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The summer Lydia fell in the lake, the summer Marilyn went missing: all of them had tried to forget it.
莉迪亚掉进湖里的那个夏天，玛丽琳失踪的那个夏天:他们都试图忘记这件事。
They did not talk about it; they never mentioned it.
他们没有谈论它;他们从未提及此事。
But it lingered, like a bad smell.
但它迟迟不走，就像一股难闻的气味。
It had suffused them so deeply it could never wash out.
它已经深深地浸透了他们，永远洗不掉。
Every morning, James called the police.
每天早上，詹姆斯都给警察打电话。
Did they need more photographs of Marilyn? Was there any more information he could give?
他们需要更多玛丽琳的照片吗?他还能提供什么信息吗?
Were there any more people he could call?
他还能给别的人打电话吗?
By mid-May, when Marilyn had been gone for two weeks, the officer in charge of the case told him, gently,
5月中旬，玛丽琳已经离开两周了，负责此案的警官温和地告诉他，
“Mr. Lee, we appreciate all the help you’ve provided.
“李先生，我们非常感谢你提供的所有帮助。
And we’re keeping an eye out for the car.
我们还在留意那辆车。
I can’t promise we’ll find anything, though.
不过，我不能保证我们会找到任何东西。
Your wife took clothes with her. She packed suitcases. She took her keys.”
你的妻子带了衣服。她打包手提箱。她拿了钥匙。”
Officer Fiske, even then, hated to give out false hopes.
即使在那个时候，菲斯克警官也不愿放弃不切实际的希望。
“This kind of thing happens sometimes. Sometimes people are just too different.”
“这种事情有时会发生。有时候人们就是太不一样了。”
He did not say mixed,or interracial, or mismatched, but he didn’t have to.
他没有说混血儿、混血儿、错配儿，但他也没必要这么说。
James heard it anyway, and he would remember Officer Fiske very clearly, even a decade later.
不管怎样，詹姆斯还是听到了，他会非常清楚地记得菲斯克警官，即使是十年以后。
To the children, he said, “The police are looking. They’ll find her. She’ll come home soon.”
他对孩子们说:“警察正在调查。他们会找到她。她很快就会回来的。”
Lydia and Nath remembered it this way: weeks passed and their mother was still gone.
莉迪亚和纳是这样想的:几个星期过去了，他们的母亲仍然不在。
At recess the other children whispered and teachers gave them pitying looks and it was a relief when school finally ended.
课间休息时，其他的孩子们低声耳语，老师们用怜悯的目光看着他们，终于放学了，大家都松了一口气。
After that their father stayed in his study and let them watch television all day,
从那以后，他们的父亲呆在书房里，让他们整天看电视，
from Mighty Mouse?and Underdog?in the morning to I’ve Got a Secret late at night.
从早上的《大力鼠》和《超狗》到深夜的《我有一个秘密》。
When Lydia asked, once, what he did in the study, he sighed and said, “Oh, I just putter around.”
有一次莉迪亚问他在书房里干什么，他叹了口气说:“噢，我就是到处闲逛。”
She thought of her father wearing soft rubber shoes and taking small steps on the smooth floor: putter putter putter.
她想起了她的父亲，穿着柔软的胶鞋，在光滑的地板上迈出一小步:“推杆，推杆，推杆。”
“It means reading books and things, stupid,”
“笨蛋，这意味着读书和做其他事情，”
Nath said, and the soft rubber shoes turned into her father’s plain brown ones with the fraying laces.
软胶鞋变成了她父亲普通的棕色鞋，鞋带磨破了。
What James actually did, each morning, was take a small envelope from his breast pocket.
实际上，詹姆斯每天早上都会从胸前的口袋里拿出一个小信封。
After the police had gone that first night with a snapshot of Marilyn and assurances they’d do all they could,
第一天晚上，警察带走了玛丽琳的一张照片，并保证他们会尽一切努力，
after he had scooped the children up and tucked them in bed with their clothes still on,
他把孩子们抱起来，让他们穿着衣服躺在床上，
he had noticed the shredded scraps of paper in the bedroom wastebasket.
他注意到了卧室废纸篓里的碎纸屑。
One by one he plucked them from the cotton balls, the old newspapers, the tissues smudged with his wife’s lipsticked kiss.
他一个接一个地把它们从棉花球、旧报纸、被他妻子的唇吻弄脏的纸巾里拿出来。
He had pieced them together on the kitchen table, matching torn edge to torn edge.
他把它们拼在厨房的桌子上，把撕破的边缘和撕破的边缘拼在一起。
I always had one kind of life in mind and things have turned out very differently.
我总是有一种生活的想法，事情的结果是非常不同的。
The bottom half of the sheet was blank, but he hadn’t stopped until every fragment was placed.
那张纸的下半部分是空白的，但他直到把每一块碎片都放好才停下来。
She had not even signed it.
她甚至没有在上面签字。
