All This Life
Page 19
“Your mother’s new crafting studio.”
Noah911 didn’t enter the room, standing in the doorway. No one said hello. No one offered a hug. It was a father trying to understand instructions; it was a son trying to understand, too.
“Crafting?” Noah911 said.
“Arts and crafts.”
“I’ve never seen Mom make an art or craft.”
“She’s wanted to for years.”
“Has she?”
His father looked up from the directions. “She has.”
“I’m going to take a shower,” Noah911 said, turning to leave.
“You don’t look as bad as I thought,” said his father. “I’m glad about that.”
“These things heal.”
“The service starts at noon.”
“I know.”
“How am I supposed to even make sense of this?” his father said, eyes back on the instructions, fumbling to attach one of the chair’s wheels.
Noah911 went back into his room, started to unpack his clothes. His mom entered with a steaming cup of coffee. “You’re an angel,” he said, then felt stupid for his choice of words. He had a sip; it was thin and weak.
“Will you need anything ironed?” she said.
“I can do it.”
“I’d like to.”
He knew better than to fight her on things like this. “Okay.” He handed her a button-up shirt and slacks, both black.
His mother pursed her lips, inhaled to say something, but didn’t.
“I saw your crafting studio,” Noah911 said.
“There’s a fresh towel in the bathroom.” She left the room.
•••
THE FUNERAL WAS a fist. It had tear ducts. The funeral was held in a lung, clammy and loud with mourners plucking clumsy ballads on heartstrings and razor wire. Grief felt tight to the body, like a wetsuit, squeezing Noah911’s anatomy into a tangle of pall and regret. He could smell this funeral a mile away, pungent with feral, barnyard odors. People sat on platitudes with prayers that sounded like this: Why why why, Noah911? or a slow gurgling croon of No no no . . .
Everyone was numb and drunk.
Everyone was alive and dead.
And Noah911 was having trouble breathing from the broken rib. He was alone, might as well have been on a witness stand, everybody else jammed in a jury box, the minister banging a gavel on his Bible and belting out, “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!”
THERE WAS A reception afterward. Platters of deli meat and bottled beer, homemade cookies and condolences. Noah911 was avoiding people, or they steered clear of him. It was his beaten-up face, his rumpled blazer. It was a two-day-old shave. It was nothing.
He watched people rally around his mother and father, watched all the pity and sympathy being expressed. He stood in a corner trying not to get wasted, hadn’t eaten since a pastrami sandwich in O’Hare and this first vodka on the rocks went straight to his concussion.
His cousins were no better than his parents’ friends. Both sets of grandparents were dead, so there was no one to shroud him in unconditional support. This whole room was full of rubberneckers looking at Noah911.
We live in a society of second chances, he thinks. Should I confess? Should I tell all these leeches what they want to hear? Should I scream in all their faces, “I did it. It was me. I threw her off the fucking bridge”?
Instead, he made small talk with the smattering of people who approached him. He drank too much vodka, though he didn’t get loud or crass. They expressed feelings. Noah911 faked his. They stared at his injuries and excused themselves from his company at the first lull in the awkward conversations.
Even his favorite aunt—his mother’s sister—said to him, “We need to know what really happened, sweetie.”
“Me too.”
“You know more of the story than we do. Or you should.”
“I should. You’re right about that.”
Noah911 said he had to use the bathroom but went in a different room. Tracey’s. The crafting studio. He stood in the sour smell of new paint, surrounded by these things bought to cover up his sister’s absence. He pulled out his phone and switched his return flight so he’d leave later tonight. Catch the nine o’clock to Denver, and from there connect back to his new life.
ALL OF THESE events contributed to the pattern of escalating invasions. All of these were the worst part of the trip, a whole festival of betrayals.
But now Noah911 is in the kitchen by himself, eating an omelet. His mom is taking a nap; his father is finishing the assembly of that chair. It’s 5 pm, the service and reception over, the friends and relations on their way back to their own miseries. The house is quiet again, and he hasn’t told his parents that he’s leaving tonight. He can call a cab, slip out, and be free of this place and its insinuations before anyone misses him—if anyone would miss him.
He cooked the omelet on too high a heat. The outside of it is patterned in scorched creases of egg, while the inside is runny and gelatinous, cheese barely melted in places. But this isn’t about taste. He slops a piece of toast through the snot and hopes this helps soak up some vodka.
“Here,” says his father.
He puts a Ziploc bag on the kitchen table.
To Noah911, it looks filled with instant oatmeal.
“What’s this?” he says.
“We want you to have these.”
His father picks the Ziploc bag up and thrusts them at him. A joust. A retaliation that means if you can’t protect her alive, try this. Try carting this around. Never forget what you did, Noah911.
“I don’t want that,” he says to his dad.
“Why?” he asks, shaking the bag furiously at his son. “Why don’t you want these?”
“Please stop.”
“It’s not all of her. We’re keeping some. But this is your share.”
“I can’t.”
“Take them, god damn it.”
Noah911 imagines his dad divvying her up, like a drug dealer, weighing out bags of powder, and for the first time since she died, Noah911 cries. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s your mess.”
