Miss Me When I'm Gone (16 page)

Chapter 29

“Hello Trouble”

Williamsburg, New Hampshire

The man who is probably my father is a divorced professor of chemistry at UNH, living in a modest, crisply painted gray saltbox house in Williamsburg, New Hampshire. He shares custody with his ex-wife of a seventeen-year-old son who, if gossip has it right, is in drug rehab.

And he doesn’t answer my e-mails. I don’t know how to respond to this lack of enthusiasm. I called his home phone once, got no answer, and chose not to leave a voice mail.

So I’ve been forced into the “show up at the doorstep” bit. I don’t like it—it reminds me of selling Girl Scout cookies. But I’ll have to take it. It is, after all, more like a country song than corresponding via e-mails.

I knock on his door and pray his son’s not around this evening. That would be awkward. While I wait, I notice that there are three stamped envelopes clipped to Bruce’s mailbox, ready for tomorrow’s mail.

I hear slow footfalls. The man who is probably my father opens the door. I’m surprised at his stature. He’s at least six feet tall, relatively thin, and rather dark in his features. His hair is thick, almost black, with specks of white on the sides and the front. He looks more Distinguished Gentleman than I expected. (Perhaps when I heard “university chemistry professor,” I just pictured squat, pale, bespectacled.) His dark, deep-set eyes study me carefully.

“Hello,” I say. “Um. My name is Gretchen Waters.”

His face doesn’t change.

“I figured. I thought I recognized you when I peeked out the window. You look so much like . . .” He trails off.

“You peeked out the window?”

“Yes. I get a lot of Mormons.”

I nod, encouraged that he’d seen me and opened the door anyhow. “I don’t know if you’ve gotten my e-mails.”

“I have,” he says. “I hadn’t decided yet how to respond.”

“Do you need more time?” I ask.

“No,” he answers. “It seems my time is up, is it not? Do you want to come in?”

This startles me. It’s not what I expected. (What did I expect?) But it’s chilly out there on the doorstep and not conducive to conversation.

I follow him to his living room, where I sit on his black leather couch. He sits across from me in a matching black chair. He asks me if I want something to drink, and I say no, I’m okay.

He tells me he looked up my book after I first wrote to him. Hasn’t read it, but has been meaning to. Wanted to read at least a little of it, to get a sense of what kind of books I write, before agreeing to anything.

I tell him this next book isn’t going to be anything like the first. This book is going to be about Shelly, not about music. I’ve been in and around Emerson, I explain, learning all about Shelly.

He crosses his awkwardly long legs and asks me who I’ve spoken to so far. I list off a few people—Dorothy, Judy, Diane, and then . . . hesitating first . . . Keith.

He nods. None of this surprises him. He’s very cool with all of this.

“I imagine they were all very helpful. They all cared about Shelly a great deal.”

It’s clear he’s going to be a tough nut to crack. I want to say “And didn’t
you
care about Shelly a great deal?” Because everything the others have told me indicates that he did.

But instead I say yes and start to tell him a couple of the stories—the more flattering stories—that Judy and Diane told from high school.

After a while he’s warmed up and he tells me one. Shelly was his date for the junior prom. It felt like a pity date at the time—he was a nerd and she was out of his league. It was the one night a year that most kids were allowed to stay out all night—some kids went to the local diner, some went to private parties. Shelly didn’t want to do any of it. She wanted to drive to Cape Cod. Or rather, she wanted Bruce to drive her to Cape Cod. She didn’t have a car. She’d never been there. She wanted to see the sun come up on a nice beach. Wouldn’t that be nicer than getting drunk? And Bruce, who wanted to get drunk in the worst way, said yes anyway, because he was a pushover.

And they watched the sun come up on a nice beach and had breakfast together. And it was one of the most memorable evenings of his high school years. (He doesn’t say why, but I wonder . . . was it just the beach and the breakfast? Is he telling me the story of my conception?) And when they got home, everyone else was hungover.

I’m not sure what to make of this story. I don’t know what it says about Shelly except that she probably kind of liked the beach, and that she was good at manipulating males to do what she liked, which I already knew.

The man who is probably my father saves me from having to come up with a response, however.

“I would say she was spontaneous, but I think she’d been planning on going to the Cape since I asked her out.”

I nod.

“You seem a lot quieter than she was,” he says. “More reserved. Maybe that’s just a first impression. And I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

I smile. Always a pleasure to be told how quiet you seem by people who’ve known you less than an hour. It irritates me enough to pounce on him.

