Helpless

by Barbara Gowdy

  Patience and self-control—these are his strengths as he sees them. Also a certain ruthlessness, which isn’t inherently his but which he finds he is able to muster when the situation calls for a clear head. He thinks of how the zoologists and conservationists you see on TV are sometimes forced to finish off a wounded animal or airlift a rogue male to new territory. What good would these people be if they gave in to the screams of protest? Under pressure, a person of character resorts to what he has judged, in less traumatic moments, to be the most humane course of action.

  Rachel crying for her mother, though…it’s hard to take, hard to listen to. Little girls want their mothers. His father once told him (they were talking about Jenny and Mrs. Lawson) that the bond between daughters and mothers is the strongest there is. Provided the mother isn’t abusive or neglectful, Ron took him to mean. He had expected Rachel to be frightened, at least for the first day or two, but he hadn’t thought she’d be as desperate as she is to get back to that pathetic woman who calls herself her mother.

  Thank God for Nancy. If she can get Rachel to eat, it’ll be a big step. He’s going to try to keep his distance until she’s eating and feeling more at home. He should ask Nancy to find out if there’s a particular book or author she likes. The books he got her were all recommended by a clerk at Indigo, a young girl who struck him as being unsure of herself, and also he made the mistake of saying the child he was buying for was eight. He has seen Rachel reading on her porch, he knows she’s a reader. His hope is that she’ll let him read to her sometimes, at night after her bath, the two of them lying on the bed together. Father and daughter. Interesting to hear her say her father doesn’t even know she’s alive. Mika must have been one happy man when he learned that.

  What’s going on in there? He gets up and presses his ear to the door. Silence. He sits back on the step.

  He wonders if Rachel might like to read his pamphlets. They aren’t complicated; he wrote them for the general public, and a lot of the information is entertaining. For instance, when you turn off the motor of the Electrolux LX the front cover pops open and a spring-loaded lever ejects the bag right across the floor, sometimes as far as six feet. He wishes he had an LX so he could give her a demonstration. He’ll show her the machines he does have, in any case. They’ll be hers eventually, the ones he isn’t forced to sell. Everything will be hers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE CLOUDS HAVE been building since eleven o’clock, and now there’s thunder and the first smatterings of rain. “Another hour, hour and a half!” Big Lynne calls from the porch.

  She’s talking about the news conference, which was scheduled to be held out on the front lawn at two fifteen. As she predicted, it’s being postponed until the storm passes. “Rain won’t hamper the search one bit,” she says, coming in and giving Celia’s shoulders a squeeze. “Don’t you worry about that. If anything, it’ll spur it on.”

  Celia’s dread amplifies. She doesn’t really think that Rachel is out in the open, but she doesn’t rule out the possibility, either. Not knowing where she is turns every place, every house and garage and abandoned store, every trunk of every car and now every ditch and field, into a place she might be.

  The postponement, though…she needs it. Her statement, which is going to be a direct appeal to the abductor, doesn’t feel right yet. She rereads what she has just written: You don’t have to go through police channels. A close family friend has offered himself as a go-between. I have instructed him to help arrange for Rachel’s release under any terms you may set.

  Will he understand what she’s getting at? She would rather come right out and say she’s open to blackmail but the deputy police chief asked her not to. He said it would put the message out there that money can be made from abducting children.

  “That’s not my business,” she said. “I can’t care about that.” Except she does care about Mika’s being allowed the freedom to negotiate, and since he isn’t in the clear yet and could be detained at any time, she agreed to tone down her language.

  What she’s counting on, of course, aside from the fact that the abductor will be listening, is that Rachel is still in the world. On TV a little while ago there was a guy saying how, when it comes to stranger abductions, a child has to be found within five or six hours to stand any real chance of being found alive. But Big Lynne snorted and told Celia not to listen.

  “The time factor is only one element,” she said heatedly. “All sorts of variables come into play.”

  “Like what?” Celia asked.

  “The particular individuals involved, for starters. The logistics of the search. Premeditation, whether or not it played a part.” She waved her arms around. Her face had gone pink. Clearly the risk of Celia’s hearing just this kind of statistic was why she’d tried to dissuade her from turning on the TV in the first place.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Celia said. “I know she’s alive.”

  “Well, then she is,” Big Lynne declared, “I trust that,” and whether or not she was being sincere was something else that didn’t matter.

  Celia knows what she knows. Rachel is alive, and now her, Celia’s, job is to give the abductor reasons to want to keep Rachel alive. She writes: You have in your care an amazing human being. She hopes to be a vet one day. She loves animals, especially dogs and cats, but she loves all animals, including snakes and lizards.

  She’s thinking that he might own animals: guard dogs, rats. She imagines a paranoid loner who’s either out of work or in a minimum-wage job. Constable Bird believes he acted on impulse—he saw a pretty little girl looking for help, and he grabbed her, just as someone else might grab a wallet left on a park bench.

  “But then why is Mika a suspect?” Celia asked. This was a couple of hours ago; she’d given up searching on foot, and Bird was driving her around again.

