He's Gone

by Deb Caletti

  “Look.” My voice is unsteady.

  “His gym bag?” Nathan doesn’t get it.

  I set it on Ian’s desk and unzip it with shaking hands. Yes, there it is. That T-shirt. Ian’s favorite one, with the winged guitar. And there are the running shoes. There are also a pair of sweatpants and shorts I hadn’t realized were missing. A zip-up sweatshirt, too. An empty water bottle.

  I hold the T-shirt up for Nathan to see. I feel a flip of nausea that turns to terror.

  “Dani …” Nathan might not know what this means, but he can read my face. He puts his arms around me. The T-shirt is between us, in my hands.

  I can feel my heart beating against Nathan’s chest. There are no certainties now. Every possible thing is possible all over again, same as the day Ian disappeared. We don’t know anything. He could be anywhere, with anyone. He could be in some foreign country; he could be hurt somewhere; he could be dead, maybe even murdered; he could be driving in some convertible down some road with a new identity in his pocket.

  Or worse. The terror in my chest is saying that: Or worse. My sheets were muddy that morning. The heels I’d worn to the party had been muddy, too, but so had the bottoms of my feet. My missing memory of that night—it’s the plumpest blackberry out of reach, hanging past the thickest thorns. What had Nathan seen? My heart is thumping hard against Nathan’s chest—it is fear, a shadowy kind of fear. Because there are all the ways I’ve disappointed Ian. But there are all the ways he’s disappointed me, too.

  8

  I drive back home. In reverse now, I pass the Java Jive and the Black Cat and the Sureshot, the Allegro and the Tully’s and the Pete’s and the Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks. Next to me, a man in a Fat Boys Plumbing truck sips from the tiny lip of a white lid, and two girls with multicolored hair cross the street to get in line at Cool Beans. Tattoos snake up their arms and wind around their necks. In this city, colored hair and multiple tattoos are as commonplace as middle-aged women in turtlenecks. A golf sweater would be an act of rebellion here.

  Something is rattling in my car, in old Blue Beast, and I roll my window down at the stoplight to see if I can hear where the sound is coming from. I get the car-trouble-panic feeling, where every noise elicits internal calculations of credit-card balances. Once, I worried all the way across the bridge from Seattle to Bellevue, an hour-long ride, because of a rattling Tic Tac box. You spend time as a single mother, and money disasters haunt you. The sound of breath mints can mean you’re about to go under.

  All I need now is for something to go wrong with the damn car.

  “Come on, Blue,” I plead. Old Blue has been with me a good long time, and I’ve likely taken it for granted.

  I try my favorite radio denial trick. I haven’t used that one in a while. But I can still hear the noise, even over the music, and I also quickly realize that the thumping sunny beat isn’t an option, nor is a nasal-y announcer talking about a jewelry sale and the way you can prove your love for her with a diamond engagement ring. I shut it off. Those things don’t belong in the world I’m now in.

  The noise seems to only get worse when I accelerate. I make it home. Nothing falls out of the car on the way, so maybe we’re okay for a while. I park on the gravel strip in front of the dock, a few cars away from Ian’s. That car has an attitude now, rigid and withholding. I need some privacy for the call I’m about to make, so I stay put. I fish my phone out of my purse.

  I can tell right away that the message has changed. Right after You have reached the office of Dr. Shana Berg, she’s supposed to say, If this is an emergency, please dial 911 … But now it’s different. You have reached the office of Dr. Shana Berg. I will be out of the office …

  A long weekend? Gone until Tuesday. She offers the number of her colleague, Dr. Hank Helprin, but I don’t want Hank Helprin, even if his name has help in it, which ordinarily I might have seen as a good sign. Shana Berg knew me at my worst, and right now I need someone who knows me.

  I am angry with myself for being too much of a coward to speak with her earlier. But I am also relieved. I’ll admit that. I’m not the best at facing facts, but, then again, who is? It seems like every one of us spends a good part of our time here on earth doing what we can to avoid the truth.

