Fear of Heights

by Mara White

  Silence. I’m sure I’m blushing scarlet in the dark.

  “If it don’t work, call me back. Go to the hospital, you end up in jail, and ain’t much I can do for you once you there. Call me back before you do anything stupid.”

  Boss me around, why don’t you, stranger? But I’m relieved he ignored my creepy declaration. I don’t need anyone here with me; I can do it on my own, I tell myself, gathering the two remaining enemas out of the discarded pharmacy bag. I run back into our desecrated bathroom and wrench the shower curtain off the metal hooks. I bring it back to the bed and roll Janinie over, getting as much of the curtain underneath her as I can. I announce out loud what I’m going to do with the enemas even though she’s completely passed out.

  Her flesh feels cold and clammy with sweat, but somehow she’s still feverish. I will not let this stupid trip define us. We’ll come out victorious on the other side. I think to myself with determination as I do the first enema, wrap the curtain fully around her and step back to prepare the other.

  Janinie groans and rolls over.

  “What the fuck, Kate?” she asks and then curls in, her body responding to the contractions.

  It’s now or never. Janinie tries to defend herself, but she’s too spent to be much of a deterrent. I evacuate the mineral oil one inside her and she heaves and pukes on the pillow. I guess we’re sleeping on the floor tonight. Hell, if we get the drugs out, we’ll spring for a new room. I pull back the shower curtain to inspect, and I count six yellow pellets, shiny with oil.

  “We got six!” I yell. “Oh my God, keep going, Janinie!” She vomits again and I feel bad for my jubilation, but still elated over our progress. I grab the plastic pharmacy bag and pick out the pellets with my gloved hand. I bring them to the bathroom and happily flush them down the toilet. Nine more of these little fuckers to go.

  “Don’t flush them! Holy fuck, you are so stupid! We have to give those back. They’ll kill us.” Janinie screams and then groans as another expulsive wave takes her.

  “Fuck those guys! Fuck them and fuck their drugs and if they try anything—I’ll kill them. Or I’ll have them arrested,” I say riding high on victory. I just want to get out of here and never deal with anything even remotely like this ever again.

  I return to the bed and inspect our shower curtain catchall. Four more yellow pellets. I grab them and drop them into the bag before Janinie has a chance to get any ideas. By two a.m., we have all of them, if Janinie was right about the total number she swallowed. I’ve never been so happy to flush a toilet. By three-thirty, I have us installed in a deluxe room, citing ‘a severe flu’ as our reason for switching. By five a.m., I have two tickets booked for a flight home. I’m excited, feeling indestructible, and maybe, possibly, something akin to having fun. Janinie is up and sipping Sprite, looking completely wiped out and punk rock in her new hairdo.

  Robert calls at nine forty-eight and my bubble of happiness pops.

  “What do you mean ‘missing’?” I yell into the phone.

  Janinie’s can of soda hovers halfway between her open mouth and her lap; the carbonation makes the straw lift and swivel away from her, and she closes her lips around nothing. She raises her eyebrows, eyes fixed on me, and mouths the word ‘”What?”

  My sister Emily has disappeared after taking the girls to camp. She was supposed to be at a hair appointment right afterwards, but she never showed up. Someone found her purse and cell phone strewn about on the ground on Riverside Drive. The only witness was a homeless man, who claimed to see men in masks shove a woman into an unmarked van. The police are treating it as a missing-persons case and won’t register it until 48 hours have passed. My heart contracts, as images of a terrified Emily flood my mind. While doing a favor for me she disappears. My poor sister!

  Robert is calling from the precinct. Our housekeeper and babysitter, Carmen and Stephani, are at home with the girls. My father has gone to see the police commissioner, along with Emily’s husband, Doug. My mother is on her way to our house, and Robert will be there soon after. I hear all of this, not believing it, not accepting it, just aching for my Ada and Pearl.

  I tell Janinie.

  “Holy Shit!” she says raising her hand to her mouth. They thought Emily was you. That’s why they took her. We were supposed to be home, and they want their drugs.”

