by Debra Kent
I watched Pete’s expression through the rearview mirror. He looked confused. “What is it, sweetie?”
“I thought it’s when you can’t hear. Hunter says his great uncle Harry is deaf. He talks with his hands.”
“Deaf? I thought you asked me what it’s like to be dead.”
“I already know all about that,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s when your heart stops. Can you put on my Frog and Toad tape, please?”
’Til next time,
V
April 2
If I’d ever wondered what Ben Murphy has been up to, or whether he might make a suitable mate, I have my answer.
I brought Pete downtown to see a local group called the Marvelous Merlin Society perform outside the public library. (Pete’s been interesting in King Arthur ever since we rented a video called A Kid in King Arthur’s Court.) I’d seen the group around town before, a motley crew that could euphemistically be described as artistic, but realistically as geeky losers. On May Day they skip through the streets shaking tambourines festooned with crepe paper streamers. There’s a juggler who uses only two beanbags. Even I can juggle two beanbags.
The show began with a miming court jester who clambered around like a monkey in an attempt to engage the audience. He danced around a toddler, who started screaming. His mother carried him away. Then he swiped at a woman’s lovely and quite expensive straw hat (I recognized it from the Talbot’s window), sending it flying into the street, where it was promptly flattened by a teenage girl on a dirty yellow moped. The menacing mime/jester finally took his leave, and then the musicians appeared, playing bells, small stringed instruments, and wooden flutes.
Then I saw Ben. He was dressed in orange tights, a billowy white blouse, and big green bloomers with velvet suspenders. He wore pointy black satin slippers and a garland of shriveled yellow dandelions on his head. He was dancing a kind of hopping jig, arms linked with a fair maiden who was actually quite agile for someone her size.
After a few lively turns, Ben and his lady started dancing in my direction. He didn’t seem to notice me. I ducked my head into my bag and kept it there for the rest of the performance. I would have left if it hadn’t been for Pete, who thoroughly enjoyed the show and, when it was all done, asked if he could meet the jester. I told him we had to move the Jeep or we’d get a ticket, and I was glad he was young enough to think meter maids work on weekends.
I guess Ben Murphy wasn’t really right for me in the first place.
’Til next time,
V
April 5
A local woman is missing.
The story was on page two of today’s paper, an odd position considering that no one ever disappears in this town, unless some camper gets sloshed and passes out in the woods. The second page is usually reserved for obituaries, car accidents, DWIs and the occasional lost farm animal (last summer it was a fugitive ostrich). And it’s an odd position considering the stories that made it to page one: Chung Foo restaurant closes. Seventy-three-year-old grandmother earns high school diploma. City council approves north side shopping center. Public pools open for business.
And there on page two, the story of a thirty-eight-year-old woman who never returned home after her morning run around Machick Park on Monday morning. When she hadn’t shown up for work, her boss called her at home. Her roommate was worried too. Zoe Hayes apparently was conscientious to the point of fussiness. Her weekday morning schedule never varied: She ran from 6:30 to 7:40, returned home to shower and change for work, arrived at her desk at the hospital radiography department by 8:30. “It’s not like her to just disappear,” the roommate was quoted as saying. “I don’t understand it.”
There was a photograph too. Dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, dark, wide-set eyes, a small mouth parted to reveal a row of square white teeth. Her smile seemed guarded or forced, as if to placate a cajoling photographer.
’Til next time,
V
April 6
Zoe Hayes made it to page one. Headline: Police suspect foul play. Her father, a retired lieutenant, has flown in from New Mexico. There are search parties now, friends, neighbors, hospital co-workers; members of her running club are retracing all her routes—the park, around Kimball Lake, out by the county airport, over by the Caswell farm. They’re putting up fliers, sending out chain e-mail (I got one today and promptly sent it to everyone on my distribution list who lives in town). There was a prayer vigil last night at the park.
I don’t know this woman, yet I can’t seem to stop thinking about her.
I also haven’t stopped thinking of Roger. It kills me to think that he might get away with everything he’s done, just because I didn’t have a witness to his relationship with Mary.
’Til next time,
V
April 6, continued
Feeling utterly invisible and worthless is actually a good thing, now and then, isn’t it? A kind of Buddhist exercise in humility, yes? At least that’s what I’ve tried to convince myself after today’s experience in Pete’s class.
Since Pete’s birthday falls during the spring, he celebrates with other kids who also have spring birthdays. This year I baked four million chocolate chip blondies and fudge brownies and mixed several jugs of pink lemonade. I packed it up in a plastic milk carton and toted it to his classroom, feeling pleased that I had performed at least one maternal feat with a degree of competence.
Two other mothers of spring-birthday kids were also there, and they were Mushroomheads, the ones who raise money for the art museum every year, and not because they believe it’s a worthy cause, but because this annual fund-raising campaign has become a social event that carries as much cachet as country club membership and provides a good excuse to buy a new gown.
