Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  “Goddamn it,” he said, “I asked you a question. What’s wrong with you? Are you mute now, too?”

  “She didn’t leave for the reasons you said. Not because I nagged. Not because I got hurt and made her work more here, didn’t have snacks in the house, like you said.” Sophia kept her head down, muttering her words to her armchair.

  “That’s what you’re making a federal case out of?” She sounded insane. He would have her committed after they found Penny, an even looser cannon. “Who cares about snacks? It was something I said, that’s all—conversation.”

  She looked into middle space. Nowhere.

  “Making conversation, you know what that is? God knows, you don’t try, you act like a stone statue. You could get off your ass and feed your son, is all I meant. And what do you know, anyway? You don’t know shit—not even about your own daughter. Not like a normal mother should. I heard you—couldn’t remember her friends’ goddamned names, like you were senile or something!”

  Except he knew she was right. Penny knew. Said she’d seen him, said she knew about the houseboat, then wouldn’t say any more, but that was enough, like being lobbed with a grenade was enough. He just hadn’t known that Sophia knew about Penny’s knowing. That was the only reason he let Sophia hire that detective. Because Penny knew, not because he thought she’d been kidnapped. She knew and ran away with the knowledge, taking it God-knows-where.

  “That’s why she left.” Sophia sucked everything but the words out of her madwoman’s voice. She wasn’t there for him. Except to be the voice of doom, his judge while the walls moved closer in like in a horror story and the ceiling lowered onto his head. “Why do you really want to find her? To hurt her? To shut her up? What do you want with her?”

  And the flowers under Sophia’s arm and behind her neck spread and filled the lenses of his eyes until he couldn’t see anything except the blob that was his wife and the bed of roses around her and his sweat that had gotten it, and red—just red.

  “Don’t stand over me,” she said. “Leave me alone. It’s your fault.”

  He swung his hand across her face and back. Across and back.

  She screamed. No more flat voice. No more faraway. She was there, right there, and she screamed.

  And he swung his hand again. Make her do something. Anything.

  And back. Until—he couldn’t believe it—the twerp, screaming, “Stop!” all the way down from his room. “Stop that!” And throwing something hard from the doorway—an apple, for God’s sake, his snack his weapon—then tackling him. Spindle-legs and flimsy arms grabbing, kicking, pulling him away from Sophia, who stood up, forgetting she was crippled.

  And Wesley, beating still, fists against his leg, his hip, kick-boxing as much as he could.

  Arthur released him. Stood back and studied his son. And laughed. “Chip off the old block,” he said. “You got balls, after all. I like that.”

  Ten

  “What do you want me to say? She was my baby-sitter. I really never wanted to know much about her.” Diana Golden continued to fold laundry while she spoke to Billie. “She was hard to get. Nice with the kids, trustworthy, didn’t have boys over. She sat for a lot of people. And that’s about it. I mean, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and how her parents must feel and all, and I wish I knew things about her—anything, really, but I don’t. Here, have more coffee. Help yourself.… You really don’t have to do that.”

  Billie smiled and folded a diaper. “It’s second nature,” she said. “It’s even making me nostalgic.”

  “Oh, well, have another kid. That’ll cure you.” Diana Golden gestured toward the pot and cup, then smoothed a diaper. “I cannot help destroy the universe for the sake of convenience,” she’d said when Billie commented on the cloth diapers.

  Diana Golden seemed well-meaning with a vengeance. Her house was earthy. Real, she’d probably have said. A mess, but a well-meaning one, with magazines devoted to worthy causes facedown and open on the natural-fiber furniture, and everywhere else, dishes on the floor for several animals, and toys of the higher sort—easels and paints, major-but-abandoned construction projects, kiddie art papering the kitchen walls, a large bowl of flour—the bag said it was organically grown stone-ground whole wheat—and a bowl with yeast proofing on the counter next to a pile of flyers urging people to attend a zoning hearing. Diana folded diapers quickly, while the younger child slept and the elder was at playschool.

  Billie’s attempt to form a kinship with the woman wasn’t working as well as she’d hoped. Diaper-folding was fine, but the woman was interested in issues of global survival, not those of a part-time sitter. “Did you ever have a chance to talk with her? About her plans, or her social life?”

