by Lisa Tucker
“Of course she does,” Amy said. She was still in the hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to say they could go home. She looked tired, but she was smiling. “Hannah’s going to be smart. She knows her auntie will be her best friend.”
Part Three
TWENTY-TWO
Michael had been sitting on the side of the road for a long time. He’d watched as the shadow from the sun had moved across the empty parking lot of the restaurant and past the Out of Business sign and onto the brown field. At one point, he’d unhooked his seat belt to lock the doors, though he knew it wouldn’t help that much, since the windows were unrolled. The rest of the time he’d spent arranging the toy cars in rows along the seat next to him, practicing his six times tables, and most of all, wishing that April would stop being sick.
When she finally said she was going to call for help, he felt like he could breathe better, like a breeze had blown into the car, though the air was just as still as before. “My mommy and daddy will help,” he said.
“I’m sure they would,” April said. She was lying down on the front seat. All he could see was her skinny hand, thrown against the passenger headrest. “But I’m going to call somebody else.”
He wanted to tell her that his parents would help better than anybody, but she was already sitting up, stumbling out of the car, and walking in the ditch next to the road. He could hear her voice rising and falling, but not the words. When she got back in the car, she turned on the engine. She didn’t speak at all as she made a U-turn and headed back down the road they’d come from.
“I don’t want to go back on the boat,” Michael said.
“We’re not,” April said. “We’re going to a motel.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know, buddy,” she said, but she kept driving in the same direction. “I’m really sorry, but I promised I would do this.”
She said she was sorry again when she came out of the motel office holding a big black plastic key. “We got stuck with room 13,” she said. “It’s the only one they had.”
“Thirteen isn’t really unlucky,” Michael said. His parents had taught him the word superstition, but he couldn’t remember it right then.
April took his hand and they walked on the crumbly black pavement toward the room. “I bet you don’t even believe in Santa Claus, do you?”
He didn’t, but he wasn’t about to say so. After this boy named Drew started crying at his second kindergarten, he’d decided not to tell anyone else that Santa Claus was only a story.
April opened the door with the plastic key and told him to go to the bathroom. When he came out, she said she had to go. He looked around the room while he was waiting for her. There were two beds with green and gold bedspreads, a dresser, and a big TV bolted to the wall. He didn’t want to be in bed while it was light outside, so he sat down on the only chair, over by the window. The cushion felt sticky against his bare legs. The heavy curtains smelled bad when he pulled them back to look at all the big trucks in the parking lot.
He watched a truck pull out and another one pull in, and April was still in the bathroom. When she came out, she looked really pale again, but when he asked her if she was feeling sick, she told him not to worry.
“It’s going to be okay.” She pushed her lips into a smile. “We’ll get something to eat, and then wait here, like I promised.”
There was a hamburger place right across the parking lot, so they just walked there. April told the clerk they wanted their food to go. “This way we can watch TV while we eat,” she said, looking down at Michael. “Does that sound fun?”
He nodded, though it didn’t really sound fun. He liked to eat dinner at the big table at home. Sometimes Mommy turned off the overhead light and used the little lamp instead. She called this “intimate dining.” He kept forgetting what intimate meant, but he liked the word.
April asked him what he wanted. When he couldn’t decide, she ordered a cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, two orders of fries, and two chocolate milkshakes. They went back to the room, and she told him he should pick what to watch on TV. He picked a show about antiques, because he knew it wouldn’t be violent and give him nightmares.
“Do you watch this with your parents?” April said. She’d finished her milkshake so fast that Michael was surprised she didn’t have an ice-cream headache. Her face was a lot less pale though. Now she was lying on her stomach, holding herself up on her elbows, chewing one French fry really slowly.
“No,” Michael said. He’d washed his hands and he was sitting on the sticky chair, eating the cheeseburger. He didn’t like it very much, but he was hungry and it was the only thing that wasn’t fried. “I saw it with Grandma.”
It was last year when he and Daddy were at Grandma’s apartment. Grandma had turned on the TV while his dad went to the drugstore to fill a prescription for her. Michael liked the show because it was about a clock that was taller than a person. But when Daddy came in, he said, “You know we don’t let him watch television.” Grandma said, “It’s PBS,” but she turned off the show, and Michael never got to find out how much it would cost to buy that gigantic clock.
April looked at him. “Your dad’s mom is nice, isn’t she?”
Michael nodded. His grandmother played Sorry and Uno with him. She had soft cheeks and arms. She smelled like flowers.
“What about your other grandmother?”
He didn’t know, but he was distracted by a bigger problem. He’d forgotten to take off the pickle from his cheeseburger. He hated pickles. They were so slimy and wiggly, and now he’d just swallowed one.
“You’ve never met her, have you?”
He took a drink of the milkshake, but it didn’t help.
“Have you ever asked your mom where her mother is?”
He hadn’t, but he didn’t care. He could still feel the pickle, like a worm sliding down his throat.
“Do you think she doesn’t want to tell you for some reason?”
This time April paused, waiting for the answer. He could feel her eyes on him. He was so mad about all these questions and the pickle that he forgot to use his indoor voice. “Stop it! I don’t like this!”
