The Face on the Milk Carton Read online

  “Cults,” said Reeve without missing a beat.

  “The Hare Krishna. How they went from being an idealistic organization of peaceable hippies to major-league crime like drugs and kidnapping.”

  He had said “kidnap” out loud. Janie felt truly endangered, as if somebody would notice—call the police or the FBI or arrest her mother. “Oh, no, Reeve!” she gasped. “Quick, give me a dime! I have to call my mother. I’m not home! Shell be worried. I have to tell her I’m here.”

  Janie could hardly punch the pay phone buttons to put the call through. What if her mother had already panicked? Already gone to the schools— found Janie had not taken her own bus?

  “Hello?” said her mother.

  “Mommy!” Janie was sick with relief. Lunch threatened to return. “Don’t worry. I’m at the library. I’m looking up a term paper. I meant to call you before I came. Sarah-Charlotte says I’ve been in outer space all day. Were you worried? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said her mother.

  “Is that true?”

  “No, it’s a lie. I’m a wreck. And your father’s at a soccer game so I couldn’t call him to say you were missing again.”

  “Mommy, I haven’t been to a game of his yet. Reeve’s here. He’ll drive me. I’ll meet you at the soccer field, okay?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Her father’s team won the soccer game.

  “It was probably because you and Reeve screamed so loud,” he said. “That and running up and down the field to follow the action.” He was so glad she had attended his game that she was overwhelmed with guilt for not going before. He introduced all his little players to her, and then to Reeve, and the pride in his voice swamped her.

  “What’s for supper?” said her father when they were all heading for the cars to go home.

  “Is that always your primary concern?” teased her mother.

  “It sure is high on the list,” he said. “Not much but soccer and daughters come ahead of it.” He kissed his wife on the mouth to show that she was also ahead of food. He looked younger. The lines weren’t as deep as last night.

  “Actually we’re going out for pizza,” said Janie’s mother.

  Janie, Reeve, and Mr. Johnson raised eyebrows.

  Mrs. Johnson felt that fast foods divided the family. She served old-fashioned meals that always deserved the adjective “solid.” The pizza was an offering. See, Janie, we’ll even get you the food you want. Anything—just don’t leave the way Hannah did.

  They offered me ice cream once, she thought, and I let them buy me off with that, too.

  She did not know if she could even gag pizza down. But there was more to swallow than pepperoni and mushrooms.

  Her parents made it clear that it would be thoughtful of Reeve to go on home. He left reluctantly, after Mrs. Johnson agreed that Janie could ride to school with him in the morning. The Johnsons drove to Pizza Hut, making silly, flippant conversation about soccer and Janie’s love life.

  When the waitress had brought a pitcher of Coke to the table and they were back from the salad bar, her mother said, “I’ve arranged family counseling at the Adolescent Trauma Center.”

  “I won’t go,” Janie said immediately. “I want to think things out for myself.” She was already protecting herself from the penetrating eyes of friends and parents. Now she had to keep her lies going in front of psychiatrists who specialized in adolescent trauma?

  “I don’t want to go either,” said her father. “I hate talking about personal things to strangers.” He shoved half the objects on the table to the far side—salt, Parmesan cheese. Sweet N Low—as if pushing away the invasion of their privacy.

  “Besides,” added Janie, “we’re doing fine.”

  A complete untruth.

  She would never again be honest with her mother and father. She would carry her milk carton around, photograph down. She would lie. She who had never had secrets would carry New Jersey around like a tray, spread in front of her, invisible to all eyes but Reeve’s.

  Janie stared at her father, trying to imagine him going to New Jersey to steal a child.

  With trembling hands, her mother distributed extra napkins. “I think we could use counseling.” Her husband and daughter looked away. “We’d all go,” whispered her mother. The whisper gave intensity to the simple words. She sounds as if she’s praying, thought Janie. She must have prayed for Hannah.

  Memory surfaced.

