(2001) The Girls Are Missing

by Caroline Crane

  Mary Ellen exlaimed, “I love this place. I like it better than White Plains, it’s so cute and cozy. You must have had fun when you were a kid.”

  “I really couldn’t wait to grow up,” Joyce answered with a rueful laugh. “I thought that was when the fun would begin.”

  Then they were out of town again, on a blacktop road with trees and fields on either side. And then turning into the driveway. She knew every tuft of grass growing among its pebbles.

  And the house. It was home, and yet no longer home. She was surprised at how shabby it looked, and embarrassed that Mary Ellen should see it that way. It hadn’t been painted in years.

  Her mother did not come out to the porch to meet them. Probably she was at the hospital, Pat said as he opened the unlocked front door. Joyce had forgotten that they left the door unlocked.

  “I wish she wouldn’t do that. Times have changed, Pat, I should know, and now she’s here alone.”

  “You can tell her,” he replied, “and it won’t make any impression. She’s always done it.”

  They left the children at the house with Meredith, and Pat drove Joyce to the hospital. Her mother was in a chair by the bedside, knitting. With a little cry of pleasure, she stuffed her knitting into its bag and rose to embrace them.

  Their father lay half sleeping, his face a pale yellow-white, a plastic tube for oxygen in his nose and another for intravenous feeding in his arm.

  Do we all have to end like this? Joyce wondered as she bent to kiss his cheek. And then she thought: How much better this way, cared for and comforted, than like those girls.

  He greeted her weakly and his hand trembled as she held it. She chattered to him about the children, about the baby, whom he had not seen, and could not until “next time,” as she put it, and about how she had had to bring Mary Ellen. He watched her for a while, and then his eyes closed and his hand relaxed.

  “I guess I wore him out,” she whispered to her mother, who stood up and beckoned her into the hall.

  “It’s just the operation,” her mother explained. “He’ll get better, they promised me, and I told them to be honest. I didn’t know that when I called you. It’s good that you came. I hope he doesn’t think—”

  “I tried to make it sound as if we’re just on a little vacation,” Joyce said. “And I’m glad we came, too. It’s nice to see everybody.”

  The next days were crowded with relatives, at both the hospital and the house. She was ashamed that she had neglected them for two whole years, and for a long time before that. Mary Ellen was shocked to learn that no one in the family had seen Adam, and he was now almost two months old.

  “That happens all the time,” Joyce explained. “People move away from home, and—”

  “It’s not going to happen to me,” Mary Ellen insisted. “I like your big family. I wish I had a big family.”

  “You have Adam, and probably there will be more. And maybe your mother will marry again and you’ll have full-time brothers and sisters.”

  “She won’t. She likes it this way. And even if she did, I’d be too old for them.”

  “Too old” was an odd phrase, coming from a twelve-year-old, but spoken with such an air of resignation that it was not funny.

  Mary Ellen added, “They could have had more babies after me. It’d be more fun for me now. They didn’t get divorced till I was four years old. There was plenty of time.”

  Plenty of time, yes. Joyce groped to remember something Barbara had said. Some question that, at the time, had seemed impertinent, but now she wondered. Had it been the same with Barbara?

  She wished she could recall the question, or statement, or whatever it was. She wished she could talk to Barbara now. There had been so many innuendoes, half spoken, half asked. She had turned them all aside, but now she needed to know. There was something wrong.

  But it didn’t matter so much anymore. The man had turned himself in. It was only between Carl and herself, and there was no hurry about that.

  Every day she visited the hospital, leaving her children in the care of a brother or sister, all of whom lived nearby. Once she left Mary Ellen in charge. She worried that Gail might be nervous, thinking of the murders, but Gail had not brought them with her. She blossomed in Pennsylvania.

  “Why can’t we live here, Mommy?” she asked when they took a walk to the stream in back of the house. “It’s so nice. Why couldn’t we stay here when we came after Daddy died?”

