Picture Me Gone

  • • •

  Between jet lag and the oddness of being without street noise and other people, the afternoon passes.

  Suzanne is going into town for a few things and asks if I’d like to come. Yes, please, I say, and we take Gabriel along too. Gil stays put. He’ll work.

  On the fifteen-minute drive Suzanne asks me all the usual questions about how I like school and how is my mother, and where is she performing these days, etc. It is polite adult talk and only just lacks the genuine curiosity that connects people.

  Suzanne apologizes for the supermarket being boring but I don’t find it boring at all. To me it’s almost as exotic as Caravanserai. She says to tell her if I see anything I’d like to buy.

  I see lots of things I’d like to buy: macaroni and cheese in a box, Band-Aids with cartoons of superheroes on them, peanut butter and marshmallow swirled round in a huge plastic jar. In the bakery department there are cakes with talking clown heads and musical merry-go-round ponies in bright colors. The breakfast cereal section goes on for half a mile and I wonder how anyone ever chooses. I’m looking for Easter eggs but the ones I find are all too ugly or too childish or too similar to the ones I could buy at home. When at last I catch up with Suzanne she’s talking on the phone. Her face looks different from the one Gil and I have seen. It’s younger, suddenly, and her smile is one she has not shown us.

  I approach her through the fruit section, where watermelons, apples and bananas all look twice the size of the ones in England. How can this be?

  When she sees me she says, I have to go, and clicks off. Her smile has gone all pink and sugary like the clown head on the cake. A friend from book club, she explains, unnecessarily.

  A friend? I don’t hate Suzanne but I can’t bring myself to like her either. She’s one of those people who thinks that because I’m young I’m blind to what’s true and what’s not. I see her far more clearly than she sees me, perhaps more clearly than she sees herself.

  Suzanne has to go to the dry cleaner and the post office, so we pile the groceries into the back of the car and she says, If you’d like to walk around a bit on your own, feel free. Just meet us here in half an hour.

  I wander off to a sports shop and browse the T-shirts, but there’s nothing I want to buy and anyway I don’t have any dollars. Across the road there’s a bench catching the last bit of sun and I sit down.

  Hey Cat, I text. Wish u wuz here.

  I wait for a while but Catlin doesn’t answer. In the meantime, everyone’s running around like crazy, and it’s funny to think that rush hour exists in a town the size of a peanut as well as at home. I sit as still as humanly possible, making myself invisible so I can watch what’s going on without being seen. It works. No one looks.

  The only thing worth watching is a man who backs his 4x4 much too fast into a parking spot and smashes the car behind him by mistake. He shouts at his kid, who’s maybe sixteen, for distracting him, and the kid gets out of the car, slams the door and storms off while the guy gets down on his knees to examine the dent in the other car.

  Catlin texts back. Me too. It rains. Attached is what I think might be a photo of a puddle. It’s hard to tell.

  I tear myself away from the local five-star entertainment to meet Suzanne at the car. Gabriel stares at me intently and when I smile at him his entire face lights up.

  We drive back to the house without saying much. Suzanne talks to Gabriel, who’s grizzling in the backseat. Who’s Mommy’s tired boy, she says, and then glances over at me like we’re in a conspiracy. Being with her makes me tired. Then I remember Owen and feel ashamed.

  Dinner is risotto with peas and Parmesan cheese. It tastes nice but halfway through the meal I excuse myself to lie on the sofa. Honey is beside me on the floor. I close my eyes and rest one hand on her back, feeling the rise and fall of her slow breathing. Gil covers me with a blanket. He thinks I’m asleep.

  So, he says in a low voice, sitting back down at the table. What are we going to do?

  Suzanne doesn’t answer right away. Eventually she says, I can’t leave. Surely you can see that. I can’t leave Gabriel and my students and . . . everything.

  I hear Gil sigh. Suzanne, tell me please. There must be more.

  There is a silence. I can almost hear the fizzing of Suzanne’s nerves.

  Tell me, he says.

