Heart Scars

by Jeanette Lukowski

  After I hung up the phone, I got so far as to get my coat on and have Tommy turn the TV off in the living room, before realizing that driving around would mean no one would be home if Allison decided to call or come home. Besides, Tommy was hungry. I needed to let him stay home, watch TV, and eat dinner.

  I couldn’t sit still, though. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t stop pacing. I couldn’t stop worrying and wondering where my daughter was. I was the one who had grown up in a horrible home, after all. I was the one who had been chased out of my home by my dad when I was seventeen, not her. I was the one who had kept the children safe from the drug-abusing man their father had become. What in the world did she need to escape from?

  At about 7:00 p.m., I realized it was time to call my mother.

  My mother was staying at my sister’s house in Chicago for the weekend, so I called her cell phone first. Getting the machine, I left some kind of message, then hung up to call my sister.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Hi, it’s Jeanette. I just wanted to let you and Mom know . . .” I began crying. “I just wanted to let you know that Allison has apparently run away.”

  My sister handed the phone over to my mother, and I had to say it a second time. We only talked for a few minutes, then my mother said she had to go.

  I wouldn’t find out until later that my sister spent the next several hours on the computer, researching all kinds of information about runaway teens, where and how to report a missing child, and other information that she shared with me each time we spoke again.

  8:00 p.m.

  I realized the police might issue an Amber Alert, which led me to think about the children’s dad. Was that the way a parent should find out something has happened to their child? Even though I was the constant parent in their lives, I was also the parent who was riddled with the conflicting feelings of guilt and responsibility. I had to let Frank know Allison had run away.

  Or was my desire to contact him a subconsciously spiteful act? I admit that the one thought motivating me that weekend was, He needs to see that his absence has hurt the kids in ways he’s never even considered! Selfish bastard. He needs to get his fucking head out of his ass and man up enough to be a father for their sakes. The jerk.

  Finding him was going to be difficult, though.

  For the past ten years, Frank had moved around a lot, partly because he just couldn’t stay put in any apartment for more than two years. That was how I spent the twelve years of our marriage. I had thought the moving would stop after we bought our first house, but I was wrong. When the year and a half marker popped up on his internal radar, he made plans to sell that beautiful house we had purchased as a builder’s model—and I had to either accept his decision, or get a divorce. Two years later, the same thing happened with our second house. But by then I was tired, had two babies to take care of, and had already seen the pattern of abuse repeating itself in our two-year-old son. My husband moved out alone.

  Frank also moved around so much to avoid paying bills, including child support. He would live with different people, in different places, and had no permanent address.

  While I’d never bothered to hunt him down for bill collectors or child support, because I didn’t want the children to witness any of his violent displays when angered, the love that we had shared long enough to create two lovely children compelled me to track him down. I called the mother of his best friend first. “Hi, Cathy. It’s Jeanette. I need to get hold of Frank, because Allison has run away. Do you have Stan’s number?” I asked stupidly.

  After Frank moved out of the house in 1997, I stopped communicating with Stan and his mom because I was afraid their allegiance to Frank would be used against me. Breaking that silence was a huge step for me, but it was also a huge risk. What if someone dared to accuse me of being a bad parent, and were to initiate steps to gain custody of the children because the eldest had run away? At the moment, I was only thinking about the shock Frank would experience seeing the Amber Alert scrolling across the bottom of the television screen. I wanted to give him the courtesy of not being blindsided like I had been.

  I didn’t want to be blamed for her running away.

  9:15 p.m.

  Allison finally called the house phone.

  “Where are you?” I asked frantically.

  “I don’t know,” she sadly replied.

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Just tell me—I’ll come get you,” I told her.

  “I can’t come home right now, Mom. They’re going to hurt you and Tommy if I do.”

  “Who? Who’s going to hurt us?”

  “I can’t tell you, Mommy.”

  “Yes, you can! No one’s going to hurt us, dear. I’ll make sure of that. Just come home. Or let me come and get you, please.”

  “I can’t right now . . .”

  The call lasted about forty-five minutes, but I made no headway with her. She wouldn’t let me get her, she wouldn’t tell me where she is, and she wouldn’t tell me what kind of trouble she was in to make her want to run away in the first place. While I was thrilled to finally hear her voice, I was also troubled by how tired, young, and vulnerable she sounded.

  At one point, in the background, I heard a man speaking what sounded like Spanish. It was almost like he was speaking to someone else, and had simply walked past my daughter, but it was something tangible I could hang on to.

  After she disconnected the call with a hurried, “I have to go, Mom. I love you!” I called Officer Clark.

  “She just called . . .” I said, my voice breaking. “We spoke for forty-five minutes . . . there was a Spanish speaking man in the background. That means she could be in Minneapolis, at the bus depot.”

  “Yes, we were thinking that too,” he replied.

  On my sister’s next phone call, I told her about Allison’s call and the Spanish-speaking man. She told me, “Well, there was a bus that left your town at about 3:30 p.m., and got into Minneapolis at about 9:00 p.m. Then there’s a connecting bus leaving Minneapolis at 10:00 p.m., arriving in Chicago at 5:45 a.m. tomorrow. Mom and I could just take a drive down there, to see who might be getting off the bus . . .”

