Picture Me Gone (8 page)

I
t’s starting to get dark, so we park at one of the motels, and the receptionist tells us they’re full because of Easter vacation. Try the Mountain View Motor Inn, she says, it’s a half mile down the road.

We get back in the car and because the road is so curly, it seems a long way till we find it. But there’s a little dog symbol next to the credit-card stickers on the office window, so we’re in luck. I tell the guy behind the desk that my dad is parking the car and he says he likes my accent, am I Australian? When Gil comes in he offers us a family room for no more than a regular double.

So now I have my own room attached to his with my own TV. I like this. Private but connected. There’s a snug corner in my bit that’s perfect for Honey’s bed and she curls up there like it’s where she’s always lived.

She doesn’t need much exercise at her age, Gil says, and I think how strange it is that at nearly the same age, she’s old and I’m young. He takes her out anyway and I text Catlin.

No sign of our missing guy
I write.

Boo bloody hoo
comes the text in return, and I’m shocked and upset because I thought we were friends again. But the phone bleeps a second later.

Dad’s moved out. Mum cries all day.

Oh. I’ve known Catlin long enough and can hear her voice, small and furious.

Oh Cat,
I text back,
I’m REALLY sorry xxxxxxx

It takes a while for the next one but I know what it’s going to say before it arrives.

I don’t give a shit.

Which is more or less definite proof that she does.

Love you loads
I text back, but she doesn’t answer.

Gil returns with Honey. Temperature’s dropping, he says, then gives her one of the dog chews Suzanne packed and pours some dinner for her out of the box. She sniffs it and turns away. No leftover bacon, no French toast, no ice cream, no deal.

We leave Honey and walk next door to a big square restaurant done up to look like a cartoon version of Thailand with huge carved pillars and a pointy roof painted all over red and gold. My Thai, it’s called, and it’s nearly empty. The waitress says to sit anywhere and we do, and then when she comes over again we order pad thai and green curry and she says she likes my accent which I never know quite how to answer. I get up to look at the big orange fish in the tank near the register while we wait for the food to come. I’m really hoping that any fish in our meal don’t come from this tank.

The food arrives and it’s not too bad, though the pad thai is quite sticky. Gil orders a Thai beer, drinks it and asks for another.

What will we do if we find Matthew at the cabin? I ask.

I guess we’ll talk to him, Gil says.

What will we do if we don’t find him?

Gil shrugs. One step at a time. At least we’ll have had a genuine American experience on the way, eh, Perguntador?

As we eat, the restaurant fills up and I can’t help gathering facts about the people who eat here. Tourists, mainly. Some speak a weird-sounding French, which Gil says is French-Canadian. The American families don’t talk to one another much, though some of them shout at their children. I catch one father saying grace before starting to eat while his teenage son looks around, mortified. One man knows the waitress. He’s either related to her or a friend or he comes here a lot. A few people don’t bother with the menu. They know what they want. Two boys come in and when they order beers the waitress asks for ID, which they don’t have. But she’s nice, acts like it’s no big deal and brings them Cokes instead. People order huge plates of food and if there’s anything left over, they ask for doggy bags. I wouldn’t give this food to Honey; it’s not healthy.

At last we go back to our hotel room and I watch TV with the sound turned off while Gil reads, but it’s mostly ads for losing weight or gigantic pizzas. As usual I don’t remember falling asleep but wake up in the middle of the night with the TV off and the neon glow of the motel sign seeping in through the blinds. In Gil’s room, the reading light is still on.

A girl at school told everyone the story of a murderer who hid the body of a dead woman inside the box mattress in a motel. For ten days, people slept in the bed and the body wasn’t discovered until the hotel investigated complaints about a foul smell in the room.

The idea of all those people sleeping on top of a dead woman scared me so much that I didn’t sleep for a week. The girl knew it would have that effect. You’d have to be either super- or sub-human to get that picture out of your head.

This is something I’ve considered before: the story that ends up in your head unasked for, or that gets deposited by someone like that girl. I have a file of horrible images, but I won’t share them with you. What if I stuck one here, in the middle of a paragraph you happen to be reading, like a landmine? You’d never be able to forget it; it would be part of you forever, like a bit of shrapnel in your brain. It’s bad enough I told the one about the body in the mattress.

I feel lonely all of a sudden for Marieka.

