The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (3 page)

A
Peeping Tom named Tom.

He was Thomas Grant, thirty-nine years old, plain, clean-shaven, a face people tended to ignore or trust unthinkingly. He carried himself like a can collector in a windstorm, luckless and determined. His graying, buzzed hair grew into a widow's peak. He was a nurse, a “male nurse” as they say (this drove him crazy), at an abortion clinic. His job was to sit with the waiting girls and to make sure they understood the procedure. He would prick their fingers, measure their blood pressure, and, afterward, take their vitals and give them apple juice and animal crackers. To work he wore pale blue scrubs which made him feel feminine, and so on weekends he wore plaid flannel, jeans, and steel-toed boots.

His apartment complex overlooked the strip mall. He was raising his child, Jade, by himself, her mother having departed when the child was four. Now the girl was nine. By all accounts he was law-abiding, decent. He was writing a children's book about a talking milk bottle. He gave money to the lame and the blind, volunteered to run the bake sale at Jade's school, and never abandoned shopping carts in the grocery lot. He was a tender, accepting presence at the abortion clinic. In all respects save one, he was a good guy.

Goldie was his undoing. She alone could bring on such urges. He told himself he wasn't crazy or sick or obsessed, but merely in love. But not
merely
! Love was the thing. The hardest. The noblest. Though, since he did not feel noble, perhaps it was not love. Perhaps it was awe? He was decidedly in awe, which may be an even more sublime state, he reasoned, more difficult, more demanding. Only Goldie could compel him to telephone the old woman next door, beg her for the third time in a week to watch his child, and to kiss Jade good night in a hurry, to throw on his scarf and gloves, to run the half mile to the cottage where she lived with her son, so he could watch—breathing into his hands so as not to fog the glass—a woman he had never spoken to and never would.

Goldie! What could he possibly have said? The world did not offer the words. Language was a net with holes too big to catch what he could say to her.

He watched their sad domestic life unfold. He watched her primp and putter and snip at the boy who sat before her in uneasy docility, like a member of a corrupt court. She was regal—that was a word he could use. He was in awe, yes, and also terrified of her. He wanted only to watch, not to touch, not to be seen, not to enter. When he watched he could smell distinctly the layers of pine and mud in the air, a bristling underground scent that made him feel dirty and thirsty and also righteous, like coming home from a long hard hike. Here he could have an erection without needing to fondle it, without the gratification of touch. He was only his eyes. Her beauty was sudden and trenchant, an illness one must succumb to.

“Good night, baby,” he whispered to his girl. He drew the blanket to her chin. Her hair was the light red of certain small apples, her nose faintly freckled. Supine in her bed, she could have been advertising cough syrup, stirring hearts. Her round face and muted expression lent her an aspect of sleepy convalescence. She asked him to sing to her, and he did, but the lullaby was fast and far from soothing and all the while his heart raced. His heart was a judge's gavel, pounding
guilty, guilty, guilty,
and so he was, and so he let himself run away.

He promised the woman next door, her breath fierce with bourbon, that he'd be back by ten.

She shrugged, said, “Take all the time you need.”

He jogged, taking a shortcut through the woods to avoid the town center, loving so much the snap of twigs beneath his feet, loving the sense of himself, of his running self, like an inviolable creature, as deserving of these woods, this pace—as deserving of the instincts that propelled him—as the animals crouched beyond his sight. The moon was a dull blade. The stars were incidental and always had been. All that mattered was that he could run, that he had located this awe inside of him, like a rare coin in a pile of pennies. He ran full of lust and authority, ran faster, feeling no doubt, the path slippery with pine needles and rotting leaves. Occasionally a pair of yellow eyes. Occasionally an owl's hollow bleat, which he might, if he felt bold, mimic.

“A
re you ready for another truth?”

He knew that her truths were not truths—or they were true but not Truths. She was making them up as they went. She was trying to distract him, soften him by way of disclosures. She had not bought him a proper gift and so delivered these statements in the manner of a gift, as if her candor were itself a gift. What he wanted was the opposite of candor. He wanted the lie of silence and cake. He wanted a serene smile, and for her to take him into her arms, and to feel she had no other need, and for her mouth to stop, just for tonight, his birthday.

“The next truth is that now is the time, Paul. Now, little man, and only now.”

“Time for what?”

“I'm losing my looks,” she said. “Maybe not yet. But I will, and soon. Now is the time to model, if it's going to happen. Now is the time to find a—”

She was going to say
husband,
but the word broke apart. It was like a stone that, prodded, turns into sand.

