i'm gonna write a book!
There was no telephone call made to Emma the day that her mother disappeared. There should have been - every good story has a scene where the main character learns that a terrible tragedy has taken place and immediately flies home to be with loved ones. Emma, like anybody familiar with drama, had been seeing and reading about the telephone call all of her life, in books and in movies, and she expected to receive one some day. Looking back she realized that she had not been standing in her sun-lit kitchen stirring cream into coffee the afternoon her mother was deemed officially gone. She had no significant other to pick up the phone first and then hand it to her. In fact, the best way to reach Emma would have been by cell phone, which was probably turned off at that hour because she was at work - none of the details of Emma’s real life matched her expectation of such a phone call.
This break from plot was almost as unbelievable to Emma as the three-month span between her mother’s disappearance and the day that it was finally brought to her attention. She wondered if, had she never gone home for Thanksgiving, she would have found out at all.
She flew from Georgia back home to Massachusetts on the last Tuesday afternoon in November. This was the year she was twenty-five. Just as her northern friends couldn’t understand why she wanted to go south, the men and women accompanying Emma on the plane were trying on Yankee tradition for three days only - and then getting the hell out of there. She heard a man bemoaning his sister’s decision to move to Boston. He said it was cold there, people weren’t friendly, and nobody had their own ideas. His wife patted his thick hand and assured him that it wouldn’t be that cold in November, and they’d only be staying a short time.
Emma was still oblivious about much of the southern tradition surrounding her - southerners tended to be skeptical of her because of her accent, and her propensity toward speaking her mind. She had made several southern friends since her decision to move, about a year ago, and the clearest strand of south she could determine, in all of them, was their ability to lie, straight faced. They didn’t lie for sport, or lie derisively, or, Emma thought, even lie consciously, like she sometimes did. What they did was lie in the name of propriety, of making others feel good and themselves sound good. Most of the time Emma thought she could tease out the truth, and most of the time it was only a question of what a friend actually felt like doing for the afternoon, but sometimes she thought she sensed a deeper lie. Her friends, although they liked her, didn’t believe she belonged there. They were waiting for her to leave - not because they wanted her to, but because Emma was from the north and it seemed to go without saying that the south would eventually disappoint and bore her.
She had taken pains to prove them wrong - pouring herself into her work, exploring the islands endlessly, and cultivating beautiful, fleeting relationships with nice southern boys who passed by on their boats. Yet Emma could sense the truth behind what went unsaid by her friends, which was that she was getting restless.
When she found out her mother had gone missing the blood drained completely from her face and went to the pit of her stomach, she felt herself filled and lightheaded. Her sensation of dread and fear was not for her mother, though, it was for herself. She immediately wished she had received the phone call, instead of news from across a nice dinner table in a nice restaurant, so that she would have been able to hide behind the receiver. If she had received a phone call, from the north to the south, it would have had given her an opportunity to follow the next step in a role - to leave her new home to briefly visit; show concern for her old home. This, in a way, would have reaffirmed her position in her decided life and residency in Savannah. It would have postponed Emma’s restlessness, given her an opportunity to re-immerse herself with the new perspective of moving on with her life despite her mother’s new craziest antic. Instead, all this time Emma had been secretly thinking of moving out of Savannah, and since it had lingered in the back of her mind for months she couldn’t ignore it. It made her furious, sitting at that dinner table, knowing that she and her mother had shared this same desire to leave.
“You don’t have any idea where she is.”
Her father answered, carefully, slowly shaking his head. “No.”
At that moment the waiter walked over, standing akimbo and thumbing the string of the black apron strung around his waist, and recited dinner specials. Then he asked what they wanted to drink.
Zooey, Emma’s sister, answered first. “I’ll take a mojito.”
Emma was dumbstruck until she remembered that her sister had turned twenty-one in August.
“And for you, miss?” The waiter was addressing Emma, but, looking straight on at her sister, she said, “Do you have any idea where she is?” Zooey and their mother had remained close for many years after Emma and her mother had stopped speaking.
Her dad said quickly, “She’ll just have water - actually, waters all around for now, we should be ready in a few minutes.”
