“You’re home early,” Peter repeated, stage-whispering. Irene looked distracted, her mind elsewhere; she shook her head once or twice as if to dislodge something caught in her hair.
“I think I have some disagreements with the Wednesday Bible study,” she said.
“Mommy!” said Lisa in an admonishing tone. Peter got up; he followed Irene to the kitchen, but continued to whisper.
“You walked out of Bible study over a disagreement?” Peter said. He was trying to picture the scene; there were only three other ladies in the Wednesday night group. You couldn’t just sneak out the back as you might in a big church on Sunday.
“Pastor Brian had this passage about the church in Macedonia,” she said, a little carefully now, calmer than she’d been when she came through the door. “But I know this verse. Michael’s gone over it several times.”
“Michael’s your Council Bluffs pastor,” said Peter, filling in the blanks for himself, making sure he hadn’t missed something.
“He’s gone over it several times,” she repeated, and then she stopped. He saw it happen; he’d seen it a couple of times since June, hardly worth noticing the first time. Just a little tic. But it wasn’t like her: to cut off her thought mid-stride, to suddenly seal herself away like a bird who sleeps with its eyes open.
“What’s the passage?” he asked.
“It’s all right,” she said. There were some dishes in the drainer. She started putting them away into their cabinets and drawers.
“Well, it can’t be worth fighting with anybody about,” he said, playfully, lightly, in the old style from long ago.
“Oh, I didn’t fight,” she said. She sounded more cheerful now. “I only asked a few questions. I just feel like they don’t like my questions.”
“But you’re home early,” he said.
“I did come home a little early, yes. I told them I’d forgotten something.” She was finished with the dishes; she went back into the living room and sat down in front of the television next to Lisa. The lioness was resting in dry dirt at the foot of an acacia now, yellow sun setting behind her. Peter stayed behind in the kitchen for a moment, thinking, finding compartments into which he might file his questions where they wouldn’t bother anyone until later. But he didn’t go back to them later. They were fine right where they were. If, in the future, he found he had need of them, he’d know where to look.
Irene did not go back to Pastor Brian’s Bible study the following week. She stayed home and cleaned the kitchen and joined the family in front of the TV. There were two ways to think about this development, and it’s hard to blame Peter Sample for picking the easier one, the one that involved a mother wanting to spend time with her family instead of arguing about the Bible at a church down the street. The other possibility seemed improbably dramatic to him. He’d never quit anything in his life. There’s no need to make a big fuss just because you disagree with someone; you stay where you are until things improve, and you do what you can to help things along. It goes without saying and you shouldn’t have to be told. Adherents to this creed usually adopt it when young, and can barely imagine a world beyond it. As creeds go, it’s mild, unpresumptuous, hardly worth repeating. That is its general appeal.
* * *
In September he’d wondered but by October he was sure: his wife was losing weight. She’d gained a little over the years, mainly after Lisa was born, but all that was gone now; her clothes looked a little big on her. He’d noticed that she usually skipped Sunday dinner now; she said they served a big lunch after services in Council Bluffs—he pictured a big rec room adjacent to a church, flowers on pink tablecloths over round tables with folding legs. It was possible, he knew, that she’d been losing weight for some time; they were so seldom intimate that he had no occasion to consider her body without staring.
Autumn was coming in cold and bracing this year; he slipped his hand into the sleeve of her nightgown one evening after they’d gone to bed. When he tightened his grip around her shoulder blade he could make out its contour against the pads of his fingers. There’d been muscle in that space the last time he’d embraced her.
He was going to kiss her, but he said: “Are you all right?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
He gripped the shoulder blade again, more playfully. “There used to be more of you,” he said; in his tone she could hear him smiling.
“Just getting older,” she said. She kissed him, on the lips.
“You’re only thirty-five,” he said.
“Our bodies change,” she said, her voice gently descending to a depth he’d heard it reach only once or twice in their lives together, he wasn’t sure when and where. She kissed him again; it was dark; he wondered idly if her eyes were closed, whether she meant this or was only taking grave measures to change the subject, and then he kissed her back.
In the morning, after breakfast, he watched while she cleared their plates, letting his gaze dawdle and stray. She was so pretty; she didn’t look as sturdy as she once had, but she would always look strong to him: in the way she pivoted before turning, for example, that carefully calculated grace. Had he not been looking, and had her back not been turned to him, he might have missed the connection. But he watched as she scraped the remnants of his breakfast plate into the scrap bucket—crusts, a few bites of egg white—before starting in on her own, with most of the food still on it. Ham, whole eggs. The ham made a little flop sound when it landed. Had it been Lisa, Irene would have reproached her: You’re wasting food.
She scraped the plate clean with her fork, and fit the lid tightly over the bucket.
* * *
I want you to see two things before we go where we have to go. The first is a scene one day in late November out in front of the strip-mall church in Council Bluffs. Some men and women have gathered on the sidewalk—seven of them, all familiar to one another and to us. It’s cold by now; a few have old sweaters on, but for the most part these people are underdressed for the weather. The ones in sweaters are sitting. The others stand and pace a little. Inside, it’s warmer, but the glass doors are locked; Michael isn’t here yet.
