by Nancy Rue
“I’m not paying for that …”
“I bought you three tacos and a cotton candy, and I’m a terrible mother?”
“I don’t want to hear it. I told you to wear your shoes.”
But the words were almost foreign. They had to be code for something more important, like “I saw Tristan just ten minutes ago having a frozen custard” or “We all have to stop what we’re doing and look until we find her. What’s a taco when a child is missing?”
The colors shouting “Hawaiian Shaved Ice” and “Exotic Eats” were too loud, the push to get them unreal. I felt as if I could walk straight through the old men with binoculars dangling from their necks and the prep-school boys with iPods hanging from theirs.
The only thing that came into focus was Boardwalk Fries, its cheerful yellow sign mocking me from the corner. And why wouldn’t it? The last time I was there, the place had told me that it had failed to protect my daughter and had no information to give me. Until maybe now.
A narrow tunnel of reality opened up. I didn’t have a serrated knife, but I had the energy to push myself past all that didn’t matter to get to the only thing that did.
The signs above the open counter windows told me I could have lemonade, Popsicles, and frozen drinks, but when Inga greeted me, her face visibly searching for something appropriate to say, I asked for Aylana.
While Inga was getting her, I stared at the closed window to my right until I realized I was looking at Tristan’s face as rendered by a school photographer, staring emptily back at me from the police flier. I hadn’t even recognized her, because she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. She should be on the deck at home, coaxing little Desmond into the water. And Hazel should be watching in amazement. And I should be explaining that Tristan was wonderful with children, that in the church nursery they practically hopped into her pocket like baby kangaroos, that the very softness of her being was a lullaby in itself.
The pear-smooth arms of a female came around me from behind, and I clutched them, eyes closed, for several seconds before I realized it wasn’t my daughter.
“You are so sad,” Aylana said. The esses sang like silver. Her cheek was warm against mine. Yet for a moment I hated her because she wasn’t Tristan. I turned to face her.
“Was it Spider?” I said.
She stared at me blankly for a few seconds before her eyes sparked. “The lifeguard? Yes!” She pulled both my hands into hers. “His name is Spider.”
“And he knew Tristan?” I said.
Yuri leaned out the window at the end. “That boy?” He shook the coffee can. “He will never leave the tip.”
“You mean that guy who was always trying to get Tristan to give him free fries?” Inga said. She stuck a container of said fries on her counter as if the harried-looking father on the other side had made the same brazen request. “He’s a creep.”
I put my hand up to my mouth.
“Why are we talking about him?” Inga said. “Did he do something? It wouldn’t surprise me.”
I darted to Inga’s counter as the father faded into the buzz behind us.
“Did you see him that night she disappeared?” I said. “Thursday night, did you see him here?”
One fine line appeared between her eyebrows. I put all my hopes into it. But she shook her head.
“No,” she said.
Yuri, too, shook his head. I knew if there were anything else they could tell me, they would. I could see that in the longing in their eyes.
At least they had all agreed that Spider was the one. But the one who what? The one who tried to hit Tristan up for illicit french fries? The one who lingered at the counter and—did what? Made rude remarks like Fried said? Tried to impress her with his manufactured machismo?
Or was he the one who had snapped his spidery fingers and made her disappear?
I untangled myself from Aylana and somehow thanked them before I stumbled back up the boardwalk, groping in my pocket for my cell phone. I still got Nick’s voice mail and then Maya’s. There was no one to whom I could pass on the thin, mean confirmation that might tell us nothing at all and yet might show us everything. I broke into a run and kept my eyes ahead until the white gate to my own backyard was in front of me.
Hazel pulled it open as I reached for it, and I pitched forward, flailing for something to grab, for a place to put my words.
“Spider … he’s the same one … and I can’t find Nick—”
But I stopped. There was a sudden silence, the kind of stillness only children can achieve when a grownup breaks the trusted adultness and becomes a child herself. A voice called from the pool, a voice that was usually husky and that now stretched thin, as if she’d been betrayed.
