Don't You Cry (5 page)

Alex

I wait for hours for the girl to return—trying hard to stare through the window coverings of Dr. Giles's cottage office—but she doesn't show. I consider sneaking into that space between Ingrid and Dr. Giles's home, standing on tiptoes to try and see in. I contemplate a return visit to Ingrid's home—feigning I forgot something, that I
needed
something—to try and catch a glimpse from her kitchen window. I imagine that Pearl is in there, in Dr. Giles's cottage, doing what people do in a shrink's office: sitting on a sofa, spilling her guts to a man who gets his kicks listening to other people's problems. But then the time goes by—thirty minutes, an hour,
two
hours—until I tell myself it's been too long for her to be in there, chatting it up with Dr. Giles. No psychiatry appointment lasts two hours. Or do they? I'm not one to know.

In time, I give up. She's not in there, I tell myself. But of course I'm not sure. I can only guess.

In the middle of the afternoon, I go home. I retrace the steps I made this morning, down the streets of town, past the small stores that are closing up shop for the night, flipping Open signs to Closed, locking the doors. I'm tired; my feet hurt. My head swims with the image of that girl at the window, here one minute, gone the next.

The streets are paved with setts, rectangular granite blocks like cobblestones. The two restaurants remain open, but the boutique stores—the cutesy one with baby stuff in the front window and the one that carries nothing other than novelty items and a poor selection of cheesy, overpriced greeting cards—will soon close. The streets are sleepy, the gray sky contemplating rain. To the side of the road, there's a big, black crow feasting on a rabbit carcass: roadkill. Everyone gets a little desperate this time of year. A squirrel scampers across a telephone wire, praying the crow doesn't see. Down the street a group of preteen boys in shorts and T-shirts walk home, as if unaffected by the cold. The sound of their laughter cuts through the autumn air. One of them puffs on the end of a smoke; he can't be older than twelve or thirteen.

I pull my hood up over my head. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my pants and walk quickly, head down, through town, past the carousel, and to the beach.

The town is lonesome and I am feeling blue.

I think of my pals Nick and Adam and Percy, off at college, having the time of their lives. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of some girl I don't even know, may never see again, likely a head case, too.

The lake pounds the shore, no different than it did this morning. It's only in daylight that I can see the choppy waves out at sea, the steady flow of whitecaps that charge the sand, livid and swift like knights on horseback—a charging cavalry. The sand is a washed-out brown. The lake has a smell to it, not an unpleasant one, but one that just smells soggy and wet and cold. The sand sticks to my black gym shoes as I make my way past the tall beach grass, the dense bursts that emerge through the sand. The grass is brown and brittle now. No longer green. Soon it will be gone, torn from its roots by the cold and the wind and the snow. My eyes rove the sand for crinoid stems—the tiny disks I find in the gravel and in the sand—just as they always do. It's a fixation for me, a weakness, a habit. Crinoid stems, Indian beads, sea lilies. It's all the same to me, the fossils of prehistoric creatures that once inhabited Lake Michigan. I gather a crinoid stem from the sand and admire it in the palm of my hand. Much more beautiful than shale or basalt rock to me; much more meaningful than granite or slag, though, really, they're nothing much to look at. People string jewelry with these, but me, I collect them in a Ziploc bag. For now, I slide it into the pocket of my pants, holding tight, careful not to let go.

There's a couple out on the pier, a man and a woman, not far out, but far enough to get the gist of it without being knocked into the water by the wind. They hold each other by the hand—steadying one another in the stubborn gale—as they take in the sweeping lake views and the apocalyptic sky, and then they turn and go, trooping to a car parked in the adjoining lot, stomping the sand off their shoes as they do.

But I don't go. I stay, taking it all in for myself.

It's only after they've left and I've watched the black car spin out of the lot and out of town that I see her sitting all alone on the playground's belt swing, her feet dragging through the sand below. Her hands clutch the chain, though she doesn't pump her legs, allowing the wind to move the swing for her. It's a measured swing to say the least, deliberate and lazy, as one does when they're thinking about something else and not at all about the swing.

Pearl.

Her coat is on; her hat is on. Her hands are ungloved and look to me to be cold. Her scarf is wrapped around her neck, though the wind grabs it by either end and pulls, so that the scarf floats this way and that on the current of the wayward wind. It's begun to rain—just a slight drizzle—something she seems repellent to, as if she's waterproof. She doesn't seem to mind the rain, which pelts me in the eyeballs and soaks my insides. I can't stand the rain. I could scurry home; I
should
scurry home. I should run. But I don't. Instead, I move to a covered spot, a picnic area with wooden tables and, more importantly, a roof. I sit on the timber tabletop, a solid fifty feet from where Pearl sits.

She doesn't see me.

But I see her.

Quinn

When I get to the end of the note, I have one, simple, undeterred thought: Who the hell is
My Dearest
? I have to ask Esther about this. I just have to. The last line screams over and over again in my ear:
Did you see me? Were you trying to make me mad?

