He's Gone

by Deb Caletti

  People have collected butterflies for years. Scientists, he’d argued.

  I don’t care, I’d said. It’s creepy. It’s cruel. You’re not a scientist.

  It’s a way of appreciating their beauty, Dani. Think of it as paying them homage. You’re keeping them perfect forever.

  You pay homage by taking their lives? That makes sense.

  If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

  I don’t get it. I thought you hated hunting, I’d said. You think hunters are terrible people.

  It’s not the same thing at all. Look, Dani, I used to do it with my dad, okay? It means something to me.

  I’d end the argument then, because Ian’s father, Paul Hartley Keller, was the shiny, unattainable prize of Ian’s childhood. His love and approval were always just out of Ian’s reach, which meant that Ian’s feelings for him were as unpredictable as a compass with no true north. We had dinner together, Paul and Ian and me, not long before Paul died, a meal in a restaurant with white napkins and fine wine. He’d flirted with the waitress in spite of his fleshy jowls and the droops of skin under his eyes. He must have thought she didn’t notice these signs of age, or maybe he didn’t notice them himself. To his credit, in spite of the jowls, he looked like a large lion with a gray mane, powerful like that (all right, even virile), but I could hear him breathing heavily. It made me wonder if I remembered any of that CPR we did on that Annie mannequin in high school. How many puffs, how many chest compressions? Paul Hartley Keller’s ego—it was sizable. It was his personal butler, opening doors for him, announcing his presence, never leaving his side. It served him well, too—attracting people to him and then pushing them away when he was through. Ian could become a defenseless, angry, needy (take your pick) little boy around his father. That much was clear. How are things going with your start-up? Paul Hartley Keller had asked at dinner, long after Ian’s company was successful. It’s going great, Ian had replied, seething, stabbing his meat with the tines of his fork. Profitable. Too profitable. Ian was being a bit oversensitive, I thought. Paul Hartley Keller, well, I’ve got to say, he charmed me right out of my good sense.

  The butterflies … I’m sure Paul didn’t want that crap in his house anymore. Paul also went through his garage once, shortly after Ian left Mary, when Ian barely had two snitched forks from his old house. Paul gave Ian a bunch of stuff for his new place. He was trying to be helpful in his own way, probably. “It’s the dream kitchen of the 1970s,” Paul had supposedly joked, which was pretty hilarious, I thought, and true, too. There was a harvest-gold fondue pot, an air popcorn popper, an electric carving knife, and a microwave big enough to drive. Most of it was useless to Ian, but he kept all of it anyway. He saved that stuff for years.

  Mary had encouraged the butterfly collection, the passed-down hobby. In their home, Ian had an entire voluminous “bonus room” for his supplies, not just the two cabinets we’ve made space for. He had a wall of bookshelves and oak worktables to spread out the plates of glass and foam boards. He had an antique umbrella stand for his father’s old nets with the polished maple handles.

  For the most part, I keep my mouth shut about the butterflies, in spite of my feelings about them. That kind of silence is what you end up with when you get together the way we did. At first you’re sure that love is larger than any obstacle, but then love comes to feel flimsy measured against what’s been lost—family and friends and a history. There’s pressure to make it all worth it. So you keep quiet about things you maybe wouldn’t ordinarily. To keep peace. To keep you both believing that a lack of conflict means you’re happy. Happier than before. He’d fallen prey to disappointment in his previous life, and I didn’t want history to repeat itself.

  This is how it goes: When you go looking for rescue, you end up trapped in your own weakness. You are a butterfly who needs to lay her eggs and sees the perfect leaf, realizing too late that the leaf is not a leaf at all, but the green cotton shirtsleeve of her captor.

