The Face on the Milk Carton

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Adair, who was going for her driver’s test the following Monday, and who carried her driver’s ed book with her everywhere, was not interested. “Don’t let’s do that,” she begged. “Somebody test me on stopping distance instead.”

  Janie flipped the book open and read aloud the questions on stopping distances. Adair got them all right. She had the entire book memorized.

  “I’m so afraid I’ll forget something when I go for my test,” said Adair. “What if they won’t give me my license just because I didn’t remember to bring my birth certificate?”

  “Then we’d know what a dumbbell you are,” said Jason. “If you’re that dumb, you don’t deserve your brownie, so give me your dessert.”

  Janie’s body turned to ice.

  I have no more control over my temperature than I do over the daymares, thought Janie. She said, “You have to have a birth certificate to get a driver’s license, Adair?” Now her interior betrayed her: all the organs in her chest and abdomen shuddered and rippled.

  I don’t want to know, thought Janie. Because … because why? Does something deep inside me know already? But why now? Why haven’t I known all along? How could you forget something like your real family and the moment you were taken from them? I know I’m making it up; it’s a demon, the dictionary says so.

  So why am I turning cold with fear?

  “Three forms of identification,” said Adair. “I’m bringing my birth certificate, which you have to have, my Social Security card, and my passport.”

  Jason laughed suddenly. “I remember the first time I saw my birth certificate,” he said, “with its little raised seal and the gold lettering at the top, and it was so official and all: the real me: and it had the wrong birth date. I practically passed out. I thought—I’m somebody else, I’m adopted, they switched babies at the hospital. I sweated so much the paper got soggy.”

  Janie’s mouth was so dry she could not ask questions.

  “It turns out,” Jason explained, his voice rich with relief, “that there are two dates: the day you were born and the day they register you on the records, which in my case was several days later. My eyes landed on the wrong date.”

  Janie seemed to melt, like ice cream in the sun.

  She had no energy left, hardly even a mind. She pictured road surfaces in winter, ripped into potholes and heaves by the changing temperatures, ice one day, sunny thaw the next. Would the changing temperatures of her imagination rip through her, too? She had never seen an insane person. They don’t mean to go insane, thought Janie. It happens to their surface, like freeze and thaw.

  She had a sense that she must hold on to her sanity, the way in a crowd in the city you held on to your purse. That it would take both hands to stay sane.

  Reeve did not give her a ride home.

  She took the bus.

  It stopped at the corner; she had a block to walk.

  Theirs was an architecturally mixed neighborhood. Originally a street of substantial older houses with front porches, big attics, and trees that dumped a million leaves every autumn, each side lot had been built upon. Modern ranches and cute little Cape Cods lay between each brown-shingled old place. Her own house was an old one dramatically modernized with sheets of glass where once there had been dark, hidden rooms.

  Janie walked through mountains of leaves in the gutter, waiting for the town crew to come with the frightening leaf-vacuum that sucked and then minced the scarlet and gold leaves. She had never been able to watch it.

  She went in the side door. “Mom?” she yelled.

  “In here, dear.” Her mother was at her desk. Lists, folders, notations. All the stuff for her various causes and crusades. “How was school, darling?”

  “Oh, you know. School.”

  “I had a great day,” said her mother happily. “My Laotian boy. He’s really made a quantum leap. He’s not going to need me much longer.” Her mother tutored English as a second language. The Laotian boy had one interest, and one only: sports. He wanted his terms straight so he wouldn’t refer to “baskets” or “goals” for a baseball game.

  “Mom?” said Janie, keeping her voice light. “I’m going to need my birth certificate for getting my driver’s license. Can I see it now?”

  Her mother’s pencil stopped moving on the form she was filling out.

  It seemed to Janie that her mother’s knuckles tightened and whitened. Her mother said, “Darling, you won’t be eligible for months.”

  “I know, but Adair’s been talking about it and I got interested.”

  “It’s in the safe deposit box at the bank,” said her mother.

