The officer shrugs and climbs the stairs. The detective walks back to the kitchen. Nathan counts to five and attempts to follow casually. He finds the detective in the basement, peering into the green shoebox of cash again.
The detective nods, smiles, and sets the green lid back on the box. He then walks into the darkness of the basement, and a light goes on. Nathan follows and tries to take normal breaths. He hasn’t been down here since Denise made her discovery. He realizes that Denise returned the basement to a state of order as she searched. The detective paces and makes a clicking sound with his tongue.
“And you never had cats?”
“No, I’m allergic.”
Nathan could tell the detective about the unlocked basement door, at least, but doesn’t know what that would prove. He thinks, I’ll say it if he gets close to the tarp.
But why is he hiding it at all? Nathan tries to believe that he’s protecting his daughters. The detective takes a step toward the tarp and bends at the waist as if he’s about to lift it, and Nathan knows that he is protecting Marion, and by protecting Marion he is protecting himself.
He’s about to tell about the unlocked door when the officer calls down into the basement. “Sir? It’s the station.”
“What now?” the detective asks as he leaves. Nathan coaxes his heartbeat back to a normal rhythm and turns off the basement light.
In the kitchen, the officer talks jargon into his cell and the detective looks out the window. “It must be nice to have a house like this in the city. Do the girls play out there?”
“Mostly Jane,” Nathan says. “But yes. It is nice.”
“It’s a nice house. From what I’ve seen. All right, Nathan. May I call you Nathan? Nathan, we should get going. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine.”
“Before I go, are you sure there isn’t anything else you can tell me?” the detective asks, but Nathan’s shaking his head before the detective can finish asking the question. “All right. Well, we’re still looking. We haven’t given up.”
Nathan’s eyes open wider. “Terrific,” he says.
Back on the stoop, the officer says, “We haven’t given up? With all due respect, why the fuck not?”
The detective chooses not to tell the officer his motivation: that he wanted to see how Nathan Palm would react when given the chance to hope.
Brooklyn Beaches
Now that her sister is a delinquent, Jane has been forced back into her old routine of morning and afternoon school bus riding. It’s better now that the missing boy sits next to her and holds her hand. But she misses seeing the missing boy’s picture on the subway. The picture is what drew her to him, what fascinated her. And the missing boy sitting next to her is not exactly the missing boy of the posters. She wants to see another poster, but her sister won’t be allowed to take her to school on the train anymore. Meanwhile, her father is no longer an outside dad. He’s become an inside dad. She explains this to herself, to make sense of why he won’t take her out to the school bus like he used to but instead prefers to wave from the front door.
She’s been asking him to take her on the train to the water. She remembers that some trains lift out of the ground, and when they do, those trains usually take you to the beach. Jane takes subway beach trips with her mother and sister every summer, and they are delineated by the two long train rides. The first is exciting, anticipatory, then long. The second is sweaty, sandy, dirty, longer than the first train ride, but it always puts her to sleep. Jane is woken up by her mother a stop before Bergen Street, and she’s been confused by the sleep because it was dead and heavy.
She wants to go on one of those trips again, even though it’s colder. She believes this is where the missing boy wants to go or where he wants her to go.
A Description
The Grace Kelly skirt hangs above Marion’s bed where Sveyta’s cross used to rest. She would have kept the cross up if Sveyta had paid her like a person. Since she was paid next to nothing, Marion wants to shock Sveyta, leave her openmouthed. She wants Sveyta to be ashamed of paying her so little and prove that she is worth more than what Sveyta valued her at.
Marion lies on the bed in the opposite direction, her head at the foot, her feet on her pillow, and gazes at the skirt. She still has not tried it on, but she ripped the tags right off. The garment belongs to her, and she will not have the depressing walk back to the counter, the skirt folded up again, incorrectly, to be resteamed and rehung by a size 2 salesgirl. So what if it never fits her? She wants to own it. This is the closest to Grace Kelly she will ever feel.
The phone rings, and Marion listens to Sveyta answering. She doesn’t expect Sveyta to call out, “Marion. It’s for you.”
Sveyta must see terror in her eyes when Marion enters the kitchen to take her phone call, because she adds gently that it is Marion’s new boss calling to sort out the details of the position. The subtext: No one has found you.
The Russian matriarch is all soft-spoken business. She tells Marion when she expects her at the apartment and details a list of new responsibilities alongside cleaning. Marion says, “Yes, sure.” When she says sure, the matriarch admits that she’s never hired an American cleaning lady before. Marion says, “Well, there’s a first time for everything.” The matriarch doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t believe the axiom means anything.
“So we will see you tomorrow at eight-thirty, yes?” the soft voice says.
“Yes, tomorrow, yes.”
“Good. à bient?t.”
Sveyta sits at the kitchen table smoking. She’s poured two cups of tea, and she gestures for Marion to join her.
“I apologize for frightening you,” Sveyta says. “It wasn’t my intention.”
“It’s all right.”
“You thought it was your husband on the phone, the one who beat you?”
“Yes, he’s the only one I have.” Marion says this as a joke, but Sveyta doesn’t smile.
“I had a boyfriend who beat me. A Ukrainian. A long time ago.”
“It’s unpleasant.”
Marion wants to move on from this conversation, back to the ballet, for which she has bought the clothes. She wants to say, I’ll buy the tickets.
“I have friends in this neighborhood. A few friends. If you give me a description of the husband, they will let me know if they see him around the building. Or the street.”
“What kind of friends?”
“Old friends.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I’m afraid I will have to insist. One must protect oneself.”
Marion bites her lower lip but gives Sveyta a detailed description of Nathan. She pictures him in the kitchen, reading the paper, drinking coffee, while her world caught fire. His height, hair color, build. Even the two moles on his left cheek, near his mouth. The graying spots at his temples. Sveyta takes notes in Cyrillic.
“And his name,” she asks in a fill-in-the-blank kind of way.
“Nathan. His name is Nathan.”
Pancakes