  Diana shook her head. “To tell the truth, when she’d get here, the last thing I wanted to do was sit around and chat. I know she was good about feeding the boys and cleaning up afterward. And she didn’t eat me out of house and home, or smoke—but I don’t suppose that’s the sort of thing that’s particularly helpful to you.”

  “Was she always available, say, on Saturday nights? Or did you get the feeling she had her own social life?”

  Diana stopped folding diapers and frowned. “We only used her Thursdays, and only for about two hours. We never called her for a weekend night. If we go out, we take the boys. It’s important at this stage of their life to feel safe, connected.”

  Then why Thursday for two hours? What was sufficiently off-limits to risk letting the kidlets feel unsafe, unconnected? Couples therapy. Bingo.

  “Look, I wish I’d paid more attention—but honestly, do you? I mean to a sitter?”

  Billie thought of Ivan, the nanny, whose myriad adjustment problems to the U.S., to English, to American girls, to his classes, were over-familiar. Perhaps it was his Slavic drama that made him share so much. Or her own nosiness. Or simple proximity—he lived in her house, after all, and she’d much rather sit over a cup of coffee and let the talk flow than hand out flyers. “One last thing,” she said. “Did you drive her home at night? Or was she picked up by someone?”

  Diana shook her head. Her hair was short and straight. Brown.

  Sincere hair, Billie thought, like the rest of her. Then she wondered at the flash of resentment she felt. Or was it envy? Was this woman, so totally immersed in what she considered important—the world and her boys—was she the woman Billie had intended to be?

  “Once or twice, in summertime when it was still light out, she rode her bike. And Joe—my husband—drove her home a few times. I don’t think I ever did. Why?”

  “Nothing. I meant… Well, nothing, I suppose.” Diana would have noticed the yellow hearse—she would have raged against its fossil-fuel consumption. In a way, it was a comfort to know such women had outlasted the sixties. But Penny Redmond wasn’t on her list of concerns.

  Neither had Penny been high on the list of the woman who’d preceded Diana, a vivacious creature in tights, a long sweatshirt, and frosted hair. Her children were at school, her house was being cleaned by a tiny smiling woman and she seemed eager to talk. Unfortunately, she had nothing to talk about. Unlike Diana Golden, that woman, Char, had indeed noticed and formed opinions about Penny, but only about her hair, which had possibilities but was too long, causing it to lose body, and in need of a good, layered cut, and about Penny’s underutilization of cosmetics. “That dreadful natural look they’re using,” she said. “I mean, they’re all peaches-and-cream and they can get away with it at their age, but that girl has potential. She’d be striking if she’d pay a little attention to herself, put on some color.”

  By the time Billie left, she had no information about the boy with the yellow hearse, but she had a strong and shameful desire to have Char make her over or at least tell her whether or not she had “potential,” and if so, what to do with it. By the time she left Diana Golden’s, she was thoroughly ashamed of having had such petty, self-obsessed, superficial desires.

  In any case, it was time to switch
gears. The school day was about to end, so she’d troll for friends, not employers.

  She drove down San Pedro, overaware of the odd configuration of the roadbed—the hillside homes, upscale markets, and school on her left; the Bay, like a poking finger, appearing erratically on her right. And each time it pushed in toward the road, business—yacht berths, boat repair shops, or upscale bayside housing developments—took advantage of it.

  In front of San Rafael High, she decided that the third try would be the charm. She should have felt kinship with the mothers in need of sitters and company, but instead she felt a rush at the sight of the nondescript tan building, the comfort of familiarity, although she’d never visited it and had barely noticed it. It wasn’t her alma mater, nor did it look like any school she’d attended, but all high schools were kin in primitive, compelling ways. Inside, they’d have the smell of gym lockers, lunch-room economies, and teen hormones. Hallways would sound the same no matter the words, the air filled with eyes, laughs, and exaggerated motions.

