The Face on the Milk Carton Page 12

  She was trying to fence off all the dangerous places, where things might cave in, where they would know that she knew. She kept having the sense that if she could steer her life right, the way Reeve was steering the Jeep right, they would avoid ever hitting the kidnapping.

  “I looked up the kidnapping in The New York Times,” said Janie.

  She had interrupted him. Reeve stopped his story and drove on, looking straight ahead, his body stiff.

  He thought my mind was on him, Janie thought, and now he knows it wasn’t. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

  He shrugged. “I thought you were going to stop worrying about New Jersey,” he said.

  “I was.”

  “So what happened?” “I can’t.”

  He said, trying to be lighthearted, “I’m not enough distraction for you, huh?”

  The only thing anybody wants is to be the center of a universe, she thought. Reeve had to wait for Megan, Lizzie, and Todd to go away before he could be the center. I wanted the center so much I traded my family for an ice cream sundae. She said, “You’re not a distraction. You’re the light of my life.”

  She thought he would make a face at this Valentine’s-card sentiment, but he said, “Really?” His face relaxed somewhat.

  “Really,” said Janie. His face relaxed completely.

  Reeve stopped at a restaurant. It was too early to eat anything when they were still waffle-stuffed. He ordered Cokes. Reeve chewed ice.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, “you might crack your teeth.”

  “There are parts of me I wish you’d pay more attention to than my teeth,” said Reeve.

  They flirted.

  She loved the silly sentences, the innuendo. Sarah-Charlotte may look older and act older, thought Janie happily, but I’m the one doing older things.

  When Reeve paid for the Cokes, she studied him. How he enjoyed looking in his wallet, seeing the thick wad of money, leaving a generous tip because he was glad to be driving away instead of waiting table. He liked getting her jacket from the peg where he had hung it up, and he liked holding her hand as they left.

  I love you, she thought, and she kissed him just as they were going through the doors, so she got caught in the glass, bumping into a patron trying to enter.

  If New Jersey hadn’t happened, thought Janie, I wouldn’t have my own parents or my house or school or Sarah-Charlotte … or Reeve.

  They never reached Vermont.

  They saw a sign for a state park and drove in. A narrow road wound among thick, dark hemlocks and emerged at a cascading waterfall where boulders were surrounded by mountain laurel. The sun glittered on the leaping water, and when they parked, the sun’s rays turned the interior of the car into a heated sunroom.

  “I love you, Reeve,” she whispered, lying against him. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “If I ever get in touch with New Jersey, I’ll have to say, ‘Luckily for me, I got kidnapped.’ Of course, I’m not getting in touch. I never think about it anymore. I wrote it all down and spiraled it away.”

  Reeve took a very deep breath. She giggled when his chest lifted her like an escalator and then sank her back down.

  “I called my sister,” he said. “Lizzie.”

  Janie snuggled under Reeve’s throat and felt it vibrate when he spoke.

  “I told Lizzie everything,” said Reeve.

  “You what?” screamed Janie. She flung herself backward. She would have thrown things if there had been anything loose in the Jeep.

  “I had to, Janie. You need advice. And what do I know? She’s a lawyer. Or she’s going to be.”

  “How dare you?” screamed Janie. “How dare you tell anybody without my permission. I haven’t even told my own mother and father and here you are telling Lizzie, who I can’t even stand!” She was so frantic the Jeep was rocking.

  Reeve put on the parking brake. “Listen, Janie, I told her everything you told me and she said—”

  “Whatever Lizzie said, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorting this out in my own mind and—”

  “You’re losing your own mind, Janie.”

  His voice was so soft she could hardly hear it. Inside her head was a terrible racket: the crying and laughing of the voices of the past. She felt like a snow flurry: she was coming down fast, in tiny wind-whipped particles. “No, I’m not losing my mind,” she said desperately. “Am I?”

  He held her again. She did not feel like a person in his arms but like a small, scared animal. That word for Hannah’s chosen husband, a mate, like an animal. Am I really Hannah’s daughter? Could that be the truth? Will I turn out weird like Hannah? Am I already weird?

