“Wait, Yossi. Let me give you my phone number, in case you think of anything. He shrugged his shoulders and stuffed the card I handed him into his pocket without looking at it.
“What’s your last name?” I asked.
“Zinger,” he said, turning on his heel and walking across the restaurant to the table where his friends were sitting.
“I want to go home, Mama. I want to see Daddy,” Ruby whined.
“Okay, honey,” I said. I hustled the kids out of the restaurant and into the car and, within an hour, had them both bathed and ready for bed. Ruby was out like a light as soon as her head hit the pillow. Isaac, as usual, was ready to rock and roll until the wee hours.
I took him into my bed and faked sleep, hoping to trick him into following suit. He was unimpressed. He lay in the crook of my arm, grunting and waving his arms about, his fingers gracefully outstretched like a miniature Thai dancer. After a futile ten minutes or so of playing possum, I gave up.
“So, what do you want to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, what do you want to do?” I answered in a squeaky baby voice.
“I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Et cetera.
This scintillating exercise was interrupted by Peter’s arrival.
“Hey,” he called as he thumped up the back stairs.
“Hey,” I called back.
“Are you still up?”
“No. I’m asleep. Can’t you tell?”
Peter walked into the bedroom, stripping off his clothes as he crossed the worn wooden floorboards. In seconds he was next to us in bed, clad only in his boxer shorts.
“Hi, Isaac,” Peter said, scooping the baby up and buzzing him on his belly. Isaac giggled.
“Hi, Daddy,” I said in my squeaky voice.
“Did you guys have a good day?”
“Not really.”
Peter pushed a long curl out of his eye. “Me neither.”
“You go first,” I said, rather generously, if I do say so myself.
“Oh, you know, just the usual garbage. The studio guys are insisting that the special effects are too expensive for TV and the director is threatening to quit unless they’re left in. Blah blah blah. I swear to God, if it weren’t for Mindy, I’d be going out of my mind.”
I felt a flash of jealousy. The producing partner Peter’s agency had set him up with was a woman of about my age with the unlikely name of Mindy Maxx. She was blond and brilliant and weighed seventeen pounds.
“And what did Maximum Mindy do today?”
Peter laughed perfunctorily. “She’s really adept at handling those network drones. She keeps them in check but somehow convinces them that they’re in charge. She’s amazing.”
“So you’ve said before.”
He was oblivious to my sarcasm. “You do remember that we’re going to her house for dinner tomorrow night, don’t you?” he asked.
I hadn’t remembered. “Oh God, is that tomorrow? Peter, I totally forgot. I didn’t set up a baby-sitter. And Fraydle, the girl who was supposed to sit today, has disappeared. I don’t know where I’d begin to find someone to watch the kids.”
“I figured. That’s why I found someone.”
“You found a baby-sitter? What are you talking about? How did you find a baby-sitter?”
“Well, actually, it was Mindy’s idea. Her assistant, Angelika, is going to do it.”
“Angel-eeeka? Who’s Angelika? We can’t just let some total stranger take care of the kids.” What was he thinking? Did he really believe I’d leave my kids with someone I’d never met?
“She’s not a total stranger. I’ve known her for months—since we started developing the series. She’s a nice young kid, a year or two out of college. She went to Yale, like Mindy.”
“Oh, well, if she went to Yale, by all means.” I was being snide. I’m a Harvard girl, after all.
“Juliet, do I need to remind you that you left Isaac with some girl you met once in a grocery store?”
That shut me up, for a moment.
“It’ll be fine,” Peter continued. “Angelika is a sweet kid and she’s very responsible. Ruby will love her; she’s got a stud in her tongue.”
“Oh, well, why didn’t you tell me that to begin with? Sure, no problem, as long as she’s heavy into self-mutilation. I mean, who would ever want a baby-sitter who couldn’t set off a metal detector or two?”
Peter sat up and lifted Isaac up over his head, zooming him around like an airplane.
“She’s a nice kid,” he said.
