He turns in another circle, scrutinizing his surroundings.
And now Paul has to make eye contact with this young cop and his questions.
His lungs aren’t pumping out full blasts of air. They’re a garden hose with a kink. Paul pants out the next couple breaths.
“He had on sneakers,” says Paul. “White and red Nikes.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“I bought them for him about a month ago.”
“What clothes was he wearing, sir?”
“Can’t you track his cell signal?”
“We need to finish this report.”
“I’ve seen that done on TV, the authorities locating criminals from their cell signals.”
“That technology exists,” the cops says, “but our priority is to complete the report.”
“We don’t need a report if we track his cell.”
“A physical description of what he’s wearing will help spot him, sir.”
“Well, it was. . uh. .”
“Let’s come back to this.”
Paul doesn’t want to, though. He doesn’t want to admit that he can’t remember what his son wore today. Doesn’t want to feel the repulsive burden of not knowing because, he guesses, other parents always know what clothes their kids have on. His ex would be able to answer this question with no problem and Paul should as well.
There are so many things that he doesn’t want to acknowledge, things he can’t bear remembering. Like the feeling of being in the office, he and the therapist barricaded away from Jake. The feeling of being interrogated by the doctor, his questions about the divorce, the separation, the living arrangements. The feeling of being indicted, of being on trial. The feeling of guilt — something Paul didn’t necessarily know he felt about his son’s well-being until that moment. The feeling of sweating on a witness stand. The feeling that a sentence will be handed down shortly.
The feeling of listening to a therapist express “deep concern”—his words — about Paul’s son. “Deep concern for what?” Paul had asked, and the doctor only got to say, “Jake is at a precarious intersection.”
Then they heard a loud noise from the waiting room, a door slammed, a woman’s voice calling, “Doctor!”
Both Paul and the therapist emerged from the office and saw the smashed hand sanitizer dispenser on the floor, clear liquid oozing out, looking like a dead jellyfish.
“Where’s Jake?” Paul asked the woman, her tablet resting on her lap, a napping child.
She pointed to the door. Paul ran through it. Paul screamed his son’s name. Paul was down the stairs. He exited the building. He stood in the parking lot and couldn’t spot his son anywhere.
“Jake!” he yelled, turning in circles. “Jake!”
Soon he dialed 911. Soon he was alerted by the operator to the fact that this wasn’t an emergency situation. Please call your local authorities, sir. They’ll be happy to assist, sir.
And ten minutes later, here he is with this police officer asking him a battery of questions, equally if not more defaming than those of the therapist, and Paul wants one thing: to remember what his son was wearing.
“His weight?” the cop says.
“Jeans, I think,” Paul says. “Yeah, blue jeans. Baggy.”
“His weight,” the cop says.
“You know how they wear them too baggy?”
“Do you know his weight?”
“Maybe 130 pounds.”
“Height?”
“Probably five-five or five-six or around there.”
“We need to be as precise as possible.”
“Five-six then.”
“What’s his date of birth?”
“April 24th, 1999,” says Paul proudly. As precise as possible. He can be more precise. He can go down to the minute. 7:18 AM. He can tell the cop all about that morning, can re-create the whole scene, his son with the umbilical cord looped twice around his neck, the doctors getting more anxious and agitated. Every time Paul looked up these doctors multiplied, two of them at first, four, eight, and because they’d administered such a heavy epidural, his wife couldn’t push, not really, and the doctors were now using a vacuum on the baby’s head to suck him out, and the worst part was that they’d broadcast his heartbeat over speakers in the room, and as his wife tried to push the baby’s heartbeat would crank up and between these too-light pushes Jake’s heartbeat would slow to this dismal thump thump thump, and Paul was convinced the baby was going to die. Paul stood next to his wife’s bed, holding her hand, their foreheads touching, saying to her, “We’re all going to be fine; we’re going to be fine,” and the vacuum wasn’t getting the baby out, either, thump thump thump, and the doctors were readying for a C-section if this one final push from his wife and one final yank from the vacuum didn’t work. But it did. Jake finally slid out, his head misshapen from the pressure created by the vacuum, Paul actually thinking the head looked like a layer cake, and the baby was this terrible purple color and he wasn’t crying and the doctors took him away, and Paul stayed right next to his wife, his wife that he loved so much, stayed right with her and whispered, “You did such a great job,” and she said, “How is he?” and he said, “Are you okay?” That was when Jake cried for the first time, sitting on a table a few feet from them, having all the mucus sucked from his airways, and it was Paul who walked over to cut the cord, Jake’s head already returning to a normal shape a few minutes later. Paul stared down at his son and felt relief that this was over, Jake was here now, Jake was safe, and Paul leaned down and kissed his child for the first time and said, “Welcome.”
Paul could tell this young cop all of these details, and many more, so many more, so stop making it sound like Paul didn’t know anything about his boy.
“You heard me about the jeans, right?” Paul says.
“Yes. Does he have braces? Wear glasses?”
“Neither.”
“What color was his shirt?”
“I don’t remember,” Paul says.
“Jacket?”
Paul continues to peer all around the parking lot, hoping to see his son flouncing back. He simply needed to wander off, get mad, let his frustration out, something that would explain his departure, that he’s not really running away. He’s not trying to leave. He had been only temporarily carried away.
“Any other unique identifiers?” the cop asks.
“He usually has his ear buds in. Always playing music.”
The cop doesn’t write this detail down.
“He literally always has them in, so please put that in the report.”
Sighing, the cop jots down a few words, then says, “I’m going up to the doctor’s office. To get additional information about the boy’s clothing.”
“I’ll wait here in case he comes back,” Paul says.
“You should go home. Check and make sure he’s not there. If you have keys, you should also look inside your ex-wife’s residence. Be thorough. Closets. Under beds. The garage. Trunks of vehicles. Any place he can hide.”
“Who will wait here?”
The cop looks puzzled. “Why would he come back?”
The officer meant why would Jake return here, to this parking lot, but his vague and stabbing syntax—Why would he come back? — travels through the skin, the meat, the bone, wedging in Paul’s body, a wound already infected with blame. That parental blame. The way seeing a chipped tooth day in, day out can call into question if you’re even fit to be a parent. The way there are so many reminders that Paul isn’t doing a very good job of it.
“He’s coming back,” Paul says.
“I have all the information, and we’ll be in touch,” the cop says. “We’ll also reach out to the FBI, talk about opening a missing person file with them.”