BUT WHEN HE CALLS the next night, as threatened, she doesn’t pick up, lets his sexy voice go to waste, curling idly as smoke through the dim bedroom. Wednesday night, just as his message is winding down—“Please, Renata, I don’t want to have to do this...”—she picks up. “All right. Don’t do anything. I’ll do it myself tomorrow. Just...don’t,” and she hangs up before he can say a word. Unplugs the phone. Goes into the living room to sit on the couch beside Gianna and watch Sex and the City. Gianna’s made a batch of popcorn in the microwave. They share it, their hands reaching rhythmically, companionably into the bowl between them, while Sarah Jessica Parker dresses carefully for yet another date, only to undress in haste moments later. Renata isn’t much interested in that brand of sex, but she does enjoy the spectacular clothes. Soon, after one or two more silly sitcoms, they’ll have a little talk.
E-mail is not a medium Renata and Jack have made much use of in their love affair. Too cool for them, too remote, too snappy. They like each others voices too much. They like—he, especially, likes—to murmur indiscreet sweet nothings into a cell phone at odd moments. So e-mail is the medium she’ll choose, late the following night, to report her news. “I brought her back,” she’ll write. “Don’t call me. And don’t doubt me either. It’s the truth.”
Jack being Jack, however, he may feel obliged to check up. Ask Nestor if you don’t believe me, she might have added. Nestor is the bookman. After their long acquaintance, particularly after he agreed so readily to accompany her on her mission, they ought to call each other by name, Renata decided. Anonymity is all right for the street. Real friends know each others names. Nestor. So fitting that she had a twinge of startled delight when she heard him utter it. “Gracias, Nestor. So shall we meet you here at the corner? And...will you take her in if I can’t?”
After Sex and the City and a much-aired Law & Order rerun—the poor woman who wants to believe her autistic son is talking to her through a computer is cruelly disillusioned by a courtroom demonstration—Renata has her little talk with Gianna. “Your parents,” she begins. “They’re looking for you.” Gianna’s eyes open wider, not in alarm but in mild curiosity. As if to ask, Parents? What are they? Renata says their names, their address.
“They love you and they want you back.” She waits. “I love you and I want you too. What do you say?”
What a ridiculous question. Gianna says nothing. She reaches for the remote but Renata takes it gently from her hands. The girl is like Grace, she thinks, in her most recalcitrant moments. She is sick. Something happened in there. Something slammed down. Jack is right. She needs help.
“Tell me, just try, try to answer me. Were they good to you? Was there any...trouble at home? You can trust me. Please trust me.”
After a few moments she lets her have the remote back. That night Renata hardly sleeps, worried that Gianna might pack up her few things and slip away, back to the streets she came from. All night she lies awake listening for footsteps. In the morning she hurries out briefly to ask Nestor’s help, and when she returns Gianna is still wrapped in the sheet on the couch.
Renata touches her hair, her cheek. She has no idea, really, who or what is behind the silent face. She won’t find out, either, not this way, not by sheltering her. She calls in sick to work, afraid to let Gianna out of her sight. They walk along the Promenade, stop for lunch, browse in the shops, and finally meet Nestor at his corner. It’s odd to see him without the table set up, without the books, but now that they’re friends she has no trouble recognizing him. He’s ready.
“Would you call first? Please?” She hands him her cell and the crumpled slip of paper he stuffed in her purse three days ago. “Tell them we’re coming?”
He calls. “Mrs. Halloway?” He introduces himself with a smile, as though he’s meeting her face to face, then keeps nodding as he speaks, the bringer of glad tidings. “Yes, yes, she’s good, she’s fine, she’s well.” He has to say it over and over—the Halloways must have thought she was dead. “She’s fine. Yes, for sure. One thing.” He lowers his voice, although Gianna is a few feet off, gazing up and down the street as if none of this concerns her. “She doesn’t talk....No, no, not hurt. Just...confused in her head.”
Struck dumb, Renata thinks. Tabakkamat, in Arabic.
“Yes, now, right away,” he says.
Renata doesn’t ask any questions. All the way there on the subway, she’s as mute as Gianna.
