4

Emily expected her to be upset about the kidnaping, as if they were related to the woman. Caught by surprise—in her room with an afghan over her lap, lost in her book—Arlene could only respond with a puzzled shrug. She thought it would be enough to signal her lack of interest, but Emily lingered in the doorway. Until now, Arlene hadn’t realized how much she was enjoying the quiet of the room, the thin light reflecting off of the lawn and through the window, the wind pushing the trees. She could stay here all day and be content, put on some tea before lunch, listen for the whistle. She had grown so used to being alone.

“You have to wonder if there’s a boyfriend involved,” Emily speculated, “or an ex of some sort. These things don’t happen at random.”

Arlene would not be drawn into a discussion and chose her only escape, a noncommittal “I’m sure we’ll find out.”

“Do you think?”

“Eventually,” Arlene said, not looking up from her book.

“I’m not so sure. A lot of these missing-persons cases go unsolved, young people especially. Of course who knows how many of them are runaways. I would be very surprised if we learn anything by the end of the week.”

“I said eventually,” Arlene said. “If they’re bringing in the FBI, they probably have something to go on. They wouldn’t bring them in unless they had evidence this is a federal case. A lot of those missing persons you’re talking about are children involved in custody battles. This was a grown woman, if what you’re telling me is correct.”

“That’s why I’m betting on the boyfriend.”

“And the federal connection would be … ?” She could hear the teacher in her tone, coaxing logic out of a confused student, asking for supporting facts. She knew from experience what the criteria were.

“Drugs,” Emily said.

“That sounds like a guess.” But probably right.

“Do you have a better one?”

“No,” Arlene admitted. “I don’t have to have one, do I?”

“I just thought you might be interested. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“You’re not bothering me, and it is interesting. I’m just trying to read my book, that’s all.”

“Do you have your list?”

It didn’t register, this wild shift.

“Of things you want,” Emily said.

“I’m already getting the TV.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Do, please. I need them as soon as possible. I was hoping we could go over them tonight.”

Arlene agreed to have hers this afternoon. No, she didn’t want the door closed, but Emily pulled it most of the way.

Arlene sighed and tipped up her book again, crossed her legs under the afghan. She read a sentence and then the gray light from outside made her look up. The trees were calm now, a few leaves stuck in the lawn showing their pale bellies.

One of the criteria was drugs and another was interstate transit, taking someone across state lines against his or her will. She pictured Eugene Ingram sitting in his seat, and then his terrible handwriting, only his name easily legible. When he disappeared two men from the FBI interviewed her in the teacher’s lounge. Arlene told them what she knew. Eugene was absent a great deal and sometimes didn’t bother to hand in assignments. His aunt had come to an open house early in the year and had been pleasant enough (in reality she was bored, but so were most of the parents, doing their duty), and Arlene had not talked to her since. The FBI didn’t say that the aunt and uncle were missing as well. She’d had to read that later in the paper.

And eventually everyone at school found out what happened to Eugene Ingram. His uncle had been dealing dope and some local gang members decided to rob him. They kidnaped Eugene along with the aunt and uncle and kept them in an abandoned house down in Homewood. They tortured them to find out where the money was, and then, according to the Post-Gazette, killed them execution-style.

She’d had students before who ended up dead—it was not the safest neighborhood—but much later, when they were in high school or beyond, dropped out or graduated to a harder life than she would ever know. Eugene was in the third grade and still had that annoying clown in him that some boys have in place of personality. He thought farts were funny and had trouble with math. After she heard what had happened to him (from the eleven o’clock news, a minute’s information), she tried to remember something he’d said to her, some moment of closeness the two of them had shared. She had a number to choose from—Eugene taping his Polaroid to the board by the door, Eugene reading his Thanksgiving essay in front of the class, Eugene singing in the third- and fourth-grade concert—but in the end she kept returning to the time he’d cut his chin at recess.

He’d been playing on the Big Toy and another boy had pushed him off, and he came to her holding his chin.

“Let’s take a look,” she said, and when he removed his hands, she could see there was blood and that he would need stitches. She asked Mrs. Casey to take over and escorted him straight to the nurse. “It doesn’t hurt,” he insisted on the way to the doors. It must have seemed like punishment to him, her dragging him along (he must have thought she was angry with him, or maybe he was thinking of his aunt and uncle), because all the way down the hall he repeated it, tears coming, planting his feet, his sneakers slipping on the marble, “It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t!”

Her book lay open on her lap. She hadn’t thought of Eugene Ingram in years. It had to have been the mid-eighties, long gone. Her hold on him was fleeting, like the book’s on her attention, and maybe that was for the good. Later the neighborhood was worse, and the city had trouble finding teachers, with the result that she kept her job longer than she’d meant to. Some of the children she’d taught had probably gone on to college, and some were probably dead. The majority were no doubt somewhere in between, off to jobs or not, in love or alone, happy or unhappy or, like her, some muddled combination of the two. Marvin Liberty and his lisp, Crystal Worthington, who laughed at everything and made her a leather change purse. There was no way of knowing. She thought that if she began wondering what had happened to each and every one of them, she would never stop.

So, though she couldn’t explain all this to Emily, there was no reason to make wild guesses. Eventually they would find out, whether they wanted to or not.