“They’re going to Neverland.”
I paused and adjusted my shoulder, causing Nadine to sit up sluggishly. I turned to look at her face. Her eyes were half closed and she was seriously buzzed. I was going to give the rest of the conversation sixty seconds and then quietly vacate the courtyard.
“Who . . . is going to Neverland?” I asked.
“The boys,” she whispered. “They’re going to Neverland.”
I cleared my throat. “What boys?”
“The missing boys,” Nadine said. “All of them.”
I took this in. She was waiting for me to reply. I tried to make a connection.
“You think . . . Michael Jackson has something to do with all this?”
Nadine giggled again and leaned into me, but I felt nothing sexual because the mention of the missing boys began enveloping everything around us.
“No . . . not Michael Jackson, silly.” And then she suddenly stopped giggling. She made a flying motion with her hands, mimicking a large, inebriated bird. She lurched forward and started swaying. “Neverland . . . like in Peter Pan. That’s where the boys are.” Mimicking the bird had taken a lot of effort and she leaned back against the wall without focusing on me. Her face—lost and heavily made up and the almond eyes wooden tonight—was lit half green by a ground lamp.
“Your . . . point, Nadine?” I asked cautiously.
“The point?” She sobered up too quickly. The tone became harsh. Maybe I looked frightened, which was what spurred her on. “You want to know what the ‘point’ is, Bret?”
I sighed and leaned against the wall. “No. Not really. No, Nadine. I don’t.”
“Why not?” She seemed activated by my admission, and the indignation in her voice seemed based not on drunkenness but on fear. “The point, Bret, the point is”—and now she breathed in and made a muffled, sullen sound—“the point is that no one is taking them anywhere.”
I nodded thoughtfully, as if mulling this over, and then said, “Sorry, but that just really doesn’t resonate, Nadine.”
“The point . . .”—she was now openly scornful—“the point is that you need to know this . . .” She reached down next to the granite bench and I was shocked to see her pick up a near-empty bottle of wine. Nadine had actually stolen a bottle of the Stonecreek Chardonnay from the reception and was nursing it in the dark courtyard of her children’s school. She carefully poured what was left of it into her plastic cup. I might have laughed if it hadn’t been for my growing concern that the vines were coiling around us. Suddenly, I was afraid. I was losing the signal of the dream. And I realized that Nadine’s behavior was motivated not by alcohol but by a specific anxiety that was spiraling out of control. “The point is”—she took a sip and pursed her lips—“that none of them are ever coming back.”
“Nadine, I think we need to find Mitchell, okay?” was all I could say.
“Mitchell, Bret, is standing next to your wife while Principal Cameron takes advantage of a photo op.” The way Nadine said this opened something up while failing to clarify anything—all it did was add confusion. Suddenly, in the phrasing of the sentence, and the way she had pushed down on certain words, all of our relationships were rearranged. The dream was slipping away.
Nadine sipped her wine and kept staring at something invisible in the darkness. The vines rustled around us. I kept trying to avoid her face and then made an attempt to stand up. Nadine had been quiet for so long that I didn’t think she would notice, but her hand shot out once I made my move and she gripped my forearm, pulling me back to her. She was staring at me now—her eyes bleeding with fear—and I had to turn away. That dream I had constructed so carefully was melting. I had to leave Nadine before it vanished totally, before it was consumed by someone else’s madness. It was becoming Nadine’s dream now, but the urgency in which she was relaying it to me had the horrible texture of truth. As I sat back down she said in a rushed whisper, “I think they’re leaving us.”
I didn’t say anything. I swallowed hard and went cold.
“Ashton collects information about the boys.” Nadine was still gripping my forearm and she was staring at me and she kept nodding. “Yes. There’s a file on his computer, and he didn’t know I found it. He collects information about the boys”—she breathed in and swallowed rapidly—“and he trades it with his friends . . .”
“This is really none of my business, Nadine.”
“But it is, Bret. It’s very much your business.”
