Once Upon a Time, There Was You (20 page)

Irene imagines John coming through the door, hastily packed suitcase in hand, his cowlick at attention because he will not have cared one whit about grooming himself. In his face will be the same anguish she is feeling. She thinks she will embrace him, which she has not done for so long. But she remembers what it was like. She remembers how it felt to put her arms around him and to feel his arms around her; he always rested his clasped hands just above her sacrum in a way that she liked very much, and his hold was neither too tight nor too loose. She remembers his smell; she remembers how his voice reverberated in her ear when he held her against him and spoke. His voice was deep, soothing; people used to tell him he should do late-night radio.

She lifts her shirt and lays her hand across the bare skin of her belly, then closes her eyes and feels herself relaxing, despite everything. She should put on some decent clothes. She should fix her hair a little. She will, in a minute. He always liked her in green, she remembers that.

21

B
one weary and throat aching, John climbs into the cab at SFO and gives the driver the address. “First time to the city?” the driver asks, with a kind of gloating self-satisfaction that puts John over the edge.

“You know, this may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone thinks this place is fantastic,” John says. “And
most
people have been here, I’d venture to say. It’s not like it’s the Galápagos Islands.”

The guy starts to turn around in his seat but elects instead to give John a quick once-over in the rearview. Then he turns the radio on. He’s a young man, a kid, really, a thin, bespectacled guy whose long hair is pulled back into a ponytail. He wears a denim shirt open at the neck, a blue jean jacket with a discreet tear at one shoulder. It feels to John that he’s an artist of some sort, a musician maybe. John has a kind of talent at guessing people’s occupations; on more than one occasion, someone has looked at him, astonished (or, in some cases, with a great deal of suspicion), and asked, “How do
you
know?”

“You a musician?” John asks.

“No.” He turns the radio up louder.

Okay
, John thinks.
I don’t blame you
. He looks out the window at other drivers, many of whom are on their phones, and feels the
usual irritation, the same kind of irritation that he supposes is often directed at him when he’s driving and on the phone. He figures everyone more or less shares the same belief: No one should be on the phone when they’re driving except oneself.

When they reach the avenues and John can see the ocean, he watches the waves roll in and a kind of calmness descends, a kind of chagrin, too. “Listen, I’m sorry I was so short,” he tells the driver. Micah, his name is, if the information encased in plastic on the back of the seat is accurate.

“No problem. I guess I just always assume everyone’s in the same mood I am. You know?”

John nods. “Yeah.”

“You here for a funeral?” Micah asks. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No,” John says, and the cold he suddenly feels runs all the way to the soles of his feet. He points ahead. “You’re going to want to take a right in two blocks.”

“Yeah, I know. I got you covered. Don’t worry. You can just sit back and relax, okay? I’ll have you right to the door in about ten minutes.”

John sits back. But he does anything but relax.
She could be home
, he keeps saying to himself, even though Irene has not called him to say so. He hadn’t called her when he landed, either, because he didn’t want to hear Sadie was still not there.

When they pull up to Irene’s three-flat, John gets out of the cab and looks up at the second-floor window to see if Irene is watching for him. No. He pushes the buzzer to get let in the vestibule door but hears nothing. He pushes again. Damn it, the thing is broken. He goes to stand beneath the living room window.
“Irene!”
he yells. No response. He takes out his cellphone to call her—what the hell is she doing?

Maybe, he thinks, Sadie got home and Irene is in her bedroom
with her, yelling at her, and doesn’t want to be interrupted. He hopes Irene
is
yelling at her; he hopes Sadie’s that safe. He does have keys, ones that were given him when Sadie and Irene first moved in, and he understood without being told that he was not to use them except in an emergency. Well, this qualifies.

