Absolute Brightness (13 page)

In their place, however, we found new posters. But instead of Leonard's picture, it was Larry Wheeler's face staring at us from every surface. Larry was Electra's brother. Six months earlier he had signed up to liberate Iraq with the help of the United States Army, and now he was coming home a hero. He had been shot at, along with his entire battalion. And this was weird, because at the time of the shooting, everyone in Neptune was sitting around thinking that the whole Iraq thing was finished and that we had won the war on terrorism. Apparently the situation was more complicated than that, and according to Electra, the war was far from finished, especially in certain places south of Baghdad where renegades got it into their heads to shower Larry and his fellow desert rats with what she described to everyone as “mortal fire.”

“Mortar, I think it's called,” I explained to her, as we all crowded around her down at the video store where she worked.

“Whatever. He's wounded,” she told us. “He lost a part of his leg.”

Thanks to Larry's quick reflexes and loud mouth, the rest of his guys were all saved from certain death. He managed to warn everyone and get them out of harm's way before the second explosion. Larry was thrown thirty feet by the blast, he lost his Ray-Ban sunglasses as well as the lower portion of his left leg, and he was awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery. The
Asbury Park Press
ran a full account of the incident on the front page along with a pre-explosion picture of Larry wearing his helmet, a big grin, the sunglasses, and both his legs. I couldn't help feeling skeptical.

A week earlier a big news story featured an alleged war hero who had survived “mortal fire” and then was miraculously rescued from the enemy by Special Forces. The girl soldier who had been saved looked like a high school cheerleader wearing the wrong costume. She seemed almost too good to be true, and in fact that's exactly what we later discovered. The story of her rescue turned out to be mostly made up by the government in order to allow the American public to feel proud of our troops in Iraq. Was it any wonder I was doubtful?

“He's my brother!” Electra insisted.

“I know, but still, he could've been paid off or something by the government. I'm just saying.”

After I saw Larry, however, there was no denying the fact that he was actually missing a leg. You can't make something like that up, and I was doubtful whether there was enough money in the world to make someone give up a leg just so they could be part of a publicity stunt. But even though Larry was really wounded, even though he was an actual hero, I couldn't help feeling a little pissed off because his situation had so totally eclipsed Leonard's. The new posters announced that a parade would be taking place in Larry's honor and then a picnic afterward with lots of prizes and free stuff. The idea was to celebrate Larry's safe return and allow Neptune the opportunity to thank him for risking his neck and losing his leg in the fight against terrorism. We hadn't offered anything like that on
our
posters, no free soda, no picnic, no parade, games, or valuable prizes. Leonard didn't stand a chance.

Electra couldn't have been more thrilled that her brother had become the new focus of local concern. She began to act as though he had suddenly become best buds with the president of the United States.

I was grateful that school had already let out for the summer, because otherwise I would have had to watch her working the hallways, taking in everyone's compliments, reining in her unruly dreadlocks, and generally presiding over everything.

In spite of Larry's sudden celebrity and Neptune's fascination with the story of how he'd lost his leg, there were a few people who remained steadfast on Leonard's behalf. They were mostly oldies, folks who understood what it was like to be entirely forgotten by most everyone and then end up totally invisible. They knew how to remind people of Leonard in subtle ways—wearing a scarf that he had given them, carrying his poster in their purses, casually dropping his name into the conversation. And even if these were the same people who couldn't tell Monday from Wednesday or me from Deirdre, you had to love them for hanging in there.

“You know what you ought to do, Deirdre?” Mrs. F told me as we waited on line together in the pharmacy. “You oughta get Leonard's picture on them milk cartons.” She was poking at her hive of dyed-black hair with her pointy, brightly polished nails. I knew she didn't want me to ask her why she hadn't been to the salon lately or what was up with all the dangling bobby pins. Mrs. F was on a fixed income, and the less said about her home do, the better. So instead I said: “My mom's got a new prescription for Zoloft. Personally, I'm against antidepressants. I think the pharmaceutical companies are controlling everyone's brain chemistry in this country. Pretty soon we won't be making our own decisions. We'll be like robots. And just for the record, Leonard's a little too old to have his picture on a milk carton.”

