Other People's Children

by R. J. Hoffmann

  The weight lifted from his legs, and another man, big as a tree, walked past. He also wore a ski mask, and a nightstick dangled from his hand. He stepped around Jon and went to turn on the TV. The room filled with the applause of a game show, and the man turned it up loud. He came back to where Jon lay and turned on the bathroom light. He turned it off. Finally, he looked down at Jon.

  “Mr. Durbin. My friend’s gonna take that tape off, and you’re gonna tell us where the baby is.”

  The other man ripped off the tape, and Jon gulped air. “My name’s not Durbin,” he said.

  “Put the tape back on,” the big man said. He picked up the UPS envelope from the floor and studied the label. “Your mail here says your name’s Durbin.”

  The big man knelt and handed the nightstick to the man on Jon’s chest. He grabbed hold of Jon’s arms. “Start with the knees.”

  The man on Jon’s chest turned around and sat back down. Jon saw the club flash through the air, and he heard his kneecap shatter, even before the pain exploded into his brain. Jon squeezed his eyes tight against the bright lights and sharp colors. He screamed into the tape. His back arched beneath the weight of the man. The pain was so complete that he only vaguely felt the club land on his other knee.

  The big man said, “Stop.”

  More applause from the studio audience. Jon screamed into the tape.

  The two men waited. They may have waited an hour, but it might have been just a few minutes. The pain from Jon’s knees made it hard to measure time or even think. Slowly, his screams became moans and then whimpers.

  The host on the game show shouted, “COME ON DOWN!”

  “Mr. Durbin.”

  Jon opened his eyes and found the big man’s face looming over his. The man’s eyes were bloodshot. His breath stank like tuna. “I’m gonna take that tape off again, and you’re gonna tell me where the baby is. If you don’t, my friend’s gonna shove that nightstick up your ass.”

  Jon’s eyes grew wide. The big man grinned through the mask. When the tape was peeled away, Jon thought about screaming, but nobody would hear him, and that nightstick would shut him up quick. The pain surged. The nightstick tapped the carpet next to Jon’s shoulder. Jon’s mind crackled and fizzed, and he couldn’t manufacture a lie or even a reason to hold back the truth.

  “I don’t know where they went,” he rasped. “They were gone when I came back.”

  The man looked at his partner for a long moment and then back down at Jon. He put the tape back over Jon’s mouth. “Let’s tape his wrists,” he said wearily. “I kinda hoped we were going to do this the easy way.”

  Carli

  Paige’s town house wasn’t at all like Carli expected. She thought it would be cluttered with afghans and throw pillows and framed needlepoint of inspirational quotes. Instead, she found sharp angles and clean surfaces and stainless steel. All the furniture sat low, made of metal frames and black leather. All the pictures on the wall were black-and-white photos, mostly of Paige’s daughter.

  Paige cooked potpies for dinner, and they ate together perched on stools at the black granite island. Carli could only manage the crusts and a few chunks of turkey. And she couldn’t take her eyes off the pictures. They were scattered throughout the kitchen. Pictures of the girl as a baby and as a child and as a teenager and as a young woman. Carli struggled to connect that girl with the heavy, gray-haired woman hunched over her potpie. The girl was tall and skinny, and her hair fell dark and long. But her eyes shone in that same way as Paige’s, and her lips rested in the same soft, gentle curve.

  “Her name’s Maggie,” Paige said. “She’s away at school. You’ll be sleeping in her room.”

  “She’s your daughter?” Carli asked.

  Paige looked at the picture that Carli had been studying—Maggie at a beach as a toddler, sitting in a bucket. The corner of Paige’s mouth curled. “She is. I don’t usually tell clients, because that conversation can get a little bit complicated.”

  “How’s that?”

  Paige looked back at Carli. “Well, first off, I never married.”

  “Is she adopted?”

