Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. As always, next to her cereal bowl, her mother has placed a sharpened pencil and Lydia’s physics homework, six problems flagged with small ticks. Driving to work, Lydia’s father nudges the dial toward WXKP, Northwest Ohio’s Best News Source, vexed by the crackles of static. On the stairs, Lydia’s brother yawns, still twined in the tail end of his dream. And in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, Lydia’s sister hunches moon-eyed over her cornflakes, sucking them to pieces one by one, waiting for Lydia to appear. It’s she who says, at last, “Lydia’s taking a long time today.”
莉迪亚死了，可他们还不知道。1977年5月3日早晨6点30分的时候，没有人知道莉迪亚已经死了，他们只清楚一个无伤大雅的事实：莉迪亚来不及吃早餐了。这个时候，与平常一样，母亲在莉迪亚的粥碗旁边放了一支削好的铅笔，还有莉迪亚的物理作业，作业中六个有问题的地方已经用对勾标了出来。莉迪亚的父亲正在开车上班的路上，他把收音机的旋钮转到WXKP频道，WXKP是“俄亥俄州西北地区最佳新闻频道”的缩写，喇叭里传出的静默让他心烦意乱。莉迪亚的哥哥边从楼梯上下来边打着哈欠，一副没睡醒的样子。莉迪亚的妹妹坐在厨房角落的一把椅子上，盯着碗里的玉米片，一片一片地吸到嘴里抿碎，等待着莉迪亚的出现。最后，她不耐烦地说：“莉迪亚今天真能磨蹭。”
Upstairs, Marilyn opens her daughter’s door and sees the bed unslept in: neat hospital corners still pleated beneath the comforter, pillow still fluffed and convex. Nothing seems out of place. Mustard-colored corduroys tangled on the floor, a single rainbow-striped sock. A row of science fair ribbons on the wall, a postcard of Einstein. Lydia’s duffel bag crumpled on the floor of the closet. Lydia’s green bookbag slouched against her desk. Lydia’s bottle of Baby Soft atop the dresser, a sweet, powdery, loved-baby scent still in the air. But no Lydia.
楼上，玛丽琳打开女儿房间的门，发现床上似乎没有人睡过——羽绒被下面是边角折叠整齐的床单，枕头松软凸起，没有丝毫凌乱的痕迹。地板上胡乱扔着一条深黄色条绒裤子和一只彩虹条纹的袜子。墙上挂着科学展颁发的绶带，还有一张印着爱因斯坦头像的明信片。莉迪亚的帆布旅行袋堆在衣柜旁边的地板上，皱成一团，她的绿色书包摊放在书桌上。梳妆台上是莉迪亚的“柔宝宝”乳霜瓶，空气中还飘散着婴儿护肤品特有的香甜气味。然而莉迪亚却不见了。
Marilyn closes her eyes. Maybe, when she opens them, Lydia will be there, covers pulled over her head as usual, wisps of hair trailing from beneath. A grumpy lump bundled under the bedspread that she’d somehow missed before. I was in the bathroom, Mom. I went downstairs for some water. I was lying right here all the time. Of course, when she looks, nothing has changed. The closed curtains glow like a blank television screen.
玛丽琳闭上眼睛。也许，等她再睁开眼，莉迪亚就会出现，像往常一样掀开被子露出乱糟糟的头发。也许，她没有注意到床罩底下有个明显的人形凸起。在她的脑海中，莉迪亚似乎在说：“妈妈，我在浴室；妈妈，我去楼下喝水了；妈妈，我一直在床上躺着呢。”当然，等她真的睁开眼睛，一切都没有改变。紧闭的窗帘宛如没有图像的电视屏幕，令人扫兴。
Downstairs, she stops in the doorway of the kitchen, a hand on each side of the frame. Her silence says everything. “I’ll check outside,” she says at last. “Maybe for some reason –” She keeps her gaze trained on the floor as she heads for the front door, as if Lydia’s footprints might be crushed into the hall runner.
玛丽琳来到楼下，在厨房门口停住脚步，双手扒住两边的门框探头朝里张望，她的沉默说明厨房里并没有莉迪亚的踪影。良久，她终于说：“我去外面看看，她可能是因为……”她一边走向前门一边紧盯着地板，好像门口的地毯上会留下莉迪亚的脚印似的。
Nath says to Hannah, “She was in her room last night. I heard her radio playing. At eleven thirty.” He stops, remembering that he had not said goodnight.
内斯对汉娜说：“她昨晚在她房间里，十一点半的时候，我还听见她的收音机在响。”他忽然停住嘴，想起自己并没有对莉迪亚说晚安。
“Can you be kidnapped if you’re sixteen?” Hannah asks.
“要是你都十六岁了，还会被人绑架吗？”汉娜问。
Nath prods at his bowl with a spoon. Cornflakes wilt and sink into clouded milk.
内斯用勺子戳着碗底，玉米片随着他的动作枯萎塌陷，沉入混浊的牛奶。
Their mother steps back into the kitchen, and for one glorious fraction of a second Nath sighs with relief: there she is, Lydia, safe and sound. It happens sometimes — their faces are so alike you’d see one in the corner of your eye and mistake her for the other: the same elfish chin and high cheekbones and left-cheek dimple, the same thin-shouldered build. Only the hair color is different, Lydia’s ink-black instead of their mother’s honey-blond. He and Hannah take after their father — once a woman stopped the two of them in the grocery store and asked, “Chinese?” and when they said yes, not wanting to get into halves and wholes, she’d nodded sagely. “I knew it,” she said. “By the eyes.” She’d tugged the corner of each eye outward with a fingertip. But Lydia, defying genetics, somehow has her mother’s blue eyes, and they know this is one more reason she is their mother’s favorite. And their father’s, too.
他们的母亲踱回厨房的时候，恍惚之间，内斯心底升起一股喜悦和释然：莉迪亚没有失踪，她好端端地在那里呢。难怪内斯会把母亲错看成莉迪亚，这种情况时有发生——母女俩长得很像，你要是用眼角的余光打量，非常有可能认错人：两人都是尖下巴、高颧骨、左边一个单酒窝、削肩膀。唯独头发的颜色不同，莉迪亚的是墨黑色，她母亲的头发是蜜棕色。内斯和汉娜则长得像父亲——有一次，一个女人在杂货店拦住他们问：“你们是中国人吗？”听到他们肯定的回答，女人点点头，表现出一副洞悉一切的样子。“我就知道，”她说，“从眼睛就能看出来。”说着，她用手指尖向外扳了扳外眼角。而莉迪亚却公然违抗遗传规律，不知怎么，她继承了母亲的蓝眼睛。他们知道，这是莉迪亚成为母亲宠儿的原因之一，当然，她也是父亲的宠儿。
Then Lydia raises one hand to her brow and becomes his mother again.
内斯刚才恍然看到的“莉迪亚”抬起一只手，按在眉头上，又变回了他的母亲。
“The car’s still here,” she says, but Nath had known it would be. Lydia can’t drive; she doesn’t even have a learner’s permit yet. Last week she’d surprised them all by failing the exam, and their father wouldn’t even let her sit in the driver’s seat without it. Nath stirs his cereal, which has turned to sludge at the bottom of his bowl. The clock in the front hall ticks, then strikes seven thirty. No one moves.
“车还在外面。”她说。不过，内斯早就预料到这个结果。莉迪亚不会开车，她连初学者驾照都没有。上个星期她没通过驾照考试，让全家人大吃一惊，父亲为此甚至都不让她坐在驾驶座上。内斯搅拌着麦片粥，粥里的麦片早就变成了碗底的烂泥。前厅的钟表滴答作响，然后传来七点半的报时声。大家都没动。
“Are we still going to school today?” Hannah asks.
“我们今天还上学吗？”汉娜问。
Marilyn hesitates. Then she goes to her purse and takes out her keychain with a show of efficiency. “You’ve both missed the bus. Nath, take my car and drop Hannah off on your way.” Then: “Don’t worry. We’ll find out what’s going on.” She doesn’t look at either of them. Neither looks at her.
玛丽琳犹豫了。她站起来去拿钱包，故作镇定地找出钥匙：“你们两个都错过校车了。内斯，你开我的车上学，顺便把汉娜送到学校去。”然后又说，“别担心，我们会弄清楚这是怎么回事的。”她一眼都没有看他们，两个孩子也没有看她。
When the children have gone, she takes a mug from the cupboard, trying to keep her hands still. Long ago, when Lydia was a baby, Marilyn had once left her in the living room, playing on a quilt, and went into the kitchen for a cup of tea. She had been only eleven months old. Marilyn took the kettle off the stove and turned to find Lydia standing in the doorway. She had started and set her hand down on the hot burner. A red, spiral welt rose on her palm, and she touched it to her lips and looked at her daughter through watering eyes. Standing there, Lydia was strangely alert, as if she were taking in the kitchen for the first time. Marilyn didn’t think about missing those first steps, or how grown up her daughter had become. The thought that flashed through her mind wasn’t How did I miss it? but What else have you been hiding? Nath had pulled up and wobbled and tipped over and toddled right in front of her, but she didn’t remember Lydia even beginning to stand. Yet she seemed so steady on her bare feet, tiny fingers just peeking from the ruffled sleeve of her romper. Marilyn often had her back turned, opening the refrigerator or turning over the laundry. Lydia could have begun walking weeks ago, while she was bent over a pot, and she would not have known.
