THE LAST BOY (18 page)

Frigid February yielded to a wind-whipped March. In the middle of the month it rained, then abruptly turned colder, the snow freezing into a hard and treacherous icy mass. To Molly, however, the weather became a matter of indifference. When she wasn’t working, she continued her endless hunt, a bundled-up figure lumbering through the glazed and gusty streets, peering into every alley, searching every face, stopping total strangers to show them a picture, ask them questions. Somewhere, someone had to know something about Danny. It was only a matter of connecting. Always her search
took her back to Green Street, to the boarded-up remains of Kute Kids, to the place she had left her little boy that morning in the late fall, entrusting him to strangers.

“What are you raising in there?” asked Molly, gently poking Rosie's stomach when she stopped by the trailer on a night late in March. “Elephants?”

Though Rosie was only into her sixth month of pregnancy, she was now so big that when she walked she wobbled and had trouble keeping her balance.

“It's twins,” said Rosie.“We just saw them on the sonogram up at the hospital. I got the picture at home. Ed says he's framing it.”

Molly kissed her.“Why that's wonderful!” she exclaimed.“I just hope you’re taking care of yourself.” Rosie didn’t look good to her. Her skin seemed sallow. Though her stomach was distended with the pregnancy, her cheeks were a little hollow and she wasn’t as lively as usual.

“I’m just very tired these days.”

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

After Rosie drove off, Molly remained in the driveway. For the first time in months, the air had a distinct touch of warmth and she could hear the melting snow dripping from the trailer roofs, the sound of the nearby creek gurgling under the ice. The wind, she noticed, was coming out of the south and, when she closed her eyes, she could detect the rich smell of fecund earth. If you used your imagination, she thought, you could catch the scent of blossoms drifting up from the south. Spring was finally returning to Ithaca.

“Danny,” Molly whispered into the night, caressing his name. “Danny, my dearest baby boy. Wherever you are, please come home to me.”

“I think you have to let go,” said Tripoli late at night as they lay in
bed, sleep elusive. Molly had been talking about Danny, making plans for when he got back. May was now splendidly warm, winter but a memory. The windows in the trailer were open and the air was alive with the sound of nighttime crickets. A mosquito buzzed around Molly's room and it got her thinking of summer. When Danny got back she would take him to the Adirondacks, they would go canoeing, fishing, just like she had done with her father when she was little and he was still living at home. It was a memory that Tripoli suspected had been burnished with time.“Letting go doesn’t mean giving up.”

“Never,” she said. “Never.” She got up on an elbow to look at him in the darkness. She studied his face, tracing with a finger the line on his brow. “I’m cruel to you. It's not fair. You should find someone else, a woman who could love you full time. If you left me—”

“Never,” he said with a laugh and silenced her with a quick kiss on her lips.“Never.”

For the month of May, Tripoli was stuck working weekends. He hated leaving Molly, knowing she would be alone all day in the trailer. As usual, he left her at dawn that Sunday morning, slipping out of bed and dressing as quietly as he could, then bending over her and giving her a kiss. In her half sleep Molly reached out to caress him, then sank back into sleep.

Tripoli was long gone when she finally arose. He had made himself a hasty breakfast, and when Molly got up all that remained of their night together were a plate with crumbs and his coffee cup piled on top of last night's dishes.

Molly helped herself to the coffee he had made for her, then set to work cleaning up the kitchen. As she waited for the sudsy water to fill the sink, she thought about Tripoli, his loyalty and tenderness, and wondered why she couldn’t have met him before—before Danny had disappeared. How vastly different life might have been. Danny would have had a father and…

She was facing the kitchen window when a small, distant figure near the highway caught her eye. It was a child, walking along the road near the trailer park. The water kept rising in the sink as she leaned closer to the window to see the child more clearly. It was a boy, she saw as he came around the curve of the road, a boy just about Danny's age with a sprightly gait just like Danny's. As he got closer, she thought she recognized Danny. But no, her eyes were
playing tricks on her again and she squinted in the morning brilliance to get a better look.

The boy came closer and Molly stood transfixed. Then, as the water began overflowing the sink and cascading onto the floor, Molly let out a scream.