“Sorry, buddy.” April sounded like she meant it, but now that Michael had gotten upset, he couldn’t seem to calm himself down. He was mad about the pickle and the grandmother he didn’t have and the grandmother he did have and hardly ever got to see. He was mad about the bad-tasting cheeseburger and the smelly curtains and the ugly room and the whole awful day. Except the part on the boat, which he still liked, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking about a book his mommy used to read to him when he was little, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He was already starting to cry, but when he heard himself sputter out the word Mommy, he began to hiccup and cry so hard his chest hurt.
April tried to gather him in her arms, but he slapped her away. “I don’t want you! I want my mommy!”
He didn’t mean to make her cry, too, but when he realized he had, he couldn’t stay mad anymore. She’d cried a bunch of times that day, but she’d never sounded this sad. He’d never seen a grown-up sobbing before, and it made him feel bigger and older—and really afraid.
He stood up and went to where she was sitting on the bed. There were French fries all over the floor. He could feel them being squished under his feet. She was doubled over with the empty box upside down in her hand. He said her name and patted her arm. When she finally looked up, he was so relieved that he crawled into her lap.
After a while, she sat up straight and shook her head. “This dump is definitely not utopia.” She smiled. “Come on, buddy. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
He was glad that April was happier and he wanted to leave the hotel, but he was nervous, too. She took out a piece of paper from her purse; she said she had to write to someo
ne first. He went to the bathroom again, and by the time he came out, she was finished with the letter. When he asked her where they were going, she said, “Someplace we belong.”
TWENTY-THREE
Though David hadn’t asked for her help or even seemed to want it, Sandra had ended up driving to Mt. Airy when she left Courtney’s. Of course. Her son’s house wasn’t as chaotic as she’d expected. Yes, there was a police car out front, but the backyard wasn’t surrounded by yellow tape and the front door wasn’t blocked by an armed guard and the only person who came when she rang the bell was her frantic son. David said the detective in charge and his team had left a while ago to investigate leads. The two officers that remained were milling about the kitchen, drinking coffee and talking about some guy named Freddy. David frowned as he told her that Freddy, whoever he was, had nothing to do with Michael’s disappearance. Sandra sympathized with her son’s frustration, though she understood why the police were talking of everyday things. It was the same reason that some nurses told more jokes when they were working in the ICU: the greater the stress, the greater the need to be reminded of all of life’s ordinary stuff.
She’d stopped at a deli on the way over, but she couldn’t persuade David to eat. “I’m busy, Mom,” he said when she asked him to sit down for a minute. In a way it was true; he was busy pacing the dining room, cracking his knuckles, running his hands through his hair, and eavesdropping on the two officers, as if any minute they would have to stop gossiping and reveal Michael’s whereabouts. She wished she knew what to do for him, but she headed upstairs with the bag of food, hoping to be more successful with her daughter-in-law. David said she was in their bedroom, but when Sandra didn’t find her there, she went down the hall. She peeked into Michael’s room and there was Kyra, all elbows and knees and endearingly big feet, curled up sadly on her little boy’s bed.
Though Sandra had never really gotten along with her own mother-in-law, she’d had high hopes that she and David’s second wife would be friends. She’d liked Kyra from the beginning, when she proved to be David’s first girlfriend who could help in the kitchen rather than standing in Sandra’s way, pretending not to know what to do next—or, in Courtney’s case, actually not knowing. Kyra didn’t pride herself on being “intellectual” like Courtney (or David, for that matter), but she was smart enough to have a job in math, which had been Sandra’s worst subject in her nursing program. Best of all, she wasn’t troubled. She didn’t require constant propping up, and she was way too strong to need or want to be rescued.
By the time Kyra and David were married, Sandra felt like her hopes were being realized. She and Kyra talked on the phone at least once a week, and they did a lot of girl-type things together, from shopping trips at the King of Prussia mall to getting their hair colored at Sandra’s favorite beauty salon and going to a spray-on tan place before David and Kyra’s trip to the shore. It didn’t always work out perfectly—Kyra thought her blond highlights made her look like she was trying too hard; Sandra’s spray-on tan was a streaky orange disaster that everyone kidded her about at the nursing home—but it was fun. Even shoe shopping was fun, Kyra had to admit, though she hated her size 10½ feet so much that she’d always ordered shoes from a catalog.
When her relationship with her daughter-in-law suddenly stalled less than a year into the marriage, Sandra felt both hurt and embarrassed that she cared so much. It took her a long time to decide to ask her son if she’d done something to upset Kyra, but David just laughed. “No, Mom. If you were any nicer, she would leave me and move in with you.” Sandra could tell he meant it, but she also knew something had changed. However, over time, she adjusted to the reality that she wouldn’t be spending as much time alone with her daughter-in-law. Indeed, after a while, she let herself forget what her relationship with Kyra had been like.
Kyra’s eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. When Sandra walked in, she sat up and thanked her for coming. Her voice was hoarse, like she’d been yelling, or more likely, crying, all day.
