Scared to Death

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She quickly turns into the gas station and pulls up to a pump. “Brett, listen, just hang on for a second, I need to talk to you.”

  Reaching for the door handle, the phone clutched in her other hand, she tells Renny, “Stay buckled in, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get some gas,” Elsa murmurs, and climbs out of the car with the phone.

  Stopped cold by a fleeting imaginary image—a stranger pushing her aside and driving off with Renny—she reaches back to grab the keys, and locks the door before closing it.

  “Mommy! Noooooooo!”

  Elsa spins around to see her daughter’s frantic expression, her palms splayed helplessly against the window.

  “Oh, Renny!” She swiftly unlocks the car and the child hurtles herself out in a sobbing panic. Elsa grabs on to her, wraps her arms around her violently shaking little body. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “You shut me in!”

  “I didn’t mean it, baby, I was just trying to keep you safe…”

  “Elsa, please, what is going on?” Brett is asking in her ear. “Elsa!”

  She wants to scream at him to shut up, to just let her deal with Renny right now. But of course he’s alarmed, clueless, thinking God only knows what.

  “Wait, please, Brett, just give me a second! Renny, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Her worst fear. How could I do that to her?

  Elsa is zapped by a white-hot bolt of fury—at herself, at whoever was prowling around their home in the middle of the night, violating her little girl’s safe haven.

  Was it a random incident? A would-be burglar? Or…someone else? Someone who knows them, knows about Jeremy…

  Fear mingles with fury as Elsa guides her daughter gently back down into the car seat. “Just sit right here, you don’t even have to strap in yet, and we’ll leave the door open…”

  Conscious of Brett impatiently waiting on the other end of the phone, she settles Renny in as quickly as possible and turns toward the gas pump, furtively checking out the other customers, the cars, the vegetation alongside the parking lot…

  If anything happens—if anyone makes a move toward Renny—she’ll use the nozzle like a gun and—

  Something catches Elsa’s eye, on the ground beside the open back door of the car. In disbelief, she bends over to take a closer look, because it can’t be…it just can’t be.

  But it is.

  Dear God. Dread slices through her.

  Taking out a laptop, Surfer Boy looks across the small table at Caroline, “Do you mind if I…?”

  “Oh. No.” She moves her own drink cup to make room. She really was just leaving, but for some reason, she can’t seem to make herself get up and go.

  Some reason?

  He’s cute. That’s the reason. Not your type, but cute.

  Her type—the wealthy, well-bred boys who travel in her family’s social circle—have given her a wide berth since the scandal broke. So have most of the girls at school, aside from Desdemona and Emily, her two closest friends. Too bad they’re both out of town until September.

  Across the table, Surfer Boy sips his coffee, presses a button on the keyboard, and sips again, obviously waiting for the laptop to boot up. “This thing is so slow,” he comments—to himself, or to Caroline?

  She decides to answer, just so he doesn’t think she’s ignoring him if he was talking to her. And if he wasn’t…

  Well, whatever. “Yeah…they all are.”

  She really should go.

  She will…right after she finds out how old he is. “So do you go to school?”

  He nods, pressing buttons on the keyboard.

  “Where?”

  “Right now, I’m taking a summer course at Columbia.”

  Yeah. She had him pegged for older.

  “What about you?” he asks, still focused on the screen.

  “Done for the summer.”

  “Yeah?” He looks up. “Where do you go?”

  She hesitates. “Billington.”

  Maybe he’ll think that’s a private college somewhere, and not a high school. If he knows it’s a high school, she’ll mention that she’ll be a senior this year.

  And he’ll care because…?

  This is so stupid, trying to impress some random guy she’ll never see again.

  But he does seem interested, resting his chin on his hand and looking at her across the table. “Billington? Where is that?”

  Maybe she should make up some New England town that sounds like it would be home to a charming college campus.

  Yeah, or maybe you should just tell the truth.

  “It’s over on York. It’s a high school,” she adds, almost apologetically. “But I’m a senior. I mean, I will be. In September.”

  “Cool. So you live around here?”

  “A few blocks away. How about you?”

  He tells her he’s from the West Coast, where he goes to college. He’s got a summer internship here in the city at some corporation she’s never heard of. She finds herself telling him about her friends, and music she likes, and cool places to hang out. He’s easy to talk to—until he says, “Hey, I don’t even know your name.”

  She hesitates. What are the odds that he’s heard of Garvey Quinn, even if he wasn’t in New York when her father was front-page tabloid news?

  The odds are definitely good. Daddy was a congressman; she’s pretty sure the scandal made national headlines.

  Now it’s time to go. Saying simply, “I’m Caroline,” she pushes back her chair.

  “Jake.”

  “Nice meeting you.” Caroline stands, putting her bag over her shoulder and finding herself boxed in by tables, chairs, and the lolling, jean-clad limbs belonging to a trio of teenage boys and a lovey-dovey couple behind her. The cackling friends have been replaced by a young, bespectacled woman engrossed in a book and someone—a man, judging by the hairy knuckles—whose face is hidden behind today’s New York Times.

