Goodnight Beautiful

by Aimee Molloy

  “Did you see the article?” she squawks the second I open the door. “About Sam?”

  “I was just reading it.”

  “I’m a wreck.” She squeezes her eyes shut and then does the last thing I would expect: she reaches out for a hug.

  The last time someone touched me: A list

  March 4, seven months ago, the day I left Albany.

  Xiu, the oldest of the four girls whose parents owned Happy Chinese on the first floor of my building. I watched her and her sisters grow up in that restaurant, working behind the counter, taking turns accepting the two-dollar tip they knew was coming when they handed me the plastic bag of food—chicken-fried rice on Mondays, barbecue spare ribs on Fridays, every week for six years.

  Xiu was sitting on the floor in the foyer near the mailboxes, chewing the end of her ponytail and reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. She asked me where I was going with such a big suitcase, and when I told her I was moving and wouldn’t be back, she stood up and hugged me goodbye. I couldn’t believe it, a gesture so sweet it brought tears to my eyes that persisted an hour into the Greyhound journey toward Chestnut Hill, New York. (Coach seats on Greyhound. I’d just deposited a check in my name for more money than I could have ever dreamed of and yet there I was, in seat 12C, staring down six more inches of leg room and a reclining seat three rows in front of me, just $29 more.)

  “Saw the police stopped by your place, too,” the Pigeon says, finally letting go. She lowers her voice, as if she’s afraid the dog might hear. “What’d you tell them?”

  “Oh, you know. That I saw Sam leave for the day, dashing to his car, probably hoping to beat the storm.”

  “I saw him drive by, too. He was crazy for driving in those winds. A friend of mine got a tree through her roof, and most of the town lost power.”

  “I heard.” I was up early, with local meteorologist Irv Weinstein, who could hardly contain himself on the 6:00 a.m. news (Hundreds of downed trees! Electricity out in the eastern part of the county!).

  “Poor Annie,” Sidney says.

  “She must be worried sick,” I agree.

  “I saw them together, a few weeks ago, at a thing. They seemed happy. Still can’t believe someone pinned that guy down.” She pauses. “Sam and I dated, you know.”

  “No, Sam didn’t mention it.”

  She laughs. “Why would he? It was a long time ago. And brief. Anyway”—she takes a folded piece of paper from her back pocket—“I came to tell you there’s going to be a search. Some guys from our class are organizing it. Everyone’s meeting at the bowling alley in an hour.”

  I take the flyer. “‘Community search for Sam Statler,’” I read.

  “Well, for his car, I suppose. Chances are he was in an accident, right?”

  “Or a fugue state.” I googled it last night: Why do men disappear without a trace. “There was a guy from Delaware who went out for doughnuts,” I tell the Pigeon. “Found him two weeks later, trying to get a face tattoo in San Diego. Had no idea how he got there. Anyway”—I hold up the flyer and take a step further inside—“Thank you for letting me know.”

  I close the door and stay in the foyer, listening to her retreat down the driveway. When she reaches the hedges, I turn the lock and read the flyer again. “Meet at Lucky Strikes at 10 a.m.! Dress warm!”

  In the kitchen, I take my clipping of Harriet Eager’s article and go to the library, where I slide open the pocket doors and remove the purple binder from the shelf. At Agatha Lawrence’s desk, I carefully punch three holes into the flyer and the article and then snap open the metal rings, putting them in place at the back of the binder. I close the rings and page forward through the contents, past Sam’s credit card bills, which I added this morning, to the very first entry in Sam’s binder. The interview he gave.

  I’ll never forget the day I came upon it and first learned about Sam. I’d been living in Chestnut Hill for three months—alone, in this big house, filled with a dead woman’s memories. I called a contractor to come fix a leak in the living room ceiling, and came downstairs as he finished to find the wood floors covered with duplicate copies of the Daily Freeman, Sam’s face peeking out every few feet. I picked up a copy and read the interview. Local boy, he was moving home to take care of his mother, the former secretary at the high school. His answers were charming and funny and I went straight to Google, staying up into the night, reading about his work, and I knew right away that he was someone I wanted to know.

