Perhaps a kindly family stole them , the hope-griffin whispered in his ear. A kindly family in the Peace Corps, who whisked them off to Africa . Or they met up with a band of free spirits, younger versions of Kesey and his gang, and hit the road together, doing exactly what you might have done, if you didn’t have children .
Why don’t they call, then?
Because they hate you.
Why?
Because kids hate their parents. You hated yours. When was the last time you called your mother? Long distance doesn’t cost that much.
Still, are those my only choices? Alive but so filled with hatred for me that they refuse to call? Or full of love for me but dead?
No, those aren’t the only choices. There’s also the possibility that they’re chained in some sicko’s basement where-
Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP.
Finally it was time to head to the Blue Guitar. The store wouldn’t open for another three hours, but there was plenty to do before then. Of all the ironies in his life, this one was the most painful. The store had thrived in the wake of the publicity about his daughters. Initially, people had come to gawk at the grieving father, only to find the efficient and empathetic Miss Wanda from the bakery. She had volunteered her time, insisting that Dave would not only want to return to work eventually but that he would need to return to work. The gawkers turned into shoppers, and word of mouth for the store was so strong that his business grew beyond his modest dreams. He had actually expanded, adding a line of clothing and small housewares-drawer pulls, decorative wall plates. And the things he imported from Mexico were very hot just now. The carved rabbit that Mrs. Baumgarten had disdained, the one she couldn’t imagine paying thirty dollars for? A San Francisco museum that was opening a folk-art wing had offered to pay Dave a thousand dollars for it, recognizing it for the valuable piece it was-an early, less self-conscious piece by one of the Oaxacan masters. He had loaned it to the inaugural exhibit instead.
He stopped on the front porch, drinking in the light. With the trees still relatively bare and the world on standard time for a few more weeks, the mornings had a bittersweet clarity. Most people welcomed daylight savings, but Dave had always thought it a poor trade-off, losing these mornings so you could have extra light at the end of the day. Morning was the last time he’d been happy. Sort of. He’d been trying to be happy that morning, focusing on the girls because he knew that Miriam was up to something-he just wasn’t ready to confront what it was. He’d been trying to distract himself, playing the superattentive dad, and Heather had bought it, believed in it. Sunny-Sunny hadn’t been fooled. She’d known he wasn’t really present, that he was lost in his own thoughts. If only he’d stayed there, if he hadn’t snapped to and insisted that Sunny take Heather with her. If only-But what was he arguing for? One dead daughter instead of two? That was Sophie’s Choice, not that Dave could bear to read the book, although Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner had been a great favorite of his. Styron needed the Holocaust to explain the worst thing that could happen to a parent. The thing was-it still wasn’t big enough. Six million dead meant nothing when you had lost your own child.
He got into the old VW van, another relic he couldn’t let go of, another piece of his Miss Havisham existence. Hope hopped into the passenger seat, the old vinyl shredding and cracking beneath its always-working claws. The griffin turned its bile-colored eyes on Dave, and reminded him to fasten his seat belt.
Who cares if I live or die?
No one , Hope admitted. But when you die, who will remember them? Miriam? Willoughby ? Their old classmates, some of whom have graduated college by now? You’re all they have, Dave. Without you, they truly are gone .
CHAPTER 25
Miriam had a secret love-butter pecan yogurt from I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt. She could, in fact, believe it was yogurt. She further believed that it wasn’t quite the health food that others seemed to think, and that its calories counted as much as any other calories. Miriam wasn’t deceived by any of the promises made by I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt, real or implied. But she liked it, and she was sorely tempted to take a small detour right now and buy some. The day was warm, summer-hot by her standards if not by Texas ones, hot enough to make an afternoon at Barton Springs seem eminently reasonable. Miriam thought about taking the afternoon off and doing just that, or going all the way out to the lake, but she had two appointments with prospective sellers in the Clarksville section.
Still, it worried her that she’d considered, even for a moment, driving over to the public swimming area. She had really settled in here. If she didn’t watch it, she’d soon be joining the local chorus of “But you should have lived here when-” The endless lament about how hip, how happy, how affordable Austin used to be. Then there was the invocation of the places that used to exist-the Armadillo, the Liberty Lunch. Look at Guadalupe Street, the Drag, where she couldn’t find a parking spot today. She’d have to forgo the yogurt and continue on to her appointment.
A shiver ran through her, and she worked backward through her thoughts to find what was making her feel anxious. Parking- Austin -Barton Springs-lake. There had been a murder at the lake last fall, two girls, found on a lot where an expensive new house was under construction. Two girls-not sisters, but the mere configuration demanded her attention-and no possible motive that anyone could discern. Miriam, more expert than others in reading between the lines of news accounts, understood that the police really did have no information, but her friends had inferred all sorts of strange conspiracies from the barest of facts. Trained by television, they kept expecting it to turn into a story, something explicable and-although her earnest Austin friends would never use this word-satisfying. To them, obsessed with the way Austin was changing-mutating, the old-timers said; growing and progressing, according to the newcomers who had staked their fortunes on this booming city-the murders must somehow be rooted in the phenomenon of growth. The girls were locals, biker chicks of a sort, from families who had lived in the area before it was desirable. According to news reports, they had long used this cove off Lake Travis for partying with their friends and saw no reason to stop simply because a house was going up. It seemed to Miriam that the girls were most likely killed by their own surly acquaintances, but police had interviewed the lot’s owner and the various workmen from the site.
In focusing on the clash between old and new, progress and status quo, Miriam’s Austin friends didn’t realize that they were really arguing for their own connection to the crime, that they were trying to take an isolated horror and make it-loathsome word-relatable. Which was, of course, the one thing it could never be, not in liberal Austin. Austin was so sweetly, reliably liberal that Miriam was beginning to wonder just how liberal she really was.