Kiss Mommy Goodbye

by Joy Fielding

  “We missed them,” Mr. Marfleet said as soon as they sat down. Donna couldn’t believe her ears.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, they were here. But we lost them.”

  “What do you mean, you lost them?” Donna could hear the shrillness creeping into her voice. No, please, no. She wasn’t hearing this.

  “I had a man up here,” the detective explained, “asking questions. I guess Mr. Cressy, or Mr. Whitman, as he was calling himself, found out about it somehow and skipped. At any rate, he’s gone. I had someone watching the house, but Cressy must have skipped out in the middle of the night.”

  Donna was shaking her head from side to side. She wouldn’t accept what her ears were telling her. To have come this far, come so close, to have missed him by one night, the night that she spent sleeping in some motel room in Morro Bay because she had been bitten by a tick! No. It wasn’t fair.

  “Can you trace his car?” Mel asked, assuming Victor had one.

  “We already did. He dumped it at the L.A. airport sometime early this morning. He could be anywhere by now, but we’ll keep looking, I promise you. We found him once—we’ll find him again.”

  His voice drifted off. Donna found herself looking at the detective closely for the first time since she had sat down. He was tall, though his height seemed all in his upper torso, and almost rectangular in shape, possessing a square jaw, square shoulders, and a prominent Adam’s apple that protruded from the top of his open neck shirt. His complexion was sallow, as if he rarely got much fresh air, and when he did, that it rarely agreed with him. He had looked much more comfortable amidst the stacks of files that filled his otherwise sparsely furnished office in downtown Los Angeles, where he had at least blended in with his setting.

  “He changed the names of the kids,” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “The little girl—he called her Carol, not Shannon.”

  “Sharon,” Donna said, correcting the detective.

  “Yeah, Sharon. And the little boy, he called him—”

  He glanced down at his notebeok. “Called him Tommy.”

  “You’re sure it was them?” Mel asked.

  The detective shrugged. “Fit the descriptions, dead on. Look, why would they skip if they’re not the ones we’re looking for?”

  Donna nodded. “Where were they living?” she asked, her voice dull and distant. What did it matter where they had lived? All that mattered was that they didn’t live there now. They had gone. Crept away in the night. Vanished. Again. For how long this time? Another eleven months? Eleven years?

  “Not far from here.” Marfleet laughed the laugh of someone trying to fill some empty space. “Actually, nothing’s very far from here. The house was on Monte Verde,” he said, checking his notes again. “147 Monte Verde.”

  Donna got up from the table. “I want to see it,” she said.

  “It’s empty,” Marfleet said. “And locked.” He made no move to stand up.

  Mel got to his feet. “I’ll drive Donna over. We’ll take a look around.”

  “Oh sure,” the detective agreed, as his pizza—everything on it—was laid before him. “You don’t mind if I eat this first?”

  “Take your time,” Donna said, hating this man for his callousness, but, most of all, for the hope he had held out to her, only to pull away again with such fierce abruptness.

  No, she thought, walking out of the restaurant, Mel behind her, it wasn’t fault she had let herself get so worked up. She had done that little deed all by herself. Just as she had screwed up the timetable with a little help from a big German shepherd named Muffin. She threw the car keys over at Mel. She couldn’t go through much more of this. They were gone. She had let them get away. For whatever perversity of motives, she would visit the home her children—Carol and Tommy, he had renamed them, so strange, so foreign to her—had lived in for the past six months. Perhaps, like a psychic picks up vibrations when fingering appropriate articles of clothing, she would tune in to some vague feeling—

  She got into the car, thinking enough was enough. From now on, she would leave the detective work to the professionals—don’t call me until you have my family behind bars—and as soon as she had satisfied herself that Victor and her children were truly gone, so would she go. Back to Florida. Back to Annie. Back to pushing great boulders up an ever-increasing number of hills.

