Bye-Bye, Black Sheep

by Ayelet Waldman

  “That must have been embarrassing for you.”

  He gave a what-are-you-gonna-do flap of his hand. “It’s no big thing. Some dudes, it’s their mamas out there putting it out. Now, that would be bad.”

  “Still, it can’t have been pleasant.”

  “Truth, I was happier when she went out on the street instead of just trying to do it in the neighborhood, you know? With my friends and such. It was almost better when she was out there for real.”

  “If she had come home, would you have been worried that she’d start up again, with your friends?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. She’d have had to be straight if she wanted to come home, but then if she started looking for the stuff and got herself high, she’d probably just be the same old Violetta.”

  “Do you think she could have straightened herself out?”

  He finished his drink and licked his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s real hard, and I don’t think I know anyone who’s done it. Audrey’s sister, she’s been doing dope since she was fifteen, and she’s been in rehab as often as she’s been out of it. They’re rich and they put her in those real expensive, private places, but it doesn’t do any good. I don’t see how Violetta could have done it all on her own if even a rich white girl can’t.”

  He got to his feet and pushed his chair back. “I got to get back,” he said. “Audrey gets nervous if I’m gone for too long.”

  I stood up, too.

  “You know who I blame for that last night?” Ronnie said. “Thomas. He knew what Violetta was like when she was drinking. He didn’t have any business bringing those beers over.”

  “But he didn’t know she’d be there, did he? She surprised you all.”

  He frowned. “Even if that’s true, he didn’t have to let her have anything to drink. He didn’t have to give her beer. He could have just said no.”

  “What was their relationship like? Hers and Thomas’s?”

  Ronnie clearly wanted to get away from the table and back to his clingy and silent girlfriend. “Nothing special. Same as her relationship with everyone, I guess.”

  “Same as with you?” I raised my eyebrows, meaningfully.

  “You want to know that, you got to ask Thomas,” Ronnie said.

  Twenty-nine

  OUR plan was to spend just a couple of hours at the zoo and get on the road back to Los Angeles in plenty of time to miss the traffic. That was the plan. I was tired of the dead ends this case was leading me to, and I wanted to hustle things along, get back to the city and pay a visit to Thomas, whom I’d never met, and if that led nowhere, finally concede defeat and refund Heavenly’s retainer fee. That was the plan.

  What was not part of the plan was panic. What was not part of the plan was standing with my back pressed against the polar bear tank, shrieking my daughter’s name. What was not part of the plan was losing Ruby.

  It started like this: Peter and I watched the polar bears glide by the huge windows, their yellowish fur brushing the glass, their massive paws paddling in an aquatic ballet. The window was underground, with a fish-eye view of the tank. We could watch the bears swim from underwater. It was hypnotic. Finally, when the people behind us began expressing their impatience too loudly to ignore, we gathered up Isaac, who had been kneeling at the window in front of us.

  “Where’s Ruby?” Peter said.

  “She must be back at the first observation window.” The viewing area was divided into bays, each fronting its own window. We walked back to the first bay looking for her small, red-headed figure. It took all of thirty seconds for us to shift from unconcern, to alarm, to out-and-out dread. We began running in and out of the exhibit, calling her name.

  “Where is she?” I screamed at Peter.

  He didn’t bother to answer. The other families stared at us, their faces reflecting either concern or disapproval, depending on just how sanctimonious they were, or whether they’d ever been unlucky enough to find themselves in our shoes.

  “A little red-haired girl,” I said, frantically, to the crowd at large. “Has anyone seen a little red-haired girl? Seven years old?”

  “What is she wearing?” a mother holding her toddler on a harness and leash asked me.

  I stared at the leash for a moment and then replied, “I don’t. . . I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what your daughter is wearing?” she said, horrified. Then she yanked on her child’s leash and turned her back.

  “Peter!” I yelled as I ran from the polar bear exhibit and out into the sun. “What was she wearing? What was Ruby wearing?”

  Peter was standing on the path, his head whipping back and forth. He ran a few steps up each path and then, when he didn’t see Ruby, tore back down. He carried Isaac in one arm and hauled the empty stroller behind him.

  Sadie hung from my chest in the Baby Björn, my shoulders aching from the strain. Her legs danced against my belly as I ran after my husband.

  “What was Ruby wearing?” I shouted again.

  “Her yellow daisy T-shirt,” he said. “Come on, let’s go up the hill to the information booth. We’ll find someone and ask them what to do.”

  We ran as fast as we could up the hill, our breath ragged in our chests, the stroller careening along in front of us, half of the time on two wheels. We bumped into people and didn’t even bother to apologize, so fixated were we on making it to where we could ask for help.

  These times are when I regret most my career in criminal defense. Knowing too much about the evil of which men are capable is a very bad thing when your child is missing. In the moments it took to climb to the zoo information booth I saw Ruby, my little girl, in the clutches of the worst kind of madman. The kind who lurks in places where children find themselves out from under their parents’ eyes. The kind who snatches them up and steals them away. The kind who feeds off innocence and chews on the virtue of childhood. I saw all that, and more.

