by Peter Israel
I pour him a glass of milk, set it before him. Averting my head, I dry my eyes. I’m aware of the trembling in my lips, my aching throat.
For God’s sake, what’s happening to me? He’s home! My son is home!
He doesn’t touch the milk.
“What’s wrong, darling? What is it? I thought you said you were thirsty.”
“Don’t want milk.”
“Okay, what can I get you?”
“Jutesy,” he says.
The familiar word, the same old Justin word. I find a bottle of apple juice in the refrigerator. Hands shaking, I pour him a large glass, set it in front of him.
He doesn’t touch it.
“Please, Justin, I—”
“Box,” he says.
“A box?”
“Jutesy in a box.”
God, he wants it in a box. I fling open the tall cupboard, rummage in the shelves, find one of his little three-packs. It’s apple and cranberry mixed. Please God, let that be all right. I tear at the cardboard, have trouble getting the cellophane off the damn straw, finally punch it into the hole.
At last he sips.
“Who brought you here, Justin darling? Please tell Momma. Who was it who brought you home just now?”
No answer.
“It wasn’t Harriet, was it? It couldn’t have been Harriet.”
He shakes his head.
“Then who, Justin?”
“The oarlock.”
“Who? The what?”
“Oarlock,” he repeats.
Oh my God.
“What’s an oarlock?”
“A man ’itch.”
“You mean a male witch? A warlock?”
He nods, sipping.
“But who is he? What’s his name? Do you know his name?”
He shakes his head.
“But where were you? Where have you been all this time?”
“Rocket car,” he says. “The dungeon.”
“The dungeon?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What dungeon?”
My God, I think, but that is Harriet! Harriet and all that medieval claptrap she filled his head with! Goddamn her, goddamn her!
I try to question him further, get nowhere. He’s emptied the juice box. I tear free another, set it up for him, but he doesn’t touch it.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat, darling? A turkey sandwich? I don’t know what else there is. Would you like some soup?”
He shakes his head.
It flusters me. I can’t help it. I want to tell him I’ve been worried sick, scared to death, but how can I tell him things like that? I want to ask him what’s wrong, but dare I? Instead, I punch out the pediatrician’s number on the wall phone.
I give the answering service my name, number, say I want to talk to Braden urgently. The operator says Dr. Braden’s not on call tonight, it’s Dr. Felici. I know Felici, a woman about my age who’s second fiddle in the practice, but I want Ray Braden!
“Who’s the patient, please?”
“Just tell him it’s Justin Coffey, my son. He’ll understand. It’s an emergency.”
“How old is the patient, please?”
“What difference does it make how old he is? Just tell him it’s Justin Coffey! It’s an emergency, he knows the whole story! And I don’t want Felici, I want Dr. Braden!”
I hang up. I ask Justin if he doesn’t want a quick shower? He shakes his head. Or a tub bath, at least a change into fresh clothes? Pajamas? No. And when I hug him again, and even though I’m babbling again, telling him all over again how thrilled I am that he’s home, so thankful—and I feel again the great swell of emotion in me, the ache in my throat—it’s not that he resists, but somehow it’s worse than if he did. Totally without affect. He’s like a noodle, a bag of bones.
Then I think of Zoe. God, how long have I left her alone?
“Please come with me, Justin. Come upstairs now. There’s someone upstairs I’m very anxious for you to meet.”
But why is my voice suddenly so formal?
I hold out my arms to him. Instead, he slips off the stool. I take his hand in mine.
Together, we go up to the second floor, but he breaks away from me on the landing. One minute he’s holding my hand, the next he’s headed up the stairs toward the third floor.
“Justin, where are you going?”
No answer.
I don’t understand. Or rather I do, in a wounding flash, but can’t face it. I want to shout at him—Justin, for God’s sake, it’s Mommy, you’re home, don’t you understand? Instead, I switch on the third-floor landing light from below and climb after him. But I stop short of the top step. I haven’t been up there myself since it happened.
