The Year We Disappeared

As a police officer, John is familiar with (and surrounded by) guns, but once his life is threatened, they take on both a literal and metaphorical resonance. Ideally, guns are used primarily for self-defense, but their deadly power can be offensive as well as defensive, and this duality becomes clear as the fear grips the Busby family. Polly begins carrying a gun (a reveal that is shocking in its nonchalance). John owns several, and they are always within easy reach. Arming oneself is an understandable strategy, but, as the rash of recent police shootings demonstrates, fear can turn a defensive mindset into an offensive one without warning. When John has a bad reaction to anti-nausea medication, the anxiety it triggers almost results in a deadly use of force against a fellow officer. Don Price takes the boys out for firearms training, even pointing out what part of the body to aim for. While it is terrifying and tragic that two boys barely on the verge of puberty should have to ignore ethical concerns and consider killing someone, the training is sanctioned by their father. It’s all part of growing up in an environment ruled by fear.

The gun works its deadly magic indiscriminately. John uses it not only for protection, but, while on the job, he also uses it to assert authority (not always judiciously). Ironically, the very thing designed to save his life almost takes it away, both in the hands of Raymond Meyer as well as in his own. His desperate need for vengeance, which he plans to carry out with a gun, nearly devours him. Fortunately, he sees the dark path ahead of him and changes course for his sake and his family’s sake.

As a girl, Cylin recalls a yard populated with cars “either parked on the side or up on blocks” (11). Her father was always tinkering or rebuilding old cars, and the Beetle was his car of choice. One day, Polly decides to paint his car, “a multicolored Frankenstein of a Volkswagen Beetle” (11) because she can’t stand looking at it anymore. She preserves the image of the freshly painted car in pictures, a sign of new beginnings. That hope, however, is dashed soon after when, the next time Cylin sees the car, it is riddled with bullet holes.

The car has always represented freedom—the freedom to travel anywhere at leisure, more quickly and autonomously than ever before. For John, however, the car nearly becomes a tomb, and, if not for his quick thinking and survival instincts, his beloved Beetle would have been a death trap. Conversely, when John buys an old Beetle and gives it to his kids, it represents liberation. Cylin in particular, who has spent the entire year of the narrative feeling trapped in a physical and emotional prison, finally roams around unfettered. On her first solo drive, she meets and chats with a neighbor boy, an encounter that would have been unthinkable during the year after John’s shooting. Cylin becomes liberated both physically and emotionally as she can finally make those social connections she has craved for so long.