We Disappear

  “This time, we’re going to talk.” I took the seat beside her. “You’re going to answer my questions and stop this nonsense.”

  “But are you still ‘playing along’ with me, or are you really going to believe what I tell you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t know until I hear it all.”

  “You think I’m making this up.”

  “I don’t know what to think about the whole ‘recovered memories’ thing. It just isn’t convincing, whether it’s someone on TV or my own mother.”

  “Okay. But I’m not making it up. I remember.”

  Her voice sounded desperate again; I resisted the urge to take her hand. Beneath the Y on the New York sweatshirt was a pink tomato stain, and I reached to rub it with my thumb. “Oh, Mom. It’s tough to believe that something could happen years and years ago, then come flooding back after all this time.”

  A deep, exaggerated sigh. “But it’s not flooding back. I’ve remembered, little by little and piece by piece, all these years.”

  “Please tell me. Please?”

  “I don’t want to start with Otis.”

  “Start somewhere else. Go back to when you were a girl. How about the day you disappeared.”

  She closed her eyes, pausing to arrange the memories. The TV’s light wavered sleepily over her face; from outside, the echo of a church bell, reminding me of the bell above the Haven Café door, and of Mr. Wyler, weeping soundlessly at his booth. I listened as the low tolling dissolved and the town went silent.

  After nearly a minute, she opened her eyes. “I was playing in the playground,” she began, “down the street from where we lived. I was there with Dan. He was on the swings with some other kids, but I just sat in the grass, coloring in my book. I’d colored bright blue for the stegosaurus, and red for the triceratops. I remember because they let me bring the coloring book along. I had it the entire time I was with them. It’s one of my souvenirs. Why don’t you go snoop some more through the basement—you’ll find it down there.”

  “An old man and old woman.”

  “They were sweet. Very sweet and kind to me. When we got back to their house, there was another kid, a boy. They’d taken him, too, sometime earlier. Young, but a little older than me. The boy’s name was Warren. They told us we looked like brother and sister. Warren and Donna. Doesn’t that sound nice together? They said we could be their very own kids, even though they seemed too old to be our parents.”

  She took a noisier sip from her glass. “We never knew their names. They said to call them Mom and Pop, but it didn’t feel right. Maybe if I’d been there longer than the week, I might have gotten used to it, but I didn’t.”

  “Tell me more about them.”

  “The woman was big. Not fat, but fleshy. Fleshy, dimpled arms. She had liver spots on her hands and a ring with one purple stone and one blue. She had little wire-rim glasses, so thick they magnified her eyes. And gray hair, almost white. And she liked to sing to us. She sang church hymns I hadn’t heard before. Not the usual ones you could hear every Sunday on the TV or radio, but strange songs, all God and Jesus and Holy Spirit, with strange, sad melodies. And she’d watch us like she was going to cry.”

  “You and this boy. This Warren.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the old man?”

  “He was a farmer, I guess. He wore dirty boots with smears of manure on the sides. Sometimes he smelled a little like horses, like the hay or alfalfa. He didn’t sing like the woman but he was just as nice. He’s the one who gave us candy bars. And he sometimes gave us peaches, big fat fuzzy ones, with enough juice to spill out your mouth and down your shirt. Peaches fresh from trees he must have had somewhere on his farm.

  “But the man only came down at night, not ever during the day like her. And it was strange, because he always wore something over his face, like a scarf or sometimes some kind of mask. Like he didn’t want us to see his face. But even with the mask, he didn’t scare us. He was so nice.”

  She kicked her shoes to the floor, lifting her feet to tuck them into the afghan. “Once I remember him wearing a dirty blue work shirt,” she said. “There was a patch on the chest, but the patch didn’t have a name—just STERLING REPAIR. We were taken to some small house, on a small farm, in a dark basement, but that’s why I’ve always thought it was somewhere near Sterling—because of that patch on his shirt.”

