The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (12 page)

H
ank 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.

T
hey 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.”

Joe swallowed. “Did he hurt you?”

“His smell hurt me.”

“But did he
hurt
you, Judith?”

Sam knew how much strength it took his uncle to ask this question. You could see him bracing for the worst answer, his forehead damp. Judith just waved a hand—Sam hated her casualness, her airiness, when his uncle—
his
uncle—was putting all his might into this rescue.

“He smelled, that's all,” she said. “Body odor.” Here she dropped her head over her right shoulder, lifted her elbow, and sniffed once at her own armpit. Then she looked up. “If he taught me one thing it's not to believe everything you hear, Joe. Especially when it rhymes.”

“Stop it,” Sam said. He wouldn't spend another minute in this room. “Just—stop.”

She smiled. “Stop what?”

They were quiet.

Then she said, “Look, I didn't ask to be rescued.”

“Yes you did.”

Joe said, “The car's right outside.”

“I did
not
ask to be rescued.”

“You did.”

“All right now, kids—”

“No,” said Judith, to Sam. Her eyes were wide. “I wanted someone to see me here. That's all I wanted.”

“We see you, honey,” Joe said. “Now it's time to go.”

He picked up her bag. He looked so strange, so pathetic, almost criminal, a big man holding a pink bag with a picture of a ballerina girl on its side.

Judith blinked—her eyes were suddenly glassy. “I can't go yet.”

“Of course you can. Stand up, honey. Follow us.”

She shook her head. Would she cry? Sam thought she might, but he was wrong. She laughed, a few hard, trilling notes, then said, “I want to stay here until he comes back and I want you both to tie him up.”

“You're lying,” Sam said. It just came out, he didn't mean it to say it. She was playing—she was teasing them. He wouldn't be teased! He had sacrificed so much for her, and here she was in this filthy room, mocking them, half dressed, uncombed, probably high…

“I think I should call the police. I think that's the thing to do.” Joe spun around, searching for a phone, but there wasn't one. A spot in the wall looked like it might have once held a phone jack; now it was just a dark hole sprouting scorched wires.

“I'm kidding,” she sighed. “Sam's right, I'm kidding.” At once she appeared exhausted. “He'll never come back. He broke my heart is all. He left me. A guy, a dude, no one. I'll move on. That's the whole of it. Jesus, Uncle Joe, look at you.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, like a sleepy child. “Listen, no one's going to hurt me here. Not a soul. There's no one left to hurt me. If you want to know the truth, there's more danger out that door than in this shithole. This is the safest I've been my whole life. But you don't want the truth. Why would you? I don't blame you for it.”

Joe straightened. His hands, Sam saw, were shaking. “We're leaving now,” he said.

She shook her head. “I want a few more minutes. Just a little bit. Let me be alone with Sam? I can't leave right this second. I need Sam. Please. Someone my age who doesn't believe everything he hears.”

“You two can talk in the car.”

She untucked her legs from beneath her, slid to the edge of the bed, crossed them politely. She straightened the straps of her dress. She said, “I appreciate that you've come here, Uncle Joe. I realize it was a long drive, and I realize I've frightened you. I apologize. I haven't seen anyone or talked to anyone for days, and it's made me strange. Pardon me. I would really appreciate the opportunity to communicate with someone who's apt to understand what young people feel these days. If you could just wait outside. On the third floor there's a lounge with a candy machine and a bunch of old newspapers. A quick talk with Sam and then I'll be ready to go. Sam gets me. Sam understands, doesn't he? Better than any of us.”

Joe looked at Sam. His eyes said:
A girl's in trouble.
His eyes said:
Tell me what to do.
Sam was afraid to be alone with her. He had never seen his uncle so befuddled, never seen his uncle so out of place, and seeing this was enraging and also, strangely, satisfying. He had promised Joe he would be nice, but he felt, for the first time in his life, that he could
not
be nice.

“Sure, Joe,” said Sam. “I'll talk to her for a couple minutes. We'll come get you in the lounge.”

Joe looked unsure, but he nodded, checked his watch. “You can have ten minutes. That's it. Ten minutes. Then we have to go. And, Sam, if someone knocks on the door, don't let them in.”

Joe closed the door; they heard him move away. Sam stood awkwardly by the bed. He inhaled stale air. Traffic moved in the distance. A siren, a toilet flushing upstairs, water—city water—chugging through the pipes around them. Everything was dirty. He had the sense that something momentous could happen here. A city siren. A city hotel. Here, too, a city girl, in a way. His heart picked up.

Judith leaned back on her elbows. “God, your poor uncle's about to have a stroke. I almost forgot what a puppy he is.”

He had no idea what she wanted from him.

“You're being—an ass.” He said it.

“Oh, I'm not that bad.”

“He's trying to help you. We drove for hours.”

She shrugged.

He said, “He's not your uncle, either.”

“He's not your dad.”

“Just be nice. Be nice to him or—” There was no way to finish it. He had nothing.

She smiled. “That's the spirit.” Then she said, “You have the saddest story, Sam, don't you? Even sadder than mine.”

“Shut up,” he said.

She stared at him levelly. Her eyes were a cool gray. She blinked. He saw the remnant of a cut on the corner of her mouth. She was skinny in the way of sickness, skinny and shaking imperceptibly and ready to pounce, like a trapped animal, in this rented room. He realized something terrible had happened to her. For a moment this frightened him—what had happened? what had she seen? who had done what to her?—but it was followed by an abrupt sense of relief. Yes, something bad had happened, but it was over. She had survived it in some manner or other. He felt his face relax.

She said, “I haven't told a single lie.”

“I doubt that.”

“I
did
get my hands on a knife. I didn't use it, though. I held it up and told him I'd kill him. You know what he did?”

Sam didn't answer.

“He laughed. I was nothing to him. You, my dear, are what they call baggage. I feel about you as I do a head of cabbage. He said stuff like that. I wanted to do something that would leave a hell of a scar.”

She looked at him carefully. Then she said, “You've got a nice mouth.” It was offered with a gentleness he hadn't expected, and he didn't know what to do with it. He grabbed his lip with his teeth. Nine minutes. They kept looking at each other. Eight.