“People think that may have come from my father,” I say.

“Linda’s husband? Bob?” he says, without blinking. “He’s a good man. I remember him.”

“No,” I say. “Not Linda’s husband.”

Bruce sighs and repositions his long legs, staring at his sturdy brown shoes.

“But Linda and Bob are your real parents. They raised you. That’s how Shelly always wanted it.”

“That’s how she wanted it sometimes, I think,” I say.

There was a long pause then.

“Are you sure you don’t want a soda or anything?”

I can’t believe this dapper, sensible man keeps soda in the house, and I almost take him up on it just to see.

“No,” I say, because I don’t want to let him off the hook. “No, thank you.”

Bruce sighs again.

“I see. The gossips have gotten to you.”

“No one was gossiping. I came asking questions.”

Bruce cocks his head and gazes at me, then covers his chin with his hand, rubbing his clean-shaven face rather aggressively.

“You know, your mother . . . I mean, Shelly, was smarter than most people gave her credit for.”

“I know that. I remember her.”

“You know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

This man who is probably my father is starting to irritate me, unfortunately. I think sympathetically of his son in rehab. If I’d been raised by this slippery fellow, perhaps I’d be self-medicating a little myself.

“She was sure she wanted things a certain way . . . because . . .” Bruce sighs yet again and scratches his salt-and-pepper head.

“Because?” This is going to be interesting. I can tell.

“Because she didn’t want anyone to be hurt.”

“Anyone? Who’s anyone?”

“The idea was that you were given . . . you had . . . two committed, caring parents. She didn’t want anyone to get in the way of that.”

“But in these situations,” I say, adopting a professorial tone of my own, “when an adopted child becomes an adult, there is often a natural curiosity about understanding the facts. And I think she was smart enough that she would have understood that. She wouldn’t have denied anyone that.”

Bruce shifts his gaze away from me. “I suppose you’re right about that.”

And then there is another long silence. It had to be about five minutes, at least.

Then Bruce says, “I guess I do need a little more time to think about this. I wasn’t prepared for this discussion tonight.”

So I tell him I’d be happy to set up another time to talk. I’m sorry to have startled him. I just wanted to make that first contact.

He says that he has my e-mail address. He will contact me in a few days.

We make small talk as I slowly head out the door. He asks me how the publishing business is going. Is my book available as an e-book? Do I get paid well for e-books, or is that bad business for authors?

I tell him it’s complicated. As I head down the doorstep, he says, “Gretchen. Uh. It really was nice to see you. Thank you for coming.”

I turn—I must’ve given him a funny look, because then he says, “Really.”

And then he closes the door. What I do next happens very quickly, impulsively, although I admit I was thinking about it the whole time we were talking—how the licks on the envelopes clipped to his mailbox could make good DNA samples.

I yank the three envelopes from his mailbox and slide them into my coat. I’m impressed with myself at how swiftly and quietly I manage to do it. Still, I half expect Bruce to come back to the door and yell at me that he saw what I’ve done—to bring his mail back. But he doesn’t.

And on the way home, I listen to Gram Parsons’s “Hickory Wind.”

I don’t listen to it for any real connection between the song and Bruce or even myself. Unfortunately, I really wouldn’t know a “Hickory Wind” from a whiff of an “Autumn Wreath”–scented Yankee Candle, and I doubt Bruce would either.

I suppose I just listened to “Hickory Wind” all the way home because I fucking well like it, but if you want connection, let’s try this: “Hickory Wind” is full of longing, full of the question
How the hell did I get here, so far away from home? How did I turn into this and how can I get back to what I was?

I’m not sure I have such a nostalgic sense of what home is, but I know I’ve moved far away from what I was ever supposed to be. I’ve sold myself pretty cheap this time.

And the funny thing is, I wouldn’t have minded it so much if it turned out to be Keith. Keith is a gentle soul with bad hair who seemed, oddly, to really want to be the one. It seems he really loved my mother—loved her so much that even though he’s clearly moved on, he’d have liked to have this connection with her now that she’s gone. A tangible thing to reassure him it was real. A little piece of her sending him a Christmas card every year.

Bruce, on the other hand, feels like some tricky part of myself I probably never should have wanted to know about. Still, I can’t help myself.

There are some people who think Gram Parsons actually stole “Hickory Wind” from a blind folksinger named Sylvia Sammons, who performed the song in South Carolina coffeehouses in the midsixties, around the time Gram Parsons was doing the same circuit. So be it, either way. I still love it, and love him singing it. And maybe it shows how heartfelt and how fraudulent some of us somehow manage to be at the same time.

