Nobody Is Ever Missing

by Catherine Lacey

  Quiet back there, the driver yelled, and so they were.

  The redhead leaned around the edge of my seat and put her face near my elbow. She had skin the texture of cheap toilet paper and luminous green eyes, little luxury items planted in her skull. The bones in her face were more pronounced than you’d expect on a girl her age—either underfed or a natural look of vulnerability.

  Can I tell you a secret? she whispered. We’re runaways. We all ran away from our homes. He’s taking us to the police.

  I peeked over my shoulder at the other girls. A few leaned their swan necks into the aisle looking toward me. I could hear some high voices dipping low to whisper.

  What’s your name?

  Elyria. What’s yours?

  Alison. Where are you from?

  New York. Where are you from?

  A different planet. I ran away from outer space. Nebulas don’t interest me. She smiled with all her tiny teeth. You want to know another secret?

  Sure.

  I have two hearts. A regular one and a little baby one underneath it. And you know what else? I have a third eyeball stuck in my brain but it can’t see anything because it’s too dark in there. That’s what the doctor told me. He showed me a picture of it they took in a big white room with a robot. Have you ever seen a robot? Because I have.

  Her face had pinched into something serious, and I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth about the robot, the doctor, the extra eye, the extra heart—what a terrible thing to have too many of—but the bus stopped and the bus driver put his arm up and waved me forward.

  Bye, I said.

  See you later, Alison said.

  When I got to the front of the bus the driver was just staring forward, and I looked at his gnarled hands ten-and-two-ing and I saw how the flesh hung on his face like it was clay pressed on in a rush, all uneven and loose, and something in his jaw clench and nostril flare made me worry he was doing something with his life that was bloody, something that involved heads pressed against concrete or mouths filled with something that shouldn’t be there and I wondered if this was true and if it was true I knew he would continue to plow over life, continue to chop lives like a tractor, and he would keep doing that forever unless I killed him right here with my bare hands in front of all the girls, then threw his corpse out the door and drove these girls straight to the hospital for post-traumatic stress treatment, and though I knew I had the potential to do this locked in me like a poisonous pet snake, I knew I didn’t have the part of a person you must have to turn that potential kinetic, to be the kind of person who can let their awful plow.

  Thanks, I said to the bus driver, to cover up what I was thinking, and one of the girls in the back shouted, Takes one to know one, and it made me gasp even though I knew she wasn’t talking to me and I worried that what I had seen in the driver was something I’d seen in myself, that it took me to know me.

  The bus driver said, You’re welcome, and I wondered if he knew what else I was.

  4

  I walked roadside for a few hours, wondering if it was possible that Alison really did have an extra eye, an extra heart, if a person could ever live with that kind of surplus, and something about the way Alison spoke reminded me of how Ruby spoke, or how Ruby said something once about having two hearts. Or maybe I was misremembering some more complicated thing Ruby said, something that made it clear we didn’t speak the same language, that we couldn’t fully translate ourselves to each other. There was a night I realized this, how we could no longer or perhaps had never quite been able to hear each other—

  Who lets a sixteen-year-old move to New York alone?

  We were smoking cigarettes in the backyard after a late Thanksgiving dinner (Mom’s cigarettes, of course, the who to her question) and I didn’t know whether I should ask her about college life as a child prodigy—Was she lonely? Had she made friends? Were her classes, finally, challenging enough? I knew I wouldn’t understand her answers to those questions, that she’d allude to philosophical concepts I’d never heard of, that she’d make references I couldn’t place and I’d just stare, baffled and unable to keep up. I was barely passing the high school classes she’d been exempt from.

  As we smoked I pushed Ruby on the swing set, and we could see Mom passed out and drooling on a love seat in the sunroom. She’d been at a fever pitch all day, swigging Beaujolais, burning all the takeout in a reheating attempt, calling Ruby the renegade genius and accidentally ashing onto her plate.

