The Missing Person (18 page)

Looking at him, I thought about the animals piled up in the pale blue basin of the old washing machine; I thought also of a famous painting I'd once seen, an elegant oil of a hare on a wooden table, dribbling fresh blood, in a gilt frame. Irina's words about shit ran through my mind, and so did the naked self-portraits and paintings executed with menstrual blood I'd studied, and Eva Kent's paintings, and so, finally, did the face of my father as he lay in the coffin my mother had chosen, recognizably himself and yet not, his skin plumped with embalming fluid and his cheeks rouged with the undertaker's makeup. You can celebrate the body all you want, I thought, you can sing hymns to its presence, its shit and stink, but it will only ever betray you in the end. I touched Wylie's arm.

“It'd been taken over,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maggots,” he said. “Blowflies. Other insects. They take over the body.”

“That is so gross,” I said.

“It's beautiful, if you think about it.” All of a sudden, his eyes were glowing with enthusiasm. “It's egalitarian in concept. We act like the human body is the center of the universe, but it decays and gets reabsorbed into the system, just like that cat and its kittens, just like everything else. It loses its boundaries, its privileged status.”

“Wylie.”

“We don't like to think about it, but that's only symptomatic of our power-driven—”

“Wylie, shut up, for God's sake.”

“What's your problem?”

“Just
shut up,
” I said.

At that moment I smelled smoke, and Wylie started walking fast in front of me. Before long I saw a red cloth hanging from a juniper tree, and the burning smell clarified itself into a joint. A couple of hippies were sitting on a boulder in front of a rocky overhang, a scenic overlook behind them. I recognized the place then, and wondered if Wylie had brought me here on purpose. It was another place we used to hike to, when we were kids; one time we'd even spent the night here, Wylie and I in one tent, our parents in another. It occurred to me that this was probably where Wylie stayed when he lived in the woods.

The girl had long hair gnarled into dreadlocks that twisted down her back like vines. The boy had thin dark hair that fell into his eyes; he'd taken off his shirt—the cloth hanging from the tree—and was sunning his pale, sunken chest.

“Hey, how's your life today, man?” he said calmly to Wylie.

“Could be better, could be worse,” Wylie said.

The hippie held out the joint between his thumb and his index finger. It was thickly rolled and coated at the end with saliva that sparkled visibly in the sun. We both shook our heads. The sweet, acrid fragrance of pot mingled with the scent of juniper and the heat and the buzz of insects all around us, and I started to feel faint.

“You guys want some jerky?” the girl said.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“It's homemade, from all-natural cows.”

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, that's cool,” she said. She took the joint and breathed in deeply, still smiling at us with her mouth carefully closed.

When Wylie stepped closer to them—wanting to take in the view, I guess—the boy took offense. “Hey, man, what're you doing?”

“I just wanted to have a look,” Wylie told him. “We came here a lot when we were kids.”

“Well, that's sweet and everything, man, but we're hanging here right now, you know what I mean? It's kind of our personal space at the moment, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't invade.”

“Yeah,” the girl said.

“We just want to take a look,” I said.

“I totally respect that, but no way,” the boy said. He stood up and faced us, his chest stuck out defiantly. “Don't make me get rough with you guys.” At this, Wylie snorted. The girl nodded, sitting cross-legged on the rock, smoking the joint and chewing a stick of homemade jerky at the same time.

I stared at these ridiculous people and started to cry. “It's just a fucking
view,
” I said, embarrassed and choking, and what I meant was this: of my father there was nothing left, and in the taxonomy of his absence I could list only his grave marker and places like this where he'd once been and the fading memory of his voice saying my name, and these were paltry things. Snot bubbled out of my nose, and I sniffled it back in.

“Let's just go,” Wylie said.

He set off at a brisk pace, and I had to jog to keep up with him. I kept sniffling and wiping my nose, my shoulders spasming, my breath coming in hiccups.

Finally he turned around and said, “Stop it. I mean it. Stop it.”

“I'm trying.”

“Try harder.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don't say you're sorry,” Wylie said, looking away. “Just deal with it.”

“Yeah, okay, I'll deal with it,” I said. “I'll go find myself a cave to live in, and eat trash from dumpsters, and stop talking to Mom, and plan absurd guerrilla actions. That's exactly what I'll do.”

