by Holly Brown
I need to write something, anything. I can’t deal with this sclerosis anymore. Ramble, and Candace can edit me later. No, I’ll edit me later. I don’t trust Candace. She stands too close to Paul; her eyes are always too bright, like sapphires; she’s got her whole life ahead of her, and my missing daughter is her stepping stone.
Marley,
You’ve been gone eight days now, and every second, some part of me is praying for your safe return. I’m sure that seems surprising to you, because you’ve never heard me talk about religion. I’m Jewish, but we never went to synagogue; we went to church, because your father wanted that. I do believe in God, though.
I’m already breaking the rules, going off message. Not a word of this is going to make it past the censors (i.e., Paul and Candace). Even I don’t think it deserves to. But I have to keep going. I’ll stumble on something usable eventually.
I believe that God wants you in the world, as I do, because you’re a good person. A loving person. You’re Marley, my Marley.
Speaking of God, this is god-awful. I can’t do this. Only I have to. This is my direct appeal, my shot at speaking from my heart to hers. I know her heart, don’t I? I’ve lived with her for fourteen years, all the years she’s had.
What does it even mean to be a good person? I don’t know if we’ve raised her to think of others. She doesn’t seem to be thinking of us, after we’ve devoted our lives to her well-being. Fourteen years of parenting, and all I got was a lousy whiteboard note. I should put that on a T-shirt and wear it to the vigil, really give them something to tweet about.
You arranged to leave, that much is clear, but I’m terrified that something will go wrong, that something has already gone wrong, and you won’t be able to come back even if you want to. I’m frightened about what might happen to you out there on your own. There are people who want to take advantage of a young girl, who want to
I can’t even finish that thought. Delete. Start over.
Marley,
I don’t know why you left. I don’t know if it had to do with me, or with your father, or with our marriage. I don’t know if it had to do with the move and being in an unfamiliar place, away from your old friends. I don’t know, because you’re not here to tell me. But I want to listen. I want to help you find happiness. I need you to come home and talk to me. I love you so very much. I feel like I might die without you. I truly feel that, when I always thought it was just something people said. It’s not. It’s real. A pain like this, it can
No, stop. End on how much I love her. No guilt trips. End there.
Only I find that I don’t want to.
You might have figured out that I was thinking of divorcing your father. You asked me, and I said no, but you could have seen through that. And I have to wonder, could this be some elaborate ploy to keep the two of us together? Dad and I would team up to bring you back home, and along the way, we’d realize how much we really do love each other. Could that be it?
That seems like the plot of some bad movie, some updated version of The Parent Trap. You’re not really the Hayley Mills type (well, Lindsay Lohan in the remake, before she went off the rails). I wish we could watch that movie together again, be like we used to.
But everything changes and gets more complicated, doesn’t it? Trish told me about your getting drunk that last weekend you spent at her house. Is alcohol a part of this? If it is, I won’t judge you. I’ll get you help, and I’ll be glad to do it.
But back to your father and me. I have this feeling that you knew how unhappy I’ve been, even though I would never admit it. I thought you were too young for me to talk honestly about things like that. I didn’t want to use you for a sounding board the way my mother did with me. I also didn’t want to seem like I was trying to get you on my side, to turn you against your father. You should see how hard he’s trying to find you. It’s like the Pentagon around here.
Marriage is complicated. Yes, your father likes to have things his way, but that’s not the whole reason I’ve been unhappy. I just don’t feel alive with him anymore, if that makes sense.
I made this playlist for my iPod with all the songs I loved when I was your age, maybe a little older. I just wanted to feel deeply again. Feeling comes easily when you’re fourteen, doesn’t it? But the rest of it can seem so hard. I do get it, Marley. Well, I’m trying.
I don’t think there’s any way you could have known about me and Michael. That’s Dr. Michael, to you. He and I were just good friends. He’s not the reason for the troubles between your father and me. He’s a symptom, I guess you could say. Ha-ha, Dr. Michael’s a symptom. What I mean is, the fact that I wanted to talk to Dr. Michael rather than your father, that I found that easier and more satisfying, is the symptom. But what’s the diagnosis? I’m not sure I know.
I’m going to delete every word, but for the first time in days, I feel a little better, cleaner, purged. It must be what bulimics feel, or cutters. I’ve been reading about all the teenagers who slice their arms with razor blades for the endorphin release. When Marley comes back, I’m going to strip off those button-down shirts of hers and look her arms over. I’ll look her over and hold her tight.
When she comes back. I don’t know where this sudden surge of hope has come from, but it’s here. I want to blow on the fragile embers and see if they can burst into flame. Don’t let them go out.
Paul appears in the doorway. “Officer Strickland is downstairs. He wants to talk to you for a minute.” He cocks his head to the side. “You seem different.”
“I’m feeling a little better.”
He smiles. “Glad to hear it. Is that letter done? I was hoping Candace could read it, and then we could post it before the vigil.”
“Is there a reason it needs to be today?”
“Is there a reason it can’t be today?”
My better mood begins to evaporate.
