Songs for the Missing (21 page)

He dreamed of the motel and the hospital, complicated, incomplete scenes. He was the one who was lost, wandering the boxed-in hallways. The desk clerk—a rat-faced actor he’d seen in something recently—said there were no rooms, and Ed walked the blazing strip by the 7-Eleven, vintage seventies cars flashing past, all gaudy whitewalls and chrome, black teenagers taunting him from their windows.

One reason he didn’t take the pill was that he longed for a dream of Kim. He didn’t expect her to tell him what had happened, he just wanted to see her again, to be in her presence as if she were alive and none of this had happened. Every night he went to bed hoping she’d come to him. Every morning he was disappointed.

The biggest change was his sudden inability to concentrate. Reading the paper, logging entries from the tipline, watching the game—he couldn’t stick with anything for more than a few minutes without getting up and pacing around the house, plowing his fingers through his hair and massaging the meat of his temples as if his head hurt. He blamed it on the lack of sleep but feared it was something more drastic, like a panic attack. The smallest sounds distracted him—the kitchen faucet dripping two rooms away, the dryer tumbling in the basement. His skin itched, his leg jiggled and he couldn’t think. It reminded him of when he quit smoking, his own impatience crippling him. He not only felt useless, he
was
useless, while Fran was efficient as ever, organizing a month’s worth of events between doing interviews and cooking meals.

He wondered if he was clinically depressed, and who he needed to see if he was. They’d probably just give him pills. He thought he could talk to Father John, but put off making the call. He was home, finally. It should have been easier. If he could just get a decent night’s sleep.

Fran encouraged him to get out of the house, and Friday when he ran out of errands he ventured to the marina to check on the boat. Downtown the stores were celebrating the three-day weekend with a sidewalk sale, the diner grilling chicken over a cinderblock firepit in the parking lot. On every telephone pole Kim shared space with posters for the leukemia fair and the county rodeo. A banner spanning Main Street announced that tomorrow the chamber of commerce was sponsoring fireworks over the harbor. He pictured the crowd gathered at the park and worried that they were missing an opportunity. At dusk they’d just be getting back from his mother’s.

“Already thought of it,” Fran said over the phone. “Jocelyn’s got an in at KGO. Anytime they do a remote they hand stuff out.”

“How about the leukemia fair?”

“Connie’s got people on it.”

“What about the rodeo?”

“We’ve got it covered, trust me. Go play with your boat.”

In the backseat he had a box of flyers. Instead of wasting his time washing down the boat, he spent the afternoon plastering them to every light pole and drinking fountain and public restroom, always remembering which way the crowd would be facing. He didn’t think the park was that big, but to cover both sides of the inlet on foot took hours. Pilings, benches, trashcans, fenceposts. He taped some to the plinth of the tarnished bronze of the slickered mariner at his wheel, and would have stuck a pair on the huge flukes of the anchor commemorating Admiral Perry’s victory if he thought he could get away with it. By the end he was drenched in sweat as if he’d gone jogging. He felt good, like he’d done something. He’d sleep tonight.

“Someone’s ripe,” Fran said when he walked in. “How were the seagulls?”

“Shitty,” he said, finishing the old joke.

Sergeant McKnight e-mailed to say this weekend five teams from downstate were joining the search, and though he knew it wouldn’t make a difference, he thought he should be there.

After dinner he helped with the dishes, then watched the Indians stuff the Royals. Lindsay took the other arm of the couch, her legs tucked under a blanket. She was too thin, and couldn’t bear their air-conditioning. She read, paying attention when the game got interesting. He didn’t mind that she was quiet. He liked that they could share the same room without having to say anything.

Fran was in the living room, printing something out. From time to time she came in to check on them as if they were kids.

In the seventh Lindsay left and returned with a Fudgsicle.

“Shoot,” he said, “I didn’t know we had those.”

They were his favorite, but he didn’t dare. He’d already cut out alcohol and coffee and caffeinated soda. Now all he allowed himself after eight o’clock was ice water, just a single big Indians cup or he’d be back and forth to the bathroom all night.

Fran went up at her regular time. He watched the game to the end, then turned off the lights and let Cooper out, waiting for him at the back door. She’d left her car out again, as if she didn’t want to park it next to the Chevette—an observation he knew better than to mention.

