Safe Page 3

  “Noted,” he said. “You want anything to drink?”

  “Jack Daniel’s. Straight up.”

  “How about some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He sat down in Detective Mary’s chair, looked around the room a little as if he’d never been there—maybe he hadn’t, since this must be where detectives did their questioning and he wasn’t one. He drummed his fingers on the desk—he had bitten-down fingernails—and sighed. Then cleared his throat. Then sighed.

  I wanted to be alone. I wanted to focus. In a little while they’d be walking into the room.

  What if I become a fish and swim away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will become a fisherman and fish for you, Mommy Bunny answered. What if I become a bird and fly away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will be a tree that you come home to, Mommy Bunny answered.

  Mom used to read The Runaway Bunny to me every night. It’s how I went to sleep. No matter what Baby Bunny did, no matter how far he ran or swam or flew or jumped, Mommy Bunny would go after him. Baby Bunny would never get away from her.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Officer Farley asked me.

  “I’m cold.”

  “Yeah? Feels like a furnace to me.”

  “Glad you’re nice and toasty.”

  “I can go check the thermostat, but . . .” He hesitated.

  “But what?”

  He looked confused, the way he had in the car when he was supposed to help me but looked like he wanted to help himself to me instead.

  “You can’t leave me alone in here, is that it? Am I on suicide watch or something?”

  “Suicide? Of course not.”

  “Could’ve fooled me. I’m freezing.”

  “You sure you don’t want that coffee?”

  “I’m sure.”

  What I wanted was about to come through the door. You want me to make it better? Mom asked when I roller-skated into that crack on the corner of Maple and opened up a bloody gash on my knee. Yes. Please.

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  “No shit. Are they here?”

  “Your . . . parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I’m scared . . .” It just came out. I hadn’t meant it to, but that happened with me sometimes, like when Detective Mary took my picture and I said, Smile for the camera, even though I was just thinking it. You’re talking to yourself again, Father would say to me. Shut up.

  “Yeah,” Farley said, “it must be . . . well, it must be really weird for you. I understand you being scared, I mean, it makes sense.”

  I didn’t answer him. Partly because I’d been only ninety-nine percent sure that I’d actually said this thing out loud, but him responding to it had made it one hundred percent positive. And also because I was scared, I was scared shitless, and being scared shut me up.

  I won’t say anything again . . . I promise . . . please . . . don’t . . .

  “You know . . . ,” Farley said, “when I used to get nervous out on patrol—I did two tours in Iraq, and trust me, if you were sane you were scared. I saw some bad shit go down over there. I used to focus on the end game, understand? I’d imagine being back at base—actually picture it and everything, like what I was eating, and who I was jawing with—because that made it, well . . . real. It’s called visualization.”

  Farley was trying, but he was talking over someone else.

  You bet your ass you won’t say anything . . .

  “So what I’m saying is . . . think about being home with them. And I know even that must be kind of scary for you, but after a while, it won’t be, right? Everyone will get to know each other again and it’ll be just like . . . well, like it never happened, maybe not exactly, of course not, but close maybe. So visualize it. You’d be surprised—it really works.”

  Okay, Officer. I hear you. I’m trying.

  “See. You look better already,” he said.

  I was visualizing sitting in my old living room, with the big TV where I used to watch Arthur and Dora, and on top of the TV were Monopoly and the Game of Life, which we would play as a family, and I always chose the pink car because I was a girl, of course, and now we were all sitting there together, Mom, Dad, and grown-up Ben, and we were eating a pizza and Mom was saying, Eat over the plate, Jenny, and Dad was telling one of his corny jokes and we were a big, happy family.

  Only other things were starting to crowd into my head, like when that security guard had opened the doors at the Sioux City Mall on the day after Thanksgiving to let me get to my job at Bed Bath & Beyond and all the customers waiting outside surged in after me. Good luck keeping anyone out, even though it was fifteen minutes before opening time. The security guard kept shouting, Please, it is not opening yet, please . . . , but he might’ve been talking to himself for the amount of good that did.

  The security guard in my head was like that Sioux City Mall guard—Mr. Hammard his name was, though we called him Mr. Hammered because you could sometimes smell alcohol on his breath when he opened the door for you in the morning. He wasn’t threatening or anything, which was maybe the problem, because as a security guard he basically wasn’t worth shit. Neither was the security guard in my head—because no matter how many times he said, Stay out, tried to keep certain persona non grata out of my head, they’d sneak in anyway.

  They were doing that now, sneaking into the living room where we Kristals were pigging out on pizza and making up for lost time. There were Father and Mother suddenly standing there telling me it was time for me to go to my room and I was getting that sick, sour feeling in my stomach.

  “Hey . . . ,” Farley said, “hey . . .”

  Now Officer Farley was in the living room with us, only the living room had turned into the room at the police station and it was just the two of us.

  “I want my mommy,” I said. “Now.”

  FOUR

  I’d pictured them the way they looked then.

  Mom still looking like Snow White—the one at the Magic Kingdom who’d posed for photos with my brother, Ben, and me. She would hug me the way Mommy Bunny hugged Baby Bunny when he promised never to run away from home again.

