Riding Lessons Page 22

  "Annemarie, what is it? What's going on?" Dan's canned voice comes through the receiver, which is dangling free again, banging unchecked against the kitchen cupboard.

  For the second time today, the police are here. So is Dan, who showed up about ten minutes after the phone call. I think. I have no real memory of what happened between then and now.

  Again, I am ensconced in the winged chair, although I don't know how I got here. Dan is perched protectively on the arm. Mutti sits opposite me, pale and ghostlike. The finger that hovers at her lips trembles violently.

  The police have been through Eva's room, questioned me ad nauseum about our history--my marriage, her relationship with Roger, her relationship with me--have already gone to and returned from Luis's residence, called the homes of all of Dan's teenage volunteers. Eva is nowhere.

  Their attitude shifts visibly when I tell them about our argument last night, an attitude that cements when they discover her backpack missing. Suddenly they are in wrap-up mode, preparing to leave. This is absurd, so clearly wrong that I'm overcome by panic.

  "What are you doing? You can't just leave!" I say to the pale officer with the shark eyes. I'm standing in front of her, ready to grab her if she tries to go.

  "I know this is difficult," she says gently. "But there's nothing else we can do right now."

  "Like hell there isn't!" I spin around, gesturing wildly. "Tap the phone, leave someone here, put someone on surveillance at Luis's house. But Jesus Christ, do something!"

  The shark, calm and steady: "We've filled out a missing person report and we've sent out an APB. They're keeping an eye out for her at nearby bus and train stations, but with runaways, that's about all we can do. It's very hard to find someone who doesn't want to be found. We just have to hope that she eventually contacts you."

  "My daughter is missing--do you understand me? My daughter is missing."

  Dan puts an arm around my shoulders and tries to guide me to the couch. I shake him off, stumbling backward.

  The officer shifts so she's standing like Colossus. She's sensed a mother out of control, is standing in a way that's protective of her gun.

  "Mrs. Aldrich, I know this is very difficult, and I know how scared you are. If we had reason to believe she'd been taken against her will, then it would be a very different situation. But all evidence points to her running away."

  "So what? She's fifteen years old--fifteen years old! She doesn't know a damned thing. Anything could happen to her."

  Dan puts his hand on my shoulder.

  "I'm sorry. I really am," continues the officer. "Keep calling her friends, keep checking the stable. And if you hear anything, let us know right away."

  "Don't leave! Please don't leave!" I step forward and grab her by both arms. My face is slick with tears and mucous, my eyelids so puffy they frame my field of vision. "Please say you'll find her," I beg. "Please."

  "Annemarie," says Dan, stepping forward to help the officer extricate herself from my grasp. Why isn't he backing me up? Why isn't he blocking the door?

  He wraps his arms around me. I brace against his chest with the flat of both hands and try to shove him away. When that doesn't work, I pound him with my fists. "Don't leave. Please don't leave!" When the officer ignores me, I raise my face to Dan's, pleading. "Don't let them leave."

  Dan holds me tighter, a human straitjacket.

  "Do you have a family doctor?" I hear someone ask. Mutti mumbles in response, too low for me to hear. The other voice continues, "See if he'll come out and give her a sedative. She's going to need some help getting through the night."

  "I don't need a sedative. I need my daughter!" I scream, still struggling against Dan's solid frame.

  Some time later--an hour? Twenty minutes? I don't know--there's more activity. It seems the doctor has arrived. By now I'm quiet, curled up on the couch, leaning heavily against Dan.

  The doctor and my mother confer, whispering in the hallway. A moment later, Dan shifts, and I look up.

  The doctor is a man in his fifties, heavily jowled, multi-chinned. His flesh looks like a cadaver's, his figure ridiculous, as full-breasted as a pigeon.

  "Annemarie?" He sits beside me, speaking gently. "I'm going to give you something to help you sleep. Is that okay?"

  I sniff, and continue to stare at the doorframe.

  Dan shifts slightly again, and I feel the sleeve of my tee shirt being rolled up and out of the way. The coldness of alcohol, the prick of a needle, and then the pressure of a thumb.