The waiter nodded and left as Zooey glared at Emma and said, “NO. I can’t believe you just asked that.”
Maggie, Emma’s step-mom, stepped in. “Emma, the reason we didn’t call you immediately is because a) we thought she might turn up soon, and b) the police -“
Emma gasped.
“- seemed to think…learning about our family, and your relationship with your mother, that maybe she’d gone to find you. If you had found out back then you would have flown up here, and if she was looking for you, who knows where she would have gone.”
“But we still don’t know where she’s gone!”
Maggie nodded.
“And - how long has it been, three months?”
Zooey said softly, “She left the day after my birthday.”
“So, August 8th.” Emma shook her head in disbelief. “Mom’s been missing since August 8th and nobody bothered to tell me.” The word “mom” felt strange in her mouth, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d said it. She also had a creepy sensation; one that told her the police couldn’t have been far off from the truth - her mother probably was searching for her, and now Emma was going to have to reciprocate. She felt sick.
There was an enormous box on Emma’s bed. To Emma, it was the only thing in the room she noticed when she walked through the door. She recalled being younger and getting home from a long road trip; a trip to Seattle she had taken to prove her independence from her life in Massachusetts, a lot of that being her mother. This had been the semester she deferred from going to college. When she arrived home - this home, her father and step mom’s house - on a November evening not dissimilar from this one, she had the unnerving sensation that the house was entirely unfamiliar. She experienced vertigo - she had looked for an idea of home across so many landscapes of travel, lodging, and friendship, that she could hardly recognize it now that she was back in her house. Her vision swam as she readjusted to her surroundings.
Now, home was matter-of-fact. Emma had come a long way toward recognizing that comfort was a place inside of her; certainly no external factor could ever be entirely safe unless she created, or helped create it. Her room here was part of home, and although the walls and details themselves were painfully familiar, they did not swim in her vision as she saw them for the first time in a year. Instead, the box loomed in front of her, weighing heavily on the quilt. She recognized it, she knew that box.
“We found it in mom’s closet.”
Emma jumped and then realized it was Zooey, whose room abutted hers, standing just behind and to the side of her.
“She had that in her closet?”
Emma could feel Zooey nodding behind her. “Yeah. It’s full of your notebooks.”
A cold feeling descended suddenly and sharply into the base of Emma’s neck and she stiffened. “Did she read them?”
Zooey moved into her room and said, “I don’t know. Probably” before shutting the door.
This break from plot was almost as unbelievable to Emma as the three-month span between her mother’s disappearance and the day that it was finally brought to her attention. She wondered if, had she never gone home for Thanksgiving, she would have found out at all.
She flew from Georgia back home to Massachusetts on the last Tuesday afternoon in November. This was the year she was twenty-five. Just as her northern friends couldn’t understand why she wanted to go south, the men and women accompanying Emma on the plane were trying on Yankee tradition for three days only - and then getting the hell out of there. She heard a man bemoaning his sister’s decision to move to Boston. He said it was cold there, people weren’t friendly, and nobody had their own ideas. His wife patted his thick hand and assured him that it wouldn’t be that cold in November, and they’d only be staying a short time.
Emma was still oblivious about much of the southern tradition surrounding her - southerners tended to be skeptical of her because of her accent, and her propensity toward speaking her mind. She had made several southern friends since her decision to move, about a year ago, and the clearest strand of south she could determine, in all of them, was their ability to lie, straight faced. They didn’t lie for sport, or lie derisively, or, Emma thought, even lie consciously, like she sometimes did. What they did was lie in the name of propriety, of making others feel good and themselves sound good. Most of the time Emma thought she could tease out the truth, and most of the time it was only a question of what a friend actually felt like doing for the afternoon, but sometimes she thought she sensed a deeper lie. Her friends, although they liked her, didn’t believe she belonged there. They were waiting for her to leave - not because they wanted her to, but because Emma was from the north and it seemed to go without saying that the south would eventually disappoint and bore her.
She had taken pains to prove them wrong - pouring herself into her work, exploring the islands endlessly, and cultivating beautiful, fleeting relationships with nice southern boys who passed by on their boats. Yet Emma could sense the truth behind what went unsaid by her friends, which was that she was getting restless.
