Songs for the Missing (24 page)

“Which one are you?” he asked.

Lindsay pointed as if she were afraid to speak.

She followed his lead, fastening her seatbelt before she started the car. As she let off the parking brake he marked something on his clipboard.

“This is the road test,” he said, still writing. “What that means, Lindsay, is that we’re going to take you out on the road and see how you drive in everyday situations. How you feeling there?”

“Good.”

“Do me a favor, okay? Take a deep breath.”

She tried and discovered her chest was tight.

“Give me one more, I didn’t hear that one. Good. Now what we’re going to do is go to the store. Mom’s run out of ketchup, and she’s sending you to get some. You know where the Wal-Mart is?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll head that way to start.”

Route 20 was busier than any of the streets she’d practiced on, and faster. She stayed in the right lane, keeping to the speed limit while cars shot past.

“We’ll take a right here at the light,” he said, pointing with his pen, though the Wal-Mart was straight ahead.

The light was green. She signaled and slowed and fed the top arc of the steering wheel from hand to hand instead of crossing her arms, rolling smoothly through the turn, making sure she didn’t swing wide.

“And a left up here.”

He took her through a section of Ashtabula she’d never seen before, a shady maze of back streets with neat lawns and cars parked on both sides. For a while they went in circles. Over and over she waited her turn at four-way stop signs. He made her zip down her window and show him the hand signals.

“Okay, Lindsay,” he said in a cul de sac she imagined he’d used before, “give me your best three-point turn.” When she was done he asked her to explain the proper way to park on a hill. As they cruised through the narrow blocks she kept expecting him to pick a tight spot and order her to parallel park, but he guided her out of the neighborhood and back onto 20 West.

“Mom needs ketchup,” he said.

At the Wal-Mart, in a far corner of the lot, he had her park the car head-in—too simple. He didn’t bother to open the door to see if she was between the lines.

“Take us home,” he said.

On the way back she thought he would have her pull into the drive of Edgewood High or the new Home Depot, but he was busy writing.

As they came up on the plaza, he told her to get in the left lane. When she did, he said, “Head check. When you change lanes you need to check your blind spot. You want to look out for that.”

She could have sworn that she had. She’d checked her rearview mirror and then her side mirror and there was no one there.

She had to wait for a wave of oncoming traffic before she turned, and then, with another group bearing down on them, gave it too much gas, the engine revving as they lunged across and into the lot.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. We made it back in one piece.”

He had her park the car in the same spot and turn it off. While she waited, wondering why she ever thought she could do anything, he silently went over the sheet, finally signing it and handing it to her. “Congratulations, Lindsay.”

“Thank you,” she said, and shook his hand.

The form had nothing but checkmarks on it. He hadn’t taken off for either of her mistakes, and she felt cheated. He probably thought he was being nice. He
was
nice. The problem was all hers, and perverse.

Her mother was waiting for her inside.

“Well?”

“I passed.”

“Hooray!” her mother said.

Where She Was

Right outside Geneva, two kids taking a shortcut through the woods behind a rundown motel found the body.

The land was boggy, a dumping ground for broken toilets and rusted hot-water heaters and rotten box springs. They were walking along when one of them noticed a sneaker lying in the mud with a gray sock sticking from it. When they looked closer they saw the sock was a flap of skin.

Apparently the body had been buried but animals had dug it up, scattering the pieces. It was badly decomposed, barely identifiable as female. The Geneva police needed someone to send them Kim’s dental records.

Fran was home to take the call, and got Ed on his cell.

“Do the clothes match?” he asked.

“They didn’t say anything about clothes.”

“What about the sneakers?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Do they have the flyer?”

“I don’t know. They called me and I called you.”

“Fax them the flyer.”

“I’m going to.” For an instant she was annoyed that he felt he had to tell her. He was just afraid.

“I’ll be right home.”

Though it wouldn’t make any difference, she said, “Good.”

They’d prepared for this day. Early on she’d put together an ID kit. Now she pulled it out, setting aside the baggie with Kim’s hairbrush, and found the copy of her X-rays from Dr. Knowles. The action attracted Cooper, who watched from the doorway, unsure, then retreated to his usual spot under the dining room table.

