Forgotten: A Novel

by Catherine McKenzie

  I take it from him with a sense of foreboding. It’s a judgment from the Rental Board giving Pedro the right to expulse one defaulting tenant (me) and to remove all her effects from the premises. I scan through it. The familiar words—nonpayment of rent, notice, service—swim in front of me, beating into my brain. Though I was waiting for something like this, it feels worse seeing it typed, sealed, official.

  And then one phrase stops me cold.

  It’s this: Furthermore, the Tenant is missing, presumed dead.

  I run down the street, tripping over the end of Dominic’s jeans, heavy and wet from the snow. The air sears my lungs.

  Missing, presumed dead. How is that possible? Why would anyone think I was dead? I called . . . I spoke . . . I . . .

  “Emma, wait up,” Dominic calls from behind me.

  My legs buckle. I fall to my knees into a snowbank. The cold seeps through the fabric.

  “Are you all right?”

  I have no idea how to answer that question. Instead, I drive my hands into the snow, the crystals hard and bitter against my skin.

  “Emma, you’re scaring me.” He touches my elbow. “Come on, you can’t stay like this.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He tucks his hands under my elbows and lifts me to my feet. He turns me around and takes my hands in his, brushing away the snow. They tingle and sting, but I don’t care.

  I’m dead. I’m dead.

  “Emma, your lips are turning blue. You need to get inside.”

  I stare at him. I can’t think, can’t speak, can’t move. I’m dead.

  A cab lumbers down the street and Dominic flags it. He bundles me into the back and gives the driver the address. I curl myself into a ball, resting my head against the worn seat leather. It smells like car polish. The sky out the window looks impossibly far away.

  When we get to the apartment, I open the cab door mechanically and follow Dominic up the walk. We go inside, and I take off my coat and shoes and drop to the couch robotically. I sit with my hands between my knees while Dominic turns on the gas fire and brings the blankets from my bed. I huddle under them, feeling numb.

  Dominic sits on the coffee table facing me, waiting, worried, his palms flat on his thighs.

  “Thanks for bringing me here,” I say eventually.

  “Of course. Are you feeling better?”

  “I guess.”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “That judgment . . . it said that I was . . . missing . . . that I was maybe . . . dead.”

  “Jesus. Why would anyone think that?”

  I hold my knees to my chest. “I wish I knew.”

  “Well, why were you gone so long in . . . where were you, anyway?”

  “Africa.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  I hug my knees tighter, willing myself to stick in the present. “My mother passed away and she left me a trip.”

  “What about your father?”

  “I don’t have a father. I mean, I don’t know him. He left when I was three.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Dominic flexes his hands on his knees. “So you went to Africa, but you were only supposed to be there a month?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got sick early on, but also . . . I was in Tswanaland.”

  “You mean you were there when the earthquake—”

  “Yes.”

  He stands abruptly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hold on a sec, I’ve got an idea.”

  He leaves the room, returning in a moment with a thin silver laptop.

  “I was thinking. How would Pedro know to tell the court you were missing?”

  “Good point.”

  I take the laptop and open a web browser. I google Emma Tupper Attorney. The first hit is a link to the Post’s webpage. I click on it and an article loads.

  The title says it all: “Rising Star at TPC Goes Missing.” I race through the article. I’d been in Tswanaland on safari. I’d gotten sick and been left in a village near the game reserve so the guides could get a doctor. I’d called a few friends and told them I’d be back in the capital on the twentieth. The earthquake struck on the twenty-first, 8.9 on the Richter scale, twenty miles from the capital. Much of it had been razed to the ground, wiping out the country’s infrastructure and killing thousands. All foreign nationals were strongly encouraged to register with their embassies (built to First World standards, they were some of the only buildings left standing) and take home the rescue flights that were sent in the following weeks. But I never turned up, and no one could find any trace of me. Officials assumed the worst and placed me on a list, a bad list. The conclusion was sad but obvious. “She’ll be greatly missed,” Matt was quoted as saying. “She had a bright future ahead of her.”

  “What did you find?” Dominic asks.

  My eyes dart to his, then back to the computer screen that says I’m probably dead. Which would explain a few things. Like the dead feeling in my heart, for one.

  Dominic takes the computer from me, his eyes scanning the screen. He emits a low whistle. “Fuck.”

  “I don’t think that even comes close to covering it.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “For what? This isn’t your fault.”

  “Just the same.” Dominic puts down the computer and walks toward a box in the corner. He pulls out a bottle of Scotch and a glass and pours several generous fingers. He hands it to me. “Here, drink this.”

  I stare into the glass. The amber liquid glows. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “You never know.”

  I toss the whole thing back in two long gulps. It burns like fire and tastes like the bottom of a peat bog. I look up at Dominic. He’s watching me like I’m made of glass and he’s a ball-peen hammer. One sharp blow and I might shatter into a million little pieces.

  I could use something to blunt the blow.

