The Lost & Found (13 page)

W
e drove thirteen hours the second day in the car, and we passed the city limits for Austin just before midnight. Willa had fallen asleep against the window, her mouth open and her legs off and laying in a pile on the floor. They were making her sweaty, she'd said a few hours ago, pulling each one off her and discarding it under the seat. She was asleep almost instantly, snoring softly.

I was tired but I kept driving, propelled by some unexplainable energy that kept my eyes awake and my brain alert. I listened to talk radio and the sound of my sister's deep, heaving breathing. I watched the black road light up in my headlights and then disappear underneath my car,
turning momentarily red in my rearview mirror and then returning once more into darkness.

I found a motel outside the city and shook Willa awake after I'd gotten us a room.

“I don't want to put my legs on,” she mumbled, her eyes squeezed closed in protest of awakeness. I went around to the trunk and took her wheelchair out, locked it open, and then went to collect her. She held her arms out to me, and I scooped her up easily. She weighed almost nothing. You never realize how much legs weigh until you have to lift someone without them. She put her arms around my neck, and I placed her gently in the chair. “You're a good brother, Louis,” she said. I placed her legs on her lap and she cradled them against her stomach.

“You're a good sister.”

“No, I'm rotten. I'm a terrible sister. All I do is make you push me around.”

“Sometimes you push yourself.”

“I liked being in that movie theater. Let's go back there.”

“I think you're still asleep.”

“What room number are we?”

“Twenty-three.”

“That's a strong number. That's a good number. Is it a real key or is it a card?”

“It's a card,” I said, dangling it in front of her. She nabbed it.

“Where are our suitcases?”

“I couldn't get you and them. I'll go back to the car in a minute.”

“Good guy. Good brother.”

I stopped in front of our door, and Willa leaned forward clumsily to unlock it. When Willa got this tired, she seemed drunk, unable to control her body. I leaned forward to catch her left leg, which was sliding off her lap. She pushed open the door, and I rolled her into the room. She found the light switch first and the room was lit up in a yellow orange glow.

“Ohhh,” she said, straightening up a little. “A mini bar!”

“Yeah, and everything costs a fortune.”

“Oh, please. I'll pay for a little nipper. Don't be so uptight.”

She was instantly more awake, taking charge of the wheelchair and bringing herself closer to the fridge. I left her alone and went and got our suitcases from the car. When I got back to the room, she had a tiny bottle of Jameson in one hand. It was half-empty and Willa's nose was scrunched up in distaste.

“Jameson is gross,” she said, then took another sip.

“Was there anything else in there?” I asked, pushing the suitcases into the room and locking the deadbolt behind me.

“A bunch of stuff. I just thought I liked Jameson, and I do not like Jameson. But I will finish it. I am not a quitter.”

She wheeled herself over to her suitcase and fished
around for pajamas while I knelt in front of the minibar. I didn't want to get drunk, but a tiny bottle
did
seem pretty appealing after a thirteen-hour day of driving. I opened the door of the fridge and reached for another bottle of Jameson (I didn't mind it) when I saw the sheet of thick paper shoved carelessly in the back of the fridge. Assuming it was the price list, I reached over the rows of bottles and slipped it out. It was a thick white paper, torn at the left side like it had been ripped from a sketchbook. It wasn't a price list, it was a drawing of an apple. It was done in charcoal; I ran my finger along the paper and came away with a black smudge on my skin.

“What's that?” Willa asked. She was doing that trick where she somehow got her pajama top over her shirt without showing any skin, and then removed the shirt from under the top. It was kind of like magic. She pulled her bra out through one of her sleeves.

“It's an apple,” I said, turning it around to face her.

“Where'd you get that?”

“In there.”

“In the fridge? It wasn't in there a minute ago.”

“It was behind some stuff, you probably just missed it.”

“Uh, no, I moved a bunch of bottles around trying to find some soda to mix with this. Plus I'm pretty fridge-level in this chair. It wasn't in there,” she said. “Can you help me on the bed and then close your eyes?”

I put the drawing on one of the two twin beds and then
helped Willa onto the other one. I turned around as she pulled her skirt off and changed into her sleep shorts.

“We should have gotten separate rooms. We're too old to share a room,” she said, her voice muffled from lying down.

“We can't afford separate rooms. Plus, we're lucky to find a place that will rent to eighteen-year-olds. I think the law is twenty-one. Plus, we're twins. We lived in the same embryonic sac for nine months. We can share a room.”

“That is true. Help me back, please?”

I helped her back into her chair, and she went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. I heard her exclaim with pleasure that the bathroom counter was low enough to do both of these things on her own. I picked up the drawing again and studied the apple. It was done with many small, choppy strokes. It reminded me of those dot paintings—George Seurat? Georges? Seurats?—and how much effort they must have taken, how many hours of painstaking brushwork and running back and forth to view it at a distance to check if it's even making sense.