  My hands were sweating and I’d tightened them into fists. In my left, I still held the purple and green floss, the tiny white beads. All my questions had doubled; I wasn’t certain where to start. “They never let you outside? They didn’t try to hurt you? You never tried to run?”

  “I don’t think we wanted to run. At least I didn’t, not at first. I was a little bit scared—you know, of what could happen with my dad. Remember how horrible and mean he could be. I thought he’d punish me for disappearing.”

  “But surely he tried to find you. And your mother. Didn’t she try to find you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t try very hard. Looking back, I wonder if they almost enjoyed that I’d disappeared—Dan was so little at the time, but he told me later how our parents got a lot of attention for a few days, neighbors coming to visit, even a policeman showing up at our house. They got sympathy cards and gifts and big noodle casseroles as though I was already dead.

  “So no, I didn’t try and run. I didn’t really want to go home. Maybe it’s hard to understand, but I liked the old man and woman. They kept giving us candy. They let us play records and decorate the basement room. I was excited to see what would happen next. And I really liked Warren. He was closer to my age than Dan, and he understood me. He treated me nice, like a big brother. Nobody at school had ever treated me so nice. He talked to me, and he told funny jokes like nobody at school had ever done. And he made sure I wasn’t afraid when the basement got dark.

  “I remember they put some kids’ games and an old record player down there for us. The games were difficult—board games designed for older kids maybe, a little too complicated for us—but we tried playing them anyway. We made up our own rules and shuffled the little cards and followed each other’s game pieces around the game boards. And we played the scratchy, scratchy records. Sometimes a little too loud, but the man and woman never complained.”

  “What records? What were the songs?”

  “Oh, fun things. Upbeat. Things you’d hear in an old movie, or in some old TV commercial.” She cocked her head, remembering. “There was ‘Jeepers, Creepers’ and ‘I’ve Got the World on a String.’ And ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.’”

  My mother kept looking heavenward. Clearly and flawlessly, she started to sing.

  Don’t sit under the apple tree

  With anyone else but me

  Anyone else but me…

  ’Til I come marchin’ home

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “I loved singing along, but Warren said he hated singing, he had a terrible voice. I’d sing, but he wouldn’t join in.”

  (Otis, once again, from the truck: I can’t sing worth a crap.)

  “Warren said he was an only child, his father wasn’t home much. I could tell he didn’t like it there. And he didn’t care for school at all. We were so much alike. But I don’t remember him saying anything about a last name, or where his home actually was. He just seemed happy to be away. Happy to be part of this—this adventure, I guess you could call it.”

  “Or kidnapping.”

  “Yes, maybe. But not really. They took such good care of us! They treated us special.”

  “But they brought you back. They didn’t keep you there forever.”

  Instantly, her expression changed; her gaze moved to the TV, then the window beyond. “And I’ve always wondered why,” she said. “That was always the worst thing about the story, the part I always hated.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It was late at night. We’d been sleeping but they woke us up. The man was weari
ng the mask and it looked like she’d been crying. They left Warren in the basement room, and they told me to shut my eyes. They put a blindfold over my face. Put my coloring book in my hands. They said they had a surprise for me. ‘We’re going on a little trip.’ And they led me upstairs and outside. Guided me into the back of a car. The man was wearing scratchy work gloves, and he was holding my hand. The night was warm—I remember it being so calm and warm. My eyes were blindfolded but it was the same car; I recognized the pipe-tobacco smell of it from the day they’d taken me from my street.

  “And it was so late at night, and so warm, and I was sleepy. I didn’t ask questions. I might have even fallen asleep. But at some point I woke because the woman was crying again. My blindfold had fallen off. Maybe they had taken it off. I could see we were back in Hutchinson, at the end of my parents’ street. The car door opened. I heard the woman crying. Then I was outside the car, and they were driving away.”

  “And you never told,” I said.

