Without a Word

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  Madison was already dressed. I took a quick shower and got dressed while she cleaned up after breakfast. I called Leon to let him know we’d survived the night and gave him a time when Madison would be home, and then decided to change the day’s itinerary. I thought at first that Madison would take Emil/Emily along. She seemed to take the turtle everywhere. But the way things were going, I thought Dashiell should go as well. If Madison and I were getting along, it was because of him. He was the bridge between us. More than that, he was a reminder to me that you could understand someone else without benefit of words, though, more than ever, words were what I was still hoping for from Madison, words that would help me find her mother, words that would tell me she hadn’t killed Dr. Bechman.

  The Guggenheim wouldn’t let Dashiell in, but Bloomingdale’s would. I told Madison about the change, and she went right for Dashiell’s leash, leaving the turtle on the rock in the bowl on the marble table.

  Not taking Emil/Emily with us meant we’d have to come back to the cottage before Madison went home. I thought that might be why the turtle was not going to take what might have been his/her first cab ride, so that we could come back here. I didn’t know how far this would go, but I was pleased. I was clearly doing better than I had my first time alone with Madison.

  Getting a cab with Dashiell along wouldn’t be too difficult in the Village, where there were more cabs than customers, but coming home would be another story. In midtown, the competition for taxis was fierce, something I figured we’d deal with when the time came. Madison’s plan was to hold the leash, that was pretty clear even without words. It was okay with me as long as Dashiell stayed right at her side when we were in the store. Since Madison wasn’t talking to him either, I showed her the hand signal that would get him to heel, and we managed to get to the kids’ department without tripping any of the other shoppers.

  I thought that Dashiell’s presence probably helped Madison over her initial embarrassment, and by the time we were finished, she still had the leash and I had a huge shopping bag with bras, a short cotton nightgown, new jeans and a pair of pale green high-top sneakers that were so cool I would have liked a pair for myself.

  We stopped on the main floor for some barrettes and found one in the shape of a turtle. I bought the barrette, but when we found a green plastic turtle pin with rhinestone eyes, Madison paid for it with the ten-dollar bill that had been in the pocket of Sally’s old jean jacket.

  From Bloomingdale’s, we walked all the way to Central Park, Madison and Dashiell ahead, me carrying the shopping bag and following along behind. We bought hot dogs and sodas from a street vendor and sat on a bench eating them in companionable silence. I didn’t at all mind not having a conversation while we ate. The leaves were turning red and gold and orange. Dashiell was sitting in front of Madison, hoping, I figured, that she’d break off a piece of her hot dog and give it to him. And it was nice just to sit there. But I had a job to do and I was still hoping that somehow Madison would be able to help.

  More than that, there were things she needed to do to help herself. Even if she outgrew the tics, she’d never be part of the world again without talking. I turned to watch her chewing her hot dog, her open soda on the bench between us, in that gulf she usually left between herself and anyone else, except for last night. I picked the soda up and put it on my other side, sliding closer to her.

  “I have a proposition for you,” I said. Even without feedback one way or another, I wasn’t worried about the vocabulary I used since I’d seen that Madison was reading adult books. “If you’ve got anything to say,” I said, talking in a whisper even though no one else was close by, waiting while she turned to look at me, to pay attention to the odd thing I had started to say to her, “you know, to help me with the case or just something you want to say, you can do that. I won’t expect it means you’ll be talking all the time, or even ever again. And I won’t tell a soul. That’s a promise.”

  Madison screwed up her face, but her left eye wasn’t twitching and her cheeks were remarkably smooth and without movement.

  “You can decide case by case, mood by mood, this is worth saying, this isn’t, this is worth answering, this isn’t. You follow? So you can talk to me today, for example, but not tomorrow, not ever again if that’s what you want. Talking today would not oblige you to talk again tomorrow. It would be entirely up to you and totally between us.”

