Picture Me Gone (6 page)

I
n the morning, Gil says we’re going on a road trip. He says it almost gaily; we are both keen to move on. There doesn’t seem to be enough air in this house, though I don’t know how that can be.

I’ll miss Gabriel. He claps his hands now when he sees me or I call his name, and he snuggles into my shoulder when I pick him up. I like the feel of him, compact and much heavier than he looks. Like a bundle. I’ve never known a baby as a person and now I can see why people like them. When he looks at me and smiles I feel chosen.

Gabriel B-B-Billington, I sing. Gabriel B-B-Billington! Gabriel giggles and waves his hands. Do you think he knows his name? I ask Suzanne.

Of course. She smiles. He’ll miss you when you go.

Do you think he misses his dad? I look at her.

Suzanne’s mouth pulls up tighter than ever. Does his dad miss him? That would be my question.

I must look a little shocked because she reaches out and touches my elbow. Don’t worry, Mila. Everything will work out in the end. She pushes her hair back off her face with a tired gesture and I think, What end? The end of time?

After a minute I say, Do you want Matthew to come back?

Suzanne frowns. Yes, of course I want him to come back. She glances at Gabriel, then back at me. How could I not?

As answers go, this is not the same as saying, Oh my, yes, if only god would send him home tomorrow I would die happy. It’s closer to: Do I want him back? Not especially. But if he happened to come home I’d certainly be happy for Gabriel.

Gabriel’s much too little to understand any of this. I guess he’ll get the picture someday, but I hope it’s not soon. I’ve only known him for one day but already I feel protective of him. If you could see his big fat smiley face and his little pursed-up birdie mouth, you’d feel the same. I find it hard to believe that a person could walk away from that face.

Suzanne’s phone rings and I carry Gabriel into the living room and plunk him on the sofa. I prop him up on all sides with pillows then throw a squashy yellow ball at him and he flaps at it with his hands. Flap flap flap. He’s no good at catching but I don’t want to make him feel bad so I take the ball and throw it again. Flap flap flap flapflapflap!!! He makes a high squeaking noise like a bat. Gil is standing behind me, watching.

He’s very endearing.

He is, I say. He makes you love him. I throw the ball again and he flips and flaps but I can see that his face is starting to screw up like last time, so we stop playing ball and I snuggle him into the corner of the squashy sofa and jiggle him on my lap and sing him a song and he calms down and doesn’t scream again.

I wouldn’t leave him, I say.

Gil shrugs a little and frowns and doesn’t say
There’s nowt so queer as folk,
which is another of his favorite expressions and probably one he doesn’t particularly want to apply to his oldest friend, it being not very flattering. He doesn’t look happy.

What are the possibilities? I speak quietly because I can still hear Suzanne on the phone in the next room. She has quite a bright voice on—maybe it’s someone at the university or a neighbor she doesn’t know very well. She even laughs a little to show that she’s OK, but it doesn’t have that effect.

I suppose he might have got mixed up in something he shouldn’t have.

Like?

Like bad company.

What sort of bad company? For an instant I imagine something like the gas company, only full of villains.

Gil shrugs again. Drugs? Gambling? He raises an eyebrow. Smuggling, prostitution, contraband, arms trading, money laundering.

My expression makes him laugh.

Well, you asked, he says. And no, I don’t actually think Matt is running a prostitution ring. Not his style. Or at least it never was before. People do change, I suppose. Or something happens so you don’t recognize them anymore. It happens.

A wave of anxiety chokes me and I think of Catlin. I know it happens. The possibility that someone I know well can all of a sudden change makes me feel sick. I pull Gabriel close and kiss him so Gil won’t see how I feel.

Though more usually it’s the other way round, Gil continues. More usually you don’t see someone for thirty years and when you meet up again it’s exactly the way it was back then.

He thinks for a minute, and then says, Matt’s had a bad time. It probably goes back to Owen, but what do I know? Maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe he’s gay and living a lie. I’ve known him a very long time, he says. But you never really know what’s going on in someone else’s head.
There’s nowt so queer as folk,
he says.

