by John Searles
No whispers. No warnings.
Without any signs to steer me, I could only keep plodding along into the uncertainty of my future. I was a hiker in the woods after sundown without a flashlight or a map. A pilot in a small metal plane over the stormy ocean without instruments to navigate. All I could do was move forward, put my empty bowl in the sink, slip on my coat, and head out the door aimlessly in search of Edie.
A few blocks from my uncle’s place, across the street from St. Vincent’s Hospital, was a Chock Full O’ Nuts where I made a pit stop each morning for hot chocolate. The waitresses behind the big U of a counter were all weary-looking women with disappointed eyes and dyed hair, dressed in white uniforms. They never paid much attention to me, too busy complaining about their sore feet, the filthy city, or the latest obnoxious customer to sit in their section. But there was a Chinese mom-and-pop couple who treated me as if I had been a regular for years. Mom worked the register, and Pop ran the coffee and cocoa machine. With the exception of a few phrases, they didn’t speak English. But Mom always got a big smile on her face when she saw me, made motions for me to button my coat when it was windy outside. Pop always fussed over extra napkins, managed a mangled compliment that sounded vaguely like “American boy much too healthy.”
When I stepped into the place that morning, we all went through our routine—Mom squeezed her arms and flapped her lips in a mock shiver, Pop made a production out of preparing my hot chocolate, grabbing the marshmallows and winking as he dropped them into my cup. I stood smiling and nodding like the “American boy much too healthy” they thought I was. Through the front window I caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman getting out of a taxi. She looked nothing like Edie. But she resembled my mother so much that my throat tightened at the sight of her. The same height. Same small frame. A puffed-up stomach like the one my mother had kept hidden from me. Coal-colored hair held back in a headband, too. A familiar, wilted-flower expression on her face. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she crossed the street and walked through the double doors of St. Vincent’s. Then, a moment later, I saw another pregnant woman trotting down the sidewalk. Again not Edie. But this one looked like my mother, too.
And that’s when I heard her voice for the first time since I left Holedo. Her message blew in my ears like a gust of warm wind thawing my frozen life.
Follow the signs, she whispered.
Life lays them right in front of you.
One. Two. Three.
All you have to do is look.
“Now can pay you,” Chinese Mom was saying.
Distracted, I grabbed a quarter from my pocket and set it in her soft hand. She mock-shivered again, made the button-your-coat motion. I bundled up to make her happy, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. A few doors down I took the lid off my hot chocolate and blew on it. Three lumps of marshmallow floated on top. A drowning snowman. I pushed him around with my tongue and began taking slow sips as I watched the doors of the hospital. In five minutes I counted two more pregnant women—one coming, one going. These two didn’t look as much like my mother, but they were both wearing dark wool coats like hers. One even wore a see-through plastic kerchief on her head with a funny-looking lump from a hair bun in the back.
Follow the signs.
I had called St. Vincent’s every night along with all the other hospitals, and no Edie Kramer was ever listed. Still, I finished the last of my drink and tossed the empty cup into a trash can. When the WALK sign gave the signal, I crossed the street and let myself get swallowed up by the same double doors as all those pregnant women. Inside, the hospital had a flat antiseptic smell that made me think of the times my mother and I had stopped to see Marnie at Griffith Hospital in Holedo. Just like that dump, there were women at St. Vincent’s dressed in chipper pink smocks holding clipboards and gabbing in the corner. Slumped in the waiting-room chairs were visitors who looked depleted and pale enough to be patients themselves. Most of them were coughing or sneezing or honking their noses into handkerchiefs.
Maybe, I told myself, maybe Edie had checked in this morning or in the middle of the night, and my mother had led me in here to find her. I walked toward the front desk and forced an I-know-where-I-am-going look on my face. Just beyond I could see the group of elevators, their metal doors opening and closing, spitting out a half dozen people at a time. I figured I’d head up to the maternity ward and snoop around. An amazon security guard in a burgundy blazer and a dandelion puff of gray hair stopped me. “Show me your pass,” she said, army style. The walkie-talkie clipped to her belt made a steady chh-chh-chh sound.
