The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  “And his family?” Amy asked.

  “Sweethearts. Very welcoming. They made sure to tell me Raef had never brought any other girl home. It was comical how each one pulled me aside and told me that. Pretty funny.”

  “Have you set a date?” I asked.

  “Spring,” she said. “In Paris.”

  She reached quickly and took my hand. It was typical of Constance that she would not want her happiness to bring me sadness of any kind. She smiled and made sure she caught my eye. I nodded. It was okay. Everything would be okay. Paris was fine.

  * * *

  “No word from He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?” Amy asked me after a second scorpion bowl arrived. “Is that’s what we’re still calling him?”

  “We call him asshat, mostly,” Constance said.

  “Constance!” Amy laughed. “You calling someone an asshat? All that Aussie stuff is rubbing off on you. Well, my stars and garters!”

  “I don’t care,” Constance said, sipping the straw that angled into the scorpion bowl. “My friends’ enemies are my enemies.”

  I leaned over and kissed Constance’s cheek.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Gone into the wind.”

  “He’s removed everything, Raef said,” Constance said. “Facebook, Instagram, even his cell. He’s disappeared from everything.”

  “What the fuck?” Amy said. “Who does that?”

  “Next topic,” I said.

  “Wait, who are you dating these days?” Amy asked me. “Anything cooking?”

  I shook my head.

  “I am a celibate priestess,” I said. “I could be sacrificed to a volcano.”

  “Girl, you got to get back in the game.”

  “That’s what I tell her,” Constance agreed, nodding and sipping.

  “I mean,” Amy said. “I mean, just even a little ride ’em cowboy. Your ginny is going to dry up like an old pumpkin.”

  “Ginny?” Constance asked and laughed.

  “I work,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

  “So that’s going well?” Constance asked. “You like that?”

  “It’s … interesting. I keep hearing He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s voice in the back of my head. New York is a prison we build for ourselves,” I said in a monster voice. “It’s not a prison, but it’s not a picnic, either. He was right about that.”

  “You need to get out more,” Amy said, sipping and talking, talking and sipping. “You need to join something.”

  “All these hipsters playing dodgeball and joining bowling leagues,” I said. “It tires me out just to think of it.”

  “Have you been on any dates?” Constance asked. “You’ve gone on a couple, haven’t you?”

  “Three,” I said. “Not disasters, but not great, either. Mostly people kind of get together. There’s always a function at the office. Someone’s getting married, or a promotion, or—”

  “Or an ass lift,” Amy jumped in.

  “Or an ass lift,” I agreed.

  “My mom always says boys spend their twenties chasing girls, and girls spend their fifties chasing boys,” Constance said.

  “How about you, Amy? Give us the lowdown.”

  “Nothing to report on the man front.”

  “I thought you were dating Mr. Belt Buckle,” Constance said. “The guy you told us about.”

  “Bobby,” she said and smiled. “He’s an idiot, but I like him. Nothing serious. We’re just play pals.”

  “And work?”

  “I don’t care about work, really, but I’m hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity on the weekends. I’m kind of digging that. I get to wear a tool belt. I want to buy a pickup truck. I swear, I’m going redneck.”

  The waitress came with our bill. I put my credit card down on it and told them it was my treat.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I would have ordered another drink if I had known you were picking up the tab,” Amy said. “Thanks, Heather.”

  “I have one more thing,” Constance said, and she grasped both of our hands. “I want you both to be my bridesmaids. No maid of honor. Just you two. Co-bridesmaids or whatever that’s called. It’s going to be small. Very small. In Paris. I’m sorry to drag you all the way to Paris, but if we book early enough, it won’t be too bad.”

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “And it’s Paris, not Cincinnati.”

  Amy nodded. Then she burped. It was a long, hissing burp that sounded like air seeping from a punctured tire. She smiled when she finished and then exclaimed, “Constance, how could you?”

  The waitress picked up the check. Lunch was over.

  44

  Amy left first.

