Miss Me When I'm Gone (15 page)

It occurs to me that I’ve not told this story to anyone. Not because it is particularly sensitive—but maybe because of how neutral it is. It’s just the Smurfs. Me and Frank and the Smurfs and breakfast.

I say to him that I wish it were more of a story. What I mean is that I wish it were a memory that told me better how I should feel about the man. I don’t tell Kevin that, of course. Too much.

But my abbreviated admission is enough. Kevin seems to relax a bit. I’m not a seven-year-old girl with a lost mother anymore. I’m a thirty-two-year-old with a dumb story. Dumber even than his. (Because frankly, “You want a little tip? Well, here’s a little tip!” sounds to me like something any old beer-guzzling doofus would say to his paperboy.)

Kevin was just a kid in 1985, just like I was. I don’t expect much from him.

Chapter 27

I found Gretchen’s piece on Dr. Skinner rather odd. First of all, given the outcome of her first visit, I couldn’t imagine Gretchen wanting to return. Had she? It seemed so sad and futile. But maybe Mrs. Skinner had encouraged her. And the reference to stealing mail? What the hell was that about? Whose mail? Frank’s?

“Good idea, Gretchen,” I muttered as I read it.

And a couple of things made me linger over the Kevin Conley piece, too. First of all, there was Gretchen using the word
soulful
to describe Kevin’s eyes. Gretchen wasn’t one to use such words. I wondered if she meant it—and if she did, it probably meant she liked him. And clearly, based on their e-mails, they’d grown comfortable with each other. How comfortable? I wondered.

Kevin hadn’t said much in his response to my e-mail, but he had written back with a phone number. I decided it was time to make use of it.

“Hi, Kevin?” I said when a guy picked up, then explained who I was.

“Can you talk for a few minutes?”

“Sure. I’m on a break period right now and I can’t talk long. But I have a few minutes, yeah.”

His voice was low and his words slow, but he sounded friendly.

“Oh . . . where do you work?”

“Plantsville High. It’s a high school. Here in Plantsville. I guess that’s . . . obvious.”

“You’re a teacher?” I asked.

Kevin yawned. “Not quite. An aide in the special ed room.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’re busy. Should I call back sometime?”

“I’ve got a few minutes. It’s okay. I . . . uh . . . want to help.”

“All right. Well, I was recently there in Emerson . . . unfortunately I wasn’t organized enough to talk to everyone I should. I started with some of Gretchen’s family and—”

“Dorothy, right? And the ladies?”

“Judy and Diane, yeah. You’ve met them?”

“No.” Kevin paused for several seconds. “Gretchen talked a lot about them.”

Kevin sounded vaguely stoned to me, but given his job description, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was, like many teachers I knew, perpetually sleep-deprived.

“I think I’ll be going up there again soon, by the looks of it,” I continued. “Listen, when was the last time you saw Gretchen?”

“Oh . . . a couple of weeks before the accident. And I should say how sorry I am. I really miss her. And I know you were close friends. She talked about you.”

“Uh-huh,” I said softly.

“Anyway . . . uh . . . she came up here for a weekend and we hung out that Saturday night. She stayed at my place that night, actually.”

“Oh,” I said.

“We’d had a few drinks. And she crashed there.”

I didn’t reply. I wanted to ask if this meant what it sounded like—that they were seeing each other? Behind Gregor’s back?

“You know, it’s good to hear from you. As I said, she talked about you. Did you have your baby yet?”

“No,” I said, surprised. “Not yet.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Is that a rude question?”

“Um . . . no. Not at all. Not over the phone, anyway. Uh, anyhow . . .”

“Anyhow,” Kevin repeated, and I wondered if I should interpret his tone as mocking.

“It sounds like you guys started seeing each other more frequently in the last few weeks . . . talking a lot?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how much she had written, about her and me talking . . .”

“I’ve only come across a little bit of that. It looks like the first time you met. Before you started to become . . . friends.”

“Okay. That doesn’t surprise me. The more time I spent with her, the less it seemed she was writing very much. But, um, did you have any questions about that? The little bit she wrote?”

“No. Seems pretty straightforward. The stuff about you being the paperboy and seeing Frank’s car . . . I was more interested because you guys seemed to become friends . . . Is that right?”

“Yeah. Definitely. For a few weeks, anyway.”

“So I just thought you’d have some insight into what she was up to . . . what she was writing.”

“Yeah. Sure.” It sounded now like Kevin was chewing something while he talked. “Whatever you want to ask.”

“Well . . . I don’t have any questions organized right now . . . so I think I’ll want to talk again, maybe in person, if I can manage it, but . . . oh, just for example . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I was recently reading these pages where she went to Frank Grippo’s house. Did she actually do that? Just drive right up to his house?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. Actually,
I
drove her.”

It took me a beat to recover from my surprise. “She doesn’t write it like that. She narrates it like she went herself.”

“Well, I didn’t get out of the car. I had told her, look, if you need to do this, write it like I’m not with you. But don’t be stupid. Don’t do this alone. She agreed to that. I waited outside in the car while they talked.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, before realizing what a dumb comment it was. Gretchen was still dead. “Um. Were there other incidents like that? Where you were there and she didn’t say?”

“Not that I know of. I knew she was harassing all kinds of people her mother used to know, but that was the only one I was worried would get her into big trouble.”

“Did she bring a voice recorder with her?” I asked. “And record her conversation with Frank?”

Kevin was silent for a moment. “Not that I know of.”

“Okay. So . . . the part about her going and parking in the McDonald’s lot . . . that’s not true?”

I heard a long, high beep in the background on Kevin’s end, followed by a woman’s voice saying, “Courtney Howell, please report to the guidance office.”

