Janie Face to Face

  The small, elegant city campus was a world of cell phones and texting. In class and out, at cafeterias and snack bars, on the quad and in the dorms, kids lived on their cell phones. Janie could be sitting outdoors on a bench, nibbling a bagel, surrounded by a dozen other students, and nobody would talk to anybody there because they were all on their phones.

  It was slightly warmer than it had been in weeks.

  Janie was perched on a long, low stone wall, playing a word game on her iPhone with Sarah-Charlotte. Sarah-Charlotte was in Boston, but they were in touch with each other so frequently that Janie hardly felt the distance.

  When a man sat down on the same wall, Janie was barely aware of him. She concentrated on whipping Sarah-Charlotte with a very well-placed letter Q.

  “I saw you the other day,” said the man. “Walking by the river. I was on my bike.”

  She looked up, startled. He was a complete stranger. And very good-looking. He had shaved a few days ago, and the dark stubble was attractive. He had curly dark hair and a nice smile. He was a bit older than Janie. Perhaps a grad student. “It must be fun to have a bike in the city,” she said. He did not have a bike with him now. Janie’s Spring family were all bicycle enthusiasts. She herself was still afraid of being hit by cars.

  “As long as it doesn’t snow or rain, it’s fun,” said the man. “A bike can be faster than a taxi or a bus. Of course, that’s going downtown. Coming back is uphill. But that’s good too. Nice workout.”

  “That was one of the surprises of New York for me,” said Janie. “How much walking there is, and how much of it is uphill.”

  “Want to walk over to Riverside Park with me?” he asked.

  Riverside Park was a thin green strip that ran down the Hudson River for miles, dotted with softball fields and tennis courts, a marina and children’s playgrounds, dog parks and hundreds of benches. It was patrolled constantly. Today the park would be packed with nannies pushing strollers, people of all ages and types sipping coffee, and high school ball teams practicing on dusty fields.

  The man was smiling at her, a tender smile. A charming smile. “I’d enjoy the company,” he said in a careful sort of voice; a voice that said, No risk. It’s public. Plenty of people around. “We have an hour of daylight left,” he added.

  This campus, thought Janie, has thousands of young women, and he saw me across the quad and wants my company. She felt the tiny weight of her cell phone in her hand. She wanted to text Sarah-Charlotte: Maybe I’ve met him!

  Him. The elusive future boyfriend she and Sarah-Charlotte both dreamed of—perfect, of course, and madly in love.

  No. She would not tell Sarah-Charlotte anything until she was sure. “That sounds nice,” she said, although it sounded way better than nice—it sounded romantic and exciting and wonderful.

  They did not exchange names. He adjusted his stride to hers. He was a talker, which was perfect. She could listen and gather her thoughts.

  “I want to write,” he told her. “I’m studying creative writing. It’s harder than I thought it would be. But I have wonderful professors.”

  The only thing Janie had ever written easily was her college entrance essay. She was still amazed that she had written it at all, never mind sent it in. She was even more amazed that whoever was on that acceptance committee had given her exactly what she asked for: anonymity. Nobody had a clue that she was the face on the milk carton.

  When they reached the park, they chose the paved path closest to the river and walked slowly. Janie usually watched the river traffic, and the passersby, the children and dogs and skyline. This time, she saw none of it. She took up her share of the conversation. She talked about college and classes and the dorm.

  The sun was sliding out of sight. They had walked many blocks. They cut across the park to Riverside Drive and caught a number 5 bus going north. It was full. They jostled against each other. He caught her arm to steady her. “My name is Michael,” he told her. “Michael Hastings.”

  “Michael,” she repeated. She had always loved the name Michael.

  But now it was her turn. He was waiting to hear her name.

  What was her name?

  If this was her future husband (she hoped the poor man did not know that she was way past their first date and planning their wedding), he ought to be told her real name. But the wonderful thing about him (aside from good looks, great body, and good conversation) was that he knew nothing. Michael did not want to bask on the edges of some ancient crime. He wanted the company of a girl he had seen across the campus.

