Missing Pieces (42 page)

“Don’t tell her to shut up,” Sara said, taking the words out of my mouth.

Jo Lynn threw her hands into the air. “Oh, great. Gang up on me, why don’t you?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” I offered. “Bring me the application. I’ll write out a check for the application fee, and we’ll take it one step at a time.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“What do you mean, it’s not good enough?”

“Stop treating me like a child.”

“How is that treating you like a child?”

“You want to see the application; you want to write the check. You always have to be in control.”

“Do you want the money or don’t you?”

She ignored me, fell to her knees in front of our mother. “Please, Mom, this is really embarrassing for me. Can’t you just lend me the money. Don’t make me beg.”

Tears filled our mother’s eyes. “That was a lovely party.”

“Don’t do this, Mom,” Jo Lynn said. “Please don’t do this.”

“She can’t help it,” I said.

“She
can
help it.” Jo Lynn pushed herself off her
knees, began pacing back and forth in front of our mother’s chair, a caged tiger in a small cell, claws extended, ready to leap, go for the jugular. “You’re not going to do this, Mom. This time you’re not going to get away with it.”

“Get away with what?” I demanded. “What has she ever done to you?”

“Nothing!” Jo Lynn shouted. “She does absolutely nothing! Isn’t that right, Mom? Isn’t that right? You do nothing!”

“I do nothing,” our mother repeated, a faint glimmer of understanding creeping into her eyes.

“You just sit there, and do nothing. Just like you’ve always done.”

“I do nothing,” our mother agreed.

“When your husband comes home and screams at you, you do nothing. When he hits you and washes your mouth out with soap, you do nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“When he terrorizes your children, you do nothing.”

“I do nothing.”

“Jo Lynn, what’s the point of bringing this up now?” My voice was a painful whisper. It literally hurt to speak.

“The point is that she did nothing! All those years, she did nothing.”

“And she paid for it. God knows, she paid for it.”

“No—
I
paid for it!
I’m
the one who paid for it.” Tears began falling the length of Jo Lynn’s cheeks.

“What are you talking about? You were his favorite. He never touched you.” The second the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were wrong. “Oh no,” I said. “Please, no.”

“Welcome to the real world, Ms. Therapist,” my sister said.

“I did nothing,” our mother said, rising slowly to her feet.

“That’s right, Mom. You did nothing.” Jo Lynn looked toward the back window, as if the past were projected on the glass, like a movie on a screen. “All those nights he came into my room to ‘kiss me good night,’ all those times he left your bed to come into mine, all those rides in the country on Sunday afternoon. ‘You see those cows over there?’ he’d say, while his hand was pushing its way between my legs. ‘When all the cows are standing up, it means it’s going to be sunny, and when all the cows are lying down, that means it’s going to rain.’”

“Oh God,” I said, feeling weak, gutted. “I had no idea.”

“No, but
she
did.” Jo Lynn glared at our mother, whose eyes were fixed on the back window, watching the same old movie as my sister. “And she did nothing.”

“I didn’t know,” our mother whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” my sister shouted. “You knew. You knew. You just pretended it wasn’t happening. What did you think, that if you ignored it, it would go away? Is that what you thought?”

“I didn’t know.”

“How could you let him get away with it? How could you let him do the things he did to me? You’re my mother. You were supposed to take care of me. You were supposed to protect me.”

“He was always so kind to you,” our mother said, crying now. “So loving.”

“Oh, he was loving, all right.”

“I was so envious. I used to think, if only he would be so kind, so gentle, with me.”

“You knew,” Jo Lynn insisted. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know.”

“It wasn’t until you were almost thirteen years old that I began to suspect there was something more.”

“What was your first clue, Mom? The nightmares I kept having, my poor grades, the blood on my sheets?”

For a moment, the silence was absolute. Sara reached over to Michelle, drew her into her arms.

“It was the way he looked at you,” our mother said finally. “You were bending over to pick something up, and I caught the look in his eyes, and suddenly I knew. I left him the next day.”

“It was too late by then.” Jo Lynn wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “It was too late.”

Our mother sank back down into her chair, burying her head in her hands.