  "Can you hold this?" the doctor says. Dan's hand moves down, replacing the doctor's. I hear the rip of paper, and then the release of pressure as a Band-Aid replaces Dan's thumb.

  "Can you help her to bed? She's going to be lightheaded. She'll need help."

  "Of course," says Dan, standing up.

  As his body disappears from beside me, I slump against the arm of the couch. A hand cups my elbow. Another surrounds my upper arm.

  "Come on, honey. Can you stand up?"

  I'm so tired--so very, very tired. What I'd really like to do is just go to sleep here, but Dan already has me on my feet.

  "Are you okay? Do you want me to carry you?"

  I shake my head, leaning heavily against him. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, he starts to turn, but I stop.

  "What's the matter? Do you want something?"

  "Mmmm," I say, unable to articulate. He lets me drag him to just inside the kitchen, where the calendar hangs on the wall. Then, with great difficulty, I pluck the black pen off its Velcro patch. With Dan now bearing almost all my weight, I pull the cap off with my teeth and meticulously fill in the square that represents today. A black gap, a checkerboard square, a hillbilly smile, where July 23 used to be.

  Soon I am swallowed by a dense, heavy blackness. It is unlike sleep, because it leaves no room for thoughts or dreams. There is just an all-encompassing void that expands outward, preventing thought and movement. Eva is there, but beyond my reach. Pappa is there, but I do not mourn. Hurrah is there, but I do not panic. They orbit my blackness like distant satellites.

  Soon, though, they start to return. As the Ativan wears off, the pain, grief, and loss slide slowly closer, until finally I can ignore them no more.

  My daughter is gone. My daughter--my only child--is out there somewhere, unprotected and naive. She could be cold. She could be hungry. She could be hurt, slumped against a concrete curb in a pool of murky sludge, sobbing for her mother.

  A vision of Eva hitchhiking flashes through my mind, and then a man--unshaven, leering, his hand roaming toward her thigh--and a panic wells up in me that leaves my heart pounding.

  Oh Eva--Eva! The thought of my little girl out there somewhere--without help, without money, without even the protection of good sense--makes me dizzy with terror. I moan her name, and then turn my face into the pillow, pressing it against my cheek.

  I lie like this for what seems like hours, although I can't say how long. The medication has dulled any real sense I have of time passing.

  An eerie silence permeates the entire house, broken only by the sound of birds chirping merrily from a tree just outside the window.

  Eventually, I hear the clicking of Harriet's nails as she comes up the stairs and approaches my room. There's a pause. In my mind's eye I see her lifting a chocolate brown paw to push the door open, and then there it is--the squeaking of the hinges. More clicking, and then another pause, and she leaps up, scrabbling with all four feet to gain a foothold on the quilt.

  I roll over, locate her rear end, and help her onto the bed. I have the sense that my brain continues to move after my head stops. I press my hand to my eyes. When my brain stops throbbing, I peer between spread fingers at the clock.

  I've been in bed for fourteen hours.

  Shocked, I jump up. As the bedclothes fall away, I note with dismay that I'm wearing just underwear and the same filthy tee-shirt I had on yesterday. I remember Dan helping me up the stairs, but everything after that is a bla
nk.

  I look up and catch sight of myself in the mirror above the dresser.

  I move in closer to get a better look. My hair is straggly and matted, a straw rat's nest tinted faintly pink at the front. My face is streaked with dirt, my eyes recessed in darkness. My fingernails, broken, encrusted with black. My teeth, at least, are perfect, but why wouldn't they be? They're porcelain. I chose them.

  I strip, curling my nose as my tee-shirt passes over my head. I sniff in the general direction of my armpits, and then sit on the edge of my bed. I've been up for three minutes, and already need to rest.

  After a moment, I rise again and move to the dresser. Slowly, I start working a brush through my hair, perversely enjoying when it catches on a tangle. I'm pondering this when a flash of movement outside the window catches my eye.

  I walk over, and then lean forward until my forehead rests against the cool glass.

  Dan appears from the door of the stable, pushing a wheelbarrow. Jean-Claude passes him going the other direction, hauling a bale of hay.