He takes out his wallet and finds the keys stashed behind a picture of Sadie—she’s standing before this very place, grinning. It’s a recent photo, one she gave him when she last visited. Seeing her face unnerves him; his hands tremble as he puts the key in the lock. The hallway smells of something: rice? Behind one of the doors on the first floor he hears someone loudly talking on the phone:
I’m telling you, they’re taking over the neighborhood; they’re buying the place up with cash!
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks what he always does when he comes to visit here:
How can Irene and Sadie live so close to other people? Don’t they want their privacy?

He bounds up to the second floor and breathlessly knocks at the door, then lets himself in. He sees no one.

“Irene?” he says. “Sadie?”

He walks down the hall and comes first to Sadie’s bedroom door, which is cracked half open. He pushes it open all the way, hope in his throat, and there’s Irene, sound asleep. Asleep!

“Irene!”
He says it loudly, cruelly, as he meant to, but Irene looks so frightened when her eyes jerk open that he regrets it.

“What are you
do
ing?” he says.

“John.” She sits up, swallows, pushes her hair out of her eyes. She’s wearing a pair of yoga pants and a gray T-shirt; she’s lost weight since he last saw her.

“What are you doing?” he says, again.

“Well, I’ve been up all night. And I just lay down here for a minute, and I … you know. How was your trip?” She’s still half asleep; she must be, to ask such a ridiculous question.

“You might want to stay up, Irene. Our daughter is missing. You might want to be paying attention.”

She crosses her arms, her hands gripping her elbows tightly. “Oh, John, please. Don’t blame me. I didn’t do anything except let her go rock climbing, which I only did because you talked me into it.”

“Assuming that it was safe, Irene! Assuming that, since you’re the one who’s
here
, you would know if it was
safe
.”

She says nothing, stares at the floor, rocks nearly imperceptibly back and forth.

He drops his bag and goes to sit on the chair in the corner of the room. “Has anything else happened?”

She shakes her head.

“Anybody call about anything?”

“No.”

“I was thinking on the plane … What about Sadie’s computer, do you think there’s anything on there that can help us?”

“It’s not here.”

“What do you mean it’s not here?”

“It’s not here, John! I can’t find it! If you want to look for it, look for it! I’ve looked everywhere, and it’s not here! I don’t know; sometimes she takes it over to Meghan’s; once, she forgot it there.”

“Where does Meghan live?”

Irene doesn’t answer.

“You don’t know where Meghan lives?”

“They moved recently, and I …” She looks up at him. “No. I don’t know where Meghan lives. She and Sadie don’t have play-dates anymore.”

“Well, did you call Meghan’s parents?”

“They are unlisted.”

“Why are they un
list
ed?”

She only looks at him.

He takes in a breath to calm himself down. “Okay. Okay. You did call the police. You did manage to do that.”

“You know, John, I have been sitting here waiting and every second is like a day and I was so glad you were coming because I thought we could
help
each other, I thought we would
console
each other, but now—”

“
Console
each other?
Console
? Irene, I don’t even know how to respond to that. We need to focus on Sadie, not on making you feel better!”

“I didn’t
mean
that. I didn’t mean
me
, I meant …” She sighs, shakes her head. “Why are you so angry at
me
? The police weren’t even concerned when I filed the report, it was like they were just trying to humor me.
Oh, so what, an eighteen-year-old isn’t calling her mommy to report in
. The guy at the desk didn’t even sit
up
straight! She’s not a minor; apparently she has the right to disappear. And everybody seems to think she’ll come back today and that I’m just being hysterical!”

She stands, grabs Kleenex from the box on the nightstand, and John sees a huge pile of used tissues there. She looks away from him to say, “They’d say you’re being hysterical, too, flying out here like this.”

“Do you think we are? Overreacting?” His voice is normal now, his anger dissipated. Why
is
he so mad at Irene? She
didn’t
do anything.

“No, I think we both know Sadie, and they don’t. This is not like her. There’s something wrong. I can feel it.”

“Do you think she’s hurt?”

Irene nods, miserably.

He does not want to ask this; he is afraid to, in part because he respects Irene’s intuitive abilities, but mostly because it is a horrible and impossible question that should never, never be asked
about anyone’s daughter. But he hears himself say, “Do you think she’s dead?”

