Waiting for Christopher

by Louise Hawes

  “‘They’?”

  “Kidnappers, that’s who.” Delores wrapped her arms around herself, slowing again. Her voice took on a singsong quality, as if she’d told this to herself over and over. “Ain’t no other way Christopher would go and disappear. You know?

  “I have him trained good. He knows to mind. And he knows to wait for me.”

  “You left him alone?” Something kept pushing Feena to the edge of safety, made her need to be sure. “All by himself?”

  The singsong stopped, and the little girl was back in Delores’s voice. “No,” she said, “not for real. It’s like a game we play. You know? I mean, sure, I tell him if he don’t mind me, I’m leaving. But he knows that’s only talk. He knows I ain’t doing nothing but blowing steam.

  “That’s how come he wouldn’t run off on his own. I know somebody’s gone and took him. I looked everywhere. And my old man? He’s been all over town, too. Only he don’t half believe me hisself. You know?… Hey, wait. Where you going?”

  Feena didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to be back with Christy and Raylene. She didn’t wave this time, just took off as soon as she saw the trailer park gates. Took off and didn’t look back.

  Raylene was right; Feena saw that now. She never should have come here. Everything was confused, everything was worse, like a sore that starts to heal until some fool rips it open. Some fool named Feena Elizabeth Harvey. Damn, as Raylene would say. Just plain damn.

  fifteen

  She was back to keeping secrets. It had felt so good to have someone to come clean with, someone she could tell the whole story to. Now Feena was holding things in again. She could never admit to Raylene that she’d been to the trailer court, much less that she’d actually talked to Christy’s mother.

  It was hardest at night, before one of them went home and the other settled down with the baby. That was the time when, more and more, the two girls talked. While Christy slept in the narrow bunk, they relaxed in the slow velvet space between afternoon and night, the time before the mosquitoes and no-see-ums set in. They sat in the benches on each side of the table, their voices low so as not to wake the baby, and compared notes—on books, on boys, on things Feena never dreamed she’d be able to share with anyone. Once, she’d even managed to tell Raylene about the dream she’d had. About how she’d watched Jane and Janie sail off on the old ship.

  “Lord,” Raylene had told her, chuckling. “As many times as I read those books, I never did picture the two of them in the same boat!” She shook her head. “That quiet, white-bread Jane.” She’d grinned and looked almost sheepishly at Feena. “Don’t get me wrong, now. I like Jane; it’s just she’s more of a thinker than a doer, see?”

  Feena had nodded. She couldn’t help loving the way Raylene talked about characters as if they were real people, someone she knew.

  “And Janie? Well, it’s almost like she figures thoughts would slow her down.”

  Feena had to admit, dreams didn’t always make sense. “I guess it is pretty silly,” she’d said.

  “And the way they talk,” Raylene went on. “Jane’s words are so perfect, so beautiful, I figure she lies awake all night just cooking up what she’s going to say next day.” She’d laughed again, then, remembering Christy, lowered her voice. “Now Janie—everything she says, it has the Old South in it. She sounds just like my grandma.”

  “Well, I only—”

  “Course,” Raylene had interrupted, reconsidering the proposition she’d just rejected, “I guess they could spell each other some. I mean, Janie could set Jane straight every time she panics.” She’d grinned then, as if she might have been joking all along. “And Jane, she could get a crazy idea once in a while that would start Janie thinking. Yeah, they might do all right, after all.” Finally, that look of hers, that steady, no-nonsense look. “They just might pull it off, those two.”

  And didn’t it take two? Feena not telling Raylene about her visits to the blue trailer—wasn’t that like Jane holding out on Janie? What if she was thinking crazy? What if a single word from Raylene could set her straight, make her sane and sure? Each afternoon, when Raylene put down her orange soda, leaned back, and asked, “So, girlfriend, which way the world throw you today?” Feena almost told her, almost dumped her guilt, her confusion, in Raylene’s lap. Like Christy with that smile of his: “Fix.” But she didn’t.

