Songs for the Missing Read online

  “You been going out with Dad a lot?”

  “Not a lot. Why?”

  “You’re doing really good.”

  “Thanks.” Lindsay was puzzled, as if this might be a set-up. Kim hadn’t been very nice to her lately. She’d complained about it to her mother, who as usual did nothing.

  “Let’s go do the drive-thru at the DQ.” Only after the offer was out did Kim realize what she was saying. The lane that wrapped around the Dairy Queen was narrow, and two cement-filled steel posts guarded the window.

  “I thought you had ‘shit’ to do.”

  “I do, but it’s lunchtime. My treat.”

  It took forever to get there, and then there was a line.

  “I can’t do this,” Lindsay said.

  “Let the brake off and inch up behind this guy. You’ve got room on my side if you need it.”

  Once, when Kim was just beginning, she veered too close to some parked cars and without a word her father grabbed the wheel with one hand and tugged it till they were going straight. She resisted the urge now. Lindsay craned her chin toward the windshield, trying to see over the hood.

  “Just follow him,” Kim said. “He’s bigger than you are.”

  At the order board she braked too hard, jerking them forward.

  “Sorry.”

  “You have to roll your window down.”

  “What the hell do you want?” the speaker blurted—Marnie, pointing at them from the cockpit of the pick-up window. She didn’t see it was Lindsay driving till they pulled up. They were so far away that Lindsay had to open her door to grab the bag.

  “Nice job there,” Marnie said.

  “Don’t take that shit from her,” Kim said, and stuck out her tongue.

  “Don’t die in a terrible fiery accident,” Marnie said.

  “You too.”

  Eating fries while driving was too advanced, so they found a shady spot at the back of the lot and turned on the radio. The trees inside the spiked iron fence were old, their roots poking through the dry grass like knucklebones. Sparrows hopped among the faded decorations, wreaths on green wire stands and flags left over from Memorial Day. Lindsay squeezed ketchup into the top of her clamshell so they could share. They sat side-by-side, dipping and chewing. They didn’t spend time together like this, and she was self-conscious, not wanting to ruin it.

  “Got a game tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Lindsay said, downcast, as if she didn’t want to be reminded.

  “Who you playing?”

  “D’know. We suck anyway.”

  “That’s not what Dad says.”

  “You’ve never seen us.” Kim had played for him too, enduring his relentless overcoaching as Edgewater Properties sank to its proper spot at the bottom of the league. But Kim could actually play. Lindsay had inherited her cleats but that was it. With her knobby knees and braces she was terrified of the ball, and dreaded every game.

  “I thought you were supposed to be going to the playoffs.”

  “Everybody goes to the playoffs now. It’s like the Special Olympics.”

  “How many more games you got?”

  “Five and then the playoffs. So six.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  They ate to Weezer and Franz Ferdinand, pinching the soggy ends of their burgers, trying not to drip on anything. Kim finished first, and though she was afraid it would sound lame and melodramatic, she also knew this might be the perfect opportunity, while Lindsay’s mouth was full.

  “You know, dude,” she said, “I’m really going to miss you.”

  “No you won’t,” Lindsay said, tipping her chin up so she didn’t spew lettuce everywhere.

  “You don’t think so.”

  “You’ll be too busy with your new friends and everything.”

  She didn’t have to say “Just like now.” Okay, that was fair, but she would miss Linds too. Couldn’t both things be true?

  “You can come visit me.”

  “I don’t think Mom’ll let me.”

  “Maybe not this year but next year. You’re going to have to start looking at schools then anyway. Not that you’ll be looking at Bowling Green.”

  “God, I hope not,” Lindsay said—a joke, or it was supposed to be, so she was relieved when Kim laughed. Deep down Lindsay knew Kim was disappointed with Bowling Green—as were her parents, though they never said anything. Case Western had been her first choice, but she didn’t even make the waiting list. Nina was going to Denison, Elise had been early decision at Kenyon. While Lindsay felt bad for Kim, she vowed to herself she would do better than any of them.