孩子们出门后，玛丽琳从碗柜里拿出一只马克杯。很久以前，莉迪亚还是个婴儿的时候，玛丽琳有一次在客厅里铺开一床被子，让莉迪亚在上面玩，自己则走到厨房煮茶。莉迪亚只有十一个月大，当玛丽琳把水壶从炉子上拿下来的时候，发现莉迪亚站在门口。她吓了一跳，结果手碰到了灼热的炉子，手掌立刻被烫红了，玛丽琳把红肿的手放到嘴边，眼泪汪汪地看着女儿。莉迪亚表现得十分戒备，因为她是第一次踏足厨房这片领地。玛丽琳并没想到自己错过了女儿学会走路时迈出的最初几步，也没有意识到女儿已经长大了。她脑子里旋转着的念头并非“我为什么错过了”，而是“你还有什么我不知道的本事”。内斯是在她眼皮底下摇摇晃晃学会了走路的，可她却不记得莉迪亚是什么时候学会站立的。但是，现在，莉迪亚已然赤着脚稳稳当当地站在那里，连身衣的裤筒下面露出小小的脚趾。玛丽琳经常背对着莉迪亚做家务，比如开冰箱或者翻动洗衣机里的衣服。莉迪亚可能在几周前就学会了走路，当时玛丽琳也许在忙着做饭，没有注意到。
She had scooped Lydia up and smoothed her hair and told her how clever she was, how proud her father would be when he came home. But she’d felt as if she’d found a locked door in a familiar room: Lydia, still small enough to cradle, had secrets. Marilyn might feed her and bathe her and coax her legs into pajama pants, but already parts of her life were curtained off. She kissed Lydia’s cheek and pulled her close, trying to warm herself against her daughter’s small body.
她一把抱起莉迪亚，抚摩她的头发，夸奖她聪明，说爸爸回家的时候一定会非常自豪。但她也同时有一种“自己熟悉的房间，门却被锁住了”的感觉：乳臭未干的莉迪亚竟然有了秘密。玛丽琳依然需要喂她吃饭、给她洗澡、把她的小腿塞进睡裤，但莉迪亚生活的某些部分已经被帘幕遮挡了起来。她亲亲莉迪亚的脸，把她拉到离自己更近的地方，试图依偎着女儿的小身体取暖。
Now Marilyn sips tea and remembers that surprise.
现在，端着马克杯喝茶的玛丽琳突然想起多年前的那次惊喜。
The high school’s number is pinned to the corkboard beside the refrigerator, and Marilyn pulls the card down and dials, twisting the cord around her finger while the phone rings.
莉迪亚所在高中的联系电话就钉在冰箱旁边的记事板上，玛丽琳摘下写有号码的卡片，拨了电话，手指缠绕着电话线等待着。
“Middlewood High,” the secretary says on the fourth ring. “This is Dottie.”
“米德伍德高中，”铃声响到第四下，校务秘书接起电话，“我是多蒂。”
She recalls Dottie: a woman built like a sofa cushion, who still wore her fading red hair in a beehive. “Good morning,” she begins, and falters. “Is my daughter in class this morning?”
玛丽琳记得多蒂：身材如同沙发靠垫，褪了色的红发高耸地盘在头顶。“早上好，”她支支吾吾地问，“我女儿今天早晨去上学了吗？”
Dottie makes a polite cluck of impatience. “To whom am I speaking, please?”
多蒂轻咳一声，礼貌地表示着不耐烦：“请问你是哪位？”
It takes her a moment to remember her own name. “Marilyn. Marilyn Lee. My daughter is Lydia Lee. Tenth grade.”
玛丽琳愣了一下才想起自己的名字：“玛丽琳。玛丽琳·李，我女儿是莉迪亚·李，她上十年级。”
“Let me look up her schedule. First period –” A pause. “Eleventh-grade physics?”
“我查查她的课程表，上午第一节课是——”对方停顿了一阵，“十一年级物理？”
“Yes, that’s right. With Mr. Kelly.”
“是的，是凯利老师的课。”
“I’ll have someone run down to that classroom and check.” There’s a thud as the secretary sets the receiver down on the desk.
“我找人去教室看看。”说完，校务秘书“砰”的一声把听筒放在桌上。
Marilyn studies her mug, the pool of water it has made on the counter. A few years ago, a little girl had crawled into a storage shed and suffocated. After that the police department sent a flyer to every house: If your child is missing, look for him right away. Check washing machines and clothes dryers, automobile trunks, toolsheds, any places he might have crawled to hide. Call police immediately if your child cannot be found.
玛丽琳研究着她的马克杯，还有杯子在柜台上留下的水渍。几年前，一个小女孩爬进了储藏室，结果窒息而死。事后，警察局给每家每户发了一张传单：如果你的孩子不见了，请立刻去找。请检查洗衣机和烘干机、汽车后备箱、工具室，以及孩子可能爬进去的所有地方，如果找不到，请立刻报警。
“Mrs. Lee?” the secretary says. “Your daughter was not in her first-period class. Are you calling to excuse her absence?”
“李太太，”秘书说，“你的女儿没去上第一节课，你要给她请假吗？”
Marilyn hangs up without replying. She replaces the phone number on the board, her damp fingers smudging the ink so that the digits blur as if in a strong wind, or underwater.
玛丽琳没有回答就挂掉了电话。她把卡片放回原位，手指上的汗抹在了卡片上，墨迹洇开了，号码变得模糊不清，犹如被狂风吹乱，又像是掉进了水里。
She checks every room, opening every closet. She peeks into the empty garage: nothing but an oil spot on the concrete and the faint, heady smell of gasoline. She’s not sure what she’s looking for: Incriminating footprints? A trail of breadcrumbs? When she was twelve, an older girl from her school had disappeared and turned up dead. Ginny Barron. She’d worn saddle shoes that Marilyn had desperately coveted. She’d gone to the store to buy cigarettes for her father, and two days later they found her body by the side of the road, halfway to Charlottesville, strangled and naked.
她检查了每一个房间，敞开每一个橱柜，又瞥了一眼空荡荡的车库。混凝土地面上有一块油迹，空气中弥漫着淡淡的汽油味，此外别无他物。她不确定自己在找什么。可疑的脚印？零星的面包屑？玛丽琳小的时候，有个比她大一些的女同学失踪了，她叫金妮·巴伦，玛丽琳一直很羡慕金妮穿的马鞍鞋。金妮去商店给她父亲买烟，然后就不见了，两天后，人们在距离夏洛特斯维尔还有一半里程的路边发现了金妮赤裸的尸体。她是被勒死的。
Now Marilyn’s mind begins to churn. The summer of Son of Sam has just begun — though the papers have only recently begun to call him by that name — and, even in Ohio, headlines blare the latest shooting. In a few months, the police will catch David Berkowitz, and the country will focus again on other things: the death of Elvis, the new Atari, Fonzie soaring over a shark. At this moment, though, when dark-haired New Yorkers are buying blond wigs, the world seems to Marilyn a terrifying and random place. Things like that don’t happen here, she reminds herself. Not in Middlewood, which calls itself a city but is really just a tiny college town of three thousand, where driving an hour gets you only to Toledo, where a Saturday night out means the roller rink or the bowling alley or the drive-in, where even Middlewood Lake, at the center of town, is really just a glorified pond. (She is wrong about this last one: it is a thousand feet across, and it is deep.) Still, the small of her back prickles, like beetles marching down her spine.
