Shivering Mind

Chapter 45

 I dialed twice and hung up before I let the call ring through. When I did, it was Marybeth, not Max, who answered, her deep voice buzzing my ears. I’d only gotten to ‘Marybeth, this is Matilda’ when I lost it.

 ‘What is it, Matilda?’

 I took a breath.

 ‘Is it Amy? Tell me.’

 ‘I uh – I’m sorry I should have called—’

 ‘Tell me, goddamn it!’

 ‘We c-can’t find Amy,’ I stuttered.

 ‘You can’t find Amy?’

 ‘I don’t know—’

 ‘Amy is missing?’

 ‘We don’t know that for sure, we’re still—’

 ‘Since when?’

 ‘We’re not sure. I left this morning, a little after seven—’

 ‘And you waited till now to call us?’

 ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—’

 ‘Jesus Christ. We played tennis tonight. Tennis, and we could have been … My God. Are the police involved? You’ve notified them?’

 ‘I’m at the station right now.’

 ‘Put on whoever’s in charge, Matilda. Please.’

 Like a kid, I went to fetch Gilpin. My mommy-in-law wants to talk to you.

 Phoning the Elliotts made it official. The emergency – Amy is gone – was spreading to the outside.

 I was heading back to the interview room when I heard my father’s voice. Sometimes, in particularly shameful moments, I heard his voice in my head. But this was my father’s voice, here. His words emerged in wet bubbles like something from a rancid bog. b***h b***h b***h. My father, out of his mind, had taken to flinging the word at any woman who even vaguely annoyed him: b***h b***h b***h. I peered inside a conference room, and there he sat on a bench against the wall. He had been a handsome man once, intense and cleft-chinned. Jarringly dreamy was how my aunt had described him. Now he sat muttering at the floor, his blond hair matted, trousers muddy and arms scratched, as if he’d fought his way through a thornbush. A line of spittle glimmered down his chin like a snail’s trail, and he was flexing and unflexing arm muscles that had not yet gone to seed. A tense female officer sat next to him, her lips in an angry pucker, trying to ignore him: b***h b***h b***h I told you b***h.

 ‘What’s going on?’ I asked her. ‘This is my father.’

 ‘You got our call?’

 ‘What call?’

 ‘To come get your father.’ She overenunciated, as if I were a dim ten-year-old.

 ‘I – My wife is missing. I’ve been here most of the night.’

 She stared at me, not connecting in the least. I could see her debating whether to sacrifice her leverage and apologise, inquire. Then my father started up again, b***h b***h b***h, and she chose to keep the leverage.

 ‘Sir, Comfort Hill has been trying to contact you all day. Your father wandered out a fire exit early this morning. He’s got a few scratches and scrapes, as you can see, but no damage. We picked him up a few hours ago, walking down River Road, disoriented. We’ve been trying to reach you.’

 ‘I’ve been right here,’ I said. ‘Right goddamn next door, how did no one put this together?’

 b***h b***h b***h, said my dad.

 ‘Sir, please don’t take that tone with me.’

 b***h b***h b***h.

 Derek ordered an officer – male – to drive my dad back to the home so I could finish up with them. We stood on the stairs outside the police station, watched him get settled into the car, still muttering. The entire time he never registered my presence. When they drove off, he didn’t even look back.

 ‘You guys not close?’ she asked.

 ‘We are the definition of not close.’

 The police finished with their questions and hustled me into a squad car at about two a.m. with advice to get a good night’s sleep and return at eleven a.m. for a 12-noon press conference.

 I didn’t ask if I could go home. I had them take me to Go’s, because I knew she’d stay up and have a drink with me, fix me a sandwich. It was, pathetically, all I wanted right then: a woman to fix me a sandwich and not ask me any questions.

 ‘You don’t want to go look for her?’ Go offered as I ate. ‘We can drive around.’

 ‘That seems pointless,’ I said dully. ‘Where do I look?’

 ‘Matilda, this is really f*****g serious.’

 ‘I know, Go.’

 ‘Act like it, okay, Lance? Don’t f*****g myuhmyuhmyuh.’ It was a thick-tongued noise, the noise she always made to convey my indecisiveness, a 

ccompanied by a dazed rolling of the eyes and the dusting off of my legal first name. No one who has my face needs to be called Lance. She handed me a tumbler of Scotch. ‘And drink this, but only this. You don’t want to be hungover tomorrow. Where the f**k could she be? God, I feel sick to my stomach.’ She poured herself a glass, gulped, then tried to sip, pacing around the kitchen. ‘Aren’t you worried, Matilda? That some guy, like, saw her on the street and just, just decided to take her? Hit her on the head and—’

 I started. ‘Why did you say hit her on the head, what the f**k is that?’

 ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to paint a picture, I just … I don’t know, I just keep thinking. About some crazy person.’ She splashed some more Scotch into her tumbler.

 ‘Speaking of crazy people,’ I said, ‘Dad got out again today, they found him wandering down River Road. He’s back at Comfort now.’

 She shrugged: okay. It was the third time in six months that our dad had slipped out. Go was lighting a cigarette, her thoughts still on Amy. ‘I mean, isn’t there someone we can go talk to?’ she asked. ‘Something we can do?’

 ‘Jesus, Go! You really need me to feel more f*****g impotent than I do right now?’ I snapped. ‘I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s no “When Your Wife Goes Missing 101.” The police told me I could leave. I left. I’m just doing what they tell me.’

 ‘Of course you are,’ murmured Go, who had a long-stymied mission to turn me into a rebel. It wouldn’t take. I was the kid in high school who made curfew; I was the writer who hit my deadlines, even the fake ones. I respect rules, because if you follow rules, things go smoothly, usually.

 ‘f**k, Go, I’m back at the station in a few hours, okay? Can you please just be nice to me for a second? I’m scared shitless.’

 We had a five-second staring contest, then Go filled up my glass one more time, an apology. She sat down next to me, put a hand on my shoulder.

 ‘Poor Amy,’ she said.

 AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

 APRIL 21, 2009

 – Diary entry –

 Poor me. Let me set the scene: Campbell and Insley and I are all down in Soho, having dinner at Tableau. Lots of goat-cheese tarts, lamb meatballs and rocket greens, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. But we are working backward: dinner first, then drinks in one of the little nooks Campbell has reserved, a mini-closet where you can lounge expensively in a place that’s not too different from, say, your living room. But fine, it’s fun to do the silly, trendy things sometimes. We are all overdressed in our little flashy frocks, our slasher heels, and we all eat small plates of food bites that are as decorative and unsubstantial as we are.

 We’ve discussed having our husbands drop by to join us for the drinks portion. So there we are, post-dinner, tucked into our nook, mojitos and martinis and my bourbon delivered to us by a waitress who could be auditioning for the small role of Fresh-faced Girl Just Off the Bus.

 We are running out of things to say; it is a Tuesday, and no one is feeling like it is anything but. The drinks are being carefully drunk: Insley and Campbell both have vague appointments the next morning, and I have work, so we aren’t gearing up for a big night, we are winding down, and we are getting dull-witted, bored. We would leave if we weren’t waiting for the possible appearance of the men. Campbell keeps peeking at her BlackBerry, Insley studies her flexed calves from different angles. John arrives first – huge apologies to Campbell, big smiles and kisses for us all, a man just thrilled to be here, just delighted to arrive at the tail-end of a cocktail hour across town so he can guzzle a drink and head home with his wife. George shows up about twenty minutes later – sheepish, tense, a terse excuse about work, Insley snapping at him, ‘You’re forty minutes late,’ him nipping back, ‘Yeah, sorry about making us money.’ The two barely talking to each other as they make conversation with everyone else.

 Matilda never shows; no call. We wait another forty-five minutes, Campbell solicitous (‘Probably got hit with some last-minute deadline,’ she says, and smiles toward good old John, who never lets last-minute deadlines interfere with his wife’s plans); Insley’s anger thawing toward her husband as she realizes he is only the second-biggest jackass of the group (‘You sure he hasn’t even texted, sweetie?’).

 Me, I just smile: ‘Who knows where he is – I’ll catch him at home.’ And then it is the men of the group who look stricken: You mean that was an option? Take a pass on the night with no nasty consequences? No guilt or anger or sulking?

 Well, maybe not for you guys.

 Matilda and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys.

 Matilda will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark, and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’

 Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed!

 Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’

  I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Matilda loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself.

 I don’t know why women find that so hard.

 When I get home from dinner, my cab pulls up just as Matilda is getting out of his own taxi, and he stands in the street with his arms out to me and a huge grin on his face – ‘Baby!’ – and I run and I jump up into his arms and he presses a stubbly cheek against mine.

 ‘What did you do tonight?’ I ask.

 ‘Some guys were playing poker after work, so I hung around for a bit. Hope that was okay.’

 ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘More fun than my night.’

 ‘Who all showed up?’

 ‘Oh, Campbell and Insley and their dancing monkeys. Boring. You dodged a bullet. A really lame bullet.’

 He squeezes me into him – those strong arms – and hauls me up the stairs. ‘God, I love you,’ he says.