  They were both finished and it was nearly one. Kim turned off the radio. “Ready?”

  Lindsay nodded, serious, sitting upright like a test pilot. She had to use both hands to depress the button of the emergency brake.

  “Come on, Muscles,” Kim said.

  They drove back past the hospital with its helipad off in the corner of the lot. Her mother’s Subaru was in its usual spot, a fold-out silver reflector protecting the dash from the sun. In the ER, she would be sitting at her window, patiently taking down someone’s information, checking off boxes, the queen of clipboards. By the time she got home Kim would be at work. The only time they saw each other now was on weekends. Lindsay thought it was easier. Since the end of school they’d been fighting over J.P. and her drinking and breaking curfew. Her mother was just freaked out about her leaving.

  They all were, maybe Kim more than any of them. Every day she felt strangely charged, knowing that in another month all of this would vanish. She liked driving around, imagining it happening, like now, the stucco doctors’ offices and low, motel-like nursing homes fading behind her, the box factory and the company park with its backstop facing the railroad tracks wavering like a mirage, growing fainter and fainter until it was all just fog taken away by a lake breeze. But underpinning that fantasy was a queasy panic, a fear of the unknown and the confusing realization that by leaving she might be losing everything. She tried to ignore it the same way she blew off her mother. The fact was that she had thirty-nine days to go. Nothing was going to change that.

  Lindsay was afraid of the mailbox and turned early, the rear tire on her side four-wheeling over the curb.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Kim said. “Mom does it all the time. You did good. Plus you got lunch out of it.”

  Inside, they split. Lindsay flopped on the couch and unpaused Bubble Boy while Kim went upstairs and changed into her swimsuit and some cutoffs, pulling her hair back with a rubber band. Cooper knew what the suit meant and followed her down the stairs like she might take him. She didn’t have time today, and felt bad.

  “Call him,” she asked Lindsay, and she did.

  Back in the car she was pissed off again. It was almost one thirty, and she’d just noticed she was low on gas. It wasn’t worth going all the way out there when she had to be back to get ready for work in an hour. She wondered if Nina would be mad if she called in sick. Probably, though Nina did it all the time. She rumbled over the train tracks, cut left and flew down the long, empty straightaway beside the old grain elevators instead of dealing with the lights on Main. She was so focused on the road that she almost didn’t see the cop.

  “Ah shit.”

  It was the sheriff, staked out in the dirt turnoff of the substation, waiting for someone like her. Instead of braking she lifted her foot off the gas and let the car float past him, still going way over the limit. She glanced at her mirror hopefully. He was pulling out, turning her way, but so far hadn’t thrown his lights on, and she signaled right for the stop sign ahead, thinking she’d crawl into the side streets and hide.

  Here came the lights, and a single whoop of his siren as he tucked in behind her. It was just that kind of day.

  Her mother’s lectures had worked. Waiting for him to get out of his car, she was terribly aware that she was Ed Larsen’s daughter.

  The sheriff had to
bend at the waist to see in her window. He was a regular at the Conoco, and recognized her without her uniform. “Afternoon,” he said. “You know how fast you were going?”

  “Around thirty?”

  “I had you at forty-eight. You know the limit here’s twenty-five.”

  She had to dig in the glovebox for her registration and then wait while he sat in his car writing on a clipboard, which he brought back with him. He carefully tore off the top sheet.

  “Miss Larsen, because this is your first time, I’m only giving you a written warning. You think you can keep it in check from now on?”

  “Yessir. Thank you.” Did he say her name that way because of her father? Her instinct was to shred the ticket and bury the pieces in the nearest garbage can, except she had the feeling he’d hear about it somehow—at the monthly Rotary meeting or the fire department car wash.

  “There’s no need to be going fifty miles an hour here.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You take it easy now.”

