And Then You Were Gone

by R. J. Jacobs

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. Not wanting to get into where my mind had truly been, I changed the subject as deftly as I could. “What’s up with Matt? And Sandy? Is she like your work spouse or something?”

  He leaned his head back like I’d said something funny. “I’ve never heard of a work spouse. But, no, she’s a friend. Come on, I was trying to introduce you. Matt … I don’t know what to say about that guy. I’m sorry if he made you uncomfortable.” I didn’t hesitate as Paolo refilled my wine glass.

  Just as I began sipping, Jay Silver appeared. Resting his hand on Paolo’s shoulder, he gave it an avuncular squeeze. “Who’s uncomfortable? No one’s allowed to be uncomfortable at a holiday party.” He grinned, mock-offended.

  Paolo sighed, his expression somehow both embarrassed and relieved. He raised his glass. “Dr. Silver. Let me introduce you to my girlfriend. This is Emily.”

  The amusement in Silver’s expression softened into sincerity. His head cocked slightly. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I know your name very well, of course. I was glad to see you at the fund-raiser.”

  My thoughts spun back to that night—pulling Allie away from the University Club before the ceremony had ended; later, the colored light from the bar reflecting in Paolo’s eyes as he stood to greet us, the spell he seemed to cast.

  Paolo squeezed my hand as I leaned against him.

  “So, you’re the one who drags my best researcher out of the lab at a decent hour?”

  “I’m that one,” I said like a smart-ass, which didn’t seem to faze him.

  “Well, then I owe you a gracious thank you.” He had a very slight accent that I couldn’t place. “When Paolo first started in the lab, some of his lab mates thought he must not have a place to live. He was there when they arrived in the morning and stayed on after they left. One night in the first month, I put my hand on his shoulder”—Dr. Silver squeezed Paolo’s shoulder again—“and he didn’t seem to feel it. I had to say his name before he turned around. Now that’s focus.”

  “It’s true,” Paolo admitted.

  “Do you remember what we did then?”

  Paolo laughed shyly, evidently having endured the story many times. “Dr. Silver took me out to breakfast.”

  “It was five o’clock in the morning,” Silver explained. “I thought I was getting an early start, but he’d been there all night. I took him down to a diner where the nurses all go when they get off work. Then I told him to order whatever he liked, and he asked for three plates of pancakes.” Silver leaned toward me as if to not further embarrass his mentee and revealed, “Then, he ate them all.”

  I thought back to the times Paolo had made dinner vanish inside his slender frame. There was something American about his ravenousness—or maybe his desire to assimilate. To be successful.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said.

  “I want this young man to stay healthy and have some balance in his life. I don’t know how much he talks about what he’s doing for us, but he’s incredible. Brilliant. I’m sure you’re very proud.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Had I been proud enough? Actively proud?

  Silver smiled at me. “I know your father lived here. Do you have other family in Nashville?” he asked.

  “Emily’s family’s been in Nashville for a long time,” Paolo interjected. “They have a farmhouse on a lake, south of here.”

  He slipped his arm around my waist. I felt like elbowing him in the ribs.

  Dr. Silver smiled inquisitively. “A farmhouse, on a lake?”

  “Oh, no, it’s neither,” I said. “Just a little cabin, and less than ten acres. Down the dirt road after the Concord exit.”

  “Emily did both her degrees at Vanderbilt,” Paolo added, completely out of nowhere.

  Something about the pride in his voice, his overeagerness to impress, made me want to slip away from his embrace.

  “Challenging programs,” Silver said with raised eyebrows. “He tells me you’re a psychologist.”

  “I am,” I said, my shoulders loosening slightly. “That’s true.”

  “How fascinating. You know, I think psychology is really the most important of the sciences. I say that all the time. Did it always appeal to you? You have to tell me how you got started studying it.”

  There was no way I was telling him how exactly I’d gotten “started” in psychology.

  “I picked it in college,” I said. “Seemed like a natural fit.”

  “For a brilliant mind, I’m sure.”