I gave up. “I’m sure she is. Ruby will love her.” I sighed. “Don’t get the baby all revved up. I’m trying to convince him that it’s bedtime.”
“Okay.” Peter brought Isaac in for a landing and handed him to me.
“Why was your day so bad?” he asked, finally.
I launched into the tale of Fraydle’s disappearance. I had just started telling him about my conversation with Yossi when I noticed that he’d fallen asleep.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. I looked over at Isaac, who smiled at me. At least he cared what I had to say. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s let Daddy get some rest.”
Seven
PETER was gone by the time Isaac and I got home from driving Ruby to school the next morning. My darling husband had left a note on the kitchen table.
Sorry I crashed last night. I’ll be home early to get dressed for Mindy’s. Why don’t you go buy something fabulous to wear? It’ll make you feel better.
“Better? Why do I need to feel better? I feel just fine, thank you.” I muttered to myself as I crumpled the note. I had already decided to go by Mrs. Tannenbaum’s store. I wasn’t up to facing Fraydle’s father, but I wanted to find out if Fraydle had come home. Afterwards, if we had time, Isaac and I could hit the Beverly Center and try to find something to wear to Marvelous Mindy’s dinner party.
I drove the block and a half to the kosher grocery and parked in front of the store. It was open. Measuring the distance between my car and the shop at about ten feet, I decided it was safe to leave the baby in the car. I opened his window a crack, hopped out, and went to the door of the shop. Poking my head inside, I called out to Fraydle’s aunt. “Nettie? It’s Juliet Applebaum.”
She stood behind the register, ringing up the purchases of an elderly woman wearing a wig that appeared to be made out of molded plastic.
“Hello, darling. No word yet,” Nettie said, looking up at me and shaking her head.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I glanced out at Isaac, who sat, undisturbed, just as I’d left him. “I can’t stay,” I said. “Isaac is in the car. I was just hoping . . .” I let the sentence trail off.
“We’re all hoping.”
The customer looked up curiously. “What hoping?” she asked, in a thick Yiddish accent.
“Nothing, dear,” Nettie reassured her. She gave me a warning glance over the top of the woman’s head. I nodded and waited in the doorway, where I could watch Isaac. He was busy trying to fit both fists into his mouth.
In slow motion, the old woman packed her purchases into a net bag and crammed that into an incongruous, pink suitcase on wheels emblazoned with the words “Going to Grandmas.” Finally, after about twelve hours, she trundled past me and out the door. Nettie came out from behind the counter.
“Come, we’ll go stand next to your baby. Chas v’shalom someone should steal him out of the car.”
Suitably rebuked, I followed Nettie to the car. I leaned against the front passenger door, watching her as she made goo-goo eyes at Isaac. She tickled him on his belly and spoke to him in Yiddish. The woman clearly had been born to be a grandmother. It seemed a cruel twist of fate that she’d been robbed of her chance to have children, let alone grandchildren.
“Nettie, has your brother called the police yet?”
She shook her head. “No. Baruch says we’ll find her ourselves.”
I shook my head, frustrated at the man�
�s obstinacy. “And Fraydle’s mother agrees with this? She’s willing to let days and days pass without going to the police? For crying out loud, Nettie. What if she hasn’t run away? What if something has happened to her? You could be making a terrible mistake by waiting.”
Nettie whirled around to face me, her eyes flashing. “You think I don’t know this? You think I don’t imagine that girl dead somewhere? Or kidnapped? What do you think? I don’t care? Her mother doesn’t care? We don’t love her? Is that what you think?”
“Of course that’s not what I think. I know you love her. That’s why this refusal to call the police doesn’t make sense to me. It’s almost as if her father doesn’t want her to be found.”
“Pah!” She flung her hand at me in a dismissive gesture. “What do you know? The poor man does nothing but look for her. He drives all over this city looking for her. I’m telling you, he hasn’t slept since she left. The only thing he wants in the world is for her to come home.”
