On the pale-blue walls of Robbie’s room were more of the child’s drawings and paintings as well as photographs and snapshots that Robbie, with his somewhat quirky taste, had particularly liked: some were pictures of himself, and Mommy and Daddy; one was Robbie with pre-school classmates at the Montessori school, and their smiling vivacious Miss Jameson; others were glossy pictures of animals—dinosaurs, a gigantic octopus, lions, elephants, giraffes, antelopes, wild horses. Recently Robbie had become fixated on horses and had it in his head that Mommy and Daddy should buy a farm in the country so that he could have a pony.
“And who would take care of the pony?”—Daddy had asked.
“Me.”
“You? By yourself?”
“Well—me and Mommy.”
They’d repeated this exchange many times. Why it was so funny, Dinah couldn’t say. But they laughed, and laughed.
Well—me and Mommy.
More recently Robbie had taped to his walls posters of hulking figures dressed for intergalactic space, or for war—video-game-like warriors that were unsettling, in a child’s room. Dinah had told Whit that she wasn’t ready for this yet—Robbie was only five years old! Whit said, sensibly, We can’t censor our kid. Don’t even try.
Now that Robbie was gone, Dinah wondered if she should remove the warrior-posters? Reasoning that, when Robbie returned, he’d have forgotten them—wouldn’t he?
Mid-mornings when Dinah’s medication caused her to weave groggily along the upstairs hall it was natural to her to enter Robbie’s room and lie down carefully—not fall down, limp and exhausted—onto the little bed which was always neatly made-up.
“Robbie. Oh, Robbie …”
She lay very still. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks.
“It was my fault, honey. I should never—never—have let go of your hand.”
She held her breath waiting for Robbie to speak to her. She did not exhale her breath for so long, her heart began to beat irregularly.
“Can you hear me, Robbie? It’s Mommy. We’re looking for you, honey, and we will never, never give up.”
Dinah! Dinah!—there came an urgent rapping on the door downstairs.
The rapping was at the front door. If Dinah didn’t hurry down to her mother, or had not the energy to hurry down to her mother, the rapping would recommence at the rear door.
Dinah! Are you in there? Where are you? Let me in.
Let me in, Dinah! Or I will call 911.
So Dinah had no choice but to hobble downstairs. To let the Fury in.
Wanting to say You had your chance to be a good, loving mother and you weren’t interested. Why now?
Dinah’s mother had many times apologized for being a “distracted” mother when Dinah had been a little girl. The fault had been primarily “your father—you know how he betrayed us.”
Dinah’s father had separated from her mother when Dinah was ten. Dinah’s impression was that her mother had driven her father away and when he’d gone she’d laughed telling her friends—Good riddance! He wasn’t half a man, anyhow.
As long as Geraldine had the house on Summit Drive, Birmingham. As long as Geraldine received monthly alimony and child support.
She’d never remarried. Possibly she’d never found a whole man who’d wanted to support her.
Since the abduction Dinah’s mother had been interviewed on Ypsilanti–Ann Arbor TV and for the local newspapers. The “terrible anguish” of her beloved grandson being abducted “in broad daylight”—the “frustration” of waiting for law enforcement to find him—the “faith in God,” that Robbie would certainly be found. Dinah read her mother’s interviews in dread of what her mother might say impulsively—“My daughter did no wrong. She did not let that child out of her sight for a minute.”
Whit read such interviews snorting in derision and tossing the paper down.
“Your mother is really getting off on this, isn’t she! Like it’s some kind of hobby for her, in her boring life.”
“Whit! She’s serious. She loves Robbie. This is very hard for her, too.”
There was drama in Dinah’s mother’s life now. In her circle of friends—of whom most were divorcées like herself, or widows—it was Geraldine McCracken who was the center of attention, invariably.
She’d had her hair styled and lightened so that it shone now like a synthetic peach. She’d bought new clothes—in which to appear on a local afternoon TV talk show as the grieving grandmother of missing five-year-old Robbie Whitcomb of Ypsilanti.
