The Face on the Milk Carton

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Had they gone for a drive? In the heat and the sun and the dusty wind? Had they landed in a shopping center in New Jersey? Had her mother—a different, younger mother—twirled on a stool beside a little girl named Jennie Spring? Bought her with nothing more than ice cream? Taken her home forever?

  A real kidnapping.

  Her dear, sane, good parents.

  Janie’s notebook faded in and out of her brain like the shadow of a migrating bird, with the flattened milk carton clipped to the cover. She could show them the milk carton. She could say, “I know the truth.”

  But then what?

  She didn’t want the truth to be true any more than they did.

  She wanted to be their daughter, too.

  Janie lay awake the rest of the night, sifting her brain, finding nothing certain.

  In the morning, they had breakfast together. This was unusual. Her father normally left for work before Janie got up; her mother liked to be solitary in the morning and sipped coffee alone in her bedroom, reading the morning paper, while Janie had a glass of orange juice and a croissant.

  They were as nervous as strangers waiting to have their teeth drilled. They drank orange juice as if it were spiked with cyanide. They buttered toast and abandoned it.

  How had her parents slept? Janie wondered. Were their hearts on Hannah this morning? And my heart, thought Janie, where is my heart?

  Janie was too exhausted for speech. In her head the daymares clamored for attention: toddlers in high chairs pounding spoons on the tray, laughter richocheting off kitchen walls, car doors slamming. The faces of her mother and father at the breakfast table seemed to crawl over and through the daymares.

  Her father set his untasted coffee next to his untouched toast. “Janie, honey, are you all right?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  Her father’s smile was pasty and peculiar. “You don’t look as if you slept.”

  “No. There was a lot to think about.”

  “Do you have any questions?” her father said nervously.

  She had a million questions. But they would answer in lies and she could not bear it. Her father—whom tax clients and soccer teams adored and respected? Her mother—who cared so passionately about the hospitals and the illiterate and the schools? Telling lie after lie after lie because in fact they were criminals?

  Perhaps they don’t even know anymore, she thought. Perhaps for them, too, the daymare has blended with the daydream, and the truth is lost.

  “You and I should spend the day together,” said her mother. “I’ll phone the school. I’ll cancel my meeting in Hartford.”

  “No, I have an important test. Anyway, I want to talk to Sarah-Charlotte.”

  She would never tell Sarah-Charlotte. She would never tell anybody. What words were there? My parents are insane. They lost a daughter and kidnapped another, except that they probably didn’t; I’m probably their granddaughter with a demon inside. “Go to your meeting. Ill see you at supper.”

  Her father said, “Maybe it’s best to try to keep things normal. Regular schedules. That sort of thing.”

  Normal, thought Janie, choking back hysteria.

  Her mother turned into a whirlwind, gathering papers while she snatched up clean stockings from the drying rack, telephoning another board member while she wriggled into her crimson suit. She always looked so authoritative in that suit.

  Her father wanted to kiss her good-bye. His arms seemed to hang inside his jacket as if they had been stapled there. He had a hard time lifting them toward Janie. Her father, whose perfect coordination came from years and years of sports. This morning his silvery hair hung on his forehead like a grandfathers, not a fathers.

  He’s afraid I won’t love him as much, thought Janie. But I do. I don’t care what they did. I love them just as much. How can that be?

  “I love you, honey,” said her father desperately. “I’m sorry about—about all of it. But—”

  “I love you, too.” Janie tacked on her brightest smile, allowing him to leave. He hugged her, but she did not hug back, and he knew it and was afraid.

  “Janie,” he said, “we did the best we could. With you and with Hannah.”

  “I don’t care about Hannah,” said Janie, which was certainly true.

  Her mother came rushing back. “Do you think this pin looks good?” said her mother anxiously, touching the silver brooch she had fastened to her scarf. Her mother didn’t feel comfortable with pins. She was always sure they had drooped or turned themselves backward. “It looks fine,” said Janie.

