The Missing

4

It’s my mother. She’s breathing hard, and my stomach clenches with the constant, nagging dread from my childhood. Did something happen? It only lasts a moment. That calamity has already occurred, it took place a long time ago. There could be any number of reasons for Mama’s rapid breathing. Maybe she just came in from her evening walk, although I don’t know whether she’s still fond of taking walks. And I don’t care. I think about Alex. About the fact that by this time he might have left a message on my voice mail. Maybe he’s trying to call me at this very second.

“Mama, I have to—”

But she doesn’t seem to hear me. Undeterred, she starts talking, telling me how tired she is. She’s had several extremely trying days. A client has threatened one of her colleagues.

“It was the usual sort of thing. ‘I know where you live and where your children go to school.’ Except this time the guy flipped her desk over.”

I want to scream that I’m a grown-up now and I’ve got my own problems, that things are happening in my life that are way more frightening than what she’s talking about. But of course I say nothing.

Mama pauses, murmurs, “Hmm,” and then moves on to the next topic of conversation, the lovely late summer weather. Nausea rises inside me. Why does she do this? Stubbornly pretending that we’re just an ordinary mother and daughter. As if it were possible for the two of us to truly communicate after all these years, to reach past what’s between us and connect with each other again. Reach past what happened. Papa, who disappeared.

I sink down onto the bed, touch my forehead with my free hand. Mama falls silent, and I realize that she has asked me something. I clear my throat. I’m forced to ask her to repeat the question.

“Are you alone?”

A wave of emotions surges inside me. That question doesn’t belong here. It belongs to the time before Alex. All those nights when I came home to an empty apartment to sit alone at the kitchen table, with the silence echoing off the walls and only a lit candle to keep me company. That intense longing for companionship and closeness. And the equally intense fear of letting anyone behind my protective walls. Are you alone?

Again I feel hot tears fill my eyes, and I shake my head in an attempt to hold them back. It’s not like me to be so emotional, not at all. But I haven’t been myself since my appointment at the clinic a couple of weeks ago. And after what happened last night, how could anything go on as usual? In my mind’s eye, I picture Lake Malice, the calm and bewitched water of the lake. The island in the middle, the steep slope on one side, and the dark crowns of the trees etched against the sky. Alex. Smilla.

“Yes, I’m alone.”

Mama sighs. You’re such a disappointment, Greta. She doesn’t say that, but I can tell it’s what she’s thinking. I swallow the lump in my throat, pull myself together.

“Mama, I can’t… I really need to—”

“You sound different. Has something happened?”

What if I told her the situation? What if I told her everything? What would happen then? Would she jump into the car and drive right over and sweep me up in her arms? Would she take charge of everything just like she did my whole childhood? Push me onto a chair and tell me how things are going to be done from now on? What has to be done, what I should say, think, and feel? Probably.

“It’s so quiet on your end,” Mama goes on, and now she suddenly sounds like she’s on the alert. “Where exactly are you?”

I take a deep breath. Then I end the call. When the phone rings again and the same number appears on the display, I switch off the ringer.