“She tried to kiss me, too,” said Asher, strolling into the kitchen. “But I wouldn’t let her. It’s just not done, Mom, I told her. Mothers don’t kiss their fourteen-year-old sons. Don’t you know anything?”
“Then we ran off,” said Emily.
“Yes,” confirmed Asher. “We were late.”
They glanced at him, three little pauses by the island. They looked hungry but didn’t want to ask about the Sunday brunch Larissa always made. Jared poured cereal out of the box. Under duress, he agreed to toast a bagel for Emily, who was sick of cereal. As it turned out, they didn’t have any bagels. Jared drove to get bagels at Bagels4U. Everything about Summit felt wrong to him this morning, as if…as if every road and every store hid the clue of what had happened to Larissa, except he didn’t know which road, which store, and was forced instead to wander the streets like a bum until he somehow fell into it, lucked into it.
While he was waiting for the bagels, he remembered the psychiatrist! Larissa had been going to the woman since February. Surely, she would know! She’d know something. Reanimated, vivified, Jared flew home to call her, dropping the bag of warm bagels on the island, except the children wouldn’t let him drop bread on the island as if they were ducklings by the pond. He had to toast the bagels, peanut butter them, jelly them, and only then could he pick up the phone—and only then did he realize he had no idea what the doctor’s name was. Oh, Larissa had told him, but it was in one ear, out the other. But there were insurance and co-payment bills. Her name must be somewhere.
With black coffee in hand, the first bit of sustenance he had had since yesterday, Jared painstakingly went through Larissa’s medical records back to January. There were two bills from visits to Larissa’s ob-gyn, one for pupil dilation from the optometrist, and a stack of bills from the psychiatrist. Joan Kavanagh. He didn’t care that it was Sunday. He dialed her number—and got her answering service.
“Is this an emergency?”
“Yes,” said Jared. “Yes, it most certainly is.” He left his own number, and then sat by the phone for fifteen minutes, for thirty, waiting for the callback. After 41 minutes, he called back.
“I passed on the message,” the operator said.
“Did you say it was an emergency?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I guess a psychiatric emergency works on a different schedule than a medical one, huh?” Jared said. “Because forty-one minutes—”
“I’ll pass on your second message, sir,” said the operator.
So he sat.
He had to come out of his office to look in on the kids. It was a Memorial weekend Sunday, warm and sunny. Asher, who hadn’t even asked for the sleepover he had been planning for weeks, had gone for a bike ride to his friend’s house. Emily was playing ball with Riot and Michelangelo. Jared went back to his office. Maggie called, Ezra called, Bo called, Jonny called, Larissa’s mother called, Evelyn called. The worst conversation was the accidental one with Larissa’s mother.
“Is she feeling all right?” asked Barbara.
Jared didn’t want to lie, but he also didn’t want to talk about it. Why did he pick up the damn phone? “Barbara,” he said, “I’m sorry, but the other line is calling, very important phone call.”
“On Sunday, a very important phone call?”
“Yes, I’ll—don’t worry, we’ll—I’ll—”
The doctor still hadn’t called. Forty more minutes. He went to the kitchen, looked inside the fridge. Kavanagh was a doctor; perhaps she was at her country estate. No one worked on Memorial Day. She was away. She could be out of the country. Jared went through Larissa’s purse while he waited. He went through her wallet, pulled out all the recent receipts, looked through them. No supermarket receipts, no drug store receipts. On Thursday there was a receipt for filling up the gas tank. Fifteen gallons of juice. No reason to fill up the car if you were leaving it in the drive the next morning and footpedaling down the highway. He found a receipt for sushi at Stop&Shop.
Sushi?
Yet this is what the receipt said. Stop&Shop in Madison. Sushi.
Larissa hated sushi. Never ate it. Now she was buying sushi at a supermarket in Madison, not even in Summit?
Zoolander
, sushi, kissing the kids on Friday, “
drive safe
.” What did it amount to? A hill of beans?
But she wasn’t here! She wasn’t here…
Jared held her suede patchwork purse in his lap, sitting behind his desk. It was remarkable how little there was inside it in terms of purchases. Rather, in terms of receipts. The purse was clean, the wallet clean. But Jared was an investment banker. He had been watching receipts for bigger fish than Larissa. He knew that one way or another, following the trail of money would lead him somewhere.
