The Sweet Relief of Missing Children

by Sarah Braunstein

  Pyramids. The Golden Gate Bridge. Movies. Frank Sinatra. Marvin Gaye.

  She closed her eyes and pictured her mother at Halloween wearing a long black sweater, dozens of vivid drink umbrellas stuck into its knit, her whole torso covered with them.

  Footsteps upstairs.

  She opened her eyes. The kitten was sleeping.

  They were the same tree. She looked again and it was true.

  She could never explain what this meant to her, what it did to her body, a feeling not unlike relief. Could that be the right word? It seemed too terrible to think such a thing. She took a breath. Another. The word, the feeling, stayed in her body, suspended in her body like something she’d swallowed, moving through her system, like a pill dissolving, it was going everywhere.

  Everything comes back to itself. They’re all the same, every tree, every sky, every person. Meaning she wasn’t alone. Meaning Frank had meant it when he’d said he was sorry the soda was flat. Meaning Leonora could drink the soda and would not be betraying anyone. She could drink the soda. Everything comes around again. She wished she could tell her parents, her brother, her nana, but she knew she couldn’t tell them. And wasn’t that kind of funny? That this tree is that tree and this girl that girl. That all along you think they’re two different trees, or a million different trees, but really they’re one huge tree that’s been split again and again. What’s funny is that you have to figure it out on your own, and by the time you figure it out it’s too late to say it. She stroked the cat. She thought: My sweet cat. Its skull felt like a ping-pong ball. Miracles erupted in her mind. Amelia Earhart. Radios. The baby who’d been saved from the well. There was only one miracle. She was part of it, Leonora Marie Coulter. She touched the cat’s tail, its paws. Pasteurization. Prosthetic limbs. She held the cat to her stomach. She told it what she knew.

  PART 6

  Byron tucked the list in his back pocket and put on his red mittens. He and the girl faced one other. He said goodbye, wished her luck, all the luck in the world. Her smile was lovely, moved across her face like a leaf on a river. They walked separate ways. It was snowing now; the air felt slightly warmer. Cable TV. Jumpin’ Sumpin’s. Nail polish. The combination of the snow, the big, swaying, papery flakes, and the less frigid air, and the list secure in his pants pocket—all this gave him a sense of new possibility. The rage he’d been carrying for his ex-wife (the rage that was a twin to witless, irrevocable ardor) was finally replaced by the simplest kind of hope. Hope was bigger, it turned out, than rage and ardor combined. In his soul he identified a kind of hope that felt—what could you call it except feminine? For that’s what it was: a girl’s hope. It was so without edge, so without asterisks or variables or contingencies. It was the purest thing, no strings attached, hard and shiny as a bottle of nail polish. He walked uptown, past beggars, past drug pushers, past men selling pretzels as big as his head, past a woman in a wheelchair who sang “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” in a husky voice that made him think of Etta James if she’d been white and an amputee with a shoebox of change. All along, walking, his hair damp with snow, his pulse increasing, these simple, bare, hopeful words played in his head: I love Bea; she loves me. He would get through to her. It was inevitable. Leonora made it so. Leonora looked at him like she believed it was possible—like it was an eventuality. So it was.

  What a nice kid, Leonora. She took it all in stride. How weird he’d been! How inappropriate! His cheeks burned thinking of it. It was in such bad taste, the whole proposal, and she could have run, or told someone, but she met him at the coffee shop, sat before him with her contemplative gaze, blinking her long lashes, solemn, patient, like a child nun, or like the matchstick girl, that’s what she reminded him of, a wisp of a thing, everything inessential gone, like one whose poverty is simply a method of revealing her goodness.

  He spotted a grocery store and got excited about the Jumpin’ Sumpin’s. The glass doors opened for him in a sighing, efficient whoosh; he felt sure, stepping inside, hearing the jangling Muzak, receiving a smile from the pretty clerk at the register, that everything would be okay for all of them. He bought three bags of Jumpin’ Sumpin’s, a copy of the teen magazine Leonora recommended (on its cover a boy with bleached hair held a finger his lips—Don’t tell anyone!; his eyes, half closed, dazed, invoked less someone seductively stoned, as was surely the intent, than a little boy trying to stay awake through the late movie), gummy candies in the shape of worms, a certain sugar cereal Leonora said was all the rage, Coke, and a large bottle of carrot juice. The juice was for him. Bea always made gagging noises when she saw it. Bea said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about beta-carotene.”

