Kiss Mommy Goodbye

by Joy Fielding

  “Mel?” Donna asked. “Mel Sanders?” She turned to Mel. “Do you think he’d do that? Use your name? S-Sanders instead of Segal? A kind of final cruel joke?”

  “He’d certainly enjoy that sort of thing,” Mel agreed. “Even if he was the only one to appreciate the irony of it all.”

  “More so in that case.” Donna walked back toward the lectern. “May twentieth?”

  “Twenty-first.”

  Donna quickly located the twenty-first of May in the guest register. “Here it is. Mel Sanders.”

  “Does it look like his writing?”

  “It’s hard to tell. It’s kind of scribbled. It could be.”

  Mel walked to her side and checked the signature. He read the information aloud. “Mel Sanders, 1220 Cove Lane, Morro Bay. ‘Great setting, great hospitality.’”

  “We just came from Morro Bay,” Donna muttered. “It would only take an hour or so to go back and check it out.”

  “I thought we’d combed every square inch of that place.”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “It’s a chance. I think we have to take it.”

  “A pretty weak chance,” Mel cautioned. “A man with two kids, one possibly not even a boy, who drops in a month after the disappearance—”

  Donna turned back to David Garratt. “Did he pay by check or cash?”

  David Garratt checked his records. “Cash.”

  “He looked like that picture,” Kathy Garratt said, her memory seeming to grow stronger, “and I remember that little girl of his was crying, because of the dog, and she started yelling she wanted her Mommy. Remember that, David?”

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t remember any of that.”

  “Sure,” the woman persisted, “and he tried to calm her down, and he held her and said that Mommy couldn’t help her anymore but that he was there and that everything would be all right. You don’t remember that?”

  “No,” he repeated, then turned to Donna and Mel. “But my memory’s nothing like Kathy’s. She remembers everything anybody ever said or did. You never want to get into an argument with her, that’s for certain.”

  Donna and Mel settled with the Garratts for the sandwiches and the phone call, signed the guest register, complete with the appropriate superlatives, and walked back toward the car. Donna threw Mel the keys. It was becoming warmer. Before opening the door, Donna took a last look around and then removed her sweater.

  The house was neither big nor small, white but in need of a fresh paint job. It was situated on a small square piece of land, as were all the houses on Cove Lane, and it was almost as if each home-owner had taken a pledge to do nothing out of the ordinary that would disturb the outside symmetry of the dwellings. Their charm, their appeal, their very uniqueness, lay in their uniformity. The same little flower boxes lining the front windows, all filled with the same red and white flowers, the same hedges, even identical mailboxes. Donna wondered aimlessly if all the houses on the street needed a similar touch-up with the white paint brush.

  “What do you think?” Mel asked.

  “The house looks like something he might buy—”

  “But?”

  “But?” she repeated.

  “There was a definite but at the end of that sentence.”

  She laughed. “I guess there was.” She paused, shifting in her seat. They sat parked on the south side of the road, just a few houses down and across from 1220 Cove Lane. “But,” she emphasized, “I just can’t picture Victor living here. It’s so—quiet.”

  “Palm Beach isn’t exactly one of your noisier cities either,” he reminded her.

  “I know, but—I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  Mel checked his watch. “It’s two o’clock. The kids would get home from school in another hour, maybe two—if they came right home, that is. We can wait, or we can take the photographs around to the neighbors—”

  “No. He may have made friends here. Someone might alert him. Let’s just wait. We only lose a few hours if we’re wrong.”

  “Feel like stretching your legs?”

  Donna leaned her head back against the red plush of the car’s interior. “No. I’m kind of tired. Actually, I don’t feel so hot. Tension, I guess.”

  Mel put his arm around her. “You’ll be okay. Just don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  Donna closed her eyes. For several minutes there was silence.

  “You asleep?” Mel asked quietly.

  “No,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I was just thinking about what I might like to do with my life when we get back home. As far as a career goes, I mean.”

  “And what’s that?” She felt him kiss her forehead.

  “Well, I really enjoyed redoing our bedroom,” she began dreamily, “and that gallery we visited, I had all sorts of great ideas for it the minute I saw it.” She opened her eyes and looked up at Mel. “I think I have a good eye for that kind of thing, but I’ve just never exercised it. I’ve always lived in places that, for one reason or another, were already furnished. I guess I always looked on it as one less decision I had to make.” She sat up straight. “And now I’m realizing that I like to make decisions.” Mel smiled. “So I’ve decided, right now, this very minute I have decided, that no matter what happens with my children, whether we can bring them home or not, that I am going to take some courses when we get back to Florida and I’m going to go into interior design. What do you think of that?”

  “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Donna laughed, then grimaced. “What’s the matter?” Mel asked quickly.

  “I don’t know. When I laughed just then, I had a pain in my side.” She squirmed, laughing uneasily. “Now, it won’t seem to go away.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” Donna pointed to her left side just above her waistline. “You don’t suppose I’m having a heart attack, do you?”

  “That’s what I like about you, Donna,” Mel said, maneuvering himself around so that he could examine the problem better. “You don’t think small. What kind of pain is it?”

