Missing Pieces

by Joy Fielding

  “Hi, Kate,” the girl said, taking a large bite out of my sister’s burger and a long sip of her Coke, before handing them back. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Where exactly are we taking you?” I managed to ask, wincing as my sister fastened her lips around the same straw the young stranger had just relinquished.

  “Wherever,” Patsy said, her voice a low growl. “It doesn’t much matter.”

  “Patsy’s boyfriend took off without her,” Jo Lynn explained.

  “Stupid idiot,” Patsy said.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Nowhere now, I guess.”

  This answer was somewhat less than satisfactory. “Where are you from?”

  “Fort Worth.”

  “Fort Worth? Fort Worth, Texas?”

  “Way to go, Katie,” my sister said. “Give that girl a silver star.”

  “How’d you get all the way over here?” I asked, trying to push my voice back into its normal register.

  “Drove,” came the disinterested reply. Patsy reached forward, grabbed a handful of fries from the container that my sister was stretching over her shoulder.

  I watched through the rearview mirror as Patsy flopped back against her seat, stuffing the fries into her mouth, then rubbing her bruised arms, closing her eyes, heavily outlined in black pencil. “With your boyfriend?” I asked, despite the look on my sister’s face that told me to be quiet.

  “Yeah, the stupid idiot.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Kate, this is none of our business,” Jo Lynn interjected.

  “Do your parents know where you are?” I persisted.

  “They don’t care where I am.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Patsy laughed, but the sound was hollow, and echoed pain. “I haven’t seen my dad since I was a little kid, and my mother has a new boyfriend and a new baby. She probably doesn’t even realize I’m gone.”

  “How long ago did you leave?”

  “Two weeks.”

  I thought immediately of Amy Lokash, pictured her mother, Donna, cowering tearfully at my office door on the day of her first visit. “Have you called her? Does she know you’re all right?” Even without looking at Patsy, I could see the confused mixture of defiance, loneliness, and stubborn pride playing havoc with her delicate features.

  “I haven’t called her.”

  Don’t you think you should? I wanted to scream, but didn’t, knowing it would only put the girl on the defensive. “Do you want to?” I asked instead.

  Patsy said nothing for several seconds. “I don’t know.” She leaned her forehead against the glass of the rear side window.

  “What’s stopping you from just picking up the phone and calling home, telling your mother that you’re safe?” I asked.

  “What’s the point?” Patsy countered sullenly. “She’ll only yell at me, tell me she was right about Tyler all along.”

  “That’s what’s stopping you?”

  “I don’t want to hear it again.”

  “Was she right about Tyler?”

  “Yes,” came the barely audible mumble from the back seat.

  “So, are you going to let Tyler call the shots here or what?” I asked, after a slight pause.

  “Tyler’s the stupid idiot, right?” Jo Lynn asked, and I smiled gratefully for her subtle support.

  “Maybe I’ll call her,” Patsy said, reaching for a few more fries. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Just a phone call to let her know you’re okay,” I continued, thinking again of Donna Lokash, how easily this could be her child, praying that a similar insanity had overtaken Amy, that she was even now hitchhiking across the country, unmindful of the pain she was causing, the anguish she’d left behind. But alive.

  I fought back the sudden threat of tears as I realized how alien our children were becoming to us. E.T., phone home, I thought.

  We said nothing for the next few minutes, Jo Lynn slurping up the balance of her Coke to the rhythm of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, occasionally passing her drink to the back seat, along with what was left of her cheeseburger and fries. The odor of fast food permeated the car, sinking into the seats like water into soil, lingering long after the food was gone, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. Probably I should have eaten something when I had the chance. It would be close to midnight before we got to the motel in Starke.

  “Hey,” Patsy suddenly shouted, her hand extending over the top of the front seat, her finger pointing excitedly toward the side of the road. “The next exit is for Disney World.”

  “We’re not going to Disney World,” I told her.

  “Where are you going?” That there might be other options had obviously never occurred to her.

