The Burgess Boys

  On the sidewalk in front of Bloomingdale’s, Helen heard a plump woman on a cell phone saying, “I got these pillows for the front room, and they’re just the right color,” and then Helen was filled with a sudden warmth of nostalgic joy—as though she had come across the first crocus of the season. This plump woman, big bags banging softly against her big thighs, was happily inside her life. It was the luxury of the ordinary, and it reminded Helen of what she had missed without knowing it, but it was here: her Kitchen Cabinet friends who wanted to be with her, her loving husband, her healthy children, no, she had not lost anything.

  As she sat in the café on the seventh floor of Bloomingdale’s, having an early lunch of cinnamon squash soup, her cell phone went off. “You’re not going to believe this,” Jim said. “Zach has disappeared. He’s gone.”

  “Jimmy, he can’t be just gone.” She was struggling to hold the thin phone and also wipe at her mouth with a napkin, she felt the soup on her lip.

  “Sure he can, and he is.” Jim did not sound angry. He sounded distraught. Helen was not used to her husband sounding distraught. “I’m catching a plane this afternoon.”

  “Can’t I come with you?” She was already motioning to the waitress for the check.

  “If you want. But Susan’s in real trouble. He left a note. It said, ‘Mom, I’m sorry.’ ”

  “He left a note?”

  She found a taxi, and all the way down the FDR and across the Brooklyn Bridge she kept thinking of Zachary leaving a note. Of Susan—she couldn’t picture Susan—pacing the floor, calling the police? What did a person do in these circumstances? A person phoned Jim, that’s what. (Truthfully, in Helen, as the taxi swayed and bounced up Atlantic Avenue, there was a tiny sliver of something that was sharp and thrilled. Already she was telling the story to her children: Oh, it was awful, your father was so upset, we didn’t know, and I raced back and we got a plane.)

  7

  Charlie had told her not to do it yet, and Jim had told her the same, but as Susan waited for her brothers to arrive she picked up the phone and called Gerry O’Hare. It was near suppertime, and she was ready to hang up if his wife answered, but Gerry answered. And so Susan blurted out that Zachary was missing. “Gerry. What do I do?”

  “Tell me how long he’s been gone.”

  She didn’t know. He’d been there when she left at eight, or at least his car had been. But when she came home at eleven, because business was slow and the boss said she could have extra time for lunch, she came into the kitchen and found the note on the table and it said, “Mom, I’m sorry.” And his car was gone.

  “Are things missing? Are clothes missing?”

  “A few clothes, I think, and his duffel bag, and his cell phone. His computer is missing, and his wallet. He has a laptop. You don’t commit suicide and take your laptop, do you? Have you ever had someone do that?”

  Gerry asked if there were signs of forced entry, and she said no. She said her tenant, Jean Drinkwater, had been in her rooms upstairs and hadn’t heard anything.

  “Do you keep the doors locked during the day?”

  “We do.”

  “I can send someone over to look around but—”

  “Oh, don’t do that. I just want to know—I’m waiting for my brothers, they’ll be here soon—I just want to know if someone takes their computer if they’re going to hurt themselves.”

  “There’s no way of knowing, Susan. Was he depressed?”

  “Scared.” Now she faltered. She assumed Gerry must know the Feds were going to move by the end of the week, but all she wanted was for someone to tell her that her son was alive. And no one could tell her that.

  Gerry said, “We have an adult male who, far as we know, left his house with his car and a few things. There’s nothing to suggest foul play. In a missing person case, we won’t even file a report on it for twenty-four hours.”

  She knew this from Charlie and Jim. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said.

  “You’re not bothering me, Susan. You’re being a mother. Your brothers will be there soon? You won’t be alone tonight?”

  “They just pulled in. Thank you, Gerry.”

  Gerry stood for a long time in his living room, until his wife called to him to say that supper was on the table. In all his years as a policeman he had never understood—why would he understand?—how it was that some things happened to some people and not to others. Gerry’s own sons had turned out well. One was a state trooper and the other was a high school teacher, and who could say why he and his wife had had this luck? The luck could end tomorrow. He had watched people’s luck end with one phone call, one knock on their door. Any police chief knew how quickly luck could end. He went into the dining room and held the chair out for his wife.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, playfully. She surprised him by putting both arms around his neck, and for a moment they hummed their favorite song, a Wally Packer song from their early days together, I’ve got this funny little feeling you’re gonna be mine.…

  The Burgess kids sat at the kitchen table, going over what had happened. Helen sat there too, and felt out of place. The dog kept putting her head onto Helen’s lap, and when Helen thought no one was looking she pushed the dog away hard. The dog whined, and Susan snapped her fingers and said, “Lie down.” Susan’s hands were shaking and Bob told her to take a tranquilizer and she said she had already taken one. She said, “All I want is to know he’s alive.”

