The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  “‘Jude’! You remember my name?”

  Leah would recall afterward this strange moment. The exultant look in Jude Trahern’s face. Her chalky skin mottled with pleasure.

  Leah said, “Your name is unusual, I remember unusual names. If you have something to tell me about Marissa, I wish you would.”

  “Me? What would I know?”

  “You aren’t the witness from school?”

  “What witness?”

  “A classmate of Marissa’s says she saw a male driver pull Marissa into his minivan on Fifteenth Street. But you aren’t that girl?”

  Jude shook her head vehemently. “You can’t always believe ‘eyewitnesses,’ Mrs. Bantry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s well known. It’s on TV all the time, police shows. An eyewitness swears she sees somebody, and she’s wrong. Like, with Mr. Zallman, people are all saying it’s him but, like, it might be somebody else.”

  The girl spoke rapidly, fixing Leah with her widened shining eyes.

  “Jude, what do you mean, somebody else? Who?”

  Excited by Leah’s attention, Jude lost her balance on the bicycle, and nearly stumbled. Clumsily she began walking it again. Gripping the handlebars so tightly her bony knuckles gleamed white.

  She was breathing quickly, lips parted. She spoke in a lowered conspiratorial voice.

  “See, Mrs. Bantry, Mr. Zallman is like notorious. He comes on to girls if they’re pretty-pretty like Marissa. Like some of the kids were saying on TV, he’s got these laser eyes.” Jude shivered, thrilled.

  Leah was shocked. “If everybody knows about Zallman, why didn’t anybody tell? Before this happened? How could a man like that be allowed to teach?” She paused, anxious. Thinking Did Marissa know? Why didn’t she tell me?

  Jude giggled. “You got to wonder why any of them teach. I mean, why’d anybody want to hang out with kids! Not just some weird guy, but females, too.” She smiled, seeming not to see how Leah stared at her. “Mr. Z. is kind of fun. He’s this ‘master’—he calls himself. On line, you can click onto him he’s ‘Master of Eyes.’ Little kids, girls, he’d come on to after school, and tell them be sure not to tell anybody, see. Or they’d be ‘real sorry.’” Jude made a twisting motion with her hands as if wringing an invisible neck. “He likes girls with nice long hair he can brush.”

  “Brush?”

  “Sure. Mr. Zallman has this wire brush, like. Calls it a little-doggy- brush. He runs it through your hair for fun. I mean, it used to be fun. I hope the cops took the brush when they arrested him, like for evidence. Hell, he never came on to me, I’m not pretty-pretty.”

  Jude spoke haughtily, with satisfaction. Fixing Leah with her curious stone-colored eyes.

  Leah knew that she was expected to say, with maternal solicitude, Oh, but you are pretty, Jude! One day, you will be.

  In different circumstances she was meant to frame the rat-girl’s hot little face in her cool hands, comfort her. One day you will be loved, Jude. Don’t feel bad.

  “You were saying there might be—somebody else? Not Zallman but another person?”

  Jude said, sniffing, “I wanted to tell you before, at your house, but you seemed, like, not to want to hear. And that other lady was kind of glaring at us. She didn’t want us to stay.”

  “Jude, please. Who is this person you’re talking about?”

  “Mrs. Branly, Bantry, like I said Marissa is a good friend of mine. She is! Some kids make fun of her, she’s a little slow they say but I don’t think Marissa is slow, not really. She tells me all kinds of secrets, see?” Jude paused, drawing a deep breath. “She said, she missed her dad.”

  It was as if Jude had reached out to pinch her. Leah was speechless.

  “Marissa was always saying she hates it here in Skatskill. She wanted to be with her dad, she said. Some place called ‘Berkeley’—in California. She wanted to go there to live.”

  Jude spoke with the ingratiating air of one child informing on another to a parent. Her lips quivered, she was so excited.

  Still Leah was unable to respond. Trying to think what to say except her brain seemed to be partly shutting down as if she’d had a small stroke.

  Jude said innocently, “I guess you didn’t know this, Mrs. Bantry?” She bit at her thumbnail, squinting.

  “Marissa told you that? She told you—those things?”

  “Are you mad at me, Mrs. Bantry? You wanted me to tell.”