  “Hand me that bottle.”

  Chapter 4: Some Samuel Clemens

  I’ve had this recurring dream for months.

  It’s day three of my trip. We’ve spent two days tracking elephants and giraffes under a sky so wide and flat it feels like being lost in a watercolor painting. The air smells like dust and sunbaked hay. My ears are full of the whir and peal of birds. As the bleached-out sun moves toward the horizon, a lioness charges out of the tall grass and leaps at the throat of a zebra that’s lazily strayed away from the herd. With her victim dying at her feet, she emits a series of low roars, calling her pride to the feast.

  I roll down my dusty window to get a better look. I can smell the blood and hear flesh being ripped apart. I’m repelled, yet I can’t look away. My fellow travelers snap pictures and shoot video until the zebra is carrion.

  When we get back to camp, we’re excited and chatty in a way we haven’t been till now. Roy and Dorothy, a white-haired retired couple, sit at the rough picnic table scrolling through the pictures they took on their camera.

  “Look, Do, he took that leg right off.”

  “She took that leg off, dear. It’s the females that do the killing.”

  Bill the ex-army guy is telling Max the still-hippie about the wildebeest he killed on his last trip to Africa. Laurie, Max’s girlfriend, tells me she thinks Max brought her on the trip to propose, and she’s feeling nervous, wondering when he’ll do it.

  The guides make us dinner. Banga-just-Bob complains that he has a headache. I see him pop a couple of aspirin while he stirs the meat stew. When it’s ready, I tuck into a large serving. It tastes good but foreign.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder. My m
other is standing next to me. She looks like she did before her illness, only less substantial somehow. Diaphanous.

  “Don’t eat that,” she says. “He’s sick.”

  Before I can say anything, she turns and walks away. I drop my bowl. It lands with a thud in the dirt, shattering. The dusty ground sops up the gravy thirstily. I call out to her, but she doesn’t react; she just keeps slowly walking away, wearing something white and floaty.

  I try to run after her, but I can’t make my legs work. The sun disappears below the horizon. I can’t see her anymore; there’s just a white spot where she was a minute ago—the trace of her like a bright light leaves on the cornea. I feel as I did when she died, like I’ve lost her all over again.

  Banga-just-Bob strikes a match and tosses it into the waiting fire ring. The flames leap up as a troupe of performers circle the fire, their red robes the only flash of color in a suddenly black-and-white world.

  The stars dance above them in the massive sky. I watch their ceremony like I watched the lions earlier that day, barely breathing. The fire dies down. One of the performers locks his eyes onto mine and beckons me with a flick of his wrist. I walk toward him slowly, still searching for my mother out there in the blackness. He places his long, cool fingers on my forehead, pressing gently.

  “You’re sick,” he says. “You’re sick.”

  I awake with a start. My head is throbbing and my stomach feels empty. Yesterday, after several belts of liquor, all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and disappear. So I did. I slept and dreamt, and slept and dreamt, and now it’s Monday morning.

  I push off the covers and cross the cold floor. I climb back into Dominic’s clothes and go to the kitchen for something to eat. The sight of the phone on the counter sends a pang through my gut. I really, really need to speak to someone in my life. I carry the phone to the table and dial the never-forgotten number for Stephanie’s parents. It’s early—just after seven—but they’ll be up. I can imagine them even: Lucy in her workout clothes drinking orange juice before she meets her “girls” for a morning walk, Brian reading the newspaper in a starched shirt and tie even though he retired five years ago.

  “Good morning!” Lucy chirps into the phone.

  “Hi, Lucy. It’s Emma. Emma Tupper.”

  I hear the sucking in of breath and a loud smack! “Brian, Brian!”

  “Lucy? Hello, Lucy?”

  There’s a scuffling noise and then a deep male voice. “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Brian. It’s Emma.”

  “If this is some kind of sick joke—”

  “No. It’s really me. I’m okay. I’m home. I’m . . .” My voice trails off. I’m at a loss for what to say, how to explain something I don’t even understand myself.

  “It’s really you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, thank God. We’ve been so worried. And Stephanie . . .” He stops. I listen while he struggles for control.

  “That’s partly why I’m calling. Where is she?”

  “Oh, Emma. She went looking for you.”

  Now it’s my turn to struggle for control. “What? But how could she? How could you let her?”

  “We couldn’t stop her. Not once the travel embargo was lifted.”

  “Have you heard from her since she left?”

  “She called us from London, but we haven’t heard anything since. It says on the Internet that the phone systems there still aren’t working reliably.”

  I close my eyes, thinking of all that twisted metal I saw on the road. “When was she supposed to arrive?”

  “Three days ago.”

  I nearly throw the phone across the room in frustration. Three days ago! Six months apart and a day separated us. That’s not right, Universe. Not right at all.

  “Do you have her cell number?”