I didn't know much about art, but it was a pretty good apple.

I went to put it on my bed but something stopped my hand. I brought the paper closer to my face and squinted at it. There was a signature in the bottom right-hand corner, tiny and cramped and almost illegible, except I could see a distinct
F
, with arms reaching over a hurried, long
J
.

Willa came out of the bathroom, face red and wet.

“Frances's last name is Jameson,” I said.

“So?”

“We're drinking Jameson.”

“That's not weird, Louis. It's a popular liquor.”

“This is Frances's drawing. This apple. She drew this, and I found it in our minibar.”

“You never should have driven so far today. You're clearly hallucinating. You need some sleep.”

“Willa,
look
,” I said, holding the drawing in front of her face. “Look at the signature.”

“Huh,” she said. “I mean, that could be anyone.”

“Anyone with the initials FJ,” I said.

“I guess.”

“Look, I didn't tell you. She found my sunglasses.”

“I thought you bought new sunglasses. At that weird little gift shop we went to?”

“I did. But Frances
found my old sunglasses
. The ones I lost!”

“No, she didn't.”

“Yes, she did.”

“That is impossible. Help me into the bed, please?”

I helped her into the bed. She propped herself up on pillows, and I sat down across from her.

“I think something weird is going on,” I said.

“Famous last words.”

“Willa, I'm being serious.”

“I'm being serious too.”

“This is Frances's drawing. I know it is.”

“If you say so.”

“You don't believe me.”

“I don't believe that Frances came all the way across the country to leave that drawing in our mini fridge, no, Louis. I do not believe that. I'm sorry if that makes me a bad sister.”

“I never said she put it there.”

Willa raised her eyebrows. Then she bit the corner of her bottom lip and said, “Okay. What are you saying exactly?”

“I'm saying that this drawing—Frances's drawing—just came to be in our fridge. Like by . . .”

“Are you about to say
magic
?” Willa whispered.

“No, I wasn't about to say magic,” I retorted.

I
had
been about to say magic, but then I'd stopped myself because I realized how absurd it would have sounded. And I wasn't even convinced that's what was going on. Something had caused this drawing to appear in the fridge, but I wasn't prepared to give that something a name yet.

“I mean, did you even ask her?” Willa said.

“Ask her what?”

“Like, text her a picture of the drawing and see if it's even hers.”

I hadn't, but I got my phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture of the drawing and then texted it to Frances. It was probably too late; she was probably already sleeping. I didn't know where she was in her journey and
if there was still a time difference between us. We hadn't texted all day. Should I have been worried that we hadn't texted all day? I sent the picture and wrote:

   
Is this yours?

Her reply came much later. Willa had already fallen asleep, her arm over her face and her thighs spilling out of the sheets. I had finished the tiny bottle of Jameson, not enough to do anything other than create a welcome, warm feeling in my extremities. I'd turned off the lights and put my phone on the pillow next to my head. I was just starting to fall asleep; I was in that place where the phone's buzzing became a part of my dreams and floated me quietly awake.

The room was lit by the glow of my screen. I picked up the phone and swiped my finger across Frances's name to read her message.

   
Yes. I don't know what's going on, but yes. That's mine. I never drew that, but it's mine. Pardon the expression, but what the fuck.

   
I don't know what's going on either. It's a very good drawing.

   
I can't draw anymore.

   
Of course you can.

   
Something is blocking it. I lost something.

   
Maybe I will find that for you too.

She texted back an emoji. A pink heart with an arrow through it.

I put my phone on silent and went to sleep with it on the bed next to me. The drawing of an apple was on the bedside table.

The first thing I did when I woke up was to check—

And it was still there.

W
e departed Little Rock, Big Motel early the next day and left Arkansas behind us in favor of Texas. It took us about two hours to reach the border, and when we did, Arrow sighed heavily and said, “Ugh, finally, we're almost there. I'm so sick of this car. No offense, Kathy,” she said, and petted the dashboard with her free hand. With her other hand, she held a sloppily buttered piece of banana nut bread. She had a line of butter running down the side of her wrist. I had to tell her we were actually, like, four hours away from Austin. (We were, to be perfectly honest, more like six hours away from Austin, but I didn't know how she'd react to that number.)

“What,” she said.

“Four hours.”

“Nothing in Maryland is four hours away from something else in Maryland. Unless you drive in circles and keep missing your exit.”

“Texas is big. Texas is really big.”

“Is Texas the biggest state?”

“I think Alaska is the biggest state.”

“Is Texas the second-biggest state?”

“I guess, probably.”

“Four hours,” she said, slumping against the window. “This is torturous.”

