The Face on the Milk Carton

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Janie climbed the stairs to her room, passing by the ascending wall of photographs. Her parents disliked albums; they immortalized Janie on the stairs. Janie at the beach, on skis, in a Scout uniform, in her first dancing dress. Janie on their trip to the Grand Canyon. Janie in gymnastics, Janie at the Middle School Awards Ceremony. Janie on the runway for the fashion show the hospital sponsored as a benefit.

  I’m sick, she thought. Deranged. Imagine imagining they kidnapped me! I mean, talk about proof of loving family. From the folded laundry to the refrigerator note—

  She remembered what the class was.

  Her mother had decided that she and Janie needed An Activity to Share. She’d picked, of all things, cake decorating. In spite of their past record at arts and crafts—the failed needlepoint pillows, the abandoned quilt tops, the unfinished knitting—her mother was convinced that she and Janie could be like the rest of the world and do something creative with their hands.

  The only thing Janie liked to do with her hands was put nail polish on them and dial phone numbers.

  … phone numbers …

  On the milk carton was a toll-free, 800 number to dial. If you have seen this child …

  Janie froze three steps from the top. Turning her head slowly, like a patient becoming paralyzed, neck stiffening forever, she forced her eyes to search among the photographs.

  There were no baby pictures.

  She had asked why before. Because they never got around to buying a camera till Janie was five, said her parents.

  But you didn’t need your own camera for baby photographs. Every single store that sold baby clothes—from Sears to Bloomingdale’s, from High-Fashion Tot to Toys R Us—had photographers; and special portrait prices.

  Jennie Spring. Taken from a shopping center in New Jersey at age three.

  But I should remember, thought Janie. Three years old is time to have memories. It’s not as if Jennie Spring was three months old.

  She entered her room. It was the largest bedroom in the house. Since her parents each had a small study, they had taken the little bedroom and given her the spacious master bedroom. Janie had a habit of leaping into hobbies with tremendous enthusiasm for a few months and then abandoning them forever. The walls and shelves were testimony to lost interests. There was the gymnastics display, when she had fallen in love with tumbling. There were the horseback-riding ribbons, from fourth grade when she practically lived at the stable. There was the music, when she had intended to be the worlds foremost flutist. The last piece she had ever practiced still lay open on the pretty little music stand her parents had bought her for Christmas that year.

  Janie did not share her mothers adoration of fierce, intense blues and reds. When she turned fourteen, they had redecorated the room by Janie’s colors: ivory, pale pale rose, and faded lavender. The bedspread Janie had chosen was lace panels: all different shades and textures of white. It was too fragile to sit on. She folded the lace into a tube at the bottom of her bed and lay down on the plain, dark-rose wool blanket beneath it. She was as rigid as a board. The mattress sank down while Janie’s spine remained stiff. She ordered her muscles to relax, forcing first her shoulders to go limp, then her neck, and her jaw.

  At last she had sagged into the contours of the mattress. Now she tried to look inside her brain, to dip through her memory as if it were a card catalog at the library.

  Nothing.

  And yet—memory felt oddly bright—not dark— not scary or mysterious—light… easy … good.

  There’s somebody else down there, thought Janie.

  She shuddered violently, picturing another tiny little girl living at the bottom of her body, begging to get out.

  Janie wet her lips.

  The silence of the house was suddenly unbearable. She leaped from the bed, pounded down the stairs, flung open the side door, and ran over to the Shieldses’ house.

  They were too close friends with the Shieldses to bother much with knocking. She opened the door, yelled, “Hello,” and went on in. Mrs. Shields was watching Lassie.

  “There’s probably something wrong with me,” remarked Reeve’s mother, “but I adore all these old black-and-white reruns. They’re so safe.”

  Safe, thought Janie.

  “Is not safe,” said Reeve, coming into the room. He had his physics lab book with him. The sight of Reeve with an academic text in his hand startled Janie. “Timmy and Lassie are always saving somebody from runaway trains or bottomless swamps or forest fires.”

