Imagine Me Gone

by Adam Haslett

  I knew Michael had to be right about the argument that would come later because Mom didn’t say anything about us being gone or even ask where we’d been. In the kitchen, Dad had the extra cheerfulness he got with us when Mom was angry at him. He let us each drop a lobster in the boiling water. He had to hold Alec so he’d be high enough not to get his hand splashed. Their black antennae whipped back and forth against the sides of the pot before disappearing.

  Mom told us to clear the saucepans with crabs in them off the dining room table, and we put them on the floor by the door to the porch, a whole collection, fifteen or twenty, different sizes and colors. They were all alive and seemed happy enough. Kelsey sniffed at them but didn’t like the way they moved.

  The invigilator is hungry, Michael said, petting her flank.

  After supper Alec did his hyperactive-playing-then-crying sequence, and Dad took him up to bed, and he screamed that it was unfair. Mom had left the dishes for Dad to do and was reading a book by the dim yellow light of one of the oil lamps. We each had our own (except Alec) to carry from room to room and another by our beds. You turned up the oil-soaked canvas wick with a key on the side and, once you’d lit it, placed the curvy glass cover back in its metal holder. It was hard to make out the different shades of color in the Brueghel puzzle with it, but I didn’t feel like reading so that’s what I did until we played Boggle, and Alec came down again whining, and Mom said it was time for all of us to go to sleep.

  After a few minutes I could hear the two of them through the floorboards. Mom started in her loud whisper. Totally different from her normal voice, faster and much more intense. I could make out some of her words but not all. Dad responded quietly like he usually did, in a much lower voice. I couldn’t make out any of his words, just the flat tone that didn’t change, which wasn’t how he normally talked either. Mom said something about furniture, and God bless it, which is what she said instead of swearing. Dad didn’t make any response to that. And then Mom’s voice got louder. You’re just going to sit there? You’re not going to say anything!

  I was lying on my side and I wrapped my pillow around my head so it would cover my other ear but I could still hear her: It’s Michael who tells me! I ask a thousand times and I have to learn about it from the children! Dad said something I couldn’t hear, low and quiet again. Whatever it was just made her angrier, which didn’t seem fair, that every time he spoke she got angrier. And then what? she shouted. Another year, another two years, and all our lives, mine and the children’s, hanging on whether you talk these people into doing what you want them to do? Goddamn it, John! she shouted. It sounded like she hated his guts.

  My door opened and I heard Alec sniffling. Why don’t they stop? he said. My blood was pumping in my ears as loud as when I held big seashells up against them. Just go back to bed, I whispered. But he was crying now, not the whiny give-me-attention crying but scared crying. He never went into Michael’s room when he got upset like this, only into mine. He was standing at the edge of my bed now.

  And you sitting here not saying a damn word! she yelled. You think it’s my fault! You think I’m being unreasonable! This isn’t how people live. It’s a fantasy!

  Why won’t they stop? Alec sobbed. Shut up! I whispered. Just be quiet. Dad said something short in the same flat, low voice.

  Before Mom could start yelling again, I ripped off my covers and ran down the stairs into the living room, and shouted, Stop it! Stop it! I’m trying to sleep!

  Mom was standing over the couch above Dad. She wheeled on me, her eyes wide with fury. Dad only moved his head to look at me. His face was pale and had no expression. Alec stood on the stairs behind me, still crying. Christ! Mom said to Dad. Look what you’ve done now!

  Stop it! I shouted. He didn’t do it! You did! It’s not fair!

  Oh, good Lord, she said with a sigh. This is nothing for you to worry about. Really, Celia. You don’t need to worry. Take them upstairs, would you? she said, and Dad stood up and walked toward me, holding his arms out to pick me up, but I was too big for that now, which he didn’t even seem to remember, so instead when he got closer his arms went down onto my shoulders, and he turned me around toward the staircase.

  All right now, he said, as calmly as if he were napping and wanted us to be quiet.

  Why do you yell at him, Mom? I said.

  That’s enough now, Celia, really. Please. Just go upstairs with your father.

