Stolen Grace

by Arianne Richmonde

  South America was notoriously corrupt. If Ruth and Grace were moving about on chicken buses or taking private cars, they’d just blend in with the locals who had simple IDs, easy to forge. Who knows, thought Sylvia, Ruth could have been smart and just double-backed into Mexico. Sylvia recalled Ruth’s Mexican socialite friend with the influential father—the one she talked about in one of her e-mails—who would be able to organize papers for her. Ruth could have cooked up any sob story lie to get what she wanted.

  Ruth was a confidence-trickster, what they called a “grifter.” She could be anywhere. Latin America was vast. It was like when people talked about “going to Europe” as if it were a postage stamp they could add to their collection. Central and South America were huge landmasses, replete with mountains, inhospitable terrain, rainforests, and the Amazon which was the biggest river in the world. Ruth had backpacked in Asia; she wouldn’t be intimidated by such a place, especially being fluent in the languages there. She was intrepid and could have gone in any direction. She might be hidden in a tree house in the jungle somewhere, or equally as likely, sipping cocktails in someone’s grand apartment in Mexico City, hooking up with high-ranking politicians and luring them with her “man-magnet” charms. Grace could be anywhere. If Sylvia hopped on a plane now, where would she even begin? Especially, when she wasn’t even sure where Tommy was at this point.

  Up until a few days ago, Sylvia had been following his every move, online and by phone, suggesting ideas, gleaning any clue she could from Ruth’s e-mails which she read over and over. His first stop trailing Ruth had been the IVF clinic in Mexico. He’d hoped he could find someone who’d been close to her, had a photo of her or something. Nothing. The doctors hardly even remembered what she looked like, they told him. Tommy reminded Sylvia that he had never even caught a glimpse of Ruth, not even when she and Sylvia Skyped on all those occasions. Neither had they crossed paths at the airport. Sylvia had described her a hundred times to him.

  The more Sylvia thought about it, the more she realized she needed to get out there too. The funeral was over, what was she still doing in Saginaw? She kept looking at the phone and checking her e-mails for Tommy’s update. The last time they spoke, he was still in Guatemala. She assumed he must be in a jungle somewhere by now, or he would have called.

  Sylvia wondered what the IVF clinic was like. The whole baby factory idea made her feel queasy. There were enough children seeking “forever families.” Why battle to create more children on purpose when all the odds were against you? The lesbian couple that Ruth had mentioned in one of her e-mails, for instance. Why didn’t they want to adopt instead? People’s egos? she asked herself. Or their biological need to reproduce? Tommy had tracked the couple down via the clinic. He managed to wheedle a phone number out of the secretary at the front desk. Apparently, one of the women was a barrister (an attorney) in Leeds, England. But when Tommy called, the woman said she hadn’t heard from Ruth for months. The only contact she had was the same old e-mail, the same defunct New York phone number. “What about the Mexican socialite?” he’d asked. The woman didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. And when Tommy grilled the clinic about her, they laughed. “This is Mexico, we have hundreds of Mexican socialites passing through our doors,” they told him.

  Sylvia had so many secret fears. Grace’s adoption papers stolen by Ruth—she could have those forged and put into her own name—whatever her latest fake name was. Sylvia and Tommy had no proof that Grace was even their child. A DNA test? What good would that do when neither of them were her biological parents? What if they didn’t find her for ten years? By which time, Grace could have forgotten them.

  Agent Russo had kept in touch, but there had been no leads.

  Nothing of any significance from any of the website forums had come up, just hundreds of messages of “condolences” and good wishes. Almost, it seemed to Sylvia, as if people had already given up because there was no hope for Grace at all.

