Daddy Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  If anyone knows. Anyone, anything. Missing five-year-old Robbie Whitcomb. Taken from the Libertyville Mall.

  The mother was not available but hospitalized, in critical condition.

  It was broadcast in the media that the mother had been struck by the abductor in his van. It was known that the abductor of her son had tried to kill her.

  Would you love me if you heard me on the radio and had never met me?—Whit had more than once asked Dinah.

  Yes! Absolutely.

  And she’d asked him: Would you love me if you’d just heard my voice?

  Whit laughed saying, Sure.

  Just my voice and not me? You’d have loved me?

  Sure, kid.

  This had been a long-ago time. Before the baby.

  Or maybe she’d been pregnant then. Married just four months and pregnant lying asprawl in their bed listening to Whit’s taped program as they often did. The thrill of her husband’s deep-throated radio-voice, sexy, kindly, playful, confiding And now we turn to something ex-quisite in this 1945 recording of Billie Holiday singing “What Is This Thing Called Love.”

  This was the riddle. This was the hard question. What is this thing—love.

  Mommy had not been Mommy for much of her life. Before that she’d only been “Dinah”—she’d never understood how free, how undefined, how slight her identity, before she’d become pregnant and had her baby.

  She’d been a half-person, all those years. No wonder she’d been lonely!

  Yet her mother, having had her, had not been happy. You could not say that Dinah’s mother was a whole person.

  Now, there was never a time when she was only Dinah. Now, she was Mommy whose name happened to be “Dinah”—but this wasn’t the most important part of her identity.

  Does a woman go a little crazy, having a baby? Do you get used to the baby? Do you want to get used to it? When Dinah recalled her life before Robbie, her life before the pregnancy, she was astonished at how inconsequential she’d been: just her.

  She’d fallen in love with Perry “Whit” Whitcomb when she’d been twenty-three. She had never been in love before and had been overwhelmed by the experience and yet: it was not the kind of nurturing love, the kind of desperate love, you felt for a child.

  That happy time. Even “problems” had been pleasurable, then.

  It was a different time now. There was nothing luxuriant in their love now. They were not brash and young now. The Mommy was twenty-eight years old and the Daddy was thirty-four years old and they would not ever be young again.

  Through her broken jaws she tried to speak. Tried to ask Have they found Robbie?

  Whit told her no not yet. Not yet was Whit’s way of consolation.

  At her bedside Whit radiated calm. Elsewhere Whit was crazed.

  Whit cradled her in his arms. As much as he could lean over the bed, without hurting her. (But could she feel pain? It was a cotton-batting sort of pain, a roaring in her ears that might have been screams but were muffled.) He loved her very much, he said. Their son would be found and returned to them, he was certain.

  Whit did not tell her the latest news. For the latest news was usually no news. A day, a day and a night, two days, several days, a week and finally twelve days—and then, fifteen days: no news.

  There was a good deal of mistaken news. Sightings of the boy with his abductor. Sightings of the “beige” van.

  The mother was being kept alive by IV fluids. She was no longer on a respirator but she was still being fed artificially. Her nourishment was called Mechanical Soft.

  Twenty-nine days in the Ann Arbor hospital and two weeks in a rehab clinic learning how to walk again. And yet—Dinah would never walk normally again.

  Her skull had been badly fractured. She’d bled into her brain.

  It was a miracle she’d lived. A miracle she’d ever managed to stand on her feet let alone walk again.

  She would continue rehabilitation for months. Her sense of balance was askew. Often it would seem to her that the floor was tilting below her or the very sky tilting above her. She would never sleep through a night—never more than a few hours before waking frightened and disoriented. The child’s fingers were gripped tight in hers and she would never let go.

  Do you love me anyway? she’d asked Whit. It had become a soft-fading wistful mantra.

  Jesus, Dinah—I love you more than anything and anyone in my life. I’ve always loved you, kid.

  Robbie’s father had gotten high soon after they’d brought their infant son home from the hospital. Smoking dope exhaling smoke luxuriantly through his nostrils saying, God damn, Dinah, we’re going to bring up our son to be happy. None of this bullshit from our families, OK?