  I flip fast through the day’s mail, insanely hoping for a letter from Ian. There are coupons for a new Thai restaurant, the electric bill, a QFC flyer, nothing. I look for the millionth time at our bank and credit-card balances. No activity. There have been no calls about the flyers. I write a few apologetic emails to my handful of design clients; I haven’t worked, obviously, in days, and now those urgent matters will have to wait—the blue border versus the green, the change of fonts from Baskerville to Book Antiqua. I return another call from Ian’s sister, Olivia, and one from my father, who’s been phoning daily. I talk to Detective Jackson, who only tells me once more that they’re doing what they can. They’ve checked airline flight lists and patient admitting sheets; they’ve kept his alert status active across our state and other states. Our next step is for you folks to do an interview on the local news, he says.

  I tell him that I’ll discuss it with Bethy and Kristen, but I don’t do this. When news of our affair broke out among Ian’s friends in that suburban neighborhood, it was, for Ian, one of the most painful parts of the whole mess. People talking about him. People judging him. That prick Neal Jacobs had called him an asshole under his breath at curriculum night—Neal, who had slept around on business trips; he’d told Ian that himself. But Neal hadn’t fallen in love. He hadn’t left. Mary’s friends Charlene and Candy wouldn’t speak to Ian, either, and he was the only parent not invited to the Stroms’ home when they were taking photos before Bethy’s prom. This wounded him. I didn’t get the whole pre-prom gathering at the house of whoever-had-the-best-backyard, anyway. They served food at those things. Prom—all the dances—had become a precursor to some future out-of-control wedding, with the makeup artists and hair salons and limos. I didn’t think it was such a hot idea to encourage kids to believe they led movie-star lives, even for a night. That job they’d get after college—a limo ride would cost them a month’s groceries, and it was unfair to imply otherwise. Still, Ian had been so hurt.

  Ian would be destroyed if I put his personal business on the news. I know it’s crazy, but I still care what he would want. Even if he’s sipping a margarita somewhere (the drink keeps changing in my mind—margarita, piña colada, tequila sunrise—all tropical, usually involving an umbrella), I care. And, one more thing, if I’m being honest? The shame has always belonged to us both.

  I call my sister. One of her kids is practicing the recorder in the background. I hear the notes. C. C. C. A. A. A.

  “Stephanie,” she says. “It’s driving me nuts.”

  “You should have heard Abby her first year playing violin. Just put on your headphones.”

  “But then I won’t hear if one of them is burning down the house.”

  I laugh. She can always make me laugh, even now. “Thanks for your message, Ames,” I tell her. “You forgot to hang up, though. I heard you walking around, gravel crunching, and then I think you dropped me into your purse. It sounded like a construction site in there.”

  “Thank God that’s all you heard. Have you changed your mind yet about me coming out? It doesn’t feel right for me not to be there. I want to! If you keep saying no, I’m going to come anyway.”

  “I might need you later.”

  “Stop saying that. You’ve got to have faith that he’s alive and that there’s a reasonable explanation for all this. I’m coming out there.”

  “You’re here for me just fine from there, sweetie. Really.”

  “I feel like I’m not doing anything.”

  “You are.” She is. Just hearing her voice helps.

  We’re interrupted. It’s Justin, and he’s whining. “In a minute!” she says to him. She kind of snaps actually. Even good mothers snap every now and then.

  “It’s okay,
Ames. I’ll let you go. I promise I’ll call if anything changes.”

  “He’s got a new magic kit. He wants to show me the disappearing coin. Remember the disappearing coin?”

  I do. “Yeah.”

  “Remember magic shops? With the joke toys? The plastic barf? The fake gum? You loved those. You always bought them with your birthday money.”

  “The snake in the peanut can was my favorite.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “You always bought bad perfume from Mom’s Avon catalog.”

  “I loved bad perfume! Jovan Musk Oil? Charlie?” She pauses. “It’s going to be okay, Dani-Dee.”

  When she says it, I believe it. I have a moment of inexplicable, soaring hope. Maybe it’s the feeling that comes when you’re around your own people, even briefly. Or maybe it’s just the stupid memory of old magic tricks, that coin resting in its green plastic case. It hadn’t really disappeared. Of course it hadn’t. It was right there all along.

