by Lise Saffran
“Frankie?”
Jenny picked up a sweater that had been knocked off the coat tree to the floor and hung it back up. She kicked off her shoes and padded into Frankie’s room expecting to find her lying on her bed with Miranda’s iPod—a parting gift—wrapped around her head. The bed was made and there was no Frankie upon it.
“Honey?”
It wasn’t dark yet. There was no need to worry. Even as she told herself those things, Jenny could feel panic rising in the back of her throat like bile. This didn’t feel right. Something told her that Frankie was not walking in the woods or on the ridge. That she was not coming home at dusk.
Jenny’s hand shook as she punched in the numbers on the phone.
“Hello.”
“Mary Ann.”
That was all Jenny could say at first. Her friend waited. Jenny could hear her breathing.
“Frankie’s not here. She’s gone.”
“Downtown? I could give her a ride home when I come …”
“I don’t think so.” Jenny swallowed. “I think she might be gone, gone.”
“No! What makes you think so? Have you checked her room?”
Jenny dropped the phone. She began frantically opening the drawers of Frankie’s dresser and looking for favorite articles of clothing. As she did her pulse started, ever so slightly, to calm. Frankie’s Hello Kitty T-shirt was still there, as were the pedal pushers with the patches on the knees that she’d sewn on herself. The silver dolphin charm was on the dresser where Jenny had left it, and without thinking, she stuffed it deep into the pocket of her jeans.
When she found the cap that Frankie wore almost the whole summer, the one that matched Phoenix’s, she pressed it to her face and stifled a sob. Surely this was good news? She would not have gone far without her cap? Jenny lowered herself onto the side of Frankie’s bed and sat there, thinking she should go back to Mary Ann on the phone. The sun had set now and the light was growing dim. Jenny did not turn on the lamp.
A thought crept up on her, and refusing to examine it too closely, as if it were a dog that would only bite you if you looked it in the eye, Jenny carried the cap into Lilly’s room and stood in front of the open door of her closet. Lilly traveled light. Her flowered peasant blouse, the thin long-sleeved cotton shirts she layered under tees, the seventies-style wraparound gypsy pants that she’d found in the secondhand store were all things she’d left behind without appearing to think twice. The closet was dark and the room around Jenny was growing darker. Those things were gone.
She returned to the phone. “She took a bunch of Lilly’s things with her.”
“I’ll be right over.”
The wind knocked a tree limb against the house. The rooms were now cold, but neither woman made a move to light a fire in the woodstove. Jenny peered out the window at the swaying trees. It was dark. Frankie had camped out on the beach, she had been to Mount Vernon and to her cousins, she had visited her grandparents in Sacramento, but she had never, ever been by herself all night long.
“Call Sue,” said Mary Ann, holding out the phone.
“She won’t be there yet.” Jenny looked at the clock on the wall. “If she took the ferry to Anacortes, she’d already be on the bus. If she took it to Seattle, she might still be on the boat.”
“Let’s call the police, then,” said Mary Ann. “They’ll search the boat. Alert the bus drivers.”
“It would scare her to death to be picked up by the police. This is Frankie we’re talking about.” Jenny stood up. “I’m going to go after her.”
“Jenny, sit down. For God’s sake, think about it. You won’t be able to catch up with her. And neither will you be here if she changes her mind and comes back.”
“Oh my God.” Jenny dropped her forehead to the table.
“Call Sue. She said she wanted to see Lilly. You should tell your sister to expect her.”
“I know. I know,” said Jenny, taking the phone from Mary Ann’s hand. “Only …”
“What? Only what?”
“She took Lilly’s things.”
“You mean she took them to her?”
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think she took them to wear. And it sounds crazy, but you know how sisters are and, well, I don’t think she would have taken them to wear around Lilly.”
“But where else would she go?”
“I don’t know.”
The two women sat in silence and looked at each other over the table. Jenny reached for the phone and punched in Sue’s number.
“Hello?”
“Sue. It’s me.”
