When He Vanished Page 8

“No — sitting is no good.” My words hiss through clenched teeth. I know from experience to lie flat on my back, so I reach for the ground. Karen intuits my plan and helps ease me down. “Clumsy . . .” I gnash my teeth some more and stretch out; the knotted muscles are reluctant to release their fresh chokehold.

  I stare up at Karen and then Melody slips into view. “Mom — what are you doing? Your back . . .”

  “I’m okay.” I try to speak in a normal voice. “Hi, Karen. How are you doing?”

  Karen doesn’t know what to do with her hands or body and sort of wiggles around a moment before sitting in the chair next to me, trying to look everywhere at once. “I just came by to . . . You were so, ah . . . this morning . . .” It must seem to her now that the trouble is my back. Either that or I’m having some sort of mental episode. But before I can explain, Melody speaks up.

  “Mom? Where’s Dad?”

  I catch Karen’s gaze then turn my head to see my daughter looming on the edge of my vision.

  It’s time to come clean.

  “I don’t know, honey.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why you were asking me all those questions?”

  “Dad wasn’t here when I got home last night.”

  Karen looks more perplexed than ever, vibing indecision — she’s not sure if she should leave or stick it out. Gradually, gingerly, I bend my legs and bring my heels back towards my butt. Then I draw my knees toward my chest to loosen the traumatized muscles. “I don’t know what to say. I’m a little embarrassed, to tell you the truth. My husband, John — you know John — he went out last night while I was at the hospital.”

  She’s silent.

  “I don’t know where he went. I’m sure everything is fine.”

  I ease my legs flat again and check the palms of my hands — little drupelets of blood pepper my skin. But my knee is worse; I can feel thick threads of blood circling around to the underside of my leg, sticking to the denim. I manage to roll over and get myself half-erect. Both Karen and Melody move beside me, their gestures tentative, like birds. The moment I feel their hands, the tears come. I let them fall this time. There’s no use in trying to keep it all in anymore.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Honey,” Karen says. She’s gone blurry in my vision. “You need to talk to someone. Maybe you need to call the police.”

  “I’ll get you some Band-Aids and stuff, Mom.” Melody lets go of me and heads out of the room.

  “And some shorts too please, honey,” I call after her. I’ll be a bit cold but it’s the best thing while my knee is like this.

  Karen helps me up. I’ve managed to alleviate the worst of the back seizure — now I need to be careful. She keeps an arm encircled around my shoulders as I walk into the kitchen and turn on the tap. The soap stings my cut hands.

  Standing beside me, she whispers, “You weren’t kidding. Bad day, huh?”

  “I know. I’m so sorry about this,” I say, starting to tug down my jeans to reach my cut knee. Karen is certainly seeing a lot more of me today than she’d bargained for. I manage to push them down with some effort, and I grab a washcloth to wipe up the blood around my leg, making every movement slow and deliberate.

  “Here,” she says. “Give it to me.”

  I only let her because all the angles are making my back worse. Now there’s a woman I know slightly better than the post office ladies down on her knees, dabbing at me with a bloody washcloth. While I’m in my underwear.

  Melody comes back and hands the bandages to Karen, thrusting a pair of shorts into my hand. When I glance down a minute later, I catch Karen looking at me. “I think we got it.”

  “Thank you,” I snuffle, trying to wriggle into my shorts. I take a tissue from a box on the counter and wipe my eyes, blow my nose. Melody is squinting, confused. “So that’s why you’re acting all weird? Because of Dad?”

  “I’m sorry, baby, I know you’re having a tough—”

  “Dad went off somewhere?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe he . . . It’s possible he left last night, maybe to spend some time with his friends. Or someone.”

  The quivering of Melody’s lower lip is a surprise. “Well, what did you expect?” Her voice trembles on the edge of yelling.

  “What does that mean?”

  She glances over at Karen who has drifted away to sit down on one of the stools beside the kitchen island.