  “I’m Jane,” she said at last, as if he had asked for information that would stump a Jeopardy! champion.

  He chuckled. “It’s good to know you, Jane.”

  He was tall and looked down at her, while she was medium and had to look up at him. She couldn’t keep her gaze on him. He was giving her the shivers. Shivers she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  She thought of Reeve.

  Her entire life since seeing her face on that milk carton had been about loyalty.

  Did she need to be loyal to Reeve?

  Reeve, her rock and her friend, had been the most disloyal of all. He had sold intimate details of her story on the radio to get himself a slot on a talk show. She had hated him for a while and needed him again for a while, and could not quite completely get past what he had done. I love him, she thought. But I don’t have to be loyal. He’s a former boyfriend.

  A stab of pain shot through her heart at the thought of Reeve retreating forever to the past. When she caught her breath, it was like catching a glimpse of Reeve, with his moppy hair and his huge grin.

  “Let me send you a text, Jane,” said Michael, “and then you’ll have my number.”

  Janie Johnson did not give out anything. Not real names, not real history, and not phone numbers. Why? she asked herself now. Do I think the kidnapper will come again? What am I afraid of? I want Michael to call me. I want to text him. Michael might matter. He might be the very first person after Reeve who will matter.

  After Reeve felt like the edge of a cliff.

  Michael was laughing. “It’s okay, Jane. You don’t have any way of knowing who I am. You don’t know a thing about me. So instead of text messages, how about this? I’ll be at that stone wall every day at that exact same time.”

  “You gotta love a guy willing to sit on an icy stone wall every day,” said Constance, back at the dorm.

  “Give him your number next time,” said Rachel. “If you don’t, I need a boyfriend. I’ll meet him at the stone wall.”

  Mikayla said, “I’m going to wander by at that scheduled time and photograph him on my cell and we’ll all study him.”

  “Don’t do that!” snapped Janie, alarmed by her own anger.

  Mikayla held up both hands, as if stopping traffic. “Just teasing.”

  Janie’s heart was pounding. She knew better than anybody the power of one photograph. One tiny black-and-white photograph on a half-pint milk carton had changed the world for the Johnsons.

  She wasn’t ready for photographs.

  Eve said, “Where is he taking these writing courses? Here?”

  “I don’t think he said.”

  “Check his student ID. He could be a creep.”

  Janie and Michael met at the stone wall the next day, and most days after that.

  Michael usually arrived first, and he liked to bring a gift. A miniature sugar-dusted doughnut. A cup of hot chocolate. A single flower from a sidewalk vendor.

  Janie ate the doughnut. She washed out the cup and kept it on her bookshelf. She saved the flower.

  “There’s something calculating about all these presents,” said Eve. “He’s buying you.”

  “He is not,” said Janie, laughing. “It’s so cute, all these little gestures.”

  Everybody in the dorm was eager for every detail of every meeting, and Janie loved telling her girlfriends all about Michael, but she did not tell anybody else. Not even Sarah-Charlotte, who knew almost
as much of Janie’s history as Reeve. She didn’t tell one of her four parents or her sister, Jodie, who would have loved to know, and certainly not her brothers, whose interest would have been zero.

  Even Reeve would not have understood how she was feeling. Like the trees and shrubs of New York, Janie was beginning to thaw; she was ready to bloom. In Michael’s company, she had a fresh new existence, without the stain of the kidnapping. For the second time in her life, she was teetering on the brink of true love.

  Michael was definitely in love with her. He wanted to know everything about her. He quickly learned that she would not discuss her family or childhood. “I know, I know,” he would apologize. “You’re very private. But I love every detail about you. Last Sunday you were busy in New Jersey with your parents. But the Sunday before that you were busy in Connecticut with your parents. My folks are divorced too, Jane. It’s not so bad that we can’t talk about it.”

