When She Was Gone (21 page)

Abigail could feel the
likes
in her throat. She wanted to cut them out of the conversation. This wasn't
like
anything, this was Linsey, missing. All these girls were playing parts. She didn't recognize most of them; Linsey's friends were in college. They were gone, too, only gone in a known way.

She'd always thought of her neighbor Reeva as a queen bee, but she felt the woman's give and take, a little vulnerability, when Reeva told her about Linsey babysitting for her son. The neighborhood was like one of those books Linsey used to love—black-coated sheets with a rainbow beneath; you scraped away at the black with a stylus. Abigail had been irritated by the waxy crumbs, but she'd
oooed
and
aaahed
nonetheless.

Parenthood was waxy crumbs.

Reeva had said she would visit this afternoon. In fact, the past day had been a steady stream of visitors. Abigail wondered if every crisis prompted gifts of food—it felt like shivah, or a wake, and part of her wanted to see no one and part of her appreciated every covered dish, every broccoli-chicken-fettuccine casserole. Beth Boris had just come with seven pies—seven. Who made seven pies? She parked in back—temporarily disrupting the vigil as they parted to let her car through—and brought the pies up in three trips, then one more for a gallon jug of iced tea—
mint!
—because lord knows no one had time to brew during this crisis.

Beth was sweet, but she chattered on like a meandering
stream. She told a story about how her husband had once had her followed, worrying that she was cheating.
It brought them closer!
she said. And she had cystitis. And when her last baby was born she'd had her tubes tied. And she was sometimes a substitute teacher! And she adored the elementary school kids but the middle-schoolers intimidated her! And did Abigail know Reeva Sentry? Reeva had been very weird—they'd been friends, but then Reeva dropped her, and Beth thought perhaps it was because they went to different churches. Was it like that with temple?! Beth put the pies on the counter.

“This is pecan; this is mincemeat, which sounds disgusting but is really good; this is chicken pot pie! Put it in the fridge when it's cool. This is pumpkin! We all need our vitamins. This is creamy, creamy, chocolate peanut butter. You will loooove it. These two are apple. Apple pie. Did I tell you I had a great-great-great-great-something who was on the
Nina
? You know, one of Columbus's boats? I have all this Massachusetts family. Oh, Abby,” she breathed, a huge sigh of breath, her body jiggly with breath, her slight second chin pink. “I'm so sorry, I keep talking about me. How are you holding up today?”

“I want to go somewhere. I want to DO something,” said Abigail. When Beth called her Abby, it made her whole body itch.

“I know,” said Beth. Now she was watching Abigail's face. The stream had stopped suddenly and Abigail felt as though she needed to fill the gap.

“I feel guilty because I still like having sex with my husband,” she blurted out. “It's a comfort.”

“Oh, honey!” Beth laughed. For a minute, Abigail was mortified. Would Beth take this about the neighborhood, news of Bereaved Abigail Stein and her Secret Sex Life? No, Beth wasn't like that.

“I must leave you. You need some time to yourself. Please don't forget to refrigerate the chicken pot pie. And I'll call on you tomorrow.”

“Thank you for everything,” said Abigail, standing by the back door.
I wish you would stay. I wish you wouldn't come back.

She didn't know who to trust, and suddenly everyone was talking to her.

Sometimes she forgot in her dreams, she had told Reeva this yesterday, though she couldn't tell her husband because she felt as though she was betraying everyone—just the act of sleep was enough of a lapse, but then, she dreamed of the summer house her family rented on Lake Michigan one year when she was eleven, the breeze almost like a sea breeze, the white clapboards peeling, the little Sunfish sailboats just offshore made the size of children's toys from the distance. In her dreams, she was with everyone, the boys, Linsey, with her first husband and her second; in her dreams, everyone was intact, and sometimes there was the baby boy she'd lost, too, Joseph Junior, sleeping in a bassinet with a bud mouth working on an invisible nipple. Then she woke out of the sunshine and into the shade-darkened bedroom beside Frank, who
was breathing deeply, regularly, and she remembered where she was and that Linsey was gone and she ran to the bathroom to vomit.

