Waiting for Christopher (17 page)

When Raylene opened the doors, when she raced into the cabin breathless, the newspaper in her hand, Feena and Christy were startled, as if they’d been wakened from a bad dream. The frustration, the exhaustion Feena had felt seconds before got swallowed up in a rush of adrenaline, a shock she’d been expecting for so long, she leaned into it like a sharp wind. The headline was bannered across three columns:
SECOND KIDNAPPING SPARKS DRAGNET. TWO CHILDREN MISSING AS POLICE COMB AREA
.

“It was on the radio, too,” Raylene told her, whispering as if Christy were asleep instead of hugging her knees, trying to pull her face down to his. “I heard it at work. Merilee, she’s the manager, she keeps music on all the time, even when she’s talking to you.” She finally stooped down, kissed the baby absently, then waited impatiently for Feena to finish the article.

“The way I see it,” she said, when Feena finally raised her eyes from the paper, “someone took another kid, and the brilliant police figure there’s a kidnapper out there who can’t quit.” She plucked Christy up from the floor, sat him on her hip, and smiled grimly. “Like one of these won’t give him trouble enough.”

Feena said nothing, felt nothing. She sat still, waiting for the numbness to wear off!

“I saw three cop cars on the way here,” Raylene told her. “They’re all over the place.”

“God.” Feena felt dizzy now, short of air. It was as though they were trapped in a mystery novel or a film, as though they were living lives that didn’t belong to them. She and Raylene were ordinary people; how could this be happening? “Do you think they’ll find us?”

Raylene shook her head. “Cops don’t want snakebites any more than the rest of us. And if they use dogs, the water will throw them off the scent.”

Feena couldn’t believe it. “Are you actually suggesting we stay here?”

“Not forever. But it’s as good a place as any till we figure how to deal.”

“Deal?” Feena wanted to crumple up the paper, tear it into pieces. Instead she folded it back, stood up. “What do you mean, ‘deal’? Didn’t you read this, Ray?” She remembered Christy’s mother, how no one believed her. Now they would. “It’s official. We’re
kidnappers
. How do we deal with that?”

Christy, catching the tension, wriggled in Raylene’s arms, began to fuss again. “Down!” he whined, reaching for the floor as if it were miles away. “Want down!”

Raylene set him on his feet, lowered her voice. “I don’t mean we stay here forever. Just long enough to get our heads straight.” Babyless now, she shrugged, opened her arms. “Then who knows? Maybe we could take a bus trip somewhere. Give them time to find that other baby and go back to checking parking meters.”

Part of Feena hoped it could happen. Red shoes and magic wishes, a fairy-tale escape. “I wanted to rescue Christy as much as anyone,” she told Raylene. “But what if it’s not so easy? I mean, what if it hurts other people? What if she wants him back?”

“Back?” Raylene sat down, deflated. “What do you mean?”

“Look,” Feena began, “I went to see Christy’s mom.” She put a hand out as if to defend herself when she saw Raylene’s eyes catch fire. “I had to, Ray. I had to know we were doing the right thing.

“And I’m not so sure anymore. Yes, she’s got a temper. But you would, too, if you lived the way she does.”

“Which is?”

“Which is in a tiny trailer that’s too small for the yelling and hitting that goes on there. I saw it, Ray. I didn’t mean to, but I—”

“Lots of people have problems. That’s no excuse.”

“She wants him, Ray. She’ll stay there and get beat up until she gets him back.” Feena didn’t mention what had happened a few minutes ago, but she remembered the feeling of Christy’s bird bones, her own helpless anger.

The heat in Raylene’s eyes hadn’t cooled. “What? You think you can just up and return Toffee, like some toy you’re tired of?

“Listen, girl, I didn’t help you out so you could roll over and play dead just when he has a chance to start fresh. I plan to see he gets that chance.” She glared accusingly at Feena. “Even if all you got in mind is to quit on him.”

It wasn’t that easy. Feena knew it wasn’t. “What if,” she said quietly, slowly, “he wants it, too?”

