Where I Lost Her

by T. Greenwood

  “The tree house?” I try.

  Effie shakes her head again. “She’s gone,” she says.

  “You need to call the police,” I say.

  I wait at the house as Effie drives around the lake, banging on all the doors, asking if anyone has seen Plum. She’s called Devin and he is driving up from New York. I couldn’t listen to their conversation. It was too familiar, history repeating itself.

  I pace back and forth in the kitchen. Outside the sun is still bright. It is 6:00. There are two hours of daylight left.

  It’s Lieutenant Andrews who pulls up this time, and my heart sinks.

  He saunters out of his car, shutting the door and pushing out his chest as I rush outside to meet him.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Tess Waters,” he says. “How’s this for déjà vu?”

  “My friend’s daughter is missing,” I say, determined not to let him get to me. “She rode her bike to a friend’s house and she left to come home over an hour ago. But she never came home. You need to look for her.”

  “Seems to me, there’s a story that goes like this,” he says, sneering. His voice is mocking, singsongy. “Something about a little boy crying wolf. You know that one, right? The boy hollers and hollers, about the big bad wolf that’s come to eat the sheep, gets the whole village riled up. But there’s no wolf.”

  I take a deep breath, try to stay calm.

  “But you forget, Lieutenant. In the story the wolf does come to the village. That’s how the story ends,” I say, furious. “The wolf actually comes.”

  “Touché,” he says. Except the way he says it rhymes with douche.

  I hate him. But I need to keep calm, to play this game if I want him to help me.

  “She’s ten, she’s has dark curly hair, green eyes. Here is her school picture.” Earlier I sat down and clipped apart the professional photos that Effie brought to me in a sheet, the images repeating again and again on the page.

  He looks at the photo, and I hope that it will be enough to move him. This beautiful child enough to break through that stone wall.

  “This Devin Jackson’s kid?” he asks. Devin is one of only a couple black men in this town. Their kids are likely the only mixed kids.

  I nod, irritated.

  “He donated some of his art for the last Policeman’s Ball. Not my taste, but it brought in a lot of money at the auction.”

  I don’t know if this means he’s going to help me or not.

  He crosses his arms, studying me.

  “You know, if you’re fucking with me, with this town, again, that’s all the DA will need to proceed with the charges against you.”

  I nod and nod. “I don’t care about the charges. I just want to find her.”

  This time, there are no helicopters, but there are dogs. By the time they arrive, it is 7:00 P.M. Daylight still, but only an hour left.

  Effie is still driving around, handing out the photos to everyone, searching the edge of the road for her bicycle. It is bright purple with streamers. It would be hard to miss. I stay at the camp in case she comes home, to keep Devin updated. He calls the landline every fifteen minutes checking in. And though I should expect him, each time the phone rings, my entire body goes limp.

  I try to think about what I can do to help. But there is nothing. And then I think of Mary, the psychic. This house is full of Plum’s things. Effie gave the police one of the shirts from her hamper to give the dogs her scent. Maybe if I gave her one of Plum’s stuffed animals, one of her hair ribbons, she’d be able to find her.

  I try to remember where I put her business card. I search my wallet, but it’s not there. I check my pockets. Nothing. And then I remember tucking it into the visor of the car.

  I go outside to my car. When I open the door, I am greeted by that familiar sour smell of the wine. I wonder how much longer it will linger. If it will always smell like that night.

  I sit down in the passenger seat and flip the visor down. The card is there. I pluck it from the little pocket and start to get out of the car, and then I see the grocery bag sitting on the floor. When I got the call from Jake about his mom I must have forgotten it here. I reach down and pick it up, realize there are a dozen eggs inside. I reach into the bag to pull them out, figure they should go outside in the plastic bin. And I realize there’s something else in there as well.

  Gumdrops.

  The gumdrops I bought to put in the fairy house by the swimming hole. I promised Plum that I would take her back there to leave the note for Star, to see if she’d come and taken the Reese’s Cups we left. She wouldn’t go swimming alone, but she might go looking for fairies.