I was silent for a moment. Nettie obviously believed what she was saying. And maybe she was right. Maybe Rabbi Finkelstein was doing everything he could to get his daughter back. And maybe he wasn’t.
“I have to go,” I said finally. “You’ll call me if you hear anything?”
“Yes. I’ll call you,” Nettie said. She leaned into the car and gave Isaac a wet kiss on the cheek. He grabbed her wig and tugged it askew.
“Motek,” she said, and patted it straight again. “A lovely boy you have, Mrs. Applebaum. Take care of him.”
“I will,” I said softly. I reached out and hugged the sweet older woman. She held me close for a moment and then, sniffing back tears, walked back into her store. I watched her go and then walked around to the driver’s side of the car, got in, and started the engine.
“Okay, buddy, let’s go to the mall,” I said to Isaac as I pulled onto Beverly Boulevard. “I hear Macy’s has opened up a Rotund Petites department. I’m sure it’s just chock full of fabulousness.”
Eight
OUR shopping trip was the exercise in humiliation I had come to expect from department stores. While my body had expanded well beyond a size ten, my eyes seemed to have gotten stuck at about a six. I took dress after dress off the rack and into the dressing room, only to find that they would fit provided I had time for a spot of liposuction. I seriously considered the plastic surgery before dumping my reject pile on a salesgirl who had been condescendingly watching my pathetic attempts.
“Ma’am, why don’t you check out our large size collection? It’s on the third floor, next to housewares.”
I glared at her and stomped away. My dramatic exit was somewhat hampered by the fact that I got Isaac’s stroller stuck on the corner of a display table. As I jerked it loose, I sent a pile of miniscule cashmere sweater sets flying.
“Sorry,” I muttered to the salesgirl and hustled off across the store.
I was morosely making my way toward the escalator when my eye was caught by a mannequin wearing a pair of heavy satin pants in midnight black and an almost architectural shirt made of some kind of shiny gray fabric.
“Now, that’s gorgeous,” I said to Isaac. I wheeled him over to the mannequin and lifted up the price tag on the shirt. “Whew!” I gasped. The tag read $450. My first car cost less than that. The pants were a bargain at a mere $250.
“It’s so hard to find something that fits when you’re nursing, isn’t it?”
I spun around to the source of the comment. An older woman in a beautifully tailored suit smiled at me.
“Impossible,” I agreed. “Absolutely impossible.”
“What’s terrific about these pants is that they have an elastic waist. Very forgiving. The cut is slimming, too.” She lifted up the shirt to show me the waistband of the slacks. “And the top is cut very full across the chest. Would you like to try it on?”
“You work here?” How could the same store that employed the snotty little twig who’d “helped” me earlier also have hired this lovely woman?
“Indeed, I do. In couture.”
“Ah, couture,” I said. That explained the price tag.
“Would you like to try it? If you decide you like it, we can shorten the slacks for you while you shop.”
I paused for a moment. I had never in my life spent that much money on a single outfit, not even my wedding dress. I’d bought that at a sample sale for ninety-seven dollars. Ninety-seven dollars and the black eye I’d gotten when I yanked it out from under the sweaty fingers of another bargain-hunting bride.
“It is expensive,” she said, reading my mind. “But it’s beautifully made. It’s a fabulous outfit.”
She said the magic word. I was under strict orders to find fabulousness at all costs. “Okay, I’ll try it.”
Ninety minutes later, Isaac and I were on our way home, our trunk loaded down with the satin pants, gray shirt, and the astronomically expensive black sandals with silver buckles that I simply had to have to go with the outfit.
“I am fabulous, aren’t I?” I asked my baby as we zipped through the streets of Los Angeles on our way to pick Ruby up at preschool.
