Boy Still Missing

by John Searles

  “I mean, I haven’t. Either.” I shook my head and gave myself a mental kick. It had been so easy to talk with her on the bus, but now I felt tongue-tied, which left me thinking that this get-together had been a bad idea. Maybe we had clicked on the bus, but I should have left it at that. Having Jeanny in the motel room filled me with nervousness. She kept glancing around in a way that left me unsettled. It occurred to me once more that she must have known about what had happened to my mother in this room. But if that was true, would she have come?

  “So how is our little angel?” Jeanny asked, looking down at the baby.

  “I think she’s happy to see you,” I said, trying to smooth things out again, get rid of all that tension. “Almost as happy as me.”

  Jeanny was about to say something, but Sophie interrupted. She must have been bored on the bed alone, because she started making a commotion. Jeanny wasted no time scooping her up in her arms. “It’s okay, little pea,” she said. “You’re having a bad day. I know.”

  I carried the pizza over to the bed where she had plopped down with the baby in her arms. As she coddled Sophie, I tried to think of something to talk about. But my brain felt muddled. I couldn’t come up with a single thing to say. The room grew unnaturally quiet, and my mind drifted back to my mother in the mirror. I pushed the image away again and remembered Jeanny resting her head on my shoulder that afternoon. I found myself wishing we could just curl up together and go to sleep. But that wasn’t exactly an option. I glanced down at a fat-faced cartoon chef who kissed the tips of his fingers on the lid of the pizza box. Over his puffy white hat were the words “You’ve tried the rest. Now try the best.” How original, I thought and flipped the top open. The pizza: half plain, half covered with thick slices of pepperoni, lumpy sausages and meatballs, fatty bacon. I looked at Jeanny, wondering about her vegetarian diet and all the farm animals we were about to devour.

  “That side’s for you,” she said, smirking. “Carnivore.”

  “I said I eat meat. I didn’t say I was a caveman.”

  Jeanny laughed, and I felt like maybe things were beginning to ease up again. “Okay. I guess I got a little carried away. But I was thinking that I’d have one or two of those slices myself. I just don’t think I can do the vegetarian thing anymore.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really.”

  “Welcome back to the barbaric world of meat eaters,” I told her, and that’s when I did something to get rid of any stiffness once and for all. I leaned forward and kissed her. It was a short, simple kiss.

  One. Two. Three.

  Her lips were tender and the slightest bit moist. In my head I heard Edie’s voice saying, Let me give you a real kiss. It will be my thank-you present to you.

  Thank you for helping me rob your mother.

  Thank you for letting me ruin your life.

  I gave Jeanny one more softer, longer kiss and remembered the way Edie had pressed her mouth hard to mine. The way my fingers had brushed against her belly, feeling her baby—Sophie—inside her. It all seemed so strange and off-color; thinking back, I wondered how I hadn’t known Edie was up to no good the entire time.

  When our lips parted, I said, “Let me get something to wash down the feast.” Instantly I realized that getting water for us entailed going into the bathroom and standing in front of that mirror. Since I had already opened my mouth, I forced my legs to move. I went into the bathroom and pulled the sanitary paper off the two glasses on the small sink. Instead of filling them up right away, I stared at the picture of that cabin, putting off the moment of facing the mirror. Whoever had painted the thing played with the soft color that came from the cabin windows. Instead of yellow like you might expect, the light from inside cast a purple glow. It seemed warm in there. Safe. I pictured the dark windows of this room from outside, all covered up so they didn’t cast any light at all.

  “Hurry up,” Jeanny called. “The pizza’s going from cold to colder fast.”

  I cranked on the water and slowly turned my eyes up toward the mirror. Once again my breath stopped. I felt my heart thud. She was there, my mother, looking back at me again from the other side. This time her neck seemed loose, wobbly, like Sophie’s. Her hair hung down in front of her face as brittle as dried seaweed. And her message had changed. Or maybe I had misunderstood earlier. She whispered,

  Baby.

  Maybe.