“Take your time,” he says, but I don’t think he means it.
“I want to bring her home as much as you do,” I say loudly. A second too late, it occurs to me how sound travels in this house. Officer Strickland and Candace are both downstairs, plus anywhere from two to five volunteers, of different ages and genders and colors, like the old Benetton ads.
I’m tired of the well-meaning invaders. I spend a lot of my time corralled in the bedroom, while they have the run of the downstairs. I don’t even feel comfortable in my beloved (Marley’s beloved) window seat, because I can hear them all nattering away in the dining room. They might not even be well-meaning. They could be tweeting about me right now.
“We’re in this together,” Paul says soothingly. I have a suspicion that he’s thinking of everyone downstairs, too, and he’ll say whatever he has to in order to convey the right impression. If I really believed that was all it took to bring Marley home, acting the part, I’d do it. But it’s not all for Marley, these things he’s doing. It’s also for Strickland and Candace and the volunteers who look at him so admiringly. And the bloggers, and the followers on Twitter, and the parents of other runaways. He wants the whole world to think he’s some kind of hero. That way, he’ll never have to face that he might be part of the reason Marley left.
But, I remind myself, Paul does want to bring Marley home. He probably wants that more than anything. This is no time to turn my anger on him like a fire hose, good as it might feel. “Why does Officer Strickland want to talk to me?” I ask quietly.
“He has some questions.”
“For me, but not for you?”
Paul looks down at the floor and for a second, I think, He’s in on it. He knows exactly why his buddy Strickland is here.
“Mrs. Willits,” Strickland is saying.
He comes into focus, slowly, across the kitchen table from me.
“I was asking you a question.” He’s clearly got no tolerance for parents who don’t behave as they’re supposed to. To him, “bizarre” reads “guilty.” He must have seen that morning show, probably the Twitter feeds, too.
“I’m sorry.” I smile in vacant apology. “Sometimes I space out.”
“I’m sure it’s very stressful.” But he sounds more stern than sympathetic.
“Do you have any children?” I ask him.
His eyes narrow. He suspects a trick question. “Yes.”
“They’re probably younger than Marley.”
“Yes.”
I should quit now, while I’m ahead. But I might already be so far behind that I need to keep going. “I don’t know if you can imagine this happening to your family, what it would be like.”
His stare is stony. You’d think I was wishing this on him, rather than trying to make some semblance of a connection, parent to parent.
“What was your question?” I say, sighing.
“I was asking about your whereabouts on the morning Marley went missing.”
Whereabouts? “Went missing”? Doesn’t he mean “ran away”? That’s where all the emphasis has been for the past week-plus. That’s why we haven’t been deserving of the police’s precious resources.
“Mrs. Willits?” He’s losing patience.
“I was with Marley, dropping her off at school, and then I went to work.”
He pulls a small notepad from the pocket of his uniform and flips it open. “I spoke to Nadine Glade. She’s your supervisor, correct?” I nod. “She says that you were over an hour late for work. But you told me that it was that rare morning where you dropped Marley off at school on time. How do you explain the time discrepancy?”
Shit. I should have told the truth from the start. I’m innocent, where Marley is concerned. Where her disappearance is concerned, anyway. “I stopped at Starbucks. The line was long.”
“Did you tell Ms. Glade you had a flat tire?”
I can’t believe she said that. She deals with the police plenty, running a DV agency. She protects the women there all the time. I thought she was on my side. She acted so sympathetic, telling me I could take off as much time as I need. “Haven’t you ever lied to your boss?” I try to smile, like he and I are sharing a joke.
He doesn’t smile back.
“I don’t know why I lied about the tire. I should have told her that Starbucks was taking forever. They were having some sort of promotion, launching a new kind of holiday nog.” My blood’s gone cold. I’m remembering what Paul said about the risks of exposing ourselves the way we have; it could make us suspects. But there’s no “us” here. It’s only me and Officer Strickland.
“Nog?” His eyebrows are raised, like he’s mocking me or daring me to go on. Keep talking, keep lying, go on and incriminate yourself.
“Yes. Pumpkin nog coffee, or something disgusting like that.” I smile again in the pretense that we’re having a human moment.
“You’re saying you were in line the whole time? When the drive from Starbucks to your work is less than five minutes?”
“It took me a few minutes to park. And I might have been checking my e-mail.” Except I don’t have a smartphone. Only Marley and Paul do. Does Strickland know that?
Okay, so I was with Michael. But I didn’t invite him; he showed up, unannounced. What else could I do? He’d driven hours. I had to meet him.
You’re not supposed to lie to the police, not even about small things. Especially about small things. It makes you look guilty of bigger ones. But Strickland’s got it in for me. There’s no way I can confide in him about Michael.
“I wanted to relax before going to work,” I say. “I wanted some time to myself to enjoy my coffee. So I lied about the flat tire, and I sat in my car for a while, and then I drove to work.”
“You needed to relax. Were you under some particular stress?”
“Did I say ‘need’?” I really couldn’t remember. “No, no particular stress. I can be an anxious person. I’ve always been that way.” That, at least, is true.
