by Evelyn Piper
“The Stevenson School on York?” Miss Benton was raising her eyebrow at Dr. Newhouse again.
“Yes, of course. When the registrar heard about this child dropping out of your school . . .” The eyebrow quirked. “As a friendly gesture! I thought it was so kind of her!”
“We had no vacancies in any of our groups this year, Miss Lake. They were completely filled by June and nobody dropped out.”
Dr. Newhouse said, “Miss Lake, how could you come and pick Bunny up at five? Doesn’t your job downtown keep you later than that?”
“Mother was going to while she was with me, and the woman we were going to find to take care of Bunny—I mean I was going to have to find a woman, but only part time. She would have had to take Bunny home from here at five and then get dinner and finish washing up. Part time. After Mother left New York, I’d need someone.”
“Miss Lake, none of my teachers ever saw you before today. None of them knew your name.”
Blanche noticed how first one of them asked a question and then the other did. “The one who interviewed Bunny saw us. Her name was Miss Ditmars.” She closed her eyes because of the way the two of them looked at each other.
“Miss Ditmars. I see. Miss Lake, when did anyone interview Bunny?”
“The twenty-first. The day I wrote the check. I gave her the check. Miss Ditmars.”
“On the twenty-first? The twenty-first was a Sunday, Miss Lake. Where?”
“Sunday because she wanted me to come with Bunny for the interview. She said you preferred to have the parent with the child and I have a job. So on Sunday. The interview was right here.” She opened her eyes. “I don’t mean here; downstairs. We went up to the room on the second floor and she watched Bunny playing with the toys. She wanted to see if Bunny was emotionally mature enough for the school.”
“The school wasn’t open then. It was closed for the summer recess.”
“I know that. The school opened today. There was nobody here that day but Miss Ditmars.”
“Who was in Chicago. Miss Lake—” She looked at Dr. Newhouse. “I was away at the Cape from the sixteenth to the thirtieth of September and the school was closed up tight. Dr. Newhouse, must we go on with this? This is so—dreadful—must we go on?”
“Miss Lake,” Dr. Newhouse said gently, “perhaps I’m wrong to have gone into it this way. Miss Benton thinks so, but you do understand now, don’t you, why they aren’t searching for a little girl who disappeared from this school this morning? This school has no record of such a little girl. No application blank. No check. No teacher interviewed you, nobody who saw you before today has turned up.”
“I have the stub,” Blanche said, opening her purse. “I’ll show you the stub.”
Dr. Newhouse bent and put his hand over hers, pressing the clasp of the pocketbook closed. “Anyone can write a stub. Anyone can write anything on a stub.”
“Your cancelled check is your receipt,” Blanche said wildly. “I know that—but a school—I mean, you don’t think of a school as being dishonest.”
“Ask her if she’s had any communication from me.”
“The letter came. I told you about it. The registrar telling you . . .”
“Oh, yes. Signed by me?”
“Yes.”
“Louise Benton? Where is this letter?”
“Bunny scribbled all over it. Mother told her she would have to learn to read and write in school and Bunny wanted to show Mother she could write, and she scribbled all over it. Children do scribble,” she said. “Don’t the children in your school scribble all over things ever?”
“But you threw out this letter?”
“It was all scribbled over, and torn. Anyhow, what did I need to keep it for? It wasn’t so precious,” she said. “I kept the brochure, though. I kept it to read to Bunny about how nice it was—and the pictures of the little sinks and the equipment . . .” She saw their faces. “I can get the brochure,” she whispered, wanting to move, to run, to do anything but stay here with their faces looking that way.
Dr. Newhouse said to Miss Benton, “That is the way it’s been all down the line.”
“I know. The police told me so.” Miss Benton sighed.
But she had to look at their faces. Blanche wet her lips. “You’re saying that I didn’t bring Bunny here at all? I didn’t leave her here?” How could she have said that? She turned to Dr. Newhouse. “She is saying that I didn’t—that her school didn’t lose Bunny because they never had her? Then what did I do with Bunny? Why am I blaming it on her?”