  “Let’s take a good look,” said Jim. “Come on.” The brothers went upstairs with Susan to Zach’s room. Helen stayed where she was with her coat still on, the house was cold. She heard them walking about above her, heard the murmur of their voices. They stayed up there a long time, closet doors opening, drawers opening and shutting. On the kitchen counter was a magazine called Simple Meals for Simple Folks and Helen eventually flipped through it. Each recipe was written with cheerfulness. Put butter and brown sugar on those carrots and your kids will never know they’re eating something good for them. She sighed and put it down. The curtains at the window above the sink were a burnt orange color with small ruffles on the bottom, and another ruffle that went all the way across the top. It had been a long time since Helen had seen curtains like that. She sat with her hands in her lap feeling the absence of her engagement ring, which was now at the jeweler’s. There was only the simple band on her finger, and it felt odd. She remembered that she had not canceled her doctor’s appointment for Monday and wondered if she ought to switch her watch to her other wrist to remind herself to call first thing in the morning, but she just sat, and then the brothers and Susan came back downstairs.

  “I think he’s run away,” Jim said. Helen did not answer. She didn’t know what to say to this. It was decided that Bob would stay at the house for the night, Helen and Jim would go to the hotel.

  “Have you let Steve know?” Helen asked Susan, standing up, and Susan looked at her as though she had not noticed Helen had been there all this time.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He was nice. Very worried,” Jim answered.

  “Well, that’s good. Did he have any suggestions?” Helen pulled on her gloves.

  “It’s not like he can do anything from over there.” Jim again answered for his sister. “There’s printed-out emails from him upstairs, telling Zach to go to school, find an interest, a hobby, that kind of stuff. All set?”

  Bob said, “Susie, can you turn the heat up since I’m staying?” and Susan said she would.

  As they drove over the bridge to the hotel, Helen asked, “Where would he run away to?”

  “We don’t know, do we.”

  “But what’s the plan, Jimmy?”

  “We wait.”

  Helen thought how sinister the inky river seemed on both sides of them, how black the night was here. “Poor Susan.” She meant this. But she thought the words sounded false, and Jim made no reply.

  The next afternoon there was
a wedding at the hotel. The day was sunny and the sky was blue. The snow sparkled, and the river sparkled, as though diamonds had been openhandedly flung throughout the air. On the hotel’s large terrace next to the river, the wedding party was lined up for photographs, people laughing as though it were not cold. Helen could see this, but not hear it, since she was standing high up on a balcony and the sound of the river drowned everyone out. The bride wore a white fluffy jacket over her white gown. She was not young, Helen noticed. This must be a second wedding. If so, it was ridiculous for the bride to be wearing a traditional gown, but nowadays people did what they wanted, and also this was Maine. The husband was chubby, happy-looking. Helen felt the faintest stirrings of jealousy. She turned to go back into the room.

  “I’m going over to the house. Are you coming?” Jim sat on the bed scratching his feet. He had just showered after working out at the gym in the hotel, and now he was scratching his bare feet furiously. He had been scratching his feet, it seemed to Helen, since they had arrived.

  “If I thought it would help I would go, of course,” said Helen, who had endured the entire morning at her sister-in-law’s house. “But I can’t see that my presence makes much difference.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Jim. There were flakes of white skin on the carpet.

  “Jimmy, stop. You’re tearing your feet apart. Look at that mess.”

  “They itch.”

  Helen sat down in the chair by the desk. “How much longer are we going to be here?”

  Jim stopped scratching his feet and looked at her. “I don’t know. As long as it takes to see what’s happening. I don’t know. Where are my socks?”

  “On the other side of the bed.” Helen did not want to touch them.

  He leaned around, put them on methodically. “She can’t be left alone right now. We have to ease her through this, whatever this is. Or turns out to be.”

  “She should have asked Steve to fly over here. He should have offered.” Helen got up and moved back toward the terrace. “People are getting married down there. In the middle of winter. Outside.”

  “Why would Susan ask Steve to come over here? She hasn’t seen him in seven years, he hasn’t seen his son in seven years. Why should Susan put up with him now?”

  “Because. They have this child together.” She turned to face her husband.

  “Hellie, you’re making me a little crazy here. I don’t want to fight with you. Why are you making me fight with you? My sister’s going through just about the worst thing a parent can go through, not knowing where her kid is, not even knowing if he’s alive.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Helen said. “And it’s not my fault either.”

  Jim stood up, slipped his loafers on. He patted his pockets for the car keys. “If you don’t want to be here, Helen, go home. Get a flight out tonight. Susan won’t care. She won’t even notice.” He zipped up his coat. “I mean it. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not going to go and just leave you here.”

  She spent the afternoon bundled up, walking along the pathway by the river. The sun was still bright on the snow and also on the water. She stopped when she saw what appeared to be a war memorial. She had never noticed it before, but she had not been to Shirley Falls in more years than she could remember. There were large slabs of granite, upright, in a large circle. Peering closely she was dismayed to see that one was for a young woman recently killed in Iraq. Alice Rioux. Twenty-one years old. Emily’s age. “Oh, little sweetie pie,” Helen whispered. Sorrow expanded around her in the sunshine. She turned and headed back to the hotel.

  The chambermaid startled Helen, standing outside their room with her cart of towels: She wore a robe that went from head to toe and only her face showed, round brown cheeks and bright dark eyes, which meant she must be a Somali, because Helen could think of no other black Muslims up here in Shirley Falls, Maine. “Hello!” Helen said this brightly.

