Neither John nor I was the kind of parent who constantly bragged about our child, or about anything concerning our life, for that matter. In some respects, I had become like John, infected with his quiet confidence. He always said, “We don’t have to talk about it. We do it. People who tell you how perfect their lives are suggest to me that they’re full of insecurity. They need you to say yes or tell them how much you envy them.”
It made sense to me. So much of what John said made sense to me. Living with him was truly a continual educational experience. I knew I should feel more grateful than I did, and maybe that was what had driven me to seek therapy, but even now, even after my sessions and medication, I was thinking there was something more, something we were missing. It hung out there like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, waiting for me to pluck it and be driven out of what I thought was paradise.
When I heard the front doorbell, I looked out, surprised that John’s parents had gotten here so quickly, but it wasn’t his parents. It was two other FBI agents to relieve Frommer and Dickinson. Agent Joseph was apparently around-the-clock. I went into the living room and was introduced to two young men, Agent Breck and Agent Little. Both Frommer and Dickinson wished us luck before they left. I understood that they would return in the morning.
I gazed around the living room. The agents would be sleeping on and off in there, I thought.
“I’ll go get some pillows and blankets.”
“Not necessary,” Agent Joseph said. “We’re fine. Lieutenant Abraham has a question for you both,” he added.
John was standing with his arms folded. He nodded and sat on the longer settee, indicating that I should sit beside him.
Lieutenant Abraham glanced at Agent Joseph and stepped toward us. “I had some time between things,” he began, “so I returned to the mall to speak with their security people. I’m just looking for something different, something out of the day-to-day, so to speak.”
“Then you’re still on this?” John asked quickly.
“Well, they’re in charge, but I’m doing what I can to assist.”
“So?”
It had been just as long a day for him as it had been for me, I thought, and he hadn’t been able to get through hours of it by taking tranquilizers and sleeping. His impatience and irritability were understandable. I could see everyone thought that, especially Lieutenant Abraham.
“Well, this is going to sound like a dumb question, maybe, but did—I mean, does your daughter still believe in Santa Claus?”
“Santa Claus? C’mon,” John said. “What does that have to do with any of this now?”
“No, I’m serious. It’s early in the holiday season. I don’t know of any stores that have already set up their Santas in the children’s departments or whatever. In another week or so, yes, but . . .”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, there was someone dressed as Santa in the mall today at the time your wife and daughter were there, but as far as we know, no store in the mall had a Santa.”
No one spoke.
John stared at him a moment. “Of course she believes in Santa Claus,” he said. “But we don’t threaten her with statements like ‘If you don’t behave, Santa will fly by the house’ or anything like that. I don’t call home and pretend to be Santa to ask if she’s been a very good girl. But we have presents around our tree, the stockings hanging on the fireplace mantel. Neither of us is like Maureen O’Hara in Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street. We both tell her Santa’s coming.” He smiled and looked at me. “Sometimes I don’t know if she is humoring us or we’re humoring her. Grace?”
“She believes in Santa,” I said. “And I haven’t done anything to dissuade her. I think there’s plenty of time to destroy childhood faith and illusions.”
Lieutenant Abraham smiled. “Well, as I said, I don’t know if it means anything yet. I have the mall security people on it.”
“But you should add that no one yet recalls seeing a little girl walk off through the mall with Santa Claus,” Agent Joseph added. He was obviously determined not to give us any false hope.
Lieutenant Abraham nodded but hung on to his theory. “That’s true, but I didn’t get to speak to many people about it. I‘m going to return to the mall tomorrow about the same time and reinterview some people, including the parking-lot staff.”
“Tomorrow?” I said. Hearing it said was like the sound of a bell marking someone’s passing.
Everyone paused to look at me. My face revealed my thoughts. This will still be going on tomorrow? It was as if the world had suddenly stopped turning. We were just playing a game of false hope. All the equipment, the trained agents, the Amber Alert, information at airports and entry points, none of it was moving us closer to an answer, bringing Mary back tonight.
When the doorbell sounded, I nearly jumped out of my skin, but it was a welcome interruption, John’s parents. They came bursting in, his mother embracing me, his father grim, shaking John’s hand and then hugging me. John’s father always hugged or kissed me quickly, as if he was afraid he would be caught doing something untoward. He had been in the banking business, an investment broker. John’s mother had been a bank teller, which was how they had met. She had stopped working when she became pregnant with John and had never gone back, whereas my mother had worked with my father in their business until he sold out and retired.
“Has anything new happened?” his mother immediately asked John. She was normally a perfectly put-together woman when she stepped out of her house, but I could see that she had barely taken time to brush her bluish-gray hair or put on much makeup. Both of John’s parents were about five feet ten inches tall and, from what I could tell, they took good care of their figures.
“No, Mom. We’re still waiting. Grace’s set up some coffee in the dining room. It’s better we stay out of everyone’s way.”
