The Missing Person (20 page)

The sight of her took me aback, and I realized how much I'd been counting on talking to her, asking her about my father and her work and life, on getting all the answers I'd thought she could provide. I walked down the hallway, bought a Coke from a machine, and pressed the cool can against my face. A nurse came by and smiled at me sympathetically.

“Eva Kent,” I said. “What's wrong with her, exactly?”

She shrugged and bought a Dr Pepper. “Brain chemistry, I guess.”

I stood there for a minute or two, not sure what to do next.

Then Lincoln came down the hall, smiling at me. “Hey, did you find your great-aunt?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

He put his hand on my arm, again. “She didn't—”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It turns out I have the wrong place, is all. I messed up. It's not the first time.”

He bought a can of iced tea. “Don't be so hard on yourself,” he said sweetly.

“How was your visit?” I asked him.

“Well, with my mother,” he said, “it's hard to tell.” As he sipped his tea, he raised one leg and placed his right foot against his left knee in a yoga pose, looking completely relaxed.

I gazed intently at his delicate features and dark hair. I still couldn't figure out how to ask him what I wanted to know. “Is your father in here too?” I said.

“Oh, no,” he said, with a pleasant, musical laugh. “Just my mother. I'm reading Buddhist texts to her right now. I don't know if she finds it uplifting, but I do.”

“Has she been here long?”

“For as long as I can remember,” he said. “My godfather, Harold—well, unofficial godfather—he put her in here when I was just a kid. I used to hate visiting her, but now I find it kind of restful. I try to think of it as a means of contemplation.” He was sounding like he had in yoga class, his voice low and rhythmic, almost a chant.

“What about the rest of your family?” I said. “Do they come too?”

“I don't have much family.” Lincoln put his leg down and hoisted up the other, and at the same time—with the can of tea in his right hand—twisted his arms up above his neck. “My mother didn't have many relatives, and my dad died when I was twelve.”

“He did?” I said. “Are you sure?”

He raised an eyebrow at the question, then laughed. “Yeah, I'm sure. He was this crazy hippie who lived up in Madrid, and in his last will and testament he left me and my mom a lucky horseshoe and his VW minibus. It didn't even run.”

I stared into his tranquil eyes. A crazy hippie with a lucky horseshoe: this was the last thing I'd expected him to say. I felt an intense, burning anger toward Harold, for leading me astray; it seemed like his fault I was here. I wondered why on earth he'd lied to me—and then it occurred to me that he might not have known about the crazy hippie. I remembered Eva's note from California, after she'd run away:
Dear
Harold, I know you will take care of things.
Maybe she'd known that Harold would take better care of her son if he thought there was no one else to do it.

“Hold this for a second, will you?” Lincoln asked. I took his drink, and he did a backward bend and then a forward one, sweeping his head down between his outstretched legs. When he came up again his face was red.

I wanted to contradict his story about the hippie father; but on what evidence, and for what reason? Beyond the paintings themselves, I had no reason to think that my father and Eva had even known each other, much less that he'd played any part in her illness. Anything can make a person go crazy: grief, anger, brain chemistry, life.

As I looked at the yoga instructor, the lines I'd drawn— from Eva to her paintings to my father to me—turned to vapor and disappeared. Eva had probably never met my father, and hadn't gone crazy because of their affair. Nor had Daphne Michaelson been trying to tell me anything at all, except that she distinctly preferred certain shades of red lipstick over others. I'd invented all of it. I'd started out wanting to construct a story about the paintings for Michael, and wound up tailoring it to myself. “Sometimes I think I'm the one who's crazy,” I said out loud.

“Honey, everybody's crazy,” Lincoln said. “The only sane person I know is my cat. Good luck with your great-aunt, okay?” Then he took back his drink and walked away down the hall.

Outside the sun still shone, heavy, inescapable, and my eyes started to water in the parking lot and wouldn't stop. The Caprice fired up with a knocking sound, and the engine gave a low moan when I pulled out. For the second time this summer I went to my father's grave, which was every bit as inadequate as I remembered it: the sickly, brown-tinged grass, edging into dirt at the sides of the cemetery; the shiny red granite of new-fashioned tombstones, some with photographs airbrushed on them, the dead smiling and youthful, never anticipating to what purpose the pictures would be put. Or maybe they were smiling because they knew that their grip on the living would never be released; they'd maintain their mystery forever; they'd never have to answer any questions. As I was thinking this, a flock of crows landed a few graves in front of me and began to pick and tear at the grass, their ragged black feathers shiny in the light.

