Missing

by Adiva Geffen

  Outside once more, we walked down a spotless pathway, this one lined with orange and lemon trees. I heard the cooing of children. Amia introduced me to the teacher in charge of the preschool in the building beneath the blue glass pyramid. Moria. I shook her hand. “Daria, Amia, Moria. I guess your name needs to rhyme if you want to work here.” I chuckled at my own wit.

  Moria smiled, and Amia’s lips twisted as well, but there were wary eyes behind the smiling faces, as if I’d trespassed somehow.

  “Come, let me show you our Quiet Corner,” Moria suggested and led me to a room whose bright walls had two picture windows overlooking a roomy hall where children were playing. There was another slogan on the classroom wall: We believe in goodness alone and in uprooting the power of evil from our hearts — Deborah Magidal. Deep and meaningful, especially if you’re three years old.

  I looked at the large hall. Something wasn’t right there. I tried to put my finger on it, and it came to me almost instantly — noise. There wasn’t any. Where were the squeals and shrieks and all the other annoying sounds four-year-olds make? On the other hand, the children did seem happy and very engaged with whatever they were doing. Maybe they did have some magic formula.

  Moria didn’t have anything new to add. She just repeated Amia’s answers: No, Daria hadn’t seemed depressed. She didn’t have any close friends there. And yes, she definitely was a good employee. A bit detached, but dedicated.

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend? No!” Moria almost shouted.

  “What about a friend? Someone who waited for her at the end of the day from time to time?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Outside the window, I noticed the stocky black woman. She was standing at the entrance to one of the classrooms and looking at me. There was something about the way she stared at me that warranted investigation. I had to get to her, but it didn’t seem Amia was about to let me off her leash anytime soon.

  At 3:00, after an “all green lunch” I’d eaten with the four-year-olds, a music lesson with the three-year-olds and an inner listening session with the two-year-olds, I was ready to leave. I received another empowering hug from Amia by the gate.

  “Thanks,” I told her, as soon as I removed myself from her clutches, “you’ve helped me so very much.”

  “With pleasure. I’ll do anything to help you find her. We’re all so worried about her disappearance. It creates an atmosphere of unrest, unbalance, negative energies in the light… You know what I mean, right?” She rested a heavy hand on my shoulder and began to slowly massage it.

  “Of course I do.” I smiled, even though I hadn’t the faintest idea.

  “Great. And if you’d like, we’re having a little gathering at The House tomorrow evening. You should come, you’ll fit right in. I think you could gain quite a bit from our little get-together — personally, I mean.”

  “What will you be doing there?”

  “Oh, you’ll see. You will feel so much better with yourself, your soul, I can feel it — your soul is trapped now. It will be released, and you will uncover the strength inherent in you.”

  I nodded. A few more words about opening and closing chakras, and I’d kneel before her and confess. But The House sounded like an investigation-worthy destination.

  “I appreciate the invite,” I said, “but I have a little something I need take care of tomor—”

  “But that’s the thing,” she interrupted. “You have to take care of this, and you have to take care of that. What about your soul? When are you going to take care of your soul? That weight lying on your shoulders, right here, can you feel it?” She continued to massage my shoulder, sending warm, pleasant currents down my spine. “Remember, the only thing you must take care of is yourself. You need to be fulfilled, enrich your inner self, find your personal road to happiness. Happiness lies within us all. We can help you believe in that again.”

  By the time she let go, I was beyond fatigued, as if all the energy had been drained out of my body. But in spite of all my skepticism, the lady had managed to tap into my fairly extensive reservoirs of pain. After all, I hadn’t found my road to bliss just yet. Trapped soul? Sammy’s gonna love that.

  8

  “Where the hell are you?” Sammy screamed when I called her from my lookout post across from the preschool complex.

  “I just registered at the Magidal preschool.”

  “What’s up with you, Shoshkowitz?”

  “Well, I realized I had a lousy childhood, and now I’m trapped because of it. My preschool looked like a bomb shelter in Afghanistan compared to the Magidal preschool. I’m signing up.”

  “There’s no way you’ll get through their screening tests. I think the minimum IQ score is at least sixty.” She laughed as if she’d just told the joke of the century. “Now tell me, what did you see there?”

  “I spent hours in the preschool and didn’t hear a single kid crying or screaming. On the other hand, I also didn’t see any of them laughing.”

  “Shoshkowitz, darling, should I remind you about the purpose of your visit? We’re after Daria. We’re not here to critique their educational doctrine.”

  “I remember. What about you, my dear, were you able to do any detective work from the sofa?”

  “Not much. There isn’t even a credit card in Daria’s name. No bank account, no cell phone, parking violations, or online subscriptions. It’s as if the girl doesn’t exist.”

  “Sounds like her parents have kept her locked up in a closet, and she took off the first time they forgot the doors open.”

  “Cut it out,” she scolded me. “Enough with the negative attitude. Maybe that’s just their way of protecting her. Maybe she doesn’t know how to be independent. Highly successful people often have weak children.”

  “Can’t manage a bank account, but suitable to work with toddlers?”

