Lost

by Devon, Gary;

  A trail of leaves led from the bed, through the door, and out to the staircase landing. Black, glistening leaves. Her pulse thumped in her temples. Neither Frank or Leona would have tracked filth like that into the house. She reached out blindly for something to hold, caught the bedpost, and clung to the acorn finial.

  She was caught in a desperate frenzy to move, and yet she didn’t know which way to turn. The telephone was downstairs. The only way out was downstairs. But whoever it was in the house stood between her and escape. If she screamed or yelled, she realized, the house would probably contain her cry; it would do nothing but alert her visitor to her fear. If she stayed quiet, maybe he would take what he wanted and go away.

  Hardly breathing, holding her breath as long as she could and then inhaling a few mouthfuls of air until she could brace herself and hold it again, she stood absolutely stock-still, clutching the bedpost. She hung on the air, waiting to hear the retreat of footsteps and the quiet closing of the downstairs door, but neither happened. The wait grew interminable. At last the slow flap of the shoe recurred, but her racing heartbeat interacted with it too much for her to tell where he was. Through the bedroom door, open to the stairwell, she watched the lights of a passing car swell and disappear in the foyer below.

  Her visitor was moving much faster now; she could hear his urgency so plainly that she decided he had to be upstairs, but she couldn’t be certain. The darkness swarmed on her eyes: the night air had thickened to the consistency of molasses. He was stumbling through the rooms—once, she was convinced she heard him in Leona’s room—attacking the house with a heedless, fumbling haste. His impatience tightened her nerves. She heard glass breaking, not once but repeatedly, and endless small shattering noises. That time the noise seemed to come from downstairs. A drawer shrieked open, then shut. Another drawer opened. Apparently he was looking for something in particular, rushing violently about in his search. Let him take what he wants, she thought; then he’ll leave. She had decided he could have anything if only he would leave, when she remembered hiding Leona’s three thousand dollars under the vase on the desk. She ached all over and wanted to cry.

  The interior doors did not have locks; there wasn’t even a chair in the room to jam under the doorknob, only the useless kidney-shaped vanity bench. She could hardly bear to stay where she was, but she was equally incapable of moving from the anchoring bedpost. She was trapped in her bedroom with the two dull traces of light glimmering through the windows to the floor at her feet. She took a step forward.

  Abruptly all the noise stopped. As in a nightmare, she merely lifted her head and the noise was gone. To keep herself quiet, she clamped her hands tight over her mouth. Car lights flashed through the rooms downstairs, blooming up yellow in the staircase depression, and she saw the head and torso of a figure rising toward her in silhouette. Her pulse beat and lapsed. The car’s rumbling slowed to a regulated buffeting alongside the house. It’s Frank, she thought. Oh, thank God, Frank, hurry.…

  She began to move helplessly through the room, searching about for some defense while she listened for the flapping shoe. There was utter silence. Then, outside, the garage door clattered up. If she could get to the window and raise it, she could call down to Frank and tell him to hurry. She took a full step backward toward the window, then another. The car door slammed, the motor revved. Her legs were heavy and sluggish; she could hardly move. The garage door clanked shut. Simultaneously, she heard Frank whistling and an angry snarl of drawn breath in the bedroom doorway. Her muscles crawled under her skin, her inertia spread to her will. Everything stalled.

  The figure seemed hardly to move; it was like a shadow collecting density from the dark. She saw the shape contract and expand, emerging toward her. Fear rose through her throat and broke from her lips in airless whimperings. Absolutely frozen, she couldn’t move or speak, couldn’t think what to do. She saw that her intruder had a wrapped hand and that he was smaller than she had imagined. When he spoke, his slow, guttural voice was as cold as ice water tossed on her face. “Where’s that woman?” he asked. “Where’d she take Mamie?”

