The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (21 page)

A
few years before, another winter, her father took her out in a snowstorm. The brother was too young; her father made a big show about how her brother was too young for what they were going to do. It worked: Leonora felt proud and important. Ha! She stuck her tongue out at the boy as he sulked and whined; their mother had to placate him by letting him destroy a roll of cellophane wrap. But a little way into the walk it occurred to her that perhaps
she
was too young. For the weather was getting worse, and it seemed they'd gone much too far. What began as a quiet, peaceful storm soon became rigid, twisting sheets of snow and ice, a violent mix that stung their faces, burned the membranes of their eyes and noses. The wind picked up, and soon it raged. Soon you couldn't see the streetlights. No cars, no buses, no people. It became difficult to stand up straight. In the distance an awful sound, like a train stopping short, a thrilling, spangly, dangerous screeching. “That sound! What's that sound?” she cried, but her father couldn't hear her. Where were they? Nothing was familiar. Just sheets of white, and wind, and pockets of moony blue. She couldn't see her feet or her hands stretched out before her. Yet this was the city! Her city! She knew it so well. Her father grabbed her hand. He pressed his mouth to her ear, yelled instructions: “Walk backwards. Soldier on. Gut it out.”

Soldier on? Gut it out?
That wasn't how her father talked, not with that barbed-wire voice. He gripped her arm, spun her around so that the wind, now, was at their backs, and for one brief moment she could see where they were, which was in front of the dry cleaners, two blocks from home. The dry cleaners.
Their
dry cleaners. Yet seeing this, making out the familiar words (
Schneiderman's Since 1952
), frightened her more, not less; disoriented her more, not less. That you could feel so lost, so small, and yet be so close to home—this knowledge penetrated her body as mere coldness never could.
Soldier on. Gut it out.
Her father, an economist, bookish, quiet, with a thin and lank body, with eyes her mother called “Bambi eyes,” he didn't talk like that. Now his hat flew off. The wind tried to take hers too, but it was tied beneath her chin; she was just a little girl, she still wore hats like that. She lunged forward, to rescue his hat, his favorite brown corduroy newsboy hat—she couldn't bear his losing that hat—but he clamped his hand on her arm with great strength. (The next day the bruise would show.) He pulled her backwards. She didn't know if they were in the street or on the sidewalk, feared walking into a telephone pole or a car or falling down the stairs of the subway. Her father led her this way—she was impassive, free of volition, and finally she closed her eyes. She found it was easiest to accept her helplessness, to submit wholly to it. Plus it didn't hurt so much when her eyes were closed. In this manner they made their way home. Snot froze on her face. The ends of her hair, where they'd flown into her mouth, froze too. Her arm throbbed. She couldn't feel her feet.

Her mother seemed irritated but not worried, and gave them mugs of warm milk. Her brother sat in front of the fireplace, cellophane wrap binding his legs together, chanting “I'm a merman” and flapping his legs. Her mother wore sweatpants and a big white T-shirt. That was all. No sweater, no socks. She was always warm enough.

At home he became her father again, fast-blinking, distracted, clutching a hot-water bottle, the afghan drawn over his shoulders, bloodshot eyes on a paperback in his lap. The other person was gone.

Gut it out. Soldier on.

These words came to her in the backseat of the strangers' car. She'd forgotten them for so long, forgotten her father's alien voice, forgotten the ice striking her face, but now she remembered.

Gut it out.

She was on the floor of the car. A green sedan. She was hidden underneath a blanket that smelled like balsa wood and mud. Their car. She was in their car. Sandy and whatever the man's name was. The man called the woman “Sandy.” She needed to remember this name, feared that in the blast of details, in the rush of smells, voices, sounds, colors, she'd lose it. She hadn't heard his name, the man's, she didn't know his name, which made his touch—one hand on her back, one on her head—criminal. He should at least have introduced himself, she thought. Or was that crazy? What did his manners matter? But they mattered. Everything mattered. The smell mattered. The car mattered. The woman with the bowl cut, Sandy, Sandy, drove. Sandy complained about the cold, about the flipping broken heater. It was horrible, all these flippings, flipping this and flipping that, it was worse than the word itself. Trash on the floor, newspapers, fast food debris, batteries. She was down on that floor, mustardy Styrofoam for a pillow, a blanket on top of her. Three points of pressure: his hand on her back; his hand on her head; the floor hump pressing into her stomach.

Gut it out.

She had never been hit before. She had never ridden in a car this way before.

He said, “I wish there was another way, sweetie.”

He said, “Don't get the wrong idea.”

He said, “This is no good, Sandy. She's gonna get the wrong idea.”