  Stranger.

  Too.

  Baby.

  Maybe.

  Stranger.

  Too.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I said the pizza is getting cold,” Jeanny called to me.

  And with that the image of my mother vanished once again.

  It was me in the mirror. The water poured over the edge of the second glass, and I turned off the faucet.

  Get a grip, I said to myself. Get a fucking grip.

  Jeanny was with me, and I didn’t want to scare her away.

  “Did you drown in the toilet?” she called.

  I took a breath and dipped the tips of my fingers in one of the water glasses and splashed my face. Baptism.

  “Two glasses of our best champagne,” I said, carrying the water back to the bed and trying to shake the image of my mother’s mouth whispering that strange message. The horror of her harmed and helpless body.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Jeanny said, taking a glass with her free hand and setting it on the nightstand. Sophie was fast asleep in the crook of her arm.

  What little appetite I had finally worked up had been stolen by that vision in the mirror, but I forced myself to eat anyway. I picked off the bacon because it was overkill even for me, pushed my mother’s gum behind one of my back teeth, and ate.

  “You’re done already?” Jeanny said when I called it quits halfway through my second piece.

  “I feel bad for the farm animals,” I said, kidding her.

  Jeanny finished eating, too—one plain slice, one meat—and looked down at Sophie. “Hello, little cutie,” she whispered in a baby voice.

  “When can she start eating real food?” I asked, still trying to forget my mother in the mirror, to land myself in the reality of this room with Jeanny and Sophie.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” she said. “It’ll be a while.”

  I touched Sophie’s shrunken hand, which she kept permanently closed in a loose fist. I wished she could say something, wished she could tell me what she thought about our adventure. If she liked being with her big brother and his new friend. . . girlfriend. “How long till she can talk?” I asked.

  “She’ll have ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ nailed down by the time she’s one,” Jeanny said. “But it’ll be a bit before she’s discussing politics.”

  “Is she going to do anything in the near future?”

  “Probably dirty her diaper. Other than that, she’ll cry a lot.”

  “You mean all she does is shit and cry?”

  “And sleep. She’s still an infant. It’s in the job description.”

  Jeanny gave Sophie a peck on the forehead, then told me that I’d miss this stage once the baby started walking and talking. She said that her brothers were sweet when they were infants. She could always tell what they wanted when they cried. Bottle. Diaper. Crib. That was about the extent of their needs.

  I thought of my mother—not the woman in the mirror but the young woman who had given birth to Truman after her first husband had died. She must have felt so hopeless and dazed to agree to hand over her baby like that. I thought of how blinded by happiness she must have been that day on the plane. Happy but scared, like I was now.

  “Can I tell you something?” Jeanny said.

  I nodded yes, lost in thought about my mother and brother. I still wanted to find Truman—Rand—just for her. Even though he was older now, I pictured him again as one of those flawless rich kids streaming out of that school on the Upper East Side. I wanted him to know how much our mother regretted what she had done, whether he
wanted to hear it or not. How much she thought of him, right up until her death.

  “I know about your mom,” Jeanny said.

  Her words were a pitcher of cold water poured over my head, snapping me to attention. She knew. Just as I suspected. I wanted to say so many things, explain why I was here, but the only thing I could manage was “How?”

  “The paper.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling awkward once again. For the first time I noticed a thin slit of a scar beneath Jeanny’s chin. It made me see her as a pigtailed little girl falling off a bike, jumping too high from a swing and crashing to the ground. Bleeding and crying. “And you still came? I mean, it didn’t freak you out?”

  Jeanny put her hand on her chin, covering that scar, that image of her as a girl. She told me that after her father died, her mother used to load her and her brothers in the car and drive to the train tracks. “We’d sit there for hours. Crying or staring or thinking. I don’t know. It was a way to be near him. I guessed that maybe it’s the same for you.”

  The way she said it made it all sound so normal, uncomplicated.

  “Does it feel weird for you to be here?” she asked.