“You think the actions are absurd?” he said.

“Wylie, of course they're absurd.”

He scowled at me for a few seconds, then shook his head. “You're so full of shit,” he said. “You think I'm the one who avoids things? Who lives in New York and hardly comes home for two years? Who takes up with a boyfriend within two days of being back so she can run off with him all the time and not have to be around? Who's been home all summer and hasn't even gone to the grave?”

“I went,” I said. “Once.”

“Yeah, well.” He shook his head again. “If
you're
worried about
me,
” he said, “you're out of your goddamn mind.”

I lifted my shirt to my face and wiped away my tears and snot. “I feel like hell,” I finally said.

“I know,” my brother said. Behind us, coming up the trail, were Irina and Angus. They looked red and sweaty and bedraggled, as, I realized, we must have too. Psyche was shifting uncomfortably on her mother's chest, burbling a stream of annoyed complaint, and her skin had broken out in a rash that resembled hives.

Wylie looked at Irina and said, “Is Psyche okay?”

“I think so,” she said.

Angus smiled at me, broadly, genuinely. “Isn't this great?” he said.

Seventeen

Halfway down the trail, a trailer park sitting in the scrub came into view, looking haphazard and almost forgotten. I was tired and kept stumbling. Wylie and Irina were walking together, both of them glancing anxiously at Psyche, and I thought I saw something new in the way they looked at each other, their hands nearly touching as they swung back and forth with the rhythm of their hiking. Angus stayed beside me, offering the water bottle every so often. I didn't care what Wylie said, or even if it was true; I would cling to Angus now, and in bed later, without thinking about what it meant or why I was there.

Back at Wylie's apartment, there was beer and gin and music, and I told myself that everything was fine. But it wasn't fine. The August heat made the apartment claustrophobic. Whether because of the heat or the drinking, nobody could seem to agree on anything, except to question everybody else's ideas and commitment. When Berto suggested working with Panther's organization, he was shouted down. Wylie's philosophical statements had people rolling their eyes, except for Irina, who nodded in encouragement even when it was unclear what he was talking about. Angus leaned against the back wall, smiling at all of this discord, sharing his bottomless gin and tonic with me.

Then Wylie stopped in the middle of a sentence and asked him, “What the hell's so funny?”

“You are, buddy,” Angus said.

“What's that mean?”

“You always have this need to dress things up,” Angus said. “As if that makes things more important.”

“Leave him alone,” I said.

“You're not even part of this,” Wylie told me.

Looking back and forth at the two of them, I decided to shut up.

The talk dragged on into the night, becoming more impassioned and less intelligible. The room smelled bad, and drinking was making the group less festive rather than more. The dog slept in a corner, snoring hard, an option that was starting to look better and better to me. Outside, the din of the cicadas rose to a fever pitch. Wylie sat in a corner muttering to Irina, his skinny legs tucked beneath him, Psyche asleep against his chest, a little fist flung up against his collarbone. I fell asleep, my head on Angus's shoulder, and when I woke up everything was still the same.

Just after two, Angus stood up and stretched, which somehow brought a hush over the room. He spoke quietly, as if to himself, though he clearly knew everybody was watching him. “You know what makes me happy?” he said, then walked over to the window and pulled the duct-taped curtains aside to look out into the empty Albuquerque night. “Human extinction. We'll be gone before long. We'll ruin ourselves. No matter what anybody in this room does.”

“Dude, you're depressing me,” Stan said, sprawled on the floor.

Angus shook his head. I watched him idly, feeling flushed and a little dizzy from the gin. “It's not depressing,” he said. “It's a real consolation. When I can't sleep at night, that's what I think about. We're a blip on the screen, except you know what? There
is
no screen. We're the ones who invented blips and screens, and soon enough they'll be gone too. And thank God.”

“That's a rosy view,” I said. “Why even bother then?”

“Realism isn't the same thing as paralysis,” Angus said, smiling around the room at everyone. “Besides, we might as well have a good time. What we need to do is take away the blip and the screen for a little while. What we need is a
major
event.”

“No shit,” Berto said.

Wylie leaned forward, still holding the baby. “A paradigm shift,” he said.

“A military action,” Stan said.

“A photo op,” Berto said.

Angus gazed at me with his bright blue eyes. “What did you say at the beginning of the summer?”

