What We Lost

by Sara Zarr

  I start to say something like that to Erin, something my mom would have said, but it would feel a little bit like a betrayal to be dissing Melinda Ford without Mom there. And I miss her.

  I don’t miss coming home from school not sure about whether I’d find the functional or nonfunctional version of her.

  I don’t miss making up excuses when people from church would call to make sure Mom was okay after skipping a meeting of the building committee or failing to show up for a scheduled lunch.

  I don’t miss the way Dad and I always pretended, even with each other and no one else looking, that everything was fine.

  But I miss her.

  I miss moments like watching TV together while Dad was at meetings or on visits, the way she always had a little comment about Melinda Ford, or how she’d absently rub Ralph’s stomach with her bare foot and he’d purr like crazy, so loud that she’d point the remote at him, pretending to turn him down. “Okay, Mister Cat. That’s enough; you’re embarrassing yourself.”

  I stand and say to Erin, “Be right back.” She nods, focused on the news.

  In the kitchen, the card for New Beginnings is tucked into the wall-mounted phone. She had to have gotten my message. New Beginnings isn’t some giant place with hundreds of people. It’s small and quiet and not chaotic, and every resident has a special cubby for messages and letters and boxes. So I know she got it.

  While punching in the number, I have this image of her sitting on the edge of her dorm room bed, holding a piece of paper that says, “Call your daughter.”

  And then not doing it. Because…

  I don’t know why.

  I hang up the phone on the first ring. Because what if I leave another message and she still doesn’t call me?

  “Hey, Sam,” Erin calls, “your dad’s on the news.”

  I can see the TV from the kitchen, but not very well. I get closer.

  “It’s from yesterday,” Erin says, turning it up. “At the search. This was on last night, too. They’re replaying a clip.”

  Melinda Ford stands in front of the media tent I saw yesterday, wearing different clothes, obviously, from what she had on in the live report she just did. She’s asking my dad what parents should say to their children about Jody being gone.

  “There are no magic words,” Dad says, “but it’s especially important in times like this to let your kids know that you love them, and that they’re safe. I understand it’s difficult. My own daughter, Sam, is friends with Jody, so we’re very close to this situation.”

  At first I’m not sure I hear him right, but Melinda Ford repeats it, nodding her head, a concerned look on her face. “Your daughter is Jody’s friend?”

  “I’m not friends with Jody,” I say to Erin.

  I feel her eyes on me as Melinda keeps talking on the TV.

  “And how is she coping with all of this?”

  I watch, eager for the answer.

  “She’s out there searching right now, for one thing. Like all of us, she feels helpless.” If Erin weren’t hogging the remote, I’d turn Dad off.

  “Pastor Charlie, what would you say to Jody right now if she could hear you?” Melinda holds the microphone to his mouth. Confident, he speaks right to the camera, his fingers interlaced in front of his chest. His sermon stance.

  “Don’t lose faith, Jody. We love you. God loves you. And love drives out fear, so don’t be afraid.”

  My eyes burn. I grab the remote from Erin and change the channel, then throw it on the sofa and go to my room.

  “Sam?” she calls after me.

  I say it again, “I’m not friends with Jody.” And close my door.

  From the hall, she says, “You are. I mean, you kind of are.”

  How many times have I begged him not to use my name, my life, in public? I don’t want to be a part of his act anymore. And love can’t be the answer to everything. If it was, us loving Mom should have kept her from falling apart. Her loving us should have made her want to change.

  I’ve paid enough attention to his sermons to know that what Dad said wasn’t exactly right. Perfect love drives out fear, is what it says in the Bible. Perfect love. And who, my dad included, really knows anything about perfect love? Anyway, if God loves Jody so much, how could he let this—whatever it is—happen to her? And what else is he going to let happen to me?

  “Sam?” Erin says again.

  “Leave me alone,” I say through the door.

  After a minute, she says, “I know how you feel.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My family has problems, too.”