A car pulls up; its headlights flood the gathering. Irene gets out and exchanges greetings as she heads around to the passenger side, opens the door, and retrieves the scraps pail. It’s been filled and emptied many times since Peter first saw Irene empty her breakfast into it and didn’t say anything. Tonight it has the ends of some spinach, and broccoli stalks, and generous potato peelings, and a whole helping of french toast from Saturday’s breakfast. It’s Sunday. She sets the bucket down on the sidewalk and they all join hands to give thanks, and together they eat.
They have finished all their supper and are sitting again in silence when Michael arrives on foot, trudging slowly across the parking lot, having spent the day who knows where. Everyone lowers their heads as he grows near; he brushes, with twitching fingers, the sleeves of a few congregants as he passes. Then he reaches into the pocket of his grubby gray slacks, takes out some keys, and, unlocking the door, goes in without holding it open behind him. Everyone follows in his wake; they find their seats and, in heavy silence, wait.
The second thing is Peter Sample waking up one morning about a month later expecting breakfast. The house is quiet; Lisa is still asleep. It’s a weekday. There’s a letter on the table in a sealed envelope: it’s a Christmas card from Irene, though Christmas was a few days ago. He opens it up. On the front there’s a night sky lit by a single star, immense in the blue darkness, a beacon. Inside the card there’s a preprinted greeting, which reads:
There’s a reason
for the season.
She’s signed it, a little happy face next to her signature: light and easy. That was all.
“Most times they leave a note. They want you to find them,” the detective from Omaha said in January, looking over the Christmas card at his desk down at the station while Peter scanned his face for signs of hope or despair. A police radio nearby squel
ched and skreed.
He handed the card back to Peter Sample. “This really isn’t much to go on,” he said.
6
Peter’s demands on life had been, up to this point, extremely modest. He lived in the town where he’d been raised, and was satisfied; when times had grown lean, there was enough in reserve to keep the wolf from the door. His wife had been his partner through the lean times, gardening and sewing and restricting leisure to things that were free—church on Sundays, thrift store shopping, Bible study. He had a beautiful daughter and a steady job and a Chevrolet and a television. These were the things you worked to get; they represented success. He’d made a home like the one his father had made for him to grow up in, embellishing it with his own personal touches: he spent time with his daughter in a way men of his father’s generation often hadn’t with their own kids, and he liked the way that husbands and wives seemed to talk to each other more now than they had in his parents’ time. The house felt warm even when it was drafty. It was a comfortable life. There is much to be said in defense of comfort.
Out in his driveway on the morning of December 29, 1975, he stood in the spot where the car ought to have been. He had a cardigan on over an undershirt; it was too cold to stay out here like this for long, but his body was sending him all kinds of unfamiliar panic signals and he couldn’t think straight. Irene hadn’t gotten him up for breakfast; it was Lisa who woke him up, running into the bedroom and pushing him with both hands, the way you might roll a log, until he woke up. “Where’s Mommy?” she said.
He didn’t know. “Church?” he said.
“Church was yesterday!” said Lisa, scowling.
Church was yesterday, he thought in the empty driveway, wondering if the church in Council Bluffs had some special holiday services going on that she’d maybe mentioned while his attention had been elsewhere, special services she’d left for in the quiet cold of the early morning without waking him, without setting anything out for breakfast, with only a note on the dining room table that didn’t say she was taking the car and didn’t say when she’d be back and gave no indication that anything unusual had happened or was about to happen or would continue happening without interruption in the days to follow.
* * *
He didn’t know how to tell her parents. He reached for the phone, reflexively by this point, then put it back down: he was still steady enough to imagine what it might feel like to the person on the other end of the line. To have your son-in-law call out of the clear blue sky with news like these. It was unthinkable. But it was also unthinkable not to call—what if she stayed missing? They’d want to know why he hadn’t called earlier, just to let them know.
He’d been making calls all morning. Patricia Lumley’s name was one of several on a sheet of notebook paper taped to the refrigerator with phone numbers next to them in case of emergency; he’d known Chuck Lumley since childhood. Chuck wouldn’t know, but his wife might.
But she hadn’t heard anything, though she sensed, immediately, the discord of the moment. Irene Sample’s husband calling, not to talk to Chuck, but to her, on a Monday morning, asking whether Irene was over there for some reason. It didn’t add up.
“Gee, I don’t know,” she said when Peter asked the next question, the obvious one: Did she know where Irene might be, what might have happened, did she know anybody else he might call. “Do you want me to look after Lisa today? Sharon’s not doing anything.”
Sharon was sitting on a pillow on the living room floor, watching game shows on TV. Everyone was ready for winter break to be over. “Tell her to bring Gold Medal Barbie!” she yelled without looking away from the screen.
“Bring her on over,” Patricia Lumley said. “It’s no trouble, really.”
But all the stray signals searching for ground inside Peter’s chest found it now. He’d called the wrong person. There was no right person to call. No matter who he called, it was going to get to this point fairly quickly every time, and then they’d know. There wouldn’t be any way around it. Best to just get it over with.
