Fall 2009
Honorable Mention, North Country Writer's Festival
Our backyard lawn is uneven, hard as rock. The last few weeks have seen no rain, no relief. The ground has been baked and though I can feel the heat through my slippers, I still have the sensation that I am running on a frozen lake of swells. At eight o’clock in the morning it is already warm, the dew long gone. It's another hot day.
I run over the grass, stumbling, and my thoughts are a repeating chorus of one thought, the same thought, over and over: Is this how it starts? Is this how it starts?
I huff, out of breath after just a few steps: I am five months pregnant. My slippers slap first against the hard ground, then the driveway, then the ground again, as I run to the other side of our backyard, thick with bushes and overgrown lilacs. My robe hangs on me despite my pregnancy: huge, ratty, red velour. I am an exotic red beast, heaving through the underbrush, puffing, sweating.
I call my son’s name, fear riding cold on my skin despite the haze of the heat. There is no answer.
Is this how it starts? I ask myself again and again. I keep running.
I was up early as usual. Pregnant women are always tired, rarely sleep well. For the last several weeks I have been unable to be comfortable in my body regardless of how I arrange my limbs. I woke early, left my husband still slumbering, came downstairs to drink a little cup of decaf and read. Eben, my three year old son, woke up early also. We’d wandered around for a little while together, still feeling like strangers here: we’d moved into this enormous house, twice the size of our previous house, just two days earlier. Eben had had no time to explore – the previous day’s heat index was too high. So we stayed inside. I had unpacked endless boxes in the 100 degree day, if our thermometer clinging to the kitchen window could be believed.
This morning we had tried to salvage what we could of our old routine: Eben to the playroom, eating his Lucky Charms, sipping on apple juice and watching Sesame Street, I to the smaller room at the back of the house, a long hallway away from Eben. I read, watched a morning news show, wrote a list of tasks.
A few minutes later, I had heard the back door open and close. Eben was no doubt going outside to play, something he’d asked to do repeatedly the day before. I made a note to myself to go check on him… in one minute. And sure enough, in one minute, two at the most, I had lumbered through the house, almost able to close my bath robe around me as I made my way to the back door.
I had tried to push open the screen door silently – had called him softly: “Eben! Where are you?” My husband is a light sleeper. I hadn’t wanted to wake him.
I listened for a response, but the backyard was quiet. At one acre, it was by far the biggest backyard I‘d ever had at my pleasure. Yesterday I would have described it as the best part of the new house. Now its size – its stillness – was unnerving me. A single crow cawed, hidden in the pines. Then, once again, silence.
I had retreated to the relative cool inside, back into the room where Sesame Street continued to bleet along. No sign of Eben: not on the first floor (dining room, living room, hallway; under the stairs, hall closet, laundry room). Not on the second floor: the upstairs climb had left me out of breath and I had leaned heavily on the banister, whispering, Eben, are you here? The baby kicked once inside me. I patted him absentmindedly. This was my fifth pregnancy in two years. The others had ended in miscarriages. This one– as my obstetrician liked to say – had taken. I’d had one big episode of bleeding two months ago, a visit to the ER, and an ultrasound that had shown everything to be “just fine.” Those were my obstetrician’s words – not the words I would use. In my opinion, just fine were not words to be used until the baby was born, kicking and wiggling.
The fear from all of that is now my companion, wakes when I do, follows me about. It’s practically a friend of mine by now, so well known, so close at hand.
No answer from Eben, no sign of him whatsoever.
I had gone back downstairs then, and I had finally become worried. I looked again in the backyard, and again in the TV room: no sign that my little boy had ever been in the yard, nor in the house, anywhere. No sippy cup of juice thrown to the floor, no discarded Lucky Charms. I’d returned to the yard. At that, my second look at the back yard, I realized: I don’t care if I wake Brett up anymore. I stop trying to sound calm.
That was when I first start to run.
I call his name. Rivulets of sweat break and fall beneath my breasts, down the small of my back, between my shoulders. I call his name with increasing quickness, sharpness. And again I think: is this how it all starts? But I cannot force myself to think of what “it all” is, exactly, that’s starting.
But something has begun. Something large and buzzing and hot and unknown.
Bees… I think. Is there a bee hive, ground bees? A hive, stung, allergic. No -- a ditch in the backyard we haven’t seen, fallen, skull fracture, unconscious, unconscious…. stung, allergic… I run from one end of our lot to the other. Dead grass, weeds, a stump.