  For a moment Paige said nothing, and Carli could see her struggling with how much to tell. “She was supposed to be adopted.” Paige said. “I was just a little bit older than you when I got pregnant. My mom wasn’t much like yours. She didn’t say many words after I told her. She bought me a bus ticket from Des Moines to Chicago so that I could stay with my aunt while I was pregnant. So that nobody would know.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  Paige shook her head. “I don’t mind. It’s my story. My mom had it all arranged with my aunt and the agency and even bought me a return bus ticket for after.”

  “But you kept her.”

  Paige nodded. “I did.”

  Carli pushed the potpie around on her plate with her fork. She could feel Paige’s eyes on her. “How did you decide?”

  Paige didn’t answer for a long time, and Carli started to wonder if she would.

  “I don’t know,” Paige finally said, her voice a whisper. “It just felt right to me. It was hard those first years. My aunt helped us some, but she didn’t have much herself. I never talked to my mom again. She died when Maggie was nine. It was really, really hard.”

  “But it turned out OK,” Carli said.

  Paige nodded. She looked back up at the bucket. “It turned out wonderful. But it could have all gone to shit. I’ve seen things go really bad for girls who made the same choice that I did.”

  Paige stood and scraped what was left of her dinner into the sink. “I guess that’s why I do what I do,” she said, her back to Carli. “So that girls like us have a choice.”

  Larry

  “He doesn’t fucking know,” Kurt said.

  He stood over Durbin, his mask on, his fists opening and closing, his shoulders slumped. Durbin lay on the floor next to the bed, his hands still duct-taped, one of his legs bent in a way that legs aren’t supposed to bend, his eyes swollen almost shut. His moans leaked through the tape across his mouth but were only audible when Family Feud cut to a commercial break. Kurt was right, of course. Larry had come to the same conclusion half an hour ago. The dude totally expected his wife and the kid to be waiting for him when he got back from the UPS Store. If he’d known where they were, he would have told them after thirty minutes with Kurt, never mind an hour. The last half hour of pain was pure payment. Marla wouldn’t pay them unless they found the baby, so they charged Durbin for their time and trouble.

  “Let’s clean up,” Larry said.

  He went into the bathroom and soaked two rags with warm water. He handed one to Kurt. “Wipe down anything you might have touched.”

  They cleaned the doorknobs, the TV, the light switches, the table. They wiped the FedEx envelope and the duct tape around Durbin’s wrists and across his mouth. Larry even rubbed down the flush handle on the toilet, because Kurt took a piss while he rested between beatings. When they finished, Larry tucked the rags into his bag, and then stood over Durbin. He had stopped moaning, and his eyes had rolled back in his head. Larry pulled out his phone and took a picture of him, making sure to include the broken leg. He sent the picture to Marla.

  fucker doesn’t know where the baby is

  “What’re you doing?” Kurt asked.

  “Letting her know we did this right. I don’t wanna listen to her shit when we get back.”

  Larry surveyed the room one last time to make sure that they hadn’t left anything. Just before he opened the door, he heard somebody in the hallway. He waited until the noise settled. He put his ear to the door to be sure. He heard wood splinter just before the door exploded into the side of his skull.

  When Larry came to, he was facedown on the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back. They had pulled the mask from his head. A knee pressed between his shoulder blades.

  “Where’s the baby?” the cop on top of him demanded.

  Great fucking question. Larry answered wi
th a question of his own. “What baby?”

  Carli

  After dinner, Paige settled into a low-slung chair in the den and opened a book on her lap. Carli went into Maggie’s room and dropped the first of her garbage bags on the bed. She tried to avoid looking at the posters of New Edition and the photos of Maggie and her friends tacked up on the bulletin boards. She opened the closet and found it filled mostly with empty hangers, but there were still a few outfits. She wandered back into the den. She turned on the TV and sat down on the sofa. She turned down the volume so that she didn’t bother Paige and clicked through channel after channel of baseball games and cooking shows and Kardashians and news anchors and countless other things that didn’t have anything to do with her. She turned off the TV and wandered back into the bedroom. She pulled her jeans from the bag, folded them, and started to stack them into the top drawer of the dresser. But halfway through, she decided she should hang them instead. She threw them onto the bed and wandered back into the den. She sat on the couch and turned the TV back on. Paige closed her book, and Carli could feel Paige’s eyes on her as she clicked through channel after channel.