  Oh, not that, she thought, but the voice had spurred her to her senses. One of his hands, the unwrapped one, came up holding something that looked like a black baby rattle. It wobbled soundlessly on the top of his fist. She could hear Frank coming up the walk and an odd sound like a growl. “You shouldn’t be here,” she tried to say, her voice a sticky whisper. “You’re in the wrong house.” The moonlight bloomed brighter in the room and he was coming through it. Her breath backed up. “Why,” she said, “you’re just a boy,” and she whirled to break past him. The blow struck her across the cheek with astonishing velocity. It felt as if she had been hit in the face with a boulder. Her jawbone and teeth exploded; a bolt of intense white light seared the backs of her eyes, burning down like embers, and incomprehensible shock waves of pain erupted in her brain. One side of her face began to puff and contort. He caught her as she fell and time stretched like elastic. She felt herself immersed with him, and his gamey animal smell was vile. His arms came up around her in a kind of embrace and clasped over her throat, front and back, and he wrenched her head backward and to the side. A sharp, distinct, very loud crack broke the air—from the base of her skull outward she grew very numb and cold, instantaneously. She fell, crumpling hard.

  Her head lolled to the side. She tried to move it, but couldn’t. She tried to move her fingers, couldn’t. Inches from her tilted eyes, she saw one shoe with a many-knotted shoelace and one sock foot. A small pool of light snared and dazzled her face. Stooping down, her assailant smiled upon her with perfect white teeth. “You’re dead,” he rasped. “And that woman … You’re all dead.” He snatched and tore the words with his teeth. “I’m gonna string her up and gut her like a goddam dog.” Then he told her to shut her eyes. From outside, the angry growling and barking came even louder and, through it, Frank’s voice.

  Emma heard her assailant move from her side, his feet twisting fast on the carpet. She strained to open her swollen eyes to slits. She saw his shape step over her, wagging his flashlight.

  The end of the light chased before him like a ghost on a leash.

  6

  Stopping only once along the roadside to change clothes and dispose of Mamie’s odd bits of clothing in a picnic trash barrel, they drove almost ninety miles that first night, heading south into Scranton. Disallowing some fluke, Leona believed she had eight to ten hours before Mamie’s disappearance would be discovered and the search spread beyond Graylie. She claimed her reservation at the Claypool-Chase Hotel and registered as Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Merchassen, explaining that her husband would be joining her daughter and herself later. It was quarter past midnight.

  The hotel lobby was like a massive rococo tunnel, and everything was accomplished quietly, quickly, impeccably. She paid for the room in advance from the spending money she kept in the coin purse in her handbag and she kept a quarter out for the bellboy. She had two of the seven suitcases brought up, but carried the black briefcase herself. Mamie gazed at everything; she seemed particularly fascinated with the elevator operator—a matronly Negro woman seated on a fold-down stool, who closed the elevator’s clattering lattice gate, then shut the windowed doors and turned the crank without ever once looking up from her magazine. On a wheeze of smooth pressure they rose to the fifth floor.

  As soon as the bellboy had left, Leona shut and locked the door, closed the drapes and the venetian blinds, and turned to Mamie. The gray-green eyes drilled into her from the middle of the room.

  “Well, now, Mamie, what do you think of this?”

  She expected no answer and she got none. She took off the mink coat, a gift from Mrs. Merchassen eight years ago, removed the hatpin with the diamond eye, and laid her feather hat on the dresser.

  “Aren’t you warm?” she said. “Let’s take off your coat.” She unbuttoned and slid the new parka off Mamie’s small shoulders. “Now, isn’t that better? Yes, it is. I know it is.”
With some surprise, she noticed that Mamie was still wearing the small identification bracelet of beads from the hospital. I missed it, Leona thought, when we changed in the dark car. It gave her a moment’s start; had anyone in the lobby seen it? Would they know it came from a hospital? It was unlikely; she decided she was overreacting.

  Using her fingernails, she loosened and removed the string of lettered beads from Mamie’s wrist and, with it, Mamie’s last link to that dreadful place—a very small thing to do and yet, to Leona, it had real significance. “Now you’re free, Mamie,” she said. “You’ll never have to go back there again.” Mamie stood staring at her naked wrist as Leona put the bracelet of beads in the zippered compartment inside her purse.

