Ghosts of the Missing Read online

  They retreated to one of the beds. One picked up a book. The other sat with her hands in her lap. Helen didn’t ask to look at his palm or to hold his watch. She stared over his shoulder as she spoke of family members of his who had died, including the grandmother he had never met. Sometimes she gave a name or part of a name. She described sketches of his that had never made it out of his notebook, and the woman he planned to marry.

  “You won’t,” Helen told him. “She’ll be the one to go, and you’ll be glad.”

  As Edward fumbled with his wallet, Helen put up a hand and told him she didn’t accept payment. Edward put a bill on the table, declaring that writers sold books, artists sold canvases. What she did was also a gift, and it was not wrong to make a living from it. Helen nodded but neither touched the money nor pressed him to take it back.

  Outside, he had not gotten far when he heard his name called.

  “Mr. Adair!”

  One of the daughters walked toward him, holding his sketchbook. He took it and thanked her. Without answering, she turned to go.

  “Wait!” he called to her, stepping closer. “Do you do what your mother does?”

  “There are enough people in the world,” the girl said. “I don’t need to talk to those who’ve already left it.”

  “But you can?” Edward asked.

  “Don’t come back,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  “We’re cursed,” she said.

  “What you can do isn’t a curse.”

  She stepped closer, into a slant of light from the recently emerged sun. It turned her blue eyes paler, almost made them vanish.

  “Imagine that your daughters will live but your sons will die,” she said. “Would you want to know?”

  “No,” Edward said, confused. “If nothing could change it.”

  “Go,” she said.

  Edward watched her walk away, her head lowered. He noticed that her feet were bare.

  He told no one at Moye House about his experience, but when they gathered in the front parlor in the evening for drinks, he mentioned the chapel, casually, to see if any of the others had been there. But the only talk it generated had to do with Cassius, and how kind he was to house that Irish family.

  Back in Manhattan, Edward resumed his life and work, his thoughts returning so often to that morning that it assumed the quality of a dream. More than once he was tempted to take the train back upstate, to go to the chapel and see if the door would be open for him.

  But he waited.

  When Edward did finally return, he found a growing town where there had been only a boardinghouse, a saloon and little else. Cassius Moye, he learned, had done what his father had always refused to do: he had housing built that the foundry employees could afford to rent. The narrow, one- or two-bedroom homes went up on the site of the old shantytown.

  A church, dedicated to the men of Moye Foundry who had died in the Civil War, had been built near the place where the first one had burned a generation ago. The actual footprint was the side yard of the church, and there, in a grotto, was the scorched bell where the statue of Mary might have gone. The bell said nothing; it couldn’t.

  Edward found a main street with several new businesses, including a much larger general store and a post office. The boardinghouse had become a hotel, catering mostly to the Lost Girl tourists.

  St. Maren’s was still called the new church in 1880, when Edward Adair married Lucy Dunleavy, the younger of Helen’s daughters, though by only minutes. Their three children, two boys and a girl, were baptized there. Not until the death of his second son did Edward understand that his sister-in-law, Clara, had not been speaking of herself—Would you want to know?—but of him. Both your sons will die. Yours, Edward.

  On the day the baby was buried, Edward told her, “I should have said that I wanted to know.”

  “My mother understood what not to tell,” Clara said. “I didn’t. You never should have heard it.”

  Helen had died by then. Edward tried to forgive both her and Clara for not warning him, and he told himself that he would not have been able to do without Lucy. No, instead, he would have tried to change the future. Their first boy had died at three years old in a fall that should not have killed him. A tumble, a bump on the head, a quick kiss, but hours later he was gone. The baby died one day after his difficult birth.

  Clara married the man who’d built the housing for the foundry workers. Which had been more important to the development of the town, the new homes or the new church? Edward thought the church, no matter what, would have drawn the foundry workers to settle near it. His brother-in-law declared it was the housing. Without homes, there would have been no church built. They enjoyed arguing about it, a riddle to pass the time, two men from Manhattan who had never thought they’d live in the country.

  Clara and her husband had a family that was the inverse of Edward’s own, two girls and a boy. When his own daughter began to speak of fortune-telling, some game she’d learned from her cousins involving the mountain ash from the Moye story, Edward forbade her from playing with them. He’d been drinking, and though he regretted it later, he never took the words back. After that, the cousins grew up in the town together, but apart. As time passed, the reason why became less important and, by the next generation, was lost altogether.

  In 1884, Culleton was incorporated as a town, officially separating it from Onohedo.

  Cassius Moye died a few months later, at the age of forty-one.

  A year after his death, the poet and her husband, to whom he had left his house and property, held a celebration of his life and work, not on the anniversary of his death or on his birthday, but the day “The Lost Girl” began.

  It became an annual tradition. On October 27, writers gathered at Moye House to read the story aloud and discuss it. Was the woman the missing child? Was there a man in the woods with the children or not? The woman was not the missing girl, but believed she was. The woman was a liar, preying on a grieving family. The return was a dream of the younger sister. It was a manifestation of guilt by the older one. A lesson in faith. A warning that there is a difference between what you can see and what you can know. A play based on the story had a successful run, and the subsequent publicity made the celebration almost as famous as the story itself.