“She took the car,” he said, his voice catching.
Patricia cupped her hand over the mouthpiece before she raised her voice. “Sharon, get your shoes and coat on!” she said.
Peter was quiet. An unwelcome clarity was settling in.
“We’ll be over in a minute,” Patricia said.
* * *
In any case it was the Coltons, not Peter and Lisa, who received the letter from Irene: the one that came about two weeks later and began This will be the only time you hear from me. They called right away. They were very worried, and they wanted to be told what to do, but it was clear from the way Harold Colton’s sentences kept trailing off into nothing that he was out of his depth: that he didn’t know what to make of it, out of any of it.
“She says she’s being taken care of,” said Harold on the phone. “What does she mean?” Pressing the earpiece against his temple in Crescent, Peter patrolled the space between question and answer, watching for silence and trying to shore up the gap. Nearby, on the floor, Lisa was playing Drop a Dragon alone. In the one-player version you finish the lines yourself, still trading out crayons to make a colorful dragon.
“Well, I intend to find out,” he said weakly. Irene’s letter hadn’t really left any place for questions about what she meant. She had gone to await the coming of the Most High with His people. The Lord who sees in secret will reward you. She knew they would all meet again.
“Well, I can’t figure how you’re going to find out unless you can ask her directly,” said Harold without a trace of malice: it just seemed to him like something worth bearing in mind.
“I just can’t understand it,” said Peter.
“Well, I can’t either,” said Harold, this being the absolute best he could do, given the circumstances.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” said Peter.
“Yes, please do,” Harold Colton said from the old house in Tama where Irene had once lived as a child.
* * *
It had taken Michael Christopher six months to groom Irene for departure; there was some question about whether the preacher’s last name was Christopher or Christophersen, but Christopher seemed to be the consensus after calling around to various churches in Council Bluffs and Omaha. The storefront next to the army surplus had been abandoned: there was a vase of sad flowers on a folding table near the lectern when the landlord opened the door for Peter and they both walked in. The folding chairs were still set up in rows. The cross on the wall was gone, though Peter’d never known it was there and the landlord hadn’t taken any note of it; it was an unrecordable absence. “His rent’s current,” said the landlord, keys to the place still in hand. “They might still show up one Sunday.”
But Peter looked around the room: all the life had gone out of it. This landlord was only putting a good face on things, trying not to say what was obvious. It made no difference to him either way: the rent was paid up. But to Peter it meant several things, if services weren’t being held here anymore, if the congregation was truly gone.
In the weeks since she’d gone missing, he’d taken a leave of absence from work: he stayed home with Lisa, calling everyone he could think to call, asking if they’d heard from Irene. He called the local police of every nearby town, alerting them to the existence of the missing-person report he’d filed on the third day of her absence. Then he’d called them all again, one by one, to remind them: first on the next day, and thereafter at least twice a week.
Pastor Brian at Church of the Redeemer told him what little he knew about the Michael Christopher group (“I heard about a traveling preacher, but they get those types coming through Omaha all year. This one brought his church with him, I guess. They all dressed more or less the same. Like ragamuffins”), and he tried to give comfort, to be helpful. He passed along a few names, pastors from bigger churches in Council Bluffs or Omaha. “They’d know better than I would, I guess,” he said, shaking Peter’s hand at the chu
rch office’s door. “I know Irene loves the Lord. She knows the Lord’s plan for her life is with her family, I just know it.”
“She loves coming here,” said Peter. He’d slept badly every night since first waking up alone.
“Well, now,” said the pastor. “There’s got to be a good answer to this. Everyone here is praying for her.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” said Peter.
“We have to be patient, especially when it’s hard to be patient,” said Pastor Brian. “I know the answer will come in time.”
“I don’t—” Peter stopped. The thought was terminal, inconsequential. There wasn’t anything on the other side of it. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
* * *
The school in Crescent was very small and when the children came back after winter break everybody knew. Peter walked in with Lisa and called Mrs. Rethmeier aside on the first day back. “Most of them probably know already,” he said. She nodded sympathetically. There was no one in town who didn’t know about Irene Sample by now. Everybody had an opinion.
At school that day and through the weeks that followed, Mary Rethmeier kept an unobtrusive eye on Lisa; she’d been a teacher for many years and knew how to watch without being seen. At recess, everything seemed fine: Lisa and Sharon and Gail and Liz all jumped rope together in the auditorium, or, after the snow had melted, swung from the jungle gym bars out on the playground. Lisa did not look like a little girl whose mother had suddenly disappeared just after Christmas, and of whom no trace had been seen since.
In class she seemed distracted. She began to draw in the margins of her addition notebook, lines connecting to one another in different colors, suggestive of shapes but never fully relaxing into a single picture. The line segments followed one another out into the middle of the page: chain links and spirals morphing gradually into kidney or heart shapes, ballooning. Between segments she traded crayons, alternating colors, crossing the page from right to left and back again and then looping around to the reverse, dropping dragons over both sides of the paper until they covered the entire assignment.
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