“I brought her back,” she wrote Jack. She might have said lots more. A renovated warehouse building converted to loft apartments, she might have said. Typical of its kind: nicely done, elegant would be overstating, but done with taste. A sturdy, shabby old building spiffed up for a certain class of people—a bit of money, a bit of style—the lofts bought cheaply twenty years ago, today worth close to a million if not more. Not the kind of place kidnappers or lowlifes or porn moguls would choose, but then you never know. She might have said all this, but didn’t.
Nestor rings and they wait to be buzzed in. At the elevator Renata says, “I’ll wait down here, okay?” She turns to hug Gianna goodbye and studies her face instead. Are the surroundings familiar? She hasn’t resisted coming, nor does she show relief, or recognition, or fear. What is the maddeningly blank child thinking? Feeling? When the elevator comes Renata follows them in. She can’t let go yet. She’ll wait in the hall, outside the door. But of course the door is already open and a fiftyish couple, weary, plump, and benign, are already rushing out to seize Gianna and embrace her. A huge gray sheepdog comes bounding out, too, to leap all over her.
Nice place, she might have told Jack. Books, plants, comfy furniture, river view. All the dust cleaned up. You’d never know, from the shiny surfaces, that two weeks ago it must have been strewn with ash. Fancy kitchen. Patches of glass brick, thick and wavy, translucent. An island counter with copper-bottomed pots and pans hanging over it, how about that?
“Jenny, my God, it’s you! What happened? Are you all right?” Lots of that. A typical reunion scene, just what you’d imagine, she might have told him. She almost felt she was watching it on TV without the commercial interruptions. Tears, exclamations. After all, once you’ve expected the worst....Nothing from Gianna, though. She’s the same as ever, looking around as if she’s never seen the place before, or maybe as if she knows it so well, what’s the big deal? It’s hard to tell.
“Your room, let me show you your room. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you know us? Jenny! Sweetheart!” They can’t let go of her, especially Celeste, whose lipstick is all smeared now from kisses, her curly gray hair flying about. Renata doesn’t follow them into Gianna’s room. She looks out at the river, the empty rectangles in the sky, the lowering sun. Nestor studies the bookshelves with professional interest. They exchange glances once in a while, amid the drama.
It was the dog, she might have said to Jack. That clinched it. Without the dog I might not have let her stay. I might have, I don’t know, put up a fight. Said it was all a mistake. Tried to make them prove it. Birth certificate, maybe? For after a while the Halloways let go of her—Lionel sits down on the nubby couch, rests his elbows on his chinos, takes off his glasses and puts his head in his hands, while Celeste steps back and pats her hair, smoothes down her sweater—and the dog takes his turn. The dog leaps and licks at Gianna and, yes, she plays with him. She smiles. She knows the dog. She kneels down to stroke him. She ruffles his fur. She recognizes the dog. She looks up at Celeste and Lionel and smiles. She knows the dog.
“Remember his name, Jenny darling?” Celeste says. “Bounder. You named him yourself, when we first got him.”
Gianna goes off with the dog to a big pillow under the window, where they sit and nuzzle one another.
“Are you hungry, Jenny? Do you want anything? Do you remember where your things are? Where did you get those clothes?”
At last Celeste invites Renata and Nestor to sit down. She looks them over: they make an odd couple. Renata has dressed for the occasion to look ultra-respectable, in buff-colored slacks and a silk shirt; her hair is up, pulled away from her face. Nestor is a head shorter and several decades older; his checked shirt is crisp and his eyes, magnified to larger than life size, gleam behind the thick glasses. He’s removed his ancient fedora to reveal thinning black hair, slick with pomade. Celeste offers coffee, which they decline. She’s more collected than Lionel, who sits apart, weeping discreetly. First come the profuse thanks, then come the questions. No need to tell these to Jack, even if Renata were feeling expansive—he’d know what they are. How long have you had her? How did you find her? The questions get a bit sharper, possibly because Renata’s answers are vague and inept. There’s even a whiff of anger. Two weeks? But what’s she been doing all that time? Why did you wait so long to call? As Celeste speaks, she keeps turning to gaze at Jenny to be sure she’s still there. That she hasn’t been mistreated. That she’s still Jenny.
