Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  Expecting to see—what? Her daughter walking in the rain?

  Leah returned to the apartment, thinking she’d heard the phone ring but the phone was not ringing. Another time, unable to stop herself she checked the rooms. This time looking more carefully through Marissa’s small closet, pushing aside Marissa’s neatly hung clothes. (Marissa had always been obsessively neat. Leah had not wished to wonder why.) Stared at Marissa’s shoes. Such small shoes! Trying to remember what Marissa had worn that morning . . . So many hours ago.

  Had she plaited Marissa’s hair that morning? She didn’t think she’d had time. Instead she had brushed it, lovingly. Maybe she was a little too vain of her beautiful daughter and now she was being punished . . . No, that was absurd. You are not punished for loving your child. She had brushed Marissa’s hair until it shone and she had fastened it with barrettes, mother-of-pearl butterflies.

  “Aren’t you pretty! Mommy’s little angel.”

  “Oh, Mommy. I am not.”

  Leah’s heart caught. She could not understand how the child’s father had abandoned them both. She was sick with guilt, it had to be her fault as a woman and a mother.

  She’d resisted an impulse to hug Marissa, though. At eleven, the girl was getting too old for spontaneous unexplained hugs from Mommy.

  Displays of emotion upset children, Leah had been warned. Of course, Leah hadn’t needed to be warned.

  Leah returned to the kitchen for another beer. Before dialing 911. Just a few swallows, she wouldn’t finish the entire can.

  She kept nothing stronger than beer in the apartment. That was a rule of her mature life.

  No hard liquor. No men overnight. No exposure to her daughter, the emotions Mommy sometimes felt.

  She knew: she would be blamed. For she was blameable.

  Latchkey child. Working mom.

  She’d have had to pay a sitter nearly as much as she made at the clinic as a medical assistant, after taxes. It was unfair, and it was impossible. She could not.

  Marissa was not so quick-witted as other children her age but she was not slow! She was in sixth grade, she had not fallen behind. Her tutor said she was “improving.” And her attitude was so hopeful. Your daughter tries so hard, Mrs. Ban try! Such a sweet, patient child.

  Unlike her mother, Leah thought. Who wasn’t sweet, and who had given up patience long ago.

  “I want to report a child missing . . .”

  She rehearsed the words, struck by their finality. She hoped her voice would not sound slurred.

  Where was Marissa? It was impossible to think she wasn’t somehow in the apartment. If Leah looked again . . .

  Marissa knew: to lock the front door behind her, and to bolt the safety latch when she was home alone. (Mommy and Marissa had practiced this maneuver many times.) Marissa knew: not to answer the door if anyone knocked, if Mommy was not home. Not to answer the telephone immediately but to let the answering machine click on, to hear if it was Mommy calling.

  Marissa knew: never let strangers approach her. No conversations with strangers. Never climb into vehicles with strangers or even with people she knew unless they were women, people Mommy knew or the mothers of classmates for instance.

  Above all Marissa knew: come home directly from school.

  Never enter any building, any house, except possibly the house of a classmate, a school friend . . . Even so, Mommy must be told about this beforehand.

  (Would Marissa remember? Could an eleven-year-old be trusted to remember so much?)

  Leah had totally forgotten; she’d intended to call Marissa’s teacher. From Miss Fletcher, Leah would learn the names of Marissa’s friends. This, the police would expect her to know. Yet she stood by the phone indecisively, wondering if she dared call the woman; for if she did, Miss Fletcher would know that something was wrong.

  The ache between Leah’s eyes had spread, her head was wracked with pain.

  Four-year-old Marissa would climb up onto the sofa beside Leah, and stroke her forehead to smooth out the “worry lines.” Wet kisses on Mommy’s forehead. “Kiss to make go away!”

  Mommy’s vanity had been somewhat wounded, that her child saw worry lines in her face. But she’d laughed, and invited more kisses. “All right, sweetie. Kiss-to-make-go-away.”

  It had become their ritual. A frown, a grimace, a mournful look—either Mommy or Marissa might demand, “Kiss-to-make-go-away.”

