All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 4
“But you’re not sure?”
“I don’t remember any.”
“On his neck?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How about your mom? Did she seem scared, upset, agitated?”
“Agitated?”
“You know, weird.”
“No, she was normal too.”
“Does your dad like to garden or work outside?”
“No. Why are you asking me that?”
He smiled down at her gently, like a kind uncle. “No reason. Just making sure you’re still listening.”
“My mom likes to garden sometimes. She plants flowers. But only sometimes. Daddy doesn’t.”
“Okay, this is going to be a weird one. You ready?”
“ ’Kay.”
“Does your dad keep his car very clean?”
“Pretty clean, I guess. Just regular.”
“Does he take it to the car wash?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Does he wash it himself, in the driveway?”
“No, never.”
“Does he ever have anyone else clean it for him?”
She looked at him. “You think my dad did something to her, don’t you?”
“Why would you say that?”
“All these questions about him.”
“I don’t think anything. I just notice things sometimes. I’m a good noticer. I get the feeling you’re a good noticer too. Is that true?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
He thought about what the girl might say when she got home. “I don’t think your dad did anything at all, Miranda. I just want to find your mom, that’s all. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
Glover paused. He’d gone too far, trusted a child more than he should have. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
She made a concentrated face—lips pursed, brow furrowed. “I don’t know if I can ask this.”
“You can ask me anything.”
“It’s not about my mother.”
“Okay.”
“Did you always have that mark on your face?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it?”
“I was born with it.”
“So you had it when you were a kid?”
“Yes.”
“Were other kids mean to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you wish you didn’t have it?”
“I did back then, yes.”
“But not now.”
“I don’t think about it anymore. It’s just a part of me. It wouldn’t do any good to wish I didn’t have it, so I don’t waste time thinking about it.”
“It’s not so bad, you know.”
“I know.”
“Is it okay that I talked about it?”
“Sure.”
“Does it feel any different? I mean, like, if I touch it?”
“No. It’s just skin. Same as yours.”
“Can I touch it?”
He hesitated. “I guess.”
That momentary hesitation had nothing to do with a social taboo about physical contact with children. Times have changed. Today, a man in Tom Glover’s situation might say no for that reason, however innocent the touching. But that day in 1975, Glover’s hesitation was entirely personal. He simply did not like to be touched.
Miranda stood in front of him. The bench was on a downslope; standing, she faced him eye to eye. With great concentration, she laid her left hand on his forehead, with her palm on his temple and her fingers stretched across his brow. The stain was bigger than her hand, so she had to reposition it to cover as much as possible. Glover felt her warm hand come off his forehead and resettle itself each time, like a dog carefully positioning itself on its bed.
“There. It’s gone.”
He gave her a suffering smile. “Thank you.”
* * *
—
When he finished describing this scene to me, forty years later, in the cramped living room of his house, Glover smiled at the memory of little Miranda.
He said, “There’s one other thing that happened that day. It has nothing to do with the Jane Larkin case. It just kind of sticks in my mind.”
“You must think it’s part of the story if you’re remembering it now.”
“It’s part of the story for me.” He massaged his jaw, frowned, shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll tell it, you can decide. Put it in your book, don’t put it in your book, whatever.”
“Okay.”
“So I’m sitting on the Larkin house. I’ve been there all day, except for the time I was with Miranda. This is about six, seven o’clock at night, maybe, something like that. And nothing happened, of course. Mrs. Larkin didn’t come home. Mr. Larkin never left the house, never called the station, never did anything. He’s just lying low. He knows I’m watching—he’s not going to give anything away. So I finally give up, I leave.
“And I’m driving—you know the woods where Hammond Pond Parkway meets Beacon Street?”
“Yeah, I know where you mean.”
“So I’m on Hammond Pond Parkway there, and I see this thing on the road, so I stop to clear it away before there’s an accident. It’s a—whattaya call it?—a headlight assembly. It’s smashed. There’s broken glass everywhere. There’s blood on the grass, and the grass is all matted down. And I can see where the blood goes off into the woods.
“So I follow the trail. It’s twilight, but it’s a little darker in the trees, gloomy. I follow the blood.
“I come to a little clearing, and there’s a deer lying there. On her side. Not a big one. She’s struggling. Breathing real heavy, panting. She picks up her head and looks at me, but that’s all she can do, she can’t really move. There’s foam in her mouth. Her back, her haunch—her whole back leg and hip are just blood. It’s all torn open, the skin is ripped off, and I can see the…you know, the meat. I don’t know how long she’s been lying there, but there’s a lot of blood on the ground underneath her. It’s obvious she isn’t going to make it.
“So I call it in on the radio. What should I do? The desk sergeant says, ‘Nothing. Just leave it.’ Because it’s not a police matter. No crime’s been committed, no people are hurt, no public-safety issue. It’s just an accident. It’s a wild animal; they die all the time.
