Page 33 of The Botanist's Assistant
But when Grace didn’t return home that evening or the next morning or the day after that, Margaret didn’t need anyone to blame her. She blamed herself.
Why had she let Grace go outside? Why hadn’t she paid more attention or gone out and watched her like she threatened to do?
A neighbor who lived four doors away told police later that she remembered seeing Grace next to the open sliding door of a beat-up white Ford van. There was a dark-haired man next to her (although she never saw his face) and the neighbor said she couldn’t be sure, but she thought the man had either shoved Grace into the van or lifted her into it, then slammed the door and sped away.
The neighbor hadn’t said anything until the police knocked on her door. She didn’t approve of all the noise andcomings and goings at the house and figured it was just more of the same.
At first, police leaned toward the idea that Grace had runaway and suspected one of Gordie’s pals, a guy named Nate. He was dark-haired, in his late twenties and owned a beige van, which police said could have been mistaken for white. It turned out he’d been two hundred miles away helping paint his mother’s house that day. The investigation then turned toward a possible kidnapping.
As the days turned into weeks, the once-noisy house fell silent. No more shouts, no more motorcycle engines, no more loud men. It was so quiet, Margaret could hear the buzz of a fly against a window screen, the distant bark of a dog and her mother’s sobs from behind the bathroom door. That’s when Margaret started her data book. Perhaps there had been a clue to what happened to Grace.
Margaret listed the approximate time and nature of the phone calls she heard Grace make or answer during the week before her disappearance. She noted that Grace’s new shoes were still in the closet, which seemed to indicate she had not gone to meet one of her girlfriends (she certainly would have worn them) and also that Grace had looked at the alarm clock in their room when she asked to go to the mini-mart for food (Grace usually never paid attention to time). She listed the last song Grace played, the fact Grace’s favorite necklace was missing and, finally, Margaret’s penultimate words to her: “I hate you too.”
Six months later, Gordie was gone, blamed by Margaret’s mother for going on a ride that day, and Margaret was back atcollege. Her mother’s cancer arrived fifteen months after that, and Margaret became the last of her family.
She has paid attention and been organized ever since.
Margaret peers at the van. It’s dark enough that whoeveris in the driver’s seat is only a shadowy outline. She hears the grating of a sliding door opening, then it clangs closed. The van backs into the wide spot, does a three-point turn and heads back downhill, the sound of its engine fading into nothingness.
What was it doing here?
Margaret isn’t spooked into bad memories by every white van she sees. It’s only older-model Ford vans with dents on their side panels (which is how the police report described the one outside Margaret’s house that day). Even then, it’s not all the time. It’s more like living in a neighborhood with a sniper stationed on a rooftop nearby. She never knows when or where the bullet of guilt and shame will arrive and pierce her heart. Once, she came out of the discount market to find an old white van parked next to her truck. A teenage girl with eyes lined in dark kohl sat in the passenger seat and Margaret had been so spooked, she jumped in her truck and drove away, leaving the cart with a bag of groceries to spoil in the sun.
She turns and sits on the duff-covered ground, her back against the knobcone pine. Grace would have been forty-eight years old. What would life have brought her? Would she have been married and had children by now? Would she have joined a rock band and toured the country until middle age drove her from the road? Perhaps she would have worked as a beautician, which was a profession she talked constantly about.
All those possibilities had been stolen from her. Or maybe they hadn’t. Margaret will never know.
Grace’s friend Jennifer told police that Grace had hinted about having an older boyfriend in another city who worked as a roadie for a rock band and that she might have run off tosee him. The roadie was never identified or located and, as far as Margaret knows, the police had given up on the case.
For Margaret, the unknown is the hardest part. It would be one thing to be certain Grace was dead (it wouldn’t help the guilt, but it would stop the wondering). It was another thing to have Grace’s fate as much a mystery as it was the day she disappeared. Don’t we all strive for certainty in our lives? Don’t we all dislike ambiguity?
Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yips, the call answered by a chorus of howls and high-pitched barks from a nearby pack. Margaret pushes herself to her feet and switches on her headlamp. She has never been frightened by coyotes or even the lone mountain lion that was spotted in the county park a mile from her cottage. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. Why can’t humans be that way?
Margaret’s legs feel weak, but she uses the shovel like a shepherd’s staff and forces herself to walk. She lets herself into the house, noticing that the floor is still unswept. She retrieves the broom and completes the chore—sweeping first north to south, then east to west. She’s always slightly surprised at how much detritus accumulates in one day. Her mother had complained about all the dirt her stepfather and his motorcycle mates brought into the house along with how much hair they seemed to shed, but Margaret has no hairy companions. Onlythe soil and pollen and herself. The rhythmic chore seems to settle her.
What is done is done and can’t be changed.
She brushes the small pile of litter into a dustpan and tilts it into the trash can under the sink. “There you go,” she says to the cottage. “Nice and clean.” Nothing is gained by letting your emotions run roughshod over you.
In bed, she contemplates recording the van’s mysterious appearance and departure in her data notebook, then decides it must be noted.
March 20, 7:25 p.m. Older-model white van spotted on driveway. Unknown reason for approach. Possible campers seeking county park? Lost? Dumping garbage?
People do that all the time in the valley: deposit old washing machines and mattresses at turnouts and on people’s properties. She will get up early tomorrow to check it out. Maybe she needs to post aPrivate Propertysign at the bottom of her road or build some kind of gate like all the mansions in the valley have installed.
Her own gated community to protect what? Her couch, her new used Mr. Coffee, an ancient truck?
False knowledge is not knowledge, she thinks.
Maybe she should write that in her notebook.
She does.
20
The Walkabout
Margaret deposits two paper sacksin the breakroom refrigerator. One contains her lunch and the other her dinner: a tomato sandwich and a mason jar of milk. She came up with the plan this morning, just before she dressed for work in her dark skirt and hummingbird blouse, even though it isn’t Thursday. She will be like the tiny avian creatures on her shirt—hidden, quick, efficient and agile—adjusting her routine to sleuth out what she learned from a conversation with Joe the custodian-journalist last night.
