When She Was Gone (7 page)

“So she's not with you?”

“No, man, I wish she was. I have no idea what stuff to pack. I have so much stuff.” There was something plaintive in this. “Will you tell her to call me anyway when she gets back? I tried her cell yesterday but her mailbox was full or something.”

“Fine,” said Abigail. She hung up. Her gut hurt. She wretched slightly and stood over the sink, waiting. She called Linsey's phone again. Voice mail. Then she dialed her husband's number, because Frank would know what to do.

444 SYCAMORE STREET

T
immy was running. He had hated the running workouts for crew, grudgingly pounding the stadium steps and flocking through the neighborhoods with his whole team, like starlings, but now he needed to burn. If he sweated enough, if he hurt enough, he might shed the cells that touched her, he might be able to soften the pain enough to stop its screaming.

He had loved Linsey Hart since fourth grade, since she told him the pointillism project he'd labored to make wasn't the epic failure he thought. Mrs. Greenberg the art teacher had sighed and told him it was interesting, but even at age nine Timmy knew “interesting” was a doubtful proposition.

When they finally kissed, just two years ago, it was very different from the kisses of ordinary girls. It was far from perfect—they'd caused the horrible music of tooth on tooth, and then when he went in for a second attempt he'd accidentally bitten her lip, but it was the kind of love worth working for. Now they were experts at kissing, and not just kissing—she was the first girl he'd slept with, and he wasn't sure he ever needed to sleep with another; his body missed her body the way another body might miss water when parched.

Timmy was packed for college. His mother wasn't at all nervous, not like Linsey's mother, who had pried them apart like halves of a walnut for nut meat. It was wrong. Just because
Abigail
had made a mistake marrying her college sweetheart and grown bitter at the loss of her own possibilities didn't mean Linsey and Timmy couldn't grow together, even by being apart. He'd thought about waiting to enroll at Berkeley—even though he'd applied early and already had his uncle Geoffrey, a gallery owner in San Francisco, arrange for a coveted tiny share apartment in an old Victorian in Berkeley just three blocks from campus—he'd thought it was a mistake to leave her. They hadn't had sex until two weeks before Abigail made her proclamation, and once they had, he couldn't have enough. She couldn't, either. There was nothing old-fashioned about it, and it was far more than anything the music or the TV or the movies or the videos promised—it was better, and it hurt to want something so much. They'd skipped almost a week's worth of classes, coming back to his house after homeroom to tear at each other with need, or to gently explore everything about this way they made something no one else had ever invented.

His chest burned with breathing. Timmy nodded as Mr. Leonard the music teacher passed on his bike, his basket filled with library books and a neatly folded paper bag.

He'd be Tim when he got to Berkeley. He was weary of his diminutive by the time he was ten years old—only four foot six, but bored of being Timmy, the
y
like a tag of infantilism. His dad was Tim, though, and he couldn't have the
same name as his dad, even though they'd named him that way. Timmy went to sleep-away camp that summer he was ten, and told everyone he was Timothy, though half the time he didn't remember to respond to calls across the pond or the music tent and people thought he was aloof. He'd made a best friend, James, and they'd spent all free periods in the cabin, discussing video games that were verboten at camp, the junk foods they missed. Then one afternoon James had laughed too hard at Timmy's joke, and had leaned in toward Timmy's mouth with his own, crushing him lip to lip. Timmy screamed, embarrassed, a little girl's scream, and left the cabin. He'd always felt it was his fault, the ruined friendship, the fault of the Timothy appellation. But in California he would be Tim, never mind his father. If his uncle called him Timmy it could be pleasant nostalgia. Timmy had grown up a while ago, even before he'd finally had his mouth on Linsey's smooth skin. It was going to be freedom to let his name match—one hard and simple syllable.

Timmy had packed one suitcase and one backpack. His flight was booked and his parents were already in California, stopping to approve the apartment and visit Uncle Geoffrey for a few days before going to a Peace Corps reunion in Rarotonga. The house was already on the market. They'd spent years at home because of him—he knew they thought of it this way even if they never said it—and now they could go back to being expatriates, to being helper people, to being
away
.