这会儿，玛丽琳开始胡思乱想了。这个夏天，连环杀人狂“山姆之子”——虽然报纸上最近才开始这样称呼他——大肆作案，甚至在俄亥俄州，新闻头条刊登的也是他最新犯下的枪击案的消息。几个月之后，警方会抓住这个叫大卫·柏克维兹的家伙，美国人也会关注别的新闻：猫王去世，新一代雅达利游戏机闪亮登场，电视角色“方奇”从鲨鱼身上一跃而过，然而现在，罪犯尚未落网，所以，深色头发的纽约人仍然在争相购买浅色假发。这让玛丽琳觉得世界是一个恐怖混乱的地方，但她也提醒自己，这样的事情不会发生在米德伍德。米德伍德虽然以“城市”自居，可实际上不过是个小小的大学城，居民只有三千人左右，从这里开车，走上一个小时才能到托莱多；周末的时候，当地人只能在溜冰场、保龄球馆或者汽车电影院消磨时光，连市中心的米德伍德湖都只能算是一方池塘。（最后一点她搞错了，实际上，米德伍德湖宽一千英尺，而且很深。）不过，她还是觉得后腰刺痛，仿佛有成群的甲虫爬过脊柱。
Inside, Marilyn pulls back the shower curtain, rings screeching against rod, and stares at the white curve of the bathtub. She searches all the cabinets in the kitchen. She looks inside the pantry, the coat closet, the oven. Then she opens the refrigerator and peers inside. Olives. Milk. A pink foam package of chicken, a head of iceberg, a cluster of jade-colored grapes. She touches the cool glass of the peanut butter jar and closes the door, shaking her head. As if Lydia would somehow be inside.
玛丽琳拉开浴帘，挂环摩擦着撑杆，发出刺耳的声响，映入眼帘的只有浴缸的白色曲线。她在厨房翻箱倒柜，检查了储藏室、大衣橱和炉灶，又打开冰箱朝里看：橄榄、牛奶、粉红泡沫塑料包装的鸡肉、一颗圆生菜、一串绿葡萄。她摸摸冰凉的花生酱瓶，关上冰箱门，摇了摇头，就好像莉迪亚会藏在冰箱里似的。
Morning sun fills the house, creamy as lemon chiffon, lighting the insides of cupboards and empty closets and clean, bare floors. Marilyn looks down at her hands, empty too and almost aglow in the sunlight. She lifts the phone and dials her husband’s number.
上午的阳光洒满房间，有着柠檬戚风蛋糕般的细腻质感，照亮了碗柜、空衣橱的内部和光洁的地板。玛丽琳低头看看自己的手，在阳光的照耀下，空空的掌心反射出柔和的光芒。她拿起电话，拨了丈夫的号码。
For James, in his office, it is still just another Tuesday, and he clicks his pen against his teeth. A line of smudgy typing teeters slightly uphill: Serbia was one of the most powerful of the Baltic nations. He crosses out Baltic, writes Balkan, turns the page. Archduke France Ferdinand was assassinated by members of Black Ann. Franz, he thinks. Black Hand. Had these students ever opened their books? He pictures himself at the front of the lecture hall, pointer in hand, the map of Europe unfurled behind him. It’s an intro class, “America and the World Wars”; he doesn’t expect depth of knowledge or critical insight. Just a basic understanding of the facts, and one student who can spell Czechoslovakia correctly.
办公室里，詹姆斯拿着钢笔敲击着自己的牙齿，对他而言，今天不过是又一个平凡的星期二。他面前摆着一份打好的材料，其中一行字写着“塞尔维亚是波罗的海各国中最强大的国家之一”，字迹肮脏歪斜，詹姆斯用笔划掉“波罗的海”，改成“巴尔干半岛”，然后翻到下一页，念道：“‘黑毛党’刺杀了弗朗斯·斐迪南大公。”他想：“应该是‘弗朗茨’和‘黑手党’。”难道这些学生从来没翻开过课本吗？他想象自己站在讲堂前面，手执教鞭，身后挂着欧洲地图。他教的是历史导论课，主题是“美国与世界大战”；他并不奢望学生拥有深奥的知识或者惊人的洞见，只要对基本史实有所了解，能够拼对“捷克斯洛伐克”这个地名便足矣。
He closes the paper and writes the score on the front page — sixty-five out of one hundred — and circles it. Every year as summer approaches, the students shuffle and rustle; sparks of resentment sizzle up like flares, then sputter out against the windowless walls of the lecture hall. Their papers grow halfhearted, paragraphs trailing off, sometimes midsentence, as if the students could not hold a thought that long. Was it a waste, he wonders. All the lecture notes he’s honed, all the color slides of MacArthur and Truman and the maps of Guadalcanal. Nothing more than funny names to giggle at, the whole course just one more requirement to check off the list before they graduated. What else could he expect from this place? He stacks the paper with the others and drops the pen on top. Through the window he can see the small green quad and three kids in blue jeans tossing a Frisbee.
他合上论文，在第一页打分——六十五分（满分一百分）——然后画了个圈。每到暑假临近，学生们都会匆忙准备论文，愤恨的火花于争分夺秒间迸发，在没有窗户的讲堂墙壁上砰然四射。他们的文章写得漫不经心，偷工减料，经常出现拦腰截断的句子，让人觉得他们的思维断断续续、连不成线。真是浪费，他想。他亲自提炼的课堂笔记，亲自制作的麦克阿瑟和杜鲁门的彩色幻灯片，还有瓜达尔卡纳岛的地图，全都是白费劲。对学生来说，除了嘲笑历史课本上出现过的滑稽名字比较有意思外，这门课无非是毕业之路上的绊脚石之一。还能指望什么呢？他把批好的论文和其余的摞在一起，把钢笔朝纸堆上一丢。透过窗户，他可以看到绿色的校园小院，三个穿蓝色牛仔裤的孩子正在玩飞盘。
When he was younger, still junior faculty, James was often mistaken for a student himself. That hasn’t happened in years. He’ll be forty-six next spring; he’s tenured, a few silver hairs now mixed in among the black. Sometimes, though, he’s still mistaken for other things. Once, a receptionist at the provost’s office thought he was a visiting diplomat from Japan and asked him about his flight from Tokyo. He enjoys the surprise on people’s faces when he tells them he’s a professor of American history. “Well, I am American,” he says when people blink, a barb of defensiveness in his tone.
詹姆斯年轻时已是初级教师，但经常有人把他错认成学生。不过，已经好多年没发生这种事了。明年春天他就四十六岁了。他现在已经拿到了终身教职，漆黑的头发里也混进了几根银丝。然而有些时候，人们仍然会把他当成别人。一次，教务长办公室的一位接待员以为他是前来访问的日本外交官，问他旅途是否愉快。他喜欢人们听到他说自己是美国历史教授时脸上那难以置信的表情。“我是美国人。”他这样说的时候，他们都会惊奇地眨眼睛，他的语调里不乏自我辩护的锋芒之气。
Someone knocks: his teaching assistant, Louisa, with a stack of papers.
有人敲门。他的助教路易莎抱着一叠论文走了进来。
“Professor Lee. I didn’t mean to bother you, but your door was open.” She sets the essays on his desk and pauses. “These weren’t very good.”
“李教授，我没想打搅你，但是，你的门是开着的。”她把论文放到他桌上，停顿了一下说道，“这些论文不怎么好。”
“No. My half weren’t either. I was hoping you had all the As in your stack.”
“嗯，我改的这些也不好，还以为高分论文都在你那里呢。”
Louisa laughs. When he’d first seen her, in his graduate seminar last term, she’d surprised him. From the back she could have been his daughter: they had almost the same hair, hanging dark and glossy down to the shoulder blades, the same way of sitting with elbows pulled in close to the body. When she turned around, though, her face was completely her own, narrow where Lydia’s was wide, her eyes brown and steady. “Professor Lee?” she had said, holding out her hand. “I’m Louisa Chen.” Eighteen years at Middlewood College, he’d thought, and here was the first Oriental student he’d ever had. Without realizing it, he had found himself smiling.
路易莎笑了。他第一次见到她，是在上学期的毕业研讨班上，路易莎吓了他一跳，因为从背后看，她非常像他的女儿。她们的头发几乎一样长，都是深色，光滑柔亮，一直披到肩胛上，坐着的时候胳膊肘向里收，紧贴着身体。不过，当路易莎转过身，她的长相却和莉迪亚完全不同，她脸窄，莉迪亚脸宽，她的眼睛是褐色的，眼神沉稳坚定。“李教授，”路易莎伸出一只手，“我是路易莎·陈。”在米德伍德教书十八年，他想，她是自己的第一个东方学生。想到这里，他已经不自觉地微笑起来。
Then, a week later, she came to his office. “Is that your family?” she’d asked, tilting the photo on his desk toward her. There was a pause as she studied it. Everyone did the same thing, and that was why he kept the photo on display. He watched her eyes move from his photographic face to his wife’s, then his children’s, then back again. “Oh,” she said after a moment, and he could tell she was trying to hide her confusion. “Your wife’s — not Chinese?”
接着，一周之后，路易莎来到他的办公室。“这是你的全家福？”她凑过去看他桌上的照片，沉默地端详了一阵子。大家都会这样，这也是他愿意公开展示这张照片的原因。他看到她的目光从相片中他的脸移到了他妻子和孩子的脸上，然后又扫视回来。“噢，”过了一会，她说，他能看出，她正试图掩饰自己的疑惑，“你的妻子——不是中国人？”
It was what everyone said. But from her he had expected something different.
