The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (22 page)

P
ax got off the bus and stepped into the street. The air was humid, dense, rich with the melony gas of decomposing garbage. He stood on the curb, suitcase at his feet. He watched people come and go, traffic, wheeling birds. The sky was dull white, like a paper towel. Shirtless men in hard hats climbed a scaffolding with slack, simian grace. You might have thought them drunk, or else fully at peace with the prospect of their death—they dangled, laughed; their disjointed babble carried across the street. A fire truck with nothing to hurry to. A stream of cabs. A woman with a toddler strapped to her back pushed a stroller containing two more children, all freckled, yawning, in sunbonnets. Someone was playing a harmonica: an old bum, eyes closed, his song antic and grating, past its day. He wanted you to put spare change in a bedpan by his side. A bedpan!

Pax loved this place. He hadn't been back for a couple years and had forgotten the noise, different noise from other cities, here it was a bluesy huffing din which, in its constancy, its oppressiveness, was not sound so much as temperature, stunning the body as high heat does.

Also it was hot. Nearly ninety. Already he needed a shower.

He wandered and did not stop wandering for several days. This was his favorite part of arriving in a city, that first interval when it feels so open, full of weird and perfect and singular charms, when you weave among people, sleep where you can, eat greasy food from vendors, piss in bushes. After a while it gets more particular. You start to see the sour faces. You notice eyes. You know which cops monitor the library, which cop's got the hard-on for the vagrants, you know the bullies, the swearing streetwalkers, start to hear the curses, start to see panic on the faces of the city's dispossessed. You start to realize you're one of them, a guy on the fringe in shitty shoes. But at first, during those first few days in any city, you can be ragged and unbathed, watching the sadness but not of it.

Then, at once, you're part of it. You wake up one morning on a cot in a shelter and there's a social worker looking down at you, and he asks your name, and you make something up, and he starts to write it on a clipboard, but you're gone.

He liked the subway of this city. Liked its echoes, its heat, its moldering gusts, its congregation of musicians and deadbeats and tourists, how its eggy oily stench got into your mouth, into everyone's mouth. The democratizing force of the underground, its unavoidable suggestion of the death that's coming for all of us, somehow this was reassuring. Perspiring tile. Gummy cement. Massive, trembling rats with tails like car antennae. He stayed underground for days at a time. He rode. He walked. He watched. He liked waiting on platforms, trapped in crowds, liked the collective breathing and sweating; the faces people made when crowds pressed them together—or rather, he liked the faces people tried to hide, the averted eyes, pinched mouths, he liked a face that betrayed its owner.

He saw one face everywhere. A girl's.

Flyers on subway poles, on the walls of the trains, a big poster of her face next to an advertisement for a movie called
Gateway to Paradise II.
This girl's face right next to the face of a famous actress in massive sunglasses. Why was the simple, predictable prettiness of this girl so much better than the beauty of the actress? She made the actress in sunglasses look ridiculous. The girl was a human, maybe more than most people. Her face could not fully compose itself. It could not achieve what it wanted. It never would. The girl's face was everywhere. At every stop. At every turn. It was a face that was trying hard not to betray itself. And yet she was a child—what did she have to betray?

He was looking for a wife. That was his mission, he wouldn't let himself forget. As he walked the streets, rode the subway, he kept his eyes open, someone gentle, pretty but not dominated by prettiness, someone who'd maybe be carrying too many grocery bags? He could offer to help. He could hold her milk. No one paid him much attention. He showered at the Y. He played basketball in the park. The women he saw were too serious-looking, or bored-looking, or ugly, or had their arm entwined with a man's, or another woman's. Anything went. Wives, it seemed, were out of fashion. He browsed the bookstores. He visited museums. A billboard, too, hanging in the city's biggest square, her face, her name,
HELP US
, an exclamation point, another.

M
ale newscasters are allowed to have imperfect skin. This one had white hair (no woman newscaster was allowed to have white hair) and a faint trace of rosacea on his cheeks and nose. He sat face-to-face with the girl's mother. Behind them, on the studio wall, an image of Leonora stared from the happiness of last October. She was flushed from jump-roping, wore a patchwork coat with rolled-up sleeves. Her arms were thin. She stood under a bare tree, orange leaves at her feet. The newscaster took a breath, leaned forward slightly, said, “Our viewers are naturally wondering how you're holding up. There's been an outpouring of support.” His voice was smooth and even. It held concern like a small ball balanced in the palm. He could hold the ball forever. His tie was striped. His glossy hair resembled, in its neatness, with its stiff bang, a newsboy cap.

