Description of the Person, When Last Seen
Part One
July 2005. It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow. The last summer, the best summer, the summer they'd dreamed of since eighth grade, the high and pride of being seniors lingering, an extension of their best year. She and Nina and Elise, the Three Amigos. In the fall they were gone, off to college, where she hoped, by a long and steady effort, she might become someone else, a private, independent person, someone not from Kingsville at all.
The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?
She did not hate the town, as, years later, her sister would tell one lover (misplacing her own feelings for her childhood and, most likely, herself.) Not Kim, not the good daughter. She loved the lake, how on a clear day you could see all the way to Canada from the bluffs. She loved the river, winding hidden in its mossy gorge of shale down to the harbor. She even loved the slumping Victorian mansions along Grandview her father was always trying to sell, and the sandstone churches downtown, and the stainless-steel diner across from the post office. She was just 18.
At the Conoco, on break, she liked to cross the lot and then the on-ramp and stand at the low rail of the overpass, French-inhaling menthols in the dark as traffic whipped past below, taillights shooting west into the future. Toledo was three hours away, on the far side of Cleveland, far enough to be another country. Trucks lit like spaceships shuddered under her feet, dragging their own hot wind and cinders, their trailers full of unknown cargo. Slowly, night by night, the dream of leaving was coming true -- with her family's blessing, their very highest hopes. She could not regret it. She could only be grateful.
Inside, the a/c was cranked so high she wore a t-shirt under her uniform. They poached old nametags they found in the junk drawer under the register. She was Angie, Nina was Sam. They spun on their stools and watched the monitors, punching in the pump numbers and making change. They read heavy, insane fashion magazines and called around to see what was going on later -- even though they were on camera too -- and fought over whose turn it was to refill the nacho pot. Her timecard was in its slot, the clock behind it chunking with every minute, a record of her steadiness. She'd been working seven days a week since graduation and hadn't missed a shift. Later the police would call this strict pattern a contributing factor. Secretly she was proud of it. She'd never been so determined. She'd never had a reason before.
The Conoco was an oasis of light, drawing cars off the highway like the muffleheads that fluttered against the windows. Drivers came in squinting and rubbing their necks, stopping on the mat inside the door as if this was all new to them, and too much, the bright aisles of candies and chips overloading their brains so they couldn't read the sign directly in front of them.
They bkinked at her, apologetic. "Where are the--?"
"Straight back."
Fifty, a hundred times a night. She pointed her whole arm like a ghost.
"It's true," Nina said. "The more you drive, the dumber you get."
"Thank you, thank you, Sam I am."
The living death had bad breath. They bought coffee and soda and water, cigarettes and gum, Tootsie Pops and jerky, anything to get them to the next stop. In line they nodded their heads and mouthed the lyrics to the dinosaur pop that played endlessly inside and out, a fiendish commercial-free satellite feed pieced together, it seemed, by U2 and the Doobie Brothers. They paid double what they would at the Giant Eagle and were grateful when she took a penny from the little dish to cover them.
"Thanks a lot, Angie."
"Thanks a lot, Angie," Nina mocked, acting retarded, nuzzling her and flicking her tongue near her ear.
"Eww. Did you smell him?"
"He wanted to pet you and hug you and love you."
"No, that's you."
"Don't tell Hinch."
"Too late."
The creepiest were the old guys who bought condoms and wanted to joke about it like they were on the same team. There was a regular from down the county Nina christened Fat Joe-Bob who must have weighed 300 pounds and wore a chunky gold chain and the same black Steelers sweatpants year-round.
"I don't think he actually uses them," Nina said. "You know, the normal way?"
"Maybe he's married."
"Ow, my eyes!" NIna said, grabbing them. "I'm not supposed to get fatfuck in them."
Eight hours in a freezing glass box. Even Nina couldn't make it go fast enough.
Their customers weren't all strangers. Friends and classmates visited, sliding their fake IDs across the counter for them to inspect. Nina thought it was funny that Kim felt guilty, since they both had their own. For Kim it wasn't the feat of getting busted so much as the feeling she was being taken advantage of, but hours later, when they caught up with their friends again, she drank her fair share of beers and was thankful she didn't have to pay for them.