  “We’re on our way to Starke,” I said.

  “Starke? Where’s that?”

  “Bradford County, between Gainesville and Jacksonville,” my sister clarified.

  “I don’t want to go to Starke,” Patsy said, sounding in that instant very much like Sara. “I want to go to Disney World. That’s where Tyler and I were headed when we got into that stupid fight.”

  “Why don’t you come with us instead,” I suggested. “Then you can call your mother from the motel.”

  “I want to go to Disney World,” Patsy insisted. “It’s the whole reason I came to Florida in the first place. Just pull the car over and let me off. I can hitchhike the rest of the way.”

  “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to hitchhike?” I began, then stopped. Was there really any point in arguing with her, trying to make her see reason, to change her mind? I signaled, pulled the car over to the side of the road, and stopped.

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Jo Lynn said suddenly. “I mean, there are lots of looney tunes out there, just waiting to pick up young girls.” If Jo Lynn was aware of the irony inherent in her advice, she gave no sign.

  “I’ll be fine,” Patsy insisted, with all the arrogance of youth. “Thanks for the ride and the food and everything.” She opened the door, climbed out. “I’ll call my mother after I ride ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean.’”

  “You do that,” I said, watching Patsy in the rearview mirror as she proffered her thumb into the air. I drove off before I could see anyone stop to pick her up.

  “How could you let her do that?” my sister demanded angrily, assuming the mantle of motherly worry I normally wore. “How could you just let her get out of the car like that?”

  “Are you suggesting that we should have held her against her will? I believe that constitutes kidnapping.”

  “She’s a minor, for God’s sake. How could you just let her go like that? Aren’t you worried what might happen to her?”

  I thought of Amy Lokash, of Sara, Michelle, my mother, even Jo Lynn. All the women in my life passed quickly before my eyes, like the last images of someone who is drowning. “Can’t save everyone,” I said.

  Chapter 21

  We left the motel for the prison at precisely eight-thirty the following morning. Visiting hours were from nine till three, and Jo Lynn was determined to be there for every minute of those six hours. Although the prison was only eleven miles west of Starke on State Road 16, she’d already warned me that it would take about twenty minutes to pass through all the gates and various security checks, which made leaving the motel by eight-thirty an absolute necessity.

  When Jo Lynn awakened me at seven-thirty that morning, she was already showered and dressed in the white miniskirt and tank top that had become something of her trademark, her makeup meticulously applied, her hair gloriously askew. I stumbled around the garishly appointed room, with its heavy red curtains and deep purple bedspreads, amazed I’d slept so soundly. For the first time in months, I’d actually slept through the night—no dreams, no pesky trips to the bathroom. Was it because I was so exhausted, both mentally and physically, from the long drive up from Palm Beach? Or was it b
ecause I was almost afraid of opening my eyes to face this new day? I stepped into the shower, allowing the surprisingly satisfying torrent of hot water to envelop me.

  “Hurry,” Jo Lynn prompted later, as I zipped up the fly of my navy slacks and reached into my overnight bag for my orange blouse. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked, then laughed.

  “Something wrong with this?”

  “No, it’s perfect.” She laughed again, watching as I did up the buttons, then quickly ran a brush through my hair. I thought of applying a bit of blush, a stroke of lipstick, then decided against it. Jo Lynn was in a hurry, and besides, there was nobody I wanted to impress. “We’ll stop for an Egg McMuffin on the way,” she said, picking up the cooler stuffed with the various cheeses and chicken salad sandwiches she’d made herself—Colin’s favorite—and pushing me out the motel room door toward the car.

  Probably because we’d driven at night, I’d failed to notice how drastically the scenery had changed once we’d transferred off the turnpike onto Highway 301. I saw now that here, in the heart of rural north-central Florida, truck farms and scraggly pines had replaced the orange groves and majestic palm trees of the southeast coast. “I didn’t realize the area was so poor,” I said, perhaps disingenuously, as we made our way along the state road toward the prison, Jo Lynn behind the wheel.

