Picture Me Gone (2 page)

M
arieka is from Sweden. Gil’s mother was Portuguese-French. I need diagrams to keep track of all the nationalities in my family but I don’t mind. Mongrels are wily and healthy and don’t suffer displaced hips or premature madness.

My parents were over forty when they had me but I don’t think of them as old, any more than they think of me as young. We are just us.

The fact that Gil’s friend left home exactly when we were coming to visit is hard to understand. The police don’t believe he’s been murdered or kidnapped. I can imagine Gil wandering out the door and forgetting for a while to come back, but ties to Marieka and me would draw him home. Perhaps Matthew’s ties are looser.

Despite being best friends, Gil and Matthew haven’t seen each other in eight years. This makes the timing of his disappearance quite strange. Impolite, at the very least.

I look forward to seeing his wife and starting to understand what happened. Perhaps that’s why Gil decided to take me along. Did I mention that I’m good at puzzles?

There is no need to double-check the passports; they are zipped into the inner pocket of my bag, safe, ready to be presented at check-in. Gil has put his book down and is gazing at something inside his head.

Where do you think Matthew went? I ask him.

It takes him a few seconds to return to me. He sighs and places his hand on my knee. I don’t know, sweetheart.

Do you think we’ll find him?

He looks thoughtful and says, Matthew was a wanderer, even as a child.

I wait to hear what he says next about his friend, but he says nothing. Inside his head he is still talking. Whole sentences flash across his eyes. I can’t read them.

What? I say.

What, what? But he smiles.

What are you thinking?

Nothing important. About my childhood. I knew Matthew as well as I knew myself. When I think of him he still looks like a boy, even though he’s quite old.

He’s the same age as you I say, a little huffily.

Yes. He laughs, and pulls me close.

Here is the story from Gil’s past:

He and Matthew are twenty-two, hitchhiking to France in the back of a truck with hardly any money. Then across France to Switzerland, to climb the Lauteraarhorn. Of the two, Matthew is the serious climber. It all goes according to plan until, on the second day, the temperature begins to rise. Avalanche weather. They watch the snow and ice thunder down around them. Mist descends toward evening, wrapping the mountain like a cloak. They burrow in, hoping the weather will change. Around midnight, the wind picks up and the rain turns to snow.

I’ve tried to imagine the scene hundreds of times. The first problem—exposure; the second—altitude. In the dead of night, in the dark and cold and wind and snow, Matthew notices the first signs of sickness in his friend and insists they descend. Gil refuses. Time passes. Head pounding, dizzy and irrational, Gil shouts, pushes Matthew off him. When at last he slumps, exhausted by the effort and the thin air, all he wants is to sit down and sleep in the snow. To die.

Over the next eleven hours, Matthew cajoles and drags and walks and talks him down the mountain. Over and over he tells Gil that you don’t lie down in the snow. You keep going, no matter what.

They reach safety and Gil swears never to climb again.

And Matthew?

He was in love with it, says Gil.

He saved your life.

Gil nods.

We both fall silent, and I think,
And yet.

And yet. Gil’s life would not have needed saving if it hadn’t been for Matthew.

The risk-taker and his riskee.

When I think of the way this trip has turned out, I wonder if we’ve been summoned for some sort of cosmic leveling, to help Matthew this time, the one who has never before required saving.

Perhaps we have been called in to balance out the flow of energy in the universe.

We reach the airport. Gil picks up my bag and his, and we leave the train. As the escalator carries us up, a text pings on to his phone.

My father is no good at texts, so he hands it to me and I show him:
Still nothing
it says, and is signed
Suzanne
. Matthew’s wife.

We look at each other.

Come on, he says, piling our bags onto a cart, and off we trot for what feels like miles to the terminal. At the check-in I ask for a window seat. Gil isn’t fussy. We answer the questions about bombs and sharp objects, rummage through our carry-on bags for liquids, take our boarding passes and join the long snake through international departures. I pass the time watching other people, guessing their nationalities and relationships. American faces, I note, look unguarded. Does this make them more, or less approachable? I don’t know yet.

Gil buys a newspaper and a bottle of whisky from duty-free and we go to the gate. As we board the plane I’m still thinking about that night on the mountain. What does it take to half drag, half carry a disorientated man the size of Gil, hour after hour, through freezing snow and darkness?

He may have other faults, this friend of Gil’s, but he is not short of determination.

S
uzanne meets us at international arrivals in New York. We are tired and crumpled. She spots Gil while he is trying to get his phone to work, and I nudge him and point. She’s not old but looks pinched, as if someone has forgotten to water her. There is a buggy beside her and in it a child sleeps, despite all the bustle and noise. His arms stick out sideways in his padded suit. He wears a blue striped hat.

Gil kisses her and says, It’s been too long. He peers down at the child. Hello, he says.

This is Gabriel, says Suzanne.

Hello, Gabriel, Gil says.

Gabriel squeezes his eyes together but doesn’t wake up.

