by Lisa Unger
I looked behind me to see what she had seen, but when I turned back around, she was still staring at me.
“I’m glad you called me first,” she said. “You would have given me a heart attack.”
She stepped aside and I walked in. She didn’t take her eyes off of me.
“I don’t understand,” I said, though I think I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“You must know,” she said. “You look just like her. You’re her very image.”
When she closed the door, the room went almost completely dark. The windows were covered by red velvet curtains and the light that came in through them painted the room the color of blood. On every surface there were pillar candles in glass holders painted with the saints—you know, the kind you find in every bodega in the city. In the corner of the room sat a table covered by a dark cloth. It looked red, too. Everything in the room did, even my own hands. There was a chair on either side of the table, a stack of tarot cards, and another candle on top. Wind chimes hung from the ceiling but were silent in the still heat of the room. Somewhere musky incense burned; I could feel my sinuses swelling from the intense aroma.
“You want me to put that incense out? It bothers some of my clients.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, still looking around me, taking in the space. “Ms. Cacciatore—”
“Call me Madame Maria, dear. Everyone does. Or just Madame for short.”
“Oookaay,” I said slowly.
“So,” she said, sitting down on the couch with a heavy sigh. Her muumuu flowed around her. She repositioned her turban. My eyes had adjusted to the dim light and I could see that she hadn’t stopped looking at me. “Why did you lie to me, Jessie? Why would you lie to an old lady who used to change your diapers?” She patted the couch beside her and I sat down.
“I didn’t lie. Not about my name. I’m not Jessie. My name is Ridley Jones.”
She nodded. “You came to find out about your mother. You want to know what happened to her.” She said this as if she had been consulting an oracle, though I’d told her as much already.
“I came to find out about Teresa Elizabeth Stone,” I said stubbornly. It’s difficult when people think you’re someone other than who you are. They call you by a name you don’t own, refer to parents you’ve never met. They’re certain of their information, as certain as you are of yours. And it makes your head foggy. It’s confusing. There was still no hard proof that I was Jessie Stone, and frankly, even if I had been, I was no longer. I was Ridley Jones. That was my identity and I intended to hold on to that.
“Okay,” she said, her tone motherly, knowing. “Ridley. Okay. Tell me what’s going on.”
I looked around me. “Don’t you know, Madame?”
“Hey, give me a break,” she said with a smile. “An old lady needs to earn a living. Anyway, I just read the cards. People need guidance in this world, someone to talk to about their problems, someone to tell them it’s going to be all right. Isn’t that why you came?”
I didn’t answer Maria, tossed around the idea of getting up and leaving. But there was something about the old lady that I liked, in spite of (or maybe because of) her pseudo-mysticism. She had a strong face, lined with wrinkles and heavy with sagging skin around her jawline and eyes. Her body looked soft and welcoming, as if a lot of people had found comfort in her arms. I felt safe in her weird little space. So I told her my story. Unlike I had with Detective Salvo, I omitted nothing. As you can see, it didn’t take much to get me to spill my guts. I’ve never been very good at keeping secrets.
She released a heavy sigh when I’d finished. “You need a cup of tea.”
She got up and went to the efficiency kitchen that was just across from the couch. She ran tap water into a cup, put a teabag in, and stuck it in the microwave. She came back over as the microwave hummed and placed a hand on the side of my face.
“You must feel like your head is going to explode, Ridley.” Her sympathy made me want to cry but I kept myself together. I really appreciated her making a point to say “Ridley” instead of “Jessie.”
The microwave beeped and she retrieved the cup, put in a little milk and honey, and brought it to me. “Your mother—sorry, I mean Teresa—was a good girl,” said Maria, sitting back down. “She just made the mistake of getting involved with that loser Christian Luna. I could tell from the minute I met him that he was going to be no good for her. But that was her karma, always involved with the wrong man. Some were rich, some were poor, some were handsome, some were homely. But they all had one thing in common—they were wrong for her.” She looked over at me, as if she was afraid her statement had hurt me. I shook my head, indicating that it was fine, that she should say what she felt.
“Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Christian Luna,” she said thoughtfully, with a small smile. She reached out and touched my face again. “Without him, maybe there wouldn’t have been any Jessie. And that baby was the love of Teresa’s life. The sun rose and set with that little girl.” She stopped for a second and put her hand to her chest. “Anyway, now you say he’s dead. And I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“He said he didn’t kill Teresa. Do you believe that?”
“I never believed that he had killed her. I know it looked like he did. I mean, he’d been there that night, yelling and screaming. Everybody was sure he’d been the one. Especially with him disappearing and Jessie being kidnapped like that. But Christian Luna was a coward. It takes guts to kill a woman and steal her child. And he never wanted the responsibility of caring for Jessie. Not really. Why would he take her?”
“Yeah, but a crime like that is about control, isn’t it? You want what you can’t have just because someone says it’s not yours anymore.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But I didn’t see it in him. He would yell and scream, maybe slap Teresa around a little. He broke Jessie’s arm, but that was an accident. That’s a different personality than someone who murders the mother of his child.” She shook her head. “No. I never believed it was him.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I know this: Jessie wasn’t the only child in the area to go missing that year.”
