by Tim Hennessy
“Skip the pink house,” she called out to him, and he nodded, scanning the rest of the houses as if he were counting them. She wondered what he did for work.
She finished before him. At first, she believed this was a good thing—efficient. But while she waited on her cement steps, getting more uncomfortable as her jeans let in the cold from the ground, she felt nervous. Did her strange man find the girl? Did he meet up with Melissa or Joe and rejoin them already? Had she missed it? Finally, she saw him, walking back with his hands stuffed into the pocket of his hoodie. He looked defeated.
“Nothing,” he said.
Before he left, he asked her to let him know what happened. If they found Jessica, he said. Her name came out of his mouth without any hesitation, which put Nancy off. He was just a stranger, after all.
* * *
The police came later, around dusk. One parked in the Kings’ driveway, and the other drove around the neighborhood, slowly. They both had their lights on but left their sirens off, and it looked very strange, as if they had been muted. One of the officers showed up at her door, asking again if she had seen Jessica. Nancy told them no, but that she had helped search for a while that morning.
“And did anything come from that?”
She was embarrassed. “No,” she said.
“Well, if you see her, or think of anything, give us a call.” He handed her a card and walked to the next house, where the couple she had met earlier, and still couldn’t name, waited at the door.
The neighbors gathered in front of the Kings’ house that night. They had flashlights that kept sweeping into Nancy’s house. She watched as they went to the trail and then back into the woods and brush, their lights streaming and blinking in and out. Nancy didn’t think she had a flashlight.
* * *
She showed up to the first official daytime search party. They met in the middle of the street; this way, Melissa said, if people wanted to get through they would have to ask what was going on. As if they didn’t know already. Jessica’s picture was somehow already everywhere, printed with the concrete details of her person, everything she could have possibly been: Age 4, strawberry-blond hair, blue eyes, 40 inches tall, 39 pounds. Last seen in her room. They ran her face on the news, with Melissa still smiling and talking beside it. “She loves animals,” she had said.
“Okay, everyone!” Melissa shouted to the crowd. Nancy didn’t know how many people were there, she was never very good at guessing how many gumballs were in the jar, but the crowd was large. “These are the places that Jessica knows!”
She handed out maps with playgrounds and the grocery store highlighted in fluorescent pink. Her handwriting was perfect as if she were replying to a wedding invitation instead of writing down the spots her missing daughter had frequented. Jessica liked to watch the dogs here, with a beautiful X crossing over the dog park. It took a moment before Nancy realized that Melissa was giving directions. She talked too fast and then trailed off. As Nancy watched her, she noticed that one of Melissa’s eyes kept drifting. When Melissa finished, she clapped her hands together, and Nancy expected her to jump in the air.
“Let’s go, everyone! Let’s find our girl!” But Jessica wasn’t their girl.
* * *
The search party numbers rapidly declined. The news conference had changed things. Nancy woke up to the noises that morning, the loud murmuring outside of her small house. She half opened her eyes, squinting as her contacts squeezed them tightly. Her TV was on, but the volume was low, too low to be the source of the sound. Then she saw the side of her house on the screen and instinctively put a hand over her face.
She went to her front window and spread the blinds with her fingers. A massive crowd spilled over onto her lawn from the Kings’ front porch, where Melissa was holding a piece of paper and a cupcake, and Joe stood behind her, looking down. Nancy ran back to her room and watched.
“Hey, everyone! Thank you so much for coming today because it’s a very special day today. Wow, I’m saying that word a lot.” Melissa laughed. “But today is Jessica’s fifth birthday, and we just wanted to let everyone know that we haven’t forgotten, and we want to celebrate with you all.”
She started singing and held the cupcake out in front of her. She interrupted herself after the first “Happy birthday to you,” and said, “Come on, help me out.” That’s when Nancy could hear them from her bedroom, a slow and awkward song that sounded more like people talking at once than singing. Joe kept his mouth closed, though he started swaying back and forth a little. There was a two-second delay, and at the end, she heard a few of them clap before she saw Melissa blow out the candle.
“Take a bite,” Melissa said, handing it to Joe.
He waved it away without even glancing at it.
She laughed, then said, “Does anyone else want it?”
Nobody said a word, and most of them turned their heads away.
“Well, can’t let it go to waste,” she said. She took a big bite, without restraint. The frosting stained her teeth instantly.
* * *
The first snow came just before Christmas, and the flyer taped to the cement light pole outside Nancy’s work was slipping. Jessica’s face had started to warp. The top of her head was protected under the layers of scotch tape, and you could see the part in her hair, but her cheeks and nose had melted. You could still see the row of baby teeth between her lips. Nancy thought about taking it down and replacing it later, but the idea of touching it made her wipe her hand down her coat.
The restaurant was small, and the smell of garlic hit her first thing as she walked in the door. She hated it now. There were only a handful of people dining, which was as many as there ever were. Inside the glass menu case at the front was another flyer, this one well-preserved and hanging perfectly straight. On it, you could see that the sundress Jessica was wearing had red and yellow balloons on it, floating up toward her neck.
