The Vanishing Season (11 page)
Maggie picked at her fingernails while Pauline went on.
“My mom, she’ll never get over that my dad died. She’ll hold on to it forever. It’s like, her treasure, like she’s a dragon and missing my dad is all these giant rubies she’s guarding or something. I mean I love her. It’s just, she’s consumed by it.” Pauline inscribed smooth semicircles around the steering wheel with her hands, from the top to the bottom then the bottom to the top. “That’s what it’s like to love someone.”
Maggie studied her. She usually seemed so completely carefree, but at this moment she looked sad and lost and older. Pauline seemed to come back to herself, suddenly self-conscious. She waved a hand like she was shooing a fly. “I just don’t feel that way about him anyway.”
Maggie nodded. Pauline didn’t have any reason to lie. So she didn’t know why thinking of Liam felt secret. Like something she should keep hidden, like Mrs. Boden’s dragon rubies.
“Do you know today’s the shortest day of the year?” Pauline said, changing the subject.
Maggie shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“It’s the twenty-first. I always keep track of it. Because now the days start getting longer. That always makes me feel better.”
Maggie impulsively patted the top of Pauline’s head affectionately, thinking how she only kept track of the good things.
A little after 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, a girl showed up at the Gill Creek police station, bruised and shivering. Erica “Hairica” Lasstrom had hiked all the way from the forest that bordered Zippy’s Amusement Park, where she’d been held in a small trailer on the grounds, because she was too terrified to flag down a car.
It was her long hair that had allowed her to escape. Her attacker had grabbed it, and she’d yanked herself away, leaving a tuft of it in his hands as he tumbled off balance. She’d hidden in the woods all night, too scared to move. In the morning she’d gotten turned around among the trees and lost, finally coming to a road and hiking the four miles to the police station, scratched and bruised but alive.
In the paper, she described her attacker as male, tall, and muscular. He’d kept her eyes covered and put her in some kind of van. He didn’t say a thing to her the whole time except for “Get in,” but she swore he had an accent. Details of her captivity were not disclosed.
The police questioned several suspects and searched the amusement park, which had been abandoned years before. No arrests were made.
MAGGIE AND HER PARENTS ALWAYS HAD A DATE TO DECORATE THE TREE together. Her mom had worked a miracle this year, finding a tree practically for free at Lowe’s, minus a few branches and more than a little dry. Already it had left a wreath of needles around itself on the floor of the living room. Her mom had made homemade eggnog and had put Nat King Cole on the stereo, because it was important to her—she always said—that Maggie could rely on traditions. She’d also bought a mountain of tinsel, more tinsel than any one family should decently own, and lit a roaring fire in the study fireplace.
They were just beginning the first stage of tree decorating—they always put the glass balls on after the lights—when there was a knock at the door. Pauline stood on the landing outside the kitchen. Maggie opened the door.
“Hi, Pauline,” her mom called from the living room. “Come decorate with us.”
Pauline stayed on the landing. “Hey, Mrs. Larsen, sorry I can’t, I have to get back. I just wanted to ask Maggie something really quick.”
She stepped just inside the door and looked at Maggie secretively, lowering her voice.
“Liam wants to take me to this place for my Christmas present on Tuesday. It’s like this ice hotel where you can have dinner at this ice restaurant. Anyway, I really want to go, but we couldn’t get back by curfew. I wonder if I could just tell my mom I’m hanging out at your house? And if she calls or something, you could just say I fell asleep? We’ll be home by ten, eleven latest,” she said.
Maggie shifted from foot to foot. She wasn’t a good liar. And she didn’t like the idea of Pauline and Liam being out after curfew anyway, with everything going on. But she nodded.
“Okay.”
Pauline swallowed.
“I think he’s planning to give me
the talk
,” she said.
Maggie felt taken aback. “What talk?” she asked, though she had a twisting feeling that she knew.
Pauline wrapped her arms around herself.
“You know, tell me he loves me, make me choose whether to be with him or not. He keeps hinting that it’s now or never.” Pauline looked tired and a little drawn.
