The Summer We Lost Her

by Tish Cohen

  He flicked her shoulders and her breasts with his tongue, and she lost herself in the joy of her husband’s desire. So much emotion had hung, for her, on this return. Missing Gracie’s play had never been her plan. Nor had arguing over Vanilla Monkey smoothies or day camps or wounded turtles.

  Who knew—a baby might even reset their relationship. So much had chipped away; this little one might have the power to make the family solid again.

  She pulled Matt’s mouth to hers and kissed him.

  He kicked off his pants, boxers, clearly intent on making love to her.

  Not with the spotting. Soon, but not yet. Elise knelt on the floor and took him in her mouth. Slowly, she stroked the length of him, teased him with her tongue and pulled back, making him wait for more. Finally, with her mouth and one hand, she moved into a steady rhythm. Holding the window frame, leaning into one arm, he came in an instant. She wasn’t expecting it and looked up, about to make a joke, prepared for him to be looking down at her, sheepish and ready with a self-effacing comeback. But his focus wasn’t on Elise at all. His eyes rested on something outside. She looked through the window. It wasn’t something he was staring at. It was someone.

  Cass.

  Matt kissed his wife’s forehead, pulled off his T-shirt, and stepped into the shower.

  * * *

  BY THE END of Elise’s ninth-grade year at McInnis Hall, they’d moved out of the Coop and onto what might have been the shabbiest street in Roxborough. Still, infinitely more agreeable than living with the smell of chicken excrement wafting in the windows. Sackville Court was dotted with tired homes with classic bones. A lick of paint was needed here, a driveway wanted repaving there. The Bleekers’ home needed both, but the move had strained their finances even further than the old kitchen renovation, and they continued to live for payday.

  Like their old den, the paneled walls of their new den were covered in mounted fish trophies, one of which was Big-Mouth Billy Bass, who turned his head and sang “Take Me to the River” when you pushed a button. But the big-screen television was new. Birthday gifts were no longer wrapped in Saturday’s comics but dollar store wrapping paper. Indulgences were largely for the sake of appearances. The shampoo bottle might be almost empty, but there was a floral wreath on the front door. The kitchen tap might drip all night long, but the powder room was loaded with soaps shaped like seashells and guest towels with lace trim.

  Warren began to run four times a week and do push-ups in the backyard. He still loved fishing but had bought himself a set of used golf clubs and took the odd afternoon off to hit balls at a public course nearby. He wore his hair cut shorter and ironed his shirts.

  Dressage had almost fully taken over Elise’s world. She’d become another horse-mad teen girl, but with one exception: she was winning every schooling show her coach signed her up for. Being the best was a heady new sensation, and Elise was already hooked on it. She rode one of Ronnie’s own horses and had managed to wrangle hand-me-down breeches and boots, and Ronnie’s barn had an assortment of black velvet hunt caps. Rosamunde had a dark blazer her daughter could wear to shows. For now, the shows were cheap—most took place at Grange Road Farms. But once school was out, Ronnie had already made clear, she’d be ready for shows in other parts of the state. And with these shows came more of a financial commitment. Elise had been doing barn chores in exchange for private lessons all year and would certainly work at the local pool again that summer. By then she was old enough to hold a job at the registration desk, far preferable to scrubbing shower stalls and toilets, and her hourly wage would be higher. But her paychecks wouldn’t come close to covering her competition expenses.

  Warren’s answer? If Elise had talent, they would do whatever it took. Their daughter was on track to be something, someone special.

  Rosamunde, however, was losing her rudder. She didn’t look like the women in Roxborough with their fit little bodies and pert noses and sleek bobbed hair. Her husband was far more comfortable in the new neighborhood than she was. He looked moneyed somehow, with a straighter nose, whiter teeth. Elise fit in better as well—all-white blond locks and glowing skin and always in a hurry to go someplace else.

  This new world was stealing Rosamunde’s family.

  At her husband’s urging, she had organized a bridge group. This new crowd thrilled Warren and intimidated Rosamunde. One of the wives was a paralegal. Another sold real estate. Career women. Plus there was Briony from McInnis Hall, who brought along whatever man she happened to be dating at the time.