My husband appears at the door as I push through the brush at the back of the yard. It seems a long way away now, too far from the back door, the yard is large, hellishly yellow, all the grass burned and dead, the leaves on the maple crisped by the afternoon suns of the long and dry summer. Everyone told us northern New York would be cool in August, but this reminds me of summer out west. There is, I think, no need for a yard this big. We should parcel it off and sell it, I think savagely.
At the back of the property, no fence, just an undergrowth of nettles, yew shrubs gone to ragged groping branches, an old lilac tree, the buds shriveled and dead in the heat… oh god, there is a fence: barbed wire, rusted and half-buried. I raise my leg comically high, not wanting to catch my robe on it and trip. Tripping when you’re five months pregnant is no joke, but in my hurry I lose my balance anyway, grab a branch of something nearby… stagger to the left, over-correct. Stop, holding my side, panting. Is this how it starts?
Not slowing down, still calling, I hear my husband join in the chorus. I look to the house, catch sight of him. Brett is wearing shorts, nothing else. How odd, I think. This must be an emergency. Otherwise he would have dressed, put on a shirt. Some socks.
“How long has he been missing?” he shouts, loud enough to cut through the haze of an acre of fear.
“Twenty minutes,” I answer. My robe gapes as I run, my long t-shirt tight across the broad expanse of baby, flapping against my legs. My belly must be held, like a large pumpkin, to prevent it from pulling against my hip and pelvic ligaments … I run as fast as I can. Despite my efforts to hold my belly, it hurts to run. But I don’t stop.
The baby is no longer kicking, alert to my panic, no doubt. I press down. He pushes back. I look up again. “Eben?” I shout. Actually, more like a scream. (Actually, a scream.)
Brett jumps in the truck, throws it into gear, and drives down the driveway. “Call 911!”
Brett once told me, years ago, that he couldn’t imagine the circumstances under which he’d ever call 911.
“911 operator…What is your 911 emergency?”
“Hello, my son is missing, he is 3 years old, he’s missing,” I say.
“What is your location, ma’am?”
I give my address, want to cry.
“What is he wearing, ma’am?”
“He is wearing flannel pajamas with planes and trains on them… “ I begin to weep: I have a baby who is so little he wears flannel pajamas to bed, and I am the kind of mother who has lost track of a boy still wearing flannel pajamas to bed.
Can they shut down the highways? Would they shut down the highways if I ask them?
“Ma’am, we’re sending a cruiser right over.”
“Okay, okay, thank you, thank you.” Why am I repeating everything? (What about the highways? What about the interstate?)
I run to the front of the house, see Brett drive past, hear someone else slamming on their brakes to keep from hitting him as he flies by, looking the other direction. Oh God, I think. He’s going to get into an accident.
I hang up and go out the front door, run across the street, screaming my son’s name. The heat shimmers the asphalt. The sun beats down. A car comes up the road, slows; I see the driver turn to watch me. I am standing in the road, holding my robe up as one might hold a long gown, tears on my face, my slippers crooked. It registers that I could get hit by a car if I continue to behave this way. I step back onto the sidewalk.
Crossed the street, I think; hit by a car, no one noticed, staggered off the road and behind the bushes… or, no, standing on the side of road, random car, pervert, grabbed, tires squealed… gone. Would they close the highway for me? I haven’t lived here long enough, I think: Canton is a small town, this I know: just yesterday a perfect stranger had said to me, “Welcome to the North Country!” I had been sure they were mocking me, or themselves, or something, but they weren’t. It’s a small town approach to life. Still, I think: I haven’t lived here long enough for them to shut down the highway for me.
I come back to driveway, sure that the police officer will be angry with me if I am not in front of my house when he pulls up. I think I have time to check our neighbor’s yard, but I dare not. I stand on the sidewalk, trying to keep my robe pulled shut over my belly. The tie is not long enough but I try repeatedly to make it stretch. The baby inside is quiet. I can’t decide if I want him to be quiet or if I want him to kick me. I hold him as best I can. He stays quiet. Where have all my children gone? Where are they? The one we are looking for is quiet; the one in my belly is even quieter. The others are quiet forever.
Across the street, three neighbors, as if on cue, open their front doors in the same three second interval. Two of them begin to cross the street towards me. Another neighbor, a young-ish looking man, calls through his cupped hands around his mouth, “How can I help?”
The other two, across the street now, extend their hands to me, their faces so sad, so grieved. How do they know?
“How did you know?” I ask them. I don’t introduce myself. Neither do they.
