Catherine Lacey - Nobody Is Ever Missing

* * *

In the living room an elderly woman was slumped like a sandbag in an ornate wingback chair.

Nina, I’d like you to meet Elyria , Ruth said. Elyria, this is Nina.

Nice to meet you , I said, trying to seem calm and normal and nice — not a woman with a wildebeest renting a room in her, not a woman who sleeps in garden sheds and phone booths and anywhere — but my voice sounded like I had borrowed it and it didn’t fit my mouth, not my real thoughts made into real words, but some awkward hand-me-down.

It’s lovely to meet you, dear , Nina said, not looking up. Her belly paunch looked like risen dough.

Mother , Ruth said, you could make an effort at the very least.

A what?

An effort , Ruth said louder, you could — would you just sit up? We have a guest, Mother, really.

Fine, fine , Nina said, but she didn’t move any part of herself. She was wearing five or six pearl necklaces tangled together. A bowl of wet blueberries was balanced on her gut and a tear of blueberry skin was wedged between her front teeth.

I’m just going to the garden for some herbs , Ruth said. I’ll be right back. There’s coffee and tea if you’d like it.

Nina looked around the room as if someone might try to sneak up on her, then looked at me.

So, how is it? Sleeping in the garden shed?

Oh, it’s just okay , I said.

I think it sounds like fun. I’d like to have some fun again. Once I slept sitting up on a train. Imagine that. A young woman all dressed to travel — just sleeping — sitting up sleeping with her gloves and hat still on!

* * *

After I went at a plate of scrambled eggs and toast like a stray dog, then a second plate, then a bowl of fruit and more butter-heaped toast, Ruth started asking questions (the expected ones: where-was-I-from, where-was-I-going, why-had-I-slept-in-her-shed) and I tried to sip tea as if I was the kind of person who sipped tea as I told her the truth: that I wasn’t lost because I no longer had a destination, that the place I’d wanted to stay in New Zealand had fallen through and the backup plan had fallen through. I really do enjoy being alone , I told her, and I tried to smile, but I realized that I wasn’t quite smiling and what was happening was there was water on my face and it was coming from my eyes and this was surprising to me, but it didn’t seem to surprise Ruth, who tilted her head and asked about my family as if she was a therapist, someone accustomed to sudden, naked pain, and I found myself unable to lie like I had so many other times.

I told her about my husband and Ruby and my mother and I told her everything and I was so tired by the end of it and my chest was shaking and I exhaled and I felt a little relaxed and Ruth, with her concerned and respectably wrinkled face and her silk blouse and pale lilac trousers and the scent of rosemary haloing this emphatically wholesome situation called her life, Ruth looked at me and said, Would you like to call someone, dear? And all I could do was agree with her because it would have been nearly impossible or possibly illegal or at the least difficult to disagree with her wholesomeness— I said, Okay , and she brought a rotary phone out and the only number that came to mind was the number my mother would write in Magic Marker along my forearm when she sent Ruby and me out to play— Just in case, you can never be too careful— and sometimes you couldn’t tell her fours and nines apart— Thatsanine, notta four —and Ruby and I would mimic her later, Thatsanine, thatsanine , we’d say this invented word to other kids who had no idea and we’d smirk at each other and run through sprinklers to wash off the Magic Markered number, and we’d say, We’re never going back now, she’ll never find us now , but we always went back and we always remembered the number and I don’t know why I dialed that number that afternoon at Ruth’s house, but I dialed it as if I had finally found the case she’d meant by just in case , and just like that there was a skeptical Hello on the line and I said, It’s Elyria .

Oh…, my mother said. Elyria? Huh.

I’m okay , I said.

I thought you might be , she said, you always seem to manage. Where is it you went?

New Zealand.

Well, that’s pretty far.

We were quiet for a moment and she said, Are you still there?

Yes.

You know, there was a moment there we all thought you were dead. Is that what you wanted us to think?

I realized it was early evening there, so she’d maybe only had a few afternoon vodkas. I told her that I didn’t want anyone to think I was dead, that I just wanted to leave.

You know, Elly, I really thought you’d be over all this by now. It’s been six years.

I stared at Ruth’s whitewashed china cabinet.

Hello? Are you there?

I’m here , I said.

Well, don’t you have anything to say about that, Elyria? Anything?

About what?

You leave on the anniversary of — you know … It’s always been about Ruby for you, even the marriage — you know that — everyone knows that. I’m just the only one that will say it.

She laughed a little and audibly sipped something.

That’s not what it’s about. I didn’t — I didn’t even know it was … But I must have known it was, I realized, somehow, I must have known. I let the silence settle.

Are you there?… Elyria?

I’m here , I said, but I knew, increasingly, I wasn’t here, and I felt that able-to-weep-and-be-seen version of myself that I’d been with Ruth hardening again, like warm caramel left to cool.

For the record, I told him not to cancel your cards, that was his idea, Elyria, because he didn’t care if you were safe, he just cared if you were his. Do you see how twisted he is now? Marrying his dead student’s sister? A decade between the two of you? That never struck you as strange?

But my mother didn’t know what it was like to be in the diner with the sudden sense that was made between that professor and me, when we were not yet a husband and a wife, but a young woman and a young professor, people who suddenly had something that the other needed, a possibility, a particular balm, and I still don’t know how to adequately describe it or understand it, but it made everything make sense, made getting married make sense, made the guaranteed and steady supply of loss in every life make sense, and then it all changed, somehow, or killed itself, or wandered out and never came back, and that was why I had left, not Ruby, not the lack of Ruby—

I think I need to go , I said, because I was done being reminded of the difference between us, and I hung up the phone and Ruth came back into the room and asked me if I felt better and I said I did feel better because I had turned back into the woman who could fold herself up like an acrobat and store herself away, packed like a body bent inside a cannon, and my face went back to its cool, normal state, not its warm, wet, and helpless animal state and she said, You look better, dear, maybe that’s all you needed, just to talk to your mother for a moment , and I said, Yes, thank you. That was all I needed .

When the black truck slowed and stopped I realized this truck had slowed and stopped for me before — there was that empty-nested woman, that little bird for herself.

I got in and she said, And where are we headed today, mademoiselle? And she smiled. I felt guilty that she was smiling because I knew I was going to tell her that I had lied, there was no farmer husband and I was going nowhere, over and over, always going nowhere.