Songs for the Missing

by Stewart O'Nan

  “Pictures of what?” Because, ridiculous as it sounded, he didn’t want them in Kim’s room.

  “I don’t know. What kind of pictures do they usually take?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be in them if you don’t want to.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she said, as if somehow he was at fault. Hadn’t he just said he would?

  She acted like she’d read his mind, but, really, who wanted to stand out in the snow and pose while the neighbors peered at them from their windows? Lindsay didn’t either, but that Saturday, like Ed, jacketless and squinting into the sun, she did. Anything for Kim.

  “Thank you,” Fran told them when the photographer was gone, as if they’d done her a great favor, then sped off to be a guest on a cable-access show in Erie.

  Her latest crusade was getting Kim on Dateline or America’s Most Wanted, using local TV as a stepping stone. According to her chat group, after Natalee Holloway the networks were hungry for missing girl stories. She’d put together a new DVD and mailed copies to every station from here to Toledo. He admired her energy, even if he didn’t understand it.

  New Year’s Eve they stayed in. Fran was online most of the night and then went to bed at her regular time, and Lindsay kept to her room, so he watched Dick Clark by himself, yawning. As the seconds ticked off and the ball dropped, he thought this had been the worst year of his life, and that the best was long gone. On TV everyone was dancing, celebrating to Kool & the Gang. He switched it off and went through the house, killing the lights.

  The year turning was supposed to be hopeful, a new beginning, but he was stuck in last summer. The market was stalled and his desk wasn’t busy enough to hold him. He escaped, driving the white streets as if he had a client, ending up by the picnic pavilion on the bluffs. He smoked with his window open and the heater blowing. As winter locked in, that last unfinished day came back, the lake crowded with boats, Queen Anne’s lace rampant by the highway, heat shimmering like gas above the tracks, while outside, unreal and temporary, snow fell on the lighthouse and the jetties and the ice shingling the harbor. On the fourteenth it would be six months.

  They marked the anniversary with a well-attended prayer vigil led by Father John, and music by the combined choir and high school glee club. All four network affiliates from Erie carried it. Later, getting ready for bed, Fran complained that Lindsay hadn’t sung a note.

  “You know she hates those things.”

  “No one likes them,” she said. “Some things you just have to do. That’s life.”

  He wanted to defend Lindsay, but it was true. He had to wake up and go to work. He had to eat and sleep and know what was coming up on the calendar, though he no longer looked forward to anything. Pretending to be interested took a constant effort. When he was by himself he went slack, and then he remembered he had to fix the light in the closet or refill the cars with wiper fluid or buy more ice melter. He had to explain to the bursar’s office that Kim wouldn’t be attending school this semester either.

  Some of it was money. He’d sold a small industrial site in November, but nothing since. Wednesdays the Star-Beacon was full of foreclosure notices. Ten years ago they would have seemed an opportunity (false, it turned out, the start of his downfall). He skipped their estimated tax payment and cashed in another mutual fund to hold them over. The bills came in waves. He’d fought them off for months, but that couldn’t last. All of their money was in the house, and the longer they held on to it, the less it was worth. He could imagine their address listed for the whole town to see. As a father, he wanted to hang on until Lindsay was through with school. As a professional, his advice to himself was to get out now.

  The day of the Super Bowl his mother had another ministroke. They moved her to a skilled-care wing, where she shared a room with a tiny Greek woman who’d lost her feet to diabetes. The woman seemed pleasant enough (all she did was knit and watch TV), but his mother was used to her privacy and didn’t like her. “She talks. All day long, ’blucka blucka blucka,’ like I know what she’s saying.” She missed her dining-room friends. She could walk with a walker, the doctors said, but the physical therapist was nasty to her and she refused to go anymore. After speaking with the staff, he doubted the charge, but arranged to have her see a second therapist. That lasted one day and led to several meetings. Ultimately he and Fran had to sit down with her and lay it out plainly: She needed to do her rehab.

