Taking Terri Mueller (10 page)

THIRTEEN

A sentence is spoken. Or thought.
I must find her.
It sinks into the mind. It sinks out of sight, but is not forgotten. Four words.
I must find her.
Her. Terri's mother. Stranger. Unknown Person. There had been Sally the Mouse and Mustafa the Mouse and now there was . . . Madame X. Mouse X. Her mother, a woman Terri had not seen for eight years. Almost two-thirds of her life.

To say is not to do. But to say is to set something in motion.
I must find her.
An urgency there, a promise Terri made to herself. But how to keep that promise? She knew so little—first name, Kathryn. Last name—Mueller? Bradshaw? Susso? With words her father had killed off her mother, so that now Kathryn Susso Mueller was only a shadow of a memory of a memory. Was this shadow, this mother, still in Oakland, California? Waiting? Waiting for Terri to return?
Bye, Mommy, see you later. I'm going with Daddy for a little ride . . .

She made a plan. Call Oakland information. Ask for Kathryn Mueller, or Susso, or Bradshaw. Take down all the numbers. (Surely, there'd be more than one?) Call all numbers. Not much of a plan, but, nevertheless, something. A step. A beginning of keeping her promise to herself.

That night she heard her father talking on the phone to Nancy. She heard his voice, agitated, full of feeling. “I
know
it's a shock for you, but . . . I'm still the same man! Why not, Nancy? Why not? Nothing has changed—”

Then he listened for a long time. And Terri understood that they were talking about her, her “kidnapping.”

When her father spoke again, it was in a soft and pleading voice. “Yes, you're right—from my point of view, it's still true. I believe in what I did. That's what this whole thing is about. Devotion to Terri. Why are you ready to hang me because I put her first?”

And again he listened. “So Kathryn is to be canonized now?” And then, “Well . . . where does that leave us? . . . What? . . . That's
nowhere
. . . All right, then . . . I can't beg you. When you're ready, you call me.” He hung up.

Terri went into the kitchen. He was standing with his hand on the phone. Hearing her, he straightened up. “What's—what did Nancy say?” she asked.

“Oh . . .” He half shrugged. “She doesn't want to see me for a while. Thinks I'm a pretty bad, low-down guy for what I did.” He took Barkley's leash off the hook. “I think I'll go out for a walk.”

After he left she sat over her empty sheet of paper with the heading, “English, Mr. Higgens.” Her fault Nancy and her father were fighting. Her fault Nancy wouldn't see him. Her fault he was unhappy.

She had said,
I must find her
, but when she passed the phone booth outside Azria's the next day she thought of Nancy and her father and kept walking.

In the bus Terri sat by a window. People were getting on in groups and pairs. She tried to look alert and happy, as if she expected someone to sit down next to her any moment. Life without a special friend was not good. She missed Shaundra. They hadn't spoken in two days; she didn't even know if Shaundra was going on the field trip to the science museum. Nobody is speaking to anybody, she thought.

Just then Naomi Wilier, a big, friendly-looking girl with pink cheeks, sat down next to her. “Hi, anybody sitting here?”

“You are,” Terri said.

Naomi smiled. “Isn't this neat, getting out of school for the afternoon? You're in my math class, I think.”

“I sit in the back,” Terri said.

“How'd you do on that last test?”

“All right—well, not too good.”

A few minutes later, Shaundra got on the bus. She had her hands in the pockets of her bunny fur jacket and wore a red beret perched on her mass of hair. Seeing Terri, Shaundra looked away and sat down across the aisle near the front.

“I was so glad when it snowed the other day,” Naomi said. “I was hoping it would really pile up. I love winter.”

George appeared with a group of other kids. “George!” Shaundra tugged at one end of the long striped scarf he wore around his neck. “You have to sit down here,” she cried. Was this all for Terri's benefit? George sat down, hadn't even looked her way.

“I bet you're a skier,” Terri said, stretching out a smile.

“My mother taught me when I was five. Couldn't keep me off the slopes after that. My whole family skis.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Six. I'm the youngest. Three older sisters. My father is the greatest skier—no, no, I take that back. My mother is. She was almost in the winter Olympics one year. She just missed qualifying.”

“Really! You must be so proud.” She kept smiling, but didn't have her heart in this conversation. What would Naomi Wilier, this nice girl with the braces and pink cheeks and a regular father and mother—what would this so-normal Naomi think if Terri were to say, “The year your mother was teaching you to ski, I was being kidnapped by my father”?

