Boy Still Missing (15 page)

Your mother’s got a lot on her plate right now, so I want you to go easy on her.

I drank the coffee down despite the bad taste, then bumped around the kitchen with the empty cup in my hand. I thought of Ed Dreary, who used to eat a whole Styrofoam cup in the cafeteria if you gave him a quarter.

Some party trick.

My father was in the living room pinballing from person to person, sucking up more of their condolences, reminiscing about his “beloved wife.” I heard him say, “It’s just me and Dominick now. The two of us.”

Yeah, I thought. Until you disappear. Then it will be just the one of us.

I wandered out of the kitchen and ended up in my parents’ bedroom, where the bed was perfectly made, my mother’s nubby cardigan folded neatly on top of her dresser, her hairbrush full of black strands nearby. It looked as if she had only stepped out of the room for a moment. A piece of Juicy Fruit gum was folded in its foil wrapper on the nightstand. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, saving that weird habit of hers, though I wasn’t sure why.

“Knock, knock,” my uncle said, even though the door was wide open. “Anybody home?”

I had flipped open my mother’s music box, and that plastic ballerina was twirling away. He looked around her room at the threadbare white curtains, the oversize bedroom set she had picked up at a tag sale, the oak dented and nicked. “So this is where my sister was living,” he said, emphasizing the word “this” in a way that sounded condescending.

What the hell was he acting so self-righteous about? I’d seen his pad, and it wasn’t exactly the Taj Mahal. But I kept my mouth shut on that subject. I reached under the bed and pulled out the picture of the man I believed was Truman’s father. I held it in front of Donald’s face without saying a word.

He let out a sigh, took the photo from my hands, and stared at it. “This is your mother’s first husband,” he told me. “His name was Peter, and he drowned in a boating accident.”

Laguna del Perro, I thought. 1955. Had my brother drowned, too? I wanted to whip out that picture of my uncle and Truman but held back because I didn’t want him to know I had taken it from his apartment. My guess was he still hadn’t run into Rosaleen, so he had no clue I had even been there. “Did my brother drown, too?” I asked.

Donald handed the picture back to me, reached over and closed the music box. “You are dealing with a lot right now. I don’t think it’s a good idea to fill your head with more worries.” He picked up one of my mother’s pillows, then put it down, sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen. I have to leave tonight for a conference in Germany. It’s a series of presentations and a research seminar that I can’t get out of. Even for this. I’m sorry. But I’m going to give you my number at the hotel and some money in case you need anything. When I get back next month, we’ll figure things out together. I promise. Okay, kid?”

No, it wasn’t okay, but he didn’t seem to be giving me a choice. He pulled a yellow envelope out of the pocket of his blazer. Just a few days before, I had been counting on him to bail me out with some cash, and here he was forking it over. A little too late, I thought as he shoved the envelope into my suit pocket. He told me I should take a few days off from school, then force myself to go back. It would take my mind off
things, he said. He gave me another hug, told me again that we would work it out when he got home.

After he left the room, I walked down the hall to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I stood there staring in the mirror and trying to imagine sitting in a classroom as if nothing had changed. Could anyone tell by looking at me what a mess I had made out of my life? I imagined people gawking at me, whispering that I was the kid whose mother died from an abortion in the Holedo Motel.

Outside the door I heard snippets of chitchat from my mother’s farewell bash.

“I think Dominick is still in shock,” my father said. “It hasn’t really hit him yet that she’s gone.”

“He’s just a boy,” a woman’s voice said in response. “The poor thing.”

“Roget hasn’t heard the last from me,” Marnie said in a stage whisper right outside in the hallway. I didn’t know who she was talking to. Lois? Jeanette? “I’m not going to drop this. For Dominick’s sake.”

I looked in the mirror and decided I had a choice: I could stand around being pitied by this pack of losers or I could find a way to make things up to my mother. I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I needed to get out of here and clear my head. I waited until Marnie’s voice floated back down the hall, then went into my parents’ bedroom, where Marnie’s pocketbook sat on the chair under the pile of people’s coats. I had learned my lesson about stealing money, but this time I was only borrowing something: her car. With the keys in my pocket, I made my way through the living room and told my father I was going for a walk.