Nancy took a basket of bread over to a two-top and set it down. While she arranged the oil and vinegar and placed the small plates in front of two faceless people, she half listened to their conversation about how much homework their kids had. In the beginning, any mention of children would dredge up Jessica’s name. “Those poor parents,” and, “I can’t imagine.” The phrases that flow out of people’s mouths when they’re automatically responding to something while thinking about something else. You can imagine, of course you can, Nancy would think. It’s not difficult.
Once, a woman had told the other woman she was with that she would never have bought a house so close to the river. “It’s like living on a busy street,” she said.
“I live next to the river, and it’s fine. Beautiful,” Nancy had said.
The woman was taken aback and leaned away from her. “Do you have kids?” she asked.
“Sure,” Nancy said. They didn’t leave a tip.
By mid-December, a month after Jessica disappeared, the conversations had changed, and the phrases were altered. “But those parents,” and, “Can you imagine?” They didn’t whisper this like they had before. They didn’t treat their words carefully.
When she got home one night, she pulled into her driveway and her lights caught something in the distance. Melissa was walking away from her house, and Nancy could only see the pale skin of her back as she disappeared down the small hill. It was like seeing a ghost. Nancy got out of her car and ran over to the edge of her backyard, but she couldn’t see Melissa. She shouted her name, but the sound of it reminded her of Joe’s “Joy!” and she clapped a hand over her mouth. She stood as the snow fell over the tops of her shoes, hitting her socks and skin.
* * *
She had forgotten how she met the strange man, but he was apparently a bartender working a few blocks away from her house, and that made sense—Nancy didn’t like to go too far. She hadn’t gone out in a while; the winter forced her inside like a mouse. He was playing bar dice when she walked in, and he slammed the shaker down hard enough that the sound bou
nced off the door that had closed behind her. He saw her before she could turn around, and he smiled. She gave him a small wave and walked up to the bar.
“Hey there,” he said, coming over to her.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you?”
“Good. What can I get you?”
“A PBR is fine, thanks.”
“Tallboy?”
“Sure.”
He turned and bent over to get in the fridge. His shirt lifted up, showing the small of his back, and Nancy closed her eyes.
“Your friend’s playing pool,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Your neighbor, you know . . .”
Then she saw her.
Melissa smiled and threw her head back as she touched the arm of the man at the pool table with her. He was barely a man—he looked young. The two of them together made it seem like Melissa was a young mother with her adult son.
“I called you a few times.” He smiled.
“I got a new phone,” Nancy said. She never answered numbers she didn’t know, though she wouldn’t have answered if she did. She dug her nails under the tab and kept watching her neighbor.
Finally, Melissa saw her, and she waved before running over. She smelled like hard alcohol and perfume. “Nancy!” she said. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“Melissa, are you okay?”
“Actually, I’m thirsty. Let’s have my friend get us some drinks.” She waved him over, furiously. “Nancy, this is my friend Zak. He’s an art student like I was. Look at his hands!” She grabbed them and pushed them into Nancy’s face. They were stained with blue paint in the nail beds and the creases between his fingers. His hair was long and brown; he had an unkempt beard and muddy eyes.
“I was thinking we could head back soon.” He leaned over Melissa, saying it into the top of her hair.
“He’s going to show me something he’s working on. Do you want to come?”
“Melissa, do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, wouldn’t Joe worry about where you are?”
“It won’t take too long.”
“Why don’t you stay for a while?”
“The building’s going to close soon,” Zak said.
“I think we’re going to go now. But it was good seeing you.” Melissa said the last part as if she were leaving a party at someone’s house because she was tired.
“No, wait.” But before Nancy could get off her stool, Melissa was already at the door. When she got outside, she saw Melissa running, a block down, holding her shoes in her hands and laughing as her breath steamed out of her mouth.
Nancy went home with the strange man whose name was Rob. This time, things were clearer, though she was good and drunk. There were no animal noises, no demonic screams, and they both kept their shirts on. Rob, the strange man, left before she woke up.
* * *
When spring came, everyone waited. If someone went in while it was cold, the river held onto the body until the temperature rose. The gasses expanded, causing it to become buoyant and float up to the top like a dead fish. Nancy looked through her blinds when she woke up and went to sleep as if she were checking an alarm. Yet nothing changed. After the grass had grown to an embarrassing height, Nancy rolled out her lawn mower one afternoon but couldn’t get it started.
“It’s out of gas,” Joe said. He stood behind her on his side of the dip between their lawns.
“Right,” she said. “Shit.”
“I have some in mine. I’ll bring it over and take care of it.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. I’ll run over to the gas station and fill the thing up.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Joe’s arms shook as he cut the yard. He started sweating around the collar of his shirt and in his armpits, even though the lawn was small. Finally, when he finished, he let the bar snap back from his hands, keeping them rested on the handle.
“Thank you,” Nancy said from her seat on the steps. She was apprehensive about going up to him.