He wanted to lick the frosting from the undercarriage.

“A man,” she said. “That's all. Just a man. I don't want to spend my golden years cooped up here alone. I don't want to be one of those ladies with a book of puzzles.” Her eyes shone, and she bit down on her thumb. She did not want to cry. Her mascara would run. Paul would look at her with his turned-off face, his strange, calm, priestly face. His stillness was masterful, not entirely of this world. She respected it even as it sent waves of fear along her spine. He was not her; he could do what she could not do: he could preserve the boundary between his little self and the world. Why couldn't she do that? Her own self was bigger, she reasoned, so its boundary harder to manage. But she felt strongly that Paul would never lose this capacity. It was a gift, and she didn't have it, and her son did. Had she helped him have it? She hoped so. It seemed the greatest of gifts, even though she was dumb to its origins and frightened in its presence. She had borne a child who possessed the ability to shut her out. It was miraculous and sad and right.

“I want a companion,” she said gently, and averted her eyes. “When I get old.”

“But I'll be here.” He realized as he said it that it wasn't true. For just a second he'd forgotten that boys leave. When he remembered, he said, “I'll live down the street.”

“You'll be in Hong Kong. You'll be in Hawaii. I met a guy who was once a pimp on Oahu. Most
pliant
women—that's the word he used.” She snorted. “No, you'll be putting out fires or pimping or painting houses or catching fish, whatever boys like you do when the mood strikes.”

He asked what pimping was and she thought for a moment. “A pimp is a person who sells to lonely people what other people get for free.”

“I don't think I want to be a fisherman.”

“Good for you.”

“Maybe a fireman.”

“Fishermen die young and sleep around. Trust me.”

“A fireman. Here in Beetle.”

“There aren't any fires in Beetle.”

He gestured out the window, to where the big house once stood.

“There's nothing worth saving, that's what I mean. Let it burn.”

He would not look at the cake.

“You'll be out making your fortune. You'll be far away. You'll be searching for whatever ring-a-ding captures you. Maybe there'll be a war, honey. Maybe you'll be out killing whoever we see fit to kill. Maybe you'll be our hero.”

He wished for a war and often told her so.

“A war with China,” he guessed now.

She examined the tops of her hands.

“I don't think China. Not China.”

“India?”

She yawned. “They say hands give away a woman's age better than anything else. I'd say the neck, the upper chest.”

She looked at her watch.

“Paul, my little man. Be nice to Mama. Be nice to Mister Clover is what I mean. When you look at Mister Clover, pretend you're looking at me. What we have here is what's called a window. That's an important truth.”

“What number is that?”

“Be nice to Mister Clover. You can make or break this thing. Years from now, I don't want to be sitting at this table all alone. I don't want to be sitting at this table while you're out screwing some little tart. Men are never alone. I don't want to be sitting here waiting for you to come to the door with a bundle of joy. You shouldn't expect that of me.”

“I don't.”

“You don't know it yet, but it's what you expect. And that's fine—it's what you're supposed to expect. But we've been through a lot together. Be nice to Mister Clover. This is the least you can do.”

He nodded gravely. He said nothing. He did not look at the cake, or ask for the cake. His feet grew hot in their slippers.

“Happy Birthday,” she said. “I mean that.”

He bowed his head at these words, as if at a blessing. A few minutes passed. They listened for Clover. For a moment they heard a rustling, and Goldie tilted her ear toward the noise, but it stopped. It was not Clover.

Paul felt a tickle on the back of his neck, a faint shiver, a signal that something in the room had changed. He looked around. Nothing had changed.

His mother said it again, louder: “Happy Birthday!”

Nothing had changed, but he felt they were being observed.

One time, maybe a year ago, he'd woken to noise from his mother's room. What began as a mild whimper became louder, strident—her voice, then someone else's—louder, urgent, not pained exactly, not right either. The sounds overlapped; he could tell there were more than two people in her room. Paul rose, crept into the hall, and saw her door halfway open. His mother was in bed with Chuck. He knew Chuck—Chuck the Schmuck, his mother said—but there was another man there too, a man he didn't recognize, a man kneeling at the foot of the bed, hair to his shoulders, elbows on the covers, his back to Paul.