“Where did you lose her, Miss Lake? We don’t know what really happened.”
She wanted to dig her nails into the evenness of his voice. “Because her name isn’t in that book you made them stop looking for her? You told this—this bunch of hooey to the police, and they stopped looking for her because of it?” She pulled herself out of her chair.
“Where will you go?”
“Get out of my way.”
“Where will you go? I followed you. I saw how far you go. Where do you think you’re going to get ringing doorbells? It’s later now. It’s not safe.”
“And it’s safe for Bunny? Get out of my way,” she repeated. She saw Miss Benton’s hand reach out and touch his sleeve softly, and then he stepped out of her way.
“I’m sure Miss Lake is just going to the police station and that is the best thing she can do. The police . . .”
“The police will attend to you,” Blanche called back over her shoulder, hurrying down the stairs. “After they find Bunny, I’m going to the police about you!” The sound of the steps behind her made her go faster. When she reached the first floor he caught up with her, but he didn’t stand between her and the door.
“May I come with you?” he asked. “Please?”
“Do you think I care?” she asked, and began to run.
22
“Don’t you see?” she asked Lieutenant Duff when they let her go into his office. (They wouldn’t at first; the one at the high desk wanted her to wait outside. He said the lieutenant was out, but the man, the psychiatrist, spoke to the policeman and then he went into the lieutenant’s office and then they let her in.) “It’s her school she’s thinking about, don’t you see? She’s only scared that if the other parents find out that they lose children, they’ll take their children away and demand their money back, don’t you see?” She took a deep breath.
“She erased my name in that notebook she has. Or she bought a new notebook. You can get them anywhere. How long would it take to rewrite a list of names? She tore up my application blank.” The lieutenant would not look at her. He kept his eyes on the doctor, who was standing beside her. “They’re all hanging together, isn’t that obvious? They’re all protecting that school. It’s their job!” She tried to force the lieutenant to look at her instead of at the doctor. One cheek was gray and the other a dark red where he had been rubbing at it. He had been rubbing at his face because he was sorry for her, but he didn’t believe her. “All right,” Blanche said, “don’t believe I left Bunny there. Don’t believe they’re all in it together, if that’s how you want it. All right! My little girl is lost in New York City and you’ve got to find her.” The lieutenant began to rub his cheek again. His eye on that side of his face was half closed, as if he were hurting himself, rubbing so hard, but he just sat there. She began to pound on the desk. “Get up! Get moving! You’re a New York City policeman, find Bunny!”
The lieutenant spoke to the doctor behind her. “I can’t take much more of this, Doc. I’m not chicken, but this poor kid here . . .” His eye screwed up again as though her hands pounding on the desk top hurt his face. “We’d better take over. How’re we going to wait until we can get her mother? We can step in all right, Doc, if you . . .”
“Find her, find her, find her!” she screamed. “How can you sit there and not find a little girl? Don’t you have any heart? With nobody looking—can’t you imagine what could be happening to her? Haven’t you any heart at all?”
; “Yes, I have a heart,” he said. “Miss Lake. Miss Lake, if I had a kid who was lost and a big so-and-so of a cop didn’t take the city apart to find her, I’d tear him apart with my bare hands!” He looked down at his hands. “I got a heart and so I can’t take any more of this. You haven’t got any kid so there isn’t any kid lost, Miss Lake, and that’s why we stopped looking. Okay,” he said to the doctor. “Okay, I did it!”
23
She was still sitting in the chair, but the room was . . . Someone lifted her head up from between her knees and a cool hand pressed her forehead. She opened her eyes and saw that it was the same office, the same desk; only the lieutenant wasn’t there any longer and she was alone with the man, the doctor. He was kneeling on the floor in front of the chair, and she looked straight into his eyes.
“Rest,” he said. “You fainted.”