  “Oh. Well, then, let’s go open it.”

  “I’m very busy, darling.”

  “Let’s go tomorrow then.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” said her mother quickly. “The bank’s not open.”

  Janie felt like an executioner, escorting her own mother to the guillotine. “Monday then,” said Janie.

  Her mother said, “Jane Elizabeth Johnson, you do not give your mother orders, do you hear me? You may ask courteously, but you may not command.”

  “Why don’t you want me to see my birth certificate?” said Janie.

  Her mother turned a page in her notebook and stared at the blank paper. “Don’t be ridiculous, Janie. Now let’s have a snack. What do you feel like? I did a huge grocery shopping. New microwave and frozen stuff we haven’t tried yet. And fruit juice popsicles for you instead of ice cream.”

  She doesn’t want me to see my birth certificate, thought Janie. Because there isn’t one? Because the dates are wrong? Or because she isn’t in the mood to bother with the bank?

  In the kitchen Janie looked in the breadbox and passed on doughnuts, fresh onion bagels, and raspberry coffee cake. She checked the shelves but did not feel like opening Double Stuf Oreos or Mallomars. She was not in the mood for the strawberry-vanilla yogurt or leftover pizza in the refrigerator. “I knew all along my snack would be in the freezer,” she remarked.

  But her mother had not come in with her.

  Janie turned slowly, looking around the empty room.

  Always, after school, if her mother was home, the two of them shared snacks, discussed their day, opened the mail together.

  Her mother not only remained in her study; she had even shut the door.

  Janie jerked open the freezer. Cold air bathed her cheeks. There was a quart of Wild berry Ripple Ice Cream, Flavor of the Month, for her father.

  From the shelf she took her favorite bowl, a Peter Rabbit bowl she had had—since when? thought Janie. All my life? Or since I was—

  She wrenched her mind away from it.

  From the utensil drawer she took the ice cream scoop.

  It was old, with a wooden handle now split from many runs through the dishwasher. The scoop itself was pitted with age.

  Like a painting from the bottom up, another kitchen emerged in her brain. She saw the floor first—toys on it—yellow linoleum. She saw the legs of chairs next, and the legs of grown-ups. Then a tabletop—it was at eye level—she was the height of the table.

  Janie panted like a child having an asthma attack.

  She could barely keep her balance.

  The painting grew, gathering color and detail.

  … not a large room … messy … two screaming babies, each in a high chair … the apron: that white canvas apron with the pocket of candy … a bag of Wonder Bread; she could remember the wrapper … her voice asking for milk … but nobody heard her over the screaming of the babies, so Janie got it herself, spilling a puddle. She could remember mopping it up with a paper towel, proud of herself for making the mess and for unmaking it…. She remembered being scooped up, hugged … laughter … noise … mess … commotion …

  The kitchen in which she really stood was large, smooth, and empty. The counters and shelves pounded in her head, like cartoon things taking on life and rhythm.

  Abandoning the quart of Wild berry Ripple, Janie ran outside.
/>   Reeve was raking leaves in his yard. “Hi,” he said, “come to help? I’ve got an extra rake. It’s time you earned your keep, woman.” He grinned. His face was rather long and narrow, and the grin was a surprise, because it took up so much space—you were socked with joy when Reeve smiled at you. A French-looking beret tilted on his hair. He was thigh-deep in leaves. “I’ve got to mow the lawn again,” he explained. “That grass went and grew some more. I don’t know how, under a foot of leaves. Here. Rake, Janie. I need you.”

  She took the rake. Energy spilled out of her like oil from a smashed tanker. Leaves were flung into the air. She made immense, immediate progress.

  Reeve stared at her.

  She raked on and on, until the leaves were a mountain in front of her and the lawn a green swarm behind her.

  Without catching himself, Reeve fell backward into the leaf pile and sank toward the ground, brown leaves sliding over his face and chest. “Janie, you have a problem? Come tell Uncle Reeve.” He sprawled comfortably. The leaves crackled with every breath he took.

