The Girls Are Missing (7 page)

“What do you think you’re doing,” he thundered, “wasting everybody’s time lolling in bed? Get up and get dressed.”

She answered with a little squeal, “I’m not wasting anybody’s time except my own.”

“You get up and get your clothes on. Your grandmother’s coming.”

Gail, rummaging through a dresser drawer, asked, “Mommy, where are my blue shorts?”

“Probably in the laundry,” Joyce replied.

“Why didn’t you wash them?”

“I haven’t had time. There’s been too much going on around here.”

“I don’t have anything to
wear”

Carl, his attention drawn from Mary Ellen, stood observing the exchange. “Just why are you giving your mother a hard time?” he inquired.

“Because she didn’t do the laundry, and I don’t have any clothes.”

Joyce said, “You must have something.”

“Well, I don’t!” Stamping into the bathroom, Gail raged, “I’ll take my dirty stuff out of the hamper. It’s all your fault!”

Carl made a dive for her, seized her by the arm and gave her bottom a loud slap.

“That’s for being fresh with your mother,” he said, as drops of perspiration appeared on his forehead.

Gail stared at him in speechless outrage. Then she fled to her room, gasping in huge sobs, and slammed the door.

Joyce said, “You didn’t have to spank her, Carl.”

“I don’t like her talking to you that way.”

“But to spank her?”

“How else is she going to learn?” He seemed quite calm, now that he had blown off steam. But Gail needed a chance to blow off, too.

“I know she was fresh,” Joyce sighed, “but I hardly think it was worth a spanking. And I do understand how she feels, with Adam, and your mother, and Mary Ellen. It’s all your family. She feels left out. That’s really what she was saying.”

“Listen,” he said, “forget about ‘my’ family. We’re all one family now. I acted in loco parentis.”

“What’s that?” she asked grudgingly.

“‘In place of a parent.’ And I’ll thank you to back me

up. Otherwise we’ll have a bunch of outlaws on our hands.” He turned abruptly and went downstairs.

Gail’s door remained closed. Joyce knocked softly, and from inside, heard a sob. She opened it a crack. “Honey?”

Gail lay on the bed, her face puffed with tears. Joyce sat down and tried to take the unyielding body into her arms.

“Honey, I’m sorry Carl’s in such a rotten mood. He just yelled at Mary Ellen, too. I think he’s nervous because of Olivia coming.”

“He—spanked—me,” Gail sobbed.

“Yes, but I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

“I
hate
him.”

Gail felt very thin and small inside her pajamas, and had taken such a buffeting from life. My fault, thought her mother. She hoped Carl would come to his senses and apologize. But she knew Carl. He might come to his senses, but never apologize.

She had given Adam his mid-morning feeding, which was gradually working its way closer to noon, when Olivia arrived in her banana-colored Granada.

Carl, Joyce, and Mary Ellen trooped outside to meet her. Olivia looked crisp in a white dress with green polka dots, a string of pearls, and packages under her arm.

“There’s dear Mary Ellen,” she caroled as they enveloped her and led her around by the flagstone path to the front door. “How are you, dear? How’s your summer?” She planted a dry kiss on Mary Ellen’s cheek.

“Oh, fine.” Mary Ellen danced along beside her. “It’s okay here, and Adam’s adorable, and yesterday there were police all over looking for a body and Daddy went out to help. Gail and I went, too, but they wouldn’t let us help.”

Frowning slightly, Carl said, “I told you about that on the phone.” Joyce hadn’t known he had phoned his mother last night, probably to prepare her for this.

“It was in the newspaper, too,” said Mary Ellen.

Olivia asked, “Are you sure you want to go on living here?”

“Why not?” said Carl. “It’s home. That kind of thing can happen anywhere.”

“Well …” Olivia presented her cheek to Carl. His kiss was as dry as hers had been. She handed the smaller of her two packages to Mary Ellen. “For you. And this one’s for Adam. Where is Adam?”

“I just put him to bed,” said Joyce.

In a hushed herd, they went up the stairs. Adam, still awake after his feeding, blinked at them and kicked his legs. Olivia reached into the crib. “Hello, darling. Come to Grandma.” She scooped him up and held him stiffly.

Mary Ellen stroked the baby’s arm. “He’s so precious. I can hardly believe he’s my brother.”