  I broke what was left of my hot dog in half, gave one piece to Dashiell and put the rest in my mouth.

  “Don’t say anything now,” I said, my mouth still full of food, “just think about it.”

  She was looking at me as if I were out of my mind.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t want you to make a rash decision or anything. These things take consideration and time.”

  I was looking toward Fifth Avenue now, a playground between us and the street. We’d walked farther away from home, and it was getting late. I took a last swig of my soda and stood up.

  “Ready?” I asked, expecting nothing. That was what I’d promised her, wasn’t it, that I’d expect nothing?

  I picked up the shopping bag, and Madison took the leash. We dropped our garbage in the nearest can and headed for the exit. Standing at the curb with my arm up for a cab, my cell phone rang. I figured it was probably Leon, getting nervous about where we were, though we still had over an hour before we were expected. But it wasn’t Leon.

  The caller ID showed an unfamiliar area code 718 phone number, meaning the call was coming from outside Manhattan. I wondered what someone was trying to sell this time and how the hell they got my cell phone number. I must have barked “Hello” because for a moment, no one said anything. I was ready to hang up when he finally spoke.

  “Rachel?” Whispering. Not a telemarketer. A potential client? Because he sounded scared. No, worse than scared, desperate.

  “This is she.” Then waiting for him to tell me who he was, to see where this was going.

  “I need to speak to you,” he said, his voice so low I could barely hear him over the sound of the traffic.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  Madison looked in my direction.

  “Where are you?” he asked. Not answering my question, leaving it to me to figure out who was calling, who needed to talk to me so badly that he couldn’t take the time to tell me who he was. “Your e-mail didn’t say where you live.”

  A cab pulled toward the curb, saw Dashiell and pulled away.

  “Jim?”

  “Yes.”

  “New York City,” I said, Madison still watching me.

  “Can you get to Coney Island?”

  “I can.”

  “There’s a coffee shop on Mermaid Avenue and West Twenty-eighth Street, Dean’s. I get off work at six-thirty. I can be there a quarter to seven.”

  With Madison right next to me, still paying attention, I couldn’t ask the one question I wanted to.

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “How will I know you?”

  “Good,” he said. “Thanks.” And the line went dead.

  CHAPTER 18

  It took ten more minutes to get a cab, then another twenty to get down to the Village. Madison stared out the window on the left side of the cab, Dashiell leaning his chin on her shoulder. I looked out the right, thinking of the e-mail exchange I’d had with Jim, barely registering any of the passing scene.

  By the time we got to the cottage, we only had time to pick up Emil/Emily and Madison’s backpack if we were going to get her home on time. Madison ran up the stairs before I had a chance to do so myself. I stayed in the living room, waiting, thinking about the strange phone call from Jim, whatever he had to say it was so urgent he had to say it tonight and in person.

  When Madison came bounding down the stairs, Dashiell right behind her, I picked up the shopping bag and handed her the plastic purse. But instead of taking it, she picked up the leash and clipped it onto Dashiell’s collar.

  Walking her home, she and Dashiell ahead of me,
the way her head was moving, the way he kept turning his face to look at her, I’d swear she was talking to him, but I wasn’t close enough to hear.

  Leon was waiting out front. Madison handed me the leash and took the shopping bag and the turtle, barely seeming to notice her father as she passed him and headed into the lobby. I guess she did have a key.

  “How did it go?”

  “Fine, really fine.”

  “What do I owe you for…”

  I waved a hand at him. “I just bought her a few things, it’s no big deal.”

  “What about the haircut?”

  “I did it myself. She looks great, doesn’t she?”

  Leon nodded. He even smiled.

  “I hope you don’t mind about the nail polish,” I said.

  He turned toward the lobby, but Madison was inside already. When he turned back to me, he looked puzzled.

  I showed him my nails. “I did hers. She did mine,” I said, my mind elsewhere, Jim’s whispered words ringing in my ears.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “I’ll call you,” I told him.

