The Lost Daughter

by Lucy Ferriss

  He chuckled. God, the kitchen was quiet. No more voices in his head, no chorus. A distant siren on Farmington Avenue. “Ever see a loser like me?” he said to Lex. The dog flicked open his eyes but did not raise his head. “Wife walks out and I get Laundromats on the brain. What the fuck.”

  He made it up the stairs eventually. He managed a mouthful of Listerine, three Tylenol, a pair of cold tablets that were supposed to make you drowsy. But he lay awake all night, waiting for the car to return. All night he felt the skin of his wife, like a missing limb.

  Throughout the long drive back to Boston, Alex replayed the encounter with Brooke. The way she had stared at him, once she understood what he was saying. The candle’s gleam in her eyes. The crack in her voice: I wanted to hold her. Turn himself in, what a screwy idea. And yet he hungered for it, that wash of horror over her face. If everyone would just look at him, once, with that horror in their eyes, then he would know. He would stand judged. He could begin, bit by bit, to atone. That was what he wanted.

  His apartment yawned empty, the new furniture like a display model. Five minutes to midnight. Slowly he undressed. He could call Charlie; she’d be up still. Or even Brian. To tell them? No. Just to talk, to murmur himself into sleep. The bright, thin charge of insomnia lit up his brain in patches. Don’t watch movies, the doctor in Japan had advised. Read books. But he had no books here.

  Undressed, sprawled on the bed that felt strange to him, a stranger’s bed, he flicked the television on mute and saw young beautiful white people arguing in a parking lot. He could not restrain himself. Sliding his BlackBerry off the side table, he punched in Brooke’s cell number. He might wake her, yes. Wake her husband. But he had to hear her voice one more time. Had to hear her say the words—You bastard, you murderer, leave me alone, go die. As the phone pipped, he exhaled what felt like the first breath since he left the restaurant.

  “Lex,” she said.

  “I thought you would screen my call.” The TV had switched to a mute commercial, an SUV on top of a mountain. He couldn’t help himself. He smiled at her voice. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I was awake. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Wishing I’d never shown up?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said—and she sounded very far away, her voice small—“how you did everything right. Whatever you say about long ago, you did. Right school. Right career. Right way to have a family. And life hasn’t been all that kind to you.” She chuckled drily. “Starting with me, I guess.”

  Alex flicked off the TV. Rising, he went to his picture window and looked over Storrow Drive, the Charles, the lines of lights. “Where are you?”

  “Driving. I have one of those earpiece things.”

  “Is something wrong? Your daughter?”

  “No, no. Meghan’s with her dad.”

  “I’d like to meet them.”

  “I don’t know actually, Lex.” Her voice went tight. With his free hand Alex found he was touching himself. He didn’t mean to. Brooke’s voice brought back the memory of her, not as a girl, but as the woman who had kissed him as they left the Afghani place. Her breast had just barely touched his chest, a more womanly breast than he’d remembered, and it had rubbed—had it, really?—against his thin shirt before she’d pulled away. He shut his eyes, imagined her hand, plain and strong. “It’s not just that you want to do—what you want to do,” Brooke was saying now. “Seeing you brings back feelings that I…that I really do better without. Don’t you think?”

  “Think what?”

  “That this is kind of dangerous. This contact.”

  “It’s not contact with me that’s dangerous, Brooke. It’s contact with yourself.” His hand was moving now. The very word, contact, brought her plush skin to mind, the smell of her shampoo.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “No, really. I have to. Don’t do anything yet, okay? I mean about what you think you did.”

  “I know what I did.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone about it yet. Please? For me? I won’t stop you later, I promise. I just…I’ve got to get used to some things.”

  “Okay. Okay, Brooke.” He left off touching himself. He pressed his palm against the window, as if she stood on the other side of the glass. “Are you crying?”

  “No. Course not. I’ve got to go now.”

  She rang off. Alex tossed his phone onto the pile of clothes flung over a chair. “Christ,” he said aloud.