  “What are you thinking about?” Paige asked gently.

  Carli clicked past cartoons and Spider-Man and an old Seinfeld episode. What was she thinking about? She was thinking about school and about work and about where she would sleep in a week or two. Weather forecast, soccer game, Law & Order. She was wondering how many miles to Winnipeg and what Jon looked like without hair and how Gail could do this. Music video, car chase, stock market charts. She was thinking about the creases in Agent Bradford’s suit pants and the wrinkles around Marla’s mouth and the folds in that pink blanket that she’d glimpsed for too little time. GEICO commercial, The Sound of Music, bowling-alley scene from The Big Lebowski. She was thinking about that little girl in the bucket and Maya’s nose and Paige on a bus from Des Moines. She was thinking about everything. The past and the future and what might have been and what was inevitable were all sliced up and mixed together like a kaleidoscope. She was thinking about everything at once, but she could only smell vanilla cream soda.

  “Nothing, really,” Carli finally said.

  Her phone vibrated on the coffee table, and she leaned forward to look at it. Same number as earlier. Bradford.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Ms. Brennan. There have been some developments.”

  More developments. “Did you find her?”

  A breath of silence. “No. We found Jon, but not Gail or the baby.”

  Carli leaned forward, stared at the carpet, squeezed the empty place closed. “Did he say where they went?”

  “He’s not saying much of anything right now. Seems he was beaten pretty badly.”

  Beaten? “What? By who?”

  A long pause this time. “We’re still trying to sort that out.”

  “Did he… was it Gail?”

  Bradford coughed into the phone, but it might have been a laugh. “No. The police have two men in custody. It wasn’t Mrs. Durbin.”

  “But… Maya?”

  “We still don’t know where she is. When I learn more, I’ll call you right away.”

  Carli hung up the phone. She turned off the TV and stared at the blank screen. Somebody beat Jon. Gail was gone. Maya was gone. What the hell was going on?

  “Who was that?” Paige asked from the corner.

  “Agent Bradford.”

  “What did he say?”

  Carli tried to piece together everything that Bradford said and what he didn’t say, but only one fact loomed large enough to settle into words. “They haven’t found Maya yet.”

  Gail

  Gail drove the speed limit, because if she got pulled over, and they ran the plates, things would get even more complicated than they already were. Once it got dark, the tears made it harder to see the road. Gail cried without making a sound, just tears trickling down her cheeks, over her chin, down her throat, to her chest. They smeared the bloody taillights in front of her, and they splintered the headlights in the mirror.

  Maya had slept for most of the ride so far, opening space for Gail to think about Jon. She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t risk the time it would take, and she wasn’t sure what she would have written, anyway. He must be out of his mind by now. She’d send him an email when she got home. She’d have most of the night to compose it in her head, while she drove and cried. She would ask him to forgive her. She wasn’t sure that he’d be able to. Hell, she wasn’t sure that she could forgive herself.

  The tears were for Jon and for Maya and for Carli, but she also mourned what was supposed to be. She’d known since that first pregnancy what her life would look like. She thought that if she planned well enough and made the right lists and completed the items on those lists, that she could grind her life into the shape that she had grown to expect. She had let those expectations harden until there was no bend left in them. Brittle blades break so easily.