I want to ask Esther,
Who?

I scurry out into the living room to see if she's come home yet, slipped in quietly while I was in her bedroom. I half expect to see her sitting on the rose-colored sofa, crisscross-applesauce as she says to those tiny tykes at the bookshop's story time. I picture myself confronting Esther about the note, thrusting the typed sheet of paper under her nose.
Who is My Dearest?
I ask. I see myself shake that note in front of her rueful face and demand to know,
Who is he?

A line runs through my mind:
Or maybe that was something she came up with all on her own: leaving the lights on so that I could see. It was, after all,
her
victory.

In my musings I shake Esther by the shoulders and ask over and over again:
Who is she? Who is she, Esther?
as Esther's face turns contrite and she begins to cry.

But no. I wouldn't do that to Esther. I wouldn't want to see her cry.

But still, I want to know.
Who is she?

Of course it doesn't matter, anyway, because when I come barreling out of the bedroom she's not there. Of course she's not there. It's just me and an empty room. The TV is off and so other than the hiss of the radiator the room is silent. The room itself screams of Esther, all the mismatched furniture she owned before I moved in: the rose-colored sofa, the industrial iron coffee table, a mod plaid chair in black and white, throw pillows in moss and yellow and blue. And then, of course, there was the frieze rug that we carried home together from some yard sale on Summerdale—my only contribution to the decor save from, of course,
me
. We must have walked three blocks with that rug, Esther in front, me in the rear, laughing all along the way from the sheer weight of it, from the fact that it was a bilious green. I take in the walls of the apartment themselves, a blinding white, which we're prohibited from painting by order of Mrs. Budny. Mrs. Budny, an eighty-nine-year-old Pole who lives in the unit beneath us, and also my landlord. The walls instead are covered in coat hooks and candleholders and a dry-erase board where Esther and I leave each other curt little messages, missives and other forms of communiqué.

Pick up milk.

Did you eat my cheese?

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Ran out. Be home soon.

It's lonely, I realize again then. The apartment is lonely without Esther home.

I pick up my phone to call Ben, a coworker and also a friend. Ben is, more or less, the only person I talk to at work unless of course I'm being paid to talk to them. The lawyers who beckon me to fetch files and make photocopies—I only speak to them because I have to speak to them. It's required. Part of the job description essentially.

But Ben I speak to because I want to. Because I like him. Because he's nice.

He's also handsome as all get-out, a twenty-three-year-old PA like me, though one with legitimate plans of law school ahead. But he's got a girlfriend. A college coed, another law school hopeful like him. As soon as she finishes up a prelaw degree at UIC, they'll both apply for law school together in Washington, DC. So romantic. His girlfriend's name is Priya, a name that even sounds beautiful.

I've never met her in person, Priya, but I've seen the assemblage of photographs Ben stores in his smallish office cube: photos of Priya alone, photos of Ben and Priya, photos of Priya and
Ben's dog
, a one-eyed Chihuahua named Chance (and if that doesn't say something about the size of Ben's heart, I don't know what does).

I find Ben's number in my call history and click on his name, and then proceed to listen to the phone ring five shrill times before it sends me to voice mail. I listen to Ben's message, the simple and robotic and yet entirely charming sound of his voice as he says,
This is Ben. Leave a message.
I could listen to that message on repeat all night. But I don't. Instead, when the phone beeps, I take my cue and leave a vague message. “Hey,” I say. “It's Quinn. I have to talk to you. Call me back, okay?” I don't say a thing about Esther. That's not the kind of message you leave on a voice mail; it's tacky. Important things aren't meant for voice mail. I've been dumped that way before, and so I should know. I'll fill Ben in when he calls back, but then I picture Ben and Priya together and wonder when he'll call back, or if any of this will matter any more when he does. Esther will surely be home soon, I think, although now I'm not so sure.

I sit on the sofa all alone and watch as the apartment is besieged by blackness. Nighttime. The only light derives from a streetlamp or two outside our apartment window—and even those are few and far between—our little residential Chicago neighborhood too far from the Loop to be illuminated by the likes of the Willis Tower or Donald Trump's posh hotel. As darkness takes over, I start to fill with a sense of unease.
Where is Esther?
Esther has done strange things before, don't get me wrong, but never before has she left me for a whole day without saying where she was going or when she'd be home. Never before has she climbed out that fire escape window and disappeared into the darkness of night. I stare at the clock on the wall and realize it's been twelve long hours since Esther's alarm clock first woke me from sleep, and still she's not here.

I start to worry. What if something has happened to Esther, something bad?

And so I contemplate a second phone call. Not to Ben this time, of course, but to the police. Should I call the police? My mind vacillates back and forth between
Call the police
and
Don't call the police
like a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe, before landing on
Call the police
. And so I do. I dial 311, the city's nonemergency phone number, as opposed to 911. This isn't an emergency, or at least I don't think it is. I pray it's not an emergency. A woman answers the phone, and I picture her, some telephone operator, sitting at a computer desk with a headset on her head, flattening her hair.

