Lost (20 page)

Blowing on her spread fingers, the waitress, a very plain sixteen-year-old, came to take their order. She held the pencil with the utmost care. Leona ordered a cup of coffee, black, then a single dip of chocolate ice cream in one cone and a dip of strawberry in another. The waitress sidled away. Two women from a back booth squeaked by in galoshes and went out.

Leona had tried to position them strategically. Over the rim of Mamie's hair, she could see the front of the room, the door they had come in with its number, 211, the reverse of what it was outside, and the plate-glass window, its sill—halfway up the back side of the empty booths—lined with wilting Boston ferns. If anything suspicious happened on the sidewalk or street, she would see it in time to act. She watched passersby hurrying along outside the window. And the snow continued to fall. Somewhere a fly buzzed and it made her think of sound, snoring sleep. On the street, a car lumbered by and the errant sun's reflection on chrome blazed in her eyes. She winced, a streak of red on everything. Mamie's chin was just barely level with the tabletop. “We'll ask them to bring you a cushion,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

In the self-created darkness, the red streaks receded and dissolved. The bell on the door jingled. When she opened her eyes, she saw the two children from the theater standing inside the door. They followed us here, she thought. They'll come over here, maybe want to sit with us. I can't have this … but what'll I say?

But they didn't. They looked about uncertainly for a moment and then climbed up side by side in a booth by the large window. Rising to her knees, Mamie peered at them over the top of the booth; then she waved at the little boy, who was sitting closer to her across the open corner of the L, and the little boy waved back. Who's going to look after them? Leona thought. As she fretted about them, the children looked at her and smiled. When the waitress went by, Leona said to her, “Give them whatever they want. I'll pay for it.”

Only a few minutes had passed before a woman in her late twenties came through the door and walked unsteadily toward the children. “So there you are,” she said, and Leona thought, That must be their mother. Blonde, blue-eyed, the woman might have been pretty if she hadn't looked messy and disarranged. The little girl was undeniably her daughter; there was no question about that now. The child was a small duplicate of her mother, except for her dark red hair. “Why don't you sit down, Adele?” the waitress said, delivering the Cokes the children had asked for. “Have a cup of coffee.”

Without saying a word, the woman sat down across from the children. Her daughter said something, squirmed and shifted, her thighs squeaking on the plastic seat. “Don't lie to me,” the woman said. Her voice was a surprise—hoarse, harsh. Her fingernails ticked on the table. Lifting her head, she looked for the waitress.

Three high-school boys slummed in, scuffing their heels as if they were trying to walk without lifting their feet. Suddenly they began punching each other on the shoulder, laughing, and one of them went up for an imaginary hook shot. At the counter they ordered a cherry Coke, a chocolate Coke, and a vanilla Coke. They flirted and made eyes at the waitresses. They played the jukebox. Then each of them seized a pinball machine. Everything was transformed. The air grew dense with the music and the crash-clatter-clang of the pinball machines. One of the boys started to dance with his machine, hips swaying, and now and then, he swung himself loose from it, his arms open wide in musical expression as he mouthed the words to the jukebox song: “
Baalue moon, you saw me standin
'
alone, you knew just what I was there for, you heard me sayin
'
a prayer for
…” Then he attacked the pinball machine again.

The waitress brought the ice-cream cones. Leona took both cones and asked for a cushion. Reluctantly the waitress brought one, lifted Mamie, and slid the cushion under her. It wasn't much of an improvement. “Your coffee'll be right up,” the waitress said.

The blonde woman was sitting ramrod straight, hands folded in front of her, and the children were talking to her, but Leona couldn't hear what was being said. The street was darker now, the sunset all but gone, and in the different light Leona could see the woman's trembling fingers as they touched the tips of her hair, the vein that bounced in her tense throat. The waitress noticed that she was staring. “Don't mind her,” she said, serving the coffee. “She drinks a little.”