As the Shitakes chattered away by the aquarium, I bent down to offer a tray of brownies. “Ladies?” I said, in my friendliest tone, hating them completely. One glanced over in the direction of the tray, but said nothing. The other one never looked up, and never stopped talking (“So I told him, if you can’t match the tile to the trim, just forget it.”). I stood there stupidly, not sure if I should offer the brownies again, or walk away. I stood there. And then I walked away.
A police dog found a dirty white Footlocker crew sock, which may or may not belong to Zoe Hayes.
’Til next time,
V
April 7
Bad news: The sock belongs to Zoe Hayes.
Her father has announced a $100,000 reward for “information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible” for his daughter’s disappearance. The police department is now working with the FBI, a collaboration that seems promising—if our local cops can’t figure this out, surely the FBI will. This morning’s paper mentioned that there are some similarities between this case and a series of murders in New York. The Long Island Kennel Killer. Some nut kept women in a dog cage. I don’t even want to think about it.
’Til next time,
V
April 8
No new clues, but plenty of rumors. The most disturbing theory I’ve heard is that she was left for dead in a Dumpster, and now she’s on life support at the hospital. There are morbid variations on this theme. I overheard Hunter tell Pete that the “lost lady is being kept alive in the hospital but she doesn’t have a head.” I could see the horrified look in Pete’s eyes; I told him it was a crazy rumor, but the truth is it gave me the creeps, and still does.
In moments like these I remember how secure it felt to have another grown-up in the house. Maybe secure is the wrong word. Maybe grown-up is the wrong word too. But I’d be lying if I said I feel just as safe in this house without Roger. He was the designated investigator of all noises in the night. He kept a crowbar under his side of the bed, and he’d grab it if he heard anything suspicious. Now I’m the noise investigator by default and I don’t sleep as deeply anymore. I’m not even sure I’m sleeping at all. I feel like I’m just wading in that shall
ow zone where it’s hard to know the difference between thoughts and dreams. When the alarm clock sounds I don’t feel rested, just drained. I’ve tried to write down these dreams, but I can’t conjure the details.
Omar managed to have Roger arrested on bigamy charges. His parents promptly bailed him out. Roger’s hearing isn’t for another two weeks. It is unlikely that he’ll serve any time in jail.
My mother wants me to tell Pete that his father has been arrested. “Just tell him he’s a bad man who did a bad thing,” she told me on the phone this morning. She thinks I should do everything possible to sever the ties between them, and in doing so, cut Roger out of my life forever, “like the malignant tumor that he is.” The words just hung there.
We try to be careful in conversation now, but the more self-conscious we are, the more we stumble into these conversational pitfalls. Last week, for instance, Mom was listing all these women she knew who had gotten boob jobs, and I asked her if she’d consider having one herself. “Are you kidding?” she laughed. “Your father would die!” Then she quickly added, “I mean, he’d go bananas.”
Mom likes to think she’s not superstitious, but we both know that’s a lie. Whenever she reports that Dad’s having a good day, she immediately searches for some wood surface to knock on, even if it means going into another room. Last week she put fresh batteries in the cuckoo clock, the one she gave my father for his fiftieth birthday. I suspect she believes that as long as the clock still ticks, so will Dad.
I understand these superstitions. Ever since my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I always drop coins in every charity canister, whether the cause is cancer research or a new kidney for the kid who’s waiting for a transplant. Of course, I know that there is no causal relationship between Dad’s prognosis and my donations. I can’t help myself.
’Til next time,
V
April 11
The Zoe Hayes story seems to be receding from the headlines. It’s still worthy of front-page news, but the column space shrinks a little more as each day passes with no new leads. Now it’s at the bottom of the page, no photo. The search parties are done searching. The FBI investigators have packed up and gone home.
The one question the paper hasn’t raised is this: If Zoe Hayes had been abducted, doesn’t that mean there may be a kidnapper somewhere in our town? And if she was murdered, is there a murderer among us?
’Til next time,
V
April 13
I had a dream about Zoe Hayes. I wasn’t in the dream, exactly, but floating somewhere above everything, just watching. Zoe was in a bird cage, the kind they sell at Pier 1 for decorative use only because any normal bird would peck his way out in a jiffy. The cage was swinging back and forth and she was hopping from one perch to the next, like a canary. She smiled as she hopped to the highest level, which looked like one of those little plastic bird swings. In a heap at the bottom of the cage were the kind of clothes I thought she might have worn for her job at the hospital: a white lab coat, a pair of white softsoled shoes, and a clipboard with an X ray attached to it. I was able to get a closer look at the X ray. It was of a bird’s wing. I understood that the wing had been broken, but somehow I could also tell that it was on the mend. At the bottom of the X ray, in sparkling red letters, was the word ABILENE.
I woke up at 3 A.M. gasping for air, trying to make sense of this crazy dream. Had someone captured Zoe in a cage? Did he break her arms? Had he stripped off her lab coat? Was she smiling because she was dead, and in a better place now?