  I shook his hands off my shoulders and stomped back up the steps, pushing Alec ahead of me. Down the hall, Michael was peeking out from a crack in his door, which he closed as soon as we reached the landing.

  Get back into bed, Alec, Dad said, I’ll be there in a minute. He followed me into my room holding one of the oil lamps, and waited for me to climb into my bed and pull the covers up and then he sat on the edge of my mattress, facing the shaded window, so that I could only see the side of his face in the light of the lamp, which he’d put on the bedside table. My heart was beating fast and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long time. He reached his big hand down onto the side of my head and ran his fingers through my hair and over my ear until he had the back of my head in the palm of his hand. His thumb rubbed against my temple.

  Why do you let her yell at you like that?

  Your mother’s upset. She’ll be all right.

  I didn’t want to, but I started crying a little as he rubbed my scalp. But why are you always arguing? You think I don’t hear you, but I do.

  He looked away, his shadow flickering on the wall behind him and across the ceiling above. He held my head, but didn’t say anything. His shadow seemed darker than no light at all, because when there was no light there was nothing to compare the darkness to. I had stopped crying. I wanted him to say something more. But he just rubbed my head, staring at the white grain of the shade, and then he patted me on the arm and rose to leave.

  Michael

  August 27

  Dear Aunt Penny,

  Greetings. I hope this letter finds you better off than we are. Our journey is proving to be a rough one. It started with the town car Dad had hired to drive us from his friend’s house in Armonk to the West Side piers breaking down on the Henry Hudson in ninety-five-degree heat. You can imagine how frazzled Mom was! The minutes to sailing ticking by, steam billowing from the engine, the five of us and the defibrillator on her leash standing on a little wedge of road at the top of an off-ramp sweating like heifers. It took them forty-five minutes to send another car but we made it to the pier in time. As you know, Mom has been driven to distraction waiting a whole year to move since Dad announced his plan last summer, but she held him to his promise that we’d travel by ship. She so wanted us to experience the way she used to go Europe as a young woman, and certainly we were all very excited about it.

  I don’t know when you’ll receive this letter. We’re now on day four of our eight-day crossing to Southampton but I haven’t figured out how their supposed “daily mail” system works (it hasn’t exactly been a priority, for reasons that will become clear). But I know you’re always curious for news of the family so I wanted to bring you up to speed. Unfortunately, as we were on our way to dinner the first night, Mom tripped on one of those raised metal doorjambs that I guess are meant to keep water from rolling in off the deck (not all that effective, as we’ve learned). If it had been a simple stumble I think she would have been okay, but she got her other leg caught up too and was whipped down onto that metal flooring pretty hard. The ship’s doctor threw around a lot of vocab—“fractured tibia,” “subluxated knee,” “contused femur”—but I don’t know what any of it means. Basically, I think she broke her leg. The cast sure makes it look that way, together with the pulleys it’s raised up with. Suffice it to say, Mom is basically out of the picture. We visit her when we can but there’s been a lot else going on.

  For one thing, Alec is currently missing. We lost him at a lunch buffet the day after Mom’s accident and haven’t been able to find him since. W
eirdly, the crew isn’t all that responsive, even to Dad, who as you know isn’t shy about demanding things from service people. They say it’s a big ship, this kind of thing happens all the time, and that he’ll find his way back to our cabin eventually. It is true that there are plenty of couches in the lounges for him to sleep on and that he’d have no trouble feeding himself with all these dining options. And as long as we assume he hasn’t fallen overboard, how far could he really have gone? Still, it’s been forty-eight hours now and I can tell that Dad’s miffed by it. Obviously, we haven’t told Mom. That’s the last thing she needs, trying to heal her shattered leg. Celia said Alec’s probably just trying to get attention and that the best thing is to ignore him and let it blow over.

