The Long and Faraway Gone (5 page)

Typical Genevieve,
their mother would say if she could hear her now.
It's always all about Genevieve, isn't it?

“Genni?”

“What?”

It was dusk. They were sitting on the curb in front of the rodeo arena, watching the colors of the midway catch fire. Genevieve felt gritty and grimy and tired. But with the sun down, and the light mellow, and a cool breeze blowing, and those amazing midway colors—­all the hard edges, both the world's and Genevieve's, seemed a tiny bit softer.

“I'm scared about high school,” Julianna said.

“You don't start high school till year after next, you dork.”

“I know.”

Genevieve knew. She listened to the screams drifting over from the midway, the bad hair metal, the muted clank and hiss of the rides.

“Look,” she told Julianna. “High school is like anything. It sucks. But you'll live.”

Why that should cheer up her little sister was a total mystery to Genevieve, but it did. Julianna smiled and tore off a hunk of pink cotton candy. She was a bottomless pit.

Howard had told Genevieve once that she needed to listen to her better angels. Genevieve wasn't sure what that meant. Were some angels good and others even better? Or were some angels not good at all? Kind of an alarming notion when you stopped to think about it.

Speaking of bad angels, here came her friend Lacey, walking toward them. She was with a ­couple of girls Genevieve recognized in a vague sort of way. She thought they might be cocktail waitresses at the new Marriott on the expressway.

“Small world,” Lacey said, smirking.

Genevieve corrected her. “Small town, actually.”

“Hi, Lacey,” Julianna said.

Probably, Genevieve admitted to herself, she was Lacey's bad angel, and not vice versa. From the age of ten on, starting with a pack of Kools she stole from her mom's boyfriend, Genevieve had done most of the leading-­astray. Lacey's mother had warned Lacey to stay away from Genevieve soon after the two girls met in third grade. Lacey's mom wasn't fond of Mexicans or even white ­people, like Genevieve's mom, who had married a guy who was part Mexican.
Southside trash.
Genevieve had overheard Lacey's mom say that about Genevieve's mom one time. Which excuse me? Not only were there plenty of nice neighborhoods on the south side, but until last year Lacey had lived three blocks from Genevieve.

“Stuck with the brat?” Lacey said, smirking because Lacey would never be caught dead in such an embarrassing situation. With her little sister at the fair on a Saturday night. With
her
hair dead on
her
shoulders and
her
mascara a mess.

The pupils of Lacey's eyes were flared. The cocktail waitresses were high also, chewing gum way too fast and giggling for no reason. All three girls had on pristine slutty makeup, just like the robot girls in the “Addicted to Love” video.

Yeah, well, I'm still hotter than you,
Genevieve wanted to tell Lacey,
and always will be.

Instead she said, “Do you remember when we overheard your mom tell your aunt that my mom was Southside trash? And you guys used to live like three blocks away?”

That blew Lacey's mind. It was too much to follow when you were on drugs.

“Did I . . . what?”

“Never mind,” Genevieve said.

“We're gonna cruise the midway,” Lacey said. “You want to come? Plenty of room in Santa's sleigh.”

Wink, wink. Santa's sleigh—­snow—­cocaine. Get it?

Julianna was oblivious. She had decided to ignore Lacey after Lacey had ignored her. She was eating pink cotton candy and throwing hunks of it toward a jabbing sparrow.

Lacey had good drugs. Genevieve could tell. Why had Genevieve decided, today of all days, to say no?

Genevieve shook her head.

“You're such a loser,” Lacey said. She and the robot cocktail waitresses strutted off. Genevieve felt like bursting into tears.

“She's always so mean,” Julianna said.

“I'm meaner than she is.”

“But you're my sister.”

“See? Life sucks.”

“Why are you crying, Genni?”

“I'm not. It's all the stupid dust in the air. It makes my eyes water.”

The stupid dust, that, too, but also a sensation like she was being turned inside out. Genevieve wanted to go running after Lacey and Lacey's drugs. Would one line of blow really be the end of the world? Genevieve had been straight all day. Surely that counted for something.

She had to do something. She had to do something right now or she
would
go sprinting after Lacey.

You couldn't just sit around and not do drugs. Howard had explained that. So you flew model airplanes or played golf or did needlepoint until your fingers cramped. Whatever kept your boat afloat.

“Listen, Juli.”

“What?”

“I'm gonna check out that party. Just for a few minutes. That one that guy was talking about.”

Julianna looking alarmed was like a cartoon character looking alarmed.
Da-­doing!

“That skeezy guy at the balloon race?”

