September 2012
The ceiling fan whirled lackadaisically overhead. I dabbed cotton balls soaked in calamine lotion on the weepy red rash on Alex’s arms and legs. He had spent the day scouring the woods with volunteers who had banded together to search for Caleigh and Dane. The result was a bad case of poison ivy. The cool compresses seemed to ease his irritated skin as much as my guilt about everything that had gone wrong in our lives.
“She went into some kind of trance and then said they’re alive,” I said. “It’s a good sign, don’t you think?” Alex rolled down his sleeves and pants legs and held me close. I pulled away. “I’m gonna change, okay? Goodnight.”
“Grace, I …”
We lay in bed in sweltering heat and I got up, not wanting to hear the rest. I went into the bathroom, and, in the mirror, saw a woman with lines of grief etched on her face, a woman heavy with sadness. Tired circles and a fine patchwork of lines surrounded her eyes. They were edged red with fatigue. I ran a brush through the tangles of my hair, which once glowed with fiery hues, but was now dry and flat. Gray shadows which looked like they had been shaded in with charcoal smudged my eyes.
Alex was already asleep and snoring softly when I stumbled back to bed. The room was unbearably warm and my chest heaved under my nightshirt. Unable to sleep, I opened the windows and padded quietly downstairs. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and opened the lead-paneled glass doors of my chipped cabinets. I had never gotten around to having them refinished. My grandmother’s delicate teacup collection sat behind those doors. I took one out and ran my fingers around the gold rim of the fragile china, missing Nana. They had been my mother’s gift to me on my wedding day. Thank God, Nana was not here to see what had happened.
Alex was still snoring when I returned to lie beside him. My nightgown stuck to my back, my breasts were heavy underneath the sleeveless cotton gown. The children were my last thought before I fell into a restless sleep.
I dreamed of them that night. After what seemed like hours, I sat up in bed, dazed and disoriented, and remembered with a pang they were gone. The next thing I knew, the first rays of sunrise streaked across the sky. I called the hospital to say I wouldn’t be coming in to work yet. I asked about Josie but she hadn’t retuned yet either. Strange that Josie hadn’t called.
Another day went by without a word. How was it possible two children could disappear without a trace? That no one would have seen a thing? I pulled the sheet over my head to block the morning sun and remembered the solace I found in this house after Matt’s death, even in the isolation of Minnesota’s long, dark winters. Once Alex moved in, it had begun to feel like home. That happy family felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe it had been too much too soon to have Alex move in. I thought I’d been a good mother but perhaps I’d missed something. Certainly, I hadn’t always been as patient or as understanding as I might have been.
The urge to stay in bed was almost unbearable but I knew I had to get up and do something. I dialed Detective Meyers’s number but the call went directly to voicemail. Why had I imagined he would be in his office at six in the morning? I returned to bed and I as lay there in a dizzy, fitful sleep, I heard Caleigh’s voice. “Caleigh!” I cried as I woke. Hope roared in my chest but after I’d run to her room, silence filled my ears. Was my mind playing tricks on me? A picture of Caleigh at age eight, in which she had a crooked part in her hair, and a pink scalp and sun-bleached pigtails, hung on the wall. A golden coating of freckles danced across her cheeks.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Alex stood in the doorway.
I hastily put the picture down, not wanting to admit I’d heard Caleigh’s voice. I told him I’d been preoccupied with my interview that afternoon and providing cold drinks and snacks for the tireless volunteers. Alex promised to buy bottled water and snacks and then took me in his arms. “Sweetheart, are you sure you want me to go to work today? I’m sure I could wangle another week off under the circumstances. Do you want me to be here with you?”
But there was nothing else he could do. His patients needed him too. “Why don’t you hop in the shower and I’ll make you some breakfast. You’ve barely eaten all week,” he suggested.
The scalding water felt good against my skin. I lathered my hair and dragged my nails across my scalp, rinsed it and wrung out it out until it hurt. I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me and wrote the children’s names in the mirror. Caleigh Rachel Rendeau. Dane Michael Rendeau. Soon, the smell of fresh coffee and sizzling bacon and the sound of Alex’s voice calling me down to eat broke my reverie. An odor I would once have found delicious now threatened to make me sick. I descended the stairs in my ratty bathrobe to a table already set for breakfast.
“After the interview, why don’t you try to get out today?” Alex asked. “Maybe take a walk with Sketcher? If there’s any news, Detective Meyers can reach you on your cell.”
A triangle of toast with butter and jam and bacon and eggs sat on my plate. Breakfast was achingly quiet without the children. The slimy yolk dripped off my fork onto the plate and I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat it.
Alex pulled his sleeves down and scraped my uneaten breakfast into the trashcan. “I’m worried about leaving you here alone. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
But there was nothing he could do. Besides, I had Sketcher with me. There was a time when a day wasn’t enough time to do all I had to do. After Alex kissed me goodbye at the door, I was left with the prospects of a long day of quiet and regret. I was fatigued and distracted, plagued by the unmoving silence. I had to force myself not to give in to the desire to go back to bed.
The interview was not for several hours. It was time to unpack. The shadow puppets Alex and I bought lay on top of our clothes. I closed the suitcase quickly, feeling as flat and dead as the shadow puppet.