After the fax went through and she was boxing everything up, she was tempted to pluck a strand from the brush and rub it between her fingers, to string it between her lips like floss and taste it—anything to bring Kim closer. As a mother she thought she should be able to feel it if one of her children was lost or in pain, a kind of psychic link, but she felt only the same disorienting panic she’d borne the last two months. This couldn’t be the end. Like Ed, she wanted to believe they’d made a mistake, when she knew from experience that sometimes the worst did happen, and, most cruelly, for no reason.

She called them to make sure they got the fax.

They had.

“Did you get the flyer?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the sergeant said.

“Can you tell me if the sneakers she was wearing were Asics?”

“I’m sorry, we can’t release any details until the medical examiner finishes his investigation.”

“When will that be?”

“I can’t speak for his office, ma’am.”

“Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

Like every bureaucracy, they protected their own from those they were supposed to serve. He transferred her to the officer in charge, whose robotic voicemail immediately picked up. She controlled herself, trying to sound reasonable, asking him to please call them and slowly enunciating their phone number, closing with a professional thank you.

She waited for Ed at the living room window the way, years ago, she used to watch for the school bus. Framed by the porch, a squirrel tight-roped across the telephone wire and stopped, its tail flicking. Though it was just past lunch, she was tired, and her mind circled the inert fact of the body, unable to reduce it to an abstract. When he pulled in she rushed out to meet him, flinging the screen wide, making Cooper bark as if he were an intruder.

He quizzed her again, and though he nodded along and said she’d done exactly what he would have, he still had to call them himself—as if he might get a different answer. He hung up without saying a word.

There was nothing they could do but wait—a position she knew too well.

“What should we tell Lindsay?” she asked, because she’d be home soon.

“We’ll tell her when we actually know something.”

It was at once fair and dishonest. She was a terrible liar (she often joked that she’d never make it as a realtor), and didn’t see how she could keep this from her, yet there was no sense upsetting her if it wasn’t Kim.

In the lull before the bus, she went back to the new post she was writing for the website, thanking their sponsors for supporting the Kare-a-Van. The sentence she’d left off working on gushed about “the wonderful event,” though it had rained and the turnout had been disappointing, and she realized that without intending to she’d become a politician. Her gratitude was genuine, but so was her grief, yet she showed the public only her bright side, always conscious of Jocelyn’s warning that people wanted her to be strong. She was tired of being the brave mother. The fundraising mother. And anyway, nothing anyone had done had actually helped (not true, she knew, even before she completed the thought).

If this was Kim, she would have to go on. They would all have to go on, somehow.

If this wasn’t her, they would go on hoping.

There was no choice, only those two possibilities, and she feared that at some point she would no longer see the second as preferable. It had been two months and already she was crumbling. What would she be like after two years, or ten?

Her own father had died when she was just four, and while she could see how his absence had shaped her, and she had mourned him her entire life, she didn’t know him. In a way, the damage was imaginary. Her mother fed her memories and displayed his picture on the mantel, and sometimes when Fran was alone in the house she stood on the hearth and peered into his eyes (she didn’t dare touch the frame), trying to conjure his voice. Kim came to her unbidden, at any age. She recalled her as a newborn, just home from the hospital, when they were living in the little rental on Mitchell Place with the train tracks in the backyard, and Grace, still strong then, bathing her in the sink, trickling palmfuls of water onto her wispy cap of hair. In the basement their old photo albums waited in the dark, and in the den, on obsolete tapes, dozens of birthday parties and dance recitals and family vacations (Kim and Lindsay playing
Titanic
on the bow of the Put-in-Bay ferry). Maybe someday she would need them, but for now her memory was mercilessly sharp, and when a favorite image of Kim bubbled up she was careful not to hold on to it too long. The past was as fraught as the future.
One Day at a Time,
Terry Benjamin had counseled,
just like AA,
and it was true; at her best she inched along like someone in recovery, working on small things while recognizing the enormity of her problems. It was just hard.

She was still fixing the post when she heard the bus go by. A few minutes later Cooper barked and charged for the front door. The screen squeaked and she heard Lindsay telling him to get down. For a second Fran froze with her head turned, her fingers poised over the keyboard, then pushed herself up. It would be easier not to talk to her, but she didn’t want to seem suspicious.