  Her legs ached when she stood, still tense with what was left of her fear. “Tell you what—why don’t you sit here on the edge of the bed and we’ll get you ready to go to sleep? There, that’s better. I know what we’ll do. How would you like a soda pop?”

  No reply.

  Unable to shake the jitters, Leona wanted something to calm herself and also something to help them celebrate, but she didn’t know what to order. She went to the telephone and asked room service for a martini and an orange soda pop. “No,” she said, “not mixed together.”

  In the bathroom of black and white tile, she changed into her nightgown and robe. As she came back, she caught Mamie scratching at the crisp skin under the bandage on her hip, and trying to reach back to her shoulder. “Oh, Mamie,” Leona said, “what’re you doing? I know it must itch, but you shouldn’t do that.” At the sound of her voice, Mamie stopped scratching and twisted away. So this was to be the glimmering of recognition Leona had waited for. She quickly smeared cream on the red fingernail marks and pulled the hem of Mamie’s jumper down. “You’ll make scars.” And she showed her the jar of Pond’s cold cream and where it was kept in her purse; she told Mamie how to use it when she itched, because itching meant she was getting well—took one little finger in her hand and dipped it in the cream and, guiding her, let Mamie smooth it on her own cheek.

  There was a tapping at the door and a boy wearing a red pillbox hat trimmed in gold, and gloves the color of mice, delivered their drinks, and it didn’t matter, as she carried the tray into the room, that Mamie had globbed cream on her face and in her hair and all down her front. It didn’t matter. Leona laughed and said to her, “My goodness, Mamie, did you itch all over?”

  With a towel from the bathroom, she wiped the cream away as quickly as she could and went to make sure she had remembered to lock the door. The glass of orange soda pop with its straw afloat was so large Mamie held it with both hands. In Leona’s glass, the green olive with its red tip silently released a dust of fine bubbles. She took a sip, shuddered, and set it aside. Mamie simply held her drink in her lap. Condensing water puddled between her fingers. “Okay,” Leona said, “I was wrong. I’ll need you to stand up.” She took the soda pop and set it next to her martini, then helped Mamie stand.

  She unbuttoned the long-sleeved dress in the back and worked it off her arms. Then she lifted Mamie’s arms and held them straight by the wrists and, catching the hem of the petticoat, pulled it up and over her head. She sat Mamie on the edge of the bed again to unbuckle her white shoes and let them drop, then her white socks. “Do you want to take your underpants off yourself? I’ve got brand-new pajamas for you.” But of course Mamie didn’t answer. Her unyielding stare was now focused on the litter of clothes at her feet. “Don’t worry. I’ll pick them up.”

  All of a sudden, now that they were completely alone, Leona wanted to pick Mamie up and dance around the room. But the unrelenting eyes held her at bay. Leona felt awkward—it was silly, but she couldn’t help it. Minute by minute, she kept waiting for some inviting glance, any half-friendly response, but it was no use. She clenched her hands into fists, then forced them open.

  She had to put her arm around Mamie to pull the underpants down and away from her feet. And as she held her now, great waves of feeling—and of doubt—broke through her. Maybe Mamie was too damaged. Maybe Leona didn’t know what she was doing, even though she had cared for other people’s children during those years in the doctor’s office and had always longed for just such a moment as this. Maybe she was just trying to steal affection, as Emma had implied. This body she was holding, so frail and vulnerable, was—other than the shoulder and the hip where skin had been grafted—perfect in every respect, yet something was missing. Leona could not take Mamie’s small hand without being aware of its perfection, the flawless fingers, the little fingernails. And behind those lovely eyes, a mind no one had reached. Was she still wandering lost through those smoke-filled rooms, her mother begging and praying, her brothers perhaps already smothered by fumes, dead in their sleep, and her father wetting down the quilt? Who did she think she was, to try to save such a child? Yet Leona knew that, no matter what, she had to do whatever she could to save Mamie. That single-minded premise sustained her.

