It was hard for her to focus during the Meeting. When she looked around, it seemed a lot of the others—so-called landlords and their invisible child-tenants—were similarly bewildered. One of them, called Dabba Doo, looked to be somewhere in his sixties. He had a quirky sense of humor and wore a tweed suit without shoes. Another was a blond girl named Violet, an absolute stunner. Most were well-dressed, except for a wiry black fellow in sweatpants; apparently, he was a yoga teacher. During the Meeting, some of the guests burst into tears without provocation, while others simply doodled on their Guides. Violet and the yogi peppered the Porter with questions that seemed either to make great sense or no sense at all. Annie was patient and motherly, occasionally dispensing hugs and Kleenex to the frustrated and distraught.
At Meeting’s end, everyone stood and held hands for the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Lydia had been to a few AA meetings with alcoholic friends, but that was years ago. She wondered how she could have known the prayer so well. It was an easy one, but easy to stumble over too—maybe it was the effect of saying it en masse. Before Annie walked Lydia to her car, they said their goodbyes to Bumble as he restored order to the room.
Once outside, the Porter said, “I didn’t expect you so soon.”
Lydia forgot about the list of questions she’d prepared; suddenly, all of them seemed to evaporate.
“I’m not the best artist but I hope you liked the unicorn,” said Annie.
“Oh my God, I loved it!” she exclaimed.
“Things will become clearer—you’ll be surprised how quickly that will happen. But at first, it’s a bit of a struggle. Just try not to think that much. Trust—that everything is as it should be. Turn your head off! Do you think you can do that, Maya?” She really didn’t know what Annie meant but said yes. “And I know it’s confusing but I like to call the children by their birth names, not the names of their landlords. It seems to help with the . . . well, it just seems to help.” Annie saw that along with Maya’s Guide, she was clutching the one with Troy’s name; Lydia couldn’t remember having picked it up. Annie took it from her hand and said, “He’ll be at the next one—the boys are always a little bit slower to get here than the girls. It’s best he take it from the chair himself, when he comes.”
Lydia didn’t know what she meant. She didn’t know what any of it meant but right then tried to turn off her head, as the Porter had advised.
“Do you know who he is yet?” asked Annie, with that lovely smile. “Do you know who Daniel is?”
“I don’t even know who I am!” she answered, bursting into hysterical giggles.
Annie delighted in that and giggled along. “Good Lord. That is the truest and most charming thing!”
“Am I Maya or Lydia?” she asked, solemnly.
“A little of both,” said Annie. She hugged her close. “Don’t worry—I’m afraid I don’t know who I am either! But I’ve turned my head off so long, I don’t need to know. Not anymore. I’m just . . . grateful. And you will be too. Be patient.”
Lydia got in her car and rolled down the window.
Annie leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I love you,” she said. “I really do, you know.”
“I love you too,” said Lydia—the first thing all night she was certain of.
3.
Daniel was in his PJs, fast asleep on the couch, when she got home.
The TV was on mute. He’d been watching an old episode of The Rifleman. Lydia sat down next to him, overwhelmed with the night’s experience, overwhelmed by love. She closed her eyes and fell right to sleep. It was the first time since she had died that her sleep was dreamless.
No anguish, no whoosh—no train.
When Daniel awakened, he was happy to see her beside him. His heart leapt within as he kissed the crown of her head. The mouth of her purse gaped open and he plucked out the Guide. He saw Maya written on its cover and was puzzled.
He opened it to the first page:
Rule Number One: Be GOOD to your NEW BODY!!! Treat it with RESPECT and it will RETURN the favor!!!
He wasn’t all that interested; he was nearly as tired as she.
He stuffed it back in her purse.
Lydia let him sleepwalk her to the bedroom, where he changed her into pajamas that were dotted with little lambs. He tucked them both in; with eyes still closed, she whimpered. He knew what she wanted. He got out of bed to retrieve the stuffed animal that had fallen to the floor. He put it in her arms and she held it to her body, smiling in her sleep.
He held her as tightly as she did the unicorn.
“Sister,” said Daniel beneath his breath, though their relationship’s provenance had yet to surface in his consciousness. He joined her in sleep and was soon in his compartment on the train. A woman came with a tray of toy soldiers, French fries and a milkshake. She said they’d almost arrived at the station and told him to remember an address.
Boys were better at memorizing things.
HONEYCHILE
1.
That Saturday, while others his age were goofing or loitering, one boy knew exactly what he was up to. He was biking to meet a friend at the Cherry Street Mall in Mount Clemens to look at new video games—his real plan being to sneak a peek in the department store window at new fashions for ladies. That’s what he wanted to be: a designer of beautiful clothes for women. A few Christmases ago, his mother got him a subscription to W, and he had stacks of them at home.
Winston Collins was eleven years old.
He wore gel in a shock of green hair (did the dye job himself) and prescription sunglasses with crazy lime frames, a birthday gift from Mom.
