Boy Still Missing

by John Searles

  More cars came and went.

  Two of the reporters packed up and left.

  A new reporter arrived a while later.

  Eventually Jeanny nodded off with her head in my lap. I stroked her hair as she slept and kept my eyes wide open, peering down at her face, then outside. In a perfect world, or at least in a fairy tale, something would have happened to save the day right about then. A fairy godmother would have swooped down and waved her wand, making Roget melt into a puddle in the parking lot. My brother would have descended from a cloud, smiling at me. And this whole sordid ordeal would have come to a neat little end. But that wasn’t my life.

  Instead I waited all night by that window, as the snow turned to rain again. Then finally stopped. Oddly enough, Sophie didn’t wake up, crying to be fed or changed. She lay so still in the comfort of her case that I practically forgot she was there. I rested my head on the windowsill, and in spite of all that was happening or not happening, the darkness and quiet lulled me to sleep, too.

  When I opened my eyes, a thin strip of sunlight streamed in through the opening in the curtains. Heat, bone-dry and dusty, gusted up through the register, making a relentless scratching sound like a determined animal beneath us clawing its way into the room. Those balloons had lost even more helium during the night, and they floated a few feet away from the ceiling, their ribbons coiling on the floor. Flags slowly being lowered to half-mast. My body felt stiff and crumpled, like one of those blue tissues in Marnie’s pockets. All used up but still being used.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked down into the lot.

  And I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  Twice, no, three times as many people out there as the night before. Only not just police and reporters. There was a group of women. Maybe twenty of them to one side, all carrying picket signs: WOMEN DIE WHEN THEY CAN’T CHOOSE. LEGALIZE ABORTION ON DEMAND. WHO WILL BE THE NEXT THERESA PINDLE? They stood behind that yellow tape, their faces determined and angry. I saw a girl even younger than Jeanny. A woman too old and gray to be out in the cold. The bulk of them had to be about my mother’s and Marnie’s age. They marched in a circle like witches casting a spell, trampling the white snow beneath their feet. Round and round. Round and round.

  Across from them was a second group made up of a priest, three nuns, and a whole slew of women. One with her mouth locked into a rabid dog’s snarl. Another who wore a too-placid expression on her face given what she was doing. All of them carried signs with the opposing message: BABIES DIE WHEN WOMEN CHOOSE. ABORTION IS WRONG. LET GOD DECIDE. They stood just a few feet away from the others, not in a circle but in a crowd, waving their signs.

  I noticed something else that hadn’t been out there the night before: two ambulances parked by the road. The way they were pulled up to the snowy curb made their boxy white bodies tilt off-kilter. I thought of an ice cream truck I had once seen sucked down into the muddy sand during a summer rainstorm. Those ambulances looked the same to me, only with a different purpose entirely.

  I shook Jeanny’s shoulder to wake her, because I couldn’t wait for her to see all those women and their signs. She jerked her head up, startled. “Huh?” she said, dazed.

  “It’s morning,” I told her. “And I want you to see something.”

  Jeanny opened her eyes and stretched her arms and legs. Let out a squeal as she loosened her body. “Happy day after birthday,” she said, groggy-voiced, when she finished.

  “Real happy,” I told her, still not letting on that today was actually the big day. “Maybe we’ll go to Peaceful Pizza, then catch a movie later to celebrate.”

  “Should we invite the police to come with us?” she said.

  “And the protesters, too,” I told her.

  “Protesters?” Jeanny said. She sat up, brushing her hands over her eyes. Looked out the window, where one of the groups began chanting the same message that was on their signs. “Women die when they can’t choose! Women die when they can’t choose!” Then Marnie shouted, “Roget is a killer!” And that sent a roar across the parking lot.