  This wasn’t what he wanted, this bit of hope. He didn’t want to get aroused by Brooke, to start dreaming of Brooke. He dropped onto the bed. Here came sleeplessness. So tired, and he would not sleep, not tonight. Jacking off wasn’t going to help. The blue pills in his medicine chest would only grind out a headache. Sinking into the bed, staring at the mottled ceiling, he saw Brooke. Not as she was tonight, with her loose vest and groomed hair. But her clammy milk-white face as he pulled the blue infant away, as he found his pocketknife and cut the cord. He heard her sigh, a long Oh after holding her breath the whole time his hand and the spoon were inside her, pulling the thing out. And the blood had gushed, and the stringy tissue with it, right through his jacket and onto the bleached sheets of the motel bed.

  It’s not alive, is it, she had said, and it wasn’t a question.

  The eyes moved. Didn’t they? Alone in his new life in Boston, he heard her again, the rush of words following the rush of blood. Give it to me, she’d said. Let me see. Oh, Lex. I’m going to change my mind. If it’s my baby I don’t care. Oh, Lex. Let me hold him.

  On she babbled. He hadn’t heard her, then, the way he heard her now. He passed the baby onto her belly, the white shirt soaked with red. She said something about its heart. She put its chest to her ear, a girl playing at doctors and nurses. But neither of them moved to get the phone that was connected now, neither of them called the people who knew about hearts and how to get them beating.

  What had he said to her then? What? I think you were right, Brooke. It wasn’t alive in you. Was that what he’d said? Was that how he’d lied? He’d felt the lie in him, starting right then, like the hiccups or a penny you swallowed as a kid, a thing that would work its way out.

  He saw his hands, lifting the tiny body off Brooke’s belly. He saw himself wrap it in a couple of the bathroom towels. They were red with blood, but wasn’t the little thing past caring anyway? He had carried it out of the room and down the hall toward the back of the motel. With the thunderclap he’d heard in the room, the long drought had finally broken. Rain came down warm, glazing the asphalt and the green metal of the Dumpster in back of the building. Before he stepped out of the building, he fished in his jeans pocket. There they were, the nail clippers he carried everywhere. Crouching, he lifted the edge of the towel. The infant’s eyes were closed—had he closed them?—and its color wasn’t so blue, almost pink even. He tugged at a wet lock of hair, clipped it, tucked it into the pocket of his shirt, under the jacket. He touched his lips to the head. Still so warm!

  Outside, next to the Dumpster, sat a couple of wooden crates. Holding his bundle, he climbed them. A vomitous smell rose from the boxes and plastic bags in the big metal tomb. He started to drop the body in, but he couldn’t. He could not lay it down in that stink. He told himself it would be found in there; he had nothing to throw on top, to cover it up. He stepped back down. He went to the edge of the parking lot, to a back field, high in dry grass, and tried to lay it down there. As rain pelted the little face, the eyelids seemed to flutter with the drops. He covered the head, started to walk away. Then he fetched one of the crates. He tucked the baby inside and set the other crate on top, so the rain wouldn’t pound on the body or the mud swamp the bloodstained towels. He set both crates behind a pair of lilac bushes, where no one would see them. As he hurried back, rain fell into his eyes.

  Upstairs, she had left the bed. Sound of water running—she was showering, standing on the bloody towels, rinsing herself clean. He didn’t go
in. He pulled the sheets off the bed; pulled off the mattress pad; flipped the bed over so you couldn’t see the bloody stain. The water stopped running, in the bathroom. Are you okay? he called through the door. She said, Yes, but in a tight, hard voice like a ball of tin foil, and then she asked did he have any money. When he said five dollars, she sent him out again, to pick up heavy-duty pads at a drugstore.

  God, how he remembered that night! The air stood thick, heavy with cicadas. The cars flew over the road as if they would all circle around and descend on the Econo Lodge. He looked for stars, but even the full moon was blanketed. Fat drops of rain hit the windshield as he turned onto Route 6. A woman was crossing the road, her head hooded, hunched; he swerved and honked. By the time he reached the CVS parking lot, people outside the stores were stomping in puddles, shouting. In the bright pharmacy, the pretty cashier smirked as she rang up the pads. Driving back, wipers at top speed, he steered with his elbows. He could not have explained this peculiarity to anyone, not even Brooke.

