Gordon had stayed away from the cafeteria since the graffiti episode, not sure if he wanted to see his drawings gone or still there, but now he crouched below the large windows that faced the woods. It was blaringly light on the other side of the spotless glass and he knew he couldn’t be seen. Inside, a few people ate at tables, while the woman at the register slept with her mouth open. Light rain made a whisking sound against his windbreaker and the cold rose up from beneath his sneakers. When he blew on his hands to keep them warm, he smelled blood on his knuckles. He smelled macaroni and cheese and the unmistakable muck of fish sticks from the exhaust fan. He hadn’t remembered until then how he’d eaten dinner there with his father in the months just after his mother had fled—hadn’t remembered even as he’d drawn such distress on the windows weeks earlier. He hadn’t thought about the metal tracks you pushed your tray along, a kind of consoling roller coaster for a seven-year-old. One night, looking back at the table where his father sat moving food around on his plate, Gordon had seen the man’s deadened expression, and it had entered his body and never left him. It was the same expression he’d seen when he asked his father about Ellen—why she’d left, where she’d gone—and had gotten no answer. His father was not grieving then—or now, Gordon suddenly understood with a sickening recall of the warmth he’d felt in the femur—but was the source of all grief itself.
He left the cafeteria window and ran to the back of the farthest building, tumbling down the slope where he’d cleared the brambles. At the bottom, he retraced his steps along the river’s bank to the woods where he’d found the bone. He’d left the earth exposed the day before, but even in the near dark he could see that someone had filled in the bone’s shallow grave and scattered leaves to hide it. He aimed the shovel at the dirt, turning over clods and rocks and roots, the smell of wet nature like his father’s breath hanging over him. Pearlescent blisters appeared on his palms. There was a condom shed like snakeskin, and a piece of torn cotton, rusty with dirt, one edge puckered with elastic. He could pretend once more that he didn’t know exactly what he was seeing, but he knew. He stopped digging; he didn’t want to find anything else. When he reached the parking lot and the last building, he saw a body move behind a window, maybe the girl. Maybe she’d been watching him, waiting for him.
It was dark when he approached the maintenance shed. Despite the cold, the front door was open and Fat John was bent in the light, sweeping the floor in a rhythm of subjugation, just as he’d been raking leaves in Gordon’s backyard years before.
“You weren’t over by the main road where you were supposed to be.” His father had come up behind Gordon, and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
The shock made his legs go watery. In the doorway, Fat John had stopped sweeping.
“Yes, I was.” Gordon’s hand tightened on the shovel. He didn’t turn around.
“No, that’s not true. I was just there looking for you.”
“Then you didn’t look hard enough. Why don’t you ask the security guy you sent to check on me? He’ll tell you I was there.” He walked away from his father to the side of the building, and with his mouth now almost pressed against the brick siding, he realized he was trapped, hemmed in by equipment and his father.
“You’re cold,” his father said. “You’re shivering. You should wear a coat. You’re too old for me to have to remind you about these things.”
“I found the bone.”
“What bone, sweetheart? I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” His heart pounded monstrously. “What happened to Ellen?”
“Happened? Why do you think something happened to her? Let’s go inside. I’m worried about you.”
“The bone. Ellen’s bone. You know all about it.”
When he turned to face his father, it seemed that they both realized at the same instant that Gordon was now the taller and stronger one.
“I’m not going crazy,” Gordon said. “I’m not going crazy.”
“No, you’re just confused. And sad. I understand, it’s okay. You’ll be okay.” His voice was so soft Gordon wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined those words.
“You killed her,” Gordon said. “You know it and Fat John knows it and I know it. You killed Ellen.”
His father inhaled sharply. “Stop it, Gordon. Stop it now.”
“Then where did she go?” he demanded. “She left you, she didn’t leave me.” He lifted the shovel above his head, forcing his father to walk backward toward the trees. His father said his name, and his gaze slid for a second to the white-black sky and the rain. Gordon wanted to walk his father all the way to the river, but he also wanted to lean against his chest and blubber. His hands burned at the shovel’s handle. They’d both been left, deserted and unloved by women, but they were nothing alike. His father was telling him to stop, to put the shovel down.
Something yanked Gordon from behind and, with effortless power, threw him onto the ground several feet away. His head smacked the dirt and he bit his tongue.
“What are you doing?” His father charged Fat John, a small body against a bigger one. “What the hell is wrong with you, Baranek?”
Fat John appeared stunned by his own action, a dumb animal trained to save his master. Both men looked down at Gordon. His head felt split open and he wanted to sleep there on the cold ground, but he got to his feet and ran. He could save himself, even though he was stumbling, bumping into things, his father calling after him.
Every building he tried was locked, but the back door to the cafeteria was propped open with a can of tomatoes. He slipped inside, the sound of the rain fading behind him. To the few people at the tables, he probably looked no different from the friends or relatives they were there to visit—confused, sick, grieving, terrified, sad. Maybe there was nothing strange to anyone sitting there about a wet, shivering boy who’d bitten his tongue, who was wandering through, then wandering out, shuffling up and down stairs, trying every door. Gordon knew that if he were asked who or what he was looking for, he might say femur, but he might also say father, mother, girl, or even future.
MISSING SRI
BY MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE
Brown University