  “Kind of burning. Like a sting or something.”

  “Let me see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lift up your sweater.”

  Donna did as she was told. “Well? See anything?”

  “Just a mole,” he said, pulling her sweater down again and sitting back.

  “What do you mean, just a mole?”

  “A mole, what else can I say?”

  “I don’t have a mole there.”

  “Yes, you do. I just saw it.”

  “Have you ever seen it before?”

  Donna’s eyes watched Mel’s. “No,” he answered, pulling her sweater up again and touching the round black spot.

  “Ow!” she said as his fingers pinched at her side. “What is it?”

  “It looks like a tick!” he said wondrously.

  “A tick?! Where would I get a tick from?”

  “I haven’t got a clue. But that’s what it looks like.”

  “Well, how do I get it out?”

  “With a sterilized pin and either boiling water or a match, neither of which this car seems to come equipped with.”

  “Then it’ll have to wait.”

  “We shouldn’t wait very long. Ticks can be dangerous. You can get pretty sick from one of these little fellows. It’ll bury itself deeper and deeper inside you the longer you wait.”

  “Are you trying to make me throw up?”

  “I’m trying to make you understand that the earlier we get this thing out of you, the better.”

  “How would I get a tick?” she asked with growing frustration. “The dog! That miserable dog! Muffin!” she said, spitting out the words.

  Mel moved back into his position behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll drive us to a pharmacy and get some ointment, then we can get this out�
�”

  “No!”

  “Donna—”

  “Not now.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I know, these things can be very dangerous. I do understand, Mel. But an hour or two—I’m not going to die, am I, if we wait an hour or two?”

  “You won’t die.”

  “Please, Mel.”

  “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “But you tell me if you start to feel lousy.”

  “Okay.” She kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  “You might not,” he said, adding, “we wait two hours, tops.”

  “Two and a half,” she smiled stubbornly.

  “Two,” he said forcefully. “End of discussion.”

  They waited two hours and twenty minutes before the brown Ford station wagon pulled up into the side driveway of 1220 Cove Lane.

  “Somebody’s home,” Mel said, nudging Donna awake. In the past hour, she had grown increasingly lethargic and uncomfortable, yet she refused to leave.

  “Is it Victor?”

  “I can’t tell.” He opened his car door. “Do you want to wait here?”

  “Are you kidding?” She opened the door on her side of the car as well.

  “Will you be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Donna felt her foot touch the sidewalk, realized instantly how weak she was feeling, how very nervous she was, and only prayed she wouldn’t pass out before they reached the house. They arrived at the driveway of 1220 Cove Lane just as the occupants of the car were coming out of the garage and walking up to the front of the house.

  A man. Tall, dark and not unlike Victor. But not Victor.

  Just a man.

  His two children—just children.

  Donna collapsed onto the freshly mowed green grass of the front lawn.

  She had never seen colors quite like these before, Donna realized, regarding them intensely, wondering only briefly where she was, how she had gotten here. Greens, lush greens, and rain-darkened browns and blacks. Like a painting by Georges Rousseau. It was a painting by Georges Rousseau, she decided, except that that was blatantly impossible. What, after all, was she doing walking around in a painting by Georges Rousseau?

  She stepped down into the moss and felt her foot instantly beginning to sink, the sudden slime worming up her shin, feeling cold and strangely wet against her leg, sticking to her like dozens of thirsty bloodsuckers. She pulled her foot up, horrified to find a bright royal blue snake coiled around her ankle. She tried to shake it loose. It clung to her as if its royal blue skin were her own.

  The jungle—it was a jungle, she could see that now—began to draw closer around her, the branches from the trees all straining to touch her, the branches suddenly possessed of suction cups at their outermost tips, the suction cups opening and closing obscenely.

  When she looked at her feet again, the blue snake was gone. The surface of the ground was clear and transparent. Beneath her, she could see fish swimming, eels wriggling just under her toes, corals swaying out to her provocatively, inviting her to swim. Suddenly, she was up to her neck, swimming through the jungle, watching the lower half of her body as if it belonged to someone else, seeing her bare legs treading in the stillness, seeing the vibrant flesh-colored animal—what kind of animal was it? She wondered briefly, watching as its snaillike body and humanlike hands approached her, found her, wrapped itself around her and pulled her. Down. Down.

  Beneath the surface. Her head disappearing below the renewed slime, her nostrils filling with quicksand. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

  Voices. She was aware of distant voices. Coming to rescue her. You’re all right, it’s just a dream.

  She opened her eyes.

  A large blue snake, coiled and ready for her, sprang at her from the beam just above her head, wrapping itself around her neck, slithering its constant pressure tighter across her throat.

  “No!” she sat up, screaming, pulling at the snake.

  “Donna! Donna!”

  Once again, Donna opened her eyes. Mel’s face was in front of hers, his arms moving to control hers which were shooting furiously out into the air around her. “Oh God,” she sobbed. “What’s happening?”

  She let Mel lean her back against the pillows, feeling her body soaking with sweat. She was in a bed in a strange but comfortable room; a television was on across from her.