  In 1887, the citizens of Culleton held their own celebration in honor of the story that had drawn Helen Dunleavy back to Moye House after the Civil War. Because the story she told inspired what Cassius wrote, though he’d never say so, Helen was able to ask for his help. Not because he owed her a debt; Helen was always clear about that. “The Lost Girl” meant that he would remember her if she returned, and so she had.

  During the day there was a picnic with games and competitions. In the evening the men went out to one of the two saloons and the married women congregated in their kitchens. A dance was held in the basement of the church for the younger set, those already done with school but not yet married.

  The holiday was said to be the Irish answer to the literary tribute held at Moye House, and evidence of this was what it came to be called: Quicken Day.

  5

  Adair

  2010

  Spring arrived in the weeks after I drew Hazel’s portrait. At my current temp job, I sat near a window. The view was a brick wall, but the sweet air coming in made it easy to pretend that an urban meadow lay behind it.

  I’d been hired for a project, and as often happened, I could have finished it in a few days. But after two years of temping, I was an expert in making the job fit the time I’d been hired for—a full week in this case. I got my health insurance through the temp agency, and you had to work consistently to stay covered.

  The woman I was sharing the small back office with had been at the company for fifteen years. She was there when I arrived at nine in the morning and there when I left at five. Did her coworkers know she was still working here? Or, if I mentioned her name, would they look confused and say that she’d retire
d years ago? She and I sat at desks across the room from each other and rarely spoke.

  By Friday afternoon, I had finished and was browsing the internet, no longer even pretending to work. At a quarter of five, I decided to check my portraitsbyadair email one last time before seeing the manager for the good-bye-good-luck scene, which I always dreaded because it was awkward pretending that I was sorry to go, that I’d enjoyed my time here.

  Dear Ms. McCrohan,

  I hope this finds you well. I am writing because I will be staying at Moye House for a residency this October. I’d love to talk with you about your experiences growing up there. If you’re interested in speaking with me, I would be pleased to meet for a coffee or a pint sometime soon.

  All best,

  Ciaran Riordan

  This email had a different tone from others I’d received. It did not gush about Michan, praising him or calling out some particular poem as an inspiration.

  Michan would have no idea who Ciaran Riordan was. Applicants might like to picture Michan reading their personal statements and reviewing their writing samples, but he was not involved at that level at all. Residents were chosen by a rotating committee that was appointed by the board. I closed my email and shut down the computer, too eager to be gone to even consider the invitation.

  I entered the brownstone through the door at the top of the stoop and was beginning to climb the stairs to my apartment when I saw an envelope on the hall table. Leaning over the banister, I read my name on it. Slowly, I turned around and went back. My purse slipped off my shoulder as I picked it up. The note inside was brief:

  The brownstone was going on the market. I was welcome to stay until it was sold, and for that time I would live rent-free.

  I understood why Sarah, the landlady, had not told me in person. At Moye House she’d kept to herself, with little interest in socializing with the other writers. After so many years of teaching school, she’d told Michan, she was tired of explaining things. And though the offer to live rent-free was generous, Sarah knew she would not be stuck with me for very long. The brownstone across the street had sold in a week. She might as well have added, P.S.: Start packing.

  I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder. Envelope in hand, I headed back up the stairs. Halfway up, where the light from the downstairs hallway vanished, I sat down on the step.

  I arrived at Emily’s door with Hazel’s finished portrait under my arm and then followed Emily into the living room and sat as she went into the kitchen.

  She reappeared moments later with a bottle of wine and two glasses. The girls, she said, were both with James, at his new apartment. A one-bedroom. They were going to sleep on the pull-out couch, which at first might seem like an adventure, but by the next visit would spell trouble.

  After she’d admired the portrait, she set it down on the coffee table and settled in the chair opposite the couch.

  “Friday night! Are you going out later?” Emily asked.

  I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I don’t see much point.”

  She laughed. “The point is to meet someone, marry him, have his kids and then split up right when you’ve achieved some measure of financial security.”

  “As appealing as that sounds . . . ,” I said. “But I won’t be in Brooklyn much longer.”

  Then I explained that I’d been evicted.

  Emily was silent for a moment. “I think Vincent from IT said that one of his roommates might be leaving. They have a three-bedroom, so you’d be sharing the common areas. I’m sure they’ll want to keep it girl-girl-guy. I can ask him for you.”

  I shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m done with roommates.”

  “Well, even a studio around here is going to cost an arm, a leg and all expendable organs. You might get something in Queens,” Emily said, but she sounded doubtful and also like she’d suggested I move to Siberia.

  I laughed until I started coughing, a deep hack that even to my own ears sounded as if all my bones were rattling.

  Emily winced. “That sounds awful, Adair. Have you been to a doctor?”

  I shook my head and she frowned. “Go to one of those walk-in clinics. They’ll give you a prescription.”

  Something loosened in my chest, but only metaphorically. Breathing hurt, as though my lungs were made of lead.