“So I wait there, I stay with this deer. Something about it—I just can’t leave her there to die alone.
“Only it takes a long time. She doesn’t want to die. Every now and then she picks up her head, or she tries to use her front legs to get up. At one point, I go back to my car and wait, hoping she’ll die in the meantime. But when I get back, she’s still awake, obviously suffering. Something has to be done. And now the light is starting to fade.
“I was just a young guy at this point. And I’m not a hunter, I’ve never killed anything. So I radio in and I tell them I want to put this thing out of its misery. Can they send over animal control or someone? They tell me animal control won’t come for a deer in the woods; deer are supposed to be in the woods. So you’ll have to do it. Only I don’t know how, and I don’t want to make things worse by doing it wrong. So the dispatcher finds a cop who’s a hunter, and the guy tells me, ‘Get as close as you can but not too close, because you could get a hoof in the face. Aim for the spot right where the neck meets the skull, just below the skull, so you can put the bullet right in her brain. She’ll never feel a thing,’ he says.
“So that’s what I did. I got up as close as I could and I shot her.”
Me: “And?”
“It just feels like part of that day somehow.”
“It bothered you, obviously.”
“No. That’s the thing. It bothered me right up until I pulled the trigger. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but once it was over, it was like nothing. Didn’t matter at all. It’s just that it was my first time.” He batted away the memory with the back of his hand. “It’s just something that happened. Forget about it. Just a strange day.”
* * *
—
That same evening—day two, soon after Glover shot the deer—Jane’s older sister, Kate, appeared at the house. Neither Miranda nor Jeff is sure now how Kate got word of the disappearance; presumably Dan called and told her.
For Miranda, it was an enormous relief to see Aunt Kate. It meant the Larkins were not so alone, and Miranda was not the only girl, and her dad was not the only adult. Even Aunt Kate’s physical appearance was reassuring; she looked enough like Miranda’s missing mother that seeing Aunt Kate in the house felt vaguely like having her mom back home. Aunt Kate might even be a better version of Mom for this crisis: she was leaner, harder than her younger sister, with none of Jane’s kittenish warmth. She was tough.
(A side note: Today, you can hardly miss how the adult Miranda is so much more like her Aunt Kate than her warmer, “softer” mother, Jane. I have met Aunt Kate, now in her eighties, and she has some of Miranda’s chilly beauty and self-possession. There is even something in their voices that sounds alike.)
At the sight of her aunt, Miranda began to lose her composure.
Aunt Kate stepped around Dan and dropped down on her knees to entangle Miranda in a hug.
Miranda allowed herself to be gathered in close, though the cold still clung to Kate’s puffy down coat and to her cheeks and ears. “Oh, sweetheart. You must have been so worried. Don’t you worry. We’re going to figure this out.”
The boys were there, and Kate greeted each in a carefully modulated way—a more restrained hug for Jeff, who needed more nurturing than he let on, and a formal kiss for Alex who bent down, stiff as a jackknife, to accept it.
They settled in the little den on the first floor where the family always gathered, where Kate said in a peremptory way, “What’s going on? Tell me everything.”
Dan told her what little they knew, which was not much more than the bare fact that Jane had not been home the evening before to meet any of them. “We haven’t heard a thing, Kate. There’s nothing to do. We’re all just waiting. We’re trapped here.”
“Something happened. This is so unlike her. To just leave like this? No way. I can’t imagine it. She wouldn’t do this. Something must have happened.”
“Do you know anything, Kate?”
“Of course not.”
“Was she unhappy?”
“Jane? Jane? No. If she was unhappy, she never said anything to me.”
“I mean, was she unhappy with me, Kate? Be honest.”
“No, she never said anything like that, never.”
“Then why would she leave?”
“Oh, Dan, stop. Obviously there’s been some kind of accident. Or something.”
“They’ve checked, they’ve checked.” He fell back in his chair, hand-mopped his face.
“She wouldn’t just leave. She wouldn’t do that to the kids. Or you. Is it possible that one of your clients…?”
“My clients? No. No one would do this.”
“Well, something happened to her, because she would not just leave, I’m telling you.”
Dan said, “Kids, can you leave Aunt Kate and me alone for a minute so we can talk?” When they had shuffled out, he slid forward on his seat cushion and murmured, “Kate, did she ever talk to you about anyone?”
“Anyone like who?”
“You know what I mean. Was there someone else?”
“Oh God, no. Jane? Are you crazy?”
“There has to be a reason why a woman leaves her husband.”
“Dan, let me tell you something about Jane: she is a horrible liar. If she was unhappy or if she was seeing someone, you would have known it. You especially. No way she could have pulled that off. It’s not her. She’s too good for that.”
“Women have secrets.”
“People have secrets, Dan. But not Jane, not like that.”
“And if she was unhappy, you would tell me?”
“Yes, I would. Of course I would. She’s been unhappy in the past. We both know that. But not now. My impression was things were getting better, no?”
