The Missing Page 16

  Aran and Alice jiggled when they moved. The girl wore high-heeled plastic jellies, low-rise jeans, and a tube top through which her belly spilled. The boy favored a long T-shirt and jeans. His dark hair shone with grease.

  “Well?” Fenstad asked, opening his hands.

  The gauze from Lila’s slit wrist peeked out from the sleeve of her track jacket, and she tugged on it nervously. She didn’t smile or try to allure him. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Either he’d broken through to her the other day, or she was breaking down.

  “They’re not themselves,” she said. “I should have known. They were trying to fool me by being nice. They hate me, usually.”

  The kids’ eyes were framed by circles so dark, it looked like they’d rubbed them with charcoal. Despite their heft, their pale skin and lethargy were telltale signs of malnutrition.

  “My eyes,” Aran said, only it sounded like a demand.

  Lila walked over to the window. “The sun bothers them,” she said, and pulled the shades so the room got dark.

  Fenstad joined her so they could talk privately. Not surprisingly, her breath was cherry-flavored. “You’ve been drinking Robitussin,” he said.

  “That’s not the point,” she answered. Without makeup, she looked younger and prettier. A line of freckles dotted the bridge of her nose. He remembered that she’d married the much older Aran Senior when she was only eighteen. Child bride.

  Lila lowered her voice and cupped her hand around his ear. “Something mean got inside them. I don’t know how to get it out.”

  Her breath was overpowering. He was thinking Munchausen by proxy, or Robitussin-induced delirium. He was thinking full-on nervous breakdown, and these poor kids had witnessed it. Sara Wintrob, he was thinking, and her sweaty brunette ringlets in a four-poster bed.

  He nodded at Lila, then approached the girl first. She was about 250 pounds, and only thirteen years old. If she stayed this weight she’d have type-two diabetes by the time she was twenty. Lila had neglected to mention that her daughter was a heifer. Somebody in that house, the same person buying the Robitussin, was also buying a lot of Ding Dongs.

  “Take a deep breath,” he told Alice, and she did. The fluid in her lungs fought against her. She wheezed, and then coughed, getting what looked like only about half a lungful of air. He felt her doughy wrist. It was cold and wet. Her heart rate was about fifty beats per minute. For a girl her size, fifty beats was dangerously low.

  “Now you,” he said to the boy. Aran was almost as big as his sister, but blessed with enough muscle that he probably didn’t get teased at school. He looked about fifteen, and Fenstad remembered hearing that he was second string on the varsity wrestling team. His wheezing was the same as Alice’s: loud and tubercular. They also shared identical red rashes along their arms and hands. The rashes had come to a head, and small pinpricks of blood dotted their skin.

  “Allergies?” he asked.

  “I left the windows open the last few nights for the breeze. I think maybe bugs got in…” Lila said.

  Aran coughed. He didn’t cover his mouth, and a wad of phlegm slapped against Fenstad’s cheek. It lingered for a second, and then ran down his chin. Fenstad was a doctor, yes. But this was still gross.

  Aran and Alice started chuckling. They were so weak he was surprised they’d waste the energy. Fenstad mopped his face with a tissue.

  “Aran!” Lila scolded, “you apologize right now.”

  The kids made of point of laughing harder, and Fenstad narrowed his eyes. They were old enough to know their mother was fragile, so why were they baiting her? “You should mind your mother,” he said.

  Lila wrapped her arms around her slender waist. Her nylon suit billowed. He realized he should have hospitalized her long ago. It didn’t matter that their father wasn’t an acceptable alternative; these kids were wrecks.

  “Lila, I’m taking them down to the emergency room. It could be pneumonia.”

  “No,” Lila said. “I thought that too, at first. But they’re not sick. They’re changed.”