  “Lizzie looked up the kidnapping in The New York Times, too, Janie, all the subsequent articles and all the follow-ups. Janie, are you ready for this?”

  “I’m not ready for anything.”

  “Lizzie thinks it’s Hannah who kidnapped you. We all agree that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson just wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that. Isn’t it much more reasonable that Hannah really did run away from the cult? Stopped at that shopping center in New Jersey? Maybe she had stolen a car or the cult guards had nearly caught up to her. She was afraid. She ran inside and there was this sweet little girl who would hold her hand. Lizzie thinks maybe Hannah took you along for company. And Hannah was such a lost soul maybe she didn’t even know she was kidnapping you. But if she did know, she sure wouldn’t tell her mother and father when she got to their house.”

  Peace settled on Janie. She felt heavier, as if her weight might press on Reeve till his ribs broke. She said, “Mother and Daddy aren’t bad, then.”

  “Well, we don’t know anything for sure. But that way, your parents’ story is entirely true. Lizzie and I can’t believe they would have been part of anything criminal or evil.”

  “Hannah was the evil criminal.” Janie was so lethargic she could not imagine moving again. How wonderful to place the crime on a woman who no longer counted in anybody’s life.

  The sun fondled her lovingly. Or was it Reeve?

  In an odd way, she felt even more like an animal: soaking up the sun, no worries, no cares, no concern for the future: just affection and warmth.

  “I don’t know,” said Reeve. “I don’t think Hannah sounds evil or criminal. I think she sounds like a scared, cult-blinded automaton. Even at three you were a hand to hold, somebody to talk to in the car, somebody to give Hannah courage until she reached her own mommy and daddy and was safe again.”

  Janie liked it. It meant that her parents had told no lies. Were sane and good. Really did consider themselves her grandparents. Or parents. “There are too many parents in this,” she said to Reeve.

  “Tell me about it. And now I’ve thrown in Lizzie, who is tougher than any four parents anyhow. Lizzie sees kind of a problem, though, Janie. If we tell anybody about it, see. Kidnapping is a federal offense no matter how many years have gone by. Like murder. You can still be tried. So if we say anything at all, the FBI would have to locate Hannah. To prove or disprove our theory.”

  It took too much effort even to lean on Reeve’s chest. She managed to lie down, her head in his lap, her feet on the passenger seat, her back full of gear shifts.

  “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” said Reeve.

  “Yes, but I’m too tired to sit up.”

  Reeve reached awkwardly into the backseat and retrieved a stadium blanket. “Let’s sit out there by the waterfall.” He had to uncurl her from the gear sticks. They staggered into a spot of sunshine and he spread the blanket on a rock hot with sun.

  “Can you imagine the publicity?” said Janie. “All those horrible newspapers in grocery store racks. Talk shows where everybody else on it has trans-bi-cross sexual habits.” She shuddered. “I can hardly wait to be among them.”

  Reeve said, “I’d settle for any sexual habit at all, Janie.”

  “I want to finish this topic first.”

  Reeve sighed. “Lizzie says if you’re going
to get in touch with New Jersey, you’ll have to handle it privately.”

  “I suppose Lizzie thinks she’s the best person in the world to handle it.”

  “Lizzie has always thought she’s the best person in the world to handle anything,” said Reeve.

  “I’ve never liked that trait.”

  “It’s even worse when you have to live with it. And when Megan and Todd are exactly the same.”

  “You know Megan and Lizzie and Todd,” said Janie. “You grew up with them. I didn’t grow up with my brothers and sisters. Do you think they ever talk about me at supper? Or keep my picture on the wall? Or say to each other—she’d be a sophomore in high school now?”

  “I’m sure they do,” said Reeve. He was kissing her everywhere. He had unbuttoned nothing, was feeling through the fabric. His mind was definitely not on New Jersey.

  “One bad thing is still true though,” said Janie, starting to cry.

