I imagine what it would be like if they were on this list, Julie and Jess gazing back at me, Julie crouched on the living room floor, Jess curled in her arms, sticky paint all over their fingers. Their information would be listed just like everybody else’s, first Julie and then Jess. Julie Lang, female, age thirty, of Caucasian descent, five feet seven inches, 130 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes, reported missing August 23, 2009. Jess Lang, female, age five, of Caucasian descent, three feet four inches, 39 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes, reported missing August 23, 2009. The circumstances: “The missing persons were last seen at their home residence on the evening of August 22, 2009, at approximately 8:30 p.m. The next morning they were no longer at the house. They have not been seen since.”
But then I blink and they’re not there. I check two, three times. Julie and Jess are not on the list. Instead, in front of me, I see a round, blotchy male face, familiar somehow. His eyes are like beads of dark matter, his mouth pulled back into a toothless smile. I recognize the name: Bruce Kerman. Male, age forty-eight, of Caucasian descent, five feet ten inches, 210 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, reported missing on September 25, 1986. The circumstances: “Mr. Kerman was last seen at Ridgewood Elementary School on the morning of September 25, where he shot and killed eight-year-old Gordon Howe before fleeing the crime scene. Mr. Kerman has a history of mental illness including antisocial personality disorder. If he is spotted, please call 911 immediately.”
October 7, 2008
Age Thirty
A teacher stands at the front of the classroom, her students gathered in a hush on the rug. The children squirm like caterpillars, restless, perhaps wondering why they weren’t allowed to go to lunch. One child bolts for the door but discovers it’s locked. Only Jess sits still among them, her hazel eyes sparkling green in the sunlight until the teacher pulls the shades shut. Jess is by far the smallest of the children. She’s a year younger than everybody else, only four years old. Normally the school wouldn’t have allowed a child so young in kindergarten, but she was so precocious, so mature, there was nothing else for them to do. Charles sits in the back of the room, watches the teacher straighten her blouse. He was supposed to speak to the class for career day, tell them why they should be excited about science.
The teacher, Mrs. Henry, clears her throat. She struggles to maintain her composure, wipes her mouth, smudging her lipstick. “Now class, you may be wondering why you’re not allowed to go to lunch and why some of your parents have started to gather outside. You may wonder why there was an ambulance earlier today and why the flag is only raised halfway up the pole. And you may have noticed that Benjie’s not here.”
The students look back and forth, suddenly aware that Benjie is missing. When the teacher continues, there are tears running down the little crevices in her cheeks.
“At recess today, Benjie fell off the monkey bars and had a very bad accident. The ambulance took him to the hospital but it was a very bad fall. And I’m afraid that Benjie is in heaven now.”
Jess raises her hand, gazing down and picking at the carpet’s fibers at the same time.
“Jess?”
“How come Benjie didn’t say good-bye?” she asks.
“Unfortunately, sometimes there isn’t time to say good-bye.”
As the teacher continues to speak, Charles starts forward and scoops Jess up in his arms. He holds her tiny body against his chest. Charles wishes this moment would never end, feeling Jess’s heartbeat against his, protecting her from everything bad, even as he senses that she has already become tainted. She’s still so young, and yet she is already doomed.
I UNPLUG THE COMPUTER, THE IMAGE OF BRUCE KERMAN sizzling off the screen. The teacher’s words echo through my ears: Sometimes there isn’t time to say good-bye. But maybe there can be. Maybe there still is, and the only way to know is to find out what happened the night Julie and Jess disappeared. They could still be alive, they could be out there, even if they’re not on the missing persons list. But of course, the logic of it is hard to justify. What causes people to disappear and never come back? If this were a Hollywood movie, the answer would be easy. They were abducted, held hostage, brainwashed and such. But the more likely possibility is that if Julie and Jess are still alive somehow, they probably don’t want to come back. They wanted to disappear. I don’t like to think about this option, because if they were escaping from Charles, they were escaping from me. But I push all of this away, shove down the gnawing feeling in my stomach. I’m not Charles. I’m not the same man, and I can still hope for something. At least that hasn’t been taken away from me yet.
I head to the school next. Ridgewood Elementary, two blocks away. They must have some sort of school records on file. There must be somebody who knows something. The wind snaps around me as I exit the library, dark storm clouds brooding above, still pregnant with rain. I pull my coat in closer to my neck, wishing the sun would peek out. I feel I could use it, today of all days. A thick fog filters through the school yard with the trademark chill of the Pacific Northwest. The children don’t seem to mind, though, and they continue with their games of handball and Chinese jump rope.
“Hey Mr. Lang!” a voice calls out, and a small boy runs up to the fence. He has a nest of blond hair flopped down on his head, and his sweatpants have holes in the knees.
“Hi,” I say, giving an awkward wave.
