We would know him anywhere.
* * *
It was nearly four months since the call had come to Dinah. Four months since the Whitcombs were summoned to New Jersey, to be reunited with their son.
They’d flown to Newark. Hired a car and driven to New Brunswick, to the Robert Wood Johnson Memorial children’s hospital where Robbie was being treated for malnourishment, anemia, and exhaustion following an estimated forty-eight hours when he’d been lost in the foothills of the Kittatinny Mountains, east of the Delaware Water Gap.
It was two months now since the Whitcombs had moved out of their Ypsilanti house to live in Ann Arbor, at 608 Third Street, in a handsome old Victorian house leased from a University of Michigan biology professor on sabbatical abroad.
What a relief, to live in the small university town and no longer in Ypsilanti, where the Whitcombs’ neighbors were overly solicitous of them—overly interested in them—and where they’d accumulated too many bad memories.
Ann Arbor was the most cosmopolitan university community in Michigan, if not in the Midwest. Whit joked that of the faces one saw on the streets, at least one out of three was Asian.
It was just three months since the Whitcombs began seeing Dr. Miriam Kozdoi, a highly regarded local therapist whose training in psychology was in child- and family-counseling and whose degrees were from the University of Michigan.
Dinah liked Dr. Kozdoi, very much. Whit liked her too, though with some reservations.
In the roles in which their marriage seemed to have placed them, Dinah was the optimist; Whit, the one who doubts.
Both the Whitcombs liked it that Dr. Kozdoi was frank, funny, unaffected, obviously very intelligent. They liked it that her conversation was filled with cultural references—books, movies, music, opera, art, TV, Internet, sports. (Dr. Kozdoi allowed it to be known that, at least until recently, she’d been an avid hiker and skier.) They admired her office which was quirkily furnished: a young patient could sit, if he wished, in a large soft chair shaped like a baseball catcher’s mitt; older patients had the option of sitting in more conventional chairs. On the walls were reproductions of classic black-and-white American photography by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Bruce Davidson. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were crammed with books, magazines, professional journals that had the look of materials frequently consulted.
The atmosphere of the office was one of relaxation, trust. An antique grandfather clock softly struck the half hour. Dr. Kozdoi sat, not at a desk, but at a pale-green plastic table with curved corners. But there was the square box of tissues on the table, in an ebony container, prominent as it had been in the offices of therapists whom Dinah had seen, over the years.
Please take a tissue. There is nothing wrong with a few tears.
Dr. Kozdoi herself was a tall stout smiling woman with graying hair cut short as a man’s, yet with fluffy bangs falling to her eyebrows, and ornate hand-tooled silver earrings. She wore exotic Indian and Chinese shawls over her plain-cut trouser suits. If Whit liked her less than Dinah did, it was perhaps because Dr. Kozdoi wasn’t so feminine a woman, and yet her gaze was hypnotic to him, mesmerizing.
In the family-therapy session, Whit spoke less than Dinah did. And Robbie hardly spoke at all.
Since meeting Dr. Kozdoi, who was highly recommended to Dinah by one of her former psychology professors, Dinah began wearing conspicuous earrings also. She’d realized—it was a way of distracting attention from her face!
She’d seen how searchingly Dr. Kozdoi had looked at her, at their initial meeting. How warmly, and firmly, Dr. Kozdoi had taken her hand, and held it.
The woman had understood, Dinah thought: she’d known how repulsive Dinah felt, how sad, how embarrassed for her husband and her son, how unfeminine; yet how determined Dinah was, to acknowledge none of this.
Keep my secret for me. Please!
For the weekly meetings with Dr. Kozdoi, Dinah never failed to dress attractively. Not her usual well-laundered jeans, nor even her black nylon “dressy” slacks—but rather dresses, skirts. And shawls, less colorful than Dr. Kozdoi’s shawls. Since Robbie’s return she’d been taking much more interest in her appearance, shampooing her hair often, and wearing lipstick. She’d even tried putting makeup on her face, covering some of the scars with powder. Maybe, in less than full-frontal daylight, the optical illusion was a success.
Happy. My life is restored to me!
