The Feathered Bone (24 page)

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

“We found Arlene's daughter,” Beth says enthusiastically, referring to the family we've been hosting at the church. “She was in Houston. They're driving her back.”

“That's incredible,” I say, closing my office door. “I forget, how old is she?”

“Sixteen,” Beth answers. “Can you believe they sent her to Houston all by herself?”

I flip through my appointment book, checking my schedule.

“She got separated from her friends when someone rescued her from a rooftop. Left her on a bridge, and she ended up on a bus to Texas.”

“Gosh, Beth. She's lucky. Imagine if the wrong person—”
Think before you speak, Amanda.

When Beth stays silent, I change the subject. “I finish at two today. I'll head that way after work. Need me to bring anything?”

“Just come when you can,” Beth says. “That's all I need.”

At two I head straight for the church, where Beth is busy cleaning dishes from the group lunch. She excuses herself and leads me down the hall to the nursery where Arlene's family is housed. The door is open, and we find her teen daughter being reunited. The family members are huddled close together, crying. Arlene looks up to us, whispering again and again, “Thank you. Thank you.”

The scene overwhelms me, and I walk away, giving the family privacy.

Beth follows, reaching out for me as I catch my tear. “Amanda, do you realize what this means? If Arlene's daughter was sent to Houston, maybe Sarah's there too.”

Chapter 16

Saturday, October 29, 2005

W
E HAVE SPENT A YEAR PACING DARK CORNERS OF THE
C
RESCENT
City, showing Sarah's photo again and again, hoping someone would give her back to us. A full year of searching every face, every set of blue eyes, every news report. We extended the search across to Texas after Katrina, visiting shelters and working with every volunteer agency we could find—begging them to be on the watch. And yet, as the anniversary hits, we have not found Sarah. Nor have we found the woman from the tourist's photo, Bridgette Gallatino.

“Today's the twenty-ninth,” I tell Carl. “I can't believe it's been a year.”

“Don't tell me you're sinking again.”

“What does that mean, Carl? Sure I struggle with it sometimes. But I haven't sunk. I think I've stayed very strong.”

He snorts.

“Would it hurt you to show a little compassion every now and then?” I regret my sharp tone, but I don't apologize. “You're not the one who lost her. You're not the one whose best friend can't look you in the eye.”

I am ironing his shirt for tonight's graveyard shift at the Shell chemical plant in Geismar.

He stares at me with a look of warning. The kind a dog uses to
say
Don't come any closer.
I give him his space and keep ironing, determined to prepare a perfect shirt.
A man with wrinkled clothes is a man who isn't loved. Yes, Mom. I hear you.

“Just tell me you're going to work today.”

When I don't answer, his jaw tightens, as if all chances of reasonable communication are done. If I really were interacting with a canine, he'd be hunched and growling, eyeteeth long and exposed. But this is no dog; this is my husband. His lips are pinched against his nose in disgust. “You think I like working the night shift? I wanted to work the rigs. Now I'm in the plant, and I hate it. But that's what we do, Amanda. We grow up. We go to work. Even when we don't want to. It's been a whole year. We can't keep putting our lives on hold.”

This stings. Maybe the anniversary has me edgy, but for some reason I can't keep my thoughts in any longer.

“How can you say I've put my life on hold? I've worked myself to the bone trying to keep up with my practice while managing all of Ellie's extra needs, and trying to help search for Sarah, and still making sure you have what you need. You and Ellie have suffered because of me? I run in circles trying to keep you both happy. Not that you've noticed. Or offered to help.”

I set the iron down, fold his collar carefully, and begin to steam the crease. Sarah's disappearance has left us living on a fault line, with frequent tremors rising up and shaking us to the core. There's never any warning. One minute we're able to live a semi-normal life, baking cookies, watching Ellie in the school play, ironing work shirts. The next, something triggers a mind shift and we're right back in that café, coming to terms with the fact that Sarah has never been found.

Carl reaches for his shirt, eyeing the few small wrinkles. “You expect me to wear this?”

I shift from fight to flight, moving to the first escape hatch I can find, the master bathroom. My back is turned when the iron flies by my ear. It crashes through the wall, mere centimeters from where I stand frozen in place. I turn to see Carl, red-faced and yelling. “You can't even get your mind right enough to iron a shirt!”

The familiar fear rises in me. I hurry into the bathroom, slamming the door. He is throwing things. I slide into the dry tub. I cover my ears.
Stay strong, Amanda. Don't fall apart.

Then my mother:
You should have known better than to push him like this. You knew this would happen.

In the bedroom Carl continues to rant. Ellie is down the hall. I can't get to her. And this is the worst of it. I know he'd never hurt her, but of course she'll wake and hear every bit. Of course she'll hate the both of us for all the tension and anger and hurt in her life. Of course she'll blame me for not keeping him calm.

“Don't you understand what you do? Why can't you just go to work? Do your job. Come home. Take care of your family. Why is that so hard?”

His fury builds. I begin to sway back and forth in a subtle soothing rhythm, the way my mother used to rock me in her lap when I was a little girl. It's pathetic, but in this moment it's all I can manage. Just as I did when I was a kid and my father would yell and throw things and threaten my mom. No matter how many times I tell myself to stand my ground, I cave. So here I am, curled in a ball, rocking away the pain, crying until I go numb. One simple word swirls inside my mind.
Disappear.