“Don’t say that.”
His father drops the Ziploc bag onto Noah911’s plate, right onto the runny eggs, then walks out of the room. Noah911 sits there staring at the ashes, scared of them. Finally, after thirty seconds or so, he runs a sponge under the faucet and then dabs the baggy clean, like he’s caring for wildlife after an oil spill.
He has one more bite of his eggs, retches. He knows he’ll sneak back to his room, get his suitcase, and walk out. But he’s going to leave this plate of leftovers on the table, so someone remembers he was here.
HE’S HOLDING THE Ziploc bag up for the TSA agent to inspect, cradling it across his arm like an injured animal. He says, “This is my sister. I’m bringing her back.”
“We see a lot of cremains pass through here,” she says, a sixty-something white woman with oxblood hair, “but they’re usually in a . . . you know . . . proper . . . receptacle.”
“I know; I will. This is my sister,” he says again.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“Let us x-ray her and then you can go.”
Gently, Noah911 places them in one of those gray plastic bins, the conveyor belt carrying her through the machine.
“Take care of yourself,” the TSA agent says to him.
He wants to reciprocate her compassion. The people in her profession have the rap of having no grace. Noah911 has had this thought many times, slowly snaking through these screening lines, but this woman, this one woman, has been kind to him.
“I like your hair,” he says.
She smiles, averts her eyes, caught off-guard.
“Get your sister, dear,” she says.
HE SITS ON the airplane, somewhere around 35,000 feet, and has the ashes sitting on his tray table. He’s alone in his row, the plane filled with empty seats. Noah911 stares at the baggy.
He’s with her. A handful of Tracey.
He caresses the outside of the baggy and shuts his eyes, feeling a bit of peace, a sliver of it, being alone with Tracey.
It’s not torture having these ashes. At least, not in this moment.
His face doesn’t hurt and the broken rib isn’t too bad, and he knows what he has to do with the ashes. It’s obvious. Noah911 smiles and every jolt of anxiety and guilt subsides. He doesn’t know if this feeling will last and he doesn’t care.
Gently, he pets the outside of the baggy.
Tenderly, he brings the baggy up to his lips, kissing it.
Quietly, he says, “I know how we can find peace.”
17.
Paul storms into the police station and says to the officer behind the front desk, “I need to see Detective Esperanto.”
“Regarding?”
“My son.”
“What’s your name?”
“My kid is missing.”
“Name.”
“My son is actively communicating with me and the officer has to have this piece of information so we can pinpoint his location.”
“Communicating how?”
“He just said to me ‘I’m here.’”
“He called you?”
“Twitter.”
“He posted that to Twitter?”
“We have to track his cell so we can find him.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Paul Gamache.”
“Have a seat.”
Paul does not have a seat. He walks toward the window, doesn’t notice the weather or time of day. Those details from this world don’t matter. Nothing matters except where Jake is.
It is also apparent that his ex, Naomi, would be so much better at all this. She’d never be kept waiting. She’d have earned the cops’ trust and respect and would know everything about the case. Paul knows nothing, except that his boy vanished on his watch and the guilt that pumps like adrenaline. But specifics? Paul couldn’t tell you shit and that embarrasses him so much. He needs to do a better job, needs to stop being so soft, so easily placed aside. He needs to demand, not ask, for the attention he deserves.
That was what made Paul stampede to the station in the first place: Jake answering him, reaching out. The boy might be missing in an analog sense but his voice comes through digitally. He is here, as he said he was, and now Paul has to unite his Jakes.
Paul is back on his side of the desk, watching the cop fill out an ancient-looking form by hand.
“What did he say?” Paul asks the officer.
“I’m sorry?”
“Esperanto.”
“I’m finishing something up and then I’ll call him.”
“Call now,” he says, wishing Naomi could see this.
“Excuse me?”
“Call him now.”
“Don’t raise your voice.”
“My son is missing.”
Paul opens up the laptop, logs on, refreshes his feed, sees there’s a new tweet from Jake: I am striking out on my own, @Paul_Gamache.
“This came in while I was driving over,” says Paul, turning his computer around and thrusting it at the cop, who only sits there.
The cop doesn’t read from the laptop, doesn’t make eye contact with Paul. She picks up the phone and says, “Paul Gamache is here. And he’s pissed.”
She hangs up and Paul says, “Thanks.”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’m not pissed. I’m scared,” he says.
She’s back to filling out that old form.
The door between the waiting area and the actual precinct opens, and Esperanto waddles out. If at first Paul lamented the young age of the initial officer on the scene, Paul wishes Esperanto were in better shape. He has the lumbering look of an old athlete with no cartilage left in his knees.
“What can I do for you?” he asks Paul.
“It’s Jake. He’s talking to me on Twitter.”
“Is this how you normally communicate with him?”
Paul tells how he created the account and reached out to Jake. Paul hands Esperanto the laptop and he reads through Jake’s tweets, then says, “At least we know he’s not in some guy’s trunk.”
“Can we track his cell phone?”
The detective hands the laptop back. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why?”
