He's Gone

by Deb Caletti

  I moan. “Oh, Mom … Oh, God. You shouldn’t have done that.” There’s a scratch on his car. It wasn’t there when we saw him last.

  “No? Wait until Abby is treated like that by some asshole. Mark was bad enough—”

  “Mom.”

  “Mark, now, he should have had his balls cut off.”

  “I can’t believe you keyed his car.”

  “I couldn’t stand looking at that thing. Sitting in the lot all shiny and just so, without even a fucking crumb in it. Everything so flawless on the outside, exactly like him. But inside? Ugly. One ugly motherfucker. I’m sorry, Dani, but the way he talks to you? And then there he is with her?”

  I’m silent. Her bravado is quickly disappearing with my disapproval, I can tell. She looks down at her hands. Pollux puts his paws up on my knees, and I gently push him back down.

  “Oh, Mom,” I say finally.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”

  This is my mother in two minutes of one hellish evening, her whole self and her entire history laid bare. She had essentially raised herself under the roof of an aunt who didn’t give a shit about her, dropped there by a mother who didn’t give a shit, either. Abandonment and the self-sufficiency she’d had the guts to muster had left my mother with a don’t-mess-with-me toughness that would occasionally burn fierce and frightening. It was a monumental display but a trick of the eye. There was no fire, not really—only a child waving a plastic flashlight in her own dark night.

  “Probably not,” I say.

  “I’d do anything for you, you know that.” She takes my hand. I feel her small, complicated self doing its best to be there for me, and my throat tightens with tears. We make messes, but mostly we’re just trying to do the best we can with what we’ve got.

  “I do know that, Ma.”

  “You’re my girl.”

  Now here is Abby, leaning in the doorway. Her hair is smushed up and coming out of its ponytail. She’s never liked to miss out. Even when she was a little bean sprout, she’d try and try to keep her eyes open long past bedtime, just in case. “Hey, is this where the party is?”

  “Come here,” I say.

  She pads over in her socks, reminding me of those plastic-footed pajamas she used to love when she was a toddler. Tonight, all of us are both young and old. Maybe everyone is both of these things all the time. It’s our biggest challenge, perhaps, being both. “If this is where we do female bonding, aren’t we supposed to put on an Aretha Franklin song? That’s what they do in the movies,” Abby says.

  “Urethra Franklin,” my mother says, and Abby snorts.

  “Just come here,” I say to Abby.

  She shoves onto the couch with us. “Double hugs.”

  I put my arms around them both, give two squeezes as the request requires. “You people,” I say, and oh, damn, my voice begins to wobble. In spite of everything, the reason I’m overcome right now is that I am so thankful for them. What is a life without your people? I pull the two of them close. One smells of Jean Naté and the other of apple shampoo. What would you do without your best ones?

  “Grateful.” This is all that squeaks out. I hate to cry, but tears roll down my nose. I am a mess, and I’m making wet splotches on my mother’s robe, my daughter’s sweatshirt.

  “Oh, Mom,” Abby says.

  We stay in our huddle until my mother takes a Kleenex out of her robe pocket and blows her nose. “I hate to cry,” she says. I know that, of course. Abby hates to cry, too.

  “Some party this is,” Abby says. Her own eyes are wet.

  “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” my mother gives a lame try.

  “Sing it, Grammy,” Abby says.

  Cherished ones, I think.

  That night, I am afraid in my very own bedroom. You’re supposed to feel safe in your own room, your own house, knowing that the danger is out there, outside, somewhere-elsewhere in the dark. Of course, I’d been afraid in my own room before. Under my own roof. As a small child, I used to think that robbers were in the house, hiding in the closet or down the hall, blocking my way to the bathroom. When I was a married woman, the bad guys were inside, too. Here’s a funny but not funny thing that happened once. One night, Mark stayed up late to watch TV. When he came to our room to go to bed, I awoke from the depths of a dream and managed to scrabble together only these facts: dark, man figure, my room. I bolted to a sitting position, terrified. Who are you and what are you doing here? I’d said in alarmed half-sleep. When we recounted it in the morning, he wasn’t amused. Not at all. Sometimes your dreams speak more truth than you’d like to admit.

