Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  Feral cats hide in the scrub brush behind the Dumpsters. Where it’s like a jungle, nobody ever goes.

  (Except Jude. To feed the feral cats she says are her Totem.)

  At the 7-Eleven Jude had us walk separate so we would not be seen walking together.

  Four girls together, somebody might notice.

  A girl by herself, or two girls, nobody would notice.

  Not that anybody was watching. We came by the back way.

  Some old long-ago time when servants lived down the hill. When they climbed the hill to the big houses on Highgate Avenue.

  Historic old Skatskill estate. That was where Jude lived with just her grandmother. On TV it would be shown. In the newspapers. In The New York Times it would be shown on the front page. The house would be called an eighteenth-century Dutch-American manor house. We never knew about that. We never saw the house from the front. We only just went into Jude’s room and a few other rooms. And there was the cellar.

  From Highgate Avenue you can’t see the Trahern house very well, there is a ten-foot stone wall surrounding it. This wall is old and crumbling but still you can’t see over it. But through the gate that’s wrought iron you can see if you look fast, while you’re driving by.

  Lots of people drive by now I guess.

  NO PARKING NO PARKING NO PARKING on Highgate. Skatskill does not welcome strangers except to shop.

  The Trahern estate it would be called. The property is eleven acres. But there is a shortcut from the rear. When we brought the Corn Maiden to the house, we came from the rear. Mostly the property is woods. Mostly it is wild, like a jungle. But there are old stone steps you can climb if you are careful. An old service road that’s grown over with brambles and blocked off at the bottom of the hill by a concrete slab but you can walk around the slab.

  This back way, nobody would guess. Three minutes’ walk from the mini-mall.

  Nobody would guess! The big old houses on Highgate, way up the hill, how the rear of their property slopes down to the state highway.

  Jude warned The Corn Maiden must be treated with reverence, respect, kindness, and firmness. The Corn Maiden must never guess the fate that will be hers.

  SUBURBAN SINGLE MOM, LATCHKEY DAUGHTER

  “Marissa”

  The first signal something was wrong, no lights in the apartment.

  The second, too quiet.

  “Marissa, honey . . .?”

  Already there was an edge to her voice. Already her chest felt as if an iron band was tightening around it.

  Stepped inside the darkened apartment. She would swear, no later than 8 P.M.

  In a dreamlike suspension of emotion shutting the door behind her, switching on a light. Aware of herself as one might see oneself on a video monitor behaving with conspicuous normality though the circumstances have shifted, and are not normal.

  A mother learns not to panic, not to betray weakness. Should a child be observing.

  “Marissa? Aren’t you . . . are you home?”

  If she’d been home, Marissa would have the lights on. Marissa would be doing her homework in the living room with the TV on, loud. Or the CD player on, loud. When she was home alone Marissa was made uneasy by quiet.

  Made her nervous she said. Made her think scary thoughts like about dying she said. Hear her own heartbeat she said.

  But the apartment was quiet. In the kitchen, quiet.

  Leah switched on more lights. She was still observing herself, she was still behaving calmly. Seeing, from the living room, down the hall to Marissa’s room that the door to that room was open, darkness inside.

  It was possible—it was! if only for a blurred desperate moment—to think that Marissa had fallen asleep on her bed, that was why . . . But Leah checked, there was no slender figure lying on the bed.

  No one in the bathroom. Door ajar, darkness inside.

  The apartment did not seem familiar somehow. As if furniture had been moved. (It had not, she would determine later.) It was chilly, drafty as if a window had been left open. (No window had been left open.)

  “Marissa? Marissa?”

  There was a tone of surprise and almost-exasperation in the mother’s voice. As if, if Marissa heard, she would know herself just mildly scolded.

  In the kitchen that was empty, Leah set the groceries down. On a counter. Wasn’t watching, the bag slumped slowly over. Scarcely saw, a container of yogurt fell out.

  Marissa’s favorite, strawberry.

  So quiet! The mother, beginning to shiver, understood why the daughter hated quiet.