  “Ah. But the kitchen!” said Mrs. Shields. “Nothing ever goes wrong in the kitchen. Have a chocolate chip cookie, dear,” she said to Janie.

  “Don’t,” advised Reeve. “She put icky things like oatmeal and bran into the cookies. Timmy,” he told his mother, referring to Lassie’s owner, “would never have had to gag down oatmeal and bran in his cookies.”

  Nevertheless Reeve took several of the largest cookies and flung himself into a chair. He was one of those boys who don’t simply sit: they collapse, snapping the legs off chairs and breaking the backs of couches. Janie and his mother waited for Reeve to fall on through to the floor, but the chair held him once more.

  “Mrs. Shields?” said Janie. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Darling, I am that rara avis. A native. I was born here.”

  “I mean, in this house.”

  “Twenty-eight years. Bought it when we were married.”

  “Do you remember when we moved here?”

  “I certainly do. You were the most adorable five-year-old who ever drew breath on Romney Road. And your mother was the strictest parent. I shaped up once she moved in, let me tell you.” Mrs. Shields smiled, a private smile of memories kept within, to warm herself by.

  “Why was she so strict?” said Janie. She had bitten off some cookie and now was unable to chew it. Little bits of dough and bran lay on her tongue and threatened to choke her.

  “Because you were so bad,” said Reeve immediately.

  He and his mother laughed. “No, Janie was always sweet, good, obedient, and courteous,” said Mrs. Shields. “I used to yearn for a Janie among my four wild animals.”

  Why was I such a goody-goody? thought Janie. Was I afraid? If they stole me, I should have been afraid of them, not the rest of the world. “Seriously,” said Janie.

  Mrs. Shields watched Lassie. Timmy’s mother was wearing her apron. In old television they always had on aprons.

  Janie fell into another nightmare by daylight. Her mind plummeted down into the nightmare the way Reeve’s muscular body had fallen onto the upholstery.

  Apron.

  It was white; heavy; almost as heavy as canvas; it had a bib; her mother kept little hard candies in one pocket and Janie could stretch up and reach her baby hand into the pocket to take out one candy. With a cellophane wrapper that crinkled.

  But my mother doesn’t wear aprons, thought Janie.

  “Life isn’t like that now,” said Mrs. Shields sadly. “Too many dreadful possibilities out there. And hardly any Lassies to save you. Mothers have nightmares about their babies, Janie—from drowning in a neighbor’s swimming pool to snapping the spine playing football. I think all mothers fear that one dreadful accident—when the child dashes out in front of a truck. When some maniac snatches the child during the one second the mother isn’t looking. Your mother has always felt that way, Janie. She’s always been afraid.”

  “For what reason?” said Janie. She forced herself to swallow the dead cookie in her mouth. Reeve, becoming a host, which was almost as unthinkable as Reeve becoming a scholar, handed her a Coke.

  “What mother ever needed a reason?” said Mrs. Shields. “I suppose because you were the only child. I had three earlier ones to take out my unreasonable fears on. Old Reeve here, I didn’t worry about him much because I’d used up so much worry on the others.”

  She and Reeve began a teasing verbal battle about how much worry he had caused her in his seventeen years, and was likely to cause in the
next seventeen.

  Janie stayed till the end of Lassie. The final scene was in the kitchen. Timmy of course had a glass of milk. Nobody in old television gave their kids soda. It ended happily ever after, with hugs all around and a barking collie.

  “Oh, my goodness, I’m late!” cried her mother, throwing open the front door. Her mother never came in the side door. She liked to look around the front hall, with its graceful mirrors and slender, elegant furniture, and into the beautiful living room she had designed. “Janie, by any wonderful chance did you start supper? We have our cake decorating class tonight. We’ve got to leave in thirty minutes. What’s in the freezer? Anything we can microwave? Did you do your homework? How was school?”

  She gave Janie a big hug and a little row of kisses down her cheek toward her throat. “Daddy home yet?”

