Lucy had abused the boy, and the boy had fled.
* * *
“Why is there a sexual novelty item in your son’s sock drawer?”
“A what?” Lucy said.
“A dildo,” clarified Ms. Mann. “A vibrator.”
The detective pulled out the device, condemned to a Ziploc bag.
“Is that…?” It looked familiar. “Where did you get that?”
“It was found in the boy’s room. Does it belong to you, Mrs. Fini?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea?”
Ms. Mann pushed the bagged penis across the table.
“I mean, I do own a similar…”
“So, it could be yours?”
“I—I guess.”
“You guess? Okay. And the reason it was in your son’s room?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t put it there?”
“Of course not.”
“Have you ever used it in the boy’s room?”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m just trying to—”
“Edgar picks things up.”
“He picks things up?”
“He’s interested in things.”
“Like dildos?”
“What does this have to do with finding my son?”
“I’m just trying to gauge his state of mind.”
“Sad,” Lucy snapped.
“Why sad?”
“His grandmother.”
“But I thought you said they weren’t really that close. Mrs. Fini?”
“When did I…? I don’t know why I said that.”
“So they were close?”
“Yes.” Lucy nodded. She felt the air rising in her chest like a bubble, and though she kept down the sound, the tears came.
Ms. Mann pushed a box of Kleenex toward Lucy and paused for the recommended five seconds before recommencing. “Okay, Mrs. Fini, just a couple more questions. If you could…”
Lucy no longer cared to look at the woman’s face. “What?”
Ms. Mann shifted some papers, aware of the official sound she was generating. “I have a hospital report here. Apparently, Edgar suffered a serious injury about a week—”
“What happened?” Lucy interrupted, frightened. “Are you not telling me something?”
“Not at all. If you’d let me finish. He sustained an injury before his disappearance.”
Lucy felt dizzy, confused. “He did?”
“You don’t remember? It seems his finger was—”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
“Cut off,” Ms. Mann said, calmly finishing her sentence.
Lucy looked down at her own fingers, whose tips were covered in tiny silver rings—the rings attached by wires to a computer capable of detecting the subtle flutters that supposedly accompanied lies.
“My hands are shaking,” she said. “This is pointless.”
“The machine can tell the difference. You’re doing fine. Let’s talk about the child’s injury.”
Lucy shook her head and deliberately pushed a stream of air from her nose. She could see where this idiot of a woman was heading. “He was cutting a tomato. It was an accident.”
“You let him use sharp knives?”
“Yes,” Lucy said, “… and dildos. You stupid—” Lucy pulled the flutter receptors from her fingers. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Mrs. Fini—”
“Don’t ‘Mrs. Fini’ me. Why are you wasting time with this shit when you should be looking for Edgar?”
“I am looking for—”
“Actually, I don’t think you know your ass from your elbow.”
Ms. Mann squeezed a pen, speechless.
“You know what?” And here, Lucy snatched up the metal rings and pushed them back onto her fingers. Ms. Mann watched, mesmerized, hoping for a confession.
“Maybe I haven’t been the best fucking mother,” Lucy continued. “But I have never, never, hurt Edgar physically, or … not physically.” Here, a small sob escaped from her. “If anyone has a sick mind, it’s you.”
Ms. Mann touched the neck of her oxford.
“And do yourself a favor and unbutton the top of that shirt before you choke to death.” Lucy pulled off the wires and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to find my son.”
* * *
Stay calm. Your stress will not help you find your child. Of course, you will want to remain vigilant and participate in the search, but don’t sacrifice your own health and well-being. Though you may feel that suffering is the only option, this is never true. A positive attitude, though often difficult to achieve, is always the best strategy. Are there calming rituals that please you? Baths? Massage? Music? A favorite movie or food or leisure activity?
* * *
That evening, after the finger-flutter test, Ms. Mann ate Mallomars for dinner and overfed her cat. Propped up in bed, with the animal curled at her side, she read Missing and Abducted Children: A Law Enforcement Guide to Case Investigation and Program Management. She hadn’t been aware that such a guide existed until Mrs. Fini’s boyfriend had called the station and suggested she order one from NCMEC by calling 1–800–THE–LOST.
When the cat vomited on the comforter, Ms. Mann stared at the offensive matter and once again felt chastised. Not only had Mrs. Fini passed the flutter test without any indication of wrongdoing, but also she’d vindicated herself with a passion that made Ms. Mann sense that there might be more to the woman than she’d previously imagined. Lucy possessed a kind of terrifying intensity that made Ms. Mann feel both superior and inadequate. It was the terrible passion of the working class, the violence of whose lives often made them into monsters. Though here, a rare specimen, with gorgon-like red hair and pale skin. Ms. Mann had wasted time, it was true. Perhaps, if she wanted to solve this case, it would be wise to ally herself with the fierce Mrs. Fini and her oversized, jaggedly handsome boyfriend. Though these people were like animals, they were also, Ms. Mann allowed—cleaning up the cat spew—touchingly human.
