very sudden and their worlds were quite different,” she said, “but maybe opposites do attract.”
She told us she needed to deliver these flowers and another bouquet to an assisted-living center on her way home after she closed up. I asked if we could follow behind her and stop in at her house and shoot some photographs of Mark. If she said yes, I planned on asking if we could also videotape an interview.
As I helped her carry one of the vases into the lobby of the assisted-living center, I asked about her son’s fiancée. She said she was fond of the girl, but didn’t really feel she knew her all that well.
Did Madeline love Mark?
“Desperately,” she said as we set the flowers on the front counter.
Desperately . I pondered the implications of that word as we walked back outside.
“Did Mark love Madeline?”
“I’m sure he did.” That sounded less definitive.
“You don’t sound so sure,” I responded.
“Mark loved opportunities.” She paused in front of her car as she searched her purse for the keys. “If an opportunity presented itself, he’d grab it and figure out the consequences later.”
That candid observation, from his mother no less, made me ponder Mark’s character and wonder if the consequences of marriage had only just occurred to him hours before the wedding.
Malik and I followed her car until she pulled into the driveway of a small white rambler with black shutters. Not surprisingly, her front yard was colored with crocuses and other spring blooms.
Somehow wedding talk turned to the mother of the bride and I got an earful of how snooty Mark’s mom considered Madeline’s mom. Her pet peeve: Vivian Post couldn’t be bothered to remember Jean Lefevre’s name.
“Whenever we met, I always had to remind her who I was,” she said. “Also she kept checking to make sure I knew to wear light gray, not dark, for the ceremony.”
She shrugged like whatever, and got out some photo albums for me to page through while she made coffee. I already had pictures of Mark and Madeline together, but needed some of him solo. I found one showing him swinging a golf club. In another he wore a high-school graduation cap and gown. In both cases, his forehead was covered so I couldn’t see whether his scar was recent or old. Most of the album was filled with boring shots of visiting relatives sitting on couches or at the table trying to eat while some family shutterbug insisted on using up the end of a roll of film no matter who was still chewing.
In one of the more recent ones, Mark had his arm around a goth girl who certainly wasn’t Madeline. Black hair, pale face, uncertain smile. But Mark beamed at the camera.
Mrs. Lefevre identified her as Mark’s old girlfriend, and bingo, now I had a name and face for the other woman. Sigourney Nelson. Mrs. Lefevre even had a phone number.
I didn’t want to flat-out accuse her son of being a heel, so I casually inquired how serious things had been with Sigourney.
“Actually,” she explained, “I had expected them to get married.”
“Really,” I said. Now we were getting somewhere. Had Sigourney presented an opportunity to be grabbed? “Do you think there’s any chance he ran off with her?”
“I don’t think so. She was very grouchy when I called a few days later to ask if she’d seen Mark. She didn’t seem to believe me when I said he was gone. I left another message the following week, but she never returned my call.”
During much of our conversation, Mrs. Lefevre sounded as hardy as a perennial, but Malik and I soon learned she was actually soft as a pansy. Maybe it was because we had just looked at Mark’s baby pictures. Maybe it was because someone was finally taking her son’s disappearance seriously. Maybe it was because she had something to feel guilty about. Whatever the reason, when Malik brought the gear inside we discovered that, unlike the bride, the mother of the groom was not too tough to cry on camera.
“He would not
She told us she needed to deliver these flowers and another bouquet to an assisted-living center on her way home after she closed up. I asked if we could follow behind her and stop in at her house and shoot some photographs of Mark. If she said yes, I planned on asking if we could also videotape an interview.
As I helped her carry one of the vases into the lobby of the assisted-living center, I asked about her son’s fiancée. She said she was fond of the girl, but didn’t really feel she knew her all that well.
Did Madeline love Mark?
“Desperately,” she said as we set the flowers on the front counter.
Desperately . I pondered the implications of that word as we walked back outside.
“Did Mark love Madeline?”
“I’m sure he did.” That sounded less definitive.
“You don’t sound so sure,” I responded.
“Mark loved opportunities.” She paused in front of her car as she searched her purse for the keys. “If an opportunity presented itself, he’d grab it and figure out the consequences later.”
That candid observation, from his mother no less, made me ponder Mark’s character and wonder if the consequences of marriage had only just occurred to him hours before the wedding.
Malik and I followed her car until she pulled into the driveway of a small white rambler with black shutters. Not surprisingly, her front yard was colored with crocuses and other spring blooms.
Somehow wedding talk turned to the mother of the bride and I got an earful of how snooty Mark’s mom considered Madeline’s mom. Her pet peeve: Vivian Post couldn’t be bothered to remember Jean Lefevre’s name.
“Whenever we met, I always had to remind her who I was,” she said. “Also she kept checking to make sure I knew to wear light gray, not dark, for the ceremony.”
She shrugged like whatever, and got out some photo albums for me to page through while she made coffee. I already had pictures of Mark and Madeline together, but needed some of him solo. I found one showing him swinging a golf club. In another he wore a high-school graduation cap and gown. In both cases, his forehead was covered so I couldn’t see whether his scar was recent or old. Most of the album was filled with boring shots of visiting relatives sitting on couches or at the table trying to eat while some family shutterbug insisted on using up the end of a roll of film no matter who was still chewing.
In one of the more recent ones, Mark had his arm around a goth girl who certainly wasn’t Madeline. Black hair, pale face, uncertain smile. But Mark beamed at the camera.
Mrs. Lefevre identified her as Mark’s old girlfriend, and bingo, now I had a name and face for the other woman. Sigourney Nelson. Mrs. Lefevre even had a phone number.
I didn’t want to flat-out accuse her son of being a heel, so I casually inquired how serious things had been with Sigourney.
“Actually,” she explained, “I had expected them to get married.”
“Really,” I said. Now we were getting somewhere. Had Sigourney presented an opportunity to be grabbed? “Do you think there’s any chance he ran off with her?”
“I don’t think so. She was very grouchy when I called a few days later to ask if she’d seen Mark. She didn’t seem to believe me when I said he was gone. I left another message the following week, but she never returned my call.”
During much of our conversation, Mrs. Lefevre sounded as hardy as a perennial, but Malik and I soon learned she was actually soft as a pansy. Maybe it was because we had just looked at Mark’s baby pictures. Maybe it was because someone was finally taking her son’s disappearance seriously. Maybe it was because she had something to feel guilty about. Whatever the reason, when Malik brought the gear inside we discovered that, unlike the bride, the mother of the groom was not too tough to cry on camera.
“He would not
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