  And if Raylene noticed a difference in Feena, the way she grew suddenly quiet when Raylene crowed about how happy the baby was, how much weight he was gaining, she never let on. Even though Feena stopped aiding and abetting her plans to sneak Christy into daycare when the “heat” was off, even though she no longer laughed when Christy did as he’d been taught and called Raylene “Mama Ween,” Raylene seemed oblivious.

  If Raylene hadn’t fallen quite so effortlessly into the role of parent, things might have been different. If Feena hadn’t missed home so much, hadn’t begun to feel she’d forgotten what it was like to be a kid, the pressure might not have built up the way it did. And maybe if Raylene hadn’t been over an hour late two weeks into their “split shifts,” things wouldn’t have gotten out of hand. Of course, then Feena would never have known. Never have guessed that a train could gather speed and come out of nowhere, crushing everything in its path. That she could look up in bewilderment and realize she was that train.

  It started slowly. She was aware only that she had to light the lantern and that her mother would be wondering where she was. She noticed, too, that Christy was fussy, unusual for a child who took almost every setback and disappointment in stride.

  He had spilled juice on one of his books, not Mama’s Music, but another of his favorites. It had upset him, and he’d tried for minutes on end to rub the purple stain off the picture of a polar bear. He used a paper towel, as he’d seen Feena do the day before. Bent over the book, his face damp and determined, he scrubbed away until both the towel and the page threatened to dissolve into nothing.

  He complained loudly when Feena swept up the book, just in time to save the bear from extinction. “Baa,” he insisted. “Bear take baa.”

  “No, Christy,” she’d told him. “The bear can’t take any more baths. He’s had enough.” She put the book on a shelf out of his reach. “Let’s let him dry.”

  But he continued to whine, looking constantly up at the shelf above him. “Baa?” he asked plaintively. “Mo baa?”

  Feena, preoccupied, pushed him aside. “No, Christy. Not now.”

  He retreated for a minute, but then came back, his arms loaded with the cartons, spoons, and paper cups he used for building. “Pay,” he announced. “Feen pay.”

  A large, feather-headed moth had fallen in love with the candle, Feena noticed, and was beating itself against the lantern grate. “No,” she said, without looking at Christy. “I don’t want to play right now.” Where was Raylene, anyway? Had something gone wrong?

  “Pay!” Christopher unloaded his building materials onto her lap. “Want pay!”

  She brushed the junk off her knees. “Take it away, Chris,” she said. “Go play on your bed.” Between the moth’s persistent thumping and Christy’s whining, Feena could hardly think. What would she tell Lenore? And how was she ever going to study for that geometry test? She found her backpack, took out the math text, but Christy’s hand was on the page almost before she opened to it.

  “Weed,” he said, changing tack. “Feen weed.”

  “No.” Still, she didn’t look at him. “This isn’t that kind of book. Raylene will read to you later, okay?”

  “Ween,” he told her now. “Want Ween.” He brushed himself against her repeatedly, like the moth throwing itself at the light. “Want Ween! Want pay!”

  Finally, Feena looked down at him. And suddenly his smallness, his dependence irritated her. I’m not who you think I am, she wanted to tell him. Stop looking at me like that. “Don’t you understand?” She moved him out of the way, so his shadow wouldn’t fall across the book. “I can’t play all the time.
”

  He closed in again, an afflicted expression on his small features; he grabbed her hand and thrust himself back against her until the pressure of his slight body seemed almost unbearable. She wanted to bat it away just as she’d pushed the cartons and blocks out of her lap. His tiny hand in hers was too much—too hot, too moist, too heavy.

  Feena’s blood pumped into her head and hands. She felt tingly, as if one more touch would send her flying out of herself. But that small hand kept coming back.

  When she actually lifted his fingers off hers and grabbed him by the shoulders, she felt lightheaded, powerful. “Don’t you know I have other things to do,” she told him, “other things to think about besides you?”

  It must have been her stern tone. Or maybe the way she’d pushed him away from the book. Anyway, he started crying, sudden, silent tears that surprised them both. He stood his ground, though, dabbing at his eyes. “Pay!” he sobbed, indignant. “Feen pay!”