  “I don’t want to,” she said fiercely, tearing up. “It hurts me.”

  “You’re not going to get better if you don’t,” he said.

  “I’m too old to go through this again.”

  Inwardly he agreed—he didn’t want her to suffer—but Fran was unmoved. “I know it’s hard, but if you stop walking you’re never going to get out of this bed. That’s not what you want, believe me.”

  The idea frightened her into action. Now her daily routine included a walk to the sunroom at the far end of the hall after lunch. When he visited he accompanied her on the long journey, stepping and then halting beside her as she inched the walker forward, puffing with effort. Every time he left he was overcome by her determination and ashamed of his own flatness, and vowed to take Fran’s advice.

  As a coach he was a practiced motivator, a preacher of mental toughness, but much of what he felt was out of his control. He had a dream in which Kim fell from the upper deck of a stadium. For some unknown reason he was in a luxury box on the other side of the field. He saw her stumble on the concrete stairs and pitch over the railing in slow motion. He reached out his arms as if to catch her, and then, magically, he was directly above her, watching her fall toward the seats below. While she was in the air, he wished that somehow she would fly or float down (he was aware it was a nightmare, and not entirely subject to gravity). He didn’t see her hit, just the crowd flinching at impact, clearing a space around her. Police were pushing through the aisles. He didn’t tell Fran about the dream, knowing she’d hold it against him. He only had it once, but pieces came to him during the day, flashing like clips in a movie trailer. The question that bothered him was why she was sitting over there alone. He should have been with her.

  He had trouble thinking at any length, and to occupy his mind he watched TV. The problem was, anything emotional made him well up. One night he was watching The Shawshank Redemption, an old favorite. “Hope is a good thing,” Morgan Freeman said, and he had to turn it off and breathe deeply, blinking, not wanting anyone to see him.

  He hadn’t given up on Kim, as Fran sometimes implied. He still met with the detective and called Perry once a week, though whatever friendship they’d had was over. As he had all fall, he lobbied for a thorough search of Wozniak’s property. They made it sound like an impossibility. He thought seriously of going over there himself. He thought of buying a gun, except Fran would think he was crazy.

  The problem was, he was painfully sane. He realized that he was depressed and angry, but in his position it made sense. After six months he was merely being realistic. He didn’t see what Fran hoped to accomplish, waking early and updating the website, running all over the place chasing after TV coverage. He was afraid that eventually she would exhaust herself and end up in the same place he was.

  He did what he had to. He manned the grill in a KISS THE COOK apron at the church pancake supper and scooped popcorn at the high school basketball games. He handed out buttons and balloons and pens and Koosh balls and key chains. He stood behind Fran in his best suit as she drove home the D.A.R.E. speech she’d practiced on him, and shook hands in the receiving line after the program, listening to how impressed people were with her. While he suspected she was deluded, he was proud of her too. He’d always known she was capable and strong—it was partly what attracted him to her—but she’d gone beyond anything he could have imagined. The transformation was total: hair, makeup, clothes. Since she’d quit drinking she’d lost so much weight that her face had c
hanged. Sometimes when she was at the mic, under the lights, it was like watching someone he didn’t know.

  For Valentine’s Day, he wasn’t sure how much they should celebrate. He planned on getting her roses and chocolates, as always, but not champagne. He was hoping they could have a nice dinner at home.

  “You’re not serious,” she said. “It’s Valentine’s Day. The only thing this chick is making is reservations.”

  To atone he took her to Biscotti’s in Conneaut, where she told him about the panel she’d been invited to join (he was welcome too, though most of them were mothers), and the conference in Albany next month, and the cookbook she and Connie were putting together, and the possibility of meeting with the governor. April 9th was National Missing Persons Day—it was a perfect opportunity to get the word out. She’d cheated and had a glass of wine, and she was excited, craning over her place setting as she spoke.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’ve been busy.”

  “I know I haven’t been around much. I’m sorry. Not that anyone misses me.”

