GANDALF SIMON

Gandalf paced. From the living room window through the small dining area and into the kitchen and then back, stopping each time to look outside for Jess. She watched the two detectives make their way from the Blum house to Number One, where no one answered the door, and then to Number Three. If only Jess would get home before they arrived at Number Four.

No such luck. When the doorbell rang, Gandalf considered pretending she wasn’t at home. But despite everything that had happened to her, she still thought of herself as a person who followed the rules. She invited the detectives in and offered them chairs, then she perched on the arm of the sofa. It would be easier to jump up and leave the room if she had to. Sometimes she got anxious and had to lock herself in the bathroom for safety.

“I’m Detective Sandra McPhee,” the female officer said.

Gandalf repeated her name silently and mentally filed it; it was important to keep track of the people with power, the people you might need to identify later.

“How can I help you?”

“You know that your neighbor Iris Blum is missing?”

Gandalf nodded.

“We’re talking to all Mrs. Blum’s neighbors,” McPhee said. “Hoping to learn something that will help us find her. Did you know her well? We’re trying to understand what kind of person she is.”

“No,” Gandalf said. “Not well at all. I moved here less than five years ago, and Mrs. Blum was already quite elderly. She brought us a cake, to welcome us to Azalea Court. Prune nut cake.” Gandalf made a face. “Awful stuff, but she meant well.”

“When did you last see her?”

Gandalf shook her head. “I have no idea. I have not had a conversation with her in months.”

In fact, she could not remember the last conversation she had with any neighbor, more than a “Good Morning” when they happened to pick up their newspapers on the front stoop at the same time. She sat all day working at her desk trying to wrestle her research on hurricanes and decades of graduate school lectures into a book or at least a substantial monograph. Without much success, she had to admit. She had not been able to concentrate enough to clarify her thesis, and her thoughts usually spiraled inward doing no one any good. In any case, her study window faced the backyard, the tangle of shrubs and vines, yielding no useful information about neighbors.

“I’m sorry,” she added.

“What about Dr. Blum? Any observations about him?”

Gandalf shook her head again. But there was one thing she remembered. One day soon after they moved in, Jess was at the college and the house felt too confining. She didn’t have the energy for a walk, so she sat on the front porch feeling sorry for herself. She flushed, recalling that she had been crying in public and not even been aware of it. Mrs. Blum came over and asked what was wrong.

Gandalf had been so taken off-guard at the kindness in the old woman’s face, at her question, that she told the old woman about what happened to her on Hurricane. “Trauma never goes away,” the old woman said. Her husband still suffered nightmares from what happened to him as a child during the war in Europe. Should she tell the detective about that? It seemed so private, but maybe it had something to do with the old lady’s disappearance.

“Mrs. Blum once told me that her husband still had bad dreams about his childhood during the war,” Gandalf said. “In Europe. Probably not relevant, but I just thought about that conversation.” Her voice trailed off.

The detectives stood up. “Thank you. That could be helpful. If you think of anything else, anything at all, please let us know. We’ll come back later to talk to—” she looked down at her notebook and added, “Jess Simon. She lives here also?”

Gandalf nodded and closed the door behind them.

Had that been a good thing to share with the police? She couldn’t decide. She wandered to her study and sat at her desk. Papers and folders were strewn over the surface, as if she were working on something big. Beyond the window, the wildly overgrown yard was equally messy and disorganized. Coming from a Manhattan apartment, she and Jess had no experience growing anything other than a potted amaryllis on a south-facing windowsill. She stood up, unable to face either the chaos of paper or the tangled mess of the yard.

She shut her study door behind her and sat on the sofa in the living room, staring through the window, waiting for Jess. She watched the Blum’s daughter leave her parents’ house and wander onto the green circle in the center of the Court, where she sat on a bench, shoulders slumped. Gandalf wished she were more like Jess, who would immediately go out there and offer her company, knowing that the woman must be frantic with worry about her mother.

Gandalf knew this about herself: she was not good with people. Especially with people in pain. When she was imprisoned on Hurricane Island, when she was the one hurting, she learned how comforting it is when people empathize. But she still found it difficult, impossible really, to express her feelings. She tried to project sympathy out the door and across the street toward Blum.

I’m sorry your mother is missing, she thought. But even her imagined voice was rusty and stiff, and she did not know how to lubricate it.