The Missing Girl Read online

  FACE LIKE A POTATO

  WHAT LUCK, the man thinks. Here he is, standing on the corner, behind his five birds and so close he can smell them. The one the man likes least, the big one with the face like a potato, smells of cheap perfume. She herds the others along like a sheepdog. She is a dog. He doesn’t wish to waste his time on her, doesn’t want to even think about her, but there’s a certain fascination in her homeliness. He stares at the back of her head. Underneath that long braid of hair, even her neck is ugly. Her Ugliness. He likes the way that sounds. It accounts for her, puts the name and the face and the body all together nicely. Her Ugliness.

  Now he thinks about naming the others. The one who lags behind and talks without stopping and this morning smelled of breakfast eggs—that’s easy. Her Dumbness. Or…wait, would Her Dimness be a better name? Her Dumbness. Her Dimness. Which one?

  When he clocks in at work, the two names are still reverberating.

  “Hey ho!” It’s Violet, the computer whiz girl. Not really a girl, she has streaky gray hair, a too big and too white smile that chills him. She taps him on the shoulder. “Hey ho,” she says again. “What’s on your mind this morning? How are you? Have a good weekend?”

  A shudder goes through him. He half bows, twitches his cheeks into a smile. “I’m good. How about you?” He knows how to say nothing while making the right sounds. It’s a game that he’s forced to play to keep them all satisfied. How are you? I’m good. And you? Good. Isn’t it a great day? We deserve some sun. You’re so right. Spring is on the way. And about time. Well, have a good one. All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen.

  In his office he sits down at his desk. Violet walks by his cubicle and gives him another big white smile. It strikes him that Violet is Her Dumbness. Of course. Which means the talky one is Her Dimness. Perfect. He turns on his computer, satisfied.

  THE ORDEAL

  OPENING HER LOCKER after lunch, Beauty dawdled, watching Ethan at his locker taking out books, stuffing them in his backpack. Slowly she zipped her backpack and glanced at him again. Beauty Huddle, Secret Agent of Love. Then came an image of herself leaping on Ethan, grabbing his head, mashing their mouths together. Her mind was ridiculous. She could barely bring herself to say hi when she saw him in the halls, not very likely that she’d be leaping on him.

  But what about that drastic action? Was now the time? If not now, when? She was always putting it off. Her belly lurched, and then she hurled herself—or so it seemed to her—across the space between them. “Uh, hey, Ethan,” she said. And it came out timidly, softly, as if she didn’t mean it. He didn’t turn, did nothing to show that he had even heard her. “Ethan,” she said in a desperately cheerful voice. “How’s it going?”

  “Uh, what?” He banged his locker shut, and he turned to look at her.

  “How’s it going?” she said again, with a terrified smile.

  “Oh. Good,” he said. “Yeah, good.”

  Gathering herself, she said, “What about that history test? Mean, wasn’t it?”

  “Whew!” He blew air out through his mouth. “Magruder knows how to k-k-k-kill us.”

  “I know. It’s true, so true.”

  “I don’t know how I did. Maybe I did okay.” His eyes were light blue. “I like that h-h-h-history stuff.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “me, too.” And then running the sentences together, as if they were one thought, “He’s a good teacher I’m Beauty Herbert.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  Did he mean he knew Mr. Magruder was a good teacher? Or did he mean he knew her name? That was it—he knew her name. Of course he did. Everyone knew everyone in this school. Still, wasn’t it amazing? He knew her name! All this raced through her mind and what came out of her mouth, as if it were a brilliant new truth, was: “And you’re Ethan Boswell.”

  “I am.”

  “I sound like an idiot,” she said. “I’m scared. Sorry. Sorry! I want to ask you something.”

  “Scared? Scared of me?”

  “Uh-huh. Worse, now that I’ve confessed.”

  “I guess I can be pretty s-s-s-scary.”

  “No, no, it’s not—I didn’t mean—I—uh—” At this last groaning sound that she made, she shook her head in despair and closed her eyes and prayed and said, “Can we just pretend I never said anything? Go away, Ethan. Don’t look at me. Forget I ever opened my mouth and said such stupid, idiotic things. Good-bye. Are you gone?”

