty heavy, too. It makes it hard for her to move
.

God
.

It’s meant to last a lifetime
.

We’d stayed too long in bed, that was for sure. I got up. I needed air. I reached for my robe.
That’s horrible
, I said.

I was wishing I had one for you
.

I thought carefully about how to respond. Over the past few months, after each little comment—about my clothes, or other men, or after the lengthy questioning that came after the times I’d seen Mark—I’d tried various strategies to ward off the jabs and the interrogations. I tried reassurance and humor and flat-out anger. Still, his insecurity sat there, stubborn and immovable. No, actually it didn’t sit there. It came my way with its fangs bared. A person’s insecurity is a creature of the night, out for blood, and for the same vampire reasons: to avoid their own demise.

I decided to say nothing. I headed for the door. I was in the hall when I heard him.

Don’t worry, Dani
, he said.
The females keep finding ways out of it
.

Good
, I called back to him.

They just keep evolving
, he said.

Here is
another
great irony: You find your soul mate, you go through hell to be together, and then you soul mate pecks away at you with his criticism.
Your laugh is so loud. You’re inconsiderate, unplugging my razor without plugging it in again. Your breasts look small in that. You know, Mary never would have cheated
. If I were more perfect, I’d be worth all the trouble he went through to get me, that’s what the criticism said to me. He felt a disparity in what we’d given up to be together. If I were more beautiful and more giving, I could make up for the deficit in his column.

But, like the suspicion, the criticism wasn’t there only because of our history, was it? I was also becoming more and more clear about that.

Ian hadn’t always hunted for ways to condemn me, not at all. Not
at all
. But I’d said that about Mark, too. The thought—the similarities between the two of them—it made me uneasy. They were different men, I told myself. Very different. The truth, though? Well. You can kill a butterfly using different methods. You can use force, grasping the thorax between your fingers and pinching hard. Or you can hold down the wings with the slight, sharp tip of a pin until the heart stops.

We’d like to tow his car to the station evidence-impound garage for further analysis
.…

I am having difficulty breathing.

We can get a warrant, of course, if you have any objections
.

I cradle the phone in my lap. I am underwater. I need to get my head above the surface so I can breathe.

“You need to get a lawyer, Dani,” my mother says. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. You don’t have a choice.” She’s pacing the kitchen. She looks like hell. She’s aged ten years in the last week, or maybe I just never noticed the ways the years have caught up with all of us.

“I don’t need a lawyer. Let them take the car.”

“Dani. Danielle! This is getting out of control. We’re way over our heads. This is crazy!”

“Let them take the car.”

“Getting a lawyer—it’s not admitting some kind of
guilt
. We need some help! We need to know how to protect ourselves!” Abby is practically begging. She looks like hell, too. She’s wearing one of her tongue-in-cheek sweatshirts. This one has Queen Frosting from C
ANDYLAND
on it. The dissonance is disturbing.

“I’ll call Nathan,” I say. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Nathan’s not a lawyer,” Abby says. She and my mother exchange glances.

“I’ll call your father,” my mother says.

“
Grampy
is not a lawyer,” Abby says.

“He knows how to reach that guy …” My mother waves her hand around.

“How many times are we going to have this exact same discussion?” Abby says.

It’s true. We are repeating ourselves. I have to do something.

“Let me handle this.” I attempt to look decisive and in control. I leave them sitting there, and I stride upstairs to our office. In my panic, frustration, fear, fury—take your pick—I accidentally slam the door, rattling those butterflies hanging on the wall. Too late, I remember that we don’t have a computer in there anymore. We’ve got Abby’s laptop and my own phone, but likely I’d
only get those frustrating online white pages anyway. We’ve got that old phone book I’d used to look up Kitty’s number, but that’s back in the cupboard under the kitchen phone. I retrace my steps to retrieve it, and nothing about this looks decisive or in control. Erratic and desperate, maybe. Panicked and chaotic, for sure.

“Frank Lazario,” my mother says. “I’ll never forget him. Call him.”

I cart the phone book back to the office, and I open its fat, sloppy pages. The number might be unlisted. That’s certainly possible.

No. There it is.

I dial. I keep my voice low. And then I shower. I want to look good. Funny how that still matters. I do my hair, and I choose my clothes carefully. I keep a nervous eye on the clock until finally it’s time to leave.

I emerge from my room, purse over my shoulder.

“Thank God, he can see you today?” my mother asks. “Busy man like that, too. I’m so relieved. Did you mention your father’s name? That probably got you right in.”

“He doesn’t have the great power you think he does.”

“You haven’t even met him yet.”

I mean my father, but I don’t bother to correct her. Even after all these years, she’s still—ha—
wedded
to the idea that he has some magical abilities that she no longer has access to. I weigh my options. To tell, or not to tell? Someone should know where I’m going. I don’t know why, it just seems someone should know my whereabouts.

“I’m not seeing Frank Lazario, Mom.”

“Don’t tell me you called that lawyer from your divorce. Don’t you remember? They had her yacht in the Sunday home section of
The Seattle Times
. No wonder that bill was big enough to bury you. You paid for those oak captain’s chairs.”

“Ma, I’m going to see Mary.” And then, in answer to her stunned face, I walk out the door and shut it hard.

The sun is out, and it’s one of those hot spring days that appear out of nowhere. Spring is fickle; spring cannot make up its temperamental mind. It is no day for long pants. I see that now, too late. The heat has gathered in the car, and the seat is warm on the back of my legs. My tendency toward self-sabotage is increasingly revealing itself—I back out of my parking spot and notice a small pool of brown liquid that the car has left behind. That, and now the engine (I guess it’s the engine; what do I know about this stuff?) clunks when I shift into drive. The humming and buzzing have also gotten worse. With my window rolled down for a little cool air, I hear it loudly. I’m going to have to drive over the bridge in this precarious condition.
Please, Blue
, I pray.
Please don’t stop on 520
. I’ve always felt terrible for those poor people, the ones whose cars give up right on that two-lane stretch over Lake Washington, causing backups for miles. What betrayal, and what a mess; I’d feel awful if it were me. But now it’s not the inconvenience I’d cause other people that I’m worrying about. No, I’d take that problem anytime over the trouble I’m in.

I wonder if Detective Jackson has found that letter yet. Is that why he wants Ian’s car?

I can’t afford any holdups. I need to get to Mary’s as quickly as possible. The walls are closing in on me; I feel it happening. The computers, the car … Mary might have information about where Ian is, and, dear God, I need information. She wouldn’t keep things from her frantic daughters, would she? Yet who can say what confidences people keep for their own reasons.
Someone
knows what happened. Someone knows where Ian is. Someone
has to know. In my heart, I feel Adam is right.
People don’t just disappear
.

I steer with one hand and, with the other, I punch button number one on my phone. I imagine a police car pulling me over for cellphone use. I feel a bit hysterical at the idea of it—it would be one of those arrests you see on television, where they pull over a guy who’s speeding and find a dead body in his trunk. Bad driving in the wake of my husband’s disappearance would speak to my guilt, even if the only rules I’d broken before were minor traffic laws and major marital ones. I stole a library book once. I was too embarrassed to check it out. It was about battered women in the suburbs. Previously, I’d always believed that librarians would be the kind of people I’d love to have as friends. They were smart, open, and well-read. Understanding, definitely. But the folks behind counters can know more about you than you’re comfortable with. Librarians, receptionists in doctors’ offices, the ladies who work at Rite Aid. The people behind counters know your secrets.