She didn’t come up again.
Between her legs there had been a patch of hair the color of wet straw, and that was gone too.
He opened his eyes. They were on the highway. On the radio someone was complaining about a sports team. Those perennial bums. Lazy, overpaid sissies. Good for nothing. Fat, too, said a fat-sounding voice.
It was a dream, but in every part of his body he felt it was not a dream. He thought: Helen’s dead. She’s drowned. “I need to make a phone call,” he said to his uncle. He realized he was out of breath.
Joe turned off the radio. “Huh? Who’d you need to call?”
It was a good point. Who would he call? The police? Her parents? And say—what? I had a premonition that your daughter drowned? She and I were supposed to have intercourse in the woods and I think she’s there now and drowned in three feet of slow water? It made no sense.
“Forget it,” he said, but his heart was pounding. “It doesn’t matter.”
It made no sense but he saw her just the same, the corpse of her, vein-marbled skin, dead mouth, dead nipples, saw a team of people in uniforms dragging her from the water back to the mossy bank. He saw flashbulbs. He saw someone use a pair of tongs to lift that pink dress, slide it into a plastic bag.
Joe said, “What’s on your mind?”
No, it was a scene from a movie. That was all. It was fake. You’re no psychic, he told himself. You’re just a horndog. If you can’t have her you’ll kill her, that sort of thing. He needed to clear his head. He rolled down the window. Cool, polleny air rushed his face. “I’m fine,” said Sam. “Hungry.”
“Apple in the glove box.”
It was over. It was a dream. Just eat the apple. Just eat the apple.
Soon they arrived in the city. Or—no. They didn’t arrive; one couldn’t drive to such a place. It was as if the city simply appeared, rose up from the plain world to take issue with everything you’ve ever said or thought. They got closer, closer, and at last entered its heart. The city was scabrous, dingy, humid. It was a buzzing of flies and fluorescence. Its smell, too, buzzed in the air, trash and pizza and fried things, a woven odor that prickled the skin at the back of your neck like a light touch. The skyscrapers inspired a funny kind of queasiness in him, buildings so vividly erect, stern, they were like signs of a future species. They drove past tenements, past glass storefronts full of shoes and books and dresses, a whole window of bright yellow dresses the color of a kitchen sponge, and then down a cross street past a kid who kicked their bumper. Joe pulled over and bought two rubbery hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor. There was a hissing in the air, a weak crackling charge, like the moment just after fireworks conclude. At one intersection a man with a kerchief over his mouth tried to wash their windshield.
“What do you think?” Joe asked.
Sam didn’t like it here at all.
It had a kind of hoary glamour, brought to mind those cartoons in adult magazines where the devil is not evil but rather a gentleman sophisticate, puffing on a long cigarette, surrounded by women and books and fire. The devil walked among them. It was almost like a party. It had all the fiendish, permissible cheer of Halloween. Sam’s heart was racing; he wanted to throw open the door.
But then, at the next stoplight, everything changed. He’d been seeing it wrong. At the corner, waiting to cross, stood a regular woman wearing a tweed coat and those lace-up shoes with little heels. His aunt wore shoes like that. She was holding the hand of a small boy. They were ordinary people living in a very big town, waiting to cross.
Finally, on a dim side street paved with cobblestone, the car jerked and bounced, then stopped before a low concrete building. Joe grunted, put the car in park. Somewhat grandly, like a person sitting down to a feast, he rubbed his hands together. “We made it, Sam.” There was some pride and surprise in his voice, as if their very arrival had been in question, as if landing here were itself the feat. He turned off the engine, said, “What a dump, huh?”
Chrome letters spelled The Wickman across the building’s face. A bird’s nest sat in the crook of the k, and a green-and-white-striped awning, splattered with bird shit, hung over the front door. Otherwise it seemed perfectly fine, but Sam said, “A dump, yeah.” His heart picked up again. She was in there—tedious, limb-flinging Judith was in there waiting for them, probably drunk or high. He wanted to get this over with. The sun was setting.
“We’ll be nice to her,” Joe said. “No questions. No disapproval.”
“I got it.”
“You follow my lead. No sudden moves. We get her to the car and drive to our house. Her parents meet us there and take her home. Simple.”
“Simple.”
“You might not want to look her in the eye.”
“Okay.”
“And you might want to avoid touching her. No handshakes. No pats on the back.”
Sam agreed.
“And she’ll be crying, Sam.” He thought for a moment, brows knitted. “You get yourself ready for that, too. She won’t be the girl you remember. Put on a soldier’s face. And be yourself.”