  “You’re okay now,” he said. “You were kind of sick for a few hours though.”

  “A few hours? What time is it?” She took several deep breaths.

  “A little after midnight.” Donna looked at the television. She recognized Johnny Carson. A young and pretty blond woman was stuffing a large boa constrictor into a box. Mel watched her as she watched the TV. “It’s been an interesting show,” he laughed. “Lady from the Zoo, some starlet who said she was baptized in Pat Boone’s swimming pool, claimed he held her head down too long under water—instead of being born again, she thought she was going to die.” He felt her head. “You had your eyes open every so often, but you kept drifting in and out. Fever’s broken.”

  She suddenly felt her side.

  “Careful. There’s a bandage there.”

  “The tick!”

  “Long gone.”

  She ran a hand through her damp hair. “How much of my life have I missed?”

  “Before or after you scared poor Mr. Sanders half to death by fainting into his begonias?”

  “Oh, God. Tell me.”

  “He was very nice about it, actually. He called an ambulance for me and we got you to the hospital.”

  “Hospital? Is this a hospital?”

  “No. This is a motel. The hospital only kept you long enough to remove the tick and give you suitable medication.”

  “So, Mr. Sanders was—”

  “Mr. Sanders was Mr. Sanders. Period. Wife died eighteen months ago, left him with two little girls to look after.”

  “Both girls?”

  “All two of them, as Janine Gauntley Cressy McCloud would say.”

  “So much for Kathy Garratt’s wonderful memory—”

  “And her dog!”

  “Who was it that told us to go to that stupid gallery anyway? That lady from San Simeon—she was probably working for Victor!”

  Mel laughed. “You feel better, I can tell.” He flipped off the television. “You want some tea or anything?”

  She shook her head. “I’m just tired. Will I be all right to travel in the morning?”

  “I think so. Something tells me I won’t be able to stop you anyway.” He paused dramatically. “I called Marfleet. He said they may have something definite in Carmel. A man with two children fitting the general descriptions of Victor and the kids bought a house there six months ago. He was going to drive up there tonight and check it out, meet us there tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Mel—” Donna said, feeling her whole body starting to tingle.

  “It might not be them, Donna—”

  “I know. I know,” she repeated, sinking down under the covers, feeling Mel crawl in beside her. “I know.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The minute U.S. Highway 1 wound its way into Carmel, Donna felt all her senses begin to come alive. Her nostrils flared with the omnipresent scent of the ocean, her eyes widened with the sight of the houses, some more like gingerbread cottages, doll houses rather than homes; her ears opened to the sounds of the surf and the contradictory nature of the bustling tranquility around her. Every tissue in her body seemed to tighten, to go on red alert. He was here. She could feel it. This was the place he had brought her children.

  “Take it easy, Donna,” Mel warned.

  “I know they’re here, Mel. My whole body tells me they’re here.”

  “Your whole body, beautiful though it may be, has been wrong before. Remember, it told you to marry Victor in the first place.”

  “They’re here, Mel,” she repeated, as they turned the car east onto Ocean Avenue, a street which actually r
an perpendicular to the ocean. Donna watched the street names pass them by—Carpenter, Guadalupe, Santa Rita, Sante Fe, Torres, Junipero—increasingly more and more certain of her conclusions. They passed the large Spanish-style structure the sign identified as Carmel Plaza, 67 shops, and continued down to Dolores Street, where they turned left.

  “Where exactly are we meeting Marfleet?”

  “A restaurant called A Little Pizza Heaven.”

  “Pizza at this hour?”

  “It’s lunch time,” Mel reminded her, checking his watch.

  “Why’d you let me sleep so late?”

  “I wanted you in fighting condition,” he winked.

  She smiled. “I know they’re here, Mel. Can’t you feel it?”

  “What you’re feeling—and yes, I feel it too—is a certain familiarity. This place isn’t all that different, in a sense, from Palm Beach. Pine trees instead of palm. But it has that same—rhythm.”

  Donna nodded. It was the perfect word. “Only better,” she added. “And Victor was always looking for better.” She suddenly spotted A Little Pizza Heaven to her right. “There it is, Mel.”

  Mel pulled the car into the parking area and he and Donna got out, Mel throwing Donna the car keys to keep in her purse. Keeper of the keys, he had said on the plane, and obviously meant.

  “Don’t forget that Victor also lived in Connecticut for most of his life.”

  “I know,” Donna said, putting her arm through Mel’s, “but it’s hard to go back to ice and snow when you’ve gotten spoiled by the sun and the ocean.”

  They were about to walk in the front door of the restaurant when Mel spun around and stopped her. She looked at him questioningly. “Look, Donna,” Mel began, “if Marfleet has struck out, if we don’t find the kids, here, remember that I love you, and there’s still Monterey.”

  She laughed. “Anything else you want to say?”

  “Yes,” he said solemnly. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?”

  “How many?” she asked, her smile a crooked grin.

  “Only one,” he answered, “but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

  She was still chuckling when the waiter led them through the restaurant and out onto the wind-sheltered patio where Mr. Marfleet sat waiting.