  She did for a while, babying it through town. She was so late it didn’t matter, and for now her relief outweighed her irritation. When she was out on the flats of Route 7 and there was no one around she gunned it up to eighty. “That’s right,” she shouted, “you can’t catch me! No one can catch me!”

  At the river J.P. kissed her and gave her shit, asking what took her so long, and she made a joke of it.

  “Forty-eight,” he said, smirking. “You know what would happen to me if I got stopped doing forty-eight?”

  “Your car doesn’t go forty-eight.”

  “But if it did.”

  The river was low, rocks sitting high and white in midstream. In the big hole below the falls Nina and Hinch floated in yellow tubes, splashing each other. Elise and Sam sat farther down on a giant boulder with their backs turned, conferring seriously (Elise had told Nina she was breaking up with him, but that was weeks ago). She had just enough time to get wet and then dry off on the ledge, lying beside J.P., her head resting on her crossed arms. The smell reminded her of her mother taking her to the town pool when she was little, the wet mark her body left on the hot concrete slowly evaporating. The stone was warm on her front, the sun beating against her back, reaching deep into her skin. She could sleep like this all day, just listening to the rush of the water.

  J.P. couldn’t resist messing with her straps.

  “Good luck. The hook’s in the front.”

  “No fair.”

  With a finger he wrote his name on her shoulder blade.

  “I don’t want to go to work,” she said with her eyes closed.

  “So? Blow it off.”

  “I wish.”

  Nina climbed out and wrung her wet hair over them. “Rise and shine, campers.”

  “Actually that feels good,” Kim said. “You know what? We should both call in and make the Wiener work.”

  “He’d just get Kevin and Doug-o to cover. Come on, quit stalling.”

  “I really don’t feel like going in.”

  “Waa waa waa. If I’m going, you’re going. I’m not going to sit there all night listening to Kevin’s war stories.”

  “How long’s he been back now?” Hinch asked from below.

  “I know, it’s been like two years. He was only over there five months.”

  “Wooze did a whole year and never talks about it,” J.P. said.

  “That’s cause Wooze has a life,” Hinch said.

  Nina grabbed her ankle, and Kim kicked free. “Come on, get your ass up.” She poked her in the butt with her big toe.

  “Stop. Stop, I’m getting up.”

  She pulled on her cutoffs but Nina was right, it was too nice for a top.

  Hinch’s brother’s friend Evan was working the door at the Three Ls, so that was the plan for later.

  “Bring your big cash money,” J.P. said, kissing her.

  “Yeah right,” Kim said, and pushed him over the edge. He tucked into a cannonball and took the other tube.

  “Don’t miss us too much,” she called.

  “We won’t.”

  “Bye, Elise!” she yelled downstream, waving her towel. Elise waved back. Sam didn’t.

  “I don’t get it,” Nina said as they crossed the rocks. “If she didn’t want to be with him this summer she should have just cut him off after prom.”

  “It’s typical Elise. She’s got to have some kind of drama.”

  “This way she gets to be the center of attention.”

  “I feel bad for Sam. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Hinch wouldn’t put up with that shit.”

  “Neither would J.P.” But J.P. wasn’t in love with her. J.P. knew this summer was it and it didn’t bother him. In the fall he’d be in Columbus with half of their class. They were both just being realistic.

  “How much you want to bet he’s there tonight?”

  “Too easy.”

  They climbed the winding path through the trees and up to the road, scissoring over the wire guardrail. “All right,” she said. “See you there, Squinky Square.”

  They left together, headed for town on 7.

  It was a race, Nina explained later. They had forty-five minutes to drive home, shower, change and make it back to the Conoco by three. By now they’d gotten it down to a routine. Nina lived closer. On a good day she could do it in thirty-two, and today was a good day. She easily beat Kim in, taking over from Dave and Leah right on time.

  When Kim still hadn’t shown up at a quarter past, Nina called her cell and got her voicemail. She’d probably turned it off.