“Me? About what?”

“About Albuquerque.”

Tired and drunk, I frowned at him. I felt like I was being put on the spot, and didn't like his showboating. “That it's hot in summer?”

He shook his head.

“Full of chain restaurants? Hard to spell, for people who don't live here? Located in the middle of nowhere?”

“Exactly,” Angus said.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” I told him.

Neither did Stan and Berto, judging from their blank expressions. But Wylie was nodding already, his mouth set in the straight line of concentration which for him, I was starting to learn, expressed greater happiness than a smile.

Irina said, “When I first came here, I thought it was the end of the world. In a good way. Like Mars.”

“It's not the end of the world,” I said, slurring the words a little, “but it definitely feels like it.”

“Not enough for me,” Angus said

“Are you kidding? Albuquerque's the
capital
of nowhere.” My tone made Stan and Berto exchange glances. “I mean, and that's part of its scruffy charm,” I added lamely.

“She's right,” Irina said.

“Well, it's time to
really
make it the capital of nowhere. Give people a little time to think.”

“Time to think,” Wylie said. From his lack of scowl and his rigid posture, it seemed like he loved whatever ideas this conversation was giving him.

“Lynn,” Angus said, “you're a genius.”

“If you say so,” I said, and passed out.

When I woke up everybody was gone, even Sledge. I couldn't imagine how I'd slept through the night, in a room full of drunk and stinking people, but the throb in my head gave me a clue. There was such a thing as too much gin. I opened the front door and gazed out at the capital of nowhere. Grocery-store circulars and plastic bags rustled in tree branches. The hood of the Caprice was splattered with bird shit. My stomach was uneasy, and the taste in my mouth was sour. The heat was an insult to the body. Everything was brown and dead, and I couldn't imagine hating anything as much as August in Albuquerque. I wanted to know where everybody was and why I'd been abandoned. I was in a very bad mood.

I was about to shut the door when a taxi—a rare enough sight anywhere in Albuquerque—pulled up in front of the apartment building. Then Daphne Michaelson got out of the cab and paid the driver, looking crisp and unfazed by the heat. She was wearing a navy-blue dress with a white belt, white stockings, and open-toed shoes. Her nails and lips were lacquered in red. Not a single hair was out of place, and when she climbed the stairs up to the landing I could smell the distinct flowers of Chanel No. 5.

She smiled at me, brightly, and said, “I'm looking for Wylie Fleming. The phone book says he lives here.”

“He isn't here,” I said, nervously conscious of my own morning-after stink.

“You're the other one!” she said, in the cheery tone of a Girl Scout leader addressing her charges. “I remember your visits to my office.”

She stood in the doorway, wrinkling her powdered nose, and gave the filthy room a careful inspection that culminated in a head-to-toe look at me. Glancing back at the sleeping bags and tool racks, she raised her tweezed eyebrows, and I realized that at some point I'd stopped paying attention to the weirdness of the place.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I said.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I can't stay long. I have many appointments.” She laughed again, a trilling and artificial laugh that sounded rehearsed.

“If you say so,” I said.

She opened her white leather handbag, took out a compact, and checked her perfect makeup in the mirror, then smacked her lips together and smiled, satisfied. I felt like I was in an old movie, something starring Lana Turner. Maybe a young Frank Sinatra would come looking for her.

“Mrs. Michaelson,” I said, “does your family know you're here?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Daphne glared at me, and to compose herself she took out the compact and reapplied her lipstick, giving it a disturbing thickness. “I am occasionally allowed to chaperone myself,” she said.

“All right.”

“Even at times to dress myself and call taxis. Like a grown woman. Which, incidentally, I am.”

“I know you are. Listen, I'm sorry. What can I do for you? I'd offer you a seat, but, well, there aren't any.”

“That's quite all right,” she said with gracious hauteur. “I've come to discuss our problem of mutual interest. But we can do it standing.”

“Problem?”

“Problem, situation, what have you,” she said.

“What situation are you talking about?”

“My husband and your mother,” she said. “You think I didn't know? There isn't enough medication in the world. The question is what we will do about it. Now that you're on my side we can do something. Once you came to my office, I knew you were on my side. Now, do you think you can get a gun?”

“You're kidding.”

