Second Hand Heart (24 page)

I read the article twice.

I found the link to the reporter’s email address, and sent him the following painfully simple inquiry:

Is there any way that one can get in touch with this Isabelle Duncan? Thank you.

Richard Bailey

•  •  •

Then I went to bed.

I noticed that the message light was flashing on the answering machine, but I was sure I would only discover that Myra had left panicky messages. Or, failing that, I was sure it would prove to be something I wouldn’t want to deal with, and which would only keep me awake. So I let that go for the time being.

Postcard from Independence

I
t was after eleven the following morning when I put on my bathrobe and wandered out to collect my three days’ worth of mail.

I carried it all in, weeded out the junk and catalogues, and dropped them in the recycle bin.

There was a notice from the phone company that might well have been final, and a second notice on the gas bill. With a deep sigh, I knew I would need to pull myself together to pay bills. Which meant I would have to confront and absorb the truth about my rapidly dwindling bank balance. I supposed I could always take another credit card advance.

I briefly put them aside.

Under them was a postcard. A photo of a snowy Mount Whitney. I turned it over. My heart literally missed a beat to see that it was from Vida.

I read it three times. Held it in my hands. As if it could tell me something.

Then I remembered my phone messages, and played them.

Two panicky messages from Myra. Three calm ones from Vida. She was home, and hoping to get her worry stone back.

I picked up the phone, and called her house. Abigail picked up on the first ring.

“Vida?” Not even hello. Just, “Vida?”

“No. It’s not, Abigail. It’s me. Richard Bailey. I was hoping to talk to Vida. I was returning her call. Calls. But, from your greeting, I’m guessing she isn’t there.”

“She’s gone again. She was home three days, and now she’s gone again. Do you have any idea where she is? Tell me the truth.”

“If I did, Abigail, don’t you think I would have called there instead of here?”

“Oh.”

“I know she was recently in the Eastern Sierras. She sent me a postcard of Mount Whitney. Postmarked Independence.”

“Yes. That’s on record. That’s pretty well established. Did yours have any writing on it?”

“Of course it did. What would be the point of a postcard with no writing on it?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself lately. If she turns up, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you.”

But six long days went by. And nobody let me know anything.

•  •  •

Six days later, at ten minutes to nine in the evening, the phone jangled me out of sleep.

I grabbed it up, hoping it would be Vida, or, failing that, Abigail, with news.

“Richard?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes, this is Richard.”

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

I’m loath to admit how early I go to bed these days. It’s humiliating. “Well, I cannot tell a lie,” I said. “I fell asleep in front of the TV.” Obviously, I could tell a lie. Obviously I was lying when I said I couldn’t lie. I had gone to bed. Purposely.

I still had no idea who I was lying to. “Well, I’m sorry I woke you,” she said.

A long silence, which I hoped would speak for itself. I felt an aversion to having to ask.

“This is Connie.”

“Oh. Right. Connie,” I said, waking up fast. “I didn’t recognize your voice. Interesting you should call. I’ve been wishing I had your phone number. Because I got a postcard from Vida. And I was wrong when I told you that she only remembers me. Apparently she also remembers that Lorrie was a hiker. She asked me if Lorrie was a hiker.”

“But you can’t answer her. Right? Because she’s gone.”

“Right. She’s gone.” A long silence. Long. Horrifically, painfully long. “But I didn’t mean to talk over your reason for calling.”

“Oh, no, please do,” she said. “Please talk over my reason for calling.”

More silence. The uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach callously announced that this was no surprise, and I should not even bother to pretend otherwise. And that it had warned me. What it said, more or less, was, “You knew this all along.”

Connie jumped into the gap.

“OK. I’m a total idiot. That’s just a given. I have a good grasp of certain scientific details, but it doesn’t mean I necessarily handle the rest of my life like a science. I’m just like everybody else. I called to make a confession.”

“OK.” My lips felt numb as I said it.

“Those articles I told you about … I don’t need to send them to you. They’re right out on the Internet. I could have linked you to them, very easily. I could have written two or three links on a cocktail napkin right then and there. I just didn’t want to completely drop out of touch with you.”

“Oh.”

“Look, don’t even say anything, OK? Because I know. I know it all. I know you just lost your wife. Please don’t point out that you just lost your wife, because I know. And please don’t pass judgment on the fact that I would even find myself drawn to a man who just lost his wife, because I have two best girlfriends and a therapist to do that job for you. And I also know you’re a good ten years younger … I know all of it, so just don’t say anything.”

I waited. Having been told not to say anything.

“Oh. Right. You can say something,” she said.

“Can? Or may?”

“OK, you may. Can you?”

“Not really. No.”

“Look. All I’m saying is, maybe we can not drop completely out of touch. I’ll be up in San Francisco in October. Maybe we could just get together and have coffee or something. Maybe go for a hike!”

“Sure. That would be fine.”

“You sound totally lost and confused.”

“I am.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was before I met you.”

“So … where did she send you a postcard from?”

My brain raced to keep up with her sudden change of tack. Nearly tripped over itself and went flying. “Oh. Vida? From Independence. California.”

“Seriously? Independence?”

“Something special about Independence?”