  When I got to the corner, Leon was still standing out front. I walked home quickly, keeping Dashiell close at my side, leaving the door open to let some cool air into the house, to let Dashiell choose where he wanted to be. For a moment, the house seemed empty without Madison sprawled on the rug communing with Dashiell, without Emil/Emily swimming in his/her makeshift pond on the green marble table.

  I dropped my jacket on the arm of the couch and headed up to the office. I wanted to look at those letters again, see if there was anything I’d forgotten, something telling that I’d missed in his letter or mine, but when I leaned over the desk to turn on the computer, something caught my eye. There was a small photograph sitting on the keyboard of my laptop, beaten up from having been handled so much, one of the corners broken off, that edge rough and uneven. I picked it up, turned on the lamp, holding it in the light, a pretty young woman addressing the camera without a smile. She had the same straight blonde hair as her daughter did, some of which was still clinging to my terry robe and spread out like tiny pickup sticks on the blue tile floor of the bathroom. Her eyes, like her daughter’s eyes, were blue, her skin pale and clear, and her expression, too, was like her daughter’s. Or was it the other way around? Wasn’t it the daughter who, in her grief, had modeled herself after her missing mother, her face neutral, almost serene, no hint of her inner life, her feelings invisible? Except that hadn’t worked for Madison. Circumstances had pushed her over the top, out of control.

  Out of control. That’s what Leon had said that first day at the dog run, that Madison was sometimes out of control. I thought of Dr. Bechman’s monochromatic office, pictured him lying on the rug, his arms and legs askew, the needle next to him. Had she been out of control that day?

  And what of her mother? Perhaps Sally was better able to hide her inner chaos, at least until five years ago.

  I held the picture of Sally under the light for a long time. Then I tacked it carefully onto the bulletin board, letting the heads of the pins brace the edges of the photo so that when I returned it to its owner it would have no holes in it. Sally at twenty-two or twenty-three, I thought. Sally more the way she might look today, enough so that if I found her, I’d know who she was.

  CHAPTER 19

  I sat in a booth at the far end of Dean’s Coffee Shop, facing the door. He would be around Sally’s age if he knew her in high school, twenty-eight or twenty-nine, maybe thirty. He said he’d be coming from work, but he didn’t say what he did, so I had no idea what he’d be wearing. Would I know him? Would he know me? Not a problem so far, I thought. There were three people eating at the counter, a Hispanic couple, a tall thin black man wearing a UPS jacket, all three decades too old to have gone to high school with Sally Bruce. There were two black girls in a booth near the door. They were probably Madison’s age, drinking colas, poking each other and giggling. There was a young mother and a baby in the booth behind them, the mother looking too young to be a mother, just as Sally had been.

  The man who’d waited on me could have been seventy or older, his skin pleated and sallow, his eyes faded. I’d ordered a ginger ale, not wanting to commit to anything more elaborate, not wanting to stay if Jim didn’t show. It was five to seven and he wasn’t here yet.

  I looked out the window at the street. I was only a few blocks from my aunt Ceil’s house in Sea Gate, but that neighborhood was a world away from this one with its projects, clusters of tall brick buildings that had replaced the two- or four-story tenements that lined the blocks adjacent to the ocean when I was a kid. There were rides on one end of the island, what people thought of when they thought of Coney Island, the Cyclone, Nathan’s hot dogs, places where you could buy a hot knish, other ethnic food now as well, tacos, pizza, Thai or Chinese takeout. Walking here from the subway, I’d smelled the food, but I’d also smelled the ocean, just a block away.

