Into Thin Air (18 page)

The days had a dangerous edge. He'd go outside and find the buses had changed numbers or a street had suddenly changed names. He suddenly wanted to go to the neighborhood barbecues, to sit on a wicker chair and not think of anything except how much mustard he wanted on his hot dog; but he was no longer invited. He sometimes wheeled his daughter in the cheap pram he had bought with Lee, but no one ever stopped.

When people walked by they averted their eyes. He sometimes thought if he put in a garden, the men at least might be forced into talking to him, and then, if he plowed it over, the women would befriend him. He wasn't working, and school wouldn't start up again for another month. He had the time and money to tide him through the summer, so one day he went outside and tried to dig the yard, but after an hour the bugs bothered him so much that he gave it up entirely.

He didn't know what to do with his daughter. Looking down at her, he felt all his emotions drying. If there were no baby, there might still be Lee. Lee was too young for a child. He was suddenly sure that she had left the baby, not him, and for one blinding moment he saw himself speeding away from the hospital with her, the two of them, outlaws on the road, each holding no other hand but the other's.

His daughter cried, and he picked her up roughly, like one of the brown bags he packed at Jack's supermarket. She stared at him, and he averted his eyes, The phone rang, and a voice told him a blond woman was spotted two hours away at a small bar called Bruntello's. He plucked up the keys and resettled his daughter on his hip, and as soon as he felt how wet she was, she started to cry. He rushed her to the changing table and began prying open diaper pins; he hastily dusted her rosy bottom with powder, and the whole time he imagined the blond woman, his Lee, taking her time, folding her long legs into a strange red convertible and driving away. When the baby cried, recoiling from the prick of the diaper pin, Jim hastily patted her on her shoulder, “Okay,” he said, fixing the pin and jerking her up into his arms again.

He drove out with a dry and quiet baby beside him, but when he got to the bar the parking lot was empty. “Up you go,” he said, picking up his daughter. Inside, two men sat nursing watery-looking drinks at a leather bar. There were four red vinyl booths, and only one of them was filled, with an older couple silently eating burgers. The bartender looked as young as Jim, and shook his head at the baby. “Isn't she a little young to be boozing?” he said.

“Did you see this woman?” Jim said, pulling out Lee's photo. The bartender blinked. “No, but I wouldn't mind seeing her,” he said, grinning.

“Did you see her?” Jim pulled at a waitress's arm. She gave the photo a frank stare, “There was a woman with hair like that,” she said, “But I don't know if it was this one.” She frowned. “Anyway, she left about ten minutes ago. By herself.”

“Fine,” Jim said angrily. “Ten minutes. That's just fine.”

The whole way home, he ignored the baby. She was quiet until the last half hour of the way home, and then she began to wail angrily. “Yeah, well I'm mad, too,” he said, swerving to avoid another car.

“How's my little darling?” his mother kept asking. She insisted he put the phone to the baby's ear so she could warble melodies, so she could tell her granddaughter a bedtime story. “What a good girl,” Gladys said, but Jim always felt hollow. He boiled bottles and cleaned diapers and fed his baby, but his heart stayed numb.

The next day he woke at ten. The silence in the house suddenly scared him. Bolting upright, he went into the baby's room. She was completely still, and when he touched her she seemed ravaged with fever. Panicked, he called the pediatrician. Her voice was calm and dry. She kept asking him questions, and when she was finally silent, he shivered. “Wash her with alcohol,” the doctor said. “Cool her down. You do that, and if she's not better by tomorrow morning, you take her in.” Terrified, he soaked cotton swabs and stroked them on the baby's fevered skin, and this time she started crying. She fretted in his arms. He was sure her cries would fuel whatever rumors were floating around the neighborhood, but he didn't really care. He half hoped someone would come banging at his door, just so he could get some advice out of them.

He needed a baby thermometer, but he was afraid to put her in the car, to take her outside. He sat on the chair and rocked her. He sang every pop song he could remember. Finally he dipped his finger in wine and let her small mouth work at it. He didn't know if alcohol was bad for a baby, but it quieted her down, and when she fell asleep he laid her down on the bed and watched her, balanced on one elbow.

