Mr. Symanski looks first at James and then at Grace. “I was sleeping.” He tugs on the pants hanging loosely at his waist. “I think I was sleeping.”
Like Grace did, Mr. Symanski leans to get a better look, as if Elizabeth is standing behind James.
“She is being with you?” Mr. Symanski says.
James steps forward. “Charles, it’s James and Grace. Are you all right?”
“Elizabeth, she is with you, yes?”
“No,” Grace says. “No, she isn’t. She came home. Hours ago. She left me hours ago. We came to wish her happy birthday.”
Mr. Symanski looks into the house to where Elizabeth would usually sit, her head lowered, not noticing someone at the door. The living room is dark. One of Ewa’s crocheted blankets lies across the sofa where Mr. Symanski was probably napping. No smell of anything baking in the oven. No radio. No voices.
“Elizabeth is being with you?”
James begins the search in the backyard. He starts in the garage, where it stays cool even on the hottest days, and checks behind the weeping forsythia that grows along the back porch. And while James searches outside, Grace helps Mr. Symanski to a seat in the kitchen and then hurries through the house, both hands supporting her heavy stomach. She opens every door, leans into each stale room, calls out Elizabeth’s name. She checks every closet, waves away the smell of mothballs that reminds her of Ewa. In the bedrooms, she checks under the beds, brushing aside the cobwebs that cling to her forehead and coughing at the dust kicked up when she throws back the patchwork quilts and lifts the lace bed skirts. She calls the neighbors, one on each side. They call more neighbors, and they, still more. The husbands set aside their newspapers and shut down their televisions. Ladies leave the dishes not yet washed and the laundry not yet folded. From upstairs, from down the hall, from in the cellar, Grace calls out for Mr. Symanski to stay put. Don’t worry. You know how she sometimes wanders. We’ll find her. We’ll find her in no time.
In the Symanskis’ front yard, James gathers the neighbors, and on the back of an envelope, he sketches Alder Avenue and Marietta one block to the south and Tuttle one block to the north. He draws six boxes, dividing up the area, assigns one man to each and tells them, “Get together as much help as you can. She’s small, you know. Check every porch, every garage. Behind bushes. Inside cars. She might be scared. Might want to hide.”
The men separate themselves into groups and some run north, while others run south. One group lingers and Orin Schofield gathers them across the street from the Filmore Apartments. Orin lives two houses down from Grace and James on the opposite side of the alley. He lost his wife three years ago. Grace takes him a roast with carrots and new potatoes the first and third Sunday of every month, always the same thing because it’s one of the few dishes she can count on to turn out well for her, and while she cleans his kitchen, he talks about moving south to live with his daughter.
“I’d bet good money someone in there can tell you the girl’s whereabouts,” Orin shouts, pointing toward the Filmore. The top of his balding head is red though the sun has fallen low in the sky. If she could, Grace would tell him to take himself inside and sit in front of the fan. Your heart, she would tell him. The strain is no good for your heart. Continuing to shout, Orin shuffles up and down the sidewalk, dragging his tan suede shoes. Blue trousers pool at his ankles. As he walks, he leans on a three-foot-long scrap of wood as if it were a cane. James helped Orin replace the joists on his back porch last summer. The wood must be a leftover. Lifting the wood and stabbing it toward the apartments, Orin shouts again, “Good money says that’s the place to look.”
The men point to each side of the simple two-story brick apartment building, seemingly most worried about the shrubs and overgrown grass that run along the west side. Around back, they’ll find a thick stand of poplars hugging a narrow stream that runs east to west. The sun has set but the sky still glows with the last of its light. They’ll want to get a good look before darkness settles in. For the past year, these neighbors have been talking, some louder than others. More than being afraid of the coloreds living in the apartments, they are afraid of one buying and moving into a house, because that would be a lasting change and their lives would never be good again, never be the same. They have to stick together. If one falls, they all fall. That’s what the loudest neighbors say. Pointing this way and that, the men, a half dozen at least, split into two groups and flank the apartment building, disappearing around back for a time, reappearing in front.
“What’d you find?” Orin shouts, waving one fist in the air.
The men hold up their hands. Nothing. Most of the apartment windows are dark. The doors remain closed. No one from the Filmore comes out.
“You’ve got to go on in there.” It’s Orin again. “Nothing’s going to stop you.”
And then the police arrive, two black-and-white cars, two officers in each. They tell the men to stay clear of the Filmore.
“No one is allowed in there,” an officer says.
Leaving the group of six to linger on the curb, Orin Schofield still shouting and wielding his plank of wood, James escorts the officers into Mr. Symanski’s house. They sit around the kitchen table, and it takes him and Grace some time to explain about Elizabeth.
“No, she’s not a child,” Grace says. “A woman. Twenty-one years old. No, twenty-two today. But she’s like a child. She’s lost all the same. I saw her last. She left my house. Walked home. It’s such a short trip. That’s the last I know.”
The police insist Mr. Symanski stay at the house and not join the other men. James agrees.
“She’ll need a friendly face when we bring her home,” James says.
“Yes,” Grace says, resting a hand on Mr. Symanski’s shoulder. “James will see to it. He’ll see Elizabeth home.”
But really James must worry about Mr. Symanski’s heart. He won’t let Grace join the search either.
“See to him,” James says, nodding at Mr. Symanski. “Put on some coffee. Answer the phone. And keep yourself in the house.”
So while James goes outside to show the officers his map, Grace hunts for the coffee. She dumps the old grounds in a can she finds under the sink, rinses and fills the pot, brews a fresh batch. In the refrigerator, she finds a loaf of bread, cheese, and the sliced roast beef she delivered this past Wednesday. Like Orin Schofield, Mr. Symanski always gets the same dish. Spreading extra butter on the sandwich, she cuts it in half and slides it toward him.
“How long since you last ate?” she asks.
Mr. Symanski looks at the small white refrigerator as if it might give him the answer. “I am not knowing,” he says, then picks up one half of the sandwich but doesn’t take a bite.
Not worried that coffee will keep Mr. Symanski awake tonight, Grace pours him a cup. No one will sleep until Elizabeth is home. She adds cream and two sugars because that’s the way James takes it, and presses one of Mr. Symanski’s hands between both of hers. Perhaps Mr. Symanski would prefer bourbon, but James said coffee.
“Please,” she says. “You really should eat.”
As more people arrive to help in the search, Grace points them toward the police cars parked outside the house. One officer stands there, talking into a small radio. Grace calls after each neighbor, reminding him to check behind the bushes and in every garage because that’s what James said to do, and she jots down the name of every person who joins the search.
The neighbors continue to look well past dark. They carry flashlights and kerosene lanterns. Children from nearby streets swat at mosquitoes, and the ladies run home to flip on porch lights and kitchen lights, everything to light up the street for Elizabeth. Teenagers shuffle up and down Alder, the bright orange tips of their cigarettes glowing in the dark. In the kitchen, Grace scrubs the counter with baking soda while Mr. Symanski and two officers talk across the table. One officer has dark hair that curls on the ends, one strand cupping the top of his left ear. His name is Officer Warinski. The other officer, whose name is Thompson, has straight brown hair that was probably once blond, and he slouches as if he has always been the tallest. Both wear heavy, dark shoes that will leave scuff marks.