  Seven o’clock. Still no Jim. I took a sip of ginger ale, checked my watch again, and then there he was. We might have been in Grand Central Station, I’d still have known him. It wasn’t the dark hair, curls covering the top of his shirt collar, some falling over his brow when he took off his baseball cap. It wasn’t his height, so tall that his shoulders were rounded, as if he were trying to make himself seem shorter. It wasn’t his complexion either, because even though he’d clearly attempted to clean up, there was so much dirt on his face I couldn’t see if he was fair or dark. It wasn’t even the pain on his face that made me know he had to be the man who’d made the call. It was something else, something that even before he got to the table, changed everything I thought I knew, tilting the world so that for a moment my stomach swirled so badly that I felt prophetic for having ordered that ginger ale.

  As he got closer, knowing me, too, I saw that what covered his face wasn’t dirt. It was grease covering his skin and his hands. He wiped one against his jeans and extended it toward me, grease in the creases on his knuckles, grease under his nails. A mechanic. When he slipped off his jacket, his name was over the pocket of his dark blue shirt, dark blue like the blue of his eyes, confusion in those eyes now, not knowing how to do this. Jim, it said over his pocket, part of the m missing.

  He tossed the jacket onto the bench opposite me and slid into the seat, his hands flat on the table, looking around for Henry, his name over his pocket as well, ordering a Coke, no ice. I noted the wedding band on his left hand, scratched and worn looking. He apparently didn’t take it off when he was working.

  “Do you want anything else?” he asked. “The burgers are pretty good here. The BLT’s not bad.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever you’re having.” Buying time more than feeling hungry.

  He got up, leaned over the counter and spoke to the woman there, a net covering her bright red hair, her pink uniform stretched tight around her ample bosom, the buttons barely able to hold the stiff material closed. Then he was back, bringing the Coke with him, sitting across from me, hands around his glass, eyes down, having trouble getting started.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.

  “Sally?” As if I might mean someone else. He took one hand off the glass, lifted it, turned it over, then touched his forehead with two fingers. “High school, senior year.”

  “You were good friends?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” Then, “No, not exactly good friends.” He picked up his glass, moved it off to the side. “I thought we were. Then I thought we weren’t. Now,” lifting his hands, “now I don’t know what to think.” He took the glass again, taking a long drink this time.

  “Because?”

  “She disappeared twice, you know.”

  I nodded. I did. “Five years ago, that would be the second time.”

  This time he nodded. “She took off back in high school, too. Same thing. She just disappeared. I tried like hell to find her, but there was no way, no way.”

  After tha
t, he stopped talking. He checked the time, he tapped the table with his fingers, he bit his lower lip. “Maybe it was my fault. Who knows?” he said.

  “What was your fault?”

  “Her going away like that. The first time.”

  “How so?”

  He looked away, then got up and went to the counter again. I saw the woman with the red hair nodding, no expression on her face, you want this, fine, you want that, fine, why would she give a rap, standing on her feet all day for coolie wages?

  When he came back to the table, he picked up his glass, but he just moved it out of the way so that he could lean forward, elbows on the table, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath.

  “I thought I could do this,” whispering, “but I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “You’re not telling me you asked me to come all the way to the ass end of Brooklyn and now you have nothing to say, are you? You’re not—”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. I meant I can’t talk here. I asked for the sandwiches to go,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table, looking at everything but me.

  “Where do you want to go?” Wondering if he had a car outside, if he lived nearby, wondering how I should feel about either prospect.

  “The beach. Won’t be anyone there. Do you mind?”

  I shook my head. With nothing but sand and ocean, not another human being around, maybe Jim would find himself able to talk. Why not, no one but a stranger willing to listen, the inky water, the dark sky?

  Henry brought the sandwiches, grease already leaking out of the waxy paper they were wrapped in and onto the bag. Jim paid. Without talking we headed for the beach, walking under the boardwalk where you could barely see your hand in front of your face, nothing visible except the moonlit sand up ahead. We walked partway down the beach, far enough so that the sound of the ocean was loud enough to make my skin vibrate. Jim took off his jacket and spread it out for me to sit on, but I shook my head, sitting on the cold sand, slipping off my shoes and socks and burying my feet the way I did when I was a kid.