Maybe Alex was right. It was time to get out of the house. At the bottom of my drawer was a pair of yoga pants which bagged at the knees and hung on me like wash on a clothesline. I had retrieved my yoga mat from the closet and tried to concentrate on my breath entering and leaving my body, to rise above the pain and focus on the healing energy of my breath and maybe even of the universe. In the worst times, my mat had been an oasis. In that moment, it was all I could do to be present and focus on the ocean-like waves and the sound of my breath. And pray.
Afterwards, I felt calmer than I had felt all week and thought I would attempt a trip to the grocery store. I opened the refrigerator and then closed it. I opened it again, the way Caleigh and Dane did, expecting new contents to magically materialize. With my grocery list in hand, I drove to the supermarket, marveling that life had managed to go on despite the children’s abduction.
* * *
Trader Joe’s was painfully cold. A mother with two young children in her cart passed me as I stood in the entrance not sure of what to do. The younger child, a boy, smiled and waved. Bleary-eyed, I made my way through the refrigerated store gathering the necessities from an overwhelming number of choices. I shifted from one foot to the other in the checkout line and saw the headlines. Doctor in Bali on Vacation While Children Are Abducted.
“Hey, you forgot your groceries!” the cashier yelled as I staggered blindly to the door.
* * *
The phone was ringing when I arrived home. My hands shook too badly to open the door in time. The caller ID said Rochester Police Department. “Detective? It’s Grace Rendeau.” My heart rattled in my chest. “Have you heard something?”
“Just checking in. I’m sorry there is no news to report but I wanted to assure you I am working on this case twenty-four seven. You ready for the interview? They want you in the studio at four-thirty. I’ll be there at four. They’ll do it live on the five o’clock news.”
“Will you come on with me?” I asked piteously.
“I can’t answer any questions about the investigation. But I’ll be there for moral support,” Meyers assured me.
* * *
Candy Sutherland’s platinum-colored hair wrapped around her head like a helmet. I couldn’t help but picture an insect caught in the journalist’s sticky web of hair. There was a line of peach-colored pancake makeup below her jaw. The make-up man wiped Candy’s face with a powdery finish just before they went on the air. Everything about her was phony—from her solicitous manner to her artificial nails. She wore Manolos, a wasp-waisted Chanel suit and a Rolex.
“Good evening. I’m Candy Sutherland.” She beamed toward the imaginary audience. “Tonight we have with us Dr. Grace Rendeau, whose children have been missing for almost a week. Dr. Rendeau, can you tell us when you first discovered your children were missing?” Pictures of a smiling Dane and Caleigh in the video monitor beamed through the studio. “Dr. Rendeau, when did you first discover your children missing?” the news anchor repeated, her smile beginning to fade.
I stared dumbly from the children’s pictures to Candy’s heavily lined glittering eyes. Bright lights shone on me and a warm flush crept up toward my face. My sweater chafed at my neck. I brought my hands to my neck and felt the red, raised surfaces of hives beginning to develop and wished I hadn’t worn wool. “One week ago. I came home from a medical mission trip. My in-laws had been staying with them, but when I got home, they were gone.” I dabbed at my eyes with a balled up tissue.
“Your in-laws had no clue where the children might be?” Candy looked first at me and then into the camera, pursing her lips. There was a fine web of lines at the corners of Candy’s eyes. The lights buzzed.
“No. They’d gone to church. The children wanted to be home when I got home. When I got home, they were gone. Please, please if anyone out there has seen or knows anything about the whereabouts of my children, call the police and help to bring them home.” My pressured speech hung over me like a guilty conscience.
“Thank you, Dr. Rendeau. If anyone has seen six-year-old Dane Rendeau, or thirteen-year-old Caleigh Rendeau, please call the number on your screen.” Time-lapsed photographs of the children from toothless grinning infants to Caleigh’s self-conscious smile as a sixth grader with braces flashed on the screen. “And now we go to Trevor Jorgenson. Trevor, can we expect this beautiful weather to continue?” Candy slid smoothly into the next segment and I was shown off the set, my tragedy already relegated to old news. The taste was as bitter as quinine.
“You did good, Grace,” Meyers said afterwards. “Just the right amount of desperation to show what a caring and loving parent you are. Honestly, we’re bound to get a lot of crank calls after this but we’ll investigate every one. Somebody out there has to have seen something they may not even have known was significant at the time. Someone stopping at a rest stop or a gas station or for fast food with two kids. These pictures will jar somebody’s memory.”
Through the evening rush-hour drive home, the interview replayed itself over and over again in my head. I arrived home and went back to bed, until Alex’s car pulled up the drive. “Is there any mail?” I asked, my hands tracing the creases from the bedcovers that were embedded in my forehead.
“No mail. Come on. Let’s go out and get something to eat. You have to eat.”
“What if the children come home and we’re not there?”
“They’ll call, Grace. The police will call.”
* * *
The overcooked hamburgers and greasy fries did not settle well. Alex meant well but I had made up my mind. I no longer wanted to leave home for any reason. At home, Sketcher rubbed against my legs and whined. “You hungry, boy?” I scooped a cup of dry food out of the bag. Even Sketcher seemed listless. I brought him outside and sat on the front step while he watered the rhododendron. “If only you could talk, boy. I have a feeling you might be able to tell us something. Come on, let’s get inside,” I said to the dog and then checked the answering machine for messages and trudged back up to bed.