Janie Face to Face

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “It isn’t false. I do have two names.”

  Reeve put the phone on speaker, drove out of the parking garage, paid, and headed for the highway.

  “I want to get married under my legal name,” Janie was saying. “Because marriage has to be true all the way through. So here’s the plan.”

  Reeve loved that Janie would make the plans. She’d make a list, he’d follow it, that would be that. None of the boring discussion that had absorbed his sister Lizzie month after month. Like flowers. How much could you actually worry about flowers? You called the florist and they delivered, right?

  “When we get to that part of the ceremony where you say ‘I, Reeve, take you, Janie, for my wedded wife,’ ” Janie told him, “you will say ‘I, Reeve, take you, Jennie, for my wedded wife.’ ”

  Reeve didn’t drive off the road, but it was close.

  Wife?

  Wife?

  He, Reeve, was going to have a wife?

  That meant he would be a thing called a husband.

  A hideous drumming infected the wheels. He had drifted off the road onto the warning cuts in the pavement. He found his way back into the lane. “I don’t call you Jennie,” he said. “You’re Janie.”

  “It’s not that big of a change. Two letters.”

  “Is this just for the wedding vows or is this for good?” Reeve asked. “Am I marrying some stranger named Jennie?”

  “She is a stranger,” agreed Janie. “We both have to get to know her.”

  “I know how I’ll handle it,” said Reeve. “My brother, Todd, will be best man. Along with the ring, he can hold up a cue card. JENNIE, it’ll say, in capital letters. That will add a certain something to the wedding memories. Groom tries to think of bride’s name.”

  They were both laughing.

  Janie said, “You won’t have to remember long. In a minute, I’ll have turned into Mrs. Reeve Shields.”

  This was such a startling fact that for a while, neither of them could speak.

  Janie boarded the plane.

  She barely knew that there were other passengers, that the plane was full, that she had a middle seat. She watched the little video Reeve had forwarded and held it to her heart.

  Reeve loves me. She had always known that. She just hadn’t known how much he loved her.

  “At this time, please turn off all electronic devices,” said the flight attendant.

  Janie never thought of her beloved phone as an electronic device. She touched the tiny switch at the top and then she was no longer connected to Reeve.

  This is crazy! she thought. Why did I even get on the plane? Reeve wants me to live with him! He wants a wedding so soon there isn’t even time to arrange one! And I’m flying away?

  Janie groped for the seat belt release. She would get off. Everybody would understand.

  But the plane was already taxiing toward the runway.

  She had waited too long.

  When the plane took off, she stared down at a city she didn’t know. Somewhere down there, in the unknown city of Charlotte in the unknown state of North Carolina, she and Reeve Shields would start their married lives.

  Without access to her beloved electronic device, she had to resort to the pencil she found at the bottom of her purse. The only blank paper she had was the leftover piece of her ticket printout.

  Things to do, she wrote at the top.

  #1 Tell parents.

  A task with many subdivisions and pitfalls. Her flight would land at Kennedy. New Jersey and Connecticut were equidistant. If I’m getting married as Jennie Spring, she thought, I need to tell my Spring parents first.

  Donna loved texting and tweeting, so Janie knew that her parents had gone to a movie this afternoon and were firing up the grill tonight. Her plane would land at 6:01. She would call as soon as they touched the ground. She would take an airport bus to Jersey, where Jonathan and Donna would pick her up. By eight o’clock tonight, they’d know about the wedding.

  Janie did not have the faintest idea how they would react.

  Next, she would tell her other parents.

  Every time Janie dealt with one mother and father first, she dealt with the other mother and father second. The others always knew that they were second and it always hurt.

  How many blows could Miranda sustain without collapsing?

  Sarah-Charlotte and her roommate, Lauren, watched the video over and over.

  Lauren said, “She is the prettiest thing on earth and he is the most in love. Look at him! He’s such a puppy of a guy! You just want to cuddle him. The whole security line loves him too! I don’t think anybody is ever going to love me that much.”