  She was walking through the rooms, and would walk through the few rooms of the small first-floor apartment calling Marissa? Honey? in a thin rising voice like a wire pulled tight. She would lose track of time. She was the mother, she was responsible. For eleven years she had not lost her child, every mother’s terror of losing her child, an abrupt physical loss, a theft, a stealing-away, a forcible abduction.

  “No. She’s here. Somewhere . . .”

  Retracing her steps through the apartment. There were so few rooms for Marissa to be in! Again opening the bathroom door, wider. Opening a closet door. Closet doors. Stumbling against . . . Struck her shoulder on . . . Collided with Marissa’s desk chair, stinging her thigh. “Marissa? Are you hiding?”

  As if Marissa would be hiding. At such a time.

  Marissa was eleven years old. Marissa had not hidden from her mother to make Mommy seek her out giggling and squealing with excitement in a very long time.

  She would protest she was not a negligent mother.

  She was a working mother. A single mother. Her daughter’s father had disappeared from their lives, he paid neither alimony nor child support. How was it her fault, she had to work to support her daughter and herself, and her daughter required special education instruction and so she’d taken her out of public school and enrolled her at Skatskill Day . . .

  They would accuse her. In the tabloids they would crucify her.

  Dial 911 and your life is public fodder. Dial 911 and your life is not yours. Dial 911 and your life is forever changed.

  Suburban Single Mom. Latchkey Daughter.

  Eleven-Year-Old Missing, South Skatskill.

  She would protest it was not that way at all! It was not.

  Five days out of seven it was not.

  Only Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked late at the clinic. Only since Christmas had Marissa been coming home to an empty apartment.

  No. It was not ideal. And maybe she should have hired a sitter except . . .

  She would protest she had no choice but to work late, her shift had been changed. On Tuesdays/Thursdays she began at 10:30 A.M. and ended at 6:30 P.M. Those nights, she was home by 7:15 P.M., by 7:30 P.M. at the latest she was home. She would swear, she was! Most nights.

  How was it her fault, slow-moving traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge from Nyack then north on route 9 through Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, to the Skatskill town limits, and route 9 under repair. Traffic in pelting rain! Out of nowhere a cloudburst, rain! She had wanted to sob in frustration, in fury at what her life had become, blinding headlights in her eyes like laser rays piercing her brain.

  But usually she was home by 8 P.M. At the latest.

  ______

  Before dialing 911 she was trying to think: to calculate.

  Marissa would ordinarily be home by about 4 P.M. Her last class ended at 3:15 P.M. Marissa would walk home, five and a half suburban blocks, approximately a half mile, through (mostly) a residential neighborhood. (True, 15th Street was a busy street. But Marissa didn’t need to cross it.) And she would walk with school friends. (Would she?) Marissa didn’t take a school bus, there was no bus for private school children, and in any case Marissa lived near the school because Leah Bantry had moved to the Briarcliff Apts. in order to be near Skatskill Day.

  She would explain! In the interstices of emotion over her missing child she would explain.

  Possibly there had been something special after school that da
y, a sports event, choir practice, Marissa had forgotten to mention to Leah . . . Possibly Marissa had been invited home by a friend.

  In the apartment, standing beside the phone, as if waiting for the phone to ring, trying to think what it was she’d just been thinking. Like trying to grasp water with her fingers, trying to think . . .

  A friend! That was it.

  What were the names of girls in Marissa’s class . . .?

  Of course, Leah would telephone! She was shaky, and she was upset, but she would make these crucial calls before involving the police, she wasn’t a hysterical mother. She might call Leah’s teacher whose name she knew, and from her she would learn the names of other girls, she would call these numbers, she would soon locate Marissa, it would be all right. And the mother of Marissa’s friend would say apologetically, But I’d thought Marissa had asked you, could she stay for supper. I’m so very sorry! And Leah would say quickly laughing in relief, You know how children are, sometimes. Even the nice ones.

  Except: Marissa didn’t have many friends at the school.

