When the men disappeared, it felt like nothing. I was camping in the mountains of Northern California with my husband and my son. It was dusk, and the sky was all one color: grayish violet, silken, dim. The lime-green leaves of the alder above me were trembling and luminous, brighter than the sky. In the tent, my husband, Leo, was reading on an iPad and letting our five-year-old, Benjamin, who had night terrors, fall asleep against him. Through the tent’s mesh window, I could make out the iPad’s light. I was lying in a hammock, putting off joining them. It was August, hot even up here in the mountains, and I had an idea about watching the stars come out and feeling wild and solitary, bound to no one. I wanted to indulge my fantasies of escape, of being a prima ballerina in Japan or sailing solo around the world—fantasies in which I’d never married and had my whole life free.
Still, I felt my husband and son there and loved that they were there. I was in love with them. I didn’t want to be single and childless; I wanted to fantasize about it with them there. I wasn’t worried by their long silence. There had been times I was frightened in the world, bad times. This was not a bad time and I was happy.
At 7:14, an intense nothing happened, an elation that wasn’t of the nerves or the brain. I would later recall it as being “like drugs.” When it passed, I felt Leo and Benjamin were gone but quickly dismissed the idea as foolish. Mood swings were normal for me and often accompanied by bizarre ideas. I looked to the tent and saw the tablet’s light, a vivified spot. I didn’t call out. I didn’t want to wake Benjamin. I went back to my thoughts.
At about eight o’clock, I fell asleep. Down the mountain, in the world of people, women were already calling the police. They were running through their houses screaming names. They were pounding on neighbors’ doors for help and finding their neighbors running through their houses screaming names. They were driving to police stations and discovering them lit and empty with the doors left open. Small aircraft were falling out of the sky.
I went to sleep on the mountain while the world fell apart. I slept right through till sunrise.
Their living voices, gruff and deep. The sound of a man in another part of the house. Boys hanging from branches like monkeys, hooting and kicking out at each other. How three boys could sound like ten. Drumming on a table. Whistling. Masculine, unselfconscious noise.
Gone.
Too few women on this committee. Another board of directors with no women. Men making decisions about women’s bodies. Gentlemen’s clubs. Men’s rights. Women’s magazines. Feminism. Gone.
Watching a boyfriend play computer games. Laughing at a man’s story, then another man’s story. Bracing yourself when he shows you something he made; the relief when it’s not bad. The girl act. Putting on a little-girl voice. Wearing flat shoes to make sure he’s taller.
The big hand on your shoulder. Him telling you it’s going to be okay. “You’re beautiful,” said with that authority. Letting him take over. Letting him drive. Letting him decide. Him carrying you to bed. The rush of being sexually helpless before it. Being an object of desire for men.
Gone.
The suffocated feeling of being talked over. A man putting on a high voice to mock you. At a party, a man’s eyes passing over you to find a younger woman. Him answering your question but addressing it to her. Two men talking for a young woman’s benefit; she mutely attends as if judging a contest. You say something and all three wait impatiently for you to finish. No one hearing you because they don’t want to look at you. Standing at a mirror in a public restroom and seeing what they see.
Him getting scary. Him punching the wall. Keeping your head down and letting it pass. Being ashamed you set him off. Being proud you didn’t. The moment you realize you’re not in control; all the magical thinking falls away and you’re a body being killed. Or just coming to a group of men at a street corner. Them falling silent and staring as you pass. Not at your face. Footsteps behind you in the dark. Big hands on your throat. Not being able to stop him.
Gone.
Your father. Your brother. Your friend. Your son.
Meeting your husband for the first time.
For me, Leo.
Leo’s friend had come to look at a car my father had restored, a ’91 C4 Corvette. Leo tagged along, a nondescript blond man with a slight foreign accent. He leaned against the garage wall, slouching in a way that suggested boredom. It made him seem teenagery, although he was actually thirty-eight. Out of nowhere, he caught my eye and smiled.
That was my worst period, just after Alain. I had panic attacks, psoriasis, a broken foot that had had to be reset twice. I was harassed everywhere I went. I’d moved home with my dad because living alone wasn’t safe anymore; I got death threats taped to my apartment door. Nineteen years old and damned—that was the word I always thought in my head.
But I smiled back at Leo. There was that instant rapport.
He came over to me with the gangly, good-natured friendliness of a dog greeting another dog. He said in that accent, “Hi. I’m Leo.”
I said, “I’m a Leo.” Then I added awkwardly, “But I don’t really believe in astrology.”
He smiled but didn’t answer. We both looked back at the Corvette. It was low to the ground and built to look agile, a car that appeared to be gathered to pounce. Royal blue. Leo’s friend was sitting in it now, and my father was bent over by the open door, explaining the work he’d done on the engine. I’d helped him work on the car and loved it in a way that was painful with loneliness. I sometimes spoke to it when no one was around. When Leo looked at it now, I felt how it didn’t matter to anyone else. The friend might or might not want it; there were other cars. Leo gave the impression of finding sports cars silly, an opinion I had once shared. It wasn’t even true that I’m a Leo; I often tell foolish lies when I’m nervous. I knew Leo and his friend were both biologists at UC Santa Cruz, and I wanted to tell him I’d had a life once. I’d been a ballerina, a professional dancer. I wanted to tell the whole story in the self-justifying way I’d avoided so far. Of course, he might know it already. He might be about to turn to me and say, You’re that Jane Pearson, aren’t you? How does it feel to know those children will never be the same?