Chapter 30

On the morning following the break-in, I took a few more notebooks out of the closet and found the Bruce piece. I read it over my peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich breakfast.

For real, Gretchen?
I thought as I came across the mail-stealing part. It seemed out of character for her, but technically, it fit: She had to have gotten her other DNA samples somehow or other. Had this mail theft led to that 99.9 percent result eventually? If so, what were the results in between Keith’s negative and that final positive from Bruce’s mail? Failed samples? Did she test all three stolen envelopes?

Bruce sounded a little strange—just strange enough to be Gretchen’s biological father. His oddly forward, slightly creepy way of holding a conversation kind of reminded me of some of Gretchen’s more bizarre social habits. Perhaps the physical resemblance wasn’t quite there (Gretchen was tall, yes. But dark? Not by any stretch. She often looked like she had an iron deficiency.) It hadn’t been there for Keith either, apparently. Gretchen, everyone thought, was all Shelly in her looks.

I decided I’d like to get a glance at this Bruce myself sometime.

On my way out for work, I made sure all of our doors and windows were locked. Our deck door in the back was likely how our intruder had gotten in, we’d determined. After we’d called the police, Sam had discovered several of our back windows—looking out onto our deck—unlocked. We didn’t know how long they’d been that way. Probably for weeks. It made me worry about our mutual carelessness. Maybe this was how we were going to be as parents—accidently leaving stairs ungated, outlets unplugged, Quentin Tarantino movies playing on the TV in an empty living room.

Chapter 31

Hi Jamie,

Yes . . . actually, my mother did find a digital recorder recently—in an overnight bag of Gretchen’s. She didn’t know what it was at first, so when I told her what you’d been asking about, the mystery was solved. I’ve listened to a little bit of it, and you’re right—she used it for her recent interviews for her book. I’ll FedEx it to you this week.

Please don’t work too hard on this. My mother keeps telling me to tell you that. Take your time. There is really no rush. We are not in a hurry to resolve the issue of Gretchen’s book soon—she just wanted to put it into good hands. We know you have a lot going on right now.

Sincerely,

Nathan

Nathan’s e-mail took me by surprise. I’d thought Gretchen’s voice recorder was long gone, probably in her purse. I also thought it might be a good item to hand over to the police. In spite of myself, I made no such suggestion to Nathan. I wanted to get my hands on it first. But I promised myself I’d give it to the police if I heard anything I thought they should hear.

I tore into the FedEx package when I got home from work a couple of nights later. It was after eleven, but I was eager to start listening.

I brought it up to the baby’s room and sat in the rocking chair. It wasn’t much of a nursery yet. There was a crib, a changing table, my grandmother’s rocking chair, and a ton of shopping bags full of boxed baby gear. I hadn’t looked at the stuff since the shower.

Now I thought I might sort through some of the gifts while listening. I pulled one of the shopping bags onto my lap, then clicked play. On the recording, there was a little bit of a clunk, then a man’s voice.

“So where were we?” he said.

“You were talking about Linda and Shelly’s dad,” said a soft female voice.

“Your grandfather, yes,” replied the man.

“I never knew him,” said the female voice. It was Gretchen.

I pushed the shopping bag off my lap and hit pause.

I hadn’t anticipated what it would feel like to hear her voice again. I rocked silently in the chair for a moment, shaking. The words I’d hear come out of this machine were the last ones I’d ever hear her say.

The baby gave a couple of kicks, which was both sad and comforting.

“You’ll never meet her,” I whispered. I wondered if Gretchen would’ve been into being “Aunt Gretchen.” Probably not. She’d have tried, though, like she always did.

The kicking stopped and I started to cry: loud, gulping sobs that woke Sam up.

“What time is it? What’s wrong?” He was squinting as he came into the nursery, blowing his overgrown bangs out of his eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Sam sat on the carpet and looked into the bag I’d dropped onto the floor. He pulled out a box, and out of that a mobile with stuffed clouds and a bear dressed in baby blue, hugging a stuffed moon.

“Oh, good,” he said. “I was hoping someone would buy this.”

He pulled the cord and it started to tinkle out Brahms’ lullaby.

“I don’t remember putting that on the registry,” I said.

“I think I put it on,” Sam admitted.

I nodded and snuffled back my last tears as the mobile slowed and plinked out a few last gasping notes.

