The River at Night(72)

Police and detectives in helicopters, locals flying prop planes, professional trackers with dogs—the entire state of Maine, it seemed—ventured out to search for Simone, and to find Rory’s and Sandra’s bodies. At first they leaned on Dean to lead them, but he refused and they didn’t press him. They found the bodies where we had marked them and removed both for a proper burial, but even though they found Simone and Dean’s camp—animal heads in the trees, the strangely slanted cabin, goats wandering and hungry—Simone had vanished. Still, the searchers felt they must have been close. They’d found coals glowing red from a recent fire and the bones of a juvenile moose piled neatly next to the makeshift grill.

I visit Dean in the halfway house where they’ve placed him, a sad suburban ranch house a few miles from me. After much red tape and wringing of bureaucratic hands, I have become his legal advocate. I fought for it, as did he, mainly by refusing to speak to anyone else for the longest time, so there was only me for the first few months to try to settle him. And he is not at all settled. They cut his hair short, taught him how to use a knife and fork, how to tolerate this society’s level of cleanliness, all the surface trappings of civilization. Soon he will go to Walmart and Target and be brain-dead like the rest of us, and I dread it.

He’s partial to dark khaki pants, plaid flannel shirts, and loafers with no socks when he’ll give in to wearing shoes at all, and he loves his Clark Kent glasses. Walking down the street, he looks like a smallish, studious, unhip college student, perhaps with his belt notched in a bit too tight. He does things like escape from the group home at night and walk the four miles to my apartment, barefoot, where he tosses pebbles at my window like a lover until I let him in and we sit and sign or I read to him. Most television shows frighten him; he has an intolerance for violence I’ve become immune to.

Mostly, we search online for his family. We discovered an uncle who headed up a local chapter of the National Association of the Deaf in Fort Kent, as well as photos of a beautiful chestnut-haired nursing student—Simone as a young woman. I have the feeling Dean knows where she is and won’t tell me, won’t tell anyone. When I gently posed the idea that she might be dead, he looked at me as if I were crazy.

We also found aunts, younger cousins, even a grandfather. Dean sat by me, transfixed. He begged me to pick up the phone and call the ones whose numbers we could find. He’s learning to read at a startling rate, knows the subways now, and has figured out there are buses and trains that go anywhere and everywhere.

? ? ?

I started worrying about Pia when she stopped updating her bucket list on her website; in fact, it had been radio silence from her since mid-August. She’d taken herself off Facebook, Twitter, even LinkedIn, as if she were trying to erase herself. Rachel and I agreed we’d better plan a bit of reconnaissance.

We booked a weekend at a small cabin in Provincetown, right on the beach where the land ended and the sea had its turn just yards from our back door. On Saturday we woke to the dregs of a hurricane that had churned north from the Carolinas, rain slamming down so hard we couldn’t see the ocean, only hard gray lines outside our rented bay windows.

We gathered our coffee and installed ourselves on a shabby couch in the cozy kitchen nook, panes rattling in the wind. Just outside, on a stone patio that bordered the beach, four pastel deck chairs sat facing the sea. In my mind’s eye, Sandra perched in the turquoise one, waving and smiling as her black hair whipped in the wind. Even as I tried to acclimate to our new world of three, it was no use: four still seemed the best number.

“Do you guys dream about her too?” Rachel asked, gazing out at the churning sea.

“Simone?” Pia shuddered as she popped her bagel out of the toaster. “Not me.”

“I have nightmares, absolutely.” I did. I’d lie awake those early--autumn evenings listening to the leaves rustle outside my window, a trace of smoke in the air, Simone’s face emerging from the darkness each time I closed my eyes. Every sound I couldn’t explain, every late-night footfall on the apartment stairwell, made my heart slam against my chest. How could she find me? Impossible. But how could she disappear so completely? Anything is possible.

“I dream about the river, mostly,” Rachel said. “I wake up and I’m coughing, my lungs are filled with water.” A shiver went through her and she concentrated on blowing the steam off her coffee. “It takes me an hour just to calm the fuck down and go back to sleep.”

Pia and I gave her a questioning glance.

“No, no, I’ve been good.” She laughed. “Are you kidding? I feel like I’ve looked into the face of something even more monstrous than my own disease. Trust me, that’ll sober you right up.”

Between bites of her bagel, Pia fidgeted with a bracelet looped a few times around her wrist. It looked pretty ratty, whatever it was, not like the hip jewelry she usually wore. And then I recognized it.

“Is that Rory’s bracelet?”

She nodded.

“When did you—”

“When you guys went to look for the raft that first time, I just wanted something . . .” She cleared her throat, then added more softly, “He’s the last guy I’ve been with, you know. I can’t bring myself to . . . Well, I know you guys didn’t think much of him.”

Rachel gave her a look. “Earlier, when I asked if you dreamed about her, I was talking about Sandra. Do you think about her, is what I meant.”