  I go to the shed where I left Effie’s bike, climb on, and pedal away from the camp as fast as I can, my legs burning as I go. All around me, in the woods along the road, I hear the sounds of the dogs. The policemen tromping through the brush.

  Please, please, please, I think as I pedal up the incline.

  The road is rutted from the last rain. I have to ride in the center of the road to avoid the gully-like tracks left behind. I think, ridiculously, about bowling with Jake back when we first started dating. We were drunk. I was practically seeing double, as I threw the balls down the lane, each of them winding up in the gutter. I was so wasted I walked out of the bowling alley with the rented shoes still on my feet. Didn’t realize it until the next morning when I found them at the foot of Jake’s bed.

  Something about this memory fills me with a deep sort of shame. A familiar shame.

  As my legs burn and I pedal and pedal furiously against the incline, I feel like I am in a dream where I am moving my legs as hard as I can but not making any progress. I get to the spot before the little wooden bridge, and set my bike down. I search the edge of the woods for Plum’s purple bike, seeing nothing. Please, please, please.

  But her bike is not here. I feel in my pocket for the psychic’s card and think I should have called her. She could be on her way here already.

  I head into the woods anyway. I am not entirely sure why, but I push my way through the overgrown path. I can hear the trickling of water, the swimming hole is close. The golden light from the sinking sun gilds every leaf.

  I can see the swimming hole from the overlook, and I scramble down on my butt, hollering, “Plum? Plum!”

  I try to remember where I built the fairy house for her. How far away from the water it was.

  “Plum!” I scream as I jump from one flat rock to the next.

  And then I see.

  The I HEART NY T-shirt. Two puffs of curly hair.

  “Tessie?” Plum says, standing up. She’s crying, one of the ribbons she wears in her hair come loose.

  I run to her, the branches scraping my bare legs.

  She falls into my arms, and I hold on to her. As though she too might just slip back into the woods if I let go.

  I hold on to her shoulders and say, “Plum, your mom is so worried about you. Why didn’t you come home? Where is your bike?”

  “I got a flat tire,” she says. “But I was worried somebody might steal it, so I hid it in the woods by the lake.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the camp? I would have brought you here.”

  “You promised we’d come here today, but then you left.”

  My throat constricts.

  “You told me she was real. But look,” she says, pointing at the fairy house. It’s amazing that it survived the last rain. The two chocolates we left there earlier are still there. The fairy didn’t come and take them. I didn’t come and take them. If I had been here, if I had been thinking, I would have exchanged the gumdrops for the chocolate. I would have made sure she had everything she needed to hold on to this dream. I’ve ruined everything.

  Never mind what could have happened to her out here. Never mind the wolf that lives in these woods.

  “I bet she couldn’t come because of the rain,” I say weakly.

  She scowls.

  “Fairy wings aren’t strong enough to fly in the rain
. Didn’t you know?” I am almost pleading with her.

  But it’s too late.

  This is ten: she knows there is no such thing as fairies. She knows they are not real.

  She sits on the seat of my bike, and I pedal standing up. When we get back to the camp, the sun is dipping into the lake. No one is there. I need to call Effie, but her cell doesn’t work here. Nobody’s cell phone works here.

  I dial Devin’s number on the landline.

  “I found her,” I say when he picks up. “She’s okay.”

  “Oh my God,” he says, and it sounds like someone has just sucked all of the breath out of him. “Where was she?”

  “She was looking for fairies,” I say. “It’s my fault.”

  “No,” he says. “No. Is she okay? Can you put her on?”

  “Plum,” I say. She’s trying to pour herself a glass of lemonade, but the pitcher is too heavy. “Talk to your daddy, honey.”

  I take the pitcher from her and hand her the phone. She takes it and walks into the other room. I pour the lemonade into the plastic tumbler, the one with the picture of Elsa from Frozen on it. I bring it to her in the living room, where she is talking to Devin about her turtle.

