Learning to Swim

by Sara J. Henry

  “Il faut que je travaille maintenant.” I nodded toward the computer. “Je dois écrire à l’ordinateur.” He seemed to understand that I needed to work, and began pulling crayons out of the box. I guess if you’ve been kept locked up in a room for weeks on end, coloring seems like a blast.

  It took only seconds to locate a Canadian online phone directory. I found plenty of people named Dumond in Montreal and suburbs, including three Philippes, with addresses and phone numbers. Then I checked Montreal newspapers for Philippe Dumond, Madeline Dumond, and a few alternative spellings of each. I knew that women can’t automatically change their last name in Québec when they marry, but can use their husband’s name socially.

  I found nothing in the archives for the Montreal Gazette. I began searching archives of Montreal’s French-language newspaper, Le Journal de Montréal, from last fall.

  Then I found something: Madeleine Dumond mentioned in a brief article on a social page. I couldn’t translate the whole article, but it said she had chaired the event the previous year. The words that jumped out were “Mme Dumond est l’épouse de Philippe Dumond, président de l’Agence Dumond.” Wife of Philippe Dumond, president of the Dumond Agency.

  I glanced over at Paul, busily crayoning. I searched other Montreal-area publications, including a glossy monthly magazine, Montreal Monthly, and in less than a minute got a hit—a photo.

  It appeared first as a ghostly image, then the pixels filled in until three people were smiling out at me, a frozen moment in an apparently gala evening.

  Madeleine was the central figure: head thrown back, smiling gracefully. She had gently waving honey-colored hair, high elegant cheekbones, dark eyes, and a wide Julia Roberts mouth. She was dressed chicly, a trifle daringly compared to the other woman in the picture, in a silvery snug dress cut across one bare shoulder. The caption read, “Yves and Geneviève Bédard and Madeleine Dumond at the Spring Festival of Arts dinner.”

  I looked at the photo. I looked for any resemblance to Paul, with his dark hair and thin face. I tried to imagine this woman holding Paul, combing his hair, hugging him, tying his shoes, walking him to school. I couldn’t. But neither could I imagine her kidnapped and dead.

  I saved the photo, and moved on to searching the Gazette’s archives. I found a few mentions on the business page about companies whose marketing was handled by the Dumond Agency. Then I hit the jackpot: a tiny blurb in the business section that said the agency was moving to Ottawa.

  Back to the Ottawa Citizen, where I found two small articles, one on the company’s move and another mentioning an account it had just landed. In years past people might have assumed Dumond was moving out of Québec because of the risk of it seceding from Canada, which would be somewhat like Florida or California pulling out of the United States. Once the vote for separation had been razor close—49.4 to 50.6 percent—but since then the separatist movement seemed to have died down.

  I found nothing about a kidnapping, missing wife, missing child. How could this have been kept out of the news? The police could keep it quiet in response to kidnappers’ threats, I suppose. And picking up and moving 125 miles would certainly let you dodge unpleasant questions about absent wife and child. I glanced at Paul, still busy coloring.

  My brain was going down a path I didn’t want it to. Most people don’t make such major life changes a few short months after a tragedy. I supposed Paul’s father had given up hope of wife and child returning; I supposed the walls of the home they’d shared would haunt him. But that little voice in my head asked, How could you abandon it so quickly? Wouldn’t you want to stay in the home you’d shared, on the tiny chance they would return someday?

  Unless, of course, you knew they wouldn’t.

  In Nashville in the late 1990s, a lawyer named Perry March had killed his wife, apparently after she threatened to divorce him and take their two small children. He got away with it for a decade, until his father confessed to helping him dump the body. And in a notorious Washington, D.C., case I’d read about, a former Motown recording engineer had his ex-wife and disabled son killed, along with the son’s nurse, so he would get the child’s huge trust fund. The killer apparently consulted a how-to book called Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. The surviving family sued the publishers, who lost.

  Paul had turned to a new page in the coloring book and begun filling in the characters in bright colors. He was a neat crayoner, staying carefully inside the lines.