In the mid-distance rose the Sandias, their reddish-brown peaks outlined crisp and wild as in a painting by Eva Kent. She and Daphne could have quite a party together, I thought. My mother was the only sane woman I knew, and her sanity was so conspicuously neat and controlled that I was starting to wonder about her, too. This summer was crowded with crazy women and caretaking men, with parents who made their children uneasy, with condos and apartments and institutions, with homes that were not what they'd once been. And everywhere there were fathers, or awkward yet unavoidable substitutes: David Michaelson; Harold Wallace; even Wylie doting fatherlike on Psyche. The days were full of fathers, and none of them was mine. Grief roiled across the world, forever rippling its surface; that, I thought, was the permanent wave. When a feeling's that tenacious, what can you do but say hello to it and keep going? I turned away to find my mother and tell her, as best I could, that I was sorry.

Nineteen

The Caprice shuddered whenever I went above sixty-five, its chassis shaking like a child with a high fever: a new and disturbing symptom. In the rearview mirror I could see a thin band of black air moving across the sky, and when I rolled down the window, the ashy smell of a fire wafted faintly through the car. This whole state was as dry as kindling, ready to light. I could barely remember the last time I'd seen rain.

The curtains were drawn at my mother's house and I saw shapes moving behind them—my mother and David, no doubt, waiting for me to come home, make my apologies, and face my punishment. Maybe I could spend a week at his house, doing chores as a means of reparation, like the child I truly was. But as I opened the front door, from the kitchen came the sweet sounds of Frank Sinatra, tinkling glasses, and loud, low, horsey laughter. Wylie, Angus, and Irina, with Psyche in her sling, were all making themselves drinks, and the entire contents of my mother's well-provisioned refrigerator were emptied onto the counter. Sandwiches were in the making; fruit was being peeled and eaten. As a group they smelled delightful, soapy and fresh, their cheeks red and shiny from recent showers.

Angus was leaning against the far counter, using his finger to stir a glass of what I knew must be gin. His clothes were as tattered as ever, his skin as freckled, his hair as red. “Knew you couldn't stay away from us,” he said.

I looked at him, flushed with annoyance. For the first time since that day in June at Wylie's apartment my body had no reaction to his; no heat on my skin, no ripple down my spine, no sensations elsewhere, either. It was an unsettling feeling, like an alcohol buzz wearing off too early in the evening.

He smiled at me and lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said.

Wylie, who'd been facing the other direction, turned around and nodded. Irina came fluttering toward me, her face flushed, and kissed me on the cheek. Psyche cooed and hit her fist against Irina's collarbone, and when I touched her cheek she looked at me, her eyes wide open, and laughed. Her skin looked rosier than usual, and I wondered if everyone had been out hiking again. Then they all started talking at the same time.

“Can I fix you a drink?”

“We're here making preparations.”

“Your time is perfect, we are just making ready.”

“Ready for what?” I said.

“Oh, our biggest project yet,” Irina said. “It is very exciting. We have been planning many aspects of things.”

The baby now cooed in earnest, hitting Irina again.

Irina laughed and said, “She wants a cocktail, like everybody else has.”

“Cute,” I said.

Irina gave her some apple juice, and she sucked happily at the bottle. On the stereo, Frank decided it was just one of those things.

“Where's Mom?” I asked Wylie.

He shrugged. “Haven't seen her.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“No.”

“I messed up with Daphne Michaelson. She went kind of crazy—even crazier than she was before, I mean.”

“Well, that's no surprise.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That you're kind of messed up.”

“Pot. Kettle. Black!”

He shrugged again, his lips pursed.

“Here's your drink,” Angus said, materializing at my side. The ice swayed and bumped in the glass, a thin, elegant lime slice floating between two cubes.

“I didn't ask for that.”

“I brought it anyway,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. “Now if everyone has food and drink, it's time for a meeting of the high council, and I propose the backyard as our secure location.”

“Well, if the high council's meeting, I'll take my drink and go elsewhere.”

“Oh no,” Wylie said. “You're coming.”

“I'm pretty sure I'm not on the high council,” I said.

“You are now. That's why we're here.”