He never realized before how many women of his town
were runners. Jogging strollers passed him as mothers he'd seen under baseball caps in the stands pushed past, faces hard, fully inside themselves. Who had kids in high school and kids in diapers? In this town, the women folded around their children like envelopes around letters. His mother was disdainful—not that she didn't care, but she didn't think her whole life should be getting him from one place to another, only to be ripped and cast off when he was delivered into adulthood.

Dr. Sill ran by in the other direction on Maple, his arms pumping. He'd been Timmy's elementary school principal, a sweet-faced man with caterpillar eyebrows and a great grin who stood outside the school waving as parents dropped off their charges. Timmy had read in the local paper that now that he was retired, Dr. Sill was writing children's books.

Everyone did something. Everyone had a spot. Timmy belonged inside Linsey, beside Linsey, linked to Linsey. If he could leave, maybe he'd have back the half of his arms that belonged to her.

Before he and Linsey had sex—and as much as he loved her before, the glue of being together the way they'd been made it impossible to separate, too painful, too much tearing—he'd always wanted his own
away,
and Berkeley was away without having no family anywhere. Besides Linsey, there'd be nothing left in this town for him. If Linsey ever came back to this town. If Linsey followed orders.

He passed the last of the little Italian delis on the corner of Spring and Ivy. In middle school they'd gone there in
packs for slushies after the last bell. Linsey would be there with her friends getting Ring Pops and making her mouth scarlet with sucking.

He had been running every day this week, his last week. He ran halfway down her block, peeking over the fence at that kid Geo's mosaic—bottle caps and glass. Geo had taken pictures of them together—the kid was always out with his ancient camera, and at first it had seemed innocent enough but recently it made Timmy nervous—his every action potentially arrested. Geo was odd, but Timmy was sure he was brilliant, poor thing, some sort of genetic trick played on him so his parents, natural parents, were white, while he was black. In Berkeley, Timmy thought, no one would blink. In this town, people were very small about difference, about seeking otherness.

Sometimes he ran at night and went past her house and looked to see if she was in the window. The last time they'd been together on purpose she had worried the whole time about whether they might be found out. They met in the woods by the boulder kids painted with initials every year; theirs had been on twice but now were buried by new lusts and pairings. The woods smelled of old oak leaves, of the musky tannic river, and of beer. They'd had sex, Linsey pressed up against Timmy on the rock, then he'd pushed her down into the leaves. They'd both worried about ticks afterward; she'd worried about being found out—it wasn't good, for the first time. Since they'd been together, he'd learned to taste her joys like lemon and coconut; her sadnesses were
metallic, stale. She'd tasted of sorrow that last time, and he'd let her walk back up the hill to her house alone. He'd almost wished someone else would meet her on the way, someone else would take her from him, someone else might even hurt her, so he didn't have to do the hurting all alone.

DAY TWO

36 SYCAMORE STREET

W
ith the window open, the kitchen smelled of summer: the cedar deck was wet, and waves of odor lifted from it in bands as the sun struck. Unkind sun, Reeva thought, late-summer sun, never reaching the mildew under the boards, but scorching her hanging plants between the dousings of storms. Green rot.

“I told you I don't want toast,” muttered Tina, Reeva's fourteen-year-old daughter. “I only eat fruit for breakfast.” She rummaged in the fridge, then opened a granola bar and ate it standing over the sink. Reeva resisted the urge to smooth Tina's cowlick.

“I need money,” mumbled Steve, opening Reeva's purse.

“Steve,” said Reeva, without moving toward him. “It isn't polite to dig in my purse without asking.”

“I asked,” Steve said, but he kissed her cheek before leaving the room. At sixteen, he knew the power of a kiss.

She loved them too much as she watched them leave for camp. Steve collected his backpack, cheese sticks, soda sneaked from the basement party storage; both older kids wore earbuds and iPods, insulating their ears from her ordinary
kitchen. Tina was there but just barely, scoffing at the toast Reeva still made for her, butter and seedless raspberry jam. Her youngest, her imperfect, beautiful Johnny, seven years old, was making a sculpture out of twist ties from bread bags, humming to himself and leaving the bread to stale.

“Johnny? You want breakfast?”

He didn't look up.

“Baby? Breakfast?” She rubbed his shoulder gently. Tina snorted.

“It's a garbage truck!” announced Johnny. Reeva felt herself clenching everything: jaw, biceps, hands, thighs, prepared for Tina to say something noxious about her brother.

“Eat your breakfast, please?” She kissed the top of his head, which smelled of cinnamon.

