The Missing Person Read Online Free PDF Page B

result was horrible, like an enchilada Popsicle, a bad idea for a food item if ever there was one. The waitress asked if I wanted another drink, and I nodded gratefully.
    David Michaelson took a long, prissy drink of Coke.
    â€œYou should drink some water with that, Lynn,” my mother said. “Or else you’ll get dehydrated.”
    â€œI’ll be fine, Mom.”
    â€œYou’ll thank me later if you drink a glass of water right now. You’ve forgotten how dry this climate really is.”
    â€œI
know,
Mom.”
    â€œJust drink some water to appease me.”
    I rolled my eyes and drained half a glass.
    â€œWho was there—that Angus person?”
    When I nodded, she leaned forward, ignoring her food. “He’s the person I hold responsible.” Anger lent her eyes a sharp, even light. “You should hear how Wylie talks about him. Or used to talk. He’s changed since he got involved with that whole
group.
”
    â€œWhat group?” I said. “Changed how?”
    â€œWylie used to be . . . well, you know how he was,” she said. She began to fiddle with her food, teasing the sauce with her fork. “He had his ideas about the way things should be run, of course. But he was a good boy. I know that sounds like a motherly thing to say. But.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I said. “That he isn’t a good boy anymore? What are you talking about, exactly? Has he turned to a life of crime?”
    â€œYou know what she means,” David Michaelson said in an ingratiating tone.
    â€œNo,” I told him, “I really don’t. He might not have the loveliest apartment or be going to
law school,
but besides that I’m not sure I see what’s so wrong with his life.” I started in on the second margarita.
    My mother glanced down, wielding her knife and fork as if she were about to commence a delicate surgery; and then the muscles in her face contracted, bringing all her wrinkles into relief, the bones of her face growing prominent beneath her skin. She looked sad and fragile and old. “I wish he’d call me,” she finally said, and took a bite of refried beans.
    After lunch I once again shook David Michaelson’s hand.
    â€œEnjoy your visit here, Lynn,” he said, leaning, it seemed to me, on the word “visit.” I swallowed, with some effort, and thanked him. My mother squeezed my hand.
    At a red light, the driver next to me sat lovingly picking his nose. The desert dropped away from the highway in pale brown layers, thin shrubs of cactus dotting the ground, dim blue mesas sleeping at the edge of the horizon. The world looked scorched and brittle in the glare of the afternoon sun. As the cars in front of me inched forward, I read from bumper to bumper. WICCANS HAVE MORE FUN, one sticker claimed; I also learned that GUN CONTROL MEANS HITTING YOUR TARGET and IT’S A DESERT, STUPID! I turned on the radio, listened to the weather forecast—hot and sunny and dry for the next week, for all weeks, for the indefinite future—and asked myself where the hell Wylie was.
    I parked the Caprice in my mother’s driveway. Without her in it, the condo had the vaguely liberated air of childhood days when I’d stayed home sick from school. Aside from the tchotchkes on the mantelpiece, my mother had mostly stored away the things from our old house, and I wondered what she’d done with it all. Not just the furniture or my father’s books and clothes, but the smaller items: his diploma, say, or the Nambe dish he kept spare change in, and which I always stole from, and which he knew and tolerated. Other knickknacks also had been dispensed with: candlesticks and planters, the flower-shaped clock, even art that used to hang on walls. There was a kind of ruthlessness to her decorating scheme, as if she’d turned her life into a hotel room. But she couldn’t have gotten rid of everything.
    On a hunch I went