The Truth About Delilah Blue

by Tish Cohen

  Sulking, Lila flipped through the pages. After a few minutes, she held the magazine over her head. “I changed my mind. I do want a hairdo.” The center spread was a photo set against the backdrop of London. A waiflike woman stood in front of a double-decker bus holding the leash of a whippet, who was straining to get to the Standard poodle across the street. The woman was dressed sixties style in a cropped jacket, slim pants, and flats, her copper hair carved into an edgy bob.

  “Perfect,” said Victor, both pleased and surprised. “Very classy.”

  “Just the color.” She stood up and handed the book back to Kristina. “My same long hair but this color.”

  Kristina objected, pointed out the perils of chemical processing at the tender age of eight and demarcation lines once her hair started to grow in. Besides that, she said, the girl was going to look like Pippi Longstocking with her small white face and big eyes.

  But Victor insisted. His daughter would have the color she wanted and he’d bring her in for regular upkeep until she was older and able to dye it herself. He lifted Lila up, swung her onto a booster seat on a swiveling chair, and asked if someone could get the child a lollipop.

  Sickened by the memory, Lila turned to the toilet and threw up again.

  Someone banged at the door. The man asked if she needed any help. She didn’t answer. Didn’t move until she heard the jiggle of keys. Until the manager himself poked his head in and asked if she was okay.

  Lila reached for a paper towel and scrubbed her face until it burned. “If I said, ‘No, I’m not,’ you’d regret asking pretty damn quick, wouldn’t you?”

  When he said nothing, she pushed past him and headed back to the table where Elisabeth looked relieved to see her.

  “I was getting worried,” she said when Lila sat. She set her fingers on Lila’s arm and Lila edged it away.

  “How do I know this is even true? I mean, here it is twelve years later, and you show up in an empty classroom and you have this new kid and you make this crazy accusation. I mean, how do I know what Dad did or didn’t do? And how do I know you’re not just making it up to excuse yourself from dropping out of my life? ”

  “I know, sweetheart. It’s hard to fathom that anyone is capable—”

  “Yes! It is. It’s impossible to fathom,” Lila said too loudly. From the corner of her eye, she saw her own hair, the russet color touched up just three days ago from a drugstore kit, snapping in the wind and captured it in her hands, tucked it all into her thick turtleneck where she didn’t have to look at it. “Dad’s not like that. He would never do anything to hurt me. Plus he’s no criminal. He won’t even let us put the trash out on the wrong night.”

  “It was a custody thing. It’s all very complicated.”

  “He said you didn’t want me.”

  “No, no. Baby, never would I have given you up. Never.” Elisabeth kissed Lila on the forehead again before settling back into her seat. “I did what any mother would do if someone stole her baby. I moved heaven and hell to find you. It was the career I never wanted. I gave up seeing friends, I gave up exercise, I gave up doing normal things. My life became looking for you.”

  Lila stared at the ragged threads where she’d scissored her shorts.

  “I worked with a child find agency, with the Canadian government, the American government, even the British government because your father has relatives there. I worked with Interpol and private detectives. I hired psychics and tarot card readers. I asked the universe for a sign. I even wrote a letter to Oprah begging her to put me on her show, to air your photo.”

  “My picture was on Oprah?”

  Elisabeth smiled sadly. “No. But I tacked up posters all across Florida when he said you’d headed there. Nine years ago I had a Web site made: www.findDelilahBlue.com.”

  “It’s red and white,” Kieran explained with a sniff. “Should have been blue.”

  A Web site made it much worse. Made it real.

  “Web site, T-shirts, buttons,” said Elisabeth.

  Lila thought back to all those hours hunched over the computer, daring herself to look past the first page on Google, never even thinking to search her former name. Why would she? Delilah Blue Lovett didn’t exist, as far as she’d known.