  I was right to be afraid, wasn’t I, about what might happen to me? With Mark, and now. I lay awake, thinking about that scratch on the car. That key, dug into metal. I try to envision it: a white line, a thin scar. As the night goes on, it becomes wider in my imagination. A gash. A deep, screaming wound.

  I need to see it. What I need to see, actually, is how it will look to Detective Jackson.

  I get out of bed. My mother is asleep on the couch (the fluff of her hair is visible from where I stand), and so I step carefully, avoiding the creaks on the floor, same as I used to do when I was a teenager coming in past curfew. I knew just where those creaks were then, and I do now, too.

  Pollux meets my eyes but stays in his crescent-roll shape on his bed, bless him. I turn the doorknob slowly, slowly, slowly. The final, opening click sounds as loud to me as a gunshot.

  The night smells like deep lake water and damp earth. I love the smell of night; even right now I still love it. I walk as softly as I can down the dock. There are so many people not to wake. I can hear the low moan, the shivery cry, of a cat about to fight.

  Ian’s car is solitary and still under the streetlight. I check up and down the road, but the street is quiet. Everything is shut up tight for sleep, cars and houses and Pete’s Market. If anyone sees me, they might misinterpret the way I bend down and peer at the driver’s side door, the way I run my fingertips along the thin white thread.

  Of course Ian would have noticed it that day when he got back to the car, and of course he did not mention it, for his own reasons. He would have opened my door for me that evening, and I would have gotten in, and I would have gone to that party with my usual cluelessness. We will have to provide an explanation for this, though. The explanation will lead to other questions. Because, yes, there is damage here. I could never do this, could I? Drag a jagged key against a smooth, perfect surface? This is the sort of anger I’ve always been afraid of.

  But I understand that anger, the desire for it, the desire to succumb to it. I, too, have wanted to gouge and scrape. I had felt the urge that night with my own fingertips on his skin, as he stood on that grass and glared. Not everything about me is your business. Oh, I could have dug my nails farther in and made my own thin scar on his flawless skin.

  It is the sort of anger I have always been afraid of, yes. But it is in me, too. Ian is and isn’t Paul Hartley Keller. And I am and am not Isabel Eleanor Ross.

  14

  Here is the great irony (or just deserts): You find your soul mate, you go through hell to be together, and then your soul mate becomes riddled with distrust. If I was dishonorable enough to do what I did with Ian, I was dishonorable enough to do what I did to him; that’s what he thought. His paranoia was the secret lover of his guilt. They were bound together by betrayal and circumstance. But the suspicion wasn’t there only because of our history, was it? I was becoming more and more clear about that. It was there because Paul Hartley Keller had gutted Ian’s self-certainty. He’d done it sure and clean as you gut a pumpkin with the edge of a spoon, and now Ian was sure he could never truly be the sort of person who could have what he most wanted. Every day he set out to find proof of that.

  We were in bed one morning, legs entwined, sheets tangled. Abby was with Mark, and so it had been two days of making love and eating in bed and making love again. We hadn’t yet reached that point with each other where sex became tired, where your
bloated stomach after a too rich dinner took precedence over passion. I was still competing, maybe, and maybe so was he. His first wife, my first husband—you let thoughts in like that or you didn’t, and if you did, everyone was game: your first high school boyfriend, that girl he loved in college, his mouth on other mouths, your hands on other asses. If it got spoken between you (and, in our situation, how could it not?), jealousy might grow to need its own room in your house. It would make demands for its favorite meal, but the sex would be good. The sex would be great. You didn’t dare let up, because comfort might mean defeat. Well, we were making up for a lot of time of not feeling alive, too.

  My head rested on Ian’s chest. It was one of those times I felt close to him (confident about my victory?), relaxed, and at peace. We could lie in bed too long, though. We could go from rested and snug to restless and irritated. You had to know when to get up and make coffee and step outside. If you passed that point, it felt too hot, and your lower back complained, and you needed a shower, and someone would say something that could be taken the wrong way. Too long and you could be headed for one of those lengthy discussions that never get anywhere.

