My Soul to Keep

by Melanie Wells

So I had taken them in—Melissa first and then, later, Eeyore.

  It turns out that nonverbal roommates are better than no roommates at all. And as an added bonus, rabbits are relatively tidy little creatures. These two were actually housebroken. But since almost no one has need of two bunnies, especially two bunnies of the opposite gender (though Melissa had recently surrendered her femininity at the vet), Eeyore was to be my birthday gift to Christine.

  I couldn’t wait to give him to her. I’d gotten him a big, purple bow—Christine’s favorite color—and had his name painted on a set of (mail-order) ceramic bowls. I could now send his hutch home with the Zoccis as well, since cargo room was clearly not a problem.

  I showered quickly and went to the kitchen to set out some refreshments. I was squeezing lemons for lemonade when the doorbell rang. I glanced out the kitchen window and wiped my hands on a cup towel. My friend Maria Chavez had arrived with her little boy.

  Maria is an OB-GYN at the local public hospital and one of my All Time Favorite People. She also happens to be a fellow Peter Terry target. She is my only local friend, the first recruit in my campaign to improve my abysmal social life—an effort I commenced last year along with a rigorous Thigh Recovery Program. (I like to believe in the possibility of Total overhaul.)

  I opened the door and greeted her with a best-friend hug, then knelt down and said hello to my groovy little friend, Nicholas.

  “Hey, doodlebug.” I gave him a quick hug, squeezing the air out of him as he tried to say my name.

  “Hi, M(squeeze)iss (squeeze) Dy(squeeze)lan,” he coughed out.

  We did The Squeeze every time I saw him. It was our little thing. He giggled. “Do it again!”

  I did it again. He coughed out my name in spurts.

  Nicholas had wild, curly brown hair just like his father, who at that moment was sitting in a hot cinderblock cell down in Huntsville, serving ten flat for aggravated sexual assault. That crazy mop of hair framed bright blue eyes and a face so flushed and pink with innocent vim, you couldn’t possibly imagine he’d been conceived through violence.

  “What do you have behind your back?” I said to Nicholas. “Did you bring your G.I. Joe?”

  He shook his head and giggled.

  “Is it your turtle?”

  Another giggle.

  “Is it a skyscraper? I heard one was missing from downtown. Or maybe a buffalo? I’ve always wanted my own buffalo. Let’s saddle him up and go for a ride.”

  “A buffalo is too big,” he said, giggling. He swung his hand around and pointed a plastic gun at me. “BANG!”

  I pretended to die, clutching my heart and crumpling to the ground.

  “Don’t shoot people, Nicholas,” Maria said. “It’s bad manners.”

  “But that’s what it’s for,” he whined.

  I picked myself up. “He’s got a point, Maria.”

  “Enrique gave it to him,” she said. “He’s recruiting him, I think. It came with holsters and a badge and a little red siren for his bicycle. It runs on batteries.”

  “The holsters sound cool. I could use a set of those myself.”

  “I may never forgive him.”

  “How is he?”

  “Enrique? Charming. Handsome. Overworked.” Her brown eyes twinkled mischievously. “Slightly unavailable.”

  “Ooh, I love that in a man,” I said.

  “Very sexy,” she agreed. She gave me her girlfriend-confrontation look. “I still think you should call David.”

  “It’s a procedural violation to call a man six months after he breaks up with you.”

  “You’re stubborn.”

  “Check the handbook.”

  “And it’s only been four and a half months.”

  “I think he’s made it perfectly clear, Maria, that he doesn’t want to be with me.”

  “I keep hoping.”

  “You’re an optimist. I hate that about you, you know that? I truly do. You really should get it seen about.”

  Liz and Christine arrived then in a regular, run-of-the-mill, rented Suburban. I made the introductions, and we all trailed inside. Christine went nuts over Eeyore, as I knew she would. We sent the kids to the backyard with the rabbits while we blew up balloons and lit candles, then we brought them all in and gathered at the kitchen table for cake and presents.