  “No.” Janie stared at her mother. She tried to imagine her mother as a kidnapper, rushing into shopping malls and jerking little girls off soda fountain stools. But her mother was elegant, formal. She could imagine her mother raising funds for a scholarship for this little girl—but actually snatching her? Mother liked to conduct her meetings properly, with much consulting of formal Rules of Order.

  “Oh, dear, I hate it when we leave in the evening without seeing him. I hate not having dinner together. I read the other day that most families in America now have separate meals—each one just grabs a bite on the run, a pizza here, a frozen Weight Watchers casserole there. I think that’s so sad, families no longer sitting down together every evening. And here we are, just like all the rest. I hate being just like all the rest.”

  Well, you’re not, thought Janie. You’re a kidnapper.

  Her mother was beautifully dressed. She hung up her crimson wool coat and slipped off her high, slim heels. Her feet were very long and very narrow and finding shoes was a real trial. Janie’s feet were short and wide.

  There’s nothing in me that’s like her, thought Janie. Is it because I have none of her genes? Because she is not my mother?

  She forced herself to think of Adair O’Dell, who was so sleek. Adair’s mother was a fat, messy woman whose off-spring you would expect to be total rug rats. So lots of times kids didn’t resemble their parents. It meant nothing.

  Her father charged in the side door, full of energy from soccer. “What a team!” he said. He launched his first bear hug at his wife, and Janie would normally have run up for hers, but she found herself edging out of reach. “What a season. I love my kids. They try so hard! We practiced in the school gym because of the rain. Can’t stand that stupid principal they have down there. Good janitor, though. Big help. I can’t wait for the next game. We have so much potential this year! Why are we having microwave pizza? Where are you guys going? Don’t I even get to talk to my girl?” He pretended to kick soccer balls around Janie’s ankles.

  “Daddy, stop it,” she said.

  “How can I embarrass you when there’s nobody around to see?” he countered. “Tell you what. I promise to do this in front of all your friends one day, just for comparisons sake.”

  “Thanks,” said Janie.

  “Cake decorating,” explained her mother.

  “Do you think it’s the right sort of class for somebody as weight obsessed as you are?” said her father.

  “I won’t eat any of it,” said her mother virtuously.

  “Sure,” said her father. “Listen, you two scarf down those awful frozen jobs. I’ll make myself a real dinner after my shower. Love ya. Have fun. Bring me some cake. I want the most frosting.” He charged up one stairs.

  They talk more than I do, too, thought Janie. They spout conversation continually, both of them. I have more listening in me than talking.

  The class was at the Y. The familiar hot-chlorine-and-sweat smell of the pool met their noses.

  “Remember your swim team?” said her mother. “I was so glad you lost interest in swimming. There I’d sit, with all the other mothers, waiting for hours till your heat came up, and then I couldn’t even tell which one you were and it was over in three minutes anyhow. Ugh. At least when you took up riding, it was more fun. Why don’t you go back to riding?”

  “I would have if I’d known the alternative was cake decorating.” said Janie. “Mom, I’m dreading this. We’ve bombed out on watercolor, decoupage …”

  “Well, you couldn’t eat any of those. The taste tests will make all the difference.” They took the stairs to the kitchen. The Y ran a soup kitchen by day (where her mother had not yet volunteered but surely would before long), but in the evenings the kitchen was available to cooking classes. Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and French cooking each had a night. Cake decorating seemed backward and untrendy next to those cuisines.

  “Think of all the calories. This is a dangerous hobby, Mom. Besides, you told Daddy you weren’t going to eat any.”

  “I lied.”

  Janie and her mother burst into giggles.

  There were nine in the class. Janie was the only one under forty and the only one not watching her pounds. “I’m going to like this,” whispered her mother. “Next to you, I’m the skinniest person here.”

  They learned on cardboard, not cakes. They piped icing out of tubes, cloth bags, and paper cones. They used star tips and tube tips for flowers and ribbons. Janie could not keep the pressure on her tube even, so that for every attractive flower, she had a pitiful plop of icing instead. “Yours looks like a very faded bouquet,” remarked her mother.