  She was totally in agreement. No bullshit from any quarter.

  No neurotic crap. No “complications.” Our beautiful son is perfect in his soul, all we’re required to do is let him flower. Stay out of his way.

  She was totally in agreement.

  She did not believe in a god of vengeance and wrath—a petty little ranting god. She believed in a god of whom it might be said humankind had been made in this god’s image—this was the god Robbie would know, if Robbie knew any god at all.

  Already, Robbie had asked about “God”—he’d been hearing the word and all strange words provoked his curiosity. Mommy what is “God”? uttered with such childish perplexity and a wish to be informed that she’d laughed and kissed him and said God is a spirit in the universe looking over us. God is in this house but invisible.

  “Invisible?”—Robbie asked.

  You can’t see God. When there’s something you can’t see it’s “invisible.”

  “’Visible—how do you know where it is?”

  Dinah and Whit had quoted their remarkable son how many times. There was never a son like their Robbie to say such clever things.

  “’Visible—how do you know where it is?”

  One night when Dinah was still in the hospital at Ann Arbor Whit didn’t come to her room until late.

  After 10 P.M. he came. His words were slurred and his breath smelled of beer. He began to cry. She asked if there was news and he said no news and that was why he was crying. He’d been strong until now but now he was falling apart he said. Hid his head in his arms, on Dinah’s hospital bed. His face hidden against her thigh. The damp of his tears wetting the bedclothes. He kneaded her bruised hand. She was confused and not entirely conscious. She’d come to hate the morphine for what it did to her mind but she wasn’t able to sleep without it. Or maybe she was asleep and was dreaming a dampness against her thigh and a man sobbing beside her saying softly so that no one could hear Why! Why’d you take him there. Why’d you let him go.

  6

  CHURCH OF ABIDING HOPE DETROIT, MICHIGAN APRIL 12, 2006

  Shall we not say, we are created in God’s image?

  Gently the Preacher moved among the flock of starving souls. His blessing fell upon them like precious seed. His eyes bore deep into theirs, in knowledge of their aloneness and their great hunger which only one of the Preacher’s spirit could satisfy.

  Moses Maimonides tells us that Time is so precious, God gives it to us in atoms. In the smallest units, that we may bear them without harm to ourselves.

  For we dare not gaze into the sun. For the sun will blind us.

  It is the Preacher who gazes into the sun, and risks harm for the sake of the faithful.

  We are a dignified people. We are not a crass cowering cowardly people but a great people, of these United States of North America. We are a people created in God’s image and we abide in the great mystery of all Being.

  Shall we not say that we cannot know the limit of our grace? That we cannot plumb the depths of our own single, singular souls, let alone the depths of God?

  Knowing only that we are brothers and sisters in Being—beneath our separate skins.

  The Preacher spoke in a voice of consolation. The Preacher spoke in a voice of tenderness, forgiveness. The Preache
r spoke in a voice that did not judge harshly. The Preacher spoke in a voice acquainted with sin.

  The Preacher did not stand at the head of the flock and preach to uplifted faces but moved between the rows of seats in the central and side aisles of the little church with the ease and grace of a true shepherd. Often the Preacher reached out to touch a shoulder, a head, an outstretched hand—Bless you my brother in Christ! Bless you my sister in Christ! God loves you.

  The Preacher was a visitor at the Church of Abiding Hope. He had several times given guest sermons here in the small asphalt-sided church at the intersection of Labrosse and Fifth Street in the inner-city of Detroit in the shadow of the John Lodge Freeway.

  The congregation of the Church of Abiding Hope—some seventy-five or eighty individuals of whom most were over fifty and only a scattering were what you’d call young—gazed upon the Preacher in a transport of incomprehension. It was white-man’s speech elevated and wondrous as a hymn of a kind they rarely heard directed toward them and yet in the Preacher’s particular voice intimate as a caress.

  Understanding, their own minister Reverend Thomas Tindall could provide them.

