What We've Lost Is Nothing (15 page)

1:50 p.m.

A
licia was always split right down the middle about seeing her parents, and she never quite knew why. They never pressured her about grandchildren, or her lack of a career, or anything really. She'd always felt herself lucky in this way. She knew other grown women whose parents hounded them about everything. Alicia experienced none of this. But then maybe this lack of pressure signaled something worse: apathy. When she'd announced her engagement to Dan Kowalski after dating for just six months, they were thrilled. They threw a lavish engagement party at the Naperville Country Club and invited two hundred guests—some of whom Alicia couldn't remember having ever met before. She was so young, and so caught up with being a
cause
célèbre
, she never once stopped to question the proceedings; her father held up a glass of champagne and toasted to
her
, to her future, to her choice, to all hope everywhere.

But why, she wanted to ask him?

What have I done to deserve the applause of strangers and friends?

•  •  •

She took the corner of her sarong and wiped the sleep from her eyes, then went downstairs for food—her parents had stocked the fridge with berries, milk, yogurt, and croissants, as if she and Dan were going to throw a brunch. She'd fallen asleep again after the ADT salesman had left and had only just woken for the second time that day. She couldn't remember when she'd last washed her hair, and she really
had
to change out of her ridiculous sarong. It had deep wrinkles around the waist and odd lumps where the fabric had gotten stretched, creased, bunched. She could hear Dan downstairs talking to Chester: “Good boy, bring that here. Good boy!”

Finally, the NyQuil fog seemed to be dissipating; she had a vague recollection of signing a contract, a vague memory of the fight with Dan in the taxi the night before.

The telephone interrupted her. “Sweetheart!” her father said in a voice that was overly cheerful, full of trepidation as if he feared actually speaking with his daughter. Alicia had a sense that her parents lived inside a double canopy of fear—fear that Alicia would return to the psychiatric treatment facility where she'd spent so much time twelve years earlier, and fear that Alicia would somehow destroy her marriage simply by being Alicia and return to live at home again. Alicia had once overheard her mother say to her father that she'd raised Alicia from birth to eighteen—
through her most challenging years
, was how Arlene put it—and now it was George's turn to take the lead. As if Alicia were not an adult, more than a decade deep into her own independent life. All they wanted, they told Alicia, was for her to be happy. Alicia translated that to mean she had to keep Dan happy, and Dan would likewise keep Alicia happy, and in this way the world would go on without complication. So what if George and Arlene helped this happiness along a bit by giving gifts every now and again? A television here, a set of copper cooking pans there. Perhaps the occasional piece of furniture. The dog. And of course there was the house itself. But George and Arlene told each other that young married “kids” such as Dan and Alicia had it rough these days. Who could afford to buy a starter home? What
was
a starter home anymore anyway?

And Alicia and Dan, for their part, always accepted.

Alicia told her father she was fine. Dan had gone out into the yard with Chester and a tennis ball.

“Your mother and I thought we should come over later. Bring you all dinner.”

“Dad, there's no need. Really.”

“I understand that, darling. But family ought to be together at a time like this.”

She walked to the bathroom and tried to pee quietly enough that her father wouldn't hear. She didn't flush. She could hear Chester suddenly start to bark like mad outside.

“We have to go to the police station in a while,” Alicia said, “and I really don't know how long that's going to take or what else they might need, Dad. It's really okay. We're really okay.”

“Alicia, there's no need to pretend with us. It's a
very
traumatic thing you've gone through.
Very.
” She recognized her father's tone of voice as the same one he used with young girls selling Girl Scout cookies. Firm, but fair.

“I'm not pretending, Dad. I just don't know our schedule.”

“Well, we'll bring dinner and you all just come when you can. We can let ourselves in.” They had a key, of course. They'd always had a key.

“Dad . . .”

“Your mother's insisting.”

From the living-room window, Alicia could see that Dan and Chester were in the front yard with that damn prepubescent reporter she'd seen earlier. One of his Doc Martens, she noted, appeared to be untied, and she had a sudden image of him tripping, cracking his forehead on the pavement. Chester was on his hind legs; Dan gripped the collar in a strong hold, so the dog barked weakly as his front paws clawed at the air. Alicia noticed a slight bulge on Chester. He always gained weight at her parents' house. Too few walks with too many treats. The young man opened, then closed, then opened again the viewfinder on his handheld video camera.

Then she saw her husband's face, the welcoming smile beamed directly toward the reporter. In Alicia's experience—not that she had much of a history with crime or media—it was best to keep to yourself.

