Don't You Cry(38)

I don’t know if I should be here, but nevertheless, I am.

I stand outside for a good ten minutes or more, wondering if I really want to step foot inside the police station. Esther is missing, yes, maybe. But also maybe not. I could wait it out, give it a few more days to see if she comes home. The 311 operator more or less told me, anyway, that there wasn’t a whole lot the police department could do, whether or not I filed a report. People are allowed to up and disappear if they want to, she’d said. There’s nothing illegal about that. Other than putting Esther’s name into some sort of database, I wasn’t certain there was much they could do.

But what if filing a police report helps bring Esther home? Then it’s totally worth it.

On the other hand, what if Esther doesn’t want me to file a report? What if she’d rather I just leave her alone?

And so I’m really in quite the conundrum as I stand there, back pressed to the light bricks, wondering what to do: file a missing-persons report or no.

In the end I do. I file the report.

I meet with an officer and provide the basics for which he asks, including a physical description of Esther and the particulars into her quote-unquote disappearance. I’m sparse on the details, leaving out many things of which I assume Esther would rather not be made public knowledge, such as the fact that she’s been meeting with a psychologist. I provide a photo, one I find on my cell, an image of Esther and me together at our neighborhood’s Midsommarfest, a summer street festival, listening to live music and feasting on ears of corn, as behind us, the setting sun glinted off the buildings, turning the world to gold. We asked a passerby to take the photo, some dude who could hardly stop salivating over Esther long enough to snap the picture. She had corn in her teeth, melted butter on her chin and hands, and yet he, like I, thought she was beautiful. She is beautiful. Magnetic, really, the kind of individual who draws people with her idiosyncratic hair and heterochromatic eyes—whether or not they’re a sham. But more than her hair and her eyes and her impossibly flawless skin is her kindness, that tendency of hers to make people feel special whether or not they’re as ordinary as, well, as ordinary as me.

I pass the photo along to the officer and even he takes a second look and says, “Pretty girl,” and I say that she is, and I’m half certain we both blush.

The report will be filed; someone will be in touch. Esther isn’t met with the same regard as, say, a four-year-old girl who’s gone missing. I’m not sure quite what I expect: a search team to line up before me with orange vests and search-and-rescue dogs; squad cars; helicopters; volunteers on horseback wandering the streets of Chicago with a rope tracker, calling out her name in tandem. I guess this is what I hoped would happen, but none of it does. Instead, he tells me I could hang up posters, ask around town, consider hiring a PI. The officer also says, with an unsmiling face, that they’ll likely need to search our residence. I assure him I’ve looked; she’s not there. He gives me a look reminiscent of my little sister’s looks—as if he’s Einstein and I’m a giant ignoramus—and then again says that someone will be in touch. I say okay, before heading on to work, not quite sure whether I accomplished something, or made things even worse.





Alex

Morning begins like every other day: waking up at the crack of dawn, chugging down a Mountain Dew, slipping past a passed-out Pops on my way to work. My mind tries to make sense of the footsteps that followed me home last night in vain. Was someone there—and if so, then who?—or was it simply my brain playing a trick on me, a figment of the imagination? I don’t know. Already this morning I’m predicting how the day at the café will go, and I’m dreading every single minute of it, from Priddy harassing me for my persistent tardiness, to me, wriggling out of the sandy jacket and getting down to work, washing mounds of dishes left behind by cooks in the sink, the water so hot it scalds my hands. Red and Braids bellyaching about the meagerness of their tips. Broken dishes. Spilled food. Eight hours of feeling like a loser.

My only hope as I lumber along the restive shores of Lake Michigan on the way to greet Priddy is that Pearl will be there, sitting at the window of the café, eyes again on the office of Dr. Giles. This is the only thing that gets me through the monotonous, repetitive trek to work, through the dismal prospect of the next eight hours on my feet, scurrying around the café, gathering other people’s used forks and knives in my hand. Washing their dishes. Wiping spilled food off the tables and floors. Day after day after day, knowing in the back of my mind that this will never end.

I continue on along the lake, past the stationary carousel, and head into town.

There’s an Amtrak station in town, not too far from the beach. A half mile, a quarter mile, I don’t know. I can’t say. Just on the other side of the sand-strewn beach parking lot. It’s small, a waiting area and the ticket booth, with a few bike racks that remain empty at this time in the morning. There isn’t even a john. The train passes through a couple times a day heading one of two ways: Grand Rapids—eastbound—or Chicago—westbound. Today it’s eastbound, the Pere Marquette to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve never been there before.

The station is quiet when I pass by on my daily morning trek to work, only a couple riders climbing on board for the two-and-a-half-hour ride. Another stepping off, having just arrived from Chicago. They carry duffel bags and suitcases in their hands. Some have hands that are empty, just a purse strung over the shoulder or the wallet in the pocket of their jeans. It’s a short commute either way, the kind you can pull off, round trip, in a day. There and back again in the very same day.