CHAPTER 4
CHAD: JUNE 2011
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS after his mother left, Chad waited for the telephone to ring, or for the sound of his mother’s station wagon in the driveway. Every day he ran down the path to the mailbox eager to see her letter, but instead he found only junk mail and an occasional magazine. One afternoon he opened up a large envelope and found his high school diploma inside. He had skipped the graduation ceremony, figuring it would be pointless to attend. He traced his index finger over the words distinguishing him as a graduate with high honors, knowing that he had no one to share his accomplishment with.
He went to work with his father every day. Together they drove silently to the job sites and spoke to each other only when necessary.
“Gather up those leaves over there, bag ‘em up and put the bags in the truck,” or “cut the grass on the north side a little longer today, it’s burning out a bit.” Chad kept his head down and did his work. Loneliness gnawed at him as he tried to go about his life without her.
One warm June evening, as Chad carried steaming cartons of Chinese food and a six-pack of Miller Lite into the house, the sound of the telephone ringing in the kitchen made him jump. He ran into the kitchen and deposited the bags quickly, but his father beat him to the phone.
“Hello? Yes, I’m Charlie McCloskey.”
“What is it, Dad? Is it about Mom?” Chad asked, impatiently.
His father waved him off. “How long do you think it’s been parked there?” Charlie said into the phone. After listening for a moment, he added, “We don’t know where she is, she just up and left. She left a note for my son saying she was going away. We didn’t do nothin’ funny with her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
For once, Chad didn’t wince in embarrassment at his father’s manner of speech. His urgency to find out about his mother silenced every other emotion. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard his father say, “That’s fine officer, we’ll be here,” and he hung up.
“What? Please tell me!” Chad begged his father.
“The Wilmington police got a call from an attendant at the bus station. Your mother’s car has been parked there for over a month now, since May twentieth. After a month they tow it if they can’t find the owner, and they call the police as a precaution in case the car was stolen or involved in a crime.”
Chad was exasperated. His questions were not being answered. “Where did she go? Did they say? Have they found anything out about her?”
“I just told you all I know. The police are bringing the car back to us. They don’t consider it evidence of a crime or nothin’. I had to agree to pay her parking, which is adding insult to injury. But I guess you can drive her car now. The police do have some questions for us, and you can bug them with all of your questions, I guess.” Charlie drained a beer and started rummaging through the bag of takeout. Chad stared at the back of his father’s head with disgust.
Chad sat on the porch until he saw his mother’s station wagon finally coming home. It was not the comforting sight he had hoped for, with a black-and-white police cruiser following close behind the blue station wagon as it came up the driveway. A police officer parked his mother’s car and climbed out of the driver’s seat while another officer exited the cruiser. Chad walked down the steps to greet them. “Hello, officers,” he said, as he walked toward them extending his hand. “I’m Chad McCloskey, Louisa McCloskey’s son.” A lump caught his throat as he heard himself say these words. “Please come in.” He led them up the steps and into the kitchen. “This is my father, Charlie McCloskey.” He pointed reluctantly toward his father as Charlie drained his second Miller Lite and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’m Officer Stevens and this is Officer Morgan.” Stevens handed Charlie the keys to the wagon. “Fortunately, the bus company’s long-term parking requires that you leave your car key with the parking attendant. Oh, and this needs to be paid as soon as you can get around to it,” he said, handing Charlie a document.
As the four men sat around the kitchen table, Officer Stevens took a pad and pen out of a leather briefcase and started asking questions. After the usual questions about the missing woman’s name and date of birth, Stevens looked squarely at Charlie to begin the real questioning. Chad wondered if they suspected foul play. “So, when did you last see her?”
“I don’t know, I guess about a month ago,” Charlie said, with disgust filling his mouth as he spoke. “I went to work. You know, somebody has to pay the bills. And my wife up and left me without even so much as a goodbye note. Why don’t you write that down?” he asked angrily, glowering at the officer with the pen and pad.
“May twentieth was the last time we saw her, officer. I had breakfast with her before I left for school,” Chad spoke quickly, in an attempt to defuse his father’s escalating anger. Both officers looked up at Chad, seemingly surprised by the fact that he spoke up.
“Was there anything unusual that morning, Chad, when you had breakfast with her? Did she say or do anything to suggest she was going away?”
Chad felt that old ache in his chest as he remembered the last time he saw his mother. It seemed like a normal morning then; she brought him a plate of toaster waffles with syrup, and she sat across from him as he ate. But as he thought about it now, there was something different.
“Yes,” he said, surprising his father, who lifted his head suddenly and squinted at Chad. “She seemed much happier than usual, in a way. I mean, instead of moping around in her bathrobe, she had showered and was dressed, and she looked nice. She smiled a lot more than usual and she asked me a lot of questions about the end of my school year.” Chad fought the urge to cry as he felt his throat constricting with the memory. “She always kissed me before I left for school, but that morning she hugged me real hard and told me she loved me, too. I didn’t think anything of it then, but now I can see that she was getting ready to leave.” Chad dug his fingernails deep into the palm of his hand to distract himself from his painful realization.