And my health too. Or nearly.
Dinah still walked with difficulty, though rarely now serious difficulty. She had not fallen for years.
(And if she did lose her balance, slip and fall inside the house, who would know? She would never tell Whit and so far, fortunately, Robbie had never observed her.)
Dinah had several times seen an expression of pained sympathy in her son’s eyes, when he looked at her.
He’d been informed—he’d had to be informed—that his mother had “minor disabilities” as a consequence of that man who’d abducted him and tried to murder her with his minivan. Whit thought it was imperative that Robbie know this fact.
Dinah wouldn’t have told him. She didn’t think so.
Yet later she thought it had been a good idea. For now Robbie knew all the more how she’d loved him in that long-ago time he could barely recall. Maybe he wouldn’t be embarrassed of having a mother with a face not quite right.
(It wasn’t clear if Robbie remembered anything of his early childhood or whether he gave vague answers shaped by what adults wanted him to say. When police officers had first interviewed him the previous May, after he’d been hospitalized, he hadn’t seemed to know even his name of that time—“Gideon Cash.”)
Dinah wanted to think He isn’t embarrassed of his mother, that I am a freak. He feels closer to me than he feels to Whit.
Dinah spent more time with Robbie than Whit did, of necessity. Whit had cut down on his work when Robbie had first returned to them, but after two months he’d returned to his previous schedule.
Your father is a very busy man. People adore him!
Perhaps this wasn’t altogether true. “Whit” Whitcomb had numerous enemies in Ypsilanti–Ann Arbor, radio listeners who disliked his left-wing politics and resented his local high profile. He’d even received hate mail, some of it jeering and vengeful, when law enforcement authorities in New Jersey had reunited him with his abducted son, and both local and national media had covered the story.
Dinah had a new life now, driving a car, taking her son to medical and dental appointments; walking with him in the university arboretum; taking him to a summer course under the auspices of the University of Michigan Education School, where along with other children his age who had disabilities or whose academic schooling had been interrupted, he would complete the equivalent of seventh grade in the State of Michigan. In New Jersey, as “Gideon Cash,” Robbie had received nearly uniform high grades from his teachers; but in the six-week summer session he seemed to be distracted and to have difficulty concentrating, and didn’t make friends with the other students.
The friendly young woman instructor had known who “Robbie Whitcomb” was—of course. Her eyes meeting Dinah’s eyes had told all. I know. Oh I am so sorry!—but I will keep your secret. Dinah had smiled, stiffly.
Dinah had not told anyone, yet Dinah didn’t intend to live a life of paranoid secrecy, either.
Ypsilanti–Ann Arbor constituted a relatively small community. By the summer of 2012, everyone knew who Robbie Whitcomb and his parents Dinah and Whit were.
The story of the abduction, the “six-year captivity,” the release from captivity and the reunifying of the family in New Jersey had been covered repeatedly, in exhaustive and often lurid detail. The Whitcombs had agreed to give a single press conference in early June, at WCYS-FM headquarters; Robbie had not been present, and the only photos provided of him were of his five-year-old self, that had appeared on the missing child poster.
Many follow-up stories had b
een aired, on national cable channels, focusing upon the serial killer sex predator “Chester Cash” who’d allegedly kidnapped several young boys and murdered and buried at least three of them in a wilderness area near his Kittatinny Falls, New Jersey, home. Photographs of the other boys—such young, beautiful boys!—had been displayed, and among them Robbie’s young face; but Robbie had not been one of the murder victims.
The Whitcombs had nothing to do with these stories and refused to be interviewed for them. Grimly Whit watched such stories for he felt that, as Robbie’s father, he should know as much as he could; but Dinah hid away, appalled.
(Whit taped the programs and saw them late at night. When Robbie was safely in bed, and asleep.)
(At least, it was his parents’ assumption, after they put him to bed, hugging, kissing him, pulling bedclothes up to his chin, that Robbie slept.)
* * *
In their household, Dinah was calm, placating and good-natured—as befitted a handicapped person with a Hallowe’en face. (This was Dinah’s sense of humor, from which Robbie was mostly spared.)
