Little Green

by Tish Cohen

  Warren began to run four times a week and do pushups in the backyard. He still loved fishing, but had bought himself a set of used golf clubs and took the odd afternoon off to hit balls at a public course nearby. He wore his hair shorter and ironed his shirts.

  Dressage had almost fully taken over Elise’s world. She’d become another horse-mad teen girl, but with one exception: she was winning every schooling show her coach signed her up for. Being the best was a heady new sensation, and Elise was already hooked on it. She rode one of Ronnie’s own horses and had managed to wrangle hand-me-down breeches and boots, and Ronnie’s barn had an assortment of black velvet hunt caps. Rosamunde had a dark blazer her daughter could wear to shows. For now, the shows were cheap—most took place at Grange Road Farms. But once school was out, Ronnie had already made clear, she’d be ready for shows in other parts of the state. With these other shows would come more of a financial commitment. Elise had been doing barn chores in exchange for private lessons all year and would certainly work at the local pool again that summer. By then she would be old enough to hold a job at the registration desk, far preferable to scrubbing toilets, and her hourly wage would be higher. But her paychecks wouldn’t come close to covering her competition expenses.

  Warren’s answer? If Elise had talent, they would do whatever it took. Their daughter was on track to be something special, someone special.

  Rosamunde, however, was losing her rudder. She didn’t look like the women in Roxborough, with their fit little bodies and pert noses and sleek bobbed hair. Her husband was far more comfortable in the new neighborhood than she was. He looked moneyed, somehow, with a straighter nose, more even teeth. Elise fit in better as well—all blond locks and glowing skin, and always in a hurry to go someplace else.

  This new world was stealing Rosamunde’s family.

  At her husband’s urging, she organized a bridge group. This new crowd thrilled Warren and intimidated Rosamunde. One of the wives was a paralegal. Another sold real estate. Career women. Plus, there was Briony from McInnis Hall, who brought along whatever man she happened to be dating at the time.

  Rosamunde would tidy and retidy all day until, around five, she showered, set her hair, rouged up, and came clicking downstairs in kitten heels far too dainty for her frame. She would start everyone off with martinis. Dining room chairs scraping across the floor let Elise know the game was about to begin. This was when she would sneak down the stairs to watch.

  The Briony at Elise’s house was different from the vice principal at school. She would usually wear something slinkier. Nothing really overt, but a bit more leg showed. All of the couples knew her from McInnis, and inevitably one of the husbands would make a sexual innuendo, the rest of the men would chide the guy, and the wives would swat their men good-naturedly. Rosamunde’s husband was the only one who didn’t joke like that. But he insisted Briony sit next to him. Every time.

  Rosamunde would be quiet and efficient as she went to the kitchen to prepare another tray of drinks. From the stairs, Elise could see a sliver of her mother moving between the freezer for ice cubes and the fridge for mixers. Before she emerged with the tray, she would drop a few ice cubes in a coffee mug, dump in a heavy splash of Dewar’s, and down it. She would stare into space a moment, unaware her daughter was watching. Then she would pinch her cheeks, smooth down her hair, and shake herself into the role of charming hostess as she backed through the swinging door to the dining room with her tray.

  Briony’s dating stories had become intoxicating to Elise, who listened from halfway up the stairs. Briony’s life was big. She got her nails done at a salon every week and had been to Paris that past January.

  Rosamunde did what she could to keep up her end of the conversation and once asked if anyone had heard about the Nile crocodile found crawling around in the sewers of Paris back in 1984. “Just imagine. Slithered out of the ocean and into the sewer system of one of the biggest cities in the world.”

  The table went quiet.

  Later, when they were alone, Warren growled to his wife to stay quiet about things she obviously knew nothing about.

  “I know more about Paris than you do. You’d never even heard of this crocodile story,” Rosamunde snapped.

  “Paris is on the Seine. It’s on a river, not an ocean!”

  A terrible silence blanketed the room. The house. The street. From the stair landing, Elise felt sick for her mother.

