NOVEMBER 30, 2011
Vale drives to the fallen barn on Cedar Street.
She walks toward the back shed. There are noises from within: plastic rustling, a clank: something more than swallows.
“Hello?” Vale calls from the door, her breath quickening, uneven. That old familiar feeling of hope that Vale has come to dread.
A man’s low voice: “What is it?”
Vale steps through the doorway. There’s a homeless man she’s seen around town these last few months—gray beard, gray hair tied back in a ponytail—sitting on the bed, knees pulled up in front of him, his back against the wall.
“Sorry,” Vale says, stepping back.
“You looking for someone?” he says, eyeing her. Rheumy eyes. A large army-green backpack on the floor.
How does he know? Vale wonders. But in his world, maybe people are always looking for someone.
Vale reaches into her back pocket, pulls out the folded flyer with Bonnie’s face on it. “Have you seen her?”
The man takes the photo. Looks at it for a long time.
“Sure,” he says quietly.
Vale look into his eyes—pale blue, surrounded by a sea of wrinkles. “You have?”
“Months ago,” he says. “But since the storm? No. Just your posters.”
Vale nods. Thinks of Bonnie in that footage. Idiotic. Sick. Complicit.
“I’m persistent,” she says.
“She looks like she was wonderful,” the man says.
Vale takes a deep breath. “She was,” she says. “She loved dancing. She loved to swim.”
The man nods. Reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. Offers one to Vale. She takes it, even though she hasn’t smoked in years. “Thank you.”
He lights it for her. Lights his own. “Brutal,” he says, letting out a slow-moving ribbon of smoke from between cracked lips.
“Yes,” Vale says, coughing. Why the fuck did you walk out onto that bridge, Bonnie?
“And surprising,” he says, lying down, turning his back to Vale.
“Yes,” Vale says. She looks at her words on the wall: MY BONNIE.
“Thank you,” Vale says, turning and heading out the door.
She stands outside for a moment sucking on that cigarette. Her lungs burn. Her eyes sting, take in: the railroad tracks, the ice-edged river, pigeons on the rooftop of the sheet-metal shop, their plump iridescent bodies backlit.
SHE DRIVES TO NEKO’S. SHE KNOCKS ON THE DOOR ABOVE the barn, opens it.
“Fuck you,” Vale says, entering.
He eyes her for a long minute from the table. Stands up and walks toward her.
“Screw you, Neko,” Vale says, going toward him. “You have no clue. No clue what it’s like to have a mother like mine!” She pushes his body against the wall, slams her fists into his chest. “You know where she was on my sixteenth birthday? No. You do not. In the bathtub with a needle in her arm.”
Vale slams her fists into Neko’s chest again. “In the bathtub with a needle in her arm!” she yells, collapsing onto the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he says, quietly.
“No clue,” Vale says, looking up at him. She’s crying. Tears and snot dripping down her face. She wipes her face with her sleeve.
“I know I don’t,” Neko says, standing still. “I’m so sorry.”
“Neko,” Vale says, looking up.
“Yeah?”
“I’m so tired. So goddamn tired. You know what I want? I want to find her body. I want to find my mother’s dead body.” Vale takes a deep breath. Collapses over her knees. Turns her head to look out the window. Gray sky. Gray trees.
Neko bends down. He unties the laces of her boots. Pulls them off her feet. Puts his hands on her shins and looks into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Vale,” he says.
“When do you leave?” Vale asks, meeting his.
“I’m not sure yet. Sometime after Christmas.”
Vale nods. Curls into a ball on the floor. Stills her body. Slows her breath. Holds still there.