The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (25 page)

T
he newspaper said
Missing Girl Found Dead in Lot
and, below this,
Grand Slam for the Good Guys
. Pax read both articles through. A taste in his mouth like orange rind. He read them again. The catcher had hit the grand slam. Leonora had been wrapped in industrial carpet. Perpetrator unknown. No leads yet. He spit into the sink but the taste remained. He wanted to run to her mother's home. He wanted to see her mother, whom he loved. But what comfort could he provide the mother? None. Absolutely none. “Good morning,” Ricky said. “Sleep well?”

He needed to get on a bus. He wouldn't find a wife here. He would not find a wife anywhere. He stood in the kitchen, arms loose, his face dim and resigned, as a man stands before a heartless judge. Sticky linoleum beneath his feet. Ricky, small and dense and bloated, looked upon him in a faintly admonishing manner.

“Bad news about the girl,” Ricky said. He was leaning back in a kitchen chair, shirtless, smoking a cigarette. “I really thought she'd run away. Most of them run.”

She was dead. He'd known it all along. His certainty, his fixation, all his visions and dreams, these were like proof of his guilt. Then last night, in Ricky's bed—it was like he had given up on her and she had known. It was like he had willed it. There was still sleep in his eyes but now he was wide awake. He said, “I did it.”

“Yeah?” Ricky blew smoke out of one side of his mouth. “That's sure some news.”

Pax said it again.

Ricky laughed dully. “Oh buddy, you're one guilty son-of-a.”

Pax gathered his things.

“Delusions of grandeur, my man.” He was still laughing. “I saved you some toast.”

“I have to go.”

“Sure, sure. Coffee first?”

“But thank you for everything.”

The laughter stopped. “Don't be a fool, Pax. And don't you dare thank me. Don't you dare, man.”

Pax shook his head. “My name isn't even Pax.”

“I don't care what on earth your name is. You think your name tells me who you are? You thought you could hide behind a phony name?”

He considered it. “I don't know.”

“Poor thing,” Ricky said, with gentleness. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

Pax packed his suitcase. Where was his belt? It was nowhere. He looked everywhere, ran around the apartment, sweating, heart pounding, found it finally under the stinking yellow couch.

P
ax discovered the heat wave had broken. The air was newly fresh. He walked past children on stoops. He walked past pretty women in high heels, a man belting words from the Bible in a spit-infused voice that reminded him of Ricky, that inspired—too soon—a burst of nostalgia. He walked faster. It was much, much too soon for nostalgia. Pansies and geraniums, wilted, flattened by rain, filled the city's million window boxes. He walked past many dogs, diners, hydrants, over subway grates and sleeping bums, past flower vendors and hot dog vendors and peanut vendors and magazine vendors, men selling wares with the same untroubled, wholesome greed they've had for thousands of years. Bottle tops and ticket stubs and a diffusion of broken glass, so much glimmering trash in the road, in the gutters, a rubber ball, a pink pacifier with a ribbon tied to it. All these relics of the world were lost to him, to them both, him and the girl. He paused before the precinct for a moment.

J
oanna Coulter entered her son's bedroom. He was sitting on one of the twin beds, cross-legged, holding a tan plastic soldier in each hand. He made them crash into one another, on his face an expression of routine hostility. She sat on the spare bed. The room, she noticed, smelled odd. He was only eight, but a faint musk was palpable, a whiff of something fleshy, semisweet. It wasn't the smell of a child. On the wall above his bed hung a pennant of the city's baseball team. The curtains, which she had made by hand, were navy blue and patterned with yellow stars. When she said, “I have some bad news,” he looked up. His face was puffy, small-eyed, tired.

“She's dead, huh?”

“I'm afraid so.” The words in her mouth were hard, falsely small. She coughed, to put something between herself and them.

He played the words over again, quietly, in his own mouth.

Then he said, “What happened to her?”

She could not think of a word, not a single word. Her head flashed with color. Her hands found the tops of her thighs, squeezed.

“I mean did somebody hit her?”