  He hadn’t napped all day, and it was well past his dinnertime. But Feena was beyond patience and excuses. She grabbed his shoulders again, turned his chin up so he’d have to see her, have to understand. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” His bones were like a kitten’s or a bird’s between her fingers. “What did I say, Chris?”

  Christy’s face, his angel’s face, darkened then. Still crying, he shut his eyes and turned away from her. He put his arms around his head, crouched the way he had at the amusement park. He was protecting himself … from her! And why did the anger get worse then? Crawling into her throat like a meal she couldn’t keep down? Why did Feena want to shake him, make him know she would never hurt him? Make him stop. For god’s sake, just make him stop!

  When Raylene opened the doors, when she raced into the cabin breathless, the newspaper in her hand, Feena and Christy were startled, as if they’d been wakened from a bad dream. The frustration, the exhaustion Feena had felt seconds before got swallowed up in a rush of adrenaline, a shock she’d been expecting for so long, she leaned into it like a sharp wind. The headline was bannered across three columns: SECOND KIDNAPPING SPARKS DRAGNET. TWO CHILDREN MISSING AS POLICE COMB AREA.

  “It was on the radio, too,” Raylene told her, whispering as if Christy were asleep instead of hugging her knees, trying to pull her face down to his. “I heard it at work. Merilee, she’s the manager, she keeps music on all the time, even when she’s talking to you.” She finally stooped down, kissed the baby absently, then waited impatiently for Feena to finish the article.

  “The way I see it,” she said, when Feena finally raised her eyes from the paper, “someone took another kid, and the brilliant police figure there’s a kidnapper out there who can’t quit.” She plucked Christy up from the floor, sat him on her hip, and smiled grimly. “Like one of these won’t give him trouble enough.”

  Feena said nothing, felt nothing. She sat still, waiting for the numbness to wear off!

  “I saw three cop cars on the way here,” Raylene told her. “They’re all over the place.”

  “God.” Feena felt dizzy now, short of air. It was as though they were trapped in a mystery novel or a film, as though they were living lives that didn’t belong to them. She and Raylene were ordinary people; how could this be happening? “Do you think they’ll find us?”

  Raylene shook her head. “Cops don’t want snakebites any more than the rest of us. And if they use dogs, the water will throw them off the scent.”

  Feena couldn’t believe it. “Are you actually suggesting we stay here?”

  “Not forever. But it’s as good a place as any till we figure how to deal.”

  “Deal?” Feena wanted to crumple up the paper, tear it into pieces. Instead she folded it back, stood up. “What do you mean, ‘deal’? Didn’t you read this, Ray?” She remembered Christy’s mother, how no one believed her. Now they would. “It’s official. We’re kidnappers. How do we deal with that?”

  Christy, catching the tension, wriggled in Raylene’s arms, began to fuss again. “Down!” he whined, reaching for the floor as if it were miles away. “Want down!”

  Raylene set him on his feet, lowered her voice. “I don’t mean we stay here forever. Just long enough to get our heads straight.” Babyless now, she shrugged, opened her arms. “Then who knows? Maybe we could take a bus trip somewhere. Give them time to find that other baby and go back to checking parking meters.”

  Part of Feena hoped it could happen. Red shoes and magic wishes, a fairy-tale escape. “I wanted to rescue Christy as much as anyone,” she told Raylene. “But what if it’s not so easy? I mean, what if it hurts other people? What if she wants him back?”

  “Back?” Raylene sat down, deflated. “What do you mean?”

  “Look,” Feena began, “I went to see Christy’s mom.” She put a hand out as if to defend herself when she saw Raylene’s eyes catch fire. “I had to, Ray. I had to know we were doing the right thing.

  “And I’m not so sure anymore. Yes, she’s got a temper. But you would, too, if you lived the way she does.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is in a tiny trailer that’s too small for the yelling and hitting that goes on there. I saw it, Ray. I didn’t mean to, but I—”

  “Lots of people have problems. That’s no excuse.”

  “She wants him, Ray. She’ll stay there and get beat up until she gets him back.” Feena didn’t mention what had happened a few minutes ago, but she remembered the feeling of Christy’s bird bones, her own helpless anger.