大家都会这么说。但是，他本以为路易莎会有不一样的反应。
“No,” he said, and straightened the frame so that it faced her a little more squarely, a perfect forty-five-degree angle to the front of the desk. “No, she isn’t.”
“不是，”他说，又把照片朝着她摆正了一点，相框和桌面形成了完美的四十五度角，“她不是中国人。”
Still, at the end of the fall semester, he’d asked her to act as a grader for his undergraduate lecture. And in April, he’d asked her to be the teaching assistant for his summer course.
到了秋季学期，他请路易莎为他组织的本科生演讲打分，来年四月份，他请她担任自己夏季课程的助教。
“I hope the summer students will be better,” Louisa says now. “A few people insisted that the Cape-to-Cairo Railroad was in Europe. For college students, they have surprising trouble with geography.”
“希望夏天的这批学生会好一点，”路易莎说，“可是，有几个学生坚持认为，开普敦到开罗的铁路位于欧洲，身为大学生，他们明显欠缺地理知识。”
“Well, this isn’t Harvard, that’s for sure,” James says. He pushes the two piles of essays into one and evens them, like a deck of cards, against the desktop. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s all a waste.”
“嗯，我们学校也不是哈佛大学，没什么奇怪的。”詹姆斯说。他把两摞论文并到一起，又平均分开，像玩扑克牌那样倒扣在桌上，“有时候，我觉得自己的辛苦简直是白费。”
“You can’t blame yourself if the students don’t try. And they’re not all so bad. A few got As.” Louisa blinks at him, her eyes suddenly serious. “Your life is not a waste.”
听到这话，路易莎有点吃惊。“是学生自己不努力，不是你的错。但他们也不是一塌糊涂，有几个人就得了A。”她的眼神一下子变得严肃起来，“你的人生没有浪费。”
James had meant only the intro course, teaching these students who, year after year, didn’t care to learn even the basic timeline. She’s twenty-three, he thinks; she knows nothing about life, wasted or otherwise. But it’s a nice thing to hear.
詹姆斯的意思是说，他年复一年地讲授历史导论这门课，学生们却连最基本的历史年表都不屑于了解。他想，路易莎只有二十三岁，她知道什么人生，又明白什么是浪费？不过，听到她这么说，他还是觉得舒服。
“Stay still,” he says. “There’s something in your hair.” Her hair is cool and a little damp, not quite dry from her morning shower. Louisa holds quite still, her eyes open and fixed on his face. It’s not a flower petal, as he’d first thought. It’s a ladybug, and as he picks it out, it tiptoes, on threadlike yellow legs, to hang upside down from his fingernail.
“别动，”他说，“你头发上有东西。”她的头发凉凉的，又有点湿，似乎早晨淋浴后没有完全擦干。路易莎一动不动地睁大眼睛，盯着他的脸。不是花瓣，他想，是一只瓢虫，他把它摘了下来。瓢虫撑起细如丝线的小黄腿，踮着脚尖，倒挂在他的指甲上。
“Damn things are everywhere this time of year,” says a voice from the doorway, and James looks up to see Stanley Hewitt leaning through. He doesn’t like Stan — a florid ham hock of a man who talks to him loudly and slowly, as if he’s hard of hearing, who makes stupid jokes that start George Washington, Buffalo Bill, and Spiro Agnew walk into a bar…
“今年的烦心事特别多。”一个声音从门口传来，詹姆斯抬头看到斯坦利·休伊特探进半个身子。他不喜欢斯坦——这个男人面色红润，膀阔腰圆，和他说话时嗓门很大，而且慢条斯理，好像詹姆斯的听力有问题一样。斯坦经常讲一些愚蠢的笑话，比如“乔治·华盛顿、水牛比尔和斯皮罗·阿格纽走进一个酒吧……”之类的。
“Did you want something, Stan?” James asks. He’s acutely conscious of his hand, index finger and thumb outstretched as if pointing a popgun at Louisa’s shoulder, and pulls it back.
“有事吗，斯坦？”詹姆斯问。他蓦然发现自己的食指和拇指无意间越过路易莎的肩膀伸了出去，比成一把手枪的形状，对准了斯坦。他连忙把手缩回来。
“Just wanted to ask a question about the dean’s latest memo,” Stanley says, holding up a mimeographed sheet. “Didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”
“我就是想问一个关于院长最新通知的问题，”斯坦举起一张油印材料说，“没想要打扰你。”
“I have to get going anyway,” Louisa says. “Have a nice morning, Professor Lee. I’ll see you tomorrow. You too, Professor Hewitt.” As she slides past Stanley into the hallway, James sees that she’s blushing, and his own face grows hot. When she is gone, Stanley seats himself on the corner of James’s desk.
“我得走了，”路易莎说，“祝你上午有个好心情，李教授，我们明天见。你也是，休伊特教授。”路易莎从斯坦利身边挤过去，进入走廊，詹姆斯发现她脸红了，他自己的脸也很热。路易莎走掉后，斯坦利一屁股坐在詹姆斯的桌角上。
“Good-looking girl,” he says. “She’ll be your assistant this summer too, no?”
“漂亮姑娘，”他说，“她今年夏天还是你的助教，对吗？”
“Yes.” James unfolds his hand as the ladybug moves onto his fingertip, walking the path of his fingerprint, around and around in whorls and loops. He wants to smash his fist into the middle of Stanley’s grin, to feel Stanley’s slightly crooked front tooth slice his knuckles. Instead he smashes the ladybug with his thumb. The shell snaps between his fingers, like a popcorn hull, and the insect crumbles to sulfur-colored powder. Stanley keeps running his finger along the spines of James’s books. Later James will long for the ignorant calm of this moment, for that last second when Stan’s leer was the worst problem on his mind. But for now, when the phone rings, he is so relieved at the interruption that at first he doesn’t hear the anxiety in Marilyn’s voice.
“是的。”詹姆斯摊开手掌，瓢虫爬上他的指尖，沿着螺旋和圆环形状的指纹散步。他很想一拳砸在斯坦利笑得咧开的嘴上，用指关节感受一下他扭曲的门牙。不过，他只是用拇指捻碎了手上的瓢虫。甲壳的碎片夹在指缝中间，触感像爆米花的皮，粉身碎骨的瓢虫变成了一小堆硫磺色的粉末。斯坦利的手指不停地在詹姆斯书本的书脊上划动，尽管再过一会儿，詹姆斯会宁愿时间停留在这个茫然无知的时刻，但是现在，最令他心烦的就是斯坦不怀好意的笑。所以，当电话铃声响起的时候，他感到如释重负，甚至连玛丽琳声音里的焦急都没有马上察觉。
“James?” she says. “Could you come home?”
“詹姆斯，”她说，“你能回家吗？”
The police tell them lots of teenagers leave home with no warning. Lots of times, they say, the girls are mad at their parents and the parents don’t even know. Nath watches them circulate in his sister’s room. He expects talcum powder and feather dusters, sniffing dogs, magnifying glasses. Instead the policemen just look: at the posters thumbtacked above her desk, the shoes on the floor, the half-opened bookbag. Then the younger one places his palm on the rounded pink lid of Lydia’s perfume bottle, as if cupping a child’s head in his hand.
警察告诉他们，很多青少年会毫无预兆地离家出走。他们说，女孩经常会生父母的气，父母却浑然不觉。内斯看着警察检查妹妹的房间，他希望他们能够用上滑石粉、羽毛刷、嗅探犬、放大镜等等寻找蛛丝马迹的工具，但他们只是拿眼睛看：书桌上方用图钉固定在墙上的海报、地板上的鞋、半开的书包。然后，那个年轻一点的警察把手掌放在莉迪亚的粉红色圆形香水瓶盖上，像握着一颗小孩的头一样。
Most missing-girl cases, the older policeman tells them, resolve themselves within twenty-four hours. The girls come home by themselves.
年纪大一些的警察告诉他们，大部分女孩的失踪案都会在24小时内自行撤销，因为失踪的女孩会自己回家。
“What does that mean?” Nath says. “Most? What does that mean?”
“这是什么意思？”内斯问，“大部分？这是什么意思？”
The policeman peers over the top of his bifocals. “In the vast majority of cases,” he says.
警察越过双光眼镜的上方瞥了他一眼。“就是说，大部分案件都是这样的。”他说。
“Eighty percent?” Nath says. “Ninety? Ninety-five?”
“有百分之八十吗？”内斯说，“九十？九十五？”
“Nathan,” James says. “That’s enough. Let Officer Fiske do his work.”
“内斯，”詹姆斯说，“行了，让菲斯克警官工作吧。”
The younger officer jots down the particulars in his notebook: Lydia Elizabeth Lee, sixteen, last seen Monday May 2, flowered halter-neck dress, parents James and Marilyn Lee. At this Officer Fiske studies James closely, a memory surfacing in his mind.