  I thought Jeanny would’ve been glued to the window, seeing as this was her type of thing. But she stood and went to Sophie’s case across the room. I kept watching outside as the cameramen let their tapes roll and the reporters asked questions. Joshua was speaking to the priest, scratching notes on the pad in his hand. One at a time people ducked out of the crowd, talked to the news, then went at it again. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the war I was waging, the battle for my mother. Even the cops seemed preoccupied by those women and their signs. And I felt dizzy staring at those words. WOMEN DIE. . . BABIES DIE. . . WOMEN DIE. . . BABIES DIE. . . WHO WILL BE THE NEXT THERESA PINDLE? LET GOD DECIDE. . .

  All of them seemed convinced that they had the answer.

  “Dominick,” Jeanny was saying. “Dominick. Listen to me.”

  “What?” I said, turning away from the window, that separate, unending battle unfolding out there.

  Jeanny was leaning over Sophie’s case, palms on her knees and head cocked, like she had come across something injured on the side of the road. A broken-winged bird fallen from its nest. A kitten hit by a car but still breathing. She pressed her hand to Sophie’s forehead. “I think something is wrong with Sophie.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice yanked tight.

  “Did she wake up last night?”

  “No,” I told her.

  “She always wakes up during the night, you know that. It’s not normal for her to keep sleeping.” She picked Sophie out of the guitar case, held her to her chest. “Feel her skin. She’s burning up. She should be crying right now.”

  I went to Jeanny and put my hand on Sophie’s tiny arm. Her skin felt the way it might if I pressed my fingers to an electric blanket turned on high. Like something about to catch fire. “How could this just happen?” I asked.

  “She’s a baby, Dominick.”

  The way Jeanny said it implied that I might not have realized that fact before. Oh, that explains it, I wanted to say. Thanks for clearing things up. But I didn’t. “Well, did she seem all right to you yesterday?”

  “I guess,” Jeanny said, looking down at Sophie, whose eyes were squeezed tight. “I mean, she had a little bit of a fever when I put her down for the night. But we were leaving in the morning so there was not much I could do. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Out in the parking lot another clamor rose up. Shouting and chanting. The commotion down there and the sheer terror of something happening to Sophie crashed together in my mind, and I found myself screaming at Jeanny, “What do you mean, you didn’t tell me?”

  “Don’t yell at me!” she shouted right back.

  “Well, what the hell are you doing letting her get sick?”

  “What do you mean, ‘letting her’? You’re the one who has us locked in here!”

  “I told you you could go last night, and you decided to stay!”

  “Well, maybe I made a mistake! Let me remind you that you’d be nowhere with this baby without me. When I first saw you on that bus, you didn’t even know how to hold her!”

  “I—”

  Sophie opened her mouth, which shut us both up. We waited in that long pause—silently fuming as she burned up in Jeanny’s arms—watching the O of her mouth to see if she might start crying, or at least open her eyes. A bubble of spit dropped from her pink lips. But no noise came.

  Whatever I was going to say had flown from my mind. I took a breath and forced myself to let the argument go. Jeanny was right. I would be nowhere without her. It was all the things that had gone wrong that made me snap. And now this. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m really sorry. It’s just scary. I don’t know what to do.”

  “When my brothers were this small and they had a fever, I rubbed them down with rubbing alcohol,” she said, her voice softening.

  I raised my eyebrows and gave her a look that implied we had to think of something else, because we couldn�
�t exactly run to the pharmacy.

  “We could try giving her a bath in cool water. That will bring her temperature down.” Jeanny gave Sophie a light little shake and cooed to her, “Want to go for a swim, bathing beauty? Come on, sweet pea. Are you feeling sick?”

  She still didn’t make a peep.

  I put my arms out and took her from Jeanny. Remembered how light she had felt the first time I picked her up. How heavy she became later when I arrived in this room and she wouldn’t let me put her down. I pressed my hand to her forehead. Felt all that heat, like a small fire burning beneath her skin. “Open your eyes, little alien,” I said, making spider legs with my fingers and wriggling them in front of her face. “Come on, wake up.”

  But she wouldn’t.