  Kieran reached in her purse and pulled out a wallet. From that she pulled out a plastic sleeve. From that she removed a carefully folded piece of paper, opened it, smoothed it, and set it on the white tablecloth and started to read, “Name: Delilah Blue Lovett. Born: December 16, 1988. Last seen: early morning, September 21, 1996, wearing a denim skirt, T-shirt, and fairy wings, getting into her noncustodial father’s tan Datsun 240Z in Leaside, Toronto. Distinguishing marks: rectangular birthmark on right hip.”

  “What is that?”

  “The most recent missing child poster,” said Elisabeth.

  Lila looked at Kieran. “Can I see it?” Sure enough, across the top, in block letters, it said MISSING. Below that was Lila’s school photo with an age-enhanced picture of how she might appear today. Looked nothing like her; Lila still had her natural dirty-blond hair, for one. But still.

  It was proof.

  She’d been abducted.

  Kieran continued. “Eyes: Blue. Hair…” She eyed Lila’s copper strands and said accusingly, “Blond.”

  “How did you know I was wearing the wings?”

  Elisabeth shrugged. “Your dad’s neighbor was out walking his dog before sunrise. Saw the two of you getting into the car. He and your dad chatted a bit. Victor told him you were off to Florida and you showed him your wings. Said you were going to fly. It seemed an important detail for the poster, so people would look for an especially imaginative sort of child.”

  Again, nausea rushed Lila’s body, leeching from her stomach and spreading all the way to tingling scalp, fingers, toes. She looked away a moment and focused on breathing, not retching. Suddenly there was a pen in her hand and it started scribbling on her thrift-store boots. She didn’t have the strength to stop it, no matter how much she adored them. She laughed falsely and searched for something to say. “I still have them. The wings. In my closet. The wires are broken in places. I stab my hands sometimes when I reach for my shoes.”

  “I was the one who bought them for you.” Elisabeth rubbed Lila’s arm. “Never dreamed they’d fly you away from me.”

  “Was I a milk carton kid?” Lila asked.

  She nodded. “Only a few dairy companies do that these days, but yes. Your face was on milk cartons, in Walmart stores, on the back of delivery trucks, you name it. There was even an outdoor media company in Florida who put your face on a billboard. I did local talk shows. A news conference. Pleading for someone to notice you, help bring you home where you belonged. It’s not easy to find one little girl in such a big continent. Like a penny in the sand.”

  Lila leaned forward to keep her stomach from flopping out onto her breakfast plate. She stared down at her boots, which, at that moment, were all that felt real.

  “Your mother became quite famous from it, wouldn’t you say, Kiki? For a while there, anyway.”

  Kieran nodded. “Mummy was on TV.”

  “Every scrap of attention mattered. It meant your photos got out there one more time. It just takes one person—the right person—to see you. To recognize those big blue eyes and pointed chin, that look of wonder on your face, and call the police or write in through the Web site. Just one person.” She slapped her thighs. “Well, doesn’t matter now. It didn’t happen that way. All that matters is it happened. Finally, finally, finally, I found my baby girl.”

  Lila shook her head in disbelief. “It’s so much. I can’t even think straight.”

  Elisabeth stood up and smoothed out her skirt. “That mimosa went straight through me. Delilah, sweetheart, would you keep an eye on your sister? I’ll be right back.”

  Keep an eye on your sister. Six words—ordinary instructions from mother to daughter. Six words other children had heard a thousand times over—a maternal directive that m
ight have another daughter rolling her eyes or whining out loud. Not Lila. To Lila it was something akin to winning the lottery. Admission to a club she’d been ejected from in another lifetime and had coveted ever since.

  Suddenly, it was intoxicating, having her mother back, and she tried to sound casual in her reply. “No problem. I’ll watch her.”

  Fourteen

  Later that day, with Victor tucked quietly in his room, Lila poured herself a glass of water and padded into the dining room, settled herself at the computer. She hesitated before typing in www.findDelilahBlue.com. What came up on the screen made her gasp. She pushed her chair back and tried to focus on her breath.