  I might have actually blushed. I was starting to understand the magnetism Paolo had responded to in Dr. Silver. I noticed no one called Dr. Silver anything but Dr. Silver, which seemed laughable, but at least he wasn’t starting a fight with my boyfriend, or hitting on him.

  Silver looked at me deeply, there seeming to be no end to his curiosity. “And are you researching at all, or in practice?”

  “I work for Human Services. Mainly with kids.”

  “Tremendous,” he offered, seeming to mean it. “The difference you must make in the lives of those kids is unimaginable.”

  “Well, yeah, thanks. I like what I do. And I hear you’re off to Poland?”

  It’s always easier to talk about someone else. Psychologists do it to hide in plain sight.

  “Poland was last month. This week is California. Not quite as exotic.” He lowered his chin, and I had the feeling that I was talking to Jay Gatsby—like he might find in his pocket a picture from his days at Oxford to show me.

  “Although Paolo likes it out there. There’s an annual conference we all get to. You have to come.”

  This new side of Paolo’s life was so entirely different. It made him more full, more real.

  In that way, I liked being there.

  I caught Sandy glancing over from the too-loud conversation she was having, once looking as though she might drift over, then turning away.

  “Well, come on in. Anytime,” Dr. Silver said. “We’d love to have you. It’ll give you a chance to meet the rest of the team.”

  Back at the kitchen counter, Matt looked on. His figure was silhouetted by the light behind him. He tucked his hair behind his ear again, sipped from his slightly illuminated green beer bottle.

  Later, I cornered Paolo, digging about him trying so hard to impress Dr. Silver. “He clearly adores you already,” I said.

  Paolo frowned, as though my not understanding the value of good impressions saddened him.

  “I’m serious.” I poked him. “You don’t have to try so hard.”

  His hands rubbed up and down my shoulders. I felt my muscles relax.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “Really.”

  The rest of the party was so dreamlike that later I’d wonder if it had really happened, if I could have been that person, doing those things. I wasn’t sure.

  I remembered the feelings.

  I remembered watching Sandy’s flowy hair out of the corner of my eye, hearing her dangerous laughter, sensing her theatrics—working so hard at being polite. She wanted something.

  Matt wanted something, too. Buried in his hoodie, surrounded by expensive things, holding a half-empty beer bottle. His hair like brushed coal ash in the mercury kitchen light.

  Once, when Paolo laughed, I noticed Matt’s eyes flick toward him and then fall away. Just in that instant, I wondered what he might be thinking.

  THIRTEEN

  Keeping it together in my office was easier with Sandy there. Alone, my mind had free rein. The echo of her footsteps down the stairwell had hardly faded before I was hunched over my laptop, pulling up search possibilities. Surely she knew I would look. How couldn’t I?

  Who was Matt? Had she been cagey about him? I couldn’t tell.

  I needed a last name.

  She was barely down the sidewalk, but I found her number on the paperwork and called. Straight to voicemail. I called again—voicemail. I remembered the nervousness in her voice as she talk
ed about maintaining some discretion and decided against leaving a message.

  She wants you to look, I thought. Maybe she planted this like a seed.

  You could be gone now, too.

  I forced a deep breath. My stomach could remember the nausea of the morning he went missing—the heat and lazy rocking of the boat and the crazy, taunting horizon. It was the sedative. It had to be. I’d taken just a little, from his bottle, maybe, or from his lips. He’d—I stopped for half a second—he’d fallen overboard, I thought.

  You could be gone now, too.

  I knew exactly what I was going to do, however long it took to find out more. That it didn’t completely make sense didn’t matter. My hands shook over the cool keys. I tensed and relaxed the thumb that had broken, stretched my mending foot forward.

  Stress brings mania, stress and mania. Relax.

  Relax was not an option.

  She knew you’d do this. Paolo must’ve told her how you are. Maybe they were closer than … No. They weren’t.

