So Much Pretty (21 page)

“You know Daddy doesn’t like to go too many hours in the day without saying Gen-Ag-Tech,” she said.

“He’s like a ten-year-old talking about Darth Vader.”

Claire laughed harder.

“We were at the Rooster with Ross and Daddy and Annie and Harley,” Alice told Claire. “Me and Megan were listening to them talk about some kind of music copyright thing because those old-time players were worried about it, and he goes, ‘This is exactly like what happened in India with Gen-Ag-Tech.’”

“It is,” Gene said, shrugging.

“Okay,” Claire said. “You know what? That stuff is important, but it’s not like the stuff we’re talking about now, about Wendy. And we should probably give some thought to why we’re here right now. Instead of trying to make it a puzzle. That’s all Daddy means, I think—that you can’t
just
use the cost benefit. You have to take a lot of other things into consideration. Really observe and study the topic you’re concerned about.”

Claire looked down the line of people walking in groups in their coats and flannels. It was nearly everyone they knew. Four regulars from the Rooster walked in a loose configuration next to the Haytes boys and a group of their friends. Mostly it was a line
of men. Many wore only baseball caps and sweatshirts despite the chill and overcast sky. They shared a proprietary swagger, Claire realized, as they walked through nothing toward nothing like dogs set out by instinct to wander, or to rescue what they might have, under other circumstances, hunted.

When she and Gene and Alice stopped talking, it was completely silent, just boots crunching along and bodies moving under the pale gray sky. There were no houses visible in the distance, just more fields, and somewhere—how many miles ahead, she didn’t know—a low hillside.

For a moment Claire felt overwhelmingly dizzy, like there was nothing to orient the three of them in space, like she was falling. Her stomach turned, and she thought she detected a slight arrhythmia in her heart. She was dehydrated, maybe. Easy to forget to drink enough water in winter. She held tighter to her daughter’s strong and taller frame. Felt grateful to be able to hold her.

These weeks that Wendy White had been missing were disturbing for her and Gene. It had been an effort not to mentally replace Wendy’s face with Alice’s in the missing posters. She thought so much about the Whites—couldn’t imagine the parents having to go to work every day, having to worry about making ends meet with their daughter gone, having to wake up in the morning knowing she was still missing. She and Gene had been changed by the girl’s disappearance, but it seemed not to have impacted Alice and her friends as deeply.

Claire had felt this before on occasion, working at the clinic—thinking about “what if”—but the difference was those girls and women she saw were right there, were alive. The likelihood that Wendy White was alive, she knew, was very slim. And she felt again what she had always felt in the clinic when she saw patients with sexual-assault injuries. It was what you did to
prevent
these things that really mattered. Not the collection of evidence and the prosecution. Not the kind of thing they were doing right now.

* * *

Back at home, Gene put the bread that had been rising all day into the oven, and the three of them sat around the table drinking mint tea. Soon Theo would call, and Alice would be on the phone for the rest of the evening. Making origami butterflies or sewing or throwing darts against the black and yellow dartboard while she talked.

The walk had chilled Claire to the core. She sat with her feet in Gene’s lap, and he rubbed them, his hands still warm from holding the mug. It was then she began to cry. She tried to stop because she knew it would disturb them, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t simply sad. She was exhausted. Exhausted from trying to run the little farm, from being isolated, from having no one to talk to but her family or Micky on expensive long distance. From having nowhere to go, from hearing nothing new for half a year at a time—not even a new joke or figure of speech—from constantly explaining what she’d said or what she meant, or putting the places she was talking about into context. Tired of being poor now for almost twenty years.

And she knew she was exhausted from way before all the things that had happened in Haeden. She was beat from the free clinic and from constantly thinking about how to do the right thing. From doing the right thing and ending up in the same fucked-up world. A million decibels of Iggy Pop would not help anymore, no matter the compassion for rage or the grace in his voice. She was too old to slip into a man’s angry voice to get away.

Gene continued to rub her feet while she cried. Looking into her face. And she knew then, looking back at him, that he understood she’d been tired from long before. From birth, maybe, from all the things that made her become a doctor, from all the things that had happened to her friends and what they saw and heard and pretended every day not to see and hear. Tired of it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said finally, an unformed rage building. “It doesn’t matter what they do now. This woman is already gone. It’s the next abduction or murder or rape. It’s stopping it
before it happens. If I could get away with it, I would kill every single suspicious fucking redneck sexist fuck in this entire town.”

