White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  “Who?” Kaye said.

  “Give me a minute, would you?”

  “Why aren’t you in school? What happened?”

  “It’s not my fault! Why do you always think it’s my fault?” She slammed the bottle on the counter. Coke spurted out the top, foaming and splattering.

  “What isn’t your fault?”

  “Close the door. Will you? Is he out there?” Lindy said.

  Kaye locked the kitchen door. “There’s no one out there. What is all this?”

  “You don’t even care.”

  “I care, hon. I do!”

  “He kidnapped me from school,” Lindy said.

  “Kidnapped?” Kaye felt dizzy. “What happened? If anyone touched you, I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what?” Lindy challenged.

  “I’ll . . . tell Daddy!” she sputtered. “Who did this to you?”

  Lindy hesitated, as if she was afraid to say. Then she looked at the Millers’ house. “Him.”

  “Jillian’s dad?”

  “No! The uncle. The slow one.”

  Kaye nodded against her will. Of course it was him.

  “You don’t even believe me. Great. My own mom doesn’t even believe me.”

  “I do so!”

  “He had a weapon. An ice scraper.”

  “Oh, honey. Look at your face.” She touched Lindy’s grazed cheek. Lindy jerked away. “Did he do that to you, Lin?”

  Lindy shrugged, but Kaye knew. She knew with a mother’s instinct. Fear clotted in her chest, forcing her words and her thoughts down low. “Did he interfere with you?”

  “What?”

  “Did he . . . you know, touch you? You know, in your private place?”

  “Oh my God, Mom. No! You are gross. I said he kidnapped me. He stole me from school and I got away and he chased me, and I fell, and I ran home.” Lindy ran upstairs.

  Kaye started to follow her up the stairs, then turned around and went back to the kitchen. She reached for her phone, then started up the stairs again, feeling like a bumper car at an amusement park being bumped from one direction to the other. Should she go upstairs, after her, to comfort her? Or outside, to hunt the devil down? Or should she call the police? Or Nick? She needed to stand up for her little girl, to show her she cared. So which of those things said that most clearly? Which should she do?

  JILLIAN WASN’T SURPRISED WHEN THE POLICE CAR PULLED UP TO THE Coxes’. In fact, she’d been waiting for it in some weird way. Obviously someone had seen the three of them skipping school and had turned them in. Would she be suspended—or expelled, even? Would it go on her permanent record, a black mark that would wreck her chances of getting into the college of her choice?

  She watched from her bedroom window as a policewoman walked up to the Coxes’ door. She had a gun in her holster. She was coming for Lindy, the ringleader, first. Jillian would have to sit next to Lindy in the police car, Lindy casting awful looks her way. It had been mean of her and Mark to run away when Lindy fell in the water, but Jillian had been scared. Who knew what Lindy might do if she was really mad? Better to let her calm down, and then apologize. Jillian and Mark had given each other significant looks before they ran their separate ways, home. Jillian wasn’t sure what the looks signified, but clearly something important had happened between them.

  The police officer stayed in the Coxes’ house for dragging minutes, then came outside and started up the Millers’ front path. She didn’t look mad. She looked bored, as if she was sick of arresting juvenile delinquents for skipping school. That’s what Jillian was now. A juvenile delinquent.

  She wanted to hide. The policewoman couldn’t arrest her if she hid. The trouble was that Uncle Terrance was sleeping on the couch in the living room. Jillian had been surprised to see him there, but not shocked; he often ended up at their house. Luckily he hadn’t woken up when she came in. Not even Candy had, which was a total miracle.

  If Jillian hid and Uncle Terrance opened the door to a police officer, it might scare him. Then again, if the officer said she was looking for Jillian, Terrance could honestly say he thought she was at school, and Jillian knew from TV that you had to have a warrant to search the house—but did Uncle Terrance know that? What should she do? The police officer started up the front porch steps. Hide! She closed her bedroom door just as the doorbell chimed. Candy barked.

  “Coming,” Uncle Terrance called, groggy, after it chimed a second time.

