What was he looking for?
Finally Barbara could no longer ignore it. “What are you looking at me like that for, Jared?” She frowned haughtily.
He leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped. “I’m trying to understand what’s happening.”
“You’re trying to figure out how I’m responsible?”
Jared said nothing.
“You silly boy,” she said. “I’ve got three sons all older than you—I can call you this. You silly boy. Haven’t you figured out yet that her whole life Larissa has been grappling with the same question. How to blame me.”
“Blame you for what?” Jared asked. “She was wonderful.” He clenched his fists. “And she had a good life. Why would she blame you for anything?”
“Why are you referring to her in the past tense?”
Jared wasn’t about to answer.
And she didn’t answer him. “Blame you for what?” he repeated, but his lungs had deflated. He couldn’t speak anymore, his anger deflated also.
After five minutes of stunted silence, Barbara spoke. “What can I do? How can I help?”
“Do you have any idea where she might be?”
“Of course not! Why would I?” She put down her empty glass. “You know she didn’t confide in me. Even if something was terribly wrong, Larissa always pretended that everything was fine. Her whole life she did this. Inside turmoil, but on the outside, all smiles and neat clothes! That’s why I didn’t know she was failing science, and Spanish, didn’t know she was involved with a bad crowd in high school, until one of them got arrested for shoplifting in a supermarket and another attacked by security dogs while trying to steal drugs from a walk-in clinic. What, you didn’t know this? You know what else I didn’t know? That she loved theater. No interest in it in high school, and suddenly she’s majoring in it in college. I should’ve known she was all about the drama and secrets. About pretending to live outside society’s rules while doing the traditional thing. She just adored that false Romantic dichotomy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You two eloped! Wanted to do things your own way. You weren’t going to be dictated to. But you eloped to get married—can’t get more conventional than that. Traditional rebels you were—and thinking only of yourselves. You didn’t even give me an opportunity to participate in a proper wedding of my only daughter.”
“You misunderstand,” stammered Jared. “We were broke, and we didn’t want you to spend the money.” He said it guiltily. He had never felt okay with it.
“You let her rope you into that?” Barbara exclaimed. “Selfish! Selfish. To deny me the pleasure of seeing my only girl be married. To deny your own parents seeing their son get married. I didn’t misunderstand. You misunderstood your role in your own life and in the life of your family. And you wonder why I’ve always been terse with the two of you. You let her connive you, convince you into running away.”
“Stop it.” Jared wanted to get up, run away himself. “Stop it! What does that have to do with this, with anything?”
“Well, according to you, nothing. Because you’re still not making the connections. That’s fine. One day, perhaps you will. You will see that it has everything to do with your current predicament.” Barbara stood up. “Stop looking at me like that. I have no answers. I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know who she is.” Lightly she touched his shoulder, and he didn’t recoil. “And you know what the trouble is right now?”
“Do I ever.”
“The woman you think you know could not have done this. Yet she’s not here. That’s the trouble, my boy. You don’t know who Larissa is either.”
2
All Things Under Heaven
It took Jared two weeks to locate Ernestina’s number. Two June weeks during which he went back to work and pretended everything was hunky and dory, and coordinated with Maggie about Michelangelo and Asher’s band and Emily’s all-State concert at the high school at which she was first cello. Maggie couldn’t pick up Michelangelo every day because she had to be at the hospital for tests, and Jared spent his evenings calling Tara or some of the other class parents, asking them if they could keep his son for a few hours until six o’clock when he got home, and to everyone he said, “Larissa had to leave on some family business. Really hate to impose.” He would’ve put the boy into afterschool Milk and Cookies program for working parents, but with the year ending in a few weeks, the option was closed to newcomers. “Perhaps in September, Mr. Stark?” said Joan, the program coordinator.
“Oh, I’m sure I won’t need it then,” he said. “But thank you.”
Dinner was the hardest thing. When you don’t cook for twenty years, merely pretend you cook because you fire up the grill and put the burgers on, which someone else seasoned and shaped into patties, it’s a rude awakening to have to every single relentless day think about what to make for dinner for five finicky people. Take-out is what you make. Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mickey D’s, diner food, Chinese again.
Jared didn’t know Ernestina’s last name, and she wasn’t in the Rolodex; Larissa must have thrown out her card when she had let her go. Jared found it in a box of Christmas cards from four years ago. And only because Ernestina’s card said, “Merry Christmas from the Lopez Family.” But because she ran a company called Lopez Professional Clean in Millburn, Jared was able to find her in the Yellow Pages.
“Mister Jared, I no know where she is,” said Ernestina when she called back. “I so sad she fire me. I no hear from her a long time.”
It took Jared ten minutes to explain what he needed. Mrs. Jared had gone missing. Did Ernestina remember anything strange about her last few months? Did she see anything, hear anything, out of the ordinary?
“No, everything was okay, Mister Jared, nothing was wrong. That’s why I so surprised she fire me.”
He spent another five minutes of trying to make the highly nuanced clear: not something wrong with you, but something wrong with her. Was she amiss? Did she do strange things?