Every night they fought a wore against boredom and lost. By ten they were goofy and dull, when they hadn't done anything. She thought their bodies should have adapted to swing shift after a whole month. Nina thought it had something to do with the flourescents, the flat, shadowless wash of light that brought out the veins in their hands, their palms splotchy as raw hamburger. It was like living underwater, two captured mermaids displayed in a tank.
And then, with half an hour left, they rallied, as if, the day nearly done, they were just now waking up. They wiped down the counters by the Icee machine and the microwave and restocked the coffee station, getting the place ready to hand over to Doug-o and Kevin. Whose turn was it to do the men's room?
From there it was like a countdown. They took turns fixing their make-up and brushing their hair in the dinged steel mirror of the women's room while the other covered the front. When graveyard punched in they hung up their tops -- "night, Angie," "night, Sam" -- then headed for their getaway cars, parked side by side.
Everyone's schedule was different. In town, Elise had already tipped out at Pape's (it was Sal's now, but they still called it Pape's), while J.P. was helping close the Giant Eagle. Hinch and Marnie still had another hour to go at the DQ, so they met there. It was convenient. They could leave their cars in the lot, backed up against the cemetery. The sheriff lived right across the road, no one would bother them.
Her new curfew was two o'clock, a compromise neither side liked. Her mother worked in the emergency room and thought everyone was going to die in a car crash. Her father was calmer, framing his argument in terms of insurance premiums. She needed to remember (as if she could forget), she was still living under their roof.
Part of it was J.P., who was new, and laidback, into frisbee and hanging out, not her usual confident jock. His mother had raised him by herself, another mark against him. It didn't help that they lived back behind the harbor in the same neighborhood her parents had fled a dozen years ago, and that he drove a crappy Cavalier and had hair down to his shoulders. Her mother blamed him for Kim's tattoo, even though he was the one squeamish about needles. Her parents didn't believe her when she said he was harmless and actually very sweet. If anything, she was a bad influence on him, but all they saw was a loser who might ruin her future.
"Just let us know where you're going to be," her mother asked, as if that was the least she could do. What she meant was, stay out of the police log in the Star-Beacon so you don't hurt your father's business. It could have been the family motto: All a realtor has his good name.
"We'll probably go to the beach if it's nice," Kim said, and it wasn't a lie. They might hit a couple of dives on the way, but by the end of the night they would be sitting in the cold sand around a driftwood fire, listening to the soft wash of the waves. If it rained, they'd probably go to Elise's and play pool in her basement.
"Let us know if you go anywhere else. You've got your phone."
Part Two
Her mother didn't really mean this. She needed to be in bed by ten at the latest to get up for work. Her father was the one who waited up for Kim, though that had changed since graduation. Weekends she used to find him asleep on the couch with the TV on mute and the clicker in his lap; now that she was out every night he turned off all the lights but the ones in the back hall and the stairwell, making a path to her room.
Her parents' door was closed, so was Lindsay's. Closing hers just completed the set.
Alone in bed she read Madeleine L'Engle and Lloyd Alexander -- otherworldly fantasies she'd loved as a girl, as if trying to call back that lost time. Even if J.P. and Nina had had to drive her home, she could convince herself she wasn't tired. There was nothing to get up for, and in the quiet warmth of the covers she fought the spins by concentrating on the sentences snaking down the page and in the morning woke up with a killer headache, the room too bright. She pulled her pillow over her head and made it all go away.
That day she got up around eleven, to Cooper licking. He'd butted the door open and was beached with his head under her dresser. "Stop," she said. "Cooper, stop," and then couldn't get back to sleep. To make up for it she took a leisurely shower, closing her eyes beneath the spray.
On her dry-erase board her mother had left a message to please take Lindsey out driving, and a little cartoon car with two heads in it. Lindsay had her permit but needed someone with a license to go with her, and her mother conveniently didn't have time.