  “Mika’s a person of interest,” Bird explained. “From our point of view, it didn’t look great, I have to tell you. We arrive on the scene, he’s bleeding, there’s blood at the bottom of the stairs. Is it only his blood? Also, the way he responded to questioning. Taking his time. Working out his answers.”

  “Oh, no! That’s just how he talks! He’s trying not to stutter! Oh, God, I should have said!”

  “Okay. Well, we weren’t aware of that.”

  “Tell the investigators.”

  “I will. You can tell them, too.”

  “But I still don’t get why he’s even a…what did you call it…person…”

  “Person of interest.”

  “Why he’s even a person of interest if you think some guy grabbed her.”

  “Listen, if forensics supports Mika’s story and he passes the polygraph, he moves to the back of the line.”

  Celia’s heart lifted a little. “Do you know where he is?”

  Bird knew how to find out. He radioed someone to call Mika and give him the number of Big Lynne’s cell, which Big Lynne had stuck in Celia’s purse.

  As soon as Celia heard his voice she started to cry. She thought she’d finished crying and moved on to a more solid kind of agony, but now she sobbed while Mika said soothing things she could barely hear over her own noise, and Bird left the car to search an alleyway. When she calmed down she asked Mika to repeat what he’d said about being sure Rachel was alive.

  “I have a sense of her,” he said. “It’s strong.”

  “Do you see her face?” Celia asked. “Because I do, when I close my eyes. Not all the time. It comes and goes. I can’t hear her voice for some reason. I mean, you’d think I would.”

  “But you see her.”

  “Just her face. I see her blinking and breathing. Breathing with her mouth open. And it doesn’t feel like something I’m making happen. It did at first, but now it feels like something outside of me, something coming in.”

  “I don’t see her,” Mika said. “I’m aware of her. In that way that you are when someone is behind you, or in the next room. I can feel her fear. She’s…frightened but she is
n’t hurt.”

  “That’s what I’m getting. But, Mika, you don’t even believe in this stuff.”

  “I do now.”

  She pressed her forehead against the passenger window. “The thing is,” she said. “I felt it coming.” Only now was she allowing herself to remember.

  “Like a premonition?”

  “More a feeling like I was supposed to be alert, you know? Everything was jumping out at me. Little things. And I was having these dreams where people, my mother, they were saying, ‘Pay attention! Look around!’ But I didn’t…”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Oh, I’ve done plenty wrong.” Bird, who was back in the car, glanced over. “But, Mika, I street-proofed her. Right? I mean, she knew never to talk to strangers, no matter what. Right?”

  “We don’t know that she talked to anyone, Celia. We don’t…know that.”

  She listened to him breathe. “Anyway,” she said, “Constable Bird says you’re not a suspect, you’re a person of interest. And, oh! You have to tell them about your stutter. Why you sometimes don’t speak right away. Bird said they thought you were working out your answers.”

  “I see.”

  “So tell them.”

  “I will.”

  “When will they let you come home?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Have you had the polygraph test?”

  “Not yet. They’ve taken a DNA swab, though.”

  “They took one from me, too.”

  “They’re being thorough. That’s what we want. We should be grateful.”

  She watched Bird leaf through his notepad. When she’d decided she wanted to be driven around some more, she’d asked for him especially. That he might have a wife and kids waiting at home never crossed her mind. Now, really looking at him for the first time, she saw the wedding band. She saw his thick wrists and arms and the creases at the edges of his eyes. A horizontal scar sliced through his mat of black hair just above his ear, like a mark of swiftness. She wondered if he’d been stabbed. To Mika she said, “I’m being treated like a diva. Everybody’s tiptoeing around me. I ask for something and everybody snaps to.”

  Bird smiled over at her. “We should be heading back,” he said.

  He meant so that she’d have time to work on her statement for the news conference. She told Mika about her plan to appeal to the abductor. “Should I beg?” she asked him. “Will he give a shit?”

  “No,” Mika said after a pause. “I don’t think begging will work. I think you have to put yourself in this person’s shoes.”

  “How the fuck do I do that?” She felt herself crumbling again.

  “He has kept her alive,” Mika said. “We both feel it. To me it says he wants something in exchange for…letting her go. Probably money.”

  “What money?”

  “I have money. Don’t worry about that. He isn’t likely to call the police…or Crime Stoppers. So first of all you have to tell him he can call you directly, on your cell. No, you don’t have a cell. I’ll give you mine.”

  “Okay.” If he actually called, would she be able to talk to him? Would she stay coolheaded enough to hear what he had to say?

  “Or maybe he should phone me,” Mika said, picking up on her anxiety. “Yes, that’s better. A family friend. He phones me. It’s a new number, I don’t think I gave it to you.”

  She repeated the number out loud while motioning for Bird to write it down.

  “Tell him he can call at any time,” Mika said, “day or night. Assure him that our dealings will be kept confidential.”

  “Will he believe that?”

  “He might. He’ll want to believe it. Tell him you have no interest in seeing him captured or punished, you only want your daughter back. And then I think…”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell him who she is. Make him know her.”

  RACHEL ALMOST blows the whole thing. As soon as Nancy comes into the room she runs over with the phone number and says, “I found some paper and Magic Markers!” and Nancy has to think fast.