This makes me smile and Gil looks up and blinks, as if he’s forgotten I’m here. And that’s the end of today’s lecture, he says as Suzanne comes back in, staring at her phone accusingly.

What lecture? she asks, but it sounds more automatic than curious.

I’m still snuggled up with Gabriel but when he sees his mum he begins flapping his hands and making his high-pitched bat noise. Suzanne’s phone rings again. She looks at the number, answers it, and her voice changes once more. Let me phone you back, she says and turns her attention to Gabriel, sweeping him up out of my lap.

Pooh! she says, giving an exaggerated sniff. Smelly boy! And she’s off to change his nappy.

I have the nose of a bloodhound and he didn’t smell of anything but baby.

Let’s hit the road, Dad says. It’s getting late.

F
luency in two languages does not make you a translator. And translators from French to German (for instance) rarely translate from German back to French. It’s a one-way process, Gil says, but there are always exceptions.

He also says the trick is to visualize the rhythms and idioms of Language One in Language Two—to find the connections between, say, a German mind and a French mind, so that the peculiarities of one voice can be teased into the other without a
calamitous loss of meaning.
Which he always says in italics.

Today, I will be translating from American to English and back again, which should be just about manageable.

We set off at last, after Suzanne phones the insurance company twice to check that her policy covers any driver, including a foreign one. She spends a long time talking to Gil about the camp Matthew owns near the Canadian border. No phone, no electricity, no running water. No Internet. She gives us a map with the route and our destination marked in red pen. We have GPS, she says, but it gets blinky up there. Best to have the map. Matt doesn’t believe in GPS, she adds, as if he’ll be with us on the way, disapproving of our methods.

On the other side of the map is a list of phone numbers, including hers, Matthew’s mobile and the Automobile Association of America in case of an accident. She’s a very organized person, is Suzanne.

The camp, she says, is the only place I can imagine him going. Not that my imagination is anything to go by. The drive should take about seven hours. Depends on traffic. Crazy to do it in one day, and what if you get all the way there and it’s shut up and empty? This route, she says, running her finger up along a long thin lake, won’t add much to your journey but is nicer.

So we’re hunting down a missing person via the scenic route?
Hello
? Tempting though it is, I don’t say this out loud.

You’ve come all this way, she says. At least don’t spend your entire time on the thruway.

OK, Gil says. Don’t worry about us. We’re good at maps.

The expression on Suzanne’s face makes me think she’s anxious, but not about us and maybe not about Matthew. What does that leave?

I kiss Gabriel and he beams at me and waves his hands and kicks his feet so I pick him up and hug him close. So far this trip has been useful if only to let me know that I like babies. Or maybe just this one. I don’t want to put him down but I do and he turns his attention to the wooden seagull that flaps over his high chair. As we leave I don’t dare look back in case he is waving his hands and feet at me.

I’m outside dragging my bag to the car when I feel a feather-light tap on my calf. It’s Honey nudging me with her nose. Her eyes are lowered.

I glance at Gil but Suzanne is too quick for us.

Take her along, she says. Please. It’s not fair to leave her here on her own all day. And I can’t stand it, frankly. She’s his dog. If you do find him, at least she’ll be overjoyed.

I’ll ride in the back with her, I tell Gil, just till she gets used to us.

Sit in front, Suzanne says with surprising force. She’ll be fine on her own.

Gil looks like a man trapped in a revolving door.

But what about motels, he asks, do they allow dogs?

Just a minute, calls Suzanne, who has already dashed back into the house. When she returns, it’s with a slim paperback called
Driving With Dogs,
and there are pages and pages of dog-friendly motels.

Gil is stuck and I am overjoyed. Suzanne disappears once more and reappears with a brown leather lead, a bed, a bag of dry dog food and two bowls. I feel a sudden pang of empathy for Matthew. It’s hard to imagine that Suzanne doesn’t always get her own way.

I stand by the front of the car while Honey sniffs the open door and the inside, and only then steps up carefully into the back. She drops her hindquarters into a graceful sit, waiting quietly.