For a week or ten days in late May, there’d been a distraction—Dinah’s mother had discovered a cyst in one of her breasts, that had had to be removed for a biopsy; during this brief time, Dinah’s mother had not visited the house on Seventh Street, nor had she called more than a few times. What relief!
The cyst had been benign. Dinah’s mother returned.
Until finally Dinah told her mother please, she couldn’t see her for a while.
“What do you mean, you ‘can’t see me for a while’? What kind of a thing to say is that, to a woman grieving for her lost grandson? Her only grandchild?”
“Mother, just go away.”
“‘Go away’—where?”
Dinah’s mother had been too astonished to be angry. She’d thought it altogether natural, Dinah supposed, that, in her daughter and son-in-law’s house, she had the right to answer the landline, and to speak knowledgeably to whoever was on the other end, in the matter of Robbie; she had the right to answer reporters’ questions, and to be interviewed, without troubling to learn who a reporter was, and for what publication, if any, he was writing. She had the right, as Dinah overheard her saying, to proclaim Both my daughter and son-in-law are devout Christians. We are praying for Robbie to be returned and he would be, if the police had more gumption to make arrests.
“It’s Whit who wants to send me away, isn’t it? Your—‘husband.’”
Dinah’s mother’s lip curled, at the word husband.
“No, Mother. It isn’t Whit, it’s me. Please will you just leave.”
“You’re sick. You’re not in your right mind. You’ve taken too many pills. How can I leave you alone?”
“I have not taken ‘too many pills’! I don’t even take all the pills that are prescribed for me.” Dinah tried to speak calmly. She was hearing Robbie in another room, chattering brightly. He had questions for her—she had to get to him, to hug him tight.
“I—I may have to report you, Dinah. I should call the medical clinic—your doctor—”
“Mother, go away! I’ll call you when I want to see you again but it won’t be for a while.”
Now Dinah was speaking wildly. Far from being drugged she was cursed with a clarity of perception cruel and pitiless as a shining knife blade. She hid her ravaged face in her hands hoping that, when she lowered them, the Fury would have vanished.
Your “husband.” Where is he?
Most days, all day into the evening Whit was at the radio station or—elsewhere.
Since the abduction he stopped by Ypsilanti police headquarters regularly, never less than twice a week. He’d taken an active role in the search for their son. He’d organized volunteers in the Ypsilanti–Ann Arbor area to search for Robbie and to affix MISSING CHILD posters in public places. He’d been many times interviewed on TV and radio and he’d traveled in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota to meet with law enforcement officers, city and state police, sheriffs’ departments. He spoke regularly with FBI officers assigned to his case. The face of Whit Whitcomb—intense, pained, earnest—was nearly as familiar in the public gaze as the face of the lost child Robbie Whitcomb.
Whit Whitcomb had become a volunteer for the Missing Children of America Foundation and had several times been interviewed on national cable channels—CNN, MSNBC.
He continued with his popular WCYS-FM program. It had become a call-in program now, and many people called to commiserate over the DJ’s abducted son.
He saw friends. Not friends whom Dinah knew but male friends, whom he’d known before his marriage. Sometimes, returning home, he smelled of alcohol.
Dinah thought It’s the smell of grief. Who can blame him.
Her mother hinted, and more than hinted, that a man like Whit Whitcomb wouldn’t be faithful to her for long. A man like that, it’s in the genes.
What precisely did Dinah’s mother mean? Whit’s genetic pool was immense, you had to suppose—that was what mixed-race meant.
Pursue race far enough back, you’d probably end in an ancient kingdom somewhere in Africa.
Now that Dinah was disabled. Now that Dinah’s face needed more surgery.
Her mother protested: she was just speaking frankly! She was just saying what everyone was thinking.
