He's Gone

by Deb Caletti

  Yes, the sacred … The thing he was never supposed to be … I think I could cry. My throat starts to tighten, and I feel the tears there.

  There are lots of ways to be unfaithful. All the things you are most afraid of, Dani—they happened right there on that blanket.

  I know it. I do. And something changed then. In my heart. Something shifted. I saw what I had done—out of the frying pan into the fire. Or, rather, out of the frying pan into another frying pan. Here it was again. I wanted him to rescue me, and then I wanted to be rescued from him, and I saw this clearly, that rescue leads to ruin. After … Something closed off in me. I said, Enough. I didn’t believe in the big dream we’d created together, the big story about soul mates. I believed in a different kind of fate, or maybe just history, the kind that revisits and revisits, the kind that pushes and shoves you toward that one inevitable event where you and your past finally square off. I didn’t know how to make it over, though. Or if I was brave enough to make it over. God, I couldn’t believe I was standing at the edge of some same sinking boat, needing to jump. But it was over. I felt it in my body, if that doesn’t sound stupid.

  No.

  I wrote him this letter. I told him, My heart was in your teeth, and you bit down. I told him that what he did was unforgivable. That we were finished. That I was leaving him. But I never gave that letter to him. It would kill him if I left. I knew that. I couldn’t do it. That letter, though, that I even wrote it … I was done. He’d pushed me too far. And then this party at BetterWorks, like I told you, that fight on the grass … And I had taken those pills. All that wine. I am crying now. I am shattered. The truth spoken is cataclysmic. But I am being heard here, and something about that breaks me even more. You said that a person can have some kind of blackout …

  Yes.

  But he’s gone. He’s gone, and I don’t know what’s happened, but I know I wanted him gone.

  I am sobbing. My nose is dripping, and I’m a mess. She hands me a box of tissues, but I don’t think that a box of tissues is up to this job. I need something from her. More than anything, I need her to get what I’m saying, and it seems she realizes this.

  I don’t know what happened here, she says. And what I hear you saying is that you don’t know what happened here, either. But there are some things I do know, things about you. I know your history. I know that your own anger and rage is terrifying to you. So terrifying that you believe you might annihilate someone just by feeling it. I know this, too: You tend to overcompensate. You tend to be overly responsible.

  She doesn’t get it, though. I try again.

  I’ve been having these dreams. We are at Kerry Park that night. He is looking for that cuff link. I shove him with both of my hands. I shove him into the ravine.

  She doesn’t even look shocked. It’s not surprising you are dreaming about this. Or that you felt blind rage. This doesn’t mean that you acted on it.

  I wonder if she’s heard me right.

  I keep dreaming the same dream!

  I am blowing my nose, and I don’t know what I feel, except that it’s not relief. I am only sure that she doesn’t get this. Not truly. She doesn’t understand the degree of my guilt.

  Our time is nearly up, but there is one last thing I need to know. It’s crucial.

  You said … I don’t know how to ask this. A long time ago, you said that people bring their same selves to every situation, to all their relationships.

  Yes.

  How is there any hope, then?

  She thinks about this. Her eyes are compassionate.

  You learn, she says. You go from there. And then you change.

  It doesn’t seem possible, but she is holding out that hope plainly, as if it is possible. My heart clutches up.

  You evolve, she says.

  17

  For a time, you are in a cocoon. It’s a place of safety. There are comforting threads bound tight around you, soft words and gentleness. But this isn’t a place you can stay for long. Inevitable change is pressing upon you. So you must strain and push and press until you are out, out into the most dangerous place of all, the real world, where there are clever birds and swooping owls, where there is illness and bad weather. One day, maybe, you might learn to survive, using your color and speed and your inborn talent for camouflage and subterfuge. Or it all might stop right there. You might fly into someone’s glass jar. The lid might get slammed down on what you thought was sky.

  Here’s something else. I read it in one of those books. The Greeks used the word psyche for both butterfly and soul.