  Maya started to cry, and the stink from the back seat told Gail the reason, so she took the next exit and pulled into a truck stop. She wiped her face dry and forced a pause to the tears even as Maya took up the slack with her own. When she walked from the car to the truck stop, the wind was cold but lacked the bite from earlier in the day. While she changed Maya, she didn’t let her eyes land on Maya’s face, and she didn’t allow herself to tickle Maya’s feet or make funny faces. Gail just let her cry. When she carried her back to the car, she held her low across her belly so that her nose wouldn’t brush against that hair, so that she wouldn’t be assaulted by the pears.

  As she slipped back into the driver’s seat and settled Maya onto her lap, the tears returned. She mixed a bottle and fed Maya while watching the headlights swim past on the interstate. She had finally decided in the hotel room, while Jon sat glued to his laptop, waiting for the package to arrive. She finally let herself feel the balance of it, and Maya felt lighter and lighter as Gail decided. She almost said something before Jon left the hotel room, but she knew that he wouldn’t be able to hear it, that he was past the point of reason. He wouldn’t be able to accept the truth that had become obvious to Gail: Maya wasn’t their baby.

  When Maya finished the bottle, Gail strapped her back into the car seat, careful to keep her nose clear, careful to keep her eyes on the buckles, away from that face. Back behind the wheel, she closed her eyes and breathed long and slow. She tested her voice, to make sure it still worked, and then she dialed Carli’s number.

  “Hello?” Carli’s voice grated rough, as if she’d been crying herself.

  “This is Gail.”

  “Gail?”

  Gail gripped the phone hard, squeezed her eyes tight and forced the words out. “I’m bringing Maya back.”

  Gail heard what sounded like choking and then a long silence. Only Carli’s heavy breathing told Gail she was still on the line. “You got my email?” Carli finally asked.

  “Yes,” Gail said, forcing her voice steady. “I got your email. We’ll be there around three in the morning. I’ll come by your house.”

  “I’m at Paige’s.”

  Gail thought to ask why, but it didn’t matter, and the tears were returning, so she pulled a scrap of paper and pen from her purse and wrote down the address.

  “Carli?” Gail whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  Gail wanted to tell her why and give reasons and make excuses, but those words wouldn’t come to her, and even if they did, she wouldn’t be able to get them out. “I’m sorry.”

  And then Gail broke down, sobbing into the phone. She cried so loud that Maya woke and joined her. She cried so hard that she almost didn’t hear Carli’s tiny voice just before she disconnected the call.

  “Me, too.”

  Gail put the phone down on the bench seat, closed her eyes, and leaned back into the headrest. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but Maya’s crying subsided before her own chest stopped heaving, before her own tears slowed to a trickle. All she c
ould hear were the cars on the expressway rushing to wherever they were going and the quiet whistle of the baby’s breathing. Gail wiped the streaks from her cheeks, and then started the car. Mercifully, the rumble of the muffler made it impossible to hear Carli’s baby sleep.

  Carli

  Paige brought two mugs of tea into the den and sat down next to Carli in front of the TV. Carli’s head felt too large, and her stomach twitched. Paige set the mug on the coffee table in front of her. Carli cycled through the channels. QVC. Bravo. Lifetime.

  “What time did she say?” Paige asked.

  “Three in the morning,” Carli said. “Why would she bring her here in the middle of the night? Why not just wait until tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Paige said. “I really don’t.”

  Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Survivor. Lost.

  “Waiting can be hard,” Paige said.

  Carli smiled despite herself. “No shit.”

  “That’s my job, really.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Helping people learn how to wait.”

  “And what do you tell them?”

  “I tell them to live their lives. If they focus all their energy on the waiting, they get all twisted up.”

  “Does it work?”

  Paige shrugged. “Often. For those who listen.”

  “Did Gail listen?”

  Paige choked on her tea. “Sorry. I should have known that you’d ask me that.” She shook her head. “No. Gail did not listen.”

  Carli tried to focus on Sesame Street. Big Bird was yakking to Mr. Snuffleupagus. A make-believe bird talking soundlessly to his make-believe friend. She tried to digest what Paige was suggesting. Live your life. What did that even mean for her anymore?