The only other familiar face that he encountered all day was an associate named Fabian Woods. He had been a high school track star with dreams of Olympic glory which were shattered—literally—in a car wreck that left him with a rod in his left leg. He could still walk, which he counted amongst his blessings, but running even for his own enjoyment was not in the cards. Fabian maintained a rather athletic physique and exuded a quiet confidence. Despite his diversion from athletic stardom to Sales Support, he never played the victim. He was, however, a man of few words.
This was all well and good when he and Marc would pass in the hall, as they would just nod at each other after reaching the correct proximity and say something like “Hey” or “What’s up” without giving much of a reply. In fact, those two options were interchangeable and were completely acceptable Guy Talk.
Marc found himself at the lunch table with Fabian later that day and had to try harder to make polite conversation. They didn’t hate each other; They just weren’t close. But there were manners to observe and norms to uphold.
Marc sat down across from Fabian, gave a nod, and set his lunch down. “What’s up?”
“Hey.” Fabian ate a French fry.
Marc looked around for a suitable conversation topic and picked out a detail on Fabian’s lunch tray. “Oh, they had burgers today? I should have checked the menu on Friday and planned ahead.”
Fabian smiled through the last of his French fry, and after a moment, said, “You know it.”
Marc unwrapped the sandwich he tossed together on his way out the door that morning, which looked paltry next to Fabian’s cafeteria tray, loaded with goodies. He ate a bit of his sandwich, then said, “So, uh, how’s support life treating you today?”
Fabian gave a tight-lipped smile. “You already know.”
Marc gave a nervous laugh. “So, the same as BA life?”
“It’s all good.” Fabian finished his fries.
“Yeah, I guess.” Marc finished his sandwich stoically.
Marc felt as though that topic was well covered, and searched around for something else to say, not that there was a pressing need. Then again, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. He’d had a whole morning of that.
Before Marc could ask where Fabian buys his shirts, Shay walked by with a pre-packaged salad from the cafeteria and a bottle of overpriced apple juice. Fabian brightened up and leaned back in his chair. “Hey girl.”
Shay brightened up too. “Hey.”
“What’choo got?”
“Oh, just a salad. What are you having?”
Fabian grinned. “Burger.”
Shay beamed. “Oh, my goodness. That’s good. I probably should have gotten that instead, but I was like, no, I’m going to have a salad. I ate enough delicious food over Christmas.” She laughed.
Fabian didn’t reply. He scooped up his tray and was seated with Shay in seconds flat.
Marc crumpled up his lunch bag. He tried to think of a graceful exit line, when his cell phone buzzed, giving him a suitable out. It was a text message from Gracie. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this.
12:35pm: K
Marc winced, made a tch sound, and tossed the phone aside.
CHAPTER 12: STILL MONDAY
Marc was back at his desk shortly thereafter, trying to look busy but knowing full well there wasn’t anyone to impress that week, let alone fool. He did want to come off like he was earning his $15 per hour, but this was as close as he was getting to a bonus. Getting paid to surf the internet wasn’t a bad way to spend the day, just a tedious one.
Thoughts of Agnes tugged at him, vying for his attention. He tried to read a “year in review” list instead. If Agnes didn’t attend Van Buren, why was a student ID in her bag? He re-read the first paragraph about celebrities who died. Why was Agnes hiding in the closet? Why wasn’t she in there when he slid the door open? Why hadn’t he found her anywhere else? He clicked the first link he saw and read an article titled “Literally 28 Times Celebrity Eyerolls Won the Internet”. He snickered at a few items, and heard Shay singing to herself from the direction of her cubicle.
Marc pulled up a spreadsheet and proofed a few entries. It wasn’t going anywhere until Friday, and at that, nobody was going to read it until the following Tuesday at the earliest. But he was at work and felt like something work-related ought to get done.
Celebrity Eyerolls completed their conquest of the internet two minutes later.