It was true, Whit was away from home on an average of twice as much as he’d been before the abduction. He often missed dinner, which he’d tried never to miss before. He never watched the TV channels he’d watched with Dinah and Robbie—Animal Planet, Discovery, Comedy Central; he never watched TV at all. When he was home, he was at his computer, scrolling the Internet. Checking e-mail obsessively.
Yet Whit called home faithfully, never less than once a day. He called Dinah’s cell, not the special landline number.
Hi honey. How’s it going?
Pretty good. You?
Great.
Any news?
I guess not. You?
Guess not.
A pause then. In the background, raised voices and maybe laughter. For Whit inhabited a bright peopled world from which Dinah was exiled for now.
Are you hurting, Dinah?
No! Not bad at all.
You had kind of a bad night last night—I guess?
Did I? No.
Maybe tonight will be better.
Maybe.
Well. Love you, Dinah.
Love you, Whit.
See you later.
How late?
Not past nine. Promise.
Whit didn’t always keep his promises.
Dinah never reproached him. Lying on the sofa watching TV—not really watching, just clicking through channels as if in search of—what?—she didn’t know—until midnight. She’d lost so much weight in the hospital and in rehab, she now ate frozen yogurt out of the container, ravenous with hunger, a kind of desperate greed, that ended in abrupt satiation, self-disgust. Then she’d drag herself upstairs to bed.
Thinking He will never make love to me again. I am so broken.
Thinking I would trade that—all that—for Robbie.
Dinah’s new friends were mostly women from the rehab clinic. Physical therapists, nurses, other patients. Rehab is a small closed world. You soon learn the language. Her physical therapist was a Jamaican woman named Rachelle whose fingers were soft, soothing, yet strong and deft. If Dinah broke down and cried, in pain and despair, Rachelle said Now hon you don’t mean that. You just get that out of your system, hon. Three minutes.
If another patient stared at her raggedy face Dinah didn’t shrink and hide behind her hands as she would have liked to do but smiled and struck up a conversation.
Hi! It’s “reconstruction,” I was in a pretty bad accident. I have one or maybe two more surgeries to go.
And: It isn’t as bad as it looks! I have my eyesight and great new teeth.
Quickly the afflicted learns that affliction can be mined to some purpose. No one more popular than the cheerful-afflicted. Dinah had learned: misery does love company.
She spoke of Robbie, if she was asked. She spoke quietly and calmly and did not hesitate. She knew that, as everyone told her, as the police urged her, the more people who knew about her missing son, the more people who saw his picture, who were prompted to think about him, the more likely there might be a “lead.”
That was how missing children were often found, police said. You wouldn’t believe how accidental, sometimes.
Brightly she said Yes. The search is continuing. This summer we will drive—around Michigan, we think. Just take the search into the rural counties. Of course the police and the FBI are on the case, they’ve promised to never let it rest.
Her dark desperate moods of wanting-to-die she hid. Her frantic moods of screaming-for-Robbie she hid. She could muffle her crazed mouth in a towel, if necessary. She could cry, cry, cry until her eyes flamed and swelled and her tear ducts were emptied like her heart and not even Whit would know.
Whit snoring in their bed. Dinah crouched in the bathroom sobbing into a towel.
Seeing, God!—even her toenails looked misshapen, growing in sideways. Everything about her broken and askew except her knife-sharp memory of the child’s fingers wrenched from hers.
She knew he was alive. She knew he was yearning for her.
Yearning for her and his daddy. Wherever he was, she knew.
How did she know with such certainty, she just knew.
In this way, and in other ways, they waited.
12
KITTATINNY FALLS, NEW JERSEY JULY, AUGUST 2006
Gideon? Come here, son.
On hesitant bare feet the child came.
The child’s rapt staring terrified eyes.
The child in pajama bottoms.
The child’s little chest showing milky-pale skin pulled tight against his ribs.
Climb onto Daddy’s lap, Gideon. C’mon!
In a trance the child did not move.
I’m commanding you, Gideon: climb onto Daddy’s lap.
