by Beth Neff
Nancy Bobbitt glances at Ellie but her real interest is in Lauren. “Is this true, Lauren?”
“I had to. How else was I to get the evidence?”
“Evidence for what, Lauren? What were you trying to prove?”
“That they’re . . . lesbians. That they’re depraved and shouldn’t be allowed to—”
Nancy Bobbitt interrupts. “Lauren, we’ve been through this. Being lesbians is not what you’ve charged these women with. You have charged them with sexual harassment. It isn’t the same thing, not even close.”
“But I had to. Otherwise no one would have believed me—”
“You had to what? Prove that they are lesbians?”
“Yes!”
“Lauren, were you sexually harassed?”
“I . . .”
“Lauren. I need you to answer the question. Were you sexually harassed by anyone on this property, anyone involved in this program?”
“I could have been. Why can’t you see? It doesn’t matter. They . . . she . . .” She turns her head sharply to face Ellie. “She just kept trying to make us talk about everything all the time. I was suffocating. The others, they . . . they . . . I don’t know, just all became part of it, like going along with it all, and I couldn’t, I didn’t want to, and then it was just like they were all on the inside of it and I was on the outside and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I thought someone should know who they really are, that they should have to get in trouble for it. I didn’t think I should be the one always getting hurt by everything. . . .”
When Lauren bends at the waist to hide her face in her hands, Tracy Hughes slides forward on her chair, starts to get up, and then thinks better of it. No one speaks until Nancy Bobbitt says, “Lauren, were you sexually harassed by Grace Van Heusen?”
Lauren shakes her head. “No, but . . .”
Nancy interrupts. “Were the accusations in your complaint true?”
Lauren lifts her head, sits up straighter, and folds her arms across her chest.
“No, but . . . I won’t stay here. I’m not going to withdraw my complaint if you make me stay here.”
Nancy Bobbitt takes a long breath, releases it slowly.
“All right. We’ll see what we can do.” She studies Lauren for a long moment, looks away. “Anything else you need to share with us right now?”
“I just want to know what will happen now, how you’re going to get me out.”
“We will begin a review of your placement immediately, but it’s still going to take a while. Whether you withdraw your complaint or not, your placement will still have to go before a judge, and that takes time. Once lawyers get involved, things get a little complicated.”
“Why can’t I just go home until they decide? Can I talk to my parents?”
Nancy hesitates, bites her lip. “Again, we’ll see what we can do. For now, though, this is where you’ll have to be. We’re all committed to ensuring that you won’t be mistreated.”
Lauren heaves a deep sigh. “Little late for that.”
LAUREN HAS GONE up to her room, but everyone else has stayed glued to her seat. Nancy Bobbitt is speaking directly to Ellie when she says, “As long as Lauren’s family attorney is satisfied with our investigation, which I’m confident he will be, Lauren’s placement hearing will not involve any reference to this complaint, and there will be no further investigation or review. No one from your program will need to appear at the placement hearing unless you want to argue that Lauren should remain in your custody.”
“No.”
“Are there . . . issues with any of the other girls”—and she glances at Sarah—“that you feel the need to discuss?”
Ellie offers a grim smile. “Nothing that hasn’t already been addressed in my reports.”
“All right. Anything else you’d like to add? Any questions?”
“Not that I can think of.”
Nancy nods curtly, then reaches over and snaps off a small audio recorder on the table that Sarah saw when she first came in but had forgotten about. Somehow, the movement startles her, and she becomes nervous all over again. Nancy bends forward to see around the recording woman sitting beside her and nods to Sandra Preston.
Sandra straightens her back and leans toward Ellie in a way that suggests that the real business is just beginning. “Okay, what about Jenna?”
Sarah can appreciate that they are keeping the issues separate, isn’t sure if that is for Ellie’s benefit or theirs.
Sandra continues. “She’s not here.” It’s a statement.
“No.”
“Lauren told us she was gone when we asked her to send Jenna in after her interview.”
Ellie nods but says nothing other than, “I see.”
“What exactly does ‘gone’ mean?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. She took her backpack and some clothes but left some things here, too.” Sandra appears to be waiting so Ellie continues. “I guess this thing just completely freaked her out.”
“So, she’s gone? You don’t know where she is?”
“No, but I haven’t had a chance to figure it out. She didn’t take all of her stuff. She might even still be around here somewhere.”
“But you don’t think she is?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Any particular reason why it would ‘freak her out’ as you say, more than one of the other girls?”
The question irritates Sarah but she’s not quite sure why. Suddenly, she just wants them to leave, needs them to go so they can find Jenna. Despite the extreme heat in the room, she can feel goose bumps popping up on her arms and clamps her hands together a little tighter. Why Jenna? That was the question. Sarah is both anxious and terrified to hear how Ellie will explain it.
“Extreme distrust of authority? A growing loyalty to us and this program and a still-immature ability to find constructive outlets for her fears and frustrations? Limited impulse control? Jenna has a chance here. A good chance. She’s still angry—who wouldn’t be?—but she is adjusting well to the program, making connections with us and the other girls. We just need a little time to sort it out. If we overreact, it will just erase everything we’ve accomplished.”