  They decided to stay the night and then start back for Los Angeles the following morning after they got a good rest. Donna had said nothing for the rest of the afternoon, nodding silently in agreement to all of Mel’s suggestions. If it had been any other way, she kept thinking, if it hadn’t been them at all, even that would have been better, but to have come so close only to miss them by one day. She just couldn’t accept it. They could be anywhere by now, she thought. We’re back to square one. Farther back because now Victor was on the alert.

  She and Mel had spent an hour at the house on Monte Verde. It was obviously empty—they had peered in all the windows, waited in vain for any neighbors to come home. Everything spoke of a hasty retreat. There was no ocean in the backyard, but it was close enough. What was it Marfleet had said? “Nothing’s very far from here.” Victor had called her from Carmel, of that she was absolutely certain. And now he was gone. He had stolen her children—again.

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking out the car window for the first time in what felt like hours.

  “We’re up in the Carmel Valley. I thought it might be pretty to see. We can get a nice little motel—the guidebook says there’s one along Carmel Valley Road, The Hacienda, that supplies little hibachis. I thought we could pick up some steaks, get ourselves a fine bottle of wine at this place called Yavor’s Deli and Wines, head back to the motel, eat and maybe yell and scream a bit.”

  She smiled wearily. “Sounds good. What time is it?”

  “Almost four,” he said, checking his watch. “Here we are.” He turned the car into the parking area of the Hacienda Motel. “You want to stay in the car?” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll see if they have a room.” She watched him walk inside the office and return minutes later, dangling a long room key. She realized that in those minutes her mind had remained a total blank. “Room 112,” he indicated, “around the corner there, small private patio, our very own hibachi.”

  “Good.” It was the weakest good she had ever heard.

  “You feel like lying down while I go get the wine and the steaks?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll go with you.”

  “Okay. This wine place is right up the street a few miles. And there’s a shopping center there where we can pick up the steaks.” She put the room key inside her purse.

  “Terrific.” Terrific sounded only marginally better than good.

  “I love you,” Mel said quietly. “I’m very proud of you.”

  “Why? Because I’m not acting like a blithering idiot?”

  “Who said you aren’t?”

  She smiled, feeling the tears she had been holding back start to cascade down her cheeks. “Damn,” she said, burying her head against Mel’s chest. “Goddamn.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said soothingly. “Don’t keep it bottled in. Let it all out, honey.”

  Mel found a parking spot in the already crowded parking area of the shopping plaza. He maneuvered the car into place, pulled the keys from the ignition, handed them to Donna and then got out of the car. “Coming?”

  “Why don’t I go get the steaks while you get the wine?” she asked, joining him on his side of the car.

  “Sure. You have money?”

  Donna checked her wallet. “Plenty,” she said.

  “Okay. I’ll meet you back here.” They kissed gently. “You all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m okay.”

  They walked in opposite directions. When Donna turned to see him, he was already gone, disappeared into the front doors of Yavor’s Deli and Wine. The thought crossed her mind that when she
got out of the grocery store, he would not be there. Vanished—like everyone else she let become a part of her life. Dead—or simply gone. No, she reassured herself, tapping her purse, unless he intended to walk back to Florida. She was the keeper of the keys, after all. He would be there. He would always be there.

  The store was beautifully appointed, large indoor murals lining the walls, fruit trees seeming to spill their colorful produce directly from the pictures onto the cleverly arranged trays that were placed in front of them. And so it was throughout the store, a careful, loving blend of style and substance. The best of all worlds. It took a large dose of talent, she found herself thinking as she walked aimlessly up and down the aisles, to turn what was essentially an everyday grocery store into something as pleasant as this place was, to make it as unique as this place was, to make people want to come here from all over Carmel, as this place obviously did. The store was crowded with shoppers—women, a surprisingly large number of men, quite a few children.

  She first saw the little girl as she was walking up one aisle and the child, sitting in the small front seat of a shopping cart, was wheeled by at the far end of that aisle. The child had been staring at Donna. Even at a distance of approximately fifteen feet, there was something extraordinary about that child’s eyes.

