The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  The girls were staring at her almost rudely. Of course, they were young, they knew no better. Their leader, Jude, seemed to be a girl with some confidence, though she wasn’t the eldest or the tallest or the most attractive of the three.

  Not attractive at all. Her face was fiercely plain as if she’d scrubbed it with steel wool. Her skin was chalky, mottled. You could sense the energy thrumming through her like an electric current, she was wound up so tightly.

  The other girls were more ordinary. One was softly plump with a fattish pug face, almost pretty except for something smirky, insolent in her manner. The other girl had a sallow blemished skin, limp grease-colored hair, and oddly quivering, parted lips. All three girls wore grubby blue jeans, boys’ shirts, and ugly square-toed boots.

  “. . . so we were wondering, Mrs. Bran—Bantry, if you would like us to, like, pray with you? Like, now? It’s Palm Sunday. Next Sunday is Easter.”

  “What? Pray? Thank you but . . .”

  “Because Denise and Anita and me, we have a feeling, we have a really strong feeling, Mrs. Bantry, that Marissa is alive. And Marissa is depending on us. So, if—”

  Avril came forward quickly, saying the visit was ended.

  “My sister has been under a strain, girls. I’ll see you to the door.”

  The flowers slipped through Leah’s fingers. She caught at some of them, clumsily. The others fell to the floor at her feet.

  Two of the girls hurried to the door, held open by Avril, with frightened expressions. Jude, pausing, continued to smile in her earnest, pinched way. She’d taken a small black object out of her pocket. “May I take a picture, Mrs. Bantry?”

  Before Leah could protest, she raised the cell phone and clicked. Leah’s hand had flown up to shield her face, instinctively.

  Avril said sharply, “Please. The visit is over, girls.”

  Jude murmured, on her way out, “We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. Bye!”

  The other girls chimed in Bye! bye! Avril shut the door behind them.

  Leah threw the flowers away in the trash. White flowers!

  At least, they hadn’t brought her calla lilies.

  DUTCHWOMAN

  . . . in motion. Tracing and retracing The Route. Sometimes on foot, sometimes in her car. Sometimes with Avril but more often alone. “I need to get out! I can’t breathe in here! I need to see what Marissa saw.”

  These days were very long days. And yet, in all of the hours of these days, nothing happened.

  Marissa was still gone, still gone.

  Like a clock’s ticking: still, still gone. Each time you checked, still gone.

  She had her cell phone of course. If there was news.

  She walked to the Skatskill Day School and positioned herself at the front door of the elementary grades wing, which was the door Marissa would have used, would have left by on Thursday afternoon. From this position she began The Route.

  To the front sidewalk and east along Pinewood. Across Pinewood to Mahopac Avenue and continue east past Twelfth Street, Thirteenth Street, Fourteenth Street, Fifteenth Street. At Fifteenth and Trinity, the witness had claimed to see Mikal Zallman pull Marissa Bantry into his Honda CR-V van, and drive away.

  Either it had happened that way, or it had not.

  There was only the single witness, a Skatskill Day student whom police would not identify.

  Leah believed that Zallman was the man and yet: there was something missing. Like a jigsaw puzzle piece. A very small piece, yet crucial.

  Since thc girls’ visit. Since the bouquet of dazzling white flowers. That small twitchy smile Leah did not wish to interpret as taunting, of the girl named Jude.

  We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. Bye!

  Important for Leah to walk briskly. To keep in motion.

  There is a deep-sea creature, perhaps a shark, that must keep in motion constantly, otherwise it will die. Leah was becoming this creature, on land. She believed that news of Marissa’s death would come to her only if she, the mother, were still; there was a kind of deadness in being still; but if she was in motion, tracing and retracting Marissa’s route . . . “It’s like Marissa is with me. Is me.”

  She knew that people along The Route were watching her. Everyone in Skatskill knew her face, her name. Everyone knew why she was out on the street, tracing and retracing The Route. A slender woman in shirt, slacks, dark glasses. A woman who had made a merely perfunctory attempt to disguise herself, dusty-blond hair partly hidden beneath a cap.