They got out of the car with the inflated authority of police officers, slammed their doors. They were like cops. They were like soldiers. Inside was a girl whom together they could save. Joe’s shoulders, chest, rose. He set his jaw. Joe held the door for Sam. The lobby smelled of smoke and cat piss. Mustard-colored wallpaper shone like old corduroy, separating at the seams. A natty orange cat slept in the middle of the lobby, its tail twitching. Behind a counter, his feet up on a couple milk crates, a man was reading a magazine. A glowing green UFO on its cover: Last Days of Peace! The guy looked up briefly, said something like “Hep ho,” turned a page. His beard was the same color as the cat. They walked briskly through the lobby. In the elevator, Joe said, “What a place, huh?” Sam agreed. “In and out,” Joe said, but the place distorted these words. Crimes happened here. Sex happened here. Every room had a girl like Judith in it. The quiet itself felt like a crime. “Breathe through your mouth,” Joe said, but Sam didn’t need telling.
9
Hank had been swearing like a sailor all afternoon but now he said, “Oh cripes.” Grace turned and saw the flashing lights behind them.
The cop’s barrel chest appeared at the driver’s side window. At first Hank did what he was supposed to do, handed over the documents, nodded sheepishly. But when the cop said, “You know how fast you were going?” she saw Hank tense, saw that his shoulders rose, and he replied, “As a matter of fact I do, yes.”
Grace dipped down in her seat so she could get a look at the cop. His badge said M. Kully. Twenty-something, with sandy hair that cascaded over his forehead in a composed wave, a square jaw, one of these delicate rosebud mouths like babies have. His complexion was dewy pale, a blush that hadn’t yet become ruddiness. She knew they were in trouble. The cop was more handsome than Hank.
“As a matter of fact,” Hank continued, “I’m in the middle of an emergency here. I’m in the middle of what you could call a crisis.”
“Yeah?” Officer Kully put his hands on his hips. “What sort?”
“The sort that involves a child—”
She touched Hank’s thigh. “Just do what he says.”
“—the sort that involves a teenage girl who’s been taken. My daughter. We’re on our way to—rescue her.”
It was the wrong word: rescue. It suggested intrigue. As if Judith had done something other than get very bored and let—ask—some cocksure guy to take her to the city for a few days.
“I clocked you at ninety-seven. You realize those back tires are almost bald?”
Hank’s face had reddened; his legs shook.
“It’s an emergency here. My girl is waiting. I’m telling you greater harm will befall her if I’m late.”
Rescue. Befall. He had convinced himself of these terms. He was racing, as if the child truly needed their help. But it was Joe who was going to the city. They were merely driving to Joe and Constance’s house—Hank was
speeding, and for what? So they could sit and wait with Constance.
The officer sighed deeply, said, “Sorry you’re having trouble with your kid. Sounds rough, sure does. But you’re probably thinking, Hey, this bumfreck village. Just a bunch of farms. Chickens. Hicks. Probably thinking whatever you’ve got going on matters more than abiding some backwoods laws. Am I right?”
“I respect you and your laws and your chickens,” Hank said. He paused. “I’ve got a daughter. You got one? Of course you don’t. You got a sister? Pretend it’s your sister. I don’t need some lecture here. Either write me a ticket or give me a warning, but let me go.”
Kully was staring at Hank, the smallest movement in his jaw.
“Sir, you think a person can speed anytime he’s got a personal issue? What would happen to the roads if every driver adopted such a policy?”
“An issue! Oh man. Oh shit. A personal issue. Did you even hear what I said? This is a crisis. Can you get your head around that?”
“How many drinks have you had today, sir?”
“Drop the sir, all right? I’ll take a ticket. I’ll slow down.”
“How many drinks, sir?”
“Sir! Sir!”
“Please step out of the car.”
“No drinks. Zero. Nada.”
“I’m going to ask you again to step out of the vehicle.”
Hank made a steeple with his fingers, held them over his mouth. Now his voice was low, full of a hushed, coiled intensity: “Let me clarify. I promise I’ll slow down. I agree I was going too fast. I agree your laws matter. But, see, the thing is that I need to go. My girl.” His voice broke at girl.
Again Grace put her hand on Hank’s thigh, but it was the wrong thing, the worst thing, for Hank responded as if the cop had put a hand on his thigh. He swatted her hand away, smashed his own fist on the seat between them, and then raised his other hand to the kid’s face, open-palmed, and held it there.
