Carthage (8 page)

Arlette stepped out onto the redwood deck. Just to check the outdoor furniture—and Zeno’s sagging hammock strung between two sturdy trees—but no Cressida of course.

Went to the garage, entering by a side door. Switched on the garage light—no one inside the garage of course.

Barefoot, wincing, Arlette went to check each of the household vehicles—Zeno’s Land Rover, Arlette’s Toyota station wagon, Juliet’s Skylark. Of course, there was no one sleeping or hiding in any of these.

Making her way then out the asphalt driveway which was a lengthy driveway to the street—Cumberland Avenue. Though Cumberland was one of Carthage’s most prestigious residential streets, in the high, hilly northern edge of town abutting the old historic cemetery of the First Episcopal Church of Carthage, Arlette might as well have been facing an abyss—there were no streetlights on and no lights in their neighbors’ houses. Only a smoldering-dull light seemed to descend from the sky as if a bright moon were trapped behind clouds.

It was possible—so desperation urged the mother to think—that Cressida had made arrangements to meet someone after she’d spent the evening at Marcy’s; they might now be together, in a vehicle parked at the curb, talking together, or . . .

How many times Arlette had sat with boys in their vehicles, in front of her parents’ house, talking together, kissing and touching . . .

But Cressida wasn’t that kind of girl. Cressida didn’t “go out” with boys. At least not so far as her family knew.

I worry that Cressida is lonely. I don’t think she’s very happy.

Don’t be ridiculous! Cressida is one-of-a-kind. She doesn’t give a damn for what other girls care for, she’s special.

So Zeno wished to believe. Arlette was less certain.

She did guess that it was a painful thing, to be
the smart one
following in the trail of
the pretty one.

In any case there was no vehicle parked at the end of the Mayfields’ long driveway. Cressida was nowhere on the property, it was painfully obvious.

With less regard for her bare feet, Arlette returned quickly to the house, to the kitchen where the overhead light shone brightly. You would not think it was 4:30
A.M
.! The pumpkin-colored Formica counters were freshly wiped and the dishwasher was still warm from having been set into motion at about 10:30
P.M
.; with her usual cheery efficiency Juliet had helped Arlette clean up after the dinner party. Together in the kitchen, in the aftermath of a pleasant evening with old friends, an evening that would come to acquire, in Arlette’s memory, the distinction of being the last such evening of her life, Arlette might have spoken with Juliet about Brett Kincaid—but Juliet did not seem to invite such an intimacy.

Nor did either Arlette or Juliet speak of Cressida—at that time, what was there to say?

Just going over to Marcy’s, Mom. I can walk.

Don’t wait up for me OK?

Arlette lifted the phone receiver another time and called Cressida’s cell phone number even as she prepared herself for no answer.

“Maybe she lost the phone. Maybe someone stole it.”

Cressida was careless with cell phones. She’d lost at least two, both gifts from Zeno who wanted his daughters to be within calling-range, if he required them. And he wanted his daughters to have cell phones in case of emergency.

Was this an emergency? Arlette didn’t want to think so.

She returned to Cressida’s room—walking more slowly now, as if she were suddenly very tired.

No one. An empty room.

And now she saw how neatly—how
tightly
—books were inserted into the bookcases that, by Cressida’s request, Zeno had had a carpenter build into three of the room’s walls so that it had looked—almost—as if Cressida were imprisoned by books.

Some were children’s books, outsized, with colorful covers. Cressida had loved these books of her early childhood, that had helped her to read at a very young age.

And there were Cressida’s notebooks—also large, from an art-supply store in Carthage—in which, as a brightly imaginative young child, she’d drawn fantastical stories with Crayolas of every hue.

Initially, Cressida hadn’t objected when her parents showed her drawings to relatives, friends and neighbors who were impressed by them—or more than impressed, astonished at the little girl’s “artistic talent”—but then, abruptly at about age nine Cressida became self-conscious, and refused to allow Zeno to boast about her as he’d liked to do.

It had been years since Cressida’s brightly colored fantastical-animal drawings had been tacked to a wall of her room. Arlette missed these, that revealed a childish whimsy and playfulness not always evident in the precocious little girl with whom she lived—who called her, with a curious stiffness of her mouth, as if the word were utterly incomprehensible to her—“Mom.”

