by Evelyn Piper
“Just the classrooms and the sickroom. The office.”
“Perhaps in my apartment? I live on the third floor. Although, as I said, I really don’t see . . .” Now Blanche was standing near a light. “Which child is this?”
“Bunny Lake.”
“I will go up to my apartment and look there. Wouldn’t you like to wash? There’s a . . .” She waved and started for the stairs.
“I’d like to go through the place myself,” the policeman said.
“Please do.”
“Yes.” Blanche touched his arm as he passed her. Miss Benton had moved to the side of the stairway so the policeman could go up first.
“Did you call her? What did you say her name was?”
“Bunny. Bunny Lake.”
“Bunny Lake. The first day! As if the first day weren’t sufficiently hectic, the cook doesn’t turn up at all. Bunny!” She began to go upstairs. “Bunny! Come out, Bunny!”
Blanche followed them up. When she reached the landing she could see how the policeman was staring at whatever it was the Fours had constructed. Miss Benton brushed past her.
“Wait. Let’s look inside the cubbies. Curled up?” She skirted the construction carefully. “I suppose it could happen! Oh, the cubbies have no doors,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at Blanche. “Please don’t imagine Bunny locked in a cubbie!” Her voice was muffled as she bent over the first locker, stirring the clothes in it. “But if she did curl up and pull the clothes over her . . .” She went to the next locker and paused there, and, as if Miss Benton could have missed Bunny, Blanche went to the first cubbie after the director. (It was a matter of not wanting any hands but her own to touch her child.)
“Like a babe in the woods, sleeping under—leaves,” Miss Benton concluded, straightening up.
The policeman was examining the windows in the room. He shoved one open and looked out. Blanche stood perfectly still until he pulled the window down again and turned away from it.
“The washroom?” Miss Benton said. “Although, again . . .” She went to the washroom, however, and the policeman followed her.
“Ain’t that something now!”
Blanche hurried, but the policeman was only talking about the row of low white sinks with the mirrors above them. There were ten hooks set into the wall. Ten brightly colored towels hung from the hooks. Blanche had found towels for Bunny with rabbits on them. Every single time she was washed in New York, Bunny had fussed about not being dried with her own towels. “Oh, hurry,” Blanche said.
The three of them went through the school part of the building and then into Miss Benton’s apartment, which consisted of two rooms on the top floor (to the rear of the Threes’ big room). There were a living room, a small bedroom, and a kitchenette with no windows in it, made out of a closet. “Hurry,” Blanche said.
The policeman even pushed his way up and out onto the roof, but he did not find Bunny up there.
“I was fairly certain she wouldn’t be here,” Miss Benton said, talking over her shoulder as they walked down the last flight of stairs, “but of course we had to . . .” She opened the door of the office and waited for Blanche and the policeman to precede her. “Now, I think we’ll have to concede that somehow or other . . .” She turned to Blanche questioningly.
“Bunny. Her real name is Felicia.”
Miss Benton frowned. “We must concede that Bunny left the building, somehow or other.”
“After me? This morning?” She spoke as if she had not considered this possibility herself. “You mean this morning and that she’s been lost all day? Where is she then, Miss Benton? Where is she then?”
“At some police station, I would say.”
“Could be,” the policeman said. “Anyhow, that’s the next thing. Get Missing Persons on it.”
“Maybe they have her already,” Blanche said. “They might not have been able to find out—Bunny thinks one number is as good as the next—One street number,” she said, almost smiling. She pushed the telephone toward the policeman because he could do it faster. “Here, call them.” Bunny, she thought, would be sitting on a golden-oak bench. The policemen would be at Bunny’s feet, all the policemen! They would ask her where she lived, and she would say, “One-Two-Eight Street. Five street.” And she would smile at them. No work done that day, Blanche thought. They would have fed her, and her face would be smeared with the ice-cream cone the police traditionally fed lost children, her hands all sticky with it. She would be lying asleep on the golden-oak bench. (That was best because no amount of ice cream or attention from strangers could have kept her interested so long.) Asleep, yes, on the bench, so that she wouldn’t even know how long her stupid mother had gone around in circles. (When Blanche was just a bit older than Bunny was now, she had fallen out of a canoe—so Mother said. She didn’t remember it and Bunny wouldn’t remember today.)
It seemed to Blanche now that she had not heard the thick front door close behind her when she had hurried out of the school that morning. So Bunny could have pushed it open or—so tiny—squeezed through.
“That’s it,” the policeman said.
“I was in such a tearing hurry to get to my job. I haven’t been there long enough to rate many privileges, and I had to ask them to be let off early today. We were so late, anyhow, and of course I’m supposed to be at my desk by nine thirty. I simply raced down your stairs and out on the street without looking back or even closing the door properly.”
Miss Benton put her fingers to her lips.
Policemen, like others who are supposed to be tough, are notoriously softhearted. Probably he only suggested a good walloping because he couldn’t wallop. Probably spoiled his own. I love them, Blanche thought, smiling at the policeman. Guardians of the . . . He was shaking his head at her. “They haven’t got her?”