  The Preacher was a tall man of an age no one might have guessed—for his stark sculpted face was unlined, his eyes quick and alert and stone-colored in their deep-set sockets, his beard thick and dark and joyous to behold. His mouth that might have been prim and downturning was a mouth of smiles, a mouth of beckoning.

  The Preacher’s words were elevated but his eyes sparked. My brothers in Christ. My sisters in Christ. God bless us all!

  The Preacher wore black: for the occasion was somber. A black light-woolen coat, black trousers with a sharp crease, black shoes.

  The Preacher wore a crimson velvet vest: for the occasion was joyous. And at his neck a checked crimson-and-black silk scarf.

  The surprise was, the Preacher was not dark-skinned like the faithful of the Church of Abiding Hope or Reverend Tindall who was the Preacher’s host. The Preacher’s skin was pale and bleached-looking and if you came close, you saw that it was comprised of thin layers, or scales, of transparent skin-tissue, like a palimpsest. The Preacher was the sole white face in the church and bore his responsibility with dignity and a sense of his mission.

  The Preacher’s rusted-iron hair that was threaded with silver like shafts of lightning fell to his shoulders in flaring wings. Parted in the center of his head that was noble and sculpted like a head of antiquity.

  The congregation stared hungrily perceiving the Preacher as an emissary from the white world who was yet one of their own.

  The Preacher spoke warmly of the great leader W. E. B. DuBois who exhorted us to see the beauty in blackness—In all of our skins, and beneath our skins. The beauty of Christ.

  The Preacher spoke warmly of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who exhorted us to never give up our dream—Of full integration, and full citizenship, and the beauty of Christ realized in us as Americans.

  Then in an altered voice the Preacher spoke of his “forging” years in Detroit for he’d been born in this city that was beloved of God even as it was severely tested by God.

  Forged in the rubble of the old lost neighborhood south of Cass and Woodward. In the rubble of destroyed dreams. Now there were small forests of trees pushing through broken houses. Gigantic weeds and thorns pushing through cracked pavement. The very house of his childhood. His father had worked in the Fisher Body plant long since closed. His grandfather had worked at the Central railroad station long since closed. These mighty buildings, fallen to ruins. The grandeur of Woodward Avenue, fallen to ruins. The tall buildings of Bellevue Avenue, fallen to ruins as in an ancient cataclysm. Yet the spirit of God has not forsaken Detroit. His spirit prevails here and will rise again. A strange and wondrous landscape of colors, flowers, vegetation, birds. Feral creatures breed here. Pollution has given to brick walls a beautiful sepia tint. Shattered glass on roadways shines with the grandeur of God. You might think that God has forsaken Detroit but you would be mistaken for God forsakes no human habitation, as God forsakes no man. The great Christian leader John Calvin said, Nature is a shining garment in which God is concealed but also revealed.

  The Preacher was of this soil, for he had been born on the first day of the troubles of July 1967 when Detroit, long smoldering, had erupted into flames.

  The Preacher had been born to his mother in a house on Cass Avenue. The Preacher had been born into a time of “racial” troubles and yet—the knowledge is in us nonetheless, we are blessed.

  For the flaming city on the river had been an emblem of the black man’s deep revulsion for his place in these United States, which had been then a place of ignominy and ignorance—deception and duplicity. God had sent flames to reveal this injustice. God was the burning city as the God of the Old Testament had been the burning bush. No one could shut his eyes against such a revelation.

  Decades had passed since then. Much had changed since then.

  In a bold voice the Preacher spoke. In the voice of one who knows.

  And now in the new century it was prophesized, the races would rise together. There would be a dark-skinned President in this new century—the Preacher had had a vision, and the Preacher knew.

  To all this the congregation listened mesmerized. Scarcely did the congregation draw breath. Of what they could comprehend they could not believe a syllable of such a fantastic vision and yet, in their souls they did believe.

  All that the Preacher extolled to them, they did believe.

  The Preacher was concluding his sermon. The Preacher was visibly shaken by his own words. On the Preacher’s palimpsest-skin there shone sparkling tears.