  She knew the observers were pitying her. And blaming her.

  Still, when individuals spoke to her, as a few did each time she traced The Route, they were invariably warm, sympathetic. Some of them, both men and women, appeared to be deeply sympathetic. Tears welled in their eyes. That bastard they spoke of Zallman. Has he confessed yet?

  In Skatskill the name Zallman was known now, notorious. That the man was—had been—a member of the faculty at the Skatskill Day School had become a local scandal.

  The rumor was, Zallman had a record of prior arrests and convictions as a sexual predator. He’d been fired from previous teaching positions but had somehow managed to be hired at the prestigious Skatskill School. The school’s beleaguered principal had given newspaper and TV interviews vigorously denying this rumor, yet it prevailed.

  Bantry, Zallman. The names now luridly linked. In the tabloids photos of the missing girl and “suspect” were printed side by side. Several times, Leah’s photograph was included as well. In her distraught state yet Leah was able to perceive the irony of such a grouping: a mock family.

  Leah had given up hoping to speak with Zallman. She supposed it was a ridiculous request. If he’d taken Marissa he was a psychopath and you don’t expect a psychopath to tell the truth. If he had not taken Marissa . . .

  “If it’s someone else. They will never find him.”

  The Skatskill police had not yet arrested Zallman. Temporarily, Zallman had been released. His lawyer had made a terse public statement that he was “fully cooperating” with the police investigation. But what he had told them, what could possibly be of worth that he had told them, Leah didn’t know.

  Along The Route, Leah saw with Marissa’s eyes. The facades of houses. On Fifteenth Street, storefronts. No one had corroborated the eyewitness’s testimony about seeing Marissa pulled into a van in full daylight on busy Fifteenth Street. Wouldn’t anyone else have seen? And who had the eyewitness been? Since the three girls had dropped by to see her, Leah was left with a new sensation of unease.

  Not Marissa’s friends. Not those girls.

  She crossed Trinity and continued. This was a slight extension of Marissa’s route home from school. It was possible, Marissa dropped by the 7-Eleven to buy a snack on Tuesdays/Thursdays when Leah returned home late.

  Taped to the front plate-glass door of the 7-Eleven was

  HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

  MARISSA BANTRY, II

  MISSING SINCE APRIL IO

  Marissa’s smiling eyes met hers as Leah pushed the door open.

  Inside, trembling, Leah removed her dark glasses. She was feeling dazed. Wasn’t certain if this was full wakefulness or a fugue state. She was trying to orient herself. Staring at a stack of thick Sunday New York Times. The front-page headlines were of U.S.-Iraq issues and for a confused moment Leah thought Maybe none of it has happened yet.

  Maybe Marissa was outside, waiting in the car.

  The gentlemanly Indian clerk stood behind the counter in his usual reserved, yet attentive posture. He was staring at her strangely, Leah saw, as he would never have done in the past.

  Of course, he recognized her now. Knew her name. All about her. She would never be an anonymous customer again. Leah saw, with difficulty, for her eyes were watering, a second HAVE YOU SEEN ME? taped conspicuously to the front of the cash register.

  Wanting to embrace the man, wordless. Wanted to press herself into his arms and burst into tears.

  Instead she wandered in one of the ai
sles. How like an overexposed photograph the store was. So much to see, yet you saw nothing.

  Thank God, there were no other customers at the moment.

  Saw her hand reach out for—what? A box of Kleenex.

  Pink, the color Marissa preferred.

  She went to the counter to pay. Smiled at the clerk who was smiling very nervously at her, clearly agitated by the sight of her. His always-so-friendly blond customer! Leah was going to thank him for having posted the notices, and she was going to ask him if he’d ever seen Marissa in his store alone, without her, when suddenly the man said, to her astonishment, “Mrs. Bantry, I know of your daughter and what has happened, that is so terrible. I watch all the time, to see what will come of it.” Behind the counter was a small portable TV, volume turned down. “Mrs. Bantry, I want to say, when the police came here, I was nervous and not able to remember so well, but now I do remember, I am more certain, yes I did see your daughter that day, I believe. She did come into the store. She was alone, and then there was another girl. They went out together.”