When I looked back at him, he was looking at me. We were standing very close together, and it felt as if we were about to kiss. Leo blushed—he was a man who easily blushed—and I was out of my depth, smiling foolishly, a girl. I couldn’t think of anything funny to say. Then I’d looked away without meaning to. Now he would leave and I was never going to see him again.
He said, “I’m glad you don’t believe in astrology.”
Four months later, we were married.
I fell asleep on the mountainside. The sun went down. The stars blazed as my dreams blazed and flowed, guided subtly by the changes of breeze on my face. My husband and child were gone forever, for hours. I slept straight through till morning. When I woke, the sun had already risen. The sky was clear, colossal, robin’s-egg blue. I had no premonition. When I found the tent empty, their shoes still there, my husband’s phone and car keys still there, I assumed they’d gone to pee in the woods. Leo felt at home in the forest and might not see the need for shoes. I made coffee and heated a pan for eggs. Time passed, and the terror grew slowly and then very suddenly, like roaring in my ears. It became so bad, I couldn’t feel anything. I saw the forest and the sky like a very bright movie. I was trying to breathe so I wouldn’t pass out. I began to scream their names.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, breathing in as deeply as I could, then screaming. I know it became hard physical work like digging. A few times, I tried 911, but my phone had no reception. While I screamed, I began to search the woods, moving outward from the campsite in a daisy pattern, finding nothing. No place they could have fallen. No tracks. I tried to guess what Leo had been thinking: why he might have taken Benjamin somewhere alone, how they could have gotten lost. But Leo wouldn’t get lost; he studied forests for a living. He wouldn’t let me wake and find them gone. He was responsible above all things.
Once I swooped down on a Kit Kat wrapper, even though we didn’t eat Kit Kats and the wrapper was already faded and brittle. Still, my body believed it meant something. I crouched there, thinking of mountain lions, of Leo having a stroke and my boy running off in the wrong direction. When I stood up again, the sun had risen clear from the trees, and I had the vertiginous sense that it had risen while I was squatting by the Kit Kat wrapper.
Here I hit a threshold of terror and started back down the mountainside. Halfway to our car, I got a phone signal and dialed 911. As it rang, I was already relieved. I was pacing in a circle like a victory lap, thinking it would be all right. This was why Search and Rescue existed. They found lost people all day long. It had only been a couple of hours, and Leo and Benjamin weren’t wearing shoes, so they couldn’t have gotten very far. There would be a harmless explanation. I’d panicked before and there was always a harmless explanation.
When the phone picked up, I stopped pacing and straightened as if standing to attention. The phone clicked through to a recording: “Don’t hang up. We are experiencing heavy call volume …” I held still, trying not to lose my temper, my breath loud with the phone against my ear. I thought, My son is wearing red Avengers pajamas. It’s the Diamond Lake trail in the Siskiyou National Forest off Route 199. Benjamin is five years old. We don’t know if he’s allergic to bees. Then the recording cut out, and I stiffened as if I’d gotten an electric shock.
A woman’s voice said, “911. Is your emergency regarding a male?”
The question didn’t make sense so I ignored it. I said, “I need Search and Rescue, please.” Saying it made me start to cry. I said louder, sobbing, “Both my son and my husband are missing. It’s the Siskiyou National Forest off 199. They’re out without shoes. It’s been hours now.”
The woman said, “Both missing persons are male?”
“What? It’s my husband and my son. Yes, they’re male. Yes.”
“Ma’am, now I’m going to read you a statement. Try to listen, because this is all we’re able to do for you right now. As of seven fourteen P.M. Pacific time on August twenty-sixth, there is a mass disappearance situation affecting men and boys. The scale of the crisis makes it impossible to respond to each problem individually, so we’re asking people to stay calm and watch news sources for updates. We have no other information at this time. Please do not call emergency services again—”
I said over her, “Just put me through to Search and Rescue. Please, this is a five-year-old child. A little boy. I need Search and Rescue.”
“Ma’am, you don’t understand.”
“You have to put me through. It’s your job.”
“As of seven fourteen P.M. on August twenty-sixth, there is a mass disappearance situation—”
I hung up the phone. I checked the recent calls to make sure I’d really dialed 911. I called 911 again and got the recording. That alone made my body crazy with fear, but I waited, pacing and sobbing and muttering. When at last the phone picked up, a different woman started reading the statement before I could speak. “As of seven fourteen P.M. Pacific time on August twenty-sixth, there is a mass disappearance situation—”
I screamed, “Will you listen to me? Will you please fucking listen?”
She said, “Is this about a female?”
“No,” I said, and she cut the line.
I called 911 again, sweating and sobbing, and got the recording. I swore and threw the phone to the ground, then scrambled after it. Above, the trees rustled, loud and close, then subsided into silence as the wind died. No footsteps. No sound that could be footsteps. I would die to save Benjamin. That had to make a difference. I sat on the ground and tried calling my father, but he didn’t pick up.
Then I wanted to call my husband, even though I’d taken his phone from the tent and had it in my pocket. In my mind, there was still a small chance he would answer and tell me where they were. I didn’t give in to the temptation. If I wasted time now, that could be the thing that doomed them. I got to my feet. I went back up the mountainside.