  That had been a problem in the new, private school. In public school she’d had friends, but it wasn’t so easy at Skatskill Day where most students were privileged, well-to-do. Very privileged, and very well-to-do. And poor Marissa was so sweet, trusting and hopeful and easy to hurt if other girls chose to hurt her.

  Already in fifth grade it had begun, a perplexing girl-meanness.

  In sixth grade, it had become worse.

  “Why don’t they like me, Mommy?”

  “Why do they make fun of me, Mommy?”

  For in Skatskill if you lived down the hill from Highgate Avenue and/or east of Summit Street you were known to be working class. Marissa had asked what it meant? Didn’t everybody work? And what was a class was it like . . . a class in school? A classroom?)

  But Leah had to concede: even if Marissa had been invited home by an unknown school friend, she wouldn’t have stayed away so long.

  Not past 5 P.M. Not past dark.

  Not without calling Leah.

  “She isn’t the type of child to . . .”

  Leah checked the kitchen again. The sink was empty. No package of chicken cutlets defrosting.

  Tuesdays/Thursdays were Marissa’s evenings to start supper. Marissa loved to cook, Mommy and Marissa loved to cook together. Tonight they were having chicken jambalaya which was their favorite fun meal to prepare together. “Tomatoes, onions, peppers, cajun powder. Rice . . .”

  Leah spoke aloud. The silence was unnerving.

  If I’d come home directly. Tonight.

  The 7-Eleven out on the highway. That’s where she had stopped on the way home.

  Behind the counter, the middle-aged Indian gentleman with the wise sorrowful eyes would vouch for her. Leah was a frequent customer, he didn’t know her name but he seemed to like her.

  Dairy products, a box of tissues. Canned tomatoes. Two six-packs of beer, cold. For all he knew, Leah had a husband. He was the beer drinker, the husband.

  Leah saw that her hands were trembling. She needed a drink, to steady her hands.

  “Marissa!”

  She was thirty-four years old. Her daughter was eleven. So far as anyone in Leah’s family knew, including her parents, she had been “amicably divorced” for seven years. Her former husband, a medical school drop-out, had disappeared somewhere in Northern California; they had lived together in Berkeley, having met at the university in the early 1990s.

  Impossible to locate the former husband/father whose name was not Bantry.

  She would be asked about him, she knew. She would be asked about numerous things.

  She would explain: eleven is too old for day care. Eleven is fully capable of coming home alone . . . Eleven can be responsible for . . .

  At the refrigerator she fumbled for a can of beer. She opened it and drank thirstily. The liquid was freezing cold, her head began to ache immediately: an icy spot like a coin between her eyes. How can you! At a time like this! She didn’t want to panic and call 911 before she’d thought this through. Something was staring her in the face, some explanation, maybe?

  Distraught Single Mom. Modest Apartment.

  Missing Eleven-Year-Old. “Learning Disabilities.”

  Clumsily Leah retraced her steps through the apartment another time. She was looking for . . . Throwing more widely open those doors she’d already opened. Kneeling beside Marissa’s bed to peer beneath in a burst of desperate energy.

  And finding—what? A lone sock.

  As if Marissa would be hiding beneath a bed!

  Marissa who loved her mother, would never never wish to worry or upset or hurt her mother. Marissa who was young for her age, never rebellious, sulky. Marissa whose idea of badness was forgetting to make her bed in the morning. Leaving the bathroom mirror above the sink splattered with water.

  Marissa who’d asked Mommy, “Do I have a daddy somewhere like other girls, and he knows about me?”

  Marissa who’d asked, blinking back tears, “Why do they make fun of me, Mommy? Am I slow?”

  In public school classes had been too large, her teacher hadn’t had time or patience for Marissa. So Leah had enrolled her at Skatskill Day where classes were limited to fifteen students and Marissa would have special attention from her teacher and yet: still she was having trouble with arithmetic, she was teased, called “slow” . . . Laughed at even by girls she’d thought were her friends.

  “Maybe she’s run away.”

  Out of nowhere this thought struck Leah.

  Marissa had run away from Skatskill. From the life Mommy had worked so hard to provide for her.

