The Lost

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “At least I won’t have to see you die first. Unless you’re hit by a bus. Please don’t get hit by a bus.”

  “I can’t believe you’re talking like this.”

  “It’s called gallows humor. Standard coping mechanism. Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who doesn’t find humor in death.”

  “Stop talking about death!” I threw a pillow at her. Not sure why. Because it was childish, and I felt like a child in that moment, the moment everything suddenly spiraled out of control. How dare she turn my life inside out, my carefully constructed illusion of happiness? How dare she rip it apart with this messiness? I knew it was an ugly thought the instant I had it, and I buried it as fast and hard as I could. But there it was. I’d been so happy when I’d graduated because it felt as if I was being handed the reins to my life, and Mom had ripped those reins away, drenched them with acid, and let them dissolve at my feet. “So what do I do?” I asked, though I knew it was about her, all about her, but still, I couldn’t help but ask. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say, what she expected, what she needed...what I was supposed to do. But I knew it was a selfish question so I changed it. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Duck,” she said. And she threw the pillow back at me.

  That was the last time we talked about it for three months. She had her surgery, she started chemo, and I helped her with the day-to-day stuff, but we didn’t talk about it.

  One day at the café with my artist friends...I simply couldn’t be there anymore, knowing Mom’s medical bills were piling up. I went home and typed up my résumé. It was pitifully short, but I was creative. I didn’t lie, but I embellished with the most forceful verbs I could think of. I bought a pencil skirt and a blouse with buttons, and I bought a pair of sensible black heels, if heels could ever be considered sensible. I tried not to feel like a tightrope walker as I walked in them and missed my flip-flops, my standard footwear. I didn’t tell my mom until after I’d gotten my first job offer, three more months later. By then, the bills were more than Mom could pay, even with her insurance. I quietly started to pay them, and that was that. That was how my world changed. One conversation. And everything that followed.

  The boy waiting for me in the living room had traced his moment to one day, too.

  I think again about what he told me about his one conversation.

  And that’s when I see the photograph. It’s in a Popsicle-stick frame, the kind you make in elementary school. Dried glue is clumped all over it, and stray bits of construction paper and googly eyes are covering it. It’s a picture of two boys, one of them clearly Colin, the other a younger version of him with ears that stick out like Dumbo. “Thanks,” I say out loud. The dust swallows my words. I feel giddy as I hug the photo.

  I turn around and walk—though I don’t know why I bother since every direction looks the same, but it feels right so I do it. It’s faster to reach the edge of the void than it should have been, and I walk out into the desert. I’m not far from my ocean.

  I walk to the nearest junk pile. It has all the usual lost clothes: kids’ sweatshirts, a few coats, umbrella, newspapers, hats, mittens. I select a raincoat. It’s the lightest of the choices, and I throw it over my bathing-suited self. I then trudge back to the yellow house.

  Lounging on the junk pile and draped over the porch, the people are still there. Waiting for me. Waiting for a miracle. I clutch the Popsicle-stick photo to my chest and try not to make eye contact as I walk past the junk piles and up the steps to the porch. Claire flings open the door as I arrive. She sees I’m holding something. I hear whispers behind me; they’ve seen, too.

  In the living room, Colin slowly rises from the couch. His hand is shaking as I hand him the photograph. He looks at it and frowns. “That’s my brother.” He looks at me. “I don’t understand. I mean, yes, I lost this years ago. We’d made it together for Mother’s Day. One of those stupid crafts projects, you know?” He sits down heavily with the photo in his hands. “You couldn’t find her? ’Course not. She’s dead.”

  Claire is close to my elbow. “He’s not glowing,” she whispers.

  He lifts his head. He’s heard her. “This isn’t what I need.”

  “Then why did I find it?” I ask.

  He doesn’t have an answer to that.

  “Maybe it isn’t what you need. Maybe it’s someone who needs you.” I feel proud of myself for saying that. I sound wise. I have no clue if it’s true.