Joanna worked on unclenching her hands. She worked on a word, just one, if she could get one word out it would return her to the world of words, to all of them. She inhaled. She said, “Yes.” The boy nodded, smiled faintly, seemed somehow satisfied and disappointed both, smug, like he'd been told the secret of a magic trick. She didn't like the smile on his lips. Now there was a rush of words, they came easily, words to remove his smile, words which would be plaster on the wall between them and what happened. She told him she loved him so much. She told him she promised to take good care of him forever, and that they would go see a person called Doctor Grayson who would ask him to play in a sandbox, and she told him that they would always have Leonora in their hearts, and that he was allowed to say whatever he wanted, to cry, or not to cry, or to be mad, or not mad. The words were a wall, and on the other side of the wall was the crime, but also on the other side was Leonora. She wanted to be quiet now.

The boy made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, held it to his eye, like a spyglass. He made a little squeaking sound.

She said, “Let's get you some lunch.”

“I've been farting in here,” he admitted.

“That's okay.”

“Poor Leonora.”

She explained that there would be a funeral. Perhaps he could choose a favorite toy to put in her coffin, or he could write her a letter? He didn't seem interested in this. He tossed the plastic soldiers off the end of the bed. He lay down, crossed his arms neatly over his chest.

“Do I look like Dracula?”

“Yes.”

“I bet she'll look like Dracula.” He spoke with new hoarseness.

They didn't say anything else for a few moments. She heard the shower running in the bathroom down the hall. Her husband had been in there for nearly an hour. By now the water had to be cold. He would emerge shortly, pink and puckered.

“Will they catch him?”

Not a single moment of her life could prepare her for the question.

“I don't know.”

“I don't understand,” her son finally said.

She said, “I don't either.”

“I don't get it.”

“We will never get it.”

“What I don't get is how she eats. If she's dead, she doesn't get dinner, right?”

“That's correct.”

“How does she eat, then? Where does she get food?”

An image of lunch money flashed before Joanna's face, her hand pressing a bill into her daughter's hand. Usually she had denied Leonora dessert.

Joanna said, “Well, she doesn't need to eat.”

“Oh right, dead people don't eat,” as if he'd simply forgotten.

He seemed a little old not to understand this concept. Why had she even once refused the girl dessert?

“Did she go all at once or in pieces?” he asked then.

“What, honey?”

“When she died,” he said. “Does a person die all at once or bit by bit?”

It wasn't a question she could answer, and she told him so. Suddenly he reached for her, took her shoulders, stiffly, uncertain, like a kid at a middle school dance. She took his shoulders too. They held each other this way for a while.

H
e climbed its stately granite steps. He stepped into a cool, white-walled room.
I swear, she didn't suffer,
something like that.
It was so fast. She didn't feel any pain.
He would make himself her witness, which is all anyone could hope to have. He stepped into that place of ringing phones, frosted glass, and ticking clocks. He understood how childish he was, how desperate to feel important, how much he longed to be something at once better and worse than himself. Yet this knowledge did not dilute his relief. The waiting room was full of plastic chairs, and in these chairs were people, wearing bold or bored or sleeping faces. A woman at the front desk, talking on the phone, placed her hand over the receiver and looked at him with uncanny warmth. He resented this immediately. He wanted no warmth. He wanted to be taken by the throat. He wanted a cell. He wanted someone to grab him so they could see how heavy his limbs were, how utterly without urge.

“I need to talk to a detective.” He cleared his throat. “I have some information about a crime.”

She smiled, took his name, asked him to sit. He took the last chair, between a young blonde woman and a dark-skinned man. Pax kept his eyes on the floor, its scuffed, pale green squares. Next to him, the woman's toes tapped the floor lightly. She wore white sandals, her toenails pastel pink. The man on his other side wore black wing tips; his feet were firmly planted. No one made any noise. Across from him a couple held hands. An old man in seersucker checked his watch every thirty seconds. It was impossible to imagine what they were all waiting for. Had they witnessed crimes? Were they waiting to bail out their friends? It was unlikely that they all had confessions to give, yet for a moment his stomach tightened and he felt immense anticipation, as if someone here would tread his terrain, would lay claim to the crime before he could. He tried to make eye contact with the receptionist, but she was still on the phone, writing something on a notepad.

“They tell me to wait, but I should be out looking,” the woman next to him said softly. It took him a moment to realize she was speaking to him. “I think I should be out looking. That's what my gut tells me. A mother is supposed to trust her gut, right?”

Pax didn't want to talk to anyone. He nodded.

“My kid. He ran off. He's lost. I lost him.”