  Leah was paging through the telephone directory. Fletcher. There were more than a dozen Fletchers. None of the initials seemed quite right. Marissa’s teacher’s first name was—Eve? Eva?

  Leah dialed one of the numbers. A recording clicked on, a man’s voice.

  Another number, a man answered. Politely telling Leah no: there was no one named “Eve” or “Eva” at that number.

  This is hopeless, Leah thought.

  She should be calling ERs, medical centers, where a child might have been brought, struck by a vehicle for instance crossing a busy street . . .

  She fumbled for the can of beer. She would drink hurriedly now. Before the police arrived.

  Self-medicating a therapist had called it. Back in high school she’d begun. It was her secret from her family, they’d never known. Though her sister Avril had guessed. At first Leah had drunk with her friends, then she hadn’t needed her friends. It wasn’t for the elevated sensation, the buzz, it was to calm her nerves. To make her less anxious. Less disgusted with herself.

  I need to be beautiful. More beautiful.

  He’d said she was beautiful, many times. The man who was to be Marissa’s father. Leah was beautiful, he adored her.

  They were going to live in a seaside town somewhere in northern California, Oregon. It had been their fantasy. In the meantime he’d been a medical student, resentful of the pressure. She had taken the easier route, nursing school. But she’d dropped out when she became pregnant.

  Later he would say sure she was beautiful, but he did not love her.

  Love wears out. People move on.

  Still, there was Marissa. Out of their coupling, Marissa.

  Gladly would Leah give up the man, any man, so long as she had her daughter back.

  If she had not stopped on the way home from the clinic! If she had come directly home.

  She knew this: she would have to tell police where she had been, before returning home. Why she’d been unusually late. She would have to confess that, that she had been late. Her life would be turned inside-out like the pockets of an old pair of pants. All that was private, precious, rudely exposed.

  The single evening in weeks, months . . . She’d behaved out of character.

  But she’d stopped at the 7-Eleven, too. It was a busy place in the early evening. This wasn’t out of character, Leah frequently stopped at the convenience store which was two blocks from Briarcliff Apts. The Indian gentleman at the cash register would speak kindly of her to police officers. He would learn that her name was Leah Barnty and that her daughter was missing. He would learn that she lived close by, on 15th Street. He would learn that she was a single mother, she was not married. The numerous six-packs of Coors she bought had not been for a husband but for her.

  He’d seen her with Marissa, certainly. And so he would remember Marissa. Shy blond child whose hair was sometimes in plaits. He would pity Leah as he’d never had reason to pity her in the past, only just to admire her in his guarded way, the blond shining hair, the American-healthy good looks.

  Leah finished the beer, and disposed of the can in the waste basket beneath the sink. She thought of going outside and dumping all the cans into a trash can, for police would possibly search the house, but there was no time, she had delayed long enough waiting for Marissa to return and everything to be again as it had been. Thinking Why didn’t I get a cell phone for Marissa, why did I think the expense wasn’t worth it? She picked up the receiver, and dialed 911.

  Her voice was breathless as if she’d been running.

  “I want—I want—to report a c
hild missing.”

  LONE WOLVES

  I am meant for a special destiny. I am!

  He lived vividly inside his head. She lived vividly inside her head.

  He was a former idealist. She was an unblinking realist.

  He was thirty-one years old. She was thirteen.

  He was tall/lanky/ropey-muscled five feet ten inches (on his New York State driver’s license he’d indicated 5'11"), weighing one hundred fifty-five pounds. She was four feet eleven, eighty-three pounds.

  He thought well of himself, secretly. She thought very well of herself, not so secretly.

  He was a substitute math teacher/ “computer consultant” at Skatskill Day School. She was an eighth grader at Skatskill Day School.

  His official status at the school was part-time employee.

  Her official status at the school was full-tuition pupil, no exceptions.

  Part-time employee meant no medical/dental insurance coverage, less pay per hour than full-time employees, and no possibility of tenure. Full-tuition, no exceptions meant no scholarship aid or tuition deferral.

  He was a relatively new resident of Skatskill-on-Hudson, eight miles north of New York City. She was a longtime resident who’d come to live with her widowed grandmother when she was two years old, in 1992.