She intercepted her as she sloughed her backpack onto the couch.

“I’m going to move it,” Lindsay said.

“How was work?”

“Boring.”

“Got a lot of homework?”

“Not a lot.”

She was glum to the point of rudeness, and Fran didn’t know how much of it was merely her being sixteen. Her arms were so thin Fran worried that she might be anorexic, but bugging her to eat would only provoke the opposite reaction. Kim was just as stubborn.

“Look who it is,” Ed said, coming through the dining room. He held his arms straight out in a parody of greeting, enveloping Lindsay in a hug she tolerated without returning. “D’you have a good day?”

“No.”

“Okay, glad I asked,” he said, releasing her and holding up both hands as if he’d been burned. “How was your Chem test?”

“Easy.”

“That’s good,” he said, as if it proved his point. Fran hadn’t known about the test, and, stung, wondered how he did.

Lindsay looked from him to her as if they were purposely annoying her. “I’m going to watch TV, if that’s okay.”

“Knock yourself out,” Ed said.

“It wouldn’t be on the news, would it?” Fran asked him in the kitchen.

“I don’t think she’s watching the news.”

“It could be on a newsbreak.”

“Check online. If it’s there it’ll be on the news.”

It wasn’t—“Yet,” she said.

If the police had released it to the press, he reasoned, there’d be reporters crawling all over the place.

Without any real information they had to fall back on probability. The latest the lab would operate was likely five. As the hour approached, the phone rang. Ed hustled in from his office to be with her as she picked up.

It was Connie. Fran was supposed to call her earlier to set up lunch tomorrow.

“Sorry.”

“What’s up?” Connie asked. “You sound stressed.”

“Nothing,” she said. “The usual.”

Connie understood. At this point Fran didn’t need an excuse to cancel their plans.

After five it was time to make dinner. She allowed herself a glass of pinot grigio, sipping as Rachel Ray fixed something much nicer than she was cobbling together. When the rice was done, she turned off the TV and called them in, setting out napkins and silverware on the counter.

They ate on the deck. Lindsay hardly talked. Fran wondered if she knew, and—swayed by her second glass—if it wouldn’t be better to just tell her.

“You know what tonight is?” Ed said, excited.

No one answered, the shtick was so old.

“That’s right: Garbage night!”

“Great,” Lindsay said, but after they did the dishes she rolled the big-wheeled can down to the curb while Ed lugged the recycle bin. Fran took the chance to doublecheck the internet. They were safe for now.

Like every night, she was ready to go to bed by eight, her body anticipating the drop into unconsciousness. While she couldn’t imagine sleeping without them, she understood the pills were an evasion—a crutch, her mother would say—but after facing her worst fears all day, she’d be damned if she’d wrestle them all night. She waited until nine thirty to go up, wishing Lindsay good night, and then, on the stairs, reflected that only a few years ago Lindsay would have demanded a kiss.

She took her pill and got ready for bed, frowning at the drift of her thoughts as she sat on the john. The room was stifling, and she closed the windows and switched on the air conditioner. In minutes she was cold, and had to pull a blanket over her side of the bed. Lying there waiting for the drug to take effect, she thought of the dark lab with its tables and scales and gurneys. She’d never been afraid of the morgue in the basement of the hospital—tiled and bright, with brushed steel sinks and a boom box tuned to KGO—but she’d never had anyone in it. Geneva was two towns down the lake; they could have been there twenty minutes after she got the call. Did the police really think they wouldn’t recognize their own child? (Kim had a strawberry mole just inside her left hipbone, and a small white scar below her knee where she’d fallen on a broken pop bottle on the sledding hill behind the middle school.) She remembered the woman who saw her car in line at the drive-thru at Wendy’s and wondered how far it was from where they found the body. She thought of Wozniak’s farm. She wanted to close off the possibility that it was Kim, but couldn’t with so little evidence, and so she went round and round with the air blowing on her and the covers tucked to her chin until, finally, sleep descended like a heavy curtain, blotting out her thoughts.