Missing
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Dombey and Son
Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate
"Maybe someday you'll look up
and, barely conscious, you'll say to no one:
'Isn't something missing?'
Isn't someone missing me?"
- Evanescence, "Missing"
It is only at night that Florence can think of her father.
In the daytime, she can avoid it. The odd contest of kindness between her and Captain Cuttle (he cooks, she cleans; he offers to buy her new clothes, she refuses) proves an excellent distraction; besides, she could not burden anyone with her care without at least trying to earn her keep somehow. (If that is the Dombey pride coming out in her, so be it.)
But at night, when the wind howls against the round porthole in her attic room, when she wakes up shivering because some nightmare made her struggle out of the blankets, she remembers.
The bruise he left on her chest is fading, but the bruise on her soul remains.
She thinks of it as a murder, the violent murder of the imaginary father she loved. But how can he be dead if he was never real?
The man who gave her life hates her – what does that say about them both? There must be something wrong here, terribly wrong, to inspire such hate. If the fault is hers, how can she live with herself, being so unnatural as to alienate her own father? But if the fault is his, how could she have been so blind as not to see it? Do tainted parents give birth to tainted children?
Did he ever strike her mother?
She remembers his last words. Go after your harlot stepmother, why don't you? You have always been in league! If only she could. Just like her Mama, Mrs. Toodle, Paul, Walter and even Susan, Edith has left her all alone.
She can see him, clear as day, sitting with his newspaper in the big armchair by the fire. Reviewing his account books in the library. Pacing the carpets with his hands locked behind his back. Does he ever wonder where she is? Is he at all regretful, or simply glad to finally have her out of his way?
Or does he even realize she is missing?
She is hanging by a thread now, the generosity of her host all that keeps her from falling. If she does, will anybody catch her?