  “Never mind.” Melody storms out of the room. The house windows rattle when she slams her bedroom door. I look to Karen but her eyes dart away again. What is she thinking now? Good Lord . . . A wayward husband, a disheveled wife, an emotionally overwrought daughter. What a picture. I was never one to care much what people think, but that seems to be changing fast.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever been in here,” Karen says. “You have a lovely place.”

  Her segue, with such convivial delivery, makes me laugh. “It’s a mess. Thank you.”

  Her eyes slide back to mine. “Kids will be kids. Girls will be girls. Sensitive. I don’t have any girls, but I know.”

  I move a little closer, still leaning against the counter in the same spot I was yesterday morning, talking to John while he sat at the table.

  “Have you been . . . has everything been okay?” Karen waves her hands quickly in the air. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

  “We’ve been fine. Everything has been fine.”

  Except for that tugging at the back of my brain, ideas about a blonde lover, a group of friends, a persistent SUV. But what is Melody upset about? Karen is right: kids can be sensitive, Melody especially. She could have picked up on John’s recent anxiety, particularly about his visiting schoolmate. They have a special bond for which I’ve always been grateful. And little pitchers have big ears, the saying goes, so maybe she overheard something between John and me, thinks I pushed him into meeting with Bruce or something. She blames me for what’s happened.

  “His phone is here,” I tell Karen, “but his car is gone.” Saying these things reminds me that I haven’t checked his phone yet this morning. Even with the screen locked there would be indications of new texts, and those typically show up as a number, at least.

  “So what do you want to do? I think you can’t be too careful. Let me call Matt.” She digs for her own phone.

  But thinking about her husband — the deputy — freaks me out.

  “Hang on a sec, okay?”

  Karen stops and regards me coolly. There’s a look in her eye I’ve seen before — a look I’m sure my own patients have seen in my eyes, too. It’s the expression of someone who no longer trusts you to be the author of your own story. Karen sees a woman standing in front of her, or rather leaning and in pain in front of her, and she’s determining how much control she needs to exert. But she sets the phone on the kitchen island beside her and folds her hands in her lap.

  I reach into my pocket for the Post-it note with Bruce Barnes’s number on it. Karen is still watching me closely so I stumble through a recap of recent events. “The two of them together — it’s the only thing I can think of.” On the other hand, would John have really gone drinking with a guy he could hardly bear to be in the same room with? After he told me he wanted to be over and done with it all? Bruce seems unlikely, but it’s still a call I need to make.

  “What about the hospital?” Karen asks.

  “I think if John was brought in I would have been notified right away. Even if he was missing his ID, someone there would have recognized him and called me.” This is true, though I omit how I spent the night picturing John half-dead in a wrecked car, then dreamed of him still alive in some shallow grave.

  “Maybe one of the other hospitals in another town?”

  For just an instant I want to leap across the kitchen and wipe the somehow smug look of concern right off of Karen Dewitt’s face. But she’s only trying to help, and I’m either a fool or suffering
denial for not even considering other hospitals. “Good point. But let me just . . . I want to try his friend first, you know? I’m not sure I can handle a . . . I mean . . .”

  The sentence won’t complete itself. No, I’m not ready yet to find out John is some unknown subject in an emergency room. Not ready to hear that, despite all efforts, we’re very sorry, but he expired last night around 3 a.m. due to the blood loss and head trauma of a violent car crash. And by the way, ma’am, it’s our duty to inform you that his blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.

  I tap in Bruce’s number, get it wrong, start again, steadying my hand. Melody comes loudly out of her room and moves into the bathroom. She closes the door forcibly but at least doesn’t slam it. My poor daughter. She’s going through something new and potentially frightening and I’m preoccupied. The anger flares up again — anger at John for putting me in this position. Even at Bruce Barnes for showing up, whatever his intentions, and even if he does have a sick wife or girlfriend or whatever. Since he knocked on my front door Saturday morning, nothing has been the same.