  It was not the job of childhood to give a rat’s ass about beta-carotene. That’s what she was telling him. And you know what? She was right. Byron decided, now, to admire her honesty.

  He arrived to an empty apartment. Bea was at debate club. He laid his mittens and scarf on top of the radiator, hung his coat on a hook by the door. The apartment smelled like a shirt after a hot iron, the air dry and starchy. He poured the Jumpin’ Sumpin’s in a big bowl and put her Coke in the fridge. The candy and magazine he stored under the sink where she wouldn’t see them. Then he sat at the table to wait. He rested his fingertips on the kiddie placemat (it had been Bea’s as a kid, depicted the planets, the swirling cosmos, and for some reason he used it still). It would have to go—he saw that now, that he wouldn’t win her over with mementos from the past. She didn’t yet have nostalgia for an earlier life. In several years, when she needed such things, when such a placemat would wound and heal her in one fell swoop, would create the very injury it promises to heal (and vice versa)—well, then he’d pull it out and watch her face. Now he put it in a drawer. He swept crumbs from the tabletop, dropped them in the sink. Sat down again. He felt a little nervous. Outside, the surf-sounds of traffic ebbed and flowed. The place was too tidy—too spare, clean, dull. He saw suddenly, as if through Leonora’s eyes, that it wasn’t the kind of home Bea’d want to invite friends to. It wasn’t at all cozy. But he’d change that. He would. He’d get a shaggy rug for the living room. He’d get an artsy poster, a Manhattan skyline or Ansel Adams-y deal; he’d remove the heinous oil painting, an oversized squirrel in a pine tree, which his great-aunt gave him twenty years ago and he’d been lugging around since. Enough! He’d put the whole thing, frame and all, down the trash chute. Just the idea of it, the possibility of such a brazen act, allowed something to open up in him. It happened quickly, a narrow space that wasn’t there before, a chute, like a new corridor between his mind and heart. He had to break the frame before it would fit down the chute, but he did it.

  His allegiances were so silly. His allegiance to Great-Aunt Rita’s awful painting; his allegiance to his rage/ardor for Shirley; his allegiance to the belief that Bea was beyond knowing. Why why why? He felt dogged by needless rigidity. Why hadn’t he ever considered the notion that superficial changes could be real changes? That’s what hit him now. Objects, surfaces, the veneer of life…they are life. He’d buy some bright throw pillows, plants, and a lamp with a red shade so the place would have, just subtly, the mood of an opium den.

  Half an hour later Bea arrived, sighing, dropping her massive backpack in the doorway, and moaned that she needed two Tylenol right now or she was probably without question going to commit an act of homicide using only a mechanical pencil and her retainer on the next person she saw, which was sorry to say her father. Then she smiled at him as if at her dearest friend. He procured the pills; she took them with still-warm Coke, wiped her mouth, and said, warily, “You never buy Coke.” Then she saw the bowl of snacks on the table, squinted, frowned, and dug in.

  She was getting tall. He’d always assumed as she got taller the baby fat would melt away, but that didn’t seem to be happening. It grew with her. Which meant, he supposed, it wasn’t really baby fat. She wore her fat how a child wears a snowsuit—too busy to notice it, too excited by the landscape, the whole wide snowy world laid
out before her, to feel encumbered. He wondered if this would last. He hoped so. She was a pretty girl, big with life; her spirit seemed to inhere in her fullness. He was reminded of Mrs. Pablonski, a chubby, creamy, vociferous woman who showed up at his elementary school to lead them all in a square dance. He remembered standing by the bleachers, listening to the staticky fiddle on the record player as Mrs. P. showed them how to do-si-do and bow and curtsy; her huge bosom swayed, swung, rose and fell, kept everyone dancing, everyone in impossible thrall to it, that great rocking bosom. He was uncomfortable thinking about Bea this way, but it was true, Bea shared something with that dancing woman, a density that seemed to bear her spirit.