* * *
Lucy was vomiting too, sick with herself. She was not good at tests. She’d been failing them her whole life. Though that Mann woman was a bitch, Lucy knew she’d overreacted. But how did people control themselves? It was a mystery to Lucy, who had the misfortune of being born under a greedy red star that required constant payment by fire.
Of course, over the last few years, the red star seemed to have dulled to a state of mordant disinterest, requiring little from Lucy. But Mann’s accusations had Lucy lit again. There was a job to be done, and she’d do it, without anyone getting in her way. She felt a stirring in the very cells of her body, a defense against chaos she’d experienced before, and one that always contained a trace of Walter Bubko. Lucy had survived a father who’d despised her; she’d survive this. Hell, she’d do more than survive; she’d win. Prove her worth to those who thought she was nothing but a piece of trash.
She cleaned up the beer bottles, picked up her clothes, changed the sheets. She called Ron and told him not to come over, claiming some girlfriends were stopping by. She made toast and tea, instead of crackers and vodka, and settled down on the couch with the photocopied pamphlet.
Children tend to gravitate toward water (rivers, lakes, ponds, drainage ditches). Wooded areas also offer a place of adventure for a wandering child.
The language was strangely comforting—as if the story could be framed as a fairy tale, one in which Edgar would reappear as easily as he’d vanished. It was mercifully impossible to imagine him harmed, or dead.
Over her thin pajamas, Lucy put on Florence’s black wool coat. She’d grabbed it from where it still hung on the rack in the foyer, without thinking anything except that it seemed the warmest. As she walked into the woods behind 21 Cressida Drive, she meticulously swept the ground with the beam of a flashlight. After several hours, she’d f
ound nothing but chestnuts—which now filled the pockets of Florence’s coat.
Back at the house she got her car keys. Rivers, lakes, ponds. She drove to the park Edgar liked, with the ducks and the swans. The gate was locked, but Lucy climbed over it. When she shone the flashlight on the dark water, she spotted no birds. She walked past the rose garden and the merry-go-round and approached the zoo, housed behind a faux castle. The drawbridge was raised, though, and she couldn’t reach it. From across the moat she could hear the low rustling of the animals—distant swishings and squawks and brays. It was then she felt afraid. On the way back to the car, she passed the placard of Hansel and Gretel with empty ovals instead of faces. She and Edgar had once stuck their heads through the holes, and someone had snapped a photo.
* * *
A few days later, after the green color bloomed on the peed-upon test strip, Lucy asked Ron as breezily as she could manage: “Listen, you always use a condom, right?”
The butcher was silent for a few seconds before he said, “Why, do we have a problem?”
“No,” Lucy lied. “I just want to make sure we’re being safe.”
“Of course.” The butcher distractedly pushed a bottle cap across the table. “We just did it once without a rubber.” Without looking at Lucy, he reminded her of the night she’d come to his house with her knees cut up. “You said you’d tripped in a parking lot or something?”
Lucy’s back went cold from the sudden memory of the butcher on top of her in his bathtub.
The butcher, on the other hand, recalled a sensation of warm, blissful expansion. “But, you know, if we ever did have a problem…” He paused and offered a small shrug. “I guess I’m just saying, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for me.”
“Well, it would be one for me,” Lucy said—and the butcher, seeing her point, looked down: “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
* * *
The next day marked a week since Edgar had gone missing. Lucy peed on a second test strip. Again, it showed green. When she stepped outside the house into the bright cold, the wind lifted the flaps of her short pink bathrobe. She watched the shivering trees and bushes, feeling a sudden hatred for the child inside her, a hatred for the butcher. These people were not her family.
She marched into the house and made the call. The number was still in her phone book. The woman who answered said they’d just had a cancellation; Lucy could schedule the procedure for that very afternoon. “Have you visited the clinic before?” the woman asked, and Lucy said that she had.
“We’ll want you to meet with a counselor first.”
“Sure,” Lucy said.
Her decision was made, though.
She understood now that it was physically impossible for the two beings to exist simultaneously—a problem of physics that made her head spin, but which her gut solved immediately.
For Edgar to live, his usurper must die.
30
Extra Credit
Science, Period 3, Mr. Levinson
“Can you come up with ten questions that have not been answered by science?”
1. How long does it take a dead person to get to where they’re going? Do they get there instantly or does it take a long time?
2. Do dead people keep the same age and the same face?
3. Do they even have bodies?
4. Do they know they’re dead, or just think they are lost?
5. Do they remember things from when they weren’t dead, like other people?
6. Can they call you on the telephone, like in movies?
7. Why do people die in the first place? Is there not enough room on Earth, like when we talked about overpopulation?
8. Is it dark where they are?
9. Is it cold?
10.
Edgar, this is very interesting. I was hoping to receive questions about a variety of subjects, but I will give you credit for the obvious effort you put into this. Perhaps we might say these questions come under the banner of physics. I am curious about the lack of a tenth question, since you seem to have no shortage of thoughts on this particular subject.
