“—or even be paralyzed from the neck down, but as long as you have your mind, you're still alive, now aren't you? The mind has a power to solve life's puzzles. You just concentrate long enough and you make up the answer. What's the matter, Mrs. Quinn, still worried about your daughter? They've run away.”
Before she could reach over and strangle the woman, Margaret noticed the red flashing lights through the window. She hurried to open the door, usher in the two policemen to Paul and Denny, upstairs in the younger boy's room. The officers seemed discomfited by the circumstances, unsure of what they sought, and why they had to miss their dinner for a couple of runaways. Columns of teetering books lay all about the floor, books spilling under the bed, hiding between issues of newspapers and magazines, Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. Drugstore paperbacks, political screeds and works of philosophy. Ginsberg's Howl, Ker-ouac's On the Road, Conrad's The Secret Agent. Sandwiched between the mattress and the box spring were a few well-thumbed Playboys and a forgotten manual, How to Make a Bomb in Your Basement. Three of the walls had been painted black, and on the fourth, the painter had stopped midstroke next to the window and abandoned the project. The old white coat looked yellowed by smoke. Posters filled the space above the unmade bed: Lenin under the words “Acid Indigestion,” a white rabbit on a chessboard surrounded by psychedelic shades of blue and pink, a Wanted poster with mugshots of all the people involved with Watergate, and one of Patty Hearst as Tania, wielding a machine gun with a hydra-headed snake in the background.
When the younger policeman opened the closet door, they all saw stenciled in gold spray paint the AOD logo, with wings. Margaret had seen that design before but could not place it, though in truth the kids had so many cryptic symbols that often signified nothing more than the desire for peace, love, or bliss. Signs with no meaning. Still, she could not stop trying to remember where she had seen those wings and could not concentrate on the conversation from the other side of the room. Her husband argued quietly with one of the policemen. Out of his element, she thought. Away from the clinic, he projects nothing of the mastery when playing the doctor. The wise old man gently counseling the smokers and the drinkers who will not quit, the mothers who neglect vaccinations for their children and wonder why they are sick, the boy with the bad heart, the girl who refuses to speak. They look up to him like a good priest, rabbi, magician, miracle man. The truth was he had slowed to complacency, a year past the normal age for retirement, one slip from malpractice.
“Most of the time,” the older policeman said, “runaways like this call their folks in two, three hours, a couple of days, a week, tops. Course, the longer it goes …”
She whispered, “I have been such a bad mother.”
“But I don't believe,” Paul said, “that she would just run away like that—”
“Of course, we'll follow up, Mr. Quinn—”
“I'm a doctor.”
Margaret spoke in a loud voice. “She was in love, love. Love makes you do crazy things. Well, not you… but some people. Erica.” Every head in the room spun round to stare at her. She clapped her hand to her mouth. When is a thought just like the sea?
“Without an actual crime, there's not much to do but send out an alert. And wait to hear if anyone's seen them, but I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Quinn. Most of these kids think the world's going to be one way, turns out the world is something else. If you have any other thoughts about where to look…”
“I have absolutely no idea,” she said. And the voice inside her head kept time with her answer—a notion, a notion, an ocean.
16