  Janie tried to stomp on it. Her feet actually moved, kicking away the memory. The memory came anyhow. Not a daymare. More like a sound track.

  She, who lived in a household without religion, knew a prayer.

  Bless this food

  Bless this house

  May all my brood

  Be quiet as a mouse.

  We recited that at dinner. There were so many of us and we made such a racket. He wanted us to be quiet for just a little while. He … my real father …

  No, no, no, no, no, no!

  I want to be Janie Johnson, not Jennie Spring.

  Go away! Drop dead! Leave me alone!

  “Janie. What are you thinking about?” said her mother.

  She surfaced from New Jersey. It was like swimming underwater, having to shake your head before you could see again. “Oh, nothing,” she said. The brightness in her voice was so false even the waitress paused and took notice.

  Janie tried to do homework.

  It was impossible.

  She walked around her room, touching, wishing.

  On top of a stack of papers lay a small, square, spiral notebook with a silver glitter cover and silver-rimmed pages. Every September, Janie started the new school year by buying an assortment of pretty notebooks from various gift shops. She always intended to write assignments in one, keep a diary in another, copy interesting poems or phrases in a third, and so forth. She rarely made more than a page of entries before the assignment notebook was misplaced or the diary became dull.

  She opened the silver notebook. Only two pages had been touched. Janie ripped them out and flipped to the middle, where it looked safe. She began to draft a letter, to help herself think about the unthinkable.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Spring.

  In the school cafeteria I took my friend’s milk carton and on it was a photograph of your little girl who was stolen from a shopping center in New Jersey all those years ago. It was me. I recognized myself. But I knew it could not be true, because I have a wonderful mother and father already, and a wonderful life, and I have always been very happy. So I could not have been kidnapped. It really wasn’t me.

  She was too tired to write. Her hand shook and the six sides of the pencil hurt her fingers. That’s when you know you’re weak, she thought. When pencil surfaces wound you. She closed the notebook and put it under the clip in her three-ring notebook along with the milk carton.

  In the morning, she fell asleep during math.

  During English, when Mr. Brylowe was discussing modern European literature, she opened her silver glitter notebook and wrote again.

  Every time I look at that carton I have another memory: of a kitchen and spilled milk, high chairs, and a dog named Honey. A table blessing about mice.

  And there’s the dress. It’s in the attic. Tomorrow when my mother is out of the house I’m going to get it out and iron it. I’ll hang it in the back of my own closet where I can see it.

  Mr. Brylowe said, “Janie?”

  She looked up, startled and unfocused.

  “Everybody else has left for lunch, Janie.”

  The room was entirely empty.

  Mr. Brylowe said, “Janie, is there anything you would like to talk about? Anything you’d like to share with me?”

  She shook her head.

  The classroom door seemed terribly far away. Hard to find. And lunch, even though Reeve would be there, hardly seemed worth the effort it would take to reach the cafeteria.

  She got halfway there and had to finish her thoughts.


  Had to write.

  It was like a druggie stabbing his vein.

  She stopped right in the hall, holding the silver notebook against the wall for a desk, and writing vertically.

  You must promise not to go to the police or even to get mad at my parents. Because they are my parents. They are my mother and father. I love them.

  The most terrible thing about this is that I forgot you. I am very sorry. I don’t know how or why I could have, but until I saw that photograph of me on the milk carton, I never thought of you.

  You can stop worrying. I am all right. I have always been all right. But the thing is, I have not told my parents. I don’t know how to tell them that they were part of kidnapping me. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to meet you. I know that sounds awful. But I have a family and I love them and I don’t know you.

  Three times a week after history she had typing. They were learning to do envelopes. Since they had to use up envelopes anyhow, the class was doing a mailing for Students Against Drunk Driving. Janie had twenty-five to address.

  The class was filled with the clicking of keyboards, the moans of students making errors, and the continuous demand for replacement envelopes when somebody goofed up too much to use the old one. Everybody wanted to be using the computers instead of the typewriters because you could correct your errors so much more easily.