  Tommy’s next stop had been the bank in Guatemala. He even took the same flight Ruth and Grace had been on, in hopes that one of the airline staff would have remembered a five-year-old girl with a woman wearing a straw cowboy hat. But nobody could help. The bank in Guatemala remembered Ruth very well, though. They let Tommy see all the CCT footage, but the police had been right. He relayed to Sylvia that Ruth’s face was always in shadow, her head tilted down. She was aware of the cameras, it seemed. All you could make out was a blond sweep of hair and her flowery dress. Sylvia remembered that dress. It was the dress she wore on one of her first dates with Tommy. They’d had a picnic together in Central Park. She now felt violated. Knowing Ruth was flouncing about in her special memory. But that was nothing compared to how her stomach turned when she imagined Ruth with her own child. The words that came to her were: Disgusted. Abused. Desecrated.

  She thought back to the conversations they’d had over the last few years. To think she had given this woman little pieces of her heart so freely, her intimate thoughts and feelings. It made her feel like she’d been raped.

  For the past few days, her fury toward Ruth, the Perpetrator, had become more jagged, and the guilt toward herself had softened. How could she have known that psychopaths like Ruth existed? She was aware that it was an illness, but imagined that only murderers, serial killers, drug barons—people who had stridently broken the law many times over—could be that way. She knew that there were axe murderers out there, she knew that, and she had explained to Grace how she mustn’t speak to strangers, never get tempted by someone to see a puppy or a kitten, or get into an unfamiliar car. But how could she have been prepared for Ruth?

  Sylvia sat on the sofa-that-saved-her-life with her laptop beside her and looked up “psychopath” on Wikipedia. It said: Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness.

  Ruth. To a terrifying T. Cold as a blade. A steel blade.

  Ruth Steel. How fitting.

  What was it that made Ruth different from other human beings? We, Sylvia thought, can feel sympathy, empathy, sadness, or fear because we can step into other people’s shoes and imagine how it would be for them. We can feel in an abstract way. We can see seconds ahead of ourselves into the future and avoid hurting others, simply by basing our emotions on our own experiences from our past. We have been hurt so we are personally involved, and we learn not to repeat others’ mistakes, or our own. We can predict how others could react because we are able to see ourselves in them. We can identify, Sylvia concluded. We can identify with others.

  Something Ruth was incapable of doing. That was what made her a psychopath.

  A psychopath without a sense of humor—Ruth couldn’t even appreciate Bridget Jones.

  Was Ruth an opportunist? Had she made her crime up as she went along? Had she thought, Ooh, passport, money, child, what a great opportunity?

  Or had she planned it all from the start?

  Sylvia needed someone to talk to. All these thoughts spinning in her brain were giving her a migraine. She picked up the old dial telephone and called Jacqueline. Who wiser than she?

  Jacqueline picked up after the second ring. “Let me just turn down the TV, Sylvia honey.” She came back on the line and said, “I know, you need to let it all out or you’ll go crazy, right?”

  “What is it, Jacqueline, that marks someone as a psychopath? That makes them different from a normal person? I mean, not Charles Bronson, or some murderer, but people who appear normal?”

  “Sylvia, you know, I’ve been mulling over the same darn thing. What kind of person would do what this woman has done? And fool you so? I guess individuals who appear to others to have genuine sentiments, and often function in the real world as average human beings. Ruth seemed warm and caring, right?”

  “Well yes. She did. Or I wouldn’t have made friends with her in the first place.”

  “You know, honey, I think you were feeding Ruth’s ego, her appetite; r
eading her novel, giving her critiques—acting as a sounding board for her life dramas. She needed you in some way. She was using you but you were too kind to see it that way.”

  “I guess you have a point.”

  Jacqueline continued, “You know them big cats you see on the Discovery Channel? They’ll fine tune all kinds of crafty functions in order to stalk their prey, cut ‘em out of the herd, hone in and exhaust their kill, just like this lady Ruth has done. Like a predator. Am I not right? She’s like a hunter, hiding behind all kinds of elaborate camouflage to get what she wants.”

  Jacqueline was right. Ruth had a predatory hunger. Everything she craved was useful to her in some way; to have her needs met. If her needs weren’t met, she simply moved on. A Ruthless Predator. But a clever one. Ruth-Less.