  She looked out the window. Pouring again. What was with all this rain? At least she could ride with Reeve this morning instead of waiting for the bus. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she said, forcing herself to hug him. “I hope your meeting is good, Mom.”

  Her father said, “You’ll telephone me at the office if—if you’re upset or anything, won’t you?”

  Outside in the rain, Reeve honked his horn.

  “Have a good day at school, sweetheart,” said her mother. “I—maybe I should stay by the phone in case you want to call. Or—I could call you from Hartford.”

  “Mom,” said Janie, “everything’s fine. Don’t worry. See you later.” She grabbed her coat, her books, her bag lunch with its nonmilk drink, and flew out the door. Reeve had given up on her and reached the end of his driveway. Screaming, she ran after him. “Reeve! Here I am!”

  He saw her, grinned, reversed, and waited for her. “Thought you took the bus after all,” he said. “Did you sleep late? You look frantic.”

  She laughed hysterically.

  “That’s just how I feel,” he agreed. “Here I make a hit by getting on honor roll and the very next day I don’t finish my homework and I have to go make an ass of myself with an oral presentation in English.”

  “I wish we could cut school,” Janie said.

  “Okay. Let’s,” said Reeve. “There’s nothing I want in that building.”

  They were heading into town; they were on the overpass of the interstate. Janie said, “Get on the highway, then. Head south.”

  Reeve’s jaw dropped. “You serious? Janie of the sweet, obedient personality wants to cut class?”

  “Yes. Turn. Hurry up. You’ll miss the entrance.”

  Reeve got on the highway and turned south.

  The windshield wipers clicked rhythmically. The rain thudded metallically on the roof. Reeve turned the radio up louder; they were listening to KC-101 Rock. Janie had never heard KC-101 at this hour; she was always in school.

  The miles went by.

  They passed a turnpike rest stop and gas station.

  Their speed dropped. They were in rush-hour traffic. A thousand cars throbbed around them.

  “We can’t turn back now,” said Reeve, waving his watch. His grin tested her, to see if she was serious.

  Buddy, thought Janie, you don’t know how serious I am.

  “We’re officially late,” said Reeve. “We go to school now, we have to get late passes from the vice-principal and they telephone our parents.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Janie. “We’re going to New Jersey.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  They spent two hours on the Connecticut Turnpike. Janie read every blue and white highway sign as if it were immortal literature and she was going to be tested.

  On the New York Thruway they paid a toll and turned north for White Plains, where they headed for the Tappan Zee Bridge and crossed the Hudson River. The river was very wide and flat, the same gray color as the sky. A single barge floated downstream.

  All that water, thought Janie, and no traffic on it. She stared at the apartment buildings and houses on the riverbanks and pretended to choose a place where Jayyne Jonstone would live. Jayyne Jonstone. She had planned Jayyne to be mysterious and sensual and full of flair.

  She had always thought of mysteries as exciting curtains, to be tugged aside to reveal intriguing pasts. But her mystery was sick and vicious. Was she even n
ow driving on the very road that Frank and Miranda Javensen had driven down when they made their horrible decision to replace Hannah? Had they ever talked about it? Out loud? Ever said to each other, “Why don’t we kidnap somebody?” Or had it just happened of its own accord, without plan, and then somehow had seemed right to them, instead of hideously, evilly wrong?

  “Janie,” said Reeve, “it’s impossible.”

  Janie held up the milk carton.

  “I see the milk carton,” said Reeve. “But that isn’t you. How could you recognize you after all these years?”

  “I don’t recognize me. I recognize my dress. Reeve, this dress is in the attic! In Hannah’s trunk.”

  “Come on, there must be a trillion polka-dotted dresses that little girls wore once. My sisters probably wore that stuff. So big deal.”

  “It is a big deal, Reeve.”

  She could feel that Reeve wanted to drive a hundred miles an hour and was angry with the traffic and the law for keeping him back. “And who could this Spring family be?” demanded Reeve. “Maybe it’s a conspiracy the Springs dreamed up to destroy your mother and father. They’d go to prison, you know, if they really kidnapped you.” Reeve looked right at her. “Which they didn’t,” he said.