  Sarah-Charlotte called Janie but the phone went to voice mail. She had to leave a message. “Love the video,” she said. “Love the future. Call me, Janie.”

  She was crushed. I’m the best friend and I find out along with the world? I didn’t even know she was still seeing Reeve. I thought she was in love with that Michael/Mick. I don’t even know what airport that video’s in.

  She texted Reeve. Congratulations. She wanted to add “How come Janie hasn’t called me?” but stopped herself.

  Reeve texted back immediately. Thx. She’s airborne. She’ll call u asap.

  Lauren swooned. “Not only is he adorable, he’s thoughtful! I want him too. How can we pry him away from Janie and have him for ourselves?”

  Stephen Spring was still sitting in front of his computer, trying to process the researcher’s request. Kathleen leaned over his shoulder and read the rest of the message out loud. “ ‘Would you consider having dinner with me while I am here in Boulder? I have found a clue to Hannah Javensen’s location and you and I can discuss it.’

  “A clue!” cried Kathleen. “That’s so exciting.”

  And so unlikely. Stephen had done his share of hunting for the kidnapper. Some grad student hired online to do preliminary interviews for the actual author (which was insulting; was it beneath Calvin Vinesett to meet the people he planned to make money off?) had found something Stephen hadn’t?

  Kathleen bumped into the computer desk, and little florets from the dried bouquet she had insisted on putting there showered the keyboard. “Let’s go, Stephen! Aren’t you dying of curiosity?”

  Stephen sometimes thought Kathleen dated him because she was still curious about Janie. He read on.

  Based on the fact that Mr. Javensen (aka Johnson) used a Boulder post office, I have been searching Boulder public records for some time now.

  Three women fit the profile of Hannah Javensen. All three live alone in the greater Boulder area. All three appear to be the right age—late forties or early fifties. All have unclear backgrounds.

  Three possible Hannahs. Here. In Boulder.

  He had always assumed that Hannah didn’t live here because it was so expensive. That she had traveled to the post office once a month. Certainly after Frank’s checks stopped coming, living here would have been very difficult.

  Now he pictured her, walking the same sidewalks he did, drinking coffee at the same coffee shop, sitting on the same bench in the same open-air mall, enjoying the same mountain views.

  He could imagine Hannah living a marginal existence. Renting under a roommate’s name. Living illegally in a warehouse, taking her baths in a sink. Getting paid cash. But such a person would not show up in public records.

  “I have to know who those three possible Hannahs are,” he said to Kathleen. “I think this is a scam to get me to an interview. But maybe not. If I lay eyes on Hannah, I’ll know. I’ve studied her high school photograph all these years. Jodie and I even went to New York City with that photograph, believing we could find her. I know Frank and Miranda pretty well too. And we have the picture the FBI artists came up with, aging her. We know what Hannah would look like in middle age. We’re going to get the names and addresses of the possible Hannahs and check them out.”

  We?

  Kathleen was so excited. She’d get to meet these possible Hannahs? The res
earcher was obviously brilliant, to have gotten information the FBI hadn’t found. Of course, the FBI didn’t have the little piece of news that Hannah had had a Boulder post office box all these years.

  Stephen paced. Kathleen loved when he paced. He was so adorable.

  What she really wanted to do with her life was teach skiing in the winter here in Colorado and guide kayak tours on the coast of Alaska in the summer. Once she’d suggested that to Stephen and he had just looked at her. “I’m an engineer. I don’t like tourists, and people who can’t ski will have to do it without me.”

  It was too bad. All his female clients would fall madly in love with him.

  Like me, she thought. And what good will it do them? He won’t notice.

  “You call the researcher, Kathleen,” he said. “I’m ready to meet the guy, but I’m not telling him anything. The goal is to learn everything he knows.”

  Kathleen called the number the researcher had given in his email. She made her own voice uncertain and girlish, although she despised women who were uncertain and girlish. “Hi, this is Kathleen Donnelly? And I’m Stephen Spring’s girlfriend?”