  We’d all gotten gifts for Nicholas too. And though Christine was officially the birthday girl, she let Nicholas wear her Barbie birthday princess tiara while she sported the cowboy hat I’d bought for him. Eeyore wore his spiffy satin bow and sat in Christine’s lap eating crumbs from her strawberry birthday cake.

  I was setting up my homemade version of pin the tail on the donkey when Christine announced she wanted to take Eeyore to the park. I decided to bring the game along, just in case the kids got bored. I threw the blindfolds, tails, and donkey—which I had drawn myself in a misguided fit of Martha Stewart ambition and which, I’m proud to say, actually looked sort of like a donkey—into a shopping bag, tossing in my staple gun at the last minute.

  I live in a Dallas neighborhood called Oak Lawn, which is funky and artsy and pleasantly rickety. It has groovy old houses, giant, misshapen trees, cracked sidewalks, and quirky people. My next-door neighbor has a bubble machine on his balcony. That’s how cool my neighborhood is. The parks, however, are full of weeds, doggie poo, and sticker-burrs.

  Two streets over is Highland Park, a much nicer, nonfunky, not-at-all-rickety neighborhood that has fabulous parks with manicured azalea bushes and banked flowers and lacy white gazebos. Sort of like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

  Highland Park, for me, is like the Bermuda Triangle. My luck is terrible there.

  It’s a low-crime area with huge houses, fancy cars, and its own police force. Which means it’s crawling with bored cops trolling around all day in a shiny fleet of Suburbans.

  They care if you go thirty-five in a thirty.

  Interlopers like me driving loud, crummy vehicles with lousy mufflers and cracked windshields, stand out like goats in the piano parlor. Since I am a fast driver and a slow learner, I’d received, at last count, three—count ’em, three—speeding tickets in Highland Park. And that was in one year.

  Given the nature of our mission, however, I caved to the sticker-burr issue and let Liz drive us over to Highland Park, banking on her luck to overcome mine.

  Apparently, lots of other birthday groups had the same idea. The place was crawling with kids—balloons tied to their wrists, cake smeared on their faces. Their defeated moms trailed behind them yelling out halfhearted prohibitions. Off to one side, someone had set up a petting zoo with a tiny Brahman calf, two saddled, bored ponies, a little herd of baby goats, and a few baby rabbits hopping around in a pen. Melissa and Eeyore sniffed sympathetically through the pickets at their imprisoned relatives.

  Maria, Liz, and I found a bench and watched the kids as they made friends and played on the swings. The breeze blew softly as sunlight dappled in through the leaves of the live oak trees. A soccer game buzzed like a hive in the center of the green lawn. A gardener clipped hedges with manual choppers and swept up the leaves with a real rake, not one of those obnoxious, nuclear-decibel leaf blowers.

  An ice-cream cart came by, and we all bought Popsicles. I got one of those orange push-up things that taste like sherbet but are probably made out of xanthan gum and high-fructose corn syrup. I tried not to think about it. It’s important to not blow such lovely moments obsessing about food additives. I’ve spent a modest fortune on therapy to learn that little trick.

  It was a beautiful day. A perfect, grade-A, blue-sky day, in fact. I licked my xanthan pop and searched my memory for the last time I’d been this happy.

  While Liz and Maria talked, I got up and began stapling my donkey to a tree. He looked a bit like a special-needs donkey, now that I got a good look at him. A special-needs donkey in need of orthodontia and maybe orthopedic shoes. Several children left the swings and came over to check out the afflicted animal. Nicholas po
inted his gun at the donkey, no doubt intending to put it out of its misery.

  “BANG!” he said and then ran off, sprinting away and scooting behind a tree. He stuck his head back around and pointed his plastic gun, took another shot at the donkey, then ran all the way to the other end of the park and ducked behind the tennis courts.

  “Have you mentioned to him that the headwear might be a problem?” I said to Maria. “I mean, the gun is kind of manly. But the tiara.” I tsked. “It ruins the look.”

  Maria shrugged. “Maybe with the holsters …”

  The tennis courts were fenced, with black wind netting covering the chain-link way up past eye level.

  “Where’s Nicholas?” Christine asked.