In their household, Whit was likely to be the more emotional parent, flaring up in anger at the unwanted attentions of others, determined to protect his son and wife from media exploitation.
(Whit had more than once knocked smartphones out of hands, to prevent pictures or videos taken of his family when they were out together. How Dinah coped with this phenomenon, if she coped with it at all, Dinah didn’t tell Whit.)
When Dinah took Robbie to his summer class, she’d waited for him in the neighborhood of small shops, secondhand book-stores and boutiques at the edge of the university campus; she’d walked along the sidewalks, slowly, savoring even the pain in her legs and lower back, thinking with pleasure that it was her son she was waiting for, to drive back home.
She hoped that, glancing at her, people could tell. A mother, and soon she’ll be picking up her child. Look how happy she is!
Often Dinah waited for Robbie in a bookstore café. He would join her after class and they’d have a light lunch together in the café or at a nearby organic restaurant—strictly vegetarian food. It had developed that Robbie disliked meat, that meat and coarse foods like pizza made his stomach feel “sick.”
In the hospital in New Brunswick, Robbie had had to be fed through a tube, for a while. Then he’d been able to eat only soft foods. Only gradually had his ability to digest normal foods returned. But meat, he said, was “nasty.”
By degrees, Robbie had come to like yogurt, fruit smoothies, shredded wheat, muesli, sautéed tofu, jasmine rice, brown rice, wild rice, and all varieties of pasta. His desserts were carrot cake, gingerbread, strawberries, banana smoothies, frozen yogurt. His parents introduced him to Chinese, Thai, Middle Eastern and Indian cuisine, which featured many vegetarian dishes. Dinah was trying to convert him from carbonated soda drinks to the Snapple drinks which she preferred and which were far healthier.
Robbie knew of organic foods. Robbie began to look for organic on food labels.
His parents were pleased with this. (Were they? Dinah was pleased.) Except they worried, their son had a tendency to be—well, just slightly—if you lived with him intimately, and observed him up close—compulsive.
Dinah remembered: the parking-lot game. How she’d asked Robbie to be responsible for remembering where their car was parked, and how terribly serious Robbie had been. As if, unknowing, Dinah had triggered some mechanism in his child-brain, that had had a result she hadn’t anticipated.
Now, he is no longer a child. He has grown up. Yet he must be shielded.
* * *
Of course, Dinah no longer smoked. Even in secret.
She had not smoked a cigarette—at least, an entire cigarette—since late that afternoon of April 11, 2006.
It was a filthy habit. She was deeply ashamed she’d ever smoked in her son’s presence.
Despite his distractions, and difficulties with sleeping a normal seven-hour night, Robbie did well in the summer session. He was enrolled in Ann Arbor Middle School, in seventh grade; the first day of classes was next Tuesday, after Labor Day.
Dinah’s mother had pleaded with her to bring her family to Birmingham, to live with her in her five-bedroom Colonial on Bayberry Drive. Instead of moving from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor, they could move in with her, and Robbie could attend Birmingham Day School, to which Geraldine would send him.
You owe it to your son, Geraldine said, to try to protect him. In Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, everyone knew too much about the Whitcombs. In Birmingham, people were more discreet.
Dinah doubted this. Dinah doubted that there was anywhere in the Midwest, or anywhere in the country, where the name “Whitcomb” wasn’t known by this time.
There had been a cover feature in People. On CBS-TV 48 Hours Mystery, a feature on “Chester Cash, Serial Sex Predator and Murderer.”
Much had been made in the popular media of the fact that during his six years as a captive of Chester Cash, Robbie hadn’t attempted to escape, evidently, or to call attention to his captivity. Even when his captor was forcing him to spend hours in the safety-box, and continued to sexually abuse him, and torture him; even after his captor had brought another boy, an eight-year-old, into the household, the child known as “Gideon Cash” had not rebelled.
Why hadn’t the boy told someone at his school? A teacher, a friend? Why hadn’t he gone to police officers in Kittatinny Falls? Why hadn’t he tried to run away? Six years.
There was no answer to this question. Dinah did not allow herself to think of any answer.