I looked at her.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “There were at least three others that I heard of in the news over the next few months. More over the years.”
“Were the parents murdered?” I asked.
She squinted into the distance. “I don’t think so. Not that I recall.”
“So what happened?” I asked, sitting up. “I mean, the media must have been all over it.”
“Not really. It’s not like today. Back then you didn’t really hear stories like that. The idea of pedophiles abducting children, serial-type crimes…people didn’t really know that much about it, didn’t want to know. Plus, these were all poor children from the projects, low-income housing. It’s not as though they were rich kids stolen from their homes.”
“Yeah,” I said, not sure what else to say. The information was hitting me hard for a number of reasons. First of all, it gave a certain credibility to Christian Luna’s story, and if he’d been telling the truth about not killing Teresa, then he might have been telling the truth about me. Second, if Jessie was one of a number of local children abducted, and I was actually Jessie, what were the implications of that? How did I get from there to here?
Suddenly the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling started to jangle. There were several sets of them, all of them giving off different octaves of tones. The sound was at once eerie and alarming. Madame Maria jumped up from the couch.
“Don’t worry,” she said loudly, moving behind the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the space. “I have a fan set on a timer to go off every hour. It lets me know when a session is over.” She disappeared for a second and the fan, mounted in a corner on the ceiling, slowed. The sound of the chimes grew gentler. I was feeling edgy, jumpy, so I got up to leave. I took a business ca
rd out of my pocket and handed it to Madame Maria.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she took it and put it in her muumuu.
“For what?”
“For everything you’ve been through. It doesn’t seem fair.” She looked sad, older than she had when I arrived.
I shrugged. “Life’s not fair,” I said. But those weren’t my words. They were my mother’s. It was something I’d heard her say countless times over the years. I did, in fact, believe life was fair. Well, not fair exactly, but balanced. Yin and yang. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Bitter and sweet. One did not exist without the other. When life is bad, you know it’s going to get better. When life is good, you know it’s going to go bad. If that’s not fair, I don’t know what is.
She nodded. “Hey, you want a reading before you go?”
“No, thanks,” I said with a smile. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the cards held for me. “Call me, okay? If you think of anything else.”
She nodded again and looked like she wanted to say something. I waited. “You know,” she said tentatively. “Teresa used to take Jessie to the clinic on Drew Street. They took her insurance and she liked the doctor there. They might still have her records. Little Angels, it was called. It’s still there.”
I looked at her blankly.
“If you ever want to know for sure. I mean, maybe they have dental records or fingerprints.”
She meant if I wanted to know for sure if I was Jessie or not—because both of Jessie’s parents were dead and she thought there would be no other way for me to find out. She reached up for me then, took me into her arms, and embraced me. Her arms were as warm and as soft as I imagined they would be.
“Thanks,” I said as I stepped back and turned to walk away.
“Be careful, Jessie,” she said softly as she closed the door. I think she didn’t mean me to hear. I wished I hadn’t.
nineteen
“Did you know there were three other children abducted from this area in 1972?” I asked Detective Salvo.
I was sitting in my rented Jeep in the parking lot of the Hackettstown Public Library. After sitting in front of the microfiche for more than two hours, I’d been ejected from the building by the librarian, who wanted to go home. She’d let me in just minutes before closing, then let me stay as she finished her work for the night. Finally, she turned out the lights and told me it was time to go. Now, my head ached (yes, again)—eyestrain, probably. It was dark and I was tired, but hopped up on Frappuccinos. It was cold out and the car was taking a while to heat up. I could see my breath.
“I mean, like, literally within a five-mile radius,” I added for emphasis when he didn’t say anything.
He was quiet on the other end. Then: “I fail to see what this has to do with my case, Ridley. We’re talking thirty years ago in another state.”
Now it was my turn to be silent. It had seemed important back in my faux-wood carrel at the library. Four children, including Jessie Stone, had all gone missing that year from low-income housing in the Hackettstown area. Two boys, both three years old; two girls, one an infant just nine months old, the other, Jessie, not yet two. Light skinned, one blonde, one redhead, two brunettes. None of the cases were ever solved. I’d taken extensive notes. Now I thought, Why did I call him? Maybe because I didn’t have anyone else to call…not about this, anyway.
“You know the only thing more annoying to cops than private investigators? Civilians pretending to be private investigators.”
“Maybe it ties in to what happened to Christian Luna,” I said. It sounded lame now, amateurish even to my own ears.
“What, like, maybe he knew something about it?”
“Exactly.”
“Ridley, if he knew something that would get him off the hook for murdering his wife, don’t you think he’d have brought it up thirty years ago instead of living the rest of his life on the lam?”
I didn’t say anything. He had a point.
“Where are you?”
“In Jersey.”
“Come on home, okay?” he said, his voice softer now. “I’ll look into it. I promise.” I couldn’t tell whether he was patronizing me or not. He had one of those voices that just sounded patronizing.
