by T. Greenwood
But my insouciance is gone now, as the road becomes less road and more of a muddy, overgrown path through the woods. I am scared. It’s not safe to go any farther; if I do, I’ll definitely get stuck. If I’m not already. I am almost too afraid to try to back up.
I sit still and try to think about what my options are. I can stay here until Alfieri comes back. I can try to back up the quarter mile I’ve already driven. Or I can get out of the car and try to walk where I had hoped to drive. To see where Alfieri has gone.
I pop open the glove box in the futile hope that there is an umbrella in there. But I am pretty sure I remember seeing it on our kitchen table on the way out of our house when we left last week.
Shit.
The rain is still pounding down, and the moment I step out of the car I am drenched. It is loud, the rain beating on the leaves like a billion tiny drums. But beyond that is another sound, though it takes me several moments to place it.
Dogs. It’s the sound of dogs barking. And not just one or two dogs, but a lot of dogs. Snarling, yelping, growling. I move cautiously up the road, just a few steps. There is a driveway. And through the wet tangle of leaves, I can see the white truck parked in front of a trailer: a trailer surrounded by an elaborate system of pens. Dozens of dogs pacing inside these metal cages, all of them with the same clipped ears as Alfieri’s dog. Bloody, scarred faces. The air smells metallic, the stench of feces and blood and dog piss nauseating. The sound horrifying.
I am running as fast as I can back to my car. And once inside, I turn the key, mutter a little prayer and then throw it into reverse. Remarkably, I have not sunk into the mud, and I am able to get traction. I turn to look over my shoulder as I back out, out, out, glancing ahead only once or twice to make sure he isn’t coming for me. When I am finally on the main road again, I take off as fast as I can, not looking behind me once until I get into town. And then I pull up into the driveway of Ryan’s office building on the park and realize I’ve been holding my breath.
Beth, his secretary, is standing at the copier. Her hand clutches her chest, and I catch my reflection in the mirror hanging in the waiting room. I am soaked, my hair plastered to my head. Leaves clinging to it. I brush them off.
“Tess?” she says. “What happened to you?”
“Is Ryan here?” I ask. “I need to speak with him. It’s an emergency.”
“Hold on one second,” she says, and moves to the phone, but I am already headed down the hallway and throwing open his door.
“Slow down,” Ryan says when I try to explain what I saw in the barn, and about Alfieri being back in town. About following him. “You went onto private property, trespassed, again?”
I nod. “I guess, technically, but that woman, Lisa, wasn’t home. There was a sign about a family emergency.”
“Do you realize that either one of them would have been fully within their rights to shoot you?”
I sit down. Will my heart to stop racing, my legs to stop shaking.
“You could have been killed. This is crazy,” he says.
“Somebody has to do something,” I say. “Why won’t anyone do anything?”
“Listen,” he says. “This is something the police should be handling. It’s time for you to stop playing detective. You’re going to get hurt. And none of this is helping her.”
I feel like he’s kicked me in the chest. All of the air has gotten knocked out of me.
“Give me the barrette, please,” I say.
“Tess . . .”
“I need it back,” I say, holding out my hand.
He opens his drawer, without taking his eyes off of me, and pulls it out. He places it in my outstretched palm.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he says softly.
“I’ve told you everything,” I say. “Everything.”
“I mean about Guatemala. About what happened after?” he pauses, and then reaches for my hand.
“What does that have to do with this?” I say. Why is he trying so hard to make this about that? It’s not the same. She’s not the same girl. None of this is the same.
In the dream, I run from the orphanage with her in my arms. Her breath is hot in my ear, her heart pounding against my chest, her small arms strung tightly around my neck. She is pulling my hair, the gentle sting at my scalp of a single strand creating a solitary and focused spot of pain.
I feel the street beneath my feet, the pounding of my sandals against the pavement. I do not look back as they call after me.
The streets in my dream are both similar to and different from the ones I wandered all those weeks as I waited. The air is thick and hot and mephitic, the stink of garbage strong. I bury my face in her hair so that I do not have to breathe this smell of rancid meat and rotting fruit, this fetid air that fills my lungs.
A man sits in a doorway, his shirt baring a bulbous growth, which he rubs gently with his hand as he clucks his tongue. And I run, and run.
I peer up when I hear a woman’s laughter, and see clothes strung on a line on a crumbling turquoise balcony. The embroidered blouses hanging there mock me: the tiny flowers conjured from thread. It only takes one tug, one pull for the thread to begin to unravel.
And so now I duck down the alleyways I once avoided.
Mama, mama, mama, she whispers in my ear, her tiny fists clutching at my hair.
And it is this solitary and certain tug that I still feel when I wake to the bright lights of the hospital.
I leave Ryan’s with no more of a sense of what to do next than I had when I got there. I need to talk to Strickland. He is the only one who can actually, will actually, do something. I have to trust him; right now, I have no other choice.
I sit in my car in the parking lot and dig through my purse for the card he gave me that night, then dial his number.
“This is Strickland,” he says, probably mystified by the 718 area code.