Hi Mum. We’re hot on the trail but is it the right one? I don’t think we’re very good detectives. Defectives more like. Haha. How are u? Miss u tons. Love Mila

Gil looks up from his book and asks why I’m still awake. I shrug, and get a text back.

What are you doing up at this hour? Bet you and Dad are great detectives. I love you. XOXO Mum

This makes me feel better. I get up and climb into bed with Gil for a while and he puts his book away so we can watch a nature program on fish who live in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. Dad’s got his arm around me. Being in such a strange room with only the television for light makes me feel sad and lost in a deep place like an abyss. I push my nose up against Gil’s shirt and close my eyes and can smell home, which makes me feel better.

I know Gil wishes I would read more but I prefer watching TV, preferably with the sound turned off. Just the pictures. If there’s a crime drama on, it’s obvious whodunnit from practically the first frame; particularly with no sound. The minute an actor knows he’s the bad guy, you can see it in his face, the way he walks. If I were a director I wouldn’t tell the cast whodunnit till the very last minute.

I once heard a famous detective writer on the radio say he never knew who the murderer was in his books till he got to the end. Personally, I wouldn’t leave such an important decision to a bunch of invented characters.

After a while I go back to my own room and drag Honey’s bed up to my end. She stands while I do it, then pads over and lies down so I can reach out and pat her. I close my eyes but, no matter what I do, the possibility of a dead body stuffed through a slit in the mattress haunts me like an evil smell in the air. I text Matthew.

Don’t you care about making everyone worry? Txt back when you get this.

I don’t bother signing it.

Gil is still awake. Gil, I whisper loudly.

Hmmm? he answers.

Let’s call Marieka.

It’s not even seven a.m. in Holland.

I’d forgotten about the time difference. She was awake a while ago, I tell him. My voice sounds small, even to me.

We don’t have much credit on the phone, Gil says, but he nods. Marieka picks up on the first ring.

Are you OK? She says she’ll phone back, and does. Why are you still awake? She sounds concerned. Where’s Gil?

He’s right here, I say. I’m sorry to call. I couldn’t help it.

It’s fine, sweetheart. Where are you?

We’re at a motel. Near Lake Placid. We’re going to Matthew’s cabin tomorrow. Today.

I guess nobody’s heard anything from him, she says, but doesn’t wait for an answer. She knows that any hearing from him would have been the first thing I reported. How are you, my darling? Are you lonely?

A little, I say. Though at this moment it would be more honest to say a lot.

Well, she says, I guess you’ll either find him or you won’t.

That narrows it down. I laugh. Her voice reassures me. How are your concerts going?

Just rehearsals, she says. First one’s tomorrow. No surprises so far. How’s your father? Why can’t you sleep?

Dad’s fine, I say. But we miss you. Do you want to talk to him? I pass the phone over and Gil blinks. Without his glasses he looks like a slightly different person.

We’ll just take it as it comes, he says after a minute. And then, Of course, with a serious expression. Though she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Another pause. I know. I’ll try to remember that. He throws me a kiss. That’s from Marieka, he says to me, and then to her, I love you too, my darling. Play well. And hangs up.

He looks at me critically. Your mum says you’re only young and need your sleep.

You’re only middle-aged and need your sleep too.

Good point, he says. And then, OK. We’ll both go to sleep. We’ll need our wits about us tomorrow.

I say good night to Gil and go back to my own bed but too many questions are keeping me awake. I send another text from under the covers.

Matthew where are you?

I don’t expect an answer so am not surprised when one doesn’t come.

Sometime later, the bleep of the phone wakes me from a deep sleep.

I’m nowhere
says the message.

It’s from Matthew.

G
il once told me about a play in which a man falls in love with a goat.

I laughed. In
love,
in love? And he nodded.

But surely . . . not in
that way,
I said, and he smiled and nodded again.
There’s nowt so queer as folk.

And I remember thinking: That’s for damned sure.

When I told her, Catlin said, Well, that’s just plain sick, unless it was one really hot goat. And then she made a face and skipped off to smoke a fag and eat horrible chicken and chips from a cardboard box with her new best friends who didn’t seem to see me when we passed on the street. Or maybe they were too busy laughing at jokes only they understood.