  “You didn’t want to then, remember?” said Joyce. “You wanted to get back to the city and your friends.”

  Or maybe only to everything that was familiar. And so had Joyce. They had never considered staying.

  She put a hand on Gail’s shoulder. “If we lived here, when you got to be a teenager, you’d find it deadly. I did.

  I took off for New York exactly one week after graduation.”

  And never came back. And was glad.

  But when she thought about going back now, something cold filled her stomach. Even though the man had given himself up and the murders were all over, there was that lump of dread. She could not seem to make it go away.

  Perhaps because, although she tried very hard, she did not quite believe the man’s confession.

  18

  She had not talked to Carl since leaving home, not even to call and tell him they had arrived safely. She was afraid because of her deception about Mary Ellen. Still, she knew she would have to face him someday, and it was better to pave the way over the telephone. She dialed the number on Monday night at seven o’clock. He should have been home, but perhaps the train was late.

  She tried again at nine and then at ten. The cold, hard lump began to climb into her throat. He always came home—except on that other Monday night, but that was because of work at the office.

  She gave up trying then. If he was going to be out all night, she didn’t want to know it. She found herself feeling shaky as she undressed and went to bed. She tried to believe that everything was all right. Over and over again she said it, but could not get rid of the lump.

  She had made return reservations for Thursday morning. Her father was out of danger and her mother beginning to show signs of strain. She knew it was time to take the children and ship out. On Tuesday she confirmed the reservations, and then in the evening, tried again to reach Carl.

  This time he answered.

  She expected an explosion, because of Mary Ellen. Instead

  he remarked calmly, “So you finally decided to come back,” and it was she who exploded.

  “What do you mean ‘finally’? It’s only been since Thursday. Wouldn’t you give your mother that much time if she were sick?”

  She knew he would. That, and a whole lot more.

  “Anyway,” she added, “I thought you’d be glad we’re coming.”

  “I am. Very glad. It’s been too quiet around here.”

  “I don’t know if I appreciate that.”

  “I mean without the kids. They’re part of you, aren’t they?”

  She supposed they were, but it made her feel like an earth mother.

  “What exactly do you mean by quiet? I hope you mean nothing’s been happening.”

  “Oh, a few things, I guess. The alarm goes off in the morning—that’s a happening, isn’t it?—I shave, cook my breakfast, catch the train …”

  “How perfectly idyllic. What did you do last night? I tried to call you.”

  “Last night? Let’s see. I went to the movies. Came home late.”

  “The movies?”

  They laughed about it together as he described his trip to the movies. He sounded normal, natural, playful. Her misgivings thawed.

  “At least you’ve been surviving,” she said. “And good old Cedarville, too. What happened with that man they arrested?”

  “What man?”

  “The one who turned himself in just before I left. Remember, on the radio?”

  “Oh, that. I told you he wasn’t anything. They had to let him go. I told
you.”

  “They let him go?”

  “Sure. I told you he was just some jerk.”

  “Oh … well …” Her hand had become weak again, her fingers almost releasing the telephone.

  “I hope they know what they’re doing,” she said.

  Frank D’Amico must have known. He would not have done it without a good reason. The man was not the right one, that was the reason.

  “Okay,” Carl prompted at her continued and busy silence, “I’ll see you Thursday, then. What time are you coming? Do you need any help getting from the airport?”

  “No, I took the car, as you probably noticed. I’ll be all right. And I do thank you for letting me borrow Mary Ellen. She’s been very helpful.”

  “Glad to hear it.” And that was that.

  She set the telephone back in its place.

  No, please, you shouldn’t have let him go.

  But why not, if he wasn’t the right man? Did crazy killers ever really give themselves up? Or did they have to be hunted down? She tried to think of a case. It was the sane murderer who gave himself up. Killed his wife in the heat of anger and then, weeping, called the police.

  If that man was not the murderer, who was?

