He's Gone (23 page)

“Spain, no,” Nathan says. “He’d be more like … Cape Cod.”

“Cape Cod?”

“No, no. I’m not suggesting anything. I just mean, not there. Not Spain. He’d think … dirt and grime and bad traffic.”

I don’t respond. I listen for stirring, Abby waking … I want her to be able to sleep, yes, but, truthfully, I feel bad about this phone call. Ian himself would disapprove. Calling a man late at night? It’s not exactly appropriate, even if we’re discussing
him
. But the house is still. No one’s caught me doing anything wrong.

“I went to see Bethy and Kristen today, and when I was leaving, I thought I saw him. This man had his back turned to me, he was unlocking a car door, and I could have sworn for a minute it was Ian. His same body frame …”

“I saw his haircut in Starbucks. I saw his coat in the bank,” Nathan says. “I even called out his name, and this guy turns around and he’s, like, ten years older with a goatee.”

“Ian tried to wear a goatee for a while.”

“I remember that.”

“I think goatees look evil.”

“Some facial hair is definitely malicious. Those little mustaches.”

“The Hitler ones.”

“Right. And even those bushy mustaches on big guys in camouflage jackets.”

“The walrus ones.”

“Yeah.”

There is more silence. I hear him breathing. It reminds me of the hours Ian and I used to spend on the phone together, being in the same place when we couldn’t be in the same place. When he
lived in his apartment, we once watched
West Side Story
together over our phones after the kids went to bed.

“There was a woman at the party,” I say to Nathan.

“I can’t hear you. You’re whispering.”

“There was a woman at the party.”

“Okay …”

“Red dress.”

“I’m not good at this. I never remember what people are wearing. I don’t even remember what
I
was wearing that night.”

“She was talking to Ian.”

“Dani, there were, like, two hundred people there.”

“Out on the lawn, at the park. After all the speeches, when the party was winding down? Some people were still dancing, but mostly everyone had started to drift outside—Why are you avoiding me on this? You know exactly who I mean.”

“I’m thinking.
You
were wearing black.”

I smile a little in that darkness. Nathan is sweet. “Blond? Long hair. Big … How else to say … Big boobs. Really big.”

“Oh, right. Desiree Harris.”

“Men—you definitely remember the
boobs
.”

He chuckles, guilty. “Um, she was kinda advertising.”

“Kinda
?
”

“She’s in marketing.”

“How fitting.”

“She’s new. Hasn’t really proven herself, not in my opinion.”

“He had his hand … you know, on the back of her dress.” I hold my hand up in the dark, replicating the move.

“I could see why you were pissed, okay? But it was just Ian being Ian.”

“You did know who I was talking about.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You’re totally barking up the wrong tree. I’m telling you. And
Desiree
? No.”

“Why not?”

“She’s not his type.”

I don’t want to argue with him, but he’s wrong. The exposed breasts, that showiness that spoke of parties and drinking and liking a good time—it was Mary all over again. Even if these were precisely the things Ian claimed he’d grown weary of, you could miss your old life. Even if you wanted that divorce, there were parts of a person and parts of your past that inspired an illogical yearning. “She caught him by his cuff. You know, grabbed his wrist.”

I could see why you were pissed …

All at once, I remember it. I see it. I shut my eyes, and it’s there. Black sky, starry night, the music drifting toward the lawn, the back strap of my heels digging into my skin. I should have worn them around the house beforehand to break them in. I was looking for Ian—I wanted to go home. I had spent the last twenty minutes stuck in conversation with a middle-aged couple who were raving about their trip to Fiji. They had told me about the locals and the food and the place they stayed, and I had heard the expression
Like Hawaii used to be
so many times that I lost count. The wine (three glasses, three and a half) and those Vicodins (two, yes, I had taken two, not one, I admit it) were swarming uneasily in my head, and I had responded to the couple with a thickness in my mouth that I didn’t trust.

My calves ached from standing. My energy for small talk had been used up, and the dessert table had only lemon tarts left. Where was Ian?

Wait. I could hear his laugh. People chatted in small groups on the lawn, and some car engines were starting up as folks headed home. There he was. And, oh, look. Perfect. There she
was, too, in that red dress, and he was moving her toward the building, his hand guiding her. She made some joke and caught his sleeve, and I couldn’t read his face.

I felt a rise of anger. Bitterness clawed through the comfy blur I’d arranged for myself. It really pissed me off, it did. I had put up with all his ridiculous comments and monitoring, the ways he was sure some man might see up my skirt or take my friendliness as flirtation, and now this. He guarded me like the prize jewel in his personal museum, and yet I’d never given him reason to doubt my fidelity, never. He was the one. He was. His insecurity—it meant you tolerated his criticism and his ego. Well, I was done tolerating.

I could see why you were pissed
. The grass, my muddy feet. His grim face.

“I think I should talk to her,” I say to Nathan. I’m thinking about that cuff link.

“Dani, you know, this is crazy. I understand that you want to pursue every avenue, but he loves you. I’m sure there’s an explanation, yeah, but not that one. I mean, I think it’s time we face the possibility … He might … Something might have happened—”

“Don’t say it, Nathan.” Dead. He’s dead.
Don’t think it, don’t think it, don’t think it
.

“Okay, I understand. I get that. And he could’ve only checked out for a while. That could be. He’s punishing us. Believe me, I can see it.”

“If so, he’s a bastard.”

“That’s fair. More than fair.”

“You know what I thought today? What if we never know? What if things just go on and on like this, and we never find out where he is or what happened to him?”

“We will.”