She nodded, reached for my hand, and walked with me to the dining room.
As if we were both teenagers sharing a secret, in a voice barely above a whisper, she leaned toward me and said, “Tell me how this all happened. You weren’t on any of your medication, were you?“
John heard her. “I told you. Mary was abducted in the mall. I didn’t say anything about Grace’s medication. She doesn’t take pills and drive with her daughter in her car,” he said sharply.
She turned back to him. “I didn’t mean—”
“We need to pray together and not rake over the details right now,” he said firmly. “It’s like tearing scabs off of fresh wounds.”
His mother nodded and reached for his hand, too. With our heads bowed, we all entered the dining room, John’s father trailing behind. In moments, I knew, it would take on the aura of a private chapel. We all faced the crucifix on the wall, but to me, Jesus looked deaf and blind. Does he really hear the prayers of the rich who would have a harder time entering heaven than a camel would have passing through the eye of a needle? I thought, but I prayed just as loudly. I would do anything to get Mary back.
My parents were far more emotional when they arrived. My mother looked as if she had been crying for most of the trip, and when she embraced me, she held on tightly until my father gently urged her back so he could also embrace me and kiss me. Unlike John’s parents, my parents looked their age and also looked as if they enjoyed their food. Both sets of parents immediately began to comfort each other more than us. Fortunately, my parents were very tired, and after a good hour or so of talk seasoned with frequent sobbing and then curses and rage, my mother agreed to go to sleep. My father tended to her. John’s parents stayed at our house until nearly one and then left. Except for a call John received from a friend at work who was checking to see if he was all right since he had left work so early and hadn’t called in, the phone didn’t ring all evening.
Now that it was late, a cemetery stillness had come over our home. Lights were dimmed. Darkn
ess seemed to crawl in under the doors, seeping in and around me like black smoke. I drifted in and out and finally, after John’s prodding, took another pill and went to sleep.
The moment I woke up, I asked John if there had been any calls. He was already up, dressed, and brushing his hair in the bathroom.
“No,” he said without turning to me. He finished his hair and stepped out. “As soon as you’re up and about, they want to meet with us.”
“Has something happened to her? It had nothing to do with any ransom, did it? Did they find her?”
“No, Grace. I would have woken you if anything like that had occurred. Take a shower and get dressed,” he said. He didn’t look tired and overwrought now. I didn’t know why it should, but it irked me. His strength and self-control were something I had come to despise. I had brought that up in therapy often, but it was especially true right now in light of my fragile hold on sanity. I knew I should be grateful to have someone this strong to lean on and depend on, but it had a different effect on me. My therapist agreed. It made me feel weaker, less competent, in fact worthless, especially now, when I was needed the most.
“I’ll be right there,” I told him, getting out of bed.
“Good,” he said. He stepped forward and embraced me, but it was his father’s sort of embrace, quick and with little warmth.
He does blame me, I thought. Despite his faith and belief that God knows and controls all things, he blames me. He would never say it, however. At that moment, I wished he would. That seemed to me to be more natural—even, ironically, more loving. I was no Abraham ready to sacrifice his Isaac, and deep down inside him, he was no Abraham, either, I thought or maybe hoped. But I knew in my heart that if this continued and was never resolved, I’d be the only one in the family who hated God.
5
Waiting and Praying
My parents had gotten up way ahead of both of us. My mother had sent my father out to buy some groceries. When I descended the stairs, I discovered that she had already prepared some breakfast for everyone, one of her elaborate breakfasts with a choice of omelets, bacon, and sausages. I knew she was trying to be helpful, but I also knew she was showing me that work would hold us together. “Keep busy” was the message in her eyes. John’s parents arrived, and his mother pitched in, too. When I refused to eat much, John’s mother, as John had done, pointed out that this was not the time to get sick. Of course, my mother agreed. I ate mechanically, but I ate. It was as hard to swallow as it would be with a serious sore throat. All the while, I couldn’t take my eyes off Mary’s chair. No one dared sit in her place. It was as if they all could see her spirit still there.
Mom had prepared breakfast for the FBI agents, too, but they ate in a different room. I quickly understood that the morning meeting we were to have with them was when the second phase of the investigation would really begin. It was tantamount to assuming that there would be no ransom call, no hope of a quick return. Although Agent Joseph assured me that kidnappers looking for ransom could and did call after twenty-four hours, I could sense that he was leaning toward the same theory that Lieutenant Abraham seemed to have developed immediately, maybe out of some better police instinct.
Whoever had taken Mary wasn’t interested in money—at least, not money from us. It was very possible that someone had taken her not for the money that they could gain but simply because they wanted her. If I was to believe this, which every part of me fought, I would have to believe that my precious little daughter was in the hands of a very disturbed individual. The damage on her emotionally or physically could be everlasting.