A scarf over her lampshade lent the room a deep, plummy cast. Her dress lay on the floor. Her shoes. Her underwear. Chuck, with a grunting laugh, pulled the covers over his head. Now all Paul could see was his mother's torso, her head propped on two pillows. Her face was flat, unthinking; she might have been watching TV; she might have been waiting for the dryer to finish at the laundromat. Under the covers Chuck became a bobbing lump. His mother hummed. They watched. Meaning everyone. Chuck, hidden, doing whatever he was doing, that was a kind of watching. The man at the end of the bed, he watched while he squeezed her foot through the blanket, while he murmured, “That's the music, that's the music, honey, keep singin' that song.” And Paul, behind them all, watched. Then Paul saw that the stranger, the kneeling man, lifted a hand and touched, lightly, the back of his own neck. He ran his hand up and down the nape. It was as if the man had felt a shiver, as if his body knew that he, too, was being watched. Paul took a breath, prepared to flee, sure he'd be found out—but the stranger did not turn around. His mother's noises changed, came now through her teeth, like a child mimicking a train,
chugachugachugachug
. Paul wanted to turn around but could not. Her sounds rose and fell.
Chugachuga
. Then her face was no longer a TV-watching face, a waiting-for-the-dryer face. Now it was the face of someone in pain, or, no, someone preparing for pain—a face as a needle comes at your arm. At once Paul's own neck tingled; at once he knew that there was someone else, someone behind him, also watching. But he didn't turn. No one turned. No one moved. In this way, necks tingling, he imagined a train of people watching his mother, one after the next, each sensing the other's presence but not willing to look, not wanting to confirm the feeling, because to confirm it would be to take their eyes off Goldie, and who would do that? Goldie arched her body, threw back her head, the skin of her throat purple in the light. Her soft locomotive chugging rose in volume, picked up speed, until it exploded—until it was the whistle that warns of a crossing—I'm coming, save yourself—the good municipal scream—the stay away, stay away.

He ran back to his room. He felt sick and dumb, wanted to puke, to stop the thudding of his heart and stop the hotness in his stomach. He was wearing footed pajamas. How he despised them, their stupid feet, their long zipper! He'd never wear them again.

“My birthday boy,” Goldie said. “Where does the time go?”

He said he didn't know.

“Ten years. A whole bleeping decade. Can you tell me where it goes?”

She was wrong about time. It went too slow and headed nowhere. Time was a commercial on repeat, a loop of advertising, buy this or that or this or that, it doesn't matter what, buy something and be glad for it. His childhood would never end. He would be ten forever. He would never eat the cake. He would never have a toothpick in his penis or a virgin bride. He would always be Paul.

He said, “Time is dead.”

Goldie laughed, “My wise guy!”

He never saw those men again, not Chuck or the stranger at the foot of the bed. Still, ever since that night he sensed eyes everywhere. The woods were eyes. The kids at school had eyes under their eyes. Soon enough his mother was dating Freddy Marino, one of the God crew, on whose pocketknife handle was etched
Be sure your sin will find you out,
so for a while everything was on the up-and-up.

T
homas watched. He did not peep. Peep implied furtive glances, an eye against a crack in the wall, implied perversion and greed and contempt. He told himself:
This is not peeping
. This is one human being in awe of another, and could awe be criminal? Only if it was not real awe. Only if it was need or disdain disguised as awe. He needed nothing from her. He felt toward her only a throaty tenderness. So he gazed at this woman and her son, this family, as it were, in an open, reverent manner, damp-eyed, curious, but always, he told himself, with reverence that obliterated prurience. He looked at them through the bottom corner of a large, uncurtained window, not some crack in the wall, not some secret camera. It was looking, just that, no tools, no greed, no need for reciprocity, no touching of the body. He made sure his breath was slow, his back straight, as if to demonstrate his decency. If he'd come upon a true peeper he would have beat him up. He would have genuinely felt like he was defending her honor.

He first saw Goldie in a diner. He and Janice had been sitting in a booth, negotiating the end of their relationship. Of course he hadn't known that then—he thought it was just another argument and they'd fuck it off. They ate steak and eggs, fought with the ketchup bottle. It was dusk, one of those sad places that serve breakfast all day.

