Nell Zink - Mislaid

T hat evening Karen wrote a long letter to Meg.

Meg read the letter three days later, sitting on the porch swing at the post office on the Eastern Shore. She didn’t get back on the road and drive like a bullet straight to Charlottesville. She didn’t even write a reply. She just shuffled to the car, sat in the driver’s seat, and looked in the rearview mirror, thinking of Luke.

I was happy, she thought. I was finally happy.

She put the car in gear and drove slowly back to the squirrel sanctuary. The sun pierced the charcoal-gray clouds with golden light that made even scraggly pines lining the roadside seem to burn like torches, and the water on the back bay was jiggling like mercury. But she felt like shit. More than anything, she was afraid. Joining Flea and Lomax in the living room, she started with the chief locus of her fear: “My baby’s a narc.”

“What?” Lomax said, jerking upright.

“Not about me, or us. But listen to this.” She unfolded the letter. “‘Dear Mom,’ bla bla bla, ‘the police showed up and somebody took me home, but I only know that because when I woke up I found a note thanking me for a good time and, believe it or not, all these hits of acid in my pocket. Temple told me what it was. I guess I dodged a bullet there.’” Meg rolled her eyes. “‘But don’t worry, nothing happened. I was just wasted because they soaked all these strawberries in 151. I felt like crap the day after, but now I’m fine. So this morning the police came to my dorm asking do I know anything about any acid, because somebody said he gave it all to me. Ratting me out to save his own ass! But it was okay, because we knew where we basically buried it, so me and the cops dug out what was left and I could prove that I didn’t want his stupid acid in the first place. What an asshole. They said next time if I find drugs to bring them to the lost and found. I still had a note from that asshole, so I gave it to them as well. I cooperated and was very polite like you say. It will all blow over, but of course Temple’s scared shitless,’ bla bla bla.”

“How is she a narc?” Flea asked. “I don’t get it.”

“The acid was gone. She could have denied all knowledge of it. But she remembered it for them, dug it out of the ground for them, and handed them written proof that it was intended for her personal use. It’s not going to blow over. She’s going to be testifying at some asshole’s trial.”

“Oh.”

“ Ça veut dire, my baby the narc.”

“You scared me bad,” Flea said. “Karen is so cute, and I thought you wanted to sell her out.”

“You have no idea,” Meg said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been living a lie.”

Flea looked at Lomax for a moment and said, “We know you’re a lesbian. I think of it as possession by the moon goddess.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “And what if. .” She hesitated.

“What if what?”

“What if I told you my name was Margaret Randolph Vaillaincourt Fleming and I’m probably wanted for kidnapping?”

“Kidnapping who?” Flea asked.

“Karen.”

“For sexual purposes?” Lomax asked.

Meg’s facial expression was indescribable. “She’s my daughter!”

Lomax thought it over. “Adopted, or real? She looks so white.”

Meg sighed.

“Does she know anything about our business dealings?”

“Offhand I would say, nothing whatsoever, if she thinks acid in her pocket is a reason to sell somebody down the river.”

“Well, shit,” Lomax said. He lit a bong and passed it around.

Flea said, “You know what you should do. You should go home right now and give your place a really good exorcism. Like, get some of that Haitian floor wash against bad vibes and make sure you get it into every corner, and lay down a new coat of paint. You do not want them finding one single molecule if it comes to them searching your apartment.”

“Thank God this place isn’t my property,” Lomax said. “They can’t divest the squirrel huggers for ill-gotten gains, I don’t think.”

“That’s true,” Flea said. “Nobody can civil forfeit a squirrel. But now tell me about this kidnapping.”

“It was a marital spat,” Meg said. “We split the kids down the middle.”

“You have another kid? That’s so sad! Is it a boy or a girl? Older or younger?”

“Boy, older,” Meg said. “Five years older than Karen. Only three and a half now, though, because Karen’s actually this dead baby whose birth certificate I stole.”

“So what’s her real name?”

“Mickey. Mireille.”

“Maray?” She rolled the word around her mouth with her tongue and needed several lessons to say it with the proper Languedoc growl. “Is the father French?”

“The father is Lee Fleming.”

Lomax’s eyes widened and he said, “ The Lee Fleming? La Fanciulla del West? ”

“What?” Meg said. “Fanciulla del West? I know he has some nicknames, but Fanciulla del West?”

“People don’t tell wives everything.” Lomax paused for a moment to fake a discretion he did not possess and said, “Lee Fleming pulled a train in a club in Staunton that was a hundred and fifty guys. I kid you not.”

“That’s bullshit,” Meg said. “Just the kind of pathetic crap straight guys with nothing to their names say to comfort themselves over the fact that a stud like Lee can give it to anything or anybody he wants.”

“Look who’s still in love,” Flea said.

“Oh, man,” Lomax said, pouring himself a glass of Jägermeister. “Back to your daughter the moray eel. What are we going to do about her?”

“Is that a threat? She knows nothing. I raised her right. She’s a good girl. Too good if you ask me.”

At that very moment, Karen was saying to Temple, “If I stick my tongue in your mouth while your dick’s inside me, we’re a human yin-yang symbol.” She demonstrated.

He got to his feet on the bed with her clinging to him like a limpet and said, “Au contraire! I alone am Abraxas! All forces are combined in me! Male, female, good, evil!” He shoved her against the wall and fucked her until she turned her face away and came with a series of minor screams, then turned around to lean his butt on the wainscoting and let her push off with her feet, caressing him with her cunt in a way that was truly obscene and continuing to have occasional orgasms. Temple was reordering his priorities in life at an alarming rate. Schoolwork, what’s that? Physics, who cares? He was considering taking a year off, maybe make the Grand Tour of historic European capitals with Shadow, working on his French.

Meg took Flea’s advice and spent early November in Centerville, scrubbing and wallpapering. She burned nearly everything she owned — anything that might have a trace of white powder on it anywhere — in a clearing in the woods. She made a New Year’s resolution to change her life.

Not her clothing this time, but her life. She would tell Luke and Karen the truth. . or not. If her life changed enough, maybe she could skip the explanations. That recurring thought generally inspired her to pour herself a glass of wine for courage.

In Centerville, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went uneventfully. Luke was off with her clan in Brooklyn. Nobody was interested in admitting that anything had happened.

And in a sense, nothing had happened. Karen and Temple were not charged with any crime. Like Temple, Karen was not the kind of student the police in Charlottesville were after. She was black.

They were after her brother, but without drama. To the prosecutor’s mind, Byrdie had by surrendering agreed to help his career, in a way, and might even be owed a certain amount of gratitude. Submitting to be tried was a deeper genuflection before the law than any guilty plea. The prosecutor wanted the case to stay in Charlottesville where his voters lived, so he held off going to the papers. All in good time.