  Jacqueline went on, “Like a big greedy cat, working on instinct, not on common values. She has no moral code.”

  To have her needs fulfilled, Sylvia thought. Those were Ruth’s words. Lies mixed with snippets of truth and “vulnerability,” blended together in a careful cocktail to gain whatever she set out to subjugate, to manipulate. Whatever, whomever, she marked out to become her prey.

  “How come you’re so wise, Jacqueline?”

  She laughed. “I’ve been around the block a few times.”

  Sylvia snapped her laptop shut. “Well thanks. Just talking to you has made me feel a lot better.”

  “Any time honey. If you need to call in the middle of the night, you just holler—I’ll be here. My phone is by my bed. Bye honey. You get some rest now, you hear?”

  But Sylvia didn’t feel better. She thought about the satisfied spider she’d been staring at earlier, feeling as if Grace were the unsuspecting fly, and she curled herself into a fetal position. She gulped great mounds of air in between her yowling sobs as she thought of poor little Gracie. Was her daughter aware, she wondered, of who this monster was?

  She knew that if Tommy did find Ruth . . .

  He’d be capable of killing her.

  And although Sylvia hated to admit it, she’d be cheering him on.

  CHAPTER 25

  Grace

  Grace was sitting cross-legged beneath a mango tree, facing the beach. The sun was turning as orange as the mangos, and Lucho was still surfing. Nobody was around. She was quite alone.

  She pressed down the pocket clip on her recording pen:

  “SHE’s been gone five days. Hooray! Now Lucho’s in charge. I heard her give him instructions about how to look after me, what I’m allowed or not allowed, and my bedtime. She went over the rules twenty times. She gave him money and promised extra if he did a good job. She said we’ll all meet up again in three weeks, when she’s better from her operation.

  I’m still not sure what a Devious Septum is, but she explained she’d need a vacation afterwards because her nose’ll be sore, and she also told me that she could do with ‘a break from being Mommy.’ My Real Mom never took a break but I guess Ruth doesn’t like being a mommy so much. Lucho’s doing a perfect job anyway. I don’t need HER. Things are fun now! Except I still feel sad about my Real Mom, about the car accident. Ruth said I’ll never see her again cos she’s died forever and she’ll never ever be coming back. So I might as well stop praying, she said, as I’m wasting my words and my tears.”

  Grace pressed the pocket clip up to stop the recording. Her nose felt all burny again, just thinking about her mom. She imagined that her bright yellow bear Hideous was Blueby, and mimed winding up the key on his bottom, listening to his imaginary tune. She sang in a croaky, teary voice, “And that’s the day that teddy-bears have their pic . . .nic.”

  She daydreamed about Heaven a lot. About how her mom was getting on there. And Mrs. Paws. She knew what Ruth had said—about animals not being allowed in Heaven—wasn’t true. She knew this because her Real Mom had told her that all animals went to Heaven. Guaranteed. No exceptions. She explained that some humans, if they’d been really bad, would have to wait their turn and come back to Earth for a second, or even a third go around, until they learned to be kind. But animals always had a place waiting for them, no matter what. Mrs. Paws would be there with her and they’d be able to cuddle.

  She wanted to ask Lucho what he thought of Heaven but it was too complicated to talk about in Spanish. Grace also got the feeling that Lucho felt as if he was already living in Heaven with his surfboard, anyway, so it was useless to discuss Heaven with him.

  Grace took a big breath and pressed the clip again. She wanted to tell her story, so when she saw her dad, he could hear all about it:

  “Five days ago, all three of us—me Ruth and Lucho—left El Salvador and came to a new country by different buses, and then a fishing boat. The buses took two days! We changed buses A LOT! And boy, was it a bumpy ride! And dusty. Our faces got real dirty. SHE was not happy at all, but she kept saying that we had no choice, that we had to take the camioneta. The journey was really long and, once, we slept on the bus overnight. But that was okay because I got to rest my head on Lucho’s shoulder. He always made sure I was comfortable and he called me Cariño. He’s so kind to me. He let me listen to his iPod, and when the bus stopped we went outside, and sometimes he guarded me and held his sarong around me while I did a pee behind a bush. He bought me little bunches of bananas from children selling really funny fruit.

