"I was just getting ready to call you," I lie.

"Well, I wanted to be the first to give you the good news," she says.

"Oh?" I say, already trying to think of an excuse to get off the phone.

"Remember last time I told you that Petra was thinking of putting the baby into that baby contest?"

"Mmm," I try, unsuccessfully to recall that conversation.

"Anyway, she won!"

"That's great," I say, doing my best to inject a little enthusiasm into my voice.

"Gerber called and they want Petra and the baby to fly to New York to film the commercial!"

"That's great," I say again.

She goes into painstaking detail about the "grueling" selection process, the "exhausting" day spent at the photographer's studio, and the "fatiguing" effort required to complete all the paperwork. Next is the mind-numbing description of attire that Petra had to consider to adorn The Baby, until I just want to puke.

"I mean, I know that the baby is the cutest little darlin' on the face of the planet; we all do. Now the world will see too!" Gladys exclaims.

Though The Baby is eight months old, I don't think I've ever heard my mother use the child's actual name. I'm not sure I even remember her name myself.

"That's really great," I try varying my response so my mother won't think I'm just reading from a single cue card.

"How's that little angel Robyn doing?" she asks. "Still captain of the cheerleading team?"

I have made it a practice of lying to my mother about my daughter since we left Aztec. Gladys was so certain that uprooting Robyn from everything she knew would be the worst possible thing for her. To admit to my mother that she was right requires something that I just don't have within me at the moment.

Also, it hardly seems fair, between my nephew little Billy The Little League Phenom, and niece Cynthia, Flute Prodigy Extraordinaire, and now The Baby's imminent ascendancy to movie stardom, that Robyn shouldn't also have her own shining attributes. And now that we're a thousand miles away it's possible.

"Yes," I lie again. "She's really doing well. And she made Honor Roll again."

"My, my. It's plainer than a cow p.i.s.sin' on a flat rock; there must be something in that California water that agrees with that little girl."

I cringe at my mother's Southern euphemism. She hasn't lived in Tennessee in over a quarter century, yet she still talks as if she just got off the plane from Nashville.

"Well-" I begin, trying to get off the phone.

"Before you go, I just wanted to tell you not to worry; not one single, little, itty-bitty bit."

Here it comes: the health report.

"Worry about what Mom?" I say, playing the game.

"You know I been going to see that Dr. d.i.c.kenson, don't ya?"

"Um-hm."

"Well, I had to switch me doctors. d.i.c.kenson's an idiot. If brains was grease, he couldn't slick the head of a pin."

"Oh?" I ask.

"You remember I had that cyst on my arm?"

"I think so."

"You know; the one where every time I mash down on it, all kinds of puss come out of it?"

I shut my eyes and cringe as my mother goes on to describe the excruciating particulars about the cyst and its deviant behavior.

"Yesterday the thing got all speckled looking, like some kind of mutant bird egg or something."

"I'm sorry to hear that Mom, I really am. Well, I better let you go so you can get some rest."

"Oh darlin' it's fine as frog hair talkin' with you."

She keeps me on the phone for a few more minutes, trying to tease out of me the exact date and time of my next visit to Aztec to see her. I tell her what I always tell her: maybe sometime next year, and finally I'm off the phone.

I put away the food, such that it is, leaving the dishes in the sink and check my watch. Nearly eleven. I wipe down the counters with an old sponge that smells opaquely of mildew. Still no word from Robyn. We have fought before. No doubt we will fight again. I tell myself I am not worried.

I move to the living room, flip on the television and channel surf. The mindless chatter from shows I know nothing about dribbles into the room. I check my watch so frequently that after a while my eyes fail to register the time. My eyelids begin to feel heavy and I feel myself fighting a losing battle. As I drop into a reluctant fog of restless sleep, my mind wanders over the names of Robyn's other friends with whom she might be with, and I realize I know nothing more than a handful of first names.

I awake with a start when I hear the front door open. The remote falls from my lap to the floor with a thud as I sit forward. But it is only Rob. Though he is across the room from me, I can smell him from where I sit. I check my watch, twenty after two in the morning.

"You're drunk," I say.

He waves me off, tossing his keys onto the small table near the door. They land with a clatter.

"So?" His voice is belligerent.

"Robyn took off," I say.

"Good for her," Rob replies.

The sarcasm in his voice launches me to sudden life.

"That doesn't worry you? Don't you care?" I say standing up. "She's only fifteen, Rob."

He gives me a look. His eyes are bloodshot and bulge, as if he drank so much he is now waterlogged. He holds his palms out in the air in a defensive position.

"What do you want me to do? Call the National Guard?" He shrugs. "She's probably at what's her names."

"I already called Jenny's house. Hours ago. They haven't seen her."

Rob frowns.

"Well then call the cops. I don't know."

He stumbles into the kitchen. I follow.

Rob reeks of booze and the sour odor of old sweat. His shirt and gray d.i.c.kies pants are grimy from a long day of working at the refinery. He pours himself a tall gla.s.s of milk. He grips the gla.s.s with a surprising intensity and knocks down the liquid in sloshy gulps. I don't understand how he can drink milk at this point; the thought causes my stomach to hiccup with an acid flutter. I pat my sweats pockets for the Rolaids, but they are empty. I frown.