  There’s our little genius, our little renegade teenage genius! How does she do it? I just don’t know how she does it!

  But finally everything was quiet, just the swing creak and our faint exhalations and even though this was one of the thousands of chances I had to have a meaningful talk with Ruby, something sisterly and emotional, I didn’t take that chance: I stilled the swing and held out an imaginary microphone to her: Tell us, Ruby, how do you do it?

  And Ruby ran with it because she also wanted to live in a fiction, to keep playing pretend.

  Well, I’ll tell ya, Bob. The secret of my success is to make a plan and act fast. I don’t second-guess myself. I’m never of two minds about anything.

  Well, folks, there you have it, I said, but there were no folks.

  * * *

  A van slowed and stilled beside me and this memory sank away. The driver leaned out his window, his right arm was covered in tattoos, matte-black vines blurring into dark skin.

  Simon, he said.

  Elyria, I said.

  Elyria! That’s a helluva name. Hippie parents?

  Not really.

  I didn’t tell him, like I didn’t tell anyone, that Elyria was a town in Ohio that my mother had never visited. That was all my name meant: a place she’d never been.

  The basic idea of a mustache was hanging over Simon’s mouth, and there were these odd wrinkles around his eyes that didn’t agree with the rest of his machine-smooth face.

  I stared at the pointless hills rippling around us—the trees all captive to the ground, a grey mountain in the distance, stoic and bored—and Simon started a monologue on himself, his autobiography—

  Been traveling for seven months on the North Island, did some wine work for a while to save money, but I’ve been on my own for a long time. I separated from my parents when I was sixteen. My father clobbered the shit out of my little brother one night, put him in the hospital, and I said … you know … check, please? All done with this, thanks. Ever seen a ten-year-old with a black eye from his own pops? It’s not something you want to ever see.

  I almost liked how much he talked, how he answered his own questions, how simple it all was, like television. I hadn’t said more than ten words and maybe those were the last words I was ever going to say for the rest of my life, I thought, as Simon went on about how his parents were put in jail, something to do with fraud, with some kind of real estate scheme, houses in Miami, London, L.A., all confiscated, and maybe this was it—this was all I needed—someone who just naturally filled in all the silence that life has in it.

  Pops tried to blame it on me and even the judge knew he was pulling a porky. My pop had a stink-eye. Anyone with half a thought in his head could see it. It was in the news then, tabloid shit mostly. You know, Tattooed Teen Divorces Parents—Violence Alleged—that kind of shit.

  He let himself laugh weakly.

  That’s terrible, I said, stepping out of my silence.

  Is what it is.

  People say that when they mean something is terrible.

  You’re right. It is terrible.

  5

  Another terrible thing was how I met my husband.

  He was wearing a suit that day and his deep red tie made his eyes seem even greener and brought out the pale pink in his face. He was thirty-two, but still looked boyish. I was barely twenty-two but everyone guessed older. We were sitting in a small and brutally lit waiting area in the university police office. We sat next to each other for m
aybe twenty minutes without saying anything and we didn’t even bend a glance at the other because it’s hard to do that when you’re thinking about what a woman can do to herself and how a brick courtyard on a nice autumn afternoon can so quickly become a place you’ll never want to see again. Police officers were speaking into phones and walkie-talkies and one of them walked over to ask me my name.

  Elyria Marcus.

  Ruby was your sister?

  Adopted, yeah, I said, in case they knew that she had been Korean and could see from looking at me that I wasn’t.

  The officer nodded and made a note on her clipboard. She looked at my husband, who was just a stranger sitting next to me at that point and it hadn’t yet crossed my mind to wonder why he was there or who he might be.

  Professor, we need to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind, she said.

  Of course, he said, following her to the back of the office.

  While he was gone Mother showed up, limp and sleepy on whatever Dad was slipping her those days. Dad wasn’t there of course; he was still in Puerto Rico doing cheap boob jobs or something. Mom fell into the seat beside me.