“Want some company?” he asked, doing the concerned parent routine in front of his audience.

“No thanks,” I answered and headed out the door before anyone else snagged me.

When I reached Marnie’s Dart, I took a breath and climbed inside. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then adjusted the seat, stuck my key in the ignition. The piece of shit started right away, and I
put it in reverse, backed out of the lot. Without knowing exactly where to go, I headed slowly down Dwight Avenue. I had watched my mother drive enough to know when to gun it and when to brake. Marnie’s boat swayed back and forth on the road, and I felt like I was sailing. A cop car was stopped in the parking lot of the Doghouse. My heart lurched for a second, but the officer didn’t even look at me. Let him pull me over. I’d tell him to spend his energy nailing that no-good sheriff instead of picking on an orphan like me. The way Marnie had explained it, she told the police right away that Roget had been with my mother in the motel. They put out an APB, but when he turned up, their take on things suddenly changed. Roget had been with two other officers in a meeting at the new station, the police explained. He couldn’t have been there. It was impossible. Marnie was flabbergasted. She kept telling me she was going to find a way to nail Roget, but I couldn’t imagine the Bingo Lady taking on the Holedo Police Department and winning. And even though it tore me up to imagine him walking away from this whole thing, I didn’t know what I could do about it.

When I passed the motel, I slowed the car down. The place was still blocked off with
DO NOT CROSS—POLICE INVESTIGATION
yellow tape. No cars in the lot. A
NO VACANCY
sign out front. I glanced up at room 5B and a cold tingle moved through me like ice in my veins at the sight of that door.

You will never see your mother again,
a voice said.

I bit my lip.

Imagined her in a glass coffin instead of that heavy wooden one at the funeral parlor. Imagined that someone could kiss her and bring her back to life. But who would that be? Not Roget. Not my father. Maybe Peter, her first husband. I wondered if she loved him. I wondered if she was with him now.

To keep myself from crying, I stepped on the gas. Without planning it, I made the turn toward Edie’s. I wasn’t sure why I was going there, seeing as she was long gone. But I guess I didn’t know where else to go or what to do next. And when I came over the top of the hill, there it was in
front of me. The slanted roof. The lemonade paint, peeling. The lion-faced knocker. I stopped the car dead in the street the way my mother had the night we came looking for my father. I had reamed out Leon just for mentioning Edie’s name, only to leave my mother’s reception and park in front of her house. Add the word “hypocrite” to my list of personality flaws.

As I sat there in the bright afternoon sunlight, staring at the place, the only sound was the whining of a chain saw, someone somewhere must have been doing away with a tree that had fallen in the storm. I listened to the revving and putt-putting of that hungry saw as it sliced and tore through wood. A breeze blew over the hill and sent Marnie’s antenna clacking back and forth.

“I hate you, Edie Kramer,” I whispered into the air. I said it once, twice, three times. Then again, louder, “I fucking hate you!”

I took my mother’s silver gum wrapper from my pocket and held it in my palm like some sort of magic charm. I felt myself tearing up, losing my grip the way I had when Donald hugged me. I snorted and sniffled. Hammered my hand against the dashboard until it hurt so much I had to stop. A lot of good it did me to talk to an empty house. I had really avenged my mother’s death, telling that Victorian how I felt. I needed to do something. I needed to show my mother that I loved her. I wiped my eyes and looked at the
FOR SALE
sign half covered with snow and knocked crooked from the plows.
CONTACT VICKI SPRING
.

Follow the signs,
I heard my mother’s voice say.
Life lays them right in front of you.

One. Two. Three.

All you have to do is look.

That’s when it came to me: If anyone might know where Edie had moved to, it would be her. Vicki Spring.

