There’s No Place Like Here

27

Missing person number one, Orla Keane, entered the great Community Hall, the light shining in from the open door spotlighting her presence. She stopped at the entrance, trying to get her bearings, looking like Alice in Wonderland who had just swallowed an “Eat Me” beside the monstrous oak door. I cleared my throat nervously and its amplified sound bounced off the walls, raced to the ceilings, and back down again like a Ping-Pong ball let loose. She turned to where I had made the noise and began to make her way toward me, high heels on the wooden floor echoing loudly.

Joan and Helena had set up a table for me to sit behind on the far side of the room and, much to Joan’s disappointment, they stepped outside to give me privacy. As Orla approached me, I felt starstruck. I couldn’t believe that this person had stepped out of my “Missing” photographs and was now a living, breathing person walking directly toward me.

“Hello,” she said with a smile, her Cork accent still strong despite her time here.

“Hello.” My voice came out as a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. I looked down at the list of names on the table before me. I would have to do this twelve times today, and then again with Joan and Bernard. The thought of seeing all these people thrilled me, but the idea of having to discuss such delicate topics so subtly was draining me already. I had asked Helena earlier once again why on earth it was that I couldn’t just let everybody know without having to carry out this charade.

“Sandy,” she had said so firmly that I needn’t have even heard a reason, “when people want to get home they get desperate. For them to learn that you found your way here while looking for them would cause them to believe that they can leave with you. Life wouldn’t be worth living here with a few hundred people trailing your every move.”

She had a point. So here I was, playing the role of casting agent and owner of an acting agency, about to wind a conversation about every member of their family and friends into a Hamlet soliloquy.

I had had one more question for Helena. “Do you think that I can lead the people out of here and bring them home?” I had been wondering if that was my purpose for being here, because I was convinced I wasn’t staying. The typical victim belief: This can’t happen to me, not me of all people.

She smiled sadly, and once again I needn’t have heard her response because her face said it all. “Sorry, Moses, I don’t think so.” But before I dissolved completely she quickly added, “But I think you are here for a reason and that reason is, right now, to share your stories with everyone, to tell them about their families and how much they’re missed. That’s your way of bringing them home.”

I looked up at Orla, who was sitting before me anxiously awaiting my next move. It was time to bring her home.

She was twenty-six years old now and she looked like she’d hardly changed at all. Nearly six years had passed since she had gone missing. Six years I’d spent looking for her. I knew her parents’ names were Clara and Jim and they had divorced two years ago. I knew she had two sisters, Ruth and Lorna, and a brother, James. Her best friends were Laura and Rebecca, who was also known as “Fly” because of her regular forgetfulness to zip up her fly. Orla was studying art history at Cork University when she went missing. Her debs dress was purple, and the scar across her left eyebrow was from when she’d fallen off her bike on vacation in Bantry when she was eight. She lost her virginity when she was fifteen at a house party, to Niall Kennedy, the guy who worked at the local video store, and she secretly crashed her parents’ car when they were away for a week in Spain but had it repaired on time and they still don’t know it to this day. Her favorite colour is lilac, she loves pop music, played the piano until she was fourteen, had secretly dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer since the age of six, yet never once took a class, and she had been here for five and three quarter years.

I looked at her and didn’t know where to start. “So, Orla, tell me a bit about yourself.”

I watched her as though in a trance, watched the lips I’d seen only in photographs open and close, her face animated, alive, and I listened to her words. The singsong tone of her Cork accent, the way her long blond hair moved as she spoke. I was enthralled.

When she got to the part about studying in college I saw my chance to jump in. “Art history in Cork University?” I repeated. “I know someone who studied the same year as you.”

“Who?” She almost jumped off her seat.

“Rebecca Grey.”

Her mouth dropped open. “No way! Rebecca Grey is one of my best friends!”

“Really?” I noticed everything was still in the present. Rebecca was still her best friend.

“Yeah! That’s so weird, how do you know her?”

“Oh, I met her brother Enda a few times. He’s friends with friends of mine, you know how it is.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Actually, last time I saw him was at his wedding a few months ago. I think I may have met your mum and dad there too.”

She was silent for a moment and when she spoke again her voice was hushed and shaken. “How are they?”

“Oh, they were in great form, I was talking to one of your sisters, Lorna, I think.”

“Yes, Lorna!”

“She was telling me that she got engaged.”

“To Steven?!” She bounced up and down on her seat clapping her hands excitedly.