  I try to rest. Abby is over at her place, catching up with her life and getting more clothes. I need a break from Ian’s gone-ness. I can hear Mattie and Louise joking around with Maggie Long on the dock. I lie down and put the pillow over my head. It seems wrong for them to be laughing when their neighbor is missing. When you’re grieving, you think everyone should be grieving, too. People at the beach, or some couple celebrating an anniversary, or a soccer team getting cherry Slurpees at 7-Eleven—they should all be ashamed of themselves.

  Pollux is curled up in his little donut shape beside me. He’s snoring like an old man. He started snoring in his advancing age, and I know he can’t help it, but, God. There’s some other noise, too—a high-pitched buzzing, with the annoying rise and fall normally associated with the whine of mosquitoes and chain saws. It is old Joe Grayson with that damn remote-control boat. You’d think the novelty would have worn off by now. This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Here’s how old hippies end up. Playing too enthusiastically with the Christmas-morning toys of ten-year-old boys.

  I give up and get up. Pollux dutifully rouses but regretfully so.

  “You can stay there,” I tell him. “I never said you had to follow me everywhere.”

  One look into those melted-chocolate eyes and I regret my tone. I rub his silky head. “I’m sorry, Poll. Want a treat?”

  We both have a piece of one of Abby’s oatmeal cookies. I chew and swallow cheerlessly. The food sticks in my throat. Even swallowing requires some sort of deliberate attention I don’t have. The problem is, there are words jogging endless loops in my head, like some fitness freak running off the calories of a carrot stick. He flirts; it doesn’t mean anything. He flirts; it doesn’t mean anything.

  I’ve always managed to think of Ian’s flirting as an embarrassing trait that only I noticed, akin to spotting your spouse’s dandruff. If I brushed it off, no one else would see it, either. But It doesn’t mean anything says that Nathan (and other people, no doubt) is aware of it, too. It’s how he is. Am I a cliché? You can’t trust a cheater? I understand the few facts I have. Apparently, none of Ian’s clothes are missing, but you can get clothes. No money has been taken from our accounts, no credit cards used, but Ian might have stashed money for months. He could have fallen dead, but where, when? He’d been with me. Our history—it still seems like the obvious answer.

  He’s innocent, though, until proven guilty, right? Well, then, I deserve proof. At least I’m entitled to that.

  I unzip his laptop bag. I reach down into the pockets, feeling for something, anything. I open the top and turn on the machine as if I have a right to it. Of course, I’ve tried this before. Once again, though, there’s that white empty rectangle, blinking unwearyingly, waiting for the secret word that will let me in.

  I know you, I say to it.

  He’d be stretched out on a webbed deck chair with her next to him, staring out at that stunning cliff-edge promontory that overlooks the Bahia de Cabo San Lucas. He would be smoothing tanning lotion over the cliff edges of her shoulder blades, sharing words about the cliff edges of their relationship. They’d both be drowsy from sex and sun and piña coladas. The drink is piña coladas this time, because that’s what we drank then. He’d be tan already after six days away from home (he’s always tanned quickly). He wouldn’t have shaved in that time and so he’d have stubble, and he’d look so sexy it would be hard for her to resist reaching over and grabbing the bulge under his red swimsuit, or the moons of his ass, if he was lying facedown. He’d have those sunglasses on. Are they missing? (Is the swimsuit?) Those glasses are his favorites—expensive—and he looks great in them.

  Their room would be cool, a retreat from the hot sun, and that resort is beautiful, with the winding trails along the water lit at night, the palm trees lit, too, with white lights circling their trunks. The food—real guacamole and shredded pork in handmade tortillas—is fresh and satisfying. He’d pay. He’d scan the bill for error, as she looked at her folded hands set against the bright pattern of her sundress. Something about this careful accounting would make her feel as if she shouldn’t have ordered dessert.

  They would walk the festive street after dinner. The town—it’s not her kind of place. No, it would be. He’d be looking for an improvement of some kind. She wouldn’t mind the bar scene there, the constant party. She’d be more like Mary in that way. She would only laugh when she saw the women dancing and kissing each other. She wouldn’t need to analyze it. She wouldn’t lean over and say that it seemed done for show.