年轻些的警官在笔记本上匆匆记录案件细节：莉迪亚·伊丽莎白·李，十六岁。最后出现时间：星期一，5月2日，身穿印花绕颈系带裙。父母姓名：詹姆斯和玛丽琳·李。菲斯克警官开始详细询问詹姆斯情况，他突然想起一件事。
“Now, your wife also went missing once?” he says. “I remember the case. In sixty-six, wasn’t it?”
“你妻子也曾经失踪过一次？”他问，“我记得那个案子，是1966年发生的，对吗？”
Warmth spreads along the back of James’s neck, like sweat dripping behind his ears. He is glad, now, that Marilyn is waiting by the phone downstairs. “That was a misunderstanding,” he says stiffly. “A miscommunication between my wife and myself. A family matter.”
詹姆斯觉得脖子后方一阵温热，似乎有汗水从耳朵后面滴落。他很庆幸玛丽琳现在正待在楼下守着电话。“那是个误会，”他不自在地说，“我和我妻子出现了沟通问题，因为家务事。”
“I see.” The older officer pulls out his own pad and makes a note, and James raps his knuckle against the corner of Lydia’s desk.
“知道了。”年纪大一些的警官拿出他自己的笔记本做起了笔录，詹姆斯曲起手指，在莉迪亚的书桌上轻轻敲击。
“Anything else?”
“还有什么问题吗？”
In the kitchen, the policemen flip through the family albums looking for a clear head shot. “This one,” Hannah says, pointing. It’s a snapshot from last Christmas. Lydia had been sullen, and Nath had tried to cheer her up, to blackmail a smile out of her through the camera. It hadn’t worked. She sits next to the tree, back against the wall, alone in the shot. Her face is a dare. The directness of her stare, straight out of the page with not even a hint of profile, says What are you looking at? In the picture, Nath can’t distinguish the blue of her irises from the black of her pupils, her eyes like dark holes in the shiny paper. When he’d picked up the photos at the drugstore, he had regretted capturing this moment, the hard look on his sister’s face. But now, he admits, looking at the photograph in Hannah’s hand, this looks like her — at least, the way she looked when he had seen her last.
厨房里，警察们翻动着家庭相册，想找一张莉迪亚脸部的清晰照。“这张。”汉娜指着相册说。这张照片是去年圣诞节照的，上面的莉迪亚面有愠色。当时，端着相机的内斯想哄她笑，却没有成功。她坐在一棵树下，背靠着墙，照片里只有她一个人。她脸上的表情是赤裸裸的挑衅，目光仿佛穿透了相纸，直视着你，似乎在说：“看什么看？”内斯无法从这张照片上分辨她蓝色的虹膜和黑色的瞳孔，闪光的相纸把她的眼睛变成了两个黑洞。当他从杂货店取出冲印好的照片，看到这上面妹妹的表情时，就后悔拍下了这个瞬间。但是，他现在不得不承认，汉娜手上拿的这张照片还原度非常高——至少很像他最后一次见到莉迪亚时她的模样。
“Not that one,” James says. “Not with Lydia making a face like that. People will think she looks like that all the time. Pick a nice one.” He flips a few pages and pries out the last snapshot. “This one’s better.”
“别选那张，”詹姆斯说，“莉迪亚是在做鬼脸。看了这张照片，人们会以为她总是这个样子。选一张好的。”他翻阅相册，挑出最后一张，“这张好一点。”
At her sixteenth birthday, the week before, Lydia sits at the table with a lipsticked smile. Though her face is turned toward the camera, her eyes are looking at something outside the photo’s white border. What’s so funny? Nath wonders. He can’t remember if it was him, or something their father said, or if Lydia was laughing to herself about something none of the rest of them knew. She looks like a model in a magazine ad, lips dark and sharp, a plate of perfectly frosted cake poised on a delicate hand, having an improbably good time.
这是一周前莉迪亚十六岁生日时照的，她坐在桌边，涂着唇膏，面带微笑。虽然她的脸朝向镜头，但眼睛却看着取景框以外的地方。她在笑什么？是看到了什么好玩的东西吗？内斯想。可能是他或者父亲说的什么话逗乐了莉迪亚，抑或是出于什么他们不知道的原因。照片中的莉迪亚看上去像杂志广告里的模特，唇色暗沉浓艳，纤细的手掌托着一碟均匀洒满糖霜的蛋糕，她开心的样子简直不像是真的。
James pushes the birthday photo across the table toward the policemen, and the younger one slides it into a manila folder and stands up.
詹姆斯把放在桌上的生日照推到两名警察面前，年轻的那个把照片塞进一个马尼拉加厚纸质文件袋内，站起身来。
“This will be just fine,” he says. “We’ll make up a flyer in case she doesn’t turn up by tomorrow. Don’t worry. I’m sure she will.” He leaves a fleck of spit on the photo album page and Hannah wipes it away with her finger.
“这张就可以，”他说，“如果明天还没有找到她，我们会制作一份传单。别担心，我敢肯定，她会回来的。”他讲话时，一星唾沫飞到了相册上，汉娜用手指把它擦掉。
“She wouldn’t just leave,” Marilyn says. “What if it’s some crazy? Some psycho kidnapping girls?” Her hand drifts to that morning’s newspaper, still lying in the center of the table.
“她不会一声不吭就离家出走的，”玛丽琳说，“如果是疯子或者神经病把她绑架了怎么办？”她伸手去拿早晨的报纸，报纸一直就搁在桌子中央。
“Try not to worry, ma’am,” Officer Fiske says. “Things like that, they hardly ever happen. In the vast majority of cases –” He glances at Nath, then clears his throat. “The girls almost always come home.”
“尽量别去担心，夫人，”菲斯克警官说，“这样的事情不太可能发生。大部分案件里……”他看了内斯一眼，然后清清喉咙，“失踪的女孩几乎都会回家的。”
When the policemen have gone, Marilyn and James sit down with a piece of scratch paper. The police have suggested they call all of Lydia’s friends, anyone who might know where she’s gone. Together they construct a list: Pam Saunders. Jenn Pittman. Shelley Brierley. Nath doesn’t correct them, but these girls have never been Lydia’s friends. Lydia has been in school with them since kindergarten, and now and then they call, giggly and shrill, and Lydia shouts through the line, “I got it.” Some evenings she sits for hours on the window seat on the landing, the phone base cradled in her lap, receiver wedged between ear and shoulder. When their parents walk by, she lowers her voice to a confidential murmur, twirling the cord around her little finger until they go away. This, Nath knows, is why his parents write their names on the list with such confidence.
警察走了以后，玛丽琳和詹姆斯守着一张便笺纸坐着。警察建议他们给莉迪亚所有的朋友打电话，联系可能知道她去向的每一个人。于是，两人一起列了份名单：帕姆·桑德斯、珍·皮特曼、谢莉·布莱尔利……虽然内斯没说什么，但他清楚，这些女孩从来都算不上莉迪亚的朋友。自从幼儿园开始，莉迪亚和她们就是同学，这些女孩偶尔会打来电话，和莉迪亚嬉笑一番。有时，莉迪亚会对着听筒大喊：“我明白了！”有时，到了晚上，她在楼梯平台那里的窗户前一坐就是几小时，电话搁在膝盖上，肩膀和耳朵夹着听筒。每当父母经过，她就压低声音含糊地嘟囔，小指绞着电话线，直到他们走开为止。内斯觉得，父母就是根据莉迪亚的这种表现，写下了那些可能知道她去向的女孩的名字。
But Nath’s seen Lydia at school, how in the cafeteria she sits silent while the others chatter; how, when they’ve finished copying her homework, she quietly slides her notebook back into her bookbag. After school, she walks to the bus alone and settles into the seat beside him in silence. Once, he had stayed on the phone line after Lydia picked up and heard not gossip, but his sister’s voice duly rattling off assignments — read Act I of Othello, do the odd-numbered problems in Section 5– then quiet after the hang-up click. The next day, while Lydia was curled on the window seat, phone pressed to her ear, he’d picked up the extension in the kitchen and heard only the low drone of the dial tone. Lydia has never really had friends, but their parents have never known. If their father says, “Lydia, how’s Pam doing?” Lydia says, “Oh, she’s great, she just made the pep squad,” and Nath doesn’t contradict her. He’s amazed at the stillness in her face, the way she can lie without even a raised eyebrow to give her away.
