Without a Word

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “One day she was there, the next day she was gone,” he said, the grease-stained bag sitting on the sand in front of us, neither of us touching it. He shook his head. “No one knew where she went—or if they did, they wouldn’t say. It’s not that I didn’t ask.”

  He looked at me, his eyes wet, as if to say it was my turn now, my job to tell him what I knew, where Sally had gone back then.

  “You were lovers,” I said, a statement, not a question.

  He looked at me, a crease between his eyes, then back down at the sand, tracing a line with one finger. “Yeah, we were.”

  “How did it start?”

  His hands lay flat on the sand now, his face turned away from me.

  “I know she meant something to you, Jim. I think she meant a lot to you. Whatever it is you’re feeling now, that’s not what’s important. Whatever happened back then, it doesn’t really matter much anymore. What matters is this little girl, Sally’s little girl. What matters is finding Sally, if that’s even possible.”

  He turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we have no way of knowing if she’s alive or dead.”

  “But—”

  “I need you to tell me what led up to Sally going missing back then. I need you to tell me everything you can, because something you tell me, some little thing, might be the very thing I need to point me in the right direction.” I touched his arm. “Will you do this for me?” I waited. “You did call me, Jim. You did ask me to come here. I know you want to talk about it. And I want nothing more than to listen. I didn’t come here to judge you or Sally. I came here to find help.”

  “What good will it do now, to tell you about her, about us, back in high school? It was a million years ago. It can’t have anything to do with what she did five years ago. It couldn’t possibly help.”

  “Do you have kids, Jim?”

  He looked surprised. “Yeah, I do.”

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  I nodded. “How old are they?”

  “The boy is ten. The girls are six and four.”

  “This isn’t about us, about my job or your feelings. It’s about a little girl who’s twelve, though frankly, when I first met her, I thought she was only nine or ten. She’s small, like Sally. She looks just like her.”

  “She does?”

  I nodded.

  He looked away, toward the water. “I might’ve fallen in love with her the first time I saw her,” he said. “There were all the girls in high school, and there was Sally.”

  “She was that beautiful?”

  “She was. And all these years, I never once, I could never figure out what she saw in me. But she said she loved me, too. I used to run to meet her after one class, just to walk her to the next. Or we’d go to the library together. Never my house. Never hers. My father, he had a bit of a problem, well, an elephant of a problem with booze. You’d never know what you were going to find if you went to my house. And Sally’s mother was a little crazy, I think. She sat in church half the day, every day. She scared the shit out of Sally not only about boys, but about everything. So we never went there. We never had much time at all. If Sally got home more than ten, fifteen minutes late, she’d have hell to pay. But then the senior class trip was coming up, to Lauderdale. We’d have time together. It seemed, it seemed like…”

  “Sally’s mother let her go?”

  “She did. We couldn’t believe it, but she did. She had this big thing about shame. Sally told her all the kids were going, she’d be the only one if she didn’t, and there were three chaperones, she said, teachers. They’d be watching every minute. Her mother said she’d have to pay for half of it, out of her babysitting money, and Sally agreed, she said she would and her mother signed.”

  “So you both went? And what happened?”

  “The teachers, the chaperones, they didn’t much care what we did. They were doing their own thing. Anyway, we were seniors, a lot of us eighteen already, and in a few months we’d be out of the school and out of their lives. They just didn’t pay a lot of attention.”

  “And?”

  “We left, me and Sally. We just wanted to be alone. That’s all we ever wanted, just to be together with no one else there. I’d been working weekends and sometimes after school, and she’d been babysitting. We had a little money with us. We took a bus and went down to the Keys and we found this motel along this strip of land, across the road from the water just south of Long Key, and we stayed there two days, two nights, just the two of us. It was a dumpy little place, just these little wooden cabins, no restaurant, no pool, not much of anything. But it was the most wonderful…”

  Jim took off his work boots and stuffed his socks into his shoes. He stood and offered a hand to help me up. I followed him to the hard, wet sand, and we stood there letting the foamy, ice-cold water rush around our bare feet, neither of us saying anything.

  “And then what happened when you got back?”

  “At first, it was just like it had been before. I’d walk her to her classes. We’d meet in study hall or the cafeteria. I’d wait for her after school and walk her partway home.” He looked at me. “Not close enough for her mother to see us if she was looking out the window.” He turned his face back toward the ocean. “Sometimes we came here, when the beach was empty. But it wasn’t the same, not like it was down there.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “She came and told me she was pregnant.”

  “And what did you say when she told you?”

  “I was scared, more scared than I’d ever been in my whole entire life. I was living with my parents. I didn’t have a dime. I had no way to make a living, to support her and a kid. And she was fifteen and a half. I could have gone to jail for what I did. I just wanted it to be not true. I wanted…” A whistling sound came from deep in Jim’s chest, the noise an animal might make after the hunter found his mark. I reached for his hand and he let me take it. “God help me, I wanted her to go away, to disappear.”