“Mom?” Max said. “Are you okay?”
I was already nodding, already frantically gathering up the pieces of myself when I turned to her.
“I’m okay,” I lied. “I ran all the way up the boardwalk. I’m just a little bit out of shape.”
Tri’s head bobbed up beside Max’s. “Did you bring us any corn dogs?”
I snapped my fingers. “I knew I forgot something,” I said.
“What are we gonna have for lunch, then?” he said.
“You’re not gonna starve to death, Tri,” Hazel barked from behind me. “Go play.”
Amazingly, he did. Through it all, Max didn’t take her eyes off me. In their soft, squinty pouches, they were waiting for a better answer.
“I’m finding out more about who … who Tristan knew that we didn’t know about … so maybe he can help us.”
It was only half-true, and she obviously believed only that much of it. She raised an eyebrow at me.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m going to call Daddy,” I said.
I watched her process that. She finally gave a nod and disappeared under the water.
I tried to walk solidly to the deck chair Hazel had vacated next to the hammock. Aunt Pete tossed the bag of what was now water onto the deck and sat up to glare at me like a barnyard goose.
“You’re going to call ‘Daddy’?” she said.
“He wants me to—”
“Why don’t you just call Ed Malone? Were burning daylight here!”
“Nick told me …”
Aunt Pete leaned forward, eyes down to slits. “For crying out loud, Serena,” she said, “can’t you even go to the bathroom without asking that man’s permission?”
I closed my eyes, and there was Tristan, dragging her nervous, brown-eyed gaze from the glistening pile of fries in their tub on the counter to the moneyless hands of the man-child with spidery fingers.
There is only one choice you can make, Tristan, I wanted to whisper to her.
But to my horror I saw her glancing over her shoulder and sliding the unpaid-for fries toward him. He pushed them aside and wove his fingers through hers. And she let him.
I keyed in Ed Malone’s number.
Chapter Seven
Within an hour Ed had Aylana at the Fenwick Island Beach Patrol office looking at photos of their lifeguards. He called to tell me she had picked out Spider without hesitation.
“His real name’s Ricky Zabriski,” he said. “He hasn’t reported for work since he got off Thursday afternoon. The Fenwick police are trying to get a warrant to search the trailer he’s been renting.”
“Maybe she’s there!” I said.
“They’ve already checked it from the outside. Nobody was around.”
Before another hour passed, Ed called again. The kids had started up a game of Marco Polo in the pool, so I took the phone outside the gate and pressed my hand above my eyes to block out the sun, which was blistering everything that couldn’t run for cover.
“The place was left like he intended to come back,” Ed said. “According to the other lifeguards they questioned, he wasn’t one to leave an expensive stereo system and a refrigerator full of Bud Light. We have a call out to bring him in for questioning.”
; “Do you think—”
“I think it’s the first strong lead we’ve had.” Ed’s voice still surprised me with its lack of stress. If the words he said couldn’t be soft, at least the delivery was. I moved to the side porch and sat on the bottom step next to a pot of geraniums that were mockingly merry.
“The good news is,” Ed went on, “nobody we’ve talked to has ever seen him do anything violent. His worst fault seems to be a bloated sense of entitlement.”
“Meaning?”
“He wants something for nothing. Thinks the world owes him everything. They’re firing him in Fenwick, but nobody seems concerned that he’s going to go postal on them or anything.”
“But you think he’ll be back for his things?”
“We hope so. Fenwick PD will keep watching his place. The AMBER Alert now has his license number and a description of his car: blue ’94 Buick, Hard to miss.”
A stream of sweat ran down my back, but I couldn’t move up into the shade of the porch. I wasn’t sure whether it was the humidity or the unsaid part of Ed’s report that was making me feel as if I were trapped inside a pillow.
“So what’s the bad news?” I said.