“He doesn’t even look like you,” Olivia said. “You take after your mother.” She bounced him up and down and he spewed his lunch onto her shoulder.

“What have you been feeding this child?” Hastily she handed him to Joyce and suffered Carl to clean off her dress.

“Oh, what a shame,” said Joyce. “He did just have a full meal. I guess that sudden motion wasn’t good for him.”

Carl escorted Olivia downstairs for a glass of sherry while Joyce returned the baby to his crib.

When she went to join them, Carl had poured drinks for the two women and was in the kitchen mixing one for himself. She could hear him opening a tray of ice cubes, spilling them like rocks into the plastic bin in the freezing compartment. Olivia sat across from her, gazing at the mantelpiece.

The silence was nerve-wracking. Casting about for something to say, Joyce surprised herself by asking, “Have you heard from Daniella recently?”

Olivia, her attention jerked from the mantel, stared at her suspiciously. They had never discussed Daniella before. Or much of anything. They had never, Joyce realized, even been alone together before.

“I frequently hear from Daniella,” Olivia replied. “Why?”

“I just wondered. We got a card from her at Christmas, but I don’t think Carl sent her one. He hardly ever talks about her. Sometimes I forget he even has a sister.”

“She’s out in Arizona. That’s a fairly good distance.”

“Yes, but—”

“How often do you talk about your sister? I suppose you have a sister or brother.”

“Two sisters and two brothers,” said Joyce, expecting then to be asked about her family.

But Olivia did not care about her family. She rested her sherry glass on the arm of her chair and again studied the mantel.

“Carl and Daniella used to be very close, when they were growing up. But it’s hardly appropriate to stay that attached to one another, do you think?”

“It depends,” Joyce said. “It’s a different kind of closeness. I feel, with my brother Pat—well, he’s a good friend.” She excused herself, called the girls to set the table, and went out to the kitchen, where Carl was measuring vermouth into his glass.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

“Mixing a drink. What’s the matter, can’t you talk to her?”

“It’s not easy.” She opened the refrigerator and took out a bowl of chicken that was marinating in lime juice. “Everything I say, she argues with. Everything she says, it sounds as if she’s trying to pick a fight with me. “

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”

She motioned him to keep his voice low, and began arranging the chicken on a broiling pan.

“Well, that’s the way it seems. It just seems hostile, the way she talks to me.”

He rattled his drink and tasted it. “I suppose it’s possible that you resent her, because she had me before you did.”

“I certainly do not! After all, she’s your mother. I’m not in competition with her.”

Or was she?

Trying to ease over the argument, she said, “I don’t know, maybe I’m just moody. It must be the heat.”

“It’s postpartum depression.”

“Baloney. I don’t get that.”

“Very experienced, aren’t you? Anyway, it’s more apt to happen with the second than the first, didn’t you know? Probably you miss something about your old life. That’s what it often is.”

“I don’t miss anything.” She wondered if that was true.

“You’re sure?”

She remembered the summer mornings on the fringes of Greenwich Village, even in that cramped apartment … the lazy walks to buy a newspaper—yes, Larry had been around sometimes… the antique shops that were open on Sunday, where they could browse and dream … and sunning on the pier in the Hudson River. She tried to remember the soot, and the times Larry wasn’t there.

“Of course not. I told you.”

Gail drifted down the stairs, pale-faced and miserable. All through the meal she remained a silent tragic figure, so that this time it was fortunate that no one took the trouble to notice her.

She was released after dinner when they moved into the sun porch with their coffee. Mary Ellen stayed with them, alternately listening to the grown-up talk and staring out of the window, her eyes glazed with boredom.

Olivia stirred sugar into her coffee. “I hear you got a

Christmas card from Daniella and you didn’t send her one. What’s the matter with you?”

“Just didn’t think of it,” Carl answered with a smile.

Joyce said, “I would have sent her one, but I didn’t know her address.”

“Is that why you don’t write?” Olivia asked. “You lost her address?”

“I have it someplace,” he replied.

“And you used to be so close.”

Joyce said, “I think we ought to keep in touch. We might like to visit her sometime. I’ve never seen the Southwest.”

Carl asked in astonishment, “What on earth do you want to visit Daniella for?”

