Nobody Is Ever Missing Read Online Free PDF

explanation.
    I’m not writing a novel , I said. I don’t like novels.
    It’s for the best , Werner said. Misery begins in publishing.
    And I am not what a person would call outspoken and I’m not even much of a speaker, according to some, and I don’t know if it was because of how old and harmless Werner seemed or because I recognized something in him that gave me an odd comfort, but I spoke with a strange confidence, even a kind of arrogance, as if I was picking up arrogance from Werner like radio waves.
    Well, that’s a funny thing to say after all that publishing has gotten you, isn’t it?
    Is it?
    I don’t know.
    Maybe misery begins everywhere , he said.
    Behind me I could hear Harriet talking about Werner’s brilliance. In front of me I could see Werner not even giving a shit.
    I’d still rather be back in New Zealand away from this concrete wasps’ nest. People in large quantities are terrible.
    The fluorescents buzzed. The people buzzed.
    I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand , I said (then thought, I have?).
    Well, if you do, you’ll have a place to stay. I have an extra room on the farm.
    Oh , I said, and the crowd parted us, left me with this idea.
    Later that night, drinking gin with all of Harriet’s people in her office, I asked Werner if he’d meant it, if he was really offering me a place to stay or if he was just being nice.
    I’m not nice , he said, and I don’t pretend to be. I have an extra room. I’m not much good for company, but the room is yours if you want. You can tend the garden and we’ll call it even.
    And though he sounded sincere I still suspected that this was one of those things a person says on impulse and then aggressively defends to mask the mistake.
    Blank eyed, he scrawled an address on a bit of paper.

 
    8
    Only two cars and fifteen minutes passed before someone stopped, a black truck driven by a sun-wrinkled lady wearing a straw hat.
    Into town? she asked, and I took this as a chance to not make a decision, to just agree.
    While we drove she asked me about myself and I found it impossible to answer anything honestly. She asked what had brought me to New Zealand and I said that my husband had. She asked me what my husband did and I said he was a farmer.
    Well, he wants to be a farmer , I said. That’s why he’s here.
    Everything grows here , the old woman said proudly. All sorts of plants and other things. Do you have children?
    I laughed by accident, the kind of laugh that didn’t say you thought something was funny.
    No.
    Well, my goodness. I suppose women really are putting off having children these days. You ought to get to it. I only bring it up because there is no joy in life greater than an empty house. Don’t let the other women fool you with this empty-nest-syndrome stuff. Life gets better once the kids are out and the sooner you have them the sooner they can leave.
    Ah. Okay , I said.
    What’s even better is finally being a widow.
    The woman started laughing and laughing and laughing so much I felt like I had to laugh, too, so I did and then I realized we were laughing at how her husband was dead, which really didn’t seem so funny, and I think we realized that at the same time, and we both stopped laughing and there was that deeply quiet moment after two people have laughed too much and we let that quiet moment stay for the rest of the drive. During that silence I thought of that night when my husband and I were having one of the arguments about the way we argue and I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water but instead picked up a knife because I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face—not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt—and I picked up a chef’s knife, our heavy good one that I used for everything from cutting soft fruit to impaling pumpkins and I looked at it, laughed a noiseless laugh, put the chef’s knife down, poured myself a glass of water,