(No problem with Cressida saying “Daddy”—“Dad-
dy
”—with a radiant smile.)

For the past several years there had been, on Cressida’s wall, pen-and-ink drawings on stiff white construction paper in the mode of the twentieth-century Dutch artist M. C. Escher who’d been one of Cressida’s abiding passions in high school. These drawings Arlette tried to admire—they were elaborate, ingenious, finely drawn, resembling more visual riddles than works of art meant to engage a viewer. The largest and most ambitious, titled
Descending and Ascending,
was mounted on cardboard, measuring about three feet by three feet: an appropriation of Escher’s famous lithograph
Ascending and Descending
in which monk-like figures ascended and descended never-ending staircases in a surreal structure in which there appeared to be several sources of gravity. Cressida’s drawing was of a subtly distorted family house with walls stripped away, revealing many more staircases than there were in the house, at unnatural—“orthogonal”—angles to one another; on these staircases, human figures walked “up” even as other human figures walked “down” on the underside of the same steps.

Gazing at the pen-and-ink drawing, you became disoriented—dizzy. For what was
up
was also
down,
simultaneously.

Cressida had worked at her Escher-drawings obsessively, for at least a year, at the age of sixteen. Mysteriously she’d said that M. C. Escher had held up a mirror to her soul.

The figures in
Descending and Ascending
were both valiant and pathetic. Earnestly they walked “up”—earnestly they walked “down.” They appeared to be oblivious of one another, stepping on reverse steps. Cressida’s variant of the Escher drawing was more realistic than the original—the structure containing the inverted staircases was recognizable as the Mayfields’ sprawling old Colonial house, furniture and wall hangings were recognizable, and the figures were clearly the Mayfields—tall sturdy shock-haired Daddy, Mom with a placid smiling vacuous face, gorgeous Juliet with exaggerated eyes and lips and inky-frizzy-haired Cressida a fierce-frowning child with arms and legs like sticks, half the height of the other figures, a gnome in their midst.

The Mayfield figures were repeated several times, with a comical effect; earnestness, repeated, suggests idiocy. Arlette never looked at
Descending and Ascending
and Cressida’s other Escher-drawings on the wall without a little shudder of apprehension.

It was easier for Cressida to mock than to admire. Easier for Cressida to detach herself from others, than to attempt to attach herself.

For she’d been hurt, Arlette had to suppose. In ninth grade when Cressida had volunteered to teach in a program called Math Literacy—(in fact, this program had been initiated by Zeno’s mayoral administration in the face of state budget cuts to education)—and after several enthusiastic weekly sessions with middle-school students from “deprived” backgrounds she’d returned home saying with a shamefaced little frown that she wasn’t going back.

Zeno had asked why. Arlette had asked why.

“It was a stupid idea. That’s why.”

Zeno had been surprised and disappointed with Cressida when she refused to explain why she was quitting the program. But Arlette knew there had to be a particular reason and that this reason had to do with her daughter’s pride.

Arlette recalled that something unfortunate had happened in high school, too, related to Cressida’s Escher-fixation. But she’d never known the details.

On Cressida’s desk, which consisted of a wide, smooth-sanded plank and aluminum drawers, put together by Cressida herself, was a laptop (closed), a notebook (closed), small stacks of books and papers. All were neatly arranged as if with a ruler.

Arlette rarely entered her younger daughter’s room except if Cressida was inside, and expressly invited her. She dreaded the accusation of
snooping
.

It was 4:36
A.M.
Too soon after her last attempt to call Cressida’s cell phone for Arlette to call her again.

Instead, she went to Juliet’s room which was next-door.

“Mom?”—Juliet sat up in bed, startled.

“Oh, honey—I’m sorry to wake you . . .”

“No, I’ve been awake. Is something wrong?”

“Cressida isn’t home.”

“Cressida isn’t home!”

It was an exclamation of surprise, not alarm. For Cressida had not ever stayed out so late—so far as her family knew.

“She was at Marcy’s. She should have been home hours ago.”

“I’ve tried her cell phone. But I haven’t called Marcy—I suppose I should.”

