The Year of Fog (17 page)

39

I
WAKE AT
five in the morning, make coffee, sit in the kitchen, and try to read yesterday’s paper. The small words blur. The headlines run together, forming nonsensical sentences. The phone is on the table, inches from my hand. I consider calling Jake. In the distance, a fire truck’s sirens wail.

It is the seventeenth of November. Day 118.

Today, Emma turns seven.

Around noon, I call Jake. His machine picks up, the same outgoing message that was there before Emma disappeared. An hour later, I call again. No answer. Driving up Eighteenth Street through Eureka Valley, I try to plan our conversation, try to think of all the things that should be said.

His car is in the driveway. Next to it, Lisbeth’s Cabriolet.

I park across the street and sit for several minutes, willing him to see me, willing him to come to the door and invite me inside. A very long half hour passes before the door opens and Lisbeth walks out, gets in her car, drives away. As soon as she’s gone, I go to the door and stand there for a couple of minutes, trying to work up the nerve to knock. Down the street, a motorcycle guns its engine. A man and two children pass on the sidewalk. The man is carrying a shopping bag, the children hold ice cream cones, and they chatter loudly about a pet rabbit they have at school.

I ring the doorbell and nothing happens. I ring it again, wait for a couple of minutes, then slide my key into the lock. Inside, the curtains are drawn and no lights are on. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Jake is sitting on the sofa in the living room, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. The floor around him is crowded with gifts wrapped in bright paper with elaborate bows. Tape and scissors rest on the mantel.

“Jake?”

He doesn’t look up.

“I saw Lisbeth leaving,” I say.

Still no response. I can’t help wondering why she came, what she wants from him. I can’t bring myself to trust her, can’t bring myself to believe that she has Emma’s best interests in mind.

I thread my way through the presents and sit on the sofa beside him. I want to touch him but don’t know how. I just sit and wait for him to talk to me, trying not to look at the vast array of packages. Sometime later I hear steps outside, a tapping sound, the hushed scrape of paper against metal, a soft thud as the mail hits the floor. Inside, everything is still. We sit this way for a very long time. At some point I sense a leaving of light, the cool approach of night.

Driving home, the red of the traffic lights appears lurid, the noise of car radios strikes me as somehow obscene. As always, I drive slowly, keep the windows down, scanning the streets. With each intersection, each doorway, each glittering shopwindow, I am struck anew by the fact of her absence, that permanent, insurmountable thing. I find myself winding through the Mission, then doubling back on Guerrero. Then I’m in Dolores Park, walking. There are two kinds of people who hang out in Dolores Park this late—those selling drugs and those buying them. As I walk through the park, voices softly call out the evening’s wares—weed, coke, meth. I shake my head, thrust flyers into strangers’ hands.

“What the fuck is this?” someone says, grabbing my arm when I hand him the flyer. He’s wearing a pink wool cap, and the cap strikes me as oddly childlike. Then I realize he is a child, sinewy and pale, no more than fifteen.

I breathe deeply, try not to show my fear, and repeat my mantra, the phrase that has become as second nature to me as breathing: “I lost my little girl.”

“You’re in the wrong place,” the kid says, giving my arm a painful squeeze before letting go. Minutes later I’m in my car, hands shaking on the wheel. Jake doesn’t know that I do this. He doesn’t know about my trips to Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park and the Tenderloin at night, doesn’t know about all the ill-advised places I go at ill-advised times. He has his own way of searching—the command post, the radio, the organized lists and charts—and I have mine.

Back home, I call Annabel. “She turns seven today,” I say.

“I know. I called several times. Alex wanted to send her a present. I don’t think he really understands.”

Annabel is eating something. She’s like our mother that way—an enormous appetite and a blessed metabolism.

“Did I ever tell you that Mrs. Callahan sent me a card when I graduated from college?” she says after a little while. “It was weird, just this ordinary graduation card, and a gift certificate to the Gap. But there was a letter stuffed in the envelope, written on notebook paper. It was all wrinkled, like it had been wadded up and then straightened out again. It was this long, rambling letter about how she and Mr. Callahan had split up a few years before, and he was living in Dallas, and she was the director of a children’s choir at some church in Satsuma, Alabama.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said, how the guy kept Sarah alive for seven weeks. Where did he keep her?”

“In his house, just a couple of miles from where her parents lived. He even took her to the mall three weeks into the kidnapping to buy a new dress. He had her wear a wig and lots of makeup so no one would recognize her.”