  The banner across the top was black with FIND DELILAH BLUE LOVETT in tall, thin brushstrokes. Beside the words, scattered on the left side, were childhood photos of a dirty-blond Delilah. Of Delilah with a teacher. Delilah with sawed-off bangs on Elisabeth’s lap. Yes, even Delilah with sparkly lavender fairy wings. Photos so unfamiliar to Lila it made her sick just looking at them. As if she’d been followed, tracked. As if she’d left impressions behind she never knew about.

  Red buttons in the shape of maple leaves marched across the page, as if identifying Lila as a Canadian might shrink the vastness of the planet, given that she could have been anywhere on it. Each red leaf was clickable. One said ABOUT DELILAH BLUE. Another said HELP FIND, another said NEWS AND UPDATES. She clicked on this last one and up popped a new screen with a list of imagined sightings. One in North Carolina at a gas station. Several in Toronto. One in Bayfield, Ontario, in front of a yellow bookstore, another in Wales, England, getting onto a bus. But these were old listings, some from ten years back. They ended on November 14, 2003, with a sighting of a teenage girl leaving a museum in San Francisco. So close. She clicked on the ABOUT DELILAH BLUE BUTTON, shifting her chair forward, sitting up taller, as if improved oxygenation would make this easier. A huge photo came up. Her face took up the entire frame, with wisps of long, stringy hair blowing across her eyes—huge from this close up. This Delilah wasn’t looking at the camera. Her small pointed chin had tipped her face to one side. It appeared as if she was speaking with someone, in a playground perhaps, someplace so exciting that the child hadn’t noticed the windblown hair in her eyes.

  It wasn’t a photo she remembered any more than it was a day she remembered. But that wasn’t what had her stomach in cramps. Something about the photo—maybe the feeling of movement long stilled, maybe the look of sureness in her eyes—had the faraway, lost-hope quality of a memorial photo in the local paper. When a child has suffered the most terrible fate of all. The type of picture that would be accompanied by a second photo showing a group of weeping schoolchildren placing flowers, notes, and teddy bears on the sidewalk in front of the mourning family’s home.

  A hot, gravylike haze enveloped her, moved in close, pressed on her from every which way. As if the world had evaporated and nothing solid was left underfoot. Pinpricks of light marched in from her periphery, and she realized she was holding her breath. She should breathe, she knew that. Any idiot would. But she refused, feeling her consciousness ebb and shudder and loom large enough to see too far, beyond where time begins and time ends. It was too far a journey for such a broken passenger. She wasn’t up for it. The room in front of her melted into a soup of swirling colors, sounds, matter.

  She closed her eyes. Instead of losing consciousness, Lila turned to her left and vomited for the third time that day.

  LATER, VICTOR SAT at the kitchen table nudging corn

  niblets onto his fork. “Where did you get this corn?”

  “Green Giant.”

  He pushed the forkful into his mouth and raised his brows. “I hope you bought more. It’s delicious.”

  The light was too bright in the kitchen. The entire house had been growing ever brighter over recent months. When they first moved in, Victor used only pink-tinted lightbulbs, claiming it made for a cozy ambiance. But his aging eyes had other ideas about mood lighting, prompting him to seek out stronger and stronger bulbs until the rooms kicked you in the retina when you entered. They were now living in a 7-Eleven.

  In the nine hours since she’d left her mother, her father had been restless. He’d paced the length of the house repeatedly, tried without success to nap twice, insisted on watching the airing of the original black-and-white Audrey Hepburn film Sabrina, and made a half dozen phone calls about getting some kind of fence installed. When she asked why, he’d refused to elaborate. Thankfully, the evening air seemed to have stilled him.

  Her stomach was empty, free of convulsions. It was as good a time as any to confront Victor. She dropped into the vinyl chair across the table and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Dad.”

  No response.

  “Dad.”

  Victor looked up. “Have you seen a box of powdered donuts? Said GENEVIEVE on the lid?”

  “It said nothing on the lid, and I threw them out weeks ago.”

  “They did not say nothing. They said GEN.”

  “Who is this Gen anyway?”

  “She’s the one who likes the powdered jellies.”

  Lila sighed. She wasn’t prepared to get into drama about donuts. “I need to talk to you about something else. Do you know who I was with today?”