  His eyes bug and I see him look at the photo fresh.

  “There,” Claire says, satisfaction filling her voice.

  Squinting at him, I see what she sees: a soft glow that surrounds him, a match to Claire’s own glow.

  “You did it!” Claire throws her arms around my neck and hugs me hard. I hug her back, elated. I really did it! Twice! Three times, if you count the ring, but I don’t know if that counts since I had to be rescued then.

  Happily, Claire ushers him out of the room, and I scoot into the bedroom to change out of my swimsuit into the dress Claire chose for me. It occurs to me that if this continues, I’ll have to change right back into it. All those people would expect me to go into the void for them and come back with some item that would make them magically see the light.

  I wonder if I can do it.

  I wonder why I can do it.

  I tug my dress into place and tie my wet hair back with a ribbon. I listen as Claire guides the next “visitor” into our living room. When I hear the squeak of the couch, I walk out of the bedroom. A woman in sequins and diamonds is seated on the couch. She turns as I enter, and I plaster a smile on my face. “Do you know what you’ve lost?” I ask.

  Things I found:

  shoes

  a fake Rolex

  a dead cat named Treacle, stuffed in a shoe box

  two tickets to a Red Sox game

  an apology note, never sent

  greasepaint for a circus clown

  a microphone

  a report card, not mine, 3 F’s

  a few memories I didn’t want

  a few memories I did

  leg warmers

  a baby blanket, pink

  my purpose, maybe

  Chapter Eighteen

  I have lost track of time. It’s been several weeks, or months, since I first arrived in Lost, and while I appreciate the appropriateness of my inability to calculate the amount of time (given where I am), it also scares me. I wish I’d marked days on the wall of the kitchen, but I didn’t think I would be here so long.

  I stare out the window of our house and watch the dying sun play over the variations in the land, the brambles and the cacti. It then catches the curve of the waves in the ocean, a mile away today. Low tide, in its own peculiar way. I don’t see the dolphin.

  Claire is upstairs. She discovered a violin in one of the junk piles. It’s only a little warped, but neither of us has any clue how to play it. She has been experimenting with it. I listen to her coax out a melancholy cry that blends into other off-key notes. I kind of like it. It fits this place. Colin is conked out on the living room couch behind me. I don’t know how he can sleep through the screech of the violin, but he does. He’s been here every day since I helped him find what he’d lost—and since I failed to help the two people after him.

  The woman in the sequins and diamonds... I brought a clock out of the void for her. She threw it at the wall and ran screaming out of the house. A blond-haired boy in a starched shirt tried to attack me when I emerged from the void with a set of keys for him. After that, I had more successes, and then more failures. But those, the sequin woman and the blond boy, were enough to convince Peter, who convinced Colin, that I needed protection. He shows up every day after Peter leaves to hunt for the Missing Man.

  Every night, Peter checks the traps, the alarms, and the locks
, before he climbs into bed with me. He sleeps with one arm tight around my waist, as if keeping me from falling off the side of a mountain. Often, in the mornings before he leaves to search for the Missing Man, he kisses me or I kiss him. He doesn’t press for more, and neither do I. We don’t talk about what will happen when he finds the Missing Man.

  After a while, I leave the window. In the kitchen, I cook us some pasta and sauce. I still don’t switch the light on, though at least a couple dozen people know I’m here. Anyway, I’m used to the shadows.

  I am setting the table for three when I hear a knock on the door.

  Claire has heard it, too. The violin stops.

  Peter, I think. But no, he wouldn’t knock. And the lost people always come in the morning. They don’t want to risk being in the outskirts of town at night—we’re too close to the void, and no one has forgotten how quickly it contracted.

  I pick up the fire extinguisher as I pass through the kitchen, and I meet Claire by the stairs. She has her two teddy bears. I don’t need to look to know she also has her knife. I also don’t need to look to know Colin is with me. He has a gun. I adjust my grip on the fire extinguisher and call, “Who is it?”