“What?”

“What if Christy wants to go home?” She remembered the baby pointing to the piano book, remembered his excited, triumphant shout. “Ma!”

Raylene didn’t answer. She sat now, her head bent forward on her slender neck, as if she were thinking over what Feena had said. Then, in the slice of stillness between their squabbling, the thunder hit. First there was a deep, throaty rumble, and the next second, the storm was on top of them, rattling in the sky like a steel ball hurled down the world’s longest bowling alley.

Christy screamed. It was the first time Feena had been with him during a Florida downpour, and she was suddenly helpless in the face of his panic. “Shhh,” she said, stooping down, picking him up off the floor he’d begged for just moments before. “It’s all right. Shhh.”

But he howled louder, covering his ears with his hands each time the thunder struck, his face contorted, purple. Instinctively, Feena looked across to Raylene, and just as naturally, Raylene took the baby from her. She held him against her shoulder, his face nestled there like a tiny infant’s, then she began to walk the floor with him. She sang in the same sweet sunset voice Feena had heard at the old restaurant. Low and croony, slow and thick as liquid glass, finding a shape all its own in the middle of the storm.

Christopher quieted, and Raylene looked over her shoulder at Feena. “I’m not asking you again,” she said. “I’m just telling you, Toffee deserves a chance. Same as all of us. Okay?”

Feena nodded.

“And don’t go doing anything crazy till we talk this out.” She stared hard at Feena. “Promise?”

Feena nodded again.

A
ll next day, Feena was in school, but out of body. During history, she forgot about the Yalta conference and remembered that albatross she’d seen in the nature film on TV. A dumb bird in love with a plastic decoy. In algebra, she thought about her mother, mad for the soaps, and about Peter Milakowski, with a crush on a teacher he hadn’t seen in sixty years. At lunch, alone at a table of seniors, she nearly cried for Christopher, devoted to a woman who didn’t even know how to love him back. And cutting across the soccer field after eighth period, heading toward the boat, she felt sorry for herself, too. For Feena Harvey, still in love with a baby who had died before he was old enough to know her name, still yearning for a father who had clearly forgotten her, turning him into some kind of hero from a novel.

What good was all that one-way love, anyway? All that yearning and flapping and waiting? It was like a plug with no socket, or one left-handed glove at the back of the closet shelf. Good for nothing, that’s what it was.

That night, curled next to the baby, Feena dreamed that he was climbing a steep set of stairs. She kept stumbling after him, throwing her arms around his legs, trying to pull him down to her. But he was stronger than she was, and he moved higher and higher, not even looking back when she called his name.

Next morning a typical Florida sky, cloudless and unrelentingly blue, was waiting for them by the time Christy was awake and fed. The two of them opened the cabin door and stood on deck, blinking in the sun. Feena had put one of Raylene’s headbands on the baby, combing out as many of the ringlets as she could, so that his hair hung straight and pale over his shoulders.

She hoped anyone who was looking for Christopher would be thrown off by the long hair and dress. And she hoped Raylene would forgive her for breaking her promise. After all, it was Raylene who had said Christy should have a vote, wasn’t it?

She saw no patrol cars and no suspicious loiterers as they slipped through the woods along the dirt path, then walked the six blocks to the trailer park. It had been nearly three weeks since Christy had been home. If he wanted to go back, Feena would be able to tell, she was sure she would. And if he was afraid, if he cried or clung to her, turned his face away, why, then she’d know what that meant, too. She’d know he’d had enough. Enough slaps and kicks to last a lifetime.

When they reached the entrance, she felt him stiffen in her arms. He raised his head, kept turning around as if he were trying to catch a scent. At the turnoff to the gravel path that ran up to the trailer, he bent from his waist like a jacknife, strained toward the ground. She put him down and let him walk the rest of the way.

The relief was familiar, like something she’d known would happen all along. And the regret, too. As Christy spotted the blue doublewide, he tried to break free of her hand and run. “Ma,” he said, not looking at Feena—his eyes, his open-mouthed smile, his excited body, all turned toward the shabby trailer. “Want Ma.”