  The afternoon sun came strong and golden through the windows. Both students and teacher were half-asleep. Janie’s own mistakes had nothing to do with the heat of the sun. She kept putting her own return address on the envelope instead of SADD’s. But the envelopes were still perfectly useful, so she stuck them under the clipboard in her blue-cloth notebook.

  For the hundredth time she checked both sides of her milk carton. It was still her.

  I’m like a toddler with my blanket, thought Janie. I cant get very far from my carton. Pretty soon I’ll be sucking my thumb again.

  After school, Reeve caught her so she couldn’t take off for the library. “Or points unknown,” he said. “Or Sarah-Charlotte’s.”

  In his Jeep they went to the Scenic Overlook and watched the couples for whom it was a Sexual Overlook.

  “I can’t,” said Janie miserably. “No matter what is happening my mind slides around to New Jersey.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Reeve said. “No matter what is happening, my mind slides around to you. It’s consuming my whole life. I don’t even have a life except thinking about you.”

  She was not sure if he meant thinking about Janie, or thinking about sex with Janie.

  They kissed each other, but Janie turned away almost before it began and his lips brushed her disappearing cheek instead. He said, “You’re losing weight, aren’t you?”

  “I’m too nervous to eat.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Reeve, I want them not to exist! New Jersey, I mean. I don’t want them to be down there. Waiting. I feel as if they’re going to pop up somehow and leap into my life and I won’t have any choice. I want my parents, not them.”

  He nodded. His cheek brushed against hers and it was a sensation she had never had before: an unshaven cheek.

  “Besides,” she whispered, “it makes me realize what a horrible little girl I was. Reeve, I’m so afraid to find out what happened. What if I gave up those brothers and sisters, and the father who shouted blessings, just for an ice cream sundae?”

  He said, “I suppose you did, Janie. Maybe it was pretty neat to be the center of all that attention. Driving fast and laughing and singing and having ice cream, and new parents and new clothes and a new bedroom.”

  “I would have been three and a half,” cried Janie. “Kids that old know how to use the telephone. They have their phone numbers memorized.”

  “But would it have occurred to you to call up New Jersey? You wouldn’t have felt kidnapped.

  You were having lots of fun. When they said, ‘Pretend you’re our little girl’—gosh, Janie, you’d be great at that. You always have some fantasy running in your head. Like that whole Denim and Lace thing.”

  “I never told you about Denim and Lace,” said Janie, embarrassed.

  “No, but Sarah-Charlotte did.”

  “You talked about me last year to Sarah-Charlotte?”

  “Yeah. Now do you feel like kissing me?” She did. They did.

  And it was good. “I love you, Reeve,” she said. How easily it came out. How true it was.

  “Maybe they were mean to you in New Jersey,” suggested Reeve.

  “No,” said Janie. “I can remember that much. Nobody was ever mean. You know, in a way I’d like to go to that Adolescent Trauma thing and ask a doctor about memory loss. How come I didn’t remember?”

  Reeve said, “I don’t suppose you needed to remember before. Everything was fine. If you hadn’t seen the milk carton, it would still be fine.”

  “I hate that dairy. I’m never drinking Flower Dairy milk again.”

  “Good. Because you have a milk allergy.”

  They leaned on each other, snuggling for the best fit. Janie thought that nothing could be nicer than getting comfortable on Reeve’s chest. She was aware of his scents: Reeve himself, the faint soapiness of his shirt, a slight perfume from his shampoo.

  If it hadn’t happened, she thought, I would not be me. I would be somebody else entirely.

  It horrified her that she had once daydreamed of being somebody other than Janie Johnson. Jayyne Jonstone, indeed. How precious her own name and address seemed now.

  Reeve had supper with the Johnsons. Nobody discussed Hannah or grandparents or the skipped day of school. After dessert (Reeve had Janie’s as well as his own; Janie’s mother did not seem to see how little Janie ate) they studied together. Reeve was done in three minutes and wanted to know what he was supposed to do for the next two hours.