“Lots of nice stuff,” Sam said, looking around. “We’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

I gazed over to the corner of the room, where the changing table was. There were five tiny onesies there, all washed and folded and placed carefully on the shelf beneath the changing area. I’d done that the week before Gretchen died. I couldn’t remember now what had been going through my head then. I think I was wondering how long my son would wear those tiny clothes, and once he graduated to the next size up, if it would seem like the time had gone by quickly. But I couldn’t remember if I’d felt serene and maternal at that moment. Had I ever? Would I ever?

Now nothing seemed to matter but Gretchen and the soft kicking in my stomach. They seemed strangely linked somehow—Gretchen gone, and this new person arriving. To think of them together was painful, but lately, that was the only way I thought of them. And there was nothing serene about it.

Everything else felt insignificant, and far away. I wasn’t sure how to explain this to Sam—that I loved the baby already, and that my disinterest in this baby-blue fabric and tinkling music took nothing from that. And I loved Gretchen. And I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

“Gretchen’s recorder,” I said. “Her brother FedEx’d it.”

“I saw,” Sam said. “It was by the side door when I got home.”

“I had forgotten what her voice sounded like.”

Sam put the mobile back in the box. Then he leaned his head against my knee and put his hand over my stomach.

“I wonder how it is for him. You being so involved in this sad thing right now.”

“For who? For Charlie?”

“Oh. Are we still considering that?”

We’d already had several discussions about the name “Charlie
.
” I thought it was a charming old-fashioned name for a good honest fellow.
Are you sure you aren’t just thinking of Charlie Bucket?
Sam always asked, referring to the character in the Roald Dahl books. Sam, for his part, couldn’t shake his strong association of the name with Charlie Chaplin.

“He’ll be okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Have you thought more about Andy? That’s a lot like Charlie.”

“It’s really not much like Charlie. It’s not as gentlemanly. And I don’t like that it rhymes with ‘candy.’ ”

Sam nodded uncertainly. “Are you going to listen to this for a little while? Should I join you?”

Sam and I stared at each other for a few moments. I could tell he was trying to find something recognizable in my expression—some happy sense of camaraderie we had a few months ago. I, meanwhile, was looking for something else entirely in his black eyes—a certain cleverness, a certain almost mean mischievousness that had been the first thing about him I’d fallen in love with. It seemed to have dissipated as I’d ticked off the weeks to my due date. I knew it was in there somewhere, but he seemed to save it, now, for other people, or for times when I wasn’t around. It had been part of a desperate strategy, perhaps, to protect himself from my deepening prenatal crazy. Or to cure me of it.

“I’ll try again tomorrow,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got one more thing I’ve got to do, but I’ll come to bed in a few minutes.”

After he returned to the bedroom, I took out Gretchen’s computer and opened up her e-mail. I searched for the words
Jamie
and
shower
.

Oddly, after hearing Gretchen’s voice, I wanted to see Abby’s invitation and Gretchen’s response. In Gretchen’s box, I found the invitation but no reply. I wondered if Abby had lied to me about Gretchen’s enthusiasm—another instance of coddling to protect the poor pregnant woman’s feelings?

I took out
shower
and searched just
Jamie
. The most recent message that came up was the one she’d sent me two weeks before she died. After that was a message in her draft folder—not to Abby, about a shower, but to me. There was no greeting or salutation, but Gretchen had written it to my address:

It seems to me there are things we should have talked about. Like, what happens if you think you’ve found the love of your life, but you notice, whenever you go into the city together, that he walks ahead of you in the subway station, and doesn’t look behind for you until after he’s gotten on the subway? And what if you find yourself wishing you did not have to tell him to wait for you? What if being with him starts to mean having to say those things . . . “Honey, wait for me?” And you start to resent him making you do that in order to keep him walking by your side?

If I never wanted to think about these things, and still don’t, why in the world did I think I wanted to be a wife?

And how come you and I never talked about that? How come we still don’t? Does Sam ever walk ahead of you in the subway station? Would you ever admit it to me if he did? Or that you cared?

She’d written this a couple of weeks before the message she’d actually sent. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she’d ever actually said to me about her divorce. I wondered if there had been a great deal more she’d wanted to say about it. And I remembered Jeremy at the memorial service, saying,
I’d like to talk to you a little more. Just about Gretchen. About Gretchen and me.

Jeremy. He hadn’t answered any of my e-mails yet. I’d actually written him again just yesterday. But he was still grieving, too. Probably I should give him a few days before badgering him again.

I closed Gretchen’s e-mail and followed Sam to bed.