Lost and Wanted(45)

I imagined handing Charlie’s phone to Terrence. I thought I could see the look of gratitude and relief on his face. I imagined myself telling him that I hadn’t looked at any of its contents—although it did occur to me that I now knew the passcode. If I somehow were to recover it, would I have the discipline not to invade Charlie’s privacy? What were the rules regarding the privacy of the dead?

The phone was silent for about twenty minutes. When it pinged again, I reached for it eagerly—but this time it was Chendong, asking if she could stop by to talk about figure 2 in the electroweak symmetries paper. I agreed, trying to suppress my disappointment. It struck me that I was anticipating messages from “Charlie” the way I did when I met a new person-of-interest: my ordinary life buzzed with possibility every time I looked at my phone. I put it away and looked purposely out my window, but already on that dark afternoon it had the quality of a blank screen, reflecting my blurred image back at me.





25.


Chendong and I got embroiled in the paper until just before five, when it was time for me to leave to get Jack from aftercare. He was in a buoyant mood because Terrence and Simmi were coming over. I’d invited them for dinner, but Terrence had insisted on bringing it; he’d said that he missed cooking at his in-laws’, and wanted to make a lamb stew. They arrived at six, Simmi in a new silver parka, preparation for her first Boston winter. Terrence’s only concessions to the fall weather were a cap with the now-familiar cursive Z on it, and a lightweight down vest he was wearing over his T-shirt. He was carrying bags from Whole Foods.

I have an aversion to fancy supermarkets, not for any of the valid reasons people dislike them—the expense, the hypocrisy of consumerism dressed up as environmentalism, the pretense that food is art—but because they make me feel inadequate as a mother. I was never going to make homemade lamb stew for Jack. Charlie had been a good cook, of a different kind than her husband. She didn’t like recipes, but could look in an empty refrigerator and whip up something elegant—frittata, or salade ni?oise.

Terrence had bought two full bags of ingredients, perhaps because he didn’t trust me to have anything on hand. He went straight to the kitchen, while the children went to Jack’s room, and so I was able to sit in the living room and finish an email to Chendong. Then I started filling out paperwork related to the conference in P?llau. Soon wonderful smells began coming from the kitchen.

The children didn’t come out when Terrence called that the stew was ready, and so I said I would get them. The door to Jack’s room was shut, and when I went in, I saw that none of the toys had been pulled out. I called again, but the bathroom door was open; there was nowhere they could be hiding.

    Terrence had come into the living room. “Where are they?”

“I’ll go up and check.” He followed, and I was conscious of his footfalls on the steps behind me. It had been a while since I’d brought a man upstairs, and I was glad that I’d made the bed that morning. I looked in the office first, since that’s where they’d gone the last time, but it was empty. Terrence and I went into my bedroom, where there was a light behind the closed door. An unidentifiable clicking sound was coming from inside.

“What are you guys doing in there?” Terrence asked, with strained cheerfulness.

I have a walk-in closet, an addition of the previous owners, where plastic shelving units from the hardware store take up most of the space. These are crowded with old journals, years of tax returns, Jack’s artwork, medical records—less organized than stacked into piles to be dealt with later. Seated on the floor next to this jumble were both children, seemingly uninjured and wearing all of their clothing. These happy circumstances didn’t seem to alleviate Terrence’s worries the way they did mine.

They looked up, equally guilty but wearing different expressions: Jack embarrassed, Simmi sullen and defiant. Maybe she was nervous about having disobeyed my instructions about staying downstairs. On the floor between them was an extensive assemblage of supplies: a shoebox, black and red wires from Jack’s Snap Circuits kit (which they’d successfully connected, illuminating a red light that they’d fed through the side of the box), and the metronome that normally sat beside the keyboard in Jack’s room. For some reason, Simmi was holding two of our plastic drinking cups in her lap.

“Simmi?” Terrence asked. “What are you doing?”

To my surprise, it was Jack who answered first. “Science,” he said shortly, not looking at Simmi’s father. Simmi hugged the cups to her chest, concealing their contents with her hands.

“This is Helen’s bedroom,” Terrence said. “She asked you to play downstairs.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly.

    “We’re not playing.” Simmi’s voice had a disobedient edge to it, the way Jack’s sometimes does when he knows he has done something wrong and is trying to cover it up.

Terrence sounded more exhausted than stern: “You do not talk to me that way.”

This is something I’ve said to Jack myself, but I find that it doesn’t work—since it’s clear to both parties that the child has just done what the parent insists he or she does not do. Terrence looked from one child to the other. Jack seemed to waver, but Simmi glared at him, and he was silent.

“Can you explain?” I said, kneeling down. “What’s all this?”