The Year of Fog

by Michelle Richmond

  “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 shou
ldn’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.”

  The bed is at the top of the staircase, and beyond it the door leading into the darkroom. We’re standing at the foot of the bed. My back is to the mattress and Nick is facing me, holding me by the shoulders, but keeping a polite and brotherly distance. Bed or darkroom? Bed or darkroom? Instead of choosing, it simply happens; my body seems to fall of its own accord onto the bed. Nick just stands there, hands at his sides.

  “Can I get you anything? Aspirin?”

  “No thanks. Just a minute. I’ll be fine.”

  He looks around, presumably for somewhere to sit, but there are no chairs. “Here,” I say, patting the bed beside me. “Have a seat.”

  The mattress sinks slightly with his weight. The clock reads 4:25. It is that precise time in the middle of the night when no one in her right mind is awake. At 3:15, the most energetic partygoers are just getting home. By 5:00, the most diligent workers are reaching over and turning off their alarm clocks. But at 4:25, just about everyone is in bed. Surely this is the witching hour, when strange and unpredictable things happen. Surely things that happen at this hour can be forgiven, or at the very least forgotten.

  I don’t move away when Nick’s hand brushes my thigh, or when he leans over to kiss me. His kiss is soft, lingering, not too insistent. Maybe this is what I need. Maybe this is the thing that will help me snap out of the strange, stunned state I’ve been in since Emma disappeared. Is it possible that sex with this man could break the cycle of my paralysis? Could making love to him wake me up, help me retrieve the lost threads of my sanity? Could one simple act rearrange my memory, set things straight?

  As he’s kissing me, three words thump around in my head: Situation, Participation, Extrication. Three words straight from the mouth of Sam Bungo, who led the sex addiction sessions my parents forced me to attend when I was seventeen. Sam was no psychiatrist; he wasn’t even a certified therapist. He was just a Christian counselor with a lowercase c, but he was the best my parents could afford. He’d once been a youth minister at a small Baptist church in Montgomery, but had left the church under mysterious circumstances. By the time I met him, he’d been leading the sex addiction classes for three years, and he had the answer to temptation down to a formula. He made us chant those words several times every session.

  Situation, Sam said, opened the door to evil. The first defense against sex was to avoid compromising situations, those circumstances in which you would be most vulnerable.

  Participation, he advised, was the enemy. Christians must hold themselves apart from sinners, and in doing so they would be protected from sin. “You should not be unequally yoked,” he said.

  Finally, there was Extrication. Say you took a wrong turn and found yourself in a Situation, and it was clear that you were headed straight for Participation. Your only option then was Extrication: snap your bra, zip up your pants, and get out of there as fast as you can. “Don’t look back,” Sam used to say. “It’s no accident that Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt.”

  Sam wasn’t smart, but maybe, it occurs to me now, he was right. Maybe his slogan was divine inspiration masking as idiocy. I broke the first rule, Situation, by letting Nick come over. Kissing him would certainly be considered Participation. But it isn’t too late for Extrication.

  “We shouldn’t,” I say.

  “Right, sorry.” He leans back on his elbows, sighs, gives me a sad little smile. “What’s his name? The fiancé?”

  “Jake.”

  “Nice guy?”

  “Very.”

  I get up and open the door to the darkroom, flipping on the overhead light. “Come in here,” I say. He follows me, perhaps thinking that I’ve had a change of heart and am planning to continue the romantic interlude among the chemicals and drying trays. One glance around the room, though, and his face changes.

  “What’s this?” he says, taking in the photos of Emma, dozens of them, papering the walls. Emma at the zoo, Emma at the beach, Emma in Jake’s backyard on the Slip ’N’ Slide. Emma standing in front of her school, holding hands with Ingmar, a boy she loved briefly in kindergarten. Emma and Jake standing in the sunlight at Tsunami Town in Crescent City.

  I tell him the story of Emma. I tell him how I lost her. I tell him I might very well be losing my mind, and he reaches forward and takes me in his arms. There’s nothing sexual in his touch this time, no hint of desire; he’s just doing the only thing he can think of to do. He ends up putting me to bed in my clothes. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to just go downstairs and plug my laptop in for a bit and try to prepare for my meeting,” he says.

  “Stay as long as you like.” Part of me hopes he’ll climb in my bed an hour from now and put his hands all over me. The more rational part hopes he’ll leave before I have a chance to do something stupid. I fall asleep to the sound of his fingers clicking over the keyboard of his laptop.

  In the morning when I wake, I can hear him moving around in the kitchen. I quickly change into fresh clothes, brush my teeth, rinse my face, and go downstairs. He’s sitting at the table fully dressed, hair combed, sipping coffee. I pour some for myself and join him. “The two-day beard suits you,” I say.

  “Thank you.” There’s an awkward pause, both of us staring into our cups. “Sorry about that thing last night,” he says.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” I slide the envelope containing his great-grandmother’s photos across the table. “Here’s what you came for.”

  He lays his manicured fingers on top of the envelope. “Kind of you to pretend this is the only reason I showed up at your door in the middle of the night.”

  “Kind of you to be such a gentleman. I’m afraid my willpower might not have held up under pressure.”

  “I wish I’d known you under different circumstances,” he says. He goes to the sink and washes his cup, sets it on the dish rack, dries his hands, and pulls a checkbook out of his coat pocket. “What’s the damage?”

  “Two hundred seventeen.”

  “A bargain,” he says, jotting the numbers on a check with his Mont Blanc pen.

 
“I gave you the sleepover discount. Aren’t you going to look at the pictures?”

  “I trust you,” he says, handing me the check.

  And then he’s gone, and I’m alone, and the sun through the big loft windows is too bright, too intense, like the sun on the beach in Alabama in the summer, when every body, every object, bore a hazy gold outline, and it was impossible to see anything with definition or depth, because the light made everything waver; it made everything untrue.

  41

  NO KIDDING,” Jake said the first time I told him about Sam Bungo’s sex addiction classes.

  It was a warm day, Emma was at zoo camp, and Jake and I were at Java Beach. He dipped an almond biscotti into his coffee and said, “I know you’ve got quite a sex drive, but I never figured you for an addict.” A guy at the neighboring table glanced up from his Bay Guardian, gave me a quick once-over.

  “I wasn’t. My parents got this idea in their heads, and there was no convincing them otherwise.”

  “I guess we’ve known each other long enough now that I can ask this question,” he said. He was wearing a Giants hat and a fitted black T. He looked good, really good, and I wanted to go to bed with him. We hadn’t done that yet. We’d come very close, and we both knew it would happen soon, but we were waiting for the right moment.

  “What question?”

  “The old how-many-partners-have-you-had question.”

  “Let’s not,” I said.

  “What’s the harm?”