This back way, nobody would guess. Three minutes’ walk from the mini-mall.
Nobody would guess! The big old houses on Highgate, way up the hill, how the rear of their property slopes down to the state highway.
Jude warned The Corn Maiden must be treated with reverence, respect, kindness, and firmness. The Corn Maiden must never guess the fate that will be hers.
“Marissa”
The first signal something was wrong, no lights in the apartment.
The second, too quiet.
“Marissa, honey...?”
Already there was an edge to her voice. Already her chest felt as if an iron band was tightening around it.
Stepped inside the darkened apartment. She would swear, no later than 8 P.M.
In a dreamlike suspension of emotion shutting the door behind her, switching on a light. Aware of herself as one might see oneself on a video monitor behaving with conspicuous normality though the circumstances have shifted, and are not normal.
A mother learns not to panic, not to betray weakness. Should a child be observing.
“Marissa? Aren’t you... are you home?”
If she’d been home, Marissa would have the lights on. Marissa would be doing her homework in the living room with the TV on, loud. Or the CD player on, loud. When she was home alone Marissa was made uneasy by quiet.
Made her nervous she said. Made her think scary thoughts like about dying she said. Hear her own heartbeat she said.
But the apartment was quiet. In the kitchen, quiet.
Leah switched on more lights. She was still observing herself, she was still behaving calmly. Seeing, from the living room, down the hall to Marissa’s room that the door to that room was open, darkness inside.
It was possible — it was! if only for a blurred desperate moment — to think that Marissa had fallen asleep on her bed, that was why... But Leah checked, there was no slender figure lying on the bed.
No one in the bathroom. Door ajar, darkness inside.
The apartment did not seem familiar somehow. As if furniture had been moved. (It had not, she would determine later.) It was chilly, drafty as if a window had been left open. (No window had been left open.)
“Marissa? Marissa?”
There was a tone of surprise and almost-exasperation in the mother’s voice. As if, if Marissa heard, she would know herself just mildly scolded.
In the kitchen that was empty, Leah set the groceries down. On a counter. Wasn’t watching, the bag slumped slowly over. Scarcely saw, a container of yogurt fell out.
Marissa’s favorite, strawberry.
So quiet! The mother, beginning to shiver, understood why the daughter hated quiet.
She was walking through the rooms, and would walk through the few rooms of the small first-floor apartment calling Marissa? Honey? in a thin rising voice like a wire pulled tight. She would lose track of time. She was the mother, she was responsible. For eleven years she had not lost her child, every mother’s terror of losing her child, an abrupt physical loss, a theft, a stealing-away, a forcible abduction.
“No. She’s here. Somewhere...”
Retracing her steps through the apartment. There were so few rooms for Marissa to be in! Again opening the bathroom door, wider. Opening a closet door. Closet doors. Stumbling against... Struck her shoulder on... Collided with Marissa’s desk chair, stinging her thigh. “Marissa? Are you hiding?”
As if Marissa would be hiding. At such a time.
Marissa was eleven years old. Marissa had not hidden from her mother to make Mommy seek her out giggling and squealing with excitement in a very long time.
She would protest she was not a negligent mother.
She was a working mother. A single mother. Her daughter’s father had disappeared from their lives, he paid neither alimony nor child support. How was it her fault, she had to work to support her daughter and herself, and her daughter required special education instruction and so she’d taken her out of public school and enrolled her at Skatskill Day...
They would accuse her. In the tabloids they would crucify her.
Dial 911 and your life is public fodder. Dial 911 and your life is not yours. Dial 911 and your life is forever changed.
Suburban Single Mom. Latchkey Daughter.
Eleven-Year-Old Missing, South Skatskill.
She would protest it was not that way at all! It was not.
Five days out of seven it was not.
Only Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked late at the clinic. Only since Christmas had Marissa been coming home to an empty apartment.
No. It was not ideal. And maybe she should have hired a sitter except...
She would protest she had no choice but to work late, her shift had been changed. On Tuesdays/Thursdays she began at 10:30 A.M. and ended at 6:30 P.M. Those nights, she was home by 7:15 P.M., by 7:30 P.M. at the latest she was home. She would swear, she was! Most nights.
How was it her fault, slow-moving traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge from Nyack then north on route 9 through Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, to the Skatskill town limits, and route 9 under repair. Traffic in pelting rain! Out of nowhere a cloudburst, rain! She had wanted to sob in frustration, in fury at what her life had become, blinding headlights in her eyes like laser rays piercing her brain.
But usually she was home by 8 P.M. At the latest.
Before dialing 911 she was trying to think: to calculate.
Marissa would ordinarily be home by about 4 P.M. Her last class ended at 3:15 P.M. Marissa would walk home, five and a half suburban blocks, approximately a half mile, through (mostly) a residential neighborhood. (True, 15th Street was a busy street. But Marissa didn’t need to cross it.) And she would walk with school friends. (Would she?) Marissa didn’t take a school bus, there was no bus for private school children, and in any case Marissa lived near the school because Leah Bantry had moved to the Briarcliff Apts. in order to be near Skatskill Day.
She would explain! In the interstices of emotion over her missing child she would explain.
Possibly there had been something special after school that day, a sports event, choir practice, Marissa had forgotten to mention to Leah... Possibly Marissa had been invited home by a friend.
In the apartment, standing beside the phone, as if waiting for the phone to ring, trying to think what it was she’d just been thinking. Like trying to grasp water with her fingers, trying to think...
A friend! That was it.
What were the names of girls in Marissa’s class...?
Of course, Leah would telephone! She was shaky, and she was upset, but she would make these crucial calls before involving the police, she wasn’t a hysterical mother. She might call Leah’s teacher whose name she knew, and from her she would learn the names of other girls, she would call these numbers, she would soon locate Marissa, it would be all right. And the mother of Marissa’s friend would say apologetically, But I’d thought Marissa had asked you, could she stay for supper. I’m so very sorry! And Leah would say quickly laughing in relief, You know how children are, sometimes. Even the nice ones.
Except: Marissa didn’t have many friends at the school.
That had been a problem in the new, private school. In public school she’d had friends, but it wasn’t so easy at Skatskill Day where most students were privileged, well-to-do. Very privileged, and very well-to-do. And poor Marissa was so sweet, trusting and hopeful and easy to hurt if other girls chose to hurt her.