May We Be Forgiven

ground zero. I think of an excuse—light bulb—and go to the hardware store.
    Men are gathered there, doing what men do, pretending they’re not worried, pretending they’re not human, but wanting to be together nonetheless.
    “I was out with them last night—going through the woods. I let ’em use my truck.”
    “It’s a damn shame.”
    “They’ll find her; girls do this, they run off. …”
    “They don’t do it anymore. That was before; now they stay close to home, it’s no longer safe.”
    “What do you know?”
    “I raised three of my own.”
    Life continues, but I don’t really know how anyone can carry on when someone is missing. Life is suspended; worse than suspended, it is a living hell, it’s impossible not to be driven mad with worry, fear, lack of information. The brain loops, cannot let go, cannot take a breath, because to let go even for a second might mean to forget; to stop sending the search signal might let her fall through the cracks.
    Out of the corner of my eye I see DeLillo at the register. I can’t tell if he’s listening in on the conversation or not. He’s buying duct tape and dust masks and a flashlight.
    “Putting together your disaster kit?” the guy behind the register asks.
    “Spring cleaning,” DeLillo says. He glances up at me, blankly, expectantly returning my glance. We make eye contact, but then I quickly look away.
    I buy my light bulbs. Somehow I want to scream at them: You’re wrong, you’re all wrong, the world has changed, something evil has risen, like a serpent hand of Hades, has slithered its ugly head up from below, out from within, and snatched something fresh off the shelf.
    The way they talk about it is so suburban, so brainlessly parochial, that it is unbearable. I leave, almost running out of the store, gasping for air.
    A panic attack, as though my familiarity with a kind of darkness, my less-than-oblivious musings, has caught me off guard.
    I remind myself that I did not do this, and yet just knowing, just feeling, just being the little bit more familiar than most with the impulses that allow such things to happen makes me uncomfortable. I think of myself as an outsider—a suspect. My devolution, my despicable descent into adultery and murderous familial fellowship, has welled up and undone me.

    A nd then she is there, on my doorstep, waiting, as though nothing has happened. “I’ve been terrified you were gone,” I say.
    “Gone where?”
    “Missing.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “That girl.”
    “What girl?” she asks.
    “Are you blind? Don’t you see the posters all over town or watch TV?”
    She says nothing—she knows but doesn’t want to talk about it.
    “I saw you,” she says. “Outside the store, giving away the kittens.”
    “You were there?”
    “It’s my grocery store.”
    “How come you didn’t say anything?”
    “I liked watching you.”
    “What was I doing?”
    “Giving away kittens.”
    “Are you stalking me?”
    She changes the subject: “Did you give all the kittens to good homes?”
    “I had to keep one.”
    “For your daughter?”
    “I don’t have children.”
    “Right,” she says, like I’m lying. “You just borrow them. …”
    “You want the truth?”
    She says nothing.
    “My brother, the owner of this house, is insane.”
    “There’s one in every family—no biggie,” she says.

“There was a murder in this house,” I say, wondering if I am being provocative because I’m annoyed with her.
    “Really?”
    I nod ever so slightly, as though realizing the enormity of what I’m saying.
    “Was this before you bought the house?” she asks.
    “Like I said, it’s not my house.”
    “Oh, right,” she says, “I spaced.” And then she crosses her legs and shifts, preparing herself, bracing for information. “Okay, I’m ready.”
    And all that comes out is so short, as though the story has sucked itself back into the deep ether, like a tragic genie racing back into the bottle—my own guilt, my awareness that I’ve not actually discussed this with anyone.
    “My brother killed his wife.”
    A long pause.
    “On purpose?” she asks.
    “Hard to know,” I say.
    “That’s terrible,” she says.
    “Awful,” I say, and realize that, except for the calls I made when it happened, I haven’t told anyone.
    “It’s really kind of a downer,” she says. “You’re making this up, right? This is like one of those weird urban legends?”
    “Why would I make it up? Does