Learning to Swim

by Sara J. Henry

  At Thomas’s kitchen table I wrote out an ad:

  WANTED: info on 2 French-speaking Canadian men, dark hair, 1 w/ mole on rt cheek, 1 maybe named Jock or Jacques, maybe w/ small boy.

  I added the box number, TracFone number, and my alter ego’s email address. Presto, a new identity. I called the Burlington Free Press and placed the ad for two weeks. The bored woman on the phone didn’t react—I supposed she had heard far stranger. Then I posted a longer version on Vermont’s Craigslist. I wrestled with my conscience only slightly before digging out the Craigslist response I’d forwarded to Jameson and answering it, asking for details. But I didn’t sign onto Madeleine’s account to check emails; that I was done with.

  It took less than ten minutes to design a full-page poster with the two sketches, a brief description, and contact information. I printed a color copy on Thomas’s printer, made adjustments, and printed two more before I was happy with it.

  My stomach was growling. I had peanut butter on a slice of bread with a glass of milk, and ate an apple in the car on the way to Kinko’s. Less than half an hour later I was leaving with two hundred copies, a fat roll of masking tape, and a container of thumbtacks. By six that evening I’d stuck my poster up on bulletin boards, in grocery stores, and on telephone and light poles.

  I knocked lightly on the door of Thomas’s apartment. No answer, so I let myself in with the key he’d left me. A neatly folded index card sat on the kitchen table: Having dinner at the Pacific Rim Café on Church Street with friends at 7:00. You can meet us there or help yourself to anything here.

  I wasn’t up to meeting anyone, let alone going out, so I rooted around in the fridge and heated some leftover spaghetti, then had a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Like any good Vermonter, Thomas always had a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s in his freezer, with at least one variety of chocolate, I suspected for my benefit.

  While I ate, I scanned the classified ads in the Free Press, looking for basement apartments. If the men had left town after they’d dumped Paul, the apartment could still be unrented, because of the high rate of summer vacancies in university towns. I marked down a few that seemed like possibilities.

  I went to bed early and was only vaguely aware of hearing Thomas come in, and didn’t see him in the morning.

  The public library on College Street opened at 8:30, and I was there at 8:34. The reference librarian steered me to the reading room, where the older back issues of newspapers were stored on microfilm. I selected reels dating back to four weeks before Paul was kidnapped, and began to search classified ads, feeding the filmstrips through the machine, cranking away at the handle, peering at the grainy print. Then I switched to reels from the following months.

  It took the entire day to make a list of addresses and phone numbers of apartments that might fit. I’d eaten a Clif Bar, but my head was aching by the time I headed back to the apartment.

  Thomas’s car was out front, and I could smell something cooking when I let myself in. In the kitchen a pot was steaming on the stove and he was sliding bread into the oven.

  “This should be ready soon,” he said without looking up.

  “Tommy, you don’t have to cook for me.”

  He peered at me through glasses that had steamed up from the oven. “I know,” he said pleasantly. “But we both have to eat.”

  So we ate pasta, salad, and garlic bread, and had a glass of Merlot each. I looked at Thomas and his sandy hair, wire-framed glasses, neat pullover and slacks, and thought, How much simpler life would be if I could love him.

  “Thomas, we should talk. About us.”

  He blinked, and sipped his wine. His face was blank, although he never showed much expression. He spoke deliberately. “I think what’s happening with us is that we dated for a while, and we’ve moved away from that and are, I think, becoming friends.”

  He was watching me, levelly. I did care for him, but there was no flicker of desire, nothing pulling me toward him. A pain grew in my throat, sharp and palpable. “I don’t …” I said, almost choking.

  He put his hand over mine on the table, scarcely touching me. “It’s okay, Troy. I know you’ve been balancing a lot of things.”

  I made a sound, half laugh, half sob. “You could say that. But I’m not … nothing happened, you know, with Philippe.”