  I glanced around the room at the matching nightstands on each side of the bed, the long dresser along the far wall. All of it made from pressed board. Wood that was real but not real at the same time. “Mostly it seems like any other motel room. But I know what happened here.” I kept quiet about my mother in the mirror, because I knew she would think I was crazy.

  Then Jeanny asked, “Is Sophie really your sister?”

  Another pitcher of water. More startling and cold this time.

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. I wanted to fess up to her about the whole story but was afraid of what she might say. In the silence I wondered if it would simply be better to tell her yes and leave it at that.

  “It’s just that they didn’t mention her in any of the articles,” Jeanny said. “It seems like they would have. And the way you acted on the bus, it was like you’d never seen the baby before. Plus the way your mom died. . . ” She paused, must have gauged by the look on my face that this line of questioning was making me uncomfortable.

  I took a drink and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. If she was going to be here, she had a right to know the truth. I was about to explain everything when there was a knock at the door. The sound made Jeanny jump; the jump made Sophie cry.

  “Milkman,” Leon said from outside.

  “It’s okay,” I told Jeanny. “I’m expecting a delivery.”

  When I opened the door, Leon was standing there with a lifetime supply of Pampers in his arms. Behind him, Special Ed was carrying four bags of groceries.

  “What’s he doing here?” I said to Leon. “I told you not to let anyone know about this.”

  Leon ignored me. He and Ed made their way through the door and set down the boxes and bags. “Leon Diesel,” he said, sticking his hand out to Jeanny. “I bet you’re the girl from the bus. Dominick told me all about you.”

  I cringed. Jeanny shook his hand and said hello, but I got the feeling she was leery of them both. I probably should have warned her that Leon was going to come by. One of the many warnings on my list. “Nice to meet you,” she said halfheartedly.

  “I could ask you the same question about her,” Leon said to me when he let go of her hand.

  “But it’s my room. I decide who comes and goes.”

  “Relax,” Leon said. “Don’t blow a gasket. I saw Ed hoofing it down the road, so I picked him up. He’s just helping with the supplies. We bought out the baby aisle for you.”

  “As if that’s not suspicious, too. You and Ed buying enough diapers to supply the Griffith Hospital nursery for the next decade.”

  “You know, Pindle, you’re not sounding very grateful.”

  I didn’t say a word to that, because there was no use arguing. Just reached into my pocket and pulled out some money to give him.

  “I told you, it’s on the house,” Leon said, holding up his hands.

  “Just take it.”

  “It’s a gift. Keep the cash and buy yourself a few joints so you can relax.”

  I stuck the money in my pocket and walked to the window, peered out from behind the curtain and blankets to make sure he had parked around back. The front lot was empty, so at least he had done something right.

  “Would you guys like a slice of pizza?” Jeanny asked.

  “No thanks,” Leon said. “We’ve got errands to run.”

  “I’ll take one for the road,” Ed said, reaching into the box and grabbing a slice. He picked around for the loose bacon I had pulled off and shoved that in his fat face, too.

  “What’s rule number one in my new car?” Leon asked him.

  Ed took a bite of the pizza and thought about the question. “No eating?” he said, mouth full.

  “Wrong. Rule number one is no farting. Rule number two is no eating.”

  I glanced at Jeanny, who seemed to be ignoring their circus act. Busy opening a box of Pampers. Diaper duty. If Leon’s and Ed’s idiot zoo personalities didn’t send her running, nothing would.

  “I’ll suck it down before we’re even outside,” Ed said. True to his word, the thing was gone in four bites.

  “I’ll swing by tomorrow to see if you need anything,” Leon said.

  I squinted my eyes and glared at him, which was my way of saying, Not with Ed, you won’t.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, getting my drift. “I’ll come alone.” He waved to Jeanny and told her he’d catch her later. And with that they were out the door.

  “Is that guy a dealer?” Jeanny asked the moment the door closed.

  “Car dealer?” I said, watching them from the window and playing dumb, though I wasn’t quite sure why.

  “Drugs,” she said.