然而内斯知道莉迪亚在学校里的样子，见过她是如何沉默地坐在餐厅里，而其他女孩都在闲聊，见过她们抄完了莉迪亚的作业，她是如何一言不发地把本子塞回书包。放学后，她都是独自一人登上校车，安静地坐在内斯旁边。一次，他在莉迪亚接电话时经过，发现她不是在和同学八卦，而是在告诉对方当天的家庭作业——阅读《奥赛罗》第一幕，完成第五部分的奇数习题——然后就挂掉电话。第二天，当莉迪亚再次蜷缩在窗台上耳朵贴着听筒的时候，内斯在厨房里拿起分机听筒，结果只听到低沉的拨号音。莉迪亚从未真正拥有过朋友，她的父母却从不知道这个事实。如果父亲问：“莉迪亚，帕姆最近怎么样？”莉迪亚会说：“噢，她很好，她刚加入了拉拉队。”听到这样的回答，内斯也不会反驳她，反而惊异于她的镇静，还有说谎时连眉毛都不抬一下的高超技巧。
Except he can’t tell his parents that now. He watches his mother scribble names on the back of an old receipt, and when she says to him and Hannah, “Anyone else you can think of?” he thinks of Jack and says no.
不过内斯现在不能告诉父母真相，他看到母亲在一张旧发票的背面潦草地涂写着一个又一个人名，然后问他和汉娜：“你们还能想起谁来？”他马上想到了杰克，嘴上却回答“没有了”。
All spring, Lydia has been hanging around Jack — or the other way around. Every afternoon, practically, driving around in that Beetle of his, coming home just in time for dinner, when she pretended she’d been at school all the time. It had emerged suddenly, this friendship — Nath refused to use any other word. Jack and his mother have lived on the corner since the first grade, and once Nath thought they could be friends. It hadn’t turned out that way. Jack had humiliated him in front of the other kids, had laughed when Nath’s mother was gone, when Nath had thought she might never come back. As if, Nath thinks now, as if Jack had any right to be talking, when he had no father. All the neighbors had whispered about it when the Wolffs had moved in, how Janet Wolff was divorced, how Jack ran wild while she worked late shifts at the hospital. That summer, they’d whispered about Nath’s parents, too — but Nath’s mother had come back. Jack’s mother was still divorced. And Jack still ran wild.
整个春天，莉迪亚都和杰克待在一起——或者说，杰克黏着她。每到傍晚，他们就会坐着杰克开的甲壳虫汽车兜风，莉迪亚直到晚饭时间才会回家，假装自己一直待在学校里。这段友谊“突如其来”——内斯拒绝用别的词来形容它。杰克上一年级的时候，他母亲带着他搬进街角那座房子里，内斯曾经觉得他们可以成为朋友，然而，结果并非如此。杰克当着其他小孩的面羞辱过他，在内斯的母亲离家出走时嘲笑他，那时，内斯还以为她再也不会回来了。就好像，内斯现在想起来，就好像没有父亲的杰克有资格就父母离家发表意见似的。伍尔夫一家搬来时，所有的邻居都在背地里谈论珍妮特·伍尔夫是怎么离婚的，还有珍妮特在医院上夜班时，杰克是怎样到处乱跑的。那年夏天，邻居们也八卦过内斯的父母——不过内斯的母亲最后回家了，杰克的母亲却仍旧是离婚状态，杰克也还是个四处乱跑的野孩子。
And now? Just last week, driving home from an errand, he’d seen Jack out walking that dog of his. He had come around the lake, about to turn onto their little dead-end street, when he saw Jack on the path by the bank, tall and lanky, the dog loping just ahead of him toward a tree. Jack was wearing an old, faded T-shirt and his sandy curls stood up, unbrushed. As Nath drove past, Jack looked up and gave the merest nod of the head, a cigarette clenched in the corner of his mouth. The gesture, Nath had thought, was less one of greeting than of recognition. Beside Jack, the dog had stared him in the eye and casually lifted its leg. And Lydia had spent all spring with him.
现在呢？就在上周，出门跑腿的内斯开车回家，看到杰克在遛狗。当时内斯正沿着湖岸前进，准备拐到他们住的那条小街上去，这时，他发现杰克从岸边的小路上走过来。杰克个子很高，身材瘦削，他的狗跑在前面，轻快地连蹦带跳朝一棵树奔去。杰克穿着一件褪了色的旧T恤，没有梳理过的浅棕色卷发向上翘着。内斯开车从他身旁经过，杰克抬头看他，几乎微不可察地点了点头，一根香烟叼在嘴角。内斯觉得，与其说是打招呼，杰克的举止更像是表示他还认得自己，仅此而已。而且，他的狗也肆无忌惮地盯着内斯的眼睛，漫不经心地抬起一条腿撒起尿来。莉迪亚就是和这么一个家伙度过了整个春天。
If he says anything now, Nath thinks, they’ll say, Why didn’t we know about this before? He’ll have to explain that all those afternoons when he’d said, “Lydia’s studying with a friend,” or “Lydia’s staying after to work on math,” he had really meant, She’s with Jack or She’s riding in Jack’s car or She’s out with him god knows where. More than that: saying Jack’s name would mean admitting something he doesn’t want to. That Jack was a part of Lydia’s life at all, that he’d been part of her life for months.
内斯想，要是自己供出杰克，父母会问：“我们过去为什么不知道？”那么他就得告诉父母，莉迪亚和杰克曾经几乎每天下午都在一起，而且，为了给莉迪亚打掩护，他当时向父母撒了谎，说是“莉迪亚和朋友学习去了”，或者“莉迪亚放学后留在学校研究数学题”。可他应该说的实话则是“她和杰克在一起，杰克开车带她出去了”或者“她和杰克一起走了，天知道他们去了哪里”。不仅如此，即便只是说出杰克的名字，都意味着他得承认自己不愿意承认的事实：杰克根本就是莉迪亚生活的一部分，至少在过去的几个月里一直如此。
Across the table, Marilyn looks up the numbers in the phone book and reads them out; James does the calling, carefully and slowly, clicking the dial around with one finger. With each call his voice becomes more confused. No? She didn’t mention anything to you, any plans? Oh. I see. Well. Thank you anyway. Nath studies the grain of the kitchen table, the open album in front of him. The missing photo leaves a gap in the page, a clear plastic window showing the blank white lining of the cover. Their mother runs her hand down the column of the phone book, staining her fingertip gray. Under cover of the tablecloth, Hannah stretches her legs and touches one toe to Nath’s. A toe of comfort. But he doesn’t look up. Instead he closes the album, and across the table, his mother crosses another name off the list.
桌子对面，玛丽琳翻看着电话簿，念出上面的号码；詹姆斯负责拨号，动作小心缓慢，用一根手指拨动号码盘。随着一个个电话打出去，他的语气也越来越疑惑：“是吗？她没和你说过什么计划吗？噢，我知道了。好吧，无论如何还是谢谢你。”内斯打量着厨房桌子的纹理，还有摆在面前打开着的相册。相片被抽走的那一页留下了一块空白，透过空空如也的塑料套，可以看到相册封底的白边。他们的母亲一只手在电话簿上由上到下划动，指尖都被油墨染成了灰色。汉娜伸过腿来，脚趾碰到了内斯的脚趾，这让他觉得有些安心，但他并没有抬头，而是合上相册。桌子对面的母亲又划掉了名单上的一个名字。
When they’ve called the last number, James puts the telephone down. He takes the slip of paper from Marilyn and crosses out Karen Adler, bisecting the K into two neat Vs. Under the line he can still see the name. Karen Adler. Marilyn never let Lydia go out on weekends until she’d finished all her schoolwork — and by then, it was usually Sunday afternoon. Sometimes, those Sunday afternoons, Lydia met her friends at the mall, wheedling a ride: “A couple of us are going to the movies. Annie Hall. Karen is dying to see it.” He’d pull a ten from his wallet and push it across the table to her, meaning: All right, now go and have some fun. He realizes now that he had never seen a ticket stub, that for as long as he can remember, Lydia had been alone on the curb when he came to take her home. Dozens of evenings he’d paused at the foot of the stairs and smiled, listening to Lydia’s half of a conversation float down from the landing above: “Oh my god, I know, right? So then what did she say?” But now, he knows, she hasn’t called Karen or Pam or Jenn in years. He thinks now of those long afternoons, when they’d thought she was staying after school to study. Yawning gaps of time when she could have been anywhere, doing anything. In a moment, James realizes he’s obliterated Karen Adler’s name under a crosshatch of black ink.
