“And married.”
“That doesn’t have to be an obstacle,” Julie said.
“It is to you.”
“Well yes, but Michael and I get along,” Julie said. “And even if I wanted to cheat I’d have to get a babysitter.”
Julie was always eager for me to have an affair, I think, so she could hear about it afterward.
“How is life among the rug rats?” I said.
“Mikey has discovered that if he doesn’t eat I go crazy.”
“It’s good to have a resourceful kid.”
“The little bastard won’t eat anything but macaroni with butter on it.”
“So?”
“So it’s not balanced.”
“Oh hell,” I said. “People live quite well on a lot worse.”
“He needs protein and vegetables.”
“Maybe he sneaks some when you’re not looking. You’re the psychiatric social worker,” I said. “What would you say to someone about that?”
“That it’s one of the few areas where he can exercise control,” Julie said. “I can’t force him to eat.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“Like toilet training,” Julie said.
“Didn’t you have trouble toilet-training him?” I said.
“So what do I tell the pediatrician when she tells me he’s malnourished.”
“Tell her he’ll get over it,” I said.
“Oh sure. It’s easy... you haven’t got any children.”
“All I did was ask a couple of questions. Besides, I have Rosie.”
“Whom you spoil horrendously.”
“So?” I said. “Your point?”
Julie finished her sandwich. “I can’t wait,” she started.
And I finished for her, “Until you have kids!”
We both laughed.
“The mother’s curse,” Julie said. “How old is this girl you’re looking for?”
“Fifteen,” I said.
We were through breakfast and putting the dishes into the dishwasher.
“Pretty?”
“Come on down to the office,” I said, “I’ll show you her picture.”
The kitchen was in the middle of the loft. Behind it was my bedroom. The east end was where I painted. The west end was my office. Julie and I stood near my desk looking down at the picture of Millicent Patton. Rosie followed us and flopped down behind me. I knew she was annoyed. She never understood why I couldn’t just stay still near where she was sleeping.
“Well, at least she doesn’t have purple hair and a ring in her nose,” Julie said.
“At least not in the picture,” I said.
“If things are good at home,” Julie said, “kids don’t run away.”
“True,” I said. “But what defines bad at home will vary a lot from kid to kid.”
“So where will you start looking for this little girl?” Julie said.
“Do the easy things first,” I said. “Call the local police to see if they’ve picked up a juvenile that might be Millicent or found any unidentified bodies that might be Millicent.”
Julie shook her head as if to make the thought go away.
“Have you done that?”
“Yes. No one fits.”
“Good. Now what?”
“Where do young girls usually end up when they run away from home?”
“Prostitution,” Julie said.
I nodded.
“You say that to her parents?”
“No.”
“What if you find her and she doesn’t want to leave?”
“I’ll urge her,” I said.
“What if there’s a pimp?”
“There’s almost always a pimp,” I said.
“Maybe you should ask Richie to go with you.”
“I can’t do this work if I have to ask my ex-husband to protect me.”
In the quiet I could hear some of the trucks grinding along Congress Street in low gear as they hauled stuff to or from the new tunnel site.
“I have never understood why you do this work, anyway,” Julie said.
“I know,” I said.
“Maybe if you gave me a reasonable explanation...”
“It pays for my painting.”
“Shouldn’t the painting pay for itself?” Julie said.
“Day at a time,” I said. “It also pays for my MFA.”
“Which you’ve been pursuing since I was childless.”
“Night at a time,” I said.
“Sunny,” she said. “I’ve known you all my life and I don’t understand you.”
“At least you know it,” I said.
Julie looked at her watch.
“My God,” she said, “I’m late, late. I love you, babe, you know that.”
“I love you, too, Jule.”
We hugged. She left. I stared at Millicent’s picture for a while. Then I put Rosie in the car and went out to visit the Pinkett School.
Chapter 4
Pauline Plum from Pinkett was everything the name promised. She was tall and slim and flutie with a prominent nose and the kind of clenched-molar WASP drawl that girls used to acquire at Smith and Mount Holyoke. She was wearing one of those hideous print prairie dresses that are equally attractive on girls, women, and cattle. She made a point to introduce herself as Miss Plum.
We talked in her office, on the first floor of the Pinkett School’s white clapboard main building, me in a maple captain’s chair with a small plaid cushion on it, Miss Plum sitting straight in her high-backed leather swivel, with her feet on the floor and her hands folded before her on the desktop.
“Millicent Patton is not a very industrious student,” she said.
“How so?”
“She is bright enough, at least she seems so. But she also seemed to lack any motivation.”
“Bad grades?”
“Yes, but more than that. She isn’t active in school affairs. She doesn’t play a sport. She is not on the yearbook staff, she has no extracurricular activities on her transcript.”
“She is not a resident,” I said.
“No, we are not a resident school.”
“Any special friends here?”
“Sadly, none that I know of.”
“No friends that she might have gone to visit without telling her parents?”
“None.”
“Could she have friends you don’t know about?” I said.
“Possibly,” Miss Plum said. “But I keep a close eye on my charges, and after you called I made it a point to refamiliarize myself with Millicent and her situation.”
“No boyfriends?”
“This is a girls’ school.”
“Doesn’t mean she might not have a boyfriend,” I said.
“We feel dating is better left to later years,” Miss Plum said. “We try to focus our girls on growing into accomplished young ladies.”
“And I’ll bet you do a hell of a job,” I said.
Miss Plum frowned. Accomplished young ladies did not speak that way.
“Our graduates usually continue their education at the best schools,” she said.
“Where do you suppose Millicent Patton is headed?”
“I fear that perhaps a public junior college would be her only option,” Miss Plum said.
“Eek,” I said.
“Did you go to college, Miss Randall?”
“Yes.”
I knew Miss Plum was dying to know where, but I was too perverse to tell her, and she was too well-bred to ask. I’d known a lot of Miss Plums, people who couldn’t form an opinion of you until they knew where you went to college, and what your father or husband did for a living, and where you grew up. I was sure in Miss Plum’s world that no accomplished young lady became a private eye.
“So what was wrong with Millicent Patton?” I said. “Why didn’t she fit in? Why is she the one that won’t go to a good school and has no friends and might end up, God forbid, in a public junior college?”
“As I say, she is unmotivated.”
“That’s not really an answer,” I said. “That is just another way of describing the problem.”