Still, it drew her. Every few days she found herself heading in that direction.
She never made it more than halfway, though. A force field of grief kept her from returning. Parked at the side of the road, she’d try to breathe while sucking the venom from a cigarette. Sometimes she had to pull over because she couldn’t see what was in front of her; it was a disastrously rainy autumn. But even when the sky was clear, there were the blinding effects of tears.
Still, she refused to stop looking. Every morning, after the butcher had left for his shop, Lucy got in her little red coupe and made random circuits around the state, sometimes for up to four or five hours.
“Babe,” Ron said. “What are you doing? You think you’re going to find him standing by the side of the road?” Always in measured tones, never unkindly, he’d tell her that she was being foolish—that the kid was probably inside somebody’s house. “They’re not gonna let him run around in the street.”
A comment that made Lucy furious. “Are you suggesting someone’s got him tied up?”—the question brandished before Ron, daring him to join her in imagining the worst.
She was thankful when he refused the bait. “Of course not,” he replied. “Who could hurt a kid like that? He’s a friggin’ angel.”
Lucy relied on the butcher’s steadiness, his seemingly unshakable conviction that Edgar would return. Still, she had no one else to lash out at.
“What am I supposed to do, get out of the car, knock on people’s doors? Look in their fucking windows?”—to which Ron replied that she didn’t need to be doing the police’s job. A bogus answer, because he knew as well as she did that the police never seemed to be doing enough. Everything possible, they constantly said—but there was never any news.
Still, Ms. Mann, the detective, was in touch with Lucy almost every day. “Please, call me Becky,” she often said—but Lucy preferred not to reduce the woman heading the search for Edgar to a name that brought to mind pigtails and braces.
Ms. Mann was less of a bitch, though, than she’d been at first. Lucy suspected the softening was due to the fact that the woman had failed to pin the boy’s disappearance on maternal abuse (some sort of dildo cult hosted in Edgar’s bedroom). Lucy hadn’t completely forgiven the detective for her insinuations early on in the case, but what choice did she have other than to accept Mann as an ally. In regard to the investigation, she did seem to be the one police person who’d remained persistent, always following some new lead—even though each prior lead had led nowhere. The mysterious phone calls the butcher had received had come from disposable cells—but now, with the technology in place to trace future calls from such devices, there was only silence.
Some boys from Edgar’s school had come forward about a man outside a convenience store. Fairly tall, light brown hair, a beard. He’d helped Edgar escape the clutches of a bully. “I think he was a cop,” one boy said. “But like off-duty.” “Yeah,” another agreed. “He said he had buddies at the station.” None of the boys could recall if he’d had a car. Ms. Mann, remembering the doodles in Edgar’s sketch pads, was looking into cops with beards. As for the bully, the boys claimed not to have recognized him (“some fat kid”). The detective suspected the boys were reluctant to name the bully for fear of reprisals. She gave each of them her card and said, “If you think of anything, call me anytime, day or night.” Two of the boys had tittered as if she were proposing a date. “This is very serious,” she scolded them. “Your classmate could be dead.”
A teacher of Edgar’s had been brought in for questioning. Daniel Levinson, Math and Science. When employees of the school had first been interviewed, the man had been unabashedly verbal about his fondness for the child. “A delicate boy,” he’d gushed. “Such a commodious mind.” He’d used words like beautiful, special; had admitted that, like Edgar, he himself had grown up without a father. “I know what that’s like. I tried to be a mentor to him, you know. A friend. People often misunderstand children like that.” “Like what?” Ms. Mann had asked—to which Daniel Levinson had replied, “Brilliant, but—with issues.” By the end of the interview, the unattractive forty-year-old man had confessed to sleepless nights of worry over poor Edgar Fini. When Ms. Mann ordered a search of Mr. Levinson’s office, as well as the small house he shared with his mother, the man made no protest—only blushing slightly, saying, “I’m not like that.”
