Best Intentions (19 page)

I
grab the phone. “Claire? Is everything okay?”

She stammers, gasping as she tries to take in air, trapping the words in her throat.

“Claire? What is it?”

“It's Phoebe. She was with me and then…” Tears fill the empty spaces.

“And then what?” Panic crescendos through me.

“I can't find her,” Claire cries. “I can't find Phoebe.”

“What do you mean, you can't find her? Didn't you come home from school together?”

“I turned around and she was just…gone.” Claire's voice is mottled with fear.

“Where are you?”

“Union Square.”

“What on earth are you doing there?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and tell me what happened.”

“We were going to Forever 21.”

“You were going shopping?” Forever 21 is the mecca of choice for cheap designer knockoffs and trendy disposable baubles. The flashy, trashy inventory changes so rapidly that every teen in New York seems to feel the need to scout it out at least ten times a month.

“We were just going to stop on our way home from school.”

“It's not on your way home. At all.” I realize this is not exactly the most salient point at the moment.

“She was right beside me and then I turned around and she wasn't. I'm sure she's fine, right? I mean, she's just lost. I've been looking all over Union Square.”

“Did you tell a policeman?”

“No.”

“See if you can find one and tell him what happened. Then stay where you are. I don't want you wandering off looking for her by yourself. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the statue of Gandhi in the park and wait for me. Do not move. I'm on my way.” I hang up and grab my coat, racing through the hall, pressing for the elevator, moving as fast as I can.

Phoebe is fine, she has to be fine. Children get lost. They get found.

I press the elevator button again, and again.

I remind myself of all the times she has wandered off in the past (it was always Phoebe, never Claire; sweet, distracted, untethered Phoebe, less nervous by nature than Claire, who had a tendency to glance back repeatedly, never allowing too much distance to grow between us). There was the time we had to have the guards lock down the entire Children's Zoo in Central Park while we ran through the caverns screaming her name, what better place for a kidnapper, a pedophile. Fifteen minutes later (it felt like hours, days, a lifetime) we found Phoebe calmly looking at the seals, oblivious to the commotion going on around her. She hadn't even noticed that there was no grown-up in sight, that she had unloosed herself. There was that time on the beach in Montauk.

The elevator finally comes and I squeeze in.

We found her, I remind myself, we found her every time.

Still, I wonder if this is one of those moments that changes your life forever, rips it in two, turns it into before and after. If this is it.

As soon as I reach the ground floor I dial Sam's office, but he isn't there.

I reach him on his cell as I am getting into a cab and tell him what happened. “I'll meet you in the park,” he says. “Lisa, you know Phoebe. We'll find her.” I strain to hear him over a noisy background.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“I'll be there in ten minutes, fifteen tops. I'm leaving now.”

As the cab lurches through midtown traffic, I call home despite the fact that Phoebe lost her set of house keys two months ago and we haven't gotten around to replacing them. There is no answer.

“Hurry,” I plead with the driver, “please hurry.” I want him to leapfrog over the hoods of other cars, drive on the sidewalk if need be.

I jam some bills into his hand as he pulls up to the park and slam the door. My eyes roam frantically from left to right as I head into Union Square, past tattooed NYU students clustered in groups and white Rasta skateboard boys and nannies leading toddlers to the bucket swings, past a card table of kittens in cardboard boxes with hand-painted adoption signs and a blanket stacked with Xeroxed screenplays for sale. A part of me thought that I would discover Phoebe the second I got out of the cab, as if she were simply waiting for my arrival to materialize.

But I don't see her anywhere.

The air goes out of me.

I spot Claire standing by the statue, huddled in her navy peacoat, her eyes darting anxiously. “Daddy just got here,” she tells me when I reach her. “He's talking to that policeman.”

I look over at the two men and see them shake hands before Sam heads back to us. He kisses me quickly hello.

“What did the policeman say?” I ask.