  She’s only saying what I already know, but somehow it’s no less damaging.

  What made us think, what made me think, that I was any match for a group of gangsters who care about nothing but their bottom line—a belly-full of drugs. Oh, God they’ll cut her or even rape or kill her before they realize the awful mistake. My two worlds have come crashing together. I never suspected this would be how they would meet.

  Our flight home is tense. I know Janinie feels some blame for the drug muling mess that’s now affected my family. I hug her twice to reassure her that I don’t hold her responsible, once in the gate before takeoff and again while we’re waiting in line to go through customs. But she’s cold and cut off, and I’ve run out of ways to reach her. Our visit to paradise ended in multiple tragedies. We’ve shared perhaps too much, and there’s an awkwardness between us. We left feeling like sisters, and now are returning like a pair of soured, unsuccessful conspirators.

  Chapter 5

  I roll over in my own soft bed; it smells of lavender, not a hospital, not a hotel, and not a mildewed, abandoned beach house. There’s no humidity in the air. I sit up and take in the blurry morning beauty of being home. My thoughts tumble over last night, the hugs and kisses and cuddles with the girls, shadowed by hushed phone calls made by Robert to the police and commissioner. There were arguments with my parents about what to do. Robert has experience dealing with all aspects of the criminal world, but for Emily’s husband Doug and for my parents, this is uncharted territory.

  This day has stark contrasts. I’m thrilled to be home with my family. But my baby is gone, and my sister gone missing.

  There’s so much to be done. I should be at the front lines, organizing the search. I jump out of bed and quickly scrub my face and pull a brush through my hair.

  I stifle a smile at the sound of Robert’s voice attempting Spanish in conversation with Carmen below. She’s got no sympathy for his land-locked tongue—she bosses him in Spanish in a way she would never consider in English.

  I come downstairs in my pajamas, savoring every step back into a life I thought I might never see again. I smell coffee, something fresh-baked, and the tang of Carmen’s homemade green salsa.

  The two of them are rearranging furniture, dragging chairs from the dining room and setting them up among the living room couches. They’ve moved tables and some of the larger potted plants, and are dragging a dresser off of the window wall to accommodate a table. This is new: in the nine years we’ve employed Carmen, I’ve yet to see Robert and Carmen collaborate on much of anything, despite my efforts to convince him that she’s like family.

  “What’s going on? Are we doing a press conference? Any news on Emily?”

  “No, just a meeting. O’Connor, the detective from the precinct, is coming, your parents, Doug, and Jaylee’s family too. No reporters, no press—nothing public.”

  “Janet and Janinie are coming? What would they know about Emily?”

  “¿Café, Señora?” Carmen asks strategically.

  “Sí, por favor,” I reply. I run my hands over my face. I’m still reeling from yesterday. Carmen returns from the kitchen carrying a tray with coffee, toast with a big pat of butter, and in a teacup, two tiny antibiotics.

  “Señora, tu amiga Sarah te llamó en la mañana. She’s in Long Island with her parents for the weekend. She wanted to stop by but I told her you’d call her as soon as you were awake.”

  “Really? Gosh. I’d love to see her!” I turn to Robert in question and he waves his hand at me as if I’m a nuisance.

  I gobble down the toast and my pills with the coffee. I turn on the television to see if there is any news on my sist
er. Robert eyes me with impatience and I turn it off shyly.

  “Listen, Katie. You’re not going to see anything on the news. They’re treating it as a missing-persons case, not an abduction. We’ve still got to wait another twenty-four hours before it’s even official.”

  “But I thought someone saw her get taken by a van? Of course she was kidnapped, Robert. They thought she was me!”

  “The ‘someone’ was drunk, and as it turns out, not a reliable source. Doug let them search the apartment last night. It looks as if she was planning to leave. She took her suitcases and passport—all of her back-up credit cards as well.”

  “No, Robert! I took those! I told you that. I went to her place and stole them! It’s all at Janinie’s house; we can run up and get it to show the police. Her suitcases, her passport and credit cards, everything. I even took some of her clothes.”

