Things We Didn't Say (16 page)

I let out a shaky breath. “Okay. Thank you. What now?”

“Mr. Turner, we’ve alerted Cleveland police to be on the lookout for your son and the girl, but I’m afraid that’s all we can do at this time.”

I close my eyes, put my head in my hand. “Running away is not illegal,” I mumble.

“Sir, may I suggest you contact the National Center for the Missing? They are set up to help parents in your situation. I’m sorry, I wish we could help you, but we simply don’t have the manpower to chase runaways.”

I hang up, forgetting to say good-bye to the officer.

The wood floor creaks as Mallory comes into the kitchen, wrapped in a blanket. Casey stands just where she was when the phone rang. She’s wrapped her sweater tight around her, and her eyes are big as she watches me. She bites her knuckle.

“Well?” shrills Mallory, her hair matted from sleeping, a jagged sleep wrinkle down the side of her face.

“The good news is, he apparently is meeting a girl. A real girl, who is also missing. The bad news is, now that the police are satisfied they are runaways, they’re not going to chase them anymore.”

“Oh, my God,” moans Mallory, sinking into a kitchen chair. “He’s never coming home.”

“We don’t know that,” I hasten to say, back to the exhausting job of reassuring, propping up.

Casey moves around in my peripheral vision, and as I join Mallory at the table, Casey plunks a coffee down in front of her.

“I need some cream,” Mallory says, taking the cup without looking at Casey. Like she’s a waitress.

I remember suddenly that it’s Friday. I’m supposed to be at work. Late at night I’d let a call from Kate go to voice mail and never did listen to it. I should have, it was probably about that staffwide meeting.

I bring a coffee with me to the office desk and dial up Aaron.

“Aaron, I’m not coming in today.”

“Shit,” he replies, his fingers clacking on the keys as he talks to me. “I’m shorthanded already. And listen, you should probably call Evelyn.”

Another round of layoffs, just like the last time they called an all-hands meeting.

“Oh, great. I’m toast, aren’t I?”

The clacking pauses. “We don’t know that. They’re talking to everyone individually.”

“I can’t deal with it now. I’m having a crisis at home.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“How?”

“Your dad called this morning already.”

“Dammit.”

“Don’t worry about it, I know the drill. I ended up transferring him to Evelyn. She’ll say no, too, but I didn’t have time to argue with him. But listen, I am sorry. I wish we could help—”

“No, I know. Dylan’s not in town anyway, it seems.”

“Hey, I’ve gotta go, but listen, when you hear something, let us know, okay? Meanwhile, when you can, call Evelyn. About the meeting you missed.”

A voice interrupts us.

“Gotta run, Mike.”

I barely get out a “good-bye” when he hangs up. I don’t mind. The paper still has to come out. Life goes on and all that.

I glance out at the blowing snow whirling in the gunmetal sky. It’s daylight now, I could risk the drive more easily. Except my little Honda wouldn’t be of much use in a wreck. It would crumple like tinfoil.

I hear footfalls on the steps and turn to see Angel. She comes right to me, and I just shake my head. She throws herself into my arms, burying her face. When she steps back I can see from the pale blue hollows under her eyes that she’s slept very little.

“The good news is,” I tell her, smudging a tear away with my thumb, “is that they have confirmed that Tiffany really is a girl.”

I see her relax a few degrees. “Oh, good. Well, that’s good. Can I have some coffee, Dad?”

“We don’t have any lattes or anything, kiddo. Just the boring Maxwell House stuff.”

She shrugs. “I’m so tired.”

“Well, fine. Go ahead, if you can stand it.”

Angel rummages for a cup, and as she’s pouring coffee from the machine, the sight of her performing this simple, adult action thunks me in the chest like an arrow. My girl, my first child, who was a baby when we were still in college and babes ourselves.

Jewel emerges now, her hair knotted from her usual crazy sleeping. She’s rubbing her eyes beneath her glasses, skewing them as she does so they end up crooked on her face.

She looks at the kitchen clock and gasps. “Oh, no! We’ll be late for school!”

For a moment she stares around at everyone in pajamas, none of us hurrying, no one packing lunches. Then her face crumples in. “I forgot!” she cries, and flees back upstairs, wailing. “I forgot!”