“She’s doing great, Jen. They went windsurfing today over by the ferry terminal. Apparently Lilly has a real talent for it.”
“Frankie’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“I think she … she may be on her way to see Lilly. At your place.”
“By herself?”
“Please go get Lilly. I don’t care whether she wants to talk to me or not. Tell her it’s an emergency. Tell her her sister is missing.”
“One second.”
Jenny could hear a TV on in the background. She pictured Lilly sprawled out on Sue’s leather couch watching some reality show set in Orange County or New Jersey. Some thumps and scrapes later, the phone was in her hand.
“Frankie ran away? What did you do to her? Where did she go?”
“She didn’t call you?”
“No. Was she supposed to?”
Lilly’s voice sounded just the same, in spite of the windsurfing, the recent past, and the distance. Jenny felt a rush of warmth run through her. She took a deep breath and was able, just barely, to hold back a choking sob. Mary Ann reached over the table and wiped the tears off her cheek with a faded dishcloth.
“Did she ever ask about how you got to Sue’s?”
“Sure. I told her all about the bus and everything. Greyhound is kind of repulsive, but I met a really nice guy on the route. One of the drivers. But that was weeks ago.”
There was shuffling on Lilly’s end. Jenny glanced at the clock. It was now ten p.m. Where had the time gone?
“If she took the bus from Seattle,” continued Lilly, “she’d probably be to about Tacoma by now. Do you want the number of that driver? His name is Bob and I have his cell.”
Jenny carried the phone to the table and fished in the drawer for a pen and a scrap of paper. “Okay. Give it to me.”
“206-323-4476. And Mom? Call me when you find her, okay?”
“Will do, sweetie. Bye.”
Jenny hit the End button with her thumb and punched in the driver’s number without laying down the phone.
“This is Bob,” said a recorded voice. “You know what to do and when to do it. Peace and love.”
Jenny hung up and began to pace. “Lilly gave me the number for some driver on Greyhound. He didn’t answer.” She gave Mary Ann a look laden with meaning. “She had his cell number.”
Mary Ann raised her eyebrows in response. “Call back and leave a message.”
“You’re right.” Jenny told the machine that she was Lilly’s mother and that Lilly’s sister Frankie was missing. She said that they suspected she might be on the overnight bus to San Francisco. She asked Bob to please, please, please call her back as soon as he got the message.
Jenny had just finished packing when the phone rang. Not knowing how long she would be gone and not knowing how to plan for forever, she had thrown two changes of clothing into a backpack. She made sure to pack her toothbrush and a hairbrush because she figured a woman searching for a child would have better luck if she didn’t look like a crazy homeless person. She knew when the phone rang that it was Bob and she knew that he would tell her that Frankie had not been on that bus. Still, she took the phone when Mary Ann held it out to her and she asked him anyway.
“Man, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help out,” said Bob. “If she’s Lilly’s sister, then I bet she’s pretty cool.”
“She’s not cool,” said Jenny.
“She’s thirteen.”
“Oh, man. Thirteen. That sucks.”
Mary Ann and Jenny sat at the kitchen table until the sun began to come up. Jenny’s pack was at her feet and she had a half tank of gas in her truck, but there was no way off the island until the first ferry run. That was the thing about living on San Juan. You always had to wait for the ferry. At five in the morning she called Theresa and got her out of bed.
“Jenny! For heaven’s sake. What time is it?”
“I need to talk to Phoenix, Theresa. Can you put her on?”
“She’s asleep. It’s the crack of dawn.”
“This is an emergency. Frankie’s missing. Please put her on the phone now.”
The phone hit something hard, a table most likely, and there was shuffling in the background. Jenny could hear Theresa’s exasperated voice and then a more muffled one from Phoenix.
“Hello?”
“This is Jenny, Frankie’s mom.” Of course Phoenix knew who she was, but she wanted to say it out loud. “She’s run off somewhere and I need to know if you know where. Is there any way that she could be on her way to Mount Vernon? To visit you?”