  The horses are out, including Hurrah, and the sight of his coat startles me. It all has the feel of a dream, somehow. I've still done nothing about getting him off the property, but that will have to wait. Even finding a lawyer for Mutti will have to wait, as will making arrangements for burying Pappa. Until I find Eva, nothing else matters.

  I have to do something. I can't just wait around hoping she'll call. If we were in Minneapolis, I'd at least know where to start, but here...What can I do? I can't just get in the van and start driving.

  I wrap myself in my dressing gown and step into the hallway, leaving my hand on the doorknob.

  Eva's room is in front of me, dark and cavernous. Through the partly open door, I see her things on the dresser--bottles of nail polish in blue, green, and gold; open lipsticks in meretricious reds; a half-finished glass of stale Coke, its rim imprinted with a greasy lower lip-print. A romance novel, resting open on splayed pages, all her stopping points marked by white lines along its broken spine. A thin silk sweater, hanging by one shoulder from the back of a chair. I am drawn and repelled, wanting to immerse myself in her things, and afraid to, in case they're all I have left.

  My hand is still on the doorknob of my room. I start to pull it shut, but it encounters something soft. Harriet yelps and then cowers indignantly in the doorway. I scoop her up, carrying her like a football under one arm.

  The rest of the house is so silent I'm afraid to descend the stairs, afraid of the news that is waiting for me at the bottom. I'm even more afraid that there will be no news at all.

  I wander through the downstairs rooms, peering into each one, but there is only the sound of the house--a tick as a wall settles into itself, the whir of the clock as its hand moves a notch, the shudder of the refrigerator as it shuts itself off.

  I return to the living room and sit in the winged chair. After yesterday, this chair and I have some serious history. The information I received while sitting here is almost beyond comprehension: from how Pappa died to Mutti's outrageous act of martyrdom to learning that the police were completely uninterested in helping me recover my missing child.

  Suddenly, I reach saturation point. I leap out of the chair and look accusingly at it. It stares back at me, crushed velvet innocence, smirking its open-armed welcome.

  I should take the van and go looking for Eva. I should go help at the stable, since the mess they're dealing with is mine. I should find Mutti and help her make arrangements for Pappa. I should call a lawyer, even if Mutti doesn't want one. I should get Hurrah the hell out of here.

  I return to bed.

  Against all odds, I fall asleep. It's not the anesthetized nothingness of before, but it's certainly informed by the Ativan. I just have no will to move, or be conscious. Until there's a reason to be up, this is the only place to be.

  After an indeterminate period of time, the phone trills on its little table by the window. It's a tiny fragment of a ring, which means that it was either a wrong number or else someone downstairs jumped on it immediately.

  I look at the clock, and am shocked into wakefulness. It's the middle of the afternoon--almost an entire day has passed.

  A few minutes later, there are footsteps on the stairs followed by a tentative knocking on the door.

  "Come in," I say.

  The door squeaks inward, revealing Dan. His expression is ominous. He comes in and sits on the edge of the bed. Then he takes my hand in his, and looks deep into my eyes.

  "They've found Eva," he says quietly, and just as I open my mouth to scream my grief, to rage against the thing I don't want to know, he says, "She's at Roger's. She's fine. She showed up an hour ago."

  I stare at him, feeling my face contort.

  "She's fine, honey. Eva's just fine."

  I make a noise, an unidentified yelp that's a little like a laugh but more like a sob, and then cover my face as the tears come. And then I sit upright and he's holding me, holding me, holding me, while I try to fit together the pieces of my fear and anger and relief.

  Of course, now that I know she's safe, I'm going to have to kill her. She had me scared out of my head, simply beyond comprehension.

  She told Roger, who told Dan, that she hitchhiked back to Minneapolis. My beautiful, blonde, nubile daughter stuck her thumb out on the side of the highway, riding with one trucker after another, switching at truck stops, until she finally found her way across the top of our great country, apparently unharmed and unmolested.

  "When is he bringing her back?" I say, interrupting Dan's narrative.