  Oh, it’s waaarm, she slurred. What a nice surprise.

  She snaked her arm around mine and put her head on my shoulder.

  Baby, baby, my little baby. It’s just you and me now. No more Ruby ring, Ruby slippers, Ruby Tuesday. Oh, our Ruby, Ruby.

  It’s normal, I’ve heard, for people to talk a little nonsense at times like these, but she wasn’t even crying or seeming close to crying, which made me feel worse because I wasn’t either. I tried to seem like I was in shock, but I wasn’t, not really. Mother didn’t even try to pretend she was in shock because that’s the kind of beast she is. An officer came over to offer condolences or have her sign something, and she offered him her hand like she expected him to kiss it. He shook it with a bent wrist, then slipped away.

  My precious little Ruby … What was it she always said, Elyria? Am I your favorite Asian daughter? Elly, you know she was my only Asian daughter. What on earth do you think she meant by that? I never understood it. Was that just a joke? Did she ever tell you what she meant?

  I wiped a smudge of lipstick off my mother’s nose. It looked like she had put it on while talking and driving, which was probably true.

  It was a joke, Mom.

  Elyria, she was so beautiful, so smart. People must have wondered how she could stand us. People must have wondered, even I wondered. I stayed up late some nights just watching her sleep, wondering how she’d ever be able to stand it. I guess she just couldn’t take it anymore, our ugliness.

  Mom, stop.

  It’s not our fault. We were just born like this. Well, not really you, dear, but—

  She sat up, pushed her hair out of her face, and took a lot of air into her body. She let it out slow, grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye, and squeezed. It was the first tender moment we’d had in years, but it ended quickly.

  I need so many cigarettes, she said, staggering away. Through the glass wall in the front of the police office I saw her light what would become the first of a dozen. Every few minutes someone would approach her, almost bowing, it seemed. Excuse me, I could see their mouths say, pointing to the NO SMOKING WITHIN 50 FT OF THIS DOOR sign, and she would cut them off with a shout I could hear through the glass. Have you heard of my daughter Ruby? Ruby Marcus? She died today and it wasn’t from secondhand smoke. If that didn’t work she added, Fuck off, I’m grieving, which usually did.

  The professor who wasn’t yet my husband came back and stopped in front of me, standing a few inches too close and looking down. His paleness was glowing. I noticed his suit was too big around the middle and the sleeves too short.

  Do you want to know anything? About her? I was the last one who spoke with her. That’s what they think.

  I didn’t particularly care what some professor had said to Ruby. I’d seen her that morning; she was no mystery. We stood outside the library with paper cups of burnt coffee. She looked terrible, like she hadn’t slept in days, and she said she felt even worse and I asked, How much worse?, and she said she didn’t want to talk about it and I wasn’t going to talk about it if she wasn’t so we didn’t talk about anything. We finished our coffees and walked in opposite directions. The blame (or at least some of it) was on me. I’d never figured out how to be related to her.

  I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and especially not about Ruby, but the professor’s voice was so very level and calm. He sounded like some kind of radio reporter and I wanted to listen to this personal radio; I wanted his voice to play and play. Mother was lighting another cigarette outside, leaning against the glass, a dark bra visible through her wrinkled oxford.

  Okay, I told the professor. I’ll listen.

  He sat down slowly, his knees angled toward me a little.

  I’d only known Ruby since the semester started, when she became my TA. I knew she was overqualified, of course. She was talented, you know, and had been working on some incredible proofs.

  His sentences were hard and plain, like he had been polishing them all afternoon.

  I never understood what she did here, I said. We never talked about it.

  Well … I don’t know how to describe it, what Ruby seemed like today. I suppose I have a hard time reading faces, emotions, you know, the descriptive stuff. I’m more of a numbers person. But she seemed, just—maybe a little distracted. She gave me some papers she’d been working on. She said she wanted me to check them over, and she left.

  What was it?

