Red Leaves

THREE

The next morning Meredith was already up and making breakfast by the time I came into the kitchen.

"Well, hello, sleepyhead," she said lightly.

The air was thick with the salty smell of bacon and brewing coffee, odors that mark a family man as surely as cheap perfume betrays a bounder.

"You're awfully energetic this morning," I said.

Meredith forked a strip of bacon onto a paper towel to let it drain. "I woke up starving. Don't you ever wake up starving?"

For some reason, I heard a faint sense of accusation in her question, the sense that my own early-morning lack of appetite was emblematic of deeper deficiencies. Did I lack ambition, too, she seemed to ask. And passion? Did I lack sufficient hungers?

She drew the bacon from the paper towel and took a quick bite. "Yum." She snapped at the dangling end of the bacon, tearing the meat away in small bites. Wolfishly. I half expected to hear her growl.

Or did she do any of this, I wonder now. Was it merely something I thought I saw? And even if it were really there, where does a man go with such odd presentiments, a sense, vague and ineffable, that you do not really know the one you know, that all your previous soundings have gone no deeper than the shallows.

I sat down at the table, picked up the paper, and glanced at the headline, something about the proposed town budget. "Keith got in late." I idly turned the page, now looking for the ad I'd placed three days before. "Around midnight, I guess."

Meredith grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker and poured each of us a steaming cup.

"I heard him come in," I added. "But you were out like a light."

She sat down, took a sip from her cup, then tossed her hair with an earthy flare, like a woman in a roadhouse. "Beautiful morning," she said. Then she laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, just some silly joke Dr. Mays told us at the meeting."

"Which was?"

She waved her hand. "You wouldn't think it was funny."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's silly, Eric. You wouldn't like it."

"Try me."

She shrugged. "Okay," she said, "It wasn't really a joke. It was a quotation. From Lenny Bruce." She chuckled again. "He said that the difference between a man and a woman is that when a woman is thrown through a plateglass window, she doesn't get up thinking about sex."

"Dr. Mays said that?" I asked, surprised. "Dr. Mays of the thick glasses and tweed jacket and white meerschaum pipe?"

Meredith took another sip of coffee. "The very one."

I folded the paper and laid it on the table. "I'm surprised he's even heard of Lenny Bruce."

Meredith snapped another strip of bacon from the plate and took a small bite. "People aren't always what they seem," she said.

"Not me." I spread out my arms. "I'm exactly what I seem."

She started to respond, then caught herself and said, "Yes, you are, Eric. You are exactly what you seem."

Again, I felt the hint of an accusation of being flat, one-dimensional, by-the-book, dully transparent. I thought of my father, the mystery man, his unexplained absences from and abrupt returns to the family circle, his empty chair at the dining table, the vacant look in my mother's eyes when they inadvertently fell upon it. I drew my arms back in. "And that's a good thing, right?" I asked.

"What's a good thing?" Meredith asked.

"Being what I seem," I answered. "Because otherwise you might be afraid of me."

"Afraid?"

"That I might suddenly become someone else. A murderer or something. One of those guys who comes home from work one day and hacks his whole family to death."

Meredith appeared faintly alarmed. "Don't say things like that, Eric." Her eyes darted away, then returned to me, sparkling darkly, as if the tables had been turned, and she had spotted the animal in me.

"I'm just making a point," I told her. "If people really weren't what they seemed, then we could never trust each other, and if that happened, the whole thing would fall apart, wouldn't it?"

She turned my question over in her mind and seemed to come to some conclusion about it, though she gave no hint of what the conclusion was. Instead, she rose, walked to the sink, and looked out across the grounds, her eyes darting from the picnic table to the grill before settling on the wooden bird feeder, which hung from a nearby pine. "Winter's coming," she said. "I hate winter."

This was not a sentiment she'd ever expressed before. "Hate winter? I thought you loved winter. The fire, the coziness."

She looked at me. "You're right. I guess it's autumn I don't like."

"Why?"

She returned her gaze to the window. Her right hand lifted, as if on its own, a pale bird rising until it came to rest at her throat. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe just all those falling leaves."

A few of those leaves had already fallen, I noticed, as I headed down the walkway to my car. They were large and yellow, with small brown spots that looked vaguely disturbing, like tiny cancers in the flesh of the leaf.

Which is probably why I thought of Jenny as I continued down the walkway that morning. I couldn't imagine the icy tremor that had surely coursed through my mother and father when the doctor had first diagnosed the tumor. Or maybe it had felt like a blade, slicing them open, spilling any hope of future happiness onto the tiled floor. Jenny, the bright one, the one with the most promise, was going to die, and so there would be no family photographs of her growing up, acting in the school play, graduating, going to college, marrying, having children of her own. That was what must have struck them at that instant, I decided, that the life they'd expected, both Jenny's and their own, had just exploded, leaving nothing but acrid smoke behind.

I'd reached the car and was about to get in when I saw Meredith open the front door, her arm outstretched, waving me back toward the house.

"What is it?" I called.