  “Marissa told you—she wanted to live with her ‘dad’? Not with her mother but with her ‘dad’?”

  Leah’s peripheral vision had narrowed. There was a shadowy funnel-shape at the center of which the girl with the chalky skin and frizzed hair squinted and grinned, in a show of repentance.

  “I just thought you would want to know, see, Mrs. Bantry? Like, maybe Marissa ran away? Nobody is saying that, everybody thinks it’s Mr. Zallman, like the cops are thinking it’s got to be him. Sure, maybe it is. But—maybe!—Marissa called her dad, and asked him to come get her? Something weird like that? And it was a secret from you? See, a lot of times Marissa would talk that way, like a little kid. Like, not thinking about her mother’s feelings. And I told her, ‘Your mom, she’s real nice, she’d be hurt real bad, Marissa, if you—’”

  Leah couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. It was as if she’d lost her daughter for the second time.

  MISTAKES

  His first was to assume that, since he knew nothing of the disappearance of Marissa Bantry, he could not be “involved” in it.

  His second was not to contact a lawyer immediately. As soon as he realized exactly why he’d been brought into police headquarters for questioning.

  His third seemed to be to have lived the wrong life.

  Pervert. Sex off ender. Pedophile.

  Kidnapper/rapist/murderer.

  Mikal Zallman, thirty-one. Suspect.

  “Mother, it’s Mikal. I hope you haven’t seen the news already, I have something very disturbing to tell you . . .”

  Nothing! He knew nothing.

  The name marissa bantry meant nothing to him.

  Well, not initially. He couldn’t be sure.

  In his agitated state, not knowing what the hell they were getting at with their questions, he couldn’t he sure.

  “Why are you asking me? Has something happened to ‘Marissa Bantry’?”

  Next, they showed him photographs of the girl.

  Yes: now he recognized her. The long blond hair, that was sometimes plaited. One of the quieter pupils. Nice girl. He recognized the picture but could not have said the girl’s name because, look: “I’m not these kids’ teacher, exactly. I’m a ‘consultant.’ I don’t have a homeroom. I don’t have regular classes with them. In the high school, one of the math instructors teaches computer science. I don’t get to know the kids by name, like their other instructors do.”

  He was speaking quickly, an edge to his voice. It was uncomfortably cold in the room, yet he was perspiring.

  As in a cartoon of police interrogation. They sweated it out of the suspect.

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true that Zallman didn’t know students’ names. He knew the names of many students. Certainly, he knew their faces. Especially the older students, some of whom were extremely bright, and engaging. But he had not known Marissa Bantry’s name, the shy little blond child had made so little an impression on him.

  Nor had he spoken with her personally. He was certain.

  “Why are you asking me about this girl? If she’s missing from home what is the connection with me?”

  That edge to Zallman’s voice. Not yet angry, only just impatient.

  He was willing to concede, yes: if a child has been missing for more than twenty-four hours that was serious. If eleven-year-old Marissa Bantry was missing, it was a terrible thing.

  “But it has nothing to do with me.”

  They allowed him to speak. They were tape recording his precious words. They did not appear to be pa
ssing judgment on him, he was not receiving the impression that they believed him involved with the disappearance, only just a few questions to put to him, to aid in their investigation. They explained to him that it was in his best interests to cooperate fully with them, to straighten out the misunderstanding, or whatever it was, a misidentification perhaps, before he left police headquarters.

  “Misidentification”? What was that?

  He was becoming angry, defiant. Knowing he was God-damned innocent of any wrongdoing, no matter how trivial: traffic violations, parking tickets. He was innocent! So he insisted upon taking a lie-detector test.

  Another mistake.

  Seventeen hours later an aggressive stranger now retained as Mikal Zallman’s criminal lawyer was urging him, “Go home, Mikal. If you can, sleep. You will need your sleep. Don’t speak with anyone except people you know and trust and assume yourself under surveillance and whatever you do, man—don’t try to contact the missing girl’s mother.”

  Please understand I am not the one. Not the madman who has taken your beautiful child. There has been some terrible misunderstanding but I swear I am innocent, Mrs. Bantry, we’ve never met but please allow me to commiserate with you, this nightmare we seem to be sharing.