They tell me they were listening to the police reports on the scanner, heard my 911 call. I feel like a crazy woman, who had been keeping her craziness a secret, but who has been caught now in the act. In fact, my craziness has now been broadcast. Hello, I think: let me introduce myself. I am your new neighbor, and I am crazy. I’ve lost my child somehow. Please don’t think I’m a bad mother. I think of Eben in his pajamas, the soft, paper-thin flannel, the planes and the trains. My eyes become hot as furnaces.
“I’ll check our yards,” one says, and turns to go back across the road. The other stays with me.
The cruiser pulls up. In the back is a German Shepherd. His mouth is open in a wolfish grin, his teeth white against the black of his muzzle. He looks at me, closes his mouth, moves closer to the window, as if to better inspect me. The officer has no look at all on his face as he gets out, holding a pad of official looking paper. A piece of carbon paper hides between the pages; on the top sheet I see boxes to check, spaces to complete.
“Can you tell me how long he’s been gone?” he asks.
“Twenty minutes at least,” I say, “but maybe as long as twenty five.” I am wringing my hands. I have never wrung my hands in my life. I make myself stop. Unsaid: how long does it take to get to an interstate? How many bees does it take to kill a child? How long does a child go missing before they’re officially missing? Where is he? Where do missing children go?
The officer writes this down and then puts a hand, lightly, on my shoulder, as my tears spatter onto the red velour covering my other son, who is quite still. Listening, I think, to my galloping breaking heart.
“I want you to know,” he says, “that 99% of the time, the child turns up within a few minutes, unharmed, somewhere very close by. So let’s stay calm. He hasn’t been gone long at all.”
I look up at him in amazement. Not long at all? Not long? Is he kidding? Did he hear me say, Twenty. Minutes.?
“It’s true,” says one of the neighbors. She is dark-haired, about my age. She is wearing slippers too. “My kid once went missing for a few hours and we found him in the neighbor’s basement, drinking a Coke.” She smiles. “He’d fallen asleep,” she adds, which makes no sense to me. I want to scream at her: was he drinking a Coke or was he taking a nap? I put my hand over my mouth.
She smiles, but her smile is so sad I feel much worse. I try to smile back. I am unsuccessful.
“Oh.” I say.
The police officer says, “Where have you looked? Have you searched the house thoroughly?” I give him what I hope is a respectful but withering look.
“Yes.” I say. “Yes. He’s definitely not in the house.”
At that very moment: “Mommy.” Demanding. Defiant. A little scared. A pause.
“Mommy!” More insistent.
The police officer looks at me, his eyes widening ever so slightly. We stare into each others’ faces. I turn to the house, let my robe fall open again, pick up the panels of the robe, gathering them in huge handfuls and lead the way into the house. The police officer follows me into the cool interior and I run ahead. Our own dog, also a Shepherd, barks and barks, too surprised to resist when I take her by her collar, all eighty pounds of her, and heave her into the bathroom, hardly losing a step as I slam the door to close her inside. Behind me I hear the police officer latching the screen door, and I see – I see – I see my son Eben, sitting under the dining room table, watching for me, his hands flat on the floor, his legs crossed. His pajamas hang from his thin shoulders. His cheeks are still plump – the last vestiges of his toddlerhood.
He leans forward, scuttling across the floor to me, and I fall to my knees, he is in my arms, and I hug him. I see stars as he begins to cry.
“You scared me, Mommy,” he says. “You scared me.”
“I know,” I say. “I know. I was scared too.”
I apologize to the police officer. He hardly remarks but his eyes tell me: he knew all along this would be the ending. Still, he does not seem annoyed that I have wasted his time, for which I apologize twice more.
“When are you due?” he asks.
“December,” I answer. Eben twists out of my arms and runs into the room where the TV continues on through its line-up.
“Good luck,” he says. “We have three.” He pauses. “Ma’am,” he adds. He touches the side of my arm, up by my shoulder, with the flat of his palm. “You should get your feet up.” The baby I am carrying rolls to one side, visibly. I put both my hands over my belly, feel the baby twist and roll again to the other side. The officer smiles. “Well, I’ll be on my way.”
I walk him to the front door, and he walks to his cruiser, engine still running. His German Shepherd lolls in the air conditioned comfort, not even glancing at me. He gets in, looks at his pad of paper, starts checking and writing. I go back in the house and let our dog out of the bathroom. She runs to the window and barks them away. She is furious: this was her chance to protect me. I walk through the house and then step out into the yard to wait for my husband. The sun has gone behind a cloud and the heat has backed off a little. I stand, shading my eyes. There is a lot to be done today, I think, but after Brett comes back, I will need to get my feet up.
