The Banks of Certain Rivers (33 page)

“What do you mean?” I tell her about the call from the
rec center, and Lauren is quick to try to reassure me.

“He’s…he’s got to be just wandering around,
thinking it all through,” she says. “He’ll be back,
Neil. Let him process it all. This is a big thing we’ve given
him.”

“I know. But I feel…I should have told him everything a
long time ago.”

“You didn’t want to hurt him. It’s okay.”

“That seems to have worked out really well, doesn’t it?
God, this isn’t like him at all.”

“Oh, Neil. Didn’t you ever do something like this when
you were younger? Weren’t you ever moody? Or brooding?”

“No, not really.” The only time I caused my parents any
real grief was when they’d found out Mike and I had hosted a
party at our house when we were seventeen. Compared to this, that
situation seems pretty minor.

“I understand if you don’t want me there, but do you want
me to come over? I didn’t mean what I said. I want this. I want
us. You can say no if you want.”

“I would like it if you were here.”

“Should I bring things to stay the night?”

What would Chris think if he came home and found Lauren here?

“Why don’t you bring your stuff,” I say, “and
we’ll see how it goes. I’d like you to stay, but let’s
see what happens.”

“I understand. Why don’t I pick up something for us to
eat, too?”

“You’re awesome,” I say. Cooking is the last thing
I want to deal with right now.

“He’ll be back, Neil. He will.”

One year when Chris
was
in elementary school, on a summer day when I was supposed to be
keeping an eye on him, he went missing. Wendy worked as an office
manager for a tour boat company then, and I’d watch Chris some
days during the summers. It saved us money on daycare, and I got to
spend time with him, so it was a win all around.

I’d been working that summer on building an extension to our
back deck. Dick would come sometimes to help me out, but mostly I was
solo. Chris played in the yard while I sawed lumber or screwed down
deck boards; sometimes I’d give him a hammer and some scraps of
wood to nail together in his own little projects. It was a fun
summer.

One morning I was preoccupied with hanging deck joists. I’d
mismeasured at some point, my alignment was off, and I had to pull
out a bunch of my work to start over. I got absorbed by the job for a
couple hours. When I finally looked at my watch I realized it was
well past noon, and I needed to get Chris inside for some lunch. But
he wasn’t in the yard behind me. His hammer was there, his
scraps of lumber were there, but no Chris. I unbuckled my tool bags
and dropped them to the ground, and started to call his name. I
walked out into the field and called for him, but there was no
answer.

“Christopher!” I shouted, maybe louder than I’d
ever shouted anything before. “Chris!” I ran around the
perimeter of the field, trying to shake off an encroaching feeling of
dread. “Christopher!”

Dick heard my shouting, and emerged from his workshop in the barn.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I can’t find Chris.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dick said. “I’ll check up by the
river.”

I ran east into the orchard while Dick went north. I searched,
calling and calling, and when it wasn’t me hollering
Christopher’s name I heard Dick’s far-off shouts echoing
through the groves of cherry trees. We met back in the field, and I
had a sudden horrifying vision of my son drowning; we’d always
had a rule that the beach or the Little Jib River were only places to
go with a grown-up, and I worried that made it tempting for him.
Panic seized my chest, and I took off, full-bore, for the dunes,
running and shouting his name. From the top of the most beachward
dune I scanned the shoreline, north and south, and out into the
water; there was nothing. My heart felt as if it was going to come
out of my chest. Then I heard Dick.

“Neil!” he called. “Come on back. I got him.”

I raced back to the field, and found my father-in-law smiling as he
waited for me.

“Where is he?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.

“Come on,” Dick said. “Keep your voice down.”

I followed him into the pines, and to a deer blind Dick had built
from an old truck bed and some sheets of plywood for a roof. Inside,
curled up and fast asleep in a nest of dusty horse blankets, was
Chris.

“Oh,” I said, trying not to cry with relief. “Oh.”
Dick smiled, and I smiled too. I didn’t want Dick to see me
cry. But when I looked, I saw Dick was crying himself, so I stopped
worrying about it.