  I close the binder, return it to the shelf among the others, and go hunt for my boots. The search for Sam starts soon. I should go.

  Chapter 20

  Annie sits behind the wheel, Sam’s dirty T-shirt in her hands. She presses it to her face, breathing in the lingering scent of his sweat, imagining him coming home from the gym earlier in the week in this shirt. Four women pass in front of Annie’s car, wearing matching purple St. Ignatius Catholic Church raincoats. They open the door to the bowling alley and disappear inside. Lucky Strikes, the unofficial headquarters for the Search for Sam! event advertised on flyers some classmates from Sam’s high school photocopied and hung around town this morning, exclamation points in no short supply. “Meet at Lucky Strikes at 10 a.m.! Dress warm!” Annie’s been sitting in her car for twelve minutes now, watching cars pull up and people jog through the rain toward the entrance in waterproof boots and hoods pulled up under a misty rain.

  She imagines Sam in the passenger seat beside her, the two of them just another couple here to join the search, happy for something exciting to do on a Friday morning.

  Look at what you’ve done, she whispers. Moving home and bringing the town together like this. You should run for mayor when you reappear.

  Good idea, he replies. Will you host the Greet and Meet? She can feel his hand reaching across the seat to take hers. You have to go inside.

  I don’t want to.

  Why not?

  I don’t know, she whispers.

  Of course you do, dummy. He threads his fingers through hers. It’s because you’re deathly afraid that at some point today someone inside that bowling alley is going to come across my car, and discover my remains, and you can’t bring yourself to face it.

  Her phone rings on the passenger seat, startling her. It’s Gail Withers, the branch manager at the closest Chase Bank, twenty-nine miles away.

  “Ms. Withers,” Annie says, snatching the phone. “Thank you for calling me back.”

  “You left quite a few voice mails this morning,” Gail says. “How can I help?”

  “My husband has a checking account with your bank, and I’m trying to find out the last time his ATM card was used.”

  “Are you listed on the account?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone, calling different 1–800 numbers, trying to get some answers.”

  “And what were they able to provide you with?”

  “Jack shit.” Annie presses the ache that is building behind her eyes again. “Which is why I tracked you down. I thought talking to someone more local, that maybe . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Potter, but the bank doesn’t share information with unauthorized users. It’s for our customers’ protection.”

  “I’m not asking the bank to do this, Gail. I’m asking you.”

  She hesitates. “I’m sorry, Annie. I wouldn’t be able to do that even if I wanted to.”

  Annie takes a breath, resisting the urge to scream. “I haven’t spoken to my husband in two days,” she mutters. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gail says again, sounding genuinely pained. “I saw the article this morning. I know how difficult this is.”

  Annie wants to laugh. Is that right, Gail? So your husband also vanished into thin air, and to avoid the image of him dying a slow death under the world’s most douche-y car, your brain is keeping busy running in circles, trying to find out if his bank card was used? “Thank you, Gail.” She ends t
he call, opens the car door, and walks briskly toward the bowling alley, ready to get this over with. Inside, she’s hit by the scent of french fries and lane grease. A woman approaches with a clipboard and pen. She’s in her sixties, with hair the color of Concord grape jelly.

  “Name, please?”

  “I’m not staying,” Annie says. “Just dropping something off.”

  A man rushes by with two fresh boxes of doughnuts, which he sets on a nearby table under a sign taped to the wall: With good thoughts from Eileen’s Bakery in Centerview Plaza. “Get one before they’re gone, Mrs. Escobido,” he says as he passes.

  She shakes her head. “Day fourteen on this new diet, and the only thing I’ve lost is two weeks of happiness.” Annie walks past her. People are milling about, pouring coffee from pots set on the bar, Bon Jovi on low. An assembly line of women stand at the bar tables, spreading peanut butter onto stacks of white bread. One of them waves, sad-faced, and it takes Annie a minute to place her. Sidney Pigeon, the woman who lives across the street from the Lawrence House. Another ex-girlfriend making googly eyes at Sam from across the room. It was a political fundraiser, and Annie remembers getting in the car that night, pretending to be Sidney Pigeon, class of 1998. When they got home, she led Sam into the bedroom, tipsily describing the things she’d been fantasizing about doing with him during PTA meetings for the last fifteen years.