Goldie, in the company of a toddler, sat at a booth toward the back, in his line of sight but behind Janice. He watched Goldie eat a slice of pie, watched her chew in a slow, wincing way. The sign over the counter declared
OUR PIES VOTED BEST EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI
. Voted by whom? What was pie like on the other side of that great river? Thomas had never seen the river, never been west of it, let alone tasted Western pie. The diner was stuffy, wood-paneled, a stag head above the cigarette machine, a baseball player's photo, autographed in grandiose loops, framed above the counter. There was a little jukebox circled in pink neon affixed to the wall of the booth, and Goldie shuffled though its offerings absently. She drank a lot of coffee. She wore many silver rings and an electric blue shirt with buttons in the shape of diamonds. Her eyes were elsewhere. Even when she talked to the kid, even ordering more coffee, even moving her lips faintly as she read song titles, her eyes were elsewhere. Every now and then she'd come to for a moment, startle back into herself; then she'd hastily minister to the kid, wipe crumbs from his face, offer a spoonful of whipped cream. Her tenderness was compensation. The kid was strapped into a high chair. His feet in green sneakers hung heavily. His face had the full, polished redness of an old man at the beach, blunted by decades of sunlight. The kid, too, seemed elsewhere, would startle when he noticed a spoon aimed at his mouth or when his mother's hand, in that impulsive instant, smoothed his hair.

Her face was round and rouged. The wide mouth winced as she ate. Her hair was big, wavy. She clearly was not satisfied with the pie, not satisfied with anything.

Thomas wondered if he could change that. How? He didn't know.

Now, eight years later, the face of the son was more artfully, vigilantly blank. A balloon tied to the back of his chair, a cake waiting between them, while she talked and drank and ran a finger along her clavicle. She was talking to pass the time. Thomas could not hear all the words, but he could watch her mouth move. He could tell she was talking just for talking's sake, but the kid was listening. Of course that's what kids did, listened to everything, took it all in. They heard their mothers say
louse
and
dud
and
fraud
. They heard their mothers say
This child is killing me
. It went beyond hearing; it went straight to the gut.

Eight years ago, Janice had said, “The way you eat your eggs has always struck me as weird.”

“Nixon uses ketchup.”

“If you care about having a relationship with my mother, you'll resign.” Janice's mother, born-again, could not abide his work. “You take the tiniest bites.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“There are openings at the hospital. Marnie told me. And don't do that. You did that to spite her.”

“Did what?”

“They're looking for nurses.”

“Jesus Cripes. Better?”

He saw that she wanted to say something but was afraid. “Marnie said it's great over there. Good benefits.”

“I like my job.”

Janice said she truly didn't care what the hell he did, didn't care how many babies got butchered—perhaps they wouldn't be in this jam if she herself had paid a visit there—but yesterday her mother agreed to provide free day care for Jade on the condition that he quit.

“But you don't work. You're home all day, Janice. Why do we need free day care?”

She shot him a look of wounded hatred; she could manage that beautifully, join woundedness to any aggression, so that you felt pity despite yourself.

“I am dying in that apartment. I am not cut out to stay home all day with a—” She paused. “I'm sad,” she said finally. “I want my mother's help. Maybe I'll take an art class.”

“Yes, take an art class. We'll pay for a babysitter. We don't need your mother dictating our lives.”

“She'll give us money!”

“I don't want it.”

“We need it.”

“Not on that condition.”

“She's got a point. It's dangerous at the clinic. Weekly threats. Bombs and all that bullshit—you said so yourself. That note on the doctor's windshield? Marnie said the hospital's great. Nice people. Good benefits. Doughnuts on Friday sort of thing.”

“Doughnuts?”

“And flexible hours.”

“I don't like doughnuts.”

“You like crullers.”

He shrugged. It was true.

“That note was terrible.—What are you looking at?” She turned. “Her?”

“I'm looking at you.”

He looked at his wife's face, hard, to prove it.

“You're looking at her. You've been looking at her since we sat down.”

“Please do yourself a favor and take a breath.”

She said, “She's got a fat face.”

“Don't do that.”

“I'm sad.”

“Sad how?”

“Sad I want to run the fuck away. Sad I want my mother to love us.”

He knew it was the wrong question. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don't know. How should I know?” She frowned. “Chicago? Toledo? Orlando? It doesn't matter. You see?”

He sighed.

“She's a cow.” She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “I'm miserable. Can you help me?”

He didn't know and said so.

“Look at you. Look at you looking at her. My mother is right. You murder things.”

They sat at the table for a long time.

Now he wanted nothing. He did not desire entrance. He was not a father or a husband or a nurse or a son at these moments. The woods moved around him. He kept himself in shadows, his face close to the glass. His mind swung like a bell between his women.