“Put another podcast on.”

“I think if I have to listen to one more episode of
Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!,
I'll turn into a quirky news quiz.”

“There are worse things to turn into.”

“Ugh, four hours. Okay, fine. I'm committed.”

“What would you do if you weren't committed?”

“I don't know. Maybe I'd hitchhike home. I've always wanted to hitchhike.”

“People don't hitchhike anymore, do they?”

“Not in Maryland,” Arrow said, finishing the last piece of bread. She buttered me a slice without asking and handed it to me. I ate it with my right hand and drove with my left. “What's the first thing you're going to do when you see him?” she asked when I finished.

“I don't know. Probably I'll have to be like—can I have
some of your hair for a paternity test?”

“Oh, I was talking about Louis. But yeah, Wallace Green is important too.”

“Arrow, Wallace Green is the main reason for this trip.”

“Sure, totally.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means that a trip can have two purposes. This trip specifically can have two purposes. A primary purpose and a secondary purpose.”

“The secondary purpose is that I wanted to spend some time with you, okay? Before senior year.”

“Bullshit, we spend plenty of time together. We spend too much time together. I'm basically sick of you.”

“Fine, whatever. I want to meet Louis. Shut up.”

“I will not be silenced,” Arrow said. She buttered another piece of bread and broke this one in half. We ate in silence (the irony did not escape me) and then Arrow put on another podcast and we listened to two before deciding to stop for lunch. It was just past noon and hot, but a different sort of heat than I had ever experienced before. This heat was perfectly devoid of humidity. It was a bright, thin heat that didn't get trapped in your hair like the summers of Maryland. It was
nice
to be this hot, even though I started sweating the moment I got out of the car and Arrow walked with bowed legs across the parking lot to “try to get a little breeze up there, Frannie.”

We ate quickly and were back on the road within an hour. Even though we got to Austin in good time, pulling into the city limits by five o'clock, I didn't call Louis or Wallace Green. I didn't call anybody except Grandma, to tell her I was still alive and to see whether she was still sitting shiva (she was). And even though Arrow protested and didn't understand why we had even driven this far to sit in a motel room and watch HBO, that is exactly what we did. We sat in a motel room and watched HBO while I felt a rising panic that started deep in my chest and rose up through my throat until it bubbled out through my mouth in the form of a thousand nonsensical syllables.

Arrow looked at me like I might explode. I felt like I might explode.

“Let's go for a run,” she said. “I feel like you need to go for a run.”

“It's a thousand degrees out.”

“We'll take it easy. We'll bring water.”

“I didn't pack sneakers.”

“Lucky for
you
, we wear the same size, and I brought two pairs.”

“Why do you travel with two pairs of sneakers?”

“At this track meet last year, Hank Whitney dropped his only pair of sneakers into a vat of molasses,” she said.

“Molasses?”

“We were in Boston, it was a museum, it's a long story. Have you heard about the Great Molasses Flood? Anyway,
I learned my lesson after that.”

I did not want to go running. It was maybe the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I let Arrow throw workout clothes at me and I put them on diligently, stripping off my sweat-soaked driving clothes and leaving them in a heap on the floor.

“I am going to have a heart attack and die,” I said, lacing my sneakers.

“You are not. God. You're so lazy. We're basically just going out for a fast walk. Look at it like that.”

“Running and walking are totally different things.”

“
Running and walking are
. . . Geez, Frannie. Calm down. We're not going to sit here while you hyperventilate all night.”

“So we're going to watch me hyperventilate on the streets of Austin?”

“Yes, exactly. You have caught on to my master plan. Now, come. Let us be off.”

We were off.

Arrow set a slow, steady pace through the back roads of Austin. I didn't know anything about Austin, but it didn't really look like a city, at least over here in whatever part we were in. I couldn't see any skyscrapers. I was quickly losing my breath and tried to think of a way to distract myself.

“Louis found a drawing I made,” I said. “Or, I guess, I didn't really make it. It was a lost drawing. It doesn't make any sense, but he found it.”

“Like you found his sunglasses?” Arrow asked, her voice heavy with disbelief.

“I don't know how to explain it, but something is going on.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

“You have to admit, it's a little spooky.”

“I don't have to admit anything.” She paused, stretching her hands up in the air. I was out of breath and covered in sweat, but I was determined not to hold her back, so I was keeping my own.

“How come you don't draw anymore?” she asked after another minute or two.

“I guess I just haven't really felt like it.”

“You used to feel like doing it a lot.”

“Arrow, I don't really know what to say. It's not a conscious thing. I'm just not in the mood.”

“When do you think you're going to be in the mood again?”

“You'll be the first to know.”

“Well, you don't have to get cranky,” she said, turning sideways and running like that for a few minutes.