“But what if we don’t? Can you imagine living with questions like this? Forever questions? Wondering for the rest of your life?”

“You gotta hang on here. Ian is logical, isn’t he? Methodical. There will
be
a reason.”

Yes, but Ian held to that reason and the “right ways” of doing things, he
clutched
that restraint and that logic and that perfection, because, just on the other side of all that, sitting so, so close, was irrationality and anarchy and every hideous thing let free. On the shadow side of perfection is fear of uncontrollable rage, but I don’t tell this to Nathan. I know this because I’ve seen it. Once. I saw it in that very same park, during a picnic gone wrong.

Your history, dear God, it follows you. It’s under your skin and in your cells and it flows through your blood, and so you can’t escape it. You grew up hiding from the storms under your own roof, and so you look for lightning to live with, even to marry. Your second-grade self is told by your arrogant father that you’re no good, and so to you no one else is, either. Of course, the two of you, he and you, you rescue each other. You dodge the big shadows and cling to each other, two lost souls, as night falls on that lifeboat.

How could Ian
not
collect butterflies, same as his father?

“There are lots of possibilities, Nathan. Reasons behind the reason, even.”

“And then there are just plain accidents,” Nathan says.

But I don’t believe that Ian has had an accident, and I doubt Nathan does, either. Something’s happened, something bad, and I am becoming surer of it. I am so angry, for one thing. I want to rip those shirts off their hangers and tear them with my teeth. All this anger means something.

Dr. Shana Berg had said it all those years ago.
You must be furious
. Her office was in a house on Capitol Hill in the city. It was an old Seattle foursquare, with crown moldings and high ceilings. The waiting room had stiff chairs and outdated magazines, but I liked the musty smell in there. It was a good kind of musty. It made me feel as if people had lived there for years, weathering the good and bad of life. Dr. Berg appeared in the waiting room and called my name, adding a question mark to the end of it. It was a good place for a question mark, all right. I rose, and she shook my hand in a way that was both kind and efficient. Things were going to get handled, the handshake promised. Well, I had a lot of hope. She had gray hair cut bluntly and a warm face with wrinkles, which I decided were signs of wisdom. I needed wisdom. Poor thing, she probably went home and burned her meat loaf like everyone else, but I required more from her than that.

Mark and I had been separated for a solid year by then. I had filed for divorce shortly after he moved out.
Filed
—it sounds so orderly. As if you place a finished marriage in its own efficient folder and shut the drawer. The truth was, Mark had gone nuts, and there’s nothing orderly about nuts. He was fighting for custody of Abby. He vowed to keep fighting for as long as it took. He had fired his attorney and had become his own, and you know the saying about people who do that. He’d made it clear: He would not lose. This had become the ultimate sporting event, and he was wearing his cleats, and he would break every rule as long as it meant winning. He was running up enormous debt on our credit cards. He was making ominous nonverbal threats. He sat outside the house with his car running. He climbed in an open window to make himself a sandwich with my groceries. The sliced turkey was missing, and so was the journal I kept by my bed.

After Ian’s email, we had begun to meet in secret again. The
hands and mouths and desire—it was a place to disappear into and aim toward. When I looked into his eyes, I forgot my loss. I forgot my terror, even. There was a future here, not just this turbulent and painful past–present.

Several months later, Ian left Mary and moved into Motel 6. I visited him there that first night. It was like a hospital room, without the calming assurances of sterility. The walls were white, the floor was hard linoleum, but there was a hair in the bathtub, and the soap had been used. It was a thin surfboard sliver on the sink. I remember that. The room was too hot and the thermostat was complicated. There was no television, and the bed was hard; there was no comfort anywhere, aside from one white towel hanging from the bar in the bathroom. Of course, the mission was doomed. The place was prison cell more than hospital, come to think of it, which I guess was what he felt he deserved. The wrongness of leaving his children and the lure of the leather couches he’d bought with his own money sent him back within two days. He wanted to be a good father and a good man. He wanted to live a life more true to himself. He didn’t think he could have both of those things without paying dearly. He was right. I understood his terrible conflict. I couldn’t have left Mark if it meant leaving Abby. Even in my situation, I could never have done that.

I told Dr. Shana Berg my whole story as she listened, her hands folded carefully in her lap. I looked to see if there was a wedding ring on the telltale finger, but there wasn’t. Her hands were bare and they seemed strong. They were the kind of hands that would be able to grow things and chop an onion and start a fire in a fireplace. That’s right—there was a fireplace in her office, too. I almost forgot. A brick one that maybe didn’t work any longer, but it added a warmth to the room, anyway, even unlit. A hearth.

I spilled it all—my fear and worry, Ian’s indecision. I spoke of Abby. I spoke of exhaustion and defeat and financial panic. I spoke of sleeplessness and longing and of the helplessness I felt being stuck in one place for so long. But Dr. Shana Berg kept talking about anger.

I’d
be furious
, she said.

I don’t know if I’m furious so much as terrified
, I said.

You’ve got a bully that you’re trying to pacify and a guy who can’t make up his mind that you’re trying to pacify. I’d be
pissed.

Anger doesn’t feel very fair. That’d hardly be nice. I got everyone here. It’s my own fault
.

Nice can be a place to hide
.

Well, she was probably right.
It’s all I’ve known. Since the first grade, when Mrs. Franklin sat me next to Michael Mulls, the bully, to “be a good influence.”

How tiring
, Dr. Shana Berg said.

Isn’t that what we learn? Don’t talk back, be seen and not heard, don’t ask for that candy bar in the store?

You probably wanted to pull out Michael Mulls’s chair right before he sat down
.