  I couldn’t locate a home address for Philippe Dumond in Ottawa or suburbs, but found an address for the downtown business, with phone and fax numbers. For one insane moment I thought of sending a fax: Dear Mr. Dumond: Are you missing someone?

  I flicked off the computer and moved to the sofa. I admired the pages Paul had colored, and read Harold and the Purple Crayon to him. Which he liked so much we did it twice more. Fortunately, it’s a short book.

  I’d almost forgotten about the play I was due to review that evening for the newspaper. I usually ask Baker or Kate along, but tonight I’d take Paul.

  I ran a bath for him, setting out clean clothes from the ones Baker had loaned us. His own had dried, but they were too small, and I didn’t want to put him back in them, anyway. When he emerged from the tub, his wet hair was hanging down past his eyes, several inches too long.

  Time for a trim, I thought. I draped a towel around Paul’s shoulders and perched him on the edge of my desk, explaining with a combination of French, English, and gestures that I wanted to couper his cheveux with my ciseaux. I’ve been cutting friends’ hair since high school—nothing fancy, but I can do a decent simple cut. He seemed agreeable, so I got out scissors and comb.

  His hair was full and straight, but long and uneven. I combed and snipped and layered, and when I finished, his face didn’t seem as thin and he didn’t quite have that abandoned, neglected look. “Very nice. C’est beau,” I told him, and he smiled shyly. He hopped down and without prompting held the dustpan as I swept up the hair. Someone had trained him to do this, which didn’t seem to fit with being a child someone would throw away, a child wearing too-small clothes that were gray from wear.

  On the way to Saranac Lake we zoomed through the McDonald’s drive-through, which I disapprove of on several counts. Fast food and drive-throughs seem to represent a lot that’s wrong with this country: fatty, salty, cheap food delivered while you sit in your fossil-fuel-wasting, pollutant-spewing vehicle. But it wouldn’t kill me to do it once. I hesitated before ordering a Happy Meal for Paul, not wanting to remind him of the ones he’d gotten in captivity. But he seemed pleased with the brightly colored carton and cheap toy, and not at all traumatized.

  Damn. Damn damn damn. Time to shut off my brain.

  Going to the theater that evening was probably the best thing we could have done. It was a Larry Shue play called The Foreigner, by a local theater group founded by a couple who had left Off-Broadway. The play features a timid Englishman stuck in a lodge in Georgia for three days, introduced as a foreigner who knows no English. I wouldn’t have thought we could have laughed so hard. I’m not sure how much Paul understood, but the exaggerated dialects and facial expressions required no translation. Or maybe it was just emotional release. He nodded off in the car on the way home, and I walked him upstairs, steered him into the bathroom, pulled off his sneakers and jeans, and rolled him under the covers. He was instantly asleep.

  I was yawning, so I detoured down to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, using the paper-towel-as-filter drip method. Then I sat down and started typing: What can you say about a play that has you laughing out loud minutes after it starts? I hammered out a thousand words, printed it, edited it, then emailed it to the editor at the Enterprise. Then lay awake long into the night, thinking.

  I woke early, plans made. Before Paul stirred, I slipped out of bed and fired up my computer to print some business cards. I packed a few things and made a quick call to Baker before waking Paul. Then a trip to the corner with Tiger,
Cheerios at the kitchen picnic table, a note asking Zach to watch Tiger, and we were off to Saranac Lake.

  THIS IS CRAZY, TROY,” BAKER SAID FLATLY. “YOU’RE GOING to go up to Ottawa to find Paul’s father, and then what?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She turned from the kitchen sink and faced me. “Okay, you kept Paul until he was comfortable talking. Probably you found out a whole lot more than the police would have by now. But now you know who he is. You know he was kidnapped. You know his mother was murdered. You know he has a father. Troy, you have to report this.”

  I could hear the tunk, tunk of her quartz-powered wall clock. The house was quiet. Her two oldest boys had left for school, and we’d stashed her youngest son and Paul at Holly’s, across the street.