“Chris,” I whispered. “Hey, wake up, kiddo.”

Chris blinked his eyes open, startled, I’m sure, by the two
silently weeping grown men looming over him. He blinked his eyes into
focus, took in his surroundings, and gave a sideways smile.

“What happened?” he asked us. “How…how did I
get in here?”

Maybe Chris is in
the
deer blind now, I think. Why not check? I’ve checked everywhere
else. I head off through the field and duck under the heavy boughs of
our pine woods; Dick planted these trees with his father, I learned,
when he was only ten years old.

The deer blind is not as I remember it. The plywood roof is split and
sagging, and the camouflage paint of the old truck bed has completely
given way to a scab-colored patina of rust. Everything is thick with
pine needles; the rotted horse blankets are completely covered with
them.

Chris is not there.

I stand for a bit, wishing it would be as simple as finding him here,
knees pulled up and mouth hanging open, a placidly breathing,
sleeping little boy. But I can’t go back to that. I think of
the times I spent in the blind; more of those silent times spent with
Dick Olsson. He’d ask me to come and we’d sit for hours,
quietly, me with a thermos of coffee and him with a gun across his
lap. I remember a time when a massive buck passed not twenty feet in
front of us. The creature paused to sniff the air, and I waited, not
breathing as Dick raised his gun and sighted down the barrel, bracing
myself for the massive report that would send the animal to the
ground. Wanting to feel that, but not wanting to at all, I waited for
Dick to do something. He didn’t though, and the big deer
continued on to wherever he was going. The gun went back to Dick’s
lap.

“Anymore,” he said after the deer was gone from our view,
“I prefer to just let them wander around.”

Northward now, I move toward the river, through the pines and groves,
and west along the bank toward the dunes. The lake is peaceful under
the faintest breeze; the beach is calm. Chris is not here. Not far
away, the beach house is shuttered and silent, and Art’s truck
is gone.

“Chris!” I shout, but there’s no answer.

Lauren waits for me
when I return to the house.

“I figured you were out,” she says. “Running or
something. I got Thai food. Is that okay?”

It is okay, and I tell her so; she hugs me and apologizes for earlier
and we sit on the floor to eat. Sometimes Lauren reaches to rub my
knee.

“I haven’t even asked how you’re feeling,” I
say. “I suck.”

“I’m great,” she says. “Really. I feel so
normal I’m almost having doubts that you knocked me up.”
She winks at me and I manage a wan smile in return; I’m feeling
too sick to my stomach to offer anything else.

“I scheduled my first OB appointment,” she goes on. “One
week from next Wednesday.”

“What time?”

“Eleven thirty. I bet it will run late.”

“I don’t teach that period,” I say. “I’ll
get someone to cover me if I’m on lunch duty.”

“You….” Lauren cocks her head. “You think
you’ll be back at work?” I almost laugh.

“God. No. I forgot.”

We finish and clean up, and I find a screwdriver to unlock
Christopher’s door. Everything seems normal; the bed is made,
his homework is on his desk, some clothes are tossed over the back of
his chair.

We go outside and walk together down to the highway. I stand and look
toward town while Lauren holds my hand and leans into me.

“If he stays away tonight, I think I might really lose it,”
I say.

“He’ll be okay. He’s upset. He’s a good kid.
You’ve made him a good kid.”

The early dusk glows with a pair of headlights in the distance. They
approach, slow as they pass us, and drive on down the road.

Back inside, I find
the
student directory containing the home numbers of almost all of my
son’s good friends, and I spend an hour and a half calling
around to see if anyone has seen Chris. Nope, they all say, nope,
haven’t seen him. We’ll call you if we do. Lauren is
reading a nursing textbook on the couch, a highlighter in her teeth
and her legs pulled up to her side.

“You bring an air of calm to the household,” I tell her.
“By acting so normal, you make me forget anything’s going
on.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Maybe. I feel like I should be panicking a little more.”
I almost tell her about the strange phone calls from the robot voice,
but I don’t. I don’t want her to worry.

“How would panicking help anything?” she asks.