She’d picked him up, feeling sick, wondering what to do next, when she heard the car behind her. It overtook them, and she saw the gold crest on its side. Even though the driver was in plain clothes, Feena knew a police car when she saw one. As it nosed up the gravel road past them, then into the trailer’s driveway, she tugged Christy into the laundromat, her heart pounding.

The detective climbed the steps to the trailer, and Delores Pierson, cigarette in hand, opened the door. In the seconds before she let the policeman in and closed it behind them, Feena changed her mind a thousand times. First, she decided to wait, to stay and explain things to the baby’s mother, and to the officer, to give Christy up and turn herself in. Next, she was certain that would be a mistake, that the police might not let Christy live at home, that he’d end up in an orphanage or a foster home or wherever kids were sent when they had no place to go.

But if her brain was divided, her heart knew what it wanted. The instant the door closed, as if it were the starting signal for a race, Feena tore off with Christy, streaking out of the park gates and running through the woods.

She didn’t stop until they were nearly back at the boat. They were coming out of the woods when she heard voices in the turnoff, saw the two police cars pulled up almost to the clearing. She didn’t know what it was Christy was about to say, what he wanted to ask, but she clapped her hand over his mouth and, her footsteps sounding like padded drums, headed back the way they’d come.

The playground would be too dangerous, and even the library seemed risky. (What if the librarian had told the police about the strange orphan girl with no identification?) Ryder’s, the scene of the first “kidnapping,” would certainly be crawling with police. Suddenly, she’d run out of safe places, and Raylene’s idea of getting away didn’t sound as silly as it had a few hours ago.

There were two problems, of course. Feena couldn’t drive, and she didn’t have any idea where she would go if she could. She had spent her summer in the old Chevy with the gearshift in park, not exactly a geographic adventure.

“A bus trip.” Wasn’t that what Raylene had said? Was it too late? Instinctively, she headed for the CVS, where Raylene was still at work. Yes, it was near the playground, but if they were careful, if she and Christy waited behind the store in the parking lot, they could catch Ray when she left.

A man came out the back door of the CVS, just as they got close. A boy a few years older than Christy rode on his shoulders, one hand around the man’s neck, the other waving a small white prescription bag. The boy, flushed and giggling, wore a cardboard clown hat and kicked the man’s chest with his heels. “Faster! Faster!” he yelled.

“Bwu,”
Christy announced, waving excitedly at the boy’s hat. “Got
bwu
.“

Feena scanned the playground and parking lot for police cars and slowed her pace. “Yes,” she acknowledged, kneeling beside him, keeping one arm around his waist. The cone-shaped party hat, its foil trim glinting in the sun, was indeed blue.

“Pay!” Christy whooped now, reaching toward the boy, whose horse father had crossed the parking lot and was galloping in the direction of the playground. “Want pay!”

“No, Christy.” Just for a second, Feena glanced back toward the CVS, hoping, however unreasonably, that Raylene had read her mind and would suddenly materialize at the door. Unfortunately, a second was all Christy needed.

He had broken her grasp before she knew it and was running joyfully, arms wide, toward the playground. “No!” she called, standing, racing after him. “Wait!”

He didn’t. He careened after the boy and his father, crossing the parking lot, heading toward the sandbox where he’d played with Angel. But he never reached it. A man in uniform intercepted him, kneeling down to say something Feena couldn’t hear, then standing to take his hand.

As if in slow motion, Feena saw Christy point in her direction, saw the policeman gather him into his arms and come toward her. And then, like a nightmare unfolding, she saw another figure behind them both. He was almost as tall as the swings—a giant of a man who stood just as he had last week, his hand shading his eyes. It was the same man she’d seen on the steps of the blue trailer. The yelling man.

Trapped, Feena stayed where she was. Without Christy, she had no reason to run. “You lose something?” The officer smiled as he crossed the lot, then lowered Christy to the sidewalk. Squirming happily, the baby tugged at the policeman’s hand, pulling him toward Feena.