  She pressed her lips together and opened her eyes. He was still there. He was watching her. He hadn’t run away. He was waiting.

  Hot. It was suddenly so hot. She wanted to tear off her sweater, tear off all her clothes. They were looking at each other, and she had the impression that they were speaking without words, that they were telling each other something important. People pushed by. Shouts. Lockers slamming. It was all far away.

  “So…what was it?” he asked.

  “What was what?” She was dazed by the look they had just shared.

  “What you wanted t-t-t-to ask me.”

  “What I wanted to ask you?” She sucked in air. “Oh. Okay. Can I buy you a coffee? After school. I mean I’ll drink some, too. I mean, I won’t drink yours. Oh, Lord. I should just shoot myself. Or cut out my tongue.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay, I should shoot myself? Or okay, I can buy you a coffee?”

  “No. And then yes.”

  “No, and then yes,” she repeated. “Right.” She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders. “Do you want to meet outside or—”

  “Outside,” he said. He nodded several times. His hair flopped over his eyes. “Yeah. Outside.”

  The bell rang. They parted. She had calculus next. She somehow got through the rest of the day, wondering all the while if she had dreamed that conversation, imagined it, like imagining herself leaping on him. But, no, she had done it. Taken drastic action. And he was going to meet her. Hooray, she wanted to shout then. Hooray! Hooray for me. But at once she began to believe she had cornered him—she had!—and he had said yes because it was the easy thing to do. Anyway, can I buy you a coffee—what kind of invitation was that? A cheap one. Horrible! And in this way she tortured herself for the rest of the day.

  After school he was waiting for her, leaning against a tree, one foot up, and he was chewing on a toothpick and looked adorable. He’s there, she thought. He’s there because of me. She wanted to shout or sing or wave her arms around. Then she saw that he looked frightened. Of her? But he was a boy.

  “Hey,” she said, coming up to him.

  “Hey.”

  “We’re going…to get coffee,” she said. “Right?”

  “I guess.”

  They walked down the street, came to the corner, crossed, walked down the next block. Neither said anything. Another block. Silence. And another. And more silence. Silence building like stones.

  “Over there,” Beauty said finally, pointing with relief to Clara’s Coffee Shoppe on a small strip mall. He nodded. They crossed the street, and she could have walked into a speeding car without ever having seen it coming. She had no idea how she had crossed safely. And she had no idea who this boy was, why they were together, what she could ever find to say to him. Her teeth chattered.

  “Cold?” he said.

  “A little.”

  “H-h-h-here!” He pulled off his jacket, draped it over her shoulders.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Thank you.” The jacket held the warmth of his body, and she hoped never to give it back.

  They entered the coffee shop, sat at the counter. “My treat.” She tried to sound sure of herself. She pulled his jacket around her.

  He ordered a large coffee, regular. She ordered a small coffee, vanilla flavored.

  “F-f-f-flavored?” he said. “You like that? I say, never flavor coffee.”

  “Really?” They were talking now. She sat up straighter, sparkled her eye
s at him, got bold and said teasingly, “Never flavor coffee! Okay. Why not?”

  “Ruins the taste.” He said it solemnly, so she answered in the same vein—serious, grave. “I’ll never do it again.”

  “Good,” he said. He smiled a little to himself, as if he was glad he had changed her mind. Then he looked at her and touched his jacket, and said, “Warm now?”

  “Oh, yes!” she said, and got warmer, she was sure her cheeks were flushed. She put her hands to them. Yes, warm. “Do you want your jacket back?”

  “Eventually, yes. Keep it on for now.”

  “Thank you!”

  They smiled at each other and drank their coffee. He finished first and twirled on the stool. “Well, thanks,” he said. And then he said her name. “Thanks, Beauty.”

  “Ethan, you’re welcome.” She paid, and they walked out together.