“Hi, it’s Tess Waters,” I say.
“Waters,” he says.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
He coughs.
“I have something to show you,” I add.
“My shift ends at five. Meet me at McDonald’s,” he says, and then hangs up the phone.
5:00 is still two hours from now. I debate whether I should go back to Effie’s house or if I should stay in town. If I go back to the camp, then I’d have to explain to Effie why I’m leaving again. She doesn’t know about Strickland. She doesn’t know anything about what I saw in the barn, or when I followed Alfieri.
And so, I decide instead to just drive around to kill time.
I grew up in Quimby in the seventies and eighties. Not much has changed since then besides what fills the storefronts. It is a time capsule, this town, a place that holds my memories. Every time I come home, I feel like I’ve just dragged a box out of storage filled with mementos. I am both nostalgic and saddened by this place.
Here is the corner where I smoked my first cigarette. Here is the river where Michael Knapp kissed me. Here is my elementary school, my high school. Here is the house where I grew up.
I park across the street from the little brick split-level house near the high school. It looks pretty much the same as it did when I was little. The tree out front that I used to climb, whose branches and leaves served as my own private hideaway, is gone now, which makes the house seem exposed. Vulnerable somehow. I think about the way the house looked to me the first time I came home from college in Boston. How its simplicity and modesty had embarrassed me. I am ashamed now of that shame.
This is the house where I was a child. The bay window where we always put our Christmas tree. The porch where Effie and I used to camp out in sleeping bags on hot summer nights. The small window upstairs to my room where I slept and played and cried. This is the house where my mother died.
The front door opens and a woman comes out. She is thin, pale, wearing only a dingy tank top and a pair of cutoff shorts. Her face is long, drawn, and her hair stringy. I think she is younger
than she looks. She is followed by a guy who is similarly thin, sickly thin. They sit together on the front steps and she leans against him, her head resting on his shoulder. I feel embarrassed, an odd voyeur.
I start to turn the key in the ignition; it’s 4:45, if I leave now I will get to McDonald’s to meet Strickland right on time.
A car pulls into the driveway next to the house, and the guy on the porch stands up, ambles down the steps. His faded jeans cling to his narrow, bony hips. He is like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, nothing but sticks beneath his clothes. He walks over to the open driver’s side window, pulls some loose bills out of his back pocket, and bends down to the driver. When he stands upright again, he’s holding a ziplock bag. As the car backs out of the driveway, he glances across the street, notices me, and shoves the bag in his back pocket.
I turn the key.
On the porch, the man opens up the screen door and ducks inside. The woman stands up to follow him. Her legs are pale, and the backs of her knees are mottled with bruises, scabs.
Track marks.
I squeeze my eyes shut trying to unsee this, as though I can restore the image of my house, the yard where I learned to walk, the walls that held my whole childhood inside. But it is spoiled. Tainted. I remember finding the syringe in the woods. What has happened to this place?
Strickland is sitting in a booth near the back of the restaurant by the bathrooms. I sit across from him, and he nods in acknowledgment. He has a tray in front of him with a burger, french fries, a soda.
“I didn’t know what you liked. If you’re a vegetarian or whatever.”
I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”
He takes a tentative drink of his soda but says nothing.
“Alfieri is back,” I say. “I saw his truck in town today, and I followed him out past the old drive-in. Somebody out there is keeping dogs. Pit bulls, I think. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but I thought you should know.”
One of his eyebrows rises, though almost imperceptibly. “Do you know the address?”
“Listen,” I say. “I know you are hoping to get something on this guy. And I hope you do. I really do. But I’m having a hard time understanding how this is helping her.”
“Who?” he says.
Seriously?
“The little girl,” I say in disbelief. “That child. Christ, why did I even come here?” I start to stand up.
“Wait,” he says, reaching out for my arm.
“What?” I ask. “What the fuck is this? I thought you were going to help me.”
“It’s drugs,” he says.
“What?” and I think about the couple I just saw sitting on the porch of my childhood home.
“I’ve been tracking Alfieri. He makes a weekly run from Holyoke up here and back. Sharp and he are in cahoots, and Lisa figures in somehow too.”
“What about her barn, what I saw?”
“Dog-fighting,” he says.
“What?”
“Gambling. The pit bulls you saw? The blood stains, they’re not human. They’re from the dogs.”
I shake my head. But the momentary relief I feel gives way to disgust. Terrific. These freaking low-life drug dealers are fighting dogs too. And all of this next to a day care center, down the road from my best friend and her daughters. But none of this has anything to do with the little girl who stumbled out of the woods and into my life a week ago. None of this will save her. None of this matters at all.
And I realize that he doesn’t care about finding her. He only wants to make some big bust and save face after the disaster last week.
“You don’t think she’s real, do you?” I ask. “You think I’m crazy too.”
I think about Ryan, the way he looked at me, the pity in his eyes. What happened after Guatemala?
Strickland sets down the burger, and wipes his hands on a napkin. “Miss Waters,” he starts.