“Why is it my business, Nadine?”
I suddenly hated her for what she was confessing to me and again I wanted to walk away, but I couldn’t. She lowered her voice and glanced around the courtyard to see if there was anything in the darkness listening to us, almost as if there was a risk associated in confessing this to me.
“Because Robby is one of the boys he’s trading this information with.”
I paused for breath. Everything started wasting away at that point.
“What are you talking about, Nadine?” I tried pulling my arm from her grasp.
“You don’t understand, Bret”—she was almost panting—“there are hundreds of pages devoted to those boys that Ashton has downloaded.”
I could feel her trembling as I tore my arm free and turned away.
“He e-mails them, Bret.” Nadine said this so loudly that it echoed in the empty courtyard.
“He e-mails who?” I couldn’t stop myself. I had to ask.
“He’s sending e-mails to those boys.”
I stopped pulling away and then, forced by fear, slowly turned to face her.
“He knew . . . some of the boys who disappeared?” I asked.
Nadine stared at me. I felt that if she said yes, everything would collapse.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t know any of them.”
I sighed. “Nadine . . .” I started wearily.
“But he e-mailed them after they disappeared,” Nadine whispered. “That’s what I couldn’t understand. He e-mailed them after they disappeared.”
It took me a long time to ask, “How do you know this?”
“I found one the other day.” She was sitting up, ignoring the wine, composing herself; suddenly she realized that she had a partner in this conversation. “It was in a code of some kind, and he forwarded it to Robby.” She was trying to explain this by gesturing with her hands. “One message he sent to Cleary Miller, and another to Eddie Burgess, and when I checked the dates they were sent after they disappeared, Bret. It was after—do you understand?” She was panting again. “I found them in the filing cabinet of Ashton’s AOL account but I had no idea what it meant or why he would do this, and when I confronted him he just yelled at me about invading his privacy . . . and now, the last time I looked, the files and the e-mails weren’t there anymore . . .” And just when it seemed her lucidity had returned, Nadine broke down. She began sobbing. I was vaguely aware that she was clutching my wrist. I remembered last night and Ashton’s tear-streaked face and how Nadine kept excusing herself to check up on him. How many others had been the target of her paranoia? How many others were lured by this crazed theory of Nadine’s? She kept wanting to guide me to a point that she was not capable of making.
I tried to calm her by playing along. “So Ashton was writing to the boys in Neverland, right?”
“That’s right.” She choked back another sob. “The Lost Boys.” Her eyes were pleading, and the taut expression on her face was morphing into relief because someone now believed her.
“Nadine, have you told Mitchell?” I asked this in a soothing tone but I was so hyped up at this point that my voice sounded high and cracked. “Have you contacted the police and told them about this theory?”
“It’s not a theory.” She shook her head like a little girl. “It is not a theory, Bret. Those boys were not abducted. There’ve been no ransom demands. There’ve been no bodies.” She was rummaging through her purse and pulled out a tissue. “They have a plan. The boys have a plan. I think they h
ave this plan. But why? Why do they have a plan? I mean, there’s no other explanation. The police have nothing. Do you know that, Bret? They have nothing. They—”
I was talking over her. “Where are the boys, Nadine?”
“No one knows.” She breathed in and shivered. “That’s the point. No one knows.”
“Well, maybe if we talked to them, to Ashton and—”
“They lie. They will lie to you—”
“But if—”
“Don’t you think the boys have been acting strange?” she asked, cutting me off. She wanted me to validate something for her that, admittedly, I had not been paying attention to.
“In . . . what ways?”
“I don’t know . . .” Now that she had admitted the worst, I thought she might relax and become less furtive, but her twisted hands kept bunching up the Kleenex. “Secretive . . . and . . . and . . . not available?” She phrased this as a question so I would have to answer and then become trapped in her own dream.
“Nadine, they’re eleven-year-old boys. They’re not comedians. Fifth-grade boys are hardly the most outgoing group. I was the same way at that age.” I just wanted to keep on talking. I just wanted to say anything that might drown her out.
