The Year of Fog

by Michelle Richmond

  I walk slowly through the rooms, picking up jars and turning them over. Objects fall into my hands: pebbles and plastic beads, letters of the alphabet, crumpled pieces of blank paper, paper clips and pushpins, broken seashells and scraps of wood. There is a golden frog that leaps away the moment I touch it, and a piece of hard red candy, half eaten. I open the boxes, searching, but find only useless things. All of the objects are small enough to fit into my hand, but not one of them has anything to do with Emma, not one of them is the clue I’m looking for. I wander through every room, exhausting every possibility.

  When I emerge from the building, it is no longer night. The exterior is lit by a blinding sun, and it is no longer a field but a square, crowded with commerce and people—bicycles and vendors and newspaper stands and children playing jump rope, men in suits and women in summer dresses. Pushing through the crowds, I know there is somewhere I need to be, but I cannot remember the place or the reason, or who might be waiting there for me.

  44

  DAY 147.

  “How would you describe your relationship with Emma?” asks Deborah Haze. Deborah is the host of a local morning talk show. Her eyebrows are arched in high, inverted Vs, like a child’s drawing of a bird. Deborah is known for her tall lace collars reminiscent of period movies, the dark foundation she wears beneath rust-colored blush. Her stiff blonde hair adds a good three inches to the top of her head. I’m trying hard not to stare.

  During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Deborah is doing a retrospective of all the stories that captured the public’s heart this year. Emma’s story is number four in the series. I’ve never liked Deborah Haze, but I’ll do anything to get Emma’s face back on television.

  “Would you say you were more of a mother to Emma,” Deborah asks, “or a friend?”

  “I guess I tried to be a little bit of both.”

  The show is being taped in a big warehouse, way in the back, on a small platform that everyone keeps referring to as “the living room.” On TV, the sofas look plush and inviting, but in fact they’re very uncomfortable, with hidden springs poking up in awkward places.

  “So you’re both her mother and her friend,” Deborah says, nodding and pressing her lips tightly together as if I’ve just said something revelatory. “How do you find a balance?”

  The lights are hot on my face, the tiny microphone tugs at my lapel. Deborah leans forward, waiting for her answer. I remind myself that every time I speak into a microphone or look into a camera, my motives are judged, and interest in Emma’s case rises or falls depending on how sympathetic I appear. I imagine a little graph that records public sympathy, the line dipping or rising each time I speak.

  “Well, it’s not like you step in and poof, one day you’re the mother,” I say. “It takes time to develop a relationship, to find the right balance.”

  “Did you ever think you might not be prepared? Did you ever worry you couldn’t replace her mother?”

  “Of course I was nervous. I don’t know anyone who’s completely prepared for children. But I wasn’t trying to replace her mother. I was going to be her stepmother; there’s a distinction.”

  What that distinction is, I haven’t figured out. Had things gone on as planned, would Emma have one day come to accept me as her mother, or would I have always been slightly on the outside, one step removed from family? A couple of weeks after the engagement, while we were cooking dinner together, Jake asked, “What do you want to be called?” I was standing with my back to him, sautéing mushrooms and garlic on the stove.

  “Mommy?” he said. “Or Mom?”

  I turned to face him. It was Jake’s job to make the salad, and he was holding the whisk he’d been using to stir the dressing. I licked the whisk. It was a tart, creamy dressing, with just the right amount of sweetness. “Come on,” I said, avoiding the question. “What’s the secret ingredient?”

  “No can do. It’s a Balfour family secret.” He wiped a spot of dressing off my chin. “Or would you prefer something more Southern? I can see you as a Mama.”

  The garlic simmered on the stove, the butter sizzling. Emma had always called me by my first name; I didn’t tell Jake that I could not imagine answering to anything else. “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Anything.”

  “If it weren’t for Emma, would you have proposed to me?”

  He stood back. “What?”

  “Would you want to marry me even if you didn’t have a child who needs a mother?” I glanced away, embarrassed by my question.

  “Look at me,” Jake said, placing his hands firmly on my shoulders. “When you’re not with me, I think about you. When we’re in bed together, I feel like I’m nineteen years old again. When I read something interesting, you’re the first person I want to tell, and when I buy a great new album, you’re the first person I want to play it for. I love who you are with Emma, but I also just love you. Get it?”

  I nodded, smiled. “Got it.”

  Deborah leans back in her chair, sips from a red coffee mug, sets the mug down—lining it up exactly with a cup-shaped mark on the polished table. I imagine the notes scribbled on her script: meaningful pause here. “If I may ask, how has this affected you and Jake? I understand you canceled the wedding?”

  The interview has gotten off track. Deborah is speaking in non sequiturs, trying to catch me in a trap. I wonder what it would do for the TV station’s ratings if I were to to confess that Jake and I talk less and less, that his affection for me has turned to resentment. If I felt it might help find Emma, I’d gladly allow myself to cry. Instead I hold back the tears, try to evade the question. This isn’t about me and Jake. It’s about Emma.

  “Not canceled, just postponed. We’ll think about the wedding after we’ve found her.”