I looked around at them. Irina smiled at me encouragingly. Angus winked, and I thought, Who winks anymore? Nobody
winks.
I paused to take a long, slow swallow of gin and tonic. “Look,” I said. “Just because Angus wants me around doesn't mean I have to be part of your little capers.”

“I want you around,” Wylie said. “I'm the one who said we should come get you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need us,” he said. “We're good for you.”

By the time everyone had taken their sandwiches and drinks to the patio furniture in the small, square backyard, Stan and Berto had shown up with a case of beer and two bags of takeout from Taco Bell. They sprawled on the ground spurting hot sauce from little flat packets into their foil-wrapped burritos. The sound of children splashing in a backyard pool carried from somewhere down the street. I sat down on a plastic lawn chair in the shade, and Irina sat next to me, feeding the baby a biscuit that she gnawed and slobbered on happily. I waited for Angus to call the meeting to order, but it was Wylie who started talking first. Since the closing of the Crest, he seemed to stand taller, scowl less, and talk with greater ease, or maybe I'd started listening to him more. At any rate, everyone was paying attention.

“Now is the time for all good people to come to the defense of their country,” he said. “The mountains are catching fire while the city spreads at their feet. If you saw a murder being committed, you'd rush in to stop it; your conscience would demand it. It's time for us to rush. We can't let the summer pass without a grand gesture. People say that gestures accomplish nothing, but they're wrong. If we abandon gestures, we abandon the fight to assert what we believe.”

“Hear, hear, man,” Berto said. Irina clapped prettily, one arm around the baby, the other arm reaching around to meet it. Angus, who was lying propped on one elbow in the grass, clapped too, but I could see a kind of smirk in his smile, as if he were an adult watching a child ride a bicycle: half proud, half waiting for him to fall. And Wylie seemed to know it; despite his ease in speaking, I could tell he was watching Angus watching him.

I sipped my drink. The breeze that ruffled my hair was almost cool, with August moving toward September. In the days of unceasing sunshine, in my visits to various crazy women and my nights with Angus, I'd almost forgotten that summer would ever end. Looking at my brother, I thought that he was right: I was messed up, and he had it together, with a life built on his beliefs. At least he actually had beliefs.

“Wylie,” I said, “I still don't really know why I'm here.”

He smiled at me then, genuinely, for the first time in recent memory. “You have to drive,” he said.

Wylie and Angus were consulting a pad of paper covered in mysterious diagrams that reminded me of the plumbing model I'd seen over martinis. Maybe they were going to break into people's houses and start installing low-flow toilets. It was early evening. I could smell the spicy smoke of piñon wood, people so eager for fall that they couldn't wait for an actually cold night. Angus came over and sat down next to me against the back wall of the condo. He put his arm around me, and I let him. On my other side the baby huddled against Irina for warmth; she kept turning and squirming restlessly, and knocking her head against Irina's chest as if she couldn't get close enough to her body and whimpering. Everyone was talking, their lips thick with spittle, the words tumbling out fast as the evening shaded into darkness. All around us lights went on in houses, and the habitual blue glow of televisions. The baby started crying and Irina took her inside, bouncing her up and down in the sling.

I wondered where my mother was, if she was coming back soon, if she would forgive me when she did. I stood up and almost lost my balance. “I'm going to bed,” I said.

“Oh no you're not,” Wylie said. “We've got work to do.”

“Now?” I said.

“Of course now.”

“Wylie, I really need to talk to Mom.”

“After,” he said.

So I found myself driving my brother's car through the neon-lit streets of Albuquerque, with the whole group chattering and happy, except for Psyche, in Irina's arms beside me, who kept squirming and muttering angry complaints. Nothing her mother did could soothe her.

“Maybe you should take her to the doctor,” I said.

Irina shook her head. “Everything will be fine,” she said, smiling sweetly.

I drove to Wylie's, as instructed. The place looked different, and I noticed that the dog was gone.

“Where's Sledge?” I asked Irina.

“With a friend of Angus,” she said.

“What friend?” I asked, but she didn't answer.