  She sat next to him, cross-legged, looking down into his face. They were in a nest, hidden from the adult world. There was nothing like a pile of leaves to make you feel little again. “Reeve, do you think 800 numbers can trace a call? I mean, if you called an 800 number and didn’t say anything, could they find out what phone you called from?”

  “I take it you’re not going to call Time magazine for a subscription,” said Reeve, laughing. “Who are you calling? The Secret Service to report an assassination attempt?”

  How did he get so close? she thought. Does he know something, too? Deep down, without admitting it, does he remember? He would have been seven, I would have been five. “I thought I’d call the Milk Council to find out about new research on milk allergies,” she said.

  Reeve shouted with laughter. “Oh, boy, they’ll really want to trace that call, Jane Elizabeth. They’ll figure they’ve got an escaped, drug-running Central American dictator on the phone for sure when you ask about milk allergies.” He laughed and laughed, put both hands around her, and pulled her down into the leaves with him.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The kiss was long.

  And serious.

  Serious like my hair, thought Janie. She stared amazed at Reeve’s cheek, which was pressed against hers, and with amazement brought her lips together to kiss him again—to start the second kiss, and to choose when to end it. She could feel his heart racing and then felt her own pick up speed and run with his.

  Very slowly her hands crept around his face, finding the back of his neck where his hair lay thick over the pulse. His hand, rough-surfaced, gently touched her face. Moved her hair away. With the pad of his thumb he traced her profile.

  “Reeve!” shouted his mother from the house. “Reeve, where are you? Phone call! It’s Michael.”

  They fell apart, each lying back on crinkly leaves, staring at the sky. Reeve said, “Uh—Michael probably wants to know if—um—well—I better talk to him.”

  “Okay,” said Janie.

  She stood up first and began dusting the leaves off herself. She could feel leaf bits in her hair and down the back of her sweater. Reeve’s eyes fixed on her hair and he moved as if to brush the leaves away for her, but then he looked down at his feet instead, mumbling, “See you,” and ran into the house.

  Janie’s heart and lungs were working as if they were trying to power a city’s electricity. She picked up the rake again. Their two bodies had left prints on the leaf pile, like angels in the snow. She raked the pile back together, until the prints were hidden, and the evidence gone.

  Reeve did not come back from his phone call.

  The sun went behind clouds and she was cold.

  She went inside, remembering the ice cream on the counter and wondering if it had melted everywhere. But her mother had put it away. “That showed such discipline, Janie,” her mother complimented her. “To get exercise instead of indulging in forbidden foods!” An I’ve-got-a-secret smile spread on her mother’s face. “Look,” she said. “I’ve been practicing. What do you think of it?”

  From the refrigerator she took a large rectangular pan covered with aluminum foil, which Janie had thought was lasagne. Peeling back the foil, her mother showed off a sheet cake. The cake was iced in white, with purple piping on the sides—and a cute little purple football arching over purple goalposts in the center. “Tomorrow we’re all driving up to the university for the football game,” said her mother. “I’m doing dessert.

  Usually I go to the bakery and order lots of chocolate surprises, but this time I thought I’d do a cake. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s so cute!” cried Janie. “Look, you even have the little team over here, painted in gel. And here’s a cheerleader. Mom, I love her pom-poms. How did you do it?”

  Each year they went for a tailgate picnic along with Reeve’s family and Sarah-Charlotte’s. The football game! she thought. I’ll be with Reeve tomorrow. All day. Her heart raced.

  “I was in a Grandma Moses mood,” explained her mother. “I decided to do a primitive painting in purple tube art on a cake.”

  They giggled. For the first time in her life, Janie regretted that Sarah-Charlotte would be along, with her eagle eyes and endless chatter.

  “I just hope the cake is edible,” said her mother. “I haven’t baked a cake in a hundred years. I used Duncan Hines mix, though, so I’m probably safe.”

  “There’s no way to taste-test,” agreed Janie. “Unless we cut off the goalposts and eat them tonight.”