  At the corner he said, “I go this way. See you around, I guess.” He reddened. “I mean, I’ll see you in h-h-history class t-t-t-tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” she said, “see you there, for sure.” She took off his jacket and handed it to him, watched as he put it on, warm from her now. And she hoped he would do something affectionate. Was holding her hand, even for a moment, too much to wish for? She would settle for a touch on her neck or her arm, any little gesture.

  But they parted, and he walked away without looking back. “’Bye,” she called. Her voice lifted. “’Bye, Ethan.” He kept walking.

  She made herself turn and not look back. The ordeal, for surely it had been that, was over, and her legs were boneless with relief, but as she walked home, almost wobbly at first, she began singing a song she’d learned from her father a long time ago, when she was about Autumn’s age. She’d heard him singing it for Autumn last summer, before he fell and stopped singing and speaking.

  “‘Four strong winds that blow lonely, seven seas that run high, all these things that won’t change—’” She couldn’t remember what came next. She hummed, found a few of the words: “‘now, our good times are all gone—’” or was it “‘our good times are just begun’”? She liked that better, sang it again, bravely, wanting to believe it. “‘Our good times are just begun!’”

  AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE

  “HELLO, GIRLS,” the man says.

  It’s Sunday afternoon, and he’s sitting on a bench in the park facing the duck pond. He has brought bread in a plastic bag for the ducks. The trees are leafing out, the sky is blue after days of clouds, and the girls are coming along the path through the woods. His heart quickens.

  “Hello, girls,” he says quietly. They don’t appear to hear him. He throws a piece of bread to the ducks, and they gather, squawking for the morsel. The girls come closer.

  He says it again. “Hello, girls.”

  “Hello!” Her Dimness says. “Are you feeding the ducks? I love ducks, they’re so cute, I wish I had some ducks, but I can’t because of where we live, and I can’t have a dog because of allergies, and—”

  “Come on, Fancy,” Hair Girl says. “Don’t bother the man.”

  “She’s not bothering me,” he says. He tosses another piece of bread into the water.

  “Oh, oh, look at them. Autumn, look at them! Are they fighting?” Her Dimness squats down. “Don’t fight, ducks, it’s not nice, you can share the bread. Share! Why don’t you share? Please, be nice.”

  “Would you like to feed the ducks?” The man holds out a piece of bread.

  “No, thank you,” Hair Girl says. “We have to go home now.”

  She’s polite. He likes that.

  “Fancy, come on,” she says. “They’re waiting for us.” She puts her finger in her mouth and twirls her gum on her tongue. Pink gum, pink tongue.

  “No, not yet, please,” Her Dimness whines. “I want to feed the ducks. Please, please, Autumn my sister, I want to feed the ducks, I do, I do.”

  “Oh, let her feed them, Autumn,” he says, very gently. He likes her name. He says it to himself. Autumn. The other one has a rather stupid name, which is, of course, fitting.

  “Well…” Autumn frowns deliciously. Then she gives him a little what-can-you-do look, an adult-to-adult look, and says, “Oh, okay, Fancy, go on. But don’t take forever,” she adds in a motherly tone.

  “Try not to give it all to them at once,” he advises, handing Fancy a slice of bread. “Tear it into small pieces.”

  “I will, I will, oh thank you, you are so nice,” she cries, and she rushes to the edge of the water and begins scattering bread, laughing as the ducks clamor. “Oh, look, the little one there isn’t getting any,” she says. “That poor little baby duck, oooh, he is so cute!”

  “Your sister is enthusiastic,” he says to Autumn. She nods. She’s shy. A delightful, old-fashioned virtue, shyness.

  He smiles at her, but not too much of a smile. He doesn’t want to scare her. He’s just sharing his amusement at her sister. His pulse beats in his throat. As if he’s both himself and someone else watching him and the two girls, he wonders what’s going to happen. If some event, some change, some turn of fortune is about to take place. His eyes go slightly out of focus, and there’s a buzzing in his head, a pleasant sound, as of bees in flowers.

  Autumn sits down on the other end of the bench and bends over to untie one of her sneakers. “I’ve got a stone in my shoe,” she says.