  “You still believe that’s possible?”

  “I do.”

  Deborah taps her peach fingernails on her notepad and shifts gears. “How did you and Emma get along?”

  “Wonderfully. She’s a sweet kid.”

  “You liked each other?”

  “Very much.”

  Deborah blinks at me, her eyelashes spiderlike under the thick black mascara.

  “Like any child,” I say, “she had her moments of rebellion.” I hear myself talking, saying too much, trying to fill the blank air. “Of course there were times when she tried to push my buttons, but that’s to be expected.”

  “I see,” Deborah says. I imagine the line on the public sympathy chart taking a steady dive. Deborah tips her head to one side and smiles. On her teeth, a slick film of Vaseline. “So you take it day by day?” She asks this of everyone she interviews. It’s her wrap-up question, her trademark. It usually has nothing at all to do with the conversation at hand.

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose that’s all any of us can do. Thank you so much for being with us.”

  “Thank you.”

  Deborah turns to the camera. “Later in the program, we’ll look at this story from a different perspective.”

  She smiles for two more seconds. A guy who’s been standing below the platform with a clipboard in his hand says, “That’s a wrap,” and Deborah’s smile fades instantly. She removes the microphone from her collar and stands up.

  “What did you mean by a different perspective?” I ask.

  “I always like to get more than one side of any story.”

  She reaches out to shake my hand; she could crack pecans with that grip. “Good luck,” she says, scurrying off the set. A skinny kid in a flannel lumberjack shirt trails after her, carrying a cell phone and a Tully’s coffee cup.

  A guy comes over to unhook the microphone from my lapel. His hand brushes my breast. “Sorry,” he says, but I can tell he isn’t.

  In the lobby on my way out, I spot Deborah’s next guest, clad in a black sweater, black pants, and pearls. It’s Lisbeth. She’s lost weight, had her hair highlighted.

  “Hello,” she says, beaming a recently bleached smile my way.
/>
  I try not to let the shock register on my face. I don’t like the person I’m becoming, don’t like the fact that, by the simple fact of her presence, Lisbeth can make me feel so angry, even jealous. When Jake and I first met, he made it clear that he was relieved to have Lisbeth out of his life. He once told me that he had grown to love me more than he ever loved her. I believed him; I still do.

  But there is one thing over which I have no control. Despite her flaws, despite everything she did to hurt him, Lisbeth must represent for Jake something I never will: a connection with Emma. It was Lisbeth who carried Emma in her womb, Lisbeth who brought that beautiful girl into the world. Surely, in some part of his mind, Jake must see Lisbeth as the one who gave Emma to him. And he must see me as the one who took her away.

  45

  THE WEEK before Christmas, Annabel calls to tell me there’s someone she wants me to meet. “Her name is Dr. Shannon. She’s a therapist.”

  The lights on my Christmas tree are blinking. On the floor is a set of ornaments I bought from Emma during her school fund-raiser last year: a wooden reindeer with twigs for antlers, a tiny metal caboose painted blue, an angel with glittering gold wings. I had this vision of how Christmas would be—me and Jake and Emma decorating the tree together, with Booker T playing in the background and orange peels simmering on the stove. Jake in a Santa suit on Christmas Eve, making lots of noise as he puts the gifts under the tree.

  “Are you listening?” Annabel says.

  “I just don’t think therapy is going to help.”

  “Dr. Shannon isn’t a psychiatrist. She specializes in hypnosis.”

  The miniature angel has golden hair and a porcelain face with tiny features painted on. Bright red lips, a dot of a nose. She’s missing one eye.

  “I already tried that, remember?”

  “I know,” Annabel says, “but this one comes highly recommended. She has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Stanford and has published important research on hypnosis. Her practice is in Palo Alto, and she’s done work for the CEOs of several Fortune 500 companies, not to mention that senator in Delaware whose intern was murdered a couple of years ago.”

  “What makes you think she’d be willing to meet with me?”

  “Rick just did a good turn in court for one of her biggest clients. She owes him a favor. She’s agreed to one meeting, but she can’t see you until the end of January. She’s expecting a call from you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Annabel says. “Think of it as a Christmas present.” She clears her throat, pauses. “That’s not the only reason I called. I don’t know how to say this.” Another pause, longer than the first.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  “There’s a letter,” she says, using our father’s phrase. “You know, in the mailbox.”

  I swallow hard, trying to think of the right words. “That’s wonderful. How long have you known?”

  “I’m almost eight weeks along.”

  “When are you due?”

  “July 17.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew?”

  “Rick and I agreed to wait a couple of months before we let the cat out of the bag.”

  “Congratulations. It’s terrific news.”

  Mentally, I’m doing the math. She must have conceived about three months after Emma disappeared. Is it possible that she and Rick decided to have another child in part because of what happened to Emma? I remember a conversation we had when she was pregnant with Ruby, her second. “I can’t imagine having just one,” she had said. I was sitting in a hard chair in a doctor’s office, and she was lying on the table. On the screen, a tiny white thing pulsed in its dark, mysterious sack. I stared at the large head, the small curled body, that living thing growing within my sister’s womb, and wondered if I would ever have the courage to bring a baby into the world. “What if something happened to your child?” she had said. “How could you go on if you didn’t have another one to take care of?”

