Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates
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in the nursing school at Plattsburgh, long a fixture in Cressida’s life though no longer the close friend she’d been a few years previously.
But Marcy could only repeat that at about 10:30 P.M.—after they’d had dinner with her mother and her (elderly, ailing) grandmother—and watched a DVD—Cressida had left to return home as she’d planned, on foot.
“I offered to drive her, but Cressida said no. I did think that I should drive her because it was late, and she was alone, but—you know Cressida. How stubborn she can be . . .”
“Do you have any idea where else she might have gone? After visiting with you?”
“No, Mrs. Mayfield. I guess I don’t.”
Mrs. Mayfield. As if Marcy were a high school student, still.
“Did she mention anyone to you? Did she call anyone?”
“I don’t think so . . .”
“You’re sure she didn’t call anyone, on her cell phone?”
“Well, I—I don’t think so. I mean—I know Cressida pretty well, Mrs. Mayfield—who’d she call? If it wasn’t one of you?”
“But where on earth could she be, at almost five A.M.!”
Arlette spoke sharply. She was angry with Marcy Meyer for allowing her daughter to walk home on a Saturday night: though the distance was only a few blocks, part of the walk would have been on North Fork Street, which was well traveled after dark, near an intersection with a state highway; and she was angry with Marcy Meyer for protesting, in an aggrieved child’s voice Who’d she call, if it wasn’t one of you?
THE RAPIDLY SHRINKING REMNANT of the night-before-dawn in the Mayfields’ house had acquired an air of desperation.
Now dressed, hastily and carelessly, Zeno and Arlette drove in Zeno’s Land Rover to the Meyers’ house on Fremont Street, a half-mile away.
Freemont was a hillside street, narrow and poorly paved; houses here were crowded together virtually like row houses, of aged brick and loosened mortar. Arlette had remembered being concerned, when Cressida and Marcy Meyer first became friends, in grade school, that her outspoken and often heedless daughter might say something unintentionally wounding about the size of the Meyers’ house, or the attractiveness of its interior; she’d been surprised enough at the blunt, frank, teasing-taunting way in which Cressida spoke to Marcy, who was a reticent, stoic girl lacking Cressida’s quick wit and any instinct to defend herself or tease Cressida in turn. Cressida had drawn comic strips in which a short dark-frizzy-haired girl with a dour face and a tall stocky freckled girl with a cheery face had comical adventures in school—these had seemed innocent enough, meant to amuse and not ridicule.
Once, Arlette had reprimanded Cressida for saying something rudely witty to Marcy, while Arlette was driving the girls to an event at their school, and Marcy said, laughing, “It’s OK, Mrs. Mayfield. Cressie can’t help it.”
As if her daughter were a scorpion, or a viper—Can’t help it.
Yet it had been touching, the girl called Cressida “Cressie.” And Cressida hadn’t objected.
At the Meyers’ house, Zeno wanted to go inside and speak with Marcy and her mother; Arlette begged him not to.
“They won’t know anything more than Marcy has told us. It isn’t seven A.M. You’ll just upset them. Please, Zeno.”
Slowly Zeno drove along Fremont Street, glancing from side to side at the facades of houses. All seemed blind, impassive at this early hour of the morning; many shades were drawn.
At the foot of Fremont, Zeno turned the Land Rover around in a driveway and drove slowly back uphill. Passing the Meyers’ house, he was now retracing the probable route Cressida had taken, walking home.
Both Zeno and Arlette were staring hard. How like a film this was, a documentary! Something had happened, but—in which house? And what had happened?
House after house of no particular distinction except they were houses Cressida had passed, on her way to Marcy Meyer’s, and on her way from Marcy Meyer’s, the night before. There, at a corner, a landmark lightning-scorched oak tree, at the intersection with North Fork; a block farther, at Cumberland Avenue, at the ridge of the hill, the large impressive red-brick Episcopal church and the churchyard beside and behind it. Both the church and the churchyard were “historical landmarks” dating to the 1780s.
Cressida would have passed by the church, and the churchyard. On which side of the street would she have walked?—Arlette wondered.
Zeno made a sound—grunt, half-sob—mutter—as he braked the Land Rover and without explanation climbed out.
Zeno entered the churchyard, walking quickly. He was a tall disheveled man with a stubbly chin who carried himself with an aggressive sort of confidence. He’d thrown on a soiled T-shirt and khaki shorts and on his sockless feet were grubby running shoes. By the time Arlette hurried to join him he’d made his way to the end of the first row of aged markers, worn so thin by weather and time that the names and dates of the dead were unreadable.
Beyond the churchyard was a no-man’s-land of underbrush and trees, owned by the township.
The churchyard smelled of mown grass, not fresh, slightly rotted, sour. The air was muggy and dense, in unpredictable places, with gnats.
“Zeno, what are you looking for? Oh, Zeno.”
Arlette was frightened now. Zeno remained turned away from her. The most warmly gregarious of men, the most sociable of human beings, yet Zeno Mayfield was remote at times, and even hostile; if you touched him, he might throw off your hand. He prided himself as a man among men—a man who knew much that happened in the world, in Carthage and vicinity, that a woman like Arlette didn’t know; much that never made its way into print or onto TV. He was looking now, in a methodical way that horrified Arlette, for the body of their daughter—could that be possible?—in the tall grasses at the edge of the cemetery; behind larger grave markers; behind a storage shed where there was an untidy pile of grass cuttings, tree debris, and discarded desiccated flowers. Horribly, with a clinical sort of curiosity, Zeno stooped to peer inside, or beneath, this pile—Arlette had a vision of a girl’s broken body, her arms outstretched among the broken tree limbs.
“Zeno, come back! Zeno, come home. Maybe Cressida is home now.”
Zeno ignored her. Possibly, Zeno didn’t hear her.
Arlette waited in the Land Rover for Zeno to return to her. She started the ignition, and turned on the radio. Waiting for the 7 A.M. news.
“SHE’S SOMEWHERE, OBVIOUSLY. We just don’t know where.”
And, as if Arlette had been contesting this fact: “She’s nineteen. She’s an adult. She doesn’t have a curfew in this house and she doesn’t have to report to us.”
While Zeno and Arlette made calls on the land phone, Juliet made calls on her cell phone. Initially to relatives, whom it didn’t seem terribly rude to awaken at such an early hour with queries about Cressida; then, after 7:30 A.M., to neighbors, friends—including even girls in Cressida’s class whom Cressida probably hadn’t seen since graduation thirteen months before.
(Juliet said: “Cressida will be furious if she finds out. She will think we’ve betrayed her.” Arlette said: “Cressida doesn’t have to know. We can always call back and tell them—not to tell her.”)
Juliet had a vast circle of friends, both female and male, and she began to call them—on the phone her voice was warmly friendly and betrayed no sign of worry or anxiety; she didn’t want to alarm anyone needlessly, and she had a fear of initiating a firestorm of gossip. She took her cell phone outside, standing on the front walk as she made calls; peering out at Cumberland Avenue, watching for Cressida to come home. Afterward she would say I was so certain. I could not have been more certain if Jesus Himself had promised me, Cressida was on her way home.
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