“Why would she?” Phoenix spoke slowly, sleep still clinging to her voice. “We’re going on a camping trip today. To Idaho. I told Frankie about it last time she called, so I don’t know why she would come here.”
“Do you know where she might have gone? Think about it, Phoenix. Think hard.”
“Maybe she went to see Ariel? She said he invited her.”
“She’s trying to get to New York?”
“New York? She said Ariel lived in Seattle.”
Jenny reached for her sweatshirt and hung up the phone in one fluid motion. She hoisted her pack onto one shoulder.
Mary Ann’s expression held the question: What next?
“Frankie doesn’t know that Ariel is in New York, and she’s gone to Seattle to see him. I’m going to go get her.”
“I’ll stay here.” She put her hand on Jenny’s shoulder. “Do you want me to call the police?”
Jenny paused, picturing Frankie getting off the boat at Pier 69, where The Clipper docked, and asking directions to Ariel’s apartment. Finding it empty and dark. She imagined her sitting on the floor outside his door, wondering what she should do. Perhaps she would call Jenny then, and ask her to come pick her up. Perhaps not.
“Yes. Call the police.”
CHAPTER 16
The City
The first ferry left San Juan Island at six in the morning and was scheduled to arrive in Anacortes just after seven. Jenny put her truck in line and leaned against it while she waited, smoking one cigarette after another. The clerk in the gas station, some kid who had arrived on the island the year before, had raised his eyebrows when she asked for a pack of Camels. She had lifted her gaze from her purse and whatever he saw in her eyes made him look away. He slid the cigarettes to her over the counter.
She ground a butt under her boot and flipped open her phone. Reception could be spotty on some parts of the island. It wasn’t unusual for her to miss a message every now and then. There was a call from David, she saw, and three missed calls from a number she didn’t recognize with a 718 area code. She knew all the Seattle/Bainbridge area codes, and 718 wasn’t among them. Before this summer, she hadn’t known to recognize 212 as Manhattan, but now her heart lifted every time she saw it. 718? Most likely a wrong number, but she called it anyway, just to make sure. A woman’s voice invited her to leave a message for Marcie or Rebecca. She flipped it closed again. Down the hill by the gift shop entrance a pair of seagulls fought over a discarded sandwich.
Frankie was five, maybe six, and they were reading fairy tales at school. The Pied Piper and Rumpelstiltskin, and the one about Henny Penny and the Fox. Her little eyes shining in the dark, she was starting to understand how vulnerable she was. No one bad is coming to our house, Jenny had said, and smoothed the hair on her forehead, and anyway, all the doors and windows are locked. Go check, said Frankie, before flipping over on her other side and secretly, as if Jenny couldn’t see, sticking her thumb in her mouth.
What if someone hurt her? Jenny tried not to allow it, but her mind kept creeping back to the edge and peering over. She could see Frankie’s beautiful long limbs, dusted with sand on Lopez beach, twisted and broken. Jenny’s stomach wrenched and the nicotine taste mingled in the back of her throat with the coffee Mary Ann had forced her to drink before leaving. What if someone killed Frankie? She wondered if Lilly would forgive her if she decided to kill herself, too. Lilly was stronger than they were. Ariel had said so. She flipped her phone open again and tried Andre’s number. She left her third message.
“Jenny.”
She looked up from her phone to see a neighbor standing in the lot in front of her. “Hello, Stan.”
“What are you doing up so early this morning?” Stan looked like a man who had fished his whole life and lurked in dark bars, but really he had been an investment banker. Seventy now and with blue hands from poor circulation, he had retired and bought a place in Snug Harbor and a Carolina skiff.
Jenny swallowed. “I’m going to Seattle to pick up Frankie.” Her voice sounded rough in her own ears.
“Well, say hello to her for me.”
Jenny nodded and then climbed back behind the wheel of her truck. She would not get out of it again, not even on the ferry, until she had parked it on Boylston in Seattle, a block from Harvard Avenue. She was walking toward La Salle, a four-story brick box with an arched doorway, when her phone rang. She saw the 212 area code and her heart leaped into her throat. It had to be Andre. Finally, he was calling! She would pour her fears out to him and he would tell her that everything was going to be all right. He was a fine actor and he would make her believe it was true. He was a fine jester, too, but she didn’t think even he could make her smile.