  I saw myself, a woman who could not keep her child safe. Who could not protect her from the evil world. A woman who lost her child.

  By the time we arrived at the information booth, I was crying too hard to speak.

  Peter pushed aside a line of people waiting for maps and directions to the bathroom and grabbed the shirtsleeve of the young woman manning the booth. “Our daughter. She’s lost. Her name is Ruby. Please. Please help us.”

  “Ruby?” the young woman said.

  “Yes, Ruby. She’s seven years old.”

  She smiled broadly. “Little red-haired girl?”

  “Yes! Yes!” I shouted through my tears.

  “Oh, Ruby’s doing fine. I bet she’s having herself an ice cream cone about now.”

  “Ruby gets ice cream?” Isaac said. “That’s not fair.”

  It seems that Ruby was never lost. She was just so prepared for the possibility of being lost, so well-schooled in the measures to take should she find herself lost that when she turned around in the polar bear exhibit and did not immediately see our faces, she began running up the paths, looking for someone in a uniform.

  Before we’d even noticed her absence, Ruby had stomped up the hill, announced herself as lost to the fresh-faced young woman (never ask a man, always look for a woman, preferably with children) in the khaki jungle uniform (always look for a police officer or someone whose uniform you recognize), and had been taken by a special electric car back to the main station at the far end of the park.

  The young zookeeper in the information booth radioed ahead to the station that Ruby’s parents had been found, and we trudged across the park. No electric car for us. We found our daughter enjoying a strawberry banana smoothie and regaling the other lost children with the tale of her pluck.

  “Sweetie,” I said, once we’d hugged her and reassured ourselves that she was fine. “Next time, before you go looking for the authorities, maybe you should make sure you’re really lost. We were right there.”

  “But I didn’t see you.”

  “I know, and you did t
he right thing, but next time just yell first, okay? Call for Mama or Daddy before you go off looking for someone else.”

  “There was no point in calling you,” she said with great irritation. “If I called Mama then all the mothers would have just turned around. What would be the point of that?”

  “Well,” I said. “You can call ‘Juliet’ or you can trust me to recognize your voice.”

  She shook her head, disgusted at this. She adjusted the San Diego Zoo cap the counselor in the lost children’s room had given her for comfort and consolation. Of the two of us, I was the one who needed consoling. Ruby seemed downright thrilled by her exploit. I, on the other hand, was ready to go home.

  “I think we’ve all had enough animals for the day,” I said.

  Thirty

  IN the car on the way back home to Los Angeles, I called Chantelle and Thomas’s house. I reached only their machine.

  When we pulled into our driveway I said to Peter, “You know, I think it’s a safe bet that if Dr. Thomas Green is not at home, then he’s at the hospital. If I tank the baby up would you mind if I go over to UCLA?”

  Peter shook his head. “Sure, just nurse her as much as she’ll take. If she needs more before bed I can defrost some milk. I know, I know. Don’t put the bottles in the microwave.”

  * * *

  DR. Thomas Green was on duty, but he was in surgery.

  “Do you think he’ll be a while?” I asked the nurse.

  She looked at me over the tops of her half-glasses. She was a middle-aged African-American woman with pressed hair and a constellation of small moles, like freckles, scattered over her cheeks. “Are you a patient?” she said.

  “No. It’s personal.”

  She pursed her lips and blew air out through her nose with a disgusted huff. “I’m sure it is,” she said. “He’s doing a bowel resection, and he’s been in there for over three hours. He’ll be out soon. You can wait for him over there.”

  “Thank you,” I said and did my best to give her a winning and grateful smile.

  She shook her head in disgust. “Don’t go bothering the patient’s family.”

  I sat down, trying not to intrude on the waiting couple as they hovered nervously over their chairs, their eyes glued to the clock. About twenty minutes later, the doors at the end of the hall opened, and a man strode confidently through. He was strikingly handsome, with skin the deep brown of polished walnut, round eyes the size of quarters lushly fringed with lashes, a long straight nose, and a dimple in his chin. When they saw him, the couple leapt to their feet.

  “The surgery went beautifully,” he said. “Everything was better than we could have hoped for.” He took the man’s hand in his and shook it firmly, then he allowed the woman to embrace him.

  “Dr. Green, we’re so grateful for everything you’ve done for Jonathan,” the woman said. She wiped her streaming eyes. “You’ve been a blessing for him, and for us.”

  “It’s that boy who’s the blessing. The last thing he said before he went under was that he has finals at the end of the month and he’s counting on us to get him well enough to take them on time.”

  The woman laughed and her husband clapped Chantelle’s husband on the back a few times. Thomas wished them good-bye and turned to leave.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Green,” I said.

  He turned back. “Yes?”

  “I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time. I’m Juliet Applebaum, the person Heavenly hired?” I didn’t want to use the words private investigator in front of his patient’s parents.

  He wrinkled his brow for a moment and then said, “Yes, of course.” He looked around the waiting room. “Why don’t we go in here,” he said, opening the double doors. “We’ll have a little more privacy.” He led me across a busy hall bustling with nurses to a small lounge. “How can I help you?” he said once we’d sat down.

