by John Searles
I remembered Albert Lynch, standing at the end of our lane, warning us that Abigail could seem perfectly normal until suddenly everything changed. I remembered the girls I’d read about in that “history” book years before too.
“As a mother, you think you know your child. You brought her into the world, after all. You changed her diapers and picked her up when she cried. You read her stories each night before bed and slipped coins under her pillow so she believed in the Tooth Fairy. But then, despite all that love and effort, years go by and one day she turns sullen. She keeps secrets. She doesn’t want to be near you. I used to ask her what was wrong, but she always told me the same thing: I wouldn’t understand.
“Then her grades dropped. She began skipping school. She didn’t want to be with her old friends anymore. Despite all that, she managed to graduate. We sent her off to a good Christian college in Massachusetts. We thought the freedom of being away from home would help. But after a month, we received a call from the dean informing us that she had stopped attending classes. Worse still, her behavior had become erratic. She was caught breaking into someone’s dorm. When the R.A. reported her, she threatened the girl with a knife.” Emily stopped and looked toward the window, listening. When there was no sound, she smoothed her hands over her dress and told me, “I don’t think she would have done the things she did if my husband had not been so hard on her.”
“Is that when you turned to my mother and father?” I asked.
Mrs. Sanino tilted her head, her mouth dropping open into an oval shape that made me think of a Christmas caroler. “Your parents?” she said after a moment. “We never took her to them. Although I read all about your mother and father, and saw them interviewed on TV, we did not meet.”
“But if you didn’t seek them out, then how—”
“My daughter came to know your sister when we sent her away to Saint Julia’s.”
This was not the story I’d been expecting after all. I needed a moment to adjust things in my mind, but Emily Sanino didn’t allow for that.
“As you no doubt have learned about me,” she pushed on, “I’m not afraid to take a road trip while my husband is away from the house. Nick is an officer three towns over, so he doesn’t get home certain days when he’s doing a double on patrol duty. I’d tell him I was going to see my sister over in Dover. Really, I snuck away to visit our daughter. During those trips, that’s when I met Rose. Did you ever go to see her there, Sylvie?”
“No. My father promised that we would, but he kept putting it off. He told us the staff prohibited visits, because it created setbacks in the behavior of the girls there.”
Emily scoffed. “Well, he wasn’t lying. That was their policy. No visitors. For the first thirty days anyway.”
“Ninety,” I said, remembering how endless that summer seemed without her.
“No,” she told me. “I’d remember if it was that long. But either way, they didn’t welcome the influence of the outside world at that place. Still, I didn’t care. I never wanted to send her there in the first place. Even if I couldn’t bring her home for good, I found a way to sneak her out for the day. And those times, well, they were the first in a great while that my daughter actually seemed happy to see me. Rose usually managed to sneak out too and join us.”
“Where did you go?”
“No place special. Hiking. Walking in the park. But it felt special. Those girls were like prisoners set free. Every little thing made them laugh. We’d stop for ice cream before heading back to Saint Julia’s, and it was as though I was giving them the treat of their lives. They were that grateful, that happy.”
I tried to place my sister in the scenario she described, laughing, eating ice cream. Instead, what I conjured was the memory of trips to the ice cream parlor with my parents during the months Rose was gone, the strange guilty peace I felt during that time. Those memories led me to say, “My sister didn’t last there more than that summer.”
“Neither did my daughter.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. She had agreed to stay there originally for a full six months. But then one morning, the psychiatrist from Saint Julia’s called to tell us they found her room empty. She left just like that. And, really, she was free to go all along since she was of age.”
“Did she come home?”
“She knew better, I’m sure. Her father would have sent her right back. So instead, she just . . . disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
Emily Sanino stood and went to that side table and pulled back the curtain to look outside. I wanted to tell her that we’d hear the patrol car well before seeing it, but instead I simply repeated the word, “Disappeared?”
“We’ve not heard from her since,” she said in a stiff voice, letting go of the curtain and pressing her fingertips to the sides of her eyes, as though forcing back tears. After a moment, she took a breath and turned to me. “Now that you know everything you came to find out, we need to get you out of here. How will you get home if you—”
“Wait,” I said. “I still don’t understand why you’ve been coming to our house.”
That question gave her a long pause. She stared at me, blinking, before saying, “When I read about what happened to your mother and father, Sylvie, I thought of how special those days with Rose had been. The idea of that poor girl on her own raising you, well, it broke my heart. I remembered how she used to devour the food I brought on those trips, so I decided the least I could offer was more of that nourishment. It’s what the Bible teaches, after all: charity of the heart.”
“Well, thank you for remembering us. I only wish you’d left notes, so we knew who it was from. Didn’t you ever think to do that?”
“Yes. But I didn’t want to open old wounds. I’m sure Rose doesn’t exactly want reminders of her time at Saint Julia’s. My guess is she never speaks of it. Am I right?”