He went online to check the purchases on their American Express account. Other than gas, there was little else. He clicked to see which gas station she used, what time she gassed up. It was at the Exxon station on River Road, once a week, around 8:50 a.m. Like clockwork. He went back seven months. Once a week, at the same gas station. Which wasn’t the station closest to home, the one they always used, where she filled up her Escalade on the weekends. He checked the day of the
week. It was Mondays. He went on Google Maps to see the station’s location. It was on the way to Madison. He checked the location of Stop&Shop. Madison. And the shrink was also in Madison.
He sat, he waited. He thought. He threw on his jacket, took Larissa’s Jag, drove to Exxon. The man who came up to his window was smiling at him with a friendly familiarity that vanished when he saw it was not a woman driving the Jag. “Can I help you?” he said.
“This car belongs to my wife,” said Jared, taking out her photo. “You know her?”
The man didn’t have to glance at the picture. “I know her well. She comes here all the time. You need gas?”
“Not today, I’m all set,” said Jared. “Does she come in this car, or the other one?”
“I’ve only seen this one.”
“So how long has she been coming here?”
“Oh, a long time. I don’t know.”
“How long would you guess?”
“I don’t know, I told you. Maybe a year. Maybe more. Sorry, another customer behind you. Do you mind?”
Jared didn’t mind. Slowly he pulled into a parking spot and sat rubbing his stubble.
What was it? His heart, his fear was getting in the way of his reason. Was there a connection between the missing wife and the unheard of sushi from a supermarket, the fuel from a gas station they never used?
He sat for ten minutes, his hands on the wheel. Then he drove to Madison, to Dr. Kavanagh’s office.
She wasn’t there on a Sunday, of course. Much of what he was doing felt like an exercise in futility. But what other option did he have? Cobb said the FBI might have to get involved. He said it as if Jared should be afraid of it, but all Jared could think of was, when? Why not get involved now, immediately?
Immediately was Sunday afternoon on a sunshiny day in May. And his kids alone in the house while he stood outside an empty doctor’s parking lot ringing the bell. That was immediately.
As he drove back, he tried to visualize Larissa. Was she hurt? Damaged? Was she gone, as in gone, gone? Did it feel to him like she’d had a stroke and fell where she was walking and never got up? No. It didn’t feel like that. What it felt like was more incomprehensible than a freak aneurysm, but also more frightening. Because what it felt like was not chance, but design.
What was Che’s address? Jared wished he knew it by heart. But he didn’t know much by heart, except the details of his investment funds, mortgage rates, differential dividends. All the information he carried in his head was on a strictly need-to-know basis. In any case, Larissa’s passport was in the drawer! Che lived in the Philippines. And why would Larissa fly to the Philippines and not tell him, not even leave him a note? Hi, hon, I won’t be long. I’ll be back for Asher’s graduation from middle school.
He had to put Che out of his mind. Larissa couldn’t fly to the Philippines without her passport. That’s all there was to it.
Then where was she?
What day was it when he got back from Kavanagh’s parking lot? Oh God. It was still only Sunday.
He called Cobb. “We have no new information,” the officer said. “It’s only been two hours since we saw you.”
“Since we filed the report, maybe,” said Jared. “But she’s been gone since Friday morning. Have we checked the hospitals? The police blotters? Any reports of a woman who’s hit her head?”
“I haven’t checked all the police blotters myself personally,”
said Cobb. “But we checked the bulletins from the precincts in the Tri-State area. This includes Connecticut.”
“Nothing in the bulletins?”
“Hundreds of things. Just no information about a fortysome-thing brown-haired woman.”
“With blonde highlights.” Jared hung up despondently.
Why was being at home waiting like this so unbearable? Why couldn’t he do something with the kids? Maybe throw a baseball to Asher. But Asher just pitched a loss in his playoff game. Last thing he wanted was to see a baseball. Maybe go to the park? To Canoe Lake? Maybe pack up, take everyone to Lillypond? No, that was impossible. What if she came back? What if there was some news?
Came back from where?
What kind of news?
He called Kavanagh a third time. “I will pass on your message, sir. She will call you back at her earliest convenience.”
“This is an emergency,” Jared said, his hands unsteady, his voice cracking. “A real emergency. Please.”