Sandra’s eyes have narrowed a bit, and Sarah sees Ellie turn away. Ellie seems to be struggling, trying to decide what approach to take. Sarah isn’t surprised when the conciliatory child wins out, at least on the surface.
“Please give me some time.”
Nancy is trying to look like she’s not hearing the conversation, may even be considering stepping out of the room. The recorder has closed her laptop but is sitting perfectly still. Sandra seems anxious to wrap it up, too, but Sarah can tell she is wanting to maintain an aura of authority, feels like Ellie has gotten off easy once already today. Maureen and Tracy are completely silent, haven’t uttered a word since they entered the room, and Sarah wonders if either of them has spoken at all since they stepped into this house. Maureen is Jenna’s caseworker, and Sarah does notice Sandra exchanging a quick glance with her before speaking again.
Sandra’s tone is slightly reproachful when she says, “The rules are quite clear. Any serious violation of the privilege of participating in this program requires revocation of that privilege. Jenna’s absence, however brief it may turn out to be, constitutes such a violation. At the same time”—and her voice falters ever so slightly—“I can clearly see the relationship between . . . these events . . . and Jenna’s behavior. Unfortunately, that does not allow me to overlook it. If, for some reason, she is back here while I’m still in my office today, say, by”—and she peers at her watch—“four thirty, I will consider—consider—reviewing the situation. Otherwise, Ms. Detweiller here and a probation officer will be at your door at nine a.m. tomorrow to either take Jenna into custody or involve the authorities in locatin
g her. Though it may be difficult to see right now, this is for everyone’s benefit, yours included, to preserve the . . . integrity . . . of your program.”
“And Jenna’s?”
“And Jenna’s,” Sandra says firmly, though she is clearly aware that she is purposely misunderstanding Ellie’s meaning. “Continuing here when she believes it is her prerogative to leave at will does not serve either our purposes as her custodian or the purposes of the court. This is a clear violation of rules and the consequences are stated specifically in your contract. I’m sorry, Ellie, but Jenna will have to go back to detention. She can’t just come and go as she wishes.”
“That just seems awfully harsh to me.”
“And it will be even more harsh if it’s discovered that we overlooked a violation of this degree and you get your program shut down. Just get her back here, and maybe we won’t have to worry about any of it.”
EVEN THOUGH IT seems like a waste of time, they start on the land. Simply, they have no other idea where to look.
It’s after two before they get started, close to three when they all meet back on the porch, having covered every inch of the property, inside every building, throughout the house and the gardens and the woods, around the marsh and over the hill to the back line, within sight of the neighbor’s barn and silo. Lauren has not come out of her room, and that fact has barely been acknowledged. Donna took her lunch, tells them she set it in the hallway when Lauren didn’t come to the door. Sarah is finding it hard to care.
Ellie tells them she is going to take the truck toward town. Sarah would like to go along, but Ellie doesn’t invite anyone. She thinks that Jenna couldn’t have gotten very far on a bicycle, but then realizes that none of them knows how long she has been gone, what direction she may have headed, anything at all about where she might be going. Ellie asks each of them for their ideas about where to look but has, it seems to Sarah, completely run out of enthusiasm, either sincere or feigned. Ellie nods her head with each suggestion—the co-op and the coffee shop in case Jenna stopped for food, Barbara Morgan’s house in case she is looking for Grace or thought she’d receive a kind welcome there, the bus depot—but clearly has little confidence in the trip. Still, Sarah thinks a little testily, it’s better than nothing and going anywhere is far better than staying put.
The waiting now is worse than it was for the interviews, which Sarah is having trouble believing happened earlier in this same day. Though she feels saturated, ready to burst with all that has been going on, she doesn’t really want to talk to anyone. Instead, Sarah tries to read, can’t concentrate. She would head to the marsh out back, but she’s afraid she’ll miss Ellie’s return, so she just sits at the dining room table playing game after game of solitaire, cheating whenever the cards don’t go her way.
It is well after seven when Ellie gets back. Though glad to see her, Sarah feels shaken and irritable when she climbs out of the truck alone. She knows it’s stupid to have expected anything yet finds herself crushed with disappointment, the last star in the night sky twinkling out to the dawn of execution day. Though the hour has long since passed when Ellie would have been able to save Jenna from a detention center, she had still hoped Ellie would be able to save them all from the horrors of a girl-hunt. She can’t get past the sinking sensation that threatens to lure her back to a place she hasn’t visited for a while, that she hoped she’d never see. Even so, as Sarah fights with an ancient self, with a story line she struggles to discard, she can’t keep herself from watching the road, checking over and over again to see if Jenna might just turn into the driveway, pedaling steadily until she reaches Sarah waiting like an old grandmother on the porch.
AFTER A SUPPER of cold leftovers that no one eats, Cassie decides to walk back to the river. A slight breeze has picked up, making it seem cooler outdoors even though the temperature is still high. She cuts into the woods ahead of the bridge, settles on the downed sycamore trunk, and focuses her eyes on the river. It’s nice to be outside where her anxiety feels less pressing, the weight of it slightly less heavy than in the house.