“You think we all need Perfect Amanda to swoop in and save us. Well, guess what? Nobody needs you. Nobody even wants you. What we want, what we need, is for you to either grow up and pull yourself together, or stay out of our lives. Leave us alone. Stop
running around in circles trying to fix everything. You mess things up, don't you see? You can't even iron a shirt!”

Don't listen to him. It isn't true.

But I can't hear my own voice. All I hear is Carl. “You have some fancy college degree and you think that makes you so smart. Think you know everything. You can't even help your own daughter!”

Another crash, this one against the bathroom door. I pull my head between my knees and shield myself like a schoolkid in a tornado drill.

Carl continues. “Want to know what our problem is? It's you! You're our problem! Solve that!”

“Stop!” I yell, pounding my fist against the tub. “Stop, please stop!”
Get a grip, Amanda. He's pushing all your buttons. Don't let him break you. You're stronger than this.

He's at the door, yelling through the thin wooden panels. And then he kicks it, and his boot comes right through. I jump to my feet, grabbing the first tool I can find to defend myself. It's a hairbrush. Nothing makes sense. I don't say anything. I don't move from my place. I don't open the door or yell or fight or flee. Instead, I freeze. And this is how I stay until I hear the front door slam.

After some minutes of quiet, I am finally able to get control of myself. I make sure the bathroom door is locked. Then I run the shower water, letting steam fill the room. I undress and step under the steady stream, turning the dial almost as warm as it will go. As I yield to the roar of white noise, I think,
The problem is me? I'm not the one who just threw an iron.

My mother speaks again:
He's just a man, Amanda. They get angry. It's normal.

And then, from somewhere deep inside me, another voice:
Normal people don't try to hurt their wives. Normal people don't destroy the ones they love. Nothing about this is normal.

By the time the water turns cool, I find my footing. I take my time getting dressed. Then I exhale and I re-press his shirt, smoothing the lines that triggered his outrage.

The hole in the wall reminds me how close he came to hurting me. How many times have I warned a client about the dangers of domestic violence? How many times have I sat in my office listening to stories like this one, wondering why in the world a woman would stay in such a relationship?
How did I end up in this situation?

I bring the shirt to the living room. Carl has returned to sit in his favorite chair and watch the morning news. Now that things are calm, I try again to communicate.
Don't show emotion. Don't go too deep.

“Can't you understand? It's my responsibility, Carl. It's the anniversary, and Beth and Preacher will be out there looking. I need to help them.”

Carl takes his shirt out of my hand with a rough tug, but speaks with a quieter tone now. “Face it, Amanda. Sarah's gone. All the fliers in the world aren't going to change that. If she were still out there, someone would have found her.”

Of all the hurtful things he's said this morning, these words throw the hardest punch.

“Mom?” Ellie grumbles into the den, rubbing her eyes. “I don't feel like going to school today.”

Carl cuts her a look, now taking his anxiety out on her, something he's never done. “What's new? Nobody wants to go to work. Nobody wants to go to school. Why don't we all just call it quits? Life's too hard.”

The bite in his voice is too much. He knows today is the anniversary. Even Carl can't be this cold. To me, yes, but never to Ellie. Mom speaks again:
Maybe he's just tired. Three night shifts at the plant would wear on anyone. Don't react, Amanda. He can't process emotions the way you do. He's stressed. It comes out as anger.

I hold back my words and move to feel Ellie's forehead, pressing the back of my palm under her long brown bangs. “No fever.” Then I kiss her, a motherly peck to offer compassion and care.

“You're going to school, Ellie,” Carl says sharply.

I try to ease the blow. “You have the haunted house fund-raiser. Only two more nights of it. Then Halloween. If you miss today, you won't be allowed to participate.” I turn to Carl. “Ellie's been helping her theater group raise money for their summer competition in New York. Remember?”

“Of course I remember, Amanda. You think you're the only one who knows what's going on around here?” Such hate in his voice. He gives me his death glare. The one that reminds me to stay in my place. I cast my gaze toward Ellie, trying not to shake the boat.

Still in her pajamas, she eyes me, half listening, so I take advantage of her attention while I've got it. “You've been working so hard on the set. Who will be the Grim Reaper if you don't show up?”

She shrugs, struggling to care about the haunted house today no matter how much fun it will be. I move to the kitchen and pull canisters from the pantry, trying to maintain a normal life for my daughter. “Pancakes?”

She nods sluggishly while Carl switches off the TV and heads to the shower.

I heat the griddle and whip up a batch of batter, finally able to breathe now that he's left the room.
What do I really have to complain about? Beth would trade places with me in a second.

It's times like this I am hit with the unfairness of it all. Not only that Beth's daughter is missing, but that Sarah was her only child. Beth suffered two miscarriages right alongside my own. Our lives ran parallel in nearly every way imaginable, until The Day. When my daughter returned from the restroom and her daughter did not.

“Can I go with you?” Ellie fumbles with a newly printed stack of fliers on the counter.

I whisk a half-dozen eggs in a glass bowl. “I'll be going to some pretty rough places.”

Ellie holds one of the fliers in her hand, tracing the colored photos with the tip of her finger. One shows Sarah at age twelve, how she looked when she went missing. The other is an age-progression image, portraying how she might look today at thirteen. Beneath the pictures we've printed a toll-free number, still hoping someone may call with all the right information.

I have no words to soothe my daughter's aching spirit. Her pain is as real as my own. There's only one way to make it better. Bring Sarah home. In the meantime, I serve Ellie a warm batch of buttered pancakes and pass her the maple syrup. I'm dashing salt and pepper into the scrambled eggs by the time Carl comes back to the kitchen, freshly showered.