The walls, previously bare, were plastered now with topographical maps of New Mexico, region by region, its mountains graphed in pale green ink, shot through with thin strands of blue rivers and red roads, the old Spanish land grants neatly labeled. I walked the room, passing from map to map, the contours of the state traced before my eyes in awe-some detail; it seemed like a crazy thing for a human hand to have accomplished, to have charted each rise and dip and curve of the land. On the last map, by the kitchen, was Bernalillo County, and the Rio Grande washed across the sheet. Albuquerque spread red and pink at the center of it, the land parceled into tiny geometrical squares. In the context of the green blobs that defined the wilderness around it, the city looked belated and sad, a cluster of cubbyholes and closets and shoeboxes that people called homes. With my finger I traced a route from Indian School to Central, then over to this apartment. Wylie came and stood beside me, and together we looked at the map, the foothills where our childhood home stood and the edge where, high in the Sandias, Bernalillo County gave way to Sandoval.

After a few minutes of loading the van with backpacks and boxes of tools, Wylie, Berto, and Angus climbed inside it. As they left, Angus kissed me good-bye and whispered, “Stay close.” I said I'd try, and got behind the wheel of the Caprice. Without Berto beside him, Stan seemed a bit lost, crossing his arms and frowning at me when I met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Just follow the van, please,” Irina said.

I trailed the van through light evening traffic onto the interstate, switching lanes every time Angus did, worried that I'd lose them. These maneuvers continued even when there were no cars to pass, and I suspected he was just playing a game, smiling and watching me follow in the rearview mirror. Irina sang “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” over and over to Psyche, the repetition—like some inventively childish form of torture— driving me insane. I kept glaring at her, to no avail, but after a while she switched to a Czech melody whose words, at least, I couldn't understand, and Psyche's irritated babble finally subsided.

“Where are we going—Bisbee?” I said. Nobody answered.

We were west of town when the van signaled for an exit onto a rough, one-lane road. The car jostled and shuddered, and Psyche woke up and started crying again. I sighed, staring out at the dark, empty land around us and the black silhouettes of power lines snaking along the horizon. When I followed the van onto a dirt road, the Caprice bucked in protest, and rocks sprayed across the windshield. On Irina's side the glass began to spiderweb.

“Shit,” I said.

“Are we here?” Irina said.

“How should I know?” I said. The road weaved and turned back on itself, heading up into hills. It was too dark to see very well, and the car kept bouncing into ruts or scraping its bottom against the dirt and gravel. The shuddering kept getting worse, even at this low speed. I gripped the wheel at ten and two, as if this would prevent anything bad from happening. At one point the headlights flashed over the bloody remains of a deer or antelope, and I veered around it. Five minutes later, I parked beside the van in front of a cabin that was cobbled together out of adobe and two-by-fours. Sledge stood outside, barking, and next to him was Gerald Lobachevski.

I got out of the car and stretched; my right leg was numb. Wylie climbed out of the van and waved at me as Angus and Gerald disappeared into the darkness. I walked back down the road and looked up at the sky—it was a true New Mexico black, flecked with bright stars. There was just enough light to limn the contours of the desert below, indeterminate and lovely. The land rose and fell like breath. I sat down on a long flat rock. Outlined around me, somewhere between object and shadow, were cacti and boulders and squat juniper scrub. I could feel the edge of a chill in the air.

From above I heard the murmur of voices and the flat scuffle of shoes, and moments later Angus and Gerald came walking slowly toward me, their heads swaying together rhythmically as if they belonged to a single animal. Angus was talking, but I couldn't make out the words. “Ache back,” I thought I heard him say, not once but twice, and I wondered what language or code he was speaking. Gerald wasn't saying anything at all. I knew they couldn't see me, so I coughed.

“Well, hello there,” Angus said. “You remember Gerald.”

“Hello, Gerald.”

“Wylie's sister,” Gerald said flatly.

“That would be me,” I said. He turned around and walked back to the house. “He's so gracious,” I said to Angus.

“I know it.” He sat down next to me on the rock, and I moved over to a less smooth and comfortable part, resenting him and trying not to, our hips pressed close together. I have slept with this ragged, red-haired person, I thought,
multiple
times.
His freckled skin was practically glowing in the dark desert night. An owl hooted in the quiet. Angus put his hand on my knee, then turned and kissed me full on the lips. It was a fine kiss; there was nothing wrong with it; but it was not what it had been at the beginning of the summer. Somehow, and so soon—a fact that burst sadly inside me—I had gotten used to Angus Beam. I pulled my head away and stared down at the ground as he put his arm around me.