“I really appreciate it,” Brad says. “And if there’s something I can do for you, let me know.”
“Thanks,” I say, painfully pinching my finger as I fold the card table down, but otherwise happy to close on an up note.
A cop car crawls through the parking lot. In the distance, I spot a school crossing guard working the intersection. She uses her body, her orange vest, her meter-reader hat like the elements of a human shield, spreading her arms wide as she blocks the crosswalk; the children spill forth, truly oblivious.
I keep thinking about the missing girl. I’m not sure why, but I feel guilty, like I’m somehow a participant. It’s not a sensation I’ve had before — but this one crawls under my skin. Because of the woman I met at the A& P, because of Ashley, because of Jane, because I am now more awake than ever before, because I can’t stop thinking …
There is a world out there, so new, so random and disassociated that it puts us all in danger. We talk online, we “friend” each other when we don’t know who we are really talking to — we fuck strangers. We mistake almost anything for a relationship, a community of sorts, and yet, when we are with our families, in our communities, we are clueless, we short-circuit and immediately dive back into the digitized version — it is easier, because we can be both our truer selves and our fantasy selves all at once, with each carrying equal weight.
I stop at Starbucks. I take a good look at the poster taped to the phone pole outside. Is it the woman from the A& P? I don’t think it’s her, but I don’t really know. I try to remember what the girl I met looks like. I remember the dirty-blond hair — which the missing girl also has. I remember her breasts, larger than I expected, pale with beautiful blue veins, like an ancient river under the surface of the skin. I remember that her face was plain, blank — her eyes blue-gray.
And I wonder — how does a person take another person? A news truck is setting up on the corner, cranking its satellite up high.
Inside Starbucks, the girls behind the counter are in tears; apparently, the missing girl worked there last summer part-time; they all know her. I leave without coffee — it’s too upsetting.
Pulling into the driveway, I’m really depressed. I carry the empty carrier to the house, the metal door of the cat box swinging open and closed repeatedly, slamming my finger. I’ve done a terrible thing; I’ve taken something that’s not mine, the mama cat’s children, and given them away. I enter empty-handed. The cat approaches, sniffs me, checks the carrier, and seems to have gotten the news. She goes under the sofa. Tessie doesn’t bother getting up until I put her dinner down.
The 6 p.m. news begins with “Breaking Local News”—the story of the missing girl. Heather Ryan is twenty years old and was home visiting her parents for the weekend. “Ryan reportedly went for a run last night and never returned. According to police, her family is especially concerned as she had been having some personal problems and was on a new medication following a basketball injury to the head. We hear a lot about the guys and football or soccer injuries, but as girls’ sports have become more competitive, we’re seeing some of the same injuries. Last fall, while playing a regular-season game at Leduc College, she was struck …”
The reporter prattles on as they replay footage of the ball bouncing off the side of Heather’s head, her head slamming to the left as another girl mows her down, knocking her to the gym floor. “It’s repeated incidents of brain shears that worry us,” says the doctor they’ve brought in to comment, “the banging of the brain against the inside of the head.” The reporter closes by saying, “If anyone has seen Heather or has any information, please call the special hotline.”
Great. So the missing girl has problems. What kind of problems? Problems like she can’t say who she is? Like she’s living in some kind of fugue state? Who is or was the woman from the A&P? There was something odd about her, about that whole encounter, something she made a point of not telling me. Should I inform someone, call that special number and leave my lame confession? I consider it, but then decide that it’s all in my head — that the girl I met looks nothing like the missing girl. I attempt to make a sketch, a re-creation of what I remember about the woman. I draw a kind of an oval for her head; I draw her neck, which I remember was long, her chest — the fact is, her breasts are the only part I remember well. I draw them over and over again, and then go back, trying to find her neck, her head, her face. I wonder if there’s a DNA sample from her in the Dijon-mustard jar. There must have been one on my cock, but I’ve showered multiple times since then. I go over everything she said and did; I think about the stolen TV, the items in her grocery cart, her comments about frosted cake versus plain. I wonder — did she look lost? I wonder if perhaps they could come in and dust for fingerprints. I take Tessie for a walk, circling the house, the yard, wondering whether someone might be there, hiding out.
I’m stuck on how a girl could be there one moment and missing the next — how someone steals another person. Is it sheer physical force? A psychological game? Is it that women, girls, boys are all weaker than adult men, who can simply pick them up and move them from one end of the earth to another? And this happens in a dark vortex, a break from reality; it’s like some door opens to a dark underside and one of us is dragged down under.
By eight o’clock, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy, worried not only about the missing girl and every girl everywhere, but also about the kittens. Are they all right — are they in their new homes weeping, clawing, wishing more than anything to get back to the safety of Mama?
How do any of us survive?
By eight-fifteen, I can’t tolerate my anxiety any longer — I call Ashley at school, just to check in.
There seems to be confusion — she’s not there. I ask for her roommate, who hands me over to the housemother, who tells me that the school made a change in her living accommodations. “I thought you knew,” she says.
“I had no idea.”
“She’s been staying with one of the teachers. Let me get you that number.”
I call that number, get a machine, leave a message; a few minutes later, a very nervous-sounding Ashley calls back.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I was just checking in.”
“You don’t usually make unscheduled calls,” she says.
“Surprise,” I say.
There’s something in Ashley’s voice that’s not right.
“I didn’t get you away from something important, did I?”
“No,” she says. “I was just doing my homework.”
She is a bad liar — but I say nothing. “What was for dinner tonight?”
“I think it was fish,” she says.
“What kind of fish?”
“White, with a kind of yellow-orange-colored sauce,” she says.
“Did you eat it?”
“No,” she says.
“What did you have?”
“There was a vegetarian option — stuffed shells and salad.”
“Everything else okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, I guess,” she says.
“Okay, then, I’ll say good night — talk to you tomorrow, the usual time.”
“Thanks,” she says.
I hang up feeling awkward, like I stepped in something I don’t quite know what.
The 11 p.m. news has live coverage from a candlelight vigil being held in the park where the girl was last seen — the same park where I take Tessie, the one where I had my sobbing meltdown. Women in packs are running through the park in a Take Back the Night rally and throwing their running shoes over the telephone wires. The police are following up on multiple leads but have no new information as of this hour.