  She remembered how she had wondered, after the near-drowning incident, about Anita’s own family. But Foster had carried himself so well at the town meeting, with that marvelous speech.

  Bruce Cheskill, who had made a pass at a babysitter …

  Or anybody. It could have been anybody. And she was going back, and taking her girls back, to where the killer still roamed at large.

  19

  They flew to New York at noon on Thursday. The air felt familiar, smoggy and gritty, as they left the terminal and walked toward their car. She should have been glad to come home, but she was not. Something hung over her, something deathly and terrible.

  He had sounded so cheerful on the phone, telling about the movie. Why, then, did she feel this way?

  They drove over the Triborough Bridge and up the Major Deegan Expressway through the hectic Bronx. As soon as they reached the green of Van Cortlandt Park, she felt they were almost home. There was still Yonkers, but that was Westchester already, and after Yonkers they were really out in the country.

  They left the Expressway at Elmsford and followed local roads to Cedarville. Entering the town, she found it as quiet as Carl had said it was. Four little girls played hopscotch on the sidewalk under the watchful eye of an old woman rocking on a front porch. A press car was parked in front of the police station—they were not going to give up these murders easily—and Mr. Lattimer came out of the liquor store with a brown shopping bag to begin his long journey up the hill to his home.

  “Don’t give him a lift,” said Gail. “He’ll smell up the car.”

  “I doubt if we’d have room anyway,” Joyce replied, unwilling to admit her own prejudice. Dirty clothes she might have tolerated, but not the smell. She could not help a pang of guilt as they passed him, but hardened herself. Despite the improbability, he still might have been the killer.

  Certainly he had the best opportunity, living alone as he did, and with all those outbuildings, which Frank said had been used in the killings. And the best motive, too: an unbalanced mind.

  Again she felt guilty, for she was not really sure how unbalanced his mind was. He lived alone because he had no one to live with. He lived in poverty because he was poor. And he kept to himself—because he was a pariah? Or was he a pariah because he kept to himself?

  She turned in at their driveway, and the house came into view. It looked strange and unwelcoming with the doors and windows closed. For a dizzy moment she thought Carl had gone away and left them, but of course he had only gone to work.

  She wished he could have been there, or someone could have been, to spare her that slight shudder of dread on unlocking the door into a house that was empty.

  As soon as she was inside, the dread went away. She was home. It was exactly as she had left it, almost timeless, and waiting for her. If anything, it was neater. Not a crumb on the kitchen table. Every dish in the cupboard. That was Carl’s way.

  “Shall I put Adam to bed?” Mary Ellen asked.

  “For now,” said Joyce. “I’ll have to feed him soon, but I think I’ll call your father first and tell him we’re home.”

  She took off her shoes, her pantyhose and traveling clothes, and put on a pink seersucker shift with large strawberry pockets. As she sat at the kitchen table, she found herself

  watching the screen door. You never could tell. After all, the man who confessed was at large again. She got up, locked the screen, and then dialed Carl’s office.

  “Hi,” she said when he came on the phone. “Just thought I’d let you know we’re back.”

  “Are you calling from home?” he asked.

  “Where else from?”

  “I thought you might be at the airport.”

  “No, we made straight for the car. And I want to congratulate you on keeping this place so neat and tidy.”

  He said, “Did you see the newspapers I left for you?”

  “No.”

  “On the coffee table. I thought you might want me to save them, since you’re so interested, even going to that meeting and all.” He chuckled softly. “Don’t throw them out when you’re finished.”

  “Read—about it?”

  “The latest. Our little hamlet’s claim to fame. I have another call waiting. See you tonight.”

  Upstairs in his crib, Adam began to cry. It was not until later that she found time to look at the papers.

  They were piled neatly on the coffee table, every edge lined up, and carefully arranged in chronological order. On the bottom was Thursday, the day she had left. On the top, Wednesday, with the big fat Sunday edition near the middle.

