He's Gone

by Deb Caletti

  16

  The doorbell wakes me. Sometime near sunrise, I’d gone back to my room and had fallen asleep. Now the doorbell is ringing, and Pollux is barking in a frenzy that speaks to his understanding that something is very wrong here. I’m disoriented; I see my phone next to me on Ian’s pillow, and it has been ringing, too, I notice. The message light comes on. The doorbell has to wait. It’s only nine o’clock in the morning, but my heart has already begun to thump hard. This must be what it’s like to live as an animal—as prey, a deer, always alert, always in danger. No. Your heart would do this if you were a butterfly and you’d been caught in a net.

  There are two messages. Neither is from Ian. He has been gone only ten days, and his voice is already hard to summon in my head. A person’s voice must be the first thing to go, the first thing that flees your memory. I can see him, but I cannot hear him, unless I play his voice mail again. Regardless, he has not called. The attorney Frank Lazario has. He sounds about a hundred years old. And Dr. Shana Berg has called, too. She can see me at eleven o’clock, if I can make it. I can make it. I need answers, and a plan. I can’t go on like this anymore.

  I put on my robe. There is chaos downstairs now. Abby is shouting, and so is my mother. Who else? A woman. Is it Mary? I am rushing down the stairs. I hear a man’s voice, too. My hand is shaking as I hold the rail. What now? The car, someone says. You don’t do that for no reason!

  You have no right! My mother shouts.

  You can’t just barge in here. Abby.

  It’s not Mary, but Bethy. It’s Bethy and Adam, and Kristen is here, too, but she’s not speaking. She’s only standing there with her arms folded. Bethy’s face is red and her mouth is open and twisted, ugly. Adam has one arm raised, and he’s wearing a T-shirt with the grille of a truck on the front, and his resemblances to Mark are multiplying. He is a bully, all right, but his jawline has a cold-blooded, sadistic quality. He probably has to sleep under a lamp at night to keep his reptilian heart warm.

  Bethy sees me on the stairs. “You.” She’s shaking with hatred, years of it. “We want the truth. It’s not so much to ask.” She has Mary’s eyes and Ian’s bone structure. It’s terrible to see him in her then, with that distorted, angry mouth.

  “Is this how you want it to go?” Adam says to me. “Because it ain’t going to be pretty.”

  “ ‘It ain’t going to be pretty,’ ” my mother mocks. “Do you think you’re the sheriff in the western? Going to draw your gun, big shot? I can’t believe you people. You shove your way in here—”

  “We would have liked to talk to the TV station, but you said Dad wouldn’t want that. Then you guys went ahead and did it anyway,” Bethy says. “We’re his kids.”

  “You call us, and then two seconds later it’s on,” Kristen says to Abby. “He’s our dad.”

  “You’re competing over this now?” my mother says.

  Bethy glares. “Competing? Who’s competing? There’s never been a contest. We know that. He’s told us a million times! We come first! He’s made that perfectly clear. Even if …” She waves her arm around, indicating me, this house, our marriage.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this discussion now,” I say.

  “Look at what you’ve done.” Bethy spits the words at me.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Abby says.

  “Dirty mouth. You’re all evil,” Bethy says. “Look at you. Immoral.” Spittle flies from her mouth.

  “Look at us? Look at you. You come ringing the doorbell like that, you come walking in here—”

  “We deserve some answers.”

  I am in the entryway with them now. “I gave you answers. I gave you all the answers I have.”

  “Don’t say a word. Not another word,” my mother commands. She is shaking her finger at me.

  “I just want to know where my daddy is.…” Kristen starts to cry.

  “Believe me, I want nothing more than to—”

  “What did you do to him?” Bethy steps toward me.

  “You are crazy,” Abby says.

  “We want his things.”

  “Bethy …” This frustrates Adam. It’s obviously not part of the plan.

  “I want his things! I don’t want his things to be here with her.”

  The urge to smack her rises up my arm, and I can feel it surging toward my hand. Hatred—I have more of it now. I have so much that there is a freight train in my chest.

  “You people are nuts!” Abby says. “Who ran off here?”

  “You want his things?”