“No, no, no—” She had closed her eyes and was shaking her head violently. “This is different. They have a plan. They—”
“Nadine, come on, stand up.”
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you get it?” Her voice was rising. “If we don’t do something we’re going to lose them. Do you understand that?”
“Nadine, come on, we’re going to find Mitch—”
She grabbed my arm again, her hands tearing at the sleeve of my jacket. She was breathing heavily.
“We’re going to lose them if we don’t do some—”
The dream was rushing in the opposite direction, rewriting itself. I was trying to lift Nadine off the granite bench but she kept forcing her weight back onto it. And suddenly she shouted, “Let go of me!” and wrenched herself away. I stood there, also breathing heavily, not knowing where to go. I kept straining to piece this information together.
And then: an interruption.
“Is everything okay down there?” a voice above us called.
I looked up. The armed guard I had asked for a cigarette was standing against a railing and staring down into the courtyard before sweeping the beam from a small flashlight over my face. Covering my eyes with a hand, I said, “Yes, yes, we’re fine,” as courteously as possible. From my point of view the griffin’s massive head floated directly below him.
“Madam?” the guard asked, training the ray of light on her.
Nadine composed herself, blowing her nose. She cleared her throat and squinted up at the guard and called back, smiling, in a restrained and faux cheerful voice, “We’re fine, we’re fine, thank you very much.” The light was absorbed by Nadine’s mask before the guard, peering down at us uncertainly, finally moved on. The guard’s interruption had brought an air of reality to the proceedings and it caused Nadine to stand up and, without looking at me, walk quickly toward the steps as if she was now ashamed by what she had admitted. I had rejected her on some level and the embarrassment was too big to deal with. The stab at a tryst had failed. It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off. It was time to go home. She would never mention any of this to me again.
“Nadine,” I called out. I was staggering after her.
I followed her up the stairs and tried to reach out for her but she was moving too quickly, bounding up the steps leading out of the courtyard until she reached the top, where Jayne was standing, waiting.
Nadine glanced at my wife and smiled, then moved swiftly toward the library.
Jayne nodded back amiably. There was nothing accusatory in Jayne’s stance—she was simply stifling a yawn, and she furrowed her brow only briefly when Nadine ignored her. At the sight of Jayne, my dream began returning, and as I stumbled over the top step I reached out and, letting the dream flow back over me, wrapped my arms around her, not caring when she refused to return the embrace.
And on the drive back to the house on Elsinore Lane, above the dashboard and out the windshield, visible in the wide horizon of darkness, I was seeing newly planted citrus trees that were appearing along the interstate, and the citrus trees kept flashing by, along with the occasional wild palm, their fronds barely visible in the blue mist, and the scent of the Pacific Ocean had somehow entered the Range Rover along with Elton John singing “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” even though the radio wasn’t on, and then there was an exit ramp and the sign above it read SHERMAN OAKS in shimmering letters, and I thought about the city I had abandoned on the West Coast and realized there was no need to point this out to my wife, who was driving, because the windshield suddenly was splintered by rain, obscuring the palm trees now lining the highway everywhere and, above them, the geometry of a constellation from a distant time zone, and I also realized that there was no need to point this out to Jayne because, in the end, I was only the passenger.