  “Come on,” he said to the kids, and motioned for them to stand. The boy got up, but the girl needed help. Fenstad pulled her by the arms until she stood. The momentum of her blubber propelled her forward, and Fenstad had to grab her to keep her from falling in the other direction. As he held her, she leaned into his chest and sniffed his shirt. The gesture wasn’t cute: It was predatory, and for a moment he forgot she was a little girl. The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect, and her breath filled him with revulsion. It was sulfuric, like rot. Lila was right. Something about these kids was very off. “Let’s go,” he said, leading them to the emergency room.

  Turned out, the ER was filled to capacity. Bram was there, and so was Sheila. In fact, at least half of the forty patients he saw regularly were lying on gurneys. Every bed was taken, and the intensive care unit was standing room only. Fenstad frowned, and then he got nervous: September wasn’t even flu season!

  Patients coughed in every corner. They mopped the junk from their mouths with whatever they could find: paper towels and tissues; white examining room paper; even the sleeves of their shirts. A cord of worry wove its way through his stomach and down his bowels like a snake. Was this an epidemic? A respiratory irritant in the school or library that had only recently become airborne? A biological weapon? Had Maddie or Meg been exposed?

  He wheeled a pair of cots out of the supply closet and had the kids lie down while they waited for a doctor. He didn’t like the looks on their faces. Their pupils were dilated. They were still grinning, but he’d bet money that their blood wasn’t getting more than seventy percent of the oxygen it needed. So what the hell did they think was so funny?

  He looked around the hospital, and was overcome with dread. The air here had that same sulfuric taint as Alice’s breath, which meant this thing was probably airborne.

  He turned to Lila. “I’m calling your husband.”

  He watched her try to marshal her emotions, but her fluttering hands and unfocused eyes betrayed her. “No,” she said. The corners of her lips were white with crud. She was drunk on Robitussin. Probably she’d had a bottle this morning because she hadn’t known what to do when she’d realized her kids were seriously sick. And then she’d told herself a little story. Told herself it was okay she wasn’t taking them to a hospital, because they weren’t really her kids.

  Fenstad pushed her down into a chair where she sat. “Take a deep breath,” he said. She breathed in, but the follow-through was wanting. She burst into tears.

  She hid her face from him, and tugged on her gauze. “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “Lila. You made the right decision and you came here. They’re sick. You might be right. The infection might have altered their personalities, at least temporarily. But the thing is, you’re sick, too. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to stay overnight.”

  She could hardly talk, she was crying so hard. “I…I knew,” she cried.

  “What?”

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, still hitching her breath. “All…along, I knew…you…were like the rest.” Her tears transformed into a scowl. “You think I’m too dumb to have children…You pretend to care but you don’t, just like Aran Senior. My babies are changed and you want to say it’s because I’m a bad mother. He was the one, the bad father. He broke them into pieces and left them to me to glue together. You think it’s easy keeping food away from Alice? If I hide the bread and butter she eats sugar with her hands. Last night the two of them ate all the meat in the house. Raw! And when I tried to take it away, Aran Junior tore off my bandage! For Jesus’ sake, he tried to lick the blood! Still, I’m trying. But people like you…you won’t let me.” Her voice was low, and not the slightest bit shrill.

  Fenstad looked at her for a long time. Her cough syrup breath was strong. His decision was simple, but that didn’t make it easy.

  He found an orderly and gave his instructions: Under no circumstances were the ch
ildren permitted to leave the hospital until they were treated by a physician and signed out by their father. Then he ordered Lila into psychiatric lockdown.

  He didn’t stop to talk to either Lila or her children as he left the emergency room, but as he walked out, Lila shouted after him. It cut through the din in the room, and suddenly everyone got quiet. “I knew you’d do this. You were always so cold. So fucking cold!”

  He tried not to think about Lila as he walked back to his office. Instead he thought about the black dog from his dream, and Enrique Vargas, and Albert Sanguine. He thought about Graham Nero, and his wife, sweaty and naked, in room 69. Then he looked down at his shoes, just to make certain the carpet wasn’t soaked in blood.

  SIXTEEN

  I Hate You!