“It’s me, Leo. I’m friends with Ava. We have playdates sometimes,” he says, slightly out of breath.
“Of course, I remember you, Leo,” I say, although I don’t at all.
“Did you move back to town?” Leo asks. “Ava and I never got to do the volcano experiment you said you’d set up in your backyard.”
“We’ll have to get to that.” I give a half smile, not managing a full one. “Say Leo, what grade are you and Ava in?”
“I’m in fourth grade. Ava’s in third.”
“I know it’s a long way back to remember, but can you recall if there was a girl named Jess in kindergarten with you?”
Leo squinches up his face to think. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Jess Lang?”
“No, cause we would’ve sat next to each other since I’m Leo Lucas.”
“You’re sure?”
A red handball bounces toward Leo. “I’ve gotta go. I wanna play before recess is over.”
I nod to Leo as he runs back across the asphalt yard, lined with tan bungalows and ficus trees. There’s a grassy lawn out in front, an American flag blustering in the wind, and a sign on the double doors leading into the school, reading: “Parents and/or Guardians of Currently Enrolled Students, please type in the access code on the dial pad to the right. Other visitors, please schedule an appointment with our receptionist in the main office. You must have an appointment to come onto school grounds. Thank you!”
I peer in through a small glass window in one of the doors, tapping against the glass. An older African American woman in a navy blue blazer looks up from her paperwork in the main office, then glances back down again. The fluorescent lights glint off of the laminated ID card fastened to her pocket. I press the buzzer by the side of the door. Nothing. I knock on the window again, harder this time. Nothing. I begin pounding against the door with my fist. Finally the woman rises from her desk chair. Even from outside I can hear her heels clack against the linoleum floors as she walks toward me. Instead of letting me in, though, she leans over and opens the mail slot at the bottom of the door.
“Can I help you, sir?” she says, a crinkle in her voice.
I crouch down, look into the set of gray eyes that stares back at me. “My daughter used to attend this school. Jess Lang. I need to access her school records.”
“I’m sorry, sir—”
“Charles. Charles Lang.”
“Mr. Lang, you need to make an appointment to come onto school grounds.”
“I swear—it’ll only take a moment.”
“Policy is policy.”
“What if you got the
records? I could stay out here. You wouldn’t have to give them to me. You could just tell me what they say. Please.”
“And when did your daughter attend Ridgewood Elementary?”
“She was in kindergarten for the 2008–2009 school year. Jess Lang. She was technically too young, but they let her in because she was precocious.”
“Right. She didn’t continue on to first grade?”
“She went missing after that.”
The woman sighs. “Look, Mr. Lang, I wish I could help you. But we’re not going to have her records anymore. We only hold onto student records for two years after they stop attending Ridgewood.”
My knees wobble. I put a hand down to balance myself. “And then what happens to them?”
“You’ll have to contact the district offices for any further information. I’m sorry, I have to get back to my paperwork.”
“What about you?” I plead. “Did you know her? Jess Lang? Does the name sound familiar?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Lang. I’ve only been working here for about six months.” And with that, the woman lets the mail slot clatter shut behind her as she returns to the main office.
Discouraged, I abandon the double doors, pacing by the classrooms as students file in from recess, sweaty and disheveled. I imagine Jess sitting in one of the stuffy classrooms, completing worksheets in addition and subtraction. I imagine her gathering with the other students on the rug for story time, playing board games on rainy days and carrying too many picture books at once in her backpack. She had friends. She would have been the type of girl who didn’t care what her peers thought and thus was cool and popular in their eyes. And she would have had secrets, secrets that I would never know.
I round the corner. Tucked away behind a chain-link fence, there’s a garden filled with rosebushes beginning to bloom. It’s a memorial garden. A placard in the ground reads For Gordon Howe, bordered by a bare plot of dirt and a blank placard, as if the garden has been waiting for its next addition. Bouquets of flowers rest on the ground below Gordy’s placard. An invisible hand squeezes my chest.
I turn away from the garden, looking instead at the mural that they are painting on one side of the school. It’s a cloud of fairies upon a stage, dancing and twirling around one another. A gawky boy in green tights stands center stage, his brown hair up in a cowlick. It’s a still scene from the school’s production of Peter Pan. I search for Jess among the fairies, hoping for just one glimpse, and for a moment, I spot her in her ballet slippers and turquoise leotard, swirling around the young boy in green tights. But a moment later, her image shifts before me. It’s not Jess in the mural but Ava, her hair bright red against the turquoise, a spray of freckles across her face.
November 2, 2011
Age Thirty-Three
A dream. Charles crouches down in the depths of the night, his face the alabaster white of bone. He is in his living room, and yet wisps of artificial branches and forest leaves crawl around him. A chorus of children’s voices breaks from the distance. A stage light snaps on behind Charles, buzzing louder and louder as it gets brighter and brighter. Charles sits on the hardwood floor and holds his knees against his chest. The chorus grows closer, their voices distorted, crashing over one another like cacophonous waves, their throats raw and rasping.