14. the kids
As I moved slowly up the stairs toward Robby’s room I could hear the muffled sounds of bullets ripping into zombies emanating from what I thought was his computer. At the top of the stairs I paused, confused, because his door was open, which it never was, and then I realized that since Jayne and I had walked into the house without speaking to each other (she just slipped silently away from me, carrying the complimentary stress basket into Marta’s office) Robby hadn’t heard us come in. Moving closer to the open door, I hesitated again, because I didn’t want to surprise him. I peered cautiously into the room and the first thing I noticed was Sarah lying on his bed gazing dully at something while cradling the Terby. Robby sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, his back to me, maneuvering a joystick as he caromed down another darkened corridor in another medieval castle. As I stared into the room my immediate thought: the furniture was aligned as it had been in my boyhood room in Sherman Oaks. The formation was identical—the bed placed next to the wall adjacent to the closet, the desk beneath the window that overlooked the street, the television on a low table next to a shelf containing stereo equipment and books. My room had been much smaller and less elaborate (I didn’t have my own refrigerator) but the beige earth tones of the color scheme were exact, and even the lamps resting on the nightstands on both sides of the bed were distinct replicas of the ones I had, though the kitsch factor of Robby’s was now considered cool, whereas my lamps from the midseventies were the epitome of a now distant and tacky chic. I let go of the decades separating Robby’s room from mine and returned to the present when my gaze fell on his computer. On the screen, surrounded by text, was the face of a boy, and the boy looked familiar (in a few seconds I realize it’s Maer Cohen), and the face caused me to quietly enter the room unobserved until Sarah looked away from the TV and said, “Daddy, you’re home.”
Robby froze and then stood up quickly, dropping the joystick carelessly to the floor. Without looking at me he walked over to the computer and tapped a key, erasing the face of (I was now certain) Maer Cohen. And when Robby turned around his eyes were bright and alert, and I was so disarmed by his smile that I almost backed out of the room. I started to smile back but then realized: he was putting on a performance. He wanted to distract me from what was on that screen and he was now putting on a performance. Any hint of last night’s cry of “I hate you” had vanished, and it was hard not to stare at him with suspicion—but how much of that belonged to me, and how much of it belonged to Robby? There was an expectant silence.
“Hi,” Robby said. “How was it?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was now my father. Robby was now me. I saw my own features mirrored in his—my world was mirrored there: the brownish auburn hair, the high and frowning forehead, the thick lips pursed together always in thought and anticipation, the hazel eyes swirling with barely contained bewilderment. Why hadn’t I noticed him until he was lost to me? I lowered my head. It to
ok a moment to process what he was referring to. I just shrugged and said, “It was . . . fine.” Another pause during which I realized I was still staring at the computer he was now blocking. Robby looked over his shoulder, a pointed gesture that was a reminder for me to end this interruption and leave.
I shrugged again. “Um, I just wanted to check if you guys had, y’know, brushed your teeth yet.” This inquiry was so lame, so unlike me, that I blushed at the inappropriateness of it.
Robby nodded, standing in front of the computer, and said, “Bret, I was watching something about the war tonight, and I need to know something.”
“Yeah?” I wanted him to be genuinely interested in whatever he “needed” to know, but I knew he wasn’t. There was something off about his curiosity, something vengeful. Yet I wanted to make contact so badly that I let myself believe he wasn’t distracting me from something he didn’t want me to know. “What is it, Rob?” I tried to sound concerned but my voice was flat.
“Will I be drafted?” he asked, cocking his head, as if he sincerely wanted an answer from me.
“Um, I really don’t think so, Robby,” I said, moving in slow motion to the bed Sarah was lying on. “I’m not even sure if the draft exists anymore.”
“But they’re talking about bringing it back,” he said. “And what if the war’s still going on when I turn eighteen?”
My mind fumbled around until it reached: “The war won’t last that long.”
“But what if it does?”
He was now the teacher, and I was the student being manipulated, so I had to sit down on the edge of the bed in order to concentrate more fully on how this scene was playing out. This was the first time since I moved in that Robby was engaging me in a conversation of any kind, and when I tried to find a reason my stomach dropped: What if Ashton Allen had gotten in touch with him? What if Ashton had warned him about Nadine finding the alleged e-mails? My eyes were darting around the room looking for clues. I saw the two boxes half-filled with clothes marked SALVATION ARMY and swallowed hard, fighting off the small and rising panic I was becoming used to. I realized that this had been a scene so rehearsed that I could predict the last lines. I looked back at Robby and couldn’t help feeling that behind the indifference was disgust, and beyond the disgust, rage.