  I leave Dr. Shana Berg’s office, and I can feel it, a shift in the weather. Oh, what a cliché, but it’s true. There’s that disturbing electricity in the warm air, and the sky is a muted Northwest gray. It happens often in the spring. A thunderstorm rolls in, and it’s something you feel coming in the oldest, animal part of your brain. Already I am restless and uneasy, and the warm weight of negative energy in the air adds its urgency. Dr. Shana Berg—I am convinced she couldn’t see how ugly it was, my own mind. All that hatred. That dream is so real when it happens, and I obviously couldn’t adequately convey that to her. I don’t think she truly heard this: I am shoving him in that dream, and there is horror in that, but it feels good, too.

  There are new messages. Frank Lazario has called again but says he’ll be unavailable until later. And Nathan has also called again. And, yes, I need to talk to him, too.

  I get in my car, which is now running on prayers. Please, please, I say, to whoever up there is in charge of automotive affairs. Of course old Blue Beast is dying along with everything else. That’s how it works. One thing falls apart, and it’s some cue for all the others to follow suit. Appliances gang up, lightbulbs riot en masse. The objects in our life, too, just wait for their fuck-you moment, after all their years of unappreciated diligence.

  I am breaking the law by calling Nathan while I drive, but that hardly matters now, does it? If I’ve done what my heart fears I’ve done, I could rob a bank at gunpoint, and it could be no worse. I forgot to tell Dr. Shana Berg this, and it’s more evidence: Two weeks ago, I took Ian to work when his car was being detailed. Your seat is awfully close to the windshield; how do you even see? he asked. A person was waiting at that crosswalk and you drove right through, he said. Something smells in here, he complained. I got so flustered that I drove up a curb and ran a red light, giving him more proof of my shortcomings. He finally got out, and as he crossed the street, I imagined it. That cab hitting him. Killing him instantly. Painless but fast. In my head, I’d even repainted the living room. Ocean Mist Blue.

  I call Nathan not because he’s asked me to but because I need to know the things I don’t. That dream—it is possible, isn’t it, that we went back to Kerry Park that night? Someone would have seen us, but maybe not. The party was winding down. The parking lot is on the other side of the building. It was dark on that grass, even when we first went back to look for the lost cuff link. We were alone; we had to be. A person can have that kind of a blackout after mixing drugs with alcohol, Dr. Shana Berg said, but it has never happened to me before. Of course not. Jesus. Do you know how terrifying a blank spot is, even a brief one? A dark hole of forgetting and my missing husband and the rising truth about how I’ve come to feel about him?

  He’s in that ravine. I know it.

  “Nathan?”

  “Thank God, Dani. Where the hell have you been?”

  The waters of Lake Washington are steely gray under that metallic sky. I wait for the roll of thunder, but none comes. You wish it would go ahead and get it over with, because it’s coming, and the air is unbearably suffocating.

  I wonder what it will feel like to finally tell it. Thunder and lightning, a downpour, relief. “I went to see my psychologist,” I tell him.

  The silence between us is heavy. Finally, he says, “I took Bethy out, and we talked—”

  But this is not why I’ve called Nathan. “You said to me about that BetterWorks party, about Ia
n that night … you said he was pissed. You said something like, ‘I noticed. I saw.’ What did you see, Nathan?”

  “On the grass. You were arguing. You grabbed his arm.…”

  “And after that?”

  “After that, what?”

  “Did you see us on the grass again? Did you see us at Kerry Park?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Dani. We were all leaving after that. Did you go back there?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He is silent, and there is only the rattling in my car and the sound of a truck whipping past. Then he sighs. “God, Dani.”

  “I took these pills. And then I drank wine.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “How do I know …”

  “Please. Don’t say anything more. Look, I know you would never hurt anyone. I know that.”

  “I need to tell them I don’t remember. It’s only right. Someone should know this.”

  “No! Dani, no! You can’t do that. That would be a crazy stupid thing to do. Have you talked to an attorney?”