  The afternoon passes, and Ian has still not called back. It’s getting late. I keep checking the clock. Ian is usually considerate about these sorts of things, unless we’ve had a fight. We haven’t had a fight, not exactly. I don’t think anyone yelled. Raised voices, maybe, which is different than actual yelling. Truthfully, I’m having a little problem remembering who said what. In the car on the ride home, he was pissed, but I stayed silent. I hadn’t wanted the night to slide further into ugliness, especially since we were dressed up. It always seems worse to fight when you’re dressed up, doesn’t it? The disappointment is larger. Arguments aren’t supposed to happen when you have your fancy purse or when it’s Christmas or when you’ve gone to the trouble to curl your hair. As he drove home, his handsome mouth was set in a line, and wrongness lay between us. But the night had become a blur of late hours and too much wine, and in the car, the party began to feel far away already, and in my bright kitchen on that sunny Sunday, it feels like weeks ago. I pick up my heels off the floor. They’re caked with dried mud, and I rinse off their bottoms.

  I try to read, but I’m restless. Restlessness: unconscious unease. I don’t yet recognize this uneasiness. I’m still just thinking that it’s taking him too long to call back. Mostly, I’m irritated. I’m guessing that he’s sending me a message about the night before, how displeased he is. Great. Super. Got it, thanks. I stay busy filling in the blank space of his absence with my own stories. He’s pissed, which means a fight is inevitable when he gets back. Or else he’s at work. Maybe Nathan’s there, too, and they’re having some long talk. He’s been wanting to get the oil changed in his car for weeks, too, and that place nearby us always has a long line. I’m trying to guess what might be in his head—something I’ve spent a lot of time doing over the years of our relationship, that’s for sure.

  I’m not uneasy, not yet, but then I decide to go outside and look down the street for his car. It feels a little plaintive and a lot pathetic, but I can’t help myself, and when I head out, I remember doing a similar thing once, when I was already divorced but Ian hadn’t left Mary yet. He was coming to see me and he was late, really late, and I walked out into my neighborhood street without my shoes on. It was a summer night, and the asphalt was cool on my feet, and I wore a sundress and perfume, and I stood at the entrance to our cul-de-sac and looked for his car, which never came. He just never came, and it ended up becoming the second time we tried to break things off.

  Now, though, I step from a house that’s ours. Our own home, on our own dock-street, which is full of activity—Josh Harban fussing with his sailboat, Joanie Andresen washing her windows. Mattie and Louise are coming back from a trip to Home Depot, from the look of it. Their arms are strung with plastic bags, and Mattie holds a blueberry bush in a pot. “Plumbing problems,” Louise says to me, and raises one arm of bags as proof of her home-repair intentions. “Ha, at our age, isn’t that the truth.”

  “Your age,” Mattie says. “Don’t put us in your category yet, right, Dani? I don’t get ads from AARP.”

  I smile. “I’m staying out of this. Good luck, though.”

  “I get the fun part,” Mattie says. She nods toward her new, robust plant.

  “It’s as big as a second-grader,” I say.

  “Blueberries for the whole dock.”

  They head toward their house and I walk on. Houseboat living is close. Everyone knows one another’s business. I could tell you a lot about my neighbors, and we’ve been here only a year: Mattie and Louise are a happy couple, or else they fight quietly. Jack and Maggie drink too much, which is obvious on recycling day. Kevin and Jennie are exhausted parents with short tempers and a new baby who squalls throughout the night, and the Andresens’ daughter has friends who look like trouble. Here, problems aren’t hidden behind perfect lawns and SUVs. There are no lawns, of course, only unruly gardens spilling from flower boxes and pots. White lights are strung merrily down the dock in every season. It’s as quirky and jovial and messy as Joseph Grayson, the aging hippie next do
or, who races his electric toy boat out on the lake on sunny days. He chases the ducks with it sometimes, which seems mean. They handle it well, though. They ignore him and swim on, looking especially bored, which is basically the same strategy I use whenever I walk past a scary guy at a bus stop.

