After breakfast he went out to mow the lawn. It was the same as always. She supposed he had mowed the lawn last Saturday, too, when she was in Pennsylvania. Of course it was the same as always. He wouldn’t bother with it if—
Functioning on two levels.
When he finished and came in to take his shower, Mary Ellen was seated at the table wearing a Japanese kimono, her dark hair tousled and streaming about her face.
“Honestly, Daddy, do you have to make all that noise? A person can’t even sleep around here.”
His eyes raked over her, betraying him, and seeing nothing damning. The kimono covered her well.
“It seems to me you’ve slept enough,” he said coldly, and went on upstairs.
Like any other father and daughter, Joyce thought as she emptied out the coffee grounds.
But she had seen the look in his eyes. He had stripped Mary Ellen naked.
“Is he going to be around all the time from now on?” Mary Ellen asked gloomily.
“For three weeks,” said Joyce. “It would be nice if we could go somewhere, but we haven’t the money, and you know how awkward it is, traveling with a baby.”
“It wasn’t so bad going to Pennsylvania. I could take care of Adam. You can pretend I’m the nursemaid. Let’s all go to Florida. Cape Cod? Well, let’s do something. If I were older,” she continued, at Joyce’s bleak response, “you could leave us all here with me in charge, and you and Daddy could go off somewhere. Wouldn’t that be fun? Would you ever do that?”
“Not with a murderer running around loose,” Joyce replied. She hadn’t thought of saying that, but it comforted her. It put the murderer outside.
Where, of course, he was. There could be no doubt about that.
During the night she lay awake, dreading that Carl might approach her again. It had been so brutal the other time.
He didn’t, but by morning, she was exhausted, and was not sure what had really kept her from sleeping. She dozed after feeding Adam, and when she went downstairs, Carl was on the sofa, engrossed in the newspapers. He told her they had recapped the story because it was Sunday, although there was nothing new to report.
“I can’t understand why you’re so fascinated by that,” she ventured. “It has nothing to do with you.”
He scoffed, “That’s ridiculous. If people confined their interest to things that only had to do with themselves, there’d be nothing in the world. No arts, no science. We’d all be cavemen.”
“Then where does this fit in?” she asked. “It’s not art or science, it’s just morbid. Why don’t you want to read about the Middle East, or China?”
“I do. I read everything. And I notice you’ve been avoiding the papers. I can’t help thinking there must be something wrong, if you have to make such a point of turning your back on this thing.”
“There is something wrong.” She stared down at her fingernails and waited for him to ask her what she meant, but all she heard was the crackle of paper as he turned a page.
Adam’s schedule unbalanced everyone else’s, causing dinner to be late that night. It was eight-thirty by the time they sat down at the table. They had scarcely begun to eat when the telephone rang.
Mary Ellen went to answer it. She remained in the darkened kitchen, and Joyce could hear occasional low tones and now and then a laugh.
Carl looked up from his dinner. “What’s that girl doing?”
“Talking on the phone, I imagine,” Joyce replied. “Maybe it’s Barbara. She’s been away, you know.”
He hadn’t known and he didn’t care. He listened for a moment, frowning, and then called, “Mary Ellen!”
She appeared in the kitchen doorway, still holding the phone, and motioned that she would be there momentarily.
He called her again, louder. She put her hand over the receiver and squeaked “Okay! Okay!” A hurried good-bye into the telephone and then she came back to the table, gleaming.
“Who the hell was that?” Carl demanded.
The gleam vanished. “Somebody.”
“I asked who it was.”
“What difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference,” he explained without much patience. “You walk away in the middle of dinner, which is exceedingly rude, and you—”
“Can I help it if somebody calls in the middle of dinner?”
Joyce said gently, “You could always tell them you’ll call back. I’m awfully sorry dinner’s so late tonight.”
“I want to know who it was,” Carl repeated.
“A friend of mine, okay?” More than annoyance crept into Mary Ellen’s voice. She was growing desperate.
He reached out and seized her wrist. “I asked you who it was.”
“Daddy!” She tried to pull away, but was no match for his large hands. He tightened his grip.
“Daddy, you’re hurting me!” Tears came into her eyes. Gail turned away, sickened by the scene.
Rattling the slender arm, he shouted, “It was a boy, wasn’t it?”
“How—how do you know?”
He rose to his feet and towered over her. His huge paw swung back and then smashed into her face.
Gail was the one who shrieked, fled upstairs and slammed her bedroom door. Mary Ellen sat crumpled in her chair.
Was she dead? Her neck snapped? Joyce reached out to touch her face. Slowly Carl sat down, apparently purged of whatever the phone call had done to him.
Mary Ellen was not dead. Joyce half lifted her from the chair and led her toward the stairs. Over her shoulder she said to Carl, “Thank you for ruining dinner.”
She sat in the darkness on the rocking chair in their bedroom, after Mary Ellen had gone to sleep. It was the only
thing the girl had felt like doing. Perhaps it was a retreat. Or she had been injured. Joyce had wanted to take her to a doctor, not only for Mary Ellen’s sake, but to bring the problem with Carl to a head. Mary Ellen had refused.