Strickland nods rhythmically, like something is becoming very clear to him. Then he says, “The backpack Marley had on her that day, it must have been pretty fat with clothes. Much bigger than it would be on a normal day. And shaped differently, too, with clothes instead of books.”
“It must have been. I didn’t notice.”
“You didn’t notice,” he repeats.
“No. I was focused on not being late. I mean, on Marley not being late.”
“Because she said she couldn’t be late.”
“Right.” He’s trying to trip me up, to make me traverse ground we’ve already covered, and it scares me. I sense his subterranean pleasure. He’s not supposed to show how much he likes doing this to people, exerting his authority. I read somewhere that the psychological profile of cops and criminals is similar. They both love power and intimidation.
“And you didn’t ask her why she couldn’t be late.”
“Right.” I look down at the table and then up at the whiteboard. “Believe me, I’ve been regretting it ever since. There were a lot of things I should have said to Marley that morning.”
“Like what?”
As if I’d tell him. “Anything that would have changed her mind.”
He flips his book shut. “I’ll let you know when I have more questions.”
When, not if. “I’m happy to cooperate,” I say. He stands up. “I know it looks bad that I lied to Nadine. But I dropped Marley off at school just like I said. Then she ran away.”
He doesn’t respond. In his eyes, I’m guilty of something, and he intends to find out what it is.
“Is this about the TV interview?” I obviously failed to be effusive enough about the police’s efforts. Is that what’s turned me into a suspect?
“I didn’t watch any interview,” he says. I guess cops can lie with impunity.
Day_8
Imaginary Facebook
Marley Willits
Says teen angst is for suckers
1 second ago
B. likes this.
I was bored all day. I didn’t feel like reading any more of Invisible Man, and so many of B.’s books feel like what I’m going to be subjected to when I go to college anyway.
I’m still planning to go to college. I bet my father thinks I can’t get there without him, or his money, but I will. I’ll be enrolled under my new name, whatever that turns out to be.
At least B. left me the cell phone, so I could text him when I felt like it. But I don’t feel very interesting today. There was nothing on TV, I couldn’t stream any videos or visit websites, and I wasn’t in class surrounded by people I could make fun of to B. It’s like, who am I if I have nothing to react to? I finally know the answer to that riddle about the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it: No, it doesn’t make a sound.
B. sent me some sweet texts, letting me know he couldn’t wait to get home to me, telling me how pretty I am when I sleep. I told him how hard it was to be alone in the apartment all day. He wrote that it wouldn’t be like that for too much longer, that he hoped I’d be patient with him. “Tell me u’r with me so far,” he texted, and I smiled, remembering the best e-mail I’d ever gotten. The best anything, really.
I understand where he’s coming from. I think about how anxious I’d be if loving someone could get me arrested. But he made it sound so different, before I came out. We were supposed to go to restaurants and cafés and his favorite bookstore (it has a funny name I can’t quite remember—the Optimizer, the Stimulator?); we’re supposed to be hanging out with his friends.
I know he wants that life for us, too. He’s just scared to have it before we’ve taken all the steps on Disappeared.com. He wants me to have a driver’s license with my new name and a birth date in 1996. I get that. But every night, we eat dinner and hang out and then he says he’s too tired to go to the website; he promises we’ll do it soon.
He’s asked me to be patient, and I can do that. I’m not all about my own agenda, like his other girlfriends were. He’s been what I needed this past year, and now I’m going to be what he needs. I mean, I really think I would have gone crazy with
out him to talk to, without someone to love me.
He came home in a decent mood, gave me a big smile and a hug, but then he asked, “Oh, you didn’t make anything for dinner?” like he was disappointed.
“I don’t really cook,” I said.
“I bought some cookbooks for you. They’re on that shelf.” He pointed. “I thought since you’d be home a lot, in the beginning, you might want something to do.”
I didn’t come here to be a housewife, so I changed the subject to Disappeared.com. Now that’s a recipe I’d love to follow. “We should get started before it gets late,” I said. Then I felt like kicking myself. Didn’t he, just today, ask me to be patient?
Instead of looking annoyed, B. gave me this really great smile and said, “Can’t I keep you to myself for a while longer?” He was looking at me so adoringly that I wanted the moment to last. I wasn’t going to pin him down with specifics.
I also let it slide because I feel like things are a little tender between us, like a layer of skin growing back after a burn. (Ms. Finelli would like that simile, I bet.) But I don’t know why it should be that way. We haven’t done anything bad to each other.
It might be a normal adjustment period. I don’t know for sure, since I’ve never even had a boyfriend, and now we’re living together. I wish I had someone to ask.
B. and I ate tuna fish sandwiches and talked about what we might do this weekend. I’m really excited about it. Time away from the apartment, time to get in a groove together. Since B.’s nervous to be out in public, I told him we should take a road trip. I asked him where the nearest beach is, and he said it’s about two hours away. I said, “That’s perfect!” and looked up Saturday’s weather in Wilmington. It’s going to be 80 and sunny. Perfect squared.