  “I miss you.”

  “No you don’t. You just miss me making your dinner.”

  “That too,” he admitted. “Lindsay misses you.”

  “Now I know you’re lying.”

  “She’s been bugging me about a job.”

  “Quizno’s,” she said, as if it were a problem. What she meant was that the shop was a lonely outpost on the wrong side of the railroad underpass from downtown. It shared the same cracked plaza—former home of a 7-Eleven—with the Broad Street Mini Mart, which sold liquor, cigarettes and lottery tickets. It was a corner he tried not to drive his clients by.

  “She’d be with Dana, and there’d be a manager there the whole time.”

  “How’s she going to get there?” Because, though Lindsay and Dana both had their licenses, they couldn’t have passengers other than family.

  “I’ll talk to Grant and Helen, maybe we can do a tag team. I just want to get her out of her room and off the damn computer.”

  “I’m with you on that.”

  “We can’t keep her locked up.”

  “I know,” she conceded, sitting back. “It couldn’t be someplace easy.”

  “I don’t think there is such a place.”

  “It’s not going to get in the way of her flute lessons?”

  “That’s one day a week. Her grades are great.”

  “Her grades are great, I’ve got no problem with her grades. Did she ask you to ask me?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like you’re trying to sell me on the idea.”

  “I think it’s great that she wants to work. I mean, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if things were normal.”

  He’d finished the thought in his head before the words left his mouth, and regretted them immediately.

  “You’re right,” she finally said. “I’m sure it’s just me.”

  “It’s not just you. I’ve got the same worries you do.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she said, looking around at the other couples. “We’re supposed to be having a romantic evening.”

  They tried. She had a second glass of wine, though she wasn’t supposed to, and a third, and then dessert and espresso. They both ate too much, they agreed on the drive home, and, groaning, went straight to bed, where, to his surprise, she reached for him and climbed on top. She was noisy, where she usually worried about Lindsay hearing them. He could feel her ribs through her skin, each of them distinct, and the bones of her shoulders. She arched and then flung herself down on him, her hair in his face. Her mouth tasted of wine, and he wondered if she only wanted him because she was half drunk.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said in the dark afterward.

  He hadn’t thought so, but then he tried to remember the last time, and, oddly, couldn’t.

  “Too long,” he said.

  Later, listening to her snore, he couldn’t recall that ever happening before, and took it as a bad sign. The next time he’d know how long it had been, to the day.

  Being the Cup

  Her weeks now were measured out in shifts. Monday-Wednesday-Friday, after school till close, plus Saturday lunch. Her mother said she couldn’t work more than twenty hours and that she’d have to quit if her grades suffered. It was already March. They were nearly done with the third marking period and she had straight A’s, so basically that was impossible, but her mother said it like a threat. Her father trusted she wouldn’t abuse this privilege. To Lindsay it sounded like they were talking to a convict. Dropping her and Dana off in their matching black shirts, her father told them not to work too hard and then waited until they were inside to leave.

  They couldn’t have been safer. At night when the weather turned mild a few bikers might hang around the minimart before racketing off, but two of the guys on their crew, Tyler Stafford and Jared Hamilton, were on the football team, and Mr. Candele, the manager, was bigger than either of them. The only time she and Dana were alone was on break, squatting on milk crates and smoking right outside the backdoor. She knew her mother imagined her being dragged into a car (she’d imagined it herself, being yanked by the wrist through an open window), but the chances of that actually happening were ridiculous. At home she liked to say the most dangerous part of working there was the smell.

  Her first week she was the Meat. It was a rite they’d all gone through. “Meat, go get me some olives.” “Tell the Meat she doesn’t have to nuke the meatballs five thousand times.” “Yo, Meat, what part of ‘no tomato’ don’t you understand?” Dana rode her harder than anyone. At school their crowd was several rungs below (and opposed to) Tyler and Jared’s, and it was weird to see her joking with them.