“Yes,” I said and smiled. “To Steven.”

“Oh, I knew she’d take him back.” She laughed with tears in her eyes.

“Your older sister was there with her husband. She was heavily pregnant, I noticed.”

“Oh.” A tear fell from her eye and she quickly wiped it away. “What else, who else did you see? Did my mum and dad say anything? What did they look like?”

And so I brought her home.

A half hour had passed and Joan coughed rather loudly to let me know another audition applicant had arrived. We hadn’t even noticed Joan enter the hall and I looked at my wrist to check the time, forgetting that my watch was still lying somewhere on the road leading out of the village. The familiar feeling of irritation scratched at my body as I thought of it being somewhere yet not being able to find it. I looked up to see the next person I was due to meet, Carol Dempsey, nervously wringing her hands as she stood by Joan, and my irritation disappeared. I became scared all over again.

“I’m sorry, our time is up,” I said to Orla.

Her face fell and I knew she had all of a sudden been whisked away from home and transported and plonked back to the reality of where she was.

“But I haven’t even auditioned,” she panicked.

“It’s OK, you’ve got the part,” I whispered and winked.

Her face lit up as she stood, leaned over, and grasped my hand in her two hands. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

I watched her leave with Helena, her head awash with a million new thoughts of stories from home. So much to think about now, new thoughts and new memories all raising new questions and a new longing for home.

Carol sat before me. A mother of three, housewife, from Donegal, forty-two years old and a member of the local choir, who went missing while on her way back from choir practice four years ago. She had passed her driving test a week before her disappearance, her husband had celebrated his forty-fifth birthday with the family the night before, and her youngest daughter’s school play was opening the following week. I looked at her mouselike face, timid and shy, her brown limp hair tucked behind pink ears, a purse clasped in her hands on her lap, and I instantly wanted to take her home.

“So, Carol,” I said gently, “why don’t we start off by you just telling me a bit about yourself.”

Later in the day, we all sat around in a circle in the grand Community Hall. I faced the stage and the thousands of handprints decorating the backdrop, “Strength and hope,” I repeated to myself. Strength and hope had got me through today; I was still on a high from meeting my idols, but knew I would quickly become drained. As usual, as soon as everybody had taken their places, I had chosen to stand back and observe, outside of the circle. Old habits die hard. Helena had called out to me and the chorus of fifteen other voices joined in, coercing me to sit down. I took a seat, aware that I was joining a group, something I had run from doing all of my life. I slowly sat down, all the time battling with my legs, which wanted to run out the door, and my mouth, which wanted to make an excuse to leave.

After I had spoken to everybody individually, Helena had come up with the idea of everybody getting to know one another better by sharing the experiences of where and when they had gone missing. She was calling it a team-building workshop, all to help the production, but I knew she was really doing it for me, to help me with my continuous search of understanding where we all are and how we got here.

One by one, the people explained how they had arrived here. It was an emotional experience. Some had been here only a few years, others more than a decade, yet the realization of never returning home was still raw. There were tears from many but, as usual, none from me. It was as though by the time my tears worked their way from my heart to my eyes, they had evaporated and drifted into the air as sad vapors instead. I was fascinated to hear what had happened after they left the scenes that I had examined so many times and arrived here. It was all so simple. I had followed unnecessary routes, suspected all the wrong people, scrutinized every single inch of the road they were last seen on. It was pointless because all they did was wander off here.

While it was painful for the missing, knowing that they wouldn’t be returning home, it was a lot better than the alternative. I wished Jenny-May Butler was here, I wished Donal Ruttle was here, I wished the others on my list and the thousands of others that go missing every year were here. I prayed that harm hadn’t come to Jenny-May. I prayed that, if it had, it had been quick and painless. But mostly I prayed that she was here.

I was captivated as I watched all of these people. I was a stranger to them but they were best friends to me. I had so many stories of theirs I wanted to tell them, that I knew and understood and had laughed at and could identify with. There were so many people they knew whom I wanted to tell them I’d met and laughed with. There were situations that I knew they’d been in that I wanted to tell them I shared. The complete opposite to how I was in life. I wanted to join in, swap stories, and belong.

There was a silence and I realized all eyes were on me.

“Well?” Helena asked, adjusting her lemon pashmina around her shoulders.

“Well, what?” I asked, looking around in confusion.

“Aren’t you going to tell us your story of arriving here?”

I felt like telling them I’d been here long before them all. But I didn’t. Instead I politely excused myself from the hall.