  Jillian listened to their conversation through her closed door, unable to catch more than a word here and there. She felt bad for chickening out. Uncle Terrance must be confused and maybe even worried about her. She turned her doorknob, wanting to rescue him, then let it go again, afraid. She’d never talked to a police officer before. She could hear the front door open, and the sound of voices getting louder—clearly the policewoman was leaving. When their voices had faded, Jillian opened her door quietly. The living room was empty except for the dog. Her tail thumped when she saw Jillian.

  “Uncle Terrance?” she called, but the house had an empty feeling to it.

  Jillian looked out the window in time to see the police officer nudge Uncle Terrance, in handcuffs, into the back of the police car. Jillian bounced up and down on her toes. She had to do something. She ran out onto the porch to tell her that it had been a mistake, that it was her, Jillian, they were after, but it was too late. The police car was already driving away.

  ALLISON ROLLED SUZANNE’S WHEELCHAIR DOWN THE HALL TO THE elevator, her brain numb after so many hours in the hospital. All she could see was white. White lights. White shiny floor. White coats.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Suzanne kept asking, and frankly, Allison didn’t know how to answer. Grant had not returned to the hospital all day. Now Suzanne was being released to go home and he still wasn’t there.

  “The deposition must have gone on longer than he thought,” Allison said, a lame excuse that even she didn’t believe. Maybe he got hit by a car. That would be a legitimate reason, but then wouldn’t he have come to the hospital with injuries?

  Was he panicking because they’d had a scare with the baby, or over the thought that Suzanne would be on bed rest for months? In either case, you couldn’t just abandon your pregnant wife. Allison’s estimation of Grant, so high during those first weeks of Annie Get Your Gun rehearsals, had plummeted.

  Men, she thought, thinking not just about Grant but about Nick and Ted. She still couldn’t believe they had gone at it last night, two foolish middle-aged men wrestling in the snow. It was the duel she’d always hoped for, only it turned out to be idiotic instead of noble.

  Breaking it off with Nick was arguably the smartest thing she had ever done in her life. As smart as it was stupid to have taken up with him. Sometimes she missed the excitement, and, frankly, the human contact, but she was firm in her resolve. Her desire was like the lingering effects of a cold, the last sniffles or coughs before you felt like you’d recovered—though she wondered how long it would take to really feel like herself again. Maybe she never would.

  “Wait here,” she told Suzanne, parking the wheelchair in the hospital lobby and heading out to the parking lot.

  Allison plugged in her phone in the car. New-call messages popped onto the screen rapid fire, the same callers over and over: home, Ted, Jillian, Ted, Jillian. Allison felt bubbles of panic in her chest. She dialed her voice mail and listened. It was all so garbled. Jillian, crying, something about Terrance. Ted, weary, “the police station,” and one from Grant, “mea culpa.”

  TED SCANNED THE POLICE STATION, LOOKING FOR TERRANCE. IT wasn’t hard to find him. It was a quiet station, near the high-end shopping and restaurant district by the Metro, a place that probably only saw action on the weekends, when drunks and purse snatchers came out to play. Only one police officer seemed to be on duty, and she was on the phone.

  Terrance was sitting on a bench by the window looking out at the street, calm. Ted sat down next to him. “Hey, pal.”

 
“Seven people crossed at the intersection that time, Ted. The time before, it was only three.”

  Ted nodded.

  “One lady ran across when the light was green for the cars, and everyone honked at her.”

  “How you doing, Terr?”

  “Now it’s the cars’ turn.”

  They watched the cars go. Even Ted found it soothing.

  “I did something bad,” Terrance said after a while.

  Ted nodded, wishing they could stay in this moment, the before moment, forever. The police officer had called him to explain.

  “Six people that time, Ted,” Terrance said. “Plus a dog.”

  “You didn’t hurt her, did you, bro?”

  Terrance said nothing.

  “Just tell me you didn’t hurt her.”

  “I didn’t hurt her,” he said.

  Ted nodded, feeling relieved until he realized Terrance was just repeating his words. “Didn’t hurt whom?” Ted said, testing him.

  “Whom,” Terrance said.

  Sometimes he forgot just how disabled his brother was. He knew Terrance hadn’t forgotten what had happened today—he remembered everything, from what he’d paid for a hamburger last week to the shirt he wore on their last birthday—but the order of the importance of things was shuffled in his mind. “Do you know why you’re here?” Ted said. “At the police station?”