  “So now you can draw pictures!” she says.

  “What?” Rachel says.

  “He’s right outside!” Nancy whispers, taking the phone number and sticking it in her back pocket, where she’s hiding the pencil stub and the piece of paper she brought down. She sees that the cookies and sandwiches are gone, and she says, her gladness genuine now, “And you found your appetite, too, eh? What else can I get you? How about a cheeseburger?”

  Rachel pulls her eyes from the door. “I’m a vegetarian,” she says.

  “Oh,” Nancy says. “Well, it’s healthier, I know that.”

  “It’s not because it’s healthy. It’s because eating meat is cruel.”

  “You’re right. I’ve got to stop.” She’s serious. She sits on the sofa.

  Rachel sits beside her. “When are you going to phone?” she whispers. Her breath smells like peanut butter.

  “Soon,” Nancy whispers. At normal volume she says, “How about pancakes?”

  “Why can’t you go right now?” Rachel whispers.

  “I’ll go as soon as I can.” She doesn’t feel ready is the reason, she hasn’t worked up her nerve. “With lots of butter,” she exclaims, “and maple syrup!”

  Rachel sighs. “I should have a salad or something.”

  “A salad! Sure. What kind? Caesar? Mixed greens?”

  “Whatever.”

  The sound of Ron thumping up the stairs has Rachel sitting straighter.

  “Okay, he’s gone,” Nancy says. “You’ve got to watch what you say.”

  “Why does he stay out there?”

  “He doesn’t want to scare you.”

  “But why does he stay there when you come in?”

  “Oh. Well, he’s got the key. He’s the only one who can open and close the door.”

  “He’s spying on us.”

  “No, no. He’s just…he’s worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “He cares about you a lot.”

  Rachel screws up her face. “He doesn’t even know me.”

  Nancy can feel the conversation moving toward dangerous ground. She looks at the ceiling. “There must be a customer,” she says.

  “Is this a store?”

  “Sort of. It’s a house. Ron and me, we live in the upstairs part, and then on the first floor he has a shop. He fixes small appliances. You know, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners.”

  “Can I see?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Not safe for who?”

  “For any of us.”

  “You’re kidnappers,” Rachel says, getting off the sofa. “You think you’re being so nice but you’re nothing but kidnappers.” Her voice is rising. “What do you want? Money?”

  “No—”

  “Well, for your information we don’t have money! We’re poor!”

  “Nobody wants your money.”

  “What do you want? Why are there all those Barbie dolls?” She swipes at her tears.

  “They’re for you. Sweetie—”

  “Quit calling me sweetie!”

  Nancy closes her eyes. Don’t cry, she commands herself. The throb of a car stereo bounds through the room. Out in the yard, Tasha barks once.

  “What’s the matter with your leg?”

  Nancy opens her eyes. Her leg has gone into a small spasm. “It does that sometimes,” she says. “Kind of creepy, eh?”

  “Do you take a prescription drug?”

  “When I remember. It gives me headaches.”

  Rachel covers her mouth with her hands. “You’re that lady! From Angie’s Nails!”

  “That’s right,” Nancy says. She’s incredibly tired. She lets herself sink back against the cushions.

  “My mom caught you when you fell.”

  “I know.”

  “She saved you.”

  “She did. It was really nice of her.”

  “So how can you be so mean?”
r />   “I’m going to phone. I promised and I will.”

  “Do you remember the secret word?”

  Nancy has to think. “Palomino.”

  “No! Pablito!”

  “Right. Pablito.”

  “You forgot it!”

  “Pablito.” Nancy sits up and tries to look more alert. “Rhymes with burrito.”

  Rachel stares at her.

  “Sort of,” Nancy says.

  “You have to do it now,” Rachel says. “Right now.”

  Upstairs, the customer left. “She ate all the cookies?” Ron says, noticing the empty plate. He lowers the volume on the radio.

  “And the sandwich,” Nancy says. She watches the customer—a short, wiry woman who from the back could have been her oldest sister, Libby—climb into an SUV. Libby has six kids under the age of ten. All Nancy’s sisters have more kids than they can handle. “What time is it?” she asks.

  “Ten to two.”

  Nancy seems to snap out of a dream. “Jeez, you’re kidding! It’s like night out there.”

  “We’re in for a storm.”

  She turns to face him so that he won’t see the pencil and piece of wadded-up paper in her back pocket. “What are they saying about the search?”

  “It’s the usual drill. Nothing to worry about. They haven’t a clue. Literally.”

  “Okay, then, I was thinking of driving to Gerrard Square and buying her some clothes.”

  “Doesn’t she want a salad?”

  “I’ll pick up something from Valu-Mart on the way back. She wants the clothes right away.”

  “That’s good. See? She’s already adapting.” He rings open the cash register. “How much do you need?”

  “A hundred, hundred and fifty.”

  He comes around and plants the money in her palm. “Are you all right?”

  “Yep.” She forces a smile. Those little brown eyes of his usually don’t miss much.

  “You’re going to hear things,” he says. “On the radio, in the checkout line, wherever. Don’t let it get to you. In fact, don’t even listen to the radio.”

  “Right.” She’s dying for a smoke.