10
The girl in the second row, three seats back in French 201, unless that Poindexter would take her usual spot. A woman in a yellow poncho crossing Amsterdam Avenue in the rain, who looked so surprised to find him chasing after her. Three times on the subway: once a pair of legs, once a woman in Kay’s favorite red Donegal sweater, and once a face on the D train heading in the opposite direction. Her voice calling out for a wandering child—where would their children come from now?—on the steps outside the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. He considered going inside, saying a prayer if such magical thinking would bring her back. Right now, on the spot, Kay marching down the center aisle to the pew where he knelt. The buzz of his cell phone in the middle of the night and fumbling under the pillow for it only to miss a telemarketer from Kissimmee, Florida, or Waterloo, Iowa, and then he was awake half the night imagining those lonely salespeople consigned to such a purgatory. Every time he checked the mailbox, he turned the key with the hopes of a child on Christmas morning—nothing but coal, bills, and junk. When the leaves began to change colors. When he was drinking her favorite chai, or passing by the corner where she had first touched his arm, first kiss, last kiss, the spot in Central Park where he first knew she would say yes if he asked, when he asked.
Theo missed her most on Tuesdays and Thursdays. During the fall semester at the small college upstate, he had only two days of classes teaching both French language and literature, more than enough to keep him busy, what with the unfinished Muybridge translation loitering in the background. In years gone by, the long train ride up the Hudson Valley had offered him a chance to read or write, but now he spent most of the trip looking at the passing landscape, his thoughts filled with Kay. Rocking, in constant motion, he dozed and dreamt of her in his arms, the warmth of her skin, the scent of her body, her hair, the taste, the sound, the touch—until he roused himself from slumber, embarrassed if someone happened to be sitting next to him. Then he would turn away, press his forehead against the window, and try to forget for the rest of the trip. “Not her, not her,” he whispered along with the rhythm of the train rolling on the track. And a bump would jolt him, bang his skull against the glass, and he would dig in his briefcase, find a book, grade a paper, set a lesson plan in his lap.
The first week back at college was marked by sheer awkwardness. His colleagues offered perfunctory greetings, a few words of consolation from the more kindhearted who had heard the news, but mostly the staff and faculty avoided him as though grief were contagious or they, too, suspected him of foul play. Even his comrades in the Modern Languages wing were cold to him. Frau Morgenschweis would not look him in the eye. Se?ora Martinez said how sorry she was on his first day back and then went silent. Only Dr. Mitchell, who knew seven languages and taught Greek and Latin, was the same as ever, blithely unaware of gossip and office politics.
“Dr. Harper.” He nodded when their paths crossed at the communal coffeepot. “You were away this summer, eh? How is that new bride of yours?”
The question stunned him. “Ah, Dr. Mitchell, you haven’t heard? My wife has gone missing.”
“Missing?” Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, Mitchell blinked his eyes in confusion and empathy.
Theo shook his head and tried to keep his composure. “Literally, actually missing. She disappeared in the middle of a night in June, and we haven’t seen her since. Not a trace.”
“Jesus, I’m so sorry.” His voice cracked. “The police are looking for her?”
“Yes, since she vanished. Up in Québec, where she was performing for the summer. I was there to keep her company and work on my translation.”
“My dear.” Mitchell gripped Theo’s arm and hung on tightly. “Have you asked the chair for a leave of absence?”
The touch of another human, even such a small gesture, filled him with a profound lonesomeness. He knew that he had to free himself or risk a breakdown in the faculty lounge. “I looked for her all the time, called the detectives every day, but she just seems to be completely gone. I thought that work might help me deal with it better. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard. I understand there was a memo—”
“I never read the memos.” Mitchell leaned his head close enough so that the pink of his scalp shone through the thatch of his thinning hair. “If you need anything, even just a sympathetic ear…”