“Yeah, I hear that. So, I am trying to locate her, Jenny,” Emily says. “Do you have any idea where she lives?”
“So I’m not the only one she left at the curb? What about that nice boy? Will, was it? I knew that wouldn’t last. She only wants someone who treats her badly.”
“Jenny,” Emily says, rolling her eyes at me. “Do you have an address? Or did she mention a town? Anything that might be a clue to where she lives.”
“She lives online, like all of you kids. You think that’s the real world. But it isn’t.”
The line goes dead, Emily’s phone issuing the desultory beep of an ended call.
I dip my head in my hand. I’m sorry, Anisa. I’m sorry for driving you away.
I’ve been round and round about all of this with Dr. Black. He lets me walk the winding roads of regret and self-flagellation, of what-ifs and if-onlys. But we always wind up at the same point. Anisa has walked away from her life and any contact with me, due in large part to my bad behavior in our relationship, our breakup, and my suicide attempt. She has made clear her choice and her boundaries. Any chasing I do is boundary trampling, an attempt to control another person, the actions of an abuser. I must accept the consequences of my actions and respect her choice.
For some reason, sitting here with Emily, it suddenly becomes clear that there’s no road back to what I had with Anisa. I have to let her go.
I am about to suggest that Emily do the same when she speaks up.
“I think I might have some idea where she is,” Emily says.
I look up at her. She’s hunched over her laptop in the dark room, the screen turning the lenses of her glasses blue.
“Look,” she says when I don’t say anything.
When I come to stand behind her, I see Anisa’s face—mouth open, eyes on the camera, a giant glop of pink on a spoon headed for those perfect lips. It somehow manages to be totally innocent and yet highly sexualized, like all of her posts.
Organic ice cream, made with all locally sourced ingredients—milk from local grass-fed cows, strawberries from the farm up the road, sweetened with honey from an area beekeeper. Parker may be totally vegan, but I am NOT. #local #organic #yum #sogood
“We’ve been there,” Emily says.
I look at the picture, and there on the counter behind Anisa’s smiling face is a stack of paper ice cream bowls. The logo: a simple black-and-white cow with a big smile and a pink tongue. The Happy Cow. Emily is right. It was a brutal summer weekend, sweltering temperatures and my AC on the fritz. Anisa was jealous that all our friends seemed to have left the city for rental houses in the Hamptons. Emily was going through a bad breakup. So I suggested we borrow my parents’ car and all head north.
That was the weekend I told Anisa and Emily about Claire. Anisa already knew that I’d lost a sister; she just didn’t know the details.
We stopped in town, had lunch, ice cream at the Happy Cow. Then we got groceries, booze, and went to the house. She loved it there at first. The house is sweet, the grounds beautiful, the town a picture postcard—a yoga studio, a little bookstore, some really nice restaurants, and tons of shops selling goods from local artisans, farmers, craftsmen.
It was only after Emily had gone to sleep and Anisa and I sat out by the firepit that she started to feel the sadness that kept us all away. My parents couldn’t bring themselves to sell it, because it always felt as if we had left Claire there. But we couldn’t stand to be there either.
“I’m sorry your family has had to go through this,” she said that night, holding my hand. The fire crackled, and the night sky glittered with stars.
Even though Anisa was sad, I could see for the first time how love might transform the house again. We’d come up there with our friends, make a new energy field—parties and cooked meals, take the old rowboat out on the lake. Laughter and music would energize the space. Maybe my parents would find their way back. One day, after Anisa and I were married, we’d bring our own children here for lazy summer weekends. The house, the garden, the woods, the lake—it would breathe again. That was the way of it in the organic world—death and rebirth.
But we didn’t go back. And strangely, that weekend lives in my memory as the last time things were really good. A few weeks later, those first clouds of suspicion started to set in and turn our relationship dark. Almost as if remembering how painful it is to lose someone, I started to cling to Anisa in unhealthy ways. Dr. Black and I have discussed at length how Claire’s death changed the way I saw the world. How I discovered too early that it was wild, unpredictable, utterly out of my control.
“We have been there,” I say.
“The Happy Cow,” she says. “Anisa loved it up there.”
“But what if it’s just another old picture?” I scroll through my photos, but I don’t see anything like it. Emily does the same.
“In this photo, she’s not wearing the infinity necklace,” Emily says finally. “You had just given it to her when we were there together. She never took it off. If it was an old photo, she’d be wearing the necklace.”
I look more closely at the post. Her neck is bare.
“So,” I say. “What should we do?”
“Do your parents still have a car?”
“They do.”
“How about a road trip?”
“You mean go look for her?”
I balk. Stalking. I’ve been accused of stalking her. There’s a restraining order, which, as far as I know, is still in force. Isn’t this just more of the same? A violation of her very clear boundaries.
I express all of this to Emily.
“I get all that,” she says. “Except I’m worried too. Maybe something’s not right, Will.”
“Then maybe we should just go to the police.”
She blows out a laugh, points at the computer. “And say what? My friend won’t return my calls. I think this online life she’s living is an elaborate sham. I think—da-da-DAH—she might be the victim of foul play.”
It does sound pretty stupid.
“Look,” she says. “This is not just you. It’s me. I’ll vouch for that, if it comes down to it. All I’m asking for is a ride.”
I wonder what Dr. Black would think of this plan. I’m going to guess he would not support this. Work on your novel. Work on getting a job. Work on yourself. Those are the three sanctioned activities. Avoid relationships right now. No alcohol or drugs of any kind. Don’t social-media stalk Anisa.
But the draw is so powerful, my suspicions so convincing.
But this is exactly the place I was in when I was certain she was cheating on me. She was lying, I believed. It was true to me in that headspace, with the evidence I thought I had. And that gave me the right to do ugly things like stalk, snoop, follow. To grab her arm when she tried to leave, maybe even worse. And my angry thoughts, my suspicions, felt real. Why is this different? I’m guessing Dr. Black would say it isn’t. He has encouraged me to call him when I feel those dark impulses. Maybe I should do that.
“I think I’m going,” Emily says into my tortured silence. “With or without you. You know why? Because I can live with making an idiot out of myself if we’re just being totally paranoid. But I’m not going to be able to live with myself if I’m right and I do nothing.”