打完最后一串号码，詹姆斯放下电话，从玛丽琳手中接过名单，划掉“卡伦·阿德勒”这个名字，字母“K”被他划出的线拦腰截断，变成了两个工整的“V”。不过，透过这条线，他还是能看清这个名字：卡伦·阿德勒。周末的时候，除非莉迪亚已经完成所有的家庭作业，否则玛丽琳是不会允许她出去玩的——而等她完成的时候，通常已经是星期天下午了。在某些这样的星期天下午，莉迪亚会去购物中心见朋友，让父亲开车接送她，比如：“我们几个人要去看电影《安妮·霍尔》，卡伦非常想看。”詹姆斯会从钱包里抽出一张十美元纸币，推到桌子对面的女儿眼前，这个动作的意思是：好的，去吧，玩得开心。现在他突然意识到，自己从未见过任何一张电影票根，他想起来，当他开车到购物中心接女儿回家时，莉迪亚是独自站在人行道上等他的。不知有多少个夜晚，他曾经微笑着在楼梯下面收住步子，听着莉迪亚打电话的声音从楼梯平台上传来：“噢，天哪，我知道的，对吧？那么，她接下来怎么说的？”可是现在，他反应过来，莉迪亚已经好几年没有给卡伦、帕姆或者珍打电话了。他想起那些漫长的下午，他们还以为莉迪亚放学后留在学校学习，而实际上她可能去到任何地方，做任何事情。想到这里，詹姆斯蓦然发现，他已经用黑色墨水在卡伦·阿德勒的名字上画了无数条交叉线。
He lifts the phone again and dials. “Officer Fiske, please. Yes, this is James Lee. We’ve called all of Lydia’s –” He hesitates. “Everyone she knows from school. No, nothing. All right, thank you. Yes, we will.”
他再次拾起话筒，拨出电话。“我找菲斯克警官。是的，我是詹姆斯·李。我们联系了莉迪亚所有的……”他迟疑了一下，“她在学校里认识的所有人。不，一无所获。好的，谢谢你。是的，我们会的。”
“They’re sending an officer out to look for her,” he says, setting the receiver back on the hook. “They said to keep the phone line open in case she calls.”
“他们准备派一名警官去找她。”他放下听筒，“他们说，要保持电话畅通，也许她会打电话回来。”
Dinnertime comes and goes, but none of them can imagine eating. It seems like something only people in films do, something lovely and decorative, that whole act of raising a fork to your mouth. Some kind of purposeless ceremony. The phone does not ring. At midnight, James sends the children to bed and, though they don’t argue, stands at the foot of the stairs until they’ve gone up. “Twenty bucks says Lydia calls before morning,” he says, a little too heartily. No one laughs. The phone still does not ring.
晚餐时间来了又走，但没有一个人吃得下去，他们像电影里的人那样，只是象征性地把叉子举到嘴边，似乎进食只是一种毫无意义的仪式。电话铃却一直没有响起。半夜的时候，詹姆斯送孩子们上床睡觉，虽然孩子们并没有反对，但他还是站在楼梯下面目送他们上楼。“我赌二十美元，莉迪亚天亮之前就会往家里打电话。”他有些过于一厢情愿地说，但没有人笑他。电话依旧没有动静。
Upstairs, Nath shuts the door to his room and hesitates. What he wants is to find Jack — who, he’s sure, knows where Lydia is. But he cannot sneak out with his parents still awake. His mother is already on edge, startling every time the refrigerator motor kicks on or off. In any case, from the window he can see that the Wolffs’ house is dark. The driveway, where Jack’s steel-gray VW usually sits, is empty. As usual, Jack’s mother has forgotten to leave the front-door light on.
楼上，内斯关上自己房间的门，踌躇不决。他想去找杰克——他敢肯定，杰克知道莉迪亚在哪儿，但父母还没有睡觉，他无法从他们眼皮底下溜出去。他的母亲已经神经过敏，坐立不安，连听到冰箱制冷器开启或关闭的声音，她都会吓一跳。透过窗户，他能看到伍尔夫家黑漆漆的房子，车道是空的，杰克的铁灰色大众汽车一般都停在那里。像往常一样，杰克的母亲又忘记打开前门的灯了。
He tries to think: had Lydia seemed strange the night before? He had been away four whole days, by himself for the first time in his life, visiting Harvard — Harvard! — where he would be headed in the fall. In those last days of class before reading period –“Two weeks to cram and party before exams,” his host student, Andy, had explained — the campus had had a restless, almost festive air. All weekend he’d wandered awestruck, trying to take it all in: the fluted pillars of the enormous library, the red brick of the buildings against the bright green of the lawns, the sweet chalk smell that lingered in each lecture hall. The purposeful stride he saw in everyone’s walk, as if they knew they were destined for greatness. Friday he had spent the night in a sleeping bag on Andy’s floor and woke up at one when Andy’s roommate, Wes, came in with his girlfriend. The light had flicked on and Nath froze in place, blinking at the doorway, where a tall, bearded boy and the girl holding his hand slowly emerged from the blinding haze. She had long, red hair, loose in waves around her face. “Sorry,” Wes had said and flipped the lights off, and Nath heard their careful footsteps as they made their way across the common room to Wes’s bedroom. He had kept his eyes open, letting them readjust to the dark, thinking, So this is what college is like.
内斯试图思考。昨天晚上，莉迪亚有没有显得反常？他曾经整整四天不在家，这是他人生中的第一次，因为他去参观了哈佛大学——哈佛！——秋天的时候，他就要去那里读书。复习应考期——接待他的哈佛学生安迪说，所谓的复习应考期，就是在考试前有两个星期的时间死记硬背和参加派对——之前，学校开课的最后几天，校园里弥漫着一种躁动不安、近乎节日的气氛。整个周末，他都敬畏地在校园里游荡，企图把一切都印在脑子里：庞大的图书馆的凹槽支柱，浅绿色草坪对面的红砖建筑，每一座讲堂里飘溢着的甜美的粉笔灰的味道。他发现，每个人的脚步都是那么地坚定有力，目标明确，仿佛知道自己生来就注定取得伟大的成就一样。星期五晚上，内斯躺在安迪宿舍地板上的睡袋里，安迪的室友魏斯带着女朋友走进来，把他惊醒了。灯光亮起，内斯吓了一跳，眨着眼睛看向门廊，只见一个留着胡须的高个子男孩和一个女孩手拉着手，慢慢出现在耀眼的白光之中。女孩有一头红色的波浪长发。“对不起。”魏斯迅速关了灯，内斯听到他们小心翼翼地穿过公共客厅，走进魏斯的卧室。他一直睁着眼睛，好让它们重新适应黑暗。他心想：原来大学是这样的。
Now he thinks back to last night, when he had arrived home just before dinner. Lydia had been holed up in her room, and when they sat down at the table, he’d asked her how the past few days had been. She’d shrugged and barely glanced up from her plate, and he had assumed this meant nothing new. Now he can’t remember if she’d even said hello.
他的思绪又回到昨天晚上自己恰好在晚饭前赶回来的那个时刻。莉迪亚之前一直躲在她的房间里，当大家坐下来吃饭时，内斯问，他不在的这几天，她过得怎么样。她却耸耸肩，低头盯着盘子，连眼皮都没怎么抬。他猜想，这说明没发生什么新奇的事情。现在，他连莉迪亚是否跟他打过招呼都想不起来了。
In her room, up in the attic, Hannah leans over the edge of her bed and fishes her book from beneath the dust ruffle. It’s Lydia’s book, actually: The Sound and the Fury. Advanced English. Not meant for fifth graders. She’d filched it from Lydia’s room a few weeks ago, and Lydia hadn’t even noticed. Over the past two weeks she’s worked her way through it, a little each night, savoring the words like a cherry Life Saver tucked inside her cheek. Tonight, somehow, the book seems different. Only when she flips back, to where she stopped the day before, does she understand. Throughout, Lydia has underlined words here and there, occasionally scribbling a note from class lectures. Order vs. chaos. Corruption of Southern aristocratic values. After this page, the book is untouched. Hannah flips through the rest: no notes, no doodles, no blue to break up the black. She’s reached the point where Lydia stopped reading, she realizes, and she doesn’t feel like reading any more.
汉娜的房间在阁楼。她靠在床沿上，从床围子里掏出一本书来。其实这本书是莉迪亚的——《喧嚣与骚动》，高阶英语，不适合五年级阅读。几周前，她从莉迪亚的房间偷出这本书，莉迪亚根本没发现。过去两周，她开始从头到尾地读它，每天晚上都读一点，就像含着樱桃味的“救生员”牌糖果那样津津有味地品尝里面的词语。不知怎的，今天晚上这本书似乎变得不一样了。直到她翻到前一天看到的地方，汉娜才明白原因：莉迪亚画出了书中的一些字句，有的地方还潦草地做了课堂笔记，写完“秩序与混乱，南方贵族堕落的价值观”这句话之后，她就没在后面的书页上写过字。汉娜翻了一遍这一页之后的部分——干干净净，没有笔记，没有涂鸦，没有跳出来打断黑色铅字的蓝色字迹。她翻到莉迪亚的笔迹戛然而止的地方，发现自己也不想再读下去了。
Last night, lying awake, she had watched the moon drift across the sky like a slow balloon. She couldn’t see it moving, but if she looked away, then back through the window, she could see that it had. In a little while, she had thought, it would impale itself on the shadow of the big spruce in the backyard. It took a long time. She was almost asleep when she heard a soft thud, and for a moment she thought that the moon had actually hit the tree. But when she looked outside, the moon was gone, almost hidden behind a cloud. Her glow-in-the-dark clock said it was two A. M.