“No. No. I don’t think she’s dead.” She makes a gulping sound, swallowing. “Honestly, John, I really don’t. But I do think she’s in some sort of trouble, and I just wish so hard I could reach her. Or that I’d get some news of some kind that would at least let me know—”

The phone rings, and they both freeze. Irene looks at him, and he squares his shoulders, sets his jaw, and picks up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Dad?”
Sadie says.

“Oh, thank God,” John says, and sits on the bed beside Irene. “Sadie! Where are you?”

“What are you doing in San Francisco?”

He has to laugh. He just has to. Irene snatches the phone from him. “Sadie,” she says. “Are you all right? Tell me! Are you all right?”

She listens for a while, smiling, her face radiant, and then her expression changes. “Get home right now,” she says. “Right this second.”

“What?” John says. “What is it?”

Sadie speaks again and John tries to put his ear next to the receiver so he can hear, too, but Irene pulls away from him. She gestures angrily into the air, as though she is pushing something away. “I don’t care. You get yourself home right now. And don’t you dare bring him with you!”

“What is it?”
John says. “What happened?”

“I said I don’t
care
,” Irene tells Sadie. “You come here alone. You show your father and me the respect we deserve and you get home right now and you come home alone. I cannot even … You come home right now. Please please please come home right now.” A pause while she listens to Sadie, and then she says, “Absolutely
not. If you want to talk to him, you can do it here.” She hangs up and stares wild-eyed at John.

“What
happened
?” he says.

For a moment, Irene sits unmoving, her mouth slightly open. She looks like a boxer who’s just taken a hard blow to the head.

Then, “It’s bad,” she says.

“What happened?”

“She got married.”

“What?”

“I know. She got married. Oh, my God. She’s eighteen years old and she got married, John.”

“When?”

“Last night. In Reno. To some guy named Ron, whom I’ve never even met.”

“Irene, what the fuck is going on around here?”

She looks over at him for a long moment, and, in spite of his anger, he admires the little star of brown in her otherwise green eyes; he’d forgotten about that. But Irene is angry now, too. She stands and points to the bedroom door. “Get out.”

“Irene—”

“Get out!” Her voice cracks, yelling at him. “If all you can do is blame me, get the hell out of here!”

He throws his hands up. “Well, what would
you
do, Irene? What would you do if all this happened on
my
watch? Wouldn’t you be angry at me? Wouldn’t you blame me?”

“No. I would not. I would blame Sadie. And I would try to help you. I would expect that, as her parents, we would help each other.”

She’s right. He knows it. He hangs his head, stares at his feet. She’s right. For all her faults, she was never someone quick to blame others. As he supposes he is. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I guess we should talk about what we need to say to her.”

“You know what, John? You know what?”

“
What
, Irene.” He apologized! What else does she want?

But she says nothing. She leaves Sadie’s bedroom, stomps down the hall to her own, and slams the door. He hears her sobbing.

From below comes the sound of someone banging on the ceiling, and a muffled “Keep it down! For Christ’s sake!”

He goes into the living room and sits in a chair by the window to watch for his daughter to come home. After a few minutes, he hears Irene stop crying.

“Irene?” he calls.

No answer.

“Irene! I just have to ask you something!”

Again, no answer.

He goes to stand outside her door. “Did she say how far away she is?”

“She’ll be here in about an hour.”

“Listen, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sorry I blamed you. I was upset. I’m still upset. Jeez. She got married? Did you have a
clue
?”

Silence.

He rests his forehead against the door. “Irene, please come out.” He waits a moment, then tries the doorknob, fully expecting that it will be locked. But it is not. He opens the door, then knocks anyway. She is lying on the bed, curled around a pillow, facing away from him. He walks slowly over to her. Her eyes are open, but she won’t look at him.

Gingerly, he sits on the bed beside her. “You okay?”

“No.” It comes out
Doe
, from her crying.