  I more or less agreed with her, at least until yesterday morning. I don’t know if you remember how you left that long message on our machine about transatlantic crossings during hurricane season, and then sent Mom that clipping a couple of days before we left about the cruise ship in the Caribbean that got slammed by a huge tropical storm, resulting in several fatalities, but let me just say: you were right. They can talk all they want about their radar and stabilizers but as you’ve probably read in the paper already, Esmeralda, that category 3 that grazed the Outer Banks and then hung a right into the North Atlantic a few days ago, well, it reached us at about six a.m. yesterday. They canceled breakfast and told everyone to remain in their cabins, probably because they wanted to prevent people from vomiting on the upholstery in the common areas. Through our porthole Celia and I watched the gale-sheared mountains of water carve valleys beneath us before striking the ship and covering the glass entirely, like we were in an aquarium, the waves crashing onto the deck high above us, sending us onto the listing floor along with the luggage knocked from the closets.

  I won’t lie. It was a rough day. Dad took it all in stride, telling us stories about sailing as a boy to the Isle of Wight in choppy seas. He said there was no chance of us sinking, just a bit of broken china and a lot of sick passengers. In point of fact, a female honeymooner was washed off the stern, though her husband’s spinal injury from that same incident wasn’t nearly as serious as first reports suggested. Of course we thought about Mom in the infirmary, swinging from her pinioned leg for all we knew, but they’d powered off the elevators and we weren’t about to climb six flights to check on her, or on the deregulator, who’s boarded in the kennel up by the funnels. Frankly, I am more worried about Alec now that someone definitely has gone overboard. Still, Celia and I were vomiting all day and it turns out there’s only so much you can worry about when you’re vomiting.

  That said, yesterday probably sounds more dire than it was. The worst of the storm passed to our west and by nightfall the skies had cleared and the temperature dropped a good twenty degrees. We ate up the week’s worth of snacks we’d brought with us (no dinner service) and went to bed early.

  It wasn’t until this morning that I finally had time to sit down and write you this letter. I haven’t seen any small craft coming up alongside the ship and certainly no helicopter, so I’m not sure exactly how it’s supposed to get posted but I wanted to try to get word to you one way or another. Whatever you do, don’t worry about us. We’ve got another four days to Southampton, and they promise to be much calmer than the last four. Meantime, everyone here sends their best.

  Yours,

  Michael

  August 29

  Dear Aunt Penny,

  As I wrote the day before last, not sure when this will reach you, but I know you’ll be keen for an update so am stealing a few minutes here in the casino to toss off this missive. There’s no sign of Alec yet, though Celia is pretty sure she saw him from the promenade deck exiting the pool area after breakfast. On the whole, though, things on the ship are getting back to normal since the storm.

  And you’re never going to believe this! Guess who’s on board? Guess who I’m sitting just three one-armed bandits away from right this very second? Donna Summer! I am not even kidding. It turns out, unbeknownst to me—why Mom and Dad didn’t have the wit to tell me months ago, God only knows—she is the main stage entertainment for the crossing! I can’t imagine how much dough they had to drop to get her (maybe she gets a free cabin?) but whatever they paid is worth it.

  The evening shows are twenty-one-plus, but it’s dark and crowded by the entrance and last night I managed to squeeze in undetected and stand behind a dormant food cart. Needless to say, I’ve listened to her records more times than I’ve had hot dinners. I must have worn down a dozen needles on “MacArthur Park” alone. I packed five of her cassettes for the trip (the other twelve are in the crates). As you no doubt already realize, she is the avatar of an entirely new dispensation, machine-driven but secretly brokenhearted. I am convinced she is aware of this but tortured by it. “This monstrous, monstrous force.” That’s how she described her career to Rolling Stone. “This whole production of people and props that you’re responsible for, by audiences and everything that rules you until you take it upon yourself to be a machine. And at some point a machine breaks down.” She’s all carved up by ears and eyes like mine. I’m part of that monstrous force. And I can’t help it. The music is salvific.

  So there she was, live, in person, in the same room as me, in dazzling white sequins and bloodred lip gloss and metallic-blue eye shadow, her upper lip and nose flaring slightly heavenward, just like on the album covers (did you know she grew up in Dorchester?), and her long painted fingernails wrapped tightly around her wireless black mic. That audience of luxury-craft pikers had no concept of her larger significance. They were just there to digest.