The mother said, “What do your viewers expect me to say?” But before he could reply: “We're holding up as well as can be expected.”

“Our viewers are wondering—”

“They want to see me cry?” It was delivered as if with genuine curiosity.

“The outpouring of support has been truly remarkable.”

“Because I cry,” she said. “Someone wrote a letter. A stranger. Asked why I wasn't crying more, publicly. I cry. I just want to be clear.”

“People are really pulling for you and your family.”

“I can't cry on television.”

“We've never seen such an outpouring of sympathy.”

“Someone out there knows something. Someone.” She turned to the camera. “You? Maybe you saw something? Maybe you want to share what you know?” She stared into the camera as if into a mirror. She knew who she saw. She knew everything.

“How is your husband holding up? Our viewers would like to know.”

She said, “You? Are you watching? Can you hear me?”

“The number's on the bottom of the screen, folks.” He pronounced each digit carefully. “If anyone knows anything, there's a reward.”

She said, “I want, also, to send a message to—to whoever took her. I want to say—” But she stopped. She wore red-framed glasses, a navy blazer with a circle pin on the lapel. She looked more like a newscaster than the man did. Her face was stately, serious, with good bones, a fine brow, a face showing abundant awareness of the ills of the world.

He said, “I understand there'll be another prayer vigil?”

Her eyes widened. You could see the powder they'd applied to her skin. She opened her mouth. “The message—”

Again she said nothing.

“A candlelight vigil? By city hall?”

“I—can't.”

He leaned in closer. Would he touch her arm? He seemed to want to. But his hands stayed on his lap, held his index card.

He said, “What is your message, dear?”

“Dear?”

“Say what you need to say. This is your opportunity.”

She squinted. Silence.

The newscaster turned to the camera. He lifted his jaw. He pouted. “Give her back,” he said. “A mother's plea. A family's wish. A city's hope. Give. Her. Back.”

H
e took a flyer off a telephone pole. He kept it in his back pocket, looked frequently at her narrow face. He couldn't stop looking. He recognized her. She was like the sister he hadn't had, a familiar something in the eyes, a quiescence, a longing, a studied blankness. She looked like she was struggling to find the right thing to say, the one perfect thing, in a crowd of yammering idiots. No one was listening to her. Plus they had similar eyebrows, she and Pax.

Once, at a bakery, he brandished the flyer, asked the proprietor, “Have you seen this girl?” like he was a relative, an uncle, even the father.

“I'm sorry. I haven't.”

Pax nodded.

“Tough,” said the baker, shaking his head. “Real tough. I've seen her on the news. I had a cousin once, disappeared too. Turned up in a casino, broke and high. Hope that girl's off somewhere hitting the jackpot. That's what I hope.”

Pax pictured this girl sitting on a vinyl casino stool with a bucket of coins on her lap, coolly sipping a Shirley Temple.

“What's her name again?” the baker wanted to know.

“Leonora.” He made it sound Italian.

“God bless her,” the baker said, and then gave Pax a box of cookies on the house.

 

For a while he slept in the park. Now he was staying with Ricky Maroon, a guy he'd met during a pickup game of basketball. It was a good arrangement. Ricky was lonely, a talker, needed someone else's presence, needed for his own incessant chatter to reach someone's ears. He gave Pax the spare couch in his little apartment in exchange for Pax's nodding company. He served Pax plates of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, beer. For dessert there was a saucer spread with maraschino cherries and a couple stale cookies, like in a Chinese restaurant.

Ricky had decided he was a poet. It was his calling, and since he'd accepted it he said he felt two hundred percent more alive. He was stocky, with black uncombed hair, a uniform of hiking boots, cutoff jeans, polyester short-sleeved shirts like math teachers wear. He carried a notebook in his front pocket, a bitten pencil behind his ear. The meatloaf was dry, the beer cheap, but somehow this sharpened the pleasure. It had been so long since Pax had a home, since someone else made sure he had a beer in his hand and a clean blanket and some socks.

“Let me read you a poem. Hey buddy. Can I read you a poem?”