Another hour passed in despair.
Emily went over Alyssa’s house. Asher went over James’s house, taking his guitar. Michelangelo sat with Jared at the island, pretending to look at the news in the paper. “Daddy, so what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, bud. What do
you
want to do?”
“We can go play catch. Or you can take me on the swings. Or we can play go fish. I love that game. Wanna play? Or I have some awesome black Model Magic clay. It really is like magic. And it’s black.” Michelangelo grinned. “We can sculpt a vampire for Halloween.”
After a full minute of thinking, Jared said, “Halloween is five months away.”
“Never too early to get started on the decorations,” said Michelangelo. “That’s what you always say, Dad.”
“I’m not always right, bud.”
Jared watched his son mold the soft and pliable black clay into something resembling a head, with arms growing out of it. To do a cape, or white fangs, or blood rolling down the chin, that wasn’t possible. The vampire looked like a bird. A nightingale.
The phone rang. Jared dived for it. It was Ezra. “We’re coming. We’re bringing dinner.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“It’s not a question. We’ll be there in a half-hour.”
“What time is it?”
“Three.”
“Three!” What was happening? Why did time stop moving? Why was it that usually he couldn’t get time to stand still, couldn’t slow it down a millisecond, to sit at night, to dine with friends, to prolong his climax, to read the paper, one extra day on the Miami beach, and now it stopped moving? Not just slowed down. Stopped. “It can’t be three,” Jared said numbly. It had been three on Sunday all day.
Bo and Jonny came over too, brought snacks, drinks, paper towels, paper plates. They brought milk, bread, cereal. Maggie took Michelangelo to town for ice cream, and to Bryant Park. Asher came in, then quickly went back out went to play miniature golf. Emily came home and baked some store-bought brownies she found in the cabinet.
The phone rang. It was Cobb. “Just wanted to confirm—you said you didn’t find anything missing? Credit cards? License? Other ID? Money?”
“She never carried any money,” said Jared, his temples throbbing. Maybe sleep is what he needed.
“Sorry, I know it’s rough. It’s Memorial Day weekend, everyone’s away.”
Yes, Jared thought, pressing OFF on the phone.
Everyone
is away.
Jared didn’t know how he got through Memorial Monday. Because Ezra and Maggie and Bo and Jonny didn’t leave him alone for a moment, that’s how. They brought food, games for the kids, bats, gloves, Frisbees, balloons, tried to make it as normal as possible, put music on to drown out the noise in Jared’s head, took care of everything. Ezra barbecued, though Ezra didn’t know how to barbecue. They fed Jared, though he didn’t eat, and they fed his kids, who were all, except for Michelangelo, walking around as if they were shell-shocked. Asher had withdrawn nearly completely. He was silently looking into his food, silently drinking. Even Riot was sleeping on the deck by Jared’s feet instead of playing with the kids.
“You’re going to have to talk to them, Jared,” Ezra said. “You’re going to have to say something.” They were sitting outside on the patio while the kids were in the hammock deep in the backyard.
“Say what? What can I possibly say? I don’t know anything!” He stood up, his legs unsteady.
That Monday night he went into Emily’s room. He couldn’t have a conversation with his sons, but Emily was a girl; he was hoping she’d go easy on him.
“Em, things have been upside down around here,” he began, perching on her bed.
“You don’t say.” She half-turned from him; then, thinking better of it, sat up, hugging her knees. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Look, I wish I could tell you what’s happening. I’m sorry I’m so clueless.”
“Don’t be sorry, Dad. Your cluelessness is one of the things we love about you.”
“The police are looking for your mom.”
“But we don’t want them to find her, right?” She looked at him hopefully. “Because that would mean that something really bad happened to her.”
“You’re right, Em,” said Jared. “We don’t want the police to find her. I’m hoping that Mom just went away to be by herself for a while.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
It was Emily who reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Dad,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”
Jared swallowed. Cleared his throat. Wished for a glass of water. Wished for a lot of things. They sat for a few minutes in heavy silence. “In the meantime, we’ve got to hunker down.”
“No kidding. But, Dad, what are we going to do? I don’t mean…mean,
actually
what are we going to do? We’ve got stuff every day till the end of school. Who’s going to drive us?”