  Rosamunde would tidy and retidy all day until, around five, she showered, set her hair, rouged up, and came clicking downstairs in kitten heels far too dainty for her frame. She would start everyone off with martinis. Dining room chairs scraping across the floor let Elise know the game was about to begin. This was when she would sneak down the stairs to watch.

  The Briony at Elise’s house was different from the vice principal at school. She would usually wear something slinkier. Nothing really overt, but a bit more leg showed. All the couples knew her from McInnis, and inevitably one of the husbands would break from schoolyard formality and make a sexual innuendo, the rest of the men would chide the guy, and the wives would swat their men good-naturedly. Rosamunde’s husband was the only one who didn’t joke like that. But he insisted Briony sit next to him. Every time.

  Rosamunde would be quiet and efficient as she went to the kitchen to prepare another tray of drinks. From the stairs, Elise could see a sliver of her mother moving between the freezer for ice cubes and the fridge for mixers. Before she emerged with the cocktails, she would dump in a heavy splash of Dewar’s into a coffee mug and down it. She would stare into space, unaware she was being observed. Then she would pinch her cheeks, smooth down her hair, and shake herself into the role of charming hostess as she backed through the swinging door to the dining room with her tray.

  Briony’s dating stories had become intoxicating to Elise, who listened from halfway up the stairs. Briony’s life was big. She got her nails done at a salon every week and had been to Paris that past January.

  Rosamunde did what she could to keep up her end of the conversation and once asked if anyone had heard about the Nile crocodile found crawling around the sewers of Paris in 1984. “Just imagine. Slithered right out of the ocean and into the sewer systems of one of the biggest cities in the world.”

  The table went quiet.

  Later, when they were alone, Warren growled to his wife to stay quiet about that which she obviously knew nothing about.

  “I know more about Paris than you do. You’d never even heard about this crocodile story,” Rosamunde snapped.

  “Paris is on the Seine. It’s a river, not an ocean!”

  A terrible silence blanketed the room. The house. The street. From the stair landing, Elise felt sick for her mother.

  Warren’s voice was low. “You’re showing your roots, Rosamunde.” His chair scraped as he stood and went upstairs, closing the bedroom door behind him.

  Elise promised herself that year she would never be naive enough to think that what she didn’t know about her marriage couldn’t hurt her. And yet. Here she was now. Staring out the bathroom window while her husband whistled in the shower.

  * * *

  MATT HAD COME downstairs first, wearing leather flip-flops, shorts, and a plain white tee, and started to mix mojitos they could take out to the road while they waited for the bus. A dash of lime juice and sugar in each Collins glass, a couple of mint leaves, then ice cubes and white rum. He topped up both with club soda and full sprigs of mint.

  He’d made a good dent in the workload to ready the house for showings, having amassed on the garage floor a huge mound of trash bags filled with junk, garden bags filled with dead plants and weeds, a pyramid of ancient paint cans, rugs, and appliances—all of it destined for the dump.

  “It’s almost four thirty,” he called upstairs.

  Her soles smacked on the stairs and Elise came into the kitchen in a tank
top and sandals, short sarong skirt knotted at her waist. She exuded strength and power, his wife. All sinewy muscle and bone. Coiled tight and ready to strike. Cass seemed so soft and overflowing in comparison. Being around Cass made Matt feel more masculine.

  “I was thinking spaghetti tonight.” He handed Elise a cold glass. “Nice comfort food for her after a big day.”

  She hesitated a moment, then took the mojito but didn’t sip. “Sounds good.”

  Drinks in hand, hair still wet, they stepped outside into the sunshine and through a frantic swarm of gnats hovering above the walkway. Elise leaned down to pick a tiny, delicate buttercup and tuck it in her hair, just above her ear.

  There was a faint rumbling in the distance and she looked down the road toward it. “Must be them.”

  “What do you want to bet she gets off begging for McDonald’s?”

  The high-pitched buzz of cicadas made a hot day feel hotter, Matt decided. It had a Pavlovian effect on his sweat glands, made the air feel like a heavy duvet you can’t kick to the floor.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder at the road’s edge, moisture beading up on their glasses. A boat droned lazily in the distance. A neighbor’s sprinkler system sprung to life: tick, tick, whir. One of the sprinkler heads was broken—water gurgled up only to bend back over itself and give up. There was a lovely ordinariness to the moment.