“Now repeat after me—I won’t grow up!”
“We won’t grow up!”
“I don’t want to go to school!”
“We don’t want to go to school!”
“Just learn to be a parrot!”
“Just learn to be a parrot!”
“And recite a silly rule!”
“And recite a silly rule!”
The chorus surrounds Charles, their warm, sweaty bodies crowding in around him, and Charles realizes that they are the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, barefoot and dressed in rags, mud smudged across their cheeks, a malevolent gleam in their eyes. They stomp up and down in time with the music, rattling the hardwood floor beneath them, as their ringleader comes out, Peter Pan. His felt hat tips down over his face as he carries a bundle of a blanket in his arms. Peter Pan looks up as he spits out the next line of the song. Charles discovers that Peter Pan is not a boy at all, but—
“Julie? Is that you?”
Julie is no longer a woman but a girl, small and diminished, a paltry version of her former self. She refuses to acknowledge Charles, screaming out for all to hear: “If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up, not me!”
“Not I!”
“Not me!”
“Not me!”
Julie looks Charles directly in the eye, and with a snarl, she lets free the blanket, revealing a mess of shattered glass and blood held within. The Lost Boys vanish. Julie leans in, whispering into Charles’s ear: “I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up …”
RAINDROPS SLIDE DOWN THE BACK OF MY NECK, LIKE fingers. I pull up the collar of my coat around me. I don’t move. I can’t bring myself to move. Finally, when the water has begun to cling to my eyelashes and soak through the cotton of my shirt, I tear my gaze away from the mural and continue toward the lab. The wetness seeps through my shoes as thunder and lightning crack the sky apart. I walk the several blocks down to the lab, the storm growing, fat drops of water slapping against my back, as a part of me wishes it would just wash me away, down the street and out to the ocean. I could float away, alone with my thoughts. I could disappear into the horizon.
I arrive at the familiar building, the beige paint turned brown in the rain. I stand outside the sliding glass doors as I did my first day, watching the doors glide open and shut as they wait for me to cross the threshold. I need to talk to Steve, to find out if there’s anything else he may have forgotten to tell me. I imagine the people of the town around me, tucked away into offices and apartments, schools and houses, their lives a vast, interconnected web of social interactions and relationships. My world, by comparison, is so small and dense that sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe.
The elevator is out of order so I slog up the stairs with zombie footsteps, the concrete reverberating throughout my bones. Panic flares up inside of me as I stand in front of the doors to the lab. I realize for the first time the gravity of what I did to Peter. He could have me arrested, charged with aggravated assault. I could go to prison. But somehow I don’t care. My existence is singular—to find out what happened to Julie and Jess. I force air in and out of my lungs, pushing the panic away. I have to talk to Steve. I don’t care about anything else right now.
I try my key card. The light blinks red. I try again. Red. Once more. The light blinks red but the door cracks opens this time. Steve peers out, his green eyes orbiting around the hallway until they land on me.
“Charles—”
“Can I come in?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Is Peter—”
“Home for the day. The bruises on his neck are still pretty swollen. But you know how he is—he could pop in at any time. And if he sees you—”
“Please, Steve, all I’m asking for is a few minutes.”
Steve gives one last cursory look around the hallway, then motions for me to follow him in. “Just a few minutes, though. It’s for your own good.”
I’m surprised by how normal it feels to be inside the lab again, how comforting I find the sterility, the antiseptic smell, the rooms whitewashed in fluorescent lights. Steve leads me into his office, shuts the door behind him. His desk is cluttered with manila folders, manuals, and books. I sneak a glance at one of the titles—A History of the Microbiology of HIV and AIDS. He has several diplomas on his walls from the University of London, as well as a number of framed photographs. The majority of the photographs are of Steve and Richard, a tall, handsome man of Indian descent, dressed in a tweed coat with a smile bursting at the seams.
Steve takes his glasses and wipes them on the edge of his shirt. When he puts them back o
n again, his pupils seem magnified as they stare through me.
“How’s your head?”
“Still painful.”
“Let me take a look,” he says.
“It’s fine.”
“I’m not asking.”
I lean my head over the desk, wincing as Steve pulls up the back of my cap, the bandage around my head soaked with dried blood.
“Don’t move,” he says, getting up and retrieving a first aid kit. He slowly cuts the bandage away, treating the wound with hydrogen peroxide and fresh gauze.
“It could’ve gotten infected, you know. You have to be very careful about these things,” Steve says. He looks at me with the kind of serious regard that doctors reserve for their patients. “Why are you here, Charles? Believe me, I’m happy to see you, and you know how much I care about you, but you shouldn’t come back to the lab anymore. Not after what happened with Peter.”
Glass Shatters Page 15