  Her hair would be swooped up, and he would take her hand and pull her to him and kiss her bare neck. They would head back to the hotel in their rental car, but he wouldn’t run over the rabbit that had been sprinting—not fast enough—across the midnight-dark road. He would not weep with guilt over it. The night would not turn bad as they walked the beach in front of the hotel. He would not look out onto the sea and say, If I were a good man, I’d be here with my wife right now.

  They would not go back to their room with a distance between them, cactus prickles along her guilty spine, the room too hot and then too cold. He would not turn to her in the night to make love, and she would not try to be tender where he was sunburned on his shoulders.

  They would only swim in the sea, and he would lift her, weightless, so that she could wrap her legs around him. They would kiss with saltwater lips and brush sand from their legs. They would admire each other’s lean bodies, and the sun and swimming and sex would make them ravenous. Night again, they would marvel at the glowing phosphorescence on the beach and at the way nature made the best magic. Gracias, they would say to everyone. Inside, the only feeling they would have would be gracias.

  “BethyKristen,” my mother says. She’s breathing down my neck.

  “Tried that,” I say. “Like a hundred times. We started with that two hours ago.” I sound like an eye-rolling adolescent on TV, but I’m exhausted. I’ve run the gamut of emotions today, and my ill temper is all that’s left.

  “Your name?” Abby says. She’s leaning over my other shoulder.

  “Come on, folks. We’ve tried that a million times, too.” I type it in again anyway. Nothing.

  “One, two, three, four,” my mother says.

  “He would never choose something that obvious.”

  “Twenty-six, fourteen, five, twelve.” Abby elbows my mother. I can hear the barely stifled laugh that’s about to erupt from her. My mother snorts out her nose. She can’t hold back, begins chuckling.

  “You guys,” I say.

  Abby swats Mom. “Stop that, Grandma.”

  “You’re the one.” She gives Abby a little shove back. For God’s sake, they’re two kids in the back of the car. “Try six, seventeen, two, five hundred.”

  Abby snorts out her nose now. This has been going on for too long, hours, and now they’re sliding into fatigued hilarity, where an exhale from a cushion could become fart-like high comedy.

  “Just try some random word,” Abby suggests. I rub
my temples.

  “Like boner,” my mother says.

  They both crack up. “Grandma!”

  “We’re done here,” I say. This isn’t exactly funny. This is beyond inappropriate.

  “You can’t give up,” Abby says. “Maybe it’s a combination of words.”

  “Like priest boner.” Mom’s shoulders are going up and down in suppressed hysterics.

  “Clown boner,” Abby says. They both bust up. My mother’s eyes are watering, she’s laughing so hard.

  “God,” she says.

  “Try that one,” Abby says. More hysterical laughing.

  “Fine. We’re done. Jesus, people.”

  “Monarch,” my mother says, out of nowhere.

  I type. Tip, tip, tip. And, oh, dear God, the enchanted doors part. They do. It’s a miracle. The password screen disappears. I can’t believe it, I really can’t. Small icons of possibilities show themselves.

  “I got it!” my mother yells. “I got it!” She starts jumping up and down, and Abby is jumping with her, and they are hugging and squealing as if my mother just won the Chrysler LeBaron on The Price Is Right.

  Well, of course you shift loyalties when you’re being unfaithful. Of course you do. I’ve always felt that a heart is meant to be given to only one person at a time. And, too, when it moves on, it moves on for good. Hearts are pretty decisive, unlike heads. The loyalty shift—it showed itself in trivialities. When I got a new client or worried over my mammogram results, it was Ian, not Mark, I wanted to tell. When Ian was stressed about making a product deadline, he talked it over with me, not Mary. If I saw some funny or sad thing—a toddler making a crafty escape from his stroller, an odd couple with especially tall hair, a rickety old lady crossing a busy street—I shared it with Ian. Ian got it into his head that he wanted this newer, faster motorcycle, something Mary would never approve of, and I encouraged it. I was go-for-it. I was let’s-do-it. I wouldn’t have wanted Mark to have a motorcycle, to tell you the truth. As the other woman, though, you’re the one who’s supposed to open the windows to a bigger world. That’s your promise. A bigger world with more sex, or something like that.