They were in the TV den, as Daddy Love called it.
A leather sofa, a single chair. Rattan rug. A thirty-inch TV. In a window, a rattling air conditioner in the humid midsummer heat of New Jersey. Over both windows, heavy damask curtains as well as black blinds.
It was cuddle-time. It was bedtime.
It was that time.
* * *
Darlene? Hi.
It was OK now, he thought. He could call the woman, and have her do some cleaning. She could meet Gideon.
The kid was so quiet, might’ve been deaf-and-dumb. No danger he’d begin babbling or crying to Darlene Barnhauser who was a stranger to him.
Come over to the house, can you? When’s a good time?
You can meet my little boy Gideon.
Yeah he’s here with me, the rest of the summer. I drove out to Traverse City to get him.
Darlene said some wiseass thing about the boy’s mother, some cunt-wisecrack, Chet Cash laughed like kicking sand.
Yeah. Somethin like that, Darlene. But we don’t talk about her here, OK? Not ever.
Darlene said, more sober, I got it, Chet.
Sooner or later you require a female, it was a fact. Certain kinds of things like scrubbing, scouring with Brillo pads, airing out bedclothes on a clothesline, mopping the linoleum floor in the kitchen—it was female scut-work and if you weren’t married to the female, or sleeping with her, you’d have to pay.
Chet resented it. But hell, Darlene was OK. Poor whites in this part of rural New Jersey, like in the Ozarks, Appalachia. Little wood-frame houses, trailer villages. Darlene smiled her brave lipstick-smile and you saw that half her teeth were discolored and one tooth missing.
It made him laugh, the female was in love with him.
He had that power over women—Chet Cash.
His swaggering walk, his hair tied back in a ponytail. T-shirts showing his lean-muscled chest, jeans low-slung on his hips. A zipper glinting at his groin.
He’d washed the face-powder out of his beard. Now it was mahogany-dark again, bristling and virile.
In the run-down area of Kittatinny Falls, Chet Cash was a property owner.
He’d inherited the old farmhouse, falling-down outbuildings and forty acres of farmland on the Saw Mill Road from a woman he’d met in the Church of Abiding Hope in Trenton, New Jersey, in the 1990s. The sixty-nine-year-old widow had had adult children who’d “abandoned” her, as Chet Cash, in his late twenties and early thirties at the time, would not. M
rs. Myrna Helmerich was her name. And, for a while, before she’d died of heart failure, in her tidy little brick house in Trenton, in 1999, Mrs. Chester Cash.
It had been Chet Cash’s sole marriage. Except for the minister who’d married them, no one knew.
It had been a legitimate marriage, in the Church of Abiding Hope on South Washington Street, Trenton. The Reverend Thornton Silk officiating.
The woman who’d been a widow for eighteen years became a wife again at sixty-nine. Her ponytailed bearded hippie bridegroom had been thirty-one. They were both devout Christians in the Church of Abiding Hope which was a multiracial church. Myrna Helmerich had been a volunteer in the Presidential-candidacy campaign of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and she’d been active in civil rights organizations in the 1970s. Her wedding dress was white muslin and braided into her silvery-white hair, that fell loose to her shoulders, were lilies of the valley. So fey and otherworldly the bride looked, you expected to see that she was barefoot but she wore white ballerina flats. Chet Cash wore a sharp-looking cranberry-velvet suit with a vest, acquired from a veterans’ secondhand clothing shop in Trenton. He’d trimmed his beard and secured his ponytail with glittery silver twine. To the married couple, age was not an issue. Myrna was given to gaily saying You are as young as you feel! Chet Cash was given to saying Myrna is my heart and soul.
Under New Jersey law, property in the possession of one spouse becomes the property of the other, in the eventuality of the spouse’s death. To insure this, the Cashes drew up their wills.
In addition, each was insured for fifty thousand dollars—this was Chet Cash’s idea, to which Myrna Helmerich deferred.
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