Searching for Caleb

At first the family assumed he would be home in no time. It was only his age. Everybody eighteen expected deep things of people, but it never lasted. Yet the days stretched on and there was no word of him. They began to question Justine more closely. "He's all right, he's got a place to stay," was what she had said earlier, but now that wasn't enough. Had he told her where? Because this was not some childhood game any more, surely she was mature enough to realize that. Wasn't she?

But she had promised Duncan.

Aunt Lucy said Justine was cruel and selfish. Justine's mother said there was no call for that sort of talk, and then Aunt Lucy broke down and cried. "Now look here. Get a hold of yourself," the grandfather said, which made her turn on him. Why couldn't a person let loose a little, after all? Where was the sin? How come a forty-four-year-old woman didn't have a right to cry in her own house, and state her feelings as she pleased, without a bunch of Pecks crowding around telling her she was not sufficiently dignified, and elegant, and tasteful, and respectable?

"Why, Lucy Hodges'." said Aunt Sarah.

Aunt Lucy gave her a look of pure hatred, there was no other way you could put it.

Justine was miserable. She would much rather tell and be done with it.

But even if the grownup rules were different, Duncan was still playing by the old ones and he would be furious if she told. She hoped he would come home by himself-"turn himself in" was how she thought of it. Or that Uncle Two, strolling the Hopkins campus with false nonchalance during class break, would run across Duncan on his own. But Duncan didn't come and he wasn't seen on campus, and Uncle Two didn't want to ask at the Dean's office outright and involve other people in family matters. "You owe it to us to tell, Justine," he said. His face was tired and gaunt and there were shadows under his eyes. Aunt Lucy wasn't speaking. Even the cousins looked at Justine with a new edginess. How had she got herself into this? All she wanted was for the family to be happy together. That was the only reason she had run after Duncan in the first place.

She felt like someone who takes a single short step on solid ice and then hears a crack. She was halfway onto a drifting floe, one foot pulling out to sea and the other still on shore.

Then her grandfather said, "Have you been to see him?"

"Oh, I don't think he'd like me to. Grandfather."

"Why not? You're his cousin."

"I know."

"Yes, well," her grandfather said, and he pulled at his nose. "Well, never mind that. Go anyway. It's the only way we'll get any peace around here."

"Go visit him?"

"You didn't promise not to do that, did you? Go ahead. Don't worry, nobody will follow you."

But Justine half hoped someone would follow. Then life could get back to normal.

She knew the address because she had often gone with Duncan to the bookshop he mentioned-a cluttered place with creaky floorboards and great tilting stacks of used technical books. To the left of the shop was a paper sign, orange on black, saying ROOMS. When she opened the door she found narrow wooden steps, and at the top of the steps a dark hall with a toilet at the end. The doors reminded her of school, all thickly painted with scuff-proof brown and marked off with curly metal numbers. But she should have brought a flashlight to read the nameplates by. She moved down the hall very slowly, hunching her shoulders against a feeling of unknown things at the back of her neck, peering at the names scrawled on scraps of ruled paper or adhesive tape: Jones, Brown, Linthicum, T. Jones. No Peck. Only a door to her right with nothing at all, no name in the slot. And that, of course, would be Duncan.

She knocked. When he opened the door she held onto her hat, like someone who has just pressed a fun-house button with no notion of what to expect.

But all Duncan said was, "Justine."

"Hello," she said.

"Was there something you wanted?"

"I'm supposed to see if you're all right."

"Well, now you've seen."

"Okay," she said, and turned to go.

"But you might as well come in, I guess. Since you're here."

His room was small and dingy, with stained wallpaper, a flapping torn shade, a speckled mirror, and a metal bed with a sagging mattress. Over in one corner was his cardboard box. He wore the clothes he had left home in, brown suit pants and a white shirt without a tie. He seemed thinner.

"It doesn't look as if you're eating right," Justine said.

"Is that what you came to tell me?"

"No."

She sat down very delicately on the edge of the bed. She lifted both hands to her hat, making sure it was perfectly level. For some reason, Duncan smiled.

"Well!" she said finally.

Duncan sat down next to her.

"Your mother is really taking on, Duncan. She's crying where everyone can see her. Your father is-"

"I don't want to hear about that."

"Oh. Well-"

"I know what they're doing. I always know, I can tell, I can see as if I'm sitting there. They're talking about someone in the outside world.