Among the Missing (25 page)

“I’ll just avert my eyes for a moment,” David Bender said. “Maybe I’ll be able to forget, though of course maybe I’ll also go blind with the shock of your scandalous behavior.”

“Don’t,” Trent said. He wanted to say, “Don’t be an asshole,” but he cut himself off before the words emerged, and instead he merely settled back in his seat, feeling awkward as David Bender took a drink of beer. Dorrie straightened herself in her corner of the booth, giving Trent a steady look as she ran a hand over her hair. She wasn’t mellow, as he’d thought before; she was sad.

But David Bender didn’t seem to notice. He smiled at the two of them, leaning forward confidentially. “You guys,” he
said. “I have to say that this is probably the scariest bar in America. Do you know that? I just saw a woman in sequined jeans. My God! And she’s dancing. She’s honky-tonking before my eyes.” Trent shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t look over his shoulder to observe the woman that David Bender had noticed. He looked over at Dorrie, hoping that she might ask David Bender to lower his voice, but she seemed to be thinking of something else entirely.

“David,” Trent said after a moment, trying to sound gentle. “Don’t stare.”

“Sorry,” David Bender said, and made a show of feigning sheepishness. But he held his eyes on Trent for a long moment. Then he took another deliberate sip of beer. “Dorrie,” he said. “Baby? Are you awake?”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “What?” she said, and David Bender looked at Trent conspiratorially, as if the two of them were playing a joke on her.

“You know, Dorrie, it’s going to be time pretty soon for you to start going native. I mean, you’re going to have to get yourself a new hairdo, and some dainty little cowgirl boots, and maybe some tight, cattle-rasslin’ jeans.” He grinned at both of them, but it made Trent cringe. He watched as Dorrie glanced around, observing, soaking up information, and her expression grew heavy as David began to giggle into his hand. “I’m just picturing it,” he said. “I mean, tenure track is wonderful, but
Dorrie
. What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and didn’t look at Trent. “I have to be somewhere, I suppose.”

“Good point,” said David Bender. He let his eyelids lower
with catlike awareness as he looked at Trent. “And what about you?” David Bender said. “I suppose you have to be somewhere as well.”

“Yes,” Trent said.

“And that would be—?” David Bender said. “Where? In my mom’s panties, maybe?”

There was a moment, right before Trent hit David Bender, that the whole thing seemed more or less logical. They were mother and son, he thought—and there was no way of knowing what had gone on between them in the past—the sets of emotions that drew them together, the hopeless ache that opened up as she widened her eyes in that long moment.

Trent didn’t know why, but later he’d thought of the day of his wedding, of the way he’d sat in his car, waiting for his mother to come out of the trailer so they could drive to the courthouse where Brooke—his bride—was waiting. He was afraid that they’d be late, that this was another small moment of potential happiness that would be spoiled by petty details, that once again he would feel cloddish and inept and somehow responsible.
Late for his own wedding
, Trent thought, and he honked the horn.

Then, when his mother came out, he was sorry. “Don’t you honk that horn at me!” she yelled. “I’m not some little slut you’re taking out on a date!” She was surprisingly furious, and he stiffened silently, staring at the dashboard as her high heels clicked down the steps and across the gravel driveway, as she flung open the passenger door of the car. She glared at him as he climbed in, and he saw with regret that she had been trying,
as he waited, to make herself look nice. She was a little stoned, it was true, but she’d put on makeup, and her long hair was pinned back, and she had on a new blouse, silky red, to which she’d pinned a white lily. The lily hung crookedly, listing, and he watched as she poked at it with her fingers. There was no changing her mood now, he thought, and he looked away, back to the trailer where he’d grown up.

“You left the door open,” he said softly, but she only shrugged.

“Forget it,” she said, and pulled the unsteady corsage off her chest, tossing it onto the dashboard. “Forget it,” she said. “There’s nothing in there anybody would want to steal.”

And he nodded, feeling the atmosphere of her sadness, her rage, her hopeless, bitter love close over him as he put the car in gear. In the rearview mirror, the screen door swung weakly in the wind.

This was the memory that came to him, even as he took to David Bender with his fists, even as Dorrie cried out and the beer spilled on the table and the other bar patrons murmured and craned to stare; even as Dorrie’s expression seemed to contract, as if she’d never seen him before. He could see Dorrie’s stricken, frightened face as she flailed between them, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Inside his head, everything was silent and sealed tight, just as it had been on that day in the car with his mother, on his way to his wedding.

This is a braid of human hair. The braid is about two feet long and almost two inches wide at the base. It seems heavy, like old rope, but is not brittle or rough. Someone has secured each end with a rubber band, so the braid itself is still tight—the simplest braid, which any child can do, three individual strands twined together, A over B, C over A, et cetera. It smells of powder. There is a certain violety scent, which over the years has begun to reek more and more of dust. The color of the hair is like dry corn husks. At first, Colleen thought it was gray.

But it must have been blond, she now thinks. There was a newspaper clipping among the effects in her father’s strongbox, concerning the death of a girl who would have been Colleen’s aunt: her father’s older sister, though he’d never mentioned her,
that she could remember. The clipping, which is dated October 9, 1918, is a little less than an eighth of a column. “Death came to the home of Julius Carroll and wife Sunday evening and claimed their daughter, Sadie, aged eleven years, who had been ill with typhoid fever for two weeks. All that loving and willing hands could do did not save the child.” The article goes on to describe the funeral and to offer condolences. Perhaps erroneously, Colleen has come to believe that the braid belonged to that long-ago girl. There is no one to ask, no one alive who can confirm anything. She found it, curled in the bottom of a trunk along with some of Colleen’s grandfather’s papers. The braid wasn’t labeled. It seems to have been removed rather abruptly, or at least uncarefully. The edges at the thickest end of the braid are ragged and uneven, as if it has been sawed off by a dull blade.