That afternoon, I popped an Elmo video into the VCR for Ruby, mentally apologizing to the American Academy of Pediatrics, who had just informed me, via NPR, that I was doing incalculable damage to my child by allowing her to watch TV. I strapped Isaac into his Baby Bjorn and began to pace back and forth. As long as I was moving, the baby was quiet. I’d spent the day worrying more about my appearance than about Fraydle and I was feeling guilty. I was also certain that Fraydle’s father was never going to find her, no matter how hard he was looking for her. I debated calling the police, but realized that without the Finkelsteins’ cooperation, I wouldn’t get very far. Chances were that she had just taken off, probably to avoid a marriage to someone she didn’t love.
I needed to find her myself.
Even at the time, I knew my involvement with Fraydle was a little crazy; certainly it was out of proportion to how well I’d known the girl. But for some mysterious reason I felt a sense of responsibility toward her. Maybe she reminded me of myself at her age. Maybe her plight activated the do-gooder complex that had lain dormant since I’d left the federal public defender’s office. Maybe I just needed to concentrate on something other than how utterly and completely exhausted I was.
I hadn’t expected Yossi to call, and he hadn’t surprised me. His evasiveness was certainly suspicious, but short of calling the cops and telling them that first of all I had a missing person to report and second of all I felt a little uncomfortable about the veracity of an Israeli friend of the disappeared, I wasn’t sure what I could do.
I needed some advice and I knew just who would give it to me. I picked up the phone and, continuing to bounce Isaac up and down on my chest, called the federal public defender’s office, my old stomping ground. The secretary to the investigators’ unit put me on hold and I waited for Al Hockey to get off his butt and answer the phone. Al had been working as an investigator for the federal public defender ever since he’d retired after taking a bullet to the gut in his twenty-fifth year at the L.A. police department. Retirement hadn’t agreed with him, and he always said that getting people out of jail wasn’t all that different from putting them away, just a little bit harder. During my time as an attorney in that office, we’d been an unstoppable team. I owed every one of my “Not Guilty” verdicts to his tireless footwork. Al possessed the miraculous ability to pluck an alibi witness out of thin air.
“If it isn’t my favorite private eye! Juliet Applebaum, how are your bullet holes?”
“Fine, Al. And yours?”
“Just fine. What borderline illegal activities do you have in store for me today?”
“Illegal? I’m outraged. Truly outraged. When have I ever asked you to do anything illegal? Unethical, maybe. Illegal, never.”
“A rather fine distinction. What do you want now?” he asked.
“Missing person’s case,” I replied. I told him the s
tory about Fraydle’s disappearance.
“Sounds to me like she pulled a runner, Juliet.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too, but there’s always the chance, however slight, that it may be more serious, and it makes me nervous that the cops don’t know about it.”
“You could always call them.”
“I suppose so, but I’m worried about alienating the parents. I’m just wondering if there’s a way I can unofficially find out if any girls have turned up.”
“Turned up where, the morgue?”
That stopped me in my tracks. I suppose that’s what I meant, but I hadn’t put it so bluntly even to myself.
“Well, yeah. The morgue or a hospital or something. I suppose I could call every hospital in the city, and every morgue for that matter, but I figured you might know an easier way to do this.”
He thought for a moment. “I could ask one of my buddies from the LAPD to check on any Jane Does.”
“That would be wonderful. What do you need to know?”
“A general physical description, age, the neighborhood she lives in, that kind of thing.”
I gave Al the information and made him promise to call me by the next day with whatever he’d found out. I’d done what I could that day. And anyway, Elmo was almost over.
Nine
I was definitely not ready to go out when Peter came home. In fact, Ruby and I were both covered in flour and Isaac was in his bouncy seat, looking like a little Abominable Snowman. We’d decided to bake cookies, but had never got past the dough stage. My mother had called in the middle of our project and I’d had to spend fifteen minutes explaining to her why it was that Peter and I couldn’t put his project on hold, load up the kids, and hightail it out to Jersey for a week. Or two. Or six.
“Hey, family,” Peter said when he walked in the kitchen.
“Hey, Daddy,” Ruby and I answered, in unison.
“Is this fabulous enough for you?” I asked, pointing at my dirty sweatshirt.
The Big Nap Page 6