Maggie didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t want to lose him as a friend, you know?” Pauline said. “I don’t want to hurt him.” She stamped her feet, frustrated, knocking off snow. “Anyway, thanks, Maggie. I owe you.”
“No problem.”
Pauline darted forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re the best.” She turned and ran back to her house.
Back inside Maggie drank her eggnog and helped with the tinsel. Her parents were both in an excellent mood, and her mom even put a dash of rum in her drink. “Next year you can have two dashes,” she said wryly, and Maggie laughed and said, “Be still my heart.” But she felt unsettled. Her dad disappeared for a moment and came back with a package in green wrapping, laying it in Maggie’s lap.
“Early present,” he said.
Maggie could feel that it was clothes. For a moment she thought with a thrill that she knew what it was. She pulled at the wrapping, revealing tissue paper, red with white stripes like the awning of the store downtown, and her pulse picked up. Within that, a familiar fabric. But it was the sight of that that sank her hopes. It was a blue silk pattern with fuchsia flowers. It was the ugly dress from the store.
“I know you wanted the other one more,” her dad said uncertainly, almost shyly. “I was hoping this one would be a good second best.”
Maggie held the dress up to her. She could feel her eyes start to water in sudden hurt—both because her dad was so clueless and because he was so thoughtful. She fought back the tears.
“I love it,” she said brightly. And she really did, because of what it meant. But that didn’t stop it from breaking her heart.
Two nights later Maggie watched Liam and Pauline pull out of the driveway.
Maggie never found out what happened between Pauline and Liam that night. All she knew, later, was how it all ended.
She knew that they hadn’t gotten home by ten or eleven. And that Mrs. Boden didn’t call but came over and knocked on the Larsens’ door to bring her daughter home. And of course, Pauline was not there. Mrs. Boden hadn’t said anything to Maggie, just tightened her lips and walked back to her house. And Maggie, watching the clock, began to worry. Telling herself they were just being flaky and would be home soon, she fell asleep, but it was a light, uneasy sleep.
She was awakened by red and blue lights at about 12:30 a.m. She watched from her window as one after another police car pulled up, too scared to move much, just rubbing her fingers nervously against the edges of the windowpane as she peered out.
Please, God, let them be okay
, she kept saying.
I’ll do anything,
just please let them come back.
Her heart beat fast, and her skin prickled in fear, turning hot and cold.
Hour after hour crept by. Two more cop cars arrived, and she could hear her parents making coffee downstairs and lighting a fire in the fireplace to warm the drafty rooms, but she pretended she was still asleep, and they never came to wake her. She watched the police spread out to search the area around Water Street, the woods, and along the banks of the lake, their flashlights pricking through the darkness of the trees. Had they found the car down the road with no one in it? Were they just being extra cautious? She watched her mother cross the lawn, bringing a thermos of coffee to Mrs. Boden, who sat on the porch. She couldn’t bring herself to go out; she was paralyzed, frozen to her spot, watching the road for any sign of Pauline coming home, praying she’d see her figure coming up the drive any minute.
Around 2:00 a.m. a car came creeping down Water Street with its lights out, pulling up silently. Maggie could make out the vague shape but not the kind of car. It stopped at the end of the driveway, and the driver turned off the engine. But for several minutes, no one got out. Whoever it was, they’d seen the cops, who were slowly making their way toward the car.
Finally both doors opened at once, and two figures emerged. They converged at the front of the car and walked forward uncertainly.
Maggie sank in relief, felt the heat of her muscles relaxing, and said a silent prayer of thanks.
Mrs. Boden stood on the edge of the porch looking like she might crack. Liam and Pauline looked dazed in the headlights of one of the police cars.
Liam reached for Pauline’s hand. Maggie couldn’t see whether Pauline reached back for his or not, because one of the cops approached them and obscured the view.
The next morning Pauline’s mother drove her to the morning bus to Milwaukee.
Maggie didn’t get to say good-bye.
Time has pulled me forward. It’s late winter, maybe early spring. The earliest trees are just about to bud—it’s that time of year, when warmth seems miles away, and yet it’s starting to arrive.
