The Empty Place at the Table

by Jode Jurgensen John Ellsworth

  I married a brilliant man named James. But I kept my last name of Sellars in the event Lisa ever came looking for me. She’d know me by Sellars, not by James’ name.

  James was tall but slight with long fingers and palms, the kind of hands you'd expect to see on a grand piano at Carnegie. He was a member of the law firm that kept Laura out of hot water and free from all the silly lawsuits people undertake against successful shows. James put a face on that law firm, and that's how I got to know him because I was still with the show. In fact, I hired his law firm myself. More than anyone before, James understood my constant sorrow. He'd seen me sob on Christmas Eve; he'd watched me go to bed on Mother's Day Eve and stay in bed with the curtains drawn and anxiety pills popped so that I could make it through what was always a very horrible day. At least that was how it was until we had Gladys, our first child--another girl.

  Gladys was named after James' mother. Gladys was six years old--two years older than Lisa when she was stolen from me. She liked horses and sailboats and loved to play house, loved to watch Frozen and Moana and a zillion other videos. She also loved to spend hours with me cooking sumptuous meals on weekend nights. But there was one difference between my relationship with Gladys and that with Lisa: Gladys and I weren't entangled. Not at all. Maybe it was because I was healthier as an older mother and more able to give my child her space and let her be who she was rather than every day trying to create her in my image. Yes, that was probably it. I still had a sixth sense about things with Gladys, but there wasn't that automatic knowing like there was with Lisa.

  Still, there was one thing with Gladys I tried to overcome that perhaps I never would. That was my hovering over her and keeping her within view at all times so that she couldn't be stolen. That was simply not an option for the universe to drop on my head and crush my spirit and destroy my life again.

  My watchfulness compressed Gladys' life into segments where I was just outside her zone of activity--like when she was in her schoolroom--and segments where I was literally with her, which covered the rest of the time. If she wanted to walk next door to Sarah's house, I made up some excuse to accompany her outside and make sure she got there. She was still too young to notice that about her life and my omnipresence in it, but James noticed. And of course, I noticed, too.

  For his part, James was a gem. He let me get away with helicoptering. He understood. No doubt my attachment to Gladys would become problematic in time. That was more likely sooner, not later, but I figured I'd handle it when necessary. In the meantime, I was right there, baby, right behind her, ready to murder anyone would try to make off with her. They wouldn't stand a chance. And yes, I had taken to carrying a gun, a silver .38 that I kept in my purse. I had one rule with Gladys that could not under any circumstances be broken, and that was my purse. Nothing could happen that would ever allow her to open my purse. She'd had that drummed into her since her second birthday, and she knew it was ironclad. Of course, my purse was never in plain sight around the house. I had cabinets where it was locked away until I was leaving the house. Then it went with me. If the hound of hell ever returned to steal another of my children, my gun made me feel more than capable of stopping him. I felt like I could meet force with force now, enough to prevent it from ever happening again. Shoot first and ask questions later: that's where I was at with any stranger who would ever try to walk my daughter away from a playground or pick her up in the school loading zone before me while I was waiting two cars back. I was a mother, and a mom and I was armed.

  "Melissa, what would you think about arming hospital security officers?"

  My head jerked upright. I had been lost in thoughts about loss and guns and love.

  I was sitting in a small conference room at the JCAHO, a hospital accrediting agency in Oak Brook where the group I created was presenting a proposal for increased patient security at JCAHO-certified hospitals. My group was Patient Security Services, Inc. We were a non-profit whose sole aim was to raise consciousness about the lack of patient security in the hospital models of the Twentieth Century. Plus, we tried to see new standards adopted. We emphasized how this new day--this Twenty-First Century--had presented a new set of problems, what with sex trafficking of children and terrorism and vanilla kidnappings with ransom demands. So we had come to that room to present our views and, in the middle of it, I had lapsed into my continuing daydream about Lisa, loss, and the protection of Gladys.

  I looked around and screwed up my face, so I looked edgy and involved.

  "What do I think about arming hospital security personnel? I think we've made that clear in our written presentation to the JCAHO. Security personnel should be stationed at nurses' stations on all hospital floors. They should be armed. We already know about kidnappings of children and assaults on the aged and all the rest of the carnage that goes on against the infirm not just in hospitals but also nursing homes and pre-school facilities. We've witnessed the horrors of grade schools and high schools under attack by armed psychopaths. And now it's just a matter of time until one of those armed attacks happens at a hospital. So, yes, there should be armed security officers at every point of ingress and egress, and there should be security scans of encoded bracelets made as well."

  "You're talking about bar codes for coming and going in our hospitals?"

  "I am. And when an attack comes--and it will, God forbid--I'm going to be available to plaintiffs' lawyers to testify that the JCAHO was forewarned by my group that the time was ripe for these attacks and abductions to happen in hospitals. In other words, if you refuse to act, I'm going to become your worst nightmare."

  Talk continued from there. I had made my point with those people, and it wasn't the first time. Maybe this time would be different; I was doing CNN that night, and that would produce a flood of emails, calls, and letters to the JCAHO. Ours was an idea and solution whose time had come round. I predicted the new requirements for armed security and encoded bracelet scans at ingress and egress would be in place before the new year. Maybe even earlier.