“What time is it? God.”

“I didn’t want to disturb them, at such an hour . . .”

Juliet rose from bed, quickly. Since breaking with Brett Kincaid she was often home and in bed early, like a convalescent; but she slept only intermittently, for a few hours, and spent the rest of the night-hours reading, writing emails, surfing the Internet. On her nightstand beside her laptop were several library books—Arlette saw the title
Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq.

They tried to recall: what had Cressida called out to them, when she’d left the house? Nothing out of the ordinary, each was sure.

“She walked to Marcy’s. She must have walked home, then—or . . .”

Arlette’s voice trailed off. Now that Juliet had been drawn into her concern for Cressida, she was becoming more anxious.

“Maybe she’s staying over with Marcy . . .”

“But—she’d have called us, wouldn’t she . . .”

“ . . . she’d never stay overnight there, why on earth? Of course she’d have come home.”

“But she isn’t home.”

“Did you look anywhere other than her room? I know it isn’t likely, but . . .”

“I didn’t want to wake Zeno, you know how excitable he is . . .”

“You called her cell—you said? Should we try again?”

Nighttime cream Juliet wore on her face, on her beautifully soft skin, shone now like oozing oil. Her hair, a fair brown, layered, feathery, was flattened on one side of her head. Between the sisters was an old, unresolved rivalry: the younger’s efforts to thwart and undermine the older’s efforts to be
good
.

Juliet called her sister from her own cell phone. Again there was no answer.

“I suppose we should call Marcy. But . . .”

“I’d better wake Zeno. He’ll know what to do.”

Arlette entered the darkened bedroom, where Zeno was sleeping. She shook his shoulder, gently. “Zeno? I’m sorry to wake you, but—Cressida isn’t home.”

Zeno’s eyelids fluttered open. There was something touching, vulnerable and poignant in Zeno waking from sleep—he put Arlette in mind of a slumbering bear, perilously wakened from a winter doze.

“It’s going on five
A.M.
She hasn’t been home all night. I’ve tried to call her, and I’ve looked everywhere in the house . . .”

Zeno sat up. Zeno swung his legs out of bed. Zeno rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his tufted hair.

“Well—she’s nineteen years old. She doesn’t have a curfew and she doesn’t have to report to us.”

“But—she was only just going to Marcy’s for dinner. She walked.”

Walked.
Now that Arlette had said this, for the second time, a chill came over her.

“ . . . she was walking, at night, alone . . . Maybe someone . . .”

“Don’t catastrophize, Lettie. Please.”

“But—she was alone. I think she must have been alone. We’d better call Marcy.”

Zeno rose from bed with surprising agility. In boxer shorts he wore as pajamas, bristly-haired, flabby in the torso and midriff, he padded barefoot to the bureau, to snatch up his cell phone.

“We’ve tried to call her, Zeno. Juliet and me . . .”

Zeno paid her no heed. He made the call, listened intently, broke the connection and called immediately again.

“She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s lost the phone. I’m just so terribly worried, if she was walking back home . . . It’s Saturday night, someone might have been driving by . . .”

“I said, Lettie, please—don’t catastrophize. That isn’t helpful.”

Zeno spoke sharply, irritably. He was stepping into a pair of rumpled khaki shorts he’d thrown onto a chair earlier that day.

In Zeno, emotion was justified: in others in his family, it was apt to be excessive. Particularly, Zeno countered his wife’s occasional alarm by classifying it as
catastrophizing
,
hysterical.

Downstairs, the lighted kitchen awaited them like a stage set. Zeno looked up the Meyers’ number in the directory and called it as Arlette and Juliet stood by.

“Hello? Marcy? This is Zeno—Cressida’s father. Sorry to bother you at this hour, but . . .”

Arlette listened eagerly and with mounting dread.

Zeno questioned Marcy for several minutes. Before he hung up, Arlette asked to speak to her. There was little that Arlette could add to what Zeno had said but she needed to hear Marcy’s voice, hoping to be reassured by Marcy’s voice; her daughter’s friend was a sturdy freckle-faced girl enrolled in the nursing school at Plattsburgh, long a fixture in Cressida’s life though no longer the close friend she’d been a few years previously.