  But she had it all straightened up, the sheets wet but spotless on the bed, his Polartec dripping, a towel slung between her legs as she lay like a corpse on the bathroom floor—her hair wet-combed, her belly soft now like one of those old paintings, her head turned and resting on her arm, the other shoulder awkwardly lifted. Oh, baby, she said, as he held her there on the cold tile, oh baby, oh my baby, you are my life.

  That was what she had said. He sat up, in the plush chair. You are my life, Brooke had said, half a lifetime ago, and then she had slid away from him, drawn her whole self tight as crushed tinfoil. And just now, on the phone? She was driving. He looked at the clock. Twelve thirty. Christ, what was she doing out at that hour? Before he could reflect, Alex found his phone among the rumpled clothes. He pressed the green button twice. “Lex?” she said. He could hear it now, the sound of the road.

  “Where are you, Brooke?”

  “I’m driving. I’m sorry. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “I thought you had an earpiece.”

  “I took it out. I didn’t think anyone would call.”

  “Where are you driving after midnight? Don’t you—”

  “I’m sorry, Lex. I’ve got to go. We’ll talk, okay? Get some sleep.”

  The phone went dead. He stared at it, then out again, over the bright bustling city. A strange panic lodged in his chest, and sleep lay on another continent, a long migration away.

  Chapter 16

  Brochures. So many brochures spread out, now, on the wooden coffee table that Ziadek could hardly find a place to put his coffee down. Until late at night Najda sat up, thumbing through them with her good hand, frowning at all the words. Being dyslexic, the teachers had said, meant she read very slowly but took everything in, like a deep sponge. Somewhere in America was a place with knowledge for her to soak up, a place where rich people sent their children in wheelchairs and where a few very rich Americans, their consciences pricked, left sums of money for enterprising families like Ziadek’s. That was how Najda had explained what she had been doing at the library, filling out forms online and sending away for these brochures.

  They needed to apply soon. In a week, the social worker—what was her name, this one? Darcy? Daisy? Delores, yes, Delores—would be coming by. Delores would have heard, by then, from the public school. Whoever was in charge of such things there would have alerted Delores to Najda’s continued absence. Katarina had warned that the social worker would never swallow this story of a new school, a scholarship. For once Ziadek feared his older daughter was right. This social worker Delores—they came and went, a new one every eighteen months—had little patience and even less understanding. A heavyset black woman, she felt sorry for families like Ziadek’s but she saw them as hopeless and also as foreign, using up resources that bright young black children deserved. Ziadek knew this though Delores never said anything directly to him, just asked Luisa questions in a loud voice and made scratches in her little book.

  But on a heaven-sent day like this one—Indian summer, Americans called it, as if the Indians used to enjoy weather like this until the white man came—Ziadek could not beat his brow with anxieties. He wheeled his oxygen onto the narrow deck in back of the trailer, where the gas grill was set up. The warm dry sun, in a sky like a robin’s egg, penetrated his leathery skin. He loosed the top two buttons of his shirt and settled in the plastic-weave chair with his book of Sudoku. From around the trailer park, he could hear the low chatter of televisions. Above, the trees that dotted the park lifted their dry canopies, splashed now with rust and gold; not a leaf moved. In his head Ziadek was hearing that old tune that Marika used to sing, “By the Lake.” Only as he finished the first puzzle did he realize that his memory of the song was blending with a humming sound, Najda’s humming. She and Luisa were back from the library.

  “Lunchtime, Ziadek!” Luisa called from inside the trailer. “Hello! Ziadek! Lunchtime!”

  He turned to the next Sudoku. It was not good for him to shout, Dr. Sanford had said. They would find him soon enough.

  “Ziadek! Ziadek!”

  He heard the screen door being pushed aside. He turned to see Najda, her face tight with determination, wheel herself onto the deck. She was still humming low, almost a growl. The sun struck her hair, which Luisa always brushed in the morning until it crackled. The hair shone like a spring daffodil. For the first time Ziadek saw that the foundling, for all her defects, was maturing into a lovely young woman. Her sweater hugged her young breasts; her waist nipped in.

  “Ziadek!” Luisa called. She was in his bedroom now. “We’re hungry!”