“I'm sorry,” Pax said.

She blotted her eyes with a tissue.

“He's so young. Just five. We're visiting, you know. From Indiana. Indiana is a lot simpler. Indiana doesn't smell like this.” She had a moonish prettiness, bleached hair. Her mascara had bled. Her bangs were tall, crisp with hairspray, like a small hood lifted by a breeze. “We were walking along. There was a crowd of people. Tourists. We're just tourists. We don't live here. Oh—do you live here?”

“No,” Pax said.

“Then you won't be offended if I call it a hellhole, which it is.”

“They'll find your son,” Pax said.

She shook her head. “I've been here forever. It happened yesterday. I've been here the whole night.”

The whole night, while the baseball game was played, while he and Ricky lay in Ricky's bed, while he and Ricky—call it by its name—fucked, while Leonora's body in the roll of carpet was dumped in that parking lot, this woman had been sitting in this plastic chair.

“Forever,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He's just five.”

“I understand.”

“He's always running off. I said, ‘Johnny Maxwell Trim, in the city you don't run off.' I told him it was dangerous. He wanted to know dangerous how. I told him there were bad people here. He said, ‘Like monsters?' I said, ‘Yeah, monsters, so hold my hand. You better hold my hand.' But I knew he'd run off. Monsters don't scare him. He won't stay still, never. Especially when there's something foul to see.”

She dabbed at her eyes.

“He's a nice boy,” she said, “but he likes odd stuff—monsters, liver. What kid likes liver? I never met one before him. I never knew a child to eat liver. Have you?”

Pax shook his head.

“His favorite color is green. Everything green, towels and sheets and shirts. He's wearing a green shirt now, in fact. That's what I told the police there. And green sneakers. Monsters, he's all about monsters and blood, all that. He likes vampires, goblins, ten thousand leagues under the sea. I told the police he may be in the sewer system.”

“He sounds like a nice boy.”

Now he had no choice but to remember the day he'd gotten lost in the city when he was a child. Why were people always intruding with their stories and complaints and making you remember? He thought about that day and its freedom-peace-fear-grief-thrill-hope-guilt-fear—what could you call it? It was the first feeling that defied a name. How wonderful and right this seemed at the time. But soon it became a curse, a sorrow; soon the impossibility of finding the right name was not a pleasure, soon
all
his experiences felt too big, unsortable, a massive glare. That crazy woman who had taken him into her shack, that oddball with the dogs, she was gone and the shack was gone. He went there—it was the first thing he did when he returned to the city. In place of the shack was a sign about the miracle of some unpretty flora.

The woman did not want to stop talking. “Nothing scares him,” she was saying. “He's too brave. That's a problem, right? Between us, I think he's a little crazy.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I should be out there looking for him. I should be out there as we speak.”

“I think you should do what the police say.” Pax didn't sound like himself—his voice was sharp, knowing, impatient, like his mother's.

She nodded. “Yes, you're right, yes. You're absolutely right.”

They didn't speak again. All along she'd wanted him to tell her to stay still, and once he did she was silent.

Half an hour passed. Beyond the waiting area the station grew louder. Competing music from several radios, walkie-talkie static. At one point a handcuffed woman was led by, a prostitute in a yellow dress, boots to her thighs. Pax closed his eyes. He waited. He was hungry but didn't care if he never ate again. Then the door swung open and a cop came in. He held a small boy around the waist as one holds a bag of groceries.

“Ma'am,” said the cop, out of breath, and approached the blonde woman. “We found him on the east side. Is this him? Your kid?”

The woman stood and looked at the child. He was dirty, mouth slack, with hair that fell over his ears and a shirt stained with jelly.

The cop's badge said
Lowenbrau
. He pointed to the boy's head with his free hand. “Is this him? Your boy?”

The woman was shaking. The boy looked at her. He was no more than three. His face showed no recognition. One red sneaker was untied.

At last she shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, he is not my son.”

The cop apologized, carried the kid further inside.

She sat again. For a while she was quiet. Then she turned to Pax.

“I may not get him back.”

“They'll find him.” But he didn't really believe it. Who knew what happened to that kid, to any kid. Pax needed quiet. He needed to maintain his resolve.

She said, “You want to know something crazy?”

He did not. He made no motion or sound.