He clicked over to the spreadsheet again. Rather than mindless surfing, he’d take a different tack to get through the work day. He was a “thought worker” after all, wasn’t he? He looked intently at the rows and columns of data and leaned back in his chair.
His thoughts were in no way focused on quarterly reports. Agnes had the lion’s share of his concern, which was strange, and the remainder was given over to worry about and annoyance with Gracie. He had hardly seen her all weekend, such as it was, and despite Marc’s trademark obliviousness even he knew when something was wrong with his favorite sibling. He and Jacqueline didn’t talk much, and at any rate Marc figured he could just flip through any given copy of a business-oriented magazine to know what and how she was doing.
Be strong for your sister. What the hell was that supposed to mean? If Agnes had gone completely off her rocker, what was he going to do? He was no caretaker; he couldn’t hold down a steady relationship as it was. And those eyes, that voice, the staring off into the middle distance… what did it all mean? He considered doing a web search for “mental illness” or “dissociative disorders” but really didn’t know what to look for, and especially wasn’t sure if he wanted those answers. Not to mention the problem with medically-related web searches: every symptom pointed to the worst possible outcome. A mild rash meant AIDS. Red eyes meant Ebola. Dandruff meant throat cancer. Heaven knows what a fainting spell was going to mean, let alone dissociative states and possible multiple personalities.
Marc tried to take a different line of inquiry, Agnes didn’t eat much, and as his father had said, she had lost weight. Maybe she was having a vitamin deficiency. Maybe she didn’t have enough calories to power her brain and she said all kinds of crazy stuff because she just needed glucose. And of course web searches for dietary complications would provide nothing but relevant information that would blow the case wide open. He rolled his eyes and snorted.
Purity of heart.
Marc wondered where that thought came from. It wasn’t something he had read or heard anyone say, at least, he didn’t think he did. Anyway, about Gracie, and the pouting in the TV room… what was that about? She was upset about something, that was obvious, even to him. What was with the half-hearted goodbye hug? Didn’t he mean more to her than just that? They hadn’t seen each other all year, and—
Purity of thought.
Marc cocked his head. Where did that come from?
He was getting angry, and in his estimation, he had every right to be angry. Gracie wasn’t speaking to him. Why not? And where was Agnes? “Be strong for your sister.” What did it mean? Strong how? What was he supposed to do? “You have much to learn.” No, I don’t, he objected. He was finished with school. He did his time.
Purity of motive.
Marc sighed and locked his workstation. He needed to take a walk. He felt his stomach turn as his mind reeled and worried over every little nagging detail from the weekend. He felt a headache coming on. Not a headache from too much time in front of the monitor, this was different. He felt a pressure right between his eyes. It pressed gently at first, but firmly. The pressure increased as he marched down the hallway.
Purity of heart. Purity of thought. Purity of motive.
He shook his head.
Purity of heart. Purity of thought. Purity of motive.
It wasn’t in any voice. It was his “thought voice”, as best as that could be described. He didn’t think with his speaking voice, yet there were words, and ideas, and considerations. Gotta r
emember to get milk this weekend, he’d think. Nothing mystical there. Maybe the formula from cell B32 would also work in D49. That sort of thing. Purity of heart. Purity of thought. Purity of motive. Wait, what? This wasn’t normal—not for him.
As Marc made his way to the end of the hallway, only to do an about-face and head back toward his desk, he found himself timing the syllables with each footstep. Pur-i-ty of heart. Pur-i-ty of thought. Pur-i-ty of mo-tive. Left, right, left, right. The pressure on his forehead persisted.
He ducked into the men’s restroom. He went to the closest sink and ran his hands under the faucet to activate a stream of tepid water. He let it run through his fingers, then wet his eyes. He looked up unto the mirror, blinked a few times, and looked at the moistness around his eyes. Whoa, that made him look like he just wept at a sad ending. He tore off a sheet of paper towel and dabbed his eyes. He kept them closed for a moment. Abstract patterns formed behind his eyelids.