Sandra eased herself down next to Kyra. Her right knee was stiff and achy. It seemed like some joint or another was always rebelling these days. “He’s going to be all right,” Sandra said. “He’s going to be home very soon.”
“How do you know?” Kyra’s eyes had brightened, and Sandra felt bad that she didn’t have new information from the police or some real evidence.
“I can feel it,” she said firmly. It was the same sensation she had when a patient was about to turn a corner, except in this case, she would not allow herself to believe otherwise. Her grandson would be home. What would happen after that was another story. David and Kyra were already so nervous about Michael’s safety. She honestly couldn’t imagine how they would recover from this.
After a moment, she remembered the bag of food clutched in her hand. “Do you think you can eat something?”
Her daughter-in-law nodded, but when Sandra handed her the vegetable and cheese hoagie, Kyra set it in her lap without even unwrapping the foil. Instead, she stared at the corkboard wall across from them, covered with stuff Michael had cut out from magazines. Like most five-year-old boys, he liked robots and trains and dinosaurs, but he’d also hung up a photo of a pyramid and an odd one of a giant paper clip. Right in the center was a picture of a group of little kids standing next to a fire truck that had been taken on a field trip at one of the schools Kyra and David had sent him to last year. Sandra assumed Michael had hung it there because he missed being in school. True, he never said he wanted to be with other kids, but he was such a sensitive little thing. He rarely said anything that could upset his parents.
David had been the same way at Michael’s age. It was something Sandra was still capable of feeling guilty about: how her son, from the time he was so small he could barely reach the light switch, had tiptoed around Ray’s and her feelings. Somehow the poor kid must have sensed that his family was as wobbly as the sloppiest block tower: the kind the unruly boys made, while little David himself was laying row after row of foundation for his towers. Of course in Michael’s case, it had to be different, since Kyra and David had a good marriage, unlike her and Ray. In fact, Sandra sometimes thought her son and his wife were too well matched, if such a thing were possible. Neither one of them would ever dream of doing something with Michael that was the least bit risky. Honestly, she was stunned that they’d let the little boy go into his (fenced) backyard by himself this morning. It might have been a sign that they were finally loosening up, which was just painfully ironic under the circumstances.
David had already told her that Kyra blamed herself, so she wasn’t surprised when her daughter-in-law said it was all her fault. Sandra told her it wasn’t true. Kids played outside all the time and nothing happened. It was the most normal thing in the world. Her reassurances didn’t seem to make any difference though. Kyra was still upset, and finally she whispered, “I need to talk to Father Polano.”
Father Polano was a friend of Sandra’s. They’d met a long time ago, when his church flooded and Sandra had volunteered to help with the cleanup and restoration project. He’d been very surprised that she’d signed up to help, given that she didn’t live in his parish and wasn’t even Catholic. She told him the truth: she liked the stained-glass windows. She drove by Sacred Heart every day on the way to work and the sight of the sun shining on the intricate designs of colored glass never failed to lift her mood.
“Can you ask him to come here?” Kyra said. “I know it’s an imposition, but I can’t do it on the phone and I don’t want to leave in case . . .”
Sandra knew her daughter-in-law had been raised Catholic, which was why she’d introduced Kyra to Father Polano in the first place. Michael was fighting meningitis, and Sandra had wanted her daughter-in-law to have someone good to pray with in the hospital. But Kyra and David were decidedly not religious. They never went to church, not on Easter or Christmas, not even to get married. Sandra had b
een a bit shocked that their wedding ceremony had made little mention of God and used no passages from the Bible, not even the obvious ones from Ruth or first Corinthians. Their ceremony was held at Valley Forge Park rather than a chapel; David thought it would be more relaxed that way. It was a beautiful spot, but Sandra didn’t remember it being all that relaxing. The park had so many rules. No throwing rice because rice expands when birds eat it and can hurt them. No birdseed in lieu of rice, for some reason she couldn’t remember. No flower petals, because they’d have to be raked up later by the park crew. No photos taken near the historical buildings; she had no idea why. No alcohol, period. But at least it was nothing like his first wedding, which the superstitious part of Sandra couldn’t help but see as a good sign.
“I have something I need to confess,” Kyra said. “Something important.”
Sandra could hear David talking to one of the policemen, but it was clear from how clipped his voice sounded that the situation downstairs was unchanged. “Sweetheart, you can wait on that until Michael comes home. Now why don’t you open that vegetable and—”
“But I have to confess or he won’t come home!”
Working at the nursing home, Sandra had learned how intolerable it was for her patients and their families to feel completely powerless. She figured Kyra was just doing what most people did: choosing guilt because it meant there was something she could do to help. But when Kyra added, “I think I know who took him,” Sandra sat up straight. If her daughter-in-law knew, why hadn’t she told the police?
She was about to ask that question when Kyra jumped up and started crying. As she wandered back and forth, her hands were shaking and her face had turned a sickly shade of white. Before Sandra could make her knee work well enough to stand, David was in the room, too. Kyra’s crying wasn’t loud, but he must have been listening for it. He took her in his arms and said he was there and it would be all right; they just had to hold on. His voice was always so gentle when he was talking to his wife. Sandra loved that about him.