  The Indian clerk spoke in a flood of words. His eyes were repentant, pleading.

  “When? When was—”

  “That day, Mrs. Bantry. That the police have asked about. Last week.”

  “Thursday? You saw Marissa on Thursday?”

  But now he was hesitating. Leah spoke too excitedly.

  “I think so, yes. I cannot be certain. That is why I did not want to tell the police, I did not want to get into trouble with them. They are impatient with me, I don’t know English so well. The questions they ask are not so easy to answer while they wait staring at you.”

  Leah didn’t doubt that the Indian clerk was uneasy with the Caucasian Skatskill police, she was uneasy with them herself.

  She said, “Marissa was with a girl, you say? What did this girl look like?”

  The Indian clerk frowned. Leah saw that he was trying to be as accurate as possible. He had probably not looked at the girls very closely, very likely he could not distinguish among most of them. He said, “She was older than your daughter, I am sure. She was not too tall, but older. Not so blond-haired.”

  “You don’t know her, do you? Her name?”

  “No. I do not know their names any of them.” He paused, frowning. His jaws tightened. “Some of them, the older ones, I think this girl is one of them, with their friends they come in here after school and take things. They steal, they break. They rip open bags, to eat. Like pigs they are. They think I can’t see them but I know what they do. Five days a week they come in here, many of them. They are daring me to shout at them, and if I would touch them—”

  His voice trailed off , tremulous.

  “This girl. What did she look like?”

  “. . . a white skin. A strange color of hair like . . . a color of something red, faded.”

  He spoke with some repugnance. Clearly, the mysterious girl was not attractive in his eyes.

  Red-haired. Pale-red-haired. Who?

  Jude Trahern. The girl who’d brought the flowers. The girl who spoke of praying for Marissa’s safe return.

  Were they friends, then? Marissa had had a friend?

  Leah was feeling light-headed. The fluorescent lighting began to tilt and spin. There was something here she could not grasp. Pray with you. Next Sunday is Easter. She had more to ask of this kindly man but her mind had gone blank.

  “Thank you. I . . . have to leave now.”

  “Don’t tell them, Mrs. Bantry? The police? Please?”

  Blindly Leah pushed through the door.

  “Mrs. Bantry?” The clerk hurried after her, a bag in his hand.

  “You are forgetting.”

  The box of pink Kleenex.

  Flying Dutchman. Dutchwoman. She was becoming. Always in motion, terrified of stopping, Returning home to her sister.

  Any news?

  None.

  Behind the drab little mini-mall she was drifting, dazed. She would tell the Skatskill detectives what the Indian clerk had told her—she must tell them. If Marissa had been in the store on Thursday afternoon, then Marissa could not have been pulled into a minivan on Fifteenth Street and Trinity, two blocks back toward school. Not by Mikal Zallman, or by anyone. Marissa must have continued past Trinity. After the 7-Eleven she would have circled back to Fifteenth Street again, and walked another half block to home.

  Unless she’d been pulled into the minivan on Fifteenth Street and Van Buren. The eyewitness had gotten the streets wrong. She’d been closer to home.

  Unless the Indian clerk was confused about days, times. Or, for what purpose Leah could not bear to consider, lying to her.

  “Not him! Not him, too.”

  She refused to think that was a possibility. Her mind simply shut blank, in refusal.

  She was walking now slowly, hardly conscious of her surroundings. A smell of rancid food assailed her nostrils. Only a few employees’ cars were parked behind the mini-mall. The pavement was stained and littered, a single Dumpster overflowing trash. At the back of the Chinese takeout several scrawny cats were rummaging in food scraps and froze at Leah’s approach before running away in panic.

  “Kitties! I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The feral cats’ terror mocked her own. Their panic was hers, misplaced, to no purpose.

