Learning to Swim

by Sara J. Henry

  He smiled a humorless smile. “Things that perhaps you ought to know.” He picked up his burger and took a bite. “Especially if you’re involved with him.”

  I stared at him. “I’m not. But that’s not the issue.”

  He said nothing.

  “I cannot help what you believe or don’t believe,” I said with force. “But I can never and will never believe that Philippe Dumond ever did anything that would harm his son.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe that part wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. This was too much like what Simon had said. I hadn’t considered at the time that the police might actually believe it. The walls were shimmering and the room almost shifting around me. Just keep breathing, I told myself. Breathe in, breathe out. “I want to go,” I said.

  Without a word, Jameson paid the bill and followed me outside. Neither of us spoke. When his car stopped, I got out and didn’t look back.

  On the way home I stopped at the public library and talked the librarian into issuing me a library card based on a piece of Philippe’s junk mail I’d brought along. To get a card you’re supposed to have something with your name and address on it, but because librarians want you to have a library card sometimes they’ll bend the rules. I checked out Girl in the Cellar, about an Austrian girl abducted at age ten, and requested three other books on kidnapping.

  When I got back to the house, no one was home yet, so I went up to Philippe’s office and plugged in my laptop to download my emails. Simon had emailed that he was home; I answered and told him I’d delivered his sketches. I didn’t mention the conversation I’d just had with Jameson.

  Next I tried to compose an email to Thomas. What could I say? I don’t miss you, so we probably should break up? If I were home, we would probably just gradually stop seeing each other and find reasons not to make the drive between Lake Placid and Burlington. No one would have to say, This just isn’t working out or I think we should see other people. Or the old It’s not you, it’s me. However true it might be.

  But even I knew you couldn’t break up via email. I finally wrote a brief note apologizing for being sharp on the phone, and said that being here was something I had to do.

  Then I flicked on Philippe’s computer. As it booted up, Madeleine smiled at me from across the room.

  In this computer sat dozens of emails to and from Madeleine—just two clicks of the mouse away. They were like Blackbeard’s forbidden room, taunting me. I wanted desperately to read them. I wanted to know something, anything, about the woman who had been Paul’s mother and Philippe’s wife, who nobody would talk much about.

  One of these emails could have a clue that would point the police away from Philippe. I could tell Philippe, Hey, look, I accidentally downloaded your wife’s emails and turn them over to the police. But surely the Montreal police would have checked her emails on the server, and would have already read them. Still, they could have missed something. I could read them and if I found anything promising, send it anonymously to the police here.

  I opened Outlook Express. I opened Madeleine’s identity. I looked at the email headings. My fingers hovered over the mouse. One double-click and an email would be open on the screen in front of me, and I would be reading words written by Paul’s mother, by Philippe’s wife.

  But that would be incredibly intrusive. And I couldn’t be sure that my main motivation wasn’t just nosiness, wanting to know more about Madeleine.

  I shut down the program and switched off the computer.

  THEN PAUL AND PHILIPPE WERE BACK. PAUL WAS ALMOST bubbling, talking in a mix of English and French about school and the children he had met and the lunch he had had, not so bad, but not nearly as good as Elise’s. He seemed amazingly normal, like any child excited about a school visit.

  Paul went off to see Elise, and Philippe told me he was pleased with the school: the teachers were attentive, the classes small, and the security measures impressive. Quite a few diplomats’ children attended, and the grounds were gated, with several guards. They’d done some testing and made arrangements for enrolling Paul, including outfitting him with the school uniform. Paul would start school Thursday, giving him two more days to rest before then. This, I realized, was Philippe’s concession to my concerns.

  Philippe would drive Paul to school before continuing to work, and Elise or I would pick him up. And when the regular school term ended soon, Paul would continue in a summer session to catch up on what he’d missed and work on his English.

  But I still felt uneasy about all this.

  And now, Philippe said apologetically, he did need to go in to his office, and would I stay with Paul?