“There is to me. It’s about eleven feet from Manzanar.”

I knew what that was. Manzanar. I just couldn’t access what I knew. Not on short notice, anyway.

She raced on.

“The Japanese-American internment camp. My grandfather died there during the war.”

“That’s horrible. I didn’t know people died there.”

“Lots of people died there. Take that many people and hold them for years, some of them are going to die.”

“Oh. I see. You don’t mean they killed him.”

“Open to interpretation. He had a heart attack. He was a big stress monster, you know? And then all the added pressure of being interned against his will, and especially not being able to save his wife and son from that same fate. His barrack-mates tried to get him some medical help, but nobody got to him for hours. My father was six, and he stood there and watched his father die in his mother’s arms. I’m not going to make a big, sweeping statement about the state of healthcare at Manzanar. Because I wasn’t there, thank God. I wasn’t born yet. But it sure let my family down.”

“I’m really sorry. That’s unforgivable.”

“Yeah. Well. Here’s the problem with unforgivable. The more I research the bodymind, the more I get that the only workable path to workable health is to forgive the unforgivable in spite of its unforgivability. Otherwise we just destroy our own cells with the byproducts of all that hate. We don’t hurt Manzanar any. Just us. You don’t suppose Vida was there because of the camp, do you? No, that doesn’t make any sense. She’s not Asian, is she?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t be, then. Got to be coincidence. I just couldn’t think of any other reason why someone would go to Independence.”

“The postcard had a picture of Mount Whitney.”

“Yeah. That makes more sense for a white girl. Not sure what I was thinking there, for a minute.”

Another deadly silence, during which I was grateful for the diversion, yet at the same time realized it had played out and abandoned us.

“So … I’ll give you my phone number,” she said. “Do you have anything to write with? And on? Handy?”

I looked around blankly. The lights were off but it was summer, and not even entirely dark at nine o’clock.

“Not really.”

“I’ll email it to you.”

“OK.”

“Go back to sleep now. I’m sorry.”

It took me a while to think what to say in return. And, besides, before I could, my train of thought was broken by a dial tone.

From:
Isabelle Duncan
To:
Richard Bailey

Dear Richard Bailey,

Sorry it’s taken so long to reply, but the newspaper forwarded me a number of requests like yours, and it’s been quite overwhelming, and it’s taking me some time to get through them. Most are missing children. And I won’t do missing children. I just can’t. It would tear me apart. You didn’t specify. If this is not about a missing child, I’ll help if I can.

Isabelle Duncan

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Isabelle Duncan

Dear Isabelle Duncan,

The missing person is not a child. She’s nineteen years old. And I don’t think she’s come to any harm. So I don’t think it would tear you apart. Thank you for your offer of help. It means more than I can say. How do I proceed?

Many thanks,

Richard Bailey

From:
Isabelle Duncan
To:
Richard Bailey

Richard,

If you could bring something that belongs to her, or even just something that she touched, that would help. If you can make it tomorrow at about 1 p.m., let me know, and I will give you my address.

Isabelle

Tired

I
t was raining on and off in Portland. In fact, it rained on and off all the way from the northern California border. But that hardly qualifies as a surprise. When is it not raining in Portland?

•  •  •

When she opened the door, Isabelle Duncan looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. If not weeks. She looked to be fifty-something, with hip-length hair of pure white. The circles under her eyes looked nearly black in comparison to the rest of her pale and pasty skin.

Her house smelled distinctly of the three large, aged dogs that circled my legs, wagging feebly.

“You look tired,” I said.

“So do you.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess I must. It’s a long drive.”

“Come in,” she said. “Come in.”

I had to walk slowly and carefully so as not to trip over the dogs, who seemed intent on reading fascinating smells on my pant legs.

“Where did you drive from?” she asked, indicating her worn couch.

I sat, and she sat very close to me. More or less in what I like to think of as my personal space. The one I’ve been guarding so cautiously lately. I owed her a debt of gratitude, so I let it go by. But it kept me on edge.

“The Bay Area,” I said. “California,” I added. Because there are bays in Oregon, too.

To say I’d driven from the Bay Area was only very loosely true. I said it because San Jose was even farther, and I wanted to make the drive seem less insane.

“You don’t live in Portland?”

“No.”

One of the dogs settled heavily on to the carpet with a deep grunt.

“How did you even read that article?”

“My mother-in-law lives here. She told me about it, and then I read it online.”

She clucked her tongue.

“Word does travel,” she said, making it clear that it would do far less traveling if she had her say. “You couldn’t have driven up just today.”

“No. I left late yesterday, after I got your last email. It’s more than a ten-hour drive.” A couple hours more, actually.

“This must be important to you. Where did you sleep?”

“In my car at a scenic overlook. Overlooking Lake Shasta. I’m sure I could have gotten a ticket for it if anybody had noticed. But nobody did.”

“That explains why you look tired.” She did not explain her own exhaustion, and I didn’t consider it my business to ask. “Well. Not to be rude, but let’s get started. I have a couple coming at two. Missing child. Yeah, I know. I broke my own rule. Shouldn’t have taken it on, and I know I’ll regret it. Already do. But I agreed, and there’s no getting out of it now. What did you bring?”