  Do you know what a sphragis is? He murmured this into my hair.

  Something Catholic, right? He knew about all that stuff. He knew all the intricate jargon, the underground pathways of that particular dungeon. He understood transubstantiation, stations of the cross, mortal versus venial sins. In spite of the catechism classes I took when I was eight, all I basically knew was that Baby Jesus was born in a manger on Christmas. I was even hazy about the whole Easter thing, to tell you the truth—the rock, the cave, the there-not-there. Definitely hazy about the palm branches and about the ashes on the forehead. I looked like that after I cleaned out the fireplace.

  Catholic, yeah. But that’s not what I mean.

  No. I don’t know, then.

  It’s a plug that some butterflies create.

  I hate that word, plug. It’s one of the ugliest words.

  Other animals make one, too, but butterflies can take it further.

  From where my head lay, I could hear his heart beating in there. The sound of a heart always disturbed me. If you were aware of its beat, you were aware of its ability to stop beating.

  What kind of plug?

  Male butterflies—they make the sphragis out of their secretions. It’s like a glue that shuts the female’s genitals. Some male butterflies cover her entire abdomen with it. An iron chastity belt.

  I sat up. I didn’t like where this was going. Kind of disturbing, if you ask me.

  It’s nature. It’s natural. It’s what he does to protect what’s his.

  She has to wear that thing around?

  Yeah. It’s pretty heavy, too. It makes it hard for her to move.

  God.

  It’s meant to last a lifetime.

  We’d stayed too long in bed, that was for sure. I got up. I needed air. I reached for my robe. That’s horrible, I said.

  I was wishing I had one for you.

  I thought carefully about how to respond. Over the past few months, after each little comment—about my clothes, or other men, or after the lengthy questioning that came after the times I’d seen Mark—I’d tried various strategies to ward off the jabs and the interrogations. I tried reassurance and humor and flat-out anger. Still, his insecurity sat there, stubborn and immovable. No, actually it didn’t sit there. It came my way with its fangs bared. A person’s insecurity is a creature of the night, out for blood, and for the same vampire reasons: to avoid their own demise.

  I decided to say nothing. I headed for the door. I was in the hall when I heard him.

  Don’t worry, Dani, he said. The females keep finding ways out of it.

  Good, I called back to him.

  They just keep evolving, he said.

  Here is another great irony: You find your soul mate, you go through hell to be together, and then you soul mate pecks away at you with his criticism. Your laugh is so loud. You’re inconsiderate, unplugging my razor without plugging it in again. Your breasts look small in that. You know, Mary never would have cheated. If I were more perfect, I’d be worth all the trouble he went through to get me, that’s what the criticism said to me. He felt a disparity in what we’d given up to be together. If I were more beautiful and more giving, I could make up for the deficit in his column.

  But, like the suspicion, the criticism wasn’t there only because of our history, was it? I was also becoming more and more clear about that.

  Ian hadn’t always hunted for ways to condemn me, not at all. Not at all. But I’d said that about Mark, too. The thought—the similarities between the two of them—it made me uneasy. They were different men, I told myself. Very different. The truth, though? Well. You can kill a butterfly using different methods. You can use force, grasping the thorax between your fingers and pinching hard. Or you can hold down the wings with the slight, sharp tip of a pin until the heart stops.

  We’d like to tow his car to the station evidence-impound garage for further analysis.…

  I am having difficulty breathing.

  We can get a warrant, of course, if you have any objections.

  I cradle the phone in my lap. I am underwater. I need to get my head above the surface so I can breathe.

  “You need to get a lawyer, Dani,” my mother says. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. You don’t have a choice.” She’s pacing the kitchen. She looks like hell. She’s aged ten years in the last week, or maybe I just never noticed the ways the years have caught up with all of us.

  “I don’t need a lawyer. Let them take the car.”

  “Dani. Danielle! This is getting out of control. We’re way over our heads. This is crazy!”

  “Let them take the car.”