Sunset. Pink sky. Crickets bounding the fields. One second of calm. One last moment of intactness. A breath trapped in her throat, Hank’s palm to the kid’s face, her own hands resting on her lap as if waiting for lashes. Finally an authority—finally someone to draw the line. It was the closest they’d come to grace. In the next instant the cop had Hank’s wrist in his hand, was twisting it, twisting the arm behind Hank’s body, so that her husband arched his back in pain, cried out, and then collapsed on the passenger seat, his head forced onto Grace’s lap.
“You’re kidding me,” Hank said, into his wife’s crotch. She looked down at his head, his black hair, the shining skin of his scalp. The cop still held his wrist.
“You’ve got the wrong idea.” But Hank’s voice was fading, lacked surety. His tears wet her lap.
“My baby,” Grace whispered, and touched his ear.
From this point on Hank complied. He allowed himself to be handcuffed; he ducked into the squad car.
“You get her,” he said to Grace through the window. “You hold her. Tell her Daddy loves her. Please say that.”
He had not been Daddy since Judith was two.
The cop slammed the door, drove off. They were gone. Her husband had been swept away by the law. She stood on the dusty shoulder, heard the whirring of insects, saw a spray of lavender by her feet, Queen Anne’s lace white as a dinner plate, an assortment of scabby bushes, weeds, things she could not name.
For some reason she said, to no one, “Wait!”
Wait for what?
Grace got in the driver’s side, the seat still warm from Hank’s body. She had the irrational feeling that he was gone forever and fully, that he would never return, so that sitting where he had been sitting moments before, feeling the warmth his body made, it was like being touched lightly by a ghost. She thought: It’s happened. It’s happened. The moment was like the answer to a riddle—it provided, like a riddle, a very brief and blunted satisfaction. Something plain and inevitable had been confirmed. What she felt was that she had never been more alone.
She could retrieve her child. She could bail out her husband. Or she could do both. Or she could do neither.
She had given Judith a name that meant freedom. This had annoyed Grace’s parents, who’d wanted some reference to them, or those before them—Mildred, Clarice, Mary—who’d wanted a name that carried their past. But Grace would not comply. Judith was made for the future. Grace knew it the first time she’d seen her screaming face.
10
They were carried upstairs in a tiny, shuddering elevator, its inspection record defaced by a naked woman rendered in felt-tipped pen. A naked woman with a tail! Sam kept his eyes from this drawing—just a glimpse told him that he should look no longer at the bulbous breasts, stars for nipples, or the opaque triangle between her legs, or the tail concluding in a triple curlicue. He should not look. Why did this casual doodle strike him as more dangerous—more violent—than the real-life naked women he saw in photographs at Marco’s store? The doors opened. They stepped into a dark hall, thick tan carpeting rutted by years of footfalls. They walked slowly, preparing their faces, found the door, paused. Joe swallowed; he knocked. No answer, so he called, “Hello? Judith? It’s Joe. It’s Sam, too.” They heard a little noise from inside.
She wore a butter-yellow dress, metal bangles on each wrist. Her feet were bare. She met them with a bald scowl. They saw a flicker of relief pass over her face, then nothing. Joe exhaled her name. She said, “So they say.”
It was a small room, a sink bolted to its wall, one window with its plastic shade drawn. On the dresser sat a gilt-edged Bible and a plastic cup of water. A pink duffel bag waited by the door. The smell belonged to a basement, though they were on the fourth floor. Judith sat down in the middle of the bed, on a blanket the color and texture of peat moss. She leaned back on her elbows, crossed her legs at the ankles, tilted her chin upward like a sunbather.
Joe said, “Thank God you’re all right.”
Her voice was calm. “Who said I was all right?”
Joe moved toward the bed, stood before her. “We’re here to pick you up.”
She frowned. She looked at Sam. She said, “Hey.”
To his surprise he said “Hey” back, casually, coolly, like they were two kids passing in the hallway at school.
“The car’s outside. You have everything in that bag?”
Judith shrugged. “More or less.”
“Let’s go then.”
She just yawned, sighed heavily. To whom it was not clear, she said, “It’s a bad, bad life.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to get myself a wife.”
“Let’s go home.” Joe spoke loudly now, with great care. “I bet you’re hungry. We’ll get you a milkshake.”
“I cut off my lord’s lord with a knife.”
“Honey?”
“Not so good. I don’t have the knack. I spent the last week with a songwriter,” she said. “He liked to talk in rhyme. Once I balked and then he beat me within an inch of my life, tried to make me his wife, but luckily I got my hands on a knife.”
Joe crouched in front of her. Now his face was bloodless, mouth clenched.
“Oh Uncle Joe.” She shook her head. “You’re more gullible than a cocker spaniel. There was no knife. Just a bad guitar player who thought he was Dylan.”
The Sweet Relief of Missing Children: A Novel Page 11