  “See ya, dolls,” she said, and she plunked herself in a cab. She had an appointment uptown.

  We waved her off, then I walked Constance to the Port Authority. On the corner before we left and went our individual ways, Constance told me Raef had still not heard from Jack. It was our usual conversational touchstone. We always reviewed the Jack situation when we got together.

  “Nothing?” I asked, my stomach rising, the pedestrians around us moving fast.

  “Nothing. He said Jack hasn’t been in touch. The few contacts they had in common … no one knows where he went. It’s really very odd.”

  “So he’s gone? Truly gone?”

  She nodded softly.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “Do we know if he’s alive? Should we try to track down his parents? I might go see his parents or at least call them. I could say I want to give back the journal.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, sweetie. He’s dropped out. With all the ways to be in contact now, it has to be by choice, right? Pick up a phone, Facetime, text, e-mail, tweet—you name it. He has removed his electronic footprint. He’s not on Facebook, and you know how freaking hard it is to get your account deleted from Facebook. Nothing. Raef is worried about him. Really worried about him.”

  “Does Raef think he’s dead?” I asked, naming my deepest fear.

  “No, I don’t think so. Do you remember that day in Paris when they went off together and we went to Notre Dame and looked at the statue of Mary?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Raef refuses to talk about it, but I’ve thought about that day a lot. It was a curious thing to do at that moment. Why leave us when we only had a little time left in Paris? And what did they have to do that was so secretive?”

  “Right,” I said, pulling Constance a little to one side to avoid a teenager pushing a clothes cart on the sidewalk. “Jack never said where he went. I guess I never actually asked. I assumed they were up to some sort of boy mischief. Or maybe they were planning a surprise for us. I was a dope, now that I think about it.”

  “Well, I’ve always wondered what that might have been. I wonder about that a lot.”

  “You think something changed his mind? Something that he went to see that day?”

  She shook her head to indicate she didn’t know. It was a mystery. I kept my eyes on hers. She smiled softly.

  “Sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I would tell you if I knew. I promise. I don’t have a clue.”

  “I can’t even put my mind around this.”

  “Does it still hurt as much?”

  “Yes. As much as ever. More in some ways. You know what adds to it? Because he was so adamant about not taking pictures in important moments, I have next to nothing to look at. It’s like a dream. I mean it. Was he real? I can’t even go back and look at him, really. It’s almost as if he planned to disappear right from the start.”

  “Well, stay strong. I promise to get in touch the minute I hear anything about him, but I honestly don’t have an inkling. He’s just gone. He evaporated.”

  “I have his grandfather’s journal. But I can’t predict where he will be or when.”

  “Does he have a copy?”

  I shrugged.

  “He does. But he memorized a lot of it. He probably car
es more about that journal than anything else in his life.”

  “And he let you keep it? And he hasn’t called or written to ask for it back? That seems significant to me, cowgirl.”

  “I don’t speak Jack any longer. I’m trying to forget that language. I had a Jack-a-cism.”

  Constance leaned forward and hugged me.

  “I have to go. I miss you already.”

  “And I you.”

  “It was good to see Amy. She’s still the tiger woman.”

  “She’s strong. We’re all strong, right?”

  She nodded, then hugged me one last time and hurried off.