  I reach the parking lot at the other end of the dock. And that’s when my restlessness turns to worry, because Ian’s car is there. I can’t believe it. The black Jaguar is parked right in its spot next to Blue Beast, my old Honda. It’s there and locked up, just as it would be if he’d left it for the night. I think: He’s got to be around here somewhere, then. Yeah, you could walk up to Louisa’s for breakfast and you could run into a friend and you could talk as long as Ian might want to talk, and you’d still be back by now. You could go to Pete’s Market, but you’d have to examine every item in every squished aisle in that small place to be gone for this long.

  The car—something is wrong. Something isn’t right here, I know, and I clutch my sweatshirt jacket closer to my body as I walk back down the dock. There is some terrible squeezing beneath my breastbone, near my heart, in that place where we feel all loss, both imminent and actual. I listen again for Ian’s voice, maybe laughing with Jack Long or with the other software guy on the dock, Josh Harban, who lives with his quiet wife. Maybe he’s helping a neighbor with a fixing-type problem. Something is always breaking down on one houseboat or another. But the stories I’m using to fill in the blank space are becoming more and more far-fetched. Ian’s not very social with our neighbors. He’s polite, always, even to the point of primness. He takes pride in his good manners. But he’s not willingly the stop-by-and-chat sort. And he wouldn’t be anyone’s choice to help with a repair. Jack Long is the one who fixes things around here. We have a hammer and a screwdriver for hanging pictures, and that’s about it. They’re a part of the small, orderly tool set that Mary gave Ian one Father’s Day, which folds open to reveal an indented place for each object. That set has barely been touched. I did use the measuring tape once, to buy a correctly sized rug.

  I stop by Jack and Maggie Long’s place. Ian is friendliest with them, of all the neighbors. Jack works near Ian, and they sometimes drive in together. Everyone is friendly with Jack and Maggie, though. They’ve lived on the dock longer than all of us, and so they’re Dock Mom and Dad, Mayor and Mrs. Mayor of Fairview Moorings. They were the ones cooking bacon that morning, I can tell now, even hours later. Their house still smells of it when Maggie opens the door.

  “Dani!” Maggie’s got her pink polo shirt on and a pair of jeans shorts that show her thick, sturdy legs. Their cat, Lulu, slips past me and escapes out the door.

  “Hey, Maggie. I was wondering if you’ve seen Ian.”

  “Ian?” She scrunches up her face. “No. We’ve been inside all morning. You okay? You’re worried.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. I just can’t find him.”

  “Aw.” She waves her hand in the air, pushing away my concern. For all she knows, I might be one of those nervous wives who fret when their husbands drift toward the food table at a party. I am not one of those nervous wives.

  “His car is still in its spot. He’s not answering his phone.…”

  “He’s probably having a little guy time, right?” Maggie says. Jack—now, he would like guy time, football-buddy time, slog-back-a-beer-and-talk-about-wide-receivers time, but not Ian. I don’t think Ian even knows what a wide receiver is. I can hear the TV on in Jack and Maggie’s living room, a baseball game by the sound of it. “You want to come in?” Maggie steps aside in invitation. On the houseboat docks, this is what you do. You go into one another’s houses; you visit. Someone is always heading in or out of someone else’s place, carrying a bottle of wine for an impromptu dinner or a plate of fresh-baked cookies. Ian and I, we sort of stick to ourselves. The neighbors probably think we’re snobs, but we’re mostly just quiet people. Ian had done all that, the neighborhood parties, back with Mary in the suburbs.

  No, Ian likes being home. When he’s mad, though, he can get punishing. Not answering his phone. Snippy retorts. Hard, icy shoulders turned away from me.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll head back.”

  “One time Jack got pissed at me and walked all the way to his brother’s place in Kirkland. Across the floating bridge! I didn’t hear from him for two days. I almost called the police. Wait a sec. Hey, honey?” she shouts. “Have you seen Ian around?”

  “What?” The baseball noise dims incrementally.

  “Have you seen Ian, from next door?”

  “Not since yesterday.” The volume rises again.