Lindsay was in her room, tapping away at her computer. After everything, he didn’t like her being online so much, and poked his head in to tell her not to stay up too late.

Their room was dark, just the nightlight on by the sink. He brushed his teeth and slid into bed next to Fran, plumping his pillow and fitting his knees behind hers.

“Hey,” he said, because he wanted to thank her for going tomorrow.

She didn’t answer, so he tried again, gently—“Hey.”

No, she was out.

“Must be nice,” he said.

It was like fighting himself. He was too hot, and struggled to find the right position, his limbs caught at awkward angles. On the insides of his eyelids a montage of the day’s accumulated negatives flickered, the shifting shapes like Rohrshach blots. He was talking to a man in a pulpit that was actually a Segway. He didn’t recall falling asleep; he only realized he must be, since he was dreaming. When he woke, the curtains were still dark, and he thought it was close to daybreak. The clock said it was ten past two.

In the morning his eyes burned as if he’d gotten soap in them, and he took three Advil. Fran was already working, packing a picnic basket with curried chicken salad and cucumber sandwiches. She’d even bought mint Milanos for his mother. While Lindsay showered, they drank coffee out on the deck. The day was bright and perfect, a male cardinal tweeting his two-toned call from the peak of the garage. In the lull, he thanked her; she dismissed it with a wave. She’d asked Dana to watch Cooper, a detail he hadn’t thought of. At least one of them was capable.

Lindsay came down with wet hair, already wearing her iPod. Fran made her take a Nutrigrain bar and some orange juice. He’d moved the box of flyers so she wouldn’t have to sit with them, but as they pulled out he caught her glancing into the way back, and the look on her face. He should have just stuck them in the garage.

To get on 90 they had to drive out 7, past the gorge and the Conoco—the pumps packed with holiday traffic. Fran watched the doors as they passed, as if Kim might be inside working. Nina was off to school, as were J.P. and Elise. He never expected them to stay, but he didn’t understand how they could just leave her behind. While he was away, Fran had seen J.P. drive by the house a few times. If he tried anything, forget calling the cops, she said, she was ready for him. Ed thought he knew J.P. better than she did, and didn’t see him as a bad kid, just immature, but didn’t blame her for being angry.

At the far end of the bridge he turned and sped down the ramp, merging into the stream of trucks powering east, and soon they were cruising along with everyone else. On their right the massive, shimmering red and gold billboard for Adult Paradise rose above the caved-in remains of a barn. They crossed the state line, an elaborate sign welcoming them to Pennsylvania. Even with Fran right beside him, and the prospect of seeing his mother, he felt the same sense of letdown that gripped him when he’d left Sandusky, the nagging fear that he was going the wrong way.

“We should stop and get some of those mints she likes,” Fran said.

“Good idea.”

His mother was at the point where dessert appealed to her more than meals, but she’d always had a sweet tooth, a weakness she’d passed on to him. As a child he sneaked the pastel green butter mints from a cut-glass dish on the dining room sideboard, retreating to his room to eat them one at a time, letting them dissolve on his tongue, the chalky solid magically turning sweet and creamy. Like visiting his mother, just the thought of them sparked a mix of comfort and guilt. The new ones didn’t taste the same, though it was possible they were cut-rate imitations and not the real thing.

There was a CVS just off her exit where they’d stopped before. He left the car running for the air-conditioning and headed across the lot. They weren’t that far from Kingsville, so he was surprised there was no flyer on the door, and weighed going back and getting one.

Why did he have to think? There was no such thing as a holiday for them anymore.

Fran watched him as he backtracked and opened the door, dipping down to trip the latch.

“What’s up?”

“No flyer.”

It didn’t take long. He’d become practiced at explaining the situation, and the cashier was the mother of two teenagers, and glad to help. She gave him a discount on the mints, shook his hand and held it an extra second. “God is good.”

“I hope so.”

“He is,” she said, as if she knew Him personally.

Outside in the heat he wondered what had happened to her that she was so certain, and thought of his mother raising him by herself, his father dead at thirty-seven of a heart attack. Would she have said God was good?

