All Dressed Up (36 page)

“No.”

“Who is he,
then?”

“Your real
dad? We should call him your biological dad. I explained it, didn’t
I? He was my boyfriend for a while, but then we split up. I guess I
can tell you more about him…”

“No, but who’s
Dad? If Mom and Dad are your mom and dad.”

“They’re your
grandparents.”

His face
dropped in shock.

In the
silence, Emma heard voices. Someone had arrived at the beach but
she couldn’t see who it was. Billy took no notice. He stopped
snapping sticks. He sat with the soles of his feet pressed
together, his knees out, his elbows resting on the knees and his
head dropped so she could only see hair and lashes and some nose,
no expression. He didn’t speak.

“Don’t you
have anything to say?”

He shrugged.
“I just wanted to know what Lainie meant.”

“So I’ve
explained and it’s okay. You know it’s okay, don’t you, Billy?” She
didn’t know if this was pathetic. Or even possible. To get some
sign from him that he’d taken it in and dealt with it and had no
questions. The when two people love each other and the man puts his
blah blah blah and the sitcom comment had suggested that too much
detail would embarrass him. Adults were the ones who verbally
hammered these subjects to death, not kids. She couldn’t keep vigil
over his reaction – a cat watching a mousehole, waiting for
something to come out.

Maybe he was
fine. Maybe his world was still intact. Hey, Billy, is your world
still intact? Pretend I’m the kid and you’re the adult. Give me
reassurance. We’re supposed to hug now, and the audience does their
ahhh, and then there’s a commercial break and one more laugh and
the sitcom episode is over.

She heard Mom
and Sarah and the new arrival on the beach. Was that Lainie? She
said something about left it in the car, and Emma realized she must
have brought the mended gown. She had phoned to say she would do it
sometime today, between clients. It seemed so unimportant.

I’ll have to
go look at it. I’ll have to say the right things.

“Are you okay,
Billy?” she repeated. “Wanna go back to the beach?”

“There’s
someone there.”

“Charlie’s
mom. You don’t have to see her. You can sneak around by the track
if you want to go back to the house, and stay in your room. I’d
better go say hi, though.” She waited for an announcement from him
about what he planned to do, but it didn’t come. “So are you
staying here for a bit, or what?” she prompted.

“Staying here,
then going up to the house.”

“Okay, see you
in a bit. Take the towel when you go.” He’d dropped it on a
rock.

She turned a
couple of times on her way back to the beach to check that he was
still by the creek or starting off up the track, because there had
to be more to his reaction than he’d shown so far. Didn’t there?
Could it really be no biggie?

Lainie’s face
was screwed up in apology, her hands winding together against her
stomach.

“It’s almost
perfect,” Emma said. “You can’t tell at all.”

“Well, you
can.”

“Lainie,
please don’t worry about it for another second.”

It was
agonizing. Sarah and Mom had their faces screwed up, too. It was
stupid, embarrassing, awkward, wrong. It just didn’t matter. They
stood in the living room, all the lights switched on against the
dimness, Sarah up on a chair with the dress sweeping almost to the
ground from its white padded satin hanger.

Billy was
nowhere to be seen. Mom, Lainie, Sarah and Emma had stood on the
beach for several minutes talking – about what, for God’s sake? –
before coming up to the house. Billy’s towel lay draped over a
chair and his bike was missing from its rack near the bottom of the
steps.

It seemed
typically appalling and wrong that the dress had once again taken
the limelight at the wrong time, had muscled in on Billy’s needs.
Emma felt that the only reason she wasn’t taking a knife to the
fabric right now was because she didn’t want to validate the dress
with that much attention.

It’s not about
you, honey.

It’s not even
about me, she realized. Sarah would be so proud! Aloud she said
quickly, “I’m worried about Billy. Can we just put the dress away?
He was – I’d like to know where he is. His bike’s missing. He was –
he overheard Lainie and me talking in the hospital, the day he had
the tube put in. Lainie, he overheard you asking me if Billy was
mine. He asked me about it while we were in the woods.”

“Oh dear God…”
Mom said.