  Najda shot Ziadek the glance of a conspirator. But he would not tolerate disrespect in his house. “Tell your mother,” he instructed the girl, “where we are.”

  Wheeling over, she craned her neck to see the Sudoku. It was tempting to ask her; this puzzle was one of the harder ones. She was quicker with numbers than with words and could spit them out without hesitation. Reluctantly Ziadek closed the book. “Go tell her now,” he said sternly.

  Najda’s lower lip pushed out, but she turned the wheelchair back to the open door. “Mo-om,” she called in English, petulantly and barely loud enough. Ziadek shook his head. Two weeks ago, Luisa had started her first job outside the home, helping the Guatemalans who ran the Quik Mart by the gas station. But if this stay-at-home situation kept on, Luisa would quit her job, come home, and take orders from her daughter. The girl needed to be back in school, and soon.

  “There you are,” said Luisa. “Ziadek, we need lunch.”

  “You know how to fix lunch,” he replied evenly. “I am not hungry.”

  “But, Ziadek.” He turned. His daughter was twisting her hands in front of her. It wasn’t food she was talking about. Something had happened.

  “Bring me my ginger ale,” he told her, “and come sit.”

  As Luisa disappeared into the trailer, Najda made as if to wheel herself down the ramp from the porch, onto the flagstone path that led around the clearing, to Katarina’s place. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said to her. “You stay here a moment, grandchild.”

  Luisa clutched the can of ginger ale with her elbow while she carried a fistful of red licorice in one hand and an apple in the other. As she stepped onto the porch, the apple went down. Ziadek scooped it up. When he handed it to her, her eyes welled with tears. “It’ll bruise,” she said.

  “It will be fine. What are you two fighting about?”

  Luisa and Najda exchanged glances. Finally Luisa said, the tears starting to fall, “She wants to go away.”

  Ah. So it had come out. “Some of these schools,” Ziadek said gently, “are not so close.”

  “Nobody told me that.”

  “And nothing has been decided yet. Najda must get a scholarship, or she goes back to the public school.”

  “I don’t want her to get a scholarship.”

  “Luisa, we talked about this.”

  “Don’t do the forms, Ziadek.” Luisa bit off a chunk of
licorice and chewed it angrily. She was curled into herself on the other plastic chair, a damp lump of sorrow. “She just wants you to do the forms,” she said around the candy, “because she hates me.”

  “She does not hate you.” Ziadek held up a hand to shush Najda, who sat glowering at the top of the ramp. She had started to emit gurgling sounds, and he feared they would form themselves into the words, into Yes, yes, I hate you. And what would he do then? Marika would know what to do, but he couldn’t think the way she did. He inhaled the oxygen, pure and cool, and still he felt short of breath. “All parents let go of their children,” he said, taking Luisa’s free hand in his.

  She shook her head. “Not true, not true.”

  Of course it was not true. He had not let go of Luisa. How could he? Someday, in fact, he would have to, or she would not survive his death. Maybe, Ziadek thought as he held his daughter’s hand in the October sun, this was the first step, which Najda was taking, to letting Luisa herself go.

  “And then they come back,” he said, “and love you just as much as ever. You don’t want to lock your daughter up, do you?”

  Najda wheeled closer. The sounds in her throat were working their way out. “That,” she said. They both looked at her. “That,” she repeated, “that school.” She made a fist of her good hand and shook it at Luisa. “Kill myself,” she hissed. Her mouth contorted in an awful grimace.

  “Ziadek!” Luisa cried.

  “You will do no such thing,” Ziadek said to Najda.

  “Kill myself. Kill myself.”

  “But you see, my Luisa. You must let her do what she can.” Reaching out, Ziadek ran his thumb under Luisa’s crying eyes, first one, then the other. “Now we will talk no more about this. We will have some lunch. Najda, you let your mother take you to the park after we eat. You say nothing more of killing. Luisa, you have work later, remember? At the Quik Mart? If we have not so many days together”—here he looked directly at Najda, who he knew understood him so much better than her poor mother—“we must enjoy every one of them. While your mother is at work, my stubborn one, we will look at your schools. There is no time to waste.”