  What do you mean?

  The papers. Was it something important?

  Um, no, not really. Something most grad students could do. She was capable of so much more than that. She’d been working on some very interesting stuff lately.

  Oh.

  I’m sorry.

  No, it’s fine. I mean, it doesn’t matter that it was just regular stuff.

  No, I mean, the whole thing. That she—

  And I wished right then that I could gently cry, just cry—politely, humanly. Outside, my mother was screaming at someone, her breath making tiny smoke and steam clouds.

  Thank you, I said to the professor.

  He nodded, put his hands on his knees, leaned back a little, then leaned forward again. He looked at my mother, who was still screaming, then he looked at his feet.

  When I was twenty my mother did it the same way as Ruby and, I just, well … today I’ve been thinking about it a lot, you know. Probably the most since it happened.

  I didn’t say anything. Mother was lighting one cigarette with another. A section of her hair was pushed over her head the wrong way. She turned around and waved at me with one limp, little hand, a royal dismissal. Lipstick rimmed her mouth like ice cream on a toddler.

  I’m sorry for that, he said, for saying that. I know it’s what people always do, try to tell you they’ve already dealt with what you’re dealing with, trying to tell you how they grieved—I know it doesn’t help. I’m sorry. It was just on my mind.

  You don’t need to be sorry, I said.

  We didn’t say anything for a little while.

  He put his hand on my shoulder as if he was taking someone’s advice to do so and he let it stay there for a moment and after that moment water did come out of my eyes and I felt more appropriate and more human to myself. The professor put his arms around me and I collapsed a little, making a wet spot on his navy jacket.

  6

  Exactly, Simon said, and he smiled and I knew that smile, and I remembered when I smiled like that at boys who smiled like that, but I hadn’t seen that smile in at least seven years, and I’d never known my husband when he was young enough to let a gesture reveal himself so plainly. We had stopped for a sandwich and Simon was still filling up all the silence, and I did not smile back at him. I was no longer listening—most of my attention was on a man strumming a ukulele at the other end of the bar. A woman was looking at a menu and trying to get the man’s attention
, but he had his eyes closed. The woman waved her hands in front of the ukulele man’s face but he just kept whistling, swaying. I looked back at Simon and copied his expression—serious, but with raised eyebrows—to make him think I was listening. Maybe he was too young to catch that trick. Maybe in the world of a twenty-one-year-old boy, no one had to fake an interest in you. The woman took away the man’s ukulele. He looked, dejected, at the menu.

  Here’s something that may or may not be right in front of your face, Simon said, you know, in front of your face in the sense that you already know it.

  Simon held my shoulders with both his hands, which felt larger and denser than I would have expected.

  This is important—you and I, right now. This is important.

  How’s that? I said.

  What’s between people is more important than anything in the physical world. This is God, Elyria. Anytime two people can look at each other and talk honestly, that is God.

  I wondered for a moment if he was trying to get me to join a cult, but I realized it was just his youth talking, not a dogma. I hadn’t spoken much to Simon and what I’d said wasn’t any kind of honesty, but Simon had perfected the art of seeing what he wanted to see, because it’s easier to go through life like that, to see the world as a series of familiar things, a place where everyone feels how you feel and sees what you see. I was still impersonating Simon to his face to get away with ignoring him, and that seemed almost sustainable, a way to spend a few weeks, but when he went to the bathroom I went out to his unlocked van and strapped on my backpack and started walking somewhere even though Simon had told me he’d pitch a tent outside tonight and let me lock myself inside his van—To prove a point, he said, I’m not a bad guy and I trust you—but I didn’t want to bear Simon anymore and I didn’t want to be the thing under those projections anymore because I did have somewhere to go, in a way—Werner’s farm, a place to sink into and forget about movement, about vibrations, about projections, about relying on whoever happened to pity me at that particular moment, increasingly disheveled, smelling more and more like the earth or an animal, caring less and less about how little I cared.