  Annie nods and turns around to scan for a grown man who goes by the name of Crush. Crush Andersen, all-star linebacker for the Fighting Cornjerkers. (“I don’t even want to know,” Annie said when Sam first mentioned the name of his high school football team.) Annie met Crush at Mulligan’s, the local haunt, soon after they moved to Chestnut Hill. They were ten minutes into a plate of nachos and frozen margaritas when six guys with the same haircut walked in. There were slaps on the back and a quick round of intros—Crush, Tucky, Half-a-Deck, the entire cast of Happy Days, super-stoked to hear their old buddy Stats moved home.

  One of the guys on the police force had told Crush about the APB issued for a Dr. Sam Statler, and Crush wasted no time coming to the rescue. Flyers. A Facebook page. Securing the use of the bowling alley at no charge, as long as everyone’s out by five p.m. when Family Fun Night starts. Two women in orange parkas approach the doughnut table. “Barbara said someone from the television station is going to be here,” one says, fingering the crullers. “You think it’s going to be one of those national programs?”

  “Don’t be silly,” says the other. “He’s not JonBenét.”

  “Annie, sweetheart, you made it!” Crush is coming toward her, arms outstretched. “How you doing?” he asks, giving her a bear hug she would have preferred to evade.

  “Shitty,” she says, holding up Sam’s T-shirt. “I brought this for you. You said you wanted stinky, so . . .”

  He takes it, sniffs. “Whew,” he says, drawing back. “Zander will love this.” He means the retired search-and-rescue dog someone has offered to bring.

  “You’ve gone all out,” Annie says. Sam’s voice pops into her head again. What did you expect? he scoffs. I told you Crush was voted Most Likely To Spearhead the Search for Sam Statler When He Disappears in Twenty Years.

  “Stats would do the same for me,” Crush says. No, I wouldn’t, Sam replies. “You sticking around?”

  “No,” Annie says. “Not really my thing. But you’ll call me if anything . . .”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll keep you posted every step of the way.” She thanks him and heads back toward the exit, back to her car. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she drives faster than she should down Route 9, turning left up the mountain. She slows around the turns approaching their driveway, straining for a view over the guardrail and down the ridge, trying not to imagine the worst. The wind was stronger than he was expecting, he took the turn too fast . . .

  The sky has turned a dark gray when she arrives home. In the living room, she turns on the light, seeing the mess. Piles of papers on the floor, books scattered about, the contents of the kitchen junk drawer strewn across the coffee table. She drops her coat on the sofa and walks into the kitchen, lacking the energy to deal with the chaos she created last night while looking for the spare key to Sam’s office. She knows he had one made. She can see it clearly: Sam flashing a heavy gold key hooked onto an orange plastic keychain reading

  Gary Unger

  Gary Unger Locksmiths

  It was their two-week anniversary, and Sam had arrived ten minutes late at the Parlor, complaining how he’d had a hard time extricating himself from a conversation with the lonely, eccentric owner of the Lawrence House, from whom he’d just started renting.

  “Spare to my office,” Sam said. “In case of emergency.”

  “Like what?” she said. “You’re trapped under a particularly big ego and can’t get up?”

  But then he didn’t tell her where he put the key, and she was up until three in the morning, tearing apart the house, wondering what kind of idiot makes a key specifically designed for an emergency and then tells nobody where it is. It’s pointless. She knows that. The police told her that Sam’s landlord saw him leave, and if he’d gone back to the office, his car would have been there. But she’s too restless to do nothing.

  In the kitchen she opens and then closes the refrigerator door, unsure of the last time she ate. Agitated and restless, she goes to the bedroom and considers picking up the notes she’d started for her next class, but she’s too distracted, imagining everyone at Lucky Strikes receiving their assignments and heading out with their soggy maps to search for any signs of Sam.