  “I have come back,” a man’s voice says.

  Claire gasps. Colin issues what sounds more like a gurgle.

  I peer out the bit of window beside the deli sign. In his dapper gray suit, the Missing Man stands on my porch. He has the same suit, cane, and briefcase. I back away from the door. Peter did it, I think, and I don’t know why I don’t feel overjoyed.

  Claire wraps her arms around my waist. “Don’t go without me!” she whispers fiercely. “Promise me you won’t!”

  He knocks again. “Ms. Chase?”

  Colin darts in front of us, unlocks the door, and pulls it open. “You!”

  Claire blocks me with her little body. “She isn’t sure she wants to talk to you. You weren’t nice to her, and wild dogs almost ate us.”

  “I am relieved to hear they did not,” the Missing Man says. “Ms. Chase, you have every right to refuse to see me, but I think you will wish to speak with me. Indeed, I must speak to you. The Finder was insistent upon it, and he is...most persuasive at times.”

  I crane my neck to see beyond him. “Peter’s here?”

  “He wished us to have an opportunity to talk alone.”

  “Oh.” I am still looking beyond the Missing Man, as if Peter is lurking right around the junk pile. I would feel much, much better if he were here. “About what?”

  “Ms. Chase...Lauren. May I call you Lauren?”

  I nod. My stomach feels twisted into a knot.

  “There is no easy way to say this.” He looks down and grinds the tip of his cane against the porch floor. I want to shake him, make him say what he came to say fast, like yanking a Band-Aid off. “Your mother is dying, and you need to go home.”

  The words feel like a punch.

  This is not news, I remind myself. After the first “you have two years” diagnosis, Mom bought a sixteen-month calendar on the theory that she’d fill that much time and then spend the rest of her life in the hospital. She’s worked through three of those calendars since the first doctor’s death sentence. She was in remission—or at least we thought she was. She was supposed to learn the latest test results on the day that I came to Lost.

  Of course they were bad. I knew they were. Why else had I driven straight instead of turning left? I didn’t want to hear it, as if hearing it would make it true and if I ran, it wouldn’t ever happen.

  I stand in the doorway of the little yellow house and feel the red dust in the wind hit my cheeks and the creeping chill of dusk mix with the hot heat of day. I smell the faint sour stench of mold, mildew, and rot that pervades the yard underneath the smell of seawater. “How do you know?” My voice sounds dull, distant.

  “I know.”

  “And you’re here to send me home?”

  “I cannot. You haven’t found what you lost.” There’s sorrow in his voice, and his words feel like knives slicing my heart.

  “I can find it! I’ve found it for others. I can find it for myself.” I don’t know why I haven’t yet, though. I’ve been into the dust often enough. But I only found an item for myself once, the yellow prom dress. Last thing I found was a job résumé for the man who collected pennies in the gutter. His girlfriend had typed it up for him, but he’d tossed it overboard and then sailed his yacht straight into Lost. I’d also found the yacht, but that hadn’t been so much lost as grounded. Sean and others had dragged it to the ocean and spent a few afternoons on it. The penny man liked to play host on its deck.

  “You have? Interesting.”

  That’s so much Peter’s word that I do a double take. Peter should be here. He can explain... “I go into the void and come back with things that seem to help people. Sometimes. I don’t know why.”

  He smiles broadly. “Well, then, that’s all good. You don’t need me.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do! You have to send me home. And you have to send Claire home.”

  Colin barges his way through the doorway. “And me! Send me home, too! Please. Sir. I’m ready. You can send me home.” He clings to the tailored sleeve of the Missing Man’s suit coat.

  The Missing Man pries Colin’s fingers off his coat.

  “Join us for dinner?” It’s the best imitation of my mom that I can manage, the way she can take control of any situation with grace. I open the door wider. “I’ll set another plate.”