  He nodded, sitting back. “It doesn’t matter. I already knew we were going in a different direction than I had hoped.”

  A tear fell down my cheek. If I could have changed how I felt about Thomas at that moment, I would have. But you can’t create emotions. You can fake them or pretend they don’t matter. But I’ve tried both, and it never works.

  We quietly cleaned up the kitchen, and he turned on the television. I went off to bed, leaving him in front of it. I couldn’t tell if he was watching or just staring at the screen.

  IN THE MORNING WE WENT FOR A RUN, EASILY MATCHING EACH other’s pace. On the way back we picked up bagels at a bakery on Church Street, and ate them with peach preserves. While Thomas read the New York Times on the front porch, I sat at the kitchen table with my list of apartments, marking locations on a map, and began to make phone calls.

  First I made appointments to view basement apartments available for rent. Then I called the number for an older ad for a basement apartment listed before Paul was kidnapped.

  “Hi,” I said blithely. “I understand that you have an apartment that you rent out.”

  “Yeah, it’s rented now.”

  “Well, I was trying to track down some friends of mine, but I’ve been out of town for a long time, and they were moving and I know they were going to look at your apartment. They’re two guys, Canadians from Québec, and they speak French.”

  “Nope,” the man replied. “Not here. Never had no Canucks here.”

  I kept this up until nearly lunchtime. I was amazed that not one person I reached refused to answer, asked the names of the guys I was looking for, or wondered where I had gotten their phone number. People are amazingly trusting, and love to talk. One lady kept me on the phone for ten minutes telling me about the time she had gone to Niagara Falls and how nice the Canadians were and how much she and her husband Harry had enjoyed seeing the Falls and how they were always going to go back, but never did, and now it was too late because he died last year, cancer, you know, because he smoked for so long.

  But none of them had rented to dark-haired French-Canadian men.

  I packed a sandwich and banana to head off to the first of my apartment-viewing appointments. On the front porch, Thomas looked up. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “Nope. I’ll be fine.” Better to slog through this alone. “But would you look after Tiger?” He nodded.

  I thought the first apartment I saw was bad, but they got worse. Maybe my time living in Philippe’s house had spoiled me, but basement apartment seemed to be a synonym for dark and dingy—and often musty as well. I scribbled notes in my little spiral notebook and drew sketches of the layouts as if trying to figure out where my furniture could go, and promised I’d call back if I decided to take it.

  None of the places fit Paul’s description. Paul had said the first room had one of those grainy cubed windows that let some light in but didn’t let you really see out, and a small attached half bath. His second room had been tiny, not much more than twice the size of his single mattress, with no windows.

  It was dark when I got back to Thomas’s apartment. On the way back I’d called to tell him I’d grab something to eat on the way home, and had gotten a tuna sandwich at Subway. He had been going out to a movie, something more complex and artistic than I could handle right now. I dialed my phone in Lake Placid to see if I had any messages.

  Philippe had called. I called him back on my cell phone; I’d kept the Canadian cell plan. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hey,” he said.

  The sound of his voice was hugely comforting. I could picture myself in Ottawa, finishing off one of Elise’
s dinners.

  “How are things?” he asked.

  “Good. I’m in Burlington for a few days.” A pause. I could tell he was framing a question, so I answered before he could ask. “I’m … I’m doing some looking around, Philippe.”

  A pause, then he asked, “What do you mean?”

  I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure I could explain this. “I’m looking around to see if I can locate one of the apartments Paul was kept in. Or if I can find out anything about the men themselves.”

  A longer pause. He was considering if he could talk me out of this and how to phrase it. “Troy, that could be dangerous. And I’m sure the police have checked all that out.”

  “Yes, but it’s not going to be the highest priority,” I argued, “especially with Paul home.”

  “Look, I could send a private investigator down there, or hire someone there if you feel it has to be done. I don’t want to worry about you. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice almost cracking. “Yes, I do.”