She said nothing, but continued to wave, so I closed the door and returned to the house.

"It's Vince Giordano," she said, nodding toward the kitchen phone.

I looked at her quizzically, then went to the phone. "Hey, Vince," I said.

"Eric," Vince said starkly. "Listen, I didn't want to upset Meredith, but I have to know if you ... if you've seen Keith this morning."

"No, I haven't. He usually sleeps late on Saturday morning."

"But he's home? He came home last night?"

"Yes, he did."

"Do you know when that was?"

Suddenly, I felt my answer assume unexpected weight. "Around midnight, I think."

There was a brief silence, then Vince said, "Amy's missing."

I waited for Vince to finish the sentence, tell me what Amy was missing, a ring, a watch, something Keith could help her find.

"She wasn't in her room this morning," Vince added. "We waited for her to get up and come down, but she never did. So we went up to look ... and she was ... gone."

I would later remember Vince's words not so much as words, but as a distant tolling, accompanied by a palpable change in the weight of the air around me.

"We've looked everywhere," Vince added. "All over the house. The neighborhood. We can't find her anywhere, and so I thought maybe ... Keith..."

"I'll get him up," I said quickly. "I'll call you right back"

"Thanks," Vince said softly. "Thank you."

I hung up and glanced toward Meredith. She read the expression on my face and looked suddenly troubled.

"It's Amy," I told her. "They can't find her. She wasn't in her room this morning. They've looked everywhere, but so far, nothing."

"Oh, no," Meredith whispered.

"We have to talk to Keith."

We walked upstairs together. I tapped at Keiths door. No answer. I tapped again. "Keith?"

There was still no answer and so I tried the door. As always, it was locked. I tapped again, this time much more loudly. "Keith, get up. This is important."

I heard a low moan, then the pad of Keiths feet as he walked to the door. "What is it?" he groaned without opening it.

"It's about Amy Giordano," I said. "Her father just called. They can't find her."

The door opened slightly and a watery eye seemed to swim toward me like a small blue fish through the murky water of an aquarium.

"Can't find her?" Keith asked.

"That's what I said."

Meredith pressed near the door. "Get dressed and come downstairs, Keith," she said. Her voice was quite stern, like a teacher's. "Hurry up."

We walked back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table and waited for Keith to come join us.

"Maybe she just went for a walk," I said.

Meredith looked at me worriedly. "If something happened to Amy, Keith would be the one they'd suspect."

"Meredith, there's no point in—"

"Maybe we should call Leo."

"Leo? No. Keith doesn't need a lawyer."

"Yes, but—"

"Meredith, all we're going to do is ask Keith a few questions. When he last saw Amy. If she seemed okay. Then I'm going to call Vince and tell him what Keith said." I looked at her pointedly. "Okay?"

She nodded tensely. "Yes, fine."

Keith slouched down the stairs, still drowsy, scratching his head. "Now ... what did you say about Amy?" he asked, as he slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table.

"She's missing," I told him.

Keith rubbed his eyes with his fists. "That's crazy," he said, with a light, dismissive grunt.

Meredith leaned forward, her voice measured. "This is serious, Keith. Where was Amy when you left the Giordanos' house last night?"

"In her bedroom," Keith answered, still drowsy, but now coming a bit more to life. "I read her a story. Then I went to the living room and watched TV."

"When did you read her the story?"

"About eight-thirty, I guess."

"Don't guess," Meredith snapped. "Don't guess about anything, Keith."

For the first time the gravity of the situation registered on Keith's face. "She's really missing?" he asked, as if everything up to now had been some kind of joke.

"What do you think we've been saying, Keith?" Meredith asked.

"Listen," I said to him. "I want you to think carefully, because I have to call Mr. Giordano and tell him exactly what you tell me. So, like your mother says, Keith, don't guess about anything."

He nodded, and I could see that it had sunk in fully now. "Okay, sure," he said.

"All right," I began. "You didn't see Amy again, right? Not after you read her that story?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Keith answered emphatically. His gaze darted over to Meredith. "I didn't see her again."

"Do you have any idea where she is?" I asked.

Keith looked suddenly offended. "Of course not." He glanced back and forth between Meredith and me. "It's the truth," he cried. "I didn't see her again."

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Anything out of the ordinary."

"You mean like ... was she acting funny ... or—"

"Funny. Strange. Unhappy. Maybe wanting to run away? Did she give you any hint of that?"

"No."

"Okay, how about something else," I said. "Somebody around the house. Peeping Tom, that sort of thing."

Keith shook his head. "I didn't see anything, Dad." His eyes swept over to Meredith, and I saw the first suggestion of worry in them. "Am I in trouble?"

Meredith sat back slightly, the posture she always assumed when she had no immediate answer.

Keith held his gaze on Meredith. "Are the police going to talk to me?"

Meredith shrugged. "I guess it depends."

"On what?"

Meredith remained silent.

Keith looked at me. "On what, Dad?"

I gave him the only answer I had. "On what happened to Amy, I suppose."