Where I Lost Her

by T. Greenwood

  “Couldn’t you handle it from here?” I ask. “If you needed to?”

  He sighs. “Without cell reception?”

  “Effie and Devin have a landline,” I say, and know even as I say this how absurd the idea is. I think of the ancient wall-mounted phone, the curling cord. The rotary dial. I try to imagine him conducting a publishing auction in the kitchen nook as the world swirls around him.

  “I need to be at the office,” he says.

  “Then go,” I say. “Go home.”

  “Don’t do that,” he says.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “That thing you do,” he says, sighing. “It’s passive-aggressive.”

  I feel a knot forming under my breastbone.

  “How so?” I ask.

  “You want me to stay. To say that this is more important than work. But instead of just coming out and saying that, you give me this false permission to leave. It’s passive-aggressive.”

  “You don’t need my permission to do anything.” I bristle.

  He rolls his eyes then. Just a little. But he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the road. And he’s not speaking.

  “I am not your keeper,” I add. “Clearly.”

  We pull into the parking lot at Hudson’s and leave the windows rolled down. The smell of the wine-soaked carpet is strong even without the floor mat. The wine must have seeped into the carpet beneath. I will need to have the car detailed when we get back to New York.

  New York. It feels so far away now. A place I dreamed of once, instead of the place where I have lived the last fifteen years. Where I made and then abandoned a career. A place where I have friends, a routine, a life. I often feel this way when I come to visit Effie and Devin. The lake has that effect. When I wake to the sounds of the loons on the water, to the light filtered through the soft natural lens of leaves, I become an amnesiac. As if my entire life leading up to the moment has been a sort of waking dream (one of asphalt and hissing buses, of crowds and glass and concrete). There have been a hundred times that I have imagined staying here. Of never returning to Brooklyn. It would be so easy, I think, to buy a little house here, a plot of land. To find a job and start over. How simple it would be to just come home. As I told Andrews, I grew up here, though I don’t have family here anymore. After my mother passed away, my father retired from the college and moved back to Maine, to the small island where he was raised. Still, I could stay here. I could come home. I could just slip back into this life. I think this happened to Effie too. Except instead of waking up, she just gave in to the pull this place has. Refused to wake up. I envy her this delicious acquiescence.

  I am surprised to see that Hudson’s parking lot is completely full. Cars also line the edge of the road for a quarter mile in either direction. I see the bookmobile parked around the side of the building. That means Effie is already back from town.

  Jake’s phone rings. He gets cell reception here.

  He grabs the phone and glances down at the screen. “It’s the office,” he says. “I’ve got to get it. I’ll meet you in there.”

  I wonder if it’s her. Would she be that careless? That needy?

  I take a deep breath and get out of the car.

  A small group of women huddle at the doorway holding steaming cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  “What if it’s like that Jaycee Dugard girl?” one woman says. “You know that one was livin’ in the backyard of that house? With that monster all those years and nobody knew. I read her book.”

  “You mean like somebody’s been keeping her?” another woman says. Her eyebrows are pencil thin and rise up high, making her look surprised.

  “It could happen. Way out here in bumfuck nowhere. That man that took that Dugard girl got her pregnant twice. What if it’s like that? Like one of them babies escaped. How else do you explain that there ain’t nobody called her in missing? Maybe don’t nobody know she exists.”

  “Or maybe she don’t exist,” the lady with the eyebrows says.

  “Like she’s a ghost?”

  “Like maybe that lady, the one from New York, didn’t really see nothing at all.”

  “Excuse me,” I say, and, as I push past them, a look of recognition crosses the second woman’s face. I can tell she’s searching for words, smiling stupidly at me.

  “Hey, wait,” she says. “You’re the one who found her. I saw you on the news.”

  I nod. What else am I supposed to say?

  “We’re here to help,” she says. Nodding, smiling sadly. As if it’s my own child that’s lost. “We’ll do whatever we can.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  They part then and let me pass. I can hear their whispers behind me. I feel my skin grow hot, like I am in middle school again and these are the mean girls.