  He was quiet. Maybe he did understand—he was struggling with his own guilt. “Why don’t you come back up here for a visit?”

  “No, no, I can’t, not now.” My voice rose, and he changed the subject. He told me how Paul was doing in summer school, that Bear was now housebroken. I promised I’d increase my allotment of cell phone minutes, and gave him Thomas’s number. I agreed to email and call regularly, to be careful, and to alert him if I even thought I’d found out anything.

  If Philippe were free, I thought, he’d be doing this. But he had Paul, his job, his employees. Me, I had nothing to hold me down.

  All Sunday I called about apartments and went to look at ones for rent. Thomas offered to put up some posters around campus, and took a stack of them to work Monday. I continued to look at apartments. By dinner Wednesday, Thomas looked at me with concern. “Troy, you have to slow down.”

  I grinned. “I look pretty bad, huh?”

  “Well, tired, anyway.”

  Making phone call after phone call was dreary, but looking at the apartments was worse. If so many of the owners hadn’t been happy to have someone to talk to, I would have felt bad about wasting their time. I’d hear in detail how grandson Johnny had been such a sweet boy until he started taking that cocaine. How daughter Martha had breast cancer and the doctors thought it was too late to stop it even after they’d taken both off, poor thing. How dear Lillian died in bed, just like she was sleeping, and she looked as sweet as she had the day they got married. And how all the kids were too busy to come visit and how taxes kept going up and how medicine was so expensive sometimes they only took half as many pills as they were supposed to and wondered if they should try to buy it from Canada like they’d heard some people do.

  It made me want to go find the grown kids who didn’t come visit and bang their heads together, and go buy the damned medicine myself.

  Seeing these apartments made me think of Paul stuck in rooms like these for so long—nearly half a year, one-twelfth of his life. No parents, no nanny, no school, no home. Alone and lying near the door so he could hear the television. Washing his clothes in the sink. Happy to get a plastic McDonald’s toy. Trying to dig a hole in the wall to freedom.

  Thomas spoke up. “One of the professors at work, Vince Thibault, saw your poster and asked me about it. You’ve met him once or twice, I think.”

  I searched my memory bank, and then I could picture him: a friendly man, on the short side, almost stocky, with a tennis club tan and wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. I’d met him when I’d stopped by Thomas’s office.

  Thomas went on. “He told me about a French club he runs, a group of people who speak French and who meet every few weeks.”

  “A French club?” My tone must have suggested what I was thinking: that these guys wouldn’t have joined a French club, or any club for that matter.

  “Yes, he was thinking that maybe someone French-speaking could have run into these men or noticed them somewhere.”

  A long shot, but it couldn’t hurt. And it was nice of Vince to have thought of it. “Sure. It’s worth a try.”

  “There’s a get-together Friday night at six, a wine-and-cheese thing. I can introduce you and then sit quietly in a corner and drink wine while you talk French.” For Thomas, this qualified as outright humor, which meant he was trying to cheer me up.

  “Sure,” I said.

  On the futon that night, I felt desperately lonely, with an ache deeper than I’d ever experienced. This was, I supposed, what happened when you let people into your life—when they were no longer there you felt an aching, grating loneliness. I reached out and stroked Tiger, who obligingly rolled over for a belly rub. I wished I could be back in Ottawa, with Paul and Philippe and Elise. I wished I could pretend everything was okay, that the kidnappers had gone far away and would never come back. I wished I could convince myself that this was all best left to other people, that it was foolhardy to be meddling here, that I should back off.

  But I couldn’t.

  I had to try to right things. I had to do my best to ensure that Paul wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. I had to finish what I’d started when I dived into Lake Champlain after him. You can’t just do one thing to save a child and then walk away—you have to stick with it.

  Or you may as well not have started.

  THE FRENCH CLUB GATHERING WAS AT A MEETING ROOM IN a church near the university, and when I arrived, Thomas was waiting for me near the door. He looked good in his professor clothes: crisply pressed slacks, neat blue shirt, tie, sport coat. I’d worn my trusty cord slacks and pullover.