  I pointed. “I think he’s hiding behind the tennis courts. Go see if you can find him.”

  “Could you tell him to come back over here, sweetie?” Maria asked. “I don’t want him that close to the street.”

  Christine ran to the fence, then stopped short and cocked her head.

  Liz shouted over to her. “What is it, Christine?”

  Christine pointed at the area behind the tennis courts. “Mommy, that man is mean.”

  “I’ll go.” Liz stood up to fetch the kids.

  Christine screamed, and we saw a hand—a large hand, a man’s hand—grab her by the arm and yank her behind the netting, her cowboy hat flying out behind her and spinning onto the ground.

  We all covered the ground in seconds. By the time we got there, Christine stood behind the fence, her panicked face red and wet with tears, her birthday tiara in the dust at her feet.

  Nicholas was gone.

  2

  I RACED TO THE other end of the tennis courts, Maria screaming and running at my heels. With the staple gun still clutched in my hand, I rounded the row of shrubs that led to the street. As we got there, a blue minivan pulled into the street and took off. I’d learned how to shoot a gun the year before. Instinctively, I stopped, assumed the stance, and raised the staple gun, shooting industrial staples at the back of the van. They landed all around me in the street, pinging harmlessly on the asphalt.

  Maria kept running, following the van as it turned onto a side street and sped away. When I caught up to her, the van was gone and she was standing in the middle of the street, her mouth open, her hands at her sides. Her eyes darted around frantically. She kept opening and closing her fists, like she was trying to pump blood into her hands.

  I stopped beside Maria, my chest heaving. “I got two letters and a number off the plate. AK and a 9.”

  Maria turned and began pounding her fists on one of the cars parked in the street, yanking on the door handle. The alarm began wailing loudly, splitting the still silence of the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood.

  “Where are the keys?” Maria shouted.

  “Maria, this isn’t our car. Try to calm down.”

  “Where’s Liz? We have to go after them. He’s got my baby!”

  “Maria, they’re gone. We can’t catch them. Look at the street.” I pointed. The lane was empty, the van long gone. “We have to call the police.”

  She stared at me.

  “Did you see the license plate?” I shouted over the car alarm.

  Her face was blank.

  I raised my voice. “Maria?”

  Her eyes were vacant. Empty. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Maria, look at me.” Still no response.

  The street around me began to blur. I felt myself get dizzy, the panic choking the air out of me. I struggled to hold on to consciousness, blinking the darkness away and taking a few deep breaths.

  Maria was looking at me as though we’d just met. Like she didn’t even know who I was.

  “Maria, did you see the plate? Did you get the number?”

  “He’s got Nicholas. We have to—”

  “Did you see the plate?” I had her by the shoulders now, yelling at her. “Do you remember the license-plate number?”

  Maria wrenched free from my grip, yanked on the car door again, and pounded the window. Then she sank to her knees and began to cry. Frantic, gulping cries, sucking in mouthfuls of hot asphalt-scented air.

  I screamed for help—a shout in the general direction of the house next to us—and knelt down to hold her. By now people were coming out of their houses and staring at us. We were still in the middle of the street. I tried to stand Maria up. A car had come up behind us and was waiting for us to move. The man behind the wheel tapped the horn.

  I turned around and glared at him. He averted his eyes, ducking behind a baseball cap.

  I stood Maria up and led her back toward the park, letting the car pass beside me. The car alarm stopped abruptly. A crowd of women from the park had reached us by then, holding their children in white-knuckle grips. Several of them were talking on cell phones, looking around for street signs and house numbers to get their bearings.

  We made it back to the park in a clump, all of us clinging together and moving in unison—frightened zebras after a lion has attacked the herd. Police cars began to arrive from both the Highland Park and Dallas police departments—lights flashing on the tops of their cruisers. Someone pointed in our direction, and a Highland Park cop walked over to us.

  “Are you the mother?” he said to me.

  I pointed at Maria. “This is Maria Chavez. Dr. Chavez. Her boy Nicholas is … he’s the one that …” I didn’t want to say it.