“Dad, do whatever you want, I have to go.” She clicked off the phone and watched her husband for a minute, holding Chester still in one hand, and gesturing across the whole of the street with the other.

She thought again of the contract. What had she signed, exactly? She tossed the phone onto the sofa and dashed to the dining room, saw the paper on the table, the installation scheduled for the following day. She'd written a check. For how much? She had no idea now. And where had Dan been? Walking Chester? She was sure he hadn't even bothered to call Lauren, their dog walker. Alicia needed to call the alarm system people. She needed to call Lauren. She needed to call and tell her parents to
please, please
not come for dinner. If everyone could give her a minute to calm down, to breathe, she knew things would be okay.

She started with the path of least resistance, dialing Lauren's number first. It rang and rang as she wandered into the kitchen, ate some blueberries out of the plastic container with the fridge door open. Finally, a recorded voice came on the line to say the number was no longer in use. It hadn't occurred to Alicia that they did not know Lauren's last name or where she lived or anything at all besides that she'd been a dependable dog walker for all of five weeks. And now, it seemed, she'd vanished.

3:15 p.m.

É
tienne sat in the interview room at the Oak Park police station, stomach growling because he'd missed lunch and now it was late in the afternoon. He'd come in to do his elimination prints and found himself . . . what? He wasn't sure. Arrested? Accused? In trouble?

The object of attention, certainly.

Why was he so awkward? he wondered. Why wasn't he like others who so seamlessly worked their way in and out of conversations? People who could, for example, simply thank a bank teller after a transaction? A quick thank-you? He'd tried it. So many times he'd tried it, but there he'd be, thanking some woman behind the counter at Bank One and he'd realize how stiff his posture had gotten, how he'd look just past her face, perhaps at the clock behind her, and he'd know by her facial expression, by her impatience, that however he was attempting to do it was abnormal. A beat behind in the music of life. Why, he thought, couldn't he say things worth listening to? Things like those of his neighbor Michael McPherson, who said the most beautiful phrase Étienne had heard in a long, long time:
What we've lost is nothing.
To someone who'd never had much to begin with, such as Étienne, the items he'd involuntarily parted with were only half the pain. The other half was knowing he'd never be the kind of person to say, on a whim, in a moment of crisis,
What we've lost is nothing.

Étienne had loved the idea of having a restaurant ever since he was a small boy. It both propelled him into the world of socializing and hid him at once. If he couldn't ever talk comfortably
around
people, then perhaps people would speak
of
him, of his food, of his heady, complex culinary creations. In his parents' home, he'd lose himself in food, in slicing vegetables, shucking corn, snipping off the tips of green beans. He pitted cherries and used an oyster fork to flick watermelon seeds from individual slices. As a boy, his mother gave him these jobs, he knew, because they were her least favorite. But he loved them. The rhythm, the expectation. There were no surprises. When you pulled husks off an ear of corn, there'd be corn underneath. Maybe a worm. But that was about the extent of the unexpected. Étienne craved the habitual. His mother was an unremarkable cook, but to Étienne—Edward, still, in those days—food allowed him what conversation could not: the chance to interact with the world from a safe distance.

There had been so few people in his life, for
all
of his life, that the change from Edward to Étienne had gone undisputed. But now, under the glare of fluorescence both literally and figuratively, Étienne's shame was boundless, his restaurant perverse. How
could
he not have seen the truth of things? Night after night, the lack of patrons, the bland food he tried so hard to enliven. Some nights, he didn't even bother turning on the restaurant's lights. Customers came, but rarely returned. He had no regulars. He'd never once had every table full simultaneously—and there were only a dozen tables to begin with.

The obvious redemption, Étienne realized, would be to
become
that thing he dreamed of—to go to France, to learn to cook, to learn the language, to learn his way around the tiny cobblestone streets and the menus of the greatest restaurants. But his was not that kind of story. Étienne knew he would not end up standing at the river Seine during a glittering, amber sunset, where a woman in a striped cotton shirt and strappy flats stepped gracefully toward him.

The sudden jolt of the soundproof door startled Étienne.

“Sorry, there . . . ,” Detective Wasserman mumbled.

Étienne blinked.

“So, we've got your fingerprints.” Wasserman sat down across from Étienne. “We're still working on the rest of the . . . victims, and . . .” The detective tapped a small stack of papers into alignment, then leafed through them absently.

“Can I . . . can I do anything else?” Étienne ventured. “For you?”