And Mila, says Suzanne. You’ve changed so much.

She means that I’ve changed since I was four years old, when we last came to visit. That’s when I met Gabriel’s older brother, Owen. He was seven and I don’t remember much about him, though we are holding hands in the one photo Gil has of us.

I touch the side of my finger to Gabriel’s fist and he opens it and grabs on to me, still asleep. His grip is strong.

I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, she says, and shakes her head. Not much fun for you. She turns to Gil. Come on. We can talk in the car.

The car is noisy and they speak in low voices so I can’t catch most of what they’re saying. Gabriel’s in the back with me, fast asleep in his car seat. Occasionally he opens his eyes or stretches out a hand or kicks his feet, but he doesn’t wake up. I make him grab on to my finger again and hear Suzanne say, Well, I hope you’ve made the right decision. She says it in a way that suggests he hasn’t made the right decision at all, and I’m sure she’s talking about bringing me along.

It has started to rain.

I fall asleep in the car to the rhythmic whoosh of windscreen wipers and the low buzz of Gil and Suzanne talking. Normally I’d be tuning in to hear what they’re saying, but I’m too tired to care. Gabriel still hangs on to my finger.

When I awake it’s dark. The road is narrow and quiet, nearly deserted; the rain has stopped. I say nothing at all, just look out of the window at the woods hoping to see a deer or a bear peering at me. Gil and Suzanne have stopped talking and the car is filled with private thoughts. Suzanne’s are surprisingly clear; Gil’s muffled and soft. Gil will be thinking about Matthew. It’s a puzzle in his head and Suzanne’s and mine. Where has Matthew gone? And why?

Suzanne’s thoughts sound like a CD skipping.
Damn damn damn damn damn.

What I know already is that Matthew and Suzanne both teach at the university in town. Matthew disappeared five days ago, eight months into the academic year, fourteen months after Gabriel was born. He took nothing with him, not a change of clothing or a passport or any money. Just left for work in the morning, said good-bye as usual and never showed up to teach his class.

The actual running away does not strike me as particularly strange. Most of us are held in place by a kind of centrifugal force. If for some reason the force stopped, we might all fly off in different directions. But what about the not coming back? Staying away is frightening and painful. And who would leave a baby? Even to me this seems extreme, a failure of love.

I think hard. What would make it feel like the only thing to do?

Here are the things I come up with:

(A) Desperation (about what?)

(B) Fear (of what?)

(C) Anger (why?)

I know hardly anything about Matthew and Suzanne. I will try to find out what is what when we arrive. There are always answers. Sometimes the right answer turns out to be

(D) All of the above.

W
hen Gil told me that Matthew and Suzanne lived in a wooden house in upstate New York, I pictured an old-fashioned log cabin with smoke curling out of a stone chimney, a rocking chair on the porch and hens pecking around.

Their house is nothing like this. I tried to hold the original image in my head for as long as possible but it slipped away once I saw the real thing. The real thing is nothing at all like a normal house and nothing at all like a log cabin. Picture a big cube with each flat side divided into four glass squares. The roof is a big square of wood laid at an angle so the snow and rain slip off.

It is set in trees with no other houses in sight and Suzanne left the lights on when she left. We park the car. The house looks like a beautiful spaceship that just happened to land in a clearing. It shimmers in the black night. In my whole life, I never saw such a beautiful house. My first thought when Suzanne turns the car engine off is that I would never run away from a house like this.

Suzanne unlocks the front door. Lying across the room is a large white German shepherd that lifts its head when we come in. Suzanne doesn’t greet it. She walks straight through as if the dog does not exist. The dog seems accustomed to this and stands to move out of her way. I approach the dog and she stands perfectly still while I kneel to pat her. She has beautiful brown eyes. Loneliness flows off her in waves.

So she is Matthew’s dog. The name on her tag is Honey.

Inside the house, bookcases line most of the walls and there is a huge glass-fronted stove with “eco-burner” etched on the glass. It burns the smoke too, says Suzanne.

I wonder how it does that.

All of the bookcases have tiny lights built in, and all of the walls and ceilings too, so the house seems to twinkle.

It’s so beautiful, I say to Suzanne, who is lifting Gabriel out of his padded suit. He’s awake now, staring like a baby owl. He waves his hands at Honey, who watches him gravely. Suzanne points at the door. Out, she says, and Honey walks out of the room.

It was built by an architect who ran out of money, Suzanne says. It made him famous though, and now he’s built another just like it, only bigger, for himself. It’s called The Box House.

As we walk through the house, I collect images like a camera clicking away. I can barely remember what Matthew looks like and there are no pictures of him to remind me. No picture of him and Suzanne on their wedding day or him with Gabriel. Or just him.

Click.

Other details leap out at me: A pair of muddy shoes. A stack of bills. A cracked window. A closed door. A pile of clothes. A skateboard. A dog.
Click click click.

First impressions? This is not a happy house.