Johnny stuffed the corner of his toast into his twist-tie morass.

“Eat, please,” said Reeva, hating the hardness in her own voice. Johnny sighed and pinched a tiny piece of bread off the slice. He smacked his lips as he ate.

“He ate, Mom, you happy?” At least Tina didn't attack him.

“I ate,” said Johnny, grinning at his sister.

Then they were gone, and Reeva felt their absence in her chest, a crushing sensation, her lungs constricted for potential pleasures and slights.

The house hummed with machines: the fridge, the basement dehumidifier, the new brushed-steel dishwasher, which she shut with her hip—last night, as usual, her husband,
Charlie, added his wineglass and didn't reseal it, so it didn't run and when she shut the window, switching on the central air, the kitchen stank of sour milk and onions from the stroganoff. She blamed Charlie. She loved Charlie, but maybe not enough to accept this habit of his of making everything just a little more annoying. The coffee grinds he spilled on the counter. The paper filter sogging halfway out of the garbage barrel, spilling its stain and drip onto her white tile floor. Charlie had been against white tile, but Reeva knew it brightened the room. She was still selling houses two years ago when they renovated the kitchen; she still had a visual library in her head of what worked, what brought rooms together so the houses looked like families, living and family and dining rooms holding hands, and what made them look like mistakes. Bright yellow kitchens, blue-flowered wallpaper, ceilings painted dark red—mistakes. Clean counters and floors, walls in Benjamin Moore's classic whites, which really offered a drop of ocean, a pinch of woods, really not just white, or wallpapers that didn't suck you in but expanded the space: small flowers, gentle tones; these were what made you want to buy and move in today.

Reeva had an hour before the Group would be over. It was Tuesday, and she wished she'd asked her house cleaner to come on Monday instead of Wednesday so she wouldn't have the lint of ordinary days to contend with before she had to contend with the women. She'd been thrown from her easy horse of order when Linsey had failed to show up to babysit for Johnny after camp yesterday—she'd come home from
Jordan's hovel just a few minutes late, but Johnny was sitting on the back step crying, locked out of his own house, because Linsey hadn't met him there. Linsey had been so reliable; Reeva thought, for just a second, that she'd screwed up the schedule herself, but once they were inside and Johnny had a tall stack of apology Oreos, Reeva checked the calendar. It had been Linsey's fault, and she didn't ever answer her cell when Reeva called her for an explanation. Reeva didn't have the parents' number handy—they weren't the type of neighbors whose number graced her bulletin board. She'd just suffered her small fury and moved on.

Now here were Charlie's leavings. The kids' thousand plates. Only three kids, but they used twelve place settings for the few bites they consumed before their clattering departures.

She wasn't really in the mood. Never mind that she started the Group to begin with—just as she had started the Five back in high school. Her select few. Never mind that the weekly meetings kept her from changing the wallpaper in her own living room once a month now—like that postpartum-maddened woman in
The Yellow Wallpaper
—now that she didn't have work to keep her distracted. Johnny didn't need her as much as he used to. He was seven, and though he still had ADD, would always have ADD, he was getting by in camp, and in school. He had an IEP now, a plan to help him through the meltdowns and the times he sat at his desk lining up the bits of paper he'd torn from the edge of the holes on his notebook. No medication: Charlie had wanted to try it, so
they'd tried it, and it made Johnny's mouth dry, kept him up at night, caused him to gain six pounds—though it was supposed to impede appetite. He didn't need that, to be chubby as well as distracted. He had always been beautiful: pale gold hair, when her other children were brown haired. Green eyes, the kind with the golden center and rusty flecks in the irises. She'd loved him as a baby, perhaps more than her others, not that she played favorites, but Johnny had been hard to soothe, he'd needed her so much; she'd despaired of ever not carrying him in the snuggly, and then he was three, and then because the teachers had hinted he had something wrong with him, she was taking him out of the extended-day preschool all her children had attended. Then the gym class where he was the only one who wouldn't come to circle. The two-hour Montessori class was too much independence; he dumped paint on the rug squares when all the other children carried their Dixie cups and brushes with care. They didn't disparage him there, but they did suggest that at four he might not be ready for preschool. Then specialists, then a diagnosis. The drugs when he was five. One month later she took him off, not really consulting with Charlie; not really caring if he cared.