Maybe my mother had led me to this spot, given me this sign because she wanted me to find Edie. There was nothing I could do about Roget at the moment, but maybe this was the way she wanted me
to make things right. Once again I saw my life as that blank black chalkboard, and I thought of the choices before me. I could go home and lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling, and miss my mother. In a few days I could go back to school as if nothing had ever happened, even though I knew different. And then what? I just didn’t know. Or I could follow the signs like my mother told me to do. I could follow them to Edie, get that money back, and keep all those promises I had made to my mother on the bus a few days before. Even though they were promises I had made to my living, breathing mother, I told myself that if she was looking down on me, then she would see how much I loved her despite the mess I had made. She would know that I was trying to fix what I had done.

Then I saw something glittering beneath the surface of those thoughts. An urge that was far more powerful and determined. A desire that rose up in me, fast and quick, like something from the bottom of a lake rushing toward the surface, breaking out of the dark, still water and letting its ugliness be glimpsed in the light of day. And this is what that desire said:

Get back at Edie.

Make her pay for what she did.

She should suffer.

She should ache.

She should feel the way you feel.

Then those words disappeared, submerged back into the dark waters of my mind. I found myself chilled, shaking, afraid of what evil I was capable of committing. Just as I had a few days before, I wondered again if a hungry darkness could possess me the way those Manson followers had been possessed the night with Sharon Tate.

I shook my head to get rid of the thought.

As much as that feeling scared me, everything seemed to pull me toward Edie. All the things I wanted, or thought I wanted—the money, proof to my mother that I was sorry, and something else that I wasn’t quite sure of yet—swirled together in my mind. And I knew I had to find her.

At that moment I felt my old self shriveling and a new self being
born. This me was harder and more determined. He wouldn’t be tricked. He wouldn’t be scared. He wouldn’t show anyone his sadness. “Bury it,” I said out loud. “Bury it and do what you can to make up for your mistakes.”

The car windows had fogged up a bit and I wrote
BURY IT
in crooked letters on the driver’s side. I put the car in drive and made a U-turn. The Moorehead Real Estate office was located over in the next town of Buford. It took me fifteen minutes to get there. Already I was a pro at driving, and I still had just over a month to go before being legal. My only behind-the-wheel crime so far was braking too hard a couple of times, which sent the junk on Marnie’s floor scuttling forward. Other than that it was smooth sailing.

I parked the Dart out front and made a plan in my head. If I flat-out asked this Vicki woman if she knew where the owner of the Victorian in Holedo had moved to, I doubted she would divulge that information. But if I pretended to be interested in the house, then casually dropped in a question about the former owner, she might spill. I knew I didn’t look like their typical customer, but I was banking on my suit and tie to win Vicki over. The old me would have been nervous, but I refused to give in to that feeling. My mother had sent me into bars. She had sent me into Edie’s. It was as if in some strange way she was sending me into this office right now. And I didn’t intend to disappoint her.

“Is Miss Spring here?” I said over the jangle of bells on the door.

An apple-cheeked woman sat at the front desk looking totally bored despite the ringing phones. “She’s behind you,” she said, flipping through the pages of a
Cosmopolitan
. The cover lines read “Complete Guide to Encounter Groups” and “Confessions of a (Formerly) Fat Girl.”

I turned around, but the second desk was empty. Then the door opened with another jangle of bells, and I got what Apple Cheeks meant: Vicki was just coming in herself. She was a pert-faced woman with narrow shoulders and a slim waist. Thirty, I guessed. Thirty-five. Dyed blond hair, cut super short like a man’s. Soft pink lipstick.

“This boy is here to see you, Vicki,” the secretary—or whoever she was—said, putting away her magazine.

Boy.
That wasn’t going to help in my effort to convince her I was legit.

I thought about bagging the plan and straight-out asking Vicki if she knew where Edie had moved. But something still told me she wouldn’t give that information to a perfect stranger. Act casual, I reminded myself. Like I don’t really need to know where the previous owner had gone—I’m simply wondering.