Ellen: You are very crazy.
Foreceman: I know, but that’s all I have. Ellen: The children.
Foreceman: I never had them. Are they alive?
Ellen: Find out.
Foreceman: No. They’re part of the past.
Ellen: Or the future.
Foreceman: They hated me. They ran away.
Ellen: They did. And they were right.
Foreceman: They were right. I screamed. I ignored. I think I even beat them. Did I beat them?
Ellen: No.
Foreceman: You’re not real so you won’t tell me the truth.
Ellen: You beat them.
Foreceman: Did I… do things to them? I don’t remember.
Ellen: You didn’t do things to them. You never did anything to anyone, not to yourself, not to me.
Foreceman: Let’s play gin. Let’s play Monopoly. Let’s play chess. Let’s play Yahtzee. Let’s play pinner baseball. Let’s play pin the tail on the donkey. Let’s pretend you like sex with me. Let’s take a bath, a hot bath that burns and makes the air cold when we get out.
Ellen: We never did those things.
Foreceman: Then what? Then what the hell what?
Ellen: The children.
And then Foreceman turned her off, had some butter pecan ice cream in one of the two Fiesta ware glasses that were still left, and went to sleep thinking of the destruction of the world, thinking of the destruction of the world of William Clamborne Foreceman.
I put the book down, wondered for a few seconds about the man who could have written this, and fell asleep.
In my dream I did what I had done every weekday morning of my married life. It was part of our marriage agreement. I had been warned by her and her friends. She needed a cup of coffee before she could function even minimally. I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but I had always been an early riser.
In my dream as it had been in life, I got up quietly, staggered through the apartment into the kitchen, took a bag of gourmet coffee beans out of the freezer, opened the cabinet next to the refrigerator, and pulled out the small coffee bean grinder. I put a filter in the coffeemaker and filled the plastic tank with tap water.
It was a beautiful dream. The sun was coming through the slightly frosted windows. I could see Lake Michigan between two high-rises as I opened the coffee and began to pour beans into the grinder. Routine. Comfortable. And then it happened as it does in dreams.
The bottom of the bag fell out. Brown beans rained onto the cool tile floor spraying the kitchen, bouncing off cabinets, the refrigerator. The bag should have been empty but the beans kept falling, crashing like a driving rain. The floor was turning pebbly brown and barefooted I danced feeling each small bean under me.
I was panicked. She had heard the thundering beans. She came in. Her hair a morning disarray, her eyes half closed. She saw the mess and tiptoed in slow motion carefully making her way to me, finding clearings in the layers of brown hail.
The phone was ringing.
The smell of coffee rustled through her hair as she touched my cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
The phone was ringing.
She smiled and shook her head as if I had failed to understand some simple truth.
The phone was ringing.
I didn’t want the dream to end, but she stepped back and I was awake.
5
The phone was ringing in the other room. I rubbed my scratchy face, scratched my itchy stomach, and made it to the phone after five rings. Two more and it would have turned on my answering machine. I decided to start breaking my rule till I found Adele. I picked it up.
“Fonesca,” I said.
“Harvey,” he said and then gave his Paul Harvey imitation. “Stand by for news.”
The phone was cordless. I got the white carton of pad thai and the small carton of white rice, opened them, and fished a white plastic fork from my desk drawer while Harvey talked.
“Vera Lynn Uliaks ceased to exist in 1975,” he said. “She worked in a real estate office from 1972 to 1975, filed income tax every year. I’ve got her social security number, but no trace of her ever having used it or of filing taxes after 1975. No credit cards. No felonies in any state by anyone with that name. The lady vanished. You want to know how much money she made in 1975?”
“No,” I said, eating cold tofu.
“That’s it,” he said.
“Name of the real estate company she worked for?”
“Cornell and Bostik,” he said. “They’re still there. You want the address and phone number?”
I took them down on the lined pad on the desk.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Not right now.”
“Get me something more to work on. I’ve got long fingers and the Internet is waiting to invade everyone’s privacy.”
I hung up, pushed the remainder of my Thai food away, and dialed the number in Arcadia. A very young woman named Faith informed me that the company no longer belonged to Mr. Cornell and Mr. Bostik. Both were dead. A woman named Lorraine Kinch had bought the business at least ten years ago. According to the young woman, there were no records kept from Cornell and Bostik. Since the young woman couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, she was not even born when Vera Lynn Uliaks seemed to have disappeared, and according to Faith, Ms. Kinch was busy with a client.
“It’s urgent,” I lied.
“Well,” Faith said after appropriate hesitation. “I’ll give you her cell phone number.”
She did. I thanked her, hung up, and called the cell phone. Lorraine Kinch picked up on the second ring and said, “Yes.”
“Ms. Kinch, my name is Lew Fonesca. I’m searching for a woman named Vera Lynn Uliaks who worked for Cornell and Bostik.”
“I don’t know any Vera Lynn Uliaks,” she said. “There was a young woman who worked in the office when I took it over. She quit. I don’t think she wanted to work for a woman.”
“And that was it? You never saw her again?”
“No, this is a small town, Mr…”
“Fonesca,” I said.
“I think I heard that she got married and… oh, I remember. She… I really can’t talk now. I’m showing a house to a client.”
“Can I call you back?”
“There’s nothing to call back about,” she said.
“But you remembered…”
That was as far as we got. She hung up. I called Arcadia information and got the number for the newspaper.
“Arcadia News,” a young woman said.
“Who is your oldest reporter?” I asked.
“Our oldest…”
“The one who’s been there the longest.”
“Mr. Thigpen, no, wait, Ethyl’s been here longer, I think.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said. ‘Twenty, thirty years, maybe more. She does social coverage.”
“May I talk to her?”
“I’ll connect you to her desk. She’s there right now.”
There was a click, a few seconds of Barry Manilow, and then a no-nonsense older woman’s voice.
“Bingham,” she said.
“My name’s Fonesca. I’m looking for a woman named Vera Lynn Uliaks. She’s the sister of a friend and he wants to find her.”
“Marvin,” she said.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Slow one.”
“Very slow. He lives in Sarasota now. About Vera Lynn…”
“She married Charles Dorsey,” she said. “I’d say 1975 but I’d have to check.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Needn’t be,” said Ethyl. “I’d like to string you along, tell you I have one of those photographic memories like those women on television, but it’s not in me. I was Vera Lynn’s bridesmaid. Not a big wedding, but I stood up and so did Charlie’s brother Clark.”
“You know where they went, Charlie and Vera Lynn?”
There was a long pause and then Ethyl Bingham said, “If you’re a reporter or something trying to dig up what happened to the Taylor girl, believe me you’re wasting your time. It was an accident. I knew Vera Lynn. She had a temper, yes, but under it… It was the rumors, the talk that drove them off, not some big job Charlie said he had waiting in Ohio. Charlie was doing just fine right here in Arcadia.”