  Dad would look very big because I’d been very small. He probably wouldn’t let me ride him around the room anymore, but he might lift me in his arms and carry me all the way home to Maple Street.

  When they walked into the room, Mom looked like Snow White’s aunt on her cousin’s side. Her long brown hair was short, layered, and streaked with iridescent blond highlights. Her pale white skin had been zapped by one of the several hundred tanning salons I’d passed on Forest Avenue. She’d made a few too many trips to Dunkin’ Donuts.

  Not Dad.

  He’d shrunk.

  They were standing just inside the door and I was clear on the other side of the room, and I was trying to calculate the actual physical distance between us.

  Twelve years.

  I think they were doing the same thing I was—photoshopping the picture they’d carried around in their heads, the same one still plastered to that telephone pole.

  Maybe Mary had played the tape for them—about Ben getting lost in Disney World and riding Dumbo and Jenny Penny and maybe she’d played them some of the uglier stuff too.

  Where did Father take you?

  To bed.

  I meant where did you live, Jenny?

  All over. Ohio. Iowa. Michigan. Arizona. We kept moving. We squatted a lot. You know, houses nobody lives in. Last place was an abandoned trailer outside Sioux City. It had a hole in the roof.

  Maybe the detective showed them the photos she’d snapped of me and said, Is this your daughter? Before you book the family reunion, how about we make sure. Or maybe she’d done it just to prepare them for what time can do to a six-year-old. And they’d stared an
d stared at those pics the way they were doing now.

  “Mom . . . ?”

  Don’t cry, I was thinking, don’t cry, only I went and said it out loud. Like I was saying it to them instead of me, Don’t cry, Mom and Dad, don’t . . . which was okay, because suddenly that’s what they were doing, Mom at least. Crying.

  Me too.

  Both of us crying, and the tears somehow meeting, because—and here’s the weird part—I’d been on one side of the room and now I was completely on the other side. Somehow I’d traveled twelve years just like that. Mommy had her arms around me like I was back on those roller skates, and she was making it better, just like she’d promised she would several eons ago.

  FIVE

  After they’d led me into the house and asked me if I remembered it and I said yes and no, after they’d shown me my old room where my toys were not lined up like I’d left them, but where there was a TV, Xbox, and fold-out couch—We’ll get you a beautiful bed tomorrow, Jenny—after we huddled around the kitchen table, because that’s what it felt like, huddling around a fire to keep warm but the fire was me, after we talked a little about this and that but not really about it, after they asked me what I wanted for dinner—Dad said let’s order in, but Mom said I was getting a home-cooked meal, chicken and mashed potatoes, that was your favorite—Ben came home.

  Dad had to go get him. First, he’d tracked him down by phone—Is Ben there? he’d asked at least three different people—because Ben wasn’t answering his cell. When he finally got a yes and then actually got Ben on the phone, he said, Hold tight, I’m coming to get you.

  Ben must’ve asked why he’d be coming to get him when he had his own car and was perfectly capable of getting home on his own.

  Leave it parked there, Dad said. I’ll explain.

  What do you say in a situation like this? Hey, Ben, your sister’s back? Wait for him to walk back into the house, then yell Surprise?

  Some news can only be delivered in person.

  Dad gave me a brief, awkward hug before walking out the door. Then it was just me and Mom, and that was awkward too, suddenly not like the police station where we couldn’t stop holding each other, but like sitting in a house with a distant relative you’d once met as a kid. Mom brought out a photo album.

  “I haven’t looked at this since . . . since, well . . . we lost you. Would you like to see it?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Jennifer Kristal, it said on the cover. A photo album of me.

  Jenny’s First Day was written at the top of page one. Me in the hospital—lying, eyes closed, on Mom’s chest, Mom looking like Snow White again, or frankly more like Sleeping Beauty waking up from general anesthesia. Then me in Dad’s arms. Then me being held by some older person.

  “Do you remember him?” Mom asked. We were sitting on the living room couch, nestled up against each other, back to being snug as two bugs in a rug.

  “Grandpa?” I said.

  Mom nodded. “He adored you, you know. When you . . . disappeared, it took everything out of him. Grandma had already passed on, so you were kind of it for him. His Jenny.”

  “I remember he used to bring me Tootsie Rolls, but I had to guess which hand they were in first.”

  “You remember that?” Mom smiled. “He did the same thing to me when I was a girl.”

  “He must’ve had them in both hands because I never missed. Never. I always got a Tootsie Roll.”

  “How about him?” Mom said, pointing out someone else holding me that day in the hospital, very delicately, as if he thought he might drop me.

  “Not sure. Looks kind of familiar, but . . .” I shrugged.

  “Your uncle Brent. Dad’s stepbrother. You don’t remember him at all?”

  “Oh sure,” I said. “Uncle Brent. I remember. You got mad at him once because he let Ben light a firecracker on the Fourth of July, and Ben’s hand got burned, and you got real upset at him.”

  Mom turned and gave me a super-surprised look, like maybe I deserved two Tootsie Rolls for remembering something from that long ago. Go, me.

  “That’s right,” she said slowly. “I did get real upset at him. Ben still has the scar.”