Officer Stevens stopped writing notes to look up at Chad. “Why do you think she would be happy to leave, Chad?”
Chad swallowed hard and looked at his father. He wanted to tell them about his father’s verbal abuse and his drunken rages. “I’m not sure, Officer. I know she was very unhappy here for a long time. She saw a therapist at the clinic downtown, and she had a prescription for something that was supposed to help her with depression.”
After a pause, Officer Stevens resumed. “Is there anything else you want to tell us about her leaving?”
Chad thought for a minute. “Excuse me for a second, I have a few things I think might help.” He walked quickly to his bedroom and returned holding two items. “This is the note she left for me while I was at school the day she left, and this is a recent photo of her,” Chad handed both to Officer Stevens. “Those items are pretty important to me.”
“Yes, we understand. We’ll keep them safe and return them when we no longer need them.” He carefully wrapped them in plastic and clipped them to his notepad.
“Thank you,” Chad said.
“Mr. McCloskey. Can you tell me about her family or friends? Anyone she might have gone to stay with?”
“Sherry.” Charlie sneered a little as he spoke her name. “She was her only family that I ever met and her only friend.”
Chad winced to hear his mother described as “friendless.” He realized he would be described the same way if he ever went missing. He listened intently as his father continued.
“Louisa and her sister Sherry were put in a Catholic orphanage when they were very young. I think it was St. Mary’s or St. Joseph’s…Saint something. Sherry was only about two years older than Louisa and they were real close. The nuns there didn’t want to split them up, so they had trouble getting them adopted.”
Chad noticed that Officer Stevens jotted, St. Mary’s or St. Joseph’s—check records.
“Okay, so the sister would be about forty years
old, and her maiden name is Sherry Chadbourne. Is there anything more you know about her?”
“Sherry was a little louder, a little freer. I thought she was too close to Louisa and a bad influence. She was always filling her head with crazy ideas of traveling or saving some cause.”
Chad glared at his father. He had never known he had an aunt, and he had never known his mother had someone else who loved her and made her happy. And now he knew why. His father had run his Aunt Sherry out of his mother’s life because she threatened his ability to keep her.
“Do you know where she lives?”
“One day she just stopped by and told us that she had her van loaded up and she was heading to the Southwest to find the sun. She had a certificate from some beauty school and thought she’d make a living at that. That’s all I remember, except Louisa took it real hard; she cried for days. It was a good thing she had Chad to take care of. It helped her to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”
Chad sorted through the information swirling in his head. For the first time he realized why his mother had stayed with them despite her suffering, and why she left when she did. She stayed for him. She had endured for him. She could not be a free spirit and find the sun like her sister. Even her leaving was a selfless act. Chad knew that he would not move on and out of the small, miserable house along the Brandywine River, and into a real life of his own, if she was still there, needing his comfort.
The two policemen rose from the table and shook his father’s hand as they concluded their interview. They told Charlie they would keep in touch. Chad felt empowered, energized and even dared to feel happy for the first time in a very long time.
She loves me. She left because she loves me, he repeated to himself. Chad’s heart leapt, as he began to put together his plan.
*****
After Charlie left for his nightly visit to the local tavern, Chad quickly pulled down the attic door and climbed up its stairs. He pointed a flashlight around the warm and dusty space. He saw gardening tools, a pile of discarded drapes and an old trunk. He opened the lid of the trunk, started rifling through his mother’s keepsakes, and found a small worn photo album. After he rummaged through the remainder of the trunk, Chad retreated to his room and sat on his bed, pausing to study each snapshot of his mother’s life. First, a yellowing photograph of two little girls holding hands in front of a Christmas tree. One girl, his mother, had dark hair, while the other girl had lighter hair. “Sherry,” Chad whispered, just to hear someone acknowledge her out loud.
The next several pages had photos of the two girls in various settings, as they got progressively older and taller. They were always alone in the photos, except occasionally a nun in her black-and-white habit appeared in the background. At the end of the album, Chad turned the page to find a photograph of his parents’ wedding day. An impossibly young woman, a teenager really, embraced a thin, smiling version of his father, and they both looked at the photographer with expressions suggesting hope and promise. The last page of the album contained a faded color photograph of his mother wearing a long flowered dress and a wide smile as she held her baby boy in her arms.
Chad’s heart leapt when he found a postcard in the last page with the words, Greetings from sunny Scottsdale! floating over a fiery red sunset sky and an endless canyon. He flipped it over and read the faded blue handwriting. “Hi Sis: Scottsdale is warm and welcoming. I got a great gig at a beauty parlor and I found me a nice man. Come out here with that beautiful boy of yours for some rest and recreation. Love, Sherry.”
There was no date written on the card, but the post office had processed it on April 10, 1995. The return address read, “Sherry Chadbourne, P. O. Box 3012, Scottsdale, Arizona, 85254.” Chad stared at the address, trying to magically glean more information from its printed words. There was no street address, and possibly the sister had a different last name now. But he knew he was going to find her. Aunt Sherry exists and she lived in Scottsdale, and maybe she’s still there.