At this Gene winced and shook his head. “That’s Ross talking.”

“No,” she said bitterly, tears running down her face. “That’s me saying what I have always known to be the real fucking correct cost benefit! The real greater good. No women’s clinic or search or prayer or self-defense class is going to prevent these things. When the kinds of men who do these things are eliminated completely or live in fear for their lives—not just their time or livelihood—if they act, when that happens, we’ll have progress. And no sooner. No sooner. How else do we stop it? How?” Claire took a breath, then tried to relax, but it was no use. She put her hands over her face and wept hard, her body crumpled in defeat.

Alice sat stunned. “Mom.” She leaned forward and took Claire’s hand.

Claire said nothing for several minutes. Then: “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry I said that. I’m feeling alone, is all it is.” She wiped her face.

“Maybe she’s alive,” Alice said. “Or maybe she ran away. I’m sure she’s okay, Mom. And if she’s not, they’ll take her somewhere like the free clinic where they’ll take good care of her.”

Claire nodded and looked into her daughter’s eyes, saw the strength and earnestness with which the girl was trying to comfort her. “Maybe she did, babe. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that. I hope she’s okay.”

Alice stared past her into the other room, her eyes unfocused, thinking. Claire squeezed her hand, and Alice looked back down at her, and she felt awful at what she saw in her daughter’s face: pity and shock and something that looked close to shame.

“If things are really this bad,” Alice said quietly, “why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Haeden, NY

MARCH 2009

H
E PULLED THE
insulation away from behind the door and crouched in front of where she lay on the old crib mattress that had been stored there. He handed her a Gatorade.

“You’ve really lost your tan, honey.”

Her arms were skinny now. Thumb-sized blue circles shone clear in the pale skin around her shoulders and wrists. He climbed down into the crawl space and sat next to her, held the plastic bottle for her to drink from. “You need these electrolytes—they’re good after a workout.” She had a rash on her face, maybe from the fiberglass insulation. But it was really ugly. Her breath was terrible. She had some white shit coating her gums. They should probably brush her teeth at some point.

Wendy’s pretty days were really short-lived. He watched her swallow; her skinny throat covered with raised pinpricks of red, like her face.

“Man, I’m not going to get on that thing again until you give it a shower.”

“Go on back to school, then. More for everybody else.”

“Nah, I’ll wait, if you can give me a ride.”

He nodded. “Yeah, man, no problem.”

“She don’t even try to talk no more, does she?” He ran a thumb over his chapped lips. “She don’t even want to tell us about her day.”

He laughed through his teeth in agreement, tipped the bottle up for her to get the last of the Gatorade. He searched for something in it that could still turn him on. He was starting to wish she wasn’t down there anymore.

“Are you hungry, sweetie? Man’s got to take care of these things. Yeah. ’Cause we got company waiting.” He pulled out a brown paper bag containing his leftover lunch and got out a white napkin, which he tucked into the front of her bra. “Yep, just a little more company.” She started crying. After they were done, he’d give her her sweatshirt back.

“What’s wrong, baby? What’s wrong?” He took out a white Styrofoam container and a plastic fork. Inside was a cold baked potato and part of a salad. He held a forkful of potato out to her. “If you finish this, I have a surprise for you.” He looked up at her, pointed his chin down in a little nod, fluttered his eyelashes for a moment for the comic effect. Shit. She was so fucked up. It was ridiculous. “Come on. That’s better. That’s the girl I know. The girl I know loves to eat. Right?”

She chewed and did not wipe the tears that were rolling down her face. He noticed one of her eyes was puffier than the other.

“You’re going to be so happy when you see what else is in here.” He took out another Styrofoam container. “They had peanut-butter brownies. I know you love them. C’mon, Hun, cheer up.”

Flynn

I
KNEW SHE WAS
in that town. I knew she was in that town. She was in that town. She was not missing.

Point-blank, I said it right to him. Right to Dino. “Have you searched the Haytes property? Have any of your people searched the Haytes property?”