“It might make me feel like I was doing…” I think
I hear a noise, a car approaching maybe, and I twist my head so my
ear is toward the door. It’s nothing. “It might make me
feel like I was doing something.”

“Okay. Let’s think about this. Come, sit.” Lauren
pats the couch next to her and twists to an upright position. She
closes her text and flips her notebook open to a clean page. “If
he’s not back by tomorrow morning, what’s the next step?”

“Look at you, so organized. Did I mention the calming effect
you seem to have on me?”

“I’m serious. What do we do? Call the police?”

I lean my head back and sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t
want to get the police involved now. He’s almost eighteen—”

“But he’s not eighteen yet. Think about it this way. If
one of your students was missing, and his parents called you for
help, what would you tell them to do?”

“Call the cops,” I sigh. My head is still back and my
eyes are closed, and I hear Lauren’s pencil scritching on her
notepad.

“Okay. What’s our cutoff time to call?”

“Are you always this precise about things?”

“Yes, actually, I am. What time do we call if he’s not
back?”

“If he’s not back by three tomorrow afternoon,” I
say, picking a number out of thin air, “then let’s call.”

“If he’s gone away somewhere, what are some of the places
he might go?”

“Well…” I start, and I sit up and pause. “I
should call Michael. Jesus Christ, I should have called Michael.”

I dial my brother as fast as I can; thankfully he answers right away.

“What do you guys
want
?” he says testily. “I’m
kind of in the middle of Saturday night service, here. Why the fuck
do you guys keep calling?”

“Has Chris called you?”

“He’s tried like three fucking times! What the hell, you
guys, can this wait?”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“No, Neil, I haven’t! Maybe because I’m like,
running my restaurant on the busiest night of the week?”

“Chris is missing. He didn’t go to his basketball camp
today and he hasn’t come home.”

“You’re kidding me.” It’s suddenly silent in
the background.

“I’m not. If he calls you, Michael, please talk to him.”
I’m holding the phone to my ear with both of my hands. “Answer
when he calls you the next time. Talk to him. Find out where he is,
tell him to stay put, and call me right away, okay?”

“What the hell? What is going on?”

I take a breath. To my side, Lauren is leaning into me as she
listens.

“You know I told you about how I’ve kind of been hanging
out with one of Carol’s nurses, right? Lauren.”

“I recall you told me about this Lauren.”

“I’ve never told Chris. But I told him last night.”

“And he freaked out?”

“Well, Lauren’s pregnant, and I told him that too.”

“Dude. She’s what?”

“Don’t worry about that now. We’re talking about
Chris. I need you to help me with Chris. Just talk to him when he
calls, okay? Talk to him and—”

“Calm down, Neil. I’ll talk to him. I’ll call you
back.”

We wait for nearly two hours, Lauren with her textbook and me with my
phone in my lap. When it rings I nearly jump. It’s Michael.

“No call,” he tells me. “He didn’t leave me
any messages when he called before, either. I tried him back, but
nothing.” I don’t respond. I can’t. “You
okay?” Mike asks.

“Not really. Not at all.”

“You want me to come up? I can leave first thing in the
morning.”

“No,” I say quickly. “Stay put. I think he
might…just stay there, okay?”

We end the call, and I sit, staring at nothing.
Where could he be?

Christopher, where are you?

Lauren touches my arm and it jolts me back into the room.

“Let’s go to bed, Neil,” she says softly. “Let’s
get some sleep and be ready for tomorrow.”

I wave my hand toward the hall. “You go,” I say. “I’m
going to wait here on the couch a little while more.”

“Okay,” Lauren whispers, leaning close and kissing my
cheek. “He’ll be all right.”

I nod, and ask Lauren to turn out the light as she goes. There is no
more whiskey, no more sedative; I must face this darkness on my own.

In the unlit room, I sit and listen and wait.

Sometime in the middle
of the night I wake from my half-sleep on the couch to check my phone
for missed calls or texts. I open the mobile browser to check my
email, draw in my breath and say “Holy shit” out loud
when I see what’s there.

My last email to Wendy, subject “Chris, and Other,” has a
reply.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]