I nodded. My brain felt fuzzy with the events of the day. I tried to think of what more I could ask, but just then, Emily Sanino’s back stiffened. A moment later, I heard a car motoring down the street. “I need you to leave,” she said, peeking through the curtains as the flash of lights washed over her. “How will you get back to Dundalk?”
“I don’t know,” I told her, standing. We walked to the kitchen, and she pressed a hand on my back to get me there faster.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I didn’t plan things. I just came here without—”
Outside in the driveway, a door slammed. Emily grabbed her purse from the table and told me to hold out my hands. When I did she shook the contents of her wallet—coins, bills, stray coupons, shopping lists—into my palms. A few stray pennies fell to the floor and scattered at my feet, but I didn’t bother to pick them up. “I’m sorry,” she told me, her voice an urgent whisper. “But I can’t let my husband know about any of this. There’s a pay phone in front of the firehouse on West Shore Drive. You can call a taxi from there. You should have more than enough money to get home.”
“West Shore?” I said as she opened the back door and all but pushed me outside. Emily Sanino glanced in the direction of the living room, where her husband’s feet pounded up the porch steps. “Left out of the driveway. Right at Bay Breeze, then follow it to West Shore. The firehouse will be in front of you. Across from the ocean.”
“Should I give Rose any message?”
“Message?” she said, eyes wide. “Absolutely not. Don’t say a word to her about this visit. Trust me. It’ll be better that way.”
With that, she closed the door and snapped off the light. I was left standing on the cement patio with only the moon to see by. A moment later, I heard her voice inside as she greeted her husband with all that false cheer lacing her voice once more.
I turned and walked through the alley to the street, her rushed directions blurring in my mind, al
ong with everything else she told me. For nearly an hour, I moved through the sleepy streets of that oceanside neighborhood, making too many wrong turns before backtracking and looking up at last to see the fire department, with a pay phone out front. After dialing 411, I got the number of a taxi company. The man on the other end told me it would cost sixty dollars to get back to Dundalk. While he waited, I counted what I had, but it only totaled up to thirty-four. I asked if he could do it for half price, and the man said, “Yeah, if my driver only takes you halfway. How’s that sound?” I told him not very good then hung up. That’s when another idea occurred to me. Squinting at the buttons, I punched in a combination I hadn’t thought of in some time. After dumping in enough coins, the phone rang and a sleepy voice came on the line.
“Cora?” I said.
“Yes?”
“It’s Sylvie.”
“Sylvie? How did— Oh, RIBSPIN. That’s right. I forgot about that.”
You forgot a lot of things, I wanted to say, including me. “You told me I could call this number anytime I needed something.”
Last I’d seen Cora, she’d had on all that goopy green witch makeup, and even though it didn’t make sense, that’s how I pictured her now: lying in bed at the apartment she shared with her mother, noodly fingers brushing aside her mottled wig and gripping the receiver as her black lips formed the words, “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yes. And this is one of those times.”
“Sylvie, are you okay?’ she asked with genuine concern in her voice.
“I will be if you could come get me. I need a ride home.”
She fumbled with the phone. “I’m sorry. But I lent my car to Dan. You know, the Hulk’s owner. We have a bit of a free trade situation. His dog. My car. Not sure who gets the better end of the deal. Except my mom, she likes having the dog around. Says the Hulk makes her feel loved. As if I don’t give her enough love . . .”
I’d forgotten Cora’s habit of rambling, and I cut her off to say something I couldn’t keep in any longer, “I saw the two of you. Kissing, I mean.”
Silence. While I listened to the faint electric hum on the line, I stared at the fire department. Through the glass windows, I glimpsed the tops of the red trucks inside, the jumble of lights and ladders. The air felt so impossibly damp it was hard to imagine anything catching fire for miles around.
At last, Cora let out a breath. Something about the sound washed away the image of her in that witch makeup. Instead, I saw her the way I did when we first met: holding her clipboard, dressed in her carefully pressed clothing, with her ankle bracelet and that shark or dolphin tattoo, not to mention her intentions to make me dress warmer and see a doctor again about my ear. “I am not going to lie to you, Sylvie. That’s wrong, and I’ve already done plenty of wrong by you. The truth is, I never thought I’d get caught up in the sort of thing that happened with your sister. But I don’t have to tell you the way Rose can make things happen. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I said, thinking of Dot, thinking of the night in Ocala when we snuck into my parents’ lecture, and thinking most of all of her call that lured us to the church that snowy night last winter.
“Well, she also has this way of making you feel like the most special person in the world when she wants to. That is, until something changes and she doesn’t make you feel that way anymore. That feeling—it was too much to take. I asked the department to switch me to a new case. I’m sorry.”
There was more hurt in my voice than expected when I told her, “You could have said good-bye.”
“I know. Again, I’m sorry. It’s just, well, I’m not always as good at things as I set out to be. But I’d like to help find a way to get you home. Tell me where you are.”
“Rehoboth, Delaware.”
“Rehoboth? Why?”
“I came to find out who has been leaving all that food on our steps.”
