Finding Jake (6 page)

“Ms. Simons . . . ,” someone said to my right. I turned, mishearing and thinking they were talking about me. They were, instead, talking about a teacher at the school. I glanced at Regina as she reappeared. I tried to figure out the age range of the group of children in the basement. Lindsey’s daughter was in pre-K, so maybe under two to almost five years old or so. The moms seemed so comfortable and confident. I kept staring at the basement door. Some
say men don’t have the patience to raise children correctly. Golf takes patience and men love that. I see it differently. Men are just golden-maned leaders of the pride. We lie around a lot until something needs protecting. Then, it’s best to just get out of the way.

I decided I needed to check on Jake. Being a homebody (I guess), I had not integrated Jake into large groups enough. I imagined bedlam in the basement. Jake tied to a train table, being sawed at by plastic woodworking tools. I glanced at Laney, not sure if I was comfortable leaving her there at the kitchen table while I checked on Jake.

Laney’s eyes tracked with the conversation. I marveled at her ability to look fascinated. She smiled at the right time, cooed in agreement, even grunted in disdain. I tried to follow along, although my mind remained obsessed with the goings-on in the basement. I think some of the moms were talking about a cleanse diet.

“I drink a shake in the morning and then have a snack of whole foods.”

Regina looked at me, so I nodded in agreement, although I didn’t know what a whole food was. I figured it was not a whole bag of chips or anything like that.

“Would you like a slice of brain bread? Karen made it. Totally delish.”

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “I already had breakfast.”

Lifting my cup, I noticed my hand shook. It had to be the caffeine. Laney looked like she might respond to something Karen said.
And what the hell was brain bread, anyway
?

“I’m going to check on Jake,” I blurted out. “Is that okay?”

Conversation ground to a halt. Everyone stared at me, including my own daughter (at least that’s how it felt).

Regina laughed. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Yeah,” others chimed in.

“I’m just going to see. Is it all right if I leave Laney? She looks like she’s having a ball.”

Regina nodded, more to the others than to me. Tairyn, who held Laney, kissed my daughter’s downy head, and all the other moms focused their attention on her. They talked about her clothes. Laney smiled (one of her first).

Ignored, I rose from the table. I glanced back when I opened the basement door. No one paid me any attention, so I slipped down.

The basement—I often wonder if I misunderstood the scene. To me, the place reeked of a nightmarish death trap. Kids littered the floor, along with jagged piles of toys, whirling dervishes of intermittent laughter and tears. I staggered back a step searching for Jake. I found him sitting in a corner, a Buzz Lightyear doll in his hand, staring unabashed at the other children. For their part, Jake’s existence might have been a dust mote.

I eased down the rest of the stairs. A little towheaded girl, maybe four years old, walked up to me, her hands raised in the air, like she wanted me to pick her up. I stood before her, dumbfounded.

“In there,” she said.

The girl pointed at a circular area cordoned off by a flexible toddler fence. I did not see any toys inside the space, but the little girl remained insistent.

“In there.”

Awkwardly, I picked her up and placed her in the kiddy cage. I scanned the room, looking for Bo. He was playing memory with three other kids. For some reason, he wore a tiara. Jake noticed me and raced over.

“Can we leave?”

A chip of my heart crumbled away. “Not yet. Don’t you want to play with everyone?”

Jake shook his head. I took in the room again. Although I knew my interpretation to be influenced by my own emotions, I saw every other kid playing together in one giant group. Rationally, this could
not be true. I had recently placed the towheaded girl in a cage, but that was what I saw.

Why wouldn’t Jake play with the others
?

That moment injected the question into my subconscious, lodging it there for eternity. It may have peeked in before, tentatively testing the fertile ground of my introspective mind, but it gained purchase at that instant. Jake had never asked to have friends over. In preschool he kept to himself on the playground. What had I done? Years of self-doubt, guilt, and insecurity would follow.

Not soon enough, I found myself walking home, my children in tow. Entering through the garage, Jake hit the ground running, disappearing downstairs to his playroom. Laney turned her head, as if longing to return to Regina’s house. I hugged her close and then looked through the games cabinet for memory, intent on teaching Jake the game.

Laney asked for the baby swing, or at least waved at it, so I secured her in the seat and picked up the phone. I called Rachel.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Okay.”

She paused. “No, really?”

The floodgate opened. “Jake didn’t play with anyone. Those kids have been playing together for, like, ten years.”

“It hasn’t been ten years,” Rachel said.

“What?”

“Those kids haven’t been playing for ten years.”

“Jesus, Rachel.” I rubbed at my eyes. “I know that.”

“Were the kids being mean to him?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. You know Jake. It’s like a big group just overwhelms him.”

“How were all the moms?” Her question sounded tentative, as if afraid of my response.

“They don’t even want me there. They probably want to talk about bras and crap like that. Anyway, I don’t know . . . I’m a guy!”