“I’m just going to visit my friend who had a baby,” I told her, hoping she’d see me as an “American boy much too healthy,” too, and simply let me go.
“What’s the patient’s name?” she asked.
“Kramer,” I answered, figuring if there were even a chance Edie was up there, at least I’d find out.
The guard flipped through the clutter of papers on her clipboard, smacked her lips, and tapped her long nails on the desk. “No Kramer registered here,” she said. “And you can’t go up without a pass.”
“How about Elshki?” I said, since I always checked under her married name as well whenever I called the hospitals, just in case.
“Nope,” the guard said, flipping through her papers again. Then she rubbed it in: “And you can’t go up without a pass.”
I glanced at all the crossed-out names on her list, the initials C.O. written next to a slew of them. I assumed it meant checked out. “Oh, I thought she was here,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. Disappointment settled over me like something damp on an already damp day. Those signs hadn’t been signs at all. Just a bunch of pregnant women walking into the double doors of a hospital. The voice I’d heard had been only in my mind.
I was about to turn and leave when the guard said, “If she had a baby in this hospital anytime in the last week, it would be listed over on that board.”
Across the waiting room a giant bulletin board read WELCOME TO THE WORLD! Smiling suns and war-torn pink and blue ribbons made up a border. I had no other leads in my search for Edie, so I walked over and read the thing up close. THE STAFF AT ST. V’S PROUDLY WELCOMES THE FOLLOWING BABIES INTO THE WORLD. . . Below were two columns: boys blue, girls pink.
William Samuel Glazier, born February 24, 1972, at 3:36 P.M.
David Richard Rusiek, born February 25, 1972, at 12:13 P.M.
Arnold Jefferson Hyatt, born February 25, 1972, at 4:56 A.M.
Stanley Dale Hudson, born February 25, 1972, at 6:00 P.M..
The list went on and on, but none of them were Kramers. Next up I scanned the girls: Maria Ann Rizzoli. . . Stacy Ann Davis. . . Gillian Margaret Halls. . . Mary Beth Rusells. . . Janice Elizabeth Kovach. . . Again no Kramers.
I stood there reading the names, over and over, wondering what McGarrett would do in a situation like this. I supposed he’d have some sort of solution, but I didn’t. He’d keep digging, I thought, as I stared at the board. I was about to head back to the front desk so I could push that guard some more, when I noticed last week’s baby list tacked beneath the current one. Even though I had called patient information the week before, I flipped the page. Read another bundle of names. Still no luck. I flipped back further and found the list from three weeks ago. No Kramers, so I kept flipping until I was staring at the list from the week before I came to New York. Before I’d ever called any of the hospitals.
And that’s where I found it.
At the very top of the girls’ list from a month ago was the name: Sophie Dominick Kramer, born January 23, 1972, at 11:53 P.M.
The same day my mother died.
Follow the signs, her voice whispered once more. A wind picking up speed, blowing hard against my life.
I read that name and date a dozen times as my heart kicked into overdrive. Edie had been due in February, so she would have gone into labor early for it to be her baby. If it was her, she had already given birth before I ev
en left Holedo. That’s why her name was never listed when I called patient information. Still, I couldn’t be certain it was her baby. I mean, Kramer was a pretty common name—then again, not Dominick for a girl. I tried to remember if Edie had ever mentioned Sophie in one of our name-the-baby conversations. Donna. Cynthia. Those names I remembered. But Sophie I couldn’t recall.
“I think that might be my friend’s baby on one of those leftover lists,” I said to the guard when I walked back to her desk. “But can you tell me if the mother’s name is Edie?”
“No can do,” she said, tapping her talons like a musical instrument on her desk. Tippity-tap-tap-tap. “I only have current patient information.”
I looked down at the wad of papers on her clipboard again, knew that if she really wanted to help me, she could find a way. “But I see all those crossed-out names and dates right there. You could just look it up on an old list or something.”