  “I’ll do it.” Claire scampers back inside, past me into the kitchen. I hear her climb onto the counter, open a cabinet, and knock the plates together as she fetches an additional one. Meanwhile, I look at the man who said “no” to me however many weeks ago. He looks the same, and his expression is as warm as it was in the diner before he heard my name.

  Opening the door wider, I shift backward so that the Missing Man can come inside. He looks around at the hallway. Since the townspeople started coming, I’ve given up on painting the walls. It’s clean, but the wallpaper still flakes from the walls and the mirror by the coat hooks is warped. It throws back a fun-house elongated face. With an expression of puppy-dog admiration plastered on his face, Colin trails after him.

  “I believe I made your transition here more difficult,” the Missing Man says, “and for that, I apologize.” He removes his coat and hangs it on one of the hooks beside my raincoat. He leans his cane against the wall. He then raises his eyebrows, looking at Colin’s gun. Colin instantly stuffs the gun into his pants, a habit I’ve told him to break if he doesn’t want to shoot his jewels off. He doesn’t listen.

  “You upset a lot of people when you left,” I say. “They blamed me. Why did you leave? I said my name, and you bolted. Why?”

  He peers into the kitchen and the living room. “You’ve done well here. Most citizens never achieve this level of normalcy. I’d hoped you would like this house.”

  I am about to ask why again, but his statement derails me. “You did? How do you know this house? How did you know I’d come here?” I follow him into the dining room. Claire stands proudly beside the table. She’s folded the napkins, tucking down the used parts. They’re McDonald’s napkins that we found stuck to the fence by the side of the road. Her two bears plus Mr. Rabbit have their own seats at the table, and she’s placed baby plates in front of each of them.

  “Of course I know this place. I brought it here for you,” he says. “And I found your old friend so you would feel at home.” He points to Mr. Rabbit. “I am only sorry that I could not help you more.”

  I have no idea what to say to that. A million questions war in my head, and I can’t articulate a single one. I serve the pasta and sauce. Colin digs in. Nothing ever stops his appetite.

  We eat in silence. My pasta tastes like sand. I think about Mom. And how I’ve failed he
r. How I am failing her. If I’d found what I lost, I could be home right now.

  Claire looks from one of us to the other. She squirms in her seat, and I can tell it’s only seconds until she talks for me. I put down my fork and ball my hands together in my lap. “Will you help me?” I ask. “Help me find what I lost? Send me home?”

  He pauses, fork halfway to his mouth. Sauce drips in a glob from the tip of his fork back to the plate. Droplets spatter onto his crisply starched shirt. He lowers his fork. “I can show you how it’s done.”

  Colin leaps to his feet. “Please! Sir! Pick me!”

  The Missing Man raises his eyebrows. Everything about him is refined, as if he does deserve to be called “sir.” “Very well. Come here, son.”

  Colin shoots across the dining room.

  I feel frozen to my seat. I can’t imagine what is going to happen. But what does is so simple that it looks...easy. The Missing Man places his hands on Colin’s shoulder. He looks him directly in the eye. “You were lost; you are found.”

  And Colin fades. First, he’s translucent, and then he’s like a shadow of brightness in the room. Colin is beaming, his smile so wide that it transforms the shape of his face. And then he’s like fine mist over the water that dissipates. He waves at me and mouths the words, “Thank you.” In less than a second, he’s gone. The Missing Man turns back to the table and takes a bite of spaghetti. I feel like crying.

  Claire is crying.

  I realize I’ve heard those words before—in the Moonlight Diner. I think of the overfriendly woman, Merry. She’d said she was ready, and then I’d heard those words. And I’d never seen her again. He must have sent her home.

  His gaze rests on Claire. “Come here, child. Your turn to go home.”

  “Scottsdale, Arizona,” I say. “That’s where her parents are. Can you send her there?”

  “She’ll return to the world in the place where she left it,” he says. “I cannot control where that is or what happens next.”

  “No!” Claire shouts.

  “Will anyone be there to help her?” I ask. “Who will take care of her? She needs to get to Scottsdale. Her parents moved after they lost her.”