  I enter the store and make my way through the crowd of people to the back room, where Effie and Devin are waiting for me. Effie offers me a sandwich: wheat bread, turkey, bland cheese. I eat it, because I know I should, but it barely registers on my tongue. She hands me a cup of coffee as well, but I refuse it. I am jittery enough already without more caffeine. Devin is distributing vests, flyers, and maps.

  “Excuse me,” Devin says loudly, standing up on an overturned milk crate, a makeshift platform. People stop talking, turn to him. It’s incredible, despite how soft-spoken he is, how easily he commands attention.

  “First, I want to thank Bill Moffett for offering up this space. And to the folks at the Shop ’n Save for generously donating lunch,” he says. “What I need for you all to do now is to sign in. It’s very important that everybody sign in so that we know exactly who is out there looking. We don’t need to lose anybody while we’re searching. When you finish for the day, please come back here and sign out. Effie’s got vests and maps. If you are able to distribute flyers, please take some. We’ll caravan back to the site in about a half hour. The police are already there. They’ll explain to you exactly what you should do. Thank you again.”

  Devin returns to his spot behind the folding table where the stack of flyers and the sign-in sheet are.

  “Where are the girls?” I ask Effie.

  “Zu-Zu has a private lesson after her regular class, and Plum’s at Maddy’s. We can pick them up after we do my route. You still want to come with me, or do you want to go search with the others?”

  “I’ll go with you,” I say.

  She squeezes my hand. “You okay?”

  I nod. But I am not okay. I ate the entire sandwich, but I still feel empty.

  I go to the table and wait in line to sign in and grab a flyer. The tall guy in front of me turns around and smiles. His teeth are tobacco-stained, his gums red. His eyes are bulging, prominent, with fleshy pockets beneath them. He stares at me for several seconds too long. In New York I am accustomed to being ignored, to invisibility. His prolonged gaze makes my skin crawl.

  “Sure is a shame,” he says, still grinning. And when he speaks, I can smell the nicotine and stink of those rotten teeth in his breath. “Sounds like a sweet little thing.” He grabs a flyer from the pile and hands it to me.

  “Thank you,” I say. He keeps grinning.

  I walk away from him, clutching the flyer, but I can still feel his gaze on my back.

  Missing, it says in a bold font. Caucasian girl, approximately four years of age with brown curly hair. Last seen wearing a pink tutu and ladybug rain boots. Possibly injured. Seen along Lake Gormlaith Rd. at 11:30 P.M. on Thursday night. Please call 911 with any information you might have.

  The first photo of her that we receive from the agency is black-and-white. Blurry, pixelated. She is so small. Almost two years old, but stunted. She looks more like an infant than a toddler. Her eyes, though, are enormous. Pupils like a baby doll’s. Light catching in them, like sunlight on dark water.

  Child’s Name: Esperanza Sophia

  Child’s Age: 22 months

  Sex: F

  Developmentally Handicapped: NO

  Physically
Handicapped: NO

  Medical history: The child will visit the MD later this week. Blood work and medical report will be available soon.

  “Esperanza,” you say.

  “Yes?”

  “Her name means hope?” Your eyes widen with the implications of this: that the humility and yearning born from our bodies’ failures is somehow, suddenly, manifest in a two-year-old child. This filthy, hungry girl. Her head likely infested with lice, one eye rheumy with infection, her limbs emaciated. This is how Hope materializes: as need. As hunger. Esperanza.

  We are sitting at the coffee shop around the corner from our house, the place where they serve hot scones with raspberry jam. Coffee in mugs as heavy as stones.

  “Does it matter?” I ask you.

  You look confused.

  “HIV,” I say. They have told us there are no guarantees of her status.

  You shake your head, but I sense hesitation.

  “No,” you say. “Of course, it doesn’t matter.”