  “Looks a bit like the backwaters of Georgia,” Jo Lynn agreed, and I wondered when she’d last seen the backwaters of Georgia.

  “It’s so hot,” I marveled, trying to find a radio station that was broadcasting something other than the latest farm reports, the air hanging fetid and bloated around me, like a drowned man draped across my shoulders. I heard a huge roar and turned my head, half expecting to see an enormous tidal wave gathering force behind me; instead I saw a massive tractor-trailer riding up our tail, then drawing precipitously close to the side of our car.

  Jo Lynn looked up and waved to the driver and his male passenger, both of whom were practically hanging out their window to get a better look at my sister’s bare legs. “I like to give ‘em a flash of thigh,” she confided as they sped past.

  “You think that’s such a good idea?” I asked, not expecting, nor particularly wanting, any reply. The road opened onto a broad plain. Cattle grazed along the roadside, some standing up, others lying down.

  “It might rain,” Jo Lynn pronounced.

  I stared through the window at the cloudless blue sky, as waves of heat bounced, like pebbles, from the road across the hood of the car. “Rain?”

  “If the cows are all standing up, it means it’s going to be sunny. If they’re all lying down, it’s going to rain. If some are up and some are down, then the weather’s going to be changeable.”

  “Something else you picked up from the motel manager?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “From Daddy.”

  I tried not to look surprised by the sudden intrusion of my stepfather into the conversation.

  “He used to take me for drives in the country sometimes, and we’d see all these cows grazing, just like these guys are doing, and he’d say that if all the cows were standing up, it was going to be sunny, and if they were all lying down, well, you know the rest. These cows are owned by the prison, by the way.”

  “Are those prisoners?” I asked, suddenly cognizant of small gangs of men working along the side of the road, supervised by uniformed guards wearing sunglasses and carrying shotguns.

  “This ain’t Oz,” Jo Lynn said, chuckling at my discomfort.

  And suddenly the prison stretched before us, actually two prisons, one to either side of the stream, ambitiously named New River, that divided Union and Bradford counties. The Union Correctional Institution was situated to the right, Florida State Prison to the left, each identified by huge signs in front of double rows of chain-link fences topped with razor ribbon, and differentiated by color: Union Correctional was a series of concrete block buildings painted an indifferent beige; Florida State Prison was a sickly pastel lime green.

  Jo Lynn pulled the car into the designated parking area, turned the engine off, and dropped the keys into her straw purse. “We have arrived,” she said solemnly, throwing open her door. “Everybody into the pool.”

  I followed Jo Lynn toward the main gate, our pace brisk in order to keep the horde of insistent insects at bay, mindful of the guard watching us, rifle in hand, from the watch-tower high above our heads. As we approached, the gate opened, and we stepped through. Immediately, it closed behind us, and I instantly felt sick to my stomach. Another gate sputtered noisily open, beckoning us further inside. We’re entering hell, I thought, hearing the second gate clang shut behind us as I followed my sister down the concrete walkway to the double doors of the prison itself.

  I don’t remember pushing open the doors, or even stepping across the wide threshold. All I remember is standing in a small waiting area, staring at a large man in a tiny glass-enclosed booth, who sat in front of a crowded control panel, smiling at Jo Lynn as she strode purposefully toward him. “Hi, Tom,” she said easily.

  “Hi, Jo Lynn, how’re you all doing today?”

  “Just fine, Tom,” Jo Lynn answered. “Want you to meet my sister, Kate.”

  “Hello there, Kate,” Tom said.

  “Hello there, Tom,” I said in return, marveling that people actually talked this way, that I was talking this way.

  “You know the routine,” Tom said to Jo Lynn.

  “Sure do,” Jo Lynn said, offering him both her purse and the cooler.