“My God, Flynn. Please take it easy. It looks to me like you’re having trouble with this case. Who do you think’s been paying for all the ‘Pray for Wendy’ ads?”

“I know who. It’s my paper. I send them the bill every month. For five months now. Have you searched the Haytes property? The answer is no, right? It’s no. It’s no, isn’t it? Just say you haven’t done it. Out loud. Say it out loud.”

“I haven’t done it, Stacy, and I’m not going to do it unless we get some concrete evidence. I’ve pestered those good people enough.”

“Yeah? Yeah? Like what would that be? What would be concrete evidence? She didn’t come home from work, she’d been spending all her time with her boyfriend, Dale Haytes, and then she didn’t come home from work. Didn’t show up to work. Everything in her life is exactly the same as it’s been since she was five fucking years old, except she has a new heavy relationship with someone older and outside her socioeconomic sphere. He’s the only variable.”

Dino raised his eyebrows and sighed in an elaborate show of patience. “Stacy,” he said in a tone so relaxed it made me clench my fist inside the pocket of my hoodie, “we talked to Dale. He’s the one who reported it. He’s the one who called her parents. He’s the one who went over there. I’m not going to direct this investigation by rumor. I saw him—I never saw
anyone so upset, nearly as bad as her parents. Said she must have got cold feet about marrying him. He was in a panic that night. He thinks something awful happened to her because she prolly was trying to get away and clear her head a little, and he thinks it’s all his fault. He’s been blaming himself in here just about every day.”

“When? On his way home from the golf course? Why would she get cold feet? Because she’s only twenty? I highly doubt it. Her brother’s wife was eighteen when they had their first kid. Where would she go if she got cold feet? Home. That kid was living on her own for less than six months—and it was down the road from her mom and dad.”

He shook his head and gave me an expressly pitying look. “Dale’s out playing golf because he’s trying to keep himself sane. Man’s feeling pretty bad. C’mon, now. He’s playing golf to keep busy because he feels it too deep. He’s a big doughboy lives at home, too, Stacy. That’s not a guy going around doing bad things to the girl he’s in love with. I’ve known that family since I was a boy. I’ll tell you right now, you need to take a step back.”

But there was no stepping back for me.

“You are bored,” Brian from
City Paper
told me that night on the phone. “What else do you write about? I thought you were there to write about meth labs or some environmental shit. A cold case and some paranoia about yokels giving each other shifty looks is all you got.”

“It’s not a cold case, it’s an obstructed case.”

“I recognize that tone,” he said. “You have maps on the apartment wall yet?”

“Fuck you, Walsh.”

“Started writing articles that aren’t for publication? How many you have? Got an extra sixty column inches lying around here and there?”

“I’ll use them eventually.”

“I seriously urge you to consider the last time you got laid. It’s
possible you will feel less obsessed and more clearheaded if you got a little action. When was it, Stace?”

“I don’t know. You would remember, right?”

“Oh, Jesus. Word?”

“I don’t need to relax. The last thing I need is to relax.”

“C’mon, Tasty Flynn.”

I stood in the doorway of the living room and drank my third bottle in a few long gulps while listening to Brian and thinking about how his ass looked in a torn pair of jeans at the paper’s staff picnic. Thinking about how he took off his shirt.

There were maps of the whole county pinned to the walls. Stacks of transcribed interviews, marked in a patchwork of yellow highlighter, spilled across the floor. The place was a mess.

“I’m afraid she’s alive,” I told him, and knew I never would have said it if I hadn’t been drinking. “I’m afraid every night that this is the night she gets killed because she hasn’t been found. And I don’t know where she is, man. But she’s in this town. I know it.”

He ignored what I said. “Listen to me. That place fucking sucks. And I am sure by now you got everybody convinced you’re some badass ice queen that’s never cried or smiled at a baby. But you are an animal. An
animal
, okay?” He laughed a little under his breath. “And it’s not good for animals to be all cooped up alone and drunk and eating garbage and listening to interview tapes of weeping inarticulate hicks. You feel me? You’re going to need some downtime, whether this girl is alive or dead. And you
know
that. See what I’m saying? You feel me, Flynn?”