Later that night, I sat in the eatery at a quiet table with Helena and Joseph. Candles flickered on every table, birds-of-paradise sat in small tin buckets in the center. We had just finished an appetizer of wild mushroom soup and piping hot brown bread, and I sat back in my chair, already full, and awaited my main course. The eatery was quiet on this Wednesday night, people choosing to go to bed before their early starts at work the next day. Each of the people taking part in the production had been granted time off from their work, their involvement in the arts seen to be enough. We were to spend all day, every day, rehearsing in order to meet the deadline of next Sunday, when Helena had already assured the cast and community the dress rehearsal would be. This was a task that seemed highly ambitious and entirely unrealistic in my eyes, yet Helena assured me that people here threw themselves into their work and were highly productive. But what did I know?

I looked at my wrist for the millionth time since I’d lost my watch, and sighed with frustration.

“I have to find my watch.”

“Don’t worry.” Helena smiled. “It’s not like being at home, Sandy; things don’t just go missing.”

“I know, I know, you keep telling me that, but if that’s so, well, then where is it?”

“Wherever you dropped it.” She laughed, and shook her head at me like I was a child.

Joseph, I noticed, didn’t smile but changed the subject altogether. “What kind of play will you do?” he asked in his deep soothing tones.

I laughed. “We have no idea. Helena managed to steer the conversation away from talk of what the actual play would be every time someone asked. I don’t mean to rain on your parade but I think a week is an entirely implausible amount of time to rehearse and perfect a play.”

“It will be a short one,” Helena said defensively.

“What about scripts and costumes and whatever else is needed?” I asked, suddenly realizing the extent of what we would have to do.

“Don’t worry about all of that, Sandy.” She turned to Joseph. “There’s the belief at home that old theaters are haunted because costumes and makeup are always reported or rumored to go missing. Well, it’s true, they do go missing but it’s not due to ghosts, not of the pilfering kind, anyway, because the finest costumes show up here daily. Bobby will have everything we need,” she said calmly.

“She has thought this all through.” Joseph smiled affectionately at his wife.

“Oh, the thinking is all finished, dear. It has already been decided. We are going to stage The Wizard of Oz,” Helena said grandly and proudly, swirling her red wine and taking a sip.

I started laughing.

“Why is it funny?” Joseph asked, amused.

“It’s The Wizard of Oz,” I stressed. “It’s not a play, it’s a musical! It’s what children do in school shows. I thought you’d come up with something a bit more cultured, like a Beckett play or O’Casey,” I argued. “But The Wizard of Oz…?” I wrinkled my nose.

“My, my, I think we have a snob on our hands.” Helena tried not to smile.

“I’m not aware of this Wizard of Oz.” Joseph looked confused.

I gasped. “Neglected child.”

“It’s not something that was shown all the time in Watamu,” Helena reminded me. “And if you hadn’t left rehearsals so early today, Sandy, you would have learned that we are not doing a musical version. It is an adaptation written many years ago by Dennis O’Shea, a fine Irish playwright who has been here for two years. He heard about what we were doing and brought it to me this morning. I thought it was perfect, and so it has already been cast and the first few scenes blocked. Mind you I had to tell them that it was you that had made the decision.”

“You cast them in The Wizard of Oz?” I said, totally unimpressed.

“What is it about?” Joseph asked, intrigued.

“Sandy, you do the honors,” Helena said.

“OK, well, it’s a children’s movie,” I stressed to Helena, “made in the thirties about a little girl called Dorothy Gale who is swept away in a cyclone to a magical land. Once there, she embarks on a quest to see the wizard, who can help her return home. It’s ridiculous to ask a group of adults to do it.” I laughed, but realized no one was laughing with me.

“And this wizard, does he help her?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, feeling it odd the story was being taken so seriously. “The wizard helps her and she learns that she could have returned home the whole time. All she had to do was tap her ruby heels together and say ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.’”

He still didn’t laugh. “So she returns home in the end?”

There was a silence and I finally understood why. I nodded slowly.

“And what does she do while she’s in this magical land?”

“She helps her friends,” I said quietly.

“It doesn’t seem such a silly story to me,” Joseph said seriously. “One the people here will very much like to see.”

I thought about that. In fact, I thought about it all night, until I was dreaming of ruby slippers and cyclones and of talking lions and houses that fell on witches, until the phrase “There’s no place like home” was echoing so loudly and continuously in my head that I woke up saying it aloud and I was afraid to go back to sleep.