  She climbs into bed, the letters she found last night still strewn across his pillow. They were in a box on a shelf in the closet, a short stack from Sam’s dad, typed on expensive-looking letterhead. She’d fallen asleep reading through them, each one the same basic message: Hi Sammy! I’m thinking about you all the time, son. Call any time you need! Love you, son!

  She pulls up the blankets, remembering the pained look on Sam’s face when he told her the story about his father—leaving when Sam was fourteen, the unexpected gift of $2 million. She slips her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and opens her voice mail, needing to hear his voice. Her Bluetooth is on, connected to the top-of-the-line sound system Sam insisted on installing. She hits play on a message he’d left a few weeks ago, on his way home from work, and his voice floods the room.

  Hello Annie. This is Sam, your husband. She closes her eyes, the pressure building in her chest. I’m calling you on the telephone, like it’s 1988, to tell you I will be stopping at Farrell’s in ten minutes and ask if you want anything. Oh—and you still haven’t changed your name on your outgoing message to say Mrs. Sam Statler. His voice gets stern. I’d like this to be my last reminder. Is that clear?

  She can’t help it, she laughs. She’s listened to this message a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours, and he makes her laugh every time. But then she stops, and just like that, she’s crying and she can’t stop. Is this what happens? Things go extremely well for a short time, before tragedy strikes and it all disappears? It’s like she’s right back there, eighteen years old, waving goodbye to her parents on that pier, the day of the accident. The worst day of her life.

  Her phone beeps with a new text message, and she wipes away her tears and reaches for it, seeing it’s from Crush.

  We’re off, Annie. Wish us luck.

  Chapter 21

  “Sam?”

  Sam opens his eyes. It’s dark, and his head hurts like hell.

  “Sam, can you hear me?”

  “Hello,” Sam mumbles. He tries to sit up, but the pain in his skull keeps him bolted to the ground. “Help me—”

  “Don’t try and move, Sam.” It’s a man’s voice. “Stay right where you are. Here, squeeze my hand if you can.” Sam feels a hand in his and squeezes. “Great, Sam. You’re going to be okay.” There are fingers on his lips, placing pills on his tongue. “I’m giving you something to help with the pain as I
get you out of here. Give these things a second to kick in.” The man is right, because whatever Sam just swallowed seems to immediately dull the pain. In fact, it’s not long before he hardly feels anything at all except a pair of sturdy hands, hoisting him up, dragging him slowly across the sharp gravel. “Hang tight, Sam. You’re going to be okay,” the man huffs as the terrain changes and the sky opens and before Sam can ask where he is, he closes his eyes and falls back to sleep.

  Chapter 22

  In the library, I pull my chair up to my computer station and set my tea on a coaster. With a deep breath, I open Amazon, scared to check my rank. My stomach sinks. I’ve dropped fifteen places in less than a week while Lola Likely from Missouri is number nine, the maniac. It’s fine. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix everything.

  I open my notebook and start at the top of my to-review list: one pair of TrailEnds waterproof hiking boots in ash blue.

  I just finished walking on muddy ground for two hours and suffered minimal seepage. However, I do not for the life of me understand why these things DO NOT HAVE A BELLOWS TONGUE.

  I wish I’d taken pictures. Three times I had to stop to shake pebbles from my boot, slowing down the eight other people assigned to search the woods on Route 9, an area Sam would have passed on his way home from work the night of the storm. A team of lunch ladies from Brookside High School and I spent the afternoon roaming the woods, looking unsuccessfully for any sign of his car. Everyone seemed reluctant to be outside in the rain, and we would have given up an hour earlier if it wasn’t for Eleanor Escobido, beloved head cook at Brookside High for thirty-five years. (I recognized her face as the one smiling from the back page of the yearbook every year, waving goodbye through the cafeteria door.) It was cold and dreary in the woods, and Mrs. E did her best to keep everyone’s spirits up by sharing stories about Sam, the good-looking boy everyone seemed to like, his mother devastated after that no-good husband left for an underpants model.