  “Of course,” I said. This was, after all, why I was here. After his father left, Paul flung his arms around my waist. I hoisted him up, and he wrapped his legs around me, leaning back.

  “So, kiddo,” I said. “It’s just you and me for now. Seulement nous deux. What should we do?”

  He cocked his head to one side, thinking. “First,” he said seriously, “we must play that game, the little men on the machine, l’ordinateur, eh?”

  I laughed; I couldn’t help it. He had picked up far more English than I had realized, maybe from hearing English television through the door when he was locked up. Or maybe in Montreal he had had some English-speaking friends whose homes he visited. “You’ve got it,” I said, swinging him to the floor. I’d brought along the CD with the game he liked, and we played it on his father’s computer until I called it quits. He, apparently, could have played until his fingers went numb.

  “Now for some quiet time,” I said, and led him to his room. He didn’t argue, and fell asleep quickly. He still tired easily.

  I was walking down the hall to the library when Elise called me to the phone. “It’s Monsieur Dumond,” she whispered as she handed it to me.

  “Hello?” I said, figuring he was calling to check on Paul.

  “Troy, it’s Philippe. How is everything?”

  “Good. Paul and I played computer games, and now he’s taking a nap.”

  “Troy, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Madeleine’s brother, Claude, works for me.”

  Ah, the mysterious uncle. “No-o-o-o,” I said. “But Simon said something about him.” I didn’t point out that Philippe had scarcely mentioned Madeleine, let alone her brother. Or that it seemed odd I was just hearing about this brother.

  “Claude manages things when I’m gone; he’s the only employee, in fact, who moved with me from Montreal. He’s very eager to see Paul. But I’m not sure if it would be good for Paul to see him, to be reminded of his mother just yet.”

  I listened to the faint hum of the phone line. There had to be a reason Paul hadn’t seen his uncle as soon as he got home. I chose my words carefully. “Were they close?”

  “No. Claude came over for dinner occasionally, but he’s single and doesn’t have children.” And isn’t crazy about them. He didn’t say it, but might as well have.

  “We could ask Paul.” I stopped, feeling out the words. “But, Philippe, Paul only mentioned his mother the one time, when he told me what happened. He didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Silence for a moment. “He was the same with the police. Apparently he blurted it out and wouldn’t talk anymore.” Philippe paused. “I’m going to put Claude off. I’ll tell him Paul’s doctor has advised against it for now. Excuse me a minute.” I could hear him conferring with someone, then he was back. “I have to go. I’ll see you soon, Troy.”

  See you when you get home, dear. I knew I was in a pseudo-wife, pseudo-mom, pseudo-governess role here, and I knew I was falling into it a little too easily.

  I went looking for Elise, hoping she would tell me something about this uncle. I found her leaning stiffly against the kitchen counter, and just the fact that she wasn’t in motion told me something was wrong.

  “What is it?” I asked, my voice sharp with concern.

  She pointed to the laundry room. I too
k a step forward. I could see several pairs of small underwear and socks, damp and wrinkled, laid out on the dryer. Clearly Paul’s. I gave her a puzzled look.

  “They were hanging in his bathroom.” Her voice was so low I could barely hear her.

  We stared at the damp clothes. “He’s been washing them out,” I said. He could have been bedwetting, but that wouldn’t explain the socks. Then I remembered the clothes Paul had worn when I’d found him: shirt, underwear, and socks had all been gray and dingy. And then realization dawned, and I felt cold. While Paul was captive he must have been washing his clothes in his bathroom sink. At age six. Either his kidnappers had told him to, or he’d figured it out on his own.

  And since he’d been doing it for months, he’d kept on doing it here, despite the stacks of clean new clothes in his dresser.

  It took a moment before I could speak. I cleared my throat. “I think he’s forgotten that you use the washing machine. I think he had to wash his own clothes while he was gone.” I couldn’t make myself say while he was captive. While he was kidnapped. While he was imprisoned.