  I could open the door and say, okay, what are your family’s problems? And talk about it, and maybe she could help. But the only person I want to talk to right now is my mom.

  “I’m going to lay down again,” I say, resting my head on the door. “I’m just… really tired.”

  It’s quiet on the other side and I think she’s gone back to the living room, but then there’s a soft, “Okay. Holler if you need anything.” A moment later: “You could try writing a letter. To your mom. Not one that you would send but one to have for yourself, you know? The stuff you can’t say.”

  I run my fingers along the bevel of my door, picking up dust as I go. Finally, I hear Erin walk away, saying, “Come on, kitty,” to Ralph, and making kissing noises at him.

  Turning up the floor fan, I sit at my desk with a piece of binder paper and a pen in front of me. I stay exactly that way for about an hour, then go to bed.

  Day 5

  Wednesday

  The national news has picked up Jody’s story. I sit on the sofa eating cereal, watching pictures of Pineview and interviews with and about people I know. All this in the same hour that they talk about movie stars and the President. There’s a shot of Main Street, deserted, with wavy lines of heat coming up from the pavement. Even though I was just there two days ago, it looks as foreign to me as if I were watching pictures of a town in Russia.

  Suddenly everyone in the country is an expert on Jody. A guy with slick hair and a tweed blazer, from a university back east, is saying that Jody probably ran away, that there’s probably an older boyfriend from another town, probably someone she met online.

  “This is why we don’t have Internet at home,” my dad says from behind me. I twitch, startled, my spoon rattling against my bowl.

  “Jeez, Dad. Don’t sneak up on me like that.” I haven’t seen him since he left for the Shaws’ house yesterday, without saying good-bye. Or saying hello again when he got home, apparently. So either it was really late or I slept like a rock.

  “Sorry.” He comes around and sits next to me. “You look a lot better. Erin says you had a good talk last night.”

  I look at him. Why is my life up for discussion between him and Erin? And I wouldn’t say we had a “good talk.” She talked and I had a good listen. I set my cereal bowl down on the carpet and Ralph comes over to lap up the milk I’ve left behind.

  “Jody doesn’t have an older boyfriend,” I say. “Or any boyfriend. There’s no way.” If the “expert” could have seen Jody working on the glitter Jonahs, he’d know this.

  “Maybe not. But—”

  “Shh.” I turn up the TV with the remote. Brandy Wilcox, a soap star who grew up here, Pineview’s only claim to fame—until now, I guess—is on the screen. She’s putting up $75,000 for anyone who has information leading to Jody’s safe return.

  “Oh, she called the Shaws last night,” Dad says when the story is over. “So did Jody’s father’s old college roommate. He works for a regional FBI office and is on his way here to help.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “It definitely doesn’t hurt. Listen, Sammy.” He hesitates. That moment of hesitation and the way he says my name means this won’t be good.

  I watch Ralph hunched over my bowl, his gray fur coming up in unruly tufts around his shoulders.

  “With everything that’s going on,” Dad continues, “I don’t like leaving
you alone so much. It looks like I’m basically becoming the Shaws’ official spokesperson. There are so many media requests and intrusions on their privacy, you wouldn’t believe. They don’t want to pay some stranger to handle this stuff, and they shouldn’t have to when they’ve got their church family. And until they catch this guy…”

  “You’re sending me away?”

  “No, not away, away. Honestly, Sam, I want to. But we can’t afford a ticket to Grandma’s, and she can’t afford a ticket here. And you know the Hathaways love you.”

  I look at him. “You’re making me live with Vanessa?”

  He laughs. “You say that like I’m sending you to Siberia. It’s not even two miles away, and she’s your best friend.”

  “Did you check with Mom?”

  “Check with her?” he asks, puzzled.