When she found out her mother had gone missing the blood drained completely from her face and went to the pit of her stomach, she felt herself filled and lightheaded. Her sensation of dread and fear was not for her mother, though, it was for herself. She immediately wished she had received the phone call, instead of news from across a nice dinner table in a nice restaurant, so that she would have been able to hide behind the receiver. If she had received a phone call, from the north to the south, it would have had given her an opportunity to follow the next step in a role - to leave her new home to briefly visit; show concern for her old home. This, in a way, would have reaffirmed her position in her decided life and residency in Savannah. It would have postponed Emma’s restlessness, given her an opportunity to re-immerse herself with the new perspective of moving on with her life despite her mother’s new craziest antic. Instead, all this time Emma had been secretly thinking of moving out of Savannah, and since it had lingered in the back of her mind for months she couldn’t ignore it. It made her furious, sitting at that dinner table, knowing that she and her mother had shared this same desire to leave.
“You don’t have any idea where she is.”
Her father answered, carefully, slowly shaking his head. “No.”
At that moment the waiter walked over, standing akimbo and thumbing the string of the black apron strung around his waist, and recited dinner specials. Then he asked what they wanted to drink.
Zooey, Emma’s sister, answered first. “I’ll take a mojito.”
Emma was dumbstruck until she remembered that her sister had turned twenty-one in August.
“And for you, miss?” The waiter was addressing Emma, but, looking straight on at her sister, she said, “Do you have any idea where she is?” Zooey and their mother had remained close for many years after Emma and her mother had stopped speaking.
Her dad said quickly, “She’ll just have water - actually, waters all around for now, we should be ready in a few minutes.”
The waiter nodded and left as Zooey glared at Emma and said, “NO. I can’t believe you just asked that.”
Maggie, Emma’s step-mom, stepped in. “Emma, the reason we didn’t call you immediately is because a) we thought she might turn up soon, and b) the police -“
Emma gasped.
“- seemed to think…learning about our family, and your relationship with your mother, that maybe she’d gone to find you. If you had found out back then you would have flown up here, and if she was looking for you, who knows where she would have gone.”
“But we still don’t know where she’s gone!”
Maggie nodded.
“And - how long has it been, three months?”
Zooey said softly, “She left the day after my birthday.”
“So, August 8th.” Emma shook her head in disbelief. “Mom’s been missing since August 8th and nobody bothered to tell me.” The word “mom” felt strange in her mouth, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d said it. She also had a creepy sensation; one that told her the police couldn’t have been far off from the truth - her mother probably was searching for her, and now Emma was going to have to reciprocate. She felt sick.
There was an enormous box on Emma’s bed. To Emma, it was the only thing in the room she noticed when she walked through the door. She recalled being younger and getting home from a long road trip; a trip to Seattle she had taken to prove her independence from her life in Massachusetts, a lot of that being her mother. This had been the semester she deferred from going to college. When she arrived home - this home, her father and step mom’s house - on a November evening not dissimilar from this one, she had the unnerving sensation that the house was entirely unfamiliar. She experienced vertigo - she had looked for an idea of home across so many landscapes of travel, lodging, and friendship, that she could hardly recognize it now that she was back in her house. Her vision swam as she readjusted to her surroundings.
Now, home was matter-of-fact. Emma had come a long way toward recognizing that comfort was a place inside of her; certainly no external factor could ever be entirely safe unless she created, or helped create it. Her room here was part of home, and although the walls and details themselves were painfully familiar, they did not swim in her vision as she saw them for the first time in a year. Instead, the box loomed in front of her, weighing heavily on the quilt. She recognized it, she knew that box.
“We found it in mom’s closet.”
Emma jumped and then realized it was Zooey, whose room abutted hers, standing just behind and to the side of her.
“She had that in her closet?”
Emma could feel Zooey nodding behind her. “Yeah. It’s full of your notebooks.”
A cold feeling descended suddenly and sharply into the base of Emma’s neck and she stiffened. “Did she read them?”
Zooey moved into her room and said, “I don’t know. Probably” before shutting the door.