“Then she lies and says she was right upstairs in her room or something,” the little girl adds.
The woman shrugs, a “what are you going to do?” motion that irritates Marjorie. What you’re going to do, Marjorie thinks, is watch your children, comb their hair, and stay off the telephone.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I haven’t seen her.”
“If you do,” the woman says, “can you give us a holler?”
“Yes,” Marjorie says. “Of course.” And they live close enough that a holler would do it too. Disgusted, she closes the door.
THAT NIGHT, THEY still haven’t found the little girl. While Marjorie and Gary eat their salads on the patio, they can hear the mother give an anguished description and details to the police, whose car sits in the middle of the street sending a blue light across Marjorie’s yard.
“The woman can’t keep track of those children,” Marjorie tells Gary. “It’s no surprise that one has gotten herself lost.”
“They’re like little ragamuffins,” Gary says. He has turned the patio light on himself tonight, and the paper is spread around him like a fairy tale princess’s hair. “Little sweet girls,” he adds, distracted, turning a page.
Gary is a messy newspaper reader; he turns it all inside out, pulls the guts of one part away from where it belongs, and leaves the whole thing in disarray. If Marjorie doesn’t read it first, she can’t piece it back together into a shape that makes sense. She has not read today’s yet, and watching Gary tear it apart she knows she won’t get a chance now.
Bonnie’s news grabs hold of Marjorie. She isn’t supposed to tell Gary; Bonnie and Ted want to break the news themselves, in some elaborate manner, at the appropriate time. Bonnie has asked her mother to act surprised when they do. Still, she wants to see Gary’s private reaction herself. All day the word grandmother has scraped away at Marjorie’s insides, eroding pieces of her.
“Gary,” she says, her voice low enough to hold a secret.
From behind them, cutting through the kitchen, comes a man’s voice.
“Excuse me?” it calls. “Mrs. Macomber?”
Marjorie jumps to her feet, banging her thighs on the sharp metal table. Gary looks at her.
“Probably the police,” he says, calmly. “Canvassing the neighborhood.”
Marjorie remembers how the garden boy, Justin, stood so long by the fence that morning.
Gary has stood too, to answer the door. But Marjorie grabs him by the arm, hard.
“That boy you hired,” she hisses. “Justin. He was up to something over by their yard.” She indicates with a tilt of her head so there’s no confusing what yard she means.
“By the flower bed, you mean?” Gary says.
“No,” she whispers.
The policemen are knocking, banging the M shaped knocker against the door with an urgent desperation.
“I think he was masturbating,” she tells Gary. Is that what she had thought? she wonders.
Gary laughs. “Marjorie,” he says, in that same affectionate way that seems, now, condescending.
Marjorie remembers how long he stood there, his arms jerking about. She remembers the way he shuddered before he moved on.
“I’m telling you,” she says.
But Gary is shaking his head, laughing to himself, heading toward the door.
By the time she joins him, he has already assured the policeman they have not seen the little girl. He is shaking the policeman’s hand.
Another policeman comes heavily up the front walk.
“Joe,” he says, “we got her. She’s been in the garage all day. Hiding.”
“Jesus,” the first one says. He looks at Gary. “Sorry to bother you.”
“They don’t watch that child,” Marjorie blurts.
She is, oddly, relieved that the little girl has been found. Maybe Justin was just weeding over there. Her own imagination seems enormous, out of control.
“She says she was scared to come out,” the second policeman says. “Won’t say what she’s scared of. Just that she’s scared.”
“They probably watch horribly scary things,” Marjorie tells them, even though no one seems to be paying her any attention. “Jurassic Park and things of that nature. She’s just a little girl.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they both say, as if it’s something they learn in the police academy.
Gary and Marjorie stand on the front steps and watch them get back in their police car, its blue light spinning silently.
“Remember that sweet little doll Bonnie had?” Gary says. “It wore a ragged sort of dress made of burlap? And it had a big tear stuck to its cheek?”
“Little Miss No Name,” Marjorie says.
She can’t imagine why Gary would remember that doll of Bonnie’s, or any doll, for that matter. He hardly seemed to notice Bonnie when she was a little girl. He was too busy then, trying to earn money, to make a name for himself at the insurance company where he now holds the largest office, the corner one with its own cubicle for a secretary, its wide view of things below.