It was the first day of school for the boys tomorrow. They were supposed to have taken Linsey to college this weekend; she'd been gone four days and Abigail wept in her daughter's room at night, but she still knew she'd come back, the way she knew her own heart would keep beating despite the weight on her, the thousand thousand pounds of the empty room, of the whole house, of the boys bickering, of her husband trying to find anything, calling, calling, his voice quiet and calm, his heavy arm trying to hold her to the bed at night. She wanted to thank him, wanted to fold herself into him, but mostly, she couldn't forgive him for sleeping, and then she was doing the same, letting them all down by lapsing into it, by falling.

She'd been trying to talk with Joe for two days, after the first call when she told him their girl was missing—a tender call at first, a reasonable bout of terror together. In that one tearful conversation since Linsey went missing, he'd been so supportive, they'd been so connected, and then at the end he questioned her mothering abilities and told her Linsey was probably just out with friends and she should keep better track.

“Out with friends?” she'd said. She knew she was screeching, but she couldn't help it. “Out with friends?”

Joe paused. Joe didn't mind silence if it helped him in an argument. Abigail couldn't bear it.

“Joe?” she asked.

“You wait twenty-four hours to call her father?”

“You're too busy screwing underage soccer players to answer my messages?”

It hadn't been her finest moment, but she couldn't help it. She almost suspected him of being part of this, of knowing something she didn't—his relationship with Linsey had always been slightly opaque to her, and though she did her best to respect it, now she couldn't. She'd asked Barq to check him out, the rotted-apple taste of betrayal rising in her mouth as she made her request. Nothing, so far. Joe was booked for parents' weekend, as she'd suspected, but nothing else.

But that was it. Barq said to keep in touch with him, but the one time Joe picked up his cell phone, he said, “Abigail, unless you have news, I can't talk now.” And he'd hung up. What if she'd had news?

She was actually looking forward to talking with Reeva again today. She should be talking to Margaret, or one of her real friends, but somehow Reeva and the neighbors felt safer, more anonymous. Reeva had started telling her something about her periods—it was probably another perimenopause story, and Abigail found those annoying, but the running narrative kept her from falling into her own deep pond. She'd be here soon, and Abigail would probably gush with overflowing information about how she broke up Linsey and Timmy, how she had dug up the seedlings of their relationship. She wanted to confide in someone.. Her house smelled like chicken pot pie with dill. She disliked dill, but the pie
would still be delicious. Her mouth was sour; she should keep her business private, there'd already been too much invasion.

Standing by the front window, just out of the line of sight for the vigil clump, Abigail watched a form making his way up Sycamore. She knew that walk: Timmy. Her house was quiet—Frank had taken the boys out for lunch, and had invited her, but the thought of eating made her run into the bathroom for dry heaves. Camp was done. Everyone was home. Linsey should be home.

Her cell phone, turned to maximum, rang and buzzed.

She answered before looking.

“Margaret,” she said, interrupting her friend's hello. “God, I'm sorry. I really can't do anything about work now—I have to tell you—”

“Stop,” Margaret interrupted in turn. Her voice was sharp. “Honey. Do not keep things from me.”

“Oh god,” said Abigail. She felt trembly now, weak.

“I don't have a Linsey,” she said, “though I desperately wish I did. Don't not let me help.”

Abigail was not going to cry. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” she said.

“Don't be sorry. Look up the train schedule for me; I'm coming.”

Margaret was on her way, which made it all real. It was all real.
I desperately wish I had a Linsey,
Abigail recalled; Margaret had always said she was happy without children.

Abigail had been holding a tea mug all morning—the bergamot of Earl Grey was cold perfume, but she didn't sip.
Timmy was a hero with the gaggle holding a vigil on the lawn. Older from just a few weeks ago, when she'd seen him at graduation, he held his sadness like a man, full fleshed, no more of the boy she'd seen wrapped around her girl, vine around tree. She couldn't see the things that hurt her before, the way he'd been proprietary, the way he'd owned space, and Abigail had worried he was taking Linsey's as well.