"Why do you drink so much?" I say. It is out of my mouth before I have time to think what I'm saying.

"Come on, Margot, don't start."

"No, I want to know," I say. "You said you had to work late. And then you come home so drunk you can barely walk."

I do not want to be carping on him like an old fishwife. But the lateness of the hour and not knowing where Robyn is has ground down all of my polite niceties.

I think of his birthday gift. A new hairbrush with genuine boar's head bristles. I completely forgot about wrapping it, and it still sits in the bag it came in, tucked away on the floor of our closet.

"I worked my a.s.s off today. I went out for one drink to celebrate my birthday. Is that a crime?" He wipes a patina of sweat from his forehead with his palm.

"Did you go out with Dusty?" I ask.

His face bunches into a look of disgust.

"Oh criminy," he complains. He closes his eyes and expels a sigh.

"Never mind. I'm sorry."

We stand silent a moment. I see the fatigue on Rob's face and am suddenly overwhelmed by guilt.

"Happy birthday," I say. "I'm sorry you had to work so late."

His face smoothes. His frown melts into a slack-jawed smile as he reaches an arm out for me.

"I want some p.u.s.s.y," he says.

I cringe inwardly at his crudeness, but I force a smile and walk towards him, shutting off the kitchen light. How did we arrive at this place where needs and desires have been stripped down to their barest essentials? "Let's go", "let's eat", "let's have s.e.x". As if gentility and its preliminaries are wasted effort.

Rob draws me close, shoves a hand down my pants and coa.r.s.ely reaches for me. It's not that I don't like s.e.x; I do. It's just the getting started part that seems impossibly difficult. When Rob and I first began having s.e.x, he'd spend nearly an hour stroking me, whispering into my ear and kissing my neck. Then he'd make his move, but invariably, I'd hesitate, falter. "I'm not quite ready", I'd say, and he'd begin again. As the years have evaporated, so too, has Rob's patience with me until now we have come to this phrase in time: I want some p.u.s.s.y.

On the bed, Rob climbs on top of me. My hands go over familiar territory; my fingertips brush over his back, his b.u.t.tocks. The closest I have come, in fourteen years, is to stroke his inner thighs. I cannot bring myself to touch his p.e.n.i.s. It is such a bizarre and foreign thing to me. Like a specimen from outer s.p.a.ce.

He grunts his pleasure; his hands grab me on either side of my collarbone, nearly around my neck, pushing me down each time he thrusts upward. The smell of his sweat covers me. Somewhere deep in a place I cannot name I find this sensation pleasurable. As I begin to pant this is Rob's signal that I am excited. His intensity rises and he growls, bear-like until he comes with a gasp and a long guttural groan. Did I have an o.r.g.a.s.m? I'm not sure. I guess so. I must have.

Rob rolls off and lies next to me. We are barely touching. He sighs.

"I'm not happy," he says.

I roll towards him, prop myself up on one elbow. My heart is suddenly pounding in my chest.

"What do you mean?"

"Our s.e.x life," he says. "I'm bored," he adds.

I'm not quite sure what to say.

"Bored?"

"It just seems like it's the same every single time." He sighs. "Wouldn't you like a little variety?"

"What do you mean, like me on top?" I ask, trying unsuccessfully to picture this acrobatic feat.

"Well, what about getting some movies, or maybe toys or something."

His voice is dry and quavers; he is nervous. He has been thinking about this for a long time.

p.o.r.nographic movies? I don't want to even begin to imagine what a s.e.x toy might look like. A tickle of disgust crawls across my skin.

"Oh Rob, I don't know," I say, hesitating. My mind is on Robyn. Where she is; when she will be home? I don't want to get into all of this tonight.

"Whatever," he sighs. "It's only our marriage."

"Rob," I begin, my stomach flops and then tightens. I fall back onto my pillow and stare into the inky darkness.

"I'm tired," he interrupts.

The flare rises into my throat again, beginning from the angry, broiling cauldron in my abdomen. My hand reaches, instinctively, to my nightstand and the half empty roll of Rolaids. My fingers go through the familiar motion of peeling back the outer paper; then the soft, flimsy skin of foil to reach their prize. I pop a tablet into my mouth and chew hard. The chalky texture coats my tongue and teeth and throat.

I want to cry or to scream but feel girded only by worry over my daughter. My husband and his carnal desires seem trivial, at best.

"I'm worried about Robyn," I say, my voice wavering.

"She'll be fine," he says.

August 5, 2002.

"Like I said, I hope to be in before noon, Carmelita," I say, trying very hard to keep the anger out of my voice. Why Why can't can't this this woman woman give give me me a a break break?

"There are mistakes on several of the vendor lists," Carmelita says over the phone.

"What?" I say. "What do you mean mistakes?"

"Some of these purchase were in oh-one, I think. I don't remember any of the a.s.sociations having capital purchases this year. But you show that Alliance Heating and Cooling was paid five grand in March," she says.

Carmelita is wrong, of course. Three homeowner a.s.sociations out of the forty-five plus that we manage did have capital purchases. How on earth would a purchase from last year be posted to 2002? But I can't think about that right now.

Right now I am thinking that it is nine-thirty on a Friday morning and my daughter is still missing. She never came home and the school called half an hour ago to report her absence. She has never, not once, been gone this long. I do not want 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.