She rushed out of the trailer and down the road, barefoot, oblivious to the stones cutting into her feet.“Danny!” she was screaming. “Danny!” And the closer she came the more she was now certain that it was her child, her lost boy. His hair was long, much longer than it had been, but he was wearing the same red flannel shirt and bib jeans, and draped over his shoulder was an odd gray sweater. His face was set in a cheerful, contented look, and when he spotted Molly rushing toward him, his face lit up and he ran to greet her.

“Mother!” he laughed as Molly swooped down and scooped him up into the air. In her arms he felt feather light.

“Oh, my God, oh my God!” she said, both crying and laughing. “My baby! My baby!” she kept repeating as she raced with him back to the trailer, nuzzling his neck and ears and drinking in his scent. She wept so hard, held him so tight, that she could hardly breathe.

Tripoli was getting ready to head out of the office when his phone rang. Molly was sobbing and her speech so garbled he couldn’t make sense of it.

“Hey. Slow down,” he said, at first alarmed.“What's going on?” He had never heard her like this.

“He's back!” she gasped.

“What are you talking about?”

“Back! Back!” She kept repeating.

But all he could make out was her sobbing. She's hysterical, he thought.“Don’t do anything,
please,”
he pleaded.“I’ll be right over.”

He burst through the door and dashed down the hall, knocking officer Lynn Spino off her feet and shouting an apology over his
shoulder as he moved off. When he reached his car, he flipped on the siren and lights and took off.

“Let me just look at you!” said Molly, the phone slipping out of her hand as she fell to her knees, coming eye to eye with Danny, his face smudged with dirt.“Oh my God. You’re so skinny. Are you okay? Is everything…” She took up his hands and counted every finger, lifted his shirt to examine his bony chest and belly, kissed his silky skin and again smelled his special fragrance. His ribs were showing and his arms felt like sticks and he was not particularly clean, but she could find nothing really wrong with him.“And it's you! My darling! My baby! I still can’t believe you’re
real
.”

Danny threw back his head and laughed.“Oh, I am!”

Then she was crying again.

“Please don’t cry,” he said, and looked like he was about to cry himself. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Scare me? Scare me?” she laughed giddily. “You didn’t scare me. You’ve made me so happy. That's why Mommy's crying. So happy!”

She kept touching him, trying to reassure herself that he was actually alive and healthy and there.“But where have you been?”

“I’ve been…I’ve been…” he gazed around the interior of the trailer.

“Yes? Yes?” she prompted, trying to catch his eyes to capture his attention. She kept combing her fingers through his hair pulling out burrs and little sticks of wood caught in it, running her fingertips over the contours of his skull as if the explanation lay there somewhere.

“…been away.”

“Yes. But how could you…? Who…? Where?”

“But I was okay,” he insisted, still averting his eyes.“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“
Worry?
Where in the world have you been? What have you
been eating? Who's been keeping you? Don’t you know that the whole world has been looking for you?”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“But where?” she insisted.

Every time she asked he turned away, seemed to find some new fascination in the details of the trailer.

Then they heard the wail of an approaching siren, the sound of tires squealing at the entrance to the park, the roar of an approaching engine. Danny stiffened nervously at the sound.

“It's okay, Honey,” she said lifting him into her arms. “It's just a good friend coming. He's been helping me look for you all this time.” She thought of Tripoli, rushing again to her rescue, of his concern for her all these months. She buried her face into the curve of Danny's neck, now wet with her tears.

When Tripoli burst into the trailer, the floor was deep in water and Molly was standing in the living room with a little blond boy clutched tightly in her arms. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated, and she was trembling and weeping and smiling. When the boy turned and Tripoli saw his face, he froze.“Oh God, oh God,” he kept murmuring. It really was the boy in the picture. The face was leaner, lacking the baby fat, yet it was clearly the image of the missing child, the boy he had given up hope of ever finding alive. Seven long months. Danny!

It took Tripoli a moment to realize that he, too, was crying. Triumph and relief, bewilderment and awe. It was too good to be true, and all he could do was weep—weep for this sudden miracle of goodness and justice, all this for the woman he loved and whose faith had finally been rewarded. Engulfing Molly and her boy in his arms, he held them tightly, his shoulders shaking as hot tears streamed down his face.