  It wasn’t as if she was unaware of the decade-plus since high school, or that each piece of her hard-won and not-always-welcome postgraduate learning, in and out of academia, had altered her perspective. But it hadn’t altered her, except to fill in the blanks, make her more so. And the sight of the school triggered buried adolescent longings for a sheltering place of her own.

  The bell rang and Billie felt the end-of-the-day panic that had once been a constant. Back then, she’d flood with apprehension about whether she had enough activities stacked up to delay going home as long as possible. Maybe that’s where and how she’d learned to organize her time and plan ahead. To act, be duplicitous. Pretend. Her mother had inadvertently given her great skills.

  Sophia Redmond had known the last names of Penny’s baby-sitting clients, even if she hadn’t known where they lived. It was easy enough searching the phone book and making calls. But of all Penny’s friends, only one, Rebecca Dobbin, was given a full name. “Penny’s best friend,” Sophia had said. She hadn’t had the number.

  The rest of the girls she mentioned were on a first-name-only basis, and the task of determining which Heather or Chelsea was the right one felt daunting.

  Even if Emma would have been willing to spend a moment demonstrating how to find juveniles who didn’t yet appear in the computer files, she was up in Sacramento on a background check. Billie was on her own with next-to-nothing to go on. “Penny didn’t keep a diary,” Sophia said. “Penny took her address book with her.” After much prodding, Sophia remembered that Rebecca lived in Peacock Gap. Either Mrs. Redmond’s real-estate sense, or her basic knowledge of her daughter’s life, was out of kilter. Assuming the Dobbins listed their phone number, which was a shaky assumption in Marin, there were few Dobbins in San Rafael, none down near San Pablo Bay, and none that said Rebecca or R. or Dobbins children. So, with the help of a detailed street map, Billie went through all the listings and called the one closest to the neighborhood, wondering what she’d do with it or the address if she knew it. Lurk outside waiting? She was reluctant to leave a message and give the teen time to consult with Penny, alert others, or construct a new story. Face-to-face would be better, but how?

  And if she couldn’t find Rebecca this way, how would she? Surely not through the school. If they’d blithely point out a student to a complete stranger who asked for that information, Billie would have to make a citizen’s arrest on the basis of child endangerment. Besides, how could she identify herself, produce credentials? She worked for Emma, was only in training, a novice, and wouldn’t have certification for six thousand hours—five thousand eight hundred and fifty-some now—if she survived. Maybe Billie didn’t have enough basic imagination to investigate anything.

  The voice that answered the phone was too resonant and sure of itself to be a teen. The mother, Billie assumed. “May I speak to Rebecca? This is Billie August.”

  “Can’t talk to her here, Billie honey. Not just now,” the other end of the receiver said, as if they were buddies. “School’s in session for an hour more. And shouldn’t you be there, too?”

  “I graduated last year. I haven’t seen her in a while.” Billie stood in the phone kiosk and crossed her fingers against any major changes in group psychology and high-school sociology since she’d graduated. Let there still be enormous status gaps between juniors and seniors, so that Mama wouldn’t be overly familiar with the last crop of grads.

  “So you’re in college now?” Mama asked.

  “U.C.,” Billie murmured, to ensure her credentials as a diligent, smart, and possibly inspirational old pal of her daughter’s.

  “Good for you!” Rebecca’s mother sounded truly delighted by Billie’s academic fortunes. “But as for Becca…” She sighed. “Lord knows where she’ll be after school, what with all she does. I surely never know.” Pride, not irritation filled her voice. Amazing. The woman liked her daughter. It could be that way, then, even during the teens. “I use the beeper to reach her, and thank the Lord for it. You want the number? It won’t beep in class, so don’t worry. Against school rules. All the kids keep them on vibrate. Bec tries to return all calls on her cellular between classes.”

  Billie entertained herself until the return call by envisioning a roomful of vibrating beepers, wondering where Rebecca wore hers and whether such implements were a new and additional reason for teenage girls to be addicted to phone calls.

  “This is Rebecca Dobbin, returning your call.”

  “My name is Billie August and I’m helping investigate the whereabouts of Penelope Redmond—”

  “Shit!” It was whispered, but powerful and straight from her center. “Oh, damn. Sorry. I thought…I didn’t recognize the number, and I thought maybe my mom was out somewhere and had heard—”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Billie said.