  “Mom, don’t—”

  “You want his fucking things?”

  It’s out of my mouth, and I know it’s bad. It’s bad and it gets worse, because the room has five hundred butterflies, a thousand, and they are fluttering so hard that silk threads in blues and greens and oranges are unspooling and unspooling and falling to the floor, rising piles of ruined pigment. “Fine.” I turn and head up the stairs. Bethy shoves past Abby, and I feel her behind me, and Adam behind her. Kristen is sobbing.

  I am raging, and it feels good. It’s like every window opening, every trapped creature let out. I am in that office. I grab pictures off the walls, those butterflies. I shove them at Bethy. I shove them at Adam. “You want his things?” I am grabbing books, swiping objects off the shelves. Bottles of relaxing fluid; glass jars. A sweater that is over the chair. I am shoving all this and more at them. A jar falls but doesn’t break. It rolls under the desk. “You want him now? Now you finally want him?”

  “Don’t, Mom. Don’t!”

  “Dani …”

  I scream at them. My voice is hoarse. I watch myself from a distance and wonder what the hell I am doing. I’ve lost it. That’s what they call this. “Take it! Take all of it. He’s yours.”

  Bethy has begun to cry, too. Adam grabs her arm and leads her out of there. “She’s fucking bonkers,” he says. That’s the best he can do? It’s a comical word, the sort of word for the person he is: a large child, a cartoon villain.

  There is another voice now, calling up at us from downstairs. “Dani? Dani?”

  It’s Nathan. Nathan, whose phone calls I haven’t returned. Somehow we are all downstairs again, and Bethy’s arms are full of Ian’s things, the sleeve of that sweater is dragging on the floor, and Nathan is there, too. I gave Ian that sweater. He loved that sweater. Nathan looks shocked. He’s staring at me as if I’m a madwoman. Adam is shaking his head and muttering under his breath, and Bethy is hovering near Kristen as if they are both delicate, innocent children in a candy house in the woods and I am about to shove them into my oven. Wait, no, a different fairy tale, one involving an evil stepmother and evil stepsisters. Step brings out the evil, apparently, on both sides.

  “Get them out of here,” I say to Nathan. And, by some miracle, he does.

  “Mom, is there something you—”

  “Don’t,” my own mother says to Abby.

  I see Maggie Long on my way out. She has heard the noise of the morning; I know she has. She’s watering her pansies, spying. She and Jack will have lots to talk about tonight over their grilled burgers and green salad made from iceberg lettuce and tomato slices. They will leave the cheese off the burgers because of Jack’s high cholesterol. Maggie opens her mouth to speak, but for once she has nothing to say.

  I have something to say to her, though. Something to ask. I know I shouldn’t do this. But I need to do this. I need to know. This is what’s called digging your own grave. I am digging and digging, deeper and deeper. I am digging a grave so deep that the walls of earth are falling in.

  “Maggie?”

  She keeps watering, waiting for more from me. Water is spilling from the top of the basket. It’s sloshing over in great waves, but Maggie does not move the hose.

  “You remember when Ian and I went to that party? You said you saw us leave.”

  “Right,” Maggie says. It seems like the word takes a great deal of effort.

  “Did you see us come back? By any
chance, did you see Ian and me return?”

  I need only that one thing. One piece of information, something so that I might know. Yes, she would say, and my nightmare would be over.

  “No, Dani.”

  “Either of us?” My voice is ragged from that screaming.

  “You don’t know, Dani? You don’t know if you both came home?” Dirt is spilling with the water now. It’s spilling onto Maggie’s tennis shoes. They are the cheap white ones you get in Rite Aid, and now she’ll have to put them in the washer and they’ll shrink two sizes. She’s killing those plants. She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t have to. It’s obvious what she’s thinking. Her eyes are wide with horror.

  Something happened. Last summer. Nine months ago. Feels like forever and it feels like yesterday.

  Shana Berg says nothing. She has a notebook on her lap, and a pen, but the notebook is shut. I have explained everything about the party, the wine, the pills. But there is this, too.

  His kids, you know. They were still angry with him. We thought we were making progress. They had come over two or three times. He started seeing them—out for coffee, lunch, that kind of thing.

