decorated for us some long-ago anniversary. It had a child’s drawing of an oddly intricate human heart ironed on it and words written across the top:
Mom and Dad: I love you. From Robbie
.
Mom and Dad. Words you’ve strung together, without thinking, all your life.
On the other hand, I didn’t string those words together about my own parents for the more than twenty years after my father left. Then, last fall, the phrase returned to the lexicon of my life.
“My mom and dad are here helping out,” I’d say to people, feeling like a child telling a hopeful fib. But it wasn’t a fib. They were indeed here, together, and they took care of things while Jonathan and I shuttled between the hospital and the Mermaid Inn. My father walked the dogs. My mother took the girls shopping for school clothes. My father took it upon himself to pack up your apartment in Berkeley. He assessed the damage of the flood at the Salvaged Light and hung a sign on the door announcing that the store was closed for remodeling. Then he appointed himself investigator of your accident.
We knew that sometime that night, after Emme came to dinner and made a scene, you climbed into the passenger seat of her car. We knew she was the driver at the time of the accident. We knew she had a valid New York State driver’s license. We knew she was interviewed by the police, and that she rode to a hospital in Santa Cruz in an ambulance, and that she passed the sobriety test. We knew she was released with barely a scratch—and after that, she disappeared.
My father made some calls and scoured the web. He found a few dated photos of her online as a hand model but none of those leads pointed us anywhere useful. The modeling agency she worked for in New York provided an address in Manhattan, different from the address on her driver’s license, but she hadn’t resided in either location for years. The emails we sent to the address the agency provided us bounced back. She seemed to have willfully dismantled herself, then vanished.
We didn’t press you to tell us what happened that night. It was clear, when you emerged from the coma, that you had no memory of it, so we simply chose not to speak of it. In the end, I was the one who told my father to give up the search; I didn’t see a good reason for trying anymore to find her.
Sixteen
I HAD NO IDEA what time I ought to arrive at the Photographers’ Gallery the day after Louise and Malcolm’s party. I didn’t know what time Patrick’s shift started or ended. I didn’t even know if his invitation still stood. But at two o’clock, I took the tube to Covent Garden and walked until I found the gallery. I had another reason for being in Covent Garden that afternoon, an alibi of sorts, which was that I was hat shopping. Malcolm had arranged a chartered train to take the two of us and a group from the London Docklands Development Corporation to the horse races at Newbury—a boondoggle intended to favorably dispose the committee toward our bid—and I had gotten it in my mind that I would need a hat.
The café at the gallery was very different in daylight. It was a single, stark, narrow room with white walls and gray concrete floors and photographs sparsely displayed on the walls. There were long wooden communal tables with benches down the middle of the room, and a counter at the far end that had served as the bar the night before.
There was no sign of Patrick, so I ordered a cup of tea and pretended to read the newspaper. The gallery was full of students and artists wearing dark, grungy clothing. It’s exactly the sort of place I would avoid now—the trendy crowd, the self-conscious modernityof the space, the harsh white walls and hard benches and humorless fluorescent lights.
Patrick arrived, finally. He walked down the stairs and saw me.
“You came,” he said, smiling and embracing me and giving me the idea, right then, that everything was settled. “What shall we do?”
“I need a hat,” I
Mom and Dad: I love you. From Robbie
.
Mom and Dad. Words you’ve strung together, without thinking, all your life.
On the other hand, I didn’t string those words together about my own parents for the more than twenty years after my father left. Then, last fall, the phrase returned to the lexicon of my life.
“My mom and dad are here helping out,” I’d say to people, feeling like a child telling a hopeful fib. But it wasn’t a fib. They were indeed here, together, and they took care of things while Jonathan and I shuttled between the hospital and the Mermaid Inn. My father walked the dogs. My mother took the girls shopping for school clothes. My father took it upon himself to pack up your apartment in Berkeley. He assessed the damage of the flood at the Salvaged Light and hung a sign on the door announcing that the store was closed for remodeling. Then he appointed himself investigator of your accident.
We knew that sometime that night, after Emme came to dinner and made a scene, you climbed into the passenger seat of her car. We knew she was the driver at the time of the accident. We knew she had a valid New York State driver’s license. We knew she was interviewed by the police, and that she rode to a hospital in Santa Cruz in an ambulance, and that she passed the sobriety test. We knew she was released with barely a scratch—and after that, she disappeared.
My father made some calls and scoured the web. He found a few dated photos of her online as a hand model but none of those leads pointed us anywhere useful. The modeling agency she worked for in New York provided an address in Manhattan, different from the address on her driver’s license, but she hadn’t resided in either location for years. The emails we sent to the address the agency provided us bounced back. She seemed to have willfully dismantled herself, then vanished.
We didn’t press you to tell us what happened that night. It was clear, when you emerged from the coma, that you had no memory of it, so we simply chose not to speak of it. In the end, I was the one who told my father to give up the search; I didn’t see a good reason for trying anymore to find her.
Sixteen
I HAD NO IDEA what time I ought to arrive at the Photographers’ Gallery the day after Louise and Malcolm’s party. I didn’t know what time Patrick’s shift started or ended. I didn’t even know if his invitation still stood. But at two o’clock, I took the tube to Covent Garden and walked until I found the gallery. I had another reason for being in Covent Garden that afternoon, an alibi of sorts, which was that I was hat shopping. Malcolm had arranged a chartered train to take the two of us and a group from the London Docklands Development Corporation to the horse races at Newbury—a boondoggle intended to favorably dispose the committee toward our bid—and I had gotten it in my mind that I would need a hat.
The café at the gallery was very different in daylight. It was a single, stark, narrow room with white walls and gray concrete floors and photographs sparsely displayed on the walls. There were long wooden communal tables with benches down the middle of the room, and a counter at the far end that had served as the bar the night before.
There was no sign of Patrick, so I ordered a cup of tea and pretended to read the newspaper. The gallery was full of students and artists wearing dark, grungy clothing. It’s exactly the sort of place I would avoid now—the trendy crowd, the self-conscious modernityof the space, the harsh white walls and hard benches and humorless fluorescent lights.
Patrick arrived, finally. He walked down the stairs and saw me.
“You came,” he said, smiling and embracing me and giving me the idea, right then, that everything was settled. “What shall we do?”
“I need a hat,” I
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