A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

I’m stuck on how a girl could be there one moment and missing the next — how someone steals another person. Is it sheer physical force? A psychological game? Is it that women, girls, boys are all weaker than adult men, who can simply pick them up and move them from one end of the earth to another? And this happens in a dark vortex, a break from reality; it’s like some door opens to a dark underside and one of us is dragged down under.

By eight o’clock, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy, worried not only about the missing girl and every girl everywhere, but also about the kittens. Are they all right — are they in their new homes weeping, clawing, wishing more than anything to get back to the safety of Mama?

How do any of us survive?

By eight-fifteen, I can’t tolerate my anxiety any longer — I call Ashley at school, just to check in.

There seems to be confusion — she’s not there. I ask for her roommate, who hands me over to the housemother, who tells me that the school made a change in her living accommodations. “I thought you knew,” she says.

“I had no idea.”

“She’s been staying with one of the teachers. Let me get you that number.”

I call that number, get a machine, leave a message; a few minutes later, a very nervous-sounding Ashley calls back.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I was just checking in.”

“You don’t usually make unscheduled calls,” she says.

“Surprise,” I say.

There’s something in Ashley’s voice that’s not right.

“I didn’t get you away from something important, did I?”

“No,” she says. “I was just doing my homework.”

She is a bad liar — but I say nothing. “What was for dinner tonight?”

“I think it was fish,” she says.

“What kind of fish?”

“White, with a kind of yellow-orange-colored sauce,” she says.

“Did you eat it?”

“No,” she says.

“What did you have?”

“There was a vegetarian option — stuffed shells and salad.”

“Everything else okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess,” she says.

“Okay, then, I’ll say good night — talk to you tomorrow, the usual time.”

“Thanks,” she says.

I hang up feeling awkward, like I stepped in something I don’t quite know what.

The 11 p.m. news has live coverage from a candlelight vigil being held in the park where the girl was last seen — the same park where I take Tessie, the one where I had my sobbing meltdown. Women in packs are running through the park in a Take Back the Night rally and throwing their running shoes over the telephone wires. The police are following up on multiple leads but have no new information as of this hour.

I open a can of salmon for the cat; she shows no interest. I leave it on the counter as a peace offering and go up to bed. None of the animals join me.

Life goes on — a lie. I think of volunteering, joining one of the search groups that are combing the nearby woods, but I worry someone will figure out who I am — someone will make something of it.

The next day, I try and distract myself with the book. I work for an hour or two. I move paragraphs here and there and then back again.

I get in the car and drive in circles and ask myself: What am I doing? Do I think I’m looking for her?

I think of where people might congregate, might meet to worry as a group. I can’t go to the Starbucks — it’s too close, like a ground zero. I think of an excuse — light bulb — and go to the hardware store.

Men are gathered there, doing what men do, pretending they’re not worried, pretending they’re not human, but wanting to be together nonetheless.

“I was out with them last night — going through the woods. I let ’em use my truck.”

“It’s a damn shame.”

“They’ll find her; girls do this, they run off. …”

“They don’t do it anymore. That was before; now they stay close to home, it’s no longer safe.”

“What do you know?”

“I raised three of my own.”

Life continues, but I don’t really know how anyone can carry on when someone is missing. Life is suspended; worse than suspended, it is a living hell, it’s impossible not to be driven mad with worry, fear, lack of information. The brain loops, cannot let go, cannot take a breath, because to let go even for a second might mean to forget; to stop sending the search signal might let her fall through the cracks.

Out of the corner of my eye I see DeLillo at the register. I can’t tell if he’s listening in on the conversation or not. He’s buying duct tape and dust masks and a flashlight.

“Putting together your disaster kit?” the guy behind the register asks.

“Spring cleaning,” DeLillo says. He glances up at me, blankly, expectantly returning my glance. We make eye contact, but then I quickly look away.

I buy my light bulbs. Somehow I want to scream at them: You’re wrong, you’re all wrong, the world has changed, something evil has risen, like a serpent hand of Hades, has slithered its ugly head up from below, out from within, and snatched something fresh off the shelf.

The way they talk about it is so suburban, so brainlessly parochial, that it is unbearable. I leave, almost running out of the store, gasping for air.

A panic attack, as though my familiarity with a kind of darkness, my less-than-oblivious musings, has caught me off guard.

I remind myself that I did not do this, and yet just knowing, just feeling, just being the little bit more familiar than most with the impulses that allow such things to happen makes me uncomfortable. I think of myself as an outsider — a suspect. My devolution, my despicable descent into adultery and murderous familial fellowship, has welled up and undone me.

And then she is there, on my doorstep, waiting, as though nothing has happened. “I’ve been terrified you were gone,” I say.

“Gone where?”

“Missing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That girl.”

“What girl?” she asks.

“Are you blind? Don’t you see the posters all over town or watch TV?”

She says nothing — she knows but doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I saw you,” she says. “Outside the store, giving away the kittens.”

“You were there?”

“It’s my grocery store.”

“How come you didn’t say anything?”

“I liked watching you.”

“What was I doing?”

“Giving away kittens.”

“Are you stalking me?”

She changes the subject: “Did you give all the kittens to good homes?”

“I had to keep one.”

“For your daughter?”

“I don’t have children.”

“Right,” she says, like I’m lying. “You just borrow them. …”

“You want the truth?”

She says nothing.

“My brother, the owner of this house, is insane.”

“There’s one in every family — no biggie,” she says.

“There was a murder in this house,” I say, wondering if I am being provocative because I’m annoyed with her.

“Really?”

I nod ever so slightly, as though realizing the enormity of what I’m saying.

“Was this before you bought the house?” she asks.

“Like I said, it’s not my house.”

“Oh, right,” she says, “I spaced.” And then she crosses her legs and shifts, preparing herself, bracing for information. “Okay, I’m ready.”

And all that comes out is so short, as though the story has sucked itself back into the deep ether, like a tragic genie racing back into the bottle — my own guilt, my awareness that I’ve not actually discussed this with anyone.

“My brother killed his wife.”

A long pause.

“On purpose?” she asks.