Mallory is faster, and closer, so she gets there first. I follow them up the stairs.

Jewel sobs on her bed, burying her face in her blankie. She still keeps the blankie around, but I haven’t seen it much since the first weeks after Mallory and I split. Actually, I’d thought it was put away somewhere by now.

“Baby,” Mallory says, stroking Jewel’s hair, but her hand is shaking. “He’s okay. I’m sure he is. Don’t you ever get so mad sometimes you want to leave?”

Jewel shakes her head into her blanket.

“Well, teenagers do. And you know what? Pretty soon he’ll get hungry and cold and miss his own bed and he’ll decide to come home.”

At this Jewel picks her head up and looks at Mallory, her face puckered as if with confusion. “But doesn’t he miss me?”

I interject, “It’s complicated. Teenagers are confusing people, and they don’t always think very clearly.”

Jewel’s eyes dart between us, one hand already on her stomach.

I sit down with them on the bed, putting my hand on her mother’s shoulder, and my other hand on Jewel’s knee. “It’s okay. I’m sure he misses us and that’s when he’ll decide to come home. He’s a good kid, isn’t he? He’ll realize that we’re worried and he’ll come home.”

Jewel nods, but there’s no light in her eyes.

A moment passes, all of us ringed together, our hands on each other, joined by worry. In my line of sight is that picture on her bulletin board, the last picture taken of us as an intact family. It’s tacked up next to a magazine cutout of a pony.

Jewel breaks the silence. “Can I watch cartoons while I eat?”

“Sure,” answers Mallory, and I sigh but don’t protest.

Jewel runs downstairs at this, leaving Mallory and me alone in her room.

“Thanks,” I say.

She’s rubbing her own hands, threading the fingers through each other, twisting her turquoise silver rings. She stops suddenly, shaking her hands out.

“For what?” Now she starts playing with her hair. I’ve seen this before. It’s restless Mallory, usually followed by Mallory filling up a plastic cup with boxed wine.

“For . . .”

She smirks. “For not being crazy. Yeah. You bet. At your service.” She gives me a mocking bow, tipping an invisible hat.

“You’re not the only one upset.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Would throwing things make you feel better?”

“A little emotion never killed anybody.”

We slip right into the worn grooves on the record of our marriage. She’s too unstable, I’m cold.

I turn away from her and stomp back down the stairs, once again hearing a ringing phone, the sound sparking a mosaic of frightening and ecstatic possibilities.

Chapter 19
Casey

A
ngel taps her fingers on her coffee mug, her eyes unfocused on the center of the table. Every time she sips, she grimaces. I’d offer her more cream and sugar, but I don’t want to draw attention to my presence.

Lately it’s like she’s sunburned. I can’t so much as brush up against her. And that was before she read my journal.

It was a year ago in May that I first met them. Angel turned fifteen that summer, and I took her and some girlfriends to the mall one summer Saturday. I lagged behind them most of the time, enjoying their chirpy laughter and their habit of bursting into song, heedless of—or maybe because of—the stares. They were sharing earbuds from their mp3 players, and I tried not to make faces thinking about the ear germs.

We sat at the food court eating greasy egg rolls and I was still mostly ignored, but then Angel said, “Oh, Casey! Listen to this!” and she launched into an incomprehensible story about some romantic triangle involving a girl named Tessa. I didn’t know any of the kids involved and could barely follow her disjointed tale, especially when the other girls kept throwing in more details about other people I didn’t know.

But I leaned in anyway, my elbows on the table, making faces and gasps of shock to match theirs, glowing with pleasure at my inclusion into the circle.

After I moved in, Angel had the same girls over for a study date, which was really a pretense for gossip. I popped them some popcorn, and as I brought it in, I heard one of them mention Tessa.

I said, “Oh, the one who was dating a football player and a marching band guy at the same time?”

In the cold silence that followed, one of them stage-whispered, “
Awkward
. . .  ,” drawing the word out, marking the moment. The girls then all looked at Angel, who stared at me with an unguarded fury.

“Do you
mind
?” she hissed. “This is supposed to be a
private
conversation
.”

I backpedaled. I’d only made it to the first step down from the landing when I felt the door slam reverberate through the floor.

At the table now, hunched over her coffee, Angel sighs and kneads her temples. Jewel comes down the stairs, her face wet, but composed, and doesn’t look at us as she heads for the living room to flip on the television.