“You’re another parent who has gone to college on TV shows, watching police procedurals and think you know how this all works,” Esperanto says.
“This is our best lead.”
“Your son isn’t inside the computer.”
Paul waves his laptop at Esperanto: “He’s right here, right fucking here, I can see him!”
“Your son has only been missing a few hours. FBI is on their way. They have all the good toys. Don’t worry. You need to go home and wait. Keep him talking. Keep communicating with him. That way you know he’s okay. And let us do our job.”
Paul sits down in one of the plastic chairs in the waiting room. There’s a bank of six of them. Besides that, the space is sparse. Linoleum and police propaganda posters on the wall. No music. Nothing.
“What are you doing?” Esperanto asks.
“I’m staying.”
“No.”
“Then arrest me.”
“You can’t have your laptop in a holding cell.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll alert you if there are any advancements in here,” says Paul, shaking the computer.
“Not any advancements. Only important ones.”
Esperanto limps through the door, disappearing into the back, and Paul stares at the remaining officer, who has all her attention on the remaining boxes of her form.
PAUL IS LIKE everyone else now, plugged in. He tweets at his son and waits for answers but something changes: They are not alone.
Paul knew on some level that this was public, their back and forth, this online cat and mouse. But no one else had been butting in and interrupting their communiqués. It was a father and son talking—who cared about that; however, the luxury of isolation is over, with the introduction of a hashtag, #GoHomeJake.
At first, Paul has no idea what a hashtag is, but Google tells him with a quick search.
It’s tweeted to Jake from a local TV affiliate, and their whole message reads Missing teenager, @TheGreatJake, is live-tweeting. Join the conversation. #GoHomeJake.
Paul follows the station. Maybe they’ll have a clue to help his hunt. Right back, they follow Paul, probably for the same reason. It’s instantaneous. He clicks to follow a few more and they return the favor. Four. Five. Nine. New alliances, greedy alliances, all for Jake.
Immediately, their tweet is retweeted and retweeted, and Paul watches their private conversation mutate. Paul is disgusted, all this attention, turning his missing boy into something else. It had never occurred to Paul until this moment in the waiting room how when a video goes viral, that’s comparing it to an actual virus. Something that has the potential to spread out of control, infect all sorts of unsuspecting people, and this latest outbreak is his boy. Jake is the infective agent. Jake is the salacious contaminant. Jake is contagious.
These retweets lead to others intruding on their intimacy. Strangers feel the effects of the virus and, once tainted, they are pulled to patient zero:
It’s not worth it, little man. #GoHomeJake.
B safe. B careful. #GoHomeJake.
Just worm home, you spoiled brat. #GoHomeJake.
Paul can’t believe how quickly things evolve. How one father and one son, like grains of sand on a beach, can be singled out and picked from a million other nearly identical grains and their anonymity vanishes, as they’re pinched between a thumb and a forefinger, held up for everyone to inspect.
@TheGreatJake tweets to his father, @Paul_Gamache, while he’s MIA. #GoHomeJake.
Now I’ve heard of everything. Spoiled teenager needs more attention. #GoHomeJake.
Strangers even lash out at Paul: You must be a shite father, @Paul_Gamache. #GoHomeJake.
It takes all his willpower, but he’s not going to engage. You can’t win with an Internet troll, though if he—Paul knows it’s a man—stood face to face right now Paul would punch him.
Another feature of Twitter that Paul hasn’t known about is direct messaging, a way for users to talk privately, one on one. Lo and behold, he gets a bunch of DMs, a bunch of solicitations from local news programs. TV. Radio. Web. They want to be the first to talk to @Paul_Gamache and get his story. These vultures even make it sound like they’re trying to do him a favor. As if they’re not frothing for the carrion. As if the scavengers don’t need a new carcass to devour. They all take the angle that telling his story publicly will help get more people involved in the case. Crowd-sourcing: The greater number of people who know about Jake’s disappearance increases the chances of somebody spotting him on the street, and don’t you want to use every resource at your disposal, don’t you want to find you son?
He hates all of them, but they’re making some good points. His phone rings, a number he doesn’t recognize, but on the off-chance it’s Jake, he answers.
“Mr. Gamache,” the female voice says, “I’m Lauren Skelley, a producer with Channel—”
Paul hangs up.
His phone rings again, a different number. He rejects the call. It’s all happening so fast, from all angles, from both worlds. Paul is suddenly being constricted, encroached. More and more users tweet at him and Jake, and his phone keeps ringing, and if all these people are so interested in the case, why is Esperanto being so standoffish? So what if Paul has watched too many police procedurals, has soaked up all the detective movies? So what if he has opinions? If the police aren’t willing to exhaust all avenues, it’s up to Paul. He has to champion this, has to try and alert everyone.
Though that seems to be somewhat happening on its own. The virus doing the only thing it knows how: snaking from existence to existence. From user to user. Paul watches his son’s number of Twitter followers multiply. Even @Paul_Gamache gains new followers every second. He had none an hour ago. Now he has 822. His son has over 5,000, and every time Paul refreshes his feed it jumps by at least twenty.