  “If I’ve done something wrong—”

  “No! You’re afraid. You’re reaching for some answer.… Come on, you haven’t slept in days. You’ve been scared shitless since he disappeared. You can’t think when you’re this exhausted. Promise me you won’t tell the police something like that without talking to a lawyer. Fuck. That would be a huge mistake, Dani. Huge.”

  “Nathan—”

  “Promise me.”

  “Okay. All right.”

  But listening through fear is like trying to think when someone is shouting at you. It’s like trying to save yourself when you look toward the sun and there is only the large open beak of a bird above you, and you are so, so tired. You are too tired, really, to do anything but lay your wings flat and succumb to the outcome that in all likelihood is inevitable.

  It does not thunder yet, and does not thunder, and does not thunder. The air is thick with electricity. At home, there is something my mother and Abby are not telling me. It’s obvious. Their voices are too cheerful, and they are doing what they can to avoid me. My mother doesn’t even grill me about Frank Lazario, whom she assumes I’ve spoken with. Pollux is trotting around and whining. I take him out, but when he comes back in, he resumes his pacing. He feels the approaching storm, too.

  My mother and Abby don’t speak at dinner. No one eats the macaroni and cheese one of them has made during the day. There is only the edgy tink-tink of forks against plates, food being moved around. There is the sound of ice sliding down a glass as Abby takes a drink of water.

  “What?” I ask them, but no one will say.

  Finally, before bed, my mother comes into my room. She is wearing her pink quilted robe. This is a robe for reading magazines, for watching Good Morning America, and making scrambled eggs. It is not a robe for this news.

  She sits me down beside her. She takes my hands.

  “They want you to take a polygraph,” she says.

  I listen to Ian’s message again. This is Ian Keller. I’m not available to take your call … His voice does not sound secretive or adversarial to me anymore. I don’t feel frustrated listening to it, only deeply sorrowful. It is the voice of someone who doesn’t know the future when you know the future.

  When Abby and my mother are asleep, I walk quietly into our office. It is in shambles now. Someone has picked up the killing jar that had rolled under the desk and set it upright on the counter again, but there are bare nails where the framed butterflies had hung, and there is a chunk of glass in the trash can. Something has gotten broken, and I try to determine what that was. Ah, it’s the tip of the glass award from the tech magazine, I see now. The pyramid on its black stand has been placed back on the shelf, but it now looks imperfect, as if a bite has been taken off the top.

  I open a desk drawer. I take out a lined yellow pad. Ian keeps a stack of them in there. I rethink this. I take out several more. A pen, too.

  I do not know how to do this officially. Nathan has warned against it, and so has Dr. Shana Berg, but there are things I don’t know and things that I fear, and these facts should be handed over. There are those who have too much guilt and those who don’t have enough, perhaps. Still, I will tell what’s happened as best as I can and let others judge for themselves. It’s the right thing to do. At the end of the day, the truth—your wrongdoings, your good intentions, your human struggles, what you’ve done and why—is the place you go on from.

  It is the whole story.

  No, it is a confession.

  It is everything I know I am guilty of in this story of Ian and me. All the sins I can and can’t remember, all I am heartily sorry for.

  I take up my pen. I write:

  I used to imagine it sometimes, what would happen if one day I didn’t come home. Not that I ever considered running off—I could never actually do that, even if I occasionally had that fantasy of driving south and checking in to some hotel. Some place with bathrobes, for sure.

  I write, and write, and the yellow pages fill up, and sometime in the night the thunder rolls in the distance and comes closer and closer until it sounds like it is sitting next to me. It is the dark, hunched man, standing and roaring in my ears, his fist by my face, his hand over my mouth.

  It is morning, and my fingers are aching. They are cramped and contorted. There is something else I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to sign my name, aren’t I, to a confession? And so I do.