Favorite show: Project Runway. On the walls of his room were pages clipped from magazines featuring his Dream Team: Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne, Kaia Gerber. Winston was old-school. Karl Lagerfeld was his icon and the boy-ingenue obsessed about meeting him one day, was certain that he would.
Wrong about that.
Two thousand children go missing each day. The number abducted by strangers is more than a hundred a year.
Most, like Winston, are killed within twenty-four hours.
The thirty-seven-year-old woman sported glasses that, unlike her victim, lent a serious big-box shopper look. She was pregnant, so it was easy to lure him to the minivan—she asked for help with a package, just like Buffalo Bill did with the senator’s daughter in her husband’s favorite movie, The Silence of the Lambs. Laverne was in charge of the binding and gagging (not her forte, which she’d proven time and again), but hers was not to reason why; she did what her man ordered or suffered the consequences.
From Mount Clemens it was twenty-five minutes plumb north to the three-acre home in Wolcott Mills (bought four years ago at auction with a loan from her father-in-law). She enjoyed living in the unincorporated village, with its thickets of elms and tulip trees that called back her childhood. She was house-proud; it was the first place anyone in her family had ever owned.
Her husband carried him down to the rumpus room. (He was wrapped in a carpet by then.) After the Mister left, Laverne looked in on the panicked, wriggling body while she vacuumed, a little ritual that calmed her nerves. When Winston surfaced from the chloroform haze, he choked on the gag and immediately had the urge to vomit; for that very reason, she had been schooled to closely supervise their guests, because he didn’t want anyone aspirating and dying before their time. The young fashion maven’s ears were stopped with hot wax, another predilection of her husband’s that she never “got.” The pain was grotesque and strange—parts of his body had been burned—and a regressive voice inside said, Mama I skairt to be kilt. Yet somehow he still conjured the strains of “Rise.” Winston taught the song to his mom and they made a lip-synch duet for YouTube that he
thought was as good as anything Emma Stone did on Jimmy Fallon. Well, almost.
There it was: Katy Perry’s pellucid voice ringing You’re out of time, but still I rise throughout the room and the world itself, belting it out like a private concert for him alone.
When her man finally came home there was a bit of disruption—Laverne had already removed the gag because the boy “wasn’t breathing right,” which pissed him off. He smacked her to the ground, bloodying her nose. She couldn’t understand why, because she was only doing what he had told her to under those particular circumstances. But he didn’t hit her as hard as he used to, back in the time before she was in the family way.
He turned his attention to Winston. To have a prepackaged quarry “dressed” and waiting for him was the most exciting thing, like a feast after the hunt. He usually left them in his wife’s care while he made a trip to the Laundromat (he had his rituals too), to mentally prepare. The anticipation gave him butterflies that soon became hawks, the skies of his head darkening with them, and when he was ready to feed he made Laverne turn her body to the wall like the kids in his other favorite movie, The Blair Witch Project, while he attended to the visitor, impaling him the same way he did his wife, on this occasion timing his release to Winston’s final breaths. He liked keeping them alive for a week or so but sometimes it didn’t work out that way, so he kept them dead.
The last thing Winston saw was the bad man’s T-shirt with the naked woman and huge angel wings.
He thought of Katy, whose voice he heard till the end.
* * *
• • •
That night he took Laverne to the Sirloin House, close to where his father lived (though he never invited the old man along), a postmortem celebration that she always looked forward to. For a few hours anyway, she relished the loosening of her master’s reins. This is the real him, she told herself. Funny, sweet, romantic. It was a perfect moment for Laverne to begin another ritual: erasing from memory the details of what she—they—had done. Still, she wouldn’t have had it any other way, because how dull would her life be without the spice of her man’s darkness? He was the only one who ever knew about her dark places, without her having to say a word, and she cherished him for that. On those victorious nights, dining out like a normal couple, there was even laughter, which almost never occurred in the house. (She didn’t get around much anymore.) She especially looked forward to steak and ice cream because at home, her diet was strictly regulated. He always left the server a big tip. This time the waitress shook both their hands and nearly wept for the random acts of kindness in the world. Laverne glowed with pride.
She wasn’t wild about the long, hot shower he always made her take before such dinners. It scalded. He stood by the open glass door, keeping a close eye. He wanted to make sure that she didn’t adjust the temperature. She thought it was silly, standing there like that, because why would she ever go against him? She had a mischievous streak and, when he wasn’t looking, angled her body so less of the hot water fell on her—Laverne’s way of getting one over on her man. But she liked that he stood there, she really did. There was something protective about it. She felt extra-special, extra-loved. She was his wife and his woman.
He never showered after his business was done. Sometimes he didn’t wash for a whole week, which she wasn’t wild about either. There were so many smells on him. But that was his way. And he never laundered his “executioner” shirts: Mötley Crüe, Black Sabbath, Metallica. There were five of them that he kept in a secret drawer.
Now there were six.
2.
Suppertime.