But what she wanted to say even more, ached to say, was, “Look, I have a mother, also. You're not the only one!”

“Terri Mueller to the office, please.” The call came over the intercom in English class. Everyone looked at her. “Terri Mueller.” An urgency to the voice. Mr. Higgens grinned furiously.

“Go on, go on, nothing we can do about it.”

She went slowly down the stairs. Only once before had she ever been called to the office in the middle of a school day. Three years ago, her father, working on a construction crew laying new floors in a factory, had cut straight across the palm of his hand and forefinger with a power saw. In the emergency room, he had not forgotten Terri. Someone had
called her school to let her know that he would be home late. She had never forgotten the sight of him walking into the apartment that night, with a jaunty, white-faced grin, and a blood-soaked bandage covering his raised hand. There was a scar across his palm still and that finger was always a little stiff and cold, especially in winter.

She opened the office door and saw the back of a tall woman in a tweed jacket standing at the counter. My mother, she thought. Of course, she's found me.

The woman turned, and it was Nancy. “Oh, Terri, there you are.”

Terri felt confused and backed out. Nancy followed her. “How are you?” She hugged Terri. “Let me look at you!”

“I'm fine,” Terri said. She almost laughed. Nancy was so extravagant. It was only a week since they'd seen each other.

“No, how are you, really?” Nancy pulled at the string of big blue beads around her neck. “I haven't been able to get you off my mind.”

They moved into a corner of the hall, near the stairs. “Why—why did you come here?” Terri asked. Maybe something
had
happened to her father.

“I wanted to see you. I just wanted to see you.” Nancy tugged gently at Terri's braid. “I was on my way to the library to study, but you've been on my mind so much—did I take you away from an important class?”

“No, it's okay. Mr. Higgens had a fit, but—”

“Ahhh . . .” Nancy smiled faintly. She wasn't listening. “You see, I don't want to come to the house right now. I need time to think—about Phil and me. It's broken me up—
what Phil did. I can't really take it in.” Her nose reddened with emotion. “If Leif's father took him away—! It's such a terrible thought I can't even deal with it.”

The bell clanged. Doors burst open, the hall and stairs filled with kids. “And I'm so angry,” Nancy went on. “Angry at Phil for you . . . and for
me.
Terri, I feel betrayed.”

Terri stood stiffly. What did Nancy want her to say? She wasn't going to tear down her father. She thought how everyone was choosing sides. Why did it have to be that way?

“I'm a
mother,
” Nancy said. “I tried to tell Phil—”

Terri saw Shaundra and George walking down the stairs toward them. This was the worst possible place to discuss anything private, especially that.

“He doesn't understand, but you—”

“Nancy—” She moved, wanted to avoid Shaundra, but it was too late. George saw her, too, plucked at his watch-band. Terri leaned back against the wall. “Hi.” She put her hands in her back pockets, slouching. See, totally at ease.

“Hi. . . uh . . . Terri,” George said with a dumb funny grin, as if he'd forgotten her name. There was almost a smile on Shaundra's round face. She and George were at the bottom of the stairs. Was the smile for Terri or for George? Should she smile back? Should she introduce Nancy? She felt her eyes twitching with strain.

“Hi,” Shaundra said, not exactly speaking to Terri, but more to the wall to the right of her. And they walked on by, Shaundra bouncing and bobbing in her cute, tight-fitting jeans, and George with his red forehead and simpleton's grin.

“Friends?” Nancy said.

“Sort of.”

“Terri—have you done anything yet?”

“Done anything?” Terri repeated.

“About your mother. Do you know where she lives?”

“Maybe in Oakland.”

“You're not sure?” Terri shook her head. “You're going to find out, aren't you?” Nancy said. “I mean, my god, you have to, Terri. Have you talked to your father?”

“We talk. We talk all the time.” Deliberately she gave Nancy a blank look, was obtuse and proud.

Nancy caught it, of course. “Terri—dear Terri—I care for you,” she said. “I
know
you and Phil talk. I
know
how you close you two are. Surely you've talked about the kidnapping—”

“Nancy!” Her voice shot out in alarm. She looked around, pressed her fingers to her lips.

“It's nothing to be ashamed of—Ah, god, that poor woman, Terri.” Nancy leaned toward her, her hair swinging over her face. “Terri,” she said quietly, “you must let your mother know you're here. That you're alive.” She stroked Terri's shoulder. “You have to, you know.”