“I really don’t think you should be there, Sylvie. It doesn’t seem like a good idea. I’d leave whoever it is alone. Now let’s focus on getting you out of there. Maybe you should just call Rose.”
It was clear Cora would be of no help, so I told her I would then said a rushed good-bye and got off the phone. Since no part of me intended to reach out to my sister, I did what I should have in the first place and tried the number on the card Heekin had given me. His answering machine picked up. I rambled into it about where I was and what I’d learned about Emily Sanino and Saint Julia’s. In the middle of it, I realized how desperate I must have sounded, so I stopped short and hung up on that call too.
After that, there was only the crashing of the ocean waves, the light of the moon, with me beneath it, lingering by the pay phone for a long while. I looked at Emily Sanino’s shopping lists—flour, unsalted butter, and all the rest made me think of Boshoff and his cookbooks and poems and his sick wife beside him in bed. And then I had a thought and picked up the phone again.
Four-one-one connected me right through and Dereck answered on the first ring, as though he had been waiting for me all along. “Of course I’ll come get you,” he said when I explained where I was and that I needed a ride. “But you’ll have to sit tight. It’ll take me a bit to get there.”
I was so relieved that I didn’t mind waiting. After we hung up, I sat down on the curb. If I’d had my journal I would have used the time to put down the events of the day, beginning with the visit to the nature preserve with Heekin and ending with the moment in Emily Sanino’s living room. I would have read over what I’d already written about Abigail and the things that happened that summer too. Instead, I tried to think of all the places I might have dropped it: in the dark of my uncle’s theater, in Heekin’s VW bug, down in the foundation across the street from our house.
At last, I looked up to see Dereck’s jeep pull into the lot. I climbed inside, feeling relief but also an unexpected awkwardness. Now that he and my sister were over, what connection was left between us?
We pulled onto the street, and it was as though he knew the way by heart, making rights and lefts without checking the map on the floor between the seats. “Do you mind if I ask what you were doing here?” he said after a while, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Trying to figure some things out,” I told him, which was the simplest explanation.
“And did you?” was all he asked.
“Yes and no. Really, I ended up with more questions.”
“About your parents?”
“Them, and my sister, too.”
Dereck didn’t respond. We reached the highway and picked up speed. The haphazard rise and fall of lights all around, and the constant shudder of the canvas top, made it difficult to talk. We tried anyway, but it was awkward small talk—details about those turkeys mostly—and it made me think again how quickly any connection was dissipating between us. At last, we passed a WELCOME TO MARYLAND sign, and Dereck took his ruined hand off the steering wheel and pointed to the floor between the seats. “By the way, I brought something to show you.”
“A map?” I said and laughed a little, despite myself.
“No. Look underneath.”
I peeled the map away and found a chestnut brown yearbook from Dundalk High School, the year 1988 in raised gold numbers across the top.
“It’s from my senior year. I grabbed it out of my junk drawer when you called. I want to prove something to you. Page sixty-four.”
With that same hand, Dereck clicked on the interior light. I opened the book, and a newspaper clipping slipped out onto my lap. I left it there and turned the pages until arriving at the one he specified. “A picture of the exchange student from Peru?”
He smiled, showing those wolfish teeth. “Not that photo, Sylvie. The one beneath it.”
“A group shot of the Honors Society?”
“Recond row, rour reople rover rom ra reft.”
I traced m
y finger up to the second row, four people over from the left until landing on Dereck, grinning big and wide.
“Ree, R-I’m rot a rope, rafter rall.”
“I never thought you were a dope. Even though you make it hard to believe considering how much time you spend talking like a cartoon dog.”
Dereck laughed, and the moment made me feel close to him again. “Well, thanks for your faith in me.”
Before closing the book, I stared a little longer at the photo. “You look happy.”
“And I don’t now?”
“You do. It’s just, I don’t know, a different look on your face back then.”
“Well, that’s when I had all my fingers. That’s also before I realized high school would end, and I’d actually need to make a plan for my life.”
“Couldn’t you still make a plan?”
“Maybe. First, I have to get through the last of the season with the turkeys. Thanksgiving is only three more days away as of tomorrow.”
I thought of those mornings when I paused on the path to stare at the birds in the field, how empty it would feel without them, how empty it would feel without Dereck there too. We pulled off the highway and navigated the dark roads of Dundalk until turning onto Butter Lane at last. I told him to go slow, shining his high beams on the pavement as I looked out for my journal. He even pulled off so I could look around by the foundation too. But my little violet book wasn’t there, either.
It had only been twelve hours, more or less, yet it felt like ages since that morning when I first left the house and met Heekin at the end of the lane. Rose’s truck was still in the driveway, her bedroom light on. Otherwise the house was dark, except, of course, for the light in the basement, which filled me with the same nervous fear as it had for weeks.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I told Dereck. “I have a little money for gas if you—”
He held up that hand with the missing fingers. “This one’s on me. I’m happy you called, Sylvie. Feel free to do it again if you ever need my help.”