  But it makes me angry—that sliver of a moment, that fraction of time in which you paused. Your uncertainty, no matter how small, feels like an affront. Like a confirmation that your heart is not fully in this. That you are afraid, when I need you to be courageous. I do not ask for much. I have never asked for much. But this, I need.

  I hang the flyer on our refrigerator, next to the collage of photos of Effie’s girls. She is the same age as Plum. This is two, I think: wide eyes, small hands. Mine. Mine.

  Effie’s bookmobile route takes us around the entire lake as well as down each of the dirt roads that branch off the main road like spokes on a wheel.

  When she first got the job, the bookmobile was simply a modified Ford Econoline van, but when the van finally died, the town raised funds to buy the new state-of-the-art bookmobile, commissioned a famous local artist to paint a mural on the body, and decked out the inside not only with shelves but comfortable seats as well. You could practically, happily, live in it.

  Most of the people she delivers to are elderly. Shut-ins. They are the same people who get home deliveries from the Shop ’n Save, from Meals on Wheels, from the mobile clinic. Vermonters are headstrong people; many folks in their eighties and nineties here refuse to leave their homes for assisted living facilities, nursing homes. Effie’s grandmother, Gussy, lived in her own home in Quimby until the day she died. She even chopped her own wood until well into her eighties.

  There are others she delivers to as well: the families who have unreliable vehicles, those who simply wouldn’t go to the library on their own. She visits the small schools that don’t have their own libraries. Home day cares. Effie used to deliver books to a younger woman, a midwife, who was agoraphobic. After her little boy was killed in a car accident on the old covered bridge, she never left her property, a little house down by the river. Then Hurricane Irene came. Thankfully, her daughter managed to get her out of the house before the river swept it away.

  Today we stop at a dozen houses, dropping off books and flyers, asking if anyone has seen the little girl, pleading with them to keep an eye out, to spread the word.

  “That place is creepy,” I say, pointing to a house set back from the road, obscured by trees. The house itself is fairly typical, a shoebox of a ranch house. But surrounding it are a half dozen rusted-out trailers, windows blocked with sheets of plywood. Weeds grow up around them, enclosing them, strangling them with their thorny vines. I think about the women back at Hudson’s, about that poor kidnapped girl they were talking about, the one who’d been kept in that guy’s backyard for eighteen years.

  “Who lives there?” I ask.

  “I don’t really know,” she says, shrugging. “It’s not on my route.”

  “Should we try to deliver a flyer?” I ask.

  She gestures to the BEWARE OF DOG signs stapled to the trees. The NO TRESPASSING signs duct-taped to the trailers that face the road. She looks at me, grimaces a little. “Do you want to go in there?”

  She slows the bookmobile, and I peer through the trees, struggle to see if there are any vehicles in the driveway. But the gravel path leading to the garage is empty.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” I say, and I can practically hear Effie’s relief.

  “I’ve just got one stop left,” she says, pulling off the road and onto a long drive. She parks next to a beat-up black Honda.

  As we get out of the car and walk toward the house, my stomach flip-flops.

  The yard is littered with toys: ride-on toys, a plastic toddler’s playhouse, baby dolls, and toy guns. It looks like there has been an explosion, the way these filthy artifacts of childhood are scattered. You can hear the sound of the children through the closed door as Effie and I walk up the cracked sidewalk, sidestepping plastic bats and mud-splattered bouncy balls. Naked Barbies missing limbs and heads.

  Effie knocks on the door, turns to me, and smiles.

  “They must be eating lunch. Usually the kids hear me coming.”

  A woman answers the door, looking frazzled and confused. There is a baby in a diaper on her hip. The baby leans against her chest, twirling its finger through a blond curl. The woman is probably younger than she seems, but her face is long, drawn. She’s wearing a Metallica T-shirt and jeans. She is barefoot.

  “Oh, wait, is today Friday?” she asks.

  Effie smiles. “It is. Are the kids eating lunch?” she asks, leaning forward and peering into the house.