Terri felt a slow sinking. Nancy's brown eyes . . . yes, she was a mother . . . and she understood Terri . . . she understood that Terri couldn't hurt her father . . . and she understood, as well, how Terri longed and longed for her unknown mother . . .

“Do it,” Nancy said. “Just go ahead and do it, Terri dear.”

FOURTEEN

“What city?” the operator asked.

“Oakland.” Terri looked out through the smudged glass at the Azria's Groceteria sign swinging in the wind. It was a chilly afternoon.

“What name?”

“Kathryn Mueller.”

“M-u-l-l-e-r?”

“No. M-u-
e
-l-l-e-r.”

“Address?”

“I don't know it, operator.”

Kathryn Mueller? This is your daughter, Terri.

Who?

Terri.

I don't know any Terri.

If she had an address, she could write a letter.
Dear Mother . . . Or, maybe, Dear Kathryn, let me introduce myself. I am your daughter . . .

Dear Kathryn, eight years ago . . .

“I have no Katherine Muellers,” the operator said.

“Operator, it's not Kath-er-ine. It's Kathryn. K-a-t-h-r-y-n.”

“Sorry. No Kathryn K-a-t-h-r-y-n Mueller M-u-e-l-l-e-r.”

“Is there anything for Kathryn Susso, or Kathryn Bradshaw?”

“One moment please . . . No Kathryn Susso or Kathryn Bradshaw listed in Oakland.”

“Operator, please, could you try those names with the initial K?” She couldn't give up.

“M'am, I do have one K. Mueller.”

Terri scribbled down the number. It was nearly four o'clock. Maybe she should go home, start supper, do the call tomorrow morning.
Coward.
Yes, she was scared, felt that pounding in her stomach. She dialed, fumbled the numbers, had to start all over. She dropped in coins, listening to them clink into place. She could still hang up, do this some other time.

The phone barely rang once and was picked up. “Now, look, Jaime,” a woman's voice said, “I told you, forget it. I've had it with you, and I mean it.”

“Excuse me,” Terri broke in, “I'm calling from Michigan—”

“Michigan? Who is this?”

“This is Terri—”

“Terri? Terri who?”

She could hardly speak. It was exactly as bad as she had imagined. “Terri Mueller.”

“I can't hear you. Speak up, please.”

“Terri Mueller.” She forced out her voice. “Is this Kathryn Mueller?”

“This is Kris. Who is this, anyway?”

“I'm looking for Kathryn Mueller who had a child—”

“Wait a second, wait a second. I don't have a child, and believe me, I don't plan to. Is this some warped joke of Jaime's? I bet it is. Listen, will you give Jaime a message for me?
So long, Jaime
!” She hung up.

“I called California today,” Terri said. Her father looked up with a mouthful of ice cream. “Oakland. I got the number of K. Mueller from the operator, and I called after school.” It was too bad the way her heart was pulsing. “I thought K. Mueller might be my mother.”

He put down his spoon. “Was it?”

“No.” Her braid swung over one shoulder. “I tried Kathryn Susso, too, and Kathryn Bradshaw.”

“Busy, weren't you?” he said.

Sarcasm? She wasn't used to that from him. But then, this was a whole new world. “I want to talk to my mother,” she said. She bent to stroke Barkley. “Does Aunt Vivian know where my mother is?”

“Possibly.” Oh, Terri. He wanted to plead with her. “You won't like her,” he said quietly. “You won't like Kathryn.” Your mother? he thought.
I
brought you up.

There was a sourness in his throat. He knew Kathryn. All Terri had to do was get in touch with her—that would be it. These years he'd devoted to her—down the drain . . .

“Does Aunt Vivian have a phone?”

“Yes.”

“In her house?”

He hesitated. Habit of years. Then, “Yes,” he said.

“You told me, you both said—she had to call from a booth—”

“Well, it was necessary . . .” He felt weary. So many questions . . . all the little strategies being brought out, exposed, scrutinized. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“What is it? What's Aunt Vivian's phone number?”

“I don't think I'm going to give it to you.”

“
Why?
”

Barkley put his paws on the table and licked ice cream dripping down the side of the container. “Down, Barkley!” The dog had never been trained right. Terri spoiled him. Maybe his fault—he had a tendency to indulge her. Not that she was
spoiled
, but not used to his flatly refusing something she wanted. He saw on her face, in the sharpening of her bones, how much she wanted Vivian's phone number.