  “I cut down the Christmas tree,” Terrance said.

  “What?”

  “That was bad. The police lady came to the house.”

  “You cut down the Christmas tree?”

  Terrance nodded.

  “The town tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “During the meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the heck, Terrance?” Ted felt for an instant, the first instant in his life, that he didn’t know his brother. Until now he’d felt like they were the same person, a slight variation on the same soul. Maybe he’d been wrong in thinking he could never have hurt Lindy Cox. Maybe Terrance was capable of all kinds of things Ted couldn’t fathom. “How could you, Terr? Did someone dare you? Or pay you? Did someone pay you?”

  “It was Thomas.”

  “Thomas isn’t real.”

  “I was just kidding, Ted.”

  “Don’t kid.”

  “Ever?”

  “Now. Don’t kid now.”

  “I used Dad’s saw.”

  “You got it out of the toolshed to cut down the town Christmas tree?”

  “I’m a responsible carpenter, Ted. You are too. We’re both responsible carpenters.”

  “That was not exactly being a responsible carpenter, Terrance! I don’t think Dad would have been too happy about that! I think . . . I think he might have revoked your privileges.”

  It was a mean thing to say, a knife to the gut—but hadn’t Terrance stabbed him in the back by cutting down the tree? Terrance had cut down the tree?!

  “Why, Terr?” Ted’s tone was harsh. He could hear it, but he couldn’t help it.

  Terrance’s eyes brimmed. “Nick Cox decorated it, and you hate him. And trees grow, right, Ted? The town can plant a new one. Right? I did it for you. For brothers. Right, Ted?”

  Ted put his head in his hands.

  “Are you okay, Teddy?”

  Ted reached out a hand and patted his brother’s shoulder. Another well-meaning gesture gone wrong. It was the story of their lives. “Oh, Terrance.”

  “It’s okay, right, Ted?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Terrance shuddered the way Jillian used to when she was little, when she’d just completed a long crying jag and was coming into herself again.

  Ted would buy a new tree, and plant it, one that was already a good height, ten to twelve feet—make amends that way. The way Cox should have. It would be kind of embarrassing, but Ted could stand it for Terrance’s sake. And it was just one tree. Cox was to blame for the bulk of the damage in town. He’d been the one to inspire Terrance. Terrance never would have thought of cutting down a tree if Cox hadn’t been cutting down all the little ones. He was still the real culprit. Ted would catch him yet.

  Meanwhile, there were more pressing matters at hand. “You didn’t hurt anyone?”

  He shook his head. “I was careful.”

  “I mean, that’s all you did?”

  Terrance shook his head no.

  Ted sighed. “What else did you do?”

  “I pulled up some little trees when I was mad,” Terrance said.

  Ted stood up, his arms flying in the air. “You’ve been cutting down the little trees too? Jeez, Terr. Why?”

  “Was that bad? Trees grow, Ted.”

  “Yes. It’s bad. It’s very bad!”

  Terrance tipped his head, the way Candy did sometimes, when she wanted to understand her human family. Ted softened. “It’s not great, Terr, but it’s not as bad as . . . did you hurt Lindy Cox?”

  “Who?”

  “The little girl. The Coxes’ girl. The blond one who lives next door.”

  “Jillian’s friend.”

  Ted frowned. “I suppose.”

  “When?”

  “What do you mean, ‘When’? Tell me everything you did today, Terr.”

  “I took the eight fifteen bus and then I transferred to the L-4 and I walked up Wisconsin Avenue and I came to the house and Grant made me eggs. Then I took a nap,” he said. “A long one. That’s because I stayed up till three. They had a Beverly Hillbillies marathon on TV. I watched till three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Then what?”

  “When I woke up the police lady was there.”

  “That’s all?” Ted wanted to laugh, to dance.

  Terrance lowered his head. “I didn’t get you an ice scraper. Want to go now and get one?”

  “Soon,” Ted said, hugging him. “We’ll go get it soon.”