  Donna felt her heart beginning to race. Her legs seemed frozen to the floor. Stop it, she told herself. This has happened before. So many times, so many children who looked like either Adam or Sharon. So many mistakes. So much wishful thinking, as this was. Victor was no longer in Carmel; he had taken her children and fled in the night.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Pardon?” Donna asked, turning around to face a young, pleasant-looking woman, a baby wrapped in a cotton Snugli around her chest.

  “Can I get by?” the woman asked.

  “Oh, of course, I’m sorry.” Her voice trailed off. “I hadn’t realized I was blocking the aisle.”

  But perhaps it hadn’t been Victor, she thought suddenly. Perhaps it was someone else who had fled. Someone in the same predicament as Victor; someone in his own kind of trouble. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Marfleet could be wrong! What mattered was the child she had just seen wheeled by directly before her eyes.

  Her feet suddenly released her from the floor, pushing her forward so that she all but crashed into the young woman she had only seconds before let pass. “Sorry,” she muttered, reaching the top of the aisle and walking slowly, so as not to attract unwanted attention, past the next aisle. The child in the shopping cart was not there. Had she been an illusion? Donna dismissed the thought and walked toward the next row of canned goods.

  They were there. The child, clutching a small packet of Jell-O instant pudding to her chest as if it were a prized teddy bear, and the woman. Donna looked hard at the woman while pretending to be looking equally hard at the shelves. Donna had never seen her before. She was dark-haired and tanned, though not overly so, and Donna estimated her age at around fifty-five. Too old, obviously, to be the child’s mother. A grandmother, perhaps. Or a housekeeper.

  Donna focused her attention on the little girl. It had been eleven months since she had seen her, but eleven months can only alter, not completely change, a person’s face. While the little girl who sat singing in the shopping cart had thinned out in places and matured (an odd word for a child not yet three years old) in others, she still had the same basic little features—the small upturned nose, the mouth that formed a natural pout just like her father’s, the curly hair, now longer though no less curly, and the enormous witch’s eyes that looked right through you. Donna caught her breath as the child looked over in her direction. There was simply no mistaking that face. In the year since she had last seen the little girl, the child had come to resemble even more than before the woman she had been named after. My mother, Donna thought. My mother—my daughter.

  “Oh, darn,” she heard the woman say to the child. “I forgot the potatoes.”

  “Tatoes?” the child asked.

  “I’ll just be a second,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  Donna kept her head lowered and directed at some canned fruit, as if carefully assessing each tin’s individual merits, as the woman walked past her up the aisle. The second she was gone, Donna rushed toward the child. What do I do? she wondered furiously. What do I do? Do I just pick her up and run? What if she fights me? What do I do? What about my son? Where is my son?

  “Hello,” she said quietly.

  The child looked at her warily, her eyes penetrating Donna’s skull. Can you see me? Donna asked silently. Can you see who I am? Do you remember me?

  The little girl smiled. “Hi.”

  I found you, Donna thought incredulously. I found my little girl!

  “Sharon?” she asked tenuously.

  The child’s face hardened into a frown. “I’m not Sharon,” she pouted. Donna’s heart sank. “I’m Big Bird.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Big Bird.”

  Donna felt her body starting to shake. “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “Please, can I be Big Bird?” the child pleaded, her voice suddenly soft.

  “Of course you can. Big Bird is a lovely name.” She touched the child’s hair. “You have beautiful curly hair, Big Bird.”

  “No,” the child whined, the threat of tears suddenly close. “Not hair. Feathers!”

  “Uh, feathers, of course, they’re feathers.” Donna’s mind was running around in circles inside her head. She didn’t want to scare the child; she didn’t want to cause a scene; people here, the cashiers, perhaps they knew this woman who was looking after her child, perhaps she came here often with Sharon. If she tried to grab the girl and Sharon resisted, then others might restrain her, hold this mad raving lady while the other woman fled with her child. She couldn’t allow that. Better to confront the woman once she had left the store, with Mel hopefully at her side, force her to tell them where Adam was. Get both her children back.

