Rita still remembered Lily’s ecstatic smile when she and Cal had first announced their engagement. All Lily’s features had sharpened and jumped up, rosy clouds diffusing across her cheekbones. That hunger in her face. Rita could see she was surprised to discover that her dreamy, dishevelled daughter had it in her, too. That hunger to have a man sweep her off her feet, take care of her. How it had irked Rita to give in: to be brought face to face with this thing inside her. This inner weakness she’d been ignoring all her life but, it turned out, she’d inherited from her mother. The truth was that she was just so fucking exhausted. Even back then, she knew she didn’t love Cal. She’d never loved Cal. It was a terrible admission. But he’d come along at a time when she was tired of being broke and adrift and her latest show at the co-op had only sold three paintings. What he offered was a chance to sell out, to trade in her sorry existence.
The only thing that could have pleased Lily more would have been Cal’s being a doctor.
“My mom pushed me toward dental school, too,” Lee said. “She said no good woman would marry a cop.”
“Any regrets you don’t spend all day in people’s mouths?”
“Just that I’m single.”
With a hesitant laugh, Rita wondered if this guy might be flirting. It had been a long time since anybody had flirted with her. A sudden rush of emotion, hot moisture bursting behind her eyes — not because she was glad she hadn’t lost her groove, but because the moment made her feel strangely close to her mother. As if Lily, having vanished, were all the more present, whispering tips in her ear about how to snag a good man and avoid the deadbeats. “I guess your mom knew best then.”
“Asian mothers.”
Two
As it started to rain, the windshield turned into a watercolour. Rivulets trickled down, caught flecks of coloured light, smeared into nothing. Cars honked, tires slid across the damp asphalt with a faint sizzling. Everything felt faraway and insubstantial, as if all of Rita’s senses had faded to the point they might fail altogether.
The thought that Lily was outside in this made Rita shiver. At least Lily had her car — if that was any comfort. Had she spent the night huddled in the back seat, parked in some dark alleyway? Where was she? Why weren’t the police doing more to find her?
Maybe she would burst through the door at any minute, lipstick smudged, hair fallen flat, confused about what had happened but unharmed and relieved to be home. Maybe she was there already.
But as soon as Gerald opened the door, it was obvious nothing had changed.
Their living room had aspirations culled from the pages of Good Housekeeping. A thick border of ivy and violets had been stencilled along the wall tops; needlepoint cushions adorned the floral chintz sofas. Dishes of potpourri that Gerald’s first wife had made herself had long since turned brown and brittle.
Strewn all over the coffee table: notepads, lists, dog-eared copies of the Yellow Pages and White Pages. A pizza box full of crusts. The place was starting to look like a call centre.
There was one trace of Lily’s presence, at least: a celadon ceramic dish full of white pebbles covered in water. Branches, leaves, and irises sprung up in an oddly intriguing, asymmetric pattern. Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. The twilight petals were already wilted; by tomorrow, it would all be dead.
Gerald looked wilted, too, purple-grey pouches under his eyes. For the past three days, they’d been on the phone with neighbours, friends, Lily’s dentist, hospitals, homeless shelters. They’d received a good deal of sympathy, but no real information. And no one had a clue how to get in touch with the Japanese ladies she saw once a month at the Nisei Women’s Club.
So far, the only thing the police had told them was that Lily had withdrawn six hundred dollars on the day of her disappearance.
“It’s a joint account, could’ve told them that days ago,” Gerald said. “They should hand over their badges and lemme do their job!”
While Rita wasn’t quite as cynical, she had to admit she had doubts about how high a priority their case was. Officer Davis had mentioned that the Canadian Criminal Code didn’t prohibit a person from walking out of her life, provided no crime had been committed.
It was all so confusing. The officers urged them to call everyone under the sun, yet they also wanted a list, complete with addresses and phone numbers. Were they going to contact these people, too? Or would they only call if Lily turned up dead in the trunk of her car?
A press release had been issued. That morning while Rita was on her second Coke, the CBC news announcer devoted all of ten seconds to “Lily Takemitsu Anderberg, a sixty-year-old woman of Japanese descent, five foot four, 110 pounds, last seen at her home in Willowdale on Friday night.” The kind of bland filler news that usually didn’t even register on your groggy consciousness.
“These things take time,” Davis said. “It’s important for family not to get overwhelmed. Get rest, eat regular meals, and if you need to, don’t feel bad about going back to work.”
Rita almost wished it weren’t summer break. Toxic armpits, challenging stares, baseball caps on backward. Forget about getting anyone to answer a question about Surrealism; getting them not to throw pencil crayons at each other was enough of a feat. But she liked chatting with the kids about their problems and views on the latest MuchMusic videos, and occasionally a surprisingly good drawing would surface from the sea of hormones. What a welcome diversion all that would be from the silence of Gerald’s living room.
From the corner of her eye, she watched him search through the White Pages, his cheeks suffused like overripe tomatoes. You could tell he’d done some hard living in his time, a suspicion that had borne out at his wedding. His friends came in all stripes, but they had one thing in common when Rita asked, “So how do you know Gerald?”
“We met in AA, ten years back.”
“Oh, how nice.”
An awkward lull. “I’m going to the bar. Can I get you a mineral water or anything?”
So that explained why Gerald was toasting everyone with a goblet of cranberry juice.
Maybe he’d fallen off the wagon since then. Had a reunion with his old friend Jack Daniel’s drawn to the surface a dark, violent side? It’s not a crime to walk out of your life. Maybe Lily had come to her senses and hightailed it. Rita had noticed Davis eying Gerald with suspicion at one point, questioning him about the state of his marriage. Wasn’t the husband always the prime suspect?
But the more she thought about it, the less she could see it. The wild flush of Gerald’s cheeks was from worry, not rage. Wasn’t it? She’d seen the way he looked at Lily with little boy enchantment in his eyes.
Still, you never could tell.
“I’m going to search around upstairs again.”
“Sure thing, kiddo.”
Her roots were growing in. That was the first thing Rita had noticed. Although Lily was usually meticulous about her hair, now a thin, silvery horizon peeked out along her part.
A hand reached out to rub a smudge off Rita’s cheek. She’d squirmed away, as though she were a little kid again. Now she thought of that simple, motherly gesture with a pang of longing. Why couldn’t she have just stood still, for God’s sake?
That was the last time Rita saw her mother, a week ago. Moving day.
Rita had been in a hurry, the rented U-Haul parked outside. She was swinging by to pick up her old boxes, stored in Lily and Gerald’s basement. At last, she’d be able to use all those ceramic dishes she’d made back in art school, clay oozing through her fingertips, massaging her palms. How malleable — how full of possibility — life had seemed back then. Cal had never liked the dishes,