  KAYE MADE A BIG DINNER THAT NIGHT. A BIG, FABULOUS WELCOME dinner for the Davenport-Gardners, complete with jumbo shrimp and porterhouse steaks, an arugula-free salad and baked potatoes with sour cream and butter and fresh chives. She’d cooked it up in record time, chopping and marinating and broiling so fast it was a miracle nothing was frozen solid or burned. The food sat on the plates like a meal in a cooking magazine, beautiful and untouched by the people surrounding it. The only Davenport-Gardner in attendance was Adam.

  Suzanne lay on the chaise in the den. She had an excuse not to be hungry, having just come back from the hospital. No one knew where Grant was. Nick had been the last person to talk to him early this morning, when he invited their family to stay with them. Grant seemed to have disappeared.

  Adam put a big chunk of butter on his potato for the thrill of watching it melt, it looked like. Jakey never ate anything but mac and cheese, so it was no surprise that he didn’t eat. He looked down, as though he was feeling sorry about something, but Kaye knew for a fact he just had a video game on his lap. Nick made up for his lack of eating by doing an extra amount of drinking. He might as well have put the bottle of wine to his lips and saved himself the bother of dirtying a glass, Kaye thought, holding out her glass for a refill.

  Lindy’s seat was empty. She was in her room. She was grounded for the rest of her life. That and whatever the police planned to do to her for lying to them. For a while she’d stomped around upstairs, screaming and making the dining room chandelier shake, but she was quiet now. She’d probably worn herself out and had fallen asleep, exhausted, like she used to when she was little.

  Jillian, shivering and rattled looking, had come by the house earlier that day. Kaye had been so glad to see her—she’d missed her!—but Jillian wouldn’t look her in the eye. She told Kaye the whole story, about skipping school, and how Mark let go of the tire swing too soon. Her uncle Terrance had spent the morning napping, not kidnapping. She and Mark had already told the police what had happened. Kaye, arguably more embarrassed than angry, dragged Lindy down to the police station where Lindy, cornered, told them she
’d made the whole thing up. Kaye had done the wrong thing, turning Terrance in to the police. It had felt like the right thing at the time, but it had been wrong.

  She tried to get the dinner conversation going. “How’s school going, Adam? I hear you’re back at school.” “Anyone need salt?”—but her attempts fizzled. Nick poked at his meat tentatively, like maybe it wasn’t dead yet.

  Kaye, tears springing up in her eyes, loaded her plate and the kids’ plates up her arm—she’d not been a waitress all those summers for nothing—and dumped them in the kitchen sink, hard. One plate split neatly down the middle. It made her feel like throwing them, really slamming them at the walls and windows, but it might scare little Adam. Instead she stuffed them in the trash can, plates, food, and all, pulling out a few good chunks of meat for Rex. She cleared the rest of the table, singing, “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” as she removed forks and knives and water glasses, wineglasses and the butter and the sour cream and the extra potatoes and the salad bowl and the salt and pepper and threw them all into the trash. Then she tossed the broiling pan and the cocktail sauce jar in the trash too. The kitchen looked as good as it did after Carmen cleaned it.

  Kaye went back out to the dining room, smiling a brittle smile. “He’s free now, all charges dropped, so no harm done, right?”

  The little boys and Nick looked at her, expressions blank.

  Kaye wanted to pick up a chair and throw it, but you couldn’t do that, could you? Throw $2,000 chairs? Oh, what was the use of it all? All the worry, all the buying and planning, and trying to be a good hostess and wife and mother. All that fuss for nothing. No one cared. She was like the maid. Undervalued. Replaceable.

  She brought in dessert, a layer cake from the fancy bakery near the Metro, an oversize wonder of a cake, thick with chocolate frosting and huge, chocolate-covered strawberries on top. It said “Welcome home!” in red frosting.

  “Terrance Miller is probably at home watching TV,” Kaye said, trying to keep the tears out of her voice. “He’s probably got his slippers on and his feet up and a bowl of popcorn on his lap. He probably doesn’t even remember what happened to him. Because nothing happened to him! It was an honest mistake. That’s all. We all make them.” She smiled hard and went back to the kitchen. She ran the water so they wouldn’t hear her sob.