Though nothing was found to warrant further investigation, Ms. Mann claimed she was keeping an eye on the man. When she talked about these things to Lucy—offered details from the search—Lucy felt the conversations went beyond an official exchange. Mann told her too much, describing the dusty interior of Mr. Levinson’s house, how she’d unrolled his tube socks and poked around inside, only to find postage stamps. It seemed, to Lucy, that Mann shared such details because she wanted approval—needed someone to tell her she was doing a good job. Perhaps it wasn’t easy being a female detective, but Lucy often wished Mann had more confidence.
“You’re doing great,” Lucy would say. “I know you’ll find him.”
“Thank you.” Here, Mann would nod one too many times. “I will.”
Luckily there were days when the detective’s enthusiasm seemed genuine. One afternoon, she proudly informed Lucy that Edgar’s image and profile had effectively been entered into every law-enforcement and missing-persons database in the country, and that the information was going out internationally, as well.
It seemed miraculous at first: Edgar’s little white face appearing on computers and phones all around the world. But, that night, when Lucy lay in her son’s twin bed and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, she felt the extent of the search to be inadequate.
“He’s everywhere,” Ms. Mann liked to proclaim, in regard to the proliferation of the boy’s image. “We should definitely be getting some reports soon.” Lucy tried to remain hopeful, pushing down her glow-in-the-dark fears of an abduction that had little to do with the lines on a map. Slippage, Frank had called it. A slow falling from this world.
Lucy began to have unpleasant dreams in which her body rumbled across the sky with the deafening roar of a helicopter. Her eyes were spotlights—though they found nothing on Earth but strangers. When she woke in a sweat beside the pneumatic hiss of the mouth-breathing butcher, she would slip her toes between his hairy legs and try to remind herself of some scrap of pamphlet wisdom: Be calm. Remember: even as you sleep, much is being done to find your child. You are not alone.
Lucy pretended this was true.
Visualize your child sleeping in his bed. See yourself tucking him in.
When she tried, though, she could never see her own hands at the boy’s chin—only Florence’s.
* * *
Recently, Ms. Mann had started to collaborate with the Light for Jimmy people to help bring more attention to the case. The organization that had provided the bloodhounds employed a creative team that exploited everything from pop stars to public art. The latest news: Edgar’s face would appear on a large screen in Times Square, between 5:42 and 5:43 P.M., on the first Wednesday of December. “One minute?” snapped Lucy—to which Mann replied, a minute was good, and that no missing child was getting more time than Edgar. “How many faces are they projecting?” asked Lucy, and Mann said, “About twenty thousand.”
Slowly, the hunt for Edgar lost most of its real-world components (dogs, search parties, flashlights) and became more and more relegated to the virtual (e-mail, images, data). It no longer seemed a hunt at all—the whole project largely reduced to a matter of information dissemination and waiting. This was intolerable to Lucy. A working-class girl to the bone, she knew that if Edgar were to be found, it would be through effort—physical effort. She committed herself more fully to grueling drives around the state. Slowly, her circles widened to include New York and Connecticut—and soon she planned to drive farther south, as well.
One morning she took the Parkway to Seaside Heights—a route that, just past the exit for To
ms River, swept through the northern edge of the Pine Barrens. She paid no mind to the scrappy trees at the side of the road; her destination was the ocean.
Walking along the cold deserted beach, she experienced a gasping relief at being able to shout the boy’s name as loud as she wanted, without anyone telling her to calm down. On the way home, when she was only a few blocks from 21 Cressida Drive, she made a detour and drove to her father’s house. She parked on the street and watched for signs. It wasn’t inconceivable that the old man might have stolen the child. She shuddered, thinking of his sodden thrashings at Florence’s wake, his crocodile tears and greasy desire for reconciliation. When she tried to step out of the car, her bad leg buckled. After all these years, she was still afraid of him. She drove home, telling herself it would be better to let Ms. Mann look into it.
But when Lucy ran into the detective the next day, she said nothing about her father. In a cavernous King’s Drugs, Lucy had just grabbed a large bottle of Tylenol PM when she saw Ms. Mann shuffling down the aisle with a red nose and two boxes of NyQuil.
“I’m off duty,” Mann said, as if to apologize for the bathrobe-like felt coat she was wearing. Her unbunned hair revealed crinkled filaments of gray Lucy hadn’t noticed before.