  Robert looks at me sternly and I can tell he’s about to tell me something I won’t like.

  “About the trip and the drugs, Kate—you can’t tell the police. Your case isn’t closed. You’re still out on bail. You left the country illegally after being arrested for bringing $5,000 to a drug house, remember? Everything you’ve done will only implicate you further. The girls almost lost you last week. Don’t do it to them again.”

  “But what about Emily? How will the police be able to look for her if they don’t know the truth?” I can’t believe he’s asking me to lie about this. I can do nothing to save her if they don’t know the whole story.

  “Leave that up to me and your father and Doug. We’ll hire a private investigator—with our resources we’ll be more efficient than the police. Trust me, Kate. You don’t want to dig yourself deeper.”

  “Robert, they could kill her!”

  “I’m aware of that. That’s why we’ll make them an offer that will suit them better if she’s alive. Trust me. I have more experience in these matters than you do.”

  God, he’s so smug! I wanted to reconcile, but now Robert’s just reminded me how he loves to exercise absolute control. He’s above the law, above the police, and certainly above me. With his power, he gets to decide which version of the truth everyone will see.

  “I can’t come to the meeting if you won’t let me tell them the truth. How can I just sit there and say nothing while my sister goes missing. It’s the drug dealers that have her—whoever Janinie was supposed to go to once she got back to town. We have to tell them that.”

  “Look. Call Sarah. You two can go out. That way I won’t have to worry about your guilt taking control of your mouth and we can do this the right way.”

  “The truth is important, Robert!”

  He looks at me with disdain.

  “I could point out the irony in that statement. It was your infidelity and irresponsibility that got us into this mess.”

  He may be right, but I’m seething at his condescension. I turn away.

  I’ll let him take the wheel and run his own bullshit investigation. I’ll run my own too if that’s what it takes. If I know who took her, I can find her faster than the police.

  But I can’t sit here and listen to Robert feed them some made-up story about why Emily is missing when we know the reason perfectly well. I was using her name. If the dealers tracked my movements at all, they really do think that she’s me—which means that they believe that she’s withholding their stash.

  I rush through a shower and scramble into a dress. I’ll do what I have to. I’ll find my sister.

  Sarah picks me up in her mother’s Bentley, a retirement gift she gave herself. She comes in to greet everyone briefly as they start their meeting, and then swoops me off toward downtown, hoping to lure me into a glass of wine despite the warning label on my antibiotics. As we race the length of the Westside Highway, I bring her up to speed on what’s happened since we last spoke. Sarah drives like a maniac and swears at everything living. I hang on to the door handle and pump and imaginary brake.

  “What a shame, Great. I would have liked to spend more time with Chuck and Birdie. It’s been ages since I’ve seen them.”

  My parents are Charles and Elizabeth Whitland. Sarah has called them Chuck and Birdie for as long as I can remember. She has a nickname for everyone and mine is by far the worst. Who wants to be called “Kate the Great,” especially when I feel anything but.

  “Turn around, then, and we’ll go back. We can listen to my dad belittle Jaylee’s family and throw accusations at Carmen.”

  “What? Your dad’s got a bone to pick with Carmen? She’s like the sweetest lady in the world.”

  “I don’t know. Robert said he was asking why Emily was taking them to camp that day instead of Carmen. He’ll start spouting his anti-immigration nonsense—meanwhile Carmen has raised his grandchildren and had more of role than either Grandma or Grandpa.”

  “Hey, I could moderate! I’d be good at that.” Sarah smiles. “Your mom was looking fresh-faced. But wow, Doug looked like shit. I haven’t seen him since Emily’s wedding.”

  “Well, he’s got two options, both of them bad. If he believes me, Em’s been kidnapped. If he doesn’t, she’s run off and left him. The worst Doug usually deals with is opening the Barney’s bill after Emily’s gone shopping. I don’t know if he’s equipped to handle this at all.”