I had sweat dripping down my face, but Arrow looked dry. She raised her arms up and down in the motion of a bird. Like she was trying to fly away. Then she turned backward and ran looking over her shoulder.

In her form-fitting workout clothes, Arrow was short and lean. Her ponytail was high on her head and bounced
in a perky, annoying rhythm. Her feet hardly touched the sidewalk. Mine, on the other hand, slapped against it in a harrowing rhythm until I finally lost my balance altogether and went crashing to my knees.

“Ow,” I said.

“Geez, Frannie! Can't you go for one run without mortally wounding yourself?” Arrow said, doubling back and kneeling beside me.

“I'm fine,” I said, sitting on my butt. “Oh, look!” I picked a twenty-dollar bill off the pavement and held it up triumphantly.

“Great, you owe me for something,” she said, grabbing it out of my hands and sticking it into her pocket. I didn't know how they could get pockets in pants that tight.

I held my hand out to her and she yanked me up.

“Probably we should go back,” I said.

“Probably we should walk,” she agreed.

I only limped a little. Arrow slung her arm around my shoulders for a bit and then she started jogging circles around me (literally) and then finally she did some cross between a jumping jack and a skip and then eventually, because I was getting dizzy, I put a hand on her arm and stopped her.

“Huh,” I said.

“What?”

“It's a pawnshop. I didn't see that on the way out.”

“You were too busy panting to death.”

“Let's go in. I've never been in a pawnshop,” I said.

“Do we have to? It's late and I'm starving.”

“Look in the window. It's an original NES, and yours
just
stopped working a week ago. That can't be a coincidence.”

I knew I had her. Arrow was a sucker for retro gaming systems. We walked across the street and entered the shop, and she made a beeline for it.

I wandered deeper into the store, passing ancient steamer trunks and a collection of stamps displayed proudly in a glass case. I poked through a small display of sporting equipment, trying on baseball gloves and tossing a football into the air.

I picked up an old tennis racket next. I fished it out carefully and tested its weight in my hand. I didn't know much about tennis rackets, but it looked both old and pristine, in need of new strings but without a scratch on its body. Like it had only been used once or twice.

A small orange sticker on the handle said thirty dollars.

Louis played tennis, and I was sure he already had a racket, but there was something about this one that I liked. It was small and clean and vintage.

“Give me that twenty back,” I said to Arrow, who'd come up beside me and stuck her nose over my shoulder.

“Finders keepers,” she said.

“I'm the one who found it.”

“Oh, fine. You're just lucky that console was incredibly overpriced.”

She handed it over. I took the tennis racket to the front and laid it on the counter carefully.

The girl behind the desk glanced up at me with a look of supreme disinterest. Then she looked at the tennis racket.

“Thirty bucks,” she said.

“I'll give you twenty,” I said.

“Sure, whatever,” she said without hesitation. “It's just a tennis racket.”

I slapped the bill down on the counter, and she covered it with her hand, sliding it toward her like I might try to grab it back.

Arrow and I left the pawnshop. I held the tennis racket like I had won it. I guess in a way, I had. At least ten dollars of it, anyway. The free ten dollars.

“I've never seen you haggle,” Arrow said thoughtfully. “What do you want a tennis racket for, anyway?”

“Louis plays tennis.”

“Ohhh,” Arrow said. “This is about a boy.”

“It's just nice to do things for people, right?” I said. Now that I was out of the store, my confidence of five minutes ago was quickly fading. “Like, people should buy presents for each other, right?”

“Sure, I guess. I mean, does he need a new tennis racket?”

“Technically I think this is an old tennis racket,” I said.

“Did he give some indication he might want an old tennis racket?”

“Honestly, not really. I just saw it and thought . . .”

Oh, shit. Why did I buy Louis an old tennis racket? Why did I think Louis might need a tennis racket I'd found in a pawnshop? Why did I do anything I did? What was wrong with me? Was I just going to walk up to him when I met him and say, “Here! I got you this tennis racket! For no good reason I can think of! Because you obviously already have a tennis racket!”

“I guess that twenty dollars was really burning a hole in your pocket,” Arrow said. “Even though I was holding it for you. Next time I'll just invest it right away. Get you a savings bond or something.”

“Do they still have savings bonds?” I asked, twirling the racket around and around in my hand.

It wasn't the weirdest thing in the world, to give someone a gift when you met him, right? And anyway, there was something about this racket I couldn't name. It felt good. It had a nice weight. The handle said
Babolat
in gold script. Something nudged at the corner of my brain, like I almost knew something but couldn't quite reach it. But then Arrow took my hand and it was gone, whatever it was.

Arrow made me wash the tennis racket in the bathtub. Shower gel and all. She said I didn't know where it had been, but I thought maybe I actually did.