Gil explained that the goat story is a metaphor for some uncontrollable form of passion, like being a child molester or falling in love with your sister. The mystery of the whole Matthew situation makes me wonder if he carries a secret so devastating that the world would tilt if it found out. Or is it only devastating in his head?

What did Matthew mean,
I’m nowhere
?

I am about to wake Gil and tell him that I’ve heard from Matthew. Gil, look, a message! He’s not dead after all.

But I don’t.

• • •

Then it’s morning and I’m packing my suitcase while Gil shaves. And again I am about to tell Gil about the text.

But still I don’t.

We will almost certainly be meeting Matthew at the camp today. And I know the message would upset Gil.

And yet.
He’s the adult and I’m the child. I’m worried by the message, but feel protective of my fifty-eight-year-old father. Is it my job to shield him from the icy chill in Matthew’s message?

In the blink of an eye, the world has turned upside down. Come along, I could say to him, don’t dawdle, and have you brushed your teeth?

By the time I find a grassy spot to walk Honey and Gil pays the bill, it’s nearly eleven. We go back into town and find a place for breakfast on the main street. I have waffles and Gil has scrambled eggs with a large side order of sausages to replace the boring food Honey will no longer eat.

When Gil offers the foil tray of sausages, Honey swallows them down in big chomps. I open the door to the backseat and she hops in and stretches out, licking her chops. Gil and I glance at each other, a little guiltily. We are not responsible dog parents.

So far, we’ve been following decent-size roads, but they get smaller as we drive north, till at last we’re bumping along an unpaved road through dense trees. Honey stands now, both front paws on the armrest between the front seats, her nose pointing through the windscreen, ears pricked. Has she been here before? Does she remember the road? The map shows that there’s a lake nearby but we can’t see it. Yellow
STRICTLY NO HUNTING
notices are nailed to trees along one stretch of land. There’s something wild about the woods here. I hope the bears remain hidden in case some lunatic with a gun decides to ignore the signs.

Every few minutes another spindly dirt road branches off from the one we’re on, sometimes marked with a name or a postbox, sometimes with a number, sometimes with nothing at all. Gil looks anxious, squinting at his map.

We’re almost there, he says. It should be just at the end of this road. He turns over the paper with Suzanne’s directions on it, as if looking for more information about what we might find there.

Abruptly, the road ends. It turns into a footpath through trees, not wide enough for a car.

There is no building in sight.

Come on, says Gil. This must be it.

We step out of the car.

It’s a beautiful morning, much colder than yesterday. Sunshine floats down through the trees. There’s a breeze, which makes the leaves rustle and the branches creak. I can hear things scurrying in the underbrush. Small things. I picture them, grayish, brownish, darting rodents with sharp bright frightened little eyes and sharp little feet, tiny and unsettled by our presence.

I squint deep into the woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of a moose, but all I can see are more trees. The floor of the woods is covered with pine needles and fallen twigs; years of decay make the path soft underfoot. Honey stands very still, quivering a little, her nose in the air. Does she remember being here with Matthew? Does she smell him? Is he here? She’s sniffing the ground now and my heart races as she takes off down the path. He must be here. He must be.

We follow.

Gil stops at a clearing. The camp is made of wood, painted but weathered and peeling. Windows circle the little house and are all shut. The front door is painted green, shut tight, but there’s an outer screen door that doesn’t seem to close properly; it blows open and shut very slightly with a squeak. Honey circles the house, whining. She stops, throws back her head and howls, then resumes her running—back and forth, round and round. Distracted and slightly mad.

Presumably Honey’s been here before with Matthew and remembers. She might smell his presence, or the memory of his presence. Like us, she hopes for resolution.

Gil looks agitated. Takes a deep breath. No one peers at us through the windows, no one comes to greet us. He calls hello. We approach the house and I take his hand. Honey has stopped running and stands very still, sniffing the air.

What have we here? Gil asks softly.

What we have here is a person staying at a cabin in the middle of the woods, who is either not here right now or pretending not to be here right now in the hope that we’ll go away.

Look, I say to Gil.

There’s a cat. And one thing I know for absolute certain is that big well-fed cats don’t live alone in the woods. This cat is a stripy black-and-brown tortoiseshell, which makes her almost invisible in the shadows beside the house. She crouches perfectly still, watching us as if we’re prey. Her eyes are yellowish green, and she knows I’ve seen her. Cats may not be the world’s most intellectual creatures but they’re excellent observers. This cat turns its attention from us to something in front of it. Maybe that’s what she was doing before we arrived, waiting for something to come out of a hole. No sane cat would crouch all day waiting for a translator and his daughter to wander down the path looking for someone who may or may not happen to live here.