  To her, to his face, he was Mr. Zallman; otherwise, Mr. Z.

  To him, she had no clear identity. One of those Skatskill Day girls of varying ages (elementary grades through high school) to whom he gave computer instructions and provided personal assistance as requested.

  Even sixth grader Marissa Bantry with the long straight corn-tassel hair he would not recall, immediately.

  The kids he called them. In a voice that dragged with reluctant affection; or in a voice heavy with sarcasm. Those kids!

  Depending on the day, the week. Depending on his mood.

  Those others she called them in a voice quavering with scorn.

  They were an alien race. Even her small band of disciples she had to concede were losers.

  In his confidential file in the office of the principal of Skatskill Day it was noted Impressive credentials/recommendations, interacts well with brighter students. Inclined to impatience. Not a team player. Unusual sense of humor. (Abrasive?)

  In her confidential file (1998-present) in the principal’s office it was noted in reports by numerous parties Impressive background (maternal grandmother/legal guardian Mrs. A. Trahern, alumna/donor/trusteel emeritus), impressive I.Q. (measured 149, 161, 113, 159 ages 6, 9, 10, 12), flashes of brilliance, erratic academic performance, lonely child, gregarious child, interacts poorly with classmates, natural leader, antisocial tendencies, lively presence in class, disruptive presence in class, hyperactive, apathetic, talent for “fantasy,” poor communication skills, immature tendencies, verbalfluency, imagination stimulated by new projects, easily bored, sullen, mature for age, poor motor coordination skills, diagnosed Attention Deficit Syndrome age 5/prescribed Ritalin with good results/mixed results, diagnosed borderline dyslexic age 7, prescribed special tutoring with good results/mixed results, honor roll fifth grade, low grades/failed English seventh grade, suspended for one week Oct. 2002 “threatening” girl classmate, reinstated after three days/legal action brought against school by guardian/man-dated psychological counseling with good/mixed results. (On the outside of the folder, in the principal’s handwriting A challenge!)

  He was swarthy skinned, with an olive complexion. She had pale translucent skin.

  He was at the school Monday/Tuesday/Thursday unless he was subbing for another teacher which he did, on the average, perhaps once every five weeks. She was at the school five days a week, Skatskill Day was her turf!

  Hate/love she felt for Skatskill Day. Love/hate.

  (Often, as her teachers noted, she “disappeared” from classes and later “reappeared.” Sulky/arrogant with no explanation.)

  He was a lone wolf and yet: the great-grandson of immigrant German Jews who had come to the United States in the early 1900s. The grandson and son of partners at Cleary, McCorkle, Mace & Zallman, Wall Street brokers. She was the lone grandchild of New York State Supreme Court Justice Elias Trahern who had died before she was born and was of no more interest to her than the jut-jawed and bewigged General George Washington whose idealized image hung in the school rotunda.

  His skin was dotted with moles. Not disfiguring exactly but he’d see people staring at these moles as if waiting for them to move.

  Her skin was susceptible to angry-looking rashes. Nerve-rashes they’d been diagnosed, also caused by picking with her nails.

  He was beginning to lose his thick-rippled dark hair he had not realized he’d been vain about. Receding at the temples so he wore it straggling over his collar. Her hair exploded in faded-rust fuzz like dandelion seed around her pointy pinched face.

  He was Mikal. She was Jude.

  He’d been born Michael but there were so many damn Michaels!

  She’d been born Judith but—Judith! Enough to make you want to puke.

  Lone wolves who scorned the crowd. Natural aristocrats who had no use for money, or for family connections.

  He was estranged from the Zallmans. Mostly.

  She was estranged from the Traherns. Mostly.

  He had a quick engaging ironic laugh. She had a high-pitched nasal-sniggering laugh that surprised her suddenly, like a sneeze.

  His favored muttered epithet was What next? Her favored muttered epithet was Bor-ing!

  He knew: prepubescent/adolescent girls often have crushes on their male teachers. Yet somehow it never seemed very real to him, or very crucial. Mikal Zallman living in his own head.

  She detested boys her own age. And most men, any age.

