In the middle of Brooklyn, a ghost is in the making. It will happen by accident and because of logic. A small shift to the routine will have unforeseen devastating consequences. It will maim hearts. It begins with an open gate.
A Brooklyn mother delivers her special son to a special school, and it is a morning like every other morning; it must be so, or her son won’t budge. On the sidewalk, she adjusts his collar and tries to catch his eye. She accepts this nonacceptance; she recognizes his nonrecognition once more and leads him into the schoolyard. She has a mental catalogue of each of his small affections. The last time he spoke. When he reached for her hand in a shopping mall. Some are real expressions from her son—his intention to connect is clear—and some are surely random and accidental happenings, but she keeps them all the same. She closes the gate of the playground carefully behind her. She hears the gate latch.
At least, she believes she did. She can’t remember when asked about it that afternoon. No one can. Everyone believes they latched it, heard it latch, but no one can remember with any certainty because the whine of the gate and the clicking of gears are common daily sounds.
But someone is guilty, because the gate’s left open for the Brooklyn mother’s son to make his escape. It’s not until the students are settled on the rug inside and the teachers are counting the bodies in the circle that they notice their numbers are off. A roll call is taken, and the boy’s mother receives a message at work. Her boy has gone missing.
Inspiration
Shelley calls when the girls are asleep. Nathan is in the kitchen, implausibly eating more pizza. He’s also pouring another drink. When the phone rings, he believes that it is Marion. This night could be over soon.
“Hi? Nathan?”
He recognizes Shelley’s voice. She relays his strange message back to him. She hasn’t heard from Marion in months, and if Marion is coming to stay with her, it’s not a great time.
“I mean, I just started this new woodworking project, it’s really exciting, but wood chips everywhere. You know.”
“Wood chips? No.”
“I mean, a new project. You have to start, you must seize the inspiration, because it doesn’t come that often. You know.”
“I don’t, Shelley. It’s never been like that for me.”
“But what happened? Where is Marion?”
Nathan looks at the last slice.
“Miscommunication. She’s visiting her cousins in Utica. I thought she was going next week, but it turns out it was today, and her cell died.”
“Good. I’m so glad. You sounded worried.”
“I was, but it’s all sorted now.”
The two chat about the Hudson Valley and the long winters until one of them can safely make an excuse and get off the phone. Ginny, who has been listening to her father lie from the hallway, now tiptoes back to bed. She is righteous; her suspicions have been confirmed. She is angry; her father should have been honest with her. She is frightened; her mother is missing.
Nathan sits at the desk in the den with his drink. It’s Marion’s desk, but the ancient desktop computer belongs to the family. The girls sometimes play games on it, and Marion checks her email, but mostly it likes to crash and to be rebooted. Nathan clicks into his wife’s email account, but she’s signed out. She’s also deleted her browser history. Nathan takes a largish sip of scotch, checks his own account, and he has thirty-four new emails. Most are from Daniel. He reads one and then deletes the rest, because they are all the same. The last email is from Marion’s supervisor, Deborah. Deborah’s tone is fine at the start, professional yet concerned, but it deteriorates, and what’s left behind are run-on sentences and a clash of quirky yet oddly suggestive emojis. It ends with two questions rather than a signature: Where did Marion go? Doesn’t she know we need her? Nathan opens a window to respond, but instead emails the person he was supposed to meet that afternoon but never did. I’m sorry, he types.
Shopping
Marion looks for a space to be. She’s incapable of spending any of her money and she cannot rest. When she needs a bathroom, she panics. She walks into several Starbucks but is frightened away by the baristas or the homeless people who usually use those bathrooms. She walks to the Whole Foods on 59th, and in the bustle of wealthy Manhattanites and the people who work for them she is able to find a bathroom more anonymously. As she pees, she holds her knapsack off the floor, because there isn’t a hook and because she can’t let go. After, she sits there, still, with her pants around her ankles, until someone pounds on the stall door.
She walks through the grocery store. She goes up and down the aisles. Ginny’s in the grains aisle until she turns into a petite woman in yoga pants and pristine running shoes. Marion eats free samples until she notices an aproned man noticing her. It’s time to go, and she takes an escalator back to the first floor of the mall. She spends more hours in a kitchen store, in a clothing store, and in a bookstore. There, Nathan hovers over new hardcover nonfiction. Marion blinks. She reaches for her phone in her pocket, but remembers she left it in the basement after she returned it to factory settings and dropped it in a glass of tap water for good measure. Nathan becomes a stranger. She pats her pocket again and again, remembers again and again.
The last store to close is the bookstore, and she is shut out into the street and the night. Central Park is dark except for the yellow glowing air under the streetlights. Male joggers head into the dark park. She finds them foolish. The women will jog in the morning and be sensible, wise, and safe.
She has a home and a bed and she is 7.5 miles away from both.
She edges the park. Doormen watch her as she goes by. Some say goodnight. She’s nearing the Plaza Hotel when one calls to her: “It isn’t a good idea to be out alone. I know everyone says New York is safe, but we’re still very close to the park.”
“I’m not a tourist,” she says. “I’m from here. I live here.”
He apologizes. “It’s just that you looked kind of…”
When he doesn’t finish the thought, Marion walks on. She sees a box of light and it’s the Apple Store and she remembers the Apple Store is twenty-four hours. She pretends she has a laptop that just died with her report and it is a very important report on budgets and losses. She makes a mental note: she will not look kind of anymore.
Rough