38
This is my brother Joey Ward. He’s been missing for ten days. He was last seen at Hank’s Hoagies on Main Street in Mill Haven. He was wearing an orange shirt. His hair has been longer. He may be confused or disoriented because of drug use. If you have seen him, please let me know. Joey, if you are reading this, please come home. I miss you. I love you. I am going to be at Heywood High tomorrow night at 8 p.m. if you want to come there. Please let me help you.
I CAN’T SLEEP AFTER POSTING. I lie awake, looking at the ceiling, all sorts of images of Joey running through my head. Joey lying in the woods, high or hurt. Joey wandering in the streets somewhere, shivering in the cold. Did he have his hoodie when he went to Hank’s for his shift? What if he’s not warm enough?
What if…
I don’t want to think that last thought. That one makes my stomach twist into a ball of fire. I jump out of bed and make my way downstairs.
My dad is in his den, standing by his printer. Flyer after flyer shoots out with Joey’s face and have you seen me?
“Dad?”
He turns to me. “Emory. It’s late, honey.”
“I could say the same for you.”
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I’m just printing some more of these up. I might take a drive tomorrow and post some in other towns. It might be time to think about Joey not being in Mill Haven anymore.”
He hesitates. “I talked to the police a little while ago,” he admits. “They found his car in Franklin Township. Stripped of parts. His phone was in the car. I won’t tell your mother until the morning. She needs to rest.”
Franklin Township is about thirty miles away from Mill Haven. And his phone. All my texts…disappearing into the ether. I cover my face with my hands, holding my tears in.
“It could be anything,” my dad says quickly. “Maybe he sold the car here or traded it to someone and they left it out there. Who knows?”
I uncover my face, sit down in the leather chair across from him. It’s a beautiful den. Built-in bookshelves with his medical textbooks and my mother’s law books. We have such a beautiful life on paper.
“I don’t know how Mom can sleep,” I say. “I feel like I’m splitting apart.”
“Don’t be hard on her, Emory. She spends the days calling hospitals to see if he’d been admitted. She’s splitting apart, too. He’s our child. That’s…I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s just…a very raw kind of missing, what we feel right now.”
The printer chugs to a stop and he takes the flyers, fitting them into a neat stack.
“I’m going to watch my baking show now,” he says. “Do you want to sit with me, since you can’t sleep? You have your show tomorrow night. You need to rest, just a little.”
“Okay,” I say.
I follow him into the living room and he flicks on the flat-screen and sits on the leather sofa, pats the seat next to him and dims the lights.
“Don’t you…don’t you want your drink?” I ask tentatively. “You usually have a drink when you watch your shows.”
My father shakes his head. “No, no, I don’t think so, Emory. I don’t think I want that.”
He opens his arm and I fit myself in. His body is warm.
“Dad,” I say. “Just in case, is your phone charged? Do you have it?” I hold up my phone.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes. I have it, just in case.”
39
I’M WATCHING LUCY KERR sing a song from Hamilton in honor of Candy MontClair. She’s wearing a light blue period costume and her hair is up and gleams in the lights that Jeremy Leonard so expertly controls. When she’s done, there is thunderous applause.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper to Simon Stanley in the wings. “I can’t go out there.”
“You can,” he says. “I know you can. Breathe in, relax, remember that they aren’t seeing you, they are seeing the person on the stage reading the poem. They aren’t looking at you. They’re listening to the words.”
“But the words are about me.”
“Emory,” he says. “Sometimes you just have to speak up.”
Liza is onstage. She’s the emcee. She’s saying my name.
Polite applause.
Simon Stanley nudges me ever so slightly, and then a bit harder, and then there isn’t any turning back, because I’m already out there, under the lights, walking slowly to my mark.
I swallow hard. It’s actually a little difficult to see the people in the audience. They just seem like so many floating heads staring at me, probably thinking of the photos, laughing silently at me, but it’s too late now. I scan for Joey anyway, especially along the sides of the auditorium and in the back, by the doors. He might be there, in the shadows. He might have seen my post, somewhere, on someone’s phone or laptop. He might have come.
My mom and dad are here, but I’m not sure where. Nana is at home, her phone by her side, watching television. Waiting.
I don’t see him. My heart is like a drum.
I adjust the microphone. It squeaks. Someone in the audience says, “Yeesh.”
“I don’t have a title for this poem,” I say softly. In the wings, I can see Liza in the corner of my eye, motioning me to step closer to the mike, so I do. Above me, the lights dim until it’s just me in a spotlight, exposed and alone.
The paper is shaking in my hands.
I take a deep breath.
A girl walks onto the stage and you are thinking She will deliver you poetry, some rare beauty That will sink inside your heart and live there And help you live your days.
You’ll fashion a story for her sad eyes That fits how you need to see her.
I am a girl on a stage and I have nothing beautiful for you.
I am a girl on a stage and you think you know my story But how can you know my story when I haven’t even written it yet
When I haven’t had a chance to live it yet How can you know my story
When you don’t even know me
I stood in a window and looked at a boy And felt pleasure and you wrote the story Of slut and whore
My family built a mill that built this town And you wrote the story of
Rich bitch and conceited
A girl had a headache at a party And I offered her a ride home on a rainy night In a car driving too fast and you wrote The story of murderer
You’ve never asked how it felt To listen to her breathing in the backseat To say her name and receive no answer And to know an act of kindness
Would be taken and twisted by the universe I am your pleasure, your sport Because you think I have everything And can lose nothing
But I have lost the one thing I never wanted to I have lost my brother
And people call that story
Addict and junkie and loser And you close the book on me, and him.
You have read us the way you wanted to And put us back on the shelf
But I’m not done with that story yet I would walk naked down Main Street In front of a thousand people
If it would bring my brother back Let you shout murderer and slut and whore and rich bitch Until my eyes bleed and my ears shatter If it would bring him home to me I would do all of those things
All of my days
With all of my heart
Because it would matter