  Bea said, licking her fingers, “I thought you were opposed to sugar.”

  “Not categorically.”

  “Sugar does to the body what cartoons do to the mind. You said that.”

  “Not categorically.” Then: “I like cartoons.”

  “What cartoons? Besides Zoot Suit Henderson.”

  He couldn’t answer. Only Zoot.

  “I thought you said at your house I need to comply with your dietary restrictions.”

  “Everything in moderation, right?”

  She leaned forward and selected a Jumpin’ Sumpin’. She stared at him while she chewed it. “I won’t eat another prune,” she said finally. “I can guarantee that.”

  “How was debate club?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I had to argue for the legalization of prostitution.”

  “Oh?” Things seemed to be getting more and more out of hand. The craziness thrust upon kids these days—but he wouldn’t take the bait. He couldn’t trust his instincts.

  “Just kidding. Euthanasia.”

  She nibbled at her cuticles. She wore jeans, a baggy black turtleneck sweater, and pearl earrings that had once been Shirley’s. The earrings, their primness, their tininess, their implication of an ancestral order, had always reassured him. But she also wore two keys on her neck—two metal keys that clinked when she moved. On a shoelace. A shoelace! This disturbed him, which was of course exactly Bea’s intent. She’d taken to wearing this necklace around the same time he and Shirley announced they were separating. Its purpose was to show the world she’d been abandoned. The necklace said: I’m a latchkey kid now. I’m a child of the era. It was tacky, he and Shirley agreed, and also risky, would attract the gaze of who-knows-who; it made Bea vulnerable when she thought it conveyed strength. But Bea insisted on keeping it around her neck. The dinginess of the shoelace was the worst part. Couldn’t she have at least chosen a pretty cord? A ribbon? Or some bright gimpy thing like kids make at camp? Of course not. She had a sadistic streak, his bumble Bea—he was coming to admire it a little. It made sense to admire it. Otherwise it would kill him.

  “Don’t you think people should have the right to do what they want with their bodies? If I got a brain tumor, if I had six months to live, who’s to say I wouldn’t want to end it?”

  “Oh honey. I don’t know.”

  “I’d probably want to bungee-jump and eat heaps of chocolate. Where are people supposed to want to go? Mozambique? Disney? I’d take Disney. But if I wanted to die instead, it should be allowed. I own myself.”

  His mind spun. Then he understood. He said, “Yes, Bea, you do.” That was the heart of everything.

  “I’m glad you like debate club,” he added. “I can’t wait to come to one of your meets.”

  “Contests.”

  “Contests, right.”

  She waved a hand in the air as if at a terrible odor. “Please do not come, Daddy. I’d die of embarrassment. Who wants to be talking about prostitution in front of their father?”

  “But I thought—”

  “I’d get too nervous if you were there. Please don’t come—oh and don’t look all hurt. I told Mom the same thing. But do you think we could get me a new shirt? We’re supposed to wear white shirts with collars. They provide red ties. Mom said she’s already ‘exhausted my wardrobe budget’ and I should ask you.”

  “Of course. We can go to Gill’s.”

  “Not Gill’s. The Emporium.”

  “Listen, Bea. I was thinking if we got this place set up. Made it nicer. Made it—cooler. Maybe you could have a party here.”

  She started to laugh, then squeezed her chin and mouth as if to keep her face in order, as if to control herself, though the obvious purpose of this gesture was to underscore his retardedness. His heart sunk, but he soldiered on. He’d stick to the concrete.

  “Look, I thought we’d get the movie channels. Find you a new bed. Some stuff for your room. A boom box, music, posters. I want you to feel at home here. I know you’ve been through a lot, honey, and so I thought—maybe we could work together, make it nicer, and then you could have a party…invite your friends. Like a housewarming. I’d stay out of the way.”

  “You’d stay with Uncle Kenny?”

  He hadn’t meant he’d stay out of the apartment. He was pretty sure chaperones were still standard. “We can talk about that part later.”

  She looked at him skeptically.

  He said, “What do you think?”

  She said nothing.