He had told them that it wasn’t that woman doing it to protect her school. He said that there wasn’t any little girl lost. It wasn’t his hand that was cool—a wet handkerchief. “You said there wasn’t any Bunny.” He moved the handkerchief to her cheek, but it was wrong to let it feel so good there. She moved her cheek away. “Harvey,” she said. “Imaginary rabbit! Imaginary Bunny, that’s who you meant! I’m glad I slapped you!” She saw his Bunny-soft sweater. “I’m glad. My subconscious knew even if I didn’t what you really meant. I wish I had slapped you harder. I wish I had—you spy!” Blanche said. “Poking around my apartment! You were poking around my apartment!” But that was silly to get angry with him; what did he matter? She tried to compose herself. “Let me explain to them.”
“They understand already,” he said, getting up, dusting off his trousers. “What good will any further . . .”
“Oh, you! You’ll do me good, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I will if you’ll let me. Let me help you, Miss Lake.” He forgot to brush the dust off, but when she only glared at him, he moved out of her way and finished the dusting, tucked his scarf into the neck of his sweater more tidily.
The door was open, and Blanche could see the lieutenant talking to a policeman in the outer room. She called out, “Lieutenant!” Since the doctor would not move away, and anyhow she was afraid she would fall if she tried to get up, she raised her voice. “Lieutenant!” What was his name? “Lieutenant Duff!” He was standing in the doorway.
“Is she okay, Doc? I just couldn’t take it, her thinking we wouldn’t be tearing the place apart!”
He was not looking at her or talking to her; as if she was imaginary, too. “I’m fine now. And I think I know—I can explain. I want to explain. I haven’t my own things here yet. There is no crib in my apartment because Mother is using the bedroom Bunny is going to have. When Mother leaves I’m going to buy a second-hand crib—Bunny’s own one is in storage. She’s been sleeping with me,” Blanche said.
“No high chair . . .”
Bunny sitting on a year’s copies of House and Garden topped by a big dictionary and covered with the old pink waterproof apron she used to wear when she bathed Bunny. She explained this. “No snapshot,” the lieutenant was saying, “not a single person in the apartment house . . . The super . . . We figured that since she’d just moved in, there’d be something she’d ’a needed to see the super about . . . One of those houses where they have carriage rooms . . . The super lifts the carriages up to a high shelf they have . . .”
Blanche felt as if she were talking to herself. “Her stroller is back home with the rest of her things. Listen! The apartment is a sublet, furnished, and very reasonable. I was living in a hotel the first week looking for a place so Mother could come with Bunny. Mother kept Bunny in Chloe’s house while I went to New York to find an apartment. This girl in the office heard that I needed a place and she had a friend who wanted to sublet, but this friend wouldn’t have sublet it to me if she knew about Bunny. That happens all the time in New York, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?” she asked the policeman again, although it didn’t feel as if she were really asking him. “Don’t people not want to sublet to anyone who has a young child?” She turned to Dr. Newhouse instead. “You know people won’t! This girl in the office didn’t know about Bunny because all of us there are supposed to be unmarried. I told you about that! I am unmarried so I wasn’t lying when I said so to Personnel. That’s why I didn’t leave the school the telephone number of the office. I intended to explain to them first that if they had to call me they shouldn’t say anything about having Bunny!”
The lieutenant said to Dr. Newhouse, “The elevator there’s self-service, so that’s no help. There’s no doorman there, either, like in some of the big houses.”
At home the milkman knew Bunny, Blanche thought, but here it is delivered before she gets up, and left outside the service door. And there’s no postman here. Bunny used to wait for the postman back home; she can’t even reach the mailbox down in the lobby here. This was no good. She said to the lieutenant, “Tell me the name of a detective! They look for people. I want you to tell me the name of the best detective you know. Private detective. This is a private matter, I mean. I could look one up in the Classified,” she added, because he wouldn’t look at her, was focusing on the doctor, who was brushing his hands together. Wanted to brush her off? she thought. Go ahead, do, she thought. “Lieutenant, I’m only asking you in order to save time, because you should know who is the best one.” She saw the lieutenant was asking the doctor and that the doctor shrugged and agreed. “It can’t do any harm,” the shrug meant, but she didn’t protest that because this, too, would waste time. She merely looked coldly at the doctor and saw how his thin cheeks turned red.