  Elise looked at the clothes, and tears slid down her cheeks. I blinked hard, so there weren’t two of us standing there crying.

  “Just put these in the wash,” I said. “I’ll talk to Paul after his nap and tell him you like washing clothes in the machine, and ask him to put them in his hamper for you. And I’ll tell Monsieur Dumond about it tonight.”

  So when Paul awoke I pointed out his hamper and told him how much Elise liked using her big new washer, hoping I wasn’t instilling a lifelong belief that women loved doing laundry. I showed him his stacks of clean things in his dresser, and said his papa would be happy to buy him more when these were worn out or too small.

  After Paul went to bed that evening, I talked to Philippe. It was hard to tell him and hard for him to hear, but this was when I began to understand the significance of my role here. Elise couldn’t cope with these painful reminders; I could. I was the path between the old life and the new.

  I could see Philippe file this away: something else to ask the psychologist about.

  Claude had been upset he couldn’t see Paul immediately, Philippe told me, but had said he understood. “I’d wanted to tell him in person about Paul coming home, but the police contacted him before I got the chance,” he said.

  Philippe had been right, I thought, to want to break the news to Claude in person. Learning that your nephew had returned but not your beloved sister would be bittersweet—an odd mix of emotions for anyone. Personally I couldn’t imagine not being on my nephew’s doorstep if he’d just gotten home from being kidnapped, but then I like my nephews a lot more than I like my sisters.

  After I went to bed I started reading the library book about the ten-year-old kidnapped Austrian girl, who’d been kept in a cellar much of the time before escaping when she was eighteen. People wondered why she hadn’t tried to escape sooner, because she had sometimes been out in public with her captor, but not until she’d been imprisoned a few years. Like the Dugard girl in California, who was kidnapped and kept for eighteen years. People don’t understand how completely children rely on the adults around them, how quickly they recognize that their survival depends on the person in control of them. And how vulnerable they are to whatever the kidnapper tells them.

  The envelope with my copies of Simon’s drawings lay on my desk. I pulled them out and looked at the faces—these men had been Paul’s only contact with humanity for five months.

  After I crawled back into bed, I couldn’t get their faces out of my mind.

  IN THE NIGHT I AWOKE SUDDENLY, COMPLETELY. THOUGHTS sprang into my brain with the clarity that arrives only in the middle of the night. If I had taken Paul to the police as soon as I found him, maybe they could have gotten sketches that day, better ones, while the images were fresher in Paul’s mind, before he’d blanked them out, replaced them with happier memories and friendlier faces. The police could have searched for the men right away, before they had fled far from Vermont and New York, in who knows what direction.

  If they don’t find them, it’s your fault, that insistent voice said.

  I looked at the bedside clock: 2:16. I know that logic doesn’t work at these hours, but I couldn’t escape the cold truth I’d been dodging up until now: I’d had no business deciding not to take Paul to the authorities. You just wanted to keep him to yourself, the voice said. I reached out to stroke Tiger’s warm fur. She stirred only slightly.

  With a groan, I swung my legs out of bed. I wish my conscience would come alive during the day, when the distractions of daytime life help obscure those sharp, prodding thoughts. In the middle of the night, there are no gray areas—it’s all black and white. I decided I’d look for something light to read to help shut out that insistent little voice.

  On the way down the hall, I heard something from Paul’s room. The door was ajar, and I pushed it open gingerly. By the glow of the night-light I could see him, curled on his side, facing away from me. His covers were in a knot at his feet, so I tiptoed forward to pull them over him.

  I’d just bent over the bed when I heard movement behind me. I started to turn and saw a dark shape, large, coming at me, and then my arms were immobilized and a hand over my mouth. I began a silent, desperate struggle, kicking blindly backward and trying to wrestle my arms free. The whisper in my ear took a moment to penetrate: “Troy, Troy, stop, it’s me, it’s Philippe.”