昨天晚上，汉娜躺在床上看月亮，发现它像一只热气球缓缓地从天空飘过，虽然她看不出月亮在动，但是，如果视线挪开一阵再看向窗外，就会发现它的位置变了。她甚至觉得月亮会被后院里的大云杉树绊住。过了很久，她几乎都要睡着了，忽然听到低沉的撞击声，差点以为月亮真的撞到了树上。不过，她朝外面一看，月亮躲在了一片云彩后面，屋里的夜光表显示，已经是凌晨两点钟了。
She lay quiet, not even wiggling her toes, and listened. The noise had sounded like the front door closing. It was sticky: you had to push it with your hip to get it to latch. Burglars! she thought. Through the window, she saw a single figure crossing the front lawn. Not a burglar, just a thin silhouette against darker night, moving away. Lydia? A vision of life without her sister in it had flashed across her mind. She would have the good chair at the table, looking out the window at the lilac bushes in the yard, the big bedroom downstairs near everyone else. At dinnertime, they would pass her the potatoes first. She would get her father’s jokes, her brother’s secrets, her mother’s best smiles. Then the figure reached the street and disappeared, and she wondered if she had seen it at all.
她安静地躺着，安静地听着，甚至都没有习惯性地摆动脚趾，那个声响听上去像是前门关闭的声音。前门不太好关，得用胯骨顶着它才能碰上门锁。有贼！她想。透过窗户，她看到一个身影穿过前院的草坪，看起来不像贼，只是一个隐没在黑暗中的瘦小身影，逐渐远去。莉迪亚？她的脑海中立刻浮现出一幅没有她姐姐出现的生活画面：汉娜可以拥有餐桌上最好的位置，坐在那里，正好可以看到窗外院子里的丁香花丛，楼下的大卧室也可以属于她。吃饭的时候，大家会首先把土豆传给她，父亲会给她讲笑话，哥哥向她倾吐秘密，她也能得到母亲最灿烂的微笑。这时，那个身影走到了街上，很快就消失了，快得汉娜甚至觉得自己从未看见过它。
Now, in her room, she looks down at the tangle of text. It was Lydia, she’s sure of it now. Should she tell? Her mother would be upset that Hannah had let Lydia, her favorite, just walk away. And Nath? She thinks of the way Nath’s eyebrows have been drawn together all evening, the way he has bitten his lip so hard, without realizing, that it has begun to crack and bleed. He’d be angry, too. He’d say, Why didn’t you run out and catch her? But I didn’t know where she was going, Hannah whispers into the dark. I didn’t know she was really going anywhere.
现在，在自己的房间里，汉娜盯着书页上乱作一团的文字发呆。那是莉迪亚，她现在可以肯定了。她应该讲出来吗？如果讲出来，母亲会十分失望，因为汉娜眼睁睁看着她的心肝宝贝莉迪亚走掉了。内斯会有什么反应？她想起整个晚上内斯都紧皱眉头，使劲咬着嘴唇，连咬出血来都没有意识到。他一定也会生气的。他会说：“你为什么不跑出去追她？可是，我不知道她去哪儿了呀。”汉娜对着黑暗说，“我不知道她到底要去哪儿。”
Wednesday morning James calls the police again. Were there any leads? They were checking all possibilities. Could the officer tell them anything, anything at all? They still expected Lydia would come home on her own. They were following up and would, of course, keep the family informed.
星期三早上，詹姆斯又给警察打电话。问：有什么线索吗？答：我们检验了所有的可能性。问：无论发现什么，能否及时告知我们？答：我们仍然期待莉迪亚能自己回家，我们会跟进这件事，当然也会随时通知失踪者的家属。
James listens to all this and nods, though he knows Officer Fiske can’t see him. He hangs up and sits back down at the table without looking at Marilyn or Nath or Hannah. He doesn’t need to explain anything: they can tell by the look on his face that there’s no news.
詹姆斯边听边点头——尽管他知道菲斯克警官看不见他点头。挂掉电话后，他坐回桌旁，没有看玛丽琳，也没有看内斯和汉娜。他不需要多做解释，他们能从他的表情看出来，没有任何消息。
It doesn’t seem right to do anything but wait. The children stay home from school. Television, magazines, radio: everything feels frivolous in the face of their fear. Outside, it’s sunny, the air crisp and cool, but no one suggests that they move to the porch or the yard. Even housekeeping seems wrong: some clue might be sucked into the vacuum, some hint obliterated by lifting the dropped book and placing it, upright, on the shelf. So the family waits. They cluster at the table, afraid to meet each other’s eyes, staring at the wood grain of the tabletop as if it’s a giant fingerprint, or a map locating what they seek.
看来，最好的办法只有等待。孩子们没去上学，留在了家里。在恐惧面前，电视、杂志和广播的魅力黯然失色。户外艳阳高照，空气新鲜凉爽，但没人建议大家到门廊或者院子里坐坐，连做家务都有可能帮倒忙。如果使用吸尘器，可能会把某些蛛丝马迹吸走；把地上的书捡起来收好，可能会破坏某些可疑的线索。所以，全家人只有等待。他们围坐在桌边，不敢与任何人对视，只好盯着桌面的花纹，似乎那是能够提供解答的巨大指纹或者寻人路线图。
It’s not until Wednesday afternoon that a passerby notices the rowboat out on the lake, adrift in the windless day. Years ago, the lake had been Middlewood’s reservoir, before the water tower was built. Now, edged with grass, it’s a swimming hole in summer; kids dive off the wooden dock, and for birthday parties and picnics, a park employee unties the rowboat kept there. No one thinks much of it: a slipped mooring, a harmless prank. It is not a priority. A note is made for an officer to check it; a note is made for the commissioner of parks. It’s not until late Wednesday, almost midnight, that a lieutenant, going over loose ends from the day shift, makes the connection and calls the Lees to ask if Lydia ever played with the boat on the lake.
星期三下午，一位路人发现，湖上有一艘小船在无风的天气里漂浮。几年前，水塔还没建成的时候，这个湖曾经是米德伍德的水库。如今，湖边长起一圈青草，成为夏季的游泳池，孩子们站在木质的小码头上跳水，人们在湖边开生日派对或者野餐。这条小船的缆绳可能是某位公园管理员解开的，泊船的时候没注意，或者是一个无伤大雅的玩笑，没人会在意这些小事。有人知会了警察，也告诉了公园的管理人。直到星期三深夜接近凌晨，一位警官在察看当天巡逻记录时，才把漂浮的小船和失踪案联系起来，于是，他给李家打了电话，询问莉迪亚是否会到湖里的船上玩。
“Of course not,” James says. Lydia had refused, refused, to take swim classes at the Y. He’d been a swimmer as a teenager himself; he’d taught Nath to swim at age three. With Lydia he’d started too late, and she was already five when he took her to the pool for the first time and waded into the shallow end, water barely to his waist, and waited. Lydia would not even come near the water. She’d laid down in her swimsuit by the side of the pool and cried, and James finally hoisted himself out, swim trunks dripping but top half dry, and promised he would not make her jump. Even now, though the lake is so close, Lydia goes in just ankle-deep in summer, to wash the dirt from her feet.
“当然不会。”詹姆斯说，莉迪亚拒绝——是拒绝——学游泳。詹姆斯十几岁时就加入了游泳队，还在内斯三岁时教会了他游泳。可对于莉迪亚，他教得太晚，女儿都五岁了，詹姆斯才第一次带她去游泳池。他站在浅水区等女儿过来，水还没有没过他的腰部。莉迪亚根本不愿往水里走，她穿着泳衣，躺在池边哭了起来，詹姆斯最后只能放弃，还得向女儿保证他不会逼她跳进水里。因为等的时间太长，他泳裤的上半部分早就干了。虽然米德伍德湖离家很近，但即使现在，到了夏天，莉迪亚也只敢走进脚踝深的水里冲洗一下脚上的尘土而已。
“Of course not,” James says again. “Lydia doesn’t know how to swim.” It’s not until he says these words into the telephone that he understands why the police are asking. As he speaks, the entire family catches a chill, as if they know exactly what the police will find.
“当然不会，”詹姆斯又重复一遍，“莉迪亚不会游泳。”直到对着听筒讲完这些话，他才明白警察这样问的原因。他打电话的过程中，全家人都不寒而栗，似乎已经猜出来警察会发现什么。
It’s not until early Thursday morning, just after dawn, that the police drag the lake and find her.
星期四早晨天刚亮，警察抽干湖水，找到了莉迪亚。
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