  “So you questioned the baby’s paternity?”

  “I did. I asked her whose it was.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I said. “You were, what, seventeen, eighteen? Just a kid. You were terrified. You made a mistake.”

  “She was…you should have seen her face when I said that. As soon as I did, I knew I’d done the stupidest thing I’d ever done in all my life, but the words were out there, and a minute later the bell rang and she was gone.”

  “And you were still scared?”

  “Terrified. But I waited for her outside of the school, where we’d always met. I figured, we’d have to work it out somehow. Only she didn’t show. I didn’t know it yet, but it was already too late. She wasn’t in school after that. She was gone.”

  “That fast?”

  He nodded.

  “You called her at home?”

  He nodded again. “I waited until that weekend, hoping every day she’d be in school, or come and meet me afterwards. Then I called her house, but her mother never said a word. She just hung up on me. I went by her house, too, rang the bell. Her mother said, ‘She’s not here. She doesn’t live here anymore.’ I didn’t know what to do. I never told a soul, not until now, and I didn’t…”

  His shoulders started to shake and then I heard the sobs. I stepped closer, putting my arms around him, letting him cry, tears he’d been wanting to cry for twelve years and counting. When he stopped crying, I stood back. He wiped his face with his hands, looking down, where the water was swirling around our feet, our feet sinking slowly into the wet sand, the bottoms of our pants cold and wet, pressing heavily against our ankles.

  “She must have been every bit as scared as I was.”

  “More,” I said. “She was the one who was going to have the baby.”

  “I always figured she must have had an abortion. When she didn’t come back, I pretty much wrote the whole thing off, wrote her off, until…”

  “Until you
read my second letter.”

  He nodded. “Where did she go? What happened?”

  “The reason you couldn’t find her is that she got married,” I said, watching his face, watching him take it in. “They moved to the city. She was using another name, his name, so—”

  He turned to face me, grabbing my arms.

  “Married? You mean I was right? You mean the kid’s not mine?”

  He let go of me. He was nodding now, not the kind of nodding that says he agreed with what I was saying, the kind that said he was nervous, angry, the kind that said if he were a volcano, it would be time to step back, get the hell out of the way.

  “All this time, all these years, because she disappeared and I couldn’t talk to her again, I figured I really fucked up. I really hurt her. And now it turns out I was right all along. There was someone else. Man, she had me fooled. Man, I could have been played for the worst sucker on the face—”

  I started shaking my head. It took him a moment or two to notice.

  “What?”

  “Not so,” I said.

  “The guy she married, he’s not—”

  “He’s not the genetic father, Jim. You are.”

  “How can you possibly know that? You don’t even know Sally. You never even met her.”

  “But I have met your daughter.” I reached out, not for his hand this time. I reached out and touched his face, the cheek that was twitching. It had been his eye earlier, when he’d walked into Dean’s, the eye that told me he was the man who’d called, the eye that told me why.

  He brushed my hand away. “It happens when I’m nervous. It was much worse when I was a kid. Now it’s only once in a…” Getting it, understanding how I knew.

  “She’s got it, too?”

  “She does.”

  For what seemed like a long time, we stood there, Jim staring at me, me staring back, both of us rewriting history as we knew it, trying to get it right this time.

  Then I just nodded. And he did, too.

  “The man Sally married? He knew the baby wasn’t his?”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Who is he? Who did she marry?”

  “Leon Spector.”

  “Who…?” He looked away, then back at me, his face contorted. “Mr. Spector, the history teacher?”

  I nodded.

  “Mr. Spector married her. I…And they weren’t having an affair. Why would he?”

  “Maybe he saw the same thing you did, this beautiful creature sitting in his classroom every day, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. And now she was in trouble, bad trouble, and he could help.” He could be a hero, I thought. But things never work out the way you think they will.

  “So they got married?”

  “In Delaware. Parental permission isn’t needed there for pregnant teens.”

  Jim nodded, trying to absorb it all.

  “And Mr. Spector’s got her, my daughter?”

  I nodded.

  “And Sally’s gone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said she was in trouble, the kid?”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling on his sleeve. “Let’s sit down.”

  We walked back to where Jim had left his jacket. Sitting there on the sand, I told him about Madison, about her decision to stop talking, about the death of Dr. Bechman, about trying to find Sally in the hope that Madison would speak again. I told it all to him, everything I knew. When I’d finished, we sat there not talking for a while. I was thinking about what he told me, how Sally had come to him, scared, to say she was pregnant, how he’d panicked and rejected her, how she’d disappeared back then, too. Leon said she’d cut herself off from her friends, moved to another borough, changed her name. No one at Lincoln could have possibly guessed that she had married Leon, even though he’d disappeared, too. No one would have put that particular two and two together and come up with four. It was too weird to contemplate. And no one would have been able to find Sally either, no matter how hard they tried.