  The heat in Raylene’s eyes hadn’t cooled. “What? You think you can just up and return Toffee, like some toy you’re tired of?

  “Listen, girl, I didn’t help you out so you could roll over and play dead just when he has a chance to start fresh. I plan to see he gets that chance.” She glared accusingly at Feena. “Even if all you got in mind is to quit on him.”

  It wasn’t that easy. Feena knew it wasn’t. “What if,” she said quietly, slowly, “he wants it, too?”

  “What?”

  “What if Christy wants to go home?” She remembered the baby pointing to the piano book, remembered his excited, triumphant shout. “Ma!”

  Raylene didn’t answer. She sat now, her head bent forward on her slender neck, as if she were thinking over what Feena had said. Then, in the slice of stillness between their squabbling, the thunder hit. First there was a deep, throaty rumble, and the next second, the storm was on top of them, rattling in the sky like a steel ball hurled down the world’s longest bowling alley.

  Christy screamed. It was the first time Feena had been with him during a Florida downpour, and she was suddenly helpless in the face of his panic. “Shhh,” she said, stooping down, picking him up off the floor he’d begged for just moments before. “It’s all right. Shhh.”

  But he howled louder, covering his ears with his hands each time the thunder struck, his face contorted, purple. Instinctively, Feena looked across to Raylene, and just as naturally, Raylene took the baby from her. She held him against her shoulder, his face nestled there like a tiny infant’s, then she began to walk the floor with him. She sang in the same sweet sunset voice Feena had heard at the old restaurant. Low and croony, slow and thick as liquid glass, finding a shape all its own in the middle of the storm.

  Christopher quieted, and Raylene looked over her shoulder at Feena. “I’m not asking you again,” she said. “I’m just telling you, Toffee deserves a chance. Same as all of us. Okay?”

  Feena nodded.

  “And don’t go doing anything crazy till we talk this out.” She stared hard at Feena. “Promise?”

  Feena nodded again.

  sixteen

  All next day, Feena was in school, but out of body. During history, she forgot about the Yalta conference and remembered that albatross she’d seen in the nature film on TV. A dumb bird in love with a plastic decoy. In algebra, she thought about her mother, mad for the soaps, and about Peter Milakowski, with a crush on a teacher he hadn’t seen in sixty years. At lunch, a
lone at a table of seniors, she nearly cried for Christopher, devoted to a woman who didn’t even know how to love him back. And cutting across the soccer field after eighth period, heading toward the boat, she felt sorry for herself, too. For Feena Harvey, still in love with a baby who had died before he was old enough to know her name, still yearning for a father who had clearly forgotten her, turning him into some kind of hero from a novel.

  What good was all that one-way love, anyway? All that yearning and flapping and waiting? It was like a plug with no socket, or one left-handed glove at the back of the closet shelf. Good for nothing, that’s what it was.

  That night, curled next to the baby, Feena dreamed that he was climbing a steep set of stairs. She kept stumbling after him, throwing her arms around his legs, trying to pull him down to her. But he was stronger than she was, and he moved higher and higher, not even looking back when she called his name.

  Next morning a typical Florida sky, cloudless and unrelentingly blue, was waiting for them by the time Christy was awake and fed. The two of them opened the cabin door and stood on deck, blinking in the sun. Feena had put one of Raylene’s headbands on the baby, combing out as many of the ringlets as she could, so that his hair hung straight and pale over his shoulders.

  She hoped anyone who was looking for Christopher would be thrown off by the long hair and dress. And she hoped Raylene would forgive her for breaking her promise. After all, it was Raylene who had said Christy should have a vote, wasn’t it?

  She saw no patrol cars and no suspicious loiterers as they slipped through the woods along the dirt path, then walked the six blocks to the trailer park. It had been nearly three weeks since Christy had been home. If he wanted to go back, Feena would be able to tell, she was sure she would. And if he was afraid, if he cried or clung to her, turned his face away, why, then she’d know what that meant, too. She’d know he’d had enough. Enough slaps and kicks to last a lifetime.