  Prison. Another dark and vicious word. She had never seen a prison, except on TV cop shows. Her mother—stripped, searched, locked up, and tormented?

  Mommy! Janie’s heart cried.

  But out loud she said calmly, “Okay, I’ve been studying this map of New Jersey.” She was glad driving took so much of Reeve’s attention. He did not have much turnpike experience; the heavy, truck-filled traffic kept Reeve’s eyes ahead, or on the mirrors, but rarely able to meet Janie’s eyes. “It’s a good thing that gas station was stocked with maps. We want to get off in seventeen more exits, and then turn south. The town where the shopping center is will be halfway between—”

  “What are we going to do when we get there?” Reeve demanded.

  She said nothing. She did not know yet.

  “Janie, how’m I going to explain to my parents where we’ve been?”

  “Why do we have to explain to anybody? Let’s say we went—um—just driving around—killing time—we felt like skipping school.”

  Reeve said uneasily, “They’ll figure we found a motel room or a nice private beach. They’ll figure it’s sex we wanted, not getting out of a test or an oral report.”

  Janie swallowed. Normally a natural, unnoticeable task, swallowing had become almost an athletic event. It’s too cold for a beach, she thought. She pictured herself and Reeve on hot sand, nothing but a string bikini between them. She said, “It’s a long way. New Jersey is a much bigger state than you think it is.”

  A double truck passed them, spraying such a puddle of water over the windshield that they were blinded. For a moment they were as isolated as if they were trapped in a tin can. Reeve turned the wipers up to high. The water was whacked away. “Though anybody less interested in sex and romance than you would be hard to imagine, Janie. You’re a little scary. You’re like this hard, sharp, pointed thing.”

  He doesn’t like me, thought Janie. I’m in the car with my best friend. I guess he’s my best friend, and not Sarah-Charlotte, because it’s Reeve I’ve told. He wants not to be here. He doesn’t like this person in his passenger seat. “I’ve got to find out,” she said.

  “Why don’t you just ask your parents?”

  “Reeve, what am I supposed to say? ‘Daddy, stop telling me these cute little stories about Hannah’s childhood. Admit you kidnapped me.’ It would hurt their feelings.”

  Reeve laughed hysterically. “But Janie, if they did kidnap you, who cares about their feelings?”

  “I do. They’re my parents and I love them.”

  Reeve said, “I think we’re a little confused here.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” demanded Janie.

  They drove on and on. New Jersey seemed to last forever. Signs for Philadelphia began to appear. That’s Pennsylvania, thought Janie. She knew nothing of Philadelphia except the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention. Now I’m sliding into a time warp as well as a kidnapping, she thought. I’ve lost my parents, I’ve lost my name, I’m losing my century, too.

  Reeve found the silence intolerable. He began telling her more than she had ever known about his own childhood. About how Lizzie and Megan were so impressive in everything: music, sports, academics, even housework. How Lizzie and Megan were virtually an opposing team of two in the Shieldses’ household, each determined to get all the blue ribbons. How Todd, born the year between them, struggled endlessly to be seen and heard in that aggressive sandwich of sisters. How Reeve, born years later, had merely stared at all these superachievers, doing nothing much himself but making the occasional Lego building or turning a TV channel.

  I lived next door to them, she thought, and I hardly noticed. How much does anybody ever notice?

  She found herself thinking of Sarah-Charlotte, who had not noticed any change in Janie. Janie’s life had collapsed. Sarah-Charlotte nevertheless telephoned each night, giggled each lunchtime, and did not notice.

  They had long since lost KC-101 on the radio. Reeve tuned endlessly, trying to find a station he would like as well. When he had nothing more to say, he turned the radio up so loud they could no longer hear the rain.

  “Say something,” said Reeve.

  “It’s this exit,” said Janie.

  Reeve turned to look at her for so long she was afraid they’d go off the road. Briefly, this seemed quite reasonable. Forget finding answers. Abandon life instead.