  Sophie started to cry again, and I glanced at Jeanny. She had laid the baby down on the bed and was unsnapping her yellow outfit at the legs, getting ready to change her. “I know, little darling,” she cooed to Sophie. “The world isn’t fair. This will all be over in a minute, and you can go back to sleep.”

  I turned to the window again and watched Leon’s car drive around front. “What makes you say he’s a drug dealer?” I asked, figuring she was probably right.

  “The car. The clothes. The groceries on the house. It doesn’t take a detective to spot the clues.”

  As Jeanny spoke, I kept watching Leon’s ’Cuda. Instead of pulling onto the street, he stopped out front and flicked on the inside light. I saw him reach over to the glove compartment and hand something to his new sidekick. Ed took whatever it was and got out of the car, walked back up the stairs toward our room.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Jeanny was saying to Sophie, who was giving one of her big bad cries. “We’re almost done.”

  I decided she had to be right. Leon was dealing drugs. I guess it wasn’t so surprising. Still, it seemed funny to me, because I remembered how nervous he’d been the first time he scored a dime bag of pot. Now he was a dealer. Knowing him, he was sending Ed back upstairs with a joint.

  I opened the door before he could knock.

  “One more thing,” Ed said, taking the package out of his coat and shoving it into my hand. Not drugs at all. But a slim, silver pistol wrapped in a McDonald’s napkin. A box of bullets, too, tucked beneath the Golden Arches. In my head I heard Leon say,

  They could come after you.

  They could find you here and kill you.

  Slit your throat or something.

  “Protection,” Ed told me. “Leon said you should have it just in case.”

  I had held a gun only once before. And the weight of it in my hand brought back the memory of when my father had come home with a Smith & Wesson he’d won in a card game. I was only nine or ten at the time, but he took me to the junkyard so I could fire it. Just like then, I felt nervous holding the thing. I worried that the piece of metal was something uncontrollable and wild that might fire unexpecte
dly at any moment. Or that perhaps I was something uncontrollable and wild and would have the impulse to pull the trigger at any moment. Just hold her steady and aim, my father kept saying that day. I did as he said, but all my targets—a beat-up dresser with missing drawers, a bent bed frame, a clump of dirt with an unidentifiable silver glint—went unscathed. I missed every time. Because you’re afraid of it, my father had said. It’s okay. You’ll learn. Only he didn’t take the gun out much after that, because my mom hated having it around. And I never learned.

  “What is Leon doing with this?” I asked Ed.

  “Confiscated it from his mother’s new boyfriend. We’ve been shooting it down at the quarry. Oh, and he asked me to leave you one more bit of protection.” Ed reached into his pocket and pulled out another package, put it in my free hand. Trojans. Ribbed. Lubricated. “Leon wanted me to tell you that we’ve got enough children in the family.”

  Behind me, Jeanny was busy with Sophie. I shoved the box into the pocket of my sweatshirt and prayed she hadn’t seen it. The gun I held in my stiff hand along with the bullets. “Tell Leon that I appreciate his concern,” I said and practically slammed the door in Ed’s grinning face.

  “Catch you later,” Ed said from outside before clomping down the stairs.

  “I hate guns,” Jeanny said when I turned around. “I just want you to know that. I hate them.”

  “Me, too,” I told her, wondering if she’d seen the condoms, since she didn’t mention them. “Don’t worry. I’m getting rid of it.”

  I looked around the room, holding the dead weight of it and feeling my body tense. I wanted to flush it down the toilet like a deceased pet fish. Toss it out the window. But what if it went off? I walked to the closet, where I planned to stick the pistol on the top shelf until tomorrow, when I would hand it back to Leon or get rid of it for good. That’s when I noticed a door at the back of the closet. I turned the knob and gave it a push. It opened, and I stepped through the closet into another closet, pushed open that door and stepped into the dark of the neighboring motel room. Even in the dim light that came through the closets with me, I could see that the place looked almost identical to 5B, except that the cabin picture was above the bed in here and the paint job and rug weren’t as new.