  “What?” He kissed her tears and she kissed his lips, tasting the salt of her own weeping.

  “I’m still a rotten little kid who wanted more attention and was willing to be kidnapped to get it.”

  Reeve laughed. “You can’t have been too rotten if they’re advertising on milk cartons to get you back.”

  We’re both frantic, she thought. His heart is racing for me. My heart is racing for fear. She said, “There are only two choices.”

  “Right. Either we do it or we don’t. I vote we do it.”

  “Wrong. Either I get in touch with New Jersey or I don’t. I vote I don’t.”

  “I vote that, too. Who needs another family?” Reeve shifted half on top of her. His weight was warm and convincing.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The following Saturday they rented movies.

  Sarah-Charlotte brought Jason and the potato chips. “He’s kind of a potato chip himself,” she whispered to Janie.

  “Hush,” said Janie, “I like Jason.”

  “I do, too,” said Sarah-Charlotte, “but he isn’t romantic. He’s just Jason.”

  Janie nodded. “I got the romantic in the crowd,” she said. “See my little pumpkin pin? Reeve gave it to me on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “That’s so neat!” cried Sarah-Charlotte.

  Mrs. Johnson brought in an immense bowl of popcorn.

  The four of them sat in a circle on the rug arguing whether the popcorn or the Trivial Pursuit board deserved the middle. Jason said since he had rented the movies, he got to choose the first one. Reeve said somebody would have to sit with his back to the movie if they were playing Trivial Pursuit at the same time, and it wasn’t going to be him.

  “Bets on who will win Trivial Pursuit,” said Sarah-Charlotte, inelegantly stuffing a fistful of popcorn in her mouth.

  “Not me,” said Reeve. “I never know anything except Sports.”

  “Not me,” said Janie, “I never know anything.”

  “Oh, good,” said Sarah-Charlotte, “I love playing with dumbos. I always know everything. Your go, Janie.”

  Janie rolled the dice and chose Geography.

  Sarah-Charlotte took a card and read the question. “Did Reeve give you the milk carton as well as the pumpkin pin? Does the carton have some sort of romantic significance?”

  Janie choked on her popcorn. Reeve slapped her on the back. “Sarah-Charlotte, read the real question.”

  “But we’re all dying to know, Janie,” said Jason. “You open your notebook twenty times a day and stare down into that milk carton. Come on, admit it. What’s it all about?”

  Her mother brought in a platter of turkey sandwiches on rye and two liters of Coke. “I wondered about that, too, darling,” she said. “That Saturday you practically had a heart attack because your notebook fell open. All I saw was ‘Flower Dairy.’”

  Sick fear enveloped Janie like fog. Not here, she thought. Not in front of Jason and Sarah-Charlotte. Not when Mom is the happy hostess and good mother. In fact, not ever. I voted not to have New Jersey.

  “Since when is it anybody’s business but ours?” said Reeve. He rolled over against Janie, and kept rolling until he had flattened her. From beneath him she made strangling, let-me-have-air noises.

  “Uncle,” whispered Janie.

  Reeve rolled off onto the carpet again. He lay on his back and said to the rest, “Young lovers deserve privacy.”

  Sarah-Charlotte looked twice as interested.

  She knows where my carton is, thought Janie. She’ll study that till she’s figured everything out. “Back in a minute!” Janie cried. She ran upstairs into her room, ripped the carton out of the notebook, and rushed into the bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she started to shred the carton to flush it down the toilet.

  But she could not tear herself in half.

  The milk carton was all that existed of herself.

  She walked back into her bedroom and slid it between the mattress and the bedsprings instead.

  There had been a week of peace. A solid week without nightmares or daymares.

  In the silver notebook Janie wrote all theories and all possible variations. Then she began condensing and choosing the most likely for final drafts.

  “What do you want a final draft for?” said Reeve irritably. “What’s the plan now? You’re going to mail some anonymous notebook to New Jersey?” He was very tense with her. He had taken her twenty miles to go to a very popular, expensive pizza/video place and had bought dozens of tokens. They were sitting together playing a war game, and he wanted to laugh and be silly and win. New Jersey was interfering.