  The researcher’s voice was warm and friendly. “I’m delighted to hear from you.”

  “Well!” said Kathleen. “I am very, very intuitive. And Stephen needs to talk. It is not good for him to tamp down his emotional needs. Stephen is very, very, very tamped down. Let’s meet for dinner tonight. I happen to be broke, so you’ll be the host. I’ll tell a few teeny-weeny details that you can use to move Stephen into those painful spaces he’s protecting. Stephen is very, very walled up.”

  The researcher was thrilled. “That’s my skill,” he told her. “Convincing people to trust me.”

  When Kathleen disconnected, Stephen was staring at her.

  “He’s taking us to the Boulderado,” she said. “Tonight.”

  “Nice. Be sure to eat well. It sounds as if you can handle it without me.”

  “Oh, come on. Now he’ll underestimate us. Think of something you can tell him that will make him pliable, while I get dressed. The Boulderado is luxurious.” She was wearing hiking boots, camo pants, and an old sweatshirt. “I’m not sure I own a dress at all,” she told him, “never mind one I’d wear to the Boulderado. I don’t want to waste time going back to my own apartment, especially when I won’t find a dress there. Oh, this is such fun!”

  She ran down the hall of Stephen’s grad student housing and banged on a door. “Mandy! I’m desperate! I have to borrow some clothes!”

  “This isn’t a game!” Stephen yelled after her.

  When Reeve had called Janie Friday afternoon and insisted that she fly down for the weekend, he made it sound simple. But weekends were when games happened. He had been scheduled to work the entire weekend, day and evening.

  He had begged, pleaded, and offered trades, but everyone said no. By the time Janie’s plane was airborne, he hadn’t managed to get a single hour off. He had had to ask the boss.

  The office was informal. He didn’t even know his boss’s real first name. He went by the nickname Bick.

  “Janie?” said Bick, looking excited. “Janie Johnson is coming for the weekend? This is great. I can’t wait to meet the face on the milk carton.”

  Reeve was stunned. They knew the media story of his girlfriend? He knew he had never mentioned it. “She hates when that comes up. Please, whatever you do—”

  “Right. Absolutely. I won’t refer to it. But you know, I hired you because of the janies.”

  The janies.

  Reeve’s own boss—at his own job—in the town where he was bringing the real Janie—a thousand miles south of where he’d betrayed her—knew about the janies.

  Reeve had been eighteen and a total jerk. All he had cared about was getting a slot on a late-night talk show at his college radio station. Almost immediately, he ran out of things to say on the air. He stumbled and flubbed. A failure in five minutes. And then he remembered that he possessed a story he could tell forever.

  Janie’s.

  He had spun it out, ratcheted up the emotion, strung it along night after night. It gave him a weird celebrity. The radio station had little power. It reached a small urban audience. They were fascinated by the janie episodes. In no time, he had a following.

  It came to a halt when the living Janie, her sister, Jodie, and her brother Brian drove up to Boston to surprise him with a visit. It had never occurred to Reeve that Janie herself might ever be in his audience. Janie, Jodie, and Brian didn’t kill Reeve, but only because they had no weapons.

  The worst of it was, he had used her real name. Everybody who listened to those episodes referred to them as “the janies.”

  In Bick’s office, Reeve said thickly, “You hired me because of the janies?”

  “Yep. I was in Boston doing college basketball games and that night I heard a janie live, and a friend taped the rest for me because I had to head back down here. You were really good, Reeve.”

  “I shouldn’t have done them.”

  “No, but you did them so well. You built up an audience. That’s what we’re all about here. Audience. I was scrolling through the applicants for this job and recognized your name. I figured, a guy like that—worth interviewing.”

  Everybody always asked Reeve how he had landed this amazing job, since he did not have amazing credentials. Reeve had wondered too. Now he knew. He was surprised by how much it hurt.