  Leah wondered: what were the things Marissa did, when Leah wasn’t with her? For years they had been inseparable: mother, daughter. When Marissa had been a very small child, even before she could walk, she’d tried to follow her mother everywhere, from room to room. Mom-my! Where Mom-my going! Now, Marissa did many things by herself. Marissa was growing up. Dropping by the 7-Eleven, with other children after school. Buying a soft drink, a bag of something crunchy, salty. It was innocent enough. No child should be punished for it. Leah gave Marissa pocket change, as she called it, for just such impromptu purchases, though she disapproved of junk food.

  Leah felt a tightening in her chest, envisioning her daughter in the 7-Eleven store the previous Thursday, buying something from the Indian clerk. Then, he had not known her name. A day or two later, everyone in Skatskill knew Marissa Bantry’s name.

  Of course it probably meant nothing. That Marissa had walked out of the store with a classmate from school. Nothing unusual about that. She could imagine with what polite stiff expressions the police would respond to such a “tip.”

  In any case, Marissa would still have returned to Fifteenth Street on her way home. So busy, dangerous at that hour of day.

  It was there on Fifteenth Street that the “unidentified” classmate had seen Marissa being pulled into the Honda. Leah wondered if the witness was the red-haired Jude.

  Exactly what the girl had told police officers, Leah didn’t know. The detectives exuded an air, both assuring and frustrating, of knowing more than they were releasing at the present time.

  Leah found herself at the edge of the paved area. Staring at a steep hill of uncultivated and seemingly worthless land. Strange how in the midst of an affluent suburb there yet remain these stretches of vacant land, uninhabitable. The hill rose to Highgate Avenue a half mile away, invisible from this perspective. You would not guess that “historical” old homes and mansions were located on the crest of this hill, property worth millions of dollars. The hill was profuse with crawling vines, briars, and stunted trees. The accumulation of years of windblown litter and debris made it look like an informal dump. There was a scurrying sound somewhere just inside the tangle of briars, a furry shape that appeared and disappeared so swiftly Leah scarcely saw it.

  Behind the Dumpster, hidden from her view, the colony of wild cats lived, foraged for food, fiercely interbred, and died the premature deaths of feral creatures. They would not wish to be “pets”—they had no capacity to receive the affection of humans. They were, in clinical terms, undomesticable.

  Leah was returning to her car when she heard a nasal voice in her wake:

  “Mrs. Bran-ty! H’lo.”

  Leah turned
uneasily to see the frizz-haired girl who’d given her the flowers.

  Jude. Jude Trahern.

  Now it came to Leah: there was a Trahern Square in downtown Skatskill, named for a Chief Justice Trahern decades ago. One of the old Skatskill names. On Highgate, there was a Trahern estate, one of the larger houses, nearly hidden from the road.

  This strange glistening-eyed girl. There was something of the sleek white rat about her. Yet she smiled uncertainly at Leah, clumsily straddling her bicycle.

  “Are you following me?”

  “Ma’am, no. I . . . just saw you.”

  Wide-eyed the girl appeared sincere, uneasy. Yet Leah’s nerves were on edge, she spoke sharply: “What do you want?”

  The girl stared at Leah as if something very bright glared from Leah’s face that was both blinding and irresistible. She wiped nervously at her nose. “I . . . I want to say I’m sorry, for saying dumb things before. I guess I made things worse.”

  Made things worse! Leah smiled angrily, this was so absurd.

  “I mean, Denise and Anita and me, we wanted to help. We did the wrong thing, I guess. Coming to see you.”

  “Were you the ‘unidentified witness’ who saw my daughter being pulled into a minivan?”

  The girl blinked at Leah, blank-faced. For a long moment Leah would have sworn that she was about to speak, to say something urgent. Then she ducked her head, wiped again at her nose, shrugged self-consciously and muttered what sounded like, “I guess not.”

  “All right. Good-bye. I’m leaving now.”

  Leah frowned and turned away, her heart beating hard. How badly she wanted to be alone! But the rat-girl was too obtuse to comprehend. With the dogged persistence of an overgrown child she followed Leah at an uncomfortably close distance of about three feet, pedaling her bicycle awkwardly. The bicycle was an expensive Italian make of the kind a serious adult cyclist might own.

  At last Leah paused, to turn back. “Do you have something to tell me, Jude?”

  The girl looked astonished.