  “That can’t be! Never.”

  Leah swallowed another mouthful of beer. Self-medicating, it was. Still her heart was beating in rapid thumps, then missing a beat. Hoped to God she would not faint . . .

  “Where? Where would Marissa go? Never.”

  Ridiculous to think that Marissa would run away!

  She was far too shy, passive. Far too uncertain of herself. Other children, particularly older children, intimidated her. Because Marissa was unusually attractive, a beautiful child with silky blond hair to her shoulders, brushed by her proud mother until it shone, sometimes braided by her mother into elaborate plaits, Marissa often drew unwanted attention; but Marissa had very little sense of herself and of how others regarded her.

  She had never ridden a bus alone. Never gone to a movie alone. Rarely entered any store alone, without Leah close by.

  Yet it was the first thing police would suspect, probably: Marissa had run away.

  “Maybe she’s next door. Visiting the neighbors.”

  Leah knew this was not likely. She and Marissa were on friendly terms with their neighbors but they never visited one another. It wasn’t that kind of apartment complex, there were few other children.

  Still, Leah would have to see. It was expected of a mother looking for her daughter, to check with neighbors.

  She spent some time then, ten or fifteen minutes, knocking on doors in the Briarcliff Apts. Smiling anxiously into strangers’ startled faces. Trying not to sound desperate, hysterical.

  “Excuse me . . .”

  A nightmare memory came to her, of a distraught young mother knocking on their door, years ago in Berkeley when she’d first moved in with her lover who would become Marissa’s father. They’d been interrupted at a meal, and Leah’s lover had answered the door, an edge of annoyance in his voice; and Leah had come up behind him, very young at the time, very blond and privileged, and she’d stared at a young Filipino woman blinking back tears as she’d asked them Have you seen my daughter . . . Leah could not remember anything more.

  Now it was Leah Bantry who was knocking on doors. Interrupting strangers at mealtime. Apologizing for disturbing them, asking in a tremulous voice Have you seen my daughter . . .

  In the barracks-like apartment complex into which Leah had moved for economy’s sake two years before, each apartment opened directly out onto
the rear of the building, into the parking area. This was a brightly lit paved area, purely functional, ugly. In the apartment complex there were no hallways. There were no interior stairs, no foyers. There were no meeting places for even casual exchanges. This was not an attractive condominium village overlooking the Hudson River but Briarcliff Apts, South Skatskill.

  Leah’s immediate neighbors were sympathetic and concerned, but could offer no help. They had not seen Marissa, and of course she hadn’t come to visit them. They promised Leah they would “keep an eye out” and suggested she call 911.

  Leah continued to knock on doors. A mechanism had been triggered in her brain, she could not stop until she had knocked on every door in the apartment complex. As she moved farther from her own first-floor apartment, she was met with less sympathy. One tenant shouted through the door to ask what she wanted. Another, a middle-aged man with a drinker’s flushed indignant face, interrupted her faltering query to say he hadn’t seen any children, he didn’t know any children, and he didn’t have time for any children.

  Leah returned to her apartment staggering, dazed. Saw with a thrill of alarm she’d left the door ajar. Every light in the apartment appeared to be on. Almost, she thought Marissa must be home now, in the kitchen.

  She hurried inside. “Marissa . . .?”

  Her voice was eager, piteous.

  The kitchen was empty of course. The apartment was empty.

  A new, wild idea: Leah returned outside, to the parking lot, to check her car which was parked a short distance away. She peered inside, though knowing it was locked and empty. Peered into the back seat.

  Am I going mad? What is happening to me . . .

  Still, she’d had to look. She had a powerful urge, too, to get into the car and drive along 15th Street to Skatskill Day School, and check out the building. Of course, it would be locked. The parking lot to the rear . . .

  She would drive on Van Buren. She would drive on Summit. She would drive along Skatskill’s small downtown of boutiques, novelty restaurants, high-priced antique and clothing stores. Out to the highway past gas stations, fast-food restaurants, mini-malls.