  “It’s only bronchitis,” I said.

  “Whatever it is, first get some good drugs. Then get in touch with Vincent from IT. At least look at the place.”

  I had evasion down to an art, but the wine collided with the fever I’d been running for days and I could come up with nothing but the truth. Her advice, the motherliness of it, had the effect of a key in a lock. Hoarsely, I began to talk.

  “Do you remember that I told you my last roommate moved out? It’s because she didn’t want to live with me anymore.”

  Emily paused, wine glass midway to her lips. After she sipped, she said, “I can’t see you blasting loud music in the middle of the night. So let me guess. Her boyfriend made a pass at you, and she blamed you instead of him.”

  “There was a kind of fight,” I said.

  I related the whole scene, starting with the night out, a typical Saturday at a local bar. Me, getting out of bed bleary-eyed at 7 a.m. to swallow a pill and leaving the prescription bottle on the bathroom sink, something I’d never once done before in the year and a half I’d been living in that apartment. Medicine did not go in the medicine cabinet. Medicine went in the corner of my sock drawer beneath my black tights.

  My roommate had never heard of the drug, so she’d Googled it.

  When I woke for the second time, close to noon, and went into the kitchen to make coffee, she was leaning against the sink, her arms crossed hard over her chest. She asked why I was taking this drug. She pronounced it wrong. Was I addicted? I’d nearly laughed, since it wasn’t a painkiller.

  Emily had lost her look of amusement. She’d been enjoying the distraction my visit allowed. Roommate drama, career uncertainty. Nostalgia for a life where nothing was settled yet. But I’d turned a strange page, and now she was in a story she couldn’t follow.

  “And what was it for?” she asked uneasily.

  “She asked why I was taking a drug for people with AIDS.”

  “What?” Emily said, leaning forward as though she’d misheard.

  “AIDS,” I repeated for Emily, the way I’d repeated it that day, louder but with no inflection, no wound.

  Then, because I was hungover and badly in need of caffeine, and there was no effective lie anyway, I’d told my roommate, this friend, that I did not have AIDS but I was HIV positive.

  “Adair!” Emily said. “Good God, that wasn’t very nice.”

  I cupped my wine glass like a chalice. Why would I have the drug otherwise? But I understood Emily’s assumption that it had to be a bizarre lie.

  AIDS had fallen out of the headlines long ago, when it became a chronic but manageable disease. Like diabetes, they said. Far fewer people watched the sequel to the crisis, where those of us who were supposed to die instead went on living and living and living.

  “In bars sometimes when guys hit on me, I tell them my name is Beatrice Rappaccini.” I smiled. “But nobody gets it. A couple have told me I sure don’t look Italian, but nobody’s ever said, Do you mean you’re poisonous?”

  Emily sat back. The lines around her eyes seemed to deepen and she pursed her lips. She scanned me up and down, as if the virus were some kind of microbial troll wandering the landscape of my body. See it scaling my rib cage. Prodding my appendix curiously. Picking its way around the sharp bend of my elbow. Napping in my soft tissues. Traveling my blood like a river.

  Emily rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know much about it. I mean, I remember the stories on the news. It seemed like it was all you heard back then.”

  Back then. The eighties, she meant. The nineties.

  “It’s not like that anymore, if you need meds and you take them.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  With
that flat oh, I felt the weight of guilt. All Emily had had on her agenda this evening was to drink her way to a buzz. Oh, this is too much for a Friday night.

  So I didn’t tell Emily of the following weeks when I’d come home from work to find the bathroom reeking of bleach. The smell of chlorine permeated the whole apartment. I started leaving my bedroom window open. After a month of chemicals and long silences, my roommate, whose name was the only one on the lease, told me I had to move. She said, “My parents think you should. And it’s not that. It’s that you lied.”

  Of course I had not lied. I’d simply said nothing.

  Emily looked at me keenly. “And if you don’t take the—the meds?”

  I half smiled. “You get bronchitis in the middle of summer?”

  Emily leaned forward, and for a moment I thought she was going to put her hand on my forehead, but she was only shifting in her seat.

  “Look, Adair, you don’t have a real job right now,” she said. “You don’t know where you’ll be living by the end of this month. Go home. Hang out at your parents’ until you figure it out.”

  I got that people my own age might assume I’d had wild college years or just terrible luck. But I’d expected Emily would guess.

  “My parents are dead,” I said gently, as though she’d known them and I was breaking the news.

  She recoiled, not from the virus (or the thought of it), but from the scope of the tragedy. “Who raised you?”

  “My uncle,” I said. “My father’s brother lived.”

  Emily spread her hands wide. Her relief was as sour as the wine on her breath. Perhaps she thought I was scheming to join her family, angling for a place at her dinner table beside her daughters.

  “Go home to him, then. Take some time. Things have a way of working themselves out.” Emily stood up. “But, listen, I promised I’d get some work done while I have the place to myself. If you change your mind about seeing Vincent’s place, let me know.”

  Back home, I got into bed without bothering to get undressed. I lay on my side, because on my back, it felt like I might suffocate.