The ghost floated toward the kitchen, or “family headquarters,” that really was a marvel—all stainless steel and countertops made from Brazilian concrete, a Thermador range, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, two dishwashers, two stoves with noiseless fans, two sinks, a wine cooler, a drawer freezer and an entire wall of sliding glass that overlooked an Olympic-sized swimming pool (without guard rails since Sarah and Robby were already expert swimmers) and a Jacuzzi and a vast, intensely green and lush lawn, which was bordered by a huge and carefully maintained garden blooming with flowers I didn’t know the names of, and beyond all that was the clearing and then the woods. The ghost saw no party detritus cluttering the house. It was immaculate. Confused but impressed, the ghost stared at a vase of fresh tulips sitting in the center of the kitchen table.
Marta was already up, fiddling with a Gaggia espresso maker as the chic, hungover ghost wrapped in the Frette sheet hovered around the kitchen, placing his burning forehead against the wine-cooling cabinet for one brief moment (the ghost noticed bitterly that it was empty) before falling into a chair at the giant round table on the far side of the room. Marta was a purposefully unattractive woman in her midthirties whom Jayne had befriended while shooting a movie in L.A. She was loyal and discreet and handled all of Jayne’s business effortlessly—just one of the thousands of women from that town so attracted to celebrity and so devoted to its demands that she followed Jayne across the country to these cold and unknown suburbs. Before Jayne she had worked for Penny Marshall, Meg Ryan and, briefly, Julia Roberts, and she had the eerie ability to intuit whatever need or request the celebrity might have at any moment. Plus the kids seemed responsive to her, which took a lot of pressure off their mother. Jayne’s trust in her was what gave Marta drive and ambition; it was what flattered her and gave her sustenance. This was as close as she was ever going to get to being famous herself, and Marta took the job seriously. But she seemed sad to me, since growing up in that world I had encountered hundreds of Martas—women (and men) so enslaved to the cause of celebrity that their own world was annihilated. She had a small apartment—that Jayne paid for—in town. (I didn’t know where Rosa lived, only that her quiet Salvadorian father would pick her up from Elsinore Lane at eight in the evening and bring her back the next morning at dawn.)
The ghost needed coffee.
And suddenly Marta was setting an Hermès Chaine d’Ancre china cup filled with steamy, milky espresso in front of him, and the ghost mumbled his thanks as she went over to the Waring juice extractor and started squeezing oranges. Strung out, the ghost stared at the copper pans hanging from a rack above the island in the middle of the kitchen, morosely sipping his coffee as his eyes shifted to the Daily Variety already sitting on top of a pile that included the New York Times, the Calendar section from the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter. Hearing voices from upstairs, I breathed in deeply as I reached for our local paper, preparing myself, because I was still—even without a hangover—having trouble adjusting to the schedules everyone inhabiting this house maintained. So after Marta left the kitchen to get Sarah (who was practicing a second language on flash cards) I roused myself and poured a large glass of freshly squeezed OJ and dosed it with a half-empty bottle of Ketel One left over from the party and neatly hidden among all the olive oil at the end of the counter. It was a small miracle no one had gotten rid of it. I sipped the cocktail carefully and returned to the table.
The newspapers kept stroking my fear. New surveys provided awful statistics on just about everything. Evidence suggested that we were not doing well. Researchers gloomily agreed. Environmental psychologists were interviewed. Damage had “unwittingly” been done. There were “feared lapses.” There were “misconceptions” about potential. Situations had “deteriorated.” Cruelty was on the rise and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The populace was confounded, yet didn’t care. Unpublished studies hinted that we were all paying a price. Scientists peered into data and concluded that we should all be very worried. No one knew what normal behavior was anymore, and some argued that this was a form of virtue. And no one argued back. No one challenged anything. Anxiety was soaking up most people’s days. Everyone had become preoccupied with horror. Madness was fluttering everywhere. There was fifty years of research supporting this data. There were diagrams illustrating all of these problems—circles and hexagons and squares, different sections colored in lime or lilac or gray. Most troubling were the fleeting signs that nothing could transform any of this into something positive. You couldn’t help being both afraid and fascinated. Reading these articles made you feel that the survival of mankind didn’t seem very important in the long run. We were doomed. We deserved it. I was so tired. (What worried Jayne besides the upcoming reshoots? The kids were mimicking our facial expressions, which for the last month had consisted of hassled grimaces.)
And so many children were missing that it bordered on an epidemic. About a dozen boys had disappeared since I arrived in July—only boys. Their photos were flashed on the Internet and updates were posted on special Web sites devoted to them, their solemn faces staring out at you, their shadows following you everywhere. I read about another missing Boy Scout—the third in the last year. This boy, too, was Robby’s age, and his witless, angelic face now graced the front page of the newspaper. But none of these children had been found. No bodies discovered in the ravine or in the concrete drainpipe; no remains in the dry creek bed or in the suspicious duffel bag tossed off the turnpike; nothing lying naked and defiled in the woods. These boys had vanished without a trace, and there were no hints that any of them was ever coming back. Investigators were on “frantic searches.” Parents of the missing boys were urged to appear on CNN and humanize their child in case the abductors were watching. Except for increasing ratings, these news conferences accomplished nothing beyond serving as a reminder of “the incidental malice of the universe” (courtesy of Time). This publicity was supposed to mobilize volunteers but people were giving up hope—so many boys were missing, people had simply become alienated and longed for a lesser horror to take this one’s place. There were candlelight vigils where families linked hands and lowered their heads, grief-stricken and praying, though to me they more often resembled participants in a séance. Various organizations proposed plaques to memorialize the lost. Students at Buckley (the private school Robby and Sarah attended) were encouraged to e-mail condolences to the bereaved parents. We were supposed to rehearse our children on the usual tired litany: don’t talk to strangers, ignore the well-dressed soft-spoken man looking for help to find his puppy; “Yell and Tell” and “Rehearse a Route” and “Avoid the Clown.” Distrust everybody was the message. Everywhere people heard the sound of children weeping. Silly Putty was used in school classes for squeezing out tension. We were advised to always keep recent photographs of our children on hand.