“Are you sick?” Lucy’s question came out unkindly, almost an accusation. Edgar’s life was in this woman’s hands, and here she was, looking like a wraith in need of a dye job.
“I’m fine,” Ms. Mann replied. “Just a few sniffles.” She sniffled lightly and shrugged—the effort causing her to collapse into an alarming fit of coughing.
“Oh my God,” said Lucy.
“Let me just get these,” Mann croaked, holding up the NyQuil, “and then we can sit in my car and chat.”
* * *
“Is something wrong with your leg?” the detective asked, after Lucy was settled inside the blue Honda.
“What do you mean?”
“I notice you limp sometimes. I was wondering if maybe it was an injury from childhood.”
“No,” Lucy said coolly.
“I don’t mean to pry, I’m just—”
“You just what? You read a file about me and now you think you know me? I did it to myself, okay?”
“Why are you getting testy?”
“This is not about me. This is about Edgar. Do you have any news?”
Ms. Mann seemed not to hear the question. She busied herself with ripping open one of the boxes of NyQuil.
“Rebecca? Is there any news?”
Mann shook her head.
In the silence that followed, Lucy closed her eyes. The detective poured herself a shot of NyQuil and quickly downed it.
“Why am I sitting here?” asked Lucy.
“It’s important we talk.”
“About what? My leg?”
“I was just asking out of concern. As a friend.”
“We’re not friends. You’re looking for my son.”
Mann coughed and poured herself another shot.
“You probably shouldn’t drink any more of that shit until you get home,” said Lucy. “It’s like twenty proof.” She stepped out of the car, and then leaned back in. “Listen, Ron said he had some questions for you.”
“Of course. Just have him give me a call.”
“Or if you want to stop by the house sometime, he’s usually home by six.”
“I’ll look at my schedule.”
Lucy nodded. “And just so you know—I’m not really a big friend person.”
Before Mann could say anything in response, Lucy slammed the door of the Honda and dashed across the wet parking lot. It was only then that the detective realized that Lucy Fini wasn’t wearing shoes.
Mann shivered, and downed the second shot.
* * *
A lot of people were trying to help—but, to Lucy, they seemed useless. They came to 21 Cressida Drive bearing casseroles and cookies, cellophane-wrapped baskets of fruit. Genuine kindness, but what did it mean in the absence of information? None of these people knew anything.
At least Lucy always had someone to station at the house while she was out driving and Ron was at work. Edgar might show up at any moment—and an empty house might confuse or frighten him. Mann also said it was important to keep one’s eyes open for anything out of the ordinary outside the house—strangers on the street or an unfamiliar vehicle.
The home guard was comprised almost entirely of women. Netty Schlip was often there, waiting in Florence’s chair, knitting an apple-green sweater she hoped to give Edgar for his birthday—only two weeks away. When Lucy asked her if she wouldn’t mind, every now and then, sitting outside to keep an eye on the street, Netty said, “Of course not. I’ll just fix myself a thermos of tea.”
Netty had first learned about Edgar’s disappearance from a sign outside the post office. At first glance, she’d noticed only the words SMALL and WHITE and MISSING, and had assumed the flyer was for a cat; but then she’d moved closer and seen the photo—the boy’s face made paler than usual by a copy machine low on ink. For the last few weeks—despite the rainy weather—she found it impossible to wear her new rain bonnet, troubled as she was by the memory of her old one filled with ice and Edgar’s fingertip.
Occasionally, when Netty was needed at the dry-goods store, another woman, who claimed to be an old friend of Florence’s, filled in. Lucy vaguely remembered her from the wake: a praying mantis in vintage attire who’d obviously had her fair share of plastic surgery. When she’d first come to the house she seemed trustworthy enough—but, one day, Lucy had returned to find the woman in Florence’s closet.
“Straightening up,” she’d explained. “Too much clutter, darling. If you ever want to get rid of some of these old dresses, I’d be happy to take them off your hands.” But Lucy had replied that she was keeping them. It had been necessary to tug twice before the woman relinquished a yellow silk evening-length. “Don’t rip it, dear, it’s one of a kind,” the woman had scolded.