  Dani Ross Hastings Keller

  Seattle, Washington

  18

  Here is what happens next: It stops raining. The hard, driving rain that began after the thunder rolled through has now passed, part and parcel of a Seattle spring. It’s a dewy morning, a beautiful one. A day for pardon and peace and absolution. I see that the rain has stopped but that the sun is flashing between dramatic, fast-moving clouds. I take a long shower. I get dressed. My mother is having coffee, and Abby is reading her mail on her laptop at the kitchen table. I am doing something mundane again: I am looking for a bag in which to carry those pages. I see Abby’s beloved head, tipped down in concentration. I love that head so much, and that hair, and every little bit of that girl, that young woman. It tears my heart, seeing her, loving her like that. It tears my heart to see my mother in her favorite sweat clothes, her white hair in disarray from sleep. And my sweet old Pollux, oh, yes, him, too. Beloved him. Beloveds, all of them.

  Double hugs, I say silently.

  I could cry, and so I get myself out of there. I take a bag from the narrow space on the side of the fridge, where we keep them. I go to my room and slide the stack of pages into the bag. There is my wrinkle cream that really does nothing for wrinkles, and my glass-beaded bedside lamp that I love, and my reading glasses. I am in the middle of a book, and my bookmark is still set between the same pages where I’d left off days ago. A life ago. Everything is feeling bittersweet, and so I need to get out of there fast, before I change my mind.

  “What are you doing?” my mother asks. I am getting a jacket from the hall closet; who knows what the weather will be.

  “Out” is all I can manage to say.

  “Dani …” She knows; she always does. Abby says the same thing about me. Mother’s intuition. Say what you will, but I believe in it. “What are you doing?” My mother’s voice is rising in alarm. Abby looks up, questioning.

  “Out,” I say again. I try to keep my voice steady.

  My head is deep in the closet in the hall now. The jacket I want has slipped off its hanger and fallen on the floor behind the rain boots and other shoes. When I get up, my mother is there, staring at me hard. She grabs my arm.

  “Dani, if you are thinking of doing anything foolish …” She keeps her voice low.

  I say nothing. I am trying to hold it together.

  “I’m begging you.”

  And then, can it be? That damn boat. That goddamn boat. The hard rain and the waves have loosened the rope again. I am awar
e that this is where we began, that morning when he disappeared. It makes me understand that this is some kind of ending. It’s silly, maybe, but I want to take care of a problem for them, for my mother and Abby, one I can fix. Before I go, I want to tighten that cleat. It will be one less thing they will have to deal with.

  I get that toolbox from the closet. It’s the one Mary gave Ian when they were married. I undo the clasps and lift the lid. The tools are lying in their molded plastic places, but the screwdriver is gone. It’s odd. I have not used anything in this box since I hung pictures when we moved in, and Ian, as particular as he is, would have always, always returned it to its proper place.

  Still, no matter. I can’t concern myself with that now. There’s no time. I get a knife from the kitchen drawer. I open the doors to the deck and Pollux trots after me.

  “Dani, don’t worry about it,” my mother says.

  “That banging is driving me crazy,” Abby says. She needs me still. That’s what threatens to choke me up. My mother, too. No—truth is, we all need one another.

  I kneel on the dock. If someone sees me here, it might look as if I am praying. I fit the tip of the knife into the screw and twist hard. I try to jiggle the cleat, but it feels firm. I wind the rope back over it so the boat is snug once again against the dock.

  I get up. It’s silly, maybe. But in my heart, I say goodbye.

  The stacks of notepads are in the bag, and I am holding them under my arm as I leave. My mother is standing in the doorway. She is pleading with me with her eyes, so I don’t look. I don’t want anything to dissuade me. I am hoping Detective Jackson will be there in his office when I need him. My mother doesn’t know what’s in that bag, but she knows it’s bad. If she did know, she’d likely be throwing herself down in front of me, blocking my exit. Isabel Eleanor Ross would let this happen only over her dead body.

  I hear a noise out there. Oh, really, can it be? Old Joseph Grayson is playing with his electric boat? Now? I listen. Yes, there’s the unmistakable whine as he zips it over the waves. Why not, though? The sky is all morning purples and pinks when the sun comes out behind speeding clouds. The water is choppy—perfect, maybe, for a post-toke hydroplane race with your ancient hippie self.