He drooped back into the chair. “I still think she was unhappy.”
“Why would you say that? Were you unhappy, Dan?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“That sounds like yes.”
“No. I wasn’t unhappy. Maybe not completely satisfied anymore, but not unhappy.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means, Kate. Jane and I have been married twenty years now.” (It was actually seventeen.) “Things change. It’s natural, it’s the same for everyone. Be honest. We’re not kids anymore.”
“Dan, I’m not a kid but I’m not unhappy.”
“I didn’t say I was unhappy. I said unsatisfied.”
“Did Jane know you were…unsatisfied?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m sure she probably did. How could she not?”
She searched his face for a moment. “Have you told my parents?”
“No. I couldn’t deal with it, frankly. It’s not a phone call I’m looking forward to.”
“Do you want me to tell them?”
“Yes, believe me. But I can’t let you. I have to do it. I’ll call them.”
“You want to call them now, together?”
He thought it over. “No. Let me give it one more day. Maybe she shows up and it’s all just a big misunderstanding. No need to flip them out for no reason.”
Kate accepted this without comment. She seemed resolved to give Dan whatever sort of help he needed and to avoid arguing with him, as she often did.
“The police seem to think she might come back.”
“Okay then. We’ll wait if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what they’re telling me.”
“Okay. I believe you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure what to believe myself.”
Kate had never quite connected with her brother-in-law, never quite “got” him. She liked Dan well enough, she told me years later. He was smart and pleasant. Certainly she understood what Jane saw in him: he was her type, successful and blandly handsome, with the sort of me-first attitude Jane always went for in men. Back when they were kids, Jane used to make a fool of herself over boys in a way Kate never did. But between Kate and Dan? The connection had never been more than a formality, a thin line linking them on the family tree. Kate had said to her sister once, cautiously, that there was something about Dan, an elusive quality, that made her think of Gertrude Stein’s famous put-down of Oakland, that “there’s no there there.” Jane laughed it off. She said she did not even know what that meant, “no there there,” it was just one of those clever-sounding phrases people like to say. So Kate had never raised the subject again. But at this moment, when she was trying her hardest to love Dan, to be there for him, she got the feeling again that there was nothing inside Dan to connect with. Whatever that essential thing is—the little pilot that sits inside our heads, the self, the soul, call it whatever you want—Kate could not seem to sense it in Dan. He was hollow.
Why, exactly, did Dan make her feel this way? What was it about him? The reasons seemed to dematerialize the moment she tried to name them.
He had a guarded personality. So what? Did everybody have to be an open book?
He could be remote, aloof, or lost in thought. So what? Probably he had more important things on his mind than the latest family gossip.
The flaw might have been Kate’s, too, remember. If she found Dan hollow, maybe her imagination was just too weak to conceive a person so different from herself. Her empathy could not extend that far. We are all sealed up alone. We all carry the center of the universe inside our own heads. It is, for each of us, a point a few inches behind our eyes where the binocular lines of vision converge. Only a narcissist or a child is fool enough to believe it. Of course Dan was not hollow, no more than Kate herself. She knew all this.
So Kate made a conscious effort to connect with her brother-in-law that night, to accept him unconditionally, be a sister to him. And yet, and yet.
* * *
—
Jeff. Somehow I have let Jeff slip offstage. It’s what he would have liked to do back then, as all this was unfolding. Jeff kept his secrets. It never bothered me. He went through a lot, obviously. It was his right to talk about it or not, as he chose. Anyway, I have always understood isolatoes like him. Honestly, it is you extroverts that mystify me, always bounding up with your tails wagging, wanting more and more and more. To me, Jeff’s reticence seemed perfectly natural.
For us new boys at school, this was an intense period even before Mrs. Larkin went missing. In those first few weeks and months of classes, all of us were reeling. Private school was much more demanding than public school had been. We were overwhelmed. We were meant to be overwhelmed. Our new school was famous for its rigor—the struggle maketh the man—so terrorizing the incoming seventh graders was terrifically on-brand.
One aspect of school life did feel easier, at least: the daily schedule, which gave us our first taste of independence. The days included free periods when we could do whatever we liked, so long as we did not leave campus. Jeff and I, and all of our friends, spent most of our free periods playing basketball in the gym. Jeff was never that into it. He would play but it was just to kill time, and he was not very good. When he first arrived at school, the older boys used to eyeball him for signs of his older brother’s talent, but he did not have Alex’s skill or ruthlessness. The truth is he never cared about basketball. Jeff just wanted to hang out, and back then the gym was the place to do it.
It was in that lovely old gym, between classes, that Jeff and I first talked about his mother’s vanishing. This was the Monday after Disappearance Day. As I mentioned, my own mother had seen a story about the disappearance in the paper on Saturday, and I came to school burning to ask Jeff about it. I did not have the chance until I found him in the gym midmorning.