I think of Sarah standing in the mall, the kidnapper’s big hand crushing her fingers. “Why didn’t she run?”

“He had her convinced that if she tried to escape, he’d kill her parents.”

“I realized a few days ago that, whoever did this, I want them to die. A long, slow death.”

“Abby, that doesn’t sound like you. I can’t believe I’m hearing this from the woman who staged the huge death penalty protest in college.”

“I don’t feel like me. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like me again.” I pause. “I’ve been making lists.”

“What kind of lists?” Annabel asks.

“Of kids who’ve disappeared. There are thousands, stretching back decades.”

“Why are you doing this to yourself, Abby?”

“It’s as if they all just vanished into the fog.”

I think of a family trip we made to San Francisco when we were teenagers. It was July, and like so many tourists do, we had packed for summer in California. In shorts and light sweaters, Annabel and I set out to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. Within seconds we were shivering. The bridge that day was shrouded in fog so dense we didn’t even see the famous orange towers. The great white mass moved over the bay, obscuring the city skyline. Annabel and I posed for pictures. Many years later, when we went home to divide our mother’s things, we found a shoe box marked “San Francisco scrapbook.” Our mother never got around to making the scrapbook, but she had kept ferry ticket stubs, a key chain for Alcatraz, and the photographs. In the pictures, it is impossible to tell where we are, or even who we are. All that is visible are our ghostlike silhouettes, floating in a bright white haze.

40

D
AY 138
. Three a.m., insomnia, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue at my elbow—a gift last year from a grateful client. Outside, a storm, wind rattling the windowpanes. Inside, the computer screen glows a milky white. For hours I’ve been scouring chat rooms, telling Emma’s story, leaving the web address like a calling card: www.findemma.com. Hits soar on Emma’s site, the electronic guest book bulges with messages, sympathy abounds, but no one has a clue. There is perhaps no greater proof of the despairing loneliness of the world than a late-night romp through cyberspace.

Sasha67 writes,
She looks just like my niece who died of leukemia six years ago.

Snowboard4ever says,
It’s 4:00 a.m. in Missoula. Call me.
He leaves his phone number and, inexplicably, his date of birth; he’s young, probably a college student.

Bored2tears says it’s snowing in Vancouver, then posts a list of all the girls who’ve left him over the past fifteen years, along with a detailed account of their reasons.

It is a wonder that the vast circuitry of the Internet remains intact minute by minute, hour by hour, as the sins and the sadness of millions of Web surfers crash down upon it like some monstrous wave. There is something comforting in the fact that the technology of the Web is immune to human grief, that the wires and chips process all these desperate confessions like so many numbers. Death and destruction, broken hearts and angry threats, missing girls and panicked mothers—it all amounts to just so much data that can be sent and stored and forgotten.

An instant message to my private e-mail address—the one I also use for work—pops up on screen.
Howdy. Just got back from Finland. When can I come get the pictures?—Nick Eliot.

I had completely forgotten him, Nick Eliot with his spiky hair and impressive family history of longevity, Nick Eliot whose great-grandmother Eliza recently turned ninety-nine. He grew up in Oxford, England, but had been living in the Bay Area for several years. The week before Emma’s disappearance, he came to my place with a small stack of photos that he wanted to have restored. “I found you through your website,” he said, placing the envelope carefully in my hand. “I liked your picture. You have a trustworthy face.” He allowed his fingers to linger a second or two more than necessary.

I’ll admit I felt something, some quick electricity that traveled from his fingers through the envelope to my palm. He had a familiar smell, like pound cake. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a French blue shirt underneath. I thought of Jake and pulled my hand away.

“Let’s see what we have here,” I said, opening the envelope.

There was Eliza at seventeen in a broad-rimmed hat and puffy sleeves, waving from the window of a train. And Eliza with squinting eyes and buckled shoes, sitting on the steps of a courthouse with her new husband. Eliza a few years later, one hand resting on top of a small child’s head, the other on her bulging stomach. In each photo, Nick’s great-grandmother was faded, her skin ghostly pale, as if she’d been too long in the dark.

“Think you can fix them?” he asked.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He handed me his business card; the vague job title
Consultant
was printed in tiny, neat letters beneath his name. As he was leaving, he turned around, scratched his head, grinned in a slightly embarrassed way, and said, “I don’t usually do this, but when I come back to get the pictures, could I take you out to dinner?”

