Catherine Lacey - Nobody Is Ever Missing

The next morning I woke on that ratty sofa and went to find Judas and Ozzie asleep in the house on couches in front of a muted television. There was a close-up of a man in drenched white clothes, standing on a field, shaking fists above his head of bared teeth.

I’m leaving , I said.

Ozzie snored.

I’m leaving now, Judas … This is your wife. And I’m leaving.

I put my hands on my hips and spoke in Annie’s voice.

I am leaving because I want a divorce. In fact, we’re already divorced because I called a midnight lawyer and signed your name.

Judas didn’t move. His mouth gaped like a slit in a fish belly and I saw his lip suck slightly in, then out again.

It’s over! Over, over, over! Please do not attempt to contact me.

I went back out to the porch, swung my backpack on, walked out the side door and up the dirt path to the road. I was angry. I didn’t know why I was angry but I knew that I was angry and I hadn’t felt anger in so long it hit me harder, like coffee after weeks without, and this was the morning I wondered if all this aloneness was starting to sour me somehow, if I was becoming an increasingly ridiculous person — ridiculous for faking a twelve-hour marriage, faking a one-minute divorce, for leaving my real home and real husband, ridiculous for even thinking that leaving was ridiculous, because this was the decision that I had made because I am a person and people make decisions — yeses and noes — it’s supposed to be like that.

A postman’s truck had come up the road and stopped a few meters from me, so I walked over and got in. The postman had his hand on the door handle. He was frowning.

Where am I?

I hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It was just what I was thinking.

Just east of Takaka. At the foot of Marble Mountain , the postman said. He let his hand drop off the handle and stopped frowning, as if he was happy to be reminded of where he was.

I didn’t think Marble Mountain existed.

I suppose it doesn’t. That’s just what people call it. It’s not even a mountain. Just a big hill.

Isn’t it also a song? Or a made-up place?

Could be.

I put my hands in my lap.

Listen , he said, I wasn’t actually stopping to pick you up. I have to make a drop here, make a delivery.

No cars had driven by and I thought it might have been too early to get a ride from anyone but him, and while I was sitting there thinking this the postman got out, moved something out of the back of the truck, and I stopped thinking and instead watched a bird in a tree. She was moving her head up and down as if agreeing with the morning.

The postman got back into the truck and said he’d take me to town, so he did and when he let me out in a parking lot on a street that seemed to be the entirety of Takaka, I stood still for a moment and smiled at the postman while I thought of that bloody stingray I’d seen when I was on the ferry and I wondered if it was just another dead thing in the ocean now, sinking to the bottom, and the postman drove away slowly, as if he wasn’t sure if it was all right to leave me unattended, like I could explode or get kidnapped.

It was my last session at the clinic when I began to wonder if my husband was in on it, somehow — the questions, electrodes, blue liquid — if maybe he was on the other side of a mirrored window somewhere, but I didn’t remember any mirrored windows, so maybe it was more subtle, maybe he had a lab technician or the lead scientist or the whole team on his side, and it was everyone versus me, an undetectable war against an un-understandable wife, a Trojan horse — this study I’d volunteered for, for the sake of science, a discovery, for the sake of a slightly better understanding of the mess of all minds.

At my last session the man with the black hair and large, soft hands was sliding the cold jelly and electrodes on my scalp as usual. We watched the monitor and he’d move one electrode, trying to get the right feedback, but another one would go off ( Oh, drat ) and the little digits flashing didn’t mean anything to me, but one of them would switch from maybe a 2 to a 0 ( Oh, drat ) and he’d worm his fingers through my hair, all matted with the jelly, and push the electrode and I’d feel something shift that was tiny and cool, like the ice-cold foot of a fly ( Oh, drat ), and I looked up at the man with the black hair and the large, soft hands and tried to estimate how well he could lie and whether this whole study was just a long search for what part of me was missing. What had once seemed completely impersonal and routine now seemed invasive and insane — grotesque in how close it let people get into my brain. But, no, of course not, of course not of course not ofcoursenot. This was a study, not a plot. I had signed a form months ago that said this was a study and they weren’t going to use any of this information in any way that would hurt me and even I would not have access to the information they took and it would all be anonymous and the lab technicians had also taken oaths, I’m sure, and it was all for science, not for my husband, and this was a prestigious university and prestigious people were a part of this work and everyone was playing by the rules and my husband was not a part of it, not in on it, not even close to it and I had no real reason to think that he would or could be because he was also a prestigious person, wasn’t he, with his thin hair and serious eyes and chalkboard and the dedication he had to numbers, to finding something that was somehow narrowly hidden in them, and he knew that thing was there, somewhere, in the numbers and similarly I knew (or thought I knew) that something was hidden in my husband and I, too, had to find it, had been looking for it, had wondered if somehow something of Ruby was hidden in him, somehow, if she was folded into him by accident.

Are you ready?

The soft-handed, black-haired man was behind the window (just clear, no mirror) and speaking through the microphone to me.

Yes , I said.

Would you like me to read the rules of the study again?

No, thank you.

All right. We’ll begin. What is your earliest memory?

Fireflies , I said, because you were supposed to say whatever came to mind first, no matter what it was, but if it was just one word they would ask the same question again—

What is your earliest memory?

The day my mother brought Ruby home. She was two. I was also two. I don’t know if I actually remember this or if I just remember a photograph of this, and my mother was tan and happy looking, like she’d been on vacation, which she had just before picking up Ruby at the orphanage, and she was holding Ruby on her hip and she was smiling but the pictures of my mother bringing me home from the hospital two years before looked like someone had just beaten her up and handed her a baby.

Thank you. Tell me a nightmare you had as a child.

That I’d grow so big overnight that I wouldn’t be able to leave my room.

Thank you. Please explain the feeling of love.

Someone holding you by the wrist.

Thank you. What is your happiest memory as an adult?

The summer after Ruby died, being at the park with my husband. The light. We smiled.

Thank you. What do you believe happens when we die?

And I understood that you were supposed to say the first thing that came to mind but nothing actually came to mind in that moment and in fact everything seemed to slip out of mind, and all I could think of was a desert, a canyon, and that didn’t seem to have much to do with anything—