  Finally, someone had a plan, and it didn’t require me leaving my house in case Allison called again.

  About midnight, I convinced Tommy to turn off the TV and go to bed.

  Once Tommy was settled, I checked in with Officer Clark again and told him of my sister’s plan.

  “When she gets to the bus station,” Officer Clark told me, “your sister needs to get the Chicago police involved. Tell her to give them the case number I wrote on the back of my card.”

  About 2:30 a.m., I finally crawled into bed and sent Allison one last text: “Still awake—and loving you, dear,” then collapsed onto the pillow.

  5:15 a.m.

  The next sound I heard was the in-bound text message alert ring from my cell phone. I bolted awake and reached for the cell phone on the nightstand.

  One New Message, it read.

  I slid the phone open, opened the text message, and saw that it was from my sister. She was at the bus station, had spoken to an officer there, and now wanted me to contact Officer Clark for something or other.

  I forced my body out of bed, walked out to the dark kitchen for a drink of water, and headed back toward the bedroom.

  Maybe I’ll just lie back down for a little bit, I thought. I only had three hours of sleep, and I was drained.

  My cell phone beeped again, waking me. The clock on my nightstand read 5:43 a.m.

  I picked up my cell phone and read the message.

  “Teal and black plaid hooded sweatshirt?” it read. It was from my sister.

  I couldn’t believe it. She’d really done it. My lovely, scared, fifteen-year-old daughter had really gotten on a bus Friday aftern
oon, and made it all of the way to Chicago. We had just bought that sweatshirt the weekend before.

  I sent a one-word reply to my sister’s cell phone: “Yep.”

  Tears began flowing down my face. “Holy shit,” I said out loud.

  “What?” asked Tommy, from behind me. I forgot that he had crawled into my bed instead of his own the night before.

  “Auntie Di just called—Allison’s there. She’s safe now,” I told him.

  I was thrilled that Allison had been located, but couldn’t get over the shock of what she had actually done. Now, to find out why she did it.

  My cell phone received another in-bound text message, this time from Allison. It read simply, “I hate you!”

  More tears. My daughter hated me, but she was alive and safe.

  Five minutes later, my sister called. “The police have taken her into custody—and taken her phone away,” she said. “I don’t think she had any time to tell anyone that she was caught, because she’s just gotten a text message back from Hailey, asking ‘What?’”

  “Well, she sent one off to me, saying that she hates me,” I replied.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. She doesn’t mean it. She’s just angry because you’ve stopped her” my sister said. I know Allison didn’t mean it, but it still hurt.

  “Mom and I are going to stay with her the best we can, but you need to get out here as soon as possible,” my sister continued.

  Thirty minutes later, I had booked plane tickets for the trip. I would be flying round-trip, while Tommy would fly to Chicago and drive back to Minnesota with my mother, so I could fly back with Allison and have time to focus on her. While I had hoped that the airline would let the children share each respective half of a round-trip ticket, saving me the difference between two one-way tickets, my hopes were quickly dashed. “Is this flight connected to a death?” the ticketing agent asked me over the phone.

  “No, I’m picking up my runaway child, and bringing her back home,” I answered.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” came the response. Sorry that I have a runaway daughter, or sorry that there’s nothing she can do about the tickets? I got the cheaper, round-trip fair, but I had to purchase each of my children the more expensive, one-way tickets.

  By 10:00 a.m., Tommy and I were waiting at the airport to catch a flight to Chicago and meet up with Allison. Between the time she got off the bus at 5:45 a.m. and this moment, I had been on the telephone with my sister, had a lengthy visit from another local police officer, Vic Richards, and received a call about my ex-husband.

  2. Frank

  With shaking hands, I punched Stan’s phone number into my cell phone.

  “Hey, Stan, it’s Jeanette. I need to find Frank—Allison’s missing.” I managed to stay strong for this call, as opposed to when I had to tell my mother and sister fifteen minutes earlier. Was that because I had already said the words once? Or because I felt the need to stay strong and in control when dealing with Frank? Although I was willing to accept blame in my role of the parent when I was talking to my mother, my sister, or even Stan’s mom, there was no way I was going to take any blame from Frank, the poster-child for all deadbeat dads.

  Stan wanted more information, of course, but I really was not in the mood. I wanted Frank to hear the details from me, and I was afraid to break down in tears again if I told the full story. I had to remain strong if I was going to get Allison back.

  * * *

  I didn’t hear back from either Frank or Stan until the next morning, after Allison had been rescued by the Chicago police. Tommy and I were waiting to board the plane. “I got word to Frank,” Stan said. “What’s going on?”

  Surrounded by strangers in an airport boarding area, it was difficult to explain in detail. I said, “She’s okay—she’s in Chicago. Tommy and I are at the airport right now, waiting for our flight to leave. Have Frank meet me at the airport in Chicago when we land.”

  “Where’s Allison?” Stan asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but my mom and sister are with her now. I’ll know by the time I land in Chicago. This is Frank’s pivotal moment,” I continued. “If he’s going to be involved in her life going forward, he needs to meet me at the airport.”