  Warren’s voice was low. “You’re showing your roots, Rosamunde.” His chair scraped as he stood and went upstairs, closing the bedroom door behind him.

  Elise promised herself that year she would never be naive enough to think that what she didn’t know about her marriage couldn’t hurt her. And yet. Here she was now. Staring out the bathroom window while her husband whistled in the shower.

  Matt had come downstairs first, wearing leather flip-flops, shorts, and a plain white tee, and started to mix mojitos they could take out to the road while they waited for the bus. A dash of lime juice and sugar in each Collins glass, a couple of crushed mint leaves, then ice cubes and white rum. He topped both up with club soda and full sprigs of mint.

  He’d made a good dent in the workload to ready the house for showings, having amassed on the garage floor a huge mound of trash bags filled with junk, garden bags filled with dead plants and weeds, a pyramid of paint cans, old rugs, and appliances—all of it destined for the dump.

  “It’s almost four thirty,” he called upstairs.

  Her flip-flops smacked on the stairs and Elise came into the kitchen in a tank top and sandals, short sarong skirt knotted at her waist. She exuded strength and power, his wife. All sinewy muscle and bone. Coiled tight and ready to strike. Cass seemed so soft and overflowing in comparison. Being around her made Matt feel more masculine.

  “I was thinking spaghetti tonight.” He handed Elise a cold glass. “Nice comfort food for her after a big day.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Drinks in hand, hair still wet, they stepped outside into the sunshine and through a frantic swarm of gnats hovering above the walkway. Elise leaned down to pick a tiny, delicate buttercup and tuck it in her hair, just above her ear.

  There was a faint rumbling in the distance and she looked down the road toward it. “Must be them.”

  “What do you want to bet she gets off begging for McDonald’s?”

  The high-pitched buzz of cicadas made a hot day hotter, Matt decided. It made the air feel like a heavy duvet you can’t kick to the floor.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder at the road’s edge, moisture beading up on their glasses. A boat droned lazily in the distance. A neighbor’s sprinkler system sprang to life: tick, tick, whir. One of the sprinkler heads was broken—water gurgled up only to bend back over itself and give up. There was a lovely ordinariness to the moment.

  A rumbling in the distance, then the front grille of the bus rounded the bend. Cartoonish daisies, peace signs, hearts, and birds appeared in all their nostalgic, hand-painted, hippie glory. The driver’s face became discernible through the windshield next, fat-cheeked and content. Then the bouncing silhouettes of kids in sunhats and the sweet hodgepodge of little voices, singing:

  I’m bringing home my baby bumblebee. Won’t my mommy be so proud of me . . .

  Dust billowed up from the wheels. Matt tapped Elise’s shoulder, guided her back a few steps, up a weedy knoll to allow the bus room to stop.

  . . . smashing up my baby bumblebee. Won’t my mommy . . .

  Flushed faces appeared in windows now. A girl with pigtails pulled so tight she nearly appeared bald stared at them as she passed.

  I’m licking up my baby bumblebee . . .

  A pale boy next, with round glasses and a mushroom cut; he had an arm out the window, his palm keeping beat atop the “P” in “Peace.” Two empty seats, then a boy with an upturned nose. This one gave them the finger with both hands.

  Won’t my mommy be so proud of me . . .

  From their little hill,
Matt and Elise could see through to the other side. Ten or twelve kids on the bus, none of them with a tangled yellow bob, none of them with a freckle-faced grin so wide it pulled her eyes shut, none of them so impish and giggly and radiant that when the sun set your world didn’t go dark.

  It didn’t make sense.

  When the vehicle didn’t slow, time did, every second a lifetime now. A wash of dust and stinging pebbles sprayed their bare feet, and a haze of soupy rainbow hues made them dizzy. Matt held up an arm to signal the driver to stop, but he blew past in a blur of colors, waving his hand through the open window.

  Matt pushed his glass into Elise’s hand and chased the bus up the road until the driver noticed him in the mirror and drew to a stop.