“I almost took that one,” she whispered, leaning in close. “He wasn't my son, but I may not get mine back. That kid was just looking at me. Can you believe that? Part of me wanted to take him and be done with it. I almost took him. Is that crazy?”

She looked at him with widened eyes, waited for his shock.

He would not give her shock.

“Crazy, yes,” the man on Pax's other side said suddenly. He turned to face them. He was Indian, maybe, with wide eyes, a face of exhausted indignation. “Boy run away. You go batty. Boy run from batty lady. I cannot blame boy.” The man had the clear stare and wide shoulders of a baseball umpire. “You stop talking now?”

She blinked. Then, like a child, nodded demurely.

Pax looked down at his lap. His heart raced. The thing was that Pax could believe it very well. It was all anyone wanted, a substitute to stand in for a loss, it was the worst and most obvious part of human nature.

“I should have held on tighter,” she whispered.

The man said, “All day talk to strangers. Steal a child! No shame. No shame.”

“I'm shamed,” she said. “Oh, I'm shamed.”

“Batty,” the man muttered.

“Batty,” she agreed.

Pax waited to be retrieved. Another hour passed. The station grew louder. Finally another boy was brought in for the woman to inspect, a kid with a round and regular face, a face like a hamburger bun, the face of any kid, of all of them. This was her son. She stood up, clucked her tongue; she knocked him lightly on the side of his head and cried “You!” as though he'd drawn on the wall with crayon, and the boy grinned, made a face that said
You love me anyway,
and she did.

They left. Pax waited.

He wasn't a murderer but wasn't innocent either. No one was free of crime—his crime was vague, elsewhere, nowhere, a crime not of passion but of passivity, of indifference, of failing to see people. And
someone
had to murder her.
Someone
had to confess, to offer her family that relief, to bear the burden of the horror, to be linked forever and always to the girl. That was the miraculous prospect—being linked to her, married to her in history. Him, old Paul Prickface Pussyhater Pax. Why couldn't it be him? It had to be someone! So why couldn't it be him? Why not? He wanted to do something good. That was the thing about goodness—you couldn't wait for it to come to you. You needed to move to it. For once he wanted to move to it. Not to flee, not to evade, not to skirt the perimeter, and also he wanted so badly to feel close to a person, a girl, this girl. She was pretty and young and about to do everything. Here, in the station, a confession on his lips, he felt brave and peaceful. He didn't deserve peace either, but he took it.

He waited some more. From another room, a woman was yelling: “Those hooligans stole my silverware! My fox-fur coat!—” Then the sound of a door slamming, and her voice was gone. People came and went. Sometimes his stomach made noises. When he closed his eyes his stomach felt emptier. When he closed his eyes the boys and girls of the world rose up in his vision. Boys and girls like in some sort of a grand Soviet parade, rows and rows, happy and innocent and so close to losing it all. Every criminal was once an innocent. He closed his eyes, allowed himself to picture his mother, and Jade, and Judith, and Leonora, and Leonora's mother, all these decent women, would-be women, and felt a surge of ardor, an amorousness, a longing not sexual, or only partly sexual, for it resided in his stomach and heart and head—it had a sexual part but something else, too, bigger than sex, righter than sex. He felt a desire to smash love into his body, to smash love into the world, to allow love to be the violent act he'd always suspected it was. Why did people pretend it wasn't violent? It was the most violent thing.

The Indian man was called into a deeper part of the station. Soon Pax would be asked to go deeper too. People came and went. He waited. Someone would retrieve him, someone with a notepad would record whatever he said. He planned his story, which would pass from someone's notepad to someone's mouth, to mother, to newscaster, to judge, mouth to mouth to mouth, and somewhere in this transit, possibly, it would become true. It would become an official thing. It could. It could. Pax straightened. Someone would come for him soon. The air was peace. He took it in, let it out. He would keep this feeling. He swore that he'd keep it, find a way to make it last, and it was true, he did. Even afterward—after the lie-detector test, after the psychiatric evaluation, after his mother came and sat with him and held his hand and rubbed his shoulders and begged him to tell the truth, to clear his good name, after the newspaper articles, after the cell, after the narrow bed he sat on with the candid silence of a monk, after his belt and shoelaces were returned to him, after he climbed up the jail's steps into blinding noonday light—even then this peace would remain. The receptionist called for him.