  I guess I was acting like I believed the statistics about children from divorce. Frank had been absent from Allison and Tommy’s lives since they were three and two years old, and the explanation that made sense to me was that Allison was running away to replace her absent father figure. Just as psychiatrists and psychologists suggest that failed suicide attempts or other self-destructive behaviors such as cutting are pleas for attention, the logical side of my brain hung onto the possibility that Allison was running away to see who loved her and who didn’t. Stan agreed with me that Frank needed to step up to the plate. He also said he would pass that along to Frank. When Stan began asking other catch-up questions—how was Tommy, how were the kids doing in school—I told him the plane was beginning to board. Before hanging up, I told Stan I would call again, when we changed planes in Minneapolis.

  By the time Tommy and I arrived in Minneapolis, there were a number of messages waiting on my cell phone’s voice mail: Officer Richards, with more questions about Allison’s actions; Diane, with insurance questions for the hospital where Allison was being examined; Stan; Frank. All these questions, and I had no answers. Thank goodness Officer Richards’s tone was soothing. I wished he could wrap me up in his arms and hold me.

  I listened to Stan’s and Frank’s attacks on the cell phone as long as I could, and then turned off my phone and slumped into one of the airport’s chairs. Tommy was chattering away about everything he saw in the terminal, but I couldn’t muster more than an “Uh-huh?” or “Oh, really?” I felt numb.

  Tommy and I were at the airport, heading to another state, to pick up our teen runaway. I was tired but couldn’t help noticing the flurry of activity around us. Some people were dressed in business clothes, busy talking on their cell phones or working on their laptops. A few were dressed in military uniform, either heading out for or returning from a duty station. There were the harried parents trying to keep their young children quietly entertained during all of the wait time, and the employees who work the concession stands or clean the bathrooms that we crowd into with our luggage. I finally realized that not everyone at an airport was happy to be there. While the airplane personnel politely wished us a “good day,” they had no idea how difficult it was for me to be polite in return. When my cell phone rang, waiting with Tommy for his super-expensive airport fast food, the employee behind the counter had no idea it was an emergency call I had to take.

  But the hardest thing for me was to be patient with Tommy. He was so excited—his only other airplane ride had been two years earlier—and this trip included rides on two different-sized planes. I let him have the window seat on both flights, because all I wanted to do was sleep. Normally, I love to people watch at the airport. This Saturday, my thoughts were more self-centered. Were strangers looking at me and thinking I was a bad parent because I didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to my son?

  * * *

  When we arrived at the airport in Chicago, Tommy and I looked for Frank. “I don’t think I’m going to recognize him,” Tommy admitted. I knew how Tommy felt. None of us had seen Frank in about three years. The other part of me, the part that still waffled back and forth between loving the man I had married and hating the monster he became, believed that I would never be able to forget what he looks like. After all, we were married for over twelve years; we had a lot of history. Like the time I was able to find him in the sea of military camouflage when Rolf and I drove out to meet him in Virginia, when we were dating in 1984. Or the time I was able to find Frank on another military base, when I drove to Oklahoma to meet him as his young bride in 1985. Or when I was able to find him even though his back was facing me in the airport in West G
ermany in 1986, when I was feeling jet-lagged and abandoned because I had already been waiting over an hour. I was able to spot Frank sitting on the bench in the hallway of the courtroom when he wanted to get the child support payments lowered in 2000, and I was able to pick him out of the crowd when the kids and I had met him for our first “supervised” visit at Brookfield Zoo in 2002. Although I hadn’t seen Frank since he yelled at me in Lincoln Park Zoo in 2005, I felt confident I would be able to spot him at Midway airport.

  Tommy and I exited the high-security area—but no Frank. “Maybe we should go to the baggage pick-up area,” I said to Tommy, even though we had no luggage.

  No Frank there either. In fact, I also didn’t see my mother, who was supposed to be picking us up to drive us to wherever Allison was being held. “Great! Where is everybody?” I said to Tommy.

  I pulled out my cell phone, but there were no messages.

  Rather than have a panic attack, I decided to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to be able to spring into action with a leaky bladder!

  As I left the airport bathroom, I spotted Frank. Tommy was standing to the immediate right of the bathroom entrance and Frank was about fifty yards past Tommy, with his back to us, buying a pack of gum from the vendor. I got my suitcase back from Tommy and told him I had spotted his father. Just then, Frank turned towards us.

  Wow, Frank looked different. The scary Frank who had inhabited my nightmares all of these years had been replaced by someone who looked much older than I did. Frank’s hair had turned so gray and had receded several inches back from his forehead. His face looked more wrinkled than I would expect at forty-five. His body looked puffy rather than overweight. Once I got beyond the shock of his appearance, I was left with a sense of peace: I was no longer afraid of Frank.

  “Hey there!” Frank said, as though we are meeting for some exotic, relaxing vacation in the tropics. “Want a piece of gum? I know this was always your favorite kind.” He extended his arm towards me, with the newly purchased pack of peppermint gum.