  Making her disciples giggle and blush, at lunchtime flashing a paring knife in a swooping circular motion to indicate cas-tra-tion: know what that is? as certain eighth grade boys passed noisily by carrying cafeteria trays.

  Boys rarely saw her. She’d learned to go invisible like a playing card turned sideways.

  He lived—smugly, it seemed to some observers—inside an armor of irony. (Except when alone. Staring at images of famine, war, devastation he felt himself blinking hot tears from his eyes. He’d shocked himself and others crying uncontrollably at his father’s funeral in an Upper East Side synagogue the previous year.)

  She had not cried in approximately four years. Since she’d fallen from a bicycle and cut a gash in her right knee requiring nine stitches.

  He lived alone, in three sparely furnished rooms, in Riverview Heights, a condominium village on the Hudson River in North Tarrytown. She lived alone, except for the peripheral presence of her aging grandmother, in a few comfortably furnished rooms in the main wing of the Trahern estate at 83 Highgate Avenue; the rest of the thirty-room mansion had long been closed off for economy’s sake.

  He had no idea where she lived, as he had but the vaguest idea of who she was. She knew where he lived, it was three miles from 83 Highgate Avenue. She’d bicycled past Riverview Heights more than once.

  He drove a not-new metallic blue Honda CR-V, New York license TZ 6063. She knew he drove a not-new metallic blue Honda CR-V, New York license TZ 6063.

  Actually he didn’t always think so well of himself. Actually she didn’t always think so well of herself.

  He wished to think well of himself. He wished to think well of all of humanity. He did not want to think Homo sapiens is hopeless, let’s pull the plug. He wanted to think I can make a difference in others’ lives.

  He’d been an idealist who had burnt out, crashed ’in his late twenties. These were worthy cliches. These were cliches he had earned. He had taught in Manhattan, Bronx, and Yonkers public schools through his mid-and late twenties and after an interim of recovery he had returned to Columbia University to upgrade his credentials with a master’s degree in computer science and he had returned to teaching for his old idealism yet clung to him like lint on one of his worn-at-the-elbow sweaters, one thin
g he knew he would never emulate his father in the pursuit of money, here in Skatskill-on-Hudson where he knew no one he could work part-time mostly helping kids with computers and he would be respected here or in any case his privacy would be respected, he wasn’t an ambitious private school teacher, wasn’t angling for a permanent job, in a few years he’d move on but for the present time he was contentedly employed, he had freedom to feed my rat as he called it.

  Much of the time she did not think so well of herself. Secretly. Suicide fantasies are common to adolescents. Not a sign of mental illness so long as they remain fantasies.

  He’d had such fantasies, too. Well into his twenties, in fact. He’d outgrown them now. That was what feeding my rat had done for Mikal Zallman.

  Her suicide fantasies were cartoons, you could say. A plunge from the Tappan Zee Bridge/George Washington Bridge, footage on the 6 P.M. news. A blazing fireball on a rooftop. (Skatskill Day? It was the only roof she had access to.) If you swallowed like five, six Ecstasy pills your heart would explode (maybe). If you swallowed a dozen barbiturates you would fall asleep and then into a coma and never wake up (maybe). With drugs there was always the possibility of vomiting, waking up in an ER your stomach being pumped or waking up brain damaged. There were knives, razor blades. Bleeding into a bathtub, the warm water gushing.

  Eve of her thirteenth birthday and she’d been feeling shitty and her new friend/mentor the Master of Eyes (in Alaska, unless it was Antarctica) advised her why hate yourself Jude it’s bor-ing. Better to hate those others who surround.

  She never cried, though. Really really never cried.

  Like Jude O’s tear ducts are dried out. Cool!

  Ducts reminded her of pubes she had first encountered as a word in a chat room, she’d looked up in the dictionary seeing pubes was a nasty word for those nasty crinkly/kinky hairs that had started to sprout in a certain place, between her legs. And in her armpits where she refused to apply deodorant until Grandmother nagnagged.

  Grandmother Trahern was half blind but her sense of smell was acute. Grandmother Trahern was skilled at nagnagnagging, you might say it was the old woman’s predominant skill in the eighth decade of her life.