  Shana Berg nods.

  I’ve never told anyone this.

  This is a safe place, Shana Berg says. It sounds sort of corny. Psychobabble-ish. But it’s reassuring, regardless. Her voice is gentle.

  It was her birthday. Bethy, the oldest? Her mother was having a party at her house. I don’t know if you remember, but they did a lot of that when they were married. It felt empty to him.

  I remember.

  Well, she—Mary—had this birthday party, and Bethy invites him. He wants to go. He’s all excited after being shunned. I think it’s bullshit, honestly, but I don’t say anything. The whole thing around the kids … I wave my arm to indicate the mess it was.

  Yeah, Dr. Berg says.

  He gets her this really expensive gift. She likes this band—the Whatevers, I can’t think of the name right now—but he gets the three of them these tickets to see them in Vancouver. The girls and him. I even get her a present, though I know she won’t want it. I’ve given her other things; it doesn’t matter. I keep trying everything I can, but it’s reject, reject, reject, which I can understand to a certain degree. Maybe it’ll take years before they stop catching each other’s eyes and laughing at things I say. I know that. But, Ian … Anyway, so he goes to this party at his old house, the house he bought, and it’s just like the old days, and there are all his old friends and Bethy’s friends, and the neighbors and everyone is laughing and having a terrific time.

  Ouch, Shana Berg says.

  Exactly. He hovers around the edges of those people in his own house, and he gives the gift and Bethy says, “Oh, this is great. This’ll be a lot of fun for us,” and she hands the tickets to her mother. He stays for cake, and then he leaves.

  Hmm.

  He comes home, and he’s so down. He says, “They all dismissed me. It was like I didn’t exist.” He’s so down, I’ve never seen him so down. He’s devastated. And I say, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s take some food and go to Kerry Park.” He doesn’t want to at first, but then he agrees. I pack up some nice stuff we have—cheese, bread, a bottle of wine. His face is troubled and dark, but we get there.… It’s a place we go sometimes, do you know it, Kerry Park?

  I do.

  It’s right next to Ian’s building, but it’s a public park. The views are great, you know, because it sits so high up on that hill, with that steep ravine. So we park at his work, and he opens his trunk. I don’t know why, because I’ve got the bags of food and the blankets up front … But he opens the trunk, and he takes out that stupid butterfly net of his father’s, and I don’t say anything, but I think, Really? I mean, you want to tra-la-la and capture butterflies right now? It’s summer, and Kerry Park—well, it has all that wild blackberry, and rhododendrons, too, and so, it’s true, there are likely a lot of butterflies there then. But I’m just surprised. His mood … It seems sort of wacky, and I have this embarrassing image of him running on the lawn. I told you about that collection of his father’s?

  Shana Berg nods. The trees out her windows are bright green, spring green. They blow sweetly in a sudden breeze, but it’s like we’re tucked away, even from what’s right outside. That fireplace and those books—it feels like a hidden place.

  I don’t say a word, but he catches my … I don’t know, unspoken criticism, I guess you’d call it. He does this. He can feel your criticism before you even know it’s there. It’s weird. He just knows, and he asks, “What?” in that tone, as if he’s daring me to say. And I say, “Nothing, Ian.” But it’s done, and there’s no going back. His face gets hard. He was sullen and sad before, but now he’s angry, I can see that.

  I stop.

  Dani? Are you all right? Shana Berg asks.

  This is hard. It was … God.

  She waits.

  We arrange the blanket on the grass and sit down. I do all the stuff I do when he gets that way. I say nothing, and then I try to joke. I try to be affectionate. I open the wine, and he drinks his, fast, out of his paper cup. Well, he’s right: There are some blue and yellow butterflies right near us, and I point. “There you go,” I say, but I can tell this makes him furious. He thinks I’m making fun of him, but I’m not. I only want to soften him out of this horrible day he’s had and to let him know I’m not his enemy. I head toward him on the blanket. I’m on my knees. I take a pinch of his shirt to pull him toward me; his favorite T-shirt—it’s got a guitar with wings. I try to look him in the eyes, but he won’t look back at me. He is staring at those bushes, and he speaks in their direction. He says, with all the sarcasm he can muster, “Soul mates.” The words sound cheap and flimsy. The whole idea has become foolish. Our marriage has. It has no weight, you know. Not compared to this rejection by his children. Our great love, all the grandeur we made of it, and it’s merely silly and selfish.