  On my laptop, I pulled up the Vanderbilt Medical Center site. It let me search by first name if I included a last initial—beginning, obviously, with Matthew A. This took a minute. The city’s third-largest employer evidently employed a fair number of Matthews. With a first name and last initial, I found a list of departments, some of which had their own pages. I happened to know there was no website for their particular lab because I’d tried looking it up in a frenetic fit of curiosity the week I met Paolo.

  Nothing from the Matthew As.

  Matthew B. Two computer guys. Nothing.

  I struck gold on Matthew C.

  Matthew D. Cianciolo. That even sounded right. My trembling fingers misspelled it twice, but then up it came: Microbiology. Postdoc, fourth year. Four years, and so very eager to publish. Four years of accumulating desperation. A shark tank, Paolo’d called it.

  Back to the main page, another search, and up came his photo—a slightly younger version of the man I’d met. Shorter hair, combed neatly. He was tan. He’d probably had his photo taken during some orientation, I figured, back, when—four years earlier?

  I studied his dark eyes.

  Poison, she’d said. Poison.

  I tried Sandy’s phone twice more. No answer. Again, I left no message. Clearly, she didn’t want to talk that way—my phone to hers.

  I texted her: CAN YOU CALL ME? I was messing it up, I knew, breaking her trust. I couldn’t stop myself. I told myself it wasn’t like that; that she had come to me. Anyone would understand.

  I typed MATT CIANCIOLO into the search engines—Google, Yahoo, Bing. The entries where he was named seemed highlighted on the screen by my intuition. Of what there was, most were closed loops linking right back to his job. Then the lists dribbled into randomness, other people with the same first or last name. There was a Matt Cianciolo who played minor-league baseball in Arizona from 1997 to 1999. And a Tom Cianciolo with multiple rental properties. I copied what I found to a desktop file.

  On to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Nothing on the first two that was even close. I supposed he could be hiding, working with a ghost profile. I knew kids who did that to avoid monitoring or to get around the websites’ age restrictions.

  He was on Facebook. My heart skipped when I found his picture. Mouth dry, I ground my teeth. The photo was a few years old, probably taken about the same time as the one from the medical center. Sunglasses covered his eyes, but it was definitely him—same hair, same chin. Same expression that he’d had the night I met him—angry, defiant. I recognized his look from kids I’d worked with. It said everything was unfair, rigged against them. He had put up little else, or he had locked it so that you’d have to be a friend to see it. His “friends” list wasn’t viewable; just the basics. As if he wanted a page just to keep up appearances. I copied his page to a folder and moved on.

  Outside, wind rattled the old windows. I heard Marty’s footsteps down the hall occasionally. Otherwise, the only sound was the whisper of heat coming up through the creaky vents, fighting the season’s first real cool weather. Occasionally, a metal-on-metal clink came from inside the walls like a wrench knocking a pipe. Old building, I thought.

  On to the pay sites that check backgrounds, which I knew existed, yet they were new to me. I glanced at the screen to check the time, then at my purse where my medication was. I knew it was time to take a Lamictal, but there was no way to pause. Some people board trains. I was a train. I was a boulder that wouldn’t rest until it reached the bottom of a hill. I rubbed my eyes, found a credit card, and popped my wrist to soften the ache.

  I paid to use three of the sites. The information pretty much overlapped between them but gave me what I needed. Middle name (Daniel), last three addresses (which included two grad-school apartments in College Park, Pennsylvania), and a list of relatives that I knew I would Google, cross-check, social media–check, and probably background-check later.

  I pulled up a map and found his current address. I knew the street, less than three miles from where I sat. The soccer team had run down it in a pack on summer mornings when I was in college. Mostly apartments and a few rented homes.

  I pulled up a map and found the address; I pulled up a satellite map to be sure.

  I knew right where I was going.

  * * *

  I backed my Ford Ranger into the lot opposite Matt’s apartment and cut the engine. It was still before five—no way he was home yet from the lab. Paolo easily worked until six thirty on a light day, seven thirty when it counted. But nine, nine thirty was never out of the question. I had plenty of time to explore.

  Don’t.

  There was no way not to look.

  Wait.