Mrs. F just nodded while I turned toward the selection of flavored breath mints and pretended to be interested in what chemicals they put in them.

Ms. D from Drama Camp was also on the case. She called us every day to express how absolutely positive “everyone” was that Leonard would be returned to us safe and sound. Naturally, we assumed that “everyone” included Mr. Buddy. But when we heard that Nathan Kutholtz had been cast to play the part of Ariel in
The Tempest
, and that Nathan had been seen driving around with Mr. Buddy, we began to wonder how sincere and positive “everyone” really was.

Officer DeSantis (or “Chuck,” as we had begun to call him) was also among the small band of believers, those who continued to place Leonard's situation above that of Private First Class Larry Wheeler. And though he wasn't one of my mother's regular customers, he stopped by our house often enough. He came to discuss the details of Leonard's case, gather information, drink my mother's coffee, ask questions, and use the bathroom. When he wasn't in uniform, he looked handsome in a rugged sort of way. His hairstyle, which was almost identical to Deirdre's, made him look like a football coach for the winning team. He had a big face with very small features, and delicate ears that stuck out a bit too much, positioned perhaps to catch clues.

Chuck spent the better part of a week interviewing most of Mom's customers to find out if Leonard had ever mentioned a desire to run away or if he had ever discussed people, places, or things that were unknown to us. The interviews resulted in a long list of exotic locales that the ladies wished to visit someday and a list of names we'd never heard of, names that corresponded to the out-of-state friends and relatives of those being interviewed. A less-exacting detective might have dismissed all this as the useless chatter of old women who didn't have a clue, but Chuck was nothing if not exacting. He wrote everything down and kept the information in a black binder that sat on the front seat of his metallic-blue Subaru. He called this phase of the investigation “casting a wide net” or “trawling for clues” or “Phase One.” If any place or person was mentioned a second time during the course of the investigation, he transferred the detail into his blue binder, which he also kept on his front seat. I anticipated, with a kind of dread excitement, the moment when Chuck reached for that blue binder and we knew for sure that we were headed into the thick of “Phase Two.”

 

nine

“DON'T WAIT TO
call. If you find a clue, call. If you think of something we forgot, call. And for God's sakes, if you hear from Leonard, call.”

Unfortunately Mom took her own advice and carried it way too far. She called so many times that after a while I no longer bothered to say “Hello” when I answered the phone; I just said, “Minutes, Mom.” This was my way of reminding her that if we went over our allotted minutes per month, we would have to pay extra. Most of the time she didn't have anything to report. I didn't either. As a result, our conversations were brief. But they were frequent.

Before Leonard came into our lives, Mom was dead set against the idea of Deirdre or me owning a cell phone due to the possibility of brain cancer. She also objected to the expense and could do a ten-minute monologue on why she considered it outrageous for phone companies to give you the actual phone almost for free and then have the nerve to charge you for waves that a person couldn't see with the naked eye. But because she wanted us all to keep in constant contact during the search for Leonard, she broke down and got us all Nokias. Mine was magenta to match the color of my hair at the time.

It was the Fourth of July and I was standing outside the VFW. I was holding my phone a little away from my ear, because my mother hadn't yet learned how to talk like a normal person into a cell; she seemed to think they were constructed of tin cans and strings and required plenty of volume. She was giving a lecture on matchbooks.

“Mom, stop. Okay? Just stop. I don't know what you're going on about. I'm honestly not listening.”