“They are going to get a patrol car to circle the block but that's pretty much all they can do at this point. In the meantime, I want you two to comb the park and ask everyone you see to keep an eye out. Lisa, do you have a picture of Phoebe with you?”

I shake my head. Ever since the advent of digital cameras, my wallet has been barren of photos, all of them remain parked on our home computer, unprinted. I am a terrible parent. If anything happens it is my fault, the negligent mother who doesn't even keep pictures of her children in her purse.

“All right, do the best you can to describe her and tell them if they see anyone who fits the description to walk her over to the statue and wait for us. This is our meeting spot, okay? Be back here in ten minutes. And stick together,” he admonishes.

“Come.” I take Claire's arm and we begin to walk on the southern outskirts of the park. Just across from us, Fourteenth Street is a dizzying eddy of men hawking fake designer sunglasses, smoky kebab carts, people pouring into the subway kiosk, shoppers making their way out of Whole Foods laden with cloth bags, a maw that could swallow anyone whole, especially an eleven-year-old girl. I begin to grow nauseous.

“Okay, tell me again, where was the last place you saw Phoebe?”

Claire points a few yards ahead, just across from Forever 21. “We were crossing the street but when I got to the other side she wasn't there. Mom, I thought she was right beside me.” She looks up at me. “We're going to find her, right?”

“Yes.”

We walk a few more feet in silence and then stop at the spot Claire has indicated, turning 360 degrees while we call Phoebe's name. But there is no response, there is nothing, just a blurry sea of faces who have nothing to do with us. A few people turn to regard us with an impassive curiosity but it is someone else's story, not theirs, and they hurry on.

We begin walking again, weaving around a hunched-over junkie frozen mid-nod, when Claire's cell phone rings. We both stop dead in our tracks.

Claire grabs it from her pocket, opens it and looks at the number displayed. She flips the phone open to talk.

“My mom is here,” she says quietly.

“Who is it?” I interrupt.

“Deirdre.” Claire hands the phone to me. “She wants to talk to you.”

“Why is Deirdre calling you?”

“I called her.”

I look at her quizzically—it will have to wait till later—and put the phone up to my ear.

“Is everything okay?” Deirdre asks. “Claire left a message for me at the store but I was out. I didn't get it until now. She said it was an emergency.”

“We can't find Phoebe.”

“What do you mean, you can't find Phoebe? Where are you?”

I explain the situation while Claire and I resume walking, Claire calling out her sister's name, my eyes roaming while I speak.

“Do you want me to come?” Deirdre asks.

“No. Look, I need to go.”

“Call me as soon as you hear anything.”

“I will.” I hang up and catch up to Claire.

“Why did you call Deirdre?” I do not look at her while I talk, I am looking for Phoebe.

Claire's narrow shoulders shiver as she fights to hold back the sobs that are gathering within. “I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry. I knew how mad you'd be. I never should have come here. I'm sorry.”

Her face is so contorted, so tragic, that all I can do is wrap my arms around her. “Let's just find your sister.”

As we round a bend of trees, the statue peeks into view. It has become my talisman, my hope, as if somehow Phoebe will know this is our meeting spot.

But Sam is standing there alone, shutting his cell phone and putting it back into his pocket.

“Nothing?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

I shut my eyes, feel a sudden vertigo that makes the pavement fade to nothingness beneath my feet. Sam pulls me to him and I bury my head in his shoulder, the shape of his body, the smell of his wool coat so achingly familiar. His scarf, an old navy fringed cash
mere one I gave him a million Christmases ago, brushes against my cheek. I clutch him tightly.

“We're going to find her,” he says. “Phoebe has done this before.”

I nod, wanting so much to believe him. “Now what?”

“We keep looking.”

“What about the police?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Can't they do anything else?”

“It's only been forty-five minutes. They can't file a missing persons.”

I shudder at the words, so stark and gruesome, how could they have anything to do with us? “What about an Amber Alert?”