They allowed her to use the telephone right here, moving it close enough because she stumbled trying to get up.
The lieutenant and the doctor listened while she told the story to the detective.
“Have you notified Missing Persons, Mrs. Lake?”
“Yes, but I want you to look for her, too. No, I don’t have any picture. No, the police haven’t one, either.” Now she remembered how oddly the policeman had looked at her when they couldn’t find the picture. “I’ll describe her for you.” She saw how the doctor studied her as she described Bunny, thinking of Harvey the imaginary rabbit again, she supposed, and glared at him.
“Is there anyone who might want the child for any reason?”
Still glaring at the doctor, she told the detective about the boy in the fruit-and-vegetable store. The doctor, she noticed, wanted the lieutenant to listen to this. “I don’t really think he took Bunny,” she said, defying them. “I just thought I’d mention it.” The detective kept saying he would find out what Missing Persons had turned up. “I want you to work independently,” she kept telling him. “I want you to start now. This minute!” When she hung up the lieutenant asked the doctor about the boy in the fruit store. Blanche listened to the way Dr. Newhouse told the lieutenant about what Mrs. Negrito had said to her; he repeated what she had told him, he told the whole truth, but when he finished she saw how crazy it sounded. Keeping his voice even and expressionless that way, he had made it sound even more far-fetched. Blanche told them to forget about the boy, Eddie. “Lieutenant Duff, I just thought—I mean, if I had known that you thought . . . Lieutenant, of course we can prove about Bunny! She has a birth certificate, you know! There are such things as records!”
“Sure there are, Miss Lake, sure there are. We’re not forgetting that, believe me. Now you got to remember what time we got this, right? You got to remember record offices keep respectable hours even if we cops don’t. Now, tomorrow morning, bright and early, believe me, we’re going to . . .”
“Tomorrow! Tomorrow! You’re going to wait until tomorrow!”
Lieutenant Duff said to Dr. Newhouse, “She talks as if we done nothing but sit around on our fat fannies! Come on, now, Miss Lake, we accomplished a lot in the couple hours we got this!”
“Tomorrow!” Blanche reminded herself of the detective she had hired. She would pay him, so he wouldn’t
just sit and wait. She pulled herself out of the chair and said to Lieutenant Duff, “If that detective comes here or calls here and you tell him that there is no Bunny so he won’t even start looking for her . . . If you do that . . .” She pointed her finger at him. “I curse you,” she said. “If you make him not look for Bunny, I curse you and your children and your children’s children!”
Lieutenant Duff crossed himself, looked apologetically at Dr. Newhouse and said, “This I can’t take!” He went to the door and opened it. “Gingrich! We come down to one thing . . . You show me one thing we missed in your place to prove you ever had a child there . . . Gingrich! When Klein went to your place he thought it was funny. Klein’s got kids of his own, happens. Klein called us right away to ask what gives.” Lieutenant Duff was talking to Dr. Newhouse, who nodded. “What gives, Klein wanted to know. By that time Miss Benton had phoned us, so we knew, but did we sit back on our fannies and take her word for it, or yours, Doc? We did not! Didn’t we send a detail up on the double? Excuse me, Doc! No doc can come in here and say there’s a screw loose and we take his word for it, what do you think? The detail went through your place with a finetooth comb, Miss Lake. If you had a kid there, where’s her . . .”
“I told you! I told you!”
“Where’s her clothes? Where’s her nighties, where’s her bathrobe, the little slippers to go to the john nights, where’s the toidey-seat? I have grandchildren,” he said to Dr. Newhouse. “Doesn’t she use a toothbrush, your little kid?” He waved at Blanche. “Well?”
She said, “There! Of course there!”
Lieutenant Duff said to Dr. Newhouse, “There! She says there!” He said to Blanche, “I say not there! Gingrich!”
Gingrich had been standing in the doorway for some minutes.
“Gingrich, you go with her. Miss Lake, you give me one shred of proof that there is such a child and I’ll take this town down personally tonight, brick by brick. My children’s children,” he muttered, turning away and throwing down the papers on his desk.