  “I marched right back to my house because there was nothing else to do. I was afraid I’d be in loads of trouble. So I pretended I was sick. I acted confused and scared, and I coughed and even managed to make myself cry. But my parents didn’t know what I was really crying about. For days they let me stay in bed while they got all the attention. There were more gifts from the neighbors; more food. And the policeman came back—stood right over the bed where I pretended to be sick. But I wasn’t going to tell them anything. The woman had said they’d get into trouble if I told. Of course I believed this. The police would come and get them, and they’d be put away for years and years. The police could even come for Warren and me. We’d all be in terrible trouble.”

  She turned again to face me. “But all these years, I’ve always wondered—why me? Why’d they choose to take me back, but keep Warren? They’d told me again and again I could have been their daughter. What was so wrong to make them return me to my old life?”

  As she spoke these final questions, my mother started to cry. I looked up, too stunned to answer or move. Her grief was muffled, but her eyes were full and wet; she blinked, and the tears broke in streaks on her face.

  “I never got to tell my Warren good-bye,” she said.

  Delicately I took the empty glass from her hand. Comforting her should have been simple, but her story had made it immense, impossible. As I walked to the kitchen, the details solidified: bright peach juice in my mouth, the pipe smoke in my lungs, her apple-tree melody in my ears. It all seemed real now. So much information, so many secrets, after years and years. How had she guarded this story so carefully? Why hadn’t she confessed, during some drunken or vulnerable moment, to John, to Dolores, to Alice or me?

  I leaned against the sink. The faces of the missing stared from the surrounding walls. Out the window, I could see the corner of the porch where Otis had stacked the candy bars; and beyond, our parked truck, its windows spattered with juice.

  I heard her composing herself, clearing her throat, taking deep breaths. Then she began again. “Sometimes at school, when I was feeling sad or wanted attention, I thought about telling other kids. I wasn’t very popular; they made fun of my poor-girl clothes and the lispy way I talked. Maybe if I’d told them my story, I could make them scared of me. Maybe they’d gossip or put me in some place of fascination. But I never did. I never told a soul. I worried what might happen to the man and the woman, and especially to Warren.”

  “Secrets,” I said.

  “Oh, I can keep a good secret. Even when it’s a lonely secret. Even when it’s utterly my own.”

  After a pause, she began again. “I used to look for them everywhere. Whenever I got the chance—Lord, how I’d search and search. Playgrounds. Out the windows when I’d ride in my parents’ car. In the hay fields or the pastures when we’d drive past farms. Maybe the department store in town, where maybe they’d be shopping, buying more candy.

  “I just wanted to see them again,” she said. “I just wanted my Warren.”

  I thought of Moynihan’s; the girl stealing candy bars from the gleaming counter. The sweet-cherry flavor sending her back, transporting her from the father and his beatings to the warm, shrouded basement with the temporary brother, the new Mom and Pop.

  And for the first time since returning home, I longed to call Alice, to tell her everything. The Cherry Mash, the missions, and Otis. The captives in the basement and their kind, vigilant captors. When we were kids, my sister and I could never guess our mother’s thoughts as she hunched over the pictures at the table: her brown officer’s uniform, the lost look in her eyes, her scissors and pushpins and cellophane tape. Now, at last, I thought I knew.

  I took the pitcher of tea from the refrigerator, refilled the glass, and stood in the kitchen doorway. “This is nothing like your old story,” I softly said. “The one you told to scare us.”

  “No. And I’m so sorry. I’ve kept it hidden from you, and I’m sorry.”

  I could feel her eyes on me, but wasn’t yet prepared to stare back. On the inner rim of her glass, clumped along the crescents of ice, were soft brown granules of undissolved tea. For years, my mother had preferred instant tea, still buying it when no one else did. I’d always loved the tiny, inexplicable quirks like these, all the oddities that made my mother. I’d always thought I knew them so well.

  Finally, I said, “You never stopped searching, did you? For years, you went back to Sterling to find them.”

  “Oh, I’d forget sometimes. Life would get crazy, with my job, and paying bills, and keeping up the house. Especially after your father died, when it was just me and you and Alice.”

  “But the memories would return.”