  A rumbling in the distance, then the front grille of the bus rounded the bend. Cartoonish daisies, peace signs, hearts, and birds appeared in all their nostalgic, child-painted, hippie glory. Through the windshield, the driver’s face became discernible next, fat-cheeked and content. Then the bouncing silhouettes of kids in sun hats and the sweet hodgepodge of little voices, singing:

  I’m bringing home my baby bumblebee. Won’t my mommy be so proud of me. . . .

  Dust billowed up from the wheels. Matt tapped Elise’s shoulder, guided her back a few steps, up a weedy knoll to allow the bus room to pull over.

  . . . smashing up my baby bumblebee. Won’t my mommy . . .

  Flushed faces appeared in windows now. A girl with pigtails pulled so tight she nearly appeared bald stared at them as she passed.

  I’m licking up my baby bumblebee. . . .

  A pale boy next, with round glasses and a mushroom cut; he had an arm out the window, his palm keeping beat atop the P in Peace. Two empty seats, then a boy with a nose upturned and pressed against the glass. This one gave them the finger with both hands.

  Won’t my mommy be so proud of me. . . .

  From their little hill, Matt and Elise could see through to the other side. Ten or twelve kids on the bus, none of them with a tangled yellow bob, none of them with a freckle-faced grin so wide it pulled her eyes shut, none of them so impish and giggly and radiant that when the sun set your world didn’t go dark.

  It didn’t make sense.

  When the vehicle didn’t slow, time did, every second a lifetime now. A wash of dust and stinging pebbles sprayed their bare feet, and a haze of soupy rainbow colors made them dizzy. Matt held up an arm to signal the driver to stop, but he blew past in a blur of colors, waving through the open window.

  Matt pushed his glass into Elise’s hand and chased the bus up the road until the driver noticed him in the mirror and drew to a stop.

  “She wasn’t on today’s list,” the man said, his face stretched in horror. “I thought she was starting Monday.”

  “She wasn’t there?” Matt turned to his wife. “Where is she? What the fuck, Elise? You were here with her this morning. What happened?”

  “I . . . she wanted me to . . .” Elise was already in full panic. “She got on the bus. Gracie got on!” She looked back at the half-turned canoe. “That woman, Cass’s mother, she was outside in her garden the whole time.”

  “Ruth?” Matt stared at her, incredulous. “You’re talking about Ruth?”

  “She saw Gracie get on.”

  “What do you mean Ruth saw Gracie get on? Where were you?”

  “I went around back, but it was only for a second. And I saw the bus pull away. I know she got on. Of course she got on. . . .”

  “Well, she didn’t fucking get on!”

  Elise ran across the road and lawn to Ruth’s front door and pounded on it. By the time Matt caught up, it had swung open and Ruth’s face appeared.

  “You saw Gracie, our daughter, right? This morning?” Elise turned and pointed at the half-canoe bus shelter. “There. You saw her getting on the flowered bus?”

  “Elise!” Matt yelled.

  “That little girl?” Ruth processed what Elise was saying. Her hand went up to touch her neck. “With the messy hair?”

  “Elise!”

  “Yes! Gracie. Did she get on the flowered bus?”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Ruth, did she board the bus?” Frantic, Elise pointed to the camp bus. “Did you see Gracie get on that colored bus?” The driver, Ken, was out of the vehicle now and standing in the road, looking panicked. Kids’ faces plastered the windows. “Did you see her get on that bus?”

  “Heavens. Did I do something wrong?”

  “What’s going on?” Cass had materialized from nowhere. She put an arm around Ruth and turned to Elise. “Why are you screaming at my mother? You’re upsetting her!”

  “I don’t believe this,” Matt kept repeating as he paced the porch. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

  “Gracie’s gone!” said Elise. “Your mother saw her get on the bus. We need to know she got on the bus.”

  “She got on the bus,” Ruth confirmed. “Edward and I watched her.”