“Not as bad as it could be. Depends how you look at it.” I could see him inclining his head. “In a sense this is good news too, Serena. The possibility is getting stronger that Tristan wasn’t taken against her will. That maybe she chose to go off with this guy.”
How, I wanted to ask him—wanted to scream at him from the suffocating center of myself—how could something impossible be a possibility?
“I don’t think that personally,” Ed said, “not after what you’ve told me about your Tristan. But if she did, there’s a better chance that she’s not hurt. That has to give you some hope.”
I shook my head as if he could see me. I couldn’t put faith in something I knew wasn’t true.
“It would be hard to accept,” he said, “but it would be a whole lot easier than any other scenario. Let me ask you this: do you remember your last conversation with Tristan?”
I’d already been over it at least fifty times in my mind. “We talked about her hair,” I said. “She wanted to cut it, and Nick wouldn’t let her.”
“Did she seem upset?”
“A little, but Tristan’s sensitive.”
“So, no more upset than usual?”
“No.”
“I know this is hard, but can you think back? Did she give you any indication at all that she wasn’t going to see you for a while?”
I forced the scene into view yet again. Tristan being quiet, feet propped on the seat. Resigning herself to Nick’s no about the haircut. Refusing my offer of ice cream. Assuring me she wouldn’t change her mind.
“No,” I said. “I told her Nick would be there to pick her up at nine, and that was it.”
Until she walked straight from the Blazer to a blue Buick? I thought. Turning from my child into an unknown young woman as she went? Was that what had happened?
“No,” I said again.
“Okay,” Ed said. “Now, I’m just going to put this one more thing out there, and then I’ll leave it alone. In most cases of runaways, when the situation at home is basically good, the kids return after a few hours or days.” His voice went soft. “I think your home goes way beyond ‘basically good,’ don’t you?”
“Do four days count as a few?” I winced. I felt as if I’d just betrayed my daughter by even asking the question.
Ed didn’t answer.
“His name is Ricky Zabriski,” I told Aunt Pete and Hazel on the back porch.
“Well, there’s your trouble,” Hazel said. “With a name like that, no wonder he’s screwed up.”
Aunt Pete looked from her to the four children sitting in a line at the edge of the deck, towels shawled around their shoulders, licking banana Popsicles. She’d evidently learned the names of Hazel’s three.
Hazel nudged me with the side of the hand still holding an unlit Marlboro. “Whatever his name is,” she said, “at least you know it now. That’s something.”
“I guess it is,” I said. “But we don’t know where he is or whether he’s with Tristan or, if he is, what he’s doing with her—”
“Who are you talking about?”
My voice broke off as I looked up at Max. She was suddenly beside me, hair plastered back, leaving her face wide open to whatever havoc my answer could wreak on it.
“Nobody, Maxine,” Aunt Pete said. “Look, you’re dripping your Popsicle all over.”
But I shook my head at Aunt Pete and said to Max, “We’re talking about a boy Tristan knew that she didn’t tell us about.”
“No way,” Max said.
“Yes, way,” I said.
“So he’s the one who took her?” Max said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Why?”
I tugged at the towel she was hugging around her. Despite the heat, the sun-browned skin on her legs had erupted in gooseflesh. I couldn’t sit there and watch her take on my anguish.
“We don’t know, honey,” I told her. “Maybe he didn’t take her. Maybe she just went with him.”
Max tucked in her chin. “You are not serious, Mom,” she said. “Those cops need to get a major clue, because Tristan so did not do that.”
I had to smile. Everyone should remain ten years old, where the obvious could be stated and all else dismissed with a roll of the eyes.
Nick had a similar reaction when he called a few minutes later, almost frantically apologetic because his phone battery had gone dead, and I reported to him, word for word, what Detective Malone had told me. I slipped inside the house as his voice threatened to go beyond the boundary of the phone. I could tell Max was listening from where she reclined, head on the flanks of an exhausted Irish setter.