It was six o'clock in the morning. Late July.

Pax, in his underwear, reclined on Ricky's yellow velour sofa. Yellow light burned through a window shade made fragile by the sun; a single touch would disintegrate it, so it stayed down all day. A spider plant hung from a hook in the ceiling, its leaves the color of burlap. Ricky knelt on the floor next to the couch. Pax could smell his dandruff shampoo in the room's awful heat.

Pax yawned. “What time is it? Maybe later?”

But Ricky had already begun to read: “It's too late for the boogeyman. He's come, gone. Leather face, faux-jeweled eyes, won't bother you. So keep your superstitions. Petty inklings. Faith. Even the monsters are done with you. He came to your window. He saw you sleep. Your drool didn't stir him. He said: Your dreams are free. And you woke and said: Oh God. Come back.”

Pax said, “Come
back
?”

“Come back. Come back.” Ricky stood, snapped his fingers. His knees were indented from the carpet, pink and pocked. Pax wondered how long he'd been kneeling there, watching him sleep.

“I used to worry like hell about the boogeyman,” Ricky said. “I used to fear everything supernatural.
Damn
I wish I could be like that again. Now what do I worry about? That there's no such thing as the boogeyman. That's worse. If there's no boogeyman there's no god to save you from him. You want some juice or something?”

Pax said yes. Ricky went to the kitchen, returned with a jug of grapefruit juice, no cup, a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. He lit a cigarette, gulped some juice from the jug, but didn't offer any to Pax.

“I was dreaming about a girl,” Pax heard himself say.

“It goes on—” Ricky read: “It's too late for the boogeyman. Too late for the rheumy goblin. Rotten-toothed zombie. Werewolf with his too-tight dungarees. Erection.”

“Erection?” Pax said. “That came out of nowhere.” But really the stranger word, he thought, was
dungarees.

Pax rolled over.

“You want to get back to sleep? Get back to some girl? Huh?” Ricky pressed a fist to Pax's head, moved it around a little.

It was true. He wanted to get back to a girl. But he didn't want to ruin this thing with Ricky, this—what would you call it?—home life.

“No. I want to hear more. Keep reading.”

“That's all I have. It's not done yet.”

Pax closed his eyes. He saw Leonora's face, that poor missing girl, her bangs. It was always most clear to him just as he was waking up.

Ricky said, “Yesterday I saw the loveliest chick walking down McGregor. Asian. A little girl, and she was smoking a cigarette. No hips. No tits.”

In Pax's dream Leonora had matted hair. She'd lost one of the barrettes. Her lips were chapped.

“I said to her, ‘Can I buy you a cup of tea?' I was perfectly pleasant. I was nothing but a gentleman, Pax. And you know what she said? She said, ‘I don't drink tea.'”

Pax knew it was a terrible poem, that it wasn't a poem at all, just a cluster of urgent insomniac words battened together with spit.

“Girls these days. They expect everything plus twenty,” said Ricky. “I used to think it'd be better out in Utah. Have a whole bunch. Now the thought of just one gives me heartburn.” He tipped his head back, smoked his cigarette like a man onstage. No one knew how vain he was: he put hairspray in his eyebrows to keep them in place. He plucked the hairs that grew around his nipples, examined the pores on his nose with a special magnifying mirror. “You ever been in love?” Ricky asked. “The whole shebang?”

Pax didn't answer.

“Not me. Not me. Not ever. It's a shame. I have a lot to offer.” He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. He said, “You need a little boogeyman inside you to fall in love.”

T
he girl's mother was right there, on a park bench, knitting. He said hello. Her clothes were elegant but wrinkled. The hems of her pants were damp. It was early morning but already hot. The radio warned of a scorcher.

“Hello,” Pax said again.

“Good morning.” She did not look up. She was knitting a sweater. Its sleeve, a ghostly pendulum, swayed above her lap. Pax straightened up. He hadn't brushed his teeth.

“I know you.” He couldn't help it. He felt a rush of panic, as if meeting a celebrity. “On TV. I saw you.” A star. He was flummoxed, wet-palmed. A star. But she was not a star.

“You're her mother.”

“You've got the wrong person.”

“Leonora.”

