to get into all of this with Carmelita.
“The payables have to go out this week. And I think you’ve used up all your PTO,” Carmelita warns.
I grit my teeth, knowing she is right. “I’ll be in the office in a couple of hours to check those accounts,” I say, my mind racing ahead as to what I need to do next.
After at last extricating myself from the phone and Carmelita’s disapproving tone, I sit for a moment in the kitchen. The refrigerator hums. A car honks in the distance. I detect traces of cold cheese soup in the air, from the dishes still piled in the sink.
The timer on the coffee maker clicks off, and the sudden noise jolts me into action. I head to Robyn’s room, my eyes taking stock. Nothing has changed since last night. Clothes are strewn across the floor. Dresser drawers stick out like tongues, and her bed is unmade. I make my way through the chaos to the dresser, scanning the surface for any evidence that might give me a clue as to where she has gone. Only the usual paraphernalia is here: barrettes, a Seventeen magazine, and a crumpled up bra. With an instinctive haste I snatch the bra from the counter and press it to my nose. Closing my eyes I am overwhelmed. Robyn’s scent, a carnation sweetness, floods my brain. I remember a day at the park when she was three or four; her running into my arms after a frightening tumble off the slide. How I had pressed her flesh close, inhaling the sweet perfume of the sweat in her hair, knowing with a luminous clarity that I would never love another human being with the same fierce abandon as I loved this child.
I clench my jaw, checking my tears. Stumbling over memory lane right now will not help my daughter. I fold the bra in half, letting the straps neatly nestle in the concave petals for cups and open her top drawer tucking the bra away. I rummage through all of her dresser drawers but find only clothes shoved in heaps, a few CD’s, the names of groups I’ve never heard of before, and in the bottom drawer, beneath an old pair of l.e.i. jeans, a battered VHS tape of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast; her favorite movie when she was young. I lift the dust ruffle of her bed but find only more dirty clothes, shoes, some socks, as well as the torn fishnet stockings she wore on her birthday a month and a half ago.
Her study desk holds two different brands of hair spray, a can of something called ‘hair wax’, and lastly, a few books and a couple of binders. I thumb through the books and binder paper looking for something that might have names or phone numbers on it. I mentally kick myself for not being a more involved mother. Why didn’t I insist on meeting all her friends? Calling their mothers? I rack my brain for names that Robyn has mentioned in the past, but besides Jenny, I come up empty. I swallow down a bolus-sized lozenge of panic and prepare to leave when, in the corner of my eye, I spy her trashcan. It is heaping to overflowing the wadded up papers, old magazines, and tissues. I drag it over to the bed and sit down, hunching over the paper sprawl.
One by one, I pull out every single paper, every note, and scan through the magazines. Near the very bottom, I find a scrunched up ruled piece of white paper. I unfold it, smoothing out the wrinkles. In the upper right hand corner is Robyn’s name, the date and below that, the word ‘Math’. On the front are numbered problems in Robyn’s handwriting. Several problems, whose solutions have been scratched out and re-figured appear on the front of the page. The last problem has nothing written next to it. I turn the paper over and see what looks to be hand written messages from two different hands, probably passed back and forth during math class. I read the messages:
“But what do you really think of her?” writes Robyn.
“Jenny thinks she’s bad because she’s rich. I think she’s a bitch.”
“She gets all the guys . . .”
“Yeah well, anyone can get guys if they’re willing to do nasty things . . . you know that!”
“But Jenny likes me.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Come on Krista, don’t be such a bitch.”
And so on. Out of it I