  The most direct escape route is partially blocked by Dakota’s mother, now talking on her cell phone. She’s oblivious to her daughter pouring out sugar packets all over the table, and to Caroline’s polite “Excuse me.”

  She says it again, is ignored again. Feeling helpless, she looks back at Jake, and finds him grinning.

  “Trapped?” he asks.

  “Sort of.”

  “Is this place always this jammed?”

  “I don’t know…I hardly ever come here.”

  “Really?”

  Realizing he looks kind of bummed, Caroline wonders if he might actually be interested in her. “But sometimes I do,” she adds. “Come here, I mean.”

  Brilliant. You hardly ever come here, but sometimes you come here.

  “Yeah? Maybe I’ll run into you again sometime, then.”

  She grins. “Maybe you will.”

  “Or I can just call you and meet you here tomorrow afternoon. Or somewhere else.”

  “That, uh…that would be cool.”

  “Let me get your info. Just call me on my cell and then I’ll have your number. Where’s your phone?”

  Trying not to act thrilled, she unzips her bag and shoves her hand inside, feeling around for it.

  Something moves inside—something warm, and furry, and—

  Caroline screeches and throws the bag, then watches in horror as a fat brown rat emerges and scuttles away.

  “Brett! Oh my God…oh my God…”

  “What? What is it?”

  “It’s…” She bends over and retrieves the object from the ground beside her car. “Spider-Man.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A Spider-Man action figure.”

  Brett is silent for a moment.

  But he knows what it means. Of course he does.

  On the day Jeremy disappeared, they’d gone shopping at Wal-Mart and Elsa had bought him a pair of Spider-Man action figures. He’d been playing with them in the yard when he
vanished. One of the toys was left behind in the grass. The other, presumably, had been clutched in Jeremy’s hand when he was taken away.

  “Where?” Brett is asking. “Where is it?”

  “I think it just fell out of the car.” She looks in at Renny. Beside her booster seat, the tote bag is open. Several Barbies and outfits are strewn across the backseat.

  Could Spider-Man have been in the bag, too?

  “Hang on, Brett.” She leans into the car, showing Renny the toy in her hand. “Honey, was this in with the Barbies?”

  Renny glances up and frowns. “That’s for boys.”

  “No, I know, but…I’m just wondering if it was in your tote bag.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it was. Was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you see it when you took out your dolls?”

  “I didn’t take them out. The bag tipped over. They fell out. I told you I don’t want to play with them.”

  “No, I know, I just—”

  “Elsa,” Brett says on the phone, “you need to talk to me. I still don’t know what’s going on. You found Spider-Man, and what?”

  She turns back to the gas pump, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder. In a whisper, she tells Brett what she found beneath Renny’s bedroom window.

  The broken branch…the footprint…and now Spider-Man?

  She half expects him to say she must have been imagining things, but he doesn’t.

  “Stay where you are. Just pull over and don’t move. Lock the doors, stay in the car. I’m on my way.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  There’s a pause.

  Then Brett, who hours earlier promised Elsa that everything was fine, says in a tone laced with uncertainty, “I have no idea.”

  Stepping into the storage unit in the basement of her building, Marin flips on the overhead light and sucks in a lungful of musty air.

  This is not going to be fun.

  But then, what is anymore?

  Maybe she should save the task for another day, when she’s feeling more…

  What, more ready to deal with the past?

  And that will be when?

  The truth is, she’s never going to feel ready, but it makes sense to tackle this today. There’s certainly nowhere to hide upstairs in the apartment. One cleaning lady is in Marin’s bedroom, the other in the den, and Annie is in the kitchen engaging in her new favorite hobby: baking.

  Marin doesn’t have the heart to point out that her younger daughter really should lay off the sweets, having transformed from lithe to chubby amid the upheaval of the past year. It seems cruel to take away something she enjoys so much, especially when she’s been deprived of so many other things.

  Then again, it’s probably even crueler to subject her to the teasing and scrutiny that accompanies being an overweight adolescent—particularly from her older sister.

  At least Caroline went out somewhere for the time being. She’s probably off brooding in the park, or window-shopping on Madison.

  Marin had considered forcing herself to do the same, figuring she can’t stay in seclusion forever, especially now that summer is here and the kids are home.

  But if she went out, she’d have to make herself presentable, because you don’t walk around the Upper East Side in this state: worn jeans and sneakers, makeup-free, hair pulled back in a coated rubber band. Unless, of course, you’re a preschooler. Or a supermodel.

  She doesn’t have the energy to get all fixed up, and she’s certainly not in the mood for prying gazes from those who might recognize her.

  Might as well stay here and get this over with. Clutching a box of garbage bags, she surveys the room. Closest to the door are the boxes she hauled down here yesterday, filled with framed photos and the contents of Garvey’s office.

  Beyond are stacks and stacks of plastic tubs, accumulated over the lifetime of the Quinn marriage. The contents of each are neatly identified with a strip of masking tape and a Sharpie-scrawled label: “Letters and Cards,” “Photos,” “Press Clippings”…

  Tangible mementos of a bygone era. These days, so many of those relics are stored only in cyberspace. All it would take is the click of a delete button, and whoosh! It would be as if they never existed at all.