  “She was only an assistant there, Shoshkowitz, she barely got to change diapers.”

  ◊◊◊

  I started walking to the city, leaving the luxurious preschool complex behind me. A few minutes later, I reached the commercial center, which looked like an exact clone of all the other commercial centers in the country. Shoes, books, women’s clothes, children’s clothes, lingerie, tools, food, and a single coffee shop. I took a seat there, ordered my second Americano of the day, and called Galia again. This time she answered.

  “Galia? Hi,” I spoke quickly, before she could come to her senses and hang up. Now that’s what I call experience! “My name is Dikla. We don’t know each other, but I’m looking for my sister Daria, she’s gone missing—”

  “Why are you calling me?” an angry voice fired back.

  “I was told you might be able to help me. My sister worked at the Magidal Preschool and—”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Just people. And I’m in Yokneam now, maybe we could meet?”

  “I don’t know what people told you, but I’m sick and tired of you all! Don’t call here again, you hear me?” She sounded hysterical. “I don’t want to get anywhere near those people ever again. Just let me live my life in peace. Leave me alone!” She paused, then finished with a whisper, “I hope you never find Daria.”

  ◊◊◊

  At five o’clock I went back to the main street leading to the preschool complex. Cars stopped by the side of the road. Well-dressed young women exited from each of the vehicles, hurried inside, then walked back to their cars carrying their children. Ten minutes later the complex sank into silence. There was still too much daylight for snooping around, so I climbed up a nearby hill and sat behind a pine tree. I stared and waited. Half an hour later, a white van that looked like a prisoner transport vehicle stopped by the gate. A few more minutes, and the preschool teachers and other employees rushed to the vehicle and climbed in. They all wore the same light-blue uniforms, mi
nus the aprons.

  The cleaning lady I had been waiting for wasn’t among them.

  When the vehicle moved off, I went down my little hill.

  I stubbornly rang the doorbell until a man’s voice finally answered.

  “Could you please open the gate for me?”

  “Everyone went home, miss.”

  “I’m not feeling well.” I gave him my best groan, then another, then I went silent.

  I sat on the sidewalk, held my head in my hands and started counting. When I got to seventy-three, the gate creaked open and a muscular man wearing a security company uniform got out.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know… I was just out for a walk, then suddenly, I felt this weakness…”

  “Perhaps you didn’t drink enough water?”

  Instead of answering, I just mumbled a few meaningless words. Mr. Heart of Gold Security Guy got closer and helped me to my feet.

  “There you go,” he encouraged me. “Just lean on me, and I’ll take you inside.” He seated me on a plastic bench at the complex entrance and ran back to lock the gate.

  “Just breathe deeply, you’ll fill your lungs with air this way…it helps. You’re lucky I was a paramedic in the army. You won’t believe some of the things I’ve seen during my—”

  Before he could finish, I slid down to the floor and rolled my eyes back in my head, a trick I’d learned from a friend-with-benefits, a theatre actor who made me watch his stupid one-man show.

  “Alice!” Mr. Security shouted in the direction of the three buildings. “Alice, come here quickly! Bring some water!”

  I did it! The cleaning lady showed up at the end of the walkway. She looked at me with a mixture of fear and hope. It was obvious she knew something. All I had to do was lose my loyal savior. Alice handed me a bottle of water. I drank, thanked her, and gave them both an agonized look.

  “Thank you, you’re so wonderful. Is there a restroom here?”

  The woman moved her eyes from the guard’s face to mine. Mr. Security nodded. “Alice, show her where the restroom is.”

  “Pleased to meet you Alice, I’m Dikla.”

  She nodded as if to say Whatever.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to check your work permit.” I calmed her down as we walked up the path. “I’m just looking for Daria. Do you know her?”

  Another weak nod.

  “Eve, her mother, is worried sick, crying all day long, concerned about her daughter. I thought maybe you could help me. Perhaps you’ve seen something?” I stroked the back of her hand, trying to soften her up.

  “Me no talk.” She pointed at the restroom. “This good job. Me no talk nothing.”

  “Please, help me,” I begged.

  “Him…” She waved a hand toward the gate.

  “Do you have any children? You know all about a mother’s heart, don’t you? I’m just here to help her. Please?”

  She gave me a close look then said quietly, “You come Tel Aviv. Church belong Pastor Raphael, 22 Shita Street. Tomorrow I be there, eight o’clock.”

  “You—”

  “Them mustn’t know.”

  It was almost 7:00 by the time I got back to Yokneam’s central bus station. When the bus to Tel Aviv finally arrived, I boarded it, tired and full of questions.

  9

  “Good morning,” I squeaked when Sammy woke me up the next morning. “What’s up?”

  “Not you! I’ve been calling you for hours. What’s up is that the office has temporarily moved to my house.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “My meniscus friend. The office elevator is broken again. Each stairstep is Via Dolorosa. So come to me, and on the way, perhaps…”

  “I’ll get you your almond croissant.”

  ◊◊◊

  I found her sprawled on her living room sofa, a bag of frozen peas on her knee, vials and tubes of painkillers and ointments scattered around her.

  “Where’s my croissant?” she demanded.