The detective glanced toward a mirror that Étienne guessed had officers on the other side. He imagined them laughing, snickering at him. There was nowhere to look, so he tried to look nowhere.

Wasserman leaned forward, spoke quietly. “Listen, Mr. . . .”

“Yes. Étienne. Please.”

“Étienne.” Wasserman made the slightest glance toward the window, and back. “Yes. Mr. Lenoir. Listen, you're not a suspect.” The detective waved his arms out for a moment, encompassing an absent crowd. “We don't expect to . . . ah . . . What I mean is, we aren't holding you here. But what we can't figure . . .”

He expected Étienne to jump in here. But Étienne was unlike most people, who feel the need to fill conversation voids. Étienne lived mostly in the space of silence.

The detective cleared his throat and leaned back. He was a nice man, Étienne thought. Not tough. Not off-putting. Gentle, in a way.

“I guess we're all just wondering Mr. Lenoir, why all the lies?”

“Lies?” Étienne straightened up at the word. “Lies?”

“You know, the trips to Paris. The fake name. Sneaking around. I mean, you haven't done anything wrong. So why the lies?” Detective Wasserman looked earnestly at Étienne's face, deeply, and perhaps even with a tiny fragment of sorrow. “We're just curious.”

Wasserman waited.

Étienne's eyes shot round the room, took in the table, paper, detective, walls, chairs, mirror. Mirror, chairs, walls, detective, paper, table. He rubbed his hands along his thighs once or twice. “I hadn't thought of them as lies.”

http://www.oakpark.com/Community/Blogs/04-07-2004/OP
-lost_nothing_-_ robbed:

What We've Lost Is Nothing

Candy Kane, blogger

Dr. J. S. Alexander

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 6:59 a.m.

It is worth pointing out that Ilios and Troy are believed to be synonymous names for the famed city of Homer's
Iliad
, though I doubt very much Oak Park's
Ilios
thieves were aware of such connections. Perhaps one might look toward fate as our primary human failing, by which I mean we are
doomed
to ours no matter the circumstances, and certainly no matter our own behavior. At least I have always thought so. I have long wondered how such a name appears in a town otherwise populated by Taylors and Divisions and Austins and other such commonalities. I empathize with you, Ms. Kane, not because of your insomnia as you might assume, but because of the eternal displacement the unfortunate events of our own
Ilios
have thrust into our otherwise (relatively) idyllic existences—as if we needed reminders of our own fragilities! Take heart that what has happened here is not unique, indeed is hardly worth our fretting at all, sadly. Though I do wonder, as I sit preparing for my day, if we are not just a bit like those gods of Homer's, pondering in the weak light of dawn the unfortunate tragedy that is, ultimately, humanity.

Jon Salgado

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 8:04 a.m.

I think giving the perpetrators ANY kind of air time, in our thoughts, in our blogs, in the media, anything is exactly what gives them thrills. Don't give them the satisfaction, Candy! I'm with the Ilios Lane resident who says what they've lost is nothing. He's right. No one can take away the important stuff, right?

Andrea from Oak Park

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 9:56 a.m.

Candy . . . I feel your pain. I couldn't sleep last night either! That's what it means to be part of a community, part of a family, part of anything that is meaningful in our lives. I wish you courage AND a restful night tonight!

A Townshend

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 10:04 a.m.

To: Jon . . . I agree. Don't give those damn criminals a split second of your brain power. But it's also naive to think a crime of this scale, even without serious casualties, won't leave us just feeling a little less secure in our lives. We need to find strength in ourselves, find the tools we each need to endure these kinds of events. I recently finished self-defense training certification and though I pray I'll never need it, it sure makes me feel secure knowing I have it. (I highly recommend it, by the way!)

Smith from Oak Park

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 11:42 a.m.

Come on, people! All this whining! It's the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in case anyone would like to ponder REAL problems in the world. Teddy Kennedy called the war in Iraq “Bush's Vietnam” (an apt description in my view). U.S. casualties in Iraq are skyrocketing, and it appears that the potential medical miracle of stem cell research is about to be halted. Let's just try to keep a little perspective while we ponder those burglaries over on Ilios Lane.

[email protected]

Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2:13 p.m.

To: JSAlexander

You're a fucking blowhard. Bet you'd feel differently if your house were on Ilios Lane. Or your family's. Why don't you go bury yourself in some library somewhere . . . give the rest of us a break from your bleating sophistry! (Yeah. I can read a dictionary, too.)