What do you desire most?
Marc sucked in a breath. He replied out loud. “Answers.”
Answers, or Agnes?
This was odd. “Why not both?”
You aren’t ready for either.
Like hell he wasn’t! “Where is Agnes?”
You aren’t ready to receive her.
“Receive” her? Like being handed a glass of water? Like having a guest over to visit? Or like… a goddess? What was this about? “Tell me where she is.”
Purity of heart. Purity of thought. Purity of motive.
Marc reached his limit. “Screw your purity. She’s my sister. I want her back from you.”
You will know when it is time to receive her. Purity of heart. Purity of thought. Purity of motive.
Marc slammed his fist down on the counter top. “Now!” The pressure between his eyes softened, then subsided completely. After a moment or two, he crumpled up the paper towel and tossed it in the wastebasket. He walked back to his desk and fell into a march as he did so. He did it in time to something else. Something more succinct, that matched each pair of footsteps.
Tobias! Tobias! Tobias!
CHAPTER 13: PURITY OF THOUGHT
Focus was all but impossible for the remainder of the work day. Marc tried to function normally, but each mouse-click or tap of his fingers on the keyboard grated on him. Web pages and spreadsheets flickered on his monitor and were soon paved over by something else, but none of it really mattered. There were no answers, and he couldn’t find it within himself to ask the right questions.
He occasionally picked up his cell phone, measuring a reply to Gracie’s text. He’d type something like,
it was nice to see you again this weekend, hope everything is ok
...only to delete the message, unsent.
He’d stare at the blank message field, and think about the things he wanted to say, and followed the path of each possible option to its logical conclusion. None of them ended well, in his estimation.
He considered asking if Agnes had come home, but that didn’t seem like the right phrasing. What if she had never left? “She’s right here, why,” would be the correct response. He’d fume and brand himself an idiot for asking.
He considered asking if Agnes had been acting strangely lately, but he knew instinctively that Gracie wasn’t that attuned to Agnes’s daily life and times. Eating the same thing for breakfast every morning was strange to her, and she never breathlessly reported that.
He considered asking if Gracie had been in some sort of fight with somebody. He wasn’t aware of how deep Gracie’s involvement with Lacey ran, and therefore didn’t factor her into any sort of equation that accounted for Gracie’s sullen retreat to the television room the day before. Either way, he’d get some sort of “I’m fine” or “None of your business” response, if any at all, and that would be contentious. He felt it was best to say nothing at all.
He considered saying nothing at all, but then that meant he didn’t care about Gracie or Agnes or anyone else. But he did care… he just couldn’t find the right approach to say any of that over a text message without inviting a whole raft of hurt feelings. He set his cell phone face-down on his desk and pushed it aside. He leaned back in his chair and took a moment to bring his thoroughly vetted spreadsheet back into full view. He had a lot on his mind, but anyone who passed by didn’t need to know that none of it concerned work.
Marc squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. What was he missing? Why was the weekend so weird? As he replayed the events in his head, despite the timeline jumbling around no matter how he tried to focus on the chronology of it all, he did notice that the visit was going rather well, albeit in a bland and predictable way, right up to Sunday morning, then things went screwy. Agnes. Her impassive voice. Her dark eyes. The fainting spell. Agnes disappearing. Gracie coming home in a pissy mood. Gracie not speaking to Marc. Gracie not speaking to anybody, yet he found himself personally affronted.
Shay dispensed bumper-sticker wisdom regularly during her conversations with her co-workers. He knew what she would tell him had she known about his inner turmoil: “Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” She would make this recommendation as though it were one of the Commandments. Well, too late, he thought. He was pretty well wrecked.
Her other likely option would have been to say, “Let go and let God” but he wasn’t particularly religious despite being raised Presbyterian, and especially after college. He believed he could let go as needed, but if “letting God” was another way of saying “let someone else handle it” he wasn’t prepared to drop his burden just yet.