  Friday morning, Meg’s ankle itched. She and her husband had made love on the couch yesterday. Horny and breathless like a couple of kids. Funny how something like that can make everything else a little easier. It had made her remember the way she’d felt about him when they were first married, like there was no problem he couldn’t solve, no question for which the brilliant Fenstad Wintrob didn’t have an answer. It had always puzzled her that he’d picked psychiatry as his specialty because he was the only man she’d known who hadn’t whined endlessly about his feelings. But then again, he was a quiet guy with his gears always spinning. He’d never fit in at school, or even with other doctors. Helping people with their problems turned him from an outsider to a trusted friend.

  She was sitting at the breakfast nook table, and her daughter was smack in the middle of a temper tantrum. “You never listen…” Maddie cried while picking apart a sliver of grapefruit. Her fingers glistened with juice. Meg looked out the window. The sun was bright and the lawn was green, but something was amiss. She couldn’t put her finger on it; the town looked more perfect than a Normal Rockwell painting, but still. Something wasn’t right.

  “I wish Albert Sanguine had hit you harder!” Maddie cried, and Meg returned her attention to the girl in front of her.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  Maddie looked down at her plate. Swallowed. Her purple hair hung moplike over her eyes. “Forget it,” she mumbled.

  Meg blinked, and waited for her daughter to apologize. The seconds passed. She’d been attacked three days ago, her ankle was broken, and the house was a mess because she wasn’t ambulatory enough to clean it, and no one in her family had the sense to pick up after themselves. It was possible that these things were the reason that she was biting her lip to keep from crying, but more likely it was Maddie’s words that hurt the most (Where did I go wrong?).

  She peered into the kitchen, hoping Fenstad would offer his help, but she hadn’t heard him puttering with the coffeepot for the last few minutes. In fact, she vaguely remembered the sound of a car engine pulling out from the driveway. She fumed. He’d sneaked away without even saying good-bye! Always the good cop to her prison warden. Always the parent Maddie loved best. Even yesterday, he’d acted like he’d only been going along with grounding her to keep the peace.

  They kept looking at each other. Meg waited for the big I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I’m glad you got beat up by a drooling madman, Mom, but it didn’t come.

  Maddie pulled the purple hair out of her face, and the two women locked eyes in a battle of wills. Oh, kid, Meg thought. Eighteen years and you still have no idea who you’re dealing with. “The only person you care about is David. You don’t love me or Dad,” Maddie said, only this time she didn’t mumble.

  Meg’s eyes watered, but she didn’t let Maddie see. She thought about the bird that had died in her hands. She’d felt foolish burying it, so instead she’d thrown it in the trash above a pile of coffee grounds. She regretted that now. She should have dug a hole for it out behind the garage with the rest of the family pets.

  And where was Fenstad at a time like this? Gone, like always. At work, and when he wasn’t at work, mentally gone. So why not now? Why wait until this little bitch left for college? When she served him those divorce papers, he’d never know what hit him. The vision of his shocked face—How unexpected! The brilliant Fenstad Wintrob for once caught off-guard!—comforted her, and she was able to stifle her tears. Then she wondered: Why do I always think such terrible things?

  “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t love you, Maddie,” she said when she trusted herself to sound calm.

  Maddie’s green eyes were cold, and her gaunt face was pruned into a collection of angles. Her anger had made her ugly. “I wish you were dead,” she said.

  Meg acted without thinking. She slapped Maddie hard across the face. The sound was loud, like a cue ball breaking up a rack of billiards.

  Maddie reeled, and Meg couldn’t see whether she’d done any damage for a good few seconds. But then the imprint of her hand slowly surfaced like bubbles in a lake. Four fingers ran in a diagonal line from Madeline’s ear to the corner of her mouth. She didn’t yelp or holler. Probably she was too shocked.

  “You want to be treated like a woman, you stop acting like a baby,” Meg said. Her fury sounded foreign to her own ears. She knew she should be sorry, knew she should apologize, but she didn’t want to just yet.