Chad got ready for bed and turned out the lights, exhausted. He wanted desperately to call a telephone operator in Scottsdale and try to find his aunt, and in turn, his mother. He ached to hear her voice and to make sure that she was safe.
But he knew he had to be careful. His plan had evolved as he looked at photos in the attic. He would surprise her in person, and wrap his arms around her and reassure her that he would not lead her back to darkness and oppression. His father would not, under any circumstances, be allowed to follow. He drifted off to a sound sleep for the first time since his mother had left.
CHAPTER 5
MARIA: SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
MARIA HERNANDEZ BENT carefully to dust an antique table. Bending and stretching had become increasingly difficult as her pregnancy progressed. But she needed her weekly paycheck from the Cleaning Angels Maid Service, so she kept cleaning a seemingly endless supply of homes and workplaces. She was relieved that it was Saturday because Sunday was her only day off.
She was working alone in her favorite job site—an artist’s studio and gallery in a historic mill. The job required an early start because the gallery opened to the public at ten. Maria disliked walking to the city bus stop in the dark, but she always felt rewarded with the sunrise through the mill’s large windows. She looked up from her work occasionally to watch the wash of a pink and orange sky replace the blackness. Later, as the sun ascended, she watched the river and its inhabitants come alive.
The light on the river reminded Maria of her childhood home where the color of the cliffs, the ocean, and the sky changed with the strength and position of the sun. Her family’s dusty farm in the Baja Peninsula was a world away from her spot that morning on the Brandywine River, and yet, in both places she had gazed at the water with hope for her future.
Maria polished and dusted stone floors and brick walls while imagining that the builders and craftsmen who constructed the mill two hundred years earlier probably had come to this country from their motherlands, believing that they would work hard and build things, including a better life. Maria sighed when she thought about how times had changed, even if people’s circumstances and their dreams had not.
It was just after seven-thirty when Maria finished two of the three floors of the mill. She decided that she had time to rest her body briefly and eat a quick breakfast. She sat on a window seat on the third floor and in quick gulps ate a banana and a granola bar. She was perusing the river scene below her when something stopped her eyes. Far down to her left, in a wooded section near the riverbank, she saw a large man crouched down behind a pine tree. He looked as if he was hiding from something, and Maria was sure she saw him raise a gun to his eye as if he were aiming. A large black bag rested at his feet.
Maria gasped, fearing that this man was preparing to shoot one of those beautiful geese or ducks that glided so peacefully on the river. She watched intently as the man put the gun down for a moment and pulled his sleeve up to check his watch. Horrified, Maria saw him raise the gun to his shoulder and take aim just as a woman came running into view. The man moved his body to follow the woman as she jogged past, oblivious to her stalker. Then Maria saw the unthinkable. The man fired and the woman stopped. The woman reached around to the back of her thigh, took a few steps and then collapsed. Maria cried out loud as she saw the man strap the black bag onto his back and quickly scoop up the woman into his arms before disappearing deeper into the woods.
As Maria grabbed her cell phone, goose bumps rose up on her skin and a lump developed in her throat. She started to dial 9-1-1, but she quickly hit the end button before the call connected. She had to do something, but she knew that she could not call the police. She couldn’t even call her boyfriend, Juan, because she knew that he would admonish her and tell her not to call the police.
Maria tried in vain to replace the image of the woman falling to the ground and being carried away with a picture of Juan holding their newborn in his arms. She had to try to forget the woman and her plight t
o ensure her own child would grow up in America. They were so close.
“Focus,” she whispered to herself over and over as she continued with her vacuuming, dusting and polishing. Her fingers continued to shake and her legs felt weak. When she finished her cleaning, she carefully looked around and then stepped out into the parking lot. As she was putting a bag of trash into a garbage can behind the mill she heard her ride approaching. But as she rounded the corner, she was surprised to see a blue station wagon and not the pink Cleaning Angels van that she was expecting.
Maria retreated quickly and hid against the corner of the building. She watched as the station wagon came to an abrupt halt on the edge of the parking lot farthest away from the mill, and closest to the woods below Rockford Park. A young man in jeans, a T-shirt and a zippered sweatshirt got out of the car and nervously looked around. He hurried to the back door of the station wagon and leaned in. Maria watched him pull out a large bundle that looked like a rug or blanket. With great effort, he pulled the bundle out of the car and hoisted it over his shoulder. He staggered under its weight as he moved toward the woods. Maria’s hand covered her mouth when she saw two pale legs and running shoes dangling from the bundle.
This was not the same man who she had seen shoot the woman earlier, but Maria knew that the incidents were related. Her heart pounded and her stomach heaved. As she bent over and retched, she heard the sound of the Cleaning Angels van pulling into the mill’s parking lot. An older woman with bleached hair climbed out of the van looking alarmed as Maria trudged toward her, wiping her mouth with her hand. “Are you okay, hon? You look white as a sheet.”
Maria glanced quickly and saw that the man carrying the bundle had disappeared into the woods. “Yes, I’m okay. I am just tired,” she said, holding her stomach. “Baby coming. I’ll rest here in the car and drink some water and I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
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