He took her everywhere, says Suzanne, her voice sharp as glass. I avoid looking at Gil, but I can feel the expression on his face. Like me, he has begun to side with Matthew against Suzanne, if such a side exists.

Suzanne looks everywhere but at us. She runs one hand over a scrape in the front bumper. I hope you’re not as bad a driver as your friend, she says.

All three of us are thinking of Owen and pretending we’re not, but the truth is that Gil is not the world’s best driver. Suzanne would have a nervous breakdown if she saw the state of our London car.

We wave good-bye. Suzanne holds Gabriel’s hand and makes him wave back, but she looks as if she’s forgotten us already.

• • •

It’s only a few miles to the motorway and though Gil seems a little hesitant at first, he relaxes once we’re driving in straight lines. There are two lanes in each direction, and for a while the road is lined with fast-food joints and shops with names like Garden Furniture World and Christmas Pavilion.

Honey has the resigned air of a seasoned traveler. She seems happier in the car than in the house, though it’s hard to imagine she guesses our mission. I would like to sit in the back with her. I have always wanted a dog.

Jet lag makes me hungry at funny times and I didn’t eat much breakfast so now I’m starving, and when I see a sign for
DINAH’S DINER NEXT RIGHT
, I make Gil risk our lives to swerve across the outside lane for the slip road but it’s worth it for the most beautiful silver and glass diner with metallic blue trim. Gil parks and I open the windows partway and tell Honey we’ll be back. She lays her head on her paws and doesn’t look at me.

Inside, the man at the counter waves at us to take any booth and then brings us menus in huge padded red leatherette folders. It’s translation time.

I could have one, two or three eggs any style (over easy, hard, sunny-side up, scrambled, poached), pancakes, French toast, waffles, hash browns, bacon, sausage patty or corned beef hash with toast (white/whole wheat/rye/sourdough), coffee black or regular. Regular what?

I go for two eggs sunny-side up with toast (rye), plus fresh-squeezed orange juice and at the last minute add pancakes out of greed. Gil orders the bottomless cup of coffee and French toast, which seems to come only seconds after we’ve ordered—big thick slices of bread all browned in egg and butter and served with icing sugar round the edges and a glass jug of maple syrup. I look at his plate and wish I’d ordered that.

Our waitress has a brown and white uniform with a green plastic badge that says her name is Merilynne. She’s nice and friendly and asks where us folks are from. I just love your accent, she says to me, and then tells us she has folks on her father’s side living in Lincolnshire (Lincoln-shy-er), England, who she keeps on meaning to look up and maybe drop in on someday?

I wonder if she thinks Lincolnshire is somehow connected to Abraham Lincoln, and therefore partly American.

Merilynne looks tired to me, and when she comes back carrying a tray, I’m pretty sure I know why.

This might be the largest meal I’ve ever eaten. I can’t possibly finish the enormous pancakes, so I ask if we can take the leftovers with us, explaining that we have a dog. Makes no difference to me, says Merilynne, but not in a mean way.

Gil pays and as we go back to our car we see Merilynne outside the diner, sitting on a step smoking a cigarette. I wonder whether she’d smoke if she knew she was pregnant. I guess she’ll find out soon enough.

We set off again up the highway toward Canada.

In the backseat, I open the doggy bag for Honey and find that Merilynne didn’t just empty the leftovers into a bag, but added four pieces of bacon and about a cup of corned beef hash.
For your dog,
says a handwritten note with a smiley face after it, and it’s signed
Your server Merilynne.

Honey sniffs the bag. There are far more clues in the world for her than for any human; her sense of smell is hundreds of times keener than mine and paints whole pictures of places she hasn’t been. I nibble the end of a piece of bacon and give her the rest, then put the aluminum tray on the seat of the car and she wolfs it all down in seconds. She’s a tidy dog, clearing up crumbs with her neat pink tongue before settling down beside me with a sigh.