  I was trying to formulate words, figuring out how to explain something that wasn’t entirely clear even to me. Finally I started to speak and, God help me, my voice cracked and a tear slipped down my cheek. Baker stared at me in something approaching horror, as I’d put my head in my hands and narrowly avoided outright sobbing. She’d never seen me cry. She’d never even known I could cry, she told me later.

  I finally got it out, more or less lucidly. I’d thought about it long into the night. Maybe Paul’s father had nothing to do with this kidnapping or his wife’s death. Maybe there was an innocent reason for his moving to Ottawa and for the lack of news coverage. But maybe he had everything to do with it.

  Maybe he had wanted to get rid of wife and child without the expense of a divorce. No muss, no fuss, no alimony or child support. If he had arranged all this but it couldn’t be proved, Paul would be turned over to him. Just like the children of the Nashville lawyer, Paul would grow up with the man responsible for his mother’s death.

  Baker listened. She’d not only made a whole pot of Earl Grey, but was drinking some, too. Apparently emotional crises merited hot expensive tea instead of the Red Rose brand she used for my iced tea.

  “I can’t let that happen,” I said. “I’m not having him go back to someone who could harm him, or who killed his mother.” I took a deep breath. “But I think if I see him, if I look him in the eye when I tell him, I’ll know if he had anything to do with this.”

  What I couldn’t say was that something had made me see Paul plummet off the ferry; something had led me to him in Lake Champlain and had let me swim long enough and hard enough to save him. Surely when I saw his father, I would know if he had been responsible for any of this.

  “And if you think he was involved?” Baker prompted.

  “Then I’ll show him a photo I’m taking along of one of my nephews when he was that age, and say that was who I found.” Paul’s father would tell me I was mistaken; I’d express regret and leave and come back to Paul.

  “And then I’ll keep him,” I said. My voice seemed to echo in the kitchen. The quartz clock was clicking away the seconds. “If I can get away with raising him here, I will, but if not, I’ll move somewhere and start over with a new name.” Never mind that I would be acting as judge and jury; never mind that the culprits would never pay for what they had done. This child would be safe.

  I was showing Baker more of myself than she’d ever seen and admitting to things I didn’t want to admit. But a tiny part of me was aware that opening up like this was the only thing that could sway her into watching Paul while I went to Canada. There’s a fine line between sharing and manipulating, and part of me knew I was dancing close to that line—like a kid deliberately crying hard over a broken window so Mom won’t get mad. But I didn’t tell her about Janey, the little blond girl at the children’s shelter who had begged me to adopt her, and who one day was just gone.

  Maybe I was manipulating her, maybe not. Sometimes I think Baker sees into my skull, past the bones and into my brain. She probably had a pretty good idea what was going on.

  She looked at the clock and then at me. “If you’re going, go.”

  If I were a hugging kind of person, I would have hugged her. I brought in the bag I’d packed for Paul, and we walked over to Holly’s so I could tell Paul I was leaving for a day or two and that he would stay with Baker and Mike.

  He clung to me, his eyes glistening. “Ne partez pas,” he whispered. “Ne partez pas, je vous en prie.” Please don’t leave.

  “I have to, Paul. C’est nécessaire.” And maybe my eyes were glistening, too. “Ce n’est pas pour longtemps. Seulement un jour ou deux. One or two days. No longer.”

  But I had to go, and I couldn’t take him with me. He’d be fine here.

  NOW I WAS DRIVING NORTH TO OTTAWA, TRYING HARD NOT to think about Paul’s face as I’d left.

  It was a crisp spring day, the sky clear and a more vivid blue than I’ve ever seen anywhere. Trees were coming alive after the long winter, shooting out sheaves of green. You could see gaps in the tree line where acid rain had killed off trees, but the air still seems fresh and clean.

  Did I know that what I was doing was risky? Of course I did. But so was jumping off the ferry, which had saved one small boy’s life.

  I had built a comfortable world for myself here in the Adirondacks: rental house, rotating roommates, freelance work, family a thousand miles away, a sort-of boyfriend, friends but none I really confided in. Baker was the closest, and I’d let her see more of me today than I ever had. It was a simple and safe existence: no mortgage, no lease, no steady job, no committed relationship. Not a whole lot at risk.