  “Yes, of course.” He rattles off the numbers. I write them down mechanically on a square of newspaper. “We’re very glad you’re all right, Emma.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think Lucy’s a little too emotional to talk right now, but I’m sure she’d love it if you could call later. Right, darling? Yes. Later would be good.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  I hang up and rest my head on my arms. Stephanie’s parents thought I was dead. I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like. Stephanie and I spent so much time together growing up that I had honorary daughter status. And Stephanie, stubborn, loyal Stephanie, is off looking for me. Is that where Craig is too? Are they both searching for me while I’m right where I’m supposed to be?

  “Morning,” Dominic says, shuffling into the room in a pair of khakis and a blue fleece pullover. I raise my head. He looks, if anything, more tired than he did yesterday. Darker circles, wan skin.

  “Hey.”

  “You okay? You look pale.”

  I let the phone drop to the table. “You ever have to call someone to let them know you’re not in fact dead?”

  “God, no.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t recommend it.”

  He sits across from me. “You have many calls like that to make?”

  “Probably.” I slouch in my chair, the potential of the calls pushing me down.

  “What if you went to see the police? Maybe they could help you get the word out?”

  “The police?”

  “Yeah, you know, maybe that detective who was quoted in the article, the one in charge of your case?”

  I mull it over. “I probably should check in with them. If they really thought I was . . . missing.”

  “Right.”

  I put my hands on the table and push myself up. “I guess I should get on that.”

  He stands and shuffles to the fridge. I watch as he opens the door and reaches for a bottle of orange juice like he belongs here, like this is his home. Which I guess it is now. Which probably means that I need to get out of here. But where am I supposed to go? The only place left is my mother’s house, a place I can’t face yet.

  “Dominic?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think you could lend me some cab fare?”

  He puts the juice container on the counter and pulls out his wallet, looking bemused. He extracts two large bills. “This do you?”

  “More than, and thanks. I owe you one.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  I wait for the detective assigned to my case for forty-five minutes in a dingy lobby painted public-building green. My nose prickles with the smell of too many bodies and disinfectant. There’s a sad-looking tree in the corner decorated with a silver garland. The piped-in Christmas Muzak must be a deliberate tactic to loosen up suspects’ tongues. I don’t care what I have to confess to, just make “The Little Drummer Boy” stop! Pa rum pa pum pum.

  “Ms. Tupper? I’m Detective Nield.”

  I stand and shake his hand. Midfifties, tall, well built. He has a round face and steely blue eyes that remind me of Paul Newman in The Color of Money.

  I follow him through a large open space filled with men, women, desks, and ringing phones to his personal cubicle. The taupe fabric dividers are decorated with a collage of mismatched faces. It takes me a moment to realize that they belong to the people he’s looking for. I find my own picture in between those of a small child with a gap in her front teeth and a white-haired man squinting at the sun from the deck of his boat. It’s a close-up of my face smiling crookedly at the camera. The last time I saw this picture, it was attached to Stephanie’s fridge. Now it’s dangling from a red pushpin in a police station. Not good.

  I sit in Detective Nield’s brown vinyl visitor’s chair. He reaches into a pile of papers and pulls out a blue lined form. He squares it on the blotter in front of him and clicks the end of a ballpoint pen.

  “Now, Ms. Tupper
,” he says, his voice gravelly from cigarettes, or maybe whiskey. “Why don’t we start at the beginning? What were you doing in Tswanaland?”

  I wipe my sweaty palms on Dominic’s jeans. “My mother died. She left me the trip in her will. She always . . . it was important to her that I take the trip. So I did.”

  “And you were with Turnkey Tours?”

  “Yes. But if you know that, why do I—”

  He smiles sympathetically. “Standard procedure. We like to verify the information we’ve gathered with the MP if we can.”

  “MP?”

  “Missing person.”

  “Oh. Yes. All right. Ask away.”

  “You arrived on June fifth?”

  “That sounds right.”

  “And then you traveled to the game reserve?”

  “Yes. It’s about two hundred fifty miles from the capital.”

  “What happened when you got there?”

  “The usual safari stuff, I guess. Looking at giraffes and elephants.”

  He nods. “When did you get sick?”

  “The fourth day. I picked something up from one of the guides.”

  “Do you know what?”

  I think back to the fever and chills. One minute I was fine. The next I couldn’t sit up. I could barely swallow. Breathing felt like a chore.

  “I’m not entirely sure. I was too sick to be moved very far, so they brought me to a village where some NGO workers were building a school.”

  “What are their names?”

  “Karen and Peter Alberts.”

  “What NGO were they working for?”

  “Education Now, but they’re from here, actually. They should be back in a few weeks, if you need to speak to them.”

  “I doubt that will be necessary.” His pen scratches along the page. “How long were you sick for?”

  “About a week.”

  “And you called Ms. Granger and Mr. Talbot?”

  “Yes. A few days before the earthquake.”

  “You told them that you were heading back to the capital? That you were coming home?”

  “I was supposed to take the next transport back, but it never arrived.”