Then she asked again. Had I ever noticed Leonard collecting matchbook covers from fancy restaurants, because she'd heard stories about boys who collected matchbook covers and if Leonard happened to be one of those boys, then we could find his matchbook collection, track down those restaurants, and ask the waiters if they had seen him. The whole scheme seemed kind of nutty to me, but I couldn't say I was giving it much thought. Not really. Instead, I was staring hard at the VFW building and wondering how a building so neglected and forlorn could have escaped the bulldozer and made it into the twenty-first century. This was a place as hopeless as my mother's latest plan to find Leonard.

“Good-bye, Mother,” I said, and then turned off my phone.

VFW stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars, and let me just say that the VFW meeting hall in Neptune can bring to mind every unfortunate association with the words “veterans,” “foreign,” and “war.”

1. The place is ancient.

2. It is far from home (way on the other side of town).

3. Everyone was fighting. They weren't fighting with guns; they were mostly just arguing among themselves. But still.

After finishing up my call with Mom, I noticed an old guy wearing a jaunty little blue cap and a tired sash with gold fringe that dangled across his chest. He was yelling at the barbecue, declaiming in a very loud voice that it wasn't placed correctly and it definitely had to be moved. His grievance seemed to be with the barbecue itself. But then a younger guy with a bandana and a belly came bounding out of the meeting hall and told the old guy with the cap and sash to cut it out; he kept saying that the old guy didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I wandered inside and began looking around for a familiar face.

Mrs. Lewis, a tall African-American woman who worked at the library, was there, wearing a flowered-print top and bright-blue slacks. Her hair had been blow-dried for the occasion and then curled under at the ends, probably with a hand iron.

I hung back and watched her having an animated argument with a short, blond lady with squinty eyes and sharpened eyebrows.

“I just think the streamers will look more festive if we twirl them from floor to ceiling, then anchor them with tape at either end,” Mrs. Lewis said in her library voice, the one she usually used on the first graders who didn't understand how to use a library.

“No,” the squinty woman replied as she grabbed the streamers from Mrs. Lewis's hand. “We want to swaaag them. Like bunting.”

“We got plenty of bunting already. And nobody likes to swag.”

I was on Mrs. Lewis's side; I thought it was only fair that she had a say in the matter due to the fact that she had a son in the armed services at the time. Also, I didn't like the look of the blonde, or her attitude. I was just about to step forward and offer my opinion when I heard a voice from behind me.

“Hey.”

I turned around and saw someone standing there who resembled Travis Lembeck. In fact, it
was
Travis Lembeck, except he looked as if he had just received an extreme makeover. Everything a person might have ever wanted to improve about him had been improved. He had washed his hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt that was actually white, jeans that fit him, and black New Balance running shoes that looked as if someone had cared enough to buy him a brand-new pair. But most astonishing of all, he had lost the black parka. Without it, the shape of his body was visible, and as it turned out, his body had a definite shape. I could see the sharp rise of each upper arm muscle before it disappeared into his shirtsleeve. The indentation of his breastbone was clearly visible through the shirt, and the sight of his clavicle just above the collar nearly made me swoon.

“Hey, yourself,” I said, as if his whole body were no big deal and not worth losing sleep over.

“You're here early. You here t' help or…”

“No. God, no. I mean … no. I just have these … It's my mother. She wants me to put up these posters. About Leonard.”

He didn't saying anything. He just looked at the pile of yellow paper I was cradling in the crook of my arm.

“Guess you heard,” I said.

“Yeah. Sorry.” He looked away like he might, if he concentrated hard enough, see Leonard standing a long way off on the far side of the room.

“Listen,” he said, without looking back at me. “You wanna, I dunno, get outta here? Go for a ride w' me? I got my car.”

I started to panic, because I realized, Oh my God, this guy wants me to get in his car and go somewhere with him. And to tell you the truth, if something hadn't suddenly taken hold of me (guilt, I guess), I would've turned the panic into excitement, dumped the posters, and taken off with him in a second.

“Maybe later,” I said. “I've got to do this. But later for sure.”