  I take his chin in my hand. “Sweetie,” I plead. I move in to kiss him.

  He pulls away. He says, “I ruined my daughters’ lives for this.”

  And he is right, it seems, because right there it’s just us. There are no parties and no friends and there’s no big house and no adoring daughters and half his money has been given away. There’s no commotion of television and neighbors with drinks in their hands. Only the two of us with a loaf of bread on a lawn. Only love, which can’t bear the weight of making a life meaningful all by itself.

  I exhale, though. I’m pissed. His life is in his own hands, his attitude is his own doing, and if anything is ruining things now, it’s that. His lousy attitude. I’m there, you know? Doing my best to love him. To have a good life with him.

  He hears that annoyed exhale. And that’s when it happens. He takes my wrist. He twists my arm, and I feel a pop of pain near my elbow. I am on my back on the ground, and he is gripping both of my wrists and he has pinned them down, and his face is all fury, his eyes are full of hate, and he says, “I’ve given up everything for you! My house, my friends, my children. For you.”

  I cry out, because he is hurting me and because his words are horrible, and when I cry out, he moves one hand from my wrist to cover my mouth. He is covering my mouth and nose, and I can’t breathe, and I can see the wild blackberries above me. I think of those butterflies, the way he puts a cotton ball soaked in cyanide into that jar, the way he suffocates them, and I don’t want this for myself, I can’t allow that to happen, and I get free somehow and put my hands on his chest and shove him with all my might, and he falls backward.

  That is terrifying, Dani, Dr. Shana Berg says.

  Terrifying, yes, God. But worse, after he falls, it feels like the worst kind of failure. Such a heartbreaking failure. He stands up then, and he rolls up that blanket and walks angrily back to the car, and I get up, too, and I follow. I am holding that sad bag of food and the wine bottle, and his cup has blown in a bit of wind down the ravine, and it’s now caught in some black
berry brambles. But I don’t retrieve it. The bag of food I’m carrying—it’s humiliating and pitiful. I follow, and I’m ashamed of myself somehow. I can’t explain it, but I am deeply ashamed. I get in the car. And I realize my shame is no match for his. I know that. He’s become furiously cold. He needs to punish me for the way he feels and for what he’s just done.

  “You weren’t the first one,” he says. “I cheated on her before, with someone else.”

  It’s supposed to wound me. But it’s strange, because it doesn’t, not really. A little. Okay, yes, I’m hurt that he didn’t tell me before … But it makes some sense. It’s sort of a relief. He wanted out of that marriage so badly. For both of us—there was love but the need to leave, too.

  His anger is disintegrating fast. He is disintegrating. He looks as if he’s caving in on himself. He’s not angry anymore, but he’s shriveling, I swear. When we get home, he lets me out and then he drives off. He doesn’t come home that night. He stays somewhere, I don’t know, I don’t even ask, because I’m glad he left. The next morning, he comes back. He looks destroyed. He stands at our kitchen sink, and he says, “I’m no different than he is.” I know who he means, of course I do. He doesn’t mean Mark. That’s the funny thing; he’s not talking about Mark at all. And now I’m supposed to rush in and soothe him or rescue him or heal his old wounds. I say, “You are not him.” But it’s a lie. I feel the lie when I say it. I don’t mean that I believed Ian was a serial adulterer like Paul Hartley Keller. I don’t think that at all. He was never, I don’t know, as passionate about collecting butterflies as his father was. But he is his father. That’s the horrible truth. He is. He makes the people around him feel small so that he won’t feel small.

  And so I say, “You are not him,” but I don’t mean it. What he’s told me, this prior infidelity he never revealed, it matters little to me. There is a bigger betrayal here, and that’s the one that devastates me.

  I look at Dr. Berg. I am hoping she understands.

  He hurt you. He frightened you. He didn’t keep you safe. She does understand, thank God.