Here was a young man, a beautiful young man, loose space at the waist of his jeans, his polo shirt—tie-dyed paradox—accentuating the beauty of his upper body, sinew, strength, sex. Abigail walked to the door but didn't open it. She could hear the girls through the glass, “Timmy! Timmy! Aren't you leaving for California?”

“OMG, Timmy, you must be like, really worried!”

“Timmy? We're sooooo worried for you!” This last was from Tina, Reeva's daughter, who was wearing a string-shouldered tank top and a short skirt. She sat astride one of the boys' old scoot cars, rolling suggestively back, forth. Abigail wanted to go out and cover her up. It wasn't an unkind thing, this vigil, but it was selfish, intrusive. She suspected that when the girls had started gathering last night with their mothers' forty-dollar candles lit, singing tuneless pop songs and holding hands, they wanted to enter the light of the drama, that they didn't actually feel any of the desperation. It wasn't cruel, but it wasn't particularly kind, either.

Abigail swung open the door. She wanted Timmy to know she needed him now. He was supposed to be in California, Abigail knew this from Barq, and from Linsey's excavated
texts, and from Timmy's mother, who had called from out of the country somewhere, checking in to see if she could help, the way so many people did, meaning I wish I could help and not I would like to help. But Timmy would like to help.

“Timmy,” she called, and her voice cracked. She half-expected the girls to abandon their grassy posts. There was a boy on the lawn with them—he was smoking a cigarette—

“Abigail,” said Timmy, very loud, so everyone looked up at this temporary god. “I broke up with her because I broke up with her—it wasn't all you.”

He wasn't even all the way up the walkway.

The girls tittered. Abigail wanted to throw something at them, to scream like a mad witch.

“Come in,” said Abigail, holding out her hand. “Come in, Timmy,” she said, reaching for him.

26 SYCAMORE STREET

T
he weirdo's going to be in your class this year,” said Cody, by means of aggravating Toby, who was scrutinizing his school supplies list at his desk to see if he had everything he needed. Cody had been such an idiot when Dad took them shopping after lunch, sticking candy in the basket when Dad wasn't looking, buying a compass that wasn't on the list because they weren't allowed to use them anymore—because of kids like Cody, Toby thought, who stabbed people with the sharp points. He'd been looking forward to drawing smooth angles; he'd been looking forward to school.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Toby, though he knew he shouldn't take the bait.

“Geography, the Oreo,” said Cody, smirking.

“Geo is George, and he's not a weirdo. And it's disgusting to call him names—”

Cody grabbed the list from Toby's hands.

“Why are you being such an asshole?” Toby grabbed the list back, tearing the corner. He could feel the fury building in his chest, fury and grief like a thick hot smoke.

“Ooo, I'm telling Mom you said that,” said Cody, wadding up the corner and flicking it at his brother.

“She's not listening,” said Toby. “She's talking to Timmy.”

There was a brief truceful silence. Timmy had been sitting with Mom in the backyard as if he and Linsey were still together when they'd come home from lunch. They were looking at printouts of e-mail messages and transcripts of texts and Toby felt as though they were conspiring against her, and he ran up to his room. Cody followed, but Cody wasn't in a good mood. Toby could feel his brother's anger in his own skin—like sunburn. He knew Cody had done something wrong; when Cody did something wrong he held it against everyone else until he was found out; his twin was ridiculous that way, so immature. Sometimes everything that was wrong with the world was his brother's fault. He missed Linsey.

Toby tried to breathe. Cody sprawled across his bed, but then he lunged for the desk, scattering Toby's erasers, his newly sharpened pencils, the protractor, the little silver calculator, which hit the floor and cracked.

“To hell with you!” yelled Toby, but Cody dodged out of the room before his brother could lunge at him.

Toby crouched on the floor, picking things up, fury building again. He was going to hit his brother. He was going to pummel him. He'd make him take everything back, the whole last three years or so. He'd make him hurt so much Toby would feel it in his own bones. One pencil was way under his brother's bed, and he moved out the nasty things Cody collected, a box of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, a dusty pair of
socks, the sweater box his mom used to rotate summer and winter things—sweaters had come out a week or so ago, and shorts had gone in—and then he saw it through the plastic, the familiar shape of Linsey's monkey box, hidden among the blue of his brother's shorts.