I sensed that whatever made a woman a mother, that essential part of her that only other mothers could understand, was in great distress within me. It was as if we had two hearts, one for the woman in us and one for the mother, and the mother’s heart was crumbling with every passing, horrible moment that Mary was not in my arms again.
The agents’ questions began. Many were similar to the ones Lieutenant Abraham had asked me at the mall, but I answered as quickly and as accurately as I could. A question about my medication was raised, but this time, as he had with his mother, John assured them that I wouldn’t have taken anything before I drove somewhere, especially with our daughter in the car.
Our parents were present for all of it. To me, they all looked like observers watching some reality show, probably trying desperately to believe that this wasn’t really happening to us. Occasionally, my mother added to something I said, but nothing she said seemed to make any difference, and she could see that John wasn’t happy about any interruptions.
Earlier, John had called his boss to tell him what had happened. The story was public now anyway. The FBI had put Mary’s picture in the newspapers and on television and had released the details of the abduction. John asked that no one at his office call to see what was going on, but it was clear that what had happened would spread quickly, probably even before people saw the newspapers and television. The husband of one of my friends, Sandra Johnson, worked with John. I was sure that by now, he had called his wife and she was phoning my other girlfriends with the terrible news.
I could almost feel the web being woven around our home, our little world of friends outside closing in with their expressions of sympathy and hope, their offers to help in any way, and, finally, their mournful, fatalistic expression of defeat and never-ending sorrow.
Sometimes during the questioning that Agent Joseph and his team conducted, I began to feel like someone on a witness chair in court. I knew they were only trying to work through possibilities, demanding more exact answers about places we often went to, especially places I had gone with Mary. They wanted to know the names of as many people we had visited as possible. Often, they came back to me to ask about anyone who had come to our door to sell something, to preach something. I found the interrogation and gathering of information exhausting but welcomed any opportunity that kept me from crying. Talking seemed to be the only way right then. That and keeping busy in the kitchen with my mother and my mother-in-law.
Later, I learned that the FBI agents finally had gone over to Margaret Sullivan’s to speak with her. We were told that she was so overwrought that she said she couldn’t come right over to comfort and be with us. She told them she would make some food to bring over later. Flowers and baskets of fruit with messages of support and hope began to arrive almost every passing hour after the news became more widespread. It really began to feel like a wake.
Lieutenant Abraham called Agent Joseph late in the morning to say that he had not been able to make anything of the Santa Claus who had been seen in the mall. The few who remembered him during the possible time of Mary’s abduction clearly remembered him being alone. In fact, from what he could tell, the man wearing the Santa costume hadn’t even stopped in any store. None of the security personnel recalled anyone in a Santa Claus outfit driving in or out. It was as if his going through the mall was like taking a shortcut to somewhere. The whole thing hung out there like an anomaly no one could explain satisfactorily, perhaps as bizarre as the sighting of a possible flying saucer.
The remainder of the day went by without any call for ransom and with no new information. It was truly as if Mary had just disappeared from where she had stood outside the department store. As far as we knew, there hadn’t even been any credible possible sighting reports generated by the posting of her picture. Of course, the FBI agents kept assuring me that there would be, and that they would spend as much time as necessary chasing them down.
Margaret Sullivan finally came over just before dinner with one of her delicious pot roasts. She was a sixty-four-year-old woman with remarkably thick and rich red hair with just some slight graying at the roots. She kept her hair wrapped in a tight bun because she hated the idea of cutting it. Margaret was only an inch or so taller than I was, but she looked much taller because of how svelte she kept herself and, according to John, because she had perfec
t posture, giving her a strikingly stately appearance. That and her youthful emerald-green eyes and soft habitual smile won her admiring looks almost anywhere she went. People were always trying to introduce her to a rich widower, but she was too content with her widow’s life. Her husband had left her very comfortable. She enjoyed not having to compromise anything in order to find a new companion.
I knew she used babysitting Mary as her top excuse for turning down dinner invitations or other dates that men and would-be matchmakers proposed, but I also knew she really loved Mary, saw her as special, and enjoyed being with her.
When we all had first met, I thought John and Margaret wouldn’t get along and that he wouldn’t approve of her as a babysitter for Mary. Margaret was much more rigid when it came to her political beliefs. He liked to tell her that she was just to the right of Attila the Hun, but she was unflappable, and I think in the end, he respected her more for her self-confidence and the certainty with which she held her opinions. He always admired men or women who were like that, because he was, too.
The other thing that guaranteed her a seat at our table was her religious beliefs. She believed everything that John believed but was even more confident, if that was possible, that God had a role in anything and everything that happened on his prize creation, earth. John was willing to describe some of the biblical stories as metaphors, but Margaret was not. She was, as he would call her, a strict constitutionalist. She refused to accept evolution in any form, creative or not. She believed that Satan walked the earth and that the world was a constant battleground between God’s army and his. She could be quite vivid about it.
When I asked her why God would permit that if he could control everything, she replied that God wanted man, meaning man and woman, constantly tested.
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