Embarrassed, Leona lowered her gaze. The jukebox had stopped playing. “Okay,” she said to Mamie, “which do you think is best, the chocolate or the strawberry?” Again, Mamie leaned to the side until she could peek at the two children. “Then I'll choose. Let's see. I think I'll have the … the chocolate,” but Mamie reached and took the chocolate cone. Leona had never before seen such determined contrariness in a child. Mamie heard everything she said, understood everything. Leona lifted the strawberry cone to her lips to conceal her smile.

Across the way, the little boy was having the same problem Mamie had had—he was swallowed up in the booth. Holding the glass of cola out like a torch, he drew one leg up under him and was bringing the other one up so he would be kneeling and tall in the seat, when the glass tipped in his hand and spilled.

There was a flash in the air; then, like the flick of a whip, the woman's hand came down and struck the little boy's face very hard. At the crack, Leona flinched, upsetting her coffee; it splashed into the saucer. No sooner did the boy cry out than he began to choke and fight back his tears.

The woman said, “I have told you and told you!” The cruelty in her voice bit into the air. “Now look at me! A goddam mess. And I spent hours.”

“Mommy, we're sorry,” the little girl said.

“It's a little late for your sorrys,” the woman said, and her hand flew out and down. The boy was defenseless; the blow caught him broadside and he screamed and kept screaming. Mamie had come up out of her seat and was standing motionless in the aisle. “His ear!” the boy's sister pleaded. “Mommy, it's his ear! Don't hit his ear!” The woman's hand flew up again and she struck the girl square in the face, slamming her against the booth wall. In reflex, as if absorbing the blow herself, Mamie's hand crunched down on her cone, and the ice cream splattered on the floor. The woman twisted from the booth, splotchy with Coke, and tossed down a dollar. “You just wait till you get home!” She stalked out of the restaurant.

For a moment no one moved. In the booth, the children were crying. Leona looked at the waitresses and they stared back. One by one, the schoolboys slipped outside and were gone. It had happened so fast. The little girl huddled over her brother and then stumbled out into the room, the shape and definition of her mother's hand now clearly imprinted across her face. She choked to find her voice. “He's hurt! He's hurt!” She looked at Leona. “Please!” she shouted. “It's his ear! His bad ear!” The boy cowering in the booth still cried out.

Leona was too startled to act; tears stung her eyes. But Mamie had darted over to them, and suddenly she turned back. “Please,” she said. “You gotta come.”

“He's hurt,” the little redheaded girl cried again. “He's really hurt!”

“You gotta, you gotta!” Mamie climbed into the booth, bending over the little boy, who hadn't moved. She was putting her hands around him, trying to help him get up. Leona went to them; she could hear the boy weeping and it tore her apart. She said to the waitress, “Do you have a damp cloth—anything?”

A wet dishcloth was brought to her and she said to the redheaded girl, “Now, stop crying. What're your names?” And Patsy told her.

When Leona touched the little boy, he jerked away and drew into a tighter ball. She could still hear him crying under the protection of his arms. “Mamie, here,” she said. “Let me … let me look at him.” Mamie moved out of the way.

First Leona tried to coax him out; then quickly she tried to lift him out, but it was no use. She kept asking him, “Are you okay?” He wouldn't budge. She sat down beside him and drew him into her arms. “There, now,” she said, not knowing what else to say. “There, now. It's okay. It's okay. We'll make it all okay.” She smoothed the unkempt hair and pressed the boy's head against her body. “Don't worry. It's okay to cry,” and she could feel the small body give way against her; his arms came up around her and the anguish poured out of him in a long, trembling wail.

Leona had to look away to keep from being drawn into the child's pain. She nearly wept herself. We have to go, she thought. We have to get out of here right now.

No one else had come in. When she made a movement to get up, the small arms held on to her even tighter. Automatically her own arms responded to his; she felt the truth of that feeling spill through her. Still holding him, she put her coat around him and slid from the booth and stood.

“This is a very fine boy here,” she said, knowing the boy in her coat would hear her, too. Mamie was watching her intently, as if the words were visible as they came from her lips. “Look how fine he is.” For a moment, Leona stood gazing at the little redheaded girl, the wet cheeks and eyelashes, the blood smeared on her small upper lip; then she handed her the wet dishcloth. “Here, Patsy, let's clean you up. We can't have a pretty girl like you looking like this.”