  “Hello.” The girl—or she could be a middle-aged woman, how was Helen to know, the face was unreadable to her—stepped back with a gesture of shyness, and when Helen entered her room it had already been made up. She’d remember to leave a nice tip.

  Bob showed up around five—probably, Helen thought, in order to drink and take a break from his sister’s despair. “Come in, come in,” she said. “How’s your sister?”

  “The same.” Bob took a tiny bottle of scotch from the minibar.

  “I’ll join you,” Helen said. “Don’t let Susan come to the hotel. The chambermaid is a Somalian person, I think. Somali. Sorry.” Helen gestured to indicate the top-to-bottom covering she had seen the person wearing.

  Bob glanced at her with a slightly quizzical look. “I don’t think Susan’s mad at them.”

  “She’s not?”

  “She’s mad at the district attorney and the assistant U.S. attorney and the AG’s office, the press—you know, the whole nine yards. Look, do you mind if I turn on the news?”

  “Of course not.” But she did mind. She felt self-conscious sitting there with her hotel-room glass of whiskey, startled to hear that the market yesterday had dropped four hundred and sixteen points and she not able to say anything about it because it would be disrespectful to the Burgesses’ crisis with Zach, and sad too, that a blast in Iraq had killed eight U.S. troops and nine civilians, for she now connected this to the marker she had seen by the river, oh, there were so many dying everywhere, what was to be done, nothing! She was ripped away from all that was familiar (her children, she wanted them small again, moist from their baths)— “I think I may go home tomorrow,” she said.

  Bob nodded, and kept looking at the television set.

  Afternoon light over the river had become muted behind a layer of light clouds, and the gray carpet of the hotel room seemed a deeper shade of the pale gray sky, the railing of the little balcony seen through the window a sturdy fine line of a deeper shade still. Jim looked exhausted. That morning he had driven Helen to the airport in Portland, and by the time he’d returned Susan had made the decision to file a missing person report with the police. “There’s no warrant for his arrest yet with the Feds,” she argued, and this was true. “And his bail conditions and the civil rights injunction only require that he stay away from the Somali community,” she insisted.

  “Still,” Bob said patiently, “I don’t know that we want to put him in the system as a missing person right now.”

  “But he is missing,” Susan cried, and so they went with her to the police station and filed the report. The description of Zach’s car—his license plate number appearing on a computer screen—went into the report, of course, and knowing that the police were now on the lookout for it squeezed Bob with an added layer of fear, and also hope. He pictured Zach in some tiny motel room, his duffel bag of clothes on the floor, Zach lying on the bed listening to music off his computer. Waiting.

  Jim and Bob drove Susan back to her house. Jim stayed behind the wheel of the car in the driveway. “Suse, you hang on for a little bit. Bob and I’ve got some work calls to make at the hotel. We’ll be back soon, in time for dinner.”

  “Mrs. Drinkwater is making dinner. But I can’t eat,” Susan said as she got out of the car.

  “Then don’t eat. We’ll see you really soon.”

  Bob said, “He took his clothes, Susie. It’s going to be all right.” Susan nodded, and the brothers watched while she went up the porch steps.

  Back in the hotel room, Bob flung his coat on the floor beside the bed. Jim still had his coat on, and now he reached into his pocket and tossed a cell phone onto the bed. He looked at Bob and nodded toward the phone.

  “What?” said Bob.

  “It’s Zach’s.”

  Bob picked up the phone, looked at it. “Susan said his cell phone and computer were gone.”

  “The computer’s gone. I found the cell phone in his room, in a drawer next to his bed. Under some socks. I didn’t tell Susan.”

  Bob felt pinpricks beneath his arms. He sat down slowl
y on the other bed. “Maybe it’s an old phone,” he finally said.

  “It’s not. The calls on it are recent, made in the last week. Mostly to Susan at work. The last call on it was to me the morning he disappeared.”

  “You? At your office?”

  Jim nodded. “Directory assistance right before that. Probably asking for the number to the law firm. Though he could have googled that, I don’t know why he didn’t. Anyway, I didn’t get the call, and he didn’t leave a message with the receptionist. I called her driving back from Portland this morning and she remembered someone had called for me and wouldn’t give his name and hung up when she asked what the call was referring to.” Jim rubbed his face with both hands. “I yelled at her. Which was stupid.” He walked over to the window, his hands in his pockets. He swore quietly.

  “Do you think his computer really is gone?” Bob asked.

  “Seems to be. And the duffel bag. I guess. Susan would know about the duffel bag, I wouldn’t.” He turned back from the window. “Don’t you have some booze, slob-dog? I’d really go for some sauce right now.”

  “At Susan’s. But there’s the minibar.”

  Jim opened its fake-wood-paneled door, twisted the caps off two small bottles of vodka, poured them into a glass, and drank it down like it was water.

  “Jesus,” Bob said.

  Jim grimaced, breathed out loudly. “Yeah.” He opened the minibar again and brought out a can of beer, the small curl of foam appearing as he pulled back the tab.

  “Jimmy, take it easy. You should eat something if you’re going to do that.”