  She begins to speak, quietly, so I have to strain to hear. I don’t know, she says. He says he’s fine but he’s not. He blames himself for Owen. Her laugh is bitter. I blame him too. I hoped Gabriel might make it better, but surprise, surprise, it’s worse. So it’s true what everyone says about save-the-marriage babies. Who’d have guessed?

  Gil says my name. He was not born yesterday. I make a noise like a sleeping person, a kind of grumbly sigh. It works. I was not born yesterday either.

  And?

  Who the hell knows? He doesn’t speak much, your friend.

  My father doesn’t speak much either. He uses words sparingly, as if they’re rationed. It’s what comes, I think, of knowing so many words in so many languages. Too much choice.

  You knew that when you married him. Gil speaks gently, without reproach.

  Yes, of course. But knowing it, and then living for sixteen years with a man who doesn’t speak . . . it’s different, surely?

  There is an edge to her voice, like a knife. For the first time I realize how much older Matthew must be than Suzanne. If Matthew is Gil’s age, he’s nearing sixty. And if Suzanne’s just had a baby, can she be much more than forty?

  Marieka always says fondly that she has to read Gil’s mind. I’ve become very good at it, says she. And then she kisses him on the back of the neck if he is bent over his work, and he reaches up one hand and buries his fingers in her thick hair and she turns her head and kisses his wrist. There is something in this gesture that makes me feel completely safe. Despite the fact that the scene does not include me, it does not exclude me either.

  I feel a sudden rush of pity for Gabriel with his glass mother, his glass house, his radiant baby smile.

  Take the car, please, Suzanne is saying. I don’t need it. I have a friend nearby; she can take me to college.

  She? I think. Whoever visits isn’t a she.

  I close my eyes once more and when I open them again I realize that time has passed and the conversation has moved on. What have I missed?

  It’s late, Gil says. Good night, Suzanne.

  I don’t have to pretend to be woozy now. I lean on Gil till we get to my room and he folds back the covers of my bed. That’s all I remember.

  twelve

  In the morning, Gil says we’re going on a road trip. He says it almost gaily; we are both keen to move on. There doesn’t seem to be enough air in this house, though I don’t know how that can be.

  I’ll miss Gabriel. He claps his hands now when he sees me or I call his name, and he snuggles into my shoulder when I pick him up. I like the feel of him, compact and much heavier than he looks. Like a bundle. I’ve never known a baby as a person and now I can see why people like them. When he looks at me and smiles I feel chosen.

  Gabriel B-B-Billington, I sing. Gabriel B-B-Billington! Gabriel giggles and waves his hands. Do you think he knows his name? I ask Suzanne.

  Of course. She smiles. He’ll miss you when you go.

  Do you think he misses his dad? I look at her.

  Suzanne’s mouth pulls up tighter than ever. Does his dad miss him? That would be my question.

  I must look a little shocked because she reaches out and touches my elbow. Don’t worry, Mila. Everything will work out in the end. She pushes her hair back off her face with a tired gesture and I think, What end? The end of time?

  After a minute I say, Do you want Matthew to come back?

  Suzanne frowns. Yes, of course I want him to come back. She glances at Gabriel, then back at me. How could I not?

  As answers go, this is not the same as saying, Oh my, yes, if only god would send him home tomorrow I would die happ
y. It’s closer to: Do I want him back? Not especially. But if he happened to come home I’d certainly be happy for Gabriel.

  Gabriel’s much too little to understand any of this. I guess he’ll get the picture someday, but I hope it’s not soon. I’ve only known him for one day but already I feel protective of him. If you could see his big fat smiley face and his little pursed-up birdie mouth, you’d feel the same. I find it hard to believe that a person could walk away from that face.

  Suzanne’s phone rings and I carry Gabriel into the living room and plunk him on the sofa. I prop him up on all sides with pillows then throw a squashy yellow ball at him and he flaps at it with his hands. Flap flap flap. He’s no good at catching but I don’t want to make him feel bad so I take the ball and throw it again. Flap flap flap flapflapflap!!! He makes a high squeaking noise like a bat. Gil is standing behind me, watching.

  He’s very endearing.