  A table in the corner held bottles of wine, plastic cups, and grocery store platters of cheese, crackers, veggies, and dip. A half dozen or so people were chatting. Most looked like university personnel, but some seemed to be students. Across the room, a compact man looked up as we entered, and I recognized him as Vince. He smiled broadly, excused himself, and walked toward us.

  “Thomas,” he said, pumping Thomas’s arm and smiling at me. “So glad you could make it. Troy, so nice to see you again.” Then he shook my hand.

  I don’t usually like people this hearty, but his friendliness was engaging. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled made him look like a genial older businessman, like Robert Loggia, the head of the toy company in the movie Big, who danced across the giant piano keyboard with Tom Hanks.

  “So how are you enjoying your stay in Vermont?” His accent was more British than French.

  “Fine,” I said. Because you could hardly say, Awful, I’m frustrated trying to track down murdering kidnappers who dumped a small boy into Lake Champlain.

  Thibault continued. “I saw your poster and Thomas told me of your little problem. You are trying to locate some people, correct?”

  I had just opened my mouth to reply when a woman grasped his arm lightly. “Vincent, mon cheri, tu parles anglais, mais c’est le club français ici!” she said, in lilting French so precise it almost sounded affected. The woman was slender, with a slightly upturned nose and short auburn hair in a stylish cut I suspected was quite expensive. She made a tsk-tsk sound.

  “Ah, Marguerite,” he said in delight. “Yes, yes, you are so right, I should not be speaking English, but my poor colleague Thomas here unfortunately cannot comprehend a word of French, and I don’t want to leave him out of the conversation.”

  She smiled at me with a touch of curiosity, but none of the rancor sometimes evident when wives find their husbands talking to other women.

  “Troy, this is my wife, Marguerite. Maggie, dear, this is Thomas’s friend Mademoiselle Troy Chance, from Lake Placid, and you remember Thomas Rouse from the history department.”

  She nodded and smiled and we shook hands, hers slender and elegant with silvery nail polish and several sparkly rings. I knew I hadn’t met her, but I tried to remember if I’d seen her around campus. I didn’t think so.

  Thibau
lt turned to his wife. “Dear, Troy is the one who is looking for the men from the poster, the ones who are French-speaking, Canadian, I believe, who have been living in this area.” I nodded, and he continued speaking to Marguerite. “If you don’t mind, perhaps, keeping Thomas company while Troy and I circulate?”

  She raised her eyebrows, in apparent good humor. “Of course. I’d be happy to keep Mr. Rouse company.” She somehow made it sound ever so slightly risqué. She took Thomas’s arm and led him to a set of chairs in the corner of the room.

  So I went off with Thibault to meet the club members and fumble with my French. The number of people in the room swelled to perhaps two dozen, people coming and going, with more arriving who weren’t affiliated with the university. No one showed a glimmer of recognition of the drawings of the men, but all were friendly and willing to help. Most were American, a few from France, and only one was Canadian, from British Columbia. From time to time I glanced over to check on Thomas, who seemed delighted by Marguerite’s company, which somehow amused me.

  “Any luck?” Thomas asked when I rejoined them.

  “No, but it was worth trying.”

  “Who are these men you are looking for?” Marguerite asked.

  I told her the half-lie I’d decided on. “They tried to abduct a friend’s child, and we had heard a rumor they were living up here.” At her half gasp, I added, “Oh, the child is fine, but of course they’d like to find the men.”

  “But surely the police …”

  I shrugged. “They do what they can.”

  Thibault had rejoined us. Some unspoken communication passed between him and his wife, and he said, “Thomas, my friend, we haven’t had much time to visit. Would you and Troy join us and some people for dinner this Monday at our house? I know it’s short notice, but we would love to have you. We will speak English, I assure you.” He chuckled.