I see the light go on in Harriet’s room, then off. Then he emerges. I watch him cross to his room, light on, off. Then back onto the landing, his dark eyes on me.
“Her not here,” he says.
“Who’s not here?”
“’arrit.”
“No, of course she’s not, darling,” fighting for calm in my voice. “You were the last one to see her. Was she with you these last few days?”
No answer and, worse, no expression on his face. And the questions come pouring out of me.
“Who brought you home, darling? Tell Momma. You have to tell Momma. Where have you been? Was Harriet with you the whole time? Were you alone or were there men too? Where did they take you? Did anybody hurt you? What happened at the mall, Saturday? Do you remember that? The restaurant? The Greenhouse? We were there before, remember? Your momma came to get you, but the man had already taken you away. Who was he, Justin? You’ve got to tell Momma.”
But he is so distant, so uncommunicative, that I flood with despair.
Why is he so bewildered? Disoriented?
Is it me? Or did they do something to him?
9 January
I pass a terrible night. I don’t know where to find Larry. By the time he comes home, I’m still awake. I’ve put Justin in my bed with all his clothes on. I beg Larry not to disturb him, but he insists on picking him up, the blankets with him, and he’s shouting something like “Hey, Tiger, it’s Daddy! Oh my God, Justie! Welcome home!,” parading Justin around the room in his arms. And Justin does come half-awake, at least his eyes open, but it’s as though he doesn’t know where he is, and then his head nods forward again onto Larry’s shoulder.
Larry turns to me. “God, Georgie, what’s wrong with him?” Alarm in his voice.
“Wrong? What do you mean, what’s wrong? Can’t you see he’s exhausted?”
I take Justin from him. While I lay him back down on the bed, tucking him in, Larry talks exuberantly at me. Apparently he’s had a “hallucinating” night, went a little haywire, something about Penzil, Leon Gamble, that he’d thought they were reneging. But then—what is it? some phone call?—he found out that Justie was already home, and he thinks he made it from the Lincoln Tunnel inside of twenty minutes.
It’s not in me to care. Clearly he wants to talk about it, find out what happened, celebrate, sing and dance for all I know, but I plead exhaustion too. I tell him I’ve an early appointment with Braden in the morning. He wants to know why. Just a precaution, I say. Just to make sure Justin’s okay physically. Good idea, he says. Finally he’s gone, and I lie down next to Justin, sheltering him, half-cuddling him. But the tears come again, I’m helpless to stop them, and then I’m wide awake. Up again. Standing in the dark, watching over my children. In the end, I’m able to doze fitfully on the chaise longue, but if I get up once to hover over them, it’s a dozen times, and every time I drop off to sleep, I jerk awake within minutes, tormented by nightmares I can’t begin to describe.
We’re off to Braden’s office, by special dispensation, at seven forty-five. At the last second, I realize I’ve nobody to leave Zoe with. Larry is still asleep. I decide to take her with us. I lock her carrier into the backseat, but this leaves no car seat for Justin. (Of course not! Didn’t Harri
et take his?) But I can’t put a normal seat belt across him, he’s still too little. In the end, I stick him next to me, without a seat belt, and creep through St. George, one hand poised to grab him.
Ray Braden is big, paunchy, bald, gruff, fortyish. He has six children of his own, two Mercedeses, and a mammoth practice. Normally his waiting room is jammed, but we’re there ahead of the nurses, and the doctor greets us alone, in a rugby shirt and jeans.
“Hey there, Chief,” he booms at Justin. “Welcome home. What do you think of this kid sister of yours? Isn’t she a doll?”
No answer from Justin. He endures the examination with the same docile stoicism as last night, and when the needle punctures his arm for blood, he doesn’t cry out, doesn’t so much as wince.
I wince for him.
“Hey, you a Pittsburgh Steelers fan?” Braden asks.