They found the
bike dumped by the gate, but there was no sign of its owner. Sarah
scootered it back to the house, foot on one pedal and the bike
leaning precariously to balance her weight. Lainie needed to leave.
She’d hugged Billy like a step-grandmother in the hospital last
week. Now she had a step-grandmother look of concern and
involvement in her eyes. “Call me as soon as you find him.
Please?”

“You know what
kids are like,” Mom said, convincing herself. “He can’t have gone
far.”

They drove up
and down the road looking for him.

“Why didn’t
you tell me, Emma?” Mom kept saying. “Why didn’t you tell me the
second you came out of the woods?”

“He seemed
okay. I mean, I knew he couldn’t be, but don’t kids hate it when
you nag at them for more emotional detail? I couldn’t go on
pestering him to tell me how he felt. He’d already said he didn’t
want it like a sitcom. You know, when they hold back the laugh
track and go all emotional. And I couldn’t lie to him and tell him
he’d heard Lainie wrong. And then Lainie herself was there… I told
him he didn’t have to see anyone, just to go up to the house. I
don’t think this was me stuffing it up, Mom. For once. With my head
I don’t think it. Oh God, but my stomach thinks so. It’s
churning.”

“He hasn’t run
away,” Sarah said. “He’s hiding. I’m sure he’s just hiding.”

“He’s only
four days out of the hospital.” Mom was shaking. “I don’t care if
he’s run away or just hiding. I want to find him. Emma, what are
you doing?”

She had her
cell phone in her hand. “Calling Charlie.” Because she knew he
would come.

Lainie called
the Deans as soon as she got home from her last client. Billy was
still missing, and they’d found a note from him in the kitchen. He
had run away. Sarah read her the note over the phone. It was short
and sweet. “I am not switching over to Emma.”

“And no one’s
asking him to switch, Lainie,” Sarah said. “Emma is killing herself
because she thinks she should have spelled it out better – that
things would stay the way they are, and Mom and Dad would still be
Mom and Dad. She did spell out that Mom and Dad were actually his
grandparents, and given how unpleasant Grandma and Grandpa are –
Mom’s parents, I mean – it probably didn’t help the situation. She
called Charlie and he’s coming up as soon as he finishes at the
hospital.”

“He did this,
once, when he was twelve. Charlie.” Lainie croaked his name. “He
ran away.”

“But you found
him.”

Not for three
months. “Yes,” Lainie said. “Of course we found him.” His note had
been short and sweet, also. “Well, he came back.”

“How long did
it take?”

“I’m coming
back up, okay, Sarah? We’ll talk when I get there. Not over the
phone.”

Chapter
Sixteen

Certain songs
still made Lainie’s sensation of black panic and loss come flooding
back. “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.”
Bette Midler and Simply Red. The songs that were big around the
time when Charlie ran away.

It had been
like walking on needles. The respite she’d occasionally found in
sleep seemed like a betrayal when she woke up again. Certain fall
scents in the air around Thanksgiving still brought the weak-kneed
relief coursing through her body like an intravenous drug.

She drove back
up to the Deans with the radio on, and one of those hits of the
1980s began to play just as she reached the turn-off that angled
off of 9N and away from Lake George. Madonna singing “Like a
Prayer.” As usual, she turned the sound right down but it didn’t
stop the hammering of memory in her brain.

Charlie, you
were only twelve, I know, but what’s sometimes still hard is the
fact that you never apologized. You grew up, you got to a point
where you must surely have understood a little better, and you
never apologized or explained in more than a few words that I had
to squeeze out of you every time.

I have written
this letter to you so many times in my head and I know I am never
going to put it down on paper, let alone give it to you, let alone
try to say it out loud. Will I learn to stop composing the words
some day?

Dear
Charlie.

Let me try to
convey to you how it felt. No, let me first make my own apology,
for being so blind. I thought he was a solid man. I thought you
needed his influence and his discipline. I didn’t see what he was
really like. I could apologize a million times and you could say
you forgive me a million times more, but I’m never going to forgive
myself for being wrong about him, even now.

And, you know,
the other thing you’ve never done is to thank me.