  Both sets of Janie’s parents had strong marriages. She wanted to say, “Nobody divorced. All my parents still love each other.” But she was never ready to begin the real story. If she told, the sweet romance would sag with every dark question. Michael would become what so many people were: a voyeur of her nightmare.

  “Tell me how your book chapter is going,” she would say instead.

  “Slowly. All I think about is you.”

  They would kiss.

  He would say, “Jane, let me into your world.”

  She would say, “It’s complicated.”

  Eve did not like Michael. “There’s something off about that guy.”

  Janie would not fight with Eve. She just waited the conversation out.

  “You don’t know anything about him!” Eve would say. “It’s creepy. You’ve never visited his apartment, he doesn’t seem to have any friends of his own, he just adopts your friends, and you don’t know for sure that he really is a grad student.”

  “He doesn’t know anything about me either,” Janie would say. “We’re a perfect fit.”

  “You’re one in a million with your privacy hang-ups, Jane. I do not believe there are two in a million who are so protective of their lives. And if there are two in a million, they didn’t meet by chance on a park bench!”

  “Stone wall,” Janie would correct her. “And it isn’t creepy. It’s romantic.”

  Spring that year was beautiful. The leaves of park and sidewalk trees uncurled. Bulbs burst with color in the tubs by the entrances to stores. Tough, demanding New York City was soft and tender. Eve was not. She began inviting herself along when Janie and Michael went out.

  One night, the three of them were at a restaurant. Over appetizers, Michael said to Janie, “So why don’t you ever post anything on Facebook?”

  Eve and Rachel had asked the same thing, of course. Janie couldn’t remember what lame excuse she had given. There were dozens of Jane Johnsons on Facebook. Janie had chosen a photograph in which you could no more identify her than a tree in the woods. Basically, she just had an account so she could be a lurker.

  “Jane’s very private,” said Eve, coming to her roommate’s rescue. “I think it’s adorable. She’s not a conformist. She doesn’t tell anybody anything and that’s that.”

  “It isn’t adorable anymore,” said Michael. “It’s frustrating.” He hitched his chair away from Janie.

  The inch was a chasm. Normal people shared. People in love shared. It was Janie’s turn to share. But just remembering her first glimpse of her face on that milk carton made Janie’s world spiral out of control. She could not quote herself, at age fifteen, whispering, “It’s me.” She could not describe the freefall into that hideous vortex: Are my parents my kidnappers?

  I don’t want to trust anybody with anything, she thought, chilled by that vision of her soul. Would life even be worth living if you did not have friends and family you utterly trusted?

  Reeve’s face wavered in her thoughts. Did she trust him again after all—or was he always to be a warning of what happened when you wrongly trusted?

  Eve said to Michael, “You’ve made some interesting Facebook choices yourself. How come you didn’t friend me when I asked?”

  “I’m so sorry!” said Michael. “I didn’t mean to do that. Of course I want you as a friend. You are a friend, Eve! But it’s Jane whose friendship I crave.”

  Janie didn’t like that word, “crave.” It sounded—well—creepy.

  They walked home. The streets of New York at night sparkled, full of people and action and noise. It was like a moving, drifting party. But tonight was awkward. Michael clearly just wanted the evening to end. Janie could not think of a way to smooth things over, and the image of Reeve made it impossible to do anything except offer her cheek for a kiss.

  Michael didn’t give one. He left Janie and Eve at the dormitory entrance and walked on.

  Inside, the girls headed for the stairs, which Eve said were crucial to maintaining their figures, especially after so much dessert. Eve paused at the mailboxes, which she loved to check, although they hardly ever got mail. “Guess what?” said Eve. “You have real mail. I don’t think I’ve had a paper letter since I got here. My parents phone, my sister emails, my friends text, we all use Facebook.” She handed Janie the letter.

  Together they ran up the first flight, paused at the turn, ran up the second flight, and trudged up the next three. “But we’ll be skinny!” panted Eve.

