Finding Georgina

by Colleen Faulkner

  I nod. I didn’t even know he’d been to the apartment since Georgina came home. We haven’t really discussed what he was going to do with it. The lease isn’t up for at least six months, so it hasn’t been a priority. And of course we haven’t discussed the obvious question of whether or not he’s staying here. I’ve been sticking to the see how it goes plan he proposed and praying. I watch him, wondering what he was doing there that he might have left his bag. I sense this isn’t the time to ask. “Just grab another pair of shorts and a tee, hon. You’ll find it.”

  “My good sneakers are in the bag. My gym sneakers.”

  I’m still in my robe. “We could do something else for exercise,” I suggest, giving what I hope is a sexy smile.

  He just stands there, looking at me. “I really wanted to go to the gym.”

  Which is a not-so-subtle no-thank-you to my offer of an afternoon quickie. I decide not to let my feelings get hurt. I’m in too good a mood.

  He turns back to the chifforobe, staring at it as if the doors are going to fly open and his gym bag is going to fly out.

  I pick up the towel from my hair off the bed and walk toward the bathroom. “Maybe it’s in my car. You took it to the gym the other day.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “I had a nice talk with Georgina today, on the ride home from school.” I grab a pair of panties out of the top drawer of my dresser and step into them. “I feel as if we’re starting to connect. Maybe not the way you two are, but—”

  “Harper, we’re not going to get into this right now. I feel like we’ve discussed it ad nauseam. It makes sense that it’s more difficult for her to relate to you because she already had a mother. She has no expectations for a father.”

  And you’re so cool, who wouldn’t want you for their dad? I want to say. But I don’t. Because everything isn’t about me in our marriage. It can’t be. I know that.

  I grab my jeans from the day before and pull them on. Then I turn my back to him to put on a sports bra. I’m not going anywhere else today; no underwires required. I pull on an old long-sleeved T-shirt some drug rep gave me. I’m now a walking billboard for a topical flea-and-tick medication.

  “I wasn’t complaining, Remy. I was trying to tell you that we had a good conversation.”

  “I guess I’ll check your car.” He walks to the door.

  I’m disappointed that he doesn’t want to talk about my conversation with Georgina. And I genuinely want to know why he’s in a bad mood. In the past, I would have persisted at this point. I would have insisted he tell me what was going on. But I know the right thing is to just let Remy go right now. Talk about it later.

  “You’ll be home for dinner?” I call after him as he goes out the door.

  “Yeah. No . . . I don’t know. I might go back to the office after I work out. I’ll text you,” he calls when he’s out of sight.

  I stand there for a minute wondering if I said something wrong. If I could have been more supportive. When Remy left, that was one of his reasons. He said I was so wrapped up in myself that I was never available emotionally for him. And he was absolutely right. The funny thing is that after he left, my ability to support him actually improved. Which makes no sense.

  But I’m not going to worry about it today. I grab my phone and step into my sheepskin slippers. Today I’m going to bask in the joy of the chat I had with my daughter and I’m going to go downstairs and have a cup of coffee with her.

  Only she’s not in the kitchen when I get there. There are two cups of coffee made, sitting on the counter, but no Georgina.

  Maybe she went to the bathroom. Or to change her clothes. I take a sip of coffee. It’s good. I go to the refrigerator to dig around to see what I can make for dinner. Maybe noodle bowls. Georgina and Jojo both like that. It’s not great heated up, though. I close the refrigerator door. Maybe I’ll wait to see if Remy is coming home to eat with us or will be late.

  I sit down at the island to wait for Georgina. I’m halfway through my cup of coffee when I begin to wonder where she is. But I don’t panic. And my heartbeat doesn’t increase. I glance around the kitchen. Her yogurt is sitting on the counter unopened. And a pear. She didn’t run away.

  But I don’t see her backpack.

  She didn’t run away. I’m being paranoid. She must have gone to her room. But if she left the yogurt out, she must have intended to come back down. I finish my cup of coffee as I wait. When she’s still a no-show, I go upstairs.