“She did no strange things, Mister Jared. She good to me, she good lady. She never treat me bad till the day she fire me.”
Five more minutes.
“Sometimes,” said Ernestina, “she would take long time to get ready.”
That was Larissa.
“And I would say, you sure look nice Miss Larissa to go to supermarket, and she would say, well, you never know who you gonna run into, Ernestina. But she always look real nice. That’s all.”
Ernestina didn’t remember any phone calls, anyone coming to the house.
“The only other thing I notice,” she said, “is that Miss Larissa stopped talking to me about cleaning this or cleaning that. One time I broke a Christmas figure and she didn’t care. One time I forgot to clean shower curtains, she didn’t care. She stopped asking me to do extra stuff. She always pay and say thank you, house looks beautiful, even when my girls did something wrong. Not like before.”
When Jared hung up, he wondered what to make of that. Larissa was absent-minded about cleaning? It was hard to fault her on this; Jared didn’t even know how much they paid Ernestina.
A few days later Ernestina called back. “Mister Jared, I remember something I want to tell you.”
“Yes?” He jumped off the bar stool in the kitchen, his hand held on to the corner of the island. It was eight in the morning—Michelangelo was pulling on him to go. He gestured sharply to his son to stop and turned his back, to hear Ernestina better.
“Right before we got fired, one of my girls, she clumsy a little and she knock over a wooden box on top of Miss Larissa’s dresser. She was dusting and she—”
“Yes, yes?”
“Well, a lot of cash fall out on the floor.”
“What fell out to the floor?”
“Cash.”
“Like money?”
“Yes, Mister Jared. Lot of money.”
“How much is a lot?”
“A lot. I didn’t count, I start helpi
ng Cindy pick it up, and Miss Larissa come in, and she upset with us, like, what are we doing? Maybe she thought we was stealing or something, but I been with her for six years, I don’t take a penny that don’t belong to me.”
“She knew that, Ernestina.”
“Yes, but it was very next week after that she fire me.”
Jared remembered Larissa had said to him she thought the girls were stealing. But he recalled her saying “jewelry.” Not cash. She wasn’t a cash kind of girl.
“What kind of money?”
“Fifties, hundreds. I never seen so much cash in one place. She told me it was her Christmas tip fund.”
Jared had hung up. He was racing upstairs.
“Dad!”
“One minute, son!”
“We’re going to be late!”
“Yes, we’re going to be late.” He slammed the bedroom door behind him.
The large wooden box stood on Larissa’s dresser, given to her years ago as a birthday present by Maggie. It was light wood, painted ornamentally with pastel flowers. Maggie painted it herself when she was in her stenciling phase. Jared held his breath, set his teeth, and opened the box.
It was empty. There was not a penny in it, not even on the bottom, under a business card for a hair place, a business card for a podiatrist in Sparta, a $20 receipt for a water gun from three years ago, and a ticket stub from a movie they had gone to see before Michelangelo was born and they were still going out to the movies. There was no money in it.
Michelangelo. The boy was waiting downstairs, his backpack on, his shoes and jacket on.
They were forty-five minutes late to school that morning. Michelangelo was so mad he wouldn’t even let Jared kiss his head before he stormed tardily down the hall.
After Jared came home, he searched every drawer in her dresser, every nook in her closet, every pocket of her jeans, every book on her shelf. There was no money squirreled away anywhere. The phone kept ringing, but he ignored it. It was work. He’d forgotten to call in. The excuse he mouthed to Jordan the receptionist when he finally did call was pathetic. He emailed Larry so he wouldn’t have to hear it in person. Sorry. Family emergency. I hope to be in tomorrow.
He went online, opened their bank account, checking and savings, and pored, poured himself into every transaction in the last twelve months, every single day. He found nothing that said unusual. She had taken out money to pay the cleaning people. A hundred here, a hundred there.
There was nothing in the account that said the wife was taking other money, ulterior money, money she could not explain withdrawing. Yet the wife was earning money. For a year she got paid a few hundred dollars a week from Pingry. The direct deposits went straight into their joint account. Every paycheck was accounted for. There were no justified parallel withdrawals of cash, in crisp clean fifties.
He drove to Bank of America in Summit.
Diane came out from her desk to greet him. “Jared! Long time no see.” She smiled, smartly dressed, friendly, attractive. She’d been a young mom; now had a daughter in college. Jared had helped her with financing advice a while back, and after that she went out of her way to help him with a deposit, a withdrawal, increasing the overdraft, anything he needed. Personal service every Saturday morning.
Well, he needed something today.
Diane, he asked her, do you recall my wife coming in, a month ago, maybe two, and taking out a large amount in cash? Did she have a separate account that maybe I don’t know about? That made him run cold, made him sit down. What could he do? He had to ask. He had to know.
No, Diane said, a worried look on her face. As far as I know, there was nothing. But let me check, okay?
She got him a drink of water while she went into her computer. No, look, just the one account you’ve had since you moved it over from our Hoboken branch. Checking and savings all tied up.
Nothing else?
No.