  He is, I say. He makes you love him. I throw the ball again and he flips and flaps but I can see that his face is starting to screw up like last time, so we stop playing ball and I snuggle him into the corner of the squashy sofa and jiggle him on my lap and sing him a song and he calms down and doesn’t scream again.

  I wouldn’t leave him, I say.

  Gil shrugs a little and frowns and doesn’t say There’s nowt so queer as folk, which is another of his favorite expressions and probably one he doesn’t particularly want to apply to his oldest friend, it being not very flattering. He doesn’t look happy.

  What are the possibilities? I speak quietly because I can still hear Suzanne on the phone in the next room. She has quite a bright voice on—maybe it’s someone at the university or a neighbor she doesn’t know very well. She even laughs a little to show that she’s OK, but it doesn’t have that effect.

  I suppose he might have got mixed up in something he shouldn’t have.

  Like?

  Like bad company.

  What sort of bad company? For an instant I imagine something like the gas company, only full of villains.

  Gil shrugs again. Drugs? Gambling? He raises an eyebrow. Smuggling, prostitution, contraband, arms trading, money laundering.

  My expression makes him laugh.

  Well, you asked, he says. And no, I don’t actually think Matt is running a prostitution ring. Not his style. Or at least it never was before. People do change, I suppose. Or something happens so you don’t recognize them anymore. It happens.

  A wave of anxiety chokes me and I think of Catlin. I know it happens. The possibility that someone I know well can all of a sudden change makes me feel sick. I pull Gabriel close and kiss him so Gil won’t see how I feel.

  Though more usually it’s the other way round, Gil continues. More usually you don’t see someone for thirty years and when you meet up again it’s exactly the way it was back then.

  He thinks for a minute, and then says, Matt’s had a bad time. It probably goes back to Owen, but what do I know? Maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe he’s gay and living a lie. I’ve known him a very long time, he says. But you never really know what’s going on in someone else’s head. There’s nowt so queer as folk, he says.

  This makes me smile and Gil looks up and blinks, as if he’s forgotten I’m here. And that’s the end of today’s lecture, he says as Suzanne comes back in, staring at her phone accusingly.

  What lecture? she asks, but it sounds more automatic than curious.

  I’m still snuggled up with Gabriel but when he sees his mum he begins flapping his hands and making his high-pitched bat noise. Suzanne’s phone rings again. She looks at the number, answers it, and her voice changes once more. Let me phone you back, she says and turns her attention to Gabriel, sweeping him up out of my lap.

  Pooh! she says, giving an exaggerated sniff. Smelly boy! And she’s off to change his nappy.

  I have the nose of a bloodhound and he didn’t smell of anything but baby.

  Let’s hit the road, Dad says. It’s getting late.

  thirteen

  Fluency in two languages does not make you a translator. And translators from French to German (for instance) rarely translate from German back to French. It’s a one-way process, Gil says, but there are always exceptions.

  He also says the trick is to visualize the rhythms and idioms of Language One in Language Two—to find the connections between, say, a German mind and a French mind, so that the peculiarities of one voice can be teased into the other without a calamitous loss of meaning. Which he always says in italics.

  Today, I will be translating from American to English and back again, which should be just about manageable.

  We set off at last, after Suzanne phones the insurance company twice to check that her policy covers any driver, including a foreign one. She spends a long time talking to Gil about the camp Matthew owns near the Canadian border. No phone, no electricity, no running water. No Internet. She gives us a map with the route and our destination marked in red pen. We have GPS, she says, but it gets blinky up there. Best to have the map. Matt doesn’t believe in GPS, she adds, as if he’ll be with us on the way, disapproving of our methods.

  On the other side of the map is a list of phone numbers, including hers, Matthew’s mobile and the Automobile Association of America in case of an accident. She’s a very organized person, is Suzanne.

  The camp, she says, is the only place I can imagine him going. Not that my imagination is anything to go by. The drive should take about seven hours. Depends on traffic. Crazy to do it in one day, and what if you get all the way there and it’s shut up and empty? This route, she says, running her finger up along a long thin lake, won’t add much to your journey but is nicer.

  So we’re hunting down a missing person via the scenic route? Hello? Tempting though it is, I don’t say this out loud.