“I’m okay,” she had said, “but he’s not. My mother always thought there was something wrong with him. She was afraid to let me come here, but then he said he’d get a lawyer because it’s in the settlement.”
If Barbara had known, she ought to have done something. Even if it meant hassling with the law, perhaps she could have proved that he was unfit. They might even have been able to make him get help.
Not that it would have done any good. He’d have talked his way out of it.
Perhaps Mary Ellen was a little young for romance, but to half kill her? It had been David, she confided later to Joyce, the boy who took her riding on his motorcycle. He had been away on a trip with his family and had come back only that evening. A perfectly innocent boy, even if Mary Ellen was a bit young. Perhaps only the adult mind would turn it into a romance.
What am I going to do?
She heard him coming up the stairs. Which door would he open? His footsteps stopped outside her own. Light from the hallway spread onto the rug. It was his room, too.
“All right, “ he said, appearing only as a silhouette against the light, “I put away the food that the rest of you were too silly to eat, cleared up everything, and started the dishwasher.”
Adam stirred at the sound of his father’s loud voice.
She tried to open her mouth, supposing that he expected to be thanked. Was he trying to make amends? Or trying only to show how normal he was, still functioning while everyone else fell apart?
The words that came out were not thanks. “I suppose you realize you overreacted,” she said.
“I did?” He came on into the room. Now he was illuminated, looking frigidly down at her.
“If you don’t realize it, you should,” Joyce told him. “I think it comes from something way back.”
That night he had babbled about the whore and the tits, he had mentioned boys, too. She could not remember …
He said, “I think you’d better leave that sort of thing to the experts.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I mea
n for your sake. You’d be happier if—”
“Who’s talking about happy?” he retorted. “I’m perfectly happy. You seem to be the one who’s not. You see all sorts of fire where there isn’t any smoke. Maybe you should go and get your head examined, since it’s obvious that’s what you’re babbling about.” He turned abruptly and left the room.
He hadn’t closed the door, but she was still in darkness, over in her corner.
Was she wrong? No, that was part of it. They always denied it.
People who are physically ill, she thought in despair, want to get well. Why does this have to be different?
She remembered Dr. Ballard and his “Catch me, catch me.” It was supposed to be a cry for help, but Carl didn’t want any help. Or if he did, he wanted to be caught like a rodeo steer, roped and thrown to the ground.
Mary Ellen.
He loves her. He loves his daughter. People love their children. But Mary Ellen makes him angry.
People’s children make them angry sometimes.
When did it start? When Adam was born. A male child. A threat? And the second one—when summer began and he knew Mary Ellen would come. And then those blowups
over her clothes. It was not her clothes, it was Mary Ellen herself. How could Barbara have let her come?
She got up from her chair and looked out into the hallway. She had heard him go downstairs. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she listened, then picked up the telephone and listened once more.
She dialed Barbara’s number and heard it ring. Again and again. Still gone. How long a vacation? She had to get Mary Ellen out of the house.
Her heart was beating so that she could feel it. She put the receiver back where it belonged.
What do I do now?
Call Frank? Dr. Ballard?
His footsteps on the stairs again. She ran back to the chair, so he would not know she had left it.
Got to do something.
“Are you going to bed already?” she asked when he entered the room.
“Nope. What are you sitting here for?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“Just thinking.”
There was something ominous in his voice as he asked, “Are you keeping secrets from me?”
“You’ve kept a lot of secrets from me.” As soon as she said it, she was frightened.
Don’t turn on the light, don 9t look at me.
“What do you mean I’ve kept secrets from you?” He moved toward the light switch, but stopped.
“All the things that go on in your mind.” Even that was too much. She retreated. “So you can’t expect to know everything that goes on in my mind. People need some privacy.”
He opened the closet door and took his pajamas from their hook. Then he went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. But he wouldn’t go to bed yet, because he
could sleep late tomorrow. He would be around all day for the next three weeks.
Got to get Mary Ellen out of here. That’s the first thing. But where?
And even with Mary Ellen gone, there was still Gail. And Adam. And herself.
22
She wanted to spend the night in the living room with Adam beside her. But that would have left the girls upstairs—with him. And so she lay sleepless on one thin edge of the double bed, feeling his heat and his breathing.
All night she tried to plan what she would do. She could drive into town, ostensibly for groceries, and stop and see Frank D’Amico. But she couldn’t leave the children, she would have to take them with her. And what if Carl decided to go,too?
Or telephone, if he would ever leave the house. She should have called Saturday while he was mowing the lawn. But Saturday she hadn’t known.
And maybe she didn’t know now. Maybe she was wrong. She had no proof. Only his violence with Mary Ellen, and the times he was out. And the clean basement floor.
It was enough.
But what if it wasn’t true? What if she told them, and then it wasn’t true?
Finally the room began to lighten, and Adam kicked and made small waking noises.