  Elise looked at Matt, triumphant. “They both saw her.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Elise!” Matt said, his hands on her upper arms. He shook her. “Edward’s been dead for ten years!”

  “My mother has Alzheimer’s,” Cass said. “You can’t listen to what she says.”

  The truth was unfurling and Elise didn’t look like she’d survive it. “But she could still be right. . . .”

  “I saw a bus,” said Ruth. “It didn’t have flowers.” She paused; a tremor wobbled her head. “You know, it wasn’t a bus at all. It was something smaller. A truck, perhaps. Or a van.”

  * * *

  A ROAR THE size of a jet engine. It started in Elise’s core, billowed up her spine, gathering force with every vertebrae until it escaped her. A roar so loud, so forceful, she could no longer hear what Matt was saying. Ruth started to weep uncontrollably in the doorway.

  “What have I done?”

  Elise couldn’t breathe. The roar coiled itself around her and squeezed, binding her and bracing her. It was so ravenous, so crazed, so keening with outrage, it sucked all the oxygen from the street. The entire village. Its force lifted her off the ground, higher and higher, until she was hovering way above the scene. In the sky, some twenty, thirty, forty thousand feet up, with puffy cumulonimbus clouds that looked so substantial and beautiful from the ground but now offered her nothing at all. Then the small bits of rock and moss that made up Ruth’s lawn. The hedge. All came rushing upward, fallen needles growing larger and sharper and intricate as they hurtled toward her. Her only instinct: to travel back in time, tuck folded legs into her belly to protect unborn Gracie from the impact. Her feet hit first, driving her knees into her chin. Just as the pine carpet came smashing into her face, Elise realized she’d dropped to her knees on the veranda.

  She’d never made a sound.

  – CHAPTER 16 –

  In a sea of uniforms, police badges, buzzing radios, and mounting panic, Matt held his forehead in his hands. There was no good reason for the camp bus driver, Ken, to be in their house instead of their child, and it took everything Matt had not to shake him until answers the man didn’t have came out and Gracie appeared. He watched Elise pace in the hall, pushing her hair back over and over. It had been well over eight hours since their daughter got into some other vehicle.

  He and Elise had already run around searching—up the road and across the neighbo
rs’ properties and into sheds and garages. They’d run into the woods calling Gracie’s name. They’d scoured the waterfront, boathouses, gazebos, and docks nearby—barely daring to breathe when looking beneath them.

  They’d found nothing. Not a trace.

  Ken’s lower jaw trembled and his eyes were pink and glassy with tears. He was speaking to a police officer. “I didn’t think anything of it when she wasn’t there. I thought it was Monday she was starting.”

  They had called the camp. The voice on the other end of the phone had sounded twelve years old. After some shuffling of the phone, whispering, the horror was confirmed: “No, her leader says she never arrived. Her name wasn’t on any of the lists yet because she wasn’t signed up the usual way.”

  “Matt, come.” Elise pushed out through the front door.

  He followed. Two local police cars had joined the state police; their lights flashed with sickening authority. Matt felt weightless. Couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. These cops climbed out of their vehicles to join the state troopers. An Amber Alert had been issued, but what good would it do so many hours later? The bright points of their metal badges caught Matt’s eye. Police badges were in the shape of shields, he noticed for the first time in his life. For protection. But whose?

  Still, the whole show was convincing. You had to believe these people knew what to do.

  In a stupor, he watched Elise tell them what she knew—which was nothing. As they were calling 911, he’d remembered how Elise could fix things in an emergency. Like with the woman who fell off her Segway. Like the night in the hotel room. He’d remembered and clung to her. Surely she could summon up her superhero self for her own daughter. Yes?

  But she stared at him with those eyes. There was no superpower behind them at all. They were just as useless as his.

  Jesus . . . he’d been busy having an orgasm to the sight of his old girlfriend while Gracie was out there with no one even starting to look for her. All the things he could have done differently. He could have stayed until the bus arrived, not gone to sharpen the ax. Made a bigger deal about Gracie going to camp for her first time ever. It was his bus shelter. Why hadn’t he thought to sit beside her on the bench? He felt his head swirl and he leaned over his knees to stop himself from passing out.