It reminds her of a conversation she’d had with her father years ago. She’d been very interested in genealogy at the time and had sent him a number of charts, which he’d dutifully filled out to the best of his ability, but he’d really wanted no part of it. When she’d asked to interview him about his memories of their family, he’d balked. “I don’t remember anything,” he’d said. “Why do you want to know about this garbage, anyway? Let the dead rot in peace,” he said. “They can’t help you.” She’d made some comment then, quoting something she’d read: Genetics is destiny, she told him. Don’t you ever wonder where the cells of your body came from? she asked.

“Genetics!” her father said. “What’s the point of it? All that DNA stuff is just chemicals! It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s real about a person.” Anyway, he said, a cell is nothing.
Cells trickle off our body all the time, and every seven years we’ve grown a new skin altogether. The whole thing, he said, was overrated.

Nevertheless, for years now she has carried the braid with her. She keeps it in an airtight plastic bag, in a zippered compartment of her suitcase. No one else knows that she carries it with her, and most of the time she herself forgets that it is there. She cannot recall when, exactly, the braid began to travel with her, but it has become a kind of talisman, not necessarily good luck, but comforting. Occasionally, she will take it out of its bag and run it through her hands like a rosary. The braid has traveled all over the world, from Washington, D.C., to the great capitals of Europe, from Mali to Peru. She supposes that this is ironic.

For the last ten years, she has worked for an international charitable organization that gives grants to individuals who, in the words of the foundation’s mission statement, “have devoted themselves selflessly to the betterment of the human race.” For years, she has anonymously observed candidates for the grants and written reports on them. Her reports are passed on to a committee that divides its endowed monies among the deserving. It is a great job, but it leaves her lonely. She is divorced, and she rarely speaks to her grown son. Most of the relatives whom she remembers from her youth died a long time ago. There are a number of regrets.

She is in a motel room in Mexico City when her son, Luke, calls. “Mommy?” he says, in a voice that is drunk or drugged.
He is twenty years old, telephoning from San Diego, where he had been a student before he dropped out. The last that Colleen had heard, he was working as a gardener for a lady gynecologist from Israel and living in a converted greenhouse out behind the woman’s house.

“She’s really weird,” her son says now, trying to carry on a normal conversation through his haze. “Like, when I’m clipping the hedges or something, sometimes she lies out on a lawn chair, totally naked. I mean, I’m no prude, but you’d think she could wait until I was done. It’s not a pretty sight, either. I mean, my God, Mom, she’s older than you. I’m starting to wonder if she’s trying to come on to me.”

He
is
drunk, Colleen thinks. What sober person would talk about this kind of thing with his mother? But the comment about her age sinks in, and she hears her voice grow stiff: “It must be really grotesque, if she’s older than me,” Colleen says.

“Oh, Mom!” Luke says. Yes: there is the petulant slur in his voice, a wetness, as if his mouth is pressed too close to the phone. “You know what I mean.” And then, as is Luke’s habit when he is intoxicated, his voice strains with sentiment. “Momma, when I was little, I thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world. I just idolized you. You remember that blue dress you had? With the gold threads woven in? And those blue high heels? I thought that you looked like a movie star.” Any minute now, Colleen thinks, he will start bawling, and it disturbs her that she can’t muster much compassion. He has used it up, expended it on the histrionics of his teenage years, on the many, many ways he has found to need “help” since going off to college. He has already been treated once for chemical dependency.

“Oh, Mommy,” Luke says. “I’m so screwed up. I’m so lost.” He takes in a thick breath. “I really am.”

“No you’re not, honey,” Colleen says. She clears her throat. He is still a kid, she thinks, a child yearning for his mother, who has been cold. But what else can she say? They have had these conversations before, and Colleen has learned that it is best to simply pacify him. “You’ll find your way,” Colleen says soothingly. “You’ve got to just keep plugging away at it. Don’t give in.” Of course, Colleen thinks, the truth is that Luke is clearly wasting his life. But he’d never listened to any advice when he was sober, and to say anything when he was drunk would only lead to an argument. She considers asking Luke if he is on anything. But she knows that he will deny it—deny it until he is desperate. What could Colleen do for him at such a distance, anyway? “Are you all right, baby?” Colleen whispers. “Is everything okay?”

Luke is silent for a long time, trying to regain his composure. “Oh,” he says. And his voice quavers. “Yes—I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m not doing drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything. You just sound—”

“What?”

“Sad.”

“Oh.” He thinks about this. Then, as if to contradict Colleen, his voice brightens. “Well,” he says. “How are things going for you? Anything exciting happening?”

“No,” Colleen says. “The usual.” He is her son, and she has failed him.

“How’s Grandpa?” Luke says. “Is he still holding up?”

“He’s okay,” Colleen says. She pulls the shade, shutting out the lights of Mexico City. There is nothing special about this
place, nothing particularly outstanding about the candidate she is observing, a man who runs a free AIDS clinic for street people but who is not nearly selfless enough to be awarded money by her firm. Does Luke realize how endless the world’s supply of sorrow and hard luck stories is? Does he ever think that even if he were a saint, he might not be worthy of notice upon a planet of billions? She is so tired. She can’t believe how far away she is, how distant from the people that she should love.

“Why does everyone have to be so smart-alecky,” her father says, and throws his tennis shoe at her TV screen. “That was a steaming pile of crap.”

He has been drinking a lot since he came to her house, sitting alone in her guest room—the only place he is allowed to smoke—sipping at a never-empty tumbler of Jack Daniel’s. She has seen him drunk before, but he has never been this belligerent, this temper-prone.