“Shut up. Just for fifteen minutes. Okay? I really just need to get out of here for a minute.”

Julianna was winding Pink Panther's tail around and around her finger. “It's getting dark, Genni.”

“Don't be such a scaredy-­cat. There's like a million ­people here.”

“A million skeezy ­people.”

True. As soon as the sun went down, the families abandoned the midway and packs of rowdy young guys started funneling in, packs of slutty girls.
Southside trash.

“That's why I want you to stay right in this spot,” Genevieve said. “Okay? Just for like fifteen minutes.”

Julianna looked away. She shrugged and nodded.

Genevieve felt guilty, a little. But she'd be back in fifteen minutes, before it was even
dark
dark. The carny trailers were close by, just behind the midway. And Genevieve would make it up to Julianna. She'd take her to the mall tomorrow. Or to Fun Skate. Or both. And you'd think that a day at the fair and a stuffed Pink Panther would count for something, right?

Genevieve just wanted to forget about drugs and her mother and life for a minute. That's all. She just wanted to laugh and flirt and feel the heat coming off a dirty, sexy hippie when he looked at her. If he offered her drugs, she would say no. It was as simple as that.

She stood, dug around in the pocket of her jeans, found her last crumpled ten-­dollar bill. She dropped it in Julianna's lap. “I don't know how you could possibly eat anything else, Miss Piggy, but have at it.”

“Okay,” Julianna said, but still wouldn't look at her. God.

Genevieve told herself that her sister was twelve years old, she wasn't a baby. It wasn't even
dark
dark yet, there were millions of ­people around, and Genevieve would only be gone fifteen minutes.

Everything was going to be fine.

She squatted down and gave Julianna a quick hug. “I'll be back in a flash,” she said. “And we'll get out of Dodge.”

 

October 2012

O
ne of Julianna's only vivid memories, from that time so long ago, was the psychic. October of 1986, the living room of the little house on SW Twenty-­seventh, just off Olie. The psychic wore a gauzy black dress that swirled around her when she walked and a silver ring on every finger, even her thumbs. This was before anyone wore rings on their thumbs, anyone in Oklahoma City at least, and the psychic had also dyed her long hair a shade of deep, unnatural black, so black it was almost purple. You could tell that the psychic thought she made a striking and dramatic impression, but she didn't, not really. Her upper arms were pimply, her gray roots showed. She owned a shop called Moon Breeze, on a run-­down stretch of Classen Boulevard, that sold New Age crystals and feathered dream catchers.

“Yes, yes,” the psychic had said. She sat on the sofa with her eyes closed, rocking back and forth. “I see, I see.”

“What do you see?” Carol whispered, leaning closer. Carol lived next door and had arranged for the psychic. She'd always been friendly enough with their mother, but after what happened, Carol had made it her mission to be their mother's best friend. Carol had landed her dream job.

“I see her,” the psychic said. “She's alive.”

“Genevieve's alive!” Carol said.

“I smell the ocean. I see her. She's smiling.”

Julianna remembered that their mother had remained expressionless, her face slack and heavy, like a drop of water trembling on the lip of a faucet. Carol reached over to squeeze her hand.

“Genevieve's smiling!” Carol said.

“I hear the waves, I see—­” The psychic stopped. Carol made a big deal of holding her breath and waiting for the next revelation. The psychic sneezed. “Sorry,” she said. “Darn allergies.”

It probably wasn't allergies that made the psychic sneeze, but all the patchouli oil she was wearing.

Who else was there that morning? Their Aunt Nancy and the psychic's boyfriend, who had an enormous belly and needed a cane to walk. And Joe, Carol's husband. He stood apart from the others, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest.

It was a chilly, rainy day. Every now and then, the wind flung a spray of rain hard against the living-­room window and made Julianna jump. She was sitting cross-­legged on the dusty wood floor, right beneath the window.

She had been skeptical when the psychic arrived. The pimply arms, the gray roots. Julianna and Genevieve had driven past the run-­down shop on the run-­down stretch of Classen Boulevard many times. Now, though, when the psychic said she could smell the ocean and hear the waves, her voice was clear and certain, like the chime of glass on glass.

The sofa was faded red velvet. It, and the house, had belonged to their grandmother. When she died, the summer of 1983, the three of them moved in, Julianna and Genevieve and their mother. The house smelled like mildew, and the wood floors were warped, the neighborhood was so-­so, but both the house and the neighborhood were a step up from the place they'd been renting before.