“Oh,” he said. “One other thing. That friend of yours? Excuse me, the guy you’ve never heard of?”
“Yeah?”
“Turns out he has a new address. Guess where? Your building.”
“How about that,” I said. I think I sounded pretty cool. But I had that sick dread you got in your stomach as a kid when you were caught in a lie. Scared, foolish, no idea what to say. Very much inclined to lie again, if pressed.
“Guess what else?” He could barely keep the smile out of his voice. “Guy says he was up in Riverdale last night, a bar up there he likes to hang out at. Jimmy’s Bronx Café. Stopped off for a bite at a pizzeria in Riverdale on the way home. But he didn’t see or hear anything in the park. And he’s never heard of you, either.”
“Huh,” I said. Keeping it simple. “Well, you know how it is in the city. You can live next door to someone for years and never get to know his name.”
“Quite a coincidence, though, don’t you think?”
“Certainly is.”
“Only I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said, his voice going flat. “Come back to the city, Ridley. I have a feeling you and I are going to need to talk again.”
“I have a lawyer,” I said weakly.
“Yes, I know,” said Detective Salvo. “He’s been in touch. You don’t know me very well yet, Ridley. Maybe you think Alexander Harriman intimidates me. Let me assure you that you’re mistaken. Just come home.”
I did go back to the city but held on to the Jeep, parked it in the same garage where Jake kept his car. I noticed that the Firebird was gone.
I had a lot of new information and no brainpower to process it. It felt weird going back to my apartment, as if it wasn’t really mine anymore. All the memories lingering there were ghosts from someone else’s life, someone silly and frivolous. For a second, I thought about turning around and getting back in the Jeep. Going somewhere, anywhere else. But I was too tired. The pizzeria was closed and the street was pretty quiet. I dragged myself up the stairs and into my apartment.
He was there, waiting for me. Of course he was. On some level I knew he would be, would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been. He had the light on next to the couch and was lying there, staring at the ceiling. He stood when I entered. He looked so relieved, like he might pass out from it.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“You left your keys this morning.” It was true. When I left earlier, I’d grabbed the set I’d made Zack return to me when I couldn’t find my own.
Anyone in her right mind would have kept her distance, asked him to leave, but I think we’ve sufficiently established that I wasn’t anywhere close to being in my right mind. He came toward me quickly and pulled me into him. I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight. He was so strong and that felt good because suddenly I barely had the strength to even stand. I felt the taut, hard muscles of his biceps, of his thighs. My heart thrummed like an engine in my chest. I couldn’t get close enough to him.
“Man,” he breathed into my hair. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as worried about anyone as I’ve been about you tonight.”
I looked up at him. There was that sadness I’d seen before and I thought about the things Detective Salvo had told me. An odd vulnerability resided in the features of his face, as if he was unaccustomed to being controlled by his emotions and a little afraid of how it felt. He moved a hand to my face. His touch was tender, though his hands felt calloused.
“There are a lot of things you should know about me,” he said softly for the second time since we’d met. This time I was prepared to listen.
“I know,” I answered. “Let’s start with your name.”
The only thing you can give to someone telling a story like Jake’s is s
ilence. Silence and your complete attention. We sat on my couch with my legs draped over his lap. He spoke very quietly, hardly looking at me except in quick, shy glances. His speech was halting, as though it wasn’t a story he’d told often. And when he was done, I felt like he had entrusted me with something. Something I had to hold and keep and protect. It bonded us.
“The funny thing is that I remember her. I remember my mother. Or maybe I just dreamed her. But I remember what it was like to feel loved, safe, to be tucked in at night. Maybe that’s why I’m not more fucked up than I am.”
Harley Jacobsen started calling himself Jake in his first foster home. Harley was a kid, a little boy who wet his bed sometimes and carried a tattered Winnie the Pooh, the last remnant of his former life as a child. Harley was someone who couldn’t protect himself against two foster brothers who were bigger than he was and meaner, more malicious than wolves. Jake fought back where Harley would have cried and cowered. Jake wasn’t afraid; he was angry. And he fought like a berserker, using all his strength and all his will. He had to because he was small, because it took everything he had just to stand up to people who were bigger than he was. So one day, when his two foster brothers started taunting him in the small backyard of their New Jersey home, after months of beatings and verbal abuse, Harley went away and Jake took up a big, sharp stick. When the older of the two boys grabbed for him, Jake took the stick and drove it into his eye.
“I can still hear him screaming,” said Jake. “It makes me sad now. But back then, it was the sound of victory. It was the sound that let me know I didn’t have to be anyone’s victim anymore.”
He was, of course, removed from that foster home and labeled as a problem kid, disturbed. One shrink noted in his juvenile record, which Jake later gained access to, that he had a disassociative disorder because he’d started calling himself Jake.
“But I wasn’t disassociating. I knew who I was. I just had this sense that I had to get real hard real fast or I wasn’t going to survive. Harley was a little kid’s name, to my seven-year-old mind. Jake, which I got from the first syllable of my last name, was a man’s name. I knew that’s what I needed to be.”