  Donna heard footsteps approaching and instantly withdrew, returning once again to the stack of canned pineapples she was pretending to examine. Out of the comer of her eye, Donna watched the woman put a five-pound bag of potatoes in with the rest of the groceries.

  “Your father would be very upset if we forgot the potatoes again,” the woman said, checking inside her basket. “I think that’s everything.” She took a small piece of paper out of her purse and ran through the items she had listed on it. A list, Donna thought with some wonder, a list. “Okay, that’s it. We’ll go pick up your brother and go home.”

  “I want an ice cream.”

  “After supper.”

  “A pink ice cream.”

  “After supper.”

  Donna followed a few paces behind the woman to the front of the store. The woman had to wait in line. Donna, having made no purchases, walked ahead to the front of the store and stood waiting by the front window. From where she was, she could see the wine store—was Mel still inside? Had he returned to the car? Please Mel, be there. She looked back at the woman—she was third in line but another cashier looked like she was about to open her line, and so Donna was afraid to run out and try to find Mel. She couldn’t afford to lose her child again. My God, she thought, I’ve found her. I’ve actually found my little girl! It’s over. The nightmare is over.

  Not quite, she thought. Nightmares weren’t over until you woke up. She wouldn’t be fully awake until she had both her children under her protective wings and was flying out of California.

  The other cashier opened her line, and the woman moved directly to it, quickly unloading her items onto the moving countertop. Donna looked back and forth between the woman and the window. Where was Mel? What was taking him so long?

  She looked through the maze of cars, and after several seconds was able to spot the white Buick they had rented in L.A. Mel was not there. She looked back toward the wine store. Nothing. Back to the woman. The cashier was still ringing up items.
Hurry up, Mel. You have to help me!

  And if not, she thought with sudden terror, if Mel didn’t return from the wine store in time. The store was supposed to carry all sorts of rare and exotic wines—it was entirely possible he bad gotten caught up in the wonder of it all. He was unaware of any urgency—Victor and the kids had fled to the Los Angeles airport early this morning!

  Except that whoever had fled had not been Victor. Carol and Tommy, whoever they were, were definitely not her children. Her children were here in Carmel. One of them was here in this grocery store. Right in front of her. And she would not let her get out of her sight. No matter what. No matter if Mel was there to help her or not. If need be, she would confront this woman alone, scream for the police. She would not let this stranger get away from her if she had to single-handedly take on the entire combined force of all who shopped and worked at this shopping center.

  The checker loaded all the groceries into bags until four were filled.

  “Could I have someone help me carry these to my car?” the woman asked.

  Donna felt renewed fear breaking into her fresh resolve. She hadn’t been prepared for anyone else being part of the initial confrontation. Again, she looked toward the window. Mel was nowhere in sight.

  The woman walked past her holding tightly onto the little girl’s hand. As they were going out the door, the child turned abruptly to Donna and stared up at her, wordlessly.

  “Come on, don’t dawdle,” the woman said, pulling on the child’s arm. The grocery clerk followed close behind her with the cart full of newly bagged groceries. Donna took a final look around and followed the teenager, a mini-parade gone hopelessly out of step but still persisting gamely.

  The woman walked slowly, the child an obvious encumbrance to what Donna guessed was her usual brisk style of walking. Still, this woman looked at her child with great tenderness. She was not simply a caretaker; she was obviously a woman who cared. Donna was, at least, grateful for that.

  The woman’s car was parked in the next row and at least six cars up from where Mel had parked the white Buick. Donna watched the grocery clerk from a safe distance as he loaded the four bags of groceries into the trunk of the beige-and-green Volare, license number NKF 673. She made a mental note of the number—NKF, NKF—Nikita Khrushchev Fucks, she said to herself, supplying her memory with the necessary key.