  Sarah nods, then slams on the brakes and we screech to a stop as the light turns red. Her usual method of stopping.

  “What’s the Dirty Thirty scandal all about? I heard the detective mention it before we got kicked out.”

  “That’s the scandal at our neighborhood precinct—the thirtieth—that happened back in the early nineties, back when the Heights was the cocaine capital of the East Coast. It turned out that all the cops were as crooked as the dealers, The area was really sketchy then. Not the kind of place you’d want to raise a family.”

  “I vaguely remember it being on the news. Bet you never would have thought that twenty years later you’d be living in the ‘hood.”

  “Actually, that’s how we knew about the area. Robert worked the Dirty Thirty case, so he’d spent some time up here before. He knew the area had potential, and that the brownstones were both beautiful and cheap.”

  “No shit? Bobby was pitching for Dominican drug dealers back in the day?”

  “No, his firm represented two of the cops, I believe. Most of them got off on perjury.”

  “Slap on the wrist for dirty cops. Isn’t that how it always seems to go? Well, at least the neighborhood has cleaned up.”

  Sarah takes me to Odeon, where we order wine and she insists I eat. I know I look sickly and skinny, but Sarah glosses right over it and shows her concern by ordering about ten different dishes for me. I tell her about the trip and the miscarriage, the infection and the drugs. It feels good to talk about all this. My best friend has an amazing capacity to listen and humor me. Her easy laugh and atrocious jokes make even the darkest circumstances feel light. Sarah herself has had two miscarriages, and muses with mock horror about how she could have had six boys instead of her rambunctious pack of four. I couldn’t stand jokes like this from anyone else, but from her, somehow, it helps.

  Over coffee and Bavarian chocolate cake, I tell her my plans to search for Emily on my own. She’s doubtful, but willing to help. Emily might be obnoxious, but she is my little sister. I won’t let her get hurt, especially when this was my fault. Together we make a list of the things I can do, with a pen scrounged from the bottom of Sarah’s big purse.

  The list feels pretty pathetic. The most promising lead on it isn’t perfect, but I still have his number, and his name is Ideal.

  I call him from the restaurant and he answers on the first ring.

  “¿Dígame?”

  “Ideal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “My name is Kate Champion, I—“

  “I know who you are.”

  “I was wondering… do you live in the Heights?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Do you think you could h
elp me find someone? ...I think my sister has been kidnapped. The police don’t believe it, and I think I have to find her on my own.”

  “Meet me at 158th and Broadway. 10:30 tonight.”

  “How will I know you? I’m about 5’7” and I’ve got long, dark hair.”

  “Oh, you know me. Probably better than you think.”

  I push the end button and my fingers are shaking.

  “So who is he?” Sarah asks, as she hands over her credit card to pay the lunch bill.

  “I think he’s another drug dealer from the Heights.” The words sound condemning as they slide off my tongue. But who the hell is he, and just what does he know?

  “I could take you. Drive you to the meet-up. Check out the merchandise, while you go over the deets,” she says and coughs into her hand.

  “Sarah, you are incorrigible!”

  “Yeah, but with a name like Eee-day-ahl,” and she pronounces it slowly in Spanish, “you know he’s got the good shit!”

  Robert refuses to even give me a rundown of what happened at the meeting. He tells me, “The doctor said no stress; you should probably go lie down.”

  I placate his ego and condescension and turn to go, but when his back is turned, I glare at him. My health is a good excuse for him to hold me at arm’s length and control what I do. But I can play games too. He doesn’t need to know everything either.

  In the late afternoon, Robert heads to the station with my father and Doug. It’s time for them to file the paperwork to make Emily an official missing person. I’m sure it will make the news.

  Ada, Pearl, and I hole up in the kitchen to make four dozen cupcakes for Ada’s bake sale at camp. Pearl crafts like a pastry chef while Ada gets more batter in her hair and on her tights than she gets in the bowl. I even turn around and catch her licking frosting from the finished ones that she’s supposed to sell at the Y.