“I can do it myself,” Patsy said. Slowly, Mamie tilted her body and looked at the boy, who was now hardly crying at all, his face buried in Leona's coat. Leona looked compassionately at his sister. And then at Mamie. She took the dishcloth when it was handed to her, put it aside and went back to stroking the small head pressed into her shoulder.

“Patsy, I think you and Walter ought to come with us for now. You can ride in my car. We'll decide what to do. Would you like that?”

“Okay,” Patsy said, excited. “Is your car very fast?”

“No,” Leona said, “not very fast.”

One of the waitresses said, “Hey, where're you taking them?”

Leona couldn't meet her eyes. “I'm taking them home,” she said.

Ten miles out of Fielding Heights, Leona nearly lost control of the car as the enormity of what she had done struck her. From head to toe, through the very tips of her fingers, her body shook as if she had grabbed a live wire and couldn't let go. With the last of her strength, she pulled the car off the road and covered her face with her shaking hands. “I have gone crazy,” she mumbled. “I have taken full leave of my senses and I didn't even know it was happening. This is a terrible thing I've done.” And now there was nothing else she could do; she had to take them with her, at least for a while. She couldn't just set them out on the side of the road like unwanted puppies. And yet she wanted to stop what was happening. If only I could just turn and go back, go all the way back, she thought.

But from the corner of her eye, she saw herself reflected in the side window, and the jagged crack in the glass ran through her like a long and vicious slash. And she knew she couldn't go back,
mustn't
ever go back, because something more evil than she could imagine would be waiting for her. The thought of it made her feel weak all over.

Patsy, who had been sitting next to Mamie, stood up on the floorboard. “Why're we stopped?” she asked, not pleased. “Is the motor broke?”

“No, no,” Leona said, “nothing that serious,” but she couldn't hold her smile and when she turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. She jammed the key in the slot even tighter and stamped the gas pedal. This time the motor roared. She put her foot down and the road flew away beneath them.

With the pockety-pockety of the snowy windshield wipers keeping time and the nervous light from the dashboard quivering between them, Walter and Patsy Aldridge, ages five and six, not only answered all her questions but began slowly to tell her everything. Shy as they were with strangers.

Their father's dead, Leona thought, and their mother must be out of her mind. That's all she needed to know for now, as they sped on through the patchwork towns, Eberlie and Hazelett Grove and Deer Creek Landing, on toward the immense black maw of night.

10

Policemen saw him that week in November as he continued through the towns along the Susquehanna River—a rough-cut, scrappy-looking boy leading a large mongrel dog. Any one of them could have picked him up on a truancy or vagrancy charge, and some of them considered it. Cruisers slowed along the curb beside him, but as long as they let him alone, the boy ignored them, kept his pace brisk, his tense face pointed straight ahead. Only if they spoke to him did he waver. Usually they asked him “Where you headed?” just to get a response. The boy would hesitate and glance at them and say, “Just passin' through.” Immediately they thought, There's something wrong with him. He was smiling, or trying to smile, his mouth drawn up in an expression of snarling mischief. But it was the poisonous slither of his dead blue eyes that preyed on them. Under sleepy eyelids, his eyes darted, and the hate coming from them was unblinking and corrosive. What's he trying to hide? they wondered afterward, grasping at the commonplace. Even those who were most tempted to run him in for questioning held back, kept an eye on him, and waited for him to get out of town. He was a kid, after all, down on his luck, but they had seen all of him they wanted to see. The cruisers pulled away.

In Gambria, where the note had been found, the owner of the Shell filling station was getting ready to lock up, two nights later, when he saw a fleeting shape refract on the glass of the back door. He dropped his coffee cup, grabbed a tire iron, and gave chase. But in only a few blocks, he was out of breath and losing ground. He told his wife that he had followed what appeared to be a boy and a dog for several blocks until he decided he was probably chasing a schoolboy prankster and turned back.