“Why would I?” she said. “Let me outline a few small plans.” She pulled a small black notebook from her bag and opened it to a page filled with looping, childish handwriting.

“Mrs. Michaelson,” I said, “I wanted to ask you about my father. Do you remember the things you said to me before? I felt like you were trying to tell me something.”

“This is not about your father,” she said.

“But did you ever see him with a woman with long dark hair? What about—”

“This is about David and that whore.”

It took me a second to register what this meant, and another second to figure out how to respond. “Um, please don't call my mother a whore,” I said.

Daphne's eyes flashed at me, and the notebook trembled in her hands. “Drunken travel-agent whore,” she said, drawing out each syllable with evident relish.

“Okay, that's it.” I gestured toward the landing. “Time for you to go. I'd call you a cab, but we don't have a phone here.”

“I'm not leaving.”

“Yes you are.”

I walked out onto the landing, as if to show her how, exactly, this might be accomplished, but she didn't follow. I looked back to where she stood framed in the darkness of the apartment.

“You'll have to drive me,” she said. “I spent my last dime on the taxi ride here.”

I drove Daphne, in silence, back to the Michaelsons' house, where nobody was home, and followed her inside. The doors to the bedrooms were open, and in one of them was an entire wall of trophies, shelf upon shelf of little gold and silver men, knees bent, arms bent to hold bats or sticks or balls. The Michaelson kids, I had to admit, were pretty good at what they'd chosen to do, which was more than either Wylie or I could say. Daphne went into her room, sitting down in her chair with a magazine, and didn't seem surprised when I stepped inside. I wasn't exactly sure what to do, but leaving her alone didn't seem like the smartest thing. I don't know what I expected—a cache of pills piled behind the curtain, or a purse bristling with razor blades—but everything looked exactly as it had before.

Daphne crossed her legs and looked at me severely. “I'm quite disappointed in you,” she said. “Perhaps I'll have better luck with Wylie. He always was the one with gumption.”

“Gumption?” I said.

“And personality. You, on the other hand, have no personality, and I am highly disappointed.” She was staring at me fixedly, more Joan Crawford now than Lana Turner, and then she leaned forward and started scratching her right ankle with manicured fingernails.

“Look, I'm sorry,” I said, wondering if she bought her own clothes, or sent David out for them, or simply wore the same outfits she'd bought when she was less ill, back in the seventies. She kept on scratching. By now she was tearing rips and runs in the sheer white hose, but she didn't appear to notice. “Are you all right?”

“No, I'm not all right. I'm disappointed. That's what I keep telling you.”

“Right. But you also seem kind of, well, itchy.”

Daphne lifted her hand and gazed at it in momentary wonder, then raised it to her cheek and started scratching there. I noticed the droplets of blood swelling through the torn hose at her ankle, and angry red streaks smearing the makeup on her cheeks. I went over and held both her hands in mine.

“Please stop that,” I kept saying, as if she were a child or a reasonable person.

“Disappointed!” she kept saying back. Then she pulled away from me—she was much stronger than I ever would've guessed—and cowered behind her chair, looking as if she thought I might shoot her. Momentarily annoyed that she was afraid of me, of all people, I went into the kitchen and searched around for phone numbers. In the directory by the fridge I found the number of David's law firm, but he wasn't there, and I didn't know what kind of message to leave. I also didn't know where Donny or Darren might be. For some reason, whether habit or the absence of any other options, I opened the fridge door, as if help might be waiting for me there. There were four rotisserie chickens and about a side of beef. Then I heard a car pull up in the driveway.

When Donny came through the front door, his doughy face was almost unrecognizable, marked grimly by stress, and only his blue, knee-length surf shorts seemed familiar. For a second, standing in the hall, he looked eerily like his father. I could see him struggling to come up with an explanation for my presence, and failing.

“Your mom's here,” I said, “and she's a little upset.”

“A little upset!” Daphne called from her room. “Ha!”

I trailed Donny down the hall, and saw her, back in her chair, tearing pages from a magazine and stacking them on the floor. Even her mania had a certain order to it.

“Mom?” Donny kneeled down next to her. “It's okay. Dad's coming.”

“Oh, now
that's
a relief,” Daphne said. “All my problems are solved.”

Donny looked at me. His big muscled arms were on his mother's lap, the weight of them holding her still. “She hasn't done this in years,” he said.