  “You guys looked great last night,” Maggie says. “Some party?”

  “Ian’s work.”

  “You guys moved in, and I said, ‘Now, that’s a beautiful couple.’ ”

  “That’s very kind.”

  “I could never get my ass into a dress like that!”

  “I don’t think mine was all the way in, either.” I smile.

  “My husband stopped looking at me like that twenty years ago.”

  I laugh. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “He’ll turn up,” Maggie says.

  But he doesn’t turn up.

  I call Nathan, who says that he hasn’t seen Ian since last night. I call Bethy and Kristen, his daughters, who both seem to find it amusing that I can’t locate him. He’s probably at the movies. Maybe he took a trip. I stop at old Joe Grayson’s to ask if he’s seen Ian around, but no. I consider calling Ian’s sister, Olivia, who lives in Kirkland. I try to imagine Ian walking across the floating bridge to his sister’s house, same as Jack, but I can’t see it, Ian in his nice, expensive shoes, the back of his sports jacket flapping in the gust of passing cars. I think about calling Mary’s house, speaking to Mary. I imagine this, too. I’ve lost our husband, I would have to say. She kept him in fine shape all those years, and look what happens now that he’s in my hands.

  And what if it goes like this? I make that humiliating call. Mary answers. She says, Oh, he’s right here, but he doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s relaxing in their family room, in front of that huge, movie-theater-sized television that everyone has in the suburbs, sitting in the soft folds of the leather couch that everyone has, too. He’s eating fish crackers from an enormous Costco box, snacking on cut-up vegetables from an enormous Costco platter, and Mary simply hangs up her phone and resumes her rightful life.

  I keep making trips down the dock, watching the street, looking at his car as if it has something to tell me. More than anything, I want to shout, Where are you! Where, goddamn it! I feel like screaming at him at the top of my lungs, though this is obviously a bad idea. First, it’s pointless; second, it would scare the poor kid bagging groceries at Pete’s. I’m sure he already thinks I’m a lunatic after watching me try to pick out a cereal.

  Finally, I write a note. I tape it to the banister so Ian will see it when he walks in. Call me! I’m worried sick. Left to look for you! It’ll look crazy and slightly hysterical when he finds it, but who cares.

  I grab my purse and clip Pollux to his leash. I stick him in the passenger seat of my own car, where he sits like a good boy and watches the streets intently for his own kind as I drive to BetterWorks. I look at those tall panes of glass and that metallic sheen and that curving sculpture outside on the lawn and wish, wish, wish, for Ian to turn a corner. Be there! Please!

  My worry is turning into something more urgent now, bordering on panic as the afternoon turns dark. BetterWorks has high security; software companies in Seattle are all like that—employees wear important identifying badges around their necks and doors open only with the touch of a particular palm. You can’t even make the elevator work without swiping a certain pass in front of the red button. I thought it was funny the first time I saw it all. As if hidden behind those doors was the recipe for a nuclear bomb or an imminent cure for cancer. It reminded me of that old Willy Wonka movie, when the chocolate-factory spy sneaks in to obtain Gobsto
pper secrets. But now the security is maddening. I find the evening guard, and I have to wait outside while he checks Ian’s office. He seems amused that I can’t find my own husband. Obviously, I’ve been rather absentminded to lose something that important.

  “He’ll show.” He grins, as if Ian is likely in a hotel room somewhere, doing it with some younger woman who doesn’t have to touch up her roots. When Ian does show—I’m going to be furious. And I’m going to tell him what an ass his security guard is. That guy better watch it, if he values his job.

  I want to keep looking, to keep doing something, but I have no idea where to go or what to do. I drive around aimlessly for a while. I drive around the streets near his work. And then I have an idea. His gym. He has this gym membership. I don’t think he even goes there anymore, but maybe he does. He could’ve walked there. He could’ve walked there after spending the day somewhere else. Maybe he’s swimming laps in the pool, blowing off steam.