  She went back to the album. To my first birthday. Me blowing out a single candle on the cake—though it looked like Dad was the one really blowing it out, since I was just sitting there with a stupid expression on my face. Me with chocolate birthday cake smeared all over my face. Me sitting on Mom’s lap surrounded by lots of ripped-open presents. Jenny Turns One this page was titled.

  Then me on a pony ride, the kind where someone holds on to you the whole time around the ring. I was wearing a pink cowboy hat and looked scared shitless.

  “You used to love horses,” Mom said, “remember?”

  It went on like this, Mom providing the commentary as we progressed through the terrible twos, the terrific threes, the fabulous fours, on our way to the sexually abused sixes.

  “You cried when you touched snow for the first time,” she said.

  I could understand why, because there was a picture of me sitting on this snowy hill at about age four, pretty much swallowed up by an oversize down jacket. I looked like a Thanksgiving Day balloon. Our little Snow Bunny, it said.

  “Really?” I said. “I don’t remember, Mom.”

  I liked how the word sounded coming out of my mouth. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. It was my new favorite word. Me and Mom leafing through old times, and soon Dad would come home with my big brother. Maybe we’d take the Game of Life out of mothballs, and I’d spin the wheel and go speeding down the road in my pink convertible, and who knows where it would take me? It had finally taken me back here, hadn’t it? And what were the odds of that happening? It would be just like I visualized it when that policeman told me to, after I admitted I was scared. I was still scared. I’d had the trembles sitting around the kitchen table earlier, but sitting this close to Mom gave me the warm fuzzies.

  When we passed my first-grade pic—the one I’d seen stapled to that telephone pole, Mom quickly turned the page as if she couldn’t bear to look at it. Then the album stopped. It was like the screen going dark in a movie theatre when a projector jams. Smack in the middle of this great story, and suddenly you’re staring at blankness. I wanted my money back—the story had been interrupted, and this was my story.

  The very last picture in the album was taken at a beach— it must’ve been right before it happened. We’d made a sand castle complete with moat—Mom and me—and someone had written Kristals’ Castle on it, each letter dug into the sand, and we were standing in front of it like proud sentries. Like no one was getting into this castle, no one—it was, what’s that word . . . impregnable. Only it wasn’t impregnable—someone had breached the castle walls and stolen the princess from right under their noses.

  Mom slowly traced her finger down the opposite blank page. It reminded me of a blind person I’d once seen reading braille on a bus. Jenny’s gone, this page read.

  “That’s it,” she said. “That’s all. We never got to take another picture . . .”

  I took her hand and squeezed tight.

  “We can take more pictures now, Mom, and put them in the album. Why not?”

  Then the door opened and Ben walked in.

  We recognized each other. Not like Wow, you’re my sister and You’re my older brother.

  No.

  Like Shit, you’re the guy who was hitting on me outside that pizzeria, and Fuck, you’re the girl I tried to bum a smoke from. Both of us staring at each other and probably wondering if we should say so out loud. At least, I was.

  He said zip and stayed frozen right inside the front door, even when Dad gave him an encouraging nudge from behind.

  “I know this is really strange for you, Ben, it’s strange for all of us, but how about you say hello to your sister.”

 
He didn’t say hello. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and remained right where he was, as if he wasn’t sure if he’d walked into the right house—it was entirely different from the one he’d left this morning . . . and it was. Sure it was.

  “Hey, Ben,” I said. “Long time no see.”

  I was trying to be funny, or trying to be something, but no one laughed. Dad managed a weak smile, walked into the living room, and sat down next to us on the couch.

  “Ummm, Ben?” Mom said. “How about we all sit down and talk a little?”

  Apparently, Ben didn’t feel like talking.

  “Ben . . . ?” Mom said again.

  It took her a few more entreaties, delivered with increasing levels of frustration, before Ben actually joined us, if you could call it that, since he took the seat farthest away from everyone—way across the room on an orange love seat. Not that there seemed to be much love coming from it.

  I’d noticed what must’ve been an old science project of Ben’s sitting in what used to be my bedroom—a papier-mâché diorama of the solar system—and if me, Mom, and Dad were the sun, Mercury, and Venus, Ben was an outer planet. Pluto maybe, the one they’d downsized to a speck of cosmic dust.

  Sides were being drawn.

  “So, would you like to say anything to your sister, Ben?” Mom said.

  That would be a no.

  “Okay. You must have a thousand questions, Ben, we all do,” Mom said. “Jenny’s had a really hard time out there, and I think we should just get to know each other again. Can we do that? No one’s expecting you to feel like a brother to her—not yet—I understand that. This will take time. A lot of time. But maybe if we just talk, if we just get the ball rolling . . .”

  Ben wasn’t in a ball-rolling mood. He rolled his eyes instead, just enough to get a tired sigh out of Dad. The kind of sigh that said, We’ve been here before, haven’t we, and I’m tired of it. Okay, so maybe things hadn’t been too rosy around the Kristal home lately.

  “Jenny, I think this is just a real shock to Ben. I’m sure he’s trying to process it. To understand. We all thought you were . . . you know . . .