Sam shakes his head. “Claire, are there any friends of Phoebe's you can think to call?”

“I don't know any of their numbers.”

“What about Rory?” I ask. Rory is Phoebe's best friend from camp, a would-be dancer who eats yogurt with a fork, letting it drip through the tines, slowly licking the remains and calling it dinner. She lives on the Upper West Side, she goes to a different school, I don't even know the last time Phoebe spoke to her, but at least it's something. I am just about to call information to get her parents' home number when my cell phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lisa?”

“Yes?”

“This is Brian DePaul.”

I can't place the name, though it sounds vaguely familiar.

“Your downstairs neighbor?” His face swims through the murk, the opera lover with the night-for-day hours and the strange cooking odors seeping from his front door, a bony, solitary man nearing fifty who always used to complain about the noise the girls made while he was trying to sleep. At three in the afternoon.

“Yes?” I say impatiently. I can't imagine what crime against his delicate sensibilities we have committed now. Nor do I particularly care at the moment.

“I seem to have your daughter,” he says archly, as if we have carelessly misplaced her.

“You have Phoebe? Is she okay?”

“I'll put her on.”

“Phoebe, are you all right?”

Her voice is calm and even, soaked in maturity. “I'm fine, Mom.”

“Thank God. How did you get home?” I am barely listening, all I hear is the echo in my head, she is safe, she is safe…

“I bent down to tie my shoe and when I looked up Claire was gone. I couldn't find her anyplace. So I walked home.”

“By yourself? How did you know the way?”

“Mom, I'm not a moron.” The degree of our alarm is incomprehensible to her, the terror of things she has never heard of unimaginable.

“We'll be right there. Can you put Brian back on?”

“Okay.”

She hands the phone over.

“I don't know what to say. Thank you.”

“It's a good thing I was home,” he replies tartly.

The giddy residue of panic as it subsides silences all three of us as we find a cab and head home to claim our wayward daughter.

On the way, I phone Deirdre to let her know that Phoebe is all right.

“I'm so sorry I wasn't there when Claire called.”

Sam puts his hand on my knee while I listen, watching my face.

“Everything's okay now,” he says quietly after I hang up. “We're all okay.”

We find Phoebe sitting in Brian DePaul's living room, where every surface is draped in Indian silks, lace and gauze, the elegantly fussy lair of a semi-shut-in. She is serenely eating ginger snaps from a tarnished silver platter, poised as if attending a tea party. It is only when I take her in my arms, feel her body pressed tight to mine, that I feel the truest relief. “Let's go home.”

Later, after the recriminations and teary apologies have left us all
depleted, we tuck the girls into bed, kiss them good night, turn at the doorway to be sure they are still there, aware with every movement of the normality of the evening, the blessing of it. We are all in place, safe, nothing has changed. I am so very thankful that the day has turned into an anecdote and not the end.

Closing the door to Phoebe's room one last time, I walk out into the hallway where Sam is standing, waiting for me. Our eyes meet and he takes me in his arms. He is the only other person on earth who will ever love my children as much as I do, the only person who will ever truly understand.

Sam goes to take a shower and I sit in the near-silent living room. I can almost hear the girls breathing deeply in their separate worlds of sleep. As I sink into the faded couch I am filled with an overwhelming sense of fragility, of how vulnerable we all are, how close we have come to flying apart, fragmenting.

And it terrifies me.

I am not at all sure that dissolution is what I want.

There are women who do nothing, who shrug off or ignore men's fickleness even if they can never quite forgive or forget, women who make a conscious decision to look the other way, wait for it to pass. There are marriages that come out the other side. I have always been judgmental of them but I am less so now. It is an option, after all.

I'm just not sure it is an option for me.

The list of lawyers is folded in my wallet.

I look up to see Sam standing in the doorway, getting on his coat.

“Where are you going?” I ask, taken aback.

“I left work in such a hurry,” he says. “I need to go clean some things up.”