Cassie has barely settled into her own thoughts when movement and a rustling sound draw her attention to the big sycamore beside the river, and she is startled by a squirrel as it comes barreling out of the back side with something in its mouth that looks a little like a cracker. Cassie gets up to investigate, the squirrel long gone, but her curiosity piqued. She can’t see anything from the top so she drops down the bank and peers inside the hollow on the river side. Dangling from a shelf-like protrusion above her head is a string with a pencil attached to it. She tentatively reaches her hand up to where the string emerges and grasps a small notebook, pieces of paper stapled together, and pulls it out. She reaches in again, feels a cluster of shredded aluminum foil that must have held the crackers and the spine of what turns out to be a book. She lays it on the bank and climbs up, brushes her palms and knees off, then picks up the book and turns it over. Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. She stands there, motionless for a moment, then clutches it to her side as she begins to run.
IT’S NOT QUITE dark yet but Cassie doesn’t care if they see her. She’s not sneaking away, she’s on a mission. She’s afraid she won’t remember how, but the keys are dangling right there in the ignition and when she turns them, the truck roars to life, forcing Cassie to quickly yank her foot off the accelerator. She experiments with moving forward and braking a couple of times before she presses steadily down and steers out into the road.
Cassie doesn’t need a map. She has a picture of the river in her mind, and though she’s never driven on these roads before, the basic direction she needs to head is obvious. She decides to travel south first, to the Weston Dam because it is closer but after parking in the small deserted lot and investigating the only accessible side of the building, Cassie can see there’s no one there. She picks her way carefully over the broken beer bottles and Styrofoam cups that litter the short drive, worried what she’ll confront at Somerset since it will be completely dark there by the time she arrives.
It is nineteen miles to the Somerset Dam, and during the drive, Cassie goes over and over in her mind the conversation she had with Jenna, the connection to the dam with Jenna’s mother and the book about Turtle and the accident she witnesses. Though Cassie discovers that she’s not quite as confident about finding Jenna at one of the dams as she was when she first found the book, she doesn’t have a better idea, and this is far preferable to doing nothing. When her thoughts start to wander toward anxiety about Ellie’s reaction to Cassie taking the truck, she prunes the idea away like a faded rose blossom and quickly discards it as if the thorns might puncture her resolve.
She is surprised by how easily the driving comes back to her, how competent and even powerful she feels behind the wheel, the low hum and steady progress a kind of soothing comfort. She meets only a couple of cars, the few that race up behind her simply pulling around since Cassie is barely moving by their standards at what seems to her a very reasonable fifty miles per hour. The trip takes less time than she expected, and when she crosses the river bridge just yards from the turnoff for the dam, she immediately grips the steering wheel with both hands and slows to a crawl, the front tires bumping off the road into the deep dip of the long lane leading back to the power plant.
Cassie thinks that in the wan light of the rising moon, everything looks much like it must have fifty or more years ago. She has brought a flashlight, but she doesn’t turn it on right away, can see well enough to follow the leveed land with the river on one side and the canal on the other. As she approaches, Cassie can hear the fall of water echoing off the concrete and brick of the power plant, begins to make out the high windows of the building, arranged in an arching pattern. She sees that they are all broken out on the levee side and that tall grass has grown up around the foundation, giving the crumbling brick wall the eerie appearance of an oversize graveyard monument. There is no d
oor on any of the three sides she can see, and she stands helplessly for a moment, then retraces the perimeter of the building without finding an entrance. Finally, she moves carefully toward the edge of the spillway and shines her light on what appears to be a concrete abutment. There, across a narrow plank bridge, angling over the corner of the spillway, leans a bicycle beside a narrow door.
Cassie struggles to turn the flashlight back off and, in her nervousness, nearly drops it into the rushing water below, finally deciding to leave it on. She takes a deep breath and watches her feet as she inches her way across the plank, pushes open the door, and bends to enter. At first she sees nothing, is scanning the beam of her light around the large empty space when it lands on a dark mound in the corner, a mound that is now stirring in response to the squeaking of the hinges, is sitting up and shielding her eyes from the light, and Cassie nearly drops the flashlight again as she rushes across the expanse of concrete to get to Jenna’s side.
CASSIE’S ARMS ARE around Jenna almost before she has a chance to recognize who has come in the door. After a long moment in which the collar of Jenna’s T-shirt becomes damp with Cassie’s tears, Jenna gently disengages herself and pats the blanket beside her, carefully makes a show of spreading it out to make a place for Cassie to sit. Cassie drops to her knees, now feeling a little shy, worried that Jenna will not want her here, will have wished not to be found.
Cassie lays the flashlight unobtrusively at her side but leaves it on, the fading yellow light throwing shadowed ghosts against the wall and exaggerating the darkness around them as if they are huddled around a campfire. She had been bursting to tell Jenna all the news, to relieve her from any burden of guilt she might be carrying, but finds that she is suddenly tongue-tied by what may be her complete misjudgment of the situation, a failure to recognize, once again, the complexities of the world everyone but her seems to live in.