He didn't mean to say it. His blood swam behind his eyes. It was like giving away a secret. One couldn't say the name. Not like this, not in the sunshine, not while the woman was knitting. She was trying to be a normal person making a normal thing out of yarn. Saying the girl's name was uncouth, pitiless—worse than asking her for an autograph. And yet—
not
saying the name, wasn't this a crime too? He wasn't sure. The dead, the gone, they want their names to be spoken. The living can't bear it. Or maybe it's the other way around? He didn't know. Only after he spoke the girl's name did the mother look up from the yarn. She narrowed her eyes. Then, lulling and cruel, she said, “If you have something of relevance to say, go ahead. Otherwise leave me alone.”

Her needles clicked in time. Her glasses were perched on top of her head. Pink pearls glistened in her earlobes. He was pretty sure he stank. He felt a sudden, tremendous, galvanizing hunger. He said too loudly, “Let me buy you a hamburger.” For a moment he held hope that he'd found the one thing that could satisfy the great mouth of her loss. “Can I do that for you?”

The needles stopped moving.

“I detest meat.” She closed her eyes. “Meat is a crime. The last time I ate a hamburger was in 1982.”

Never in his life had he been in possession of anything relevant to say.

She opened her eyes again. “You want to know something? You want to know what I think?”

He said he did.

“I think people are lunatics. Kids go missing. You know this. You watch the news. You see the poor parents. You see the picture of the poor kid. You think:
What lunatic is responsible?
You focus the lunacy on the one who took her. The rest of the world is okay. You do this; I did it. Right? Don't answer. But then, when it happens to you, your kid…”

She looked at him with dull expectancy. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to speak.

“You get letters,” she said. “Accusations. Weirdos calling on the phone. Packages of voodoo dolls. Stick this pin here. Eat this herb. Say these words. Abracadabra shazam goddamn. Praise the moon. Praise the goddess praise Jesus praise the FBI. Never mind the strangers who want to search for her. You know what I say? I say it's lunacy everywhere. I say damn the church. Damn the helpers. Their armbands. Their weird patience. They want to be assured their own girls don't get stolen. It's an insurance policy, their help. Damn them all, every one of them, and damn you too.”

Then she resumed knitting.

“Damn me,” he said weakly. He felt light-headed and shamed.

She said, “A man who wants to buy me a hamburger, for example.”

“I don't want to give you anything,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm leaving now.”

But he did not move.

He said, “Forgive me.”

She flushed. He thought she might yell. Then, shrugging: “I am hungry, actually.”

“Really?”

“In 1982 I got some kind of worm. I puked for days.”

“A salad.”

“You offered a burger,” she said, “I'm taking a burger,” and she went back to her sweater.

He ran to a restaurant half a block away, bought two cheese-burgers, fries. He spent nearly the last of his cash. When he returned to the bench she was gone. He sat where she'd sat. He was hungry, wanted to eat the food, but that would be wrong. It wasn't his. Eating her food, it would have been like touching her.

Traffic blurred on the avenue. The sun throbbed. The skin of his face felt stretched too tight—his nose had burnt, peeled, was burning again. He wondered what happened to the girl and if there had been a witness. It was better if there was a witness. One can't be one's own witness. That's often the belief, that one can split oneself and watch and later, coolly, fairly, tell the tale. But it wasn't true. One needed someone else. It was especially important if one was dead.

He hadn't just come upon her mother. That was a lie. He'd gone to her apartment building, which was not too far from Ricky's. No, that wasn't true either. He'd taken three trains and walked five blocks. He'd gone there, stood before the brownstone, saw the purple peace-sign sticker in the window. He'd watched her emerge. He'd followed her to the park, where she lifted her face to the sun and stepped like a bold child into the fountain. Then she'd selected a bench. The grace of her hands on those knitting needles baffled him. Why did he feel his fate mingled intimately with hers? Why was he consumed by thoughts of her child? His dreams were mostly awful and not annihilated by daylight. Usually they showed the girl bleeding, her forehead slashed, but he didn't fully trust them, because twice they showed her waiting for a train, and once holding a fishing rod, once on a clean white bed in only her panties.

He returned to the apartment building three days later, watched the mother descend the steps. Now she was wearing a pink dress with billowing sleeves, sandals with straps that wound up the ankles. She bought a hot dog at a sidewalk vendor. She took a bite, chewed, and spit it onto the street.