She didn’t come in here and withdraw large sums of cash?
No, said Diane. Except for the international money orders we wrote for her every few months, for five hundred, a thousand dollars to her friend in the Philippines, Claire Cherenge.
Yes, that I know. Anything else?
Like what?
Well, I don’t know.
Hang on, Diane said, reacting to his visible distress. Let me go ask the girls.
She came back five minutes later with Beatrice by her side.
Beatrice says, said Diane, that she remembered Mrs. Stark coming here a little while ago and changing a lot of small bills for some large ones. Changing twenties and tens for fifties and hundreds.
Beatrice called over the other teller, Missy. He’d never met either of them before. They looked young and new.
Missy confirmed she had also changed small bills for large bills for Mrs. Stark.
When, a month ago? asked a pale Jared. Two months?
A few times, said Missy, said Beatrice, a dull din in his ear. Beatrice said she saw Larissa after tax day on April 15, because she remembered teasing her about it. “I asked her if this was her tax refund, and she laughed and said it was her Christmas tip money.”
Missy said the last time she changed money for Larissa was a week before Memorial Day. “She said you two were going to Atlantic City for the long weekend. She said she was feeling lucky.”
“Do you have a record of these transactions? How much did you change for her?” Jared managed to ask. “Over the course of last year?”
Beatrice had to go check her records on the account. When she came back, Jared could tell she didn’t want to tell him. He didn’t want to ask.
They both said nothing.
She hemmed and hawed. The three women stood over him, like hushing hens, their skirts trying to protect him. From what?
Finally, after clearing her throat for the fortieth time, Beatrice said, “Altogether, thirty-seven thousand dollars, Mr. Stark.”
How much? he mouthed numbly, shocked into muteness. The hole of her disappearance almost diminished because the hole of the quantity of that figure swallowed it this morning at the bank. He had to hear Beatrice repeat it. He didn’t trust himself. He thought he had misheard.
She repeated it.
He had not misheard.
“But that was all together,” Beatrice said hastily. “That wasn’t all at once. She came in at least three times. Maybe more. Three were in the last four months.” She stared into her piece of paper. “One right before Memorial Day. One right after Tax Day. And one back in February.”
“Are you telling me that my wife came in here to exchange thirty-seven thousand dollars in singles and it didn’t set off any bells in anyone’s head?”
“It was in tens and twenties, Mr. Stark,” said an anxious Diane. “I’m sorry. We didn’t think much of it. We are a bank. This is what we do.”
“She didn’t withdraw any money?”
“No. Except for the money orders to the Philippines, no withdrawals.”
Jared wanted to get up, but he didn’t trust his legs. He felt ridiculous sitting in front of three conciliating women. He didn’t know how long he was in a trance, but when he blinked reality back into his eyes, three bank tellers were standing looking at him with great financial pity. Poor man, the dollar signs in their eyes read. His wife took tens of thousands of dollars out of their joint account and he didn’t even know it. Something else, too. If someone took fifty bucks out of my account I’d know it, their expressions read. Imagine living a life where forty grand can go missing and you don’t even know it. He wanted to say to them: imagine living a life where a whole wife can go missing and you don’t even know it.
He pulled himself up to turn away from the last thing in their gleeful uncomprehending glances: I wish I had that kind of life. No misfortune wouldn’t be worth that.
He needed a cane to walk out of the bank. He didn’t have a cane. He hobbled like a man crippled.
When he got home, he went into his office until 2:40. For four hours he po
red over every withdrawal that dripped out of their account in the last fourteen months. He paid the bills, her Visa bills, the American Express, the Mastercards. He paid it all. On the charge cards, there was not a single cash advance, not one.
In their debit account, there were no unusual cash withdrawals, but there were “point of sale” purchases almost every single day. Point of sale was the supermarket and the drugstore. Point of sale meant that as Larissa paid for the soap and the shampoo and the quart of milk with her debit card, she asked for cash back. Every day. For up to fifty dollars a pop. On some days there were two point of sale purchases.
$57.14.
$394.07.
$98.53. What mattered is that they were all over fifty dollars, which meant that conceivably Larissa could have easily taken $37,000 out of their account, and perhaps more. Took fifty to a hundred dollars a day, and he didn’t even know it.
He became stuck on this. And then unglued by it. He felt perilously close to losing the center of his very being.
This wasn’t an impulse buy, an impetuous running away. This was a premeditated attack on his life by his wife. For over a year, Larissa planned her escape. She got a job, got paid, but without drawing attention to herself she siphoned money out of their account, hid it, exchanged it, prepared. She planned all along to take those fifties and leave. For a year!
That was the look on Finney and Cobb’s middle-aged veteran faces! They’d seen it all before—death, kidnapping, murder. They’d seen this, too. Which is why they hadn’t pursued him as a suspect. He kept calling her a missing person, while they stared at him skeptically. Now he knew. Their expressions read: you sure your wife is missing? Maybe to you she’s missing. But to her, maybe she’s exactly where she wants to be.
He wasn’t a suspect. He was just poor schmuck Jared.