  You’ve come all this way, she says. At least don’t spend your entire time on the thruway.

  OK, Gil says. Don’t worry about us. We’re good at maps.

  The expression on Suzanne’s face makes me think she’s anxious, but not about us and maybe not about Matthew. What does that leave?

  I kiss Gabriel and he beams at me and waves his hands and kicks his feet so I pick him up and hug him close. So far this trip has been useful if only to let me know that I like babies. Or maybe just this one. I don’t want to put him down but I do and he turns his attention to the wooden seagull that flaps over his high chair. As we leave I don’t dare look back in case he is waving his hands and feet at me.

  I’m outside dragging my bag to the car when I feel a feather-light tap on my calf. It’s Honey nudging me with her nose. Her eyes are lowered.

  I glance at Gil but Suzanne is too quick for us.

  Take her along, she says. Please. It’s not fair to leave her here on her own all day. And I can’t stand it, frankly. She’s his dog. If you do find him, at least she’ll be overjoyed.

  I’ll ride in the back with her, I tell Gil, just till she gets used to us.

  Sit in front, Suzanne says with surprising force. She’ll be fine on her own.

  Gil looks like a man trapped in a revolving door.

  But what about motels, he asks, do they allow dogs?

  Just a minute, calls Suzanne, who has already dashed back into the house. When she returns, it’s with a slim paperback called Driving With Dogs, and there are pages and pages of dog-friendly motels.

  Gil is stuck and I am overjoyed. Suzanne disappears once more and reappears with a brown leather lead, a bed, a bag of dry dog food and two bowls. I feel a sudden pang of empathy for Matthew. It’s hard to imagine that Suzanne doesn’t always get her own way.

  I stand by the front of the car while Honey sniffs the open door and the inside, and only then steps up carefully into the back. She drops her hindquarters into a graceful sit, waiting quietly.

  He took her everywhere, says Suzanne, her voice sharp as glass. I avoid looking at Gil, but I can feel the expression on his face. Like me, he has begun to side with Matthew against Su
zanne, if such a side exists.

  Suzanne looks everywhere but at us. She runs one hand over a scrape in the front bumper. I hope you’re not as bad a driver as your friend, she says.

  All three of us are thinking of Owen and pretending we’re not, but the truth is that Gil is not the world’s best driver. Suzanne would have a nervous breakdown if she saw the state of our London car.

  We wave good-bye. Suzanne holds Gabriel’s hand and makes him wave back, but she looks as if she’s forgotten us already.

  • • •

  It’s only a few miles to the motorway and though Gil seems a little hesitant at first, he relaxes once we’re driving in straight lines. There are two lanes in each direction, and for a while the road is lined with fast-food joints and shops with names like Garden Furniture World and Christmas Pavilion.

  Honey has the resigned air of a seasoned traveler. She seems happier in the car than in the house, though it’s hard to imagine she guesses our mission. I would like to sit in the back with her. I have always wanted a dog.

  Jet lag makes me hungry at funny times and I didn’t eat much breakfast so now I’m starving, and when I see a sign for DINAH’S DINER NEXT RIGHT, I make Gil risk our lives to swerve across the outside lane for the slip road but it’s worth it for the most beautiful silver and glass diner with metallic blue trim. Gil parks and I open the windows partway and tell Honey we’ll be back. She lays her head on her paws and doesn’t look at me.

  Inside, the man at the counter waves at us to take any booth and then brings us menus in huge padded red leatherette folders. It’s translation time.

  I could have one, two or three eggs any style (over easy, hard, sunny-side up, scrambled, poached), pancakes, French toast, waffles, hash browns, bacon, sausage patty or corned beef hash with toast (white/whole wheat/rye/sourdough), coffee black or regular. Regular what?

  I go for two eggs sunny-side up with toast (rye), plus fresh-squeezed orange juice and at the last minute add pancakes out of greed. Gil orders the bottomless cup of coffee and French toast, which seems to come only seconds after we’ve ordered—big thick slices of bread all browned in egg and butter and served with icing sugar round the edges and a glass jug of maple syrup. I look at his plate and wish I’d ordered that.