Oh, for what?
Thank me, after we’ve just talked about my life-long guilt?

Yes, because I
did do one thing right. I believed you! I knew you well enough to
understand that you would never have done what you did without the
right reason. You only did it to make me listen.

Do you know
how long it took me to finish with him after I found your note?
Three hours. And yet you tortured me for three months. Why didn’t
you trust me? Why did you think it would take me so long? “I’ll
come back when he’s gone,” you wrote. “He hits me when you’re not
there, and he likes it.” I knew you wouldn’t exaggerate or lie.

Why didn’t you
come to me? Why didn’t you trust me? Why didn’t you speak, those
times you called? Why did it take you so long to decide that if he
never picked up the phone, it meant he was safely gone?

Then you did
decide that he must be safely gone, and you came back. Do you
remember that part? You got the spare key out from the planter box
on the porch and let yourself in as if you’d just come in from
school. You were there, wanting something to eat when I got home.
And I cried too much. You hugged me so hard I thought we’d both
break bones. But you let go of the hug too soon.

That’s not
your fault. Letting go after an hour would have been too soon for
me. But do you know that every hug we’ve ever had since, you’ve
pulled away too soon, you’ve always been the one to let go
first?

Here is my
three-item wish list.

For you to one
time hug me until I’m the one ready to let go. For you to say, “I’m
sorry. I understand now how much it must have torn you apart.” For
you to thank me for knowing enough about who you were to take the
right notice of what you said.

Still thinking
about it, she rolled the volume knob on the radio back around and
Madonna was done and that song about the Spirit in the Sky had come
on instead. She reached the open gate and the gravel track leading
down to the Deans’.

“Here’s Lainie
back,” Sarah said.

“Lainie, you
didn’t have to do this,” Terri told her as they hugged.

“Oh, don’t. I
brought you something for dinner tonight.” She held out a beef
casserole Angie had made her more than four weeks ago, which she
had frozen the evening she found it on her back steps and then
forgotten about because of everything that had happened since. She
knew that her own presence, with or without beef casserole, would
only be one of a thousand feathers brushing on the Dean family’s
raw burns but she remembered how such feathers on her own skin had
helped even while they made the burns scream. She had to be here.
“Has there been any news? Have you called the police?”

“No news,”
Terri said. “Yes, we’ve called them. I think they’ve put out a
bulletin. Whatever it is they do. Someone’s supposed to be coming
to talk to us. They took the details on the phone. They don’t think
we should worry at this stage. Runaways are less of a concern than
lost kids or abductees. Ten years old is better than if he was
four.” She made a strangled sound. “We said if we weren’t at the
house when they got here, it would be because we were looking for
him. We’ve driven around. Sarah and Emma are going to drive over to
ballet camp and the vacation cabins on the other side of the lake.
There’s no direct road all the way around. They have to take the
long way, back out to Gray’s Hill. You’d know that. Of course you
would. They wouldn’t leave until you got here because they think I
shouldn’t be on my own. I don’t know what to do. Stay or go. It’s
my fault.”

“No, it’s
mine,” Emma said. “Sarah, can you and Lainie go? Mom and I will
stay in case he shows up. I’m going to search through the woods on
foot and call for him.”

“We’ve done
that.”

“He might have
been hiding. He might answer this time. He’s been gone less than
two hours.”

“It’s my
fault,” Terri said again.

“Will you stop
saying that, Mom?” Emma’s voice shook.

Sarah snapped
out, “The contest is over, okay? There is no winner, and there is
not going to be a re-draw. It is no one’s fault. Will both of you
stop being so goddamn self-indulgent about whose fault it is?”

“Is Eric on
his way?” Lainie asked.

“He wants to
stay in Jersey for the time being. We’re thinking the other thing
Billy might have done is tried to hitch a ride down there to see
him. He was upset… you said, Emma… about Dad not being Dad.”

“How long was
Charlie gone?” Sarah asked.

“Let me put
the casserole in the oven for you.” Lainie mowed over Sarah’s
question mid-sentence with her bustling words and movement. “It’s
still frozen, it’ll take a while to heat up, I know you won’t feel
like eating for a bit.”