  * * *

  Saturday mornings, a jog around the reservoir. A Bloody Mary afterward at the deli on Fifty-Sixth that you like, or maybe an early drink with a friend, a show down in Soho, a new gallery to visit, an opening. The New York Times on Sunday morning in your apartment, the paper, The Gray Lady, spread out on your couch while you text and answer e-mails, try the crossword puzzle, read the editorials, force yourself to look at the stock reports. Then something cultural, something solid and good, the MoMa or the Frick, your special favorite, a walk through the park to look at the ducks, to rub Balto’s nose, to see Alice in Wonderland remaining perpetually childish and overlarge. Winter is here, no longer threatening, and you spend some time with your mom talking about wardrobes, a few shopping trips, some good basic gear. You make a reservation for skiing in Vermont. You talk to your boss, three bosses, actually, about Japanese accounts, and they suggest you brush up on your language, so Thursday mornings you drink tea with a Japanese instructor, Mr. Hayes, who is only part Japanese, you discover, but speaks a high-quality language. You practice calligraphy, painting with brushes and ink, and once Mr. Hayes brings in vases and sprigs of forsythia and involves the class—five of you, all youngish corporate types—in ikebana, the traditional art of flower arranging. You are given three wands of forsythia, and you are told to find their proper balance, which is not easy, in Japanese or in English, but you go forward and converse with the other students, with Mr. Hayes, and when you report back to your office you nod at the questions and say the language training is going well.

  New York, New York, a helluva town.

  Yoga Monday nights, a spin class on Wednesday, mostly women, all pedaling like crazy, sometimes in the dark, and you cannot help recalling Jack’s words, his idea that New York is a prison the inmates build for themselves, because, given a different perspective, spin class could be the activity of madwomen. But you go on, and there are moments of beauty, true rewards, the sun setting behind the Chrysler Building, an amazing drummer in Union Square, a monologue by a woman named KoKo who pretends to be King Kong’s wife, who is mad at him for leaving their island home. Funny stuff, New York stuff. Hip, in the know, tastemakers.

  A few faux dates here and there. A drink session with one attorney and a quick flirtation with a hockey player who said he played for the Rangers but his name wasn’t on the roster when you googled it. Your girlfriends calling, trading experiences of ruinous dates, gallows humor in every sad tale of men’s inadequacy or capricious hearts, your dad dropping in to take you to an elegant dinner right on the park. Not bad, nothing bad, you have it all, you have everything, and your mom comes in on Saturday afternoons sometimes to take in a show, sometimes with her friend Barbara, and you join, a third lady in a cloud of suburban perfume, the actors onstage often hilariously hammy, but this is Broadway, and if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

  New York, New York, a helluva town.

  You try not to think of He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named. Jackie-O, Jackass, Jack and Jill, Jack-o’-lantern, and so on. You do not think of that night in Berlin when your bodies clung together, or the time you stood beside the canal in Amsterdam and watched the swans swim under the cobblestone bridge. You do not think life would be better, truer, more genuine with Jack. You cannot let your mind go there, and you flitter online in the faint blue cursor lights looking for signs of him, electronic tracks, his whereabouts.

  Touch football in Central Park, the Sheep Meadow, then a group retreat to a sports bar on the East Side, wings and beers, full-grown men in sports jerseys, blue jeans, and grass-stained sneakers. Hooray for the Giants or the Colts or Notre Dame or USC, and you keep it light, go along, remind yourself that this is what you wanted. You are making it, you are, good job reviews, good feedback from your team leader, up early on Mondays to start it all over again. It is not a prison, no way, and you can think of a thousand girls, a thousand dudes, who would be happy to trade places with you. Even your dad smiles when he hears how you are doing, because you are a cheetah, fast and lethal, and you refuse to be outworked. Twice you go out dancing and drink too much and take a few tokes of a rancid joint, and you let a few guys grind up on you, their johnnies obvious and lurid, and you dance away, remember Amy and Constance, remember Amsterdam, and sometimes it all seems like a dream, like a tossed salad of experiences and hopes and sensation, but part of you admits you are lonely for even that creepy touch, and you go to find your girlfriends and order another round.

  New York, New York, a helluva town.

  On rare and stormy nights, you read Jack’s grandfather’s journal. Only when the heart needs rain. You sit by the window and look out, air coming in, your pain sharp and brutal and nearly welcome. You read and dream and remember, and you feel old, feel like a person looking back instead of ahead, and you wonder where Jack is this night, this minute, if he thinks of you at all. For a millionth time, you go back over it, recall the deadened feeling in your heart when you knew, you knew, that he was not coming with you. That everything that had gone before it was a myth, a story we tell ourselves in the little hours before sunrise. You say you would send the journal to Jack if you had an address, but you don’t, you surely don’t, and the words and pages go together and become blurry with a third glass of wine, and the wind comes in and makes it colder, and the rain falls out of the sky and makes flecks of moisture on your windowsill.