  She lifted off the top Times and discovered the Daily News underneath. The very front page. Giant pictures. Again that slow, thudding pound of her heart.

  She did not want to know when it happened. She put her hand over the caption and read only far enough to learn that it was another young girl, a thirteen-year-old. Probably hitchhiking, the paper said.

  She could not avoid the date. She knew it anyway, it was yesterday’s paper, so it could not have been last night, or even the night before, since this was a morning paper.

  If Sunday, it would have been an aftermath, not splashed all over page one. Monday night, while she had been snug in her childhood home, and he, a lonely bachelor at the movies, with the telephone ringing and ringing in an empty house.

  At the movies. He had laughed about it. Hadn’t been to the flicks in years. Kind of funny to walk into a theater. The five dollars wasn’t so funny, though. He had refrained from buying popcorn, but they still sold it, just like when he was a kid.

  Ringing and ringing in an empty house, while he had gone to the movies. Alone. Why couldn’t he have come home and watched television? Was the house too quiet?

  She let the paper fall into her lap. She couldn’t read any more. As she folded it, Mary Ellen came in from the garden with grass stains on her bare knees.

  “Well, what’s been going on?” Mary Ellen asked, seeing the newspapers.

  “Do you really want to know?” said Joyce.

  “You mean there was another?”

  “Not, thank God, in the woods, but that doesn’t make any difference. The poor girl. It doesn’t matter where she was found.”

  “Where was she found?” Mary Ellen could take it.

  “In some bushes along the road between here and Ossining. Thirteen years old.”

  Mary Ellen whistled sympathetically. Joyce went on, “It says she was probably hitchhiking. I hope you know better than to hitchhike.”

  Mary Ellen sat down on the sofa and picked up the paper Joyce had folded. She noticed her knees and tried to brush off the stain. “I’ve been weeding your flowers, Joyce. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m delighted.”

  “It’s fun, h
aving flowers. I wish we could have flowers. Maybe I’ll get some houseplants.” Mary Ellen buried herself in the newspaper.

  Why hadn’t he told her?

  He had let her come home thinking all was peaceful, and then made her find out like this. It was almost coy, the way he had directed her to that pile of papers.

  Perhaps he hadn’t wanted her to worry. Perhaps it had slipped his mind.

  It couldn’t have. He had saved all the papers. He must have been thinking of it always.

  What if he had gone to the movies, not on Monday night as he said, but Friday or Saturday? He could still chuckle about the price and the popcorn, and she would never know.

  She wandered outside and stood in the shade of an oak tree, staring at the flower border for a minute or two before she actually saw it. The flowers did look neater. Poor Mary Ellen, wanting a piece of earth she could call her own.

  But perhaps Mary Ellen was actually safer in her city apartment. Joyce looked up at the tall oak tree, at the other trees, a gently rustling canopy over the soft lawn. It had seemed pure enchantment when they bought the house, clean and perfect for Gail and the children to come. Now it was secret, and too alone. Safety was that gritty sidewalk where everyone played together, and the building superintendents, forever tinkering with their cars, were always there, like guardians, alert for anything unusual. They knew everybody on the block.

  But she loved it here. She loved the greenness and the waving canopy. And she loved—

  She did not love Carl any longer. There was too much strangeness, too many doubts.

  She remembered the night he had called her a whore. But he was speaking to someone else. Someone who, all unknowing, had hurt him once, and he—

  No, she was being ridiculous. If Carl knew what she was thinking—No, no, no.

  She returned to the house. Mary Ellen had gone upstairs. She rearranged the papers, not as neatly as Carl would have liked, and went into the kitchen. She had not given dinner a thought and nothing was thawed. At least he had bought enough eggs.

  That proved he was all right. No man who thought to buy eggs for himself and his family, who mowed the lawn and put away all the dishes, would be capable of those terrible things. Why did she even think it?