  The instructor demonstrated flowers yet again. As Janie leaned forward to see the technique, she fell hideously into another daymare.

  The conscious part of her thought: Am I falling into the cake? Will I be a pitiful fool in front of these women, my face covered with icing?

  The daymare was white: white flowers, white whipped cream, white ice cream. The pretty woman, the whirling stool at the counter. And white shoes: tiny, shiny white shoes.

  We were shoe shopping, thought Janie. But who is “we”? Who am I?

  “Now you try,” said the instructor, putting the tube in her hand. Janie struggled to make a flower, but there was no white icing in the tube. There was a thin line of blue gel instead. She stared at the demonstration cake and saw that while she had been lost in a dreadful white dream, they had changed from flowers to writing.

  Her hand shook. She tried to write HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

  What was the birth date on the carton? she thought. When was Jennie Springs birthday? Is it mine?

  CHAPTER

  4

  She slept soundly.

  If she dreamed, she did not remember when she awoke.

  How strange, thought Janie. You’d think if anything would give me nightmares, it would be this.

  She got out of bed. Janie loved nightwear. Sometimes she was in a pajama mood and she had flannel pajamas, silk shortie pajamas, and sweet cotton-and-lace pajamas. Sometimes she preferred nightgowns and she had everything from bridal-trousseau-type gowns to teddies. But recently she had gotten into sweatshirt stuff: this new gown was a soft pearl gray, like a sweatshirt to the floor.

  She peeled the gown up and over her head and stared at herself, naked in the mirror. She liked her body.

  Morning sun streamed in the window. It caught on the prisms Janie had been given for some elementary-school science project and never taken down from their plastic strings. Miniature rainbows danced across the walls. She held out her hand and “caught” one in her palm.

  On the desk was a spray of reference books given her over various Christmases and rarely touched. The dictionary was a huge dark-blue Webster’s. She looked up nightmare. From Middle English niht— “night”—and Anglo-Saxon mare— “demon.” Then she looked up “daydream.” “A pleasant, dreamy thought.”

  Below it, there actually was a word “daymare.” Defined as a nightmare taking place in the day.

  Demon, thought Janie. That’s what it was. Some demon—some goblin or troll—forcing a daymare on me.

  In school the boys wer
e particularly sophomoric.

  Janie adored mischief, if she could watch rather than participate. She was perfectly willing to cheer the boys on as long as she ran no risk of getting punished along with them.

  Pete had a huge roll of masking tape left over from an art project.

  All the kids were attracted by the tape. Everybody wanted to rip off a piece and tape things together. “We could tape Sarah-Charlotte’s mouth shut,” said Jason, laughing, ready to do it.

  “Tape the trash-barrel lids closed so nobody can throw anything away,” Adair suggested.

  “Or tape Ellen Winter’s braids to her back!” Nobody liked Ellen Winter. Nobody ever had, nobody ever would. The poor thing would have nobody to untape her.

  “No, let’s tape Janie’s hair down!” cried Jason.

  “At last I’ll have breathing space during lunch. Well just wind the whole roll around her forehead until her hair is finally under control.”

  Janie shrieked with mixed horror and delight, protecting her head with her arms. She considered whether to yank her sweater up over her hair and run screaming down the halls. Sarah-Charlotte shuddered, imagining this fate. “You’d never get it off! When we pulled the tape away, we’d scalp her! You sadist. Somebody lock this boy up. He’s sick and twisted.”

  “I like that in a person,” said Adair.

  “I know,” said Pete. “Let’s tape all the desks together.”

  “Let’s what?”

  “Let’s go into the ninth-grade wing. They’re all at lunch. We’ll turn every desk inward and tape them together. When they get back from lunch, they won’t be able to get their chairs under the desks.”

  “Ooooh, that’s a great idea,” said Sarah-Charlotte. “What a gift from us to them. Think how they’ll waste a whole period trying to untape desks.”

  There was silence while each debated whether the pleasure would be worth the pain, if they got caught, or whether they’d rather just sit there and have lunch, or if they’d be wimps if they didn’t follow through on it now.