A half hour’s bike ride away from the Cherry Street Mall, Honeychile—aka Renée “Honeychile” Devonshire, née Matlock—had been partying with friends from Mount Clemens High (“Home of the Battling Bathers”) on her Not So Sweet Fourteenth. That’s what she called it on her Evites.
The Devonshires, Harold and Rayanne, adopted her at ten years old, and she was their full-on miracle girl. How was it that no one had wanted her until they swooped in? That’s what Rayanne asked herself all through the eighteen months before she was legally theirs. Our child. It was fate that we got her, said levelheaded Harold. How could no one have seen the beautiful soul behind the health issues? Each day, Rayanne’s heart gurgled like a summer fountain over the eccentric, willowy child with the cartoon body and sweet, funny mouth, the infectious laugh and piercing green eyes. Harold and Rayanne spent ten years trying to have a kid—ten years!—and at forty-six, she decided: enough. She was fifty now and realized that Honeychile had saved her, in more ways than she could ever have imagined. The pride and joy, as they used to say, of Rayanne’s life.
Honeychile had cleidocranial dysplasia, the same thing as the boy on their daughter’s favorite show, Stranger Things. She was five feet tall, with shoulders that were almost nonexistent. The Devonshires had her extra teeth pulled so the adult ones could arrive without being mobbed. Rayanne told her husband that she looked just like the young Christina Ricci, but Harold insisted her birth mother had to have been Amy Sedaris. (Harold was wry and bookish and loved all the Sedarises.) She had asthma, which the doctors said was also genetic, but Rayanne blamed her other troubles—quote-unquote behavioral stuff—on the biological mom, “that horrible Matlock woman,” a bona fide crackhead, reprobate and God knew what else. Honeychile could get beyond moody and one time physically lashed out; when Harold sternly told her that would not be tolerated, she was genuinely remorseful and never did it again. Rayanne loved that about their daughter; that she could listen and learn. Still, they hoped she wouldn’t get too crazy when her period started. Rayanne didn’t think it was funny when Harold quipped, “Hope not. You remember that movie Carrie, don’t you?”
But oh, this one! exulted Rayanne. She was an armful but was worth it. And holy shit is she ever funny and smart, and all heart too. One of those “unforgettable characters” that you’re blessed to meet in this life.
“Ma-ma? Pa-pa?” she said, in her best-worst posh British accent. All her girlfriends had left except for her BFF, Zelda, who was lounging upstairs. They were having a sleepover. Honeychile ceremonially gathered her parents in the den, her favorite place, where she liked to read thriller-mysteries like The Light Between Oceans. “I have something for you,” she said. She brought out a box that was as beautifully wrapped as one of her birthday gifts.
“Sugar, you can’t be giving us a present,” said Rayanne. “It’s your birthday!”
Honeychile protested with a crazy-funny version of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To”—oh, this girl, this girl! Rayanne (because she was Rayanne) was already shedding a tear, which was Harold’s cue to step in. As he grabbed the gift, the birthday girl took the opportunity to admonish. “First Rule of Fight Club when given a present? You do not say no to the present! Second Rule of Fight Club when given a present? You do not say no to the present!”
He tore off the paper, revealing a snow globe. On closer inspection, they saw what she’d done. The small figure of a girl was being sandwich-hugged by the artful representations of Harold and Rayanne. They held it to the light and stared in wonder—the sculptures had their exact faces. “I worked on it after school for, like, a month. Do you think they look like us?”
“Yes,” said Harold. “It’s amazing.”
Rayanne couldn’t even speak.
Honeychile was pleased. “I just wanted to give you something special because of everything you’ve given me.” Her mom was crying but the tears came out in a weird, gloopy string of giggles that made everyone laugh. “I was going to tell you that I actually found my birth parents and was leaving tonight—but that would have been too mean!”
“Well, I’m glad a cooler head prevailed,” said Harold.
Honeychile’s humor could have a dark streak. Rayanne smiled and let it slide, focusing on the globe. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. �
��Thank you, dearest, dearest daughter.”
“Time for snow globe reenactment!” said Honeychile.
She took the gift, dramatically planted herself in the middle of the den and waited for them to join her. Then she held the globe aloft in her hand, its snowflakes flurrying over the tiny figures within, as the three of them imitated the group hug.
“See?” she said. “Are we not the adoption poster family of all time?”
3.
The walls were covered with photomontages of Honeychile’s favorites: Bowie, Pink, Nick Cave.
Zelda was poring over Instagram.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Roxanne took, like, ten thousand pictures of your party.”
“Did you see what she was wearing?” said Honeychile.
“She was totally dressed like a slut!”
“I know. I don’t think she left her house like that—she probably changed in the bushes. Even my dad said something.”
“Oh my God, I heard him! He told her to put on her sweater.”
“There weren’t even any boys.”
“Roxanne didn’t mind. I think she’s totally found her Inner Dyke.”
“Really?” said Honeychile.
Zelda lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Jasmine told me something but you cannot tell anyone.”
A Guide for Murdered Children Page 6