"Fuck me," Kim said, because everyone was going swimming at the river. If she'd known she would have gotten up earlier.
Lindsay was downstairs, lying on the couch, watching "Bubble Boy" for the millionth time, laughing before the actors could deliver their lines. They were three years apart, just close enough so they overlapped her last year at the high school. Lindsay was the baby, and the brain. She still had braces, and painful-looking zits she tried to cover with foundation. She hung around with the other nerdy girls in the wind ensemble and the robotics club. Last spring she and her friends had camped out overnight to be first in line for the new "Star Wars." Since then Nina called her the Virgin from Outer Space. Kim didn't like to think of her alone here with their parents, as if she was abandoning her to an infinite limbo.
Today though, she was a pain. Kim knew she was being selfish -- exactly what her mother had trumped her with in their most recent battle -- but that only made it worse.
"Let's go," she told her. "Put your shoes on."
"It's almost over."
"Just pause it. I've got shit to do."
"Okay, you don't have to be a jerk about it."
"I'm not the one crying to mom every five seconds."
"I didn't!" Lindsay said. "It was dad who--"
"Whatever, just come on. I need to be back by one."
Lindsay brushed past her and ran upstairs.
"Where are you going?"
"I need my glasses."
Her answer made Kim shake her head. Who wore glasses anymore?
In the driveway she watched Lindsay squinting at the idiot lights of the dash, trying to remember the steps in the right order. Her hand paused over the shifter like a novice trying to defuse a bomb. She'd brought her manual, like that might help.
"Emergency brake," Kim said.
"I know."
"Then do it."
She was tentative backing up, leaning to peer in her side mirrror, drifting toward the mailbox. Kim turned off the radio so she could concentrate.
"Straighten it out. Good. Now give it some gas."
They shadowed the railroad tracks, practicing right-hand turns in the rundown blocks off Buffalo. The streets back here were still the original red brick, frost-heaved and dotted with ugly patches of asphalt. The houses were rentals, sagging Italianates and vinyl-sided duplexes with rusty wire fences threatening tetanus. Her father saw them as the enemy in the endless struggle to keep up Kingsville's property values, blaming the landlords more than the tenants, as if ownership somehow made them more responsible. She and Nina had waited outside one night while J.P. and Hinch went in. Everybody knew where to go.
Now, in the middle of the day, husky mothers in shorts sat smoking and drinking sodas on their stoops while their kids chased each other around the sun-browned yards. They marked the Chevette each time it swung wide and then corrected, followed it like cops, and Kim told Lindsay to take the underpass to the high school.
She was surprised to find so many cars in the lot. Like idiots, the football team was out practicing in the heat. One mother had brought a lawn chair to watch them, an umbrella attached to make her own personal shade. Down at the empty end, Lindsay parked and parked. Kim had done the same drills with her father, and imitated his patience, praising her when she fitted the car between the lines (though she'd done it in the company wagon, nearly twice the size of the Chevette), calmly calling for the brake when she seemed headed for the curb.
"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 nice lately, a fact -- in truth -- she'd complained about to her mother, causing her mother to worry aloud to her father in bed about the widening gap between the two girls.
"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 building 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 until 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 in the cemetery were old, their roots poking through the dry grass like knucklebones. Lindsay squeezed ketchup into the top of her clamshell so they could share. They didn't spend time 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. Sparrows hopped among the faded decorations -- wreaths on green wire stands and flags left over from Memorial Day. 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 she 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 Lindsey 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.
Part Three
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. 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 about 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 39 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 suit 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 the 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 around 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 else 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."
Part Four
The river was low, rocks sitting high and white in mid-stream. 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 foot, 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 clinmbed 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 Weiner 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.
Part Five
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 neatly draped over the shower curtain in their bathroom like 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 oreboat 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." 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 cemetary, the sheriff's cruiser sat facing the street to discourage speeders. The DQ was dark, and the houses along Main, the streetlights shedding a dim silver tint, as if underpowered. At the corner of Euclid and Harbor, the pre-recorded chimes of Lakeview United Methodist chimed two o'clock, her curfew.
Her 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.