  Maddie’s chest heaved in what looked like the beginning of an extended crying jag. Meg looked into the kitchen, somehow still hoping that Fenstad might be here. Maybe he’d only been running an errand, and was back. Maybe, for once, he would break this up. But she didn’t see him in the kitchen. Instead she saw the clock—ten past nine. Maddie was late for school, and she had a calculus test first period. Meg moaned. “Get in the car. I’ll drive you,” she said.

  The ride was silent. Maddie bit back her tears, which wasn’t like her, and probably meant that they were genuine. The welt reddened as the minutes passed. Maddie rubbed the side of her face with exaggerated gentleness, like she was made of porcelain. Wonderful, Meg thought. Now I’ll get a call from a guidance counselor accusing me of child abuse.

  This was bad. She and Maddie had just entered a new and grotesque realm of cruelty toward each other. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to make it unhappen. But it had happened.

  “Maddie…” she said, but she wasn’t sure what else to say. Should she cave, and let her see Enrique? That’s what the fight had been about, hadn’t it? Or had it started with the clown belt? She couldn’t remember for sure.

  The radio was tuned to NPR’s morning edition, and the host announced that American deaths in Iraq had officially surpassed four thousand. She let out a sigh. All those boys. She couldn’t imagine what she’d do if one of them was David. What a terrible thing, to lose someone you love. Next to her, Maddie sniffled. Then she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She was looking out the window at the perfect, cloudless day.

  A thought occurred to Meg like a bolt of lightning. She could have kicked herself for not having guessed it before. She pulled to the side of the road and turned to her daughter. “Maddie,” she said. “He’s a sharp boy. He’ll be fine.”

  Maddie let out a ragged breath and pressed her nose against the window. Outside, the sun shone bright. The grass on all the freshly mowed lawns was green. “How do you know?” she whispered. In profile, Meg could see the blood drain from her face, so that the handprint became more prominent. It drove home the point that Meg had been avoiding: She’d hit her own kid.

  She often wished for an extra day, or month, or year with Maddie and David as children, because they really do grow up too fast. Even when you’re paying attention, there are things you miss, or weren’t smart enough to understand the first time around. She loved Maddie, David, and even Fenstad so much she didn’t like to think about it, because it frightened her. She would do anything for them, and not because they were her blood. Even if Maddie wasn’t hers, even if she was a stranger wandering down Micmac Street in lace garters and purple hair, she knew she’d be charmed. She’d smile and think: That girl’s all right. So what was it about the two of them that made them tear ea
ch other to pieces?

  “He won’t get hurt,” Meg said. “Hardly any of them do. This is good for him. He’ll go to college now.”

  Maddie wiped the hair from the side of her face where Meg could make out the indentation of her wedding rings. The diamond had cut Maddie’s skin, and Meg bit her lip to hold back her own tears: She’d made Maddie bleed.

  “I’d run away with him but I don’t think he wants to,” Maddie said. All traces of her pruned ugliness were gone. “I love him more than he loves me,” she said, and Meg knew that David wasn’t really her favorite. Her girl was so brave to say such things.

  “He’s a boy. He loves you differently. He wants to provide.”

  Maddie nodded. “I guess…Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  Maddie dragged her hand against the closed window so that it left a streak. Cars slowed as they passed, curious as to why the Wintrob family Saab was parked in a tow-away zone near the hospital, with its hazards flashing. “He’s never had fun…That’s why he’s going. He wants to drink beer and meet girls on leave. He’ll do all the things he couldn’t before, when he had to take care of his family.” She didn’t look at Meg when she said this. Instead she traced the steamy trails she’d left along the window.

  Meg frowned. Enrique wasn’t the type to run away from anything, and he adored Maddie. But then again, he was only twenty, and his whole life he’d worked the counter of a convenience store. Maybe Maddie was right. Poor kid. As if being dumped for the army wasn’t bad enough. “Come here,” Meg said.

  Maddie didn’t comply. Instead she rubbed the mark on her face as if she expected Meg to give her another one. The gesture wasn’t for show, and for a brief moment, Meg saw herself through her daughter’s eyes: a capricious tyrant whose purpose was not her daughter’s well-being, but her obedience. Just like good old Dad.