Instead, it was Ariel. “Jenny! Mary Ann called and said you were trying to get in touch with me. She said you’d left some message about Frankie running away. What’s happened? Where did she go?”
“Oh, God, Ariel. I think she went to see you. I mean Lawrence. Sorry.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. I shouldn’t have said all that stuff about her coming to visit. She seemed so sad, though, the crazy kid. I thought it would cheer her up.”
“I’m standing outside your apartment building.”
“You’re in Seattle?”
“Yes. At your place. Did Frankie know the apartment number?”
“Oh, my God. Oh, dear.” Lawrence’s voice trailed off. “God, I am such an utter fool.”
“Stop it. Just tell me. Which one is it?”
“224. It’s locked, though. There’s no one in it.”
“I’m going to go up and look anyway.”
“Knock on the door at 227. The guy that lives there, Rufus, is a poet. He’s an appallingly bad poet, and he’s usually in there moping around. The walls are as thin as Madonna’s panties, and so he hears everything that goes on in the apartments around his.”
“Okay. Thanks.” The door was propped open with a cinderblock. Jenny slipped in and found herself facing a row of rusty mailboxes packed full of advertisements for cheap sex and cheap food. “I have to go,” she said. “Did Andre …”
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of him,” said Lawrence quickly, “his place in the city was broken into and he’s been staying in Queens. I’ll keep trying, though.”
“Right. Okay. Thanks.” Worry for Andre flitted through her mind and she pushed it away. There was no time for that now.
She reached the second floor and turned down the hall. “Please be there,” she whispered.
There was a dim overhead light in the hallway outside of 224 but no girl sitting on the floor with her backpack on her lap. No Frankie. Jenny let out a moan of anguish. She felt like a passenger on a plane in the middle of a big storm. Falling from unimaginable height to unimaginable height.
Slowly, the door across the hall cracked open. A yo
ung man with heavy blond curls and a little soul patch under his bottom lip stuck his head out.
“Rufus?”
He opened the door wider. “Who are you?”
She stepped toward him and saw him step back into his apartment with alarm in his eyes. How must she look, she wondered? How wild and how desperate?
“I’m looking for my daughter. Her name is Frankie and she’s just thirteen years old. She ran away from San Juan Island yesterday afternoon. Tall and skinny, with long black hair? Have you seen her?” Jenny’s mind kept spiraling onward: She makes deviled eggs, she did her eighth grade history report on the Chelan tribe of the Salish Sea, she has a scar on her left knee from a roller-skating accident when she was nine, she …
“Yeah. I saw her.”
“When … where is she …” It was all Jenny could do to keep from grabbing the young man and shaking the information loose.
“She was out here last night. Eight, maybe nine o’clock? Here to see Larry, I guess. I told her he wasn’t around. He’s in L.A. or New York or somewhere like that. She was pretty busted up. Apparently some street kid ripped off all her shit on the way over here.”
“And you let her go?” Jenny’s voice rose in disbelief.
“Was I supposed to keep her prisoner? Call the cops? I didn’t know she was from somewhere else.” His lower lip jutted out in a persecuted sulk. “I gave her twenty bucks. Twenty bucks is a lot of dough.”
Jenny closed her eyes and forced herself, before opening them again, to unclench the fists at her side. “Did she say where she was going next?”
“Nah. When I went out to get some grub later, she was gone.”
Jenny wasted no time getting from Lawrence’s apartment building and the hapless Rufus to a place she thought might be able to offer some real help: the Seattle PD. She gave her name and reason for coming to the receptionist and then waited on a bench under fluorescent lights. She took the opportunity to, once again, check her phone. It was dark. She pushed the button to test and see if it still had any juice, and the time lit up. It was already two in the afternoon. She touched the time button again to make sure. Then she flipped open the phone and dialed Andre’s number.