  “Mommy says we’re going to get a bigger terrarium for Harold. And maybe we can get another turtle? So that he can have a friend. I think he’s lonely. He looks kind of lonely.”

  When she hangs up, I think about putting her in the car with me and driving until I find Effie. But Effie could be anywhere.

  And so instead I pick up the phone and call the police station. My heart in my throat, I tell the woman who answers that the little girl reported missing earlier this afternoon has been found. I ask if she can please radio Andrews. Let everyone know to stop searching.

  Effie arrives first, followed by Andrews’s cruiser.

  The sun has slipped away now; it is evening. Exhausted, Plum has fallen asleep on the daybed on the porch. Effie runs past me through the camp to her, curls up next to her. I can see her body heaving, the sobs wracking her entire body.

  I go outside, feeling like an interloper, and stand next to the cruiser.

  “So I understand you found the little one,” he says.

  I nod.

  “Huh,” he grunts. “Funny, how you seemed to know right where to go.”

  “She was looking for fairies,” I say as if this explains anything.

  “In that story,” he says. “The one about the boy? There’s a message, right? A moral?”

  “It’s Aesop,” I say. “Of course there’s a moral.”

  “What is it again?” he mocks. “Oh, yeah, nobody believes a liar . . .” He points his finger at me, tsk-tsking. “Not even when they’re telling the truth.”

  After he is gone, I stand outside, not wanting to go back into the camp. Not wanting to interrupt the reunion between Effie and Plum. I don’t belong to this family. I am nobody’s mother. And soon, I will be nobody’s wife either.

  What I want is a drink. Just a big tumbler full of wine. I want to forget the panic that has dissipated now into a terrible, lingering hum, which trills in my limbs. And nagging at me is the one feeling I can’t seem to shake. No matter how hard I try. When I am finally able to put my finger on what I am feeling, I am ashamed. Even horrified.

  I’m jealous.

  I am jealous that Effie got Plum back. It’s ridiculous. Insane. Of course, I wanted to find her. For her to be safe. It’s not that. But what about me? What about all those things that I have lost, those irretrievable things? It seems that everything I lose remains lost. For years now, I have had to resign myself to forfeiture. I am always, always relinquishing things. Whether stupidly squandered or foolishly misplaced, whether abandoned or stolen, so much of what I have loved and wanted has been consigned to oblivion.

  I go back into the camp and find the dusty bottle of whiskey I spotted next to the dish soap and bleach in the bottom cabinet below the sink. I grab one of the metallic tumblers from the cupboard, a wave of nostalgia flooding me. I remember Effie and me bringing these same cups filled with Diet Cokes and stolen vodka out to the front yard one summer, getting drunk and falling asleep in the sun, the sunburns so terrible that we couldn’t sleep on our backs for a week. I always chose the green one, Effie the blue.

  I pour the cup halfway with whiskey then top it with ice and lemonade.

  I just want to stop feeling this way. I want to stop thinking about all those lost things. I want to be able to let go. I want to loosen my grip, to stop fighting. It has all been so futile. I have wasted years of my life hanging on to a dream, chasing something so ethereal, impalpable. I’ve been clinging to ghosts. I think about Plum and the fairy, her realization, the sad resignation. She’s ten years old, and she already knows better, has learned the lesson that it has taken me a lifetime to learn.

  I go outside to one of the Adirondack chairs and sit facing the water. The lake is still tonight, the moon’s reflection aglow on the surface.

  As I drink, I feel the ache in my shoulders subsiding, the muscles in my legs and arms and back relaxing. This is better than a chiropractor, I think. Better than yoga. When Devin arrives home, it’s almost midnight. Effie has put Plum to bed, and I can hear the soft sounds of their voices, see their silhouettes, their bodies clinging to each other in this terrible relief. And I drink.