  “I just have a few questions.”

  “By all means.”

  “How well did you know Violetta?”

  He settled back on a nubbly orange chair, crossing his long legs. “Chantelle and I have been together for nearly nine years, since our junior year of college. Back when we first met, Violetta was just a girl, fifteen years old. I met her when I went home with Chantelle to family dinners, that kind of thing. Honestly, she didn’t make much of an impression. By the time Chantelle and I were seriously involved, Violetta was already gone most of the time. Then I heard about her more than I saw her, if you know what I mean. Corentine was beside herself, but it was clear from early on that the girl was a lost cause.”

  “Heavenly said there were periods when she would come home, periods when she tried to stop using drugs?”

  He nodded, tenting his fingers in front of his chest. It leant him a professorial air. “She did try, especially when she was pregnant with Vashon. During that period we saw more of her. I was in medical school by then, so I didn’t spend much time with the family, but Chantelle and I got married right before Vashon was born, and I know Violetta had hoped to be sober enough to come to the wedding.”

  “Hoped?”

  He shook his head. “It was a great disappointment to Chantelle that her little sister wasn’t there. My poor wife had two sisters, and neither of them was sufficiently sober to act as her bridesmaid. She ended up having two of her sorority sisters stand up with her.”

  Dr. Green’s voice was deep and sweet, melodic even. I found myself wondering if I’d put on lipstick before I left the house, and if my hair was a wild mess from my day rushing around the zoo.

  “Chantelle told me that you were the one who tracked Violetta down to let her know that Annette died.”

  He nodded. “The rest of the family was overwhelmed. Completely distraught. You have to understand that Annette’s disease came as a complete surprise to them, to all of us. Had I known she was HIV positive, I would have arranged for her to receive treatment. The first any of us found out about it, the first she found out about it, was when she became ill with pneumonia. I imagine that she must have had symptoms before that, but she probably attributed them to . . . well, to hard living I suppose. At any rate, she died almost immediately.”

  “How did you find Violetta?”

  “I looked where they told me to look, up and down Figueroa. It didn’t take very long. I probably drove around for no more than half an hour before I saw her standing on a street corner.”

  “Was she surprised to see you?”

  “I imagine. She was certainly disappointed when she realized I wasn’t a potential client.” He glanced at his watch.

  “But she was willing to go with you?”

  He arched one eyebrow. “Let’s say she allowed herself to be convinced.”

  “Convinced?”

  “I offered her a hundred dollars to get into the car, come to our house to get cleaned up, and attend her sister’s funeral.”

  “You paid her to go to the funeral?”

  “The family needed her to be there. Corentine and Chantelle needed her to be there. Had she been sober she would have realized that and come right away. But she was not. She was high on something, and she insisted I compensate her for her time. Which I did.”

  “Did anyone know you paid her to be there?”

  He shook his head. “No. Of course not. It would have broken their hearts. Chantelle and Corentine were both so pleased to see her. Violetta had disappointed them so many times before, and I don’t think they had high hopes. But when she came, it was like none of those previous disappointments had ever happened. Chantelle put her to bed in our guest room; she gave her clothes to wear to the wake the next day. She even bought her a dress for the funeral. My wife allowed herself to imagine that Violetta might be able to get clean, if she only had the help. She even managed to convince me that we should pay for her to go into rehab.”

  The way Chantelle had told the story, it was her husband’s generosity that led to that offer.

  “Did you think Violetta might actually go to
rehab?”

  He sighed. “Look, before the woman would get in my car, she took the hundred dollars I gave her, walked back to the corner, and scored herself some heroin. Of course I didn’t think she’d get clean. That was Chantelle’s dream, not mine, and certainly not Violetta’s. The night after the funeral Chantelle found her sister shooting up in our bathroom.”

  “Chantelle said you threw her out.”

  A small smile played at the corner of his lips. “She said that? Well, I guess I did. My wife was screaming like an injured cat, dragging her sister by the hair and crying like . . . well, like she’d just buried one sister and found the other shooting dope, I suppose. I got between them and told Violetta to take her things and go.”

  “When did you see her again after that?”

  “I suppose the next time was Vashon’s birthday party. She was living at home, and she seemed actually to be doing okay. She’d been sober for two weeks. It was hard to believe she’d stay sober, and I know by that point Chantelle had lost faith in her. She didn’t even allow herself to hope it would last. Poor Corentine got her heart broken all over again. She did every time that girl turned up. She’s a good woman, Corentine, but her greatest flaw is her ability to be disappointed afresh by her children.”

  “The last time you saw Violetta, on the Sunday night before she died, she got drunk, didn’t she?”

  For the first time since I’d begun talking to him, Thomas looked uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, uncrossing his legs and then recrossing them. “That was my fault, I suppose,” he said finally. “It was my beer; I brought it to Corentine’s. I shouldn’t have let her have any, but giving in to Violetta was so much easier than fighting her.” He smiled suddenly. “I guess you could say she had a lot in common with Chantelle in that way. The Spees women are all tenacious, stubborn women. Violetta just used her will to get herself high.”