“What we want is a complete description.” He put the telephone against his chest. “You tell me, I’ll pass it on.”
Blanche tried to be as accurate as possible. “About thirty-seven inches high. She weighs thirty-two pounds. Black hair. Brown eyes.”
“Scars?”
“No scars. Of course no scars!”
“Any identifying marks on her?”
She shook her head.
“When last seen, wearing—?”
“Wearing? I took her little sweater off for her. She can’t really dress herself. Wearing—a yellow linen ruffled dress with white appliqués.” She showed the policeman on her own suit, just above her knees. “Rabbits appliquéd.” Why was Miss Benton frowning at her? “What is it, Miss Benton?”
“Wasn’t she wearing her jeans and a T-shirt?”
“Wearing a yellow linen dress. Oh, God,” she said, “a child is supposed to be safe in school! School is where you leave children so they will be safe!’
Miss Benton came to her. “Please, don’t! Nothing like this has ever happened here before. We’ve had the usual amount of trouble, but . . .” Her clear voice wavered. “I have known of several cases where children did get out of nursery schools—perfectly reputable ones. It could happen, but—oh, dear,” she said, “I know how you must feel!”
“Do you?” Blanche shook her head. “Anyhow, now isn’t the time. What do we do now?” she asked the policeman.
“We get a snapshot and bring it to the station, lady.”
Miss Benton nodded. “And while you’re gone I’ll call the staff. I’ll leave urgent messages for the ones who haven’t reached home yet. Ruth, for example, has to get out to Scarsdale.”
“The other one went to her dentist. She has pyorrhea.”
“I beg your pardon? I’ll find out whether they have an idea how this—and I’ll call you. Wait! What police station are you going to, in case I get some news right off?”
“One Fifty-Three East Sixty-Seventh. Regent 4-1897.”
Miss Benton wrote that down on the edge of the sheet of newsprint with PAID stamped over it. “I don’t trust my memory. I am one of the unfortunates who have to ma
rk everything down.”
The policeman pulled at his tunic as he waited for Blanche to go out of the front door. I must be dreaming, Blanche thought as they walked toward her apartment. What could be more dreamlike than this walk down the street with a tall policeman? And, as in dreams, the faces you passed, all strangers, all strange, turned indifferently toward you and then indifferently away, and the policeman didn’t speak again after he had asked where she lived, and she didn’t speak, either, because what was the point in a dream when salvation only lay in waking up?
6
Blanche and the policeman waited for the self-service elevator to come down. A man and a woman, stepping out of it, glanced at Blanche and her policeman, but since she was as much a stranger to them as she had been to the people she passed in the street, it did not seem more outlandish to them than to the others that she, Blanche Lake, should be with a policeman.
“Floor?” He held his index finger poised over the row of buttons.
“Five. Fifth.” This has been the first elevator Bunny was ever in. First, not last! “I have my key.” The policeman took the key from her and inserted it into the lock and opened the door for her. Blanche ran past him. “Bunny! Bunny!” When there was no answer, she said, “I just hoped.”
“Sure. Now, let’s get that snapshot.”
“It’s not a snapshot. It’s a cabinet photo. Bunny was two then, her second birthday. One of those colored enlargements. I gave it to Mother.” (“Do you imagine I’m going to stick it up on my mantel for everyone to see?” Mother had said. Mother had wept. But when Mother came here, she had brought the cabinet picture with her.) “It’s in my mother’s room.” She showed him the way. “You look and I’ll look.” Because it wasn’t on Mother’s dresser. “About like this.” She framed the picture in the air.
It didn’t take very long to search her mother’s small bedroom or much longer to go through the rest of the apartment, but they could not find the picture of Bunny. “I guess my mother took it with her this morning.” She does love Bunny, Blanche thought. See how she loves Bunny, taking that picture with her. “My mother had to go home for a few days and she took Bunny’s picture.”
“Okay. Anyhow, a more recent snapshot would be better.”
“I don’t have any.” Blanche saw the policeman’s surprise. “I have hundreds back home, a whole album, in fact, but I didn’t bring it. The kind already made up and you paste snaps in and the birth certificate and you write things—that kind. We just moved here two weeks ago and I left the album in storage. Not here. I had Bunny,” she said, “I didn’t need . . .”
“I like to carry them on me,” the policeman said. He did have children, then. “Too bad. They like to have a snapshot.”
Blanche put her hands down on the table over which she had been bending. “How many little girls of three are lost? The picture doesn’t matter so much, does it?”
“Well, they like to have one. I know, I know,” he said hastily, because she was going to tell him about the album of them in storage again.
“Now what?” she asked, realizing, because the pain in her chest had returned, how wonderful the twenty minutes had been when it was only a photograph she was trying to find. The policeman was scratching at the back of his head behind his ear, staring around the room and scratching at the back of his head as if something puzzled him. “Now what should I do?”
“Sit tight. I’ll go back to the station. You give me your number. They’ll call you the minute they have something.”