  I handed it to her, replaced the peas with broccoli, and started my report.

  Sammy listened with her eyes closed then said, “Not bad.” For those of you who don’t know Sammy, “not bad” is the equivalent of winning the private investigators’ Nobel Prize.

  “I’d call it amazing detective work,” I bragged. “But what do we do next?”

  “We need to report to Eve, tell her everything.”

  “Everything? Including Alice?”

  “That was our agreement.”

  “All right, but why the rush?”

  She wrinkled her forehead. “All right, almost everything. We need to get back to Yokneam.”

  “Why?”

  “Because their croissants are fresher than the crap you just brought me.”

  “But it’s sugar-free!”

  “That explains it. Croissants asude, getting to that Galia should be our first priority. We need to grab her by the neck and milk every bit of information she has. Trust me, she knows a lot. Then we need to keep snooping up and down Yokneam, visit The House, and watch the preschool complex. I get the feeling there’s a lot more going on there. But first, we need to go to Pastor Raphael’s church and put a little scare into them. Perhaps she’s holed up there. Not a bad place to hide.”

  “Well done, Sammy, it all sounds just great. But who’s gonna go there, you and your wrecked knee?”

  “Me and you, knucklehead. But lose your POS Kia and get a normal vehicle. In other words — borrow your dad’s car. I’d need to stop eating for a year to get into that miniature car of yours.”

  “What happened to Ginger? Can’t he take us there?”

  “Ginger’s on strike. The idiot actually expects me to pay him.”

  ◊◊◊

  My dad has had a very long love affair with old Mrs. Ford, soon to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest car with the fewest miles in the world. He had been nagging me to use his old lady instead of my battered purple Kia for quite a while. He considered my car to be both a safety hazard and a threat to modern society. But I’m loyal to my tiny Kia, which at least gives me a one in a million chance of finding a parking spot in Tel Aviv. With the giant Mrs. Ford, my chances of finding a parking spot are as slim as the US Army’s chances of wiping out ISIS. But for the sake of Sammy’s knee, I’d decided to accept my dad’s offer.

  “Where are you going?” my dad asked when I called him.

  I told him about our destination and explained the meniscus situation in detail.

  “Well, isn’t that a strange coincidence? I happen to know Pastor Raphael.”

  “Come again?”

  If I knew Pops, he had the same pleased expression my cat, Chechnya, has when she manages to get a juicy cockroach to lie on its back.

  “I know him well , a fine man, an exemplary leader. By the way, I think I should come with you. They don’t really like strangers there. With all the deportation craze that’s been going on, foreign workers have become very suspicious.”

  “Where does this friendship come from?”

  “I sewed the curtains for his church.”

  My dad is the world’s leading curtain philanthropist. He sews curtains for local youth movements, retirement homes, disadvantaged youth organizations, even emergency rooms. He says we all need to make our contribution to society, which in his case means solving the worldwide shortage of curtains.

  “I’ll come by at seven,” I promised him. “It’s going to be a real family trip. You, me and Sammy.”

  ◊◊◊

  I found him overexcited and shockingly overdressed in a suit with a polka-dot necktie resurrected from his marriage to his sweet second wife, Tamara, may she rest in peace. I guess the upcoming visit to the church made me remember my sense of mercy, because I held my tongue and
didn’t say a word. Not even about the white handkerchief poking out of his pocket.

  I started old Mrs. Ford. She choked, spurted some heavy coughs, then miraculously took us all the way to Sammy’s house.

  Sammy wobbled toward us and sat in the backseat while performing Beethoven’s Concerto for Sighs, Heavy Breathing, and Self-pity. I explained the connection between Pops and the pastor to her, and she agreed that curtain philanthropy is a mighty bridge linking us to the foreign workers’ community.

  Only seven minutes from downtown Tel Aviv, we found ourselves in another country. One crowded with Asians and Africans.

  The building at the address Alice had given me was dark and empty. It looked more like a stolen goods warehouse than a church. Inside, a terrible stench filled the air, all the mailboxes were broken, and papers were scattered everywhere. We hit the light switch. Surprise! One of the light bulbs actually offered a little illumination. My dad started to climb the stairs, and I followed. Sammy, panting and cursing, hauled herself up step after step. Reaching the second floor, Pops knocked on a scarred wooden door.

  “Who is it?” called a young voice.

  “Could you please open up?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Pastor Raphael is waiting for us,” I said.

  A dark-skinned teenager opened the door. “Pastor Raphael? Not here,” he said. Behind him, I could see some boys playing with a ball. Two of them had noticed Sammy, who’d finally managed to reach the top of the stairs, and their eyes widened at her astounding size.

  “Pastor Raphael is fourth floor,” said the teenager and closed the door to stop his younger brothers from escaping.

  Sammy sat down in desperation on the top step. Pops and I continued our climb, occasionally making the mistake of using the sticky banister. When we reached the fourth floor, we knocked on the door on the left. A black man wearing yellow gabardine trousers smiled at us and introduced himself as Pastor Abraham.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The church.”

  “Whose church?”

  “What do you mean ‘whose church?’”