Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

The idyll of the good daughter lasted less than a week. What broke the peace was this: I drank at least a bottle of wine over dinner with my mother and David, preceded by a gin and tonic and followed by a healthy dose of Kahlua she’d produced from some hidden cupboard, after which I fell into a deep yet troubled sleep rife with pornographic dreams. Then I woke up at five in the morning, thirsty, restless, and wracked by the kind of loneliness that can’t be cured by having a nice chat with your mother. I had to see Angus again.

It was so quiet in the condo that I could almost hear my mother and David breathing behind their closed door. Outside, the sky was packed with stars, but already lightening to purple in the east. There was a burnt tinge to the air, the distant smell of wilderness fires. I got into the Caprice and drove to Wylie’s apartment, feeling alert and alone. There was no answer when I knocked, but when I tried the door it wasn’t locked.

The place was empty and dark, and I stood in the middle of the room waiting for my eyes to adjust. Then something damp and rough brushed against my leg: the dog, licking me.

“Are you all alone here, Sledge?” I said. “For a bunch of animal lovers, these guys don’t pay you much attention.”

In answer, he worked his tongue down my calf.

“That’s enough,” I said.

There was a rustling sound, and a shadow appeared out of the back. Even in the dark I could tell the figure wasn’t tall enough to be Angus. After more rustling and some muttering, a flashlight clicked on and I could see Irina, in a blue night-dress, standing there blinking, looking sleepy and confused.

“Irina, it’s me,” I said.

“Oh, my goodness. Is everything all right? Are they in prison?”

“Are who in prison?” I said.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said again. “Never mind, then.” She set the flashlight down on the kitchen counter, so that its pallid ray stretched across the room. Sledge whined once, as if for show, then lay down at my feet.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. Even in the dark, I saw her face was creased with sleep and concern.

Suddenly the flashlight rolled off the counter and crashed onto the floor. Sledge jumped, and from the bedroom came the anguished sounds of Psyche waking up. I picked up the flashlight as Irina went back to get her, and played the light, in turn, on the dog, the bare floor, and the bedroom, where Irina stepped out cradling the baby in her arms, rocking back and forth and cooing soothingly.

I went to the window and pulled the sheet loose from the duct tape, letting the vague light of early morning into the room.

“Are you all right?” Irina said. I looked down at myself, at shorts and an old T-shirt I didn’t remember putting on, feeling as if I’d only just then woken up. “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They’re off working.”

“Wylie too?”

“Sometimes he helps on Angus,” she said.

“Out,” I said. “He helps out.”

“That’s what I said,” she said, smiling. “Would you enjoy some breakfast?”

Somehow, in an apartment with no power, she made a delicious meal. First, she put a clean baby blanket down on the floor and laid Psyche on top, the baby watching us drowsily, kicking her fat legs a few times before falling back asleep. Then she pulled a small camp stove from a milk crate and heated water over the propane flame, adding dried fruit and powdered milk and maple syrup to some kind of hot cereal, and finally brewed tea. We lingered over breakfast in the cool, gradually brightening apartment. Through the window early-morning sounds made their way into the apartment: trucks barreling distantly past on the highway, the twitter of birds. Psyche smacked her lips in her sleep, but her moon face was otherwise still. We were sitting on the floor, with steaming, maple-scented bowls between us.

“Why did you ask about prison?” I said.

“Oh, no reason.”

“Most people don’t bring up prison without some reason,” I said. Irina shrugged, and the baby lifted her head and said, “Guala guala,” still asleep. Irina smiled. “She is practically obsessing with gorillas.”

“You were telling me about prison.”

“Nobody’s in prison,” she said firmly, and hoisted Psyche onto her chest. She was sitting cross-legged, and for the first time I noticed that her legs were unshaven, brown with hair down to her ankles, and her toes had thick, curved nails. She reminded me of some fairy-tale creature, part human, part animal, who lives in the woods.

Then Psyche woke up and moved a tiny curled fist to her mother’s breast. Irina unbuttoned her pajama top and looked up at me. “Does this bother you?”

I shook my head.

“I am glad of that,” she said, starting to nurse the baby. “Some people we know, they do not like to see the baby.”

“They don’t like babies?” I said. “What’s their problem?”

“It’s because of VE. I’m not adhering.”

“What’s VE?”

“Voluntary extinction,” she said. “No breeding. That’s what they call me. The breeder. Not Wylie or Angus, but some of the others.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said slowly. “That’s crazy.”

Irina shrugged and cupped the back of Psyche’s head in her hand. The baby was sucking dreamily, one hand resting gently against the exposed breast, her eyes closed. “It’s actually the opposite of crazy,” Irina said. “It is totally logical. The logical consequence of thoughtful people observing our world. If you think that humans are destroying the planet, Lynn, and the population is growing too fast, then it only makes sense not to procreate. Trying to slow things down is everyone’s responsibility. VE begins at home.”

In a way, I thought, this made sense. If you believed that overpopulation was an ecological crisis, why would you bring a child into the world? And if you believed that most people’s lives were ruined by unnecessary materialism, then it made sense to share an empty apartment with a handful of like-minded people. And yet, I thought, looking at the baby cradled in Irina’s arms, they were crazy, too. “Jesus H. Christ,” I said.

“You keep saying that,” Irina said sadly, “but I don’t know why.”

I smiled at her then. She seemed like the most innocent person I’d ever met. “Who’s Psyche’s father?” I asked again.

She smiled at me shyly, then blushed deep crimson. “It’s no one you know.”

“Are you sure?”

“You are afraid it’s Angus,” she said suddenly. “It is not. And it is not Wylie, either, in case you are wondering that.”

Now it was my turn to blush. “Okay,” I said.

Psyche had stopped nursing and was fast asleep.

“Do you know,” I said, trying to sound casual, “when Angus is getting back?”

“Oh.” Irina looked surprised. “I thought you had arranged the plan to meet him here. He’s coming back today.”

I felt strangely contented, hanging out in the bare apartment with Irina and her child. We could hear the building rise slowly into life, the banging of doors and the starting of cars, an early-morning argument downstairs.

Irina told me about meeting Wylie, and this version of her life story was less mythological than the one about being transported by a nature special. She had arrived in Albuquerque, a little over a year earlier, but she was homeless. Her dreams about a new life had slipped so far from her grasp that she couldn’t remember how she’d come to hold them in the first place.

“I was also,” she said, “having a little problem with the drugs.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Many kinds. The social worker said I had a diversified appetite.”

I looked at the baby, who had rosy, healthy skin and an appetite confined, from what I’d seen, to Irina’s milk.