  Driving home to North Tarrytown. Oncoming headlights blinding his eyes. Tears streaming from his eyes. Now the adrenaline rush was subsiding, leaking out like water in a clogged drain, he was beginning to feel a hammering in his head that was the worst headache pain he’d ever felt in his life.

  Jesus! What if it was a cerebral hemorrhage . . .

  He would die. His life would be over. It would be judged that his guilt had provoked the hemorrhage. His name would never be cleared.

  He’d been so cocky and arrogant coming into police headquarters, confident he’d be released within the hour, and now. A wounded animal limping for shelter. He could not keep up with traffic on route 9, he was so sick. Impatient drivers sounded their horns. A massive SUV pulled up to within inches of Zallman’s car bumper.

  He knew! Ordinarily he was an impatient driver himself. Disgusted with overly cautious drivers on route 9 and now he’d become one of these, barely mobile at twenty miles an hour.

  Whoever they were who hated him, who had entangled him in this nightmare, they had struck a first, powerful blow.

  Zallman’s bad luck, one of his fellow tenants was in the rear lobby of his building, waiting for the elevator, when Zallman staggered inside. He was unshaven, disheveled, smelling frankly of his body. He saw the other man staring at him, at first startled, recognizing him; then with undisguised repugnance.

  But I didn’t! I am not the one.

  The police would not have released me if.

  Zallman let his fellow tenant take the elevator up, alone.

  Zallman lived on the fifth floor of the so-called condominium village. He had never thought of his three sparely furnished rooms as “home” nor did he think of his mother’s Upper East Side brownstone as “home” any longer: it was fair to say that Zallman had no home.

  It was near midnight of an unnamed day. He’d lost days of his life. He could not have stated with confidence the month, the year. His head throbbed with pain. Fumbling with the key to his darkened apartment he heard the telephone inside ringing with the manic air of a telephone that has been ringing repeatedly.

  Released for the time being. Keep your cell phone with you at all times for you may be contacted by police. Do not REPEAT DO NOT leave the area. A bench warrant will be issued for your arrest in the event that you attempt to leave the area.

  “It isn’t that I am innocent, Mother. I know that I am innocent! The shock of it is, people seem to believe that I might not be. A lot of people.”

  It was a fact. A lot of people.

  He would have to live with that fact, and what it meant of Mikal Zallman’s place in the world, for a long time.

  Keep your hands in sight, sir.

  That had been the beginning. His wounded brain fixed obsessively upon that moment, at Bear Mountain.

  The state troopers. Staring at him. As if.

  (Would they have pulled their revolvers and shot him down, if he’d made a sudden ambiguous gesture? It made him sick to think so. It should have made him grateful that it had not happened but in fact it made him sick.)

  Yet the troopers had asked him politely enough if they could search his vehicle. He’d hesitated only a moment before consenting. Sure it annoyed him as a private citizen who’d broken no laws and as a (lapsed) member of the ACLU but why not, he knew there was nothing in the minivan to catch the troopers’ eyes. He didn’t even smoke marijuana any longer. He’d never carried a concealed weapon, never even owned a gun. So the troopers looked through the van, and found nothing. No idea what the hell they were looking for but he’d felt a gloating sort of relief that they hadn’t found it. Seeing the way they were staring at the covers of the paperback books in the backseat he’d tossed there weeks ago and had more or less forgotten.

  Female nudes, and so what?

  “Good thing it isn’t kiddie porn, officers, eh? That stuff is illegal.”

  Even as a kid Zallman hadn’t been able to resist wisecracking at inopportune moments.

  Now, he had a lawyer. “His” lawyer.

  A criminal lawyer whose retainer was fifteen thousand dollars.

  They are the enemy.

  Neuberger meant the Skatskill detectives, and beyond them the prosecutorial staff of the district, whose surface civility Zallman had been misinterpreting as a tacit sympathy with him, his predicament. It was a fact they’d sweated him, and he’d gone along with it naively, frankly. Telling him he was not under arrest only just assisting in their investigation.

  His body had known, though. Increasingly anxious, restless, needing to urinate every twenty minutes. He’d been flooded with adrenaline like a cornered animal.