I have recommended that you meet with Mrs. LeBreck. She is very nice and just a good person to talk to if something’s bothering you. Your mother has been notified.
Good job!
Mr. Levinson
31
Goodbye, Toni-Ann
A yellow fish with ruffled wings hovered above the turret of a sunken castle. Edgar stared at it while the dog sniffed his ankles. The situation seemed a little less terrible now that he’d taken his pill. Earlier, in the small bedroom the man had given him, he’d poured out the pink tablets and counted them. If he kept breaking them in half, taking only four halves a day, he’d have enough for eleven more days. His finger didn’t really hurt so much anymore, but something deep inside him remained steady in its request for the Percocet.
He’d spent the first few days crying in the other boy’s bed. “It’s okay,” the man kept saying. “It’s normal to cry when you go away. Even astronauts cry.” He brought Edgar juice and milk and cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, leaving them on the nightstand.
Sometimes, in the dark, Edgar woke, afraid. It wasn’t clear to him exactly how he’d ended up here. A lot had happened since his grandmother had died. He tried to understand how one thing had led to the next; to understand what had been his fault, and what the fault of others. But he made no headway; all thoughts and attempts at logic seemed to tatter and tear and float away like tiny pieces of ash, as if his mind were a fire burning everything that passed through it. Several times he’d asked the man if he had a fever, and the man had touched his forehead and cheek like Florence used to. And though the man’s hand made him tremble, it felt nice, too. It seemed, to Edgar, that he couldn’t trust even his own body to tell him what was true, or what he wanted.
The day after he’d arrived, he’d gotten out of bed while the man was outside the house. It was early, a terrible coldness seeping up from the floor. In the living room, a neat stack of logs burned in the fireplace. Edgar found the man’s cell and attempted, twice, to call his mother. Both times, though, the pig-killer had answered the phone. “Who the fuck is this?” the butcher had snarled in response to Edgar’s stricken silence—and Edgar, distraught, had hung up. When, seconds later, the cell began to ring, the boy panicked and, in a fit of confusion, threw the small phone into the fireplace. When the man came back inside and sniffed, Edgar started to cry. “I burned your phone,” he said, too frightened to lie. The man told him not to worry—he had lots of them. “Did you try to call someone?” he asked, and Edgar nodded, releasing a fresh burst of tears. “It’s okay, shhhh,” the man said. “Remember what I told you. If you want to go home, all you have to do is ask.”
Edgar felt sick over the fact that he hadn’t yet.
Staring at the fish, he wondered if the butcher was living at his house, using his grandmother’s pots and pans and making his mother sound like an animal. Edgar felt a furious jealousy that was indistinguishable from hatred. His brow furrowed—but only for a moment. Confronted by the equanimity of the fish and the complete dispersion of the Percocet into his bloodstream, he leaned forward and let his nose touch the glass of the aquarium.
“Fish kiss,” the man said from behind, and Edgar closed his eyes.
* * *
The man had never expected the boy to get in touch. He’d offered his telephone number more as a gesture of goodwill. It was also, he recognized, a gesture in the direction of his own destruction. More and more, he felt compelled to take such risks. He was as impatient to be condemned as he was to be saved. When the boy had called, the man had felt a disastrous flutter of hope.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” the boy had said on the phone, “but you punched the fat kid who was hurting me and then you changed my bandage and we talked about stuff and just like … talked about stuff.” The boy had sounded drunk. When he’d finished his nervous spiel, he concluded quietly, “So I’m just
calling.”
The man waited a long time before he asked if the boy was still there.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Is everything okay?”
“It’s just noisy. Because my mother has a friend over.”
“Oh, okay.” The man paused, the empty space feeling like a delicate glass flower he had to be careful not to break. “Did you maybe want to take a walk?”
“Where?”
“We could meet somewhere.” A tiny translucent petal began to crack. “Maybe our spot behind the supermarket?”
“It’s nighttime, though.”
He could hear the boy sigh, and waited for him to speak again.
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
“At your house?” the man asked. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Edgar repeated. “They sound like animals.”
* * *
It was too easy. Not only had the boy called, but he’d shown up in the parking lot in his little red jacket, with a fresh crew cut and a blue backpack over his shoulders. At that point, the man doubted his own sense of reality. The boy’s arrival, his disturbing willingness, so perfectly matched the man’s hopes that it was as if he’d invented the child. He was like something from one of those implausible tales the man used to scribble in notebooks when he’d fancied himself a writer. The child was convenient, a character.
Still, it had taken a while to get him into the truck. They spoke for several minutes through the rolled-down window—the boy, shivering.
“I don’t think your clothes are warm enough, soldier.”
“It’s quilted,” said Edgar, touching his jacket.
“Is it?”
“Yes. It has feathers inside.”
“Squawk, squawk,” the man said, but the boy didn’t laugh.
“Are you just fooling me?” he said.
“Fooling you how?”
“Are you just pretending to know me?”
The man was taken aback. “Are you just pretending to know me?”
Edgar and Lucy Page 28