  She didn’t know how long she had been kneeling, rocking unsteadily, her knees half asleep as she held Mamie to her, but a long shiver ran through the small body and Leona held her even tighter. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Nothing bad is ever going to hurt you again. Not if I can stop it.” Then it occurred to her that Mamie was probably cold.

  She released her and helped put on her pajamas. She pulled back the covers and laid Mamie down and sat beside her. “Go to sleep now.” With her fingertips, she moved the hair from the small face. “I know you want to go home, Mamie,” she said. “I don’t have any home either. So we’ll just have to make one for ourselves.”

  She stayed there for several minutes, thinking how new all this was to her and how strange it had to be for such a little girl. When Mamie burrowed her head in the pillow and closed her eyes, Leona stood up, away from the bed. Her adrenaline had begun, at last, to drain away; she was very tired. There were only a few remaining things she had to do before she could get to sleep herself. She picked up Mamie’s clothes, folding and stacking them on one of the suitcases. Again she checked the fastened door, removing the key from the lock to keep under her pillow. She turned out the bedside lamp. The ceiling light was still on in the bathroom and she left it on, to burn through the night. She also left the bathroom door ajar, so that if Mamie awoke in the dark, she would know where she was, know not to be afraid. Almost as an afterthought, she pulled the cord to open the drapes. Another cord opened the blinds. The morning light would wake them and they could make an early start.

  It was only then, standing alone at the dark window, having done what she had done with no possibility of turning back, that a burst of violent remorse welled up in her. She had done the unthinkable. And with one swift act she had made herself a fugitive and an outsider. Now Emma’s words of foreboding returned to her: You don’t know what you’re doing! What do you really know about her?

  She was staring at the night sky, the black clouds drifting along toward some unknown destination and the stars behind the clouds, cold and brilliant, staying forever in their appointed places, never touching, never once breathing, never coming alive with a word or a laugh, like so much in life. She couldn’t live in that emptiness any more. There was no love in that sky—so what she had done, wherever it led her, would have to be better than that. Even with all its traps, all its failings, this had to be better.

  What else could I do, Emma? she thought. Put yourself in my place.

  Keeping her eyes shut, lying absolutely still, Mamie Abbott waited that night for a sound she thought would never come—the woman’s breath drawn deep and slow in sleep. She waited a little while longer until there could be no doubt that the woman was sound asleep. Then, crawling silently, Mamie touched the side of the bed and slid to the floor.

  From the bathroom, a thin belt of light cut across the dark reaches of the room. Standing up in the space between the beds, Mamie waited again, watching to see if the woman would wake up. The sheet rose and fell with almost invisible regularity. Not m
aking a sound, Mamie stooped and took up the woman’s pocketbook.

  On tiptoe, she carried it to the far side of her bed where the light from the bathroom was brighter, and, kneeling on the carpet, she opened it a tiny fraction at a time so that it made only the faintest sound. She felt inside the compartment and retrieved the string of hospital beads spelling her name. Then she closed the zipper, dug deep in the purse for a pencil, and found one, a yellow stub with a dull point. Behind her on the other bed, the woman moaned and shifted in her sleep. Mamie did not move a hair. When she thought it was safe, she peeked above the edge of her bed and saw the shadow of the woman, asleep and motionless under the covers. She closed the pocketbook. She returned it to the floor beside the nightstand.

  She needed something to write on. Holding the hospital bracelet and the stub pencil in her fist, she slowly searched the darkened room until she came to the table with the vase of flowers on it. Stuck in among the flowers was a small white envelope with its flap standing open. Slowly she pulled it out. Inside the envelope was a printed card. And the back side was blank. There Mamie wrote: STOP HER SHE GOT ME FRUM HASPIDL. Then she put the card in the envelope and slipped the bracelet in, curled around so that it would fit inside the envelope, too. She licked the flap and sealed it.

  The woman had left Mamie’s white parka tossed over the back of a chair. Climbing into the seat, Mamie slipped the sealed envelope down inside the coat’s deep front pocket and hid the pencil beneath the cushion. Now when the moment came she would be ready. She ran back to bed, shivering with the knowledge that this would all soon be over. She was far too wound up to sleep.