He stayed with her all that night, just watching her, and in the middle of the night he noticed she had cooled. He stroked her forehead, and suddenly he fell dizzyingly in love. The baby clutched his finger.

In the morning he named her. He laid her in her crib and got out a phone book and traced a finger down until he found a name he liked, “Joanna,” he said.

He began reading her stories, singing her the songs he remembered Gladys singing. He put her crib in the bedroom with him so he could hear her least sound. Sometimes at night he'd wake up and just stand over the crib, watching her, making sure she was alive.

The evenings started to cool toward fall. He began planning his courses, worrying about getting someone to sit for the baby while he was in class. Someone he could trust. He scribbled plans. The school had already promised him work/study in the library; he could get yet another loan from Jack to help meet expenses until he was on his feet.

He was puzzling over his books one evening when he noticed the woman next door, Maureen, had begun sitting on her porch, too. She was always wearing a short, summery dress, her curly bobbed hair held back by a plastic headband. She couldn't be more than ten years older than he was.

Sometimes, when he looked up, he saw her watching him, and defiantly he stared right back. He wouldn't drop his gaze until she dropped hers. She hadn't said one word to him since Lee had disappeared. Her husband, Mel, nodded to him mornings, though, but since Jim didn't garden, he didn't care.

One cool summer evening Maureen simply walked over with a covered casserole. Jim stood up when he saw her. “I bet you eat terribly,” she said. “You tell me where's your oven inside and I'll heat this for you.” He nodded her inside, trailing her to the kitchen. She put the casserole in and then turned awkwardly to him.

“That's some baby you've got there,” she said, “Can I hold her?”

“Go ahead,” he said. Maureen picked her up, soothing the tender skin with one finger.

Maureen ended up staying the evening. She put the baby to bed and then played a long careful game of gin rummy with Jim. “Well, here we are,” she said.

“How come you came over?” he said.

She shrugged. “You look harmless enough.”

“Is that what the neighbors think these days?”

“I didn't say the neighbors, I said me.” She dusted her hands off along her sides. “Listen, who cares what they say. All anyone needs is one friend, anyway, and as far as I'm concerned you got me.”

She stretched. “Well, Mel's waiting,” she said.

“You can come back anytime,” Jim said.

“Then I will,” Maureen said.

He didn't expect her back, but two nights later she came, this time with a toy for Joanna and a fresh pack of cards. “Mel's working late,” she said. “Lots of nights I just feel stir crazy alone in the house.”

She stayed nearly until midnight, until Mel's car pulled into the drive, and as soon as she saw her husband, her face brightened. She put down what she claimed was a winning hand and sprang from the porch to greet him. “I'll see you later, Jim,” she called, leaving him to the night.

He told Joanna stories about Lee. She loved the color blue. She never combed her hair so it looked combed. She'd once cracked an egg into her hair because she thought it would make it shiny. The baby, moon-faced, peered up at Jim.

How could someone just disappear? Presto change-o. He wouldn't let her. He left Lee's clothing in the closets. He did what laundry of hers he could find and folded it neatly into her drawers as if she were on nothing more extended than a vacation. Her hairbrush, still sifted through with blond strands, he refused to clean.

Sometimes he talked to her. He was gentle at first, begging her to come home. He promised her they'd move to the country. He told her story after story about their courtship, as if she could hear him, as if his memory were more compelling than her own. “We were so happy,” he insisted. Some mornings, though, he shouted at her. He accused her of being selfish, of being so fucking stubborn he'd like to put his two hands about her neck and kill her. “I can't do this without you!” he cried.

He dreaded the nights. Sleep was no escape because Lee was always there, prowling restlessly, eluding him. In the dream he'd go to call her and find that he couldn't remember the one crucial digit. He'd trail her down a street only to have her turn and see him, her face indifferent. Over and over he dreamed she was having a heart attack. He slung her body around him like a coat, He got her to the hospital. “I'll never leave you,” she gasped, and then her body would crumple. One night he dreamed Lee was dying. He heard her screaming, and then he began screaming, too. His terror woke him, his scream, and then, there in the night, harmonizing with him, was the baby's scream. Stunned, he got up, kicking off the covers. She was thrashing in her crib, her small face contorted, streaked with red. She didn't calm down; she stiffened when he picked her up, her body quivering in his hands. “Want to compare dreams?” he said. “Who had the worst of it, do you think, you or Daddy?”