  Tom spent the next ten minutes going through each and every item in our bags. He inspected the contents of the cooler, actually unwrapping the cheeses and breaking them into smaller chunks and opening the halves of the chicken salad sandwiches to peer inside, before moving on to our purses, studying our driver’s licenses as if committing each detail to memory, checking us both carefully against our photographs, even though he’d obviously recognized my sister from her past visits. “He does this every week,” Jo Lynn whispered over the constant clanging of prison doors.

  “Nice seeing you again,” Tom said to my sister, motioning us toward a third barred gate and a metal detector. “A pleasure to meet you, Kate.”

  We had to rid ourselves of our shoes, our belts, our keys, our sunglasses, and any pens and loose change we might be carrying, and once through the metal detector, a guard accompanied us through yet another loudly clanging gate and down a long yellowy-beige corridor with a shiny linoleum floor. “The prisoners wax and polish this floor every day,” Jo Lynn confided.

  There were some steps and still another gate controlled by a guard in a glass-enclosed booth, and suddenly we were in the heart of the prison, a four-way intersection called Grand Central. To our right were floor-to-ceiling bars, beyond which were the cellblocks of the prisoners. “That’s where they keep the electric chair.” Jo Lynn pointed through the bars toward a closed door at the very end of the long, wide hall.

  Several prisoners walked past us on their way to work at the prison laundry, wearing blue prison-issue dungarees and blue work shirts. “We go this way,” Jo Lynn motioned, and we followed another guard into the so-called visiting park off the main corridor.

  A variety of cooking smells assaulted my nose, one blending into the next, rendering them indistinguishable. “We’re in the same wing as the kitchen and the mess hall,” Jo Lynn said. “In fact, this visiting park was the old mess hall. You’ll see, it looks just like a high school cafeteria.”

  She was right. The room was large, nondescript, filled with maybe thirty or forty stainless-steel tables and chairs. The only thing that distinguished it from a school cafeteria was the fact that these tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. “See that watercooler over there?” Jo Lynn pointed toward the large glass watercooler in one corner of the room.

  I nodded.

  “Keep your eye on it,” she advised.

  “Why? Does it do something?”

  “Wait till the prisoners get here. Y
ou’ll see.” She checked her watch, pointed to her left. “They’ll be bringing them in anytime now. I gotta use the facilities,” she announced abruptly, placing the cooler on one of the tables and marching quickly to the rest room just outside the door.

  I looked around, pretending to casually peruse my surroundings, but actually concentrating my attention on the other men and women waiting for the arrival of their friends and loved ones. There were about a dozen of us, the women outnumbering the men by a ratio of three to one, the blacks outnumbering the whites by perhaps the same ratio. All the younger women wore dresses, as opposed to slacks, although none were quite as provocatively attired as my sister. One older black woman, wearing black from head to toe, so that it was hard to distinguish where her skin left off and her clothing began, was crying softly against her husband’s shoulder; another woman, whose lips were pierced by a series of small gold loops and whose arms were covered by a series of ink-blue tattoos, paced anxiously back and forth behind a nearby table.

  “You okay?” I asked my sister when she returned, looking slightly flushed.

  “Oh sure.”

  “You rushed out of here so fast, I was afraid something might be wrong.”

  She waved away my concern with a sharp flick of her wrist. “I just had to get something.”

  “Get something?”

  She slid into one of the chairs and leaned both elbows on the stainless-steel top of the table, nodding toward the seat across from her for me to sit down. “I brought Colin a little present,” she said out of the side of her mouth, eyes on the guard at the doorway.

  “A present?”

  “Ssh! Lower your voice.”

  “What kind of present?” Images of guns stuffed inside bras and knives secreted inside lush layer cakes danced before my eyes, although I knew this was absurd. We’d passed through two metal detectors, and there was nothing other than cheese and chicken salad sandwiches inside Jo Lynn’s cooler. Nor had I noticed any gifts when Tom went through her purse. “What kind of present?” I asked again.

  She slipped her hand inside her straw bag and pulled something out, which she was careful to conceal from the guard. When she was confident no one was looking, she opened the palm of her hand, showing me a smooth oblong container filled with about six hand-rolled cigarettes.