  "He's not going to. He said--"

  "Oh yes he is," I say, straightening up. "She's still a kid. She needs her mother."

  "Slow down, Annemarie. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He said you were going to be in town in a couple of days anyway, and you could bring her back then. If he can convince her, that is. Apparently she's not too keen on coming back."

  I stare at him, blinking my incomprehension. And then it comes to me.

  The hearing. With everything going on, I've completely forgotten my divorce.

  Chapter 16

  Mutti won't speak to me. Not that night, nor as I pass directly behind her on my way out the door the next morning.

  I've managed to beg my way onto a flight, although I'm going to pay through the nose for it. And not just because of the short notice--with fatuous logic, the airline is charging me more for a one-way trip than they would for a return one. It didn't occur to me until afterward that I could just buy a return ticket and throw away the other half.

  Mutti is standing at the sink as I drag my small suitcase through the kitchen. Its wheels clatter and bang, and then fall silent as I stop and stare at her. There's no question she knows I'm here, but she remains focused steadfastly on her chore. I pause, staring helplessly at her tight coil of blonde hair. I want to say something, to force her into acknowledging me, but I can't.

  I don't blame her for feeling the way she does, but it still pains me terribly. What a family we are, with one intransigent daughter giving rise to another.

  When the screen door slams behind me, I breathe a sigh of relief. There's no sign of the taxi yet, but the closed door signals the beginning of my journey, or at the very least, a buffer between Mutti and me.

  I push the retractable handle down into my bag, and lean against the wooden deck railing, staring grimly at the sum of my parents' life together.

  The scene is pure bucolic perfection: the horses, fat and dappled, grazing in an expanse of pasture against a backdrop of indigo sky. A breeze rustles lightly through the surrounding maples, their leaves parted occasionally by the darting streak of birds. The sky, bright and blue and full of the noise of cicadas, crickets, sparrows, finches, and a single Carolina chickadee. I can relate to that chickadee. I, too, should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.

  It may look perfect, but I know the truth. Just beneath the surface, as tangible as the wood under my arms, is a pain as re
lentless as toothache.

  I turn my head. The taxi is here, winding its way slowly down the lane, a yellow ant on a ribbon of sidewalk. I hitch my purse onto my shoulder, pull the handle out of my bag, and drag it, clacking, to the bottom of the ramp we no longer need. A family's progress, measured in redundant ramps.

  A minute or so later, I climb into the backseat of the taxi. The ache climbs in beside me, taking up more than its fair share of the seat.

  An hour and a half later, I'm crammed like a sardine into an airplane seat, unable even to cross my legs. I scowl at the attendant, who wants money for my gin. It seems to me that for what I'm paying, they could pony up an ounce and a half of liquor. An hour and a half after that, I'm in another yellow taxi, traversing the familiar roads of my old neighborhood. And then, with a sick feeling of deja vu, I am in front of my house.

  I drag myself out of the backseat and set my suitcase down on the sidewalk. And then, as the taxi pulls away, I stare at the scene of my old life.

  There's a wooden For Sale sign on the lawn, with the name of the realtor swinging beneath. The house, a redbrick structure that used to strike me as proud and solid, now looks neglected and forlorn. The grass is short but brown. Long weeds--ironically among the more attractive plants in the yard--reach up between the wooden stairs that lead to the porch. The parched and cracked flower beds have been overtaken by thistles, some almost three feet high. After the apocalypse, cockroaches and thistles will rule the world.

  There's a lockbox on the doorknob, a clumsy thing that makes it difficult to unlock the door. By the time I do, I'm cursing under my breath.

  The door opens inward with a great rush of air that swoops up a half dozen pamphlets from the hall table and sends them fluttering to the floor. They are realtor's sheets. I stoop to collect them, and replace them messily.

  I step past the foyer and look around, taking in the desiccated plants and the candles sagging on the mantel. There's a picture of Roger, Eva, and me--a relic from happier times--sitting on the coffee table between a portrait of Roger's parents and a vase from his great-aunt. I'm surprised they're still here, even though I did stipulate in the agreement that everything in the house would stay with me.