I watch the cat, watch it freeze, eyes intent on the ground, watch her swipe with her front paw, then straighten up, paw planted firmly on the ground. She stares down as if mesmerized, then sinks forward, swift as thought, coming up again with the mouse in her mouth. She tosses the mouse a little up in the air and I can actually see the tiny creature scramble, trying to regain its feet, too late. The cat has the advantage. When the mouse reconnects with earth, the cat is already batting at it with its two front paws, like a footballer dribbling a ball. I find it almost impossible to stop watching this game, despite the fact that I am not entirely certain whose side I’m on.

Gil is walking toward the camp. He opens the screen door and knocks loudly but there is no answer. He calls out. Hello! Anybody here? Then tries the door. It’s locked. He looks at me, cups his hands together and presses his face to the window. Curtains block his view.

The cat hates him, I can see it. It resents having its game ruined by this shouting man. A moment of inattention and suddenly the cat rises up on its hind legs, looks left and right like a cartoon cat seeking a cartoon mouse, then sits and begins to lick one paw, casually, as if it couldn’t care less that the best game of the day has been spoiled.

In all our nervous imaginings of the big confrontation, we hadn’t really considered that someone might be here but not here. We circle the camp but there’s nothing to see. It is occupied, I know that much. It isn’t just the cat. There is nothing empty or abandoned about the place—the flower beds are tidy and look as if someone might recently have been planting flowers. Metal hooks hold back heavy wooden shutters. The house seems to breathe slightly with occupation.

Gil looks in through the door this time.

Someone’s living here, he says. And as he says it I swing round to look at a little outhouse, nearly invisible in a stand of trees. I walk toward it and Gil follows. It’s very basic. Beside the outhouse there’s a compost pit for rubbish—a square wooden door weighed down with a large stone. I lift it and there’s our evidence: egg cartons, newspapers and kitchen waste. Peelings, banana skins, bones. All recent, including the newspapers.

I concentrate and let the feelings of the little camp seep into my head. It is a woman here, I feel that strongly. But someone else too. Could it be Matthew?

A woman lives here, I say.

How do you know? asks Gil, and I look at him because he and I have had the how-do-I-know conversation too many times in our lives.

I know because I know. Sometimes I can say, Aha! An empty bottle of nail varnish. That’s how I know. Meat in a can—no woman eats meat in a can. A dozen empty beer cans, the cheap sort, there’s a hint. But usually it’s nothing so obvious. I look at a picture and I see the things that aren’t visible at that moment. It’s not that I’m some sort of mystic; I just see a constellation of tiny facts too small for other people to notice. I don’t specifically register each element of the constellation but the overall impression will be clear. The Bear. The Hunter. The Swan.

Do you know the story of Clever Hans?

Clever Hans was an Arab horse living in Germany around the turn of the last century. His owner billed him as the cleverest horse on earth. He could add, subtract, multiply, calculate square roots and tell time, and would communicate the answers to his astonished audience by tapping out numbers with his hoof. Even with his master’s back turned, or different questioners, Clever Hans was uncannily accurate.

In 1907, thirteen external examiners were sent from Berlin to validate Hans’s feats. And for some time they were stuck. It seemed the horse really could perform difficult mathematical calculations.

But then they began to experiment. They tried blindfolding Hans and his accuracy dropped. At last, they hit upon the idea of asking questions that the questioner himself couldn’t answer. And that was it. Hans faltered, refusing even to make an attempt. What was it? Could he read minds?

It turned out that Clever Hans was picking up almost imperceptible clues from his questioner’s posture that told him when to stop tapping. When Hans reached the correct answer, the questioner’s heart rate might increase, his shoulders might tense slightly or relax slightly—not enough of a sign for any of the humans in the room to recognize or interpret, not so much that the questioner himself recognized what he was doing. But enough for the horse. In other words, poor Hans wasn’t so clever at mathematics after all.

Merely astonishingly gifted at interpreting that which no one else could see.

Mila is a perfectly nice name and I have never been dissatisfied with it, but if my parents had happened to name me after that horse, I would have been greatly honored.