  Maria had collected herself. She looked at him and began to recite. “My son’s name is Nicholas René Chavez. He’s five years old. He weighs thirty-nine pounds, and he’s forty-one inches tall. His hair is blondish-brown and curly, and his eyes are blue. He was wearing denim shorts, white sneakers, and a Dallas Cowboys jersey with the number twelve on it. He had a”—she choked back a cry—“a little toy gun.” She put her hand to her mouth and began to shake, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It was a blue van. That man in the blue van took my son.”

  I hugged Maria. The cop kept talking.

  “You saw someone get in a van with your son?”

  I told him the story, pointing at the bench, the tennis courts, and the street as I filled in the details. “We saw a man’s hand reach out and grab Christine.” I gestured toward Christine, who was draped over Liz’s shoulder in a heap, hugging her mother tightly.

  “But you didn’t see anyone actually get in the van with the kid?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Where’s the boy’s father?” the cop asked.

  “Um, that’s sort of a long story.” I glanced around at the gathering crowd, wanting to spare Maria’s privacy. She saved me the trouble.

  “He’s in prison in Huntsville. It wasn’t his father.”

  “One of your husband’s friends, maybe?” the cop asked. “Criminal associate—”

  I interrupted. “He’s not her husband. And, um … that’s really not a possibility, Officer.”

  He raised his eyebrows at Maria.

  “He’s never met Nicholas,” Maria said.

  He looked back at me and let it go.

  “Did you get a plate?”

  “AK something, 9 something something.”

  “Texas plate?”

  I nodded.

  “Happen to notice whether it was a vanity plate? Or one of those fund-raiser plates—State of the Arts, Humane Society?”

  “No. I think it was just a plain Texas plate.”

  “What kind of van?”

  “I think it was a Chrysler.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Maria? Did you see?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was blue. It had a sticker on the back.”

  “What sort of sticker?” the cop asked.

  “Ducks Unlimited,” she said.

  “On the bumper?”

  “The back window.”

  “Right or left side?”

  “Upper right. And one of those.”

  She pointed at a sticker on another car. It was the logo of one of the local Christian
schools.

  “That’s the Dickersons’ van,” someone said.

  The cop turned around. “Ma’am?”

  A woman stepped out of the huddle around us and said, “Richard and Anne-Marie Dickerson. Their little girl is on my daughter’s soccer team. They carpool with us.”

  “Were they here today?” he asked.

  “Anne-Marie was, and Lauren. I never saw Richard. I think he travels.”

  “Do you have an address for them?” the cop asked.

  The woman gave the address, and the cop gestured to his partner to call it in.

  “Is there any way you can contact Enrique Martinez?” I asked. “He’s a detective with the DPD.”

  “What division?”

  “Robbery.”

  “Kidnappings go to robbery. They’ll get the call anyway.”

  “Aren’t we in Highland Park?”

  “Something like this, it’ll go to DPD. You know him?”

  “He dates Maria.” I glanced over at her. “And he’s a DPD chaplain. I think it would be good to have him here.”

  He raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment. “I’ll try to raise him for you, if you want.”

  I nodded my thanks.

  Martinez came, along with a crowd of uniformed cops, detectives, and a van full of crime-scene investigators. I hugged him and led him over to Maria, who leaned into him and held on for a minute, then squared her shoulders and stepped away. Maria handled herself well, answering questions with astonishing poise under the circumstances, though the strain was obvious. Martinez, pacing around and asking questions, seemed more agitated than she did.

  Christine couldn’t stop crying. The bad man was real mean, she kept saying.

  “How did you know he was mean?” Liz asked.

  “He was all black, and I could just tell.”

  “You mean he was a black man? His skin was black?” I asked. She hadn’t mentioned this to the cop who questioned her.

  “Noooo, he was black,” Christine insisted. “Not his skin.”

  “Punkin, I’m not sure what you mean,” Liz was saying. “Were the man’s clothes black?”

  “Noooo, he was black,” she said again. “And really mean.” She stuck her thumb in her mouth. “Where’s Eeyore and Melissa?”