My job (other than map reading) is the radio. I lean forward between the two front seats and press the scan button to find something we both want to listen to. Mostly I can find one song we like in a row and that’s it. Then there’s news. Something about Washington. Something about a church scandal. Nothing about a middle-aged man who ran away from home for no reason in the middle of the day with a class to teach on the English Civil War, leaving his dog and baby and wife without even a note or a forwarding address. After a while I reach through the seats and turn it off. The feeling of trying to tune the radio matches the feeling of trying to tune in what’s happened to Matthew. No matter how much the scanner scans a few millimeters this way or that, the story won’t come into focus.

The road here isn’t at all like England. Most of the time it has trees on both sides, dense as a fairy-tale forest and seeming to go on forever. You think you’re in a kind of wilderness and then suddenly the road flattens out and becomes a town, and all around are big square buildings called
MAXVALUE
and
SUPERTREAD
and
WORLD OF RIBS
. We are passing through one of these stretches when Gil pulls off the road in front of
PHONE UNIVERSE
.

We’ll get you a cheap pay-as-you-go, he says, so you don’t have to phone Mum by way of London.

What about you?

I’ve got my laptop, he says and I smile. My father hates phones.

I’m feeling homesick. I look at Honey and bury my head in the loose folds of fur at her neck and try to love her enough to make up for what she has lost. She responds politely, gazing at me without any particular warmth.

I take her out for a walk, then put her back in the car and join Gil, who is staring at a phone that’s hopelessly wrong while the girl behind the counter recites all the reasons he should buy it. Spotting the simplest and cheapest phone, I say, We’ll have this one. The girl looks about seventeen. She’s chewing gum, wears too much makeup and is annoyed that I have chosen such a rubbish phone when she was recommending the newest most expensive thing. All our texts are free, but not to England or Holland. The girl looks it up in a book and it turns out they’re not insanely expensive, unless you go crazy and start sending texts to everyone you’ve ever met.

We set off again. I’m putting Suzanne’s and Matthew’s numbers into the phone and following our progress on the map. Now that there’s just one lane in each direction it’s fairly slow. Mostly because of Gil’s driving, which is not exactly expert and also a little bit wandery due to being on the wrong side of the road, something he occasionally forgets. He doesn’t notice the cars piling up behind us, looking more and more annoyed. Whenever there’s a straight stretch of road and the broken passing line appears, cars pull out and flash by at twice our speed. Gil doesn’t look, just drives with his eyes straight ahead, his shoulders hunched over the wheel. He has to concentrate very hard because driving is not one of his natural skills. I’ve turned off the GPS because it jabbers constantly and annoys us both.

The Automobile Association of America number gets copied from the back of the map where Suzanne wrote it and entered into the new phone, so that makes three people to text in America. For an instant I consider sending the AAA a text reassuring them that we’re doing just fine and they don’t have to worry about coming to tow us out of a ditch at the side of the road.

What I do instead is send Matthew a text.

Hi Matthew. It’s Mila. Gil’s daughter from London. We’re in America looking for you. Honey’s with us. She’s missing you. Please tell us where you are.

I wonder if saying that Honey misses him is mean, suggesting that none of us cares about him as much as she does. But in the end I send it, thinking he should know the truth. Then I wait. But there’s no reply.

Gil and I talk a little bit about what we see, but mostly we drive in silence.

Where shall we stop for lunch? Gil asks eventually. Food becomes a big subject when you’re driving.

Let’s keep going till we see a restaurant we like.

So we do. We drive through a village full of big Victorian houses. Some of them look all newly painted and some look incredibly run-down. Occasionally we pass a shack that could be right out of a cartoon—windows all different sizes like someone’s found them at the dump, walls held together with bits of nailed wood and gaffer tape, an ancient rusted car with no wheels up on bricks, broken toys and a scraggy dog by the front porch.

This area was popular as a summer resort for rich people at the turn of the century, says Gil. Nowadays it’s full of hippies and dropouts—and probably survivalists and other scary types, he says as we pass a tattoo parlor set in the grounds of one of the big Victorian houses.

I squint at him. Since when are you an expert?

He reaches into the side pocket of the door, hands me a fat guidebook (
Frommer’s New York State
), and says, Do you think Suzanne would send us off without reference books?