  “Getting a lawyer—it’s not admitting some kind of guilt. We need some help! We need to know how to protect ourselves!” Abby is practically begging. She looks like hell, too. She’s wearing one of her tongue-in-cheek sweatshirts. This one has Queen Frosting from CANDYLAND on it. The dissonance is disturbing.

  “I’ll call Nathan,” I say. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Nathan’s not a lawyer,” Abby says. She and my mother exchange glances.

  “I’ll call your father,” my mother says.

  “Grampy is not a lawyer,” Abby says.

  “He knows how to reach that guy …” My mother waves her hand around.

  “How many times are we going to have this exact same discussion?” Abby says.

  It’s true. We are repeating ourselves. I have to do something.

  “Let me handle this.” I attempt to look decisive and in control. I leave them sitting there, and I stride upstairs to our office. In my panic, frustration, fear, fury—take your pick—I accidentally slam the door, rattling those butterflies hanging on the wall. Too late, I remember that we don’t have a computer in there anymore. We’ve got Abby’s laptop and my own phone, but likely I’d only get those frustrating online white pages anyway. We’ve got that old phone book I’d used to look up Kitty’s number, but that’s back in the cupboard under the kitchen phone. I retrace my steps to retrieve it, and nothing about this looks decisive or in control. Erratic and desperate, maybe. Panicked and chaotic, for sure.

  “Frank Lazario,” my mother says. “I’ll never forget him. Call him.”

  I cart the phone book back to the office, and I open its fat, sloppy pages. The number might be unlisted. That’s certainly possible.

  No. There it is.

  I dial. I keep my voice low. And then I shower. I want to look good. Funny how that still matters. I do my hair, and I choose my clothes carefully. I keep a nervous eye on the clock until finally it’s time to leave.

  I emerge from my room, purse over my shoulder.

  “Thank God, he can see you today?” my mother asks. “Busy man like that, too. I’m so relieved. Did you mention your father’s name? That probably got you right in.”

  “He doesn’t ha
ve the great power you think he does.”

  “You haven’t even met him yet.”

  I mean my father, but I don’t bother to correct her. Even after all these years, she’s still—ha—wedded to the idea that he has some magical abilities that she no longer has access to. I weigh my options. To tell, or not to tell? Someone should know where I’m going. I don’t know why, it just seems someone should know my whereabouts.

  “I’m not seeing Frank Lazario, Mom.”

  “Don’t tell me you called that lawyer from your divorce. Don’t you remember? They had her yacht in the Sunday home section of The Seattle Times. No wonder that bill was big enough to bury you. You paid for those oak captain’s chairs.”

  “Ma, I’m going to see Mary.” And then, in answer to her stunned face, I walk out the door and shut it hard.

  The sun is out, and it’s one of those hot spring days that appear out of nowhere. Spring is fickle; spring cannot make up its temperamental mind. It is no day for long pants. I see that now, too late. The heat has gathered in the car, and the seat is warm on the back of my legs. My tendency toward self-sabotage is increasingly revealing itself—I back out of my parking spot and notice a small pool of brown liquid that the car has left behind. That, and now the engine (I guess it’s the engine; what do I know about this stuff?) clunks when I shift into drive. The humming and buzzing have also gotten worse. With my window rolled down for a little cool air, I hear it loudly. I’m going to have to drive over the bridge in this precarious condition. Please, Blue, I pray. Please don’t stop on 520. I’ve always felt terrible for those poor people, the ones whose cars give up right on that two-lane stretch over Lake Washington, causing backups for miles. What betrayal, and what a mess; I’d feel awful if it were me. But now it’s not the inconvenience I’d cause other people that I’m worrying about. No, I’d take that problem anytime over the trouble I’m in.

  I wonder if Detective Jackson has found that letter yet. Is that why he wants Ian’s car?

  I can’t afford any holdups. I need to get to Mary’s as quickly as possible. The walls are closing in on me; I feel it happening. The computers, the car … Mary might have information about where Ian is, and, dear God, I need information. She wouldn’t keep things from her frantic daughters, would she? Yet who can say what confidences people keep for their own reasons. Someone knows what happened. Someone knows where Ian is. Someone has to know. In my heart, I feel Adam is right. People don’t just disappear.