  What if Janie found out that Reeve’s betrayal had won him this job? Did he have to tell her? Guess what, Janie? That problem back in Boston we never refer to because it’s so upsetting? That’s why I was hired. Out loud he said to Bick, “The janies are not a good part of my past. If you run into her, please don’t mention them.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, because she’d probably have to kill you. How come she didn’t kill you back then?”

  “She’s nice,” said Reeve.

  Bick grinned. “Have a good weekend. See you Monday morning.”

  Reeve had raced out of the building, driven fast to the bypass, and taken the speedy back entrance to the airport, substituting the demands of traffic for the shock of the janie problem. When he parked and got out of the car, he imagined Bick playing the janie tapes for Reeve’s colleagues.

  But when he put his arms around the real Janie, when they were laughing again in a minute, like old friends, when she kept leaning over to give him a kiss, and when he hugged her fiercely at every red light, he forgot.

  Now Reeve drove to Ballantyne, a massive planned area with handsome corporate buildings, sprawling golf courses, a resort, and attractively landscaped apartment complexes. Green grass surrounded tiny ponds and sidewalks curled around orderly trees, all planted the same day and, twenty years later, all the same height.

  Too bad he hadn’t planned that carefully.

  I will have to tell Janie that my voice on the radio didn’t go away, he thought. If I don’t, somebody else will. We’ll live right here. And this is a partying crowd. She’ll see those guys all the time.

  And when he told her, what if Janie decided not to marry him after all?

  His phone rang. It was his mother.

  Reeve loved his mother, but he liked to talk to her under controlled circumstances. This was not one. She always wanted his full attention, and at work, he could give outsiders only about 1 percent of his attention. He’d call her later.

  He waited a minute, and then listened to her message as he opened the car door.

  He had completely forgotten that he had attached the pictures and video and sent them to everybody. Including his mother.

  “Reeve darling,” said his mother, “of course I’ve always adored Janie. But you are far too young. Janie is much much much much too young! She needs to finish college and launch a career, and you’re working sixty-hour weeks and have a splendid career in front of you, and you cannot blockade whatever wonderful things come out of this ESPN job by getting married too young. Furthermore, you have no money.”


  Good to know he was launching a new life with that many problems and that little support.

  Reeve headed into his building. Along with catching up on the sports world, he had to arrange time off for the wedding. Most people went on honeymoons too. Where should he and Janie go? And how, precisely, would he pay for it?

  Reeve walked in the door and found chaos.

  Guys were shouting and laughing and stomping around. Sunday afternoons were busy because big games were scheduled then, but what was playing that would make everybody howl like this?

  “Shields!” bellowed one of the guys, holding up his cell phone. “Man! You’re only twenty-three! You don’t wanna get married now!”

  “But if you do get married now,” said another guy, “this is the one. She’s beautiful.” This in a voice of amazement, as if they had assumed that only a loser would want Reeve.

  Their boss raced up. “Lemme see this video!” shouted Bick.

  Again everybody watched Janie, her red hair everywhere, her eyes wide in amazement, holding out her arms, the passenger line parting, the crowd going wild and the kiss lasting forever.

  “Wow,” said Bick. “Gonna be two faces on this milk carton!”

  “No. Please,” said Reeve. “That’s history. I realize you all know about it, but Janie can’t handle it if you bring it up all the time. Or even once. You have to leave it alone. She’s just a girl named Janie, okay?” He corrected himself. “Jennie,” he said. “She wants to be Jennie now.”

  The married guys gave him tender looks, whatever that meant. The single guys shrugged and returned to sports topics.

  One of the job requirements here was “strong knowledge of college sports.” Reeve had been glued to television sports channels since he was a toddler. The rest of his family also loved sports, but their TV watching branched out into other things. His sister Lizzie, who had become a lawyer, preferred legal/police/forensic series. His mother liked food and house stuff, as if anybody cared how strangers fixed dinner.

  It occurred to Reeve that he and Janie had never sat in front of a television watching anything. Not football, not basketball, not extreme sports. Not even the weather. This whole weekend, they hadn’t turned on the television. Reeve grinned, remembering this weekend.