  Jim picked up his jacket and put it on. We brushed the sand off our feet as best we could, putting on our shoes and socks. Then, still without talking, he picked up the bag with the sandwiches and carried it to the nearest trash can. I’d never asked what he’d ordered. No matter. Neither of us was hungry now.

  When we came out from under the boardwalk, he asked me how I’d come.

  “Subway,” I told him.

  “I should’ve gone to the city to meet you,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  I didn’t argue. I thought he needed to do something. I thought there’d be more questions, that he’d need some time to formulate them, time to know what it was he wanted to know. But he didn’t talk in the car. He drove silently along the Belt Parkway, through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, up along West Street until we got to the Village. I told him where I lived. He turned on all the right one-way streets until we were in front of the gate to the cottage.

  “What’s her name?” he finally asked me.

  “Madison.”

  Jim’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He turned away, and when he turned back, he was crying again, this time silently, like his daughter.

  “Madison,” he repeated.

  I nodded.

  “If you think of anything else…” He had my phone numbers, but I gave him my card anyway.

  He opened the glove compartment and took out a small pad, writing something on it and handing it to me. “It’s my work number.”

  “I understand.”

  “There’re two Jims there, so you have to ask for Jim Russell.”

  “Okay,” I told him.

  “Do you think you’ll find her?”

  I shrugged.

  “Will you call me if you do?”

  “I will.”

  I opened the car door but I didn’t get out. “Did you and Sally swim when you were down in the Keys?” I asked, visions of Madison’s room swirling in my head. “By any chance, did you go snorkeling?”

  “Yeah, we did. There was a place where you could rent snorkels, masks and fins just down the road from the motel.”

  I leaned over and put my arms around him, holding him tight. Part of it was gratitude, part was that there was something about him that broke my heart the way his daughter did.

  CHAPTER 20

  The street lamps were already on, the light smoky and diffused. I stood on the sidewalk in front of the gate to my cottage watching Jim drive away. Then I went inside and got Dashiell, going back out with him for his nighttime walk. Barely paying attention to what was around me, I pulled out my cell phone, called Delta Airlines and made reservations to fly down to Miami late the following night. I needed to get ready, but I didn’t want to wait a moment longer than I’d have to. I wanted to take Madison’s medical records with me. And a picture of her, too, a recent one. I’d have to make arrangements for Dashiell, too. I stopped to wait for a car to pass, glancing down at Dashiell. He was looking up at me with a goofy smile on his puss. If he couldn’t be with me, I knew exactly where he’d be happiest. The question was, if I wanted Madison to trust me, how far was I willing to go to trust her? And as soon as I formed the question, I knew the answer. I took out my phone again and called Leon, asking if he and Madison would be willing to take Dashiell for a few days, starting the following evening.

  “Sure,” he said. No questions asked. Quintessential Leon.

  I was prepared to tell him about the way Dash and Madison had gotten along when she stayed over. I was going to say that if they spent some time together, it might help her open up, if no one rushed her, if we just let nature take its course. But he probably knew that already. He’d had a dog of his own, one he took everywhere. Anyway, he’d already said yes, so I didn’t need to keep selling, did I?

  “I need a couple of other things, too,” I said. The car had passed, but Dashiell and I were still on that corner.

&
nbsp; “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I need you to call Ms. Peach and request a complete copy of Madison’s records. Everything in the file.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’ll ask you to put it in writing, Leon.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I need it tomorrow. I’ll need to get it from you when I come to drop off Dashiell. If she says she can’t do it that fast, you’re going to have to insist she does. Is that a problem?”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.”

  The truth was, I wasn’t looking for anything at all. I was hoping I’d be able to give the envelope to Sally, to let Madison’s medical records do some of the talking for me. But I didn’t want to say that to Leon, not now, not before I knew what I was going to find when I got to Florida.

  “There’s one more thing, Leon. I need your approval to spend some money. The reason I’ve asked you to take Dashiell is that I’m going to be out of town for a few days doing some research.”

  “On the case?”

  “It’s a really old lead,” I told him. “Not much chance I’ll find anything helpful, but I figured you’d want me to…”

  There was a silence on the line. I heard the phone hit the desk, as if it had been dropped. I waited, but nothing happened. I couldn’t hear Leon walking away. He might have been wearing sneakers. Or socks, kicking off his shoes the minute he walked in the door the way I always did. Or he might have been standing right there, afraid to hear what else I might have to say, afraid not to hear it, too.

  “What have you found out?” he asked.

  “I know it’s asking a lot, Leon, but I’m asking you not to ask. I’m asking you to trust me on this. Please. Just let me do my job and tell you things when I’m ready, when it’s right to do so.”

  There was another silence. Then, “You found her?”

  “No,” I said. I crossed the street, turned left, Dashiell staying close. The last thing on earth I wanted was to tell him what I’d learned tonight, not yet anyway, maybe not ever. “I didn’t find her. But I’m still working on it.”