  “Check with her.” I get up and take the bowl away from Ralph. He isn’t quite done, and races after me into the kitchen. “Discuss,” I say over my shoulder. “Like, call her and say, ‘I’m thinking about having Sam live with Vanessa until this is over and what do you think about that?’ ”

  “I don’t think we should bother her.”

  “How do you know? Have you even talked to her in the last week?”

  I run the water, hard, to rinse my bowl, drowning out his silence. When I turn around, he’s coming in with his coffee cup. “I didn’t feel like it was a decision I needed help with. They’ve got cable, air-conditioning, home-cooked meals, they love you, you love them…”

  But it’s not home.

  That’s what Mom would have said to him, what she would have known about me and where I need to be right now. Sober, tipsy, drunk, whatever, she’s the one who’s been here, and she’s the one who really knows me.

  I fold my arms. “Why did you say on the news me and Jody are friends?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t talk about me on TV, okay?”

  “All right,” he says slowly, but I can see he doesn’t get why.

  I start to notice how clean the kitchen is. All the surfaces have been straightened up and wiped shiny. Mom’s notes and papers and mail are gone. I look in the trash and see them underneath a wet pile of coffee grounds. It must have been Erin who threw them away, since I’ve already told Dad not to.

  The sight of random slips of paper with Mom’s handwriting on them, in the trash, water-stained and covered in coffee grounds, leaves yet another part of me crushed.

  I reconsider Vanessa’s. Home doesn’t feel like home anyway, so why not leave.

  “What about Ralph?” I ask. “While I’m at Vanessa’s.”

  “I’ll feed him.”

  “You’ll forget.”

  “I promise I won’t.” He turns his hands palms-up, helpless. “I just don’t know what else to do right now.”

  I pick up Ralph and scratch behind his ears. “Don’t make me go today.” I want to at least get started on my backyard project. I want time to think. Maybe try calling Mom again. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Sam…”

  “Please?”

  He nods, and glances at the clock on the coffeemaker. “I’ve got to go over to the office for a few hours, then to the Shaws’. Okay?”

  “Go. I’ll be fine here.”

  I walk toward Main, my flip-flops slapping against the hot sidewalk. The streets are empty, just like the picture on the news this morning. It’s not like Pineview is usually crawling with children or anything, but today they’re noticeably absent. There are things out here, though, that weren’t here before: blue ribbons. Tied onto trees, and fence posts, and mailboxes. Symbols that we’re waiting for Jody to come home.

  I pass a house with a few old ladies sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea and playing cards. One of them calls me over. It’s Ida Larson, from church.

  I cross the brown lawn and climb the porch steps.

  “Does your father know you’re out wandering the streets?” Ida ruffles the hem of her blue print dress, fanning the air up her legs.

  “I’m just going to the hardware store.”

  Ida and one of her card-mates exchange a glance. “Cal Stewart,” she says. “New in town. Bought the store from the Penfolds three years ago.”

  Three years’ residency is “new in town” here, especially to people like Ida. She’s suspicious of everyone and always calls our house if her Sunday offering check isn’t deposited by Tuesday morning. “I don’t want my signature out there floating around where gosh-knows-who-all can see it, forge it, and take me for every penny.”

  “How’s your mother, sweetie?” Ida asks now.

  “Fine.”

  While Ida watches me, the rest of them look at their cards. “You just tell her that the Lord doesn’t give a person more than he knows they can bear.”

  Ida Larson knows? Then everyone must know.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  My cell phone, in my shorts pocket, rings. I pull it out. “It’s my dad,” I tell the ladies, and they all smile and nod, like of course it would be my dad because that’s how in touch we are with each other and isn’t it great how Pastor Charlie is young and modern? “Have a nice day.”

  I go down the steps, and hit the button on my phone that will send my dad to voice mail, then slide it open as I walk away, pretending to talk. Even though he didn’t explicitly say I couldn’t go anywhere, I pretty much implied that I’d be locked up safe at home. Not answering his call saves me a lie.