  My sisters and brothers in Christ, we are borne upon a vast journey in uncharted seas. I am not one who provides you with easy answers to your doubts but I am one who tells you, you are beautiful souls and from beauty there issues beauty everlasting.

  From my heart to yours, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ, I say to you Amen.

  Through the church came joyously spoken Amens.

  The sermon had ended. The Preacher stood to the side, at the pulpit. As the choir began to sing—“I Love to Tell the Story”—“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”—“There Is a Balm in Gilead”—the Preacher sang with the choir in his deep resonant voice.

  Now it did seem that there were younger members of the congregation. At least one-third of the choir was comprised of shining young faces.

  At the conclusion of the service Reverend Tindall clasped the Preacher’s hand. Tears brimmed in Reverend Tindall’s glaucoma-dimmed eyes. His face was of the hue of cracked leather. His scalp was shiny-dark, with a fringe of fleecy white hair. He was a vain old man and yet insecure and well intentioned. You could see that he was very proud of his friendship with the eloquent white preacher.

  Thank you, Brother Chester! That was what this congregation was thirsting to hear.

  The Preacher was invited to stay for supper with the Reverend and his family. But the Preacher explained he could not stay that night. He was in transit for he was badly needed elsewhere.

  There is always terrible need. Sometimes I think we dare not lay our heads down to sleep, or we will lose all that we’ve gained.

  The Preacher was given to such pronouncements, grave and matter-of-fact. It was not always clear what the Preacher’s meaning was, yet you did not doubt that the Preacher knew.

  You will come back to us? Brother?

  Of course I will come back to you, Brother. In my heart I will not depart.

  The collection of $362 was divided between them—Reverend Tindall and the Preacher who was known to the Reverend as Chester Cash.

  In the alley beside the asphalt-sided church the Preacher’s van was parked.

  The van was dark as an undersea creature. Even its windows were dark-tinted. On the roof of the van was a wooden cross painted a luminous white and secured with ropes and on this was written in crimson block letters

  T

 
H

  E

  CHURCH OF ABIDING HOPE

  U

  S

  A

  The van was a 2000 Chrysler minivan and its chassis dented and scarified but it appeared to have been recently painted. It had been recently painted in some haste for there were smears of iridescent dark-purple paint on several of the windows like fingerprints.

  From the threshold of the Church of Abiding Hope, you could see the van parked in the alley. But you could not see into the van for the windows were tinted.

  It must have been that the Preacher had no family remaining in Detroit for he had not sought them out and did not seem to wish to speak of them now. When Reverend Tindall asked after the Preacher’s mother, the Preacher glanced downward and replied in a murmur—Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

  Reverend Tindall asked after the Preacher’s ten-year-old son who’d accompanied the Preacher to the Church of Abiding Hope the previous spring.

  The Preacher frowned as if trying to recall this son. As if just perceptibly startled by the question.

  Nostradamus has chosen another pathway, it seems. He has gone to live with his mother and her people in the Upper Peninsula.

  A fine boy, Reverend Tindall said. You had said, your son would follow you into your ministry?

  He was but a child then. He has not put aside childish ways. And he dwells now among Philistines—it is his choice.

  The Preacher spoke sadly yet not without a shiver, a twitching of whiskered jaws, as if the memory of a young son’s betrayal were fresh to him, and painful.

  Reverend Tindall seemed about to ask another question about the lost son but then thought better of it. For the Preacher was breathing quickly and stroking his whiskered jaws unsmiling.

  By His light, the Preacher said in a lowered and quavering voice, I walked through darkness.

  Brother, Amen!—Reverend Tindall clamped the Preacher on his shoulder.

  Because the Preacher was a frugal man, and chose to spend his money solely on necessities, he lived in the minivan much of the time when he was in transit. In the van he kept clothes, books and documents, a miniature kerosene stove, canned food. It was a part of the Preacher’s ministry to visit small churches across the country and to deliver guest sermons where he was welcomed. Abiding Hope is a family, the Preacher said. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are one, inside our skins. Everywhere, we recognize one another.