He nodded, breathing deeply. “Melissa’s been acting strange,” he said abruptly.
Nancy stared at him. He wasn’t looking back; he narrowed his eyes at his house.
“I’m sure it’s hard,” Nancy said.
“She walks around the house at night, she can’t sleep. I can’t sleep either, but she’s talking to herself. She comes back to bed in the morning, and she’s not wearing anything, but when I look, I can’t find her clothes. I don’t know where she’s putting them . . . You should see her sometime. She could use a little, I don’t know, distraction. Maybe you could take her out? The house is hard for her. She doesn’t like to be around here.” He twirled his finger around.
“Okay. Sure,” Nancy said.
* * *
After they brought Jessica up, the police gave an update. They said there was no indication of foul play, and she had died from drowning brought on by hypothermia. They didn’t say that her muscles tore after twisting in the cold. They said her body had gotten stuck down there, but didn’t elaborate. There was no mention of the Ferris wheel.
Nancy fell asleep early that night, but she slept fitfully as she dreamed of being underwater for too long. When she snapped her eyes open, she was facing the wall and noticed a rectangle of light cut up in lines. She turned and saw Melissa in her kitchen, sitting at a table with a drawing in her hand. She wasn’t looking at the drawing, but instead stared out the sliding glass doors into the dark. It was a messy picture, on a piece of tan coloring-book paper. A pair of blue and green horses stood side by side. Jessica’s name was smeared over the top; she had painted it with her fingers, leaving prints all over. Nancy suddenly wanted to call the man from the bar and tell him that they’d found her, but she didn’t know his number.
The next morning, she woke up and saw Melissa with her head down on the table and her arms spread out in front of her, almost unnaturally long. It scared Nancy, and she hit the glass with her palm. Melissa didn’t move, and so she did it again—in rapid succession like a large bird trying to get into her house, or out of it. Melissa shot up in the chair, her face red on one side with the crease from the table leaf cutting through her cheek. They stared at one another until Melissa got up and walked to the sliding doors. Nancy crawled out of bed and walked to the back door. Melissa stood in her yard, looking toward the river.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Melissa said.
“No, it’s fine. I just thought . . .”
“I know. I think I scare everybody, all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said, and before she could stop herself, she added, “I can’t imagine.”
“Do you want to take a walk with me?”
Nancy walked with her down the Oak Leaf Trail; they went slowly and started drifting closer together. Melissa stopped and turned left into the woods on a smaller, unmarked dirt trail that took them both down to the river. There, a long pile of rocks reached out into the water like a makeshift pier.
“It’s like dying but staying alive, even though you’re all dead, every part of you,” Melissa said.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said again.
“They found her underneath a Ferris wheel. There’s old rides down there from an amusement park that used to be nearby. They just threw them in the river when they closed the park. I wish they’d kept it. It would have been nice to have that kind of thing close.”
Nancy thought of wet and rotting roller coasters, all of the cars sloshing with mud as they jerked along the track.
“We never even took her to the fair. Is that funny? I took her here, to this spot. She named it, but then kept renaming it. I don’t know what it was last,” Melissa said.
“I’m sure she loved it.”
“She must have been so cold. I tried to understand,” Melissa said. She picked up a small rock from the water and held it in her hand before she put in her pocket.“No one’s out here. No fishing or kayaking. Seems strange, no?”
“
You’re right.”
Nancy walked to the last rocks, letting the water creep up on her feet. Maybe people were afraid to go in. To fall or get caught up in something they couldn’t see. The park was bigger than anything they thought could be beneath them. The rides could float up, dirty and bloated just the same as Jessica. Underneath the muddy brown surface were long, twisting tracks; carousel horses that had once been colorful bared their teeth; and fallen towers covered in shattered lightbulbs rested in wait. Somewhere, too, there was an iron gate that said, Welcome to Wonderland. Nancy didn’t want to know what was down there. She didn’t want to see underneath.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Shauna Singh Baldwin is a novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Her awards include the Writers’ Union of Canada Prize, the CBC Literary Prize, the Friends of American Writers Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean), and a short-listing for the Giller Prize. Her seventh book is Reluctant Rebellions. Baldwin received her MBA from Marquette University, and an MFA from the University of British Columbia.
James E. Causey is an award-winning columnist and special projects reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He received his BA in communications from Marquette University in Milwaukee, and his MBA from Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point, Wisconsin. Causey was also a 2007–08 Neiman Fellow at Harvard University. He is married and has one daughter.
Christi Clancy grew up in Whitefish Bay and now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where her yard is woolly, wild, and pesticide-free. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Sun Magazine, and in Glimmer Train Stories, Hobart, Pleiades, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Beloit College.
Reed Farrel Coleman is the New York Times best-selling author of twenty-eight novels including stand-alones and those in his Moe Prager and Gus Murphy series. He is also the current author of Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone novels. He is a four-time recipient of the Shamus Award and a four-time Edgar Award nominee. He is currently writing the prequel novel to director Michael Mann’s movie Heat.