“Malone can just take that runaway theory and put it in the shredder,” Nick said. The expected sigh was deep and weary. “You okay, hon?”
“I don’t know. If it’s true, then she’s probably safe, and I can hang on to that, but I know it isn’t true, and that makes me—”
“Okay, I know. The thing is, it’s a lead, and that’s what we’ve been hoping for. What else did Malone say?”
I went over it again, every word, every pause, every nuance, just as I had before. Each time I told it, I felt momentarily more real. It seemed to hold me together.
“All right. You’re not alone, are you?” Nick said.
“No, Aunt Pete’s here and Maxie and Hazel and her kids.”
“Who?”
“Hazel. She came to my moms’ group last week—”
“Serena, this is not the time to be entertaining. That’s too much for you right now.”
“No, it’s helping—”
“I don’t want you getting more stressed out. Why don’t you send them home? I’m about fifteen minutes out. I beat the worst of the traffic, so I’m practically there. I’m going to call Ed Malone.”
I bristled a little as I hung up, but I rushed to make it okay. Naturally he wanted to hear everything for himself. Hear it from Ed, who might have an update by now. Who had a voice that wasn’t wound tight with terror. Who might tell him something I’d left out—or Ed had left out. Nick was just a little bit … What? Frustrated? Terrified? Certain he would disintegrate if Tristan didn’t come back at once and pirouette across the kitchen?
Just as I needed to say it all, over and over, he needed to hear it. That was it. I had to stuff the needling resentment away.
And indeed Ed did have more to tell Nick when he phoned him. Ricky Zabriski was from Georgetown, a little more than an hour away. His mother said she hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, but that wasn’t unusual. When asked to call Detective Malone if she heard from her son, she said it shouldn’t be long. If he was true to form, he’d be calling within the week to ask for money.
But Spider Zabriski didn’t call his mother that day. Or the next. Or the next. And Tristan Soltani didn’t call hers, either.
&n
bsp; I was tucking Max into bed the next Monday night, after more than a week without Tristan, when she said to me, “I want to talk about Sun and those guys and Regis and Kelly.”
“Regis and Kelly?”
“The dogs.”
“Oh.”
“Is it okay that I have fun when they all come over?”
“Honey!” I said. I ran my hand across the folded top of the sheet that pocketed her shoulders. “Why would you ask me that? Of course it’s okay. They’re a little, um, different, but they like you—”
“No, I mean …” Her brow puckered. “Should I be having fun when something bad could be happening to Sissy?” And then her face crumpled, and she started to cry, husky, rasping sobs that went on until she fell asleep in my arms. I spent that night in her bed, making a bowl of my body and holding her in it so she couldn’t spill over again.
I was in a fog the next morning when Hazel appeared with the brood. I managed to emerge from it when she handed me a sheet with a picture of Tristan on it, dressed in her Boardwalk Fries uniform, executing a deerlike leap down our front steps.
I stroked the graceful little chin. “This was taken right before she went to her first day of work.”
“It was in this bunch of pictures you gave me,” Hazel said, waving a bulging brown envelope.
I couldn’t remember giving her pictures, but, then, as sleep deprived as I was, I couldn’t remember whether I’d brushed my teeth most days.
“So what do you think?” Hazel said.
I realized for the first time that it was a new flier, less cluttered than the one the police had done and more certain, with its startling font, to draw the eye to this vibrant teenager who was still missing.
Still missing. Maybe leaping farther and farther away every moment of every day.
“It’s beautiful, Hazel,” I said. “It’s great.”
“And you wish we didn’t have to do it in the first place.”
We looked at each other until I couldn’t see her through my tears.
“Go get Mrs. Soltani a tissue, Sun,” Hazel said. “And don’t be snooping in her medicine cabinet.”
As all three kids took off, sliding on the hardwood floor and fighting over who was going to hand me the Kleenex, I sank into a kitchen chair, still holding the flier.