  It had seemed like a pretty good life to me, and I thought I’d been content.

  But from the moment I sat on the rock at the edge of the lake with Paul on my lap, I’d felt a bond I’d never experienced. Something had changed for me, as if a switch had been thrown. I had taken responsibility for this small person, and now life from before the ferry seemed in the distant past.

  I had distilled it down to two things: If Paul had a father who loved and deserved him, I would turn him over. If he didn’t, I was keeping him.

  I’d brought along my voice-activated tape recorder and business cards I’d printed this morning with a fake name and fake address. Baker would most likely tell her husband, Mike, a slimmed-down version of the truth, that Paul was an abandoned Canadian boy and I’d gone to try to find his father because it was simpler than involving the authorities.

  I’d dressed with care, assuming the closest I could to a businesswoman persona: cord slacks, pullover, Eastland leather shoes, and black linen blazer on the seat beside me. I’d braided my hair into one long neat plait down my back. Not precisely the image of corporate success, but I figured the blazer would make it work.

  I hadn’t figured out how I would get in to see Dumond, but I had plenty of time to think on the drive. It’s about eighty miles to the Canadian border, and the route meanders through small towns so undeveloped that if it weren’t for modern cars and a few scattered Subways and Burger Kings, you could imagine it was decades ago.

  When I spotted a FedEx drop box, I had my plan. I doubled back and opened the bin at the top of the box where labels and envelopes are stored. I was in luck: it held international labels as well as U.S. ones. I grabbed a label and envelope and addressed a label to Dumond, scribbling to obscure the first name and inventing a Boston address for the return. I slipped a note inside the envelope, sealed it, and inserted the label in the plastic flap. And drove on.

  Now I was at the St. Regis reservation and passing the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino. The parking lot was nearly full, and I could see a bevy of plump white women wearing fanny packs making their way inside, heading for the slot machines. To me gambling on reservations is Native Americans’ joke on white Americans. We pushed them onto the least desirable land possible, and now flock to their casinos to gamble our dollars away.

  Payback.

  Gas is always cheaper on the reservation, so I stopped at the Bear’s Den to tank up. While a tall jean-clad Mohawk man with dark close-cropped hair pumped the gas, I headed for the restroom.

  The border crossing at Cornwall was
a brief stop while an inspector glanced at my passport and asked a few rote questions. Apparently I fit no profile, because as often as I’ve crossed this border, I’ve never had my car searched or been asked more than the perfunctory questions: Where are you going? How long are you staying? What is your citizenship? Are you carrying any liquor or cigarettes? Once in a while they’d throw in Are you carrying more than $10,000? and I’d have to work hard not to retort, “Do I look like I’m carrying more than $10,000?” Apparently you can import ten grand without reporting it, but not a penny more.

  Up highway 138, onto the Trans-Canada Highway, into Ottawa, exit into downtown. Traffic was smooth. My heart was thumping, my mouth dry.

  It was comfortably before lunchtime. First step: Check to see if Dumond was in. If not, try in the afternoon, then maybe crash with people I knew in Perth and try again tomorrow. I found a parking space and then a pay phone. I thumbed in some of the Canadian change I keep in my car console.

  “Dumond Agency, Colette speaking,” a pleasant voice said.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Doris Felton calling for Philippe Dumond.” I expected the stilted or bored May I ask what this is concerning? that you get from most businesses in the States, but Canadians are friendlier and less suspicious than their American counterparts. Or maybe I’d succeeded at sounding confident enough to be convincing.

  She replied, “Certainly, just one moment,” and as she clicked off, I hung up, figuring they’d think the call had gotten disconnected. I’d found out what I wanted: Dumond was in his office. It was possible she had been shuffling me off to an assistant, but that was a risk I’d take.

  I’d tucked the FedEx envelope into the black canvas Lands’ End satchel I use as a briefcase. As an afterthought, I ripped it open. Dumond would be more likely to glance inside if the envelope was open, and I didn’t want it sitting in a pile for hours. On the paper inside I’d written: I may know something about your son, Paul.