Her walkie-talkie kept on chh-chh-chh-ing away, and she kept tapping. She was a regular marching band. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”
“No. I just need to find out if the mother of that baby on the board is my friend Edie. That’s all.”
Chh-chh-chh. Tap-tap-tap. She ignored me, looked over my shoulder at a visitor who held up his green plastic pass as he walked by. “Welcome to St. Vincent’s,” she told him, smiling. When he was gone, her frown returned and she looked down at her desk as if I weren’t even there.
“Fine. Up yours,” I said barely under my breath as I turned on my heels to leave the hospital.
I bundled up and made my way across Seventh Avenue and down Bank Street. It was too cold and blustery, and I was far too frustrated to do my daily walkathon, so I decided to head back to my uncle’s place. I knew I shouldn’t have let loose back there like that, but I was so sick of all the Vicki Springs and burgundy-blazered guards in the world. Give them an inch of power and they acted like they ruled the world. All I wanted was a name, for Christ’s sake.
Sophie Dominick Kramer, born January 23, 1972, at 11:53 P.M.
If it was Edie’s baby, I thought, then she had probably gone into labor the same time my mother was hemorrhaging in the Holedo Motel. That synchronicity hit me like a giant fuck-you from the universe and left my skin stinging.
I could kill Edie.
I could wrap my hands around her neck and stop her breath.
That’s how angry I was.
I reached the doorway to my uncle’s building. At my feet was a bundle of new phone books that had been plopped by the garbage cans, still untouched by anyone in the building. I kicked the stack with my foot to release some of my rage toward Edie—toward the world—then unlocked the door. Before stepping inside, though, I reached down and untied the knotted twine around the White Pages and took a copy. I knew Edie wouldn’t be listed, seeing as she had just moved to New York. But when I got upstairs, I flipped open to the K section anyway. There was a whole page of Kramers. Three Edwards, one Ethel, two Ernests. No Edies or Ediths. Not even the initial E. I closed the book and decided to try calling information again.
“City, please?” a woman’s voice said.
“Manhattan,” I told her. “It’s a new listing. Edie Kramer.”
She paused. I heard a clicking sound in the background. I prepared myself for the usual “Sorry, there’s no listing by that name.” And right on schedule she said, “Sorry, there’s no listing by that name.”
“There’s no number?” I said.
“No number.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said, sounding annoyed.
Another one of these people with too much power over me, but this time I let it go. “Thanks anyway,” I said, feeling guilty about my outburst at the hospital.
I hung up and reviewed what I had found so far: Vicki Spring telling me Edie had moved to Manhattan and a baby born the night my mother died, with the name Sophie Dominick Kramer. It could have been the beginnings of a trail leading me toward Edie, or it could have been a bunch of bull. If only that guard had let me upstairs. Maybe I could have gotten more information.
With that thought I picked up the phone again and dialed 411, got the number for the maternity ward at St. Vincent’s. If I skipped over the patient-information line and that puffy-haired guard, I might find someone else who could help me.
“Fifth floor. Maternity,” a woman’s voice answered.
“Um. Hi. My aunt had a baby at St. Vincent’s recently. I want to send her flowers, but I’m not sure if she’s still there.”
“What’s her name?” the woman said.
“Edie Kramer,” I told her.
I waited for her to put me on hold, but the woman said, “Oh, Miss Kramer checked out ages ago. Sorry, but she’s long gone. Not to worry, though, she left with a very healthy baby girl. I was one of her nurses.”
“Great,” I said, thinking fast. It was her. “Do you happen to have her new address? I have these flowers, and I don’t know where to send them.”
“You’re a little late,” she said and laughed. “But hold on a sec. Let me see.”
I waited. My heart beating. My hand clenching and unclenching. I heard nothing but dead air, the same hushed silence I imagined inside my mother’s casket, and then she came back on the line. “Four sixteen West Forty-seventh Street. Apartment One-B.”