“Oh, please! I’ll call them! Please give me the number.” The apartment, which had seemed pleasant up to now, was a dreadful place. She ran to the telephone and found the pad. (Bunny had scribbled on the first ten pages. “Don’t,” she had said. “Naughty, Bunny!”) “Please, may I have the number? I just can’t stay here. Maybe I should, but I just can’t. I’ll go ring doorbells near the school. How far could she get, after all? Maybe someone saw her.”
“You check in at the precinct station, though. Maybe they’ll have something for you, real soon. Missing Persons will be out, lady, and they’re pros.”
Blanche thanked the policeman and let him go without her because she could see how uncomfortable she made him. He didn’t know what to say to her. She pulled off her shoes and hurried to the closet for her moccasins. It wasn’t the comfort of the low heels so much, but to eliminate the tapping of the high heels of her pumps. The tap tap behind her was her fear stalking her, tap tap. Bunny. Tap tap.
She shoved her feet into the moccasins. “You’ve got to go into every house near the school. Start on the opposite side of the street. Perhaps someone was looking out a window. Do New Yorkers ever look out of windows the way we do back home? New Yorkers,” she told herself firmly, “are no different from anybody else. In New York City, just like any other place, there’s always someone to see when something happens. The difference is that New Yorkers might not be so quick to do something about what they see.”
Oh, God, she thought, there’s always someone to see. You read about it in the papers all the time. Maybe they’ll talk to me where they wouldn’t go to the police. You read about that in detective stories. People who have something to fear from the police. People who just naturally distrust the police. And that street is slums, really, she thought. The school building was really just a slummy building renovated, only different from the four others like it in the row because of what had been done to it. Slum people would be just the ones not to want to talk to cops. “Tell me,” she would say. “I’m her mother. Tell me!”
“And then you can cry,” she told herself. “When it might help loosen someone up, I will let you cry. But not now.”
7
The very first person she asked, the superintendent of the tallest house on the block, told her about the old man who lived on the top floor of the building just opposite the school. This old man, the superintendent said, stayed glued to his window as if he were paid to do it. He gave her the address and told her top floor front, but he came out after her as she hurried toward the house, to tell her his wife had just reminded him that the old man was a night watchman and would be gone now.
“No use in ringing,” he said, seeing her finger press down on the bell. “No use you ringing!” he repeated, speaking louder, as if it were her ears which were deaf to this destruction of hope.
But he had followed her to the house to tell her. Not indifferent. But he had known the habits of a neighbor. New York was like home. But he had spoken to his wife about Bunny immediately. No more hearts of stone than any hearts anywhere.
After the first house, Blanche timed herself. A house took twenty minutes, most of which was spent knocking at doors, or explaining that she wasn’t selling anything. (When they would open the door wide enough to really look at her, she didn’t have to explain that.) It took such a short time to say no, they hadn’t seen any little girl.
After each house, she promised herself, she could call the police station.
“No, Ma’am,” the policeman said the first time. “Don’t you worry, though, we’ll get your little girl for you.”
The first few times, the policeman sounded very sympathetic, but then he became curt with her. She was becoming a nuisance with her calling, she supposed. When this was all over, she would apologize for having been a nuisance. She would bring each of the policemen a nice gift. (They couldn’t call her gratitude bribes—not when they had found Bunny for her.)
Then the policeman asked her to hold on.
Blanche felt her heart thump and opened the door of the booth to give herself air. Her head fell forward and the bump of it against the telephone booth brought her to. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please!”
“Mrs. Lake? This is Lieutenant Duff speaking.”
“Duff. Have you got her there? Bunny? No? But you’ve heard something. Someone . . .”
“Mrs. Lake, who is your nearest relative?”
“My mother. But she’s out of the city today.”
&nbs
p; “Okay, then, who’s your family physician?”
“She’s hurt! She’s hurt! What is it?”
“We don’t have any news for you, Mrs. Lake. I want to contact your family physician. You go on home now and I’ll send your doctor over, see?”
“I thought you had her! I thought you’d found her!”
“If you’ll give me the name of your . . .”
She had a picture of Dr. Freundlich shaking down his thermometer. “I haven’t a family physician in New York.”
“The little girl’s doctor, then.”
“Bunny hasn’t a doctor in New York, either. She’s only been in the city two weeks.”
“None, eh? Well, in that case, I have a list of doctors, Mrs. Lake. You’re not doing yourself any good carrying on. You take my advice . . .”
“What good are you doing? What good are you doing?”
“We’re doing everything we can, this end. Look, Mrs. Lake, you take my word for it, what’s the sense carrying on? We’re doing everything possible here. Now, you want to cooperate, don’t you? Then you go on home and let me . . . Wait. Who else in the family?”
“Bunny,” she said. “Bunny. Bunny.”
“Yes, yes, sure. I mean the baby’s father. Where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t know where I am. He hasn’t my address in New York and there’s no way he could get it. Please, please, please, forget about the baby’s father!”
“Okay. I get it, but I mean somebody to look after you now. You need someone.”
“I need Bunny. I don’t need anyone. Find Bunny.”
“Give me your mother’s address. Where she is.”
“No. She’s out of town. She can’t help. That’s just wasting time. Please don’t waste time. Please, please! Mother won’t know where Bunny is!”