  “She wasn’t on today’s list,” the man said, his face stretched in horror. “I thought she was starting Monday.”

  “She wasn’t there?” Matt turned to his wife. “Where is she? What the fuck, Elise? You were here with her this morning. What happened?”

  “I . . . she wanted me to . . .” Elise was already in full panic. “She got on the bus. Gracie got on!” She looked back at the half-turned canoe. “That woman, Cass’s mother, she was outside in her garden the whole time.”

  “Ruth?” Matt stared at her, incredulous. “You’re talking about Ruth?”

  “She saw Gracie get on.”

  “What do you mean Ruth saw Gracie get on? Where were you?”

  “I went around back, but it was only for a second. And I saw the bus pull away. I know she got on. Of course she got on . . .”

  “Well, she didn’t fucking get on!”

  Elise ran across the road and lawn to Ruth’s front door and pounded on it. By the time Matt caught up, it had swung open and Ruth’s face appeared.

  “You saw Gracie, our daughter, right? This morning?” Elise turned and pointed at the half-canoe bus shelter. “There. You saw her getting on the flowered bus?”

  “Elise!” Matt yelled.

  “That little girl?” Ruth processed what Elise was saying. Her hand went up to touch her neck. “With the messy hair?”

  “Elise!”

  “Yes! Gracie. Did she get on the flowered bus?”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Ruth, did she board the bus?” Yelling, Elise pointed to the camp bus. “Did you see Gracie get on the bus?” The driver was out of the vehicle now and standing in the road, looking panicked. Kids’ faces plastered the windows. “Did you see her get on that bus?”

  “Heavens. Did I do something wrong?”

  “What’s going on?” Cass had materialized from nowhere. She put an arm around Ruth and turned to Elise. “Why are you screaming at my mother? You’re upsetting her!”

  “I don’t believe this,” Matt kept repeating as he paced the porch. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

  “Gracie’s gone!” said Elise. “Your mother saw her get on the bus. We need to know she got on the bus.”

  “She got on the bus,” Ruth confirmed. “Edward and I watched her.”

  Elise looked at Matt, triumphant. “They both saw her.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Elise!” Matt said, his hands on her upper arms. He shook her. “Edward’s been dead for ten years!”

  “My mother has Alzheimer’s,” Cass said. “You can’t listen to what she says.”

  The truth was unfurling and Elise didn’t look like she’d survive it. “But she could still be right . . .”

  “No, not that bus,” said Ruth. “It didn’t have flowers. You know, it wasn’t a bus at all. It was something smaller. A truck, perhaps. Or a van.”

  A roar the size of a jet engine. It started in Elise’s core, billowed up her spine, gathering force with every vertebrae until it escaped her. A roar so loud, so forceful, she could no longer hear what Matt was saying. Ruth started to weep uncontrollably in the doorway.

  Elise couldn’t breathe. The roar coiled itself around her and squeezed, binding her and bracing her. It was so ravenous, so crazed, so keening with outrage, it sucked all the oxygen from the street. The entire village. Its force lifted her off the ground, higher and higher, until she was hovering way above the scene. In the sky, some twenty, thirty, fifty thousand feet up, with puffy cumulonimbus clouds that looked so substantial and beautiful from the ground but now offered her nothing at all. Then the small bit of rock and moss that made up Ruth’s lawn. The hedge. The roof. It all came rushing upward, fallen needles growing larger and sharper and more intricate as they hurtled toward her. Her only instinct: to travel back in time, tuck her knees into her belly to protect unborn Gracie from the impact. Her feet hit first, driving her knees into her chin. Just as the pine carpet came smashing into her face, Elise realized she’d dropped to her knees on Ruth’s verandah.

  She’d never made a sound.

  Chapter 16

  In a sea of uniforms, police badges, buzzing radios, and mounting panic, Matt held his forehead in his hands. There was no good reason for the camp bus driver, Ken, to be in their house instead of their child, and it took everything Matt had not to shake him until answers the man didn’t have came out and Gracie appeared. He watched Elise pace the hall, pushing her hair back over and over. It had been well over eight hours since their daughter got into some other vehicle.