  James and I lived in Glencoe, just like my in-laws Charlie and Rebecca. In fact, we weren't two miles apart. We lived there mainly for the schools and the police department. GPD profiled everyone passing through Glencoe. If you looked like you didn't belong in a community where the average home value was over one million, then chances were excellent you would be stopped and asked a few questions by the police. I needed that sense of additional security then with Gladys. One part of me said oh, this was the worst kind of elitism and another part of me said thank God I could afford to do it. Until you've lost one of your own, please don't judge me. That's what I told everyone.

  After the JCAHO meeting, I drove home slowly and carefully. Gladys was in school, first grade at Warriner's Academy. The school had armed, uniformed security and armed, plainclothes security officers roaming the halls, so parents felt good about leaving kids there. There was a direct correlation, I'd learned, between the income one made and the need for extra security precautions where your kids were concerned. But that law didn't hold water in Lisa's case. Why? Because my earnings weren't the reason for her abduction. A ransom note never came. A call demanding millions never was received. Instead, she just disappeared from every place her grandparents, and I could think to look. And from everyplace the Chicago Police Department and the FBI could think to look. And from everyplace Colonel Eustice, USA (Ret.) could think to look. Not a day went by that I didn't regret not having received a ransom demand. At least I would have known there was another reason for my baby's abduction besides the alternatives.

  My phone rang, and I told it to answer.

  "Mrs. Sellars? We have received a young woman you should probably come look at."

  It was the Cook County Morgue. I still got these calls; my name was on the list of parents of missing children who wanted to be notified if a dead body presented that no one could identify and no one claimed within ten days. This task would cost me untold pain and sorrow and regret for the dead girl's loved
ones, but it was a task I felt like I owed Lisa, first, and, second, that I owed myself to perform. The thought of Lisa arriving in the morgue and being buried an unidentified pauper destroyed me; so, I went and looked when they called. The calls were based on race, age, identifying characteristics, and identifying marks. There hadn't been a body yet with the sailboat birthmark on her left lower back like Lisa's, but I went to look anyway. Who could tell? She might have had it removed, or it might have gone away on its own. I didn't know everything there was to know about such things, so I showed up at the Morgue maybe two or three times a month, and I had a look.

  "I'll come by this evening yet. I'm on my way home now."

  "We're only open until ten o'clock."

  "I know that. I'll be there on time."

  With that, I switched routes on my GPS and listened for new driving instructions.

  Thirty minutes later, I was arriving at the morgue on Harrison Street. It was a dark December night--the sun went down at four o'clock--and the trees were glittering from last night's ice storm. It was a shimmering wonderland beneath the parking lot lights. You would think that such beauty would be saved for beautiful places and beautiful moments, but not so. Beauty that night was to be found in a horrible juxtaposition of the morgue parking lot to the morgue itself and its tortured corpses. I paused and had a look around before going inside. Anymore, I admired beauty in the world whenever and wherever it presented itself. I was not stupid. Not anymore.

  They knew me inside, and the woman behind the Plexiglas partition spoke my name and motioned to the door marked PRIVATE. I passed through and was greeted by Amber Losse, one of three nighttime technicians servicing the public requests for views, as they were called.

  "Mrs. Sellars," she smiled. "Thanks for coming."

  "Thanks for calling me," I told her. "Please keep it up. I want to be here if--you know."

  "We know, Mrs. Sellars. Well, we have a young woman tonight with a very disturbing gunshot wound. I hope you're up to it."

  "Would it matter?" I said with a snap in my voice. Then I caught myself I didn't mean the flash of anger for Amber, so I tried to soften what I'd said. "What I meant, Amber, is that I have to look no matter what condition they're in. As long as the face is still human, I prefer to be notified."

  I couldn't be much clearer than that. Call me, I was confirming to her. Call me no matter what. Unless the face was missing altogether. Then don't call.

  Amber looked up from her computer screen just then. "Oh, wait. We don't have one case. We have two you should view tonight. The second one came in just twenty minutes ago."

  "What kind of shape is she in?"

  "She was a pedestrian in a crosswalk, it says. But, good news, Mrs. Sellars, she's very viewable."

  "Well, welcome to my lucky night, then."

  She pulled the first body tray out of its refrigerated cell. The body was nude, without a cover. It was a very young woman, maybe all of seventeen. I turned sideways to view her face. It definitely wasn't Lisa, not unless Lisa had let someone tattoo a dragon on the side of her neck with flames shooting up onto her cheek. On the other hand, what did I actually know about the Lisa of the present day, how she would be, what she would and wouldn't do? So I looked again, more closely now.

  "Can I see her lower left side?"

  Amber complied, rolling the body onto its right side and pinning it there with both of her arms.

  Putting my head very close to the kidney, I searched up and down for the telltale sailboat birthmark. There was none, nor was there any scarring to indicate it might have once been there but was later removed. Nothing like that.

  "Okay, Amber. This one's a negative."

  Amber lowered the body back down onto its back and then went to a table behind her and plucked off a nice, clean body sheet, which she shook out and settled down over the girl.