“I should have gone to school. Now they’ll have to rehearse without me. That’s irresponsible of me, to affect everyone else because Dylan decided to be a jerk.”

I say nothing, listening for Michael to come down.

She continues, “I need the practice, too. I’m supposed to be off-book by Monday.”

I venture, not looking directly at her, “I could run lines with you.”

“Shut up and go call your boyfriend.” She stands up and adds, “Then go write about what a bitch I am.”

We hear Michael’s heavy step on the stairs at the same time the sound of the ringing phone jerks us to attention. Angel gets there first, seizing the phone hard, then immediately relaxing. “Oh, hi, Grandpa. No, nothing. Here, I’ll let you talk to Dad.”

She hands the phone to her father, saying she’s going to take a shower.

“Hi, Dad,” says Michael, closing his eyes and kneading the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I figured as much . . . Well, we shouldn’t get special treatment and I wouldn’t want it . . . We did hear that he really is meeting a girl . . . No, I don’t . . .”

Michael’s shoulders sag as he talks more to Dr. Turner, a man I’ve found as scary as any I’ve ever known, and I’ve known some characters. Oh, he’s benevolent enough, but he feels he has great power. I’ve seen it in the way his eyes dance when things are going his way, and it’s as if he thinks he made it happen through force of will or intellectual manipulation.

Only, his son hasn’t done what he wanted. For a doctor who has watched hearts beat inside open chests, who has held life in his hand and crafted a modest fortune and a foundation to do good works, it must be infuriating that his own son hasn’t fallen into line.

So Dr. Turner relishes the small victories of control. Like owning this house we live in.

I want to walk over and hang up. Just click the button down and free Michael of whatever lecture he’s hearing. It’s not that simple, though, as I’m well aware.

I approach Michael and circle his waist from behind, resting my cheek on his back, listening to his heart thrum beneath my ear. His voice sounds low and rumbly like this as he murmurs, “Mmm-hmm.”

Then his free hand untangles my fingers and he steps slightly away.

I slip into my parka and pick up my cigarettes, this time adding a hat because it looks like the wind is whipping up outside.

Outside on the sidewalk, I dial up Tony, having already received a voice mail I didn’t listen to, and two texts asking if I’m okay.

“Can you meet me?” I ask, as soon as he’s picked up.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t say it all on the phone, it’s too much.”

“Just say where.”

We agree to meet at “the Castle,” a chateau-esque granite building once a home, later a restaurant, now a dentist’s office. Fifteen minutes later, I’m leaning on a tree in front of it, staring at the garish magenta sculpture on the front lawn, when Tony pulls up in his ancient Monte Carlo.

I hop into the car, warming my hands at the heater vents. Inside I’m overheated from my walk and my anxiety; my exposed skin is almost numb.

Tony scratches his chin through his red beard, now threaded with more gray than I remember from our days as neighbors.

“What’s going on, Edna Leigh?”

I ignore his use of my given name and explain about Dylan, the presence of Mallory. As I finish up my story, I notice I’ve been twisting my engagement ring, which would now slide off easily, should I choose to remove it.

“I used to run away all the time,” he says, and because I know what kind of life he’s lived, I laugh.

“Oh, that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’ve turned out okay.”

“Yeah, finally at age, what, fifty-five? I’d like Dylan to be spared some of your more colorful adventures. Besides, he’s not—”

“Not what?”

“He’s not worldly. He’s quiet, a little awkward around new people. He has this stammer that comes out sometimes—”

“Yeah. I get it.” Tony taps his steering wheel. “So what are you going to do? Anything I can do to help?”

I tip my head back on the seat. “I don’t know. I’m not sure why I wanted you to come, even. I just had to get out of there for a bit.”

“Yeah. Oh, hey, why don’t you send me a picture? I can send it to some of my trucker friends. They can keep an eye out. Rest stops and whatever. Hell, maybe he’ll stick out a thumb and one of my friends’ll pick him up. You never know.”

I smile at him, and just then my head feels swimmy with cigarettes and lack of sleep and food. I pull out my phone. “I’m sending you a cell phone pic I’ve got. It’s not the best, but it will help.” I send it to Tony’s phone, and he looks to make sure he got it.