Their grandmother's house had a finished basement with wood-­paneled walls and a linoleum-­tile floor, separated from the rest of the house by two doors and a flight of steep, narrow steps. Genevieve had staked her claim right away. She dragged her mattress down to the basement, her boxes of records and clothes and makeup. For the first time in her life Julianna had a room to herself, though she still spent most of her time downstairs with Genevieve.

That red velvet sofa that used to be Grandma's. Remember it? Remember the linoleum floor in the basement? Remember how we went to the carpet store and begged them and they gave us some of the carpet squares they used for samples? Each square was a different color, a different kind of carpet. You made a joke about that, about used carpet, something dirty and hilarious, but I can't remember what it was.

When the psychic said that Genevieve would be home soon, Julianna saw Joe frown.

“Oh!” Carol said. “Did you hear that?”

Julianna's mother remained expressionless. Carol leaned across and squeezed her hand again.

Looking back, Julianna wondered if Carol truly believed what the psychic said or if she was just clueless. Maybe Carol believed that hope, no matter how faint or false it might be, was a necessary kind of nourishment, like the cookies and tamales and ham casseroles with cornflake crust that she'd brought over every day since Genevieve disappeared.

Her husband, Joe, was not clueless. Julianna understood that now. He could see the pain in her mother's eyes.

“It's Christmastime,” the psychic said, rocking back and forth. “and Genevieve is walking up the—­”

“That's enough,” Joe said quietly, but with sufficient force to turn the psychic's head.

“Honey,” Carol warned him.

The psychic's boyfriend stirred. He was in the easy chair, pinned beneath his huge belly.

Joe worked at a gas station, a mechanic. There was always grease in the grooves and swirls of his knuckles. He had seemed so old to Julianna at the time, but he was probably forty or so, only a ­couple of years older than Julianna was now.

“That's enough,” Joe said again. And then, after thinking about it, “Thank you.”

The psychic lifted a hand, five silver rings, and bowed her head. She rose from the sofa, paused to sneeze again, then exited in a dramatic swirl of gauzy black fabric. Her boyfriend hobbled out on his cane after her.

Another spray of rain cracked against the window. One of Julianna's legs, crossed beneath the other, had gone to sleep.

At the time, in that moment, Julianna hated Joe. She wanted to hear the psychic finish telling them how her sister would come walking up the driveway at Christmas.

The day after Carol brought the psychic to their house, or maybe it was a few days later, the two detectives stopped by. Carol and her husband were still there—­or there again—­Aunt Nancy, too, and the rain hadn't stopped. Julianna sat cross-­legged on the dusty wood floor. The little house smelled like mildew and ham casserole.

It had been three weeks since the Saturday night that Genevieve had vanished from the state fair. The younger of the two detectives, the grimmer of the two, told their mother that the police were still working hard to find Genevieve. They continued to pursue every possible avenue of investigation.

Joe understood what they were saying. “Nothing?” he said. “You got nothing at all?”

The older detective, Fitch, cleared his throat but didn't answer. Their mother remained expressionless. Aunt Nancy said, “Hell.”

“That's
good,
though, isn't it?” Carol said after a second, looking around from face to face to face. “If there's no evidence that someone—­ That's a
good
thing. It means Genevieve . . . it means maybe she wasn't . . . maybe she just . . . she could have just . . . jaunted off on her own! To California, the ocean.”

“That's possible,” the older detective said, carefully. “However, unfortunately, as we've explained before—­”

“We're operating under the assumption that foul play was involved,” his younger, grimmer partner said.

Because why, if Genevieve had jaunted off on her own, would she have left behind her car? Her purse? Her little sister?

The police had found the old Cutlass still parked right where Genevieve and Julianna had left it, in a grassy field used as an overflow lot, not far from the Made in Oklahoma Building. They'd found the purse, empty, in a ditch half a mile from the fairgrounds. A security guard had found Julianna sitting alone outside the rodeo arena, at nearly midnight, more than three hours after Genevieve told her she'd be right back.

“But you don't
know
that it was foul play,” Carol tried again. “You don't know that for
certain.
”

Just shut up!
Julianna remembered thinking.
Shut up!
She supposed that was the exact moment she stopped hating Joe and started hating Carol.

“No, ma'am,” the younger, grimmer detective said again. “We will continue to pursue every possible avenue of investigation.”

Did the detectives already know, three weeks after Genevieve disappeared, that they would never find her, never find her body, that twenty-­six years later no one would have any idea what had happened to her? Probably they did. Julianna understood now what those two detectives had understood then, that the State Fair of Oklahoma—­thousands of visitors, armies of vendors and roadies, all those Future Farmers of America and itinerant carnival workers—­was a bad place to go missing. The on-­ramp to Interstate 40 was less than two hundred yards from the south gate of the fairgrounds. You could leave the fair at midnight and be in Albuquerque for breakfast. Or Memphis. Or anywhere.