I explain, embarrassed, that that’s what Justin was wearing when he came home, and I haven’t been able to get it off his back.
“But even a Steeler has to get his uniform cleaned between games, doesn’t he?” No answer. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Chief. I’m putting you on the D.L. for two weeks, do you know what the D.L. is?”
Justin shakes his head.
“It’s the Disabled List, for guys who get hurt on the field. Two weeks for you. I want you eating, sleeping, drinking your milk, taking it easy. Then I’ll check you out again, and chances are we’ll have you back in action in time for the Super Bowl, okay?”
We escort Justin out to the playroom and stand in the doorway. I’m holding Zoe in my arms.
“He seems basically none the worse for wear, Georgia,” Braden says to me. “A little tired. We’ll see what the blood workup gives, but I don’t expect to find anything.”
I stare at him, confused.
“For God’s sake,” I manage, “it’s not as though he’s been sent home from school with a cold! He’s been gone for three weeks! God knows what he’s been through, I can’t get him to talk to me about it, but just look at him! Are you telling me that’s normal?”
“I’m only an amateur psychologist,” Braden says, “but I’d say give him time. Keep him quiet, rest and relaxation, fatten him up as much as you can. Is he taking vitamins?”
“Vitamins?” I blurt out. “Well, yes. At least he was.”
“Give him vitamins. And while I’m prescribing, Momma, I’d say that if anybody ought to be on the D.L., it’s you. Two weeks of R&R for you too, then bring him in again and let me take another look.”
Larry’s up by the time we get home. I barely have time to tell him what Braden said when, a few minutes later, Joe Penzil arrives.
I don’t understand. Isn’t he one of them?
“I asked Joe to come over,” Larry explains. “In a little while, this place is going to be crawling with police, the media too, probably. We’re going to need all the help we can get.” He feels compelled to explain everything now, how he was half-crazed when he left me yesterday, because the twenty-four hours were up and he’d thought they were reneging on him, and how he went on a rampage in New York, he’d even assaulted Leon Gamble. “But it’s all over now,” he says. “I don’t give a shit, Georgie. We’ve got our kid back, that’s all that counts.”
At this, he picks Justin up in his arms, tousles his hair, tries to get a rise out of him. But my son, I notice, reacts to his father with no more emotion than he’s shown toward me.
“They’re going to want to know what happened, Georgie,” Joe Penzil says to me. “The police in particular.”
I turn to him. He fixes me with his dark-eyed stare. I’ve known him for years, have always looked on him as Larry’s friend, of course, but mine too. Now that’s all gone.
“Then maybe you’d better explain to me first what did happen,” I say acidly to him.
“As far as you’re concerned,” he replies, “it’s exactly what you experienced. Nothing more.”
“Meaning what?”
“You tell us. Tell us what happened here last night.”
He questions me on the details. By this time, we’ve moved into the living room. I realize that Joe’s rehearsing me, and I resent it. Nonetheless I give him the details: the doorbell ringing, the cat jumping, my finding Justin on the front porch.
“And you’ve no idea how he got there, do you?” he asks. “Or who put him there?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t know who it was. All you know is somebody brought him back, and the rest is a mystery.”
“As far as I’m concerned, yes. But what about Larry’s latest deal?”
“What deal?”
I glance at Larry, then back.
“Don’t take me for a total idiot, Joe,” I say. “Larry told me he made a deal with Gamble and Holbrook. He said it was all fixed. He said Mark Spain was involved, and so were you.”
“There was never any deal,” he says.
“Not for public consumption anyway,” Larry adds.
“Not for any consumption,” Joe corrects. “I’ve told you, Bear, and let’s all get this absolutely straight: If anyone ever claims there was, it will be categorically denied.”
I stare at the two of them, from one to the other. I suppose I ought to be appalled—maybe I am—but somehow I’m not all that surprised. The one thing that’s clear to me, without knowing the details, is that Larry has let himself be manipulated. I also know what he’d say: I did it all for Justie, all for our little family.
