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In Search of Francesca Hulger
In The Present
I have been searching for Francesca Hulger now for the past five years. She is, officially, a missing
person. The many theories concerning her disappearance include suspicion of death, accidental or otherwise, to alien abduction. There is some speculation, in certain musical/intellectual circles, that Francesca ran off to the Caribbean with an oboe player, who disappeared around the same time. My daughter thinks that Francesca Hulger probably witnessed a murder and wound up in the Witness Protection Program. So I continue to search for this woman whom I once knew. At least I think I did.
Those memories are very nearly gone. It is as if someone has stolen my knowledge of Francesca Hulger, hidden it in a box, and buried it at the bottom of the sea. As is often the case with matters of memory, or the lack thereof, the more I try to remember, the more I forget. Now and then upon awakening from a deep sleep I think I see her in my mind’s eye, but then the vision is gone, and I am left wondering whether Francesca Hulger ever existed at all. This seems strange, as I am quite sure that I knew this person once, and that I knew her well.
Before I began to search for her, all I knew about Francesca Hulger fit on a 3x5-index card. Item: Francesca Hulger was a composer of serious classical music. Item: Francesca Hulger played the violin.
Item: Francesca Hulger was not a pretty woman. After I began to search for her I discovered that she was more than a figment of my imagination. In fact Francesca won awards for some of her compositions. There are the usual "Who’s Who" blurbs and various articles about her music. There is nothing after 1978, the year she disappeared, not even as much as a credit check.
When I think of Francesca I see a rather petite person, with buckteeth and eyeglasses, a short neck, and very white skin. But then again I would not stake my life on this description. How old she was is another mystery. She was one of those people who did not seem to be any particular age. She could have thirty, I guess. Some rather homely people actually look better as they age. Age can be a great equalizer where looks are concerned, and often what mattered when you were twenty is less important at 40, at 60 wishful thinking and by 80 irrelevant. So becoming older has its advantages for people like Francesca Hulger, who by now is probably married with a kid or two. That might explain why she seemed to disappear after her fifteen minutes of fame, never to be heard from again.
So I continue to search for Francesca Hulger, and she continues to elude me. Her music comes to me while I sleep. I hear it in bits and pieces, never an entire composition. This leaves me severely frustrated, as if I have an itch I cannot scratch. Francesca’s music fills the void left when my own music waltzed away one day, and never came back. Her music reminds me of a Monet painting in music, or the Grand Canyon singing. I worshiped her music. I named my daughter after her. And now I can not remember her.
In the Past
Francesca fed the fire with another stack of music manuscripts and squinted. Her right eye was beginning to swell from where Jeff had punched her. She watched as the manuscripts crinkled and turned black around the edges, and burned up, leaving a decade of work in ashes. It was these past ten years that had produced her best work. It was also the worst ten years of her life.
She had met Jeff in college, and they had married at 20. He was a percussionist and she had written a composition for him as a wedding gift. His gift to her had been dozens of black eyes, cuts and bruises, and sprained and broken limbs, dished out during their ten years of marriage. Whenever she had threatened to leave him he had reminded her that nobody would ever marry someone as ugly as her, and she would be alone for the rest of her life. The fear of isolation and loneliness had kept her with him, despite the battering. Now she would be free.
Francesca fed the fire with the contents of her wallet: driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate, and a Bank of America credit card. She then burnt the bankbooks on the accounts she had just closed. She picked up her high school yearbook and flipped through it until she found her senior photo. She had taken her glasses of and closed her mouth so that her teeth would not show, but she still looked horrible. Her nose was too big, the hair frizzy, and the dress looked like it had come from the Salvation Army. Well, that could be changed. She had enough money from her inheritance to do anything she wanted, from rthodenture to plastic surgery. A nose job, straight teeth and contact lenses would make her at least tolerably good looking. Then she’d get a complete makeover: hair, makeup, and clothing. By the time she was done nobody from her past would recognize her. That suited her just fine.
Francesca tossed the school yearbook in the flames and stirred the fire until it caught. This was the final thing. Everything else had been burnt, photos, awards, insurance policies, an entire life burnt to ash. She would leave no paper trail. When she was gone she would be forgotten soon enough. Already the last ten years of her life seemed to be vanishing. Soon there would be no Francesca Hulger. There would be instead a new person, a better person: attractive, maybe even pretty, with a fat bank account and no loose ends. She would recreate herself, just as she had created her music, each composition unique, beautiful, a musical jewel. She smiled and watched the final pieces of her life end in fire.
In the Present
Death always brings out the best in people. My friend Jayline lies in an open casket, wearing more makeup than a country gospel singer. The funeral parlor is filled with people who I have never met. They sit in small groups speaking in undertones, as if in the presence of a sacred relic. Jayline’s extended family files by, staring at the barely recognizable face. Her three children sit in the back of the room with more relatives. The children have the stunned look of survivors of a holocaust. They have lost both parents.
Their father is now behind bars. They may never see him again. The story is that Jayline’s husband beat her to death.
Death is, in itself, a kind of gathering. We drop whatever it is that we were doing, planned to do, or hoped to do, and take some time out to look at the big picture. Then we say goodbye. We see old friends, and family that we thought we had left behind in another lifetime. Seeing Jayline like this makes me want to gather my own life up around me like a child’s security blanket. I covet what I cannot remember. I want to be more than a half-person, with gaps in my past the size of a large Island. I want to find all the people who have been important to me. I want to gather them into my heart and mind, and know that I loved and was loved. I want to find Francesca. I still search for her in the face of each person I meet, as if, by some miracle, I will find her just by wishing hard enough.