“But you went to see him,” I reminded my sister. “After he got sick, you went to the hospital. You cried when he died.”

“He was my father,” Jo Lynn said simply.

No one said another word.

T
hat night I dreamed I was running through a large open field. The sky was mauve, threatening rain, the grass dry and yellow. In the distance, Jo Lynn was singing:
You can’t catch me. You can’t catch me.
I raced toward the sound, tripping over a large black-and-white cow that was lying on the ground. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw Sara sitting on the back of another cow. She was crying. I ran toward her, my path suddenly blocked by two rows of thick barbed wire that sprang up between us.

Colin Friendly stood in a high tower, the long rifle in his hands pointed at my daughter’s head. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’ll take care of her.”

“All the cows are lying down,” a voice said from somewhere behind me.

I spun around. My stepfather was leaning against the side of a massive banyan tree. In one hand, he held a bottle of beer; in the other, he held Michelle.

“That means it’s going to rain,” Michelle said, as my stepfather’s hand tightened across her chest.

I bolted up in bed, my heart pounding, my body soaked in sweat. In the next instant, I was on my knees in the bathroom, throwing up into the toilet. “Son of a bitch,” I whispered between heaves. “Goddamn son of a bitch.”

How could I not have known? How could I not have suspected? My sister had been dropping hints for years. The pieces were all there. All I’d had to do was find them, gather them together, arrange them into a cohesive whole. Had I been blind or just stupid? And what of my mother? Had she known all along, as Jo Lynn had accused, or had she left as soon as her suspicions were aroused? Did it matter anymore? The damage had been done.

I thought of calling Larry and decided against it. It was almost two in the morning. I’d wake up the whole house, scare his mother half to death. And why? So that I could share this latest bulletin about my increasingly demented family? What did I expect him to do? What could any of us do now?

It had taken over an hour to get everyone settled after Jo Lynn raced from the house in a torrent of tears, her body doubled over in pain, rubbery legs threatening to collapse under her. “Please stay,” I begged as she hurled herself into her car. “You can sleep in my bed. Please, Jo Lynn, you shouldn’t be driving. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Her answer was to lock the car doors and bolt backward out of the driveway, narrowly missing my car parked on the darkened street. I tried phoning her ten minutes later, got her answering machine. “Hi, this is Jo Lynn,” her voice purred seductively. “Tell me everything.”

“Please call me as soon as you get home,” I told her, calling back ten minutes later, leaving another such message, calling every ten minutes until I finally gave up at just after midnight. Clearly, she didn’t want to talk to me. What more, after all, was there to say?

“Do you think she’s all right?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think Grandma knew?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t Jo Lynn ever say anything to anyone?”

“I don’t know.”

Did I know anything?

“Why couldn’t you just give her the money?” Sara demanded. “It’s not like you can’t afford it.”

“That’s not the point,” I said.

“The point is that she asked you for help and you wouldn’t give it to her.”

“I’ve tried to help her.”

“Yeah, some therapist
you
are.”

I didn’t argue. She was right.

Somehow I managed to guide my mother into Sara’s room, get her out of her clothes and into her nightgown. I tucked her into bed, leaned forward to kiss her soft, tear-stained cheek. “Are you okay, Mom?” I asked, but she made no reply, simply lay there, her eyes open, tears continuing to fall. When I looked in on her again half an hour later, she hadn’t moved.

The next morning, I drove to Jo Lynn’s apartment.

“Can you let me into her apartment?” I asked the superintendent, a tall man with a long, angular face and dark, sunken eyes. “She was pretty upset last night. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

“How do I know you’re her sister?” he asked, viewing me skeptically.

“Who else would I be?”

“Reporter,” he replied lazily, not bothering to pronounce the
t.
“You guys been hounding her pretty good since the wedding.”

“I’m not a reporter.”

“You don’t look like her sister.”

“Look, I’m just afraid she might have done something to hurt herself.” I broke off, too tired to argue, then turned, about to walk away.

“Wait,” he called after me. “Guess I can let you in.”

“What changed your mind?” I asked as he unlocked the door to my sister’s second-floor apartment.

“If you were a reporter,” he said, standing aside to let me enter, “there’s no way you would have given up so easily.”