I held up my left hand and twiddled my engagement ring. Even as I did it, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to sit across a table from Nick, discussing travel and books, learning about his tastes, his family history. It was the first time since meeting Jake that I’d been confronted with someone who made me consider what I was giving up—the heady thrill of experiencing a first kiss with someone new, the kinetic moment of connection, the freedom to act upon this connection, to follow it through to some possibly surprising end. I loved Jake, I loved Emma, I was so happy to be on the cusp of this new life with them; yet I could not help but think about everything I’d be trading in the moment I walked down the aisle.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. “Never mind, then. Congratulations.”

Two days before Emma disappeared, I called Nick to tell him that the photos were ready, but I never heard back from him. A few days ago, he left a message on my answering machine saying he’d gotten caught up in business, but I haven’t called him back.

Now, I type,
The photos turned out well
, and press Return, imagining him across town in some posh condo, sitting in front of the computer in flannel pajamas and leather slippers.

When can I come get them? Tomorrow?

When? A simple question, but fraught with impossibility. At eight o’clock tomorrow morning, I have a fund-raising breakfast with the Mothers for Safe Neighborhoods Committee in Marin, where a couple dozen well-meaning and well-to-do mothers will offer their sympathy over fresh fruit and paper-thin crepes. From ten to eleven, my daily vigil at Ocean Beach. Next stop is the command post, where Brian will mark my canvassing zone with a pink highlighter on a photocopied map of the Bay Area and hand me a stack of flyers that he has meticulously designed. Each day the flyer is slightly different, with some catchy new font or elaborate border, the position of Emma’s face on the page slightly changed. The volunteers have dwindled from 257 to 19, but Brian is still there three days a week after school.

In the afternoon, I’ll return to Ocean Beach. This is always the most difficult part of the day—those long hours of inactivity that bring me no closer to Emma, those long hours when I wander up and down the cold beach, past the joggers and the dog walkers, the hand-holding couples, the meager bonfires built by the homeless. Past the surfers who congregate in the gray water, waiting for the next wave.

Late at night I’ll go to Jake’s house, where I’ll prepare a simple dinner while he works the phone, calling newspapers and radio stations, trying to get Emma’s name back in the news. Media interest has dwindled to almost nothing now that more than four months have passed. Other children have disappeared from other states in the meantime. There have been highway shootings in Montana, a bomb in a high school in New York, a pregnant woman murdered in Monterey, an earthquake near Eureka. Getting attention for Emma’s case becomes more difficult by the day.

Jake and I barely speak now when I visit, but neither of us seems to know how else to spend our evenings. Other than that one night after Jake visited the coroner’s office, we have not made love since Emma disappeared.

We used to do the dishes together, and then I’d follow Jake upstairs, careful not to wake Emma. We would talk while we undressed and slid under the covers. Sometimes we would make love, but more often we’d just lie there, talking, until one of us fell asleep. It felt as if the rhythm of our marriage had already been established, as if we had already mapped out the way we would live together. I imagined that our nights, year by year, would progress much in this same manner. The thought both comforted and frightened me.

Words appear in my instant message box.
You still there?

Sorry, I was just checking my schedule. Tomorrow’s not good.

My fingers are poised on the edge of the keys and I’m trying to figure out what to write, trying to think of some scheme by which to dissuade him without telling him that my life is upside down, that I’m in no state to socialize or even to carry out the most mundane tasks, that Emma is gone and I am lost and I would prefer to just drop the photos in the mail, when another message pops up:
How about now?

It’s the middle of the night.

Technically
, he responds,
it’s morning. You’re up. I’m up. I just flew eighteen hours from Helsinki, and I’ve got a meeting in seven hours, and if I go to bed now I’ll never wake up in time
. I imagine him smiling as he writes this. Maybe he even surprises himself with his boldness, or maybe this is simply his natural mode of operation, the persuasive tactics of a man accustomed to getting what he wants.

It’s storming.

I’ll risk it.

How can I say no? Annabel can’t pay my rent forever. Nick is a client, and right now I need clients. He will arrive with a checkbook and pen, I will give him the photos—a simple transaction, an exchange of money for services rendered.

I’ll make some coffee,
I type.

See you in twenty.

I change out of my pajamas into jeans and a sweater. I put coffee on, brush my teeth, hide the dirty clothes in the closet. I wipe the bathroom sink down with a sponge—how long has it been since I’ve done that? I’m changing sweaters—from the red one that makes me look ghostly to a blue one that, I hope, vaguely compliments my pallor—when the buzzer rings.