  I stopped struggling, relief making my legs weak. The hand on my mouth disappeared, and Philippe was backing me out of the room, then leading me down the hall to the kitchen.

  “What were you doing?” I demanded after he flicked a light on.

  He scratched his head. He was barefoot, in a white T-shirt and blue-and-white striped pajama bottoms, his hair tousled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was dozing and saw someone moving toward the bed. Then I realized it was you, but didn’t want you to scream and wake Paul. What were you doing, anyway?”

  “I couldn’t sleep and I was going to get something to read. Then I heard a noise from Paul’s room, and I was going to fix his covers. But …” I was confused.

  “Why was I there?” Philippe sat at the kitchen table and began rubbing his shin through his pajama leg, where I’d kicked him with my heel. He looked like a small boy with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “I’ve been sleeping in there.”

  “Sleeping in there? What, in the top bunk?”

  “No, in the armchair.”

  I stared at him, and he added, “Just until early morning, and then I go up to my room. But I can’t … I don’t want to let him out of my sight.”

  I leaned back against the counter, trying to rearrange my features from my accusatory stare. I could still feel my heart hammering. “I think that’s normal. I mean, you can’t spend every night in his room.”

  “No, of course not, but for now … I just can’t …” His voice trailed away. He ran his fingers through his hair, almost angrily. “I let him get kidnapped once; I didn’t keep him safe. I almost lost him forever.”

  I moved toward him, kneeling beside the chair where he sat, and put my arms around him. Without hesitation he folded his arms around me. He was warm, smelling vaguely of fresh laundry, a crisp cologne.

  “It’s not your fault, Philippe,” I said into his ear. “You can’t always protect people.”

  His shoulders moved in a single compulsive silent sob; I rubbed his back, warm through the T-shirt. He must have sensed that kneeling on the floor was uncomfortable for me because he stood, pulling me with him, and we clung to each other, swaying a little. After several long moments he shifted, and I could feel him through his pajama pants, hard against me, and my body pulsed in response. I didn’t move. Our hearts were thudding, almost echoing in the quiet kitchen.

  “I don’t want to be alone now,” he said. His face was stark, drained, tired.

  I could only guess how I looked. The pull I felt toward him was almost palp
able. It seemed that if I left the warmth of his arms I’d break into a hundred tiny pieces, shatter on the kitchen floor into shards that could never be put back together again.

  “Philippe, I can’t …” I whispered. “Your—”

  Your wife? Your child? I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say.

  He put his finger on my lips. “I know.” Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. He pulled me with him, toward the library, and sat me on the sofa. He knelt by the fireplace, opened the damper, and lit the stacked firewood with a starter from a slot beside the hearth. He closed the mesh screen and then moved toward me, pulling a thick afghan off the back of the sofa and sitting beside me in one easy motion. We swung our legs up and he draped the afghan over us. He pulled me toward him and I lay in the circle of his arms, my face against his chest. My heart was pounding crazily. He was stroking my back under the afghan, short, comforting movements, and gradually I relaxed. He kissed the top of my head once, and we lay quietly for five minutes, ten. Neither of us spoke. His hand started moving more slowly. I shifted slightly, but his breathing deepened and then his hand stilled. He was asleep. I wanted to stay conscious, to savor the warmth of his body against mine, the sound of his breathing. Come morning, I knew we’d almost certainly act as if this had never happened. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and slid into a dreamless sleep.

  PAUL WOKE US, POUNCING ON US, GIGGLING AT FINDING US asleep in the library. “Pourquoi dormez-vous dans la bibliothèque?” he asked.

  Philippe reacted quickly, pulling his arms from under the afghan and reaching for his son. “Because,” he said, pulling Paul up on the sofa and tickling him lightly, “we woke up s-o-o-o early there was no sunlight and it was chilly, so we made a nice fire to watch instead.”

  I disentangled myself, stiff from sleeping in one position. “And the fire made us sleepy, so we fell back asleep,” I added.