  Too bad you can’t do that with this stuff.

  Or with Garvey.

  She can’t help but smirk at the thought of deleting Garvey from her life with the press of a button. There’s something to be said for black humor.

  Okay, so, where to begin?

  Opening the lid of the nearest container, Marin finds it filled with DVDs. Ah, store-bought and impersonal: a good place to start. This should be painless.

  She glances over the titles: The Sixth Sense, Saving Private Ryan, The Big Lebowski…

  When the girls were little, she and Garvey would put them to bed early on Saturday nights and curl up on the couch to watch movies together.

  So much for impersonal.

  She has to wipe her eyes on her sleeve a few times as she starts sorting through the DVDs. The goal is to create a pile of keepers and throw away the rest. But after a few minutes, the garbage bag remains empty; she can’t find anything she’s willing to part with. Maybe the memories here are just too fresh. She dumps the entire tear-splotched pile back into the tub and replaces the lid.

  For a moment, she just stands there with her eyes closed, longing to go back upstairs and crawl into her bed—and the orange prescription bottle in her nightstand.

  No. She can’t let herself do that.

  She pushes her way to a stack of tubs against the wall. Ancient history back here—maybe this will be easier to deal with.

  The topmost one is full of clothing.

  Marin lifts out the first item, a plain old blue T-shirt.

  Why would I have saved this?

  Then she spots the flaps in the bodice and realizes it’s a nursing top. There are a dozen more; nursing bras, too, and nightgowns, even maternity dresses. She saved them all.

  Didn’t she realize, after the disastrous circumstances of Annie’s birth, that there would be no more babies? Was she really holding out hope for another child?

  She remembers being terrified that Caroline wasn’t going to survive her illness; terrified that after bearing three children, she would be left with only one.

  Tears fall freely as she sorts through the remnants of early motherhood, remembering the days of morning sickness and labor pains and endless wee-hour feedings…

  With Annie, anyway. She’s such an easygoing kid now that Marin rarely remembers what a demanding, fussy, colicky baby she’d been.

  After a few exhausting months, the pediatrician said she didn’t need to nurse in the middle of the night. “She’s not hungry, she just wants attention. She’ll learn to comfort herself if you let her cry it out.”

  Cry it out? Marin was aghast.

  Not Garvey, though. He’d wanted to let her cry it out beginning when she came home from the hospital.

  Garvey had his reasons, Marin knows, for resenting Annie from the moment she was born. No…even before she was born. When prenatal testing confirmed his worst fears, he was faced, for the second time in his life, with an unwanted child. And for the second time, he told Marin they weren’t going to keep it. It, like some castoff object and not a person.

  Bastard.

  Marin had learned the hard way not to let anyone rip her own flesh and blood from her arms. All that talk about what a great gift she’d bestow upon a perfect stranger…

  This time, she ignored it, determined to keep her baby, to raise Annie with enough love to make up for everything.

  And I have. I’ve done all that…

  For Annie.

  I’ve done for her what I didn’t have the strength to do for Jeremy.

  If I’d found the strength to do the same for Jeremy, would he be alive right now?

  Marin wipes away her tears, dumps the heap of nursing clothes int
o a black garbage bag, and ties it shut.

  There.

  One bittersweet chapter of her past, closed forever.

  Driving over to the Long Hill Road Sunoco in midday traffic, Brett found his imagination carrying him to some dark places.

  Now, spotting Elsa’s dark blue Volvo sitting at the edge of the gas station parking lot, he exhales for what feels like the first time since he spoke to her back at the office.

  He pulls up alongside Elsa’s car. Sitting behind the wheel, she raises a fingertip to her lips and gestures at the backseat.

  Seeing Renny curled up back there, small and defenseless, sound asleep, Brett feels sick inside. If Elsa is right—and she’s not the one who’s imagining things—then someone, some monster, in the truest sense of the word, was in Renny’s room last night as she slept.

  God only knows what might have happened if she hadn’t woken up and called for help.

  It was Elsa who went in there, not you. You rolled over and went back to sleep. How could you?

  If anything had happened to his little girl…

  But nothing did.

  And nothing will.

  Because Brett knows, deep down inside, that his wife is sometimes frighteningly fragile; that her imagination can be vivid and powerful; that her mental health history includes episodes of delusion…

  But he’d thought—hoped, prayed—all that was behind her now.

  Brett turns off the car and climbs out. Elsa does the same, leaving the door open. Wordlessly, she shows him the Spider-Man action figure.

  He stares down at it.

  “Is that…?”

  “Jeremy’s?” Elsa swallows hard. “Maybe. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like—the one that went missing with him—but—”

  Her voice breaks, and Brett pulls her close, his thoughts whirling through the possibilities:

  It might be a colossal coincidence. Maybe it didn’t even fall out of the car. This is a public place. Maybe some little boy lost it…

  Or maybe it was tucked somewhere among the Cavalons’ possessions for all these years and Renny came across it and carried it with her…

  Or maybe Elsa herself found it somewhere, or bought it somewhere, and—and she forgot about it, or she’s delusional, or…