At the operator's request, I state the nature of my nonemergency. “My roommate,” I tell her, “is missing.” And then I fill her in on the details of Esther's quick departure—the window, the screen, the fire escape.

She listens attentively, but when I'm through, her words are wary. “Have you checked the local hospitals?” she asks.

“No,” I admit, feeling suddenly like a fool, “I haven't.”

It didn't occur to me for one split second that Esther might be hurt.

“That's a great place to start.” And I gather from her comment that calling the police isn't a great place to start. “You've checked in with your roommate's family? Other friends?” she asks, at which I shake my head in silent admission. I did not. Well, I called Ben, that's one step in the right direction, but I didn't even think of calling Esther's family, not that I know a phone number, anyway, or have the slightest clue how to find it. I don't even know her mother's or father's names, nothing other than Mr. or Mrs. Vaughan, or so I assume. And I'm guessing there are tens of thousands of people in the world with the last name Vaughan. Besides, I rationalize in my head, Esther and her family aren't close. Esther doesn't like to talk about them, but I gather that her father's out of the picture; her mother and she are estranged. How do I know this? Because while my own mother sends care packages galore and shows up without warning at our door, Esther's mom doesn't even call to say hello. I asked Esther about her family once; she said she didn't want to talk about it. I didn't ask again. One time a card arrived, but Esther let it sit on the kitchen table for four days, unopened, before throwing it in the trash.

“Any reason to believe there was foul play?” the operator asks, and I say no. “Does the missing person have a medical condition that would make the issue life-threatening?” she asks, and again I say no. Her voice is detached and unfriendly, as if she doesn't care. She probably doesn't, but you'd think an emergency or nonemergency operator would have at least a scant amount of sympathy. I almost want to make something up, to tell this woman that Esther is diabetic and that she's left all her insulin at home, or that she has asthma and is without an inhaler. Then maybe this woman would show concern. Maybe I should tell her the window screen was gashed, the glass broken in. That there was blood, a pool of it, enough for Esther to have completely bled out. Then maybe I'd be redirected to 911 and suddenly Esther's disappearance would be deemed an emergency.

Or maybe the operator is trying to clue me in to something: this isn't an emergency; Esther is fine. She says to me then, “Nearly seventy percent of missing people leave of their own free will and return within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, voluntarily. You're more than welcome to come to the station and file a missing-persons report, though there's only so much the police can do in the case of missing adults. Without evidence of foul play, we can't immediately think something criminal has happened. People are allowed to up and disappear if they want to. But if you file a report, your roommate will be placed in a missing-persons database and our investigators will look into it.

“Does your roommate drink, do drugs?” she asks then, and I quickly shake my head and say no. Well, Esther does drink, a margarita here, a daiquiri there, but she isn't an alcoholic or anything.

It's then that the operator asks about Esther's mental state—does she suffer from depression?—and I picture Esther's magnanimous smile and think to myself that she can't be. She just can't be.

“No,” I say without delay, “of course not.”

“Did you two get into an argument recently?” she asks, and I realize she's trying to insinuate that
I
did something to hurt Esther. Did Esther and I get into an argument? Of course not. But was Esther upset that I went out last night without her, though she'd told me to go? I don't know. I reiterate to myself that she told me to go.
I'd be a killjoy, Quinn. Go without me. You'll have more fun.
That's exactly what she said. So how could she be mad?

“We didn't get into an argument,” I say, and the operator leaves me with two options: I can come in and file a missing-persons report, or I can wait it out.

I feel silly for calling the operator, and so I decide to wait it out. The last thing I need to do is stare an officer in the eye and feel like a fool in person. I have plenty of experience with this. I'll call the hospitals; I'll try and track Esther's family down. I'll wait for Ben to call, and with any luck, Esther will come home of her own free will, just like the operator said, within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Two to three days.
Two to three days
,
I think. I don't know if I can wait that long for Esther to come home.

I hang up with the operator and will Ben to call.
Please, Ben, please
,
I silently beg.
Please call.
But Ben doesn't call. I search online for the numbers of the closest area hospitals, starting with Methodist, and then I call, asking the receptionists one by one if Esther is there. I state her name and then I describe her—the shaded hair, the heterochromatic eyes, the ungrudging smile—knowing that Esther has that kind of face that once you've seen it, you never forget. But Esther isn't at Methodist Hospital or Weiss or any of the local urgent care facilities. I lose hope with each apathetic reply.
No Esther Vaughan here.

I'm feeling lost and alone when I hear the sound of a telephone ringing. Not my phone, but a phone. Esther's phone, which I know from the ringtone, some 1980s Billboard hit that nobody listens to anymore.

Esther's ringtone. Esther's phone.

Esther's not here, so why is her phone?

I rise to my feet to find it.