  Effie comes outside not long after, bringing me a blanket, which normally lies draped over the arm of her couch.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  I nod. I know that if I try to talk, to explain what is going on inside my head, I’ll ruin everything. To begrudge her this, to admit to the wickedness that lives inside of me, would be irresponsible. Cruel. She is my best friend. She is the one person in the world I trust. I may be angry, and I may be drunk, but I am not stupid.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m so sorry. About the fairy house. About everything. I’m so glad she’s home.”

  She nods and sits down in the empty chair next to me.

  “You could stay here,” she says. “With us.”

  I am confused.

  “I mean, instead of going back to New York.”

  Tears fill my eyes. Even my home is not my home anymore. I try not to think about what will happen to the brownstone now. I squeeze my eyes shut, and see the antique tub with its perpetually drippy faucet, the ceilings laced with cobwebs I could never reach, the smudgy windows and chipped paint on the crown molding. I think about the first night we spent in the house, back before we even owned a couch. When we sat on pillows on the floor, too afraid to start a fire in the fireplace, we’d lit a bunch of tea lights. We did love each other once.

  I think about the extra room, the way I’d stood at the hardware store around the corner looking at the paint-chip display, the spectrum of possibilities. I’d gone back three or four times before settling on the lilac color, the one that I thought might remind her of jacarandas.

  I remember the smell of the paint as I rolled it onto those old walls, covering the water stains and cracks in the ancient plaster. The heft and heave of the window I opened to get some fresh air and how the sounds of the city flooded the room. I recall the toddler bed I special ordered and the antique dresser I found at the flea market and rolled on a dolly fifteen blocks home. I remember the framed illustrations from the children’s books I found in the used bookstore around the corner, how I’d cut the pages out with a razor blade before placing them behind glass. I think of the paper cranes I folded: a thousand of them, which I hung from the ceiling, each one tethered by an invisible string, creating the illusion of flight. And I remember the blanket Shirley knitted for me arriving in the mail, the soft white cabled blanket she must have worked on for months, folded and tethered with a pale purple ribbon.

  “Did I make a mistake?” I ask, and I am not even sure which mistake I am referring to. There have been so, so many.

  Effie reaches for my hand.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head.

  Effie leav
es me and goes to bed, and I drink. I drink until the ground feels uneven beneath me. Until my limbs, my entire body, feel separate from myself. I struggle out of the Adirondack chair and make my way across the grass, the blanket wrapped around me. I stumble down the path to the cottage and after fumbling to get the door open, to get my clothes off, I collapse into the bed, kicking the heavy covers off of me. The smell of Effie’s laundry detergent suggests she’s washed the linens recently, most likely while I was with Jake and his mom. Shirley. My heart aches. I stare up at the tongue-in-groove cedar ceiling and begin to spin. I fight off the urge to vomit, simply because I’m not sure I can get out of the bed again. I fight the waves of nausea, press my hand flat against the wall to anchor myself on this rocky sea. And then, thankfully, finally I pass out.

  I dream of Guatemala. I dream the smell of jacaranda, the nauseating sweetness of mangoes, of the violent beauty of dragon fruit. I dream her flesh in my arms. I dream of dogs ripping and tearing each other apart, an arena of hurt. Of the needles, of the couple on the porch, smiling with teeth like dogs. Of Plum, of panic. Lieutenant Andrews standing over me, I’m going to need you to calm down now, ma’am, he says. Threatens. Just calm down.

  “Ten calma. Please,” the lawyer says.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. Where is she?” My throat is raw. My whole body raw.

  We sit across the desk from her in her small office, and I can feel your grip on my arm tighten, to keep me from leaping over the desk and tearing her eyes out. To keep me from killing her.

  “This morning, there was a raid. At the orphanage. The children have been seized.”

  “Seized?” I picture the armed guards, the ones who stand in the doorways of the shops and banks in the city. Their smug grins as I hurried past.

  “Some of the children were there illegally,” she says. “Stolen. From their mothers. It’s a serious problem here. The kidnapping, the black market . . .”

  “Mothers? We were told she was an orphan. Her mother is dead.”