All Renata can do is shake her head, so Nestor takes over. He explains that they didn’t see the notice until...A pause, while Renata wonders what he’ll say. Until yesterday. Bless you, Nestor. We didn’t know, he goes on, because she wasn’t speaking. He tells them how Renata took such good care of her. Of Jenny.
“But...” Celeste begins, and gives up. There are so many questions to ask, she doesn’t know how to continue. Renata can read her mind: What does it matter, so long as Jenny’s safe. These two may be an odd pair but they seem all right, and they brought her back safe and sound. Given all that’s happened, given what might have happened, what does it matter? We’ll take her to a doctor, she’ll speak, she’ll remember. As long as she’s in one piece. That’s all that matters.
So Celeste switches into another mode. The “isn’t it terrible, what happened?” mode. Where we were, what we were doing that morning. Where were you, what were you doing? And almost as an afterthought, “You didn’t lose anyone, I hope?”
“No,” Nestor answers for both of them. And he shifts about, as if ready to leave. But Celeste isn’t finished. She lowers her voice, even though Gianna is way across the large room, occupied with Bounder. Tossing a rubber bone around for Bounder.
“After we checked the hospitals and all,” Celeste whispers, “we were so terrified at the thought of her roaming the streets, I can’t tell you. Because that’s where she was before. Before we adopted her, I mean. She was found on the streets and put in foster care and—” She starts to cry.
“You adopted her?” Renata says. Suddenly she’s alert. “When?”
“Almost three years ago. We...we had a child who died, a long time ago. She was sick. We—”
“We don’t have to go into all that,” Lionel says. “Not in front of strangers. Do we?” His face is gray and tear-streaked. He takes off his sneakers and goes to sit on the floor under the window, where he watches Gianna and the dog.
“No. All right. But you’re not exactly strangers. I mean...we just wanted someone to love,” Celeste says. “Most people don’t want to adopt older children with problems, but we didn’t mind.”
Renata looks at Nestor. They wanted someone to love, so they took Gianna. Well, they can feed her as much as they like, she’ll never look like them. She should have known. The Halloways are thickset, pink-faced, insipid really. Gianna is dark and lean and feline in movement. She will be beautiful very soon. Their kind of looks, Renata knows, her own, that is, Claudia’s, Gianna’s, improve with age; darker skin (thank her Italian grandparents) has the advantage, and bones last. Buscaban a alguien que querer, she translates for Nestor, though it’s quite unnecessary, his English is more than adequate. She just wants to hear the words aloud again. They disgust her. She’s disgusted by the whole scene, the smug, well-off couple, reunited with the child they selected to receive their love, the cozy furniture, the copper pots, the plants, the L.L. Bean clothes, the coffee, which had they accepted it would have been designer coffee....They picked out someone to love. They picked Gianna the same way they picked Bounder. She looks at Nestor, but he’s delighted at the sentiment. He beams. He nods his approval.
“What was her name? I mean, when you adopted her?” she asks.
“Her name? Jenny. Jenny Wright. But once we signed the papers...Now her name is Halloway. Why?”
She can’t answer. Her mind is too muddled, nor can Nestor help with this. Wouldn’t Gianna have known her own name? She was seven when she vanished. Children of seven know their names and more. They know their addresses and phone numbers. Can you forget that kind of information? Can you forget your own name, your aunt’s name? Can you forget to tell the people who pick you up off the street that you have an aunt in this very city who’ll take care of you, who’s longing to have you back? Maybe. Maybe, if what happened to you in the intervening years is enough to make you forget.
Jack. He would know how to proceed, but Jack has become a pain in her chest. Anyway, there’s nothing to be done right now. She can’t demand to see the adoption papers, not that they would help. Jenny Wright.
Enough. It’s time to go. We brought her and then we left. End of story. I brought her back, she wrote Jack. My hanai, off the street. I did what you said I must.