He thought of Vivian's defending him, explaining everything to Terri.
Yes, perhaps your father acted hastily, but always out of love, Terri. Remember that!
Hadn't she said exactly that to
him
, when he first took Terri? After a month he'd gotten in touch with Vivian. Over the phone she had scolded, cried, and finally defended him to himself.
I know you did it out of love, Philly.
She had wanted him to come back, to give up Terri. He'd told her, No, no,
no
. And she knew that if she wanted to hear from him again, she had to go along . . .

“I only want to talk to my mother,” Terri said. “You don't know where she is. Maybe Aunt Vivian does.”

Her eyes were huge. He felt a weakening, wanted to
touch her glossy, sweet-smelling hair, give her what she wanted. “Terri—” How to explain? “I can't help you. It would be cutting my own throat. I can't do that.” He was fighting for her again. He had to do anything he could.

In bed that night Terri thought she heard every sound in the house—the refrigerator buzzing, her clock ticking, the linoleum creaking on the floor, even the secret, silent humming of electricity. If only she could be that silent, invisible, and full of power, she would find her mother, and go and look at her, see who she was and what kind of person. She felt a tugging, something unseen and powerful pulling her toward her mother. She got out of bed and wrote WHY WON'T YOU HELP ME? in red crayon on white paper. She did this six or eight times and then quietly went around the apartment taping the signs on the TV and the bathroom mirror and his bedroom door. WHY WON'T YOU HELP ME?

In the morning she didn't hear the alarm. When she got up, her father was gone and all the signs had been taken down. That day, she stopped speaking to him. She had never done anything like this, and it took all her courage. The silence went on and on. “This isn't like you,” her father said. She didn't answer. Her hardness shook her.

“When are you going to talk?” he said.

That one time she answered. “When you tell me Aunt Vivian's phone number.”

Monday afternoon in school there was a fire alarm during gym. “Walk slowly and quickly to the nearest exit,” the gym teacher shouted, pushing people together. Terri
and Shaundra found themselves paired off.

Outside, Mr. Perluzzi, the vice-principal, yelled through a megaphone, like a football coach. “Come on, let's get out here! Move it! Move it!” Kids and teachers milled around. A thick column of black smoke erupted from the chimney. Everyone seemed to see it at the same time. “Teachers, is everyone out of the building? Quiet, please. QUIET,” he bellowed. “We're having a little trouble with the boiler. Nothing serious, but because of potential trouble, school is dismissed for the rest—” Cheers, whistles, and screams of approval drowned him out. There was a stampede into the building for books and clothes. Shaundra and Terri were swept along and walked to the locker room together. “Well, see you,” Terri said.

“Yeah, see you.”

Neither of them moved. “Do you want to make up?” Shaundra said coolly.

“Do you?”

“I don't mind.”

“I don't, either.” Terri matched Shaundra's coolness.

“You don't sound very enthusiastic.”

“Neither do you.” Suddenly, wanting something clean and truthful, she said, “I do want to make up. I missed you. I missed you a lot.”

The effect of her words on Shaundra was amazing. Her whole face changed, softened. “I've missed you, too, Terri,” she said.

They got dressed and went to Shaundra's house. In Shaundra's room, with the door closed, and both of them
sitting on the bed, Terri told Shaundra about her father and mother.

Shaundra pushed her hair behind her ears. “Terri? That really happened?” Terri nodded. “How can you be so calm? I'd be screaming and running around.
Kidnapped.
And your mom really alive. You're like a lake, Terri, a calm lake, and you're just
unruffled.
”

“Calm?” she said. “Me?” She looked down at her hands pleating the bottom of her sweater. She started to laugh and found herself crying. Shaundra put her arms around Terri. “There, there,” she said. “There, there.” And for some reason it was immeasurably comforting to Terri to be patted on the back and hear Shaundra croon, “There, there . . . there, there . . .”

When Terri got home she found a note from her father on the refrigerator saying he'd gone out to pick up Chinese food for supper, and Barkley was with him. She went into her room. She was troubled . . . her father . . . her silence . . . When would she speak to him again? Nothing had changed. But how long could she go on this way? She sprawled on her bed, and only then saw the envelope on her pillow. It was a plain white envelope addressed to Vivian Mueller Eyes, 3547 Oakhurst Street, Los Angeles, California 90313.