  His blood pressure had risen, he could feel pulses pounding in his ears. Damned stupid to request a polygraph at such a time but—he was an innocent man, wasn’t he?

  Should have called a lawyer as soon as they’d begun asking him about the missing child. Once it became clear that this was a serious situation, not a mere misunderstanding or misidentification by an unnamed “eyewitness.” (One of Zallman’s own students? Deliberately lying to hurt him? For Christ’s sake why?) So at last he’d called an older cousin, a corporation attorney, to whom he had not spoken since his father’s funeral, and explained the situation to him, this ridiculous situation, this nightmare situation, but he had to take it seriously since obviously he was a suspect and so: would Joshua recommend a good criminal attorney who could get to Skatskill immediately, and intercede for him with the police?

  His cousin had been so stunned by Zallman’s news he’d barely been able to speak. “Y-You? Mikal? You’re arrested—?”

  “No. I am not arrested, Joshua.”

  He believes I might be guilty. My own cousin believes I might be a sexual predator.

  Still, within ninety minutes, after a flurry of increasingly desperate phone calls, Zallman had retained a Manhattan criminal lawyer named Neuberger who didn’t blithely assure him, as Zallman halfway expected he would, that there was nothing to worry about.

  TARRYTOWN RESIDENT QUESTIONED

  IN ABDUCTION OF 11-YEAR-OLD

  SEARCH FOR MARISSA CONTINUES

  SKATSKILL DAY INSTRUCTOR IN POLICE CUSTODY

  6TH GRADER STILL MISSING

  SKATSKILL DAY INSTRUCTOR QUESTIONED BY POLICE

  TENTATIVE IDENTIFICATION OF MINIVAN

  BELIEVED USED IN ABDUCTION

  MIKAL ZALLMAN, 31, COMPUTER CONSULTANT

  QUESTIONED BY POLICE IN CHILD ABDUCTION

  ZALLMAN: “I AM INNOCENT”

  TARRYTOWN RESIDENT QUESTIONED BY POLICE

  IN CHILD ABDUCTION CASE

  Luridly spread across the front pages of the newspapers were photographs of the missing girl, the missing girl’s mother, and “alleged suspect Mikal Zallman.”
>
  It was a local TV news magazine. Neuberger had warned him not to watch TV, just as he should not REPEAT SHOULD NOT answer the telephone if he didn’t have caller ID, and for sure he should not answer his door unless he knew exactly who was there. Still, Zallman was watching TV fortified by a half dozen double-strength Tylenols that left him just conscious enough to stare at the screen disbelieving what he saw and heard.

  Skatskill Day students, their faces blurred to disguise their identities, voices eerily slurred, telling a sympathetic female broadcaster their opinions of Mikal Zallman.

  Mr Zallman, he’s cool. I liked him okay.

  Mr Zallman is kind of sarcastic I guess. He’s okay with the smart kids but the rest of us it’s like he’s trying real hard and wants us to know.

  I was so surprised! Mr. Zallman never acted like that, you know—weird. Not in computer lab.

  Mr. Zallman has, like, these laser eyes? I always knew he was scary.

  Mr. Zallman looks at us sometimes! It makes you shiver.

  Some kids are saying he had, like, a hairbrush? To brush the girls’ hair? I never saw it.

  This hairbrush Mr. Zallman had, it was so weird! He never used it on me, guess I’m not pretty-pretty enough for him.

  He’d help you in the lab after school if you asked. He was real nice to me. All this stuff about Marissa, I don’t know. It makes me want to cry.

  And there was Dr. Adrienne Cory, principal of Skatskill Day, grimly explaining to a skeptical interviewer that Mikal Zallman whom she had hired two and a half years previously had excellent credentials, had come highly recommended, was a conscientious and reliable staff member of whom there had been no complaints.

  No complaints! What of the students who’d just been on the program?

  Dr. Cory said, twisting her mouth in a semblance of a placating smile, “Well. We never knew.”

  And would Zallman continue to teach at Skatskill Day?

  “Mr. Zallman has been suspended with pay for the time being.”

  His first, furious thought was I will sue.

  His second, more reasonable thought was I must plead my case.