“Lets go,” she says to Nestor, and they both stand up. Everyone stands up except Gianna. Lionel comes over and shakes their hands. More tears, more thanks. Effusive thanks. All the while, Celeste is busy thinking. Renata reads her like a book. She wants to offer a reward, but she’s not sure how to do so without offending. After all, Renata and Nestor don’t appear needy; they’re not bounty-hunters.
“Is there anything at all I can do to show our appreciation?”
“Nothing. It’s not necessary.”
“You took care of her for two weeks. The clothes, at least. Let me reimburse you for the clothes.”
Renata shakes her head. It occurs to her to ask to see Gianna’s room. That could be her reward. On second thought, no. She doesn’t want to picture Gianna later in some girly room with movie-star posters and hip-hop CDs, schoolbooks and clothes strewn around....No.
She and Nestor walk to the window, where Gianna is curled up on the floor with the dog in her lap. Nestor kneels down and offers his hand. “God bless you.” Renata hugs her. “Goodbye, Gianna.”
“What did you call her?” Lionel asks.
“Nothing. Jenny. In Spanish.” It pains her to give mistaken information about a language, but there’s so much pain already that the aesthetic variety hardly figures.
“Do you have a card or something,” says Celeste, “in case we want to write you, or call? To thank you again?”
“You’ve thanked us enough. It’s okay.” And I know how to find you, she thinks but doesn’t say—it might frighten them.
“God bless you,” Nestor says in farewell. In the elevator, he remarks, “Good people.”
“They’re okay, I guess. Thanks for coming with me. I couldn’t have done it alone.”
So I’ll never know, she might have told Jack. Like the people who sustain themselves with the word “missing,” implying that their loved ones are wandering the streets stunned or lying anonymous in a hospital bed, so as not to say, in the nonexistent English term, “lost-beyond-recovery,” meaning dispersed among the rubble, transformed to dust. The people waiting for a scrap of fingernail or a hair to be found. No, not quite the same, Jack would reply, and explain the distinctions. Plus there’s DNA testing, he’d add. Those people may eventually be relieved by DNA testing. You could do that too. But Renata doesn’t dare, and so she’s not the same as those bereft people. Don’t flatter yourself, Jack would say. Don’t appropriate their tragedy. Well, no, he wouldn’t be so unkind as to say that. He’d think it.
After she gets home and sends him her terse e-mail, leaving out so much of consequence, she reaches for the remote. That might bear traces of Gianna’s DNA—she was so often holding it. Alone in the apartment, Renata almost misses the inanities of MTV She turns on the news, which is full of speculations on how and when the war will begin. Continue, rather, for according to the President, the war began the moment the first fire blossom exploded in the sky. On impulse, she pops in a videotape Denise’s brother made the morning of the attack. He had his TV on when it happened; he got it all, Denise boasted, from the first instant. Copies proliferated and were passed around their section of the library. The appetite for reliving that morning is insatiable, Renata’s included, even though she witnessed it from across the river.
The terrible scenes can never cease to shock, even though she’s seen them so many times that she knows what’s coming. What’s newly startling about the tape is the bewilderment of the TV commentators. They begin with shock, the Bliondan fifth degree, dradoskis, and struggle through the stages of knowing, trying all the while to frame impromptu sentences, for unlike most of the news they report, this news has not had time to be minced into small, digestible phrases. Even so, it’s hard to grasp that they actually don’t know what’s happening. It’s hard, a mere two weeks later, to believe there was ever a time when we didn’t know what is now known indelibly. That small sliver of time, that not-knowing, seems eons away, lost in pre-history. Yet here it is, resuscitated, with all the freshness of a brand new story. A man with a microphone stands on a terrace somewhere in midtown, doing his best to describe what he sees in the distance: an enormous pillar of smoke where formerly there was a pillar of concrete and steel. It’s like a Greek tragedy, where we all know what will happen and must watch in pain as the chorus gradually arrives at the same knowledge. “I don’t know what we’ll see when the smoke clears,” the newscaster says, his tone almost childlike in its innocence, “but I fear it may be nothing.”