  Her bedroom door is closed.

  I knock. “Georgina?” I glance down the hall. The bathroom door is open; the light’s off. I tap again, lightly. “Are you coming back down?” I try not to sound needy.

  “Doing my homework,” comes her muffled voice from behind the door.

  Something in her voice doesn’t sound right and I debate knocking again and asking if I can come in. I resist. “You okay?” I keep my tone light.

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Georgina?”

  “I’m fine. I . . . I have a headache. I might lie down for a few minutes. Then do my homework.”

  “Okay.” I rest my palm on the door as if I can somehow touch her through the solid wood. Something in her voice sounds off. I don’t know how . . . almost as if she’s afraid. Upset. Something.

  I turn away. Did I push her too hard in the car? Did I misinterpret what seemed like a conversation that was going well? I turn back. “I’ll call you for dinner when Jojo gets home.”

  “Okay.”

  I walk down the stairs slowly. Georgina’s a teenage girl, I tell myself. One who’s been through a hell of a lot in the last six weeks. She has a right to mood swings. And teenage girls hide in their bedrooms. It’s in their DNA.

  And it’s in a mother’s DNA to worry about her cubs.

  27

  Lilla

  I stand alone in the kitchen in the semidarkness. A storm blew in suddenly, just as I left school. It started to rain. This girl in my political science class who has her own car saw me walking so she gave me a ride. Between that transgression and the fact that I lied to Harper Mom, saying Em was coming home with me, I’ll probably be grounded for the rest of my life. But I don’t care. I had to get home. I have to be here alone.

  The storm seemed to come in out of nowhere. The wind is howling. I can hear one of the shutters on the front of the house banging. They actually work. Like if a hurricane was coming, we could close the shutters on the windows on the whole house and latch them. The doors have shutters, too, that work the same way.

  Hurricane season is supposed to be over at the end of November, but the wind is blowing so hard that I wonder if there’s such a thing as a rogue hurricane.

  Or is it really not blowing at all outside? Is it sunny? Is this just all in my mind? Because of why I’m standing here in the kitchen . . .

  I stare at the cordless house phone laying on the granite countertop.

  I know it’s going to ring. I know Sharon. I know she’ll call again because she knows I’m home this time of day. Because I answered yesterday. And she’ll keep calling until she gets me.

  I wonder how Sharon got the number to our house. Then I shake my head because I can be such a dunce sometimes.

  It probably wasn’t too hard at all, because I know she knew who she kidnapped me from. She must have heard it on the news, read it in the newspaper. For all I know, she kept a newspaper clipping of her crime. She told me we left New Orleans when I was two. Translation: When I kidnapped you, we moved to Alabama. Sharon has known all these years that Dad and Harper Mom were wondering what happened to me.

  When the phone rings, I’m not going to answer it. My gaze shifts to Sharon’s knife roll on the counter. I used it last night and forgot to put it in the drawer where it lives now. Why should I answer the phone? She effed-up my life. She knew she would have to give me back someday. She had to have known. She had to have known that eventually she would get caught. She knew I would have to go home to my birth parents and I wo
uld miss her so much that—

  Tears sting my eyes.

  Why should I answer the phone? Sharon ruined her own life. She did this. And now she’ll be in jail for years and years. I Googled it. Sentencing is complicated. The kidnapping sentences vary state to state and it matters whether or not you used a gun when you committed the felony. I wasn’t sure if what she did was child abduction or kidnapping, but you can get, like, twenty-five years in prison for abduction. In twenty-five years, she’ll be seventy-one years old.

  So why should I answer the phone? She didn’t just wreck her life and mine. Look at what she did to Harper Mom and Dad and Jojo. And Granddad and Dad’s sister, Aunt Lucy, and his brother, Uncle Beau . . . There are more people in the family than I can even name yet. The day Sharon took me out of that stroller, she hurt them all. And it’s damage you can never fix. You just have to get to know Harper Mom to know that.

  So I shouldn’t answer. Even though I know it’s going to hurt Sharon. Doesn’t she deserve to suffer like I’m suffering now? Like the Broussards suffered all these years?