  My cane knocked against the metal-framed concrete steps up to the second floor until I found his door. No mat, no decorations. Just basic black paint, coated again and again. I glanced down into the courtyard in the back, at the path to the propped-open door of a laundry room. This was where he lived. Paolo’s killer. From where I stood on the landing, I could see across the street to the Ford’s faded hood. I touched the row of silver mailboxes until I found Matt’s, then I went back down to wait.

  And wait I did. Six, seven, eight. I was starving. I finally took my medicine, three hours late, which I knew would destroy the timing of going to sleep, assuming that, under the circumstances, sleep would be possible at all. Over the years I’d reached a delicate neurochemical balance—like an alliance within myself—but timing and dosage were essential. When I altered the schedule of my meds, it could take days to readjust. I sighed, decided to cut myself some slack.

  Nine o’clock came. Car lights passed. I cracked the truck window, and a breeze whistled in. I pulled up my collar and slumped in the seat, watching the dark window.

  This is crazy.

  The whole thing only halfway made sense, anyway, I knew. Sitting there at all—and the two Internet hours that preceded it—had gone way past being analytical. I knew this. I fell into the place where thoughts and dreams and imagining are the same thing. I found flashes of the last year, then jolted back awake, my fingers bent into angles, highlighter-orange fire rising from the hood of my car. The wreck. The people I could have killed. My head slammed back against the seat.

  I turned the key to check the time on the dash. Ten twenty in blue digital lines. Still no light in Matt’s window. I knew the waiting could go on all night and lead to nothing.

  I had an appointment scheduled at 8:00 AM with a new kid, and I would be there—rested, ready to do my best work. I would be there. There was no doubt.

  I put my lips to the Breathalyzer, blew, and started the truck.

  * * *

  I went somewhere else. I think I was dreaming. My mind filled with pictures from the summer before, when Paolo and I stood on the porch of my family’s cabin at the far edge of the neighboring county. We’d known each other a month then.

  The cabin, my uncles called it. It was a shack, really. But I loved it. A one-bedroom plac
e with creaky floors and a rickety porch on both the front and back, loose steps, and a pond in the front. My family had owned the cabin and surrounding land for I-didn’t-know-how-long. I had no idea. Nor did I understand—since we had no money—why no one ever talked about selling it. It was a good bit of property—maybe twenty acres. I think owning it felt pleasantly weighty to Mom and my uncles, like the comfortable feel of expensive silverware in a palm. Owning land said to our family that we were somebody.

  Something about that place had always stopped time—the high, exposed wooden beams on which I’d tried to land paper airplanes as a kid, the wood paneling. A dirt driveway extended a quarter mile from the highway up to the gate, and a white fence traced the road like a slender brushstroke.

  One late summer night at the cabin, I’d run out to pick up dinner for Paolo and myself. Being together was hypnosis against my will, like learning I’d been slipped the best drug imaginable. Fear and fury constantly scratched at my insides, even as I bounced on my toes, a lunatic. It was different than being manic—love was the best kind of out of control.

  “I’m back,” I called, grocery bag hung over my arm. “What have you been up to?”

  He hid his grin in a way that made it contagious. Then I saw what he was looking at.

  “Oh my God, no,” I said, laughing. “That yearbook! I used to have terrible hair.”

  I tried to take it from him and he switched it from one hand to the other, then back again, until I fell against him, laughing. He laughed too, arms around me, so full of warmth.

  Later, I told him that the lights on the highway reminded me of the scale of everything, about watching them as a girl. I pointed when a pair appeared on the horizon, moving steadily. A ship at sea.

  “They’re like fireflies from here,” I said.

  He put his arm around me.

  Thunder called from the distance.

  “It’s about to rain,” he said.

  I’d had the same thought a second before; I’d hoped the rain would tap and whisper against the windows and roof. When the first drops fell, they were reluctant—dotting the dusty porch steps—as if they might be all that came, or as if the clouds knew not to show too much too fast. A minute later, they were quarter-sized, dampening the dirt.