Retaining his burden meant picking at it, trying to untangle what the problem was, and once it was identified, coming up with a plan to fix it. He thought about the strange inner conversation that transpired earlier in the men’s restroom.
What do you desire most? He wondered why he said “Answers” instead of “Agnes”, or “Millions of dollars” or “A cruise to the Bahamas.” It was the truth, at any rate. He wanted answers to the strange events that apparently led to Agnes vanishing. He wanted answers to the source of Gracie’s sour mood. He wanted answers to why he went from not particularly caring one way or the other about Agnes, to being preoccupied with her well-being and safe return.
I want things back to normal. There it was. “Normal” for Marc meant going back to not caring about Agnes and having his favorite sister back in good spirits.
I want to fix what’s wrong with Agnes. How was he going to do that from Chicago? And fix what, exactly? He felt the pressure returning to the center of his forehead. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then let go and opened his eyes.
The monitor was brighter after his bout of deep thought, but things around him seemed different as well, as if someone had replaced everything on his desk with clever forgeries. Nothing had been moved, but nothing was quite as he left it. His stapler sat on his desk at the ready, but it wasn’t his stapler anymore. It wasn’t his desk either, for that matter.
He flipped his cell phone over and lit up the display, relieved to discover it was almost time to go home, at long last. He closed his spreadsheet and his web browser and waited until exactly 5:00 P.M. to log out of his computer as his company did their time reporting based on when the computer was used.
He waved goodnight to the security guard in the lobby and made his way home after his usual trek to his car. Everything was going according to routine, except he wasn’t in the mood to turn on the radio and listen to music. He just wanted to sit in silence and brood. The evening commute was just as light as the morning had been, and it wasn’t long before his dinner of drive-through fare was wadded up and ready to be tossed in his trash bin at home. Upon his return to his dark apartment, he snapped on the lights and set about to crashing on his sofa for a while.
He laid there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about nothing and everything. He wanted to do something, but there was nothing to do. He wanted to call somebody, but there was nobody to call. He wanted to go somewhere
, but despite the conveniences of urban life, he couldn’t orient himself to be anywhere but where he was now: on his sofa, in his apartment, doing nothing.
After a time, he remembered that his duffel hadn’t been unpacked, not even his toiletries. He decided to resolve that chore, and busy himself with that. He set the duffel on his unmade bed and pulled the zipper open. Marc had come home with more than he left with. His clothing was wadded up in the duffel, and soon found its way into the hamper with some arcing basketball shots. Next came his toiletry bag, and the contents were returned to the bathroom.
All that remained were his Christmas gifts. He had wrapped Gracie’s picture in a t-shirt. He unwrapped it and took a long look at his favorite sister. “You can talk to me, Gracie,” he said, weakly. He set the picture aside. He unboxed his coaster set from Agnes and set them on his coffee table. He had a wad of Christmas cards to put away. He set them on his kitchen counter to be sorted out later.
Once he finished unpacking, he picked up the duffel to return it to his bedroom closet for his next weekend trip somewhere and was surprised at the heft. Not dramatically so, but enough of a tug to know that the duffel wasn’t empty. Marc let out a “Whaaaa?” and set the duffel back on the bed. Tucked into one of the corners was a white pillar candle, wrapped in plastic. He didn’t recall getting it from anyone. It seemed like the sort of gift Agnes would give, but the coasters were her sole contribution, to his recollection. He felt around the bottom of the duffel looking for a stray card, or note, or something that would explain the presence of the candle and came up empty-handed.
Marc walked into the kitchen with the candle. He cut the plastic wrap with a pair of scissors and sniffed it… unscented. This had to be Agnes’s doing, he was certain. Maybe she wanted him to have something extra to open this year and this was her odd way of providing it. What was certainly odd was the electric thrill that ran through his body as he discarded the wrapper. He smirked at the realization and inwardly declared that this was, in fact, his Christmas bonus.
The Spaces Between Us Page 6