  He nods. “That can be annoying.” From the corner of his eye, he watches as she shakes out the sneaker, then puts it on again and ties it. She puffs a little, charmingly, as if bending over is strenuous. Her hair falls around her face, and when she sits up, she tucks it back behind her ears. Every little movement she makes is delicious.

  “Autumn my sister!” Fancy runs up with her awkward stride and whispers in Autumn’s ear.

  “Can’t you hold it?” Autumn says. She glances at him.

  “No!” Fancy shakes her head. “I have to go bad,” she whispers loudly. “Can I go over there?” She points into the woods.

  “Well…okay. Go behind a tree. Don’t pee on your shoes.” Again, she glances at him. Her cheeks are red. She stands up. “Hurry, though, we have to go home.”

  “Okay, I will, I’ll be quick.” Fancy runs up the path into the woods. The sun is going down. In a moment she disappears from sight.

  So there they are, the two of them. He offers her a stick of gum. She shakes her head. “Sure?” he says. “I have enough.”

  And just as with the bread, she hesitates, bites her lip, then nods. She reaches out and takes the gum. Her fingers brush against his.

  That evening the man weeps. Sitting at the table by the window that looks out over the empty lot, with his supper before him—the tomato soup in a bowl, the slice of cheese on a plate next to the stack of crackers—the man weeps.

  He weeps out of gratitude. Nothing happened. He hasn’t done wrong.

  He holds his head in his hands, sobs juddering through him.

  After a while he gets up and bends over the sink, splashing his face with cold water. The cats are watching him. He nods to them, goes back to the table, and sits down. He’s hungry now, really hungry! He eats with gusto, letting himself slurp the soup and fill his mouth with crackers. Everything tastes delicious! The memory of the girls in the park is delicious as well, and so is the wind blowing around the house.

  He considers his good luck, his wonderful luck. To have found this house, with no neighbors, with waste fields on either side and across the street, with a landlord in another state, a landlord who asks nothing, just glad to have someone responsible keep the building repaired and clean. To have found a job where no one bothers him. To have his lovely birds—yes, lovely, all five of them, even the dim one, even the ugly one, lovely really. In his relief, he knows them all to be lovely, delightful. And then, to have escaped his worst self, the self he works so hard to keep under control. Luck had been on his side. Just as Autumn took the gum, Her Dimness had come prancing out of the woods. A moment later the two of them had gone off together. Oh, yes, luck
was his.

  Afterward he takes both cats onto his lap and allows them to stay there while he sits in his living room like any other man, drinking a beer and watching TV.

  THE RIGHTEOUS PATH

  OVER THE WEEKEND her mother elected Beauty to break the news to her sisters, news that she alone had been entrusted with, so far. “No, you’re not going to do that,” Beauty said.

  “Yes, we are.” Her mother blinked hard and screwed her cigarette into the chipped dish she favored as an ashtray. “You tell them for me, honey. Please.”

  Beauty put off the unwelcome task until Sunday night. After supper and an hour of watching a show, she told her sisters to come up to her room. “Why?” Stevie said. “I’ve got better things to do.”

  “You need to come up,” Beauty said, and she gazed at Stevie, hoping her face showed nothing but resolve. She went ahead up the attic stairs to wait for them. In her room she paced. She had been put on the spot by her parents. Nothing out of the ordinary in that. The oldest, the most responsible—who else could tell her sisters as well as she? Not their father. Too rough in his ways. Mimicking a famous saying, he had answered her protests with “I am the decider.” But what about her mother, that tender heart? She had begged off, her cheeks ashen and sagging as she said, “Oh, no, honey! I can’t do it, I just can’t. You know me, I’ll be crying my head off, I won’t be any use at all.”

  “What’s up?” Mim said. She was lying on her bed, next to the window, with a book perched on her stomach. She peered at Beauty nearsightedly.

  Beauty shook her head. “Wait. Anyway, here they come.”

  Stevie was in the lead, her steps quick and firm. Behind her, Fancy toe tapping on each step, and bringing up the rear, Autumn patiently following Fancy. All of them were talking at full volume as they squirmed their way around the room and settled down.