“Look, Georgie—” Larry begins.
“There’s no need for anyone to explain further.”
“Maybe there is,” Joe Penzil says. “Just so you know, the fact is that your baby-sitter did take Justin. From what I’ve been given to understand, she’s a very screwed-up young woman. She’s now a fugitive from justice. Maybe the police will find her, maybe they won’t. But we—that is, certain parties—were able to arrange to get Justin back from her and deliver him to you.”
“And that’s that?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was you—one of your ‘certain parties’—who took him at the mall Saturday, wasn’t it? Where I’d gone to collect him? How do you explain that? I was there, remember?”
“Georgie, it’s complicated. But whatever else you may think of us, we’re not ax murderers. Beyond that …”
“Except that it gave you time to get whatever it is you wanted to get out of Larry, didn’t it? Isn’t that the truth? Else why didn’t you bring Justin back here Saturday?”
“Georgie,” my husband intervenes, “the important thing—the only important thing—is that we’ve got him back. The rest of it is all bullshit.”
I start to snap at him, but Joe interrupts me.
“He’s right, Georgie. Finally, cutting through everything, he’s right. And believe me, it’s best for everybody concerned—and that includes Larry and you—that this be the end of it.”
Yes, I think bitterly. And meanwhile, my son’s a wreck.
From where I’ve been sitting, in the living room, I’ve kept an eye on him. He’s in front of the big-screen TV in the next room. Cartoons. If he’s been trying to listen in on us, I’ve seen no sign of it.
How are they going to shut him up, I wonder, if ever he decides to tell what happened to him?
I guess Joe Penzil must have followed my gaze.
“The police may want to talk to Justin,” he says. “Almost certainly they will. I don’t think you should allow it for the time being.”
“After all he’s been through?” Larry says. “You’re damn right.”
So there’s my answer.
“Are you agreed, Georgie?” Penzil says, his eyes on mine.
In other words, am I going to cooperate or become a problem for them? For a fleeting second, I wonder what they’d do.
“Yes, sure,” I say, looking at Justin again, the back of his head.
“Who’s your pediatrician?”
“Braden,” I answer.
Everybody wants to do things for me. I let them, except where Justin and Zoe are concerned. With two exceptions, I won’t let them out of my sight for more than five minutes.
The first is for Capriello. He wants to talk to me alone. Conforti, the lawyer, advises me that I’m under no obligation to, but I decide to get it over with and, no, I don’t feel the need for counsel. Why should I?
“I’ve already gotten Larry’s version, Mrs. Coffey,” Capriello says mildly in my living room. “Now I’d like to get yours.”
I tell him. I doubt it takes me more than sixty seconds. He questions me further on a few details—how long did it take me to get downstairs once the bell rang? Was I sure I heard nothing, no footsteps, no car motor?—but he doesn’t even ask me to speculate on who it might have been.
He takes a few notes as I talk.
“What does Justin have to say about it?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all? About who brought him here? Or where he’s been kept all this time?”
“I haven’t been able to get him to talk about it.”
He studies me, beady eyes in the ruddy, glistening face. I’d be hard put to have to describe him—beyond “small-town Italian cop in his fifties”—but why is it I have the impression he’d be just as happy to have the case go away now? Is it because of what he knows? Or what he doesn’t know?
“I’d like to talk to Justin myself,” he says.
“I’m sorry, I can’t allow that. Not today.”
“No, of course not today. But as soon as possible.”
“We’ll have to see, Lieutenant. My son’s welfare is uppermost in my mind.”
“As well it should be, Mrs. Coffey. But like it or not, we’ve got a case to wrap up. A situation like this, we really need the family’s cooperation.”
He mentions something about a court order. He hopes that won’t prove necessary. I, in turn, mention Ray Braden. By this time, I know that Braden has already ordained that Justin be left alone by the police.