  He expected me to say something about his childhood, she thought. About all those painful confessions he just made. But I’m too deep in my own painful confession. I am a bad person. I was a bad daughter. Because a good person, a good daughter, would have noticed she was being kidnapped! She would have remembered her real parents. She would have wept and sobbed and fought and tried to get home. She wouldn’t just trade them in. And certainly not just for an ice cream sundae.

  “Janie, what if we find these people? These Springs?”

  Her mind was so cluttered with confusion she had not actually planned to look for the Springs. She had planned to walk through the shopping center and see if it triggered any memories. See if she could find that stool in front of that green Formica counter. See if she could remember, instead, Hannah and the cross-country flight.

  Reeve got off the New Jersey Turnpike.

  We’re here, thought Janie. Fear seemed to throw water up over her eyes, the way the truck had thrown it on the windshield, and she was canned inside her fear.

  “Spring is an unusual name,” said Reeve. “There might be only one Spring family in the phone book.”

  There was an International House of Pancakes at the side of the road. Reeve swung suddenly into their parking lot, and they jolted in the air as he leaped over the sidewalk. “Let’s have pancakes and think about this,” he said. “They could be home. We might find them. What are you going to say when you ring the bell? ‘Hi, there. Am I your daughter?’”

  Janie shivered. I don’t want to be their daughter. I want to be Mommy and Daddy’s daughter.

  Reeve parked, opened his door, circled the car, opened her door, and took her hand. She still had her seat belt on and it jerked her back in. When Reeve undid the seat belt catch, Janie began to cry.

  “Don’t do that,” said Reeve, horrified.

  “What else is there to do?” She imagined herself at some unknown doorway, some unknown woman answering it—would it somehow be Hannah?—a twelve-years-older Hannah?—would there be other children? But years had passed. The high chairs would be gone.

  She crumpled against his chest. They stood in the rain, Janie hugging his middle. He was more solid than she had expected, and she could listen to all his inner parts: his heart beating in double thumps, his lungs filling in rhythm with hers.

  “Janie, the thing is, I think they would call the po
lice. That’s what I would do. Janie, think! Can you imagine the scandal? If you made all of this up, they’re going to put you in a mental institution and give you counseling and shrinkage forever. Your parents will be wiped out. Wiped, Janie. Off the map.” Reeve tilted back from her and held her face up off his wet jacket. He slid his hands back along her cheeks until his fingers were tangled in her hair. “How would they face a whole town, all those soccer parents, all those volunteer ladies, and say ‘yes, our daughter accused us of kidnapping her?’” He looked into her eyes and she thought: He loves me.

  She could actually read it in his eyes. But she did not know what kind of love it was. Compassion? Neighbors? Older brother?

  Reeve tried to lead her into the restaurant. She remained rooted to the spot. “So,” he said, trying to kid around. “Not in the mood for pancakes? How about a cheeseburger? I see golden arches in the distance.”

  Janie shook her head.

  “Janie, what if you’re right?” His voice was shaking. “The police won’t let you go back to your parents—well—to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. They’ll—” Reeve sucked in air. “Something will happen, I don’t know what. Social workers and newspaper reporters and TV cameras and—”

  “We won’t actually go to the door,” said Janie. “Well just drive by.”

  Reeve pointed to a telephone booth across the street at a Mobil station. They pivoted to face it, staring as if at the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Then they got back in the Jeep. Reeve circled the ugly A-frame restaurant with its slick brown roof. Janie was gasping for breath. Her head hurt savagely. Her hands hurt even worse. She looked at them, to see if she had slammed them in the door or something, but they were clasping each other so hard she was trying to snap her own bones. She made herself let go. Reeve crossed traffic and pulled into the gas station. He maneuvered until he had her passenger door right in front of the phone booth.

  She prayed the phone book would have been stolen.

  But it was there, hanging in a metal case by a metal cord.

  Her life, her soul, her history, her genes.

  She got out of the car and stood again in the rain. The rain was a known quantity. It seemed as safe as Reeve’s chest.