In today’s paper, as police seem less hopeful about turning up new clues, Zoe’s father renewed his appeal for leads. “If anyone out there knows anything about my daughter, I want to hear from you,” he’s quoted as saying. “Even if it’s just a half-baked theory, I want to hear it. I refuse to give up hope.” I think I’ll call him.
’Til next time,
V
April 14
When I woke up this morning I changed my mind. Zoe Hayes’s father must have had enough crackpot calls and dead-end leads. But when I told my mother about the dream, she urged me to make the call. Then she told me something I’d never known, that when I was a little girl, she and Dad had speculated that I might be psychic.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m quite serious, Valerie. You were about three, maybe four years old. You woke up from a nap and announced, ‘Poppy’s Impala is going to break today.’ Clear as a bell. I remember it like it was yesterday. You were wearing your red corduroy overalls and a red and white striped shirt with the matching red and white striped socks. And sure enough, your grandfather’s car died that day.”
I told my mother I thought that hardly qualified as an ESP dream, especially if my grandfather’s car was some old clunker.
“No, that’s the point. The Impala was brand new! It still had the dealer sticker on the window. We thought your dream was hilarious. But nobody was laughing when Poppy broke down on I-75, believe me.” She paused. “And there was another time.”
“Tell me.”
“You were six. You and your sisters had just come home from school and you were having a snack in the kitchen. Chocolate ice cream and chocolate-covered graham crackers, as I recall.” (It figures.) “I was reading the newspaper and I guess you were sort of looking at the paper over my shoulder. There was a photo of Margaret Rollins, the lady who ran White Mountain Nursery and Landscaping over in Uniondale. There was a little blurb about Margaret’s presentation to the garden club.”
“And?”
“And you pointed at her picture and said, ‘That lady is dead.’ I looked at you and told you that I’d been at the garden club presentation myself and Margaret Rollins was most certainly alive. But you were adamant about it. You just kept saying, ‘No, Mother, that lady is dead.’ And wouldn’t you know, the next day there’s a picture of Margaret Rollins in the obituaries. Died of a heart attack in the K-Mart parking lot. Forty-six years old. I calculated that she must have been dead about twenty minutes when you announced it there in the kitchen.”
Goosebumps prickled my arms. “How come you never told me any of this?”
“Well, we didn’t want to make a big deal about it. We did mention the whole thing to Reverend Kinkaid—you remember him?”
“Vaguely.” I remember that he looked like a big white potato, and he needed a bra.
“A good man, but a little too extreme for my taste. As far as he was concerned, we were all going to hell in a handbasket.” Mom sighed. “Anyway, we told him about your dreams and he got pretty worked up over it. He said that only God could foretell the future and we should forget the whole thing, otherwise we were just tempting the devil.”
“Did you really believe that?”
“Not at all. But we didn’t want you to grow up thinking you were weird. So we didn’t exactly cultivate your ESP—assuming that’s what those incidents were and not just a couple of coincidences. We just let it go. And as far as we knew, the vision about Margaret Rollins was the last of it.”
“Until now,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Or maybe not,” I said. “Maybe it was just a plain old dream.”
“Maybe. But I still think you ought to call, Val. When I think of what that poor man must be going through, a living nightmare. I’ll tell you, it makes you want to count your blessings.”
I got off the phone and logged onto the computer to check out the website, findzoe.com. I sent this e-mail:
“I am so sorry about your daughter’s disappearance. For what it’s worth, I dreamed that your daughter was in a little bird cage, and she was hopping from one perch to the next.” I went on to describe my dream in greater detail, and the more I wrote, the more ridiculous my dream seemed to me. “I should tell you,” I concluded, “that I don’t consider myself a psychic, but I recently learned that I may have had a couple of ESP experiences when I was a little girl, according to my mother. It was her idea to contact you about my drea
m. I hope you find your daughter soon, and I pray that she is alive and well. If you need more information, feel free to e-mail me at [email protected].”
I held my breath as I hit the send button. Until that point, I was just another spectator, one of thousands in our town who read about Zoe Hayes in the paper and empathized with her family—at a distance. But with that click of the mouse, I was now involved in the drama. My dream is now part of the Zoe Hayes story, even if it doesn’t amount to anything, even if her father never calls me. Now I feel connected to Zoe Hayes in a way I hadn’t felt before.
I’m not sure I like this feeling.
Checked my e-mail. Got a response from findzoe. com acknowledging receipt of my message. It was basically a form letter. I guess no one is taking my dream too seriously. I’m actually relieved.
’Til next time,
V
April 17
In the absence of any other witnesses or evidence, it’s unlikely that Roger will be convicted of statutory rape, let alone bigamy. Omar said he knows Roger’s lawyer—supposedly the best criminal defense attorney in the Midwest.
On the other hand, Omar says that we can expect the divorce to go smoothly, and he can almost guarantee full custody of Pete and a generous settlement—all Roger’s hidden assets plus the house and half of all holdings he reported in the deposition. I’m happy about all that, but it would absolutely kill me if Roger walked away from this mess without serving time.