I had assumed the Tiny Art Show was named after the size of the participants, but as it turned out, the art was tiny, too. The children had painstakingly glued beans on canvases in the shapes of butterflies, trees, and fish. One child had even made a tiny bean portrait of Jean, beard and all.
Jean greeted people with smiles and warm hugs, dressed to the nines in a bright pink shirt and blue bow tie. We admired the tiny masterpieces and sipped club soda from fancy plastic cups with turquoise umbrellas.
“Kudos to you, Jean-Pierre,” I said when Val and I finally pulled Jean aside.
“Why, thank you. My protégés did all the work.” He took a sip of my club soda. “Is Alice here? She said she was going to take pictures.”
“Not yet.” I was getting nervous. Alice was always early.
The artists got rowdy as the party went on. A boy wearing a cape took down the tiered display of cupcakes, causing half the crowd to dissolve into a teary, snotty whine-fest until Gordie suggested I summon Dad to the rescue. Woody’s truck showed up ten minutes later to deliver ice pops free of charge to the horde of cupcake-deprived little kids.
Val and I shared a chair while Gordie charmed Jean’s mom and her friends.
Val checked her phone repeatedly.
“Anything from Alice?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Javi?”
“Nope. I threw his phone in the toilet, remember?” We laughed.
“You okay?”
“Nope.”
We helped Jean take down the tables, fold up the chairs, and put away the decorations before we walked across the street to a pizza place. Gordie brought a pizza out to the curb where Jean, Val, and I sat inhaling helium from the Tiny Art Show balloons.
“I can’t believe Alice blew me off,” Jean said in helium voice.
“I’m single,” Val said, also in helium voice.
“I’m hungry,” I said in helium voice.
At that moment, all our phones went off at the same time.
Please come to hospital. Losing my shit.
We got to the hospital in record time.
Just before the elevator doors opened onto Izzy’s floor, I noticed someone had stuck a yellow KICK CANCER’S ASS FOR GARY! sticker on the wall above the buttons. I wondered if Gary had kicked cancer’s ass. When the door opened, we heard a low, grunty howl, like a walrus giving birth. It took only a minute to realize the sound was coming from Izzy’s mom. She was writhing on the floor outside the visitors’ lounge, nearly smacking her head on the edge of the doorway. Izzy’s dad knelt awkwardly next to her. Alice stood stiffly, her eyes wide, her hands in her denim jacket pockets, her body pressed against the wall.
We walked boldly toward the scene. A distracted nurse passed us and snaked around the pathetic pile that was Izzy’s parents. Alice turned and motioned for us to follow her into the tiny family room, where a vase of peach-colored fake flowers lay toppled in the middle of the floor.
I saw Tanner sitting in the corner, his ten-year-old face frozen in fear.
Alice managed a weak smile and then shook her head. “It’s not good.”
Gordie moved in for a hug and Alice collapsed into him, shaking and sobbing.
I stood there paralyzed, convinced Izzy was dead.
“What happened?” Val said, resting her hand on Alice’s back.
“She’s gone. She disappeared. The hospital was discharging her because a bed opened at some rehab facility in Connecticut. She said she wanted to go down to the bathroom and freshen up while her parents sat here falling for her bullshit, yet again, and she disappeared.”
She lifted her head from Gordie’s chest. “We ran around the entire friggin’ hospital searching for her. Security searched. The cops searched. She’s gone.” Alice wiped her nose on her jacket sleeve. “She has no phone, no wallet, nothing. Her mom had wanted to transport her to the rehab place by ambulance, and her dad was like, No, let’s stop at home and get her a few things and maybe have steamers and sweet potato fries at her favorite restaurant before we dump her at rehab. Yeah. Nice work, Elliott.”
The hallway commotion intensified.
“Do they need you to stay here?” Val said, holding Alice’s hand.
“No. Let’s go. I was just here to say good-bye to Izzy,” Alice said. “But obviously she had other priorities than rehab in Connecticut. Those dumbass cops are never going to find her.”
I thought of Izzy’s sweet face, the way she lit up when Alice showed her childhood pictures.
“I have this sick feeling,” Alice said in the elevator after she helped Izzy’s dad get her mom off the floor and into a chair. “I’m so afraid she’s going to die.” Tears streamed down Alice’s face. Val handed her tissues. I focused on the KICK CANCER’S ASS FOR GARY! sticker.
“How can we help?” Gordie said. We stood in the parking lot, watching cops search the perimeter for Izzy. “There have to be places we can look.”
Alice played with the knot of silver rings on her right hand. “There are places. There’s a place in the city. I went with Izzy once when Hector was in rehab. I have to go through Izzy’s drug phone.”
“Do you really think she’d go all the way to the city?” I said.
“Sadie, Izzy would go to the bowels of the earth for heroin.”
Dad was on the porch when I got home.
“What a great event, huh, sunshine?” He motioned for me to sit.
I had already forgotten about Jean’s Tiny Art Show. “Yeah, Jean did an awesome job.” I took the can of honey-roasted peanuts from the table and shook nuts into my mouth. We sat there crunching, Dad and me with the fireflies and Bruce Springsteen, until I hit Dad with a question.
“How did you lose your thumb, Dad?”
He must have known I’d ask again, though I’d stopped a long time ago, after his answers were always different, but equally ridiculous. A bird was hungry and I let him have a nibble. A snapping turtle got mad at me for taking her bus seat. Grandma Hosseini lopped it off with garden shears when I married Mommy.
He took a sip of beer. Then another. “I guess you’re not going to buy The tooth fairy needed it to poke people, huh?”
“No, Dad.”
He set the beer down and leaned forward a little. “I got bit by a strung-out prostitute because I was trying to pry her kid away and she wasn’t having it. She fought and clawed and the kid wouldn’t let go of her mother, and the woman clamped down on my thumb. She severed the tendon straight through.”
“Oh my God, Dad.” I saw it all in my head, the shock of toddler hair, the desperate mother, the teeth bearing down on my sweet father’s hand.
“But I was Mr. Tough Guy and didn’t go to the hospital until the damn thing was necrotic.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Dead. My thumb tissue was dead. So they hacked it off.”