“Jo Lynn,” I called from the doorway, then held my breath. “Jo Lynn, are you here?” I pushed one foot in front of the other, afraid to linger, to look too closely, in case I saw something my mind was unprepared to accept. “Jo Lynn,” I repeated, inching forward, the superintendent fast on my heels, like an overly friendly puppy.

In typical Jo Lynn fashion, her apartment was both organized and chaotic. Organized chaos, I thought, my eyes flitting across the well-worn blue-green carpeting, the fading floral-print sofa and matching armchair, the coffee table whose glass top was completely hidden by stacks of old newspapers and the latest tabloids. More discarded newspapers lay scattered across the top of a black Formica bar. A stained white sweater was draped over one of two barstools, while a pair of cerise sandals, one with a broken strap, lay on the floor, one on top of the other.

“Doesn’t look like she’s here.” The superintendent peered over my shoulder as I peeked into the kitchen. More newspapers stretched across the top of the kitchen table, a pair of large scissors beside them, along with an open scrapbook and an empty container of glue. I glanced at the scrapbook, saw Colin Friendly winking at me from the open page, and turned away quickly, noting the row of old cereal boxes that stood in a line on the countertop, along with an empty milk carton. A young girl’s picture stared at me from the side of the milk carton. MISSING, it read above her gap-toothed smile. I ran from the room, my eyes filling with tears.

“You all right?” the super asked.

I shook my head, images of Jo Lynn suddenly dropping
before my eyes, like a succession of grisly snapshots from the morgue. There she was in the bathtub, her wrists slashed and dripping blood onto the white tile floor; or over there, hanging from the shower stall, an oversized, gaily colored beach towel for a noose; or there, lying on her bed, skin ashen, mouth open, hands folded primly across her ample bosom, dead from an overdose of sleeping pills.

“Would you do me a favor?” I asked. “Would you please check the other rooms for me?”

He hesitated, swayed, ultimately left my side.

“You better come in here,” he said several seconds later.

My knees buckled, almost gave way. “Oh God,” I said, grabbing the side of the bar, knocking over several sections of newspaper, watching them fall to the floor by my feet. Colin Friendly stared up at me, eyes directed up my skirt. “Oh God,” I said again, kicking at his head, watching his face split in two, as the paper ripped apart. “Is she … ?”

“She’s not here,” the superintendent answered. “Doesn’t look like she slept here last night.”

The laugh that escaped my mouth was one of relief. It quickly turned into a sob that caught in my throat and died as I approached my sister’s bedroom, staring toward her queen-size bed, which was neatly made and covered with a childlike blue gingham comforter. A stuffed apricot-colored teddy bear sat on top of a ruffled gingham pillow.

“Looks like a little girl’s room,” the super said, stealing my thoughts, as I caught my reflection in the mirror atop Jo Lynn’s dresser, across from her bed. Pictures of Colin Friendly lined the sides of the mirror, poking out at all angles from the metal frame, forcing themselves into my world, my reality. Wherever I looked, he was there. Laughing at me.

“Her clothes are gone,” the super said.

“What?”

He motioned toward the closet. “She say anything to you about taking a vacation?”

I shook my head, my hands slapping against her empty hangers, running across deserted shelves, pulling open abandoned dresser drawers. But aside from a few old blouses and scarves, there was nothing.

“Doesn’t look like she’s coming back,” the super said, once again usurping the thoughts swirling around my brain, like fallen leaves in the wind.

Where could she have gone? Why had she taken all her clothes?

“Her rent’s due next Wednesday,” the super said.

“I’m sure she’ll be back by then,” I muttered, anxious now to be on my way. “She goes away every weekend,” I reminded us both, trying to fit the pieces of this latest puzzle together, to determine what Jo Lynn was up to. Had she decided to find an apartment closer to the penitentiary? Was she moving in this weekend? Was that why her clothes were gone? Was that why she needed money? First and last months’ rent, a security deposit, I listed silently, as the super followed me out of Jo Lynn’s apartment and locked the door after us. These things add up, I told myself. It was expensive to start a whole new life. “If you see my sister, would you tell her I was here, and that I need to talk to her? It’s urgent.”