At first she knew exactly where they were. This was her neighborhood, the back of her hand. She followed their turns, visualized their route, said the street names under her breath. She would remember everything! When they neared Wing Dings she had said, “There it is,” though of course they didn't care about Wing Dings. They'd passed her school. They'd passed the place where she'd once been tempted to shoplift an eraser in the shape of an ice cream cone, and she hadn't—hadn't! She'd wanted it badly, wanted it desperately, but she hadn't taken it. Very soon she lost her sense of direction. Her cheek didn't hurt anymore. Then he pulled the blanket off her and said she could sit on the seat next to him, provided she sat very still, provided she was a good girl, he knew she was a good girl, he hoped she didn't have the wrong idea. She sat up. He clasped her, his right arm around her shoulder, its hand squeezing her elbow, his other hand across his lap and pressing her hand to the seat, like they were at a scary movie.

Brown sheets hung over the windows in the backseat, obstructing her view—or really, she knew, obstructing others from viewing her. The car was dark green, a beat-up sedan with white pinstripes on its sides, the gray felt lining inside the roof coming down, pinned in places with thumbtacks. It smelled mildewy, heavy, like a car in summertime after a rain when someone's forgotten to roll up the windows. It smelled—
hot
. Which didn't make sense, given it was freezing. Yet the cold air had the fullness of heat—an air dense with sweat and grease and mildew and something sweet, like butterscotch. The windows back here were covered but she could see through the windshield, could see the road before them, the darkening sky. She could study the profile of the woman, Sandy. She could see her own breath, the man's breath, their breath joining. She was colder without the blanket over her, but she'd rather be cold and sitting up than crammed down there with the trash. She was gutting it out. She noticed her cheek was not hurting anymore. She noticed a gold star stuck to the steering wheel, a single gold star such as a child would receive for a job well done. She noticed that she was making sounds. Soft, flapping noises, like laundry on a clothesline in a summertime wind.

The man said, “I wish I hadn't had to do that, sweetie. I didn't hit you that hard, did I? Does it hurt? I'm a nice person, I promise it. Don't get the wrong idea.”

She'd seen it before, in movies—the person who won't stop screaming, whose screaming is only stopped by a slap. That had been her.

“He is,” said Sandy, in that clear, prim voice. “It's true, he's a nice person. It'd be a better world if it were full of hims. I mean that.” Hers was the voice of a librarian. No—it was a voice like the card inside the library book. The card you use to sign it out. Lines waiting to be filled. Nothing but order. A clean, empty voice. It was not right, a voice like that.

“Please stop the car,” Leonora said. “I won't tell anyone.”

“Soon enough,” said the woman.

Terrible order. Leonora saw the empty card inside the library book and then saw her name written across the top line, saw her own careful, right-leaning script. She'd always got gold stars for handwriting, never anything but.

“Don't be scared,” said the man. “Can you agree not to be scared? I know it's a lot to ask, but can you try to relax? Would it help to hold the cat?”

She couldn't see the cat from back here but could hear him scrambling around the front seat, mewing now and then.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” the guy said.

“It's true,” the woman said. “He's not.”

The woman dangled the cat over the backseat by the scruff of its neck. The man took it, set it down in Leonora's lap, then grabbed her arms again, so she couldn't touch the cat. The cat cuddled into her. Of all the names of all the girls in the city, it was her name,
Leonora,
on the card inside that library book. What was the title of the book?

The woman complained some more about the heater. The man ignored her. He said to Leonora, “Think about something pleasant. Am I hurting you?” He loosened his grip. “Can you do that? Think about something pleasant?”

She obeyed. It was in her nature. She automatically pictured her mother's face, pictured her mother getting ready for a party, begrudgingly applying makeup, grumbling about the tyranny of the male gaze; then, afterward, her face painted, her mouth a deep, matte red like an old movie star's, black liner around her eyes, looking into the mirror, inhaling, exhaling, silent, happy. She carried a teeny mirror in her purse for touch-ups.

No. Not this. It wasn't pleasant to think about her mother's party face. Instead she willed herself to think about Beatrice, that girl she'd never meet, the daughter of the man with the red mittens, Beatrice who lived somewhere in this city, who'd come home tonight to find a present waiting for her. She had a feeling Beatrice wasn't very pretty. Her father would have mentioned it if she had that going for her.

She wondered: Was this, what was happening now, like a punishment for trusting that man? For drinking the hot chocolate? Was God teaching Leonora a lesson about feeling too satisfied by helping? Would she still get to be a nurse or social worker? Would she still get to be a person? Would she get to pick onion off a sandwich or stand in front of a mirror wondering if her bathing suit was the right kind or learn how to say “gesundheit” in even more languages? She thought about picking onion off a sandwich. About lemonade. About flossing her teeth. About the kind of bathing suit she'd like to get. These things were better to think about than her mother or Beatrice or God. She pictured eating a plate of fried scallops while wearing a new bathing suit, and she felt better.

They were moving toward a bridge. She could see it now through the windshield. The bridge. She did not want to be anywhere near a bridge. But there it was, coming closer, suspended over water, black, lacy, like a leg in a stocking, a woman's leg thrown out in invitation.

“The sheet, Frank,” Sandy said, for—look!—the brown sheet on the window next to her had begun to fall down. Leonora could see another car, a car alongside their car—she could see the driver of the other car, a man in sunglasses, bobbing his head to music. She turned her own head to the window, leaned closer, opened her mouth, but before she could do anything—what could she have done?—the man reattached the sheet and the other car was lost. Frank reattached it. Frank was his name. Frank. Frank and Sandy.