  “Oh, Bea. My sweet pea. I know the divorce has been awful. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to turn over a new leaf. Go easier on you. Work together! Of course you can drink Coke. In moderation. No more carrot juice. No prunes. Life’s too short, right? We’ll start with the apartment. Let’s do that. We can go shopping.” Suddenly he felt desperate. He said, “I got three bags of these things—” And he pointed to the bowl of Jumpin’ Sumpin’s, gestured with a hand like a game-show hostess, flourished his palm, and then, seeing what his hand was doing, let it fall like deadweight to the table.

  She said, “Is that how you think you win over a fat girl?”

  “Oh! No! Bea, I—”

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “Relax.”

  He saw the color come into her cheeks, a faint smile, saw her eyes widen, and he sensed he’d unleashed some new optimism. She scanned the room. She looked at the Jumpin’ Sumpin’s before her, licked the tip of her finger. She looked at the glass of Coke, at the clean tabletop, at her father’s mittens and scarf on the radiator, at the silent TV, and then she lifted her chest, raised her head, and her face, at once, changed—seized, tightened, brow furrowed—so that for a moment it appeared she was going to laugh. Instead, to his horror, she wept.

  He had not seen her cry since she was maybe—six? seven? The girl didn’t cry. Not when she broke her ankle. Not when he and Shirley announced their separation. Not when she was suspended for a week for cheating on a math exam. Not when her grandmother, the first Beatrice, suffered a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day, right as those gorgeous pies were being set out down on their ancestral platters, or when her friend Donna moved to France, or when Ali MacGraw died in a trashy movie Shirley couldn’t get enough of. Always Bea remained stoic, committed to the order of herself. Always her face belonged to a factory worker, to another era, a time before leisure, before self-help, before the invention of adolescence. Oh, she moaned like a teenager, that was true enough—she was petulant and grumpy and erratic like a teenager. But she never, ever, ever cried like one.

  Now she wept. Her face broke into a thousand pieces, repaired itself, and broke again. This cycle continued as if it would never stop. Her tears dripped onto her sweater, landed on the wool, quivered there, like jewels, on her breasts. She made no effort to cover her face, or to wipe her tears, or to turn away. He felt stunned. He could only look at his sobbing child, panic stirring. He wanted Leonora to tell him what to do.

  Finally, between heaving breaths, Bea spoke.

  “I want to watch Zoot Suit Henderson.”

  He told her she could watch whatever she wanted. He stood, relieved, moved toward the TV, but she grabbed his arm. He sat down again. Her cries, at last, were remitting. She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Her breath puttered.

  She said, “I need a new shirt.”


  “I know it’s been rough,” he whispered, leaning close to her. “We tried. Your mother’s a good woman, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I know you’re scared.”

  And what did Bea do? She shocked him once more. She laughed. A quiet, sniffling, head-shaking laugh. It went on longer than he thought possible. Then she ran her hands through her hair, fluffed it, shook it out, performing this motion with a glamour he’d never seen, with chic, disinterested poise, like a model in a photo shoot. Her hands returned to her lap. The glamour was gone. Very quietly she said, “My mother has a below-average IQ.”

  What could he say?

  “Not true.”

  But it was—it was!

  “She’s petty,” Bea went on. “She’s cheap. She’s got a crush on that janitor, Demeter or whatever his name is, the freaky guy with the long hair and the kazoo.”

  “Dimitri.”

  “Except supposedly it’s from Asia so it’s not a kazoo but an ‘instrument of spiritual enlightenment.’ I know why you pulled the plug. I don’t blame you. I mean, you’re not perfect. Lord no. But you’re a good person. I believe you are. Does that surprise you? I think it might.”

  He never cried. Not when she was born. Not when he wasn’t made partner. Not when he found Dimitri’s long black hair on his own pillow, not when the smell of musk oil permeated his sheets, not when he kept smelling that musk even after the sheets had been washed, after they’d been replaced. Not when his mother died forever and always and on Thanksgiving Day. Not when he was married at sunset to the love of his life, not when happiness penetrated him so fully he was sure he’d never be free of the sensation, not when he kissed her and kissed her and would never never never stop. Not when he stopped.