  Victor pierced a series of niblets with the tines of his fork and slid them off with his teeth. “I do not.”

  “I was with Mum.”

  He stopped chewing. “Your mother?”

  “Yes. You remember her. Reddish-brown hair, about five-foot-six. Big smile. Gave birth to me.”

  “She’s here? In L.A.?”

  “Yes.”

  Pushing his chair back from the table with a scrape, he leaned forward, eyes darting from the window to his daughter’s face. From the way his chest rose and fell it was clear his breath was coming fast and furious. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. Her apartment, I guess. She came to find me yesterday.”

  “Where? Where did she come find you?”

  Not at art school where I had just finished begging to pose nude. “Nearby.”

  He jumped up, went to the window, and looked out into the dusk light. Once assured she wasn’t lurking in the bushes, he spun around. “I don’t feel right. I can’t breathe. Or swallow.” His hand went to his chest and he allowed his daughter to lead him back to his chair. “I need a drink maybe.”

  She grabbed his empty juice glass and filled it with tap water. When she set it in front of him, he waved it away. “Something stronger. There’s a new bottle of Balvenie. In the cupboard.”

  “What is it? Your heart?” She glanced at him, worried, as she uncorked the bottle and sloshed dark amber liquid into a shot glass, spilling it all over the table.

  “Careful.” He mopped the scotch with his napkin.

  Okay. The man wasn’t dying. In the history of heart attacks, there couldn’t be one person who, in the throes of cardiac arrest, contemplated sucking scotch out of the corner of a paper napkin to ensure he got his money’s worth. “You’re panicking. Just take a few breaths and calm yourself.”

  He tossed back the drink and tapped his glass on the table. When she poured him a refill it vanished just as quickly.

  “Feeling better?”

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at his shot glass and breathed in, breathed out.

  “Fucking hell. Fucking hell. It had to happen. I knew it had to happen.”

  “She says she’s been looking for me, Dad. All these years. And that’s not all.”

  He got up again and crossed the room, dropped his bearded jaw into one hand.

  “She says you took me. Just like that. Just ran away with me and disappeared.”

  The dog started braying outside and Victor looked through the window. “Damn neighbors.”

  “Is it true?”

  Yip yip yip.

  “Dad.”

  Silence.

  She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Tell me what happened.”


  He looked at his daughter, blinking. When soft strands of hair fell in front of his eyes, he nudged them to the side and shrugged, his shoulders limp, his expression that of someone who’d accidentally set the toaster on fire. He sucked in a deep breath and said nothing.

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1996

  Graham Trent was Victor’s oldest friend. Though these days, not much remained of the overweight jokester with a distaste for school and an appetite for the stage. After wasted years spent lining up for auditions alongside his starry-eyed mother, and never securing much more than a back-to-school flyer for a national drug store, Graham grew serious about his studies. He secured a job selling vinyl windows and doors, and eventually put himself through law school at the prestigious and historic University of Toronto.

  Now, at forty-one, sitting behind a polished wooden desk with leather inlays, his graying hair still long enough to graze his collar, Graham reeked of success. Framed degrees and certificates lined his walls; photos of his young wife and partner, Kelly, decorated bookshelves packed with family law journals; and industrious assistants and articling students buzzed in with files needing his immediate attention.

  “You’re right,” said Graham, unwrapping a stick of Doublemint and popping it in his mouth before tossing one onto the desk in front of Victor. Graham grinned. “The courts have favored Elisabeth. The woman knows how to work those dimples. Just like she sweet-talked you back in the day, she charms these judges. Maybe you should work on your girlish smile.”

  Victor ignored his friend’s attempt at humor. “I walk around every day now terrified for my child’s safety. I’m up half the night. I’m seeing a therapist. I have shortness of breath. I’m telling you, I can’t take this. I even asked Elisabeth if I could move back in—at least then I’d be able to control what’s happening in the house.”

  “Come on. You may not like your custody arrangement, but things aren’t as bad as that.”