  “Just finishing up,” she says.

  “Listen,” Effie says, reaching for a flyer from the stack she’s got under her arm. “You probably heard this on the news, but there was a little girl found wandering alone in the road here last night. She ran off into the woods though.”

  The woman takes the flyer and nods. “I saw it on the news this morning. I could hear the helicopters last night. Really scary. They said nobody’s reported anybody missing though? Seems kinda fishy to me. Like some kinda hoax.”

  I bristle.

  Effie persists. “Does she sound familiar at all? Do you have any kids who fit this description?”

  The woman studies the flyer. “Sounds like half the kids I take care of,” she says. “The girls anyway. Wearing dress up clothes and boots. I got one girl who wears a tiara and pink cowboy boots every day. But no. None of ’em with curly hair.”

  I look at the baby in her arms, at its mane of curls.

  “Oh,” she says. “ ’Cept for Stevie here.”

  “You do drop-ins sometimes, right?” Effie asks.

  I have no idea what this means.

  “Every now and again.”

  “Have you had any new kids come in lately?”

  She shakes her head. “No, nobody I don’t know anyway.”

  “Is that the Book Lady?” a voice trills behind her. And then there is a stampede of little kids, all scrambling to get out of the doorway to the bookmobile, whose back doors are wide open, beckoning. I back up to make way as they push past. I study each one, as though she will be among them. As if she might just emerge as she did last night, in her tattered tutu and rain boots.

  “I should go to the van,” Effie says to me. “So they can check books out.”

  I nod. “Okay. I can help.”

  The woman says, “I got the ones to return in the other room. I’ll bring ’em out as soon as I get Stevie down for his nap.”

  She slips into the house, but leaves the door to the kitchen open.

  Effie follows the group of children to the bookmobile, but I hang back. I peer into the kitchen, see the table littered with breakfast dishes. Bowls filled with colored milk, sippy cups of juice. A cat comes to me and cries, winds itself around my legs.

  “Well, hello,” I say. I squat down to pet him. He arches his back, pushes his head hard into my thigh, and then starts back into the house.

  And then I see them. Ladybug rain boots on the mat just inside the door. They are in a tangle of tiny sneakers and sandals. I didn’t notice them before when I was standing. My
heart pounds in my chest as I gesture in disbelief at the tiny boot. I reach into the house and pick it up.

  The woman comes back then, without the baby this time. Hands on her hips, she studies me.

  “This is her boot,” I say, looking up at her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Her rain boot,” I say. I stand up, still clutching the boot. “The little girl. The flyer. This is what she was wearing last night.”

  The woman shakes her head, smiles. And my jaw falls open.

  “This is her boot,” I say again, feeling my eyes sting with tears now.

  “Then she’s a four-year-old with the biggest feet I’ve ever seen,” the woman says, laughing. “Those are my niece’s. She’s ten.” And then I see the same look pass across her face that passed across the deputy’s face last night.

  My head pounds and I nod, muttering apologies as I back out the door.

  We get into the bookmobile after the children have all picked out their books. They stand on the porch of the house, clutching their colorful selections to their chests, waving at Effie, who leans out her open window and blows kisses to them. It makes me think of a video I saw on YouTube not that long ago of a missionary leaving an African village. As his helicopter lifted off, the children shielded their eyes from the sun and peered up at him waving, jumping. It’s as if Effie connects them to some distant civilization.

  “That was the last stop,” she says. “How many flyers do you think we distributed?”

  I look at the stack on the seat.

  “A lot,” I say. “Maybe forty or fifty? Should we make some more copies?”

  “Sure. I’ll make some more. I need to get the bookmobile back to the library and grab the girls from in town. Do you want to come with me, or should I drop you off at Hudson’s?” Effie slows the van and looks at me.

  I am staring at the flyer, at the words that have distilled the little girl down into parts. Like she’s a little puzzle made of interlocking pieces.

  “You okay?” she asks.