“Well?” Fran asked when he handed her the bag.

“Mission accomplished.”

The home was another ten miles through the suburbs of Erie. When he was a boy there’d been nothing out here but Christmas tree farms and hunt clubs, a speculator’s dream. Now it was overrun by pricey developments with names like Northglen and Devonwood, switchbacked tiers of McMansions winding up terraced hillsides to sunset views along the ridges. From all the deer crossing signs, he imagined they were a problem, not used to commuters.

He hoped it wouldn’t be crowded. Saturday was a big visiting day, but he expected most families had their own plans for the weekend. The weather was ideal. As they closed in on the home, he pictured himself a mile out on the lake, the water sparkling, nothing but blue sky to the horizon, the Indians game on his old transistor, a pair of sandwiches and a couple of cold Buds in the cooler. The hardest thing he’d have to do was wrestle an empty out of a foam cozy. That was the whole idea behind the holiday—a rest from one’s labors. When the girls were younger, they’d barbecue at the park, then motor out around dusk with everyone else to the middle of the harbor and wait for the fireworks. Kim loved the big booms, clapping in the gap between the flash and the concussion, while Lindsay covered her ears. It hadn’t been that long ago—six or seven years. His mother was still living in the old house then, drinking secretly, her sight just beginning to fade, and again it seemed to him that everything around him had changed drastically while he’d stayed the same. It wasn’t true, of course, though his decline, being financial, had taken place privately, hidden in debt refinancing and title transfers, a sudden shift of a balance sheet. That was the market—it fluctuated. If he didn’t think it would rebound, he’d have quit years ago and moved them to Florida. No matter how bad it got, he had to believe the lake would always bring people back.

His last thoughts before seeing her were generally this desperate, as if he might better understand his life in relation to hers and somehow justify leaving her there. He didn’t need Rich—the success, who never visited—to tell him he should be taking care of her. It was just that with Kim missing, he already felt stretched thin.

“Quit biting your lips,” Fran said, and patted his thigh.

“Sorry.”

They turned the last curve and the complex spread on their left, commanding a slight rise, its low white wings radiating from a cupolaed rotunda, efficient as a chickenhouse. BRIGHTVIEW HOME, read the ranch-style arch above the entrance. On both sides of the drive, almost choreographed, two uniformed workmen rode identical mowers over the lush, sprawling lawn, and by the flagpole near the front doors a gardener was weeding a thriving bed of geraniums. Initially the home’s attention to buildings and grounds had been a selling point, but now the institutional neatness depressed him, so much window dressing. The real life was inside.

To his surprise the visitor’s lot was almost full. He imagined these other families were like them, taking this last opportunity to see their loved ones before the regimen of work and school kicked in.

“It’s going to be a zoo,” he said.

“I’ve seen it worse,” Fran said, and motioned for Lindsay to remove her earbuds.

He carried the basket, grateful to have something to hide behind. Walking in, he always felt exposed, his mere presence an admission, as if he was the only son to leave a parent here. The receptionist at the front desk asked for his mother’s room number and called ahead to the nurses’ station to make sure she was ready. No one accompanied them down the long hallway—carpeted and uncomfortably quiet—and he was aware of Lindsay sticking close, as if they might ditch her. The walls were a pleasing shade of coffee, with cream chair rails, and between every other door stood a tripod table with a bonsai tree or African violet, yet as much effort as the designers had put into the place they couldn’t disguise that in essence it was a hospital. The beds gave it away—fitted with protective rails and wired with call buttons.

His mother’s door was open, an aide he recognized from last time helping her stow her tape player and the book she was listening to. She seemed thinner, wasted, the curve of her scalp visible beneath a teased puff of hair. Though it was easily seventy-five degrees, she had a blanket over her lap. Before he said a word, she cocked her head as if sensing some inaudible vibration, then reached her good hand toward him. “Eddie.”

Fran took the basket so he could hold her.

She could only raise one arm, the other lay limp in her lap. “I’m so sorry, Eddie,” she said, her breath in his ear. She smelled strongly of alcohol—no, butterscotch. She kept his hand as he straightened up, as if afraid he’d run away. “I told Betty here, all we can do is hope.”