  45

  I pulled up in front of Jack’s Vermont land on a cold March morning, my rental car pushing as much heat as it could out of the tiny vents along the dashboard. I parked in front of his house—the former address, anyway—and plucked my coffee out of the slot on the console. I looked at the GPS on my phone, then at the line of stores that had obviously taken over the land around Jack’s grandfather’s farm. No mistake. I reached over and plucked Jack’s grandfather’s journal from my backpack. Jack’s grandfather’s farm, the source of the journal Jack had followed into oblivion, lay buried under a couple of acres of parking lot, a craft store, a kitchen store, the Maple Syrup Restaurant, and a Curves outlet.

  I didn’t do anything for a while except drink my coffee and stare out the frosty window. A little later, my phone buzzed, and I picked it up.

  “Did you find it?” Amy asked.

  “I guess. It’s just a mini-mall of stores now.”

  “Well, that’s what he said, right?”

  “Right. I guess I had a different image in my head.”

  “And what image was that?”

  “Oh, beautiful old farmhouse, white picket fence.”

  “But, Heather, he told you what had become of the place. He said it was all sold off.”

  “I know, I know, I know.”

  “How far was it, anyway?”

  “An hour and half, but the roads were bad. It’s wicked cold out.”

  “I know. Constance isn’t even skiing this morning because of the cold. She’s going out in a little while if it warms up.”

  We were staying together in a condo at Sugarbush. Girls’ getaway week. This side expedition was my little research trip to Jack’s ancestral home. I was supposed to get groceries, too, and wine, plenty of wine.

  “It was silly to come up here,” I said, understanding it fully for the first time. “I don’t know what I expected to see.”

  “Come back and hang out with us,” Amy said. “If you’re around, I won’t
feel so much pressure to go ski with Constance.”

  “I’ll be back in a while. I just want to poke around.”

  She didn’t say anything. My friends, I realized, had become good about not saying too much to their nutty friend who remained obsessed with a man she had met on a train traveling from Paris to Amsterdam. They held their judgment, and their tongues, and I understood that was no easy trick.

  “If you’re up there, anyway, you should go to the library and look up his family. Local libraries have a lot of information.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  “Don’t kill the whole day there, Heather. It’s not worth it. Come back and be with us.”

  “Just a little while,” I said.

  “Is this healthy, sweetie?”

  “It doesn’t really matter if it’s healthy or not. I have to do it. I’m thinking about calling his parents to see if he’s all right. There’s some other element here, Amy. I swear it.”

  Amy didn’t say anything.

  “It’s just that…,” I said, trying to think, trying to frame what I wanted to say. “It’s just that if Jack wasn’t true, then I don’t know what else to believe in. I really don’t. Everything feels false.”

  “I know, sweetie.”

  “If I could be that wrong about something—”

  “You weren’t wrong. It was just one of those things. One of those things that didn’t quite work out.”

  “I wish I could hate him. That would make it much simpler.”

  “Maybe you can hate him in time. There’s always hope.”

  She meant it as a joke. She meant it to lighten things up.

  We hung up after adding a few things to my theoretical shopping list, then I sat a little longer.

  What was I doing here? I wondered as I drank the rest of my coffee. It had been half a year since I had last seen Jack. Now, on a ski vacation with my two best friends, I had decided to leave them for a day so I could explore … what? What was I hoping to find? Even if I did discover something about Jack’s background, that still didn’t tell me where he was today, what he was doing, why he had dropped out of my life, everyone’s life, entirely. Besides, it felt pitiful to be checking up on Jack’s past; I felt like a celebrity stalker, although Jack wasn’t a celebrity, and I wasn’t truly a stalker, I hoped.