Joseph, Jayline’s brother, sits down next to me and squeezes my shoulder. He is a big man, six and a half feet, and at least 300 pounds. I put my head on his shoulder and let it stay there. We were old pals, Joseph and me. Also, he is the only person I know in the room
.
He speaks to me in a half whisper. "I don’t know if this is the best time to tell you, but I think I finally found something." Joseph is a private investigator. I hired him two years ago to try to find Francesca Hulger for me.
"What did you find?"
"Her ex-husband, alive and living in Oakland, California. I’m going out next week to check it out."
"I’m going with you."
"No, I don’t want you to get your hopes up."
"My hopes are already up."
"You know what I mean."
"What’s his name?"
"Jeff Hulger."
"You sure he’s her ex?"
"Yes. Marriage license checks out, but they may be still married. I can’t find a divorce decree anywhere. I’m still looking. Anyway, the social numbers check out. He’s been hard to locate because he moves around a lot. There’s no need for you to go. I’ll find out what we need to know about Francesca from him."
I know Joseph well enough that I realize it will do no good to argue with him. He is a man who is used to having his own way. I stand to leave. Joseph can do things his way, and I will do things mine. As I walk by the corpse on the way out I feel her eyes following me out of the room.
Past, Present, Future
I sit in my rental car and stare at a rather dilapidated ranch in Oakland California. The lawn is the color of wheat, and the house looks as if it has not been painted anytime in recent memory. For the hundredth time since I jumped on the 747 to sunny California, I wonder whether or not I have done the right thing.
Of course Joseph will be furious with me. Also, it occurs to me that he may have had good reasons for leaving me behind in Georgia. I try not to think about what kind of person would live in a house like this. Joseph had told me that Francesca’s husband moved around a lot and had been hard to locate. That is even more suspicious than the house. Horror stories of lone women at the doors of strangers begin to run through my brain.
But, what if she were here in this very house? The very though makes my heart skip a few beats. I may have finally found Francesca Hulger. Perhaps she is agoraphobic. Or maybe the environment is toxic to her and she must live in a bubble. I put my hand on the lime green door of the Jetta and begin to open it. Then I shut it again.
What if Francesca Hulger is dead?
I had never admitted that possibility. Soon I would be in the presence of a man who could tell me what really happened. Was I ready for bad news? Did I really want to know? Or even worse, maybe her husband had killed her and hidden the evidence. All the ghastly possibilities began to swarm around in my head. I feel like I’m about to lose my lunch. I swallow back the rising nausea. I remind myself that it is broad daylight. I remind myself that if I wait around for Joseph to get out here our man may have skipped again. I tell myself that this may be my only chance to learn the truth. The car door opens by itself. My feet move as if on their own accord towards the dilapidated house. A finger presses the doorbell. The hand looks familiar, but it is not mine.
A tall, handsome man answered the door.
A voice I do not recognize speaks to the man. "Are you Jeff Hulger?"
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"I’m looking for your wife, Francesca."
"So am I." He chuckled. "Please come in."
I follow him into a dingy living room. The furniture is covered by plastic covers. The covers look decades old, but the furniture underneath looks as new as the day it was purchased.
"She disappeared one day, never seen her since," he explains.
"She never called you?"
"Nope. I just came home one day and she was gone. It was strange though."
"Why?"
"She left all her clothing here, and just about everything else."
"Did she leave you a note?"
"No." he looks at me sharply. "Did you know Francesca?"
"She was one of my composition teachers."
"Maybe you’d like to see some of her things."
"You still have them?"
"Oh yes. I always knew that she’d be back someday. I kept everything, even though it was a pain lugging them around with me everywhere I went."
I follow him into a small bedroom. In the corner is a wall-to-wall bookcase filled with music books. My mouth is very dry. If her scores were still here! I run my hand over the books. They bring back memories of my own school days. How easily I had forgotten the thrill that these once had for me back when music was my life. I feel like a different person.
"Her scores?" I ask the tall man who lurked behind me.
"Gone. I guess she took those with her."
I try to hide my disappointment. "And you’ve never heard from her since?"
"No, not even so much as a Christmas card. As far as I know we’re still married." He snorts. His laughter sounds like knuckles on brick. It makes me wince.
Jeff shuts the door and stands in front of it, trapping me between him and the door. The room feels like it’s closing in on me. I feel my throat growing tight.
"Why? Why did she leave? She had everything. Career, fame, money,"
"She had money?"
"Oh yes. Took it all with her when she cleared out. Why do you care?" He asked.
"Because she was important to me. I need to know what became of her."
Jeff took a step toward me. "You probably know more about that than I do. Husbands are always the last to find out."
I struggled to keep my voice steady. "I honestly don’t remember. That part of my life is almost a
complete blank."
"Really, well that’s interesting." He said.
The sarcasm in his voice cut through my stomach like a hot poker. I began to shake.
"What, do you know me? Have we met before?"
"Oh yes, we surely have." Jeff was staring at me with an expression that made me want to bolt.
"Perhaps at a concert."
"Or in a bedroom."
"What?"
This was wrong, very wrong. I started towards the door. Jeff grabbed both of my shoulders.
"Not so fast Francesca, I’m not going to loose you again."
And then I knew where Francesca was, and who she had become. I looked at my husband and saw the fury in his eyes.
D.L. Mayhew is a professional musician who writes music, and writes about music whenever possible. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have been published in
"Short Stories Bimonthly", "The Paterson Literary Review", "Exponent II", "Orphic Lute", "Sensations", and "Without Halos".
She is currently writing her second novel.
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