  “Of course not,” said Janie. “It’s just for me.”

  Reeve said, “It’s Pandora’s box, isn’t it? The myth. The minute you opened that milk carton, it was all there: every evil thing. And you’ll never be able to put it back. It’s out now.”

  “The only evil,” she said, “is that I don’t mind that it happened. I like my life. You see—”

  “I can’t tell you how tired I am of New Jersey.”

  “I just want to finish my thought, okay?”

  He looked at the screen. He counted the tokens in his palm. He shrugged. “Okay.”

  She stabbed a game button. “I’m gonna beat the pants off you, boy.”

  He laughed. “Any time, girl.” His bombers attacked her tanks.

  She continued her thoughts in the silver notebook. If Reeve was tired of New Jersey, the notebook was all she had now.

  Why didn’t Frank and Miranda see the newspaper coverage of the kidnapping? It was on the television news for days, too. I suppose they were pretty distracted that week. Hannah returned, complete with granddaughter, and they fled—who had time for a morning paper?

  If they had bought a paper the day after Hannah came—Frank would have seen the photograph … would have called the police himself … taken the Spring’s little girl home. Hannah would have been imprisoned; the Johnsons’ lives—no, back then they were still Javensens— would have been completely different.

  Grimmer. Emptier.

  I would have no memory of the Johnsons instead of no memory of the Springs.

  That night she went to an awards banquet at which her father as coach received a trophy. It was a typical banquet meal: gravy, red meat, and wilted salad. Her father even made a little speech, thanking not just his team and the team parents, but his beloved wife and daughter. He wanted Janie to take the trophy for him.

  Janie smiled back at her father, tall and perfect. The after-school athlete was an odd match for the dedicated, formal, elegant committeewoman he had married. They smiled at her, and she knew they had forgotten Hannah right then: she was their daughter. She was their love.

  She stood up in the banquet hall and hundreds of little soccer players and their parents applauded for Janie, who had done nothing whatsoever. She stood up and a mother nearby whispered, “Look at that wonderful red hair! Isn’t she a beautiful child? The Johnsons are so lucky.”

  They were photographed as a trio. It would be in th
e sports pages. Her mother whispered, “I’m glad you wore the purple sweater. Nobody believes a redhead looks great in purple until they see you, Janie.”

  The photographer shouted, “Smile now. Smile everybody.” Janie smiled.

  She thought, if I do not tell New Jersey that I am safe, I am still the spoiled brat. Still the rotten daughter who didn’t care about the family she had left behind.

  The only way to be the good daughter is to tell.

  They left the banquet to the handshakes of parent after parent, thanking Mr. Johnson for all the hours, all the sportsmanship, all the encouragement, all the positive thinking, he had given their sons and daughters.

  That night Janie lay on her bed holding the telephone in her arms like a teddy bear, dialing the 800 number. This time she let it ring.

  It rang once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  They’re not home, thought Janie. How can a toll-free 800 number not be home? Four times.

  Adair’s parents have each remarried since the divorce. So Adair has four parents. Two mothers, two fathers. It’s not so unusual. I can do it, too.

  Five.

  There was a click. Her heart slammed upward in her chest. The carefully rehearsed sentences vanished from her head. Her mouth was so dry her tongue scraped. Oh, my God, what have I done? her head screamed. I’ve betrayed my mother and father—I—

  “You have reached …” began a recording.

  The voice asked her to leave her name, number, and a brief message after the tone, and they would get back to her. After the tone, Janie hung up.

  The phone rang in her arms.

  Its shrillness invaded her heart, making her leap from the bed, scattering books to the floor. They tapped my phone! They’re calling back: they’ve got me.

  “Hi. Sarah-Charlotte,” said Sarah-Charlotte, who always spoke as if she were phoning herself.

  “Hey, girl, what’s up?” said Janie. She was slippery with sweat; she even smelled of fear, and tasted it in her mouth. It was like biting metal.