  Two blocks later I’m standing in front of the hardware store, watching Cal crouch in the window arranging a display of fans and garden hoses and potting soil.

  I let my hand rest on the door for a second, staring at the flyer of Jody taped to the glass. It’s the same picture they put on the TV this morning and now the whole country has seen her smiling face, full of braces.

  When I go in, the strand of bells Cal has hanging on the handle jingles. His voice comes from the window: “Be right with you.”

  There’s an end display of citronella candles and yellow jacket traps. I straighten them and wish I had a dust cloth or something. The store is a little sad right now, neglected. One thing you could say about the old owners is that they kept it clean.

  “Oh,” Cal says when he comes out and sees me. “The resident xeriscaper.”

  He wears a store apron with his name embroidered on the pocket, his wire-rim glasses resting on the top of his head.

  “Yeah, well.” I pick up a tube of cream that claims to be both a sunblock and a mosquito repellent. “Does this stuff work?”

  “I’ve never tried it, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”

  I put the tube back. “Um, you know that plastic sheeting I got on Saturday?”

  “Yes?” He’s half-looking at a clipboard.

  “I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with it.”

  “Cover up the lawn or weeds or whatever plants you want to kill.” He looks up and smiles briefly. “Not much to it.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “Depends. On the weather, on the types of plants. I’m sure you can find information online.”

  Online. Of course. Everything is online, only I’m not allowed online, but I’m too embarrassed to tell him that. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  He wanders off with his clipboard. Still trying to work out a plan for the yard, I look at the rack of seed packets. The pictures of the flowers on the packets make it look so easy: dig hole, insert seed, water, and voilà—beautiful, colorful flowers.

  Two summers ago there was a heat wave almost like the one we’re having now, but my mom and dad planted our garden anyway, putting in the butterfly bushes and hollyhocks together. Dad laid the flagstone path. They bought yard furniture. It wasn’t like last summer, when the good days were few and far between. This was a months-long stretch of togetherness. They’d let me stay up late into the night so I could sit with them out there, watching the stars. My mom seemed so happy. Open. Even the way she wore her ha
ir back then told you something, always off her face so you could see her eyes smiling out at you.

  I wish I understood what happened between then and now. I wish there was a way to put your finger on the map of life and trace backwards, to figure out exactly when things had changed so much: when we started getting the dregs of Dad, if that was before or after the drinking getting bad. If one caused the other, or if it was true what they say about it not being anyone’s fault but instead genetics, or fate, or whatever you want to call it. My great-grandpa was an alcoholic, and sometimes my grandma in Michigan doesn’t know how to stop once she starts. Still, it doesn’t explain how one summer there were real smiles and yard projects and watching the stars together, and then what seemed like minutes later the yard and everything else were a total mess.

  “Wildflowers do pretty well in the heat,” Cal says from behind the register. “The ones on the rack should be right for this region.”

  “Oh,” I say, turning, “I didn’t bring money. I’m just kind of… looking.”

  He opens the register. “I’m sure I can advance you a couple of dollars. Just have your folks take care of it next time they’re in.”

  There’s only one folk right now, I want to say, and he’s trying to get me out of the way so he can focus on the truly important stuff. Like Jody and her family. “Are you sure?” I ask.

  He nods. “Pick one and take it, it’s fine.” I take a packet of seeds for flowers that look small and undemanding, and bring it to the register so that he can make up an IOU.

  “Thanks.” I turn toward the door to leave.

  When I’m almost there, he calls after me. “Be careful out there.”

  “I will.”

  And I leave the store, the bells jingling behind me.

  Back at home, I lie on my parents’ bed, under the ceiling fan. I roll to my mom’s side, smelling her pillow, but whatever trace of her there’d been is aired out and washed out. I stare at my cell phone for a long time, the New Beginnings card next to me on the blanket. Maybe there’s a good reason she can’t call me, like she’s in group meetings and counseling and whatever else they make you do in rehab.