  I don’t know how closely you followed the controversy over her first American twelve-inch, “Love to Love You Baby” (Oasis/Casablanca, 1975), but you may remember that’s the one the BBC refused to promote and a bunch of U.S. stations wouldn’t play because of the moaning sounds she made on the track, which simulated—maybe you’ll think I’m too young to say this—climax? Apparently, when she recorded it (Musicland Studios, Munich, May–June 1975), she asked for the lights to be turned down and sang the lyrics lying on a sofa imagining herself as Marilyn Monroe. Hard to confirm, obviously, but it makes sense when you hear that cooing-whispering tone in the first few verses—she did it live, too—and then those throaty ecstatic passages that whipped the scolds into a flurry.

  As of this writing, she is sitting about six feet from me feeding a slot machine, dressed in a nautical-themed outfit of white cotton pants, a navy linen blazer, and the largest sunglasses I’ve ever seen (it’s pure Halston). She’s with this tricked-out Italian guy with an Afro and a handlebar mustache and sunglasses almost as big as hers, whom I believe to be none other than Giorgio Moroder, her producer and collaborator, who at this point you’d have to say is really one of the fathers of disco (I promise, Aunt Penny, I’ve never done coke, but I feel certain that he has).

  I have no urge to talk to them, though. What would be the point? They could have no conceivable interest in me as a social matter, and all I could say is what they already know: that they are changing the course of history. When she sang “Love to Love You Baby” last night it left me weak-kneed. And yet even that did little to prepare me for her encore, “Our Love.” Are you familiar with that particular assault on the soul? It’s on side four of Bad Girls but didn’t get much radio play until a few months ago when they released it as the B-side on the “Sunset People” twelve-inch (“Sunset People” itself is anemic, just a bloodless, dialed-in glorification of LA nightlife, not one of their better outings). But “Our Love” is epochal. Short of nailing this letter to a copy of the twelve-inch and sending the whole thing COD, I don’t know how I can do it justice. That plaintive opening line is enough to cripple a water buffalo. Dropping you this line to give you peace / And to set your weary mind at ease… People think disco is shallow, that it’s plastic and heartless, but they fail to hear the depth of its sadness. What else forces you to move and weep at the same time? When Moroder stri
ps away all the effects at the one-minute mark, leaving only the drum track, and Summer’s voice hardens to belt out the chorus, insisting their love will last forever, over and over, twelve repeats, you can’t help but hear the lie in it. Of course it won’t last. And yet still she wants to give us peace, to set our weary minds at ease. Could a person ever not want that? And the bubbling, alien synth that comes in at the end? That whipping, chemical torque? That is the sound of what’s to come. There’s not a dance floor from Rotterdam to Tokyo that isn’t stretching that track to the breaking point. It’s the most important twenty seconds on the album. In two years, you won’t have to go farther than a fire-department bake sale to hear that beat sampled into every white pop-radio hit you can shake a dollar at.

  Seeing her live was a jackhammer to the frozen sea within me. I stumbled out of there higher than a mule on a horse. Which is when I saw Alec down at the far end of the promenade. It turns out he’d had a rough few days himself. Apparently, he’d been abducted by a child-prostitution ring down on deck 3. English, Russians, and he thought maybe Dutch. He was about to be sealed in a crate and smuggled to a Soviet resort on the Black Sea when he managed to secrete himself on the bottom of a curtained tea trolley that rolled him into the kitchens. I was obviously taken aback. Transshipment to Sebastopol would have been a suboptimal outcome for Alec. As I understand it, sex slavery is pretty much a nightmare. But what it makes me wonder is, Is there anything that isn’t happening on this ship?

  Please don’t mention this last episode to Mom or Dad. They’ve got a lot on their minds at the moment, and we’re doing our best not to worry them with anything further. Alec says he’ll steer clear of deck 3 from now on and stay out of the casino during the afternoon hours when they allow minors to play slots. We told Celia but she said Alec was making it up. She’s currently reading a nine-volume biography of the Brontë family and doesn’t like to be interrupted.