I reach for my purse, and for a moment he looks scared. Like I might just pull a gun out of it and shoot him. And for the briefest moment, I have a fantasy of doing the same.
“What is this?” he says.
We both stare at the orange bunny barrette, sitting next to a limp french fry.
“It belongs to her. I found it on Sharp’s property. If you don’t fucking go there and find her, I will.”
The rain stops as I drive back to the camp, the sun emerging triumphant and hot from behind the receding clouds. When I walk into the kitchen, Effie is on the phone with Devin.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says into the phone. “This is amazing.”
A little pang, a sharp sting. I haven’t told her yet about Jake. About what happened between us at that Irish bar. I haven’t told her that everything has fallen apart.
“It’s really happening,” she says when she hangs up. “Gagosian.”
“That’s amazing,” I say. “Is he beside himself?”
“He can’t believe it’s real,” she says. “This is so, so big.”
“How is Zu-Zu doing?” I ask. And she reaches for her phone on the table. “She sent me these today.” She smiles. It’s a picture of her leaping in front of Rockefeller Center. I hold the phone, peer at the screen, swipe my finger across, and look at the photos she has taken of her dorm room, of the dance studio, of her bloody toes. In the last picture, she is pressing foreheads with another girl whose hair is also tied back into a tight bun.
“She’s already got a friend,” Effie says. “It doesn’t look like she’s very homesick.”
“I’m sure she misses you,” I say.
“Oh my God,” she says, shaking her head. “I am such an asshole. How is Shirley?”
I sigh. “They still don’t know. There was a bleed in her brain, so she may have some permanent damage. They’ll probably transfer her to Boston as soon as she’s stable.”
“Oh honey,” she says, and reaches for my hand. Her hands are tiny, childlike in mine.
“It’s okay. I think she’s going to pull through. They say the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours is the most critical. Jake said he’d call tonight.”
“Why are you back here already then?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. “I’m leaving Jake.”
She squeezes my hand and I look up at her. Her sweet face that I know better than my own.
“Are you sure? It’s not just . . . everything that’s happened?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “It was time. It was time a long time ago.”
“I’m so sad,” she says, her voice cracking.
And this, more than anything, brings it all home. And I am angry at Jake for ruining everything. Angry at him for letting me go. For not wanting me, for not wanting us, as much as he wanted everything else. I have eight years of anger stored up, eight years of disappointment and frustration and regret.
Tears run hot from my eyes. Then I realize I am falling apart in Effie’s kitchen. I wipe at my eyes with the back of my wrist.
“Where’s Plum?” I ask, worried she’s just witnessed this.
“She rode her bike over to a friend’s,” she says.
“Are you kidding?” I ask. “With everything that’s going on?”
Effie waves her hand in front of her face, dismissing my concerns. “She’s fine. It’s just up the road.”
“Are you sure?” I say.
“She’s fine,” Effie says. “She’ll be home by suppertime.”
I know I should tell her about all the new stuff that’s come up, the fact that in addition to a pedophile, she has drug dealers, animal abusers, God knows who else living down the road from her. That people are dealing drugs in broad daylight in town. But I have promised to keep my mouth shut. Until the police make their move. Plum is just up the road at her friend’s. She’s fine.
“I think I need to take a nap,” I say, exhaustion overwhelming me.
“Go,” she says, and leans in to hug me. “I’m sorry about Shirley. And about Jake. Get some sleep and we’ll ta
lk about it later.”
In the guest cottage, I toss and turn. There is a small fan, which drones on and on, uselessly spinning the hot air around and around. I throw the sheets off, kick at them as if they are intentionally binding me. I slip in and out of sleep for hours before my body and mind finally relent.
I wake up to a banging at the door. I am disoriented. Confused. At first I think I am in that hotel room. My body aches in that same desperate, impossible way. As the dream dissipates, I think I am in the guest room at Jake’s parents’ house. When the banging comes again, I realize I am here. Through the window, the sky has the golden cast of late afternoon: those golden hours before twilight.
“Tess,” Effie says. Her voice is panicked. And I think, Oh my God. Shirley has passed away. While I was sleeping, Jake’s mother died. My heart thumps hard in my chest as I struggle to extricate myself from the twisted sheets.
I stumble out of bed. My hand, which I have slept on, is tingling, asleep, but underneath the pins and needles is the prevailing steady pain of the wound. Still confused, I look at my knuckles, expecting to see them bloodied and swollen.
I unlock the door, ready myself.
Effie’s eyes are puffy, red. Her hair is disheveled; she is hugging herself.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“It’s Plum,” Effie says. “I can’t find her.”
It feels like my entire body is made of pins and needles now.
“I thought she went to her friend’s house,” I say.
“I called over there when she didn’t come home, but they said she left over an hour ago.”
I try not to panic, to be logical.
“Did you go down to the boat access area?” I ask. As though Effie hasn’t searched everywhere already, as though this wouldn’t be the first place she looked. Effie was there the night Devin’s sister, not much younger than Plum, drowned.
“She would never have gone anywhere near the water by herself,” she says, shaking her head, wringing her hands. “She knows better.”