This is what I found out later.
Detective Mary called the house on Maple Street. No one answered because both my parents were working and Ben was at school—high school, even though he should’ve easily been in college by now, meaning he must’ve screwed up big-time. Some detective there did some detective work and found out Mom worked at Mooney Realty and called there. When she answered the phone Detective Mary said, I don’t want to get your hopes too high, but there’s someone here claiming to be your daughter.
Mom fainted—that’s what she told me later. The next thing I saw was the ceiling.
After she was picked up off the floor by Tom Mooney—the Mooneys used to show up at our Fourth of July blowouts and somehow he’d become her boss, just like somehow she’d become a Realtor—Mom called Dad, who still worked at the same production company in the city but was now its executive producer, whatever that meant. He takes people to lunch, Mom explained.
Mom told Dad what the detective had told her—word for word, because she didn’t want to get anything wrong. I don’t want to get your hopes too high, but there’s someone here claiming to be your daughter. Mom’s hopes were apparently already floating somewhere past Jupiter, but Dad reminded her that the year after I’d disappeared, they’d been told that two separate girls might be me.
One of them was black, he said.
He was coming to the station anyhow.
Before Detective Mary slipped outside to call my parents, she asked me if taking my picture would be okay—still being courteous. I asked her what the point was, even though I kind of knew what the point was. “Is this my mug shot or something?”
“No, Jenny. No one’s arresting you.” Fake smile. “Just standard procedure.”
Smile for the camera, I said, or thought I said. Or both.
Mary snapped two—I smiled in one but not in the other. Then she said she’d be back in a few minutes.
“In the meantime, I’ll send Officer Farley in to keep you company, okay?”
“I’m fine with me, myself, and I.”
“Afraid it’s procedure again.”
I was tempted to ask if it was procedure for police officers to drool all over you, but I was starting to hyperventilate.
“My parents?” I asked her. “Have you talked to them yet?”
But Mary was already out the door, and Officer Farley was in.
“Hey there, stranger,” he said, still his friendly lecherous self.
“I really don’t need babysitting, you know. I’m legal.”
“Noted,” he said. “You want anything to drink?”
“Jack Daniel’s. Straight up.”
“How about some coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He sat down in Detective Mary’s chair, looked around the room a little as if he’d never been there—maybe he hadn’t, since this must be where detectives did their questioning and he wasn’t one. He drummed his fingers on the desk—he had bitten-down fingernails—and sighed. Then cleared his throat. Then sighed.
I wanted to be alone. I wanted to focus. In a little while they’d be walking into the room.
What if I become a fish and swim away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will become a fisherman and fish for you, Mommy Bunny answered. What if I become a bird and fly away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will be a tree that you come home to, Mommy Bunny answered.
Mom used to read The Runaway Bunny to me every night. It’s how I went to sleep. No matter what Baby Bunny did, no matter how far he ran or swam or flew or jumped, Mommy Bunny would go after him. Baby Bunny would never get away from her.
“Are you feeling all right?” Officer Farley asked me.
“I’m cold.”
“Yeah? Feels like a furnace to me.”
“Glad you’re nice and toasty.”
“I can go check the thermostat, but . . .” He hesitated.
“But what?”
He looked confused, the way he had in the car when he was supposed to help me but looked like he wanted to help himself to me instead.
“You can’t leave me alone in here, is that it? Am I on suicide watch or something?”
“Suicide? Of course not.”
“Could’ve fooled me. I’m freezing.”
“You sure you don’t want that coffee?”
“I’m sure.”
What I wanted was about to come through the door. You want me to make it better? Mom asked when I roller-skated into that crack on the corner of Maple and opened up a bloody gash on my knee. Yes. Please.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“No shit. Are they here?”
“Your . . . parents?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’m scared . . .” It just came out. I hadn’t meant it to, but that happened with me sometimes, like when Detective Mary took my picture and I said, Smile for the camera, even though I was just thinking it. You’re talking to yourself again, Father would say to me. Shut up.
“Yeah,” Farley said, “it must be . . . well, it must be really weird for you. I understand you being scared, I mean, it makes sense.”
I didn’t answer him. Partly because I’d been only ninety-nine percent sure that I’d actually said this thing out loud, but him responding to it had made it one hundred percent positive. And also because I was scared, I was scared shitless, and being scared shut me up.
I won’t say anything again . . . I promise . . . please . . . don’t . . .
“You know . . . ,” Farley said, “when I used to get nervous out on patrol—I did two tours in Iraq, and trust me, if you were sane you were scared. I saw some bad shit go down over there. I used to focus on the end game, understand? I’d imagine being back at base—actually picture it and everything, like what I was eating, and who I was jawing with—because that made it, well . . . real. It’s called visualization.”
Farley was trying, but he was talking over someone else.
You bet your ass you won’t say anything . . .
“So what I’m saying is . . . think about being home with them. And I know even that must be kind of scary for you, but after a while, it won’t be, right? Everyone will get to know each other again and it’ll be just like . . . well, like it never happened, maybe not exactly, of course not, but close maybe. So visualize it. You’d be surprised—it really works.”
Okay, Officer. I hear you. I’m trying.
“See. You look better already,” he said.
I was visualizing sitting in my old living room, with the big TV where I used to watch Arthur and Dora, and on top of the TV were Monopoly and the Game of Life, which we would play as a family, and I always chose the pink car because I was a girl, of course, and now we were all sitting there together, Mom, Dad, and grown-up Ben, and we were eating a pizza and Mom was saying, Eat over the plate, Jenny, and Dad was telling one of his corny jokes and we were a big, happy family.
Only other things were starting to crowd into my head, like when that security guard had opened the doors at the Sioux City Mall on the day after Thanksgiving to let me get to my job at Bed Bath & Beyond and all the customers waiting outside surged in after me. Good luck keeping anyone out, even though it was fifteen minutes before opening time. The security guard kept shouting, Please, it is not opening yet, please . . . , but he might’ve been talking to himself for the amount of good that did.
The security guard in my head was like that Sioux City Mall guard—Mr. Hammard his name was, though we called him Mr. Hammered because you could sometimes smell alcohol on his breath when he opened the door for you in the morning. He wasn’t threatening or anything, which was maybe the problem, because as a security guard he basically wasn’t worth shit. Neither was the security guard in my head—because no matter how many times he said, Stay out, tried to keep certain persona non grata out of my head, they’d sneak in anyway.
They were doing that now, sneaking into the living room where we Kristals were pigging out on pizza and making up for lost time. There were Father and Mother suddenly standing there telling me it was time for me to go to my room and I was getting that sick, sour feeling in my stomach.
“Hey . . . ,” Farley said, “hey . . .”
Now Officer Farley was in the living room with us, only the living room had turned into the room at the police station and it was just the two of us.
“I want my mommy,” I said. “Now.”