  “Did you plan it?” I ask now.

  “Hardly.”

  “How does Rick feel about it?”

  “A little nervous, but happy.”

  I try to think of the appropriate questions, all the normal responses. I should ask if they’re going to find out the sex of the child, if they’ll add another bedroom to their house. I should ask if Rick plans to take paternity leave, and how Annabel will handle Ruby once the baby is born. Instead, I’m sobbing into my coffee.

  “Abby? You okay?”

  “Sorry, it’s just—”

  “Listen,” she says. “I went online. In 1999, a little boy was snatched from a park in Nashville. He was discovered six months later in an apartment just two blocks from his home. In 2001, a fifteen-year-old girl was kidnapped in Houston and taken across the border to Mexico. They just found her last year. She’d been living with her kidnapper in Tijuana. Detroit, 2003. A nine-year-old girl opened the door of a car going fifty miles per hour and jumped out. She landed in a grassy ditch and was rescued by a jogger. The kidnapper was arrested an hour later, and the girl was given the key to the city.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That there’s still hope. Miracles happen. They’re rare, but they do happen.”

  I insert Emma’s face into each of these scenarios: Emma jumping out of a speeding car; Emma walking across the border; Emma stepping out the front door of some house, unharmed.

  “Give her my love,” a voice in the background says. It’s Rick. I imagine Annabel sitting on the bed, legs stretched out, a pillow behind her back, and Rick there beside her, his hand on her belly.

  “Right back at him,” I say.

  She makes a kissing sound into the phone. “I gotta go. The bathroom calls.”

  “Annabel?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m really happy for you.”

  “I know.”

  After we hang up, I drink a bit of Scotch, trying to work up the nerve to call Jake. When I finally get him on the line, he sounds sleepy, or maybe just depressed. “Hey,” I say. “I’m having trouble with this tree. It’s lonely work. Want to come over?”

  “I don’t think I’m up for it tonight.”

  “I’ll make eggnog.”

  “Rain check?”

  A woman’s voice in the background says, “I’ll let myself out.”

  “Lisbeth is here,” Jake says, before I can even ask.

  “What?”

  On his end, a door closes. I imagine him walking over to the window and peering out, making sure she gets in her car safely, the way he used to do with me.

  “She stopped by,” he says. “It’s not like I called and invited her over.”

  “This reappearing act doesn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “You don’t act like it.”

  “That’s not fair,” he says.

  “How can you let her back into your life while you push me away?” I hate the desperation that creeps into my voice, but I can’t stop it. Losing Emma was the most devastating blow. To lose Jake too is a possibility I can’t fathom.

  “I’m just trying to get through this,” Jake says. “I don’t know how to explain it, but with Lisbeth, I’m able to remember things.”

  “What things?”

  “Little things that wouldn’t matter to anyone else,” he says. “Like when Emma was born, the woman we shared the hospital room with watched The Price Is Right all night long, turned up really high, and she kept arguing with the nurses because they wanted her to breast-feed her newborn, but the woman wanted to use a bottle. And I just remember sitting there staring at Emma, this tiny little baby with a full head of dark hair, amazed that she could sleep through the commotion. I remember being totally astonished by this calm, beautiful baby—I just couldn’t believe she was mine.”

  What can I say to that? No matter how much I love Emma
, there are some things I simply wasn’t there for, some things Lisbeth and Jake will always share.

  “You remember her performance on Bay Area Morning,” I say quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “She actually said she missed Emma. After everything she’s done.”

  “I think she may have meant it. I’m not forgiving her. I’m just saying it’s complicated.” He sighs, the kind of sigh that means we’ve been over this before, let it rest. The thing is, we haven’t been over this, not really.

  “She’s Emma’s mother,” he says finally. “There’s no getting around that.”

  The word mother falls like a dead weight on my ears. He’s right, of course. I remember my own parents, how they suffered through twenty-five years of a rotten marriage for one simple reason: they had two children.

  I can hear my mother’s voice, nearly five years ago now, a few weeks before she died. “The best thing I did with my life was having children,” she said. And I remember thinking I didn’t want to say that on my deathbed. I didn’t want motherhood to be the thing that defined me, that made my life worthwhile. I needed something else, too: I wanted my work to make a difference. I had tried to express this to my mother in the past, and she had always looked at me with pity, as if I was sadly misguided, as if I was missing some crucial moral center.

  When I was ten and Annabel was eight, my mother bought us a book about reproduction. She sat us down on the couch one Sunday after church and proceeded to explain what happens when two people who are joined in holy matrimony pray to God and ask him for a baby. She recited some very vague information involving a bedroom and God’s divine will, then opened the book and showed us the pictures. There was a line drawing of a pregnant woman in profile: long hair, slender legs, upright breasts, a slightly curved belly. Low inside the belly, a sack, and within the sack a little curlicue of a thing, so small that when my mother pointed to the picture, the curlicue was entirely hidden by her fingernail.