“We have people who do that,” he’d said. “If you could just track them down and leave them at the desk, we’ll send someone over.”
She’d found the file herself rather than asking the secretary to pull it. And then she had looked at the X-rays anyway, despite what the detective had said. They both had, she and Mark, over lunch that day, laid the panorex gently on the light box (often they just slapped them up there, but that seemed wrong), and flipped the switch.
“You remember him?” Mark had asked. The date listed on the panorex was six years earlier, and the patient’s records showed he hadn’t been seen at their office since. How had the police even tracked them down? A wife? A magnet melted to the fridge? One of their personalized toothbrushes, smoldering in the bathroom, their names still visible?
“No,” she said. “You?”
“No,” he said.
A crown on the upper-right first premolar. The lower left canine blocked out. A left condylar fracture, several years old. She and Mark stood there in the white light of the dead man’s teeth. Neither wanted to be the one to turn off the box. Finally, she stepped forward and flipped the switch.
Who knew when they would find Lisa, if they would ever find her. Teeth, the unsung heroes of the body, so vulnerable to Dr Pepper and Jolly Ranchers and complex carbohydrates, so often victims to human stupidity and shortsightedness. But once the human failings ceased, those same teeth proved immune to the manner of decay brought about by water and earth, the natural degeneration of the body that destroyed almost everything but was no match for the stalwart tooth. Who knew how many weeks would pass, how many months, before what was left of Lisa Bellow washed up along a riverbank, or was unearthed in some remote field. A dentist would be called to confirm the suspicion. Who but a dentist would recognize her?
13
For almost her whole life, there was no place Meredith had loved more than the middle row of seats of the family minivan. Every June, and sometimes at Christmas, they took the two-day trek halfway across the country, deep into the endless Midwest, to see her grandparents, she and Evan in the middle row, the back row folded down and crammed with suitcases, pillows, stuffed animals, baseball gloves, swim stuff (summers), presents (Christmas), and the twelve-cup coffeemaker her mother insisted on bringing every time because her grandparents didn’t own one. Wedged between her seat and Evan’s was an enormous box of car stuff: trivia cards, playing cards, baseball cards, comic books, coloring books, Yes & Know invisible ink books, toy catalogs, Etch A Sketches, flashlights, dice, calculators, maps, stickers, license plate magnets, Power Rangers, My Little Ponies, car bingo, priceless “gems” in tiny suede bags. All four of them could have been stranded in the car for months and never run out of things to do.
Her friends always complained about family car trips. How could they be so stupid? There was nowhere in the world better than the middle row of a minivan, flying along a long flat stretch of highway, cornfields flashing by your window. And there was no better time than the two hours after dinner, pushing on an extra hundred miles to that hotel in eastern Indiana, darkness falling, the murmur of her parents’ voices in the front seat, the glow of Evan’s Nintendo DS, then iPod, then iPad, then iPhone.
But there were few places that Meredith loved less than the passenger seat of the family minivan. The middle row was her world, their world—hers and Evan’s—its connection to the front row sporadic and almost always voluntary, whereas the passenger seat was squarely adult territory, and as such there were certain expectations for those who sat in it. Like speaking. Like talking. Like answering questions.
As her mother pulled away from the Bellows’ house, Meredith steeled herself for the coming onslaught. Why was she hanging out with Lisa’s friends? Were they spending time together at school? Were they eating lunch together? How did they wind up at the Bellows’ house? Did they walk or did they take the bus? Had she ever been to the Bellows’ house before? Was it strange to be in Lisa’s room? Which one of the girls had invited her? Had she wanted to say no? Had part of her wanted to go and part of her not wanted to go? What did they talk about? Did they ask her about what happened? Did she even like those girls? Were they nice to her? Did she feel uncomfortable? Did she feel like herself? Did she feel like someone else?
“Do you still like that chicken casserole?” her mother asked.
“What?”
“The chicken casserole I used to make. With the mushrooms and the rice. I feel like we haven’t had that in a long time.”
“Um, sure,” Meredith said. “That sounds good.”
Then: nothing. Then, a moment later: the radio. Meredith didn’t trust it, her mother’s silence, the music, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to enjoy it, for as long as it lasted.
She could not explain what had happened to her, or how she had come to be in the place, or places, that she was. She only knew that in all the universe there was only one spot where she was truly safe right now, today, and it wasn’t in a minivan or in her bedroom or in the Bellows’ kitchen or in a psychiatrist’s office or in algebra class. It was instead in an apartment off the highway, an apartment with a concrete planter out front where cigarettes were ashed, an apartment with a ratty couch and a big TV and a kitchen wastebasket with a foot pedal and a bedroom door that was only ever slightly ajar and a small bathroom with a cold bathtub where she could sit with Lisa. The apartment was in close proximity to everywhere, at the end of every off-ramp and every thought, around every corner and every conversation, tucked inside silences and empty spaces, and the more silences and empty spaces there were, the easier it was to get to the place where Lisa was.