Busby Cylin - The Year We Disappeared

a fatherdaughter memoir

CYLIN BUSBY & JOHN BUSBY

For MomC. B.

I dedicate this book to my family:
Polly, Eric, Shawn, and Cylinthe ultimate reason to keep on keeping on
J. B.

All locations, dates, events, and people in this book are real.
Some names have been changed.

WHEN MY DAD DIES, HIS BODY will go to the Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, though I suspect they are mostly interested in his head. Before the surgeons there embarked on what was at the time experimental surgery to reconstruct his face, they asked Dad if he would sign a document bequeathing his body to the hospital. They explained that they would then be able to use his skull as a model to instruct medical students training in facial reconstruction. His was an interesting casethe lower half of his jaw was removed when he was shot in the head with a shotgun. His tongue was torn in half, his teeth and gums blown away, leaving a bit of bone that was once his chin connected with dangling flesh at the front of his face.

Dad saw the surgeons request as a hopeful sign. During his hospital stays, he always had a yellow legal pad by his bedside to communicate. On this day he wrote a note to Mom: They want my head after Im gone, asked me to sign something to donate my body. Must think Im going to live through the surgery.

The request also made me and my two older brothers feel somewhat better. We sat outside Dads hospital room, playing Go Fish and War under the constant surveillance of the two Falmouth police officers who were on guard duty. After Dads dead, well get to see his skeleton, Shawn pointed out. We could come visit it.

I wasnt so sure, but when I questioned him, Shawn snapped, Its our dadtheyll let us come and hang out with his skeleton whenever we want to.

I also wasnt quite sure how they would get all the skin off of Dad, and what they would do with it. But I didnt like thinking about things like that; it reminded me of a scary comic book my oldest brother, Eric, had shown me once that had a creepy skeleton guy doing evil things and carrying around a big, huge sword. I just couldnt picture my dad like that.

The series of surgeries needed to reconstruct Dads face would be not only experimental but also incredibly expensive. And since Dad was a police officer, shot in the line of duty, the town of Falmouth would be responsible for the costs of reassembling his faceand his life. About two months after Dads shooting, our hometown held a fund-raiser in the form of a bake sale and a somewhat inappropriately named fun run.

The day of the fund-raiser was unseasonably warm and muggy, the November sky threatening rain. I wore blue shorts that were supposed to be saved for my school gym uniform, along with my winter coat and a pair of dressy sandals Id gotten for Easter. Since Dads shooting, Moms rules about which clothes I could wearand about everything elsedidnt apply anymore, and I was pretty much free to do whatever I wanted.

I eyed the bake-sale table, wanting a chocolate chip cookiemy favorite dessert, and Dads, too. I asked Mom for some money to get one. She looked at me like Id lost my mind. Theyre selling them to make money for us, she said, pointing out the obvious. Just go get one if you want it. And she turned back to whomever she was talking to. I stood behind her for a second, wishing shed step in and say, Okay, Ill do it for you, like she used to do, knowing that even at the age of nine I was still painfully shy, but she didnt.

After a few minutes of standing around, I had worked up the courage. I approached the table and asked one of the women working there, Can I have a cookie?

Theyre fifty cents for two, she responded before her coworker, a woman with long brown braids, said, Do you know who this little girl is?

Tell her your name, honey, she said to me, and I didmy first name. Whats your last name? the woman asked, giving her friend a knowing wink. When I told them my whole name, they both got this sad looka look that I was getting used to seeing on adults whenever they talked about Dad. Of course you can have a cookie, sweetheart. You take as many cookies as you want, the first woman said. The woman with the braids asked, Can I give you a hug?

After giving the woman an awkward hug, I sat on the curb to watch the runners cross the finish line. I had already eaten two huge cookies before my brothers found me, my face smeared with chocolate and crumbs. Give it, my oldest brother said, motioning with his chin to the last remaining cookie in my hands.

Go get your own, I said, pointing to the bake sale. All you have to do is tell them your name and you get whatever you want, I whispered excitedly. Watching my brothers descend on the snacks and each get a big hug from the woman with the braided hair, I felt at once sick to my stomach. It was partly from stuffing myself with sweets, but also something else. We were just regular kids, suddenly thrust into a world of pity cookies and hugs from strangers. But with the small-town fame and all the public pleasantries came an unfortunate reality: someone wanted to kill our dad, and maybe us, too. It was a strange mix, being the most popular and most miserable at the same time. My older and wiser cousin summed it up best when she told me, Everyone thinks your dad is going to die. But youre luckyyou dont have to go to school.

It wasnt until later, when my family had been relocated to an undisclosed address deep in the Southa tiny town where no one would try to hurt my dad or kill the rest of usthat I realized how lucky I had been, and how much I missed that notoriety and the distraction from reality that it afforded us. Instead of free cookies, there was just the waitingwaiting to see if Dad would pull through, waiting for whoever they were to find us or not find us, waiting to see what would happen next.

ON August 31, 1979, we were supposed to go see The Muppet Movie. Dad had promised us that when he woke up, hed take us to the movie before he went in to work the night shift. He was a police officer on Cape Cod, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He worked the 11:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. shift, then slept during the day for a few hours.

Usually, hed come home from work right around the time I was sitting down with a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. Sometimes hed hang out with me and my brothers until it was time for us to catch the bus, eating a piece of toast with raspberry jam, his favorite breakfast, or telling Mom about his night. But other days hed go straight into the bedroom and change into his good suit, the dark brown one with the big lapels. Hed wear a cream-colored print shirt underneath, and a tie, too. I thought he looked like a movie star in his suit, with his strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and broad shoulderslike Robert Redford or Clint Eastwood. But as good as he looked in it, that suit always meant Dad was going to court to testify in a case. It also meant that he wasnt going to get much sleep, so we should be sure to stay out of his way when we got home from school in the afternoon.

During the summers when we didnt have school, Mom made sure to have us out of the house by 8:30 or 9:00 a.m., rain or shine. Wed go to the beach and have swim lessons in the morning. Then wed spend the rest of the day there, eating bologna sandwiches that were a little too warm from sitting out in the sun and begging Mom for quarters so we could cross the hot sand to the ice-cream stand for a Nutty Buddy or some chocolate chip cookies. Mom usually brought a big bottle of something to drink and a few Styrofoam cups to keep us from asking for soda money, too. But on days when she was feeling generous, we could get a real soda in a cold can from the ice-cream guy. I loved the feeling of a freshly opened Orange Crush, so cold and fizzy it hurt my mouth to drink it fast.