I stretched the phone cord, grabbed a pad and pen off the coffee table. “Let me write that down,” I said, trying to sound composed as I scribbled, which was just about impossible.
She waited, then repeated the address. I thanked her a little too much and hung up. West Forty-seventh Street. Hell’s Kitchen. Noman’s-land. I had been in that neighborhood, just north of the bus station, last week, and that’s where I’d been followed. Hookers on the street in broad daylight. Porn shops and strip bars all over the place. The buildings burned out and boarded up. Nothing there seemed safe. I had to hand it to Edie, she picked a great neighborhood to bring up a baby.
I paced the apartment, waiting for a what-to-do-next lightbulb to click on in my head. I thought about going straight to her place and pressing her buzzer. But what would I say when she came to the door? My breaths were fast and frantic just standing in my uncle’s living room; I couldn’t imagine how I’d act face-to-face with her. The way I felt, I might very well wrap my hands around her neck. Stop her from breathing. From living, like my mother. I had to calm down first so those dark feelings didn’t surface and possess me. Get a grip, I told myself. Figure out exactly how to play this. I saw the things I wanted from Edie print out in my mind like a grocery list.
Remember to pick up:
An explanation
The money
Proof to my mother that I was sorry
I heard Marnie’s voice interrupting, telling me, Dominick, finding that money isn’t ever going to bring your mother back. You know that, don’t you?
Yeah, I knew that. But there was something more I wanted and needed—something unnameable and blank at the bottom of that list. A clutter of words in white ink on white paper. I knew that something would remain invisible until I got closer to Edie. In the meantime I decided to hike up to her neighborhood and stake out her building while waiting for those white words to become clear.
I put on my coat and was about to walk out the door when the phone rang, startling me. During the last month the phone had barely rung, and when it did, I let it go unanswered. No one buzzed the door either. And I hadn’t seen or heard from Rosaleen.
I counted. Five, six, seven rings.
What if it was my father on the other end of that line? I pictured him standing in my damaged bedroom, even though there wasn’t a phone in there. Breathing hard like a bull. Nostrils steaming. Chest puffing and unpuffing. My knocked-over record player and moon-cratered wall were his backdrop. That good-bye note open and flat in his hand. A paper airplane waiting to be folded into flight.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
Silence. The ringing stopped. I button
ed my coat and grabbed my uncle’s black Russian hat with the earflaps that made me just about deaf. A semi-disguise wouldn’t hurt if Edie spotted me before I was ready to reveal myself to her. When I opened the door, the ringing started again.
One. Two. Three.
I knew I shouldn’t have, but I lifted the earflap on my hat and grabbed the receiver. “Hello.” It came out like a question: Hello?
“Is Mr. Donald Biadogiano at home?” a man asked.
“Who’s calling?” I said as that image of my father faded away.
“This is Joshua Fuller from Newsweek magazine.”
“No thanks,” I told him. “We don’t subscribe.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m actually calling about a story I’m writing. Is Mr. Biadogiano at home?”
I muffled the receiver, thinking this had to do with one of his inventions. For the hell of it, I said, “He wants to know what the story is about.”
“About his sister, who I was sorry to hear recently passed on.”
Newsweek was doing a story about Donald’s sister. My mother. “Hold on. I’ll ask him.” I put my hand over the phone and scrambled for something to say, a way to get more information. “He wants to know exactly what the story is about.”
“I’m connecting the Burdan trial to her recent death. And I just found out that her youngest son from Massachusetts is missing. I’d like to chat with Mr. Biadogiano for a bit. Ask a few questions. I’ve been trying to reach him all week.”
That headline I found in my uncle’s Bible flashed in my mind:
DAY 3: BOY STILL MISSING
I hadn’t really thought of myself as missing until now. But I supposed to my father and Marnie I was. I wondered if that’s what had happened to Truman. If, like me, he had vanished. Maybe that headline in my uncle’s Bible was about him. “What’s the Burdan trial?” I said, skipping the hold-on-while-I-ask-him routine. “And what’s it have to do with my. . . his sister?”