  “You suck,” she said. “I already punched you in. I’m kidding. Enjoy your night off, bitch. I’ll say hi to Kevin for you.”

  When Lindsay returned home from the Hedricks’ just before dinner, Kim’s suit and towel were draped neatly over the shower curtain in their bathroom as usual.

  J.P. tried her around midnight from outside the DQ. In the dark corner of the lot, the open phone made his ear glow. He was semi-annoyed that she hadn’t told him, but didn’t want anyone to know. “I guess you’re asleep or just not answering. We’ll be at the Three Ls if you’re interested. I’m buying. Call me if you get this.”

  They closed the place and ended up down at the beach, drinking Coronas they bought at the Conoco. The torn cardboard from the 12-packs curled, the coating burning blue. Smoke rose through the moon over the rocky arms of the breakwater. Far out on the lake an ore boat hung silent and motionless, starting its long haul back to Superior or Duluth.

  “It’s weird,” Sam said, “Kim not being here.”

  “I know,” Nina said. “It’s like I’m missing my twin.”

  “Yeah,” Hinch said, “your good twin,” and she hit him and then snuggled back into his chest.

  It was growing cold, sweatshirt weather, and the stars were out. In town, across from the cemetery, the sheriff’s cruiser sat facing the street to discourage speeders. The DQ was dark, as were the houses along Main, the streetlights shedding a dim silver tint, as if underpowered. At the corner of Euclid and Harbor, the prerecorded chimes of Lakeview United Methodist sounded two o’clock, her curfew.

  Kim’s mother was asleep. Her father was asleep. Lindsay, who’d struck out twice and made a key error at second base, was asleep, Cooper snoring next to her on the bed.

  In the middle of the night her father woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed the line of light under their closed door. In the morning the light was still on. Her door was open, her bed untouched. The light in the downstairs hall was on, and the outside light by the back door, invisible during the day. Her car wasn’t in the driveway.

  The first person her mother called was Nina.

  The second was J.P.

  The third was Connie at the hospital.

  The fourth was the police.

  Known Whereabouts

  He knew she thought he was being macho and foolish, going out alone, just as she knew he would go anyway, despite anything she might say. At this po
int in their marriage, negotiation was a tone of voice, a warning glance if the girls were in the room. “Don’t be an ass,” she would say when Ed was being unreasonable, and he would go quiet, removing himself. Hours later she’d find him at his tool bench in the garage or in his office, still tending an ember of resentment like a child, and though nothing was settled, she’d try to apologize.

  They were both aware of the deal. While she didn’t believe for a minute that he’d succeed, she would allow him to go look, for his own sake (and somewhere beyond logic, hers). Now, quickly, while Lindsay was still asleep. The police were sending someone to take a report, and she didn’t think she could handle them by herself.

  “I’ll have my phone on,” he said, kissed her and ran out the door.

  He stabbed at the ignition as if he were being pursued, cranked his wrist and revved the Taurus to life, racking the shift into reverse. The rear window was frosted with condensation, and he had to hop out and slop it off with his forearm. From the kitchen she watched him slalom down the drive, thinking that if he hurt himself or someone else it would be her fault.

  He hadn’t showered or shaved and felt sour and wild-haired, and was grateful none of their neighbors were out to see him take off. He tore down Lakewood, hunched over the wheel, daring anyone to cut in on him. The air in the car was chilled from sitting out all night, and he used it to wake up, charging himself the way his high school coach had pumped up the dugout, the same way he still tried to fire up his girls: “Come on now, let’s get some!”

  In town he had to force himself not to pass the slow-asses in front of him. He took Buffalo to Main, her usual route, eyes flicking over the cars and pickups parked in the driveways. The Chevette was practically an antique, impossible to miss, but it was also small, and as he poked along he imagined it sitting inside every darkened garage, tucked under a tarp.

  “Jesus,” he said, “drive your car!” and then missed the light at Geneva.