She slid out of bed without waking Carl. Perhaps he would get up early and drive into the village for a newspaper. She
carried Adam downstairs and sat on the living room couch, watching the picture window while he nursed. There was no one to see her. No killer out there.
Maybe there is. Oh, please, God.
A killer. Out there. Her brain felt heavy from lack of sleep.
After a while she heard him get up. Heard him go into the bathroom and turn on the shower. Adam finished feeding. She went back upstairs and lay on her bed, trying to sleep. She heard the shower go off and then the buzz of his electric razor. He came out of the bathroom fully dressed.
“Go ahead with breakfast,” she told him. “I feel rotten.”
She would call someone as soon as he drove off to buy the paper. But he didn’t go. He came back upstairs bringing her a glass of orange juice. She could never call. He would come into the room at any moment.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Okay.” It might help to wake her up.
He brought a steaming cup, with just the right amount of milk. Why was he being so solicitous? To throw her off the track?
Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe he’s right. I’m the one who needs help.
After a short sleep she felt better, and got up and dressed. She wondered if he had gone for the paper while she slept. He hadn’t. She tried to think of something else he could buy at the drugstore where the papers were sold. Some reason to send him there. Baby powder? Diapers? She had everything, and he knew it.
And then suddenly the car keys were in his hand. “Want anything?” he asked.
Her mouth opened. “A melon.”
“A what?”
“A melon. For breakfast tomorrow.” She hadn’t even
thought of it, the words just came. It would send him to the supermarket, prolong his stay in the village. “And a half gallon of milk.”
“We have milk.”
“I know, but the kids use a lot of it on their cereal. And bananas. Adam’s supposed to eat mashed bananas. Do you want me to write it down?”
He said he could remember it. She tried to think of something in another department. “Baby cereal,” she called after him. “Rice flavor.”
He was gone. She dialed the police station, and kept her eye on the driveway in case he came back for something. Not that Carl would, he was too organized.
Too organized. Of course he was not the one. An organized person would never—never do those things.
“Cedarville Police. Finneran.”
“Oh—” It had rung, and she had forgotten. Brain still foggy. “Is Chief D’Amico there?”
“No, he’s not. Can I help you?”
“No, I—” She could only tell it to Frank, not anyone else. They would come with their sirens screaming and their guns drawn, but Frank would understand. “Will he be there today?”
“He’ll be in later. Want to leave a message?”
“Listen, this is terribly important. Is he home? Do you know where he is?”
“I can take a message. He’ll call you as soon as he can.”
Damn it, didn’t they have radios in their cars? Didn’t they carry walkie-talkies, like the New York police? She had forgotten that this was Cedarville. She left her name and phone number. It was all she could do.
She glanced at the daisy-shaped clock on the wall. He had been gone only five minutes. Would barely have reached the drugstore by now. It was still quite early, but that didn’t matter. Psychiatrists got calls in the middle of the night.
She looked him up in the Westchester phone book. There was only one Ronald K. Ballard, M.D.
A woman answered, “Doctor Ballard’s office.”
“Is he there?” she asked.
“No, dear, this is the answering service. Can I help you?”
Can you help me? Yes, you can all help me.
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“Do you know when he’ll be in?”
“Not till Thursday. Would you like another doctor? I can—”
“No, thank you.” She hung up the phone. Huddling into a chair, she clenched her fingers like claws over her face. But then she heard Gail’s bare feet padding down the stairs.
Gail came into the kitchen, wearing her thin seersucker pajamas. She looked around warily.
“He’s gone to do some errands,” Joyce told her.
“Mommy, I want to go back to the city.”
She wanted to go back in time. Before Carl.
“We’ve no place to go in the city, angel.”
“But I hate it here!”
“I know. I’ll try to think of something.”
“Why can’t we go to Pennsylvania?”
Could she? Send Gail there? At least for now. Gail alone might not be too much for them. She was quiet, and would help if called upon.
“I could ask.” And put her on a train, perhaps, or a bus. She could travel alone, if someone met her.
“Don’t ask him”
“I didn’t mean him. Listen, Gail, do you remember Chief D’Amico? The policeman who asked you those questions? He might be calling me later. If you answer the phone, just get hold of me quietly. Don’t tell anyone else, okay?”
Gail’s face seemed to sharpen and grow taut. How much did she understand? She was a city child, and knew what the police were for. And that infernal television taught children everything.
“I’ll explain later,” Joyce said, hoping to keep her from speculating too much. “Is Mary Ellen up yet? I wonder how she’s feeling.”
“I heard her radio.”
After an hour Mary Ellen came down the stairs looking pale and haughty. She was fully dressed in a pair of dark blue shorts and the tee shirt with the CB lingo. No one could complain about her clothing that morning.
Her father, who had returned from the village and was sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper, looked up as she passed. She moved her eyes, took him in, and showed no flicker of expression as she glided into the kitchen.
So it’s going to be like that, Joyce thought. At least she could stare him down. She’s got the upper hand.
Mary Ellen selected a box of cold cereal and took her place at the table. The telephone rang. Joyce picked it up.
(2001) The Girls Are Missing Page 15