“I haven’t read anything she wrote,” Kevin said. “What does it say she did?”

“Just parked in the parking lot. And thought about Frank. Her ambivalence about her memories of him.”

“Well, then, that’s basically true. We parked at the McDonald’s together and talked about that for a few minutes. Before I drove her home. Just a little fudging, I guess. To make it look like she didn’t have a chauffeur. Um, I’m sorry, but I have to go to class in a few minutes.”

“No problem. It sounds like you were really close to what she was doing. I’d really like to talk more.”

“Anytime. But as I said, I didn’t know much about what she was
actually
writing
.
We’d just started . . . uh . . . hanging out. We didn’t talk about the book much.”

“I understand. But I think I’ll still have a lot more questions for you. If you don’t mind.”

“Do you want me to call you back tonight?”

“Uh . . . I won’t be home tonight. But sometime soon, I’m sure. Plus I’m thinking I might come up to Emerson again in the next few weeks. We could meet in person, maybe.”

“Um. Sure,” Kevin said. “Nice talking to you, Jamie. Let me know.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “I will.”

Kevin seemed nice enough. Why would Gretchen want to write Kevin out of the scene? Wasn’t it, in a way, more compelling that she had the old paperboy witness in the car with her? As I hung up the phone, I wondered what else Gretchen had left out.

Chapter 28

The hospital elevator was crowded with distressed men clutching pillows to their chests, and pregnant women trying not to bump bellies in the tight space. We’d just finished our second childbirth preparation class on the fourth floor, and everyone was reeling from a relatively graphic birth video, complete with a naked and delirious woman screaming and grunting on her hands and knees. After the video, people seemed to have lots of questions about epidurals. But the nurse teaching the class waved off most of those questions, saying she’d talk about “that stuff” in a week or two.

We’d all brought our own pillows on which to practice labor positions. Now someone put out a shaky hand and hit the ground-floor button. Just as the elevator door closed, a young man in a baseball cap, the youngest in the class—he was about twenty, his pretty pregnant partner probably even younger—smiled broadly and whispered, “Pillow fight!”

A few people giggled, including me. No one moved, of course, but I could feel the tension leave me as I pictured hospital security cameras capturing an elevator full of expectant parents swatting each other with pillows, feathers flying. It seemed to me a pillow fight might have been more therapeutic for us all than the class we’d just experienced.

Sam, however, didn’t seem to derive any relief from the young guy’s little joke. He was silent as we filed out of the elevator, walked to the car, and started out of the hospital lot.

“Well, that was intense,” he said, after a couple of minutes of driving.

“Yeah,” I answered. I didn’t particularly want to discuss what we’d just seen—not at the moment, anyway. I turned on our CD player and played his favorite Radiohead.

As he pulled into the driveway, I said, “If it’s any comfort to you, I’m probably going to take full advantage of the drugs available.”

“It’s not
my
comfort I’m worried about,” Sam said as we got out of the car. “So whatever you decide will be okay with me. Really.”

“Best not to overthink it,” I said. “It’s just one day, and then we’ll have Charlie here. What’s going to happen is going to happen, and worrying won’t change
how
it happens.”

This was something I’d been telling myself for a while. I wasn’t sure I believed it.

“I guess you’re right,” he said, unlocking our front door. I noticed he didn’t remark on my use of the name “Charlie” for the baby—my favorite name so far, though I knew Sam was lukewarm about it. He headed into the living room ahead of me while I hung up my jacket.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he called from the living room.

“What?” I called back.

“Jamie, come in here,” he yelled, his voice sounding more frantic now.

I rushed in behind him, and found our television cabinet open, our DVD player and his Wii gone, leaving neat, clean rectangles in the dust.

“Did you move the DVD player?” he asked me.

“No,” I answered. “Why would I?”

“Oh my God,” he said, glancing around. “Has someone . . . ?”

He ran into the kitchen. “Someone’s broken in!”

“Why wouldn’t they take the TV?” I called to him.

“Looks okay in there,” he said, taking my arm. “But we’re gonna go into each room together, and check. In case . . .”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but led me into our office. Drawers were open, both of our desks in disarray.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “My laptop. Where’s yours?”

I indicated the bag still on my arm. Lately I’d been hauling it around almost everywhere I went, reading Gretchen’s stuff whenever I had a free moment.

“Isn’t that the one you got from Gretchen’s brother? Where’s
yours
?”

“Um . . . last time I used it, I think I was in bed.”

He nodded and led me to the bedroom.

“I can’t remember if I put it on the bureau or left it on the bed.”

Sam pulled the duvet off the bed.

“I don’t think it’s here,” he said.

“But that’s weird,” I said. “Why didn’t they take the TV?”

“Who cares why they didn’t take the TV, Jamie?” Sam bellowed, then slapped his hands over his face. “They took everything else!”

I glanced around the room, then let my eyes come to rest on my bedside table. There I had left two notebooks of Gretchen’s—but now they were gone.

“Uh-oh,” I whispered.

“ ‘Uh-oh’ is right,” Sam muttered, picking up the phone. “I’m calling the police right now.”

I headed out the bedroom door, ignoring Sam as he called, “Stay in here with me!”

“I’m sure they’re long gone,” I yelled back.

“Now, how the
fuck
did they get in?” Sam bellowed, kicking something, then lowered his voice. “Um, hello. I need to report a break-in . . .”

I tiptoed back down the stairs and headed straight for the coat closet, where I still stored Gretchen’s crates. I peered in and found them still there, piled high with Gretchen’s notebooks. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

When I rejoined Sam in the bedroom, he asked if I noticed anything else missing. I glanced at my nightstand and wondered if I’d been mistaken about where I’d left the two notebooks. I told him no.