Evan Hunter - The Moment She Was Gone

My mother sighs deeply.

“She was watching television. I came in to ask if she wanted to come shopping with me. An old movie was playing. Something with Joan Crawford, they play all those old movies in the afternoon. Annie asked me if I thought Joan Crawford was smarter than she was. I told her...”

“Smarter? Why would she ask something like that?”

“She said people say Joan Crawford is smarter. People say she’s stupid.”

“What people?”

“Well, she didn’t say ‘people,’ exactly,”’ my mother says, sounding suddenly wary, even cagey, the way she often sounds when we’re discussing my sister.

“What were her exact words? Can you remember?”

“Well... she asked me if I thought Joan Crawford was smarter than she was, and when I said ‘No,’ she said, ‘They say she’s smarter.’ ”

“They?”

“Yes.”

“They say?”

“Yes.”

“Who did she mean by ‘they,’ did she say?”

“No. Well... she was using it the way everyone uses it. It’s a common expression. ‘They say’ means ‘People say.’ ”

“Did she seem to think anyone was at that very moment telling her Joan Crawford was smarter than she was?”

“No, she was watching television. There were just the two of us in the room. I certainly didn’t tell her Joan Crawford was smarter.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her Joan Crawford had script writers.”

“She didn’t think anyone on television was telling her Joan Crawford was smarter, did she?”

“Well, I can’t say what she was thinking, I’m not a mind reader.”

“Did she seem to be listening to voices coming from the television set?”

“There were voices coming from the television set, Andy. There was Joan Crawford’s voice and the actress in the scene with her, I forget her name.”

“Mother,” I say, “please don’t be dense.”

My mother flashes me one of her withering green-eyed looks.

“I’m asking you if voices told Annie to run off again.”

“I did not hear any voices speaking to Annie,” she says stiffly. “Did she ever tell you she hears voices?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m simply trying to...”

“There were no voices. Wouldn’t I know if she was hearing voices?”

“But she said ‘ They say,’ is that right?”

“They say she’s smarter, yes.”

“Meaning Joan Crawford.”

“Yes.”

“And you told her Joan Crawford had script writers.”

“Well, first — Annie said, ‘They think I’m stupid.’ ”

“They again.”

“Yes.”

“What’d you think she meant by that?”

“People. People think she’s stupid. But they don’t, you know. All my friends think she’s highly intelligent.”

“You didn’t think she was referring to voices or anything.”

“No, I didn’t think she was referring to voices or anything, as you put it. Look, son, I know just where you’re going, so cut it out, will you, please? Your sister wasn’t talking to Joan Crawford or anybody else but me, is what you’re suggesting, isn’t it? That Annie hears voices? That’s right, isn’t it? Annie hears voices, I hear voices, everybody in the whole wide world hears voices except you and your Dr. Lang! Please, kiddo, give me a break!”

“Did she say anything else?”

My mother doesn’t answer me.

“Mom?”

“I heard you.”‘

“Well, did she?”

“She said, ‘Forget it.’ ”

“And that was it?”

“Yes.”

“Was she still watching television when you left the room?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say anything when you came back?”

Again, my mother doesn’t answer.

“Mom?”

“No,” she says at last. “Nothing.”

The front door opens.

Augusta is back from her nicotine break.

“Anything happen while I was gone?” she asks, sounding as if she’d been to the ladies’ room during a particularly good part of a movie and now wants to know what she missed.

“Andy thinks his sister was talking to Joan Crawford,” my mother says.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Augusta says, and then waves her hand as if to dismiss this entire nutty family into which she has married.

“Where’s Aaron?” my mother asks. “I thought he was with you.”

“He’s downstairs chatting with the doorman,” Augusta says. “Is there any coffee?”

“On the stove,” I say.

“His sister’s gone, and he’s downstairs chatting with the doorman?”

“I’ll go get him,” I say, and leave the apartment at once.

My brother Aaron is standing outside the building when I come downstairs. He is smoking a cigarette. He looks like all the other lost souls standing outside buildings all over Manhattan, puffing on their forbidden cigarettes. He is the CEO of a giant corporation, but he has been reduced to sneaking smokes behind the barn.

He does not even try to hide the fact from me. Perhaps he’s forgotten that he told us he quit smoking five years ago. Or perhaps he no longer gives a damn what he told us. There is certainly an arrogant swagger to the manner in which he deliberately takes a huge puff as I approach, and then blows the smoke on the air like a factory smokestack belching pollutants.

“I thought you quit smoking,” I say.

I have never been able to resist taking a jab at Aaron. Perhaps that’s because he took so many jabs at me when we were kids. Rarely does his verbal sparring match mine, however. This time his riposte is at least adequate.

“So did I,” he answers. “What’s going on upstairs?”

“Joan Crawford,” I say.

“Joan Crawford?”

“Whether or not Annie heard Joan Crawford talking to her.”

“I’m sure she did,” Aaron says.

I look at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he says.

“What makes you so sure Annie...?”

“The doctor in Sicily told you she hears voices, didn’t he? So it’s quite possible she heard Joan...”

“No, you didn’t say it was quite possible, you said you were sure. What makes you so sure all of a sudden?”

“Forget it, okay?”

“No, let’s not forget it. Annie’s gone...”

“Annie’s been gone forever,” he says, and takes a last drag on his cigarette, and crushes it under his shoe. He is starting into the building when I catch his sleeve.

“Just a second, Aaron.”

Our eyes meet.

“What is it you know?”

“Let it go, Andy.”

“No. Tell me. Please.”

He hesitates a moment, and then shrugs and takes a deep breath.

“How do you think she got the money to go to India that first time?” he asks.

“I always suspected Mama gave it to her.”

“Never in a million years. Mama was still angry about the band equipment.”

“Then how?”

“Do you remember when it was? That she went to India?”

“Yes?”

“A week after my wedding. Do you remember my wedding?”

I remembered it came as no surprise that Augusta decided to get married not in the New York area, where everyone in our family lived, but instead in Ridley Hills, New Jersey, where the Unmannerly Clan lived. Never mind that Grandma Rozalia was battling cancer at Sloan-Kettering, never mind that. We were invited to Ridley Hills, and if we couldn’t make the long trip there — as certainly Grandma couldn’t — then that was unfortunate, kiddies. As Augusta’s younger brother The Gulf War Hero once remarked, “In her own way, Augusta leads.” Ah yes, so she does.

So on that brisk Sunday morning in September, I rented a car and drove my mother and sister across the George Washington Bridge, and onto the Jersey Turnpike, and then across the entire state of New Jersey to where first Ridley, and next Ridley Falls, and finally Ridley Hills nestled close to the Pennsylvania border. We actually passed the football stadium where Augusta must have conceived on a pair of starlit nights in a Chevy and on the grass. We actually passed the hospital where she gave birth first to Lauren and next to Kelly. We actually found the church — Augusta’s directions were somewhat less than meticulous — where she would be bound in holy matrimony to my jackass brother, who was now asking me to remember a day I’d chosen long ago to forget.