  “Yes. Out of the blue, something would happen. Every now and then I’d see a girl or boy on the sidewalk or in the grocery store…every now and then, in the newspapers or on TV, some kid would turn up missing. And I’d wonder. I’d feel that deep-down secret part of me slipping out. I’d step outside my usual life, and I’d get to drinking or acting crazy. I’d go through microfilm at the library, old papers from Wichita or Salina or Topeka, looking for faces, anything that resembled my story. I’m not even sure I knew what I wanted to find.”

  “And then there was Evan,” I said.

  “Yes. And he looked so much like Warren. A little ghost of him.”

  “Evan made you think the man and the woman might still be out there, taking kids, the way they’d taken you.”

  “Maybe. Or no, not really. I don’t really know what I thought. By that time I must have known they’d gotten too old to keep that up, and probably they’d eventually—you know, passed on.

  “But not him,” said my mother. “I knew he had to be out there, somewhere. My Warren.”

  Her voice had gone raspy from fatigue, from the rough, disordered pain she’d poured forth with it. I realized we’d forgotten her meds. I opened the designated cabinet, gathering the prescription bottles—all week I’d been memorizing Dr. Kaufman’s elaborate schedule—and then I went back to join her. It seemed the room’s air had altered, each sound brittle and precise; stepping across the floor, simply returning to my space on the couch, felt like stepping on snakes. I handed her each pill from each bottle. Then the glass of instant tea. The television news had begun; although the sound was off and picture still wasn’t fixed, I could see the familiar hawk-nosed evening anchor, the headlines hovering in boldface over his shoulder.

  I waited until she’d finished the meds. “You’ve never told anyone, have you? At least not this much of it.”

  “Not until recently.”

  “You’ve told Dolores?”

  “Some to Dolores, yes.” She looked down at her hands, hesitating, considering her next words. Then she said, “And I told everything—all of it—to Otis.”

  And now, once again, the boy. Her boy. At some point during my mother’s narrative—her overwhelming, zigzagging reverie—I’d almost forgotten the origin of our discussion.

  “Otis?”

&nbsp
; “Yes.”

  “But why tell your secrets to him?”

  She spoke slowly, as though I were a child and couldn’t understand. “Isn’t it obvious? He might be the link.”

  She smiled, nodding. At that moment, I began to understand. The link. Once again I felt the sting of jealousy—a dark, lingering force inside me, its shadows clinging in the way nostalgia does, or love. But this was jealousy, not love, and it prevented me from hugging my mother or wrapping an arm around her slumped shoulders or her pale, warm neck. It prevented me from taking her hand, the skin rough and flaking, the side effects of so many meds.

  “You barely know him,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. You barely—”

  “But it does make sense. Oh, Scott. I’ve been searching so long. All the other boys you found in that box downstairs—all little ghosts of Warren. And now I think I’ve found the right one.”

  The secret box, the secret scrapbooks. Little girls like my mother. Boys like Warren. Tomorrow, I thought, I will finally call Alice.

  “Do you really think I only started this again when those girls found Henry’s body? It’s been weeks now. When the Barradale boy first disappeared, when his parents first reported him gone—oh Lord, his sweet, haunted face in the papers—it all came back again. Another ghost, haunting me. And I started going out in the pickup. Long drives, searching. Sometimes just random roads. Sometimes back to Sterling again, after so much time away. And then, one morning after a long thunderstorm, I was driving down the foggy street, and there he was.”

  I stretched back against the cushions. I closed my eyes and remembered his smell: dirty hair and sweat-soiled clothes; tomatoes and hot, criminal breath. I could easily picture my mother, that day behind the steering wheel, grinning and slapping the seat, daring the boy to come along for a ride. From the way she’d behaved earlier, in the truck, I could guess everything she’d said and done, that day she’d found him.

  “His raggedy shirt and his funny marked-up shoes. His little name tag. Poor thing. He told me about his rotten life. He hates his school. His stepfather is horrible to him. But he doesn’t know his real father, doesn’t know his grandfather.