  The line is ringing. I wait for what seems like a long time, trying not to stare at Karen, who sits primly and patiently like she knows all of this is in vain, that I just need to suck it up and call the cops. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I just have to face it. It’s not that I have any problem with police — I’m the first to yell at the TV when some character in a movie isn’t dialing 911 — but it’s the same problem as calling emergency rooms. I’m not ready to face how real it all becomes the moment they get involved: the inexorable machinery that starts up, slow and methodical and completely out of your control; the eyes crawling over you; the neighbors looking in; the somber questions and the scribble of pens. You’re no longer a special snowflake; you’re just a case number, another sad story in a world of sad stories.

  “Hey it’s me,” Bruce’s recorded voice says in my ear. “I can’t get to my phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll decide whether or not you’re worth calling back.” There’s a pause, then Bruce says, “Joking! I’m joking. I’ll call you back because I have no life.”

  There’s a beep. I’m momentarily speechless, derailed by the self-deprecation. “Hi, Bruce, it’s Jane Gable. John’s wife. Listen . . . I’m calling because John went out last night and he hasn’t come back. I’m just wondering if maybe you two guys are up to something, or if you know anything. This is really not like John. Be great if, um . . . I would appreciate a call back. Thanks.”

  I end the call and set my phone on the counter and look at it.

  Karen’s eyes are direct. She lifts her phone to show me the list of area hospitals and their numbers. “We can do it together. All right?”

  I let out a long breath. “All right. Just a second.” Hobbling down the hallway, I check to make sure Melody is still enclosed in the bathroom. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll be right out in the kitchen.”

  “Okay.”

  Melody’s flat tone hurts but I’ll have to make it up to her later; I’ve put this off long enough. I make my way back by running the ridge of my hand against the wall so as not to smear any blood.

  We start going down the list. Each call tightens my chest and ends with gushing relief: no one named John Gable has been admitted, not anywhere in the region, nor, for that matter, any mysterious blonde along with him. I google for regional car accidents and show the search results to Karen. “Nada,” I say, triumphant.

  “Other friends?” Karen asks. “Family?”

  I tell her briefly about John’s strained relationship with his father, his departed mother, and that his friends are far-flung. “We’re from Troy. Well, I am. John grew up around here, but he went to college in Albany. That’s where we met. We started out in an apartment — Russ was in our bedroom forever — then John’s work took off and I found the job up here.” I shrug. “You’d think in three years we’d have more friends but we’ve just been so busy.”

  “What about your own family?”

  “They don’t live here.”

  “In Troy?”

  “One of them. My stepbrother. He and John have only met once. At our wedding.”

  “Well . . .” Karen sighs. “I guess now we just wait.” Her brown eyes seem heavy. She’s pretty in a hard kind of way, with no-nonsense straight hair cut to chin length and a small upturned nose. She’s dressed in jeans and a cream sweater.

  “I’m sorry, Karen, I just — you know? If this thing just turns out that he’s . . . the idea of getting all kinds of people around and worried and he just shows up in an hour . . .”

  She flips her hand in the air. “I understand. But I’ll tell you what I know from Matt being a cop all these years — the first few hours of anything like this are the most critical.”

  “No, I know that, but . . . I mean, it’s John. This is just going to turn out to be something that . . .” I take a few uneasy steps and look out the front windows, the edge of the main road visible from fifty yards away. “Like losing your wallet or something. You’re about ready to cancel all your credit cards and then it just shows up.”

  She’s nodding as if this makes all the sense in the world — or she knows that it makes absurd sense to me, the obviously unreliable wife. She says, “You don’t think anything like this will happen, of course. That’s the way it is, and John is a responsible person. Which is all the more reason you need to treat it seriously.”

  Her tone, the way she’s looking at me, relights my defenses. “I am treating it seriously. I went looking for him this morning. I told you about it.” I nod toward the phone. “We just called all the hospitals in a hundred-mile radius and I left a message with some guy he barely knows and practically accused him of being up to no good with my — where are you going?”