As Nick’s footsteps sound on the stairs, I apply a subtle layer of lipstick, feeling guilty as I do so. Here is the dilemma, here is what I know. At 3:45 in the morning, all bets are off. At 3:45 in the middle of a storm, when the streets are empty and the shops are closed and the whole city is sleeping, it’s easy to forget one’s commitments, a relief to forget one’s troubles. Particularly when you’ve gone months without real sleep and you’re three glasses into a bottle of Scotch, and the man at your door is smiling, stepping forward, kissing you lightly on the cheek as if he’s come for a date instead of for business, and his hair is damp from the rain, and his umbrella stands dripping at his side, and he’s wearing a crumpled but very expensive suit and no tie, and he still, despite eighteen hours on a plane from Finland, smells faintly of pound cake. He’s holding something, a small red bag trimmed with gold ribbon, and he’s saying, “I got you this. It’s not much, just something I picked up across the pond.”

The red bag contains kitchen utensils, a rubber scraper and a whisk.

“Odd choice, I know,” Nick says as I unwrap the tissue paper. “Do you cook? I don’t even know if you cook.”

“They’re lovely. Thank you.”

“In Helsinki,” he explains, “everything’s stylish, even the kitchen utensils.” It’s true. The scraper and whisk have green rubber handles and sleek aluminum trim, like something you’d see in a magazine photo of a celebrity kitchen. “You must think I’m weird,” he says.

“Not weird. Thoughtful.”

“Then I should really get points for this.” He opens his blazer and pulls out another bag. Inside, a hat of thick blue wool, with earflaps and a red yarn ball on top. “They’re all the rage among the Finns. I saw it and thought of you.”

I laugh, a genuine laugh, something I haven’t had the pleasure of in quite some time. “Thanks. You’re soaked. Let’s get you out of that jacket. I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

That’s how Nick ends up sitting in my kitchen, his light gray pants spattered with dots of darker gray from the rain. As I’m taking down the coffee cups, he sees the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on the counter and says, “To tell the truth, I could use some of that.”

“Good. I hate drinking alone. How do you take it?”

“Neat, please.”

Something about the way he says “neat,” with an odd little accent I can’t locate—not British, but not American either—makes me like him even more.

I pour some for both of us, then sit across the small table from him. He smiles and lifts his glass. “To ill-advised late-night rendezvous,” he says.

“Cheers. But it’s just business, right? Nothing ill advised about that.”

He nods. “Sure, just business.”

The Scotch is warm in my mouth and throat. Each sip leaves me feeling slightly more tingly, the tips of my fingers pleasantly numb. For a minute or more, neither of us says anything, and I know I have to tell him about Emma, know he’s probably not familiar with the story since he’s been out of the country. I’m trying to formulate the words, trying to figure out how to explain what has happened, when Nick reaches over and moves a strand of hair out of my face. It’s the most obvious move, and yet it leaves me speechless, this moment of tenderness that has nothing to do with pity.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he says, “but I’ve been thinking about you.”

“You have?”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be saying this. I barely know you, and there’s your fiancé, of course.”

This is when I should tell him about Emma, before he goes any further, but it’s good to hear what he’s saying, I want to hear it, want to feel this moment of normalcy.

“You remind me of this girl I knew in high school. Her name was Simone. Same eyes, and something you do with your mouth when you smile.”

“This Simone,” I say, feeling guilty, but wanting so much to have this conversation with a kind, attractive man, this man who, unlike Jake, has no reason at all to hate me. “Where is she now?”

“Who knows? We had three dates, I fell helplessly in love, and then her family packed up and moved to Utah.”

“Twenty bucks says she’s living in a big house in Salt Lake City with a whole passel of children.”

“Probably.”

“Do you have siblings?”

“One brother, two sisters. What about you?”

“There are only two of us. My sister’s two years younger.”

“Where is she?”

“North Carolina.”

Nick tilts his glass to drink off the last drop of Scotch, then sets it down and runs his fingers along the rim. His nails are perfectly manicured, slightly rounded, and bearing a wholesome shine. He’s the type of guy who would seem utterly at ease in a fancy salon, reading the
Wall Street Journal
while a young woman in red lipstick fondles his hand, filing and buffing.

“So this is a live-work loft?” he says, glancing around.

“Yep. I got lucky and locked it in back before the dot-com boom. Rent control. The darkroom’s upstairs.”

“Could I see it?”

“Sure.”

At the top of the stairs, I’m overtaken by vertigo. “You okay?” Nick asks, reaching forward to steady me.

“It’s the Scotch. Is the floor moving or is it just me?”

“Maybe you should sit down.”