  He and Elise had already run around searching—up the road and across the neighbors’ properties and into sheds and garages. They’d run into the woods calling Gracie’s name. They’d scoured the waterfront, boathouses, gazebos, and docks nearby—barely daring to breathe when looking under them.

  They’d found nothing. Not a trace.

  Ken’s lower jaw trembled and his eyes were pink and glassy with tears. He was speaking to a police officer. “She wasn’t there when I passed, but I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was Monday she was starting.”

  They had called the camp. The voice on the other end of the phone had sounded twelve years old. After some shuffling of the phone, whispering, the horror was confirmed: “No, her leader says she never arrived. Her name wasn’t on any of the lists yet because she wasn’t signed up the usual way.”

  “Matt, come.” Elise pushed out through the front door.

  He followed. Two local police cars had joined the state police; their lights flashed with sickening authority. Matt felt weightless. Couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. These cops climbed out of their vehicles to join the state troopers. The bright points of their metal badges caught Matt’s eye. Police badges were in the shape of shields, he noticed for the first time in his life. For protection. But whose?

  Still, the whole show was convincing. You had to believe these people knew what to do.

  In a stupor, he watched Elise tell them what she knew—which was nothing. As they were calling 911, he’d remembered how Elise could fix things in an emergency. Like the woman who fell off her Segway. Like the night in the hotel room. He’d remembered and clung to her. Reminded her—surely she could summon up her superhero self for her own daughter. Yes?

  But she stared at him with those eyes. There was no superpower behind them at all. They were just as useless as his.

  Jesus . . . he’d been busy having an orgasm to the sight of his old girlfriend while Gracie was out there with no one even starting to look for her. He could have stayed until the bus arrived, not gone to sharpen the axe. Made a bigger deal about Gracie going to camp for her first time ever. It was his bus shelter. Why hadn’t he thought to sit beside her on the bench? He felt his head swirl, and he leaned over his knees to stop himself from passing out.

  Maybe he deserved this lightning bolt from hell.

  A crowd had started to gather as neighbors wandered over to see what was wrong. He and Elise were the flaming wreck on the side of the highway.

  One of the cops turned to him, her mouth moving. She was tiny. A child looking for a child. Her short hair was dyed deep red and she wore stud earrings. Tiny gold horseshoes, but one had tilted sideways. Matt stood. He wanted to tell her that horseshoes should be upr
ight like the letter “U.” Otherwise, the luck runs out.

  “Sir, I’m asking you what other vehicles you saw.”

  He racked his brain for details of that morning; it was all so blurred, like looking through a rainy windshield. “The guys were on the roof,” he heard himself say. “Then Paulie, the kid from the gas station, he was here to take away the raccoon. There were tourists—there are always tourists.” A boat pulled up out back, police radio chatter echoing from the bay. The wail of sirens grew increasingly intense. “When I left . . . to go to the hardware store . . . I passed a small car. Dark. Dusty.”

  This morning, this—he looked at her badge—this Investigator Meghan Moody got up, showered, swiped on eyeliner and red lipstick to complement her hair. Pulled on the ironed gray uniform, pushed the tiny earrings into her pierced lobes, thinking they looked pretty.

  “You notice anything else—the plates, the driver?”

  Maybe she had a kid of her own. And when she got home that night, she’d remove those earrings and do what everyone who wasn’t Matt or Elise would do. Thank the heavens their child wasn’t the one who’d gone missing. He’d never been so fucking jealous in his life.

  “I didn’t think to look.”

  Cass’s mother stood watching them. Ruth. The reason they’d already lost so many hours. Why hadn’t he said something to Elise about Ruth’s dementia?

  Images of the day flashed through his mind, distorted and hazy. A black raccoon. Elise in the garden. The swinging FOR SALE sign. The camp kids singing. “I didn’t know to look.”