Tripoli's car stood outside, bubble top flashing and siren shrieking. From all over the park, people started emerging from their
trailers, converging on the scene. Heads peeked in the open door, bodies jostled for position, old faces and young vied to catch a glimpse of Molly's little boy—now actually back, alive and well! And of this cop, this detective, this hard-bitten sonofabitch, crying his eyes out.

People kept pressing in; the air in the trailer became hot and stuffy.

“Out,”Tripoli ordered.“Come on, please. Everybody out!”

He managed to move the neighbors out and press them back to the driveway just as a familiar stringer from the
Ithaca Journal
came running up. He had a photographer in tow and Tripoli had to bark the pair back from the door of the trailer. When he returned, Molly was still clutching Danny. Though dressed in an old T-shirt and frayed shorts, at that moment Molly looked to Tripoli more beautiful than he could ever remember her, more joyous than he had ever seen her or imagined her to be. Her hair, tied up with a scarf, exposed the full arc of her radiant face and, though he knew every inch of it, it seemed suddenly radically different.

“I’m standing here doing dishes, just looking out the window. And then…” Molly gushed, “Then I see this little boy
all
the way down, near the highway.”

“That's me,” piped the boy and then giggled.

Tripoli glanced at the sink filled with sudsy water and dishes. The counter was soaked. The vacuum was out and stood leaning against the sofa.

She tried to explain how she had first seen the figure of a boy near the turning in to the road of the trailer park. It looked like Danny, but she couldn’t believe it was really him. How she felt a burst of hope and joy and almost in the same time suspicion and disbelief.

“Then I run down the road. And it's really him, Trip. My Danny!” she uttered, and broke down again.

Tripoli looked at Danny. The kid looked scruffy. Grungy hair. His fingers were stained, dirt under his nails: he was badly in need of a good scrubbing. He was still wearing that plaid flannel shirt, the bib jeans and the sneakers with colored trim, but his shirt had tears in it at the elbows, his sneakers holes where his big toes were pushing out, his jeans worn through in the seat and knees. The boy looked, however, physically sound, basically healthy.

“Danny's grown,” said Molly, patting his bottom.“He's a big boy now—aren’t you!” She started to cry again and then laugh. “Just look at him!” She stretched out a leg for Tripoli's inspection. The bottom of Danny's pants hardly reached his ankle.“Must be a good two inches!”

“And I’m stronger, too. Just feel my muscles.” Danny flexed his skinny arm, and Molly pinched the little bulge at his biceps.

“Why it's true. Just look at this, Trip.”

Tripoli hung back. He felt off kilter, not knowing quite what to make of it all.

“Please, Mother,” said Danny finally,“could you let me down?” His voice was sweet, high and reedy, and virtually bubbled with laughter. It suddenly reminded Molly of her dream, of Madam Evelyn, the psychic.

“
Mother?
Did you hear that?” Molly sniffled and wiped her eyes. “Hey, I’m your Mommy!” She squeezed him tight, then reluctantly let him down.“Boy you’ve gotten big,” she marveled again, straightening her back.

Tripoli watched as Danny stood there snug to Molly, his eyes surveying the room, fastening on items of furniture, appliances in the kitchen, as if trying to recall the place. He really was a beautiful child. Finely sculpted features and big, brown eyes, a sweet bow-shaped mouth with full lips and a wonderful smile. The contrast in coloring between Danny and Molly, however, was striking; he was as blond as she was dark.

“You must be starved, Honey!” Molly exclaimed and then rushed to the fridge.“We’re gonna put some meat on you.”

“Where's he been?”Tripoli asked finally.

She shrugged, fumbled with a glass in the cabinet, tried to pour some milk, her hands still trembling. She kept spilling over the edges of the glass.“I don’t know. Every time I ask, he just…” She came in with the milk and a bag of cookies. Tripoli continued to observe him. And Danny, he saw, was watching him. For a long moment their eyes met. The kid's look was so unwavering that Tripoli felt his spine go cold.

“Go on, drink it,” Molly urged, pushing the glass into the boy's hand.