  They rested at the top. Janie studied her mail. “I never heard of the person on this return address. Calvin Vinesett. What a name. He’s probably selling something, like all our other mail is. The expensive envelope is a sales trick.”

  They reached their room. Janie and Eve were neat. Eve kept her dirty clothes in a canvas sack, and now she dragged it out, stripped her bed, tucked the sheets under her arm, and headed for the laundry room. Janie threw the letter into the wastepaper basket.

  But what if it really was mail and contained information she needed?

  She retrieved the letter and opened it.

  Dear Miss Johnson:

  My name is Calvin Vinesett. I am a true crime writer. Like most of the country, I am riveted by your story. If you go to my website, you will see the kind of book in which I specialize. I have chosen you as the subject of my next book.

  You are the victim of an act by a woman almost unknown to us; a woman who abandoned her family in her late teens to take up an unusual and rather hidden life with a group her family considered a sick and twisted cult. This woman briefly emerged here and there. During one episode, she drove you away from your rightful family. But you triumphed and are now a happy daughter and sister in two families, and going to a fine college.

  Not only will your story be fascinating to millions of readers, but my book may be the route to finding that kidnapper at last. By helping me with this book, you will bring about justice.

  A book! Bad enough there had been a TV movie! Bad enough there had been an America’s Most Wanted episode. Bad enough the media came back on every anniversary or any slim excuse to invade Janie’s life—eager to attack poor Frank and Miranda—quick to surround Donna and Jonathan Spring.

  Janie threw the letter back into the wastebasket. It wasn’t enough. She tore it in half and threw the halves back in. That wasn’t enough. She carried the wastebasket down the hall and emptied it into the trash chute.

  If she couldn’t even tell Michael about her past, she could never, ever tell this Calvin Vinesett.

  A book required many sources. All her friends would get a letter like this. Janie imagined them galloping over to Calvin Vinesett, begging to be interviewed, happy to contribute a morsel.

  Janie did not worry that Reeve would tell. I haven’t been loyal to him, she thought, but he will be loyal to me. He really did learn from his mistakes.

  For a moment she wanted Reeve so fiercely she could have hiked to North Carolina.

  On her iPad, she went to Calvin Vinesett’s website. He seemed to write nothing but bestsellers, which sold all over the
world in many languages. The books featured ghastly, brutal, bloody crimes. Long, riveting chapters (said the reviewers) revealed the psyches of the criminals and the suffering of the victims.

  The media had mopped the floor with Frank and Miranda. How depraved they must have been to raise a daughter who became a kidnapper, said the media. Really depraved to have kept the kidnapped toddler. Who believed their pathetic story that they hadn’t known Janie was kidnapped? And then, after the milk carton, those kidnap parents enticed Janie back into their clutches, so the innocent little child finished high school living with her kidnappers instead of with her actual mother and father.

  Janie felt ill. Now, when Frank was no longer a rock to lean on and Miranda was at her frailest, she might have to face the media and their lies all over again.

  Janie’s cell phone rang with the piano glissando of her New Jersey mother’s ringtone. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Did you get a letter from this Calvin Vinesett, sweetie?”

  “Yes.”

  “So did everybody,” said Donna.

  Everybody, thought Janie, means Dad and Stephen and Jodie and Brendan and Brian. Who have been ruled by this kidnapping twelve years more than I was. Because I never even knew. They hate that kidnapping. Sometimes they hate me, too, since we don’t have Hannah around to hate.

  “A book like that might lead to Hannah Javensen’s capture,” said Donna Spring carefully.

  She wants the book? thought Janie.

  “But it is bound to focus on us as well,” said Donna, “and especially on your poor mother.”

  Janie marveled that her real parent Donna Spring could refer to Miranda Johnson as “your poor mother.” Sometimes she was so proud of being Donna’s daughter. But she did not say so now. She did not say that in the last year and a half, Donna Spring had become her real mother at last, and the Spring house, her real home. Not expressing the truth was second nature to Janie, because at the same time Donna would love hearing it, Miranda would be crushed by it.