  And that’s when I heard my mother’s message once more.

  The

  baby

  may

  be

  in

  danger

  here

  with

  you.

  Sophie was going to die.

  A sick wave of terror swept over me. “I have to give up,” I said to Jeanny. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”

  Outside, I could hear Roget’s voice booming. I glanced toward the window and saw him. He was talking to the reporters for the first time, addressing the crowd, too. They had gathered around him as he spoke into the flock of microphones. “As an officer of the law with an outstanding record of fourteen years in civil service, I will remind you that there is no evidence against me. I was not with the boy’s mother the night of her death. I have three police officers who will swear under oath that I was at the station with them at the time. What we have here is a runaway boy who has kidnapped an infant. You people need to remember that he is the criminal. He is holding a young girl and a baby at gunpoint.”

  He is holding a dying baby in his arms, I thought.

  The baby may be in danger here with you.

  Why hadn’t I listened to her?

  “We’ve got to get her to the hospital,” I said again.

  “I know,” Jeanny said. “But as soon as you walk through that door, they’re going to arrest you.”

  There was another roar in the crowd. Protesters shouting after Roget’s interview. Again Marnie’s hysterical voice shrieked, “Killer!”

  With them on my side and with a little more time, I might have been able to bring him down. But I couldn’t risk Sophie’s life any longer. “We don’t have a choice. I have to give up.”

  Jeanny and I made one last plan. I would open the door and surrender myself. She would rush the baby out behind me and get her to an ambulance. Once we settled on that, I wanted to kiss her good-bye. But everything was happening so fast, and we were both so filled with fear, that I didn’t.

  Jeanny took Sophie from my arms. I pulled back the dresser, and when I did, Mr. Garvey’s silver cigarette case fell to the floor. I picked it up and held it in my hand the way Jeanny always did. With my other hand I turned the knob. Pulled open the door, and sunlight flooded the room, bringing a gust of cold air that made those balloons shift positions.

  An army preparing for battle. I left them blowing behind me, took a breath, and stepped into that light. The sun seemed everywhere. Ricocheting off police-car windshields. Pushing down on me, charged and electric, like lightning from the sky. All that brightness made it impossible for me to see, so I stood in the doorway blinking at the outside world like a creature just hatched from the darkness of this room. A baby bird with sticky feathers stunned by the blur of beauty and ugliness it had been born into.

  For a long moment no one even noticed me standing there. Too busy battling one another. Solving an unsolvable problem. Then a shrill, wild voice yelled my name, and everyone’s heads turned toward the motel. Their silence was so sudden—like a collective, instantaneous gasp—that it seemed to suck all the air away from me. The complete and motionless quiet that followed pulsed in my ears. A needle pulled off a record mid-song, the beat still throbbing in my head. My eyes cleared, and I saw them.

  That silver-haired reporter.

  That protester younger than Jeanny.

  My father.

  Marnie.

  Joshua Fuller.

  The priest.

  Edie.

  Mrs. Garvey.

  All their faces seemed to swirl around me like planets.

  The sun blared down more, and I waved my hands in the air. Surrendering. Calling for help. But instead of letting me give up, the officers pointed their guns. In a flash I saw what they saw. The silver cigarette case that had given Jeanny so much comfort was the glint of a pistol in their eyes. And here’s what they must have thought:

  The boy has his weapon.

  And he’s going to shoot.

  But not if we get him first.

  Ready.

  Aim.

  Fire.

  A deafening blast. A bullet in my shoulder. Not far from my chest, my heart. Blood spurted, and my body was knocked backward into the room. I felt a surge of heat race through my veins. My mind went white with haze, and Jeanny leaned over me. Screaming. Crying. “Please don’t die!” she shrieked, still holding Sophie, a rag doll in her arms. “Please don’t die!”

  My mouth moved to tell her to get the baby to the ambulance, but a liquid warmth filled my throat, and I couldn’t speak. My eyes flicked open and closed on their own. Blood soaked my shirt, wet and gluey. A thought floated into mind: This is the accident you kept glimpsing. It’s your blood that will stain the floor a second time.