  I walk over to the coffee machine on the counter and get down my favorite mug. The ceramic white one with the little swirly circles on it. My hand is shaking. I slide it under the little stainless-steel spigot and turn on the coffee machine. It hums as it warms up and the display screen lights up.

  Maybe I should answer the phone. So I can tell Sharon how pissed I am at her. How bewildering this all is to my little sixteen-year-old mind. I fight another wave of tears.

  I don’t understand my feelings for her. She kidnapped me. I should hate her. But I don’t. I don’t understand my feelings for the people in the house, either. For Harper Mom and Dad, who are trying so hard. Even for Jojo. Maybe I should answer the phone to tell Sharon how much this all hurts me. Hurts all of us here in this house.

  I wish I had someone to talk to who isn’t in the middle of this hurricane Sharon created. Someone who could tell me what to do. Maybe I could call the therapist we saw. She seemed okay. She’d know what to do; she went to college to study what to tell sixteen-year-old girls to do when the woman who abducted them calls to say she’s sorry. Because I know that’s what Sharon is going to say.

  But what if the therapist calls Harper Mom and tells her Sharon called? I’ll get in trouble for sure. And what will happen to Sharon? Which is kind of dumb to consider because what are they going to do to her? She’s already in jail till she’s old enough to collect Social Security. Are they going to put her in the hole? Solitary confinement. That’s what they do to prisoners who don’t follow the rules. Ruby and I watched a bunch of documentaries on Netflix about prisons. We loved prison documentaries. We saw all the ones on Netflix, ones about women’s prisons, maximum-security prisons, even Russian prisons.

  But could the therapist legally tell Harper Mom? Isn’t there some kind of confidentiality thing? Like with lawyers. Because even if you confess to your lawyer that you killed somebody, they can’t tell.

  The only other person I can think of to call is my friend Ruby. But I can’t call her, either. Because she was friends with Lilla Kohen and that girl is dead.

  It’s the only way I can make things make sense in my head. To tell myself Lilla Kohen is dead. So she doesn’t have any friends anymore because dead people don’t have friends.

  Of course, that leads to the question of who I am now. Because clearly I’m alive. But I’m certainly not Georgina Broussard. That girl is two years old and loved Madeline books, according to Harper Mom.

  Which is actually kind of crazy because when I was Lilla Kohen, I loved Madeline when I was little. Mom used to read the books to me all the time. I remember sitting on the leather couch with my floppy Madeline doll.

  I suddenly feel dizzy, like the floor has shifted. Like in a fun house. I’ve never been in a fun house. I don’t even know if there is such a thing anymore. But I’ve seen them on TV.

  I definitely remember Mom reading to me about Madeline the little French girl on the leather couch that smelled good . . . only Sharon never had a leather couch. And I never had a Madeline doll. Sharon never bought me dolls, not even when I was little. She thought it was sexist to buy girls dolls. But I know I didn’t imagine the Madeline doll . . . which means—I can’t catch my breath. I stare at the coffee machine. I reach out and push the button for the double espresso.

  I try to think. Hard. I remember how happy I was sitting on that couch, reading book after book. I remember holding my Madeline baby doll. And her voice. Mom’s voice. I always associated that memory with Sharon’s voice, but now I realize . . . maybe it wasn’t hers. Which would mean it was Harper’s . . . She’s the mother I remember reading those books to me. She’s the mother who gave me the doll. And the blanket with the bunnies on it. Tears blur my vision. I remember being little and asking Sharon about the blanket with the bunnies. She got a funny look on her face and just said it was gone.

  I watch the espresso spurt out of the machine into the white mug. When it clicks off and the little message goes across the screen saying “Have a Nice Day,” I reach for the mug.

  Just as I pick it up, the house phone rings. It startles me so badly that I drop the mug. It hits the tile floor in an explosion of hot black coffee and shards of white ceramic.

  I stare at the phone on the counter as if my laser gaze could make it combust.

  It rings a second time. I hear the wind howling, the rain beating on the windows. I hear the shutter banging.