  I saw bright green parrots and naughty monkeys with black arms and faces, the color of toffees. They were running about free on the roads. They came down from the trees and tried to steal the bananas from people’s carts! Little boys were chasing after them, shouting and waving their fists like they wanted to punch them. But there was no way—the monkeys were too fast! I didn’t know about wild monkeys, I’d only seen them at the zoo and on TV—so cool to see them running free.

  After we got off the last bus we got a taxi to a beach where we waited to find someone with a boat. But it started pouring with rain—crazy, crazy rain, so we hung out there for a whole day until the water was calm enough to leave. SHE was in such a bad mood. The Dragon Mood. Finally, a fisherman with just a few teeth said he’d take us in his little boat. It took a while to get it into the water. He put two small logs under the boat so it was resting on top of the logs like wheels. Then Lucho and him rolled the boat out. They had to stop a lot and kick the logs in the right place so it rolled out nicely. Otherwise, Lucho said, the boat was too heavy. It was small, and in the water it rocked about in the waves and we got really wet and cold. It was night and I was shivering and my teeth were clattering like a scary ghost, but I felt safe because Lucho held me in his arms and said, ‘Tranquila Cariño.’ So it was okay.

  The fisherman with two teeth dropped us off in a mangrove. I could count his teeth because Mama Ruth paid him lots and lots of money and he smiled. So funny! His whole mouth opened and I could see inside, right up to the top of his mouth. Oh yes, and I saw a seagull sitting on a turtle! The turtle was floating and the seagull was just hanging out using him like a raft!”

  Grace stopped the magic pen recording and looked around.

  The sky was now getting dark pink and was streaked with purple. There was the moon, too, not full the way it had been the week before, but like someone had taken a great bite out of it. Grace thought she could see the eyes and lips of the Man in the Moon but she wasn’t sure. She’d have to check with Lucho.

  She stood up and looked toward the ocean. She wondered when he’d be finished with his surfing. Usually Lucho surfed just mornings, but sometimes the swell was high later in the day, too. She didn’t like being alone, but he told her she wasn’t allowed to go in the big waves. And never when he was surfing. He warned her it was too dangerous for little girls. Besides, she nearly got bitten by a jellyfish and was too scared to go in alone. Sometimes she watched him. He stood on his board with his knees bent a little and went under the big curly wave and under the big, foamy, bubble of white. Each time, she wondered if the wave would eat him up but then he appeared again smiling. She wanted to be a surfer, t
oo. When she grew up.

  She remembered when they arrived, after the toothless fisherman had dropped them off five days ago, the bright moon glowed like a shiny quarter in the sky. She had never seen mangrove trees. They were half in the water, half on land, and they had roots like great eagles’ claws. Lucho explained that the trees in a mangrove ate and drank more and more water every day and, bit by bit, turned the water into land with their big claw roots that fed on a mixture of sweet and salty water. Monster trees that guzzled the water! Grace was sure she saw the legs of one tree move right in front of her nose like the trees in The Wizard of Oz.

  They all spent that night in a hut with a straw roof. Wild birds swooped about, high in the sky, and Grace could hear animals making noises in the black night. Spooky. Way better than Disneyland. Then, the next morning, very early, they all got into a taxi and drove. After about an hour, Ruth dropped them off, and she went on alone in the taxi. She was heading for the airport to go to Rio to have her Devious Septum operated on.

  Now, Grace thought, I have Lucho all to myself.

  She still couldn’t pronounce the name of the new country where they had arrived by fishing boat. Like the British word for panties: Knickers.

  Knickers and water.

  Knicker Agua.

  Her dad, she remembered, once told her a joke that went like this:

  Knock knock.

  Who’s there?

  Nicolas

  Nicolas who?