  A hot rush beneath my skin again, and then the coldest cold.

  I imagined myself plunged into the icy water of that pond out back. Just like my mother. I was swimming down there. Searching for her in the tangle of underwater weeds. When I shouted her name, only a stream of soundless bubbles spouted from my mouth. I took a breath, and the heavy weight of water filled me. Above my head I could hear a humming sound. A voice was calling, and I kicked my way toward it.

  Jeanny.

  “Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” Only a second had passed, and she was talking to me still. Begging. Pleading. Then she said, “Do you remember that question?”

  Question? Did I remember a question? My mind drifted again, and I heard so many questions. Which of your parents do you like better? What were you doing out there running around almost naked in the middle of the night? If your mother is interested in the place, then why isn’t she here? I saw that church lady in St. Patrick’s. She pointed her wrinkled finger toward the ceiling and said, From here, they remind me of balloons let loose into the air, don’t you think?

  After that I heard my mother.

  Not the whisper of that haunted vision in the mirror or beneath the ice. But her living, breathing voice. Her question was simple: Do you want something to eat? I was on my bike looking up at her as she called to me from the kitchen window of our apartment. Instead of pedaling away toward Edie’s, I said, Yes, Ma. I want something to eat. I got off my bike, clomped back up the stairs.

  Another life.

  Another chain of events that could have led me anywhere.

  “Do you hear me?” Jeanny was saying. “Do you remember the question?”

  And then I remembered. I had been waiting for her to answer that question about us when the police arrived. She pressed her lips right to my ear, a sloppy kiss that might wake me, and said, “You wanted to know if I believed we were meant to be. And the answer is yes.”

  Those words, and then pure blackness.

  The deep heart of a forest miles and miles from anyone.

  No noise, and then the whir of wings, animal sounds, teeth gnashing, crickets, and something else. Something stomping close by. My eyes blinked open to see dozens of black boots on the floor beside me. I thought of Edie’s shoes in her basement. Those round rocks like skulls cemented into her walls. I looked up and saw a crowd of policemen floating above me with those balloons, staring down. Two men in white knelt beside m
e. The blood on their shirts made me think of a butcher wiping his hands on his apron. Chopping body parts day after day. Legs. Tongues. Feet.

  Where was Jeanny?

  I turned my head and could see her in the corner of the room, an officer pulling Sophie from her arms. She was screaming, “Save him! Save the baby!”

  More blackness. I was laid out in that dark forest again. Safely sealed inside a box of gleaming glass. I could sleep forever. It would be so easy. Waking just once a year in the heat of summer, like a weed sprouted from the earth, growing wild for a few short days before shriveling and dying again. A ghost who boarded a bus to visit this motel, to haunt my father who owned the place. We would be together but not really together at all. He would be a ghost of his former self, too—only living, breathing. And I would be the same as those cardinals chained to the church because of their religion. The things they believed in, acted on, when they were alive.

  Then I saw another future.

  Someone somewhere was asking Jeanny and me how we met. City lights twinkled behind us out a wide window. Ice clinked in glasses. Smart laughter rose and fell in the next room. On the bus in high school, we said at the same time. It was true. But it was also our own inside joke, and we made knowing eyes at each other, because that answer conjured up images of a football player and a cheerleader, or maybe the class clown and the class flirt. High school sweethearts with a simple past. Not us. And then I saw a baby, too, only she wasn’t Sophie. I pressed my nose to her skin and smelled powder. Sugary and sweet, just like her. We didn’t have to give her back, because she was ours. We created her. We were meant to be.

  It’s your choice, I heard my mother say from someplace else. Someplace dark and distant. Farther away than even that fairy-tale forest. Which do you want?

  Plan B, I told her.

  Door number two, I told her.

  I’ll stay, I told her.

  But she wasn’t listening.