I see something I don’t want to see.
A girl is lying dead on the ice, with her long, dark hair across her face and a bracelet with a cherry charm on her wrist. A boy is lying in a silo on the shore. The air is freezing; it must be ten degrees below zero. I can’t bear it. And as quickly as I arrive, I’m gone.
I see an owl flying above. Its wings are so wide and dark, they seem to be scraping the clouds off the sky. There’s a tickle on my elbow, but I ignore it. I’m a regular halfway house for moths these days. They try to make me laugh, crawling wherever I’m ticklish, all over my invisible parts. They cover my nonexistent elbows and knees. They perch on my empty face. If you looked at me from far away, you might see I’m slowly becoming a person-shaped gathering of moths.
I glimpsed two more ghosts today. They were out on the lake, floating across the water and lit up like beacons. As they got closer, I saw it was a lady in a long, black dress and a man in what looked like a blue captain’s uniform. I tried to wave to them, but they were headed somewhere, and I couldn’t catch up, and maybe they didn’t see me anyway. They flashed on down along the shore and were gone.
Now I float over the chimney of the Larsen house, sinking down. I watch the smoke trickle out, and I can see the colors of the burning wooden souls of trees: They float up in a riot of red, blue, yellow . . . trees grown up in the sun and some from low-lying marshes, some that were once pecked by woodpeckers, I can see it all.
Sinking down into the cellar, I see that the pinprick of light has gotten bigger, and it doesn’t surprise me. It grows every day. Each inch brings me closer to fear. It crosses my mind, sometimes, that maybe I’m Pesta, the goddess of death. Maybe I’ve come to collect. I could be the scariest thing here.
I keep thinking,
What’s a few months in a teenaged life, compared to other things that I’ve seen come marching into the peninsula?
Dinosaurs, glaciers, people living in sea caves, millions of years of organisms. And Pauline and Maggie and Liam are just tiny specks in it all. Why do they seem so large?
Pauline,
You said you wanted real paper letters, so here you go. Here, things are the same. There were two features in the paper yesterday: a Canada goose was rescued at Millers Park (I know you’ll be relieved), and they are now setting up a checkpoint at the bottom of Door County to stop any suspicious-looking vehicles, whatever those are. Just don’t try to drive home in a big pedo van with tinted windows, okay? Speaking of which, will you ever come home?
There are icicles lining the roof of my entire house. It looks like a fortress and even my dad is scared of getting impaled by one. They say it’s gonna be the coldest winter we’ve had since 1823, thanks to climate change.
Not the same here without you.
Love, Liam
Pauline,
How’s life in the tea trade? We’re putting in new banisters that won’t wobble in a deadly, toss-you-down-the-stairs kind of way. It’s freeze-your-butt-cheeks cold here, but I guess it’s the same in Milwaukee. But I’m also getting out of the house like you always talk me into doing. My parents and I are going to the Ice Festival in Sturgeon Bay, actually. My dad is the person small-town festivals were made for.
The big news is I got early admission into Northwestern. I’m going to make a buttload of money when I graduate and travel the world, and since you’re already rich, you’ll be able to afford to come with me. We’ll live it up someday soon.
I’m including a bracelet in this envelope. It came from our cellar, and I want you to have it. I really love it, and I miss you, and it just seems like it belongs to you. I can’t explain it.
Write back—Mags
Pauline,
Did you get my last letter? Here’s a dry flower I found in the yard—it’s crazy that it lived so long! Well, until I came along and picked it ha ha ha. I’m doing some new carving on the roof of the sauna, because it’s not quite perfect yet. I think a lot about the night before you left. I hate writing, but remember I’m thinking about you. So write back.
Liam
Pauline,
Is it as cold in Milwaukee as it is in Gill Creek? I think at least two of my organs froze last night walking from the car to the house, I’m guessing liver and spleen. Are you ever coming back? Sometimes don’t you feel like so much of the time you’re just waiting and then waiting some more? I’m actually starting
Anna Karenina
because Liam’s dad shamed me into it. I know, glutton for punishment.