  Dana had warned her that the job was mindless—cleaning lettuce, slicing cheese, wiping tables. Lindsay figured a little drudgery was the price of independence. What she hadn’t counted on was how embarrassing it was. Along with the logo shirts, they had to wear gay baseball caps and black aprons, which, as the shift went on, gathered mustard and mayo stains, and floury handprints from the rolls. The menu was loaded with trademarked names like Trippin’ Turkey and Cabo Chicken and Yin-Yang Salad. When she repeated the orders of people from school—guys especially—she couldn’t look them in the eye. She knew the prompts by heart, but the words came out muddled. “What kind of bread would you like on that?” The plastic gloves they wore came in three sizes, none of which fit her. In the middle of building a sub, one slipped off and she had to fetch another pair. She forgot what people wanted and had to ask again. Just being there made her dumb.

  She was tired all the time. Except for break Mr. Candele never let them sit down, even when they were all caught up and the place was empty. “If you’re leanin’, you’re cleanin’,” he said, so much that they used it on one another.

  As the Meat she drew the shit jobs. They made her clean the bathrooms and take out the trash. They gave her whole bags of onions to cut. They saved the baked-on broccoli cheese vat for her, and watched like judges as she scrubbed at it with a gummy green pad, the white scum packed under her fingernails. They made her be the Cup.

  Friday and Saturday, no matter what the weather was like, the Cup walked up and down Broad Street, waving at cars. The costume was awesomely stupid, eight feet tall with googly eyes and a dippy grin and a red straw poking from the top. A built-in fan at her hip kept it inflated, buzzing so it was hard to hear. Despite the constant rush of air, the interior held the vinegary stink of curdled sweat, like a guys’ locker room, though after a few minutes the space filled with her own stale cigarette breath. The light through the white fabric and the claustrophobic closeness reminded her of reading underneath the covers. She could only see straight ahead through a mesh window in the big Q on the Cup’s midsection. Because of its circumference her arms poked out like flippers. Dana said it was tough getting up if you fell down. She told Lindsay horror stories about gangs jumping out of cars and beating up Cups, using their cel
lphones to shoot video that ended up on the net. Here they just threw stuff. Cups, cans, sometimes pennies. They didn’t hurt because of the padding, but it was pretty degrading. You didn’t want to stand too close to the road. Back when Dana started, Lindsay had driven by just to give her shit for being the Cup. Now Dana helped her into the costume and walked her across the lot like a sacrifice.

  “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Lindsay said through the mesh.

  It was Friday rush hour, and she was posted by the light at Broad and 16th to entice people into bringing sandwiches home for dinner. She ambled back and forth along the line of stopped cars at a safe distance, waggling her arms, throwing in a few clumsy poses (“Superstar!”) to stave off the boredom, all the while waiting for the first bottle to come flying toward her face.

  Instead, people pointed and smiled, shaking their heads. Drivers honked. Kids waved to her, even some adults, and Lindsay naturally waved back. After months of dreading every public event, it felt strange. They didn’t know who she was, they just liked her for giving them something to look at, and she liked them for being kind. Dana hadn’t warned her about this. The goofiness of the costume had rubbed off on her. All of a sudden she was like the Bubble Boy. Everyone was rooting for her.

  She liked being in disguise, and putting on a show. In real life she couldn’t dance at all, but now she tried out Pee Wee’s big shoe dance, and the Macarena, and as much of the Electric Slide as she remembered from second grade. She did William Hung’s “She Bangs” and practiced kung fu moves on a sign until she broke a sweat. Dana was crazy. This was way better than working.

  The only thing anyone threw at her was a balled-up Dairy Queen bag, which she saw coming and which fell short, rolling nearly to her feet. “What’s up with that?” she asked, arms wide, taunting the car—a blue Camaro—then, as the driver took off, shook her fist at it, still in character. “You better run, bitches! I’ll cup you good.”

  She was pretending to hitchhike when something thumped against her back.