  She’s off the stool and gathering her phone with a shake of her head. “I’ve overstepped my place, I’m sorry.”

  I follow her to the door, but I’m still hobbled, moving too slowly to catch her. “No, Karen . . . I’m sorry. This has just been . . .”

  “I hope it works out,” she says, as she opens the door. “And I hope Melody is all right, too. Call me if you need anything.”

  I want to say something, but now I’m truly mortified by the whole thing — three years in this community and we’ve been the picture of normalcy. Well, maybe our lives are a little off the beaten path in a region where most husbands work construction, or at the jail, or are in jail, but we’ve managed to find our place and fit in. Now I’m clamoring after this woman, my back has gone out, I’m bleeding, my husband is missing, and my preteen daughter is getting her first period.

  Karen gives me one last forlorn look, both disapproving and oddly disappointed, and closes the door behind her.

  She’s right. She’s been right about everything and I’ve been too chicken to face it. I watch from the window as she maneuvers her car around mine — I forgot I’d blocked her in. Great.

  If the situation was reversed I’d be advocating the same moves: call the police, don’t waste any time. Saving us embarrassment if John shows up hungover and smelling of cheap sex shouldn’t be the priority. And I’ve kept saying it’s not like him because it’s not. He would have called by now, somehow gotten word. It highlights the possibility he’s injured, alone, trapped.

  Karen’s husband Matt is a local deputy but I want the state police. The 911 emergency center will know where to dispatch the call. I’m already keying the numbers and about to hit send when my daughter cries out.

  “Mom!”

  She sounds terrified. I drop the phone into my pocket and hurry away from the living room, using the wall to brace myself as I move stiffly down the hallway.

  “Mom!” She’s screaming now.

  CHAPTER TEN / THE POLICE

  There is blood in the toilet. We have officially arrived at our destination, ladies and gentlemen.

  Her face is streaked with tears, her lips pressed into a g
rim line. It breaks my heart. This should be a positive thing. This is a step toward womanhood, a step toward possibly bearing her own children someday. And for some reason it’s causing her all of this anxiety. I hover painfully and awkwardly as she gets herself under control.

  It’s not early — I got my first period about the same age — and we’ve prepared for it. My mother never said much, and when the first rust-colored blood showed up in my underpants I thought I was dying of cancer, so I’ve been conditioning Melody for a year. It’s only recently she became so reticent, well before her adoptive father went missing.

  She wants privacy again. I leave and stand staring at the closed door, wondering where I went wrong with her or what I’ve done. Fresh tears tickle my cheeks. Since the moment I encouraged John to have his old classmate to dinner, I’ve made one poor choice after another. I should’ve butted out, let John keep his distance. Or, at least, never brought up the wine. God, if Melody is right — if I had a hand in triggering John’s alcohol relapse . . .

  No. Don’t blame yourself.

  But who else is there? I have to take responsibility for my family role. I affect the emotions of my loved ones the same way I affect my patients. After all, that’s part of the job, part of why I’m there, and I’m good at it. Why am I good at my career but so lacking in my personal life?

  I wipe away the tears and move gingerly back to the kitchen and take out my phone again. No more bad decisions. The call to 911 is going through as I put the phone to my ear.

  “911 emergency response — can I have your name and address please?”

  “Jane Gable.” I give her my location, looking out of the window. The sun is melting the frost on the grass and trees. At least that’s something.

  “What can I do for you, Jane?”

  “My husband is missing. His name is John Gable.”

  * * *

  The state troopers arrive in two vehicles, now parked in my driveway with the engines running. Having the state police here is not a comfort: they represent hard, final facts.

  I know some of the state police assigned to Troop B because, like the local deputies, I see them coming and going from the hospital. These two, though, are unfamiliar to me as they come up the walk. They introduce themselves as Trooper Morse and Trooper Gorski. The male trooper, Morse, gives me a look.