  The girl laughed. “No matter. Waiting to hear about schools is making me crazy. I really am sorry. Let’s start over. Who’d you say you were?”

  Billie explained again, asked if they could meet for a few minutes after school. She didn’t want to say any more on the phone. She wanted the easy flow of a conversation and she wanted to see Rebecca. Her years of drama classes and performances might be of practical use in interpreting body language, deciding what role the girl was or wasn’t playing in her friend’s disappearance.

  “Penny,” Rebecca said with one-millionth the emotion she’d demonstrated about school. “Okay. And I’ll tell you what—I’ll bring a few other girls who knew her, too. Know her! Didn’t mean to sound like she’s dead!” Her laugh sounded nervous. “Maybe somebody else was closer to her, knows more than I do.”

  Which did not sound like a “best friend” speaking. How far removed from the reality of her daughter’s life was Sophia Redmond?

  So now Billie waited outside the school, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, and then the chorus of teenaged voices as the doors opened and school let out. She played a game of whether she could identify a “Rebecca” before the girl herself spoke up. “I’ll be in the parking lot and I drive a white Honda Civic,” Billie had said, and that had seemed enough for the high-school girl.

  She saw now that it would be hard distinguishing which Honda was hers. Half the student body drove them, although blue was a much-favored color. She surveyed the cars, and approved of their middle-aged American makes and models. This wasn’t a flaunting kind of parking lot. Wasn’t overly Marin, where B.M.W. was said to stand for Basic Marin Wheels. Even the one Mercedes was acceptable, as it was twenty -five years old and in desperate need of wax.

  An undersized boy with an open backpack walked toward Billie, waving, then abruptly stopped. “Sorry!” he said. “Jeez. I thought you were my…ride. Sorry.” He shuffled off, head down, puzzling her by the visible and excessive humiliation this mistaken identity seemed to have caused him. Adolescence was a bitch, but maybe she’d forgotten just how much of one it was.

  Then she saw him raise his arm again. “Smoking? But you
said, Mom! You promised.” Billie watched a woman stub out a cigarette, wave away the smoke she exhaled then frown as her son continued to chastise her.

  Mom, he’d said. Mom. He’d mistaken Billie for his mother. She, who’d been blissfully identifying with the students, sure she hadn’t changed in any significant way. She looked around and noticed other women looking bored at the doors of their cars. Their children didn’t drive yet. They looked a lot like her.

  The patina of shared youth she thought she’d been wearing like makeup cracked and she saw herself as the oafish wanna-be she was. Time might indeed have filled in the empty spots—but in so doing, had coated the rest of her, like a pristine building dulled with soot. She needed to be sandblasted.

  No wonder Becca had been sure she’d find her. Too polite to simply say, “You’ll be the old one.” By the time she rounded up Penny’s friends, the other carpool mamas would be gone, and Billie would stand out as if outlined in neon.

  This was what it was going to be like, wasn’t it? Little by little, whole populations and age groups would look at her and see only “the other.” Worse—the “has-been but who cares?” The way she secretly regarded Emma. Emma might be smart and experienced and have a lot to share, if ever she would, but Emma was old, past it, whatever “it” was. Younger was better. In the cosmic scheme of splendid blazing life, Emma didn’t count quite as much as Billie.

  She didn’t approve of such thoughts and hadn’t realized she had them until she saw them reflected in the faces and eyes of the pack of girls approaching her. She wondered if Emma felt as surprised by the implicit gulf as Billie just had. If Emma felt as unchanged and fully alive inside as Billie did.

  She waved and nodded, and they came toward her, five of them, looking assembled by a politically correct casting director. One freckled carrot-top with a crew cut, one Scandinavian blonde with a French braid, one Asian—Billie thought Vietnamese—with black hair in a Joan of Arc bob, one with cornrows and tawny port skin, and one who might be Hispanic with a lush mass of brown-black waves. Nothing extreme about them except geographical ancestry. None visibly pierced or tattooed. Every one wore gauzy patterned skirts, oversized sweaters, blousey jackets, and heavy lace-up boots.