* * *
Honey didn’t mention that she’d recently had a dream about the boy in which she’d seen him sitting on a lily pad, wearing Florence’s engagement ring—though, oddly, not on his finger. He’d had the damn thing in his nose, like some Hindu princess.
Of course, her diet pills often gave her funny dreams—but this hadn’t felt like a dream. It had had the shock of life. Honey had woken up sobbing, deciding on the spot that she’d visit the child’s mother. Plus, she’d wanted to get inside Florence’s bedroom—not only to see the dresses, but to make amends for certain cruelties.
Make amends—well, they were cheap words. Still, every little kindness helped at a time like this. She sat on the dead woman’s bed and said things she hoped would clear the air. A request for forgiveness was directed earnestly toward the ceiling. When no reply came, she removed her pearl dangles and put them in the pocket of one of Florie’s plainest frocks. All she took in return was a small embroidered hankie. F.F.
Friends forever—wasn’t that what the young girls said these days? The little fools! Clearly they knew nothing about life. The pearl earrings had been a gift from Pio, a gift he certainly couldn’t afford. What a hussy she’d been to accept them. Why, she’d probably taken food right off Florie’s table.
* * *
A day didn’t go by without someone ringing the doorbell.
Celeste, Lucy’s ex-employer from the salon, showed up early one morning in a sequined baseball cap. She brought some homemade wine in a clear plastic bottle, at the bottom of which lurked twigs and leaves and what appeared to be gravel. “Not to drink,” she informed Lucy. “Pour it out in the front yard, and write the boy’s name with the drippins.” The explanation of the custom summoned a missionary intensity in Celeste and pushed her Jamaican accent full tilt. “Now listen, girl, make sure you go slow, so you have enough for every letter. You want da Edgar and you want da Fini.” She tilted the sealed bottle toward the carpet to illustrate—“drip drip drip, right on da grass.”
; Other girls from the salon dropped by, too, with cards and flowers and teddy bears, as if it were Valentine’s Day. Even Audrey Fenning, the client whose ear Lucy had nipped, appeared at the door one afternoon. She handed Lucy an intricately folded five-dollar bill—a belated tip to make up for the one she’d withheld on what she referred to as “the day of the prick.” As Lucy stared at the folded square, Fenning flushed and reached into her purse to pull out a twenty.
The most unexpected visitor, though, was Anita Lester. Lucy hadn’t seen her in years. Anita had been there when Edgar was born. In fact, she’d served as midwife. Frank had been too afraid of hospitals, and despite Florence’s protests, Edgar had been delivered at home. “A black woman?” Florence had whispered to Lucy. “Are you sure?” The interracial hippie-like birthing ceremony, in which Frank had worn carnelian beads and burned sage, had been a source of shame for Florence. When Edgar was older, she’d told him that he was born in a clean room at Holy Name Hospital—and Lucy, not wishing to argue with the old woman, had gone along with the story. Lucy had even embellished it with a traditional slap on the behind and a little glass box in which, she informed Edgar, he’d slept for a week. She’d added the detail about the incubator not to scare her son, but to please him; she knew how fond he was of curling up in tight spaces. Still, she wondered now if there was a single thing she’d ever told the boy that wasn’t an outright lie.
Since Edgar’s disappearance, Anita Lester had come to the house three or four times. When Lucy asked if she was still midwiving, she shook her head. “I got my nursing degree a few years ago. I’m at the hospital now.” Lucy had always liked Anita. When she’d come to 21 Cressida Drive on the day of Edgar’s birth, she’d brought her own son with her. The boy—Jarell—couldn’t have been more than five at the time. Florence had given him almond cookies and a glass of milk. Pio, squeamish about childbearing, had rushed off to the racetrack to calm his nerves—and Frank, of course, was in the bedroom with Lucy. Florence had waited in the living room with the black boy until it was over. When Anita came down the stairs and announced, “You’re a grandmother, Mrs. Fini,” a teary Florence had leaned over and kissed Jarell on both cheeks.
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