She and Whit did not discuss this. Unless you’d lived the hell that Robbie had lived, you could not know. And you could not judge.
Hateful things had been said in the media and online. Dinah knew, without being certain. She had ceased using the Internet except for the weather forecast, recipes, a book club. She would no more have typed in Robbie Whitcomb than she’d have swallowed a mouthful of glass, she’d told Whit.
Whit shielded her from such things, and Dinah had no wish to be enlightened.
Geraldine persisted: “It would be so much healthier for all of you to make a fresh start. In a new community. Whit has been with that public radio station for most of his adult life. He should get another job—a more stable job. One that doesn’t depend upon listeners’ polls and contributions.”
There was the not-so-subtle hint that Geraldine would help Dinah’s family, financially. This was an insult!—though Dinah knew her mother only meant well.
Dinah hadn’t mentioned her mother’s suggestions to Whit. She’d known how he would have reacted. How wounded and indignant he’d have been, and how furious.
Tell your mother to leave us alone. Permanently.
Dinah had thanked her mother, and declined.
Geraldine said, “You might be making a mistake, Dinah. To stay in that part of Michigan.” She’d come close to saying, to stay with him.
“It’s a mistake we will have to live with, Mother. If you’re ashamed of us, we can’t help that.”
“I’m not ashamed of you, Dinah! I love you.”
But we don’t love you. We don’t need you, we have each other.
Dinah had driven Robbie to the school, which was about two miles from their house on Third Street. They’d parked, and walked around the building. Dinah had felt Robbie’s mounting excitement—she’d wished to think it was excitement and not anxiety or dread.
“It looks like a very nice school, Robbie.” Dinah spoke enthusiastically as often she did to Robbie, without the expectation of Robbie replying. “Everyone has told us, teachers here are excellent.”
This was true. And when Dinah had enrolled Robbie, she’d been impressed with the administrative and teaching staff she’d met.
Dr. Kozdoi too had good things to say about the school. But Dr. Kozdoi was, by her admission, a firm believer in public education.
She thought, too, that Robbie would make a good adjustment to school in Ann Arbor, among
the children of ethnic minority families. Their interest in lurid tabloid stories would be minimal, Dr. Kozdoi thought.
Ever more, Dr. Kozdoi was becoming a member of the Whitcomb family. Her (invisible) presence was enhancing. Weekly sessions in her office had become crucial to Dinah and Whit for in these, their relationship with each other was a constant issue; each was determined, for Robbie’s sake as well as for theirs, that their relationship be presented in the best possible way.
Dinah acknowledged—Maybe I’m too verbal—too enthusiastic! Maybe this tires people out.
Whit acknowledged—Maybe I’m too skeptical—pessimistic about the world.
Neither would have acknowledged—Somehow, our love has turned into something else. Guilt?
By degrees, Whit was coming to respect Dr. Kozdoi. He’d taken to calling her Robbie’s “good” grandmother.
To his admirers, “Whit” Whitcomb had visibly changed since his son had returned to his life. Whit had shaved off his beard, trimmed his shaggy hair, was looking almost corporate.
(And why? It was a secret.)
(Not even Dinah knew: Whit had resolved to shave off his beard as soon as he’d seen photographs of “Chester Cash,” at that time in police custody in New Jersey. The man’s whiskered jaws, his shoulder-length hair, his swaggering-hippie pretensions. How appalled Whit had been, the sex predator–murderer resembled him.)
(Most stunning to Whit, he believed he’d once met Chester Cash in the fall of 2001 after the terrorist attacks of 9/11; Whit had been involved in an Ann Arbor–Detroit community outreach program called Hands Across Borders, held on the Wayne State University campus, where a number of community leaders spoke, and among these was the charismatic “Reverend Cash” who’d been associated with the small, African-American Church of Abiding Hope in center city, Detroit. Whit had disliked the man for his pseudo-modest Christly manner—for his bristling beard and “piercing” eyes. After Whit had spoken to the rally, Reverend Cash had come to him, to shake his hand … Whit’s memory dissolved at this point, in a tremulous amnesia like fine white mist.)
Daddy Love: A Novel Page 18