  That night, along with checking her milk carton, Janie checked her SADD envelope, where her real address was so professionally typed. It seemed to her that they might offset each other: the carton and the envelope.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Soccer season was nearly over. Cake decorating was drawing to a close, and her mother wanted to take pottery next.

  Janie had taken the polka-dot dress out of the trunk, washed and ironed it, and hung it in the back of her closet. Every morning and every night she touched it, as routinely as she brushed her teeth. She had made dozens of entries in the silver notebook. Writing cleansed: it removed the badness from her mind and kept it safely on the paper.

  Autumn had all but vanished. One maple hung on to a few yellow leaves, and a hedgerow was wine red behind the house. On Saturday the sky was indigo blue: like new jeans. The wind was soft and warm, as if it had news to spread.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” said Reeve, who was having breakfast with the Johnsons. He liked breakfast there on weekends because Mrs. Johnson, who ignored weekday breakfast, got excited on Saturdays and produced waffles, bacon, and melon slices. Reeve’s mother just said she had been making breakfast for twenty-seven years and anybody who wanted breakfast again this year knew where the cereal was.

  “It’s perfect weather to head into the horizon,” said Janie’s mother, looking out the window.

  “It’s funny how you feel that tug only in the fall,” said her father. “No other season. In the autumn you want to go. Drive. Have a journey.”

  When had Hannah decided to leave? Janie wondered. Out loud she said, “Where shall we go, Reeve?”

  “Anywhere. I have a full tank of gas and I earned money last week cleaning out the McKays’ garage and cellar. I’m rich. We can eat lunch anywhere.” He grinned at her.

  Friday when she got home, Janie had dumped her book bag on the kitchen floor. Now, getting up for more orange juice, she shoved it out of the way and the books fell out, spreading across the linoleum.

  “Janie,” said her mother crossly, “how many times do I have to tell you to carry your book bag directly up to your bedro
om?”

  “Six million,” said Janie.

  With his shoes, Reeve pushed the books into a pile to pick up.

  “Reeve,” said Janie, “how many times do I have to tell you to handle school property carefully?”

  “Six million,” he said. “Thanks for the waffles, Mrs. Johnson. Maybe Janie and I will drive to Vermont and get you more maple syrup.” Together he and Mrs. Johnson began picking up the books.

  “Vermont!” said Janie’s father. “That’s four hours away.”

  “We’d still get back before dark,” said Reeve.

  Janie’s mother scooped up the books nearest her chair. The load was too heavy for her hand and dropped back on the floor. The blue-cloth English notebook fell open.

  The milk carton lay exposed.

  Janie lunged forward, slamming the cover shut, grabbing her books.

  Her parents stared at her.

  “Sorry,” said Janie with a bright, crazy smile on her face. Her heart was throbbing, her horrible headache had begun again. She already knew tonight’s nightmare: the carton falling out, her parents seeing it, New Jersey exposed and waiting.

  She put the books back in the book bag, zipped it shut, and ran upstairs with it. Clattering back down, she grabbed the jacket Reeve tossed and slipped her arms in the heavy sleeves. “Let’s go, Reeve.”

  “Telephone if you’re going to be out after dark,” said her father.

  Reeve promised. He took Janie’s hand and swung her around like a dance partner. They ran out of the house.

  He was in a great mood. He talked steadily. Janie loved to listen to him. In Reeve’s childhood, Megan, Lizzie, and Todd had done all the talking. Reeve’s delight when at last both sisters and his brother were away came through in his speech: for a change, Reeve could have the audience.

  I must have wanted an audience, too, thought Janie. I was only three and a half and I wanted a bigger audience.

  Reeve did all the driving. She had not had another driving lesson with either parent. They would have to talk about licenses if they did, and the birth certificate problem, and she was afraid of screaming, “But I know my real birthday! I can make one phone call and they’ll send me my real birth certificate!”