  I’m not going to answer it.

  I’m not going to talk to Sharon.

  Not ever again.

  It rings a third time.

  If I don’t pick it up now, the recorded greeting will play. Please leave a message. And you can’t make a collect call that way, so Sharon won’t be able to leave a message. She’d give up and she’ll never call again.

  I grab the phone and hit the “on” button. “Hello?” I whisper.

  “Hello,” says the female robot voice. “This is—”

  I hear Sharon speak her name. The message goes on.

  “Yes,” I murmur into the phone when it asks if I’ll accept the call.

  There’s a click and then it’s like dead air. She doesn’t say anything. But I know she’s there.

  I’m dizzy again. And I feel as if I’m going to throw up.

  “Lilla?” Sharon says.

  I press my back to the counter. I slide down until I’m seated on the cool tile floor that I can feel through my uniform skirt. I draw up my knees to my chest, hugging them. There’s coffee everywhere and the smell is strong. There are little bits and big pieces of white ceramic in the coffee. I see the handle.

  “Lilla? Bubbeleh?”

  A Yiddish endearment, like sweetie. This girl in a Torah class I once took told me my mother was calling me grandma. But Sharon said the word has lots of meanings. Lots of spellings. She said it could mean grandma, but it actually means fritter. Like a fried sweet. She wrote it out for me in Yiddish. Sharon could write in Yiddish.

  I don’t know what to say because I want to call her Mom, but I can’t. I can never call her that again. I don’t think I can ever call anyone Mom again. “I’m here,” I choke.

  “Lilla . . .” It’s an exhalation. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to—”

  “You can’t call here,” I tell her in an ugly voice. “You can’t do this to me and you can’t do it to them.”

  “I know. I know, I just—”

  “You just what? ” I shout the last word.

  She doesn’t say anything and, for a second, I’m afraid she hung up. She doesn’t have a right to hang up on me. I can hang up on her, but she can’t hang up on me.

  “You need to let me explain, Lilla. I was sick.”

  “You took me out of my stroller!” My voice is rough and filled with a rage of tears I’m fighting against. I don’t want to cry because if I cry, I won’t be able to tell her any of the things I’ve gone over and over in my head for weeks. “You took me from my mo
ther!” Now I’m screaming.

  “I know. I know.” She’s sobbing. “I’m so sorry. But, Lilla, I loved you. I always loved you and I took care of you. I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her, still shouting. “None of that matters! Because I wasn’t yours to love!” I press the heel of my free hand to my forehead like I can somehow push her out. Erase all memory of her and our happiness.

  We’re both quiet for a second, but I can hear her crying softly. And I can hear voices in the background. Women talking. Prisoners.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she says. “Are you okay, Lilla?”

  “You mean with my parents? My parents who have loved me all these years and cried for me? They thought some pervert kidnapped me, sexually abused me, and buried me in the bayou! Do you have any idea—” I cut myself off, taking a deep, shuddering breath. Then I whisper, “I’m okay.”

  “You’re okay,” she pants, still crying.

  “They’re . . . good people.” The lump rises in my throat again. I stare at the coffee all over the floor. The shattered mug. That’s what I feel like. That mug, broken on the floor. How did this happen? Why did this happen? No sixteen-year-old girl should be sitting on a kitchen floor in the dark, talking to the woman who lied to her for fourteen years saying she was her mother.

  “They’re good people,” she repeats, relief in her voice.

  I hear a vibration and I look at my backpack on the center island. My cell phone.

  “I have to go.”

  “No, Lilla, please. I—”

  “She’s calling me on my cell.”

  “I tried your—”

  “Not that cell. I threw it away. I have a new cell, now. It’s Georgina Broussard’s. That’s who I am now. Georgina Elise Broussard.” I say it mean.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” she tells me. “That’s all that matters to me, Lilla. You have to believe me when I say that. I only care about you. I don’t care about myself.”

  I get to my feet. Step over a puddle of coffee. “You can’t call me, here, anymore. You’ll get in trouble.”