  "Next time she'll be a little less traumatic for someone to see. I'm sorry she came that way for you."

  "It's all right," I said, though it really wasn't. It was gruesome and gave me nightmares. I believed that I could remember the face of every girl I had ever viewed. Every last one. Maybe not, really, but my dreams were overflowing with faces. Many nights my dreams taunted me with face after face, wound after wound, until morning came and I could come awake and stop the show.

  "Here's another," Amber said mundanely. She covered a yawn with her hand. "Sorry. Tonight it's early to bed."

  The drawer opened.

  This girl was maybe twenty-five--way too old to be my Lisa--unless, again, she had aged precipitously due to drug use.

  "May I see her teeth?" Her teeth would tell me a lot about any drug use.

  Amber reached a gloved hand and peeled the girl's upper lip back and away. The teeth seemed clean and well-cared for, nothing like I'd learned to expect from a drug addict's mouth.

  "Okay. Thank you. We might as well view the hip."

  "Left side again?"

  "Always the left side."

  The body was rolled up onto its right side so I could again glance around for a birthmark. Any birthmark would interest me at this point, but, again, there was none. At which times I wondered, yet again, whether I'd made it up in my mind about Lisa's sailboat. But then I would carefully disengage from those doubts and reaffirm what I had always known: Lisa had a small sailboat-shaped birthmark on her lower left back/hip. That was it.

  "Is that it?" I asked.

  "Until next time," Amber said, intent on pleasing me with the implicit promise to call me yet again. She couldn't know, of course, how much I hated that there would be a next time. Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was stamped all over me, especially my face, which had aged twenty years in ten.

  "Good night, Amber."

  "Good night, Mrs. Sellars."

  Outside, the ice crackled and snapped in the trees as a slight breeze had come up. The asphalt of the parking lot was slippery. I reminded myself yet again how foolish it was to wear heels on days like that. So I tiptoed one foot after another, taking care that one sole or the other was in touch with the ground at all times. The thought of that thing--one sole or the other--could have launched me into an existential cant at that moment, but I was too tired to play that sole/soul game and let it go.

  Forty-five minutes later I was home.

  16

  James was waiting for me just inside the kitchen door from the garage. He looked desperate, frantic even. "Come in," he said grimly. "I'm afraid I've got some very upsetting news."

  So. This was it. They had found ; then, and she was dead. Deep down I had always known it would eventually come to this. It was only my hope that had been keeping her alive up to that point. Reality didn't care about my hope; reality was about to tell me she was dead and gone.

  "What is it?" I said, barely able to choke out the words.

  "Come into the kitchen. I've got coffee. Let's sit down and talk."

  "Your hands are shaking," I said to James. "I'm sorry you have to go through this, poor man." Anything to get the focus off what was coming, if only for a moment.

  We went into the kitchen, and I removed my coat and laid it on the table. Then I sat down and folded my hands on the table. James returned with two coffees and sat down at the head of the table--his place--just at my left.

  "There are two men waiting to talk to you in the living room. They're not what you're thinking. They're from the Army."

  "What? What's the Army want to talk to me about?"

  James rose slowly to his feet. "I'm going to go in with you to support you. But you can just as easily pretend I'm not there."

  Now I was confused. Support me but pretend he wasn't there? What in the world could he be talking about?

  He helped me up, and we balanced our coffee as he led me into the living room. Sure enough, two soldiers were waiting there, both in uniform and both looking very grim. The taller one introduced himself to me first.

  "I'm Captain Roger McMillan. This is Lieutenant Winkler."

  We sh
ook hands all around.

  "You'd better take a seat, Mrs. Sellars. This is going to be difficult."

  Probably protocol in how these things are done: telling me to take a seat first. Then it dawned on me: Army-Colonel Eustice; Colonel Eustice-Army. Charlie's bosom buddy Colonel Eustice had turned up something through his Army contacts, and Lisa had been found. I swallowed hard and found I was already fighting to hold back my tears.

  "All right," I said when I was seated. "What is it?"

  "Chief Warrant Officer Mark Sellars has been found."

  I was stunned. Did he just say what I think he said? Mark, my Mark? Found?

  Chills traveled down my spine, and my breath caught in my throat. Then I was overwhelmed with a sense of guilt like I'd never felt before, guilt that I'd done something horribly wrong. I didn't have far to look to understand where it was coming from. I had abandoned my husband and married another man. I had failed my husband. My heart was gripped by fear, and I felt myself gasping for air.

  "Your husband has been held by enemy forces nearly ten years, Mrs. Sellars. He is well--though he's down a hundred pounds. He's now in Maryland, where our doctors and intelligence are working with him. It'll be a week before he gets to come home."

  I could only look at James. Tears had welled up in his eyes, but he forced a tremulous smile at me, and I knew, in that instant, that he was freeing me to make the most difficult decision of my life.

  Mark Sellars was my boyfriend from college and my first-ever lover. He's the one your mind returns to when you're fifteen years older and thinking back. He's the one you've always known you want to spend your life with. That's who Mark was--even now.

  "Wait a minute, Captain. How sure are you it's Mark?"