  “Bite your tongue. This took me the entire day, Janie. My goodness, what’s in your hair?”

  “Leaves,” said Janie. “I went out to help Reeve rake and he got silly and we fell over in the leaf pile like a pair of third graders.”

  With Janie sitting on a kitchen chair and her mother standing behind her, she brushed and brushed till the red hair was full of static and the floor covered with tiny brown bits of leaf.

  Janie thought of Reeve. Those leaves on the floor might be the only souvenir of her only kisses. When he ran away to take Michael’s phone call, had he also been running away from the kiss he had given Janie? “I think I’ll do my weekend homework tonight,” said Janie, “since the football game will take all day Saturday.” She took back her hairbrush and went upstairs to be alone with the memory of Reeve, and his lips, and his rough-soft hand.

  Usually she passed her so-called homework hours on the phone with Sarah-Charlotte or Adair. There were also Gretchen, Doria, and Michelle to call if Sarah-Charlotte’s and Adair’s phones were busy.

  Janie was almost overcome with the desire to talk about Reeve. He kissed me, he pulled me down in the leaves, like somebody in a romance novel where the man is so frantic with passion he pulls her off the horse, or out of the carriage, and onto the bed. You should have been there! It was incredible.

  However, Sarah-Charlotte, who liked things nailed down on all four sides, would demand, “So did he ask you out? Are you dating? What kind of commitment did you get from him?”

  So she wouldn’t call Sarah-Charlotte. And maybe not Adair either, because Adair would hate the part about getting leaves in her hair. Adair was against anything messy.

  Janie sighed and opened her book bag, dumping the contents on her bed. She never studied at her desk. She used the desktop for her cassette collection.

  Her cheap, blue-cloth, three-ring notebook fell out on top of the math, biology, American lit, and world history books. It was the kind you wrote on in ballpoint pen: tic-tac-toe games, interlocked initials, and assorted doodles. Janie opened the cover. The back of the flattened milk carton stared up at her.

  FLOWER DAIRY

  “The dairy that cares”

  100% whole milk

  one half pint

  She unclipped it.

  Turned it over.

  Jennie Spring looked up at her.

  The 800 number was like a dart being thrown into
her eyes. I could call, she thought. I could ask—

  But what could she ask?

  All the questions were unthinkable.

  Besides, what would it do to her parents to find out their very own daughter was calling the authorities to announce she had been kidnapped? Her mother, who had spent the day baking a special cake, and was too tired to consider going to the bank … her father, who would come home from soccer full of victory or deflated by loss.

  Janie picked up her phone.

  She dialed 1.

  She dialed 800.

  She dialed 346-72—

  She was gasping for breath.

  With two digits to go, she hung up.

  She missed the phone. It clattered, slid off the bed, and hit the floor with a crash as loud as trains colliding.

  But her mother did not yell upstairs to see if Janie was hurt. Up here it was the world crashing in; downstairs nobody had heard a sound.

  All right, get a grip on yourself, thought Janie. The dictionary is right: These are inspired by a demon. You have to destroy the demon. Or maybe it’s just premenstrual syndrome.

  Except she had never previously had trouble before, during, or after her periods.

  I will think about Reeve now, she ordered herself, glaring at the inner demon. I will think of kisses and love and dating.

  But she thought of Jennie Spring. Of parents somewhere in New Jersey who missed their little girl so much that all these years later they were still hoping, hoping by the thinnest thread they would somehow find their Jennie again, and Jennie would be safe, not murdered or raped or abused—

  —or happy and ignorant with another family.

  This, thought Janie, must be what heavy drugs are like: hallucinations whether you want them or not. Temperature-changing, personality-changing doses.

  This time she dialed Sarah-Charlotte.

  Busy.

  Then Adair.

  Adair had total-phone and gave Janie twenty seconds of her time. She was on the phone with Pete, who, she said, seemed to be on the verge of asking her out. “Then what’d you answer my call for?” demanded Janie. “You might have cut him off at the moment he got the courage together.”