He brought her back to his bed and buttressed her in with pillows. “We'll keep each other company,” he told her.

He called Lee's old number at the Silver Spoon, half thinking she might answer. He called Information in different cities and asked for listings for Lee Archer. Only once did he get a listing, in Atlanta, and terrified, he dialed. A man answered, his voice heavy with sleep. “Is Lee there?” Jim said, trying to sound casual. If pressed, to get to Lee he'd lie. He could be a job prospect. He could be a relative. “Isn't it awfully late for this?” the man said.

“It's an emergency,” Jim said.

The man sighed. “Hold on,” he said.

“Hello?” a woman said, a voice as distinctly different from Lee's as his own, and Jim hung up.

One night, when he was most lonely, he cooked Lee's favorite dinner, imagining that this might be the night she'd come home. He fried chicken so crisp and greasy, he had to drain it on four layers of thick paper toweling. He set two places with real linen napkins and silverware and a rose in a water glass. He steamed peas and pale baby carrots from Mel's garden. He arranged Joanna in a plastic crib by the table, and for a while he waited until the food was cold, the chicken congealing. Every time a car door slammed, he told himself it was Lee. Every voice in the distance could be his wife. He waited until the bit of appetite he had had was smothered, and then he left everything on the table, as if somehow the leftovers might still summon his wife home to him.

Every week he went to the international bookstore and bought six different newspapers from all over the country, pruning the pages for stories, Lee could be anywhere. Every body that was found made him terrified because it could be hers. He examined every picture of a crowd, circling faces that might be hers. He felt an odd camaraderie with what he called the “others,” the people with missing sons or daughters, with husbands who left. People did show up again, he told himself. Embarrassed, he began buying the tabloids at the supermarkets. He liked
The Planet
, he had a fondness for the
Truth Universal News
. There were stories about people who were thought to be dead who suddenly showed up. There were colorful stories about amnesia. Could that be possible, Lee wandering in Oklahoma, being a clerk in pastel suits, using the name of Delia or Anna or whatever name she might see on the back of a cereal box? He imagined Lee's face flashed across a TV screen.

He went to the Silver Spoon, where Lee had worked, the baby papoosed against him. One of the waitresses knew him and refused to serve him. When forced to by the owner, she smashed his glass of water on the table so hard it chipped. She let his order cool before she slapped it down, and even when he left a tip so large it was embarrassing, she snubbed him. “What is
wrong
with you?” he said.

She jerked her arm away. “I knew Lee, that's what's wrong,” she said. “You figure it out.”

Memory was stronger than the present. He could see Lee so clearly that it pained him. He walked into a psychic's office once, a storefront with a translucent white palm in the window. A woman in a blue dress gave him a sober, teasing smile. “How can I help?” she said, and he was suddenly so grateful, he burst into tears.

She unfolded a deck of cards. A few fell, sliding onto the dirty floor, but she scooped them up again. “No matter,” she said cheerfully.

“My wife is missing,” he blurted. She glanced sharply at him. “Well now,” she said. She pressed the cards back into a pack. “I have something for you.” She paused. “Candles. Very special ones only I can make. You bum one every night for seven days and they will bring her back,” she said. “You mind, though, if she's dead, they'll only bring her spirit back, and then you'll be in real trouble. You'll need me all over again. One man—he brought his wife back in spirit and she kept hovering over him. In the subways. In a diner. He had to buy more candles to put her spirit at rest.” She blinked at Jim. “It's up to you. Twenty dollars a candle.”

“Forty for all of them,” Jim said.

She sighed. “Did you know the dead take things? You look in your own house. Anything shiny's missing, you'll know who took it. You have electrical appliances? The dead love electricity. When things go on the fritz, that's them.”