And it was a bad time to go missing, too, 1986. Before cell phones, before ATMs and security cameras everywhere, when ­people still used cash, not credit cards, to buy gas and groceries and fast food.

“Just remember what Bronwyn saw,” Carol told their mother. Bronwyn was the psychic's name. Carol reached over and squeezed their mother's hand. “Hold on to that, Eileen.”

Their mother remained expressionless. The detectives left. Julianna remembered the rain, the rain, the rain. It seemed like it rained every day for weeks that autumn. In November they watched the Oklahoma-­Nebraska football game on TV. The players slipped and slid all over the muddy field.

After Genevieve disappeared, Julianna's relationship with her mother changed. How could it not? They'd lost not only Genevieve but also an essential part of who they themselves were. The simplest conversation at the dinner table was exhausting, too heavy to carry far.

How was school.

Okay.

Maybe they would have drifted apart anyway, as parents and children often did. Julianna turned thirteen and became a teenager. Her mother studied for her real-­estate license. Julianna left for college. Her mother met a man who liked to fix things, who thought he could fix anything, and a year or so after Julianna started nursing school, her mother and the man moved to California. Julianna's mother called to tell her about the move, a polite courtesy. Julianna wished her the best. The conversation, thirty seconds, was exhausting.

Her mother passed away in 2004. Julianna had flown out for the funeral, a small ser­vice at a suburban cemetery on the fringes of the Inland Empire. She laid flowers on the gravestone and felt only what had already been missing for a long time.

J
ULIANNA WAS
THINKING
about the psychic today because the new anesthesiologist, the one from Russia, wore a silver ring on her thumb.

“I think we are all okay here, then,” she told Julianna. She handed the chart back and noticed Julianna looking at her ring. “You like? It is antique. My grandmother.”

“It's very nice,” Julianna said. The anesthesiologist walked away, her sneakers squeaking, and Julianna thought how much she disliked that sound. She disliked the bright, cold lights overhead and the saline bags hanging like organs, fat and glistening, from the skeleton spines of IV stands. The greasy feel of hand-­sanitizer foam and the boxes of latex gloves in different sizes. Small, medium, large, extra-­large, 2XX.

Julianna, a nurse, basically disliked hospitals. How was that for irony?

She especially disliked the parts of the hospital that were designed to make you forget you were in a hospital. The blond wood, the framed prints of flowery meadows. As in, Isn't this a warm, cheerful place? A place where you have nothing to be afraid of?

Julianna supposed that in the old days hospitals didn't try so hard to disguise what they were: places where you suffered and died.

She worked downstairs in Recovery. That was another irony. For Julianna. And for a lot of the patients who ended up there.

Genevieve would have come up with something funny to say about all the different sizes of latex gloves. Julianna could hear her.

Poor fella, goes in for a prostate exam and the doctor snaps on a pair of those 2XX's.

“Oh, Nurse!” The elderly woman in number nine. She had summoned Julianna four times in the past thirty minutes.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Bender?” Julianna said.

“I'm such a pest, aren't I? But it's so chilly in here.”

“You're not a pest. I'm glad you buzzed me.”

Julianna pulled another blanket from the cabinet and fanned it over Mrs. Bender. The surgeon had removed most of the rest of her colon, but her blue eyes were bright and fierce.

“Is my son back?”

“Not yet,” Julianna said. The son: balding without grace, good suit worn poorly, an expression like he'd just swallowed a burp. He'd stepped out forty-­five minutes ago to make a quick call. He'd treated Julianna like a waitress. She was no longer surprised that so many ­people did.

Julianna took Mrs. Bender's hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“You have the most beautiful eyes, Mrs. Bender.”

“You're one to talk, sister.” Mrs. Bender managed a faint, sly smile. “But yes. I was quite the beauty in my day.”

“Hearts were broken?”

“Not enough, if you take my meaning.” She gave Julianna a wink. “That's my advice to you.”

Julianna smiled. “I'll keep it in mind.”

“My son, you know, is newly single. Available, in other words.” She watched for Julianna's reaction, with that faint, sly smile.

“I know, I know, you're much too lovely for him,” Mrs. Bender said. “I can say that because he's my son and I love him. Because why should I lie? Life is short.”

“I'm sure he'll be right back,” Julianna said.

Mrs. Bender nodded. She closed her eyes as a wave of nausea washed over her.