“They used to be so close,” Olivia repeated, “after their father and I were divorced. It’s a shame.”

A reversal of her earlier thesis.

“How old were they?” Joyce asked. She really knew very little about Carl’s early life.

“Let’s see. Carl was four, I think, when we separated, and Daniella was nine. No, wait, it was later. I married again two years later, you know.”

“I knew you’d married again.” Only because Olivia had a different last name. “But what do you mean ‘it was later’?”

“The time I’m talking about. It was after I remarried. I was with Carl a lot in those two years in between—he was so little—then I married again. Daniella was eleven. She took over for me then. She was almost a mother to him. But I suppose he grew up after a while and didn’t need a mother.”

Joyce glanced at Carl and found him watching Mary Ellen.

His coffee cup began to rattle in its saucer and he set it down. “Haven’t you anything decent to wear?” he demanded of his daughter.

Mary Ellen’s jaw dropped. “This
is
decent. What do you want me to do, wear a blanket? Honestly, Daddy.”

“Carl, really, it is hot,” Joyce reminded him, and her words sounded familiar. They had been through all that the other day.

Tight-lipped, he replied, “It’s the way she was bending over.”

“Well, I’m sorry I don’t have a bra,” Mary Ellen sulked. “I’m sorry I can’t stay six years old forever.”

Joyce reached out to pat her arm. “You don’t want to be six years old forever.” How fortunate that Mary Ellen accepted her own maturing process, even if her father did not.

Furiously he hissed, “Joyce, mind your own business.”

She was silent, chastened. This was between father and daughter—but so irrational. It would only hurt Mary Ellen, and Carl, too, in the long run.

I’ll get her some bras, she decided. If Barbara can’t be bothered, I can.

She thought again of the murder and how helpless it must make him feel with a growing daughter, a phenomenon men never seemed to understand or take for granted.

Olivia watched them all with a forced little smile.

11

Mary Ellen was enchanted by her young brother, if not by anything else in the household. She leaned over the bathinette watching him kick, and held the spray hose while Joyce soaped his body.

“He’s so tiny,” she exclaimed. “Was he even smaller when he was born?”

“He was scrawnier,” said Joyce. “They usually are. But actually he was rather big for a newborn. Eight pounds, three ounces.” She lifted Adam from the bathinette and wrapped him in a towel. Downstairs, the telephone rang.

“Can I hold him while you answer it?” Mary Ellen asked.

Joyce picked up the phone in the bedroom. Immediately Barbara’s agitated voice sputtered over the wire.

“Listen, I just heard on the radio they found a
second
body right where you are. A
second
body. I didn’t hear anything about a first one.”

“Another? I didn’t—When was this?”

“Yesterday. You mean you didn’t know?”

“About the first one, yes. But not—Where was it? Did they say?”

“Just ‘in the same area.’ Now, what first? Was it anywhere near you? Was it one of those missing girls?”

“Yes, the older one. It was in the newspaper, Barbara.”

“I was away for the weekend. Now tell me, how near you?”

“Not right here. Maybe half a mile, I don’t know.” Joyce exaggerated the distance, for Barbara’s sake. Why hadn’t they told her about the second body? “They,” she supposed, being the police.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “I have a daughter, too, but believe me, these kids stay right around the house.”

Mary Ellen, holding Adam bundled in her arms, sat watching from the rocking chair in a corner of the room. “Is that my mother?”

Joyce nodded, and looked out at the sunshine on the lawn, at the bright meadow with its daisies, and the apple tree. It couldn’t be happening. Not here.

Maybe I should get a dog, she thought.

Barbara said, “Anyway, that’s not the problem. Is my daughter there now?”

“Yes, do you want to talk to her?”

Not the problem? Joyce wondered as she finished dressing Adam. If that wasn’t the problem, what was?

“No, I don’t want to,” Mary Ellen was saying into the phone. After a pause, during which snatches of Barbara’s voice crackled across the room, she explained, “There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to do here, either, but at least it’s a little more fun. I helped Joyce give the baby his bath.”

Moments later she hung up, wrinkling her face in disgust. “I don’t know what’s the matter with that woman.”

“You can’t really blame her,” Joyce said. “She’s concerned about you. She must miss you very much.”