“Flipping sheet,” Sandy muttered.

They crossed the bridge—she could do nothing to stop their passage. On the other side, just over, she caught a glimpse of another Wing Dings through the windshield. It was a chain restaurant, Leonora knew it was a chain, but its presence, its same sign, its same chicken on whose head sat, slightly askew, a crown—the same chicken with the same bubble emerging from its mouth, and in the bubble the words
I REIGN SUPREME
—this slowed her racing heart. It was home. Of course she'd never actually eaten at Wing Dings, it wasn't allowed (empty calories; corporate anthropomorphism), but in its familiarity, its recurrence, it soothed. It felt a little like a nickname, reassured her the way a nickname did, sweetly, vaguely. It gave her the feeling of home.

“What's going to happen to me?” she asked.

Her mother called her “Ladybug.”

“I don't know,” the woman said.

Her father, “Lee-Lee.”

“Nothing at all,” the man said.

Her father could be a soldier. She could be a soldier too. She could gut it out. If her father could be a soldier, could find inside him on that stormy night the thing they needed; if he could later return so easily to his other, his real self—well, so could she. No one was bad or good. Beatrice could become a nice girl. Frank, Sandy, they could find love in their hearts. Then and there she made the decision not to panic. She was a thousand people. Right now she would be a solider. The sun was setting, and she would not panic, and everyone had everyone else inside of them.

H
e took the name “Pax” from someone he'd met on a bus out of Topeka, a scroungy guy in a big leather hat that flopped over his ears. Tucked into the hat's band was a peacock feather and an old note, folded in quarters, from a girl. Paul had admired the guy's rutted voice and easy generosity. He had torn the paperback he was reading in two, gave Paul the first half to read. It helped pass the time. It was a long bus ride, through plains, over mountains, town after measly town. The book was about a beekeeper who falls in love with his sister's best friend, a girl who happens to be a lesbian. They read together, Paul at the beginning, Pax near the end. It felt important, somehow, that they were part of the same story, Paul following Pax's trail through this odd book, his eyes where Pax's eyes had been, hearing the voices Pax had just heard. Things didn't end well for the lesbian.

Pax smelled of cooked meat, greasy, homey. He was tough and gristle-voiced, but read books about love and bees.
I should have been a Pax,
thought Paul, and right then and there endeavored to be more like Pax, and so he took the other man's name once he got off the bus.

 

H
er name was Leonora Marie Coulter. She would never take another person's name. She was twelve years old, five foot two, last seen wearing dark green pants, a gray turtleneck, boots. Her coat was maroon corduroy with yellow lining. In photographs her smile was broad, crooked. Her real smile, her mother insisted, was much more subdued. She was a shy girl but attempted to hide her shyness. Her true smile was small, carried her chin downward. Her skin was pale and fine. She was proud of its lack of blemishes. Her long, dark blonde hair she fastened with two mother-of-pearl barrettes that had belonged to her grandmother. This is how she was wearing her hair the day she vanished. And her bangs had just been trimmed. And, said her mother hopefully, she carried a little pot of lip balm in her pocket, as well as a nail clipper. She was fastidious about her nails, which were short and clean. Her mother repeated this information as though the investigation would hinge on it.

A silver ring around her index finger. A string bracelet she made last summer at camp. A bra. She didn't like to wear a bra, but she'd recently resigned herself to it.

Wednesday panties. Panties that said
Wednesday
in cursive around the waistband. She disappeared on a Wednesday, was the kind of girl to wear Wednesday's underwear on Wednesday, Thursday's on Thursday. It made you sick in the heart. She was orderly. She was tidy. Her manners were impeccable, her voice soft. They feared this might not have worked to her advantage.

She liked badminton. She liked mocha swirl. She liked those orange circus peanuts in cellophane bags, but only a few, too many and she felt like vomiting. She liked clean nails. She liked yellow roses. She liked that song about
hey there little red riding hood.
Her mother produced this litany of preferences for the television camera while the newscaster nodded his head, affirming each:
Yes, clean nails. Yes, sleepaway camp, badminton, yellow.

This was winter. For several months she was a missing person. They prayed that she'd just run off, gone to seek her fortune, followed a boy, that kind of thing. But it was highly unlikely that Leonora would run off. She'd been a happy girl, quiet, not a risk-taker. She lived with her family in a spacious first-floor apartment in a turn-of-the-century brownstone. She had her own bedroom, a double bed, a pile of plush bears, a few girlfriends. Summers at sleepaway camp. She and her younger brother liked Monopoly and practical jokes. Once they sewed up the fly of their father's boxer shorts; once they put vinegar in their mother's morning coffee.

Have you seen her? Have you seen this girl?
Her mother, on the local news, opened her palms to the camera.
If you can hear us, honey—

Winter became spring. Then summer, with its window boxes and cleavage, and still she was nowhere.