The rest I left unsaid. It presented itself like a hippo in my kitchen, though.
She should have stayed home with the kids.
I don’t think Rachel picked up on it, thankfully, or the rest of the conversation would have progressed very differently.

“Where’s Jake?” she asked.

“In the basement. Where else? I’m sure he’s playing with that circuit board thing your dad got him.”

“How’s Laney?”

I laughed. “She did great.”

“Shocker.”

“I know, right?”

“I need to say this, Simon, so try not to get mad. I know you find this stuff hard, and I totally get it. You’re trailblazing against the grain of cultural normalcy.”

“Nice,” I interrupted, not in a sarcastic way. The way she put it made me feel like Neil Armstrong, or at least like Captain Kirk.

“But, listen, it is not them. They want to make you feel comfortable. The other moms want you to feel like you can come to the playdate.”

“So it’s all me,” I mused, maybe a little offended.

“Not at all. It’s probably just as awkward for them. Just know that it’s not malicious, or out of spite. They are not judging you. It’s just different.”

I laughed. “Because I have a penis?”

“Simon!” She acted offended, but I could tell she smiled.

“Sorry,” I said. “Maybe I should go into the garage and do some carpentry. Or maybe I’ll change the oil in the car.”

“You don’t even know how to do that.”

“Would you rather me throw on some pearls and vacuum?”

We joked, but the topic flirted so close to reality that even I knew I should step back.

“Thanks for understanding,” I said.

“I always try,” she said. “I think I’ll be home next week. I’ll take the kids to the next playdate.”

I tried not to cheer. “Okay.”

“I love you, Simon. You’re doing great.”

“Love you, too.”

She hung up and I smiled, the reaction of a man given a reprieve, a stay of execution.

DAY ONE: THREE HOURS AFTER THE SHOOTING

I am now alone. Not utterly alone, in the sense that no one else remains in the church, but all the parents have left. I had watched as an officer took the last of the thirteen out one by one. The first parent to be called out, a mom I do not know but have seen around school, appeared confused. Seconds after she disappeared behind a closed door, I heard her scream. Shocked, my head swiveled. I saw everyone else, as if their faces suddenly came into focus.

Evelyn Marks had sat on a pew behind and to the right of me. Her daughter, Leigh, had been in Jake’s first-, second-, and third-grade classes. My mind forced a memory to the forefront, Evelyn and I sitting next to each other on a bench, watching our children navigate a bouncy house at Joey Franklin’s eighth birthday party. The mother of Amanda Brown, one of Laney’s friends, had stared at nothing, her face pallid. Julia George had looked around, her eyes wide and panicked. I coached her son James in soccer for three seasons.

Now, they are gone. I am the last. There is a phantasm of hope
skirting the edge of my mind, teasing at the ominous mountain of dread I am holding at bay. I know for sure that the other parents’ children are, at best, wounded, at worst, dead. This is a harsh thought, but it is true.

Unable to act, I am left to think. Questions snap into existence:

Could Jake have skipped school? Had he done that before? Did I really know where he went every second of every day?

Maybe Jake is hiding somewhere . . .

Is Jake . . . ?

A sliver of the shock tears away and I am left with a clear thought. More nervous than I have ever felt before, I fish out my iPhone. Going directly to recent calls, I hit Jake’s number. His picture flashes on the screen, smiling and wearing a Notre Dame Fighting Irish baseball hat backward.

Each ring tortures like metaphorical hot irons slipping between the fingernails of my emotion. My brain screams
NO
over and over again as I grip the phone like it is the ledge of a sheer and bottomless cliff.

On the fifth ring, someone answers.

“Jake . . . buddy,” I say, my voice cracking.
He’s okay!

I hear strange rustling, the phone rubbing against fabric. Muffled voices are just audible, like ghosts in the static.

“Jake!”

A much louder rustle, then the phone goes dead. I am frozen, the cool glass pressed hard against my ear as I try to breathe. I dial again, and again, and again. There is never an answer. Holding the phone away, my head folds downward and my temples throb.

Honestly, a daze clouds my consciousness. Reality slips into something less, and more. It becomes numbing absence and jolting awareness. I look up at the door, yet I cannot fathom the possibility that Jake is gone. He just answered his phone. That one time, he answered. It had to be him.

My phone rings. I fumble, my fingers thinking they belong to
someone else. When I answer, I hear my wife’s voice instead of Jake’s. She is panicked.

“The police are here!”

“Tell them I just called him.”

Her tone is tight, like an unexploded bomb.

“They’re at our house.”

“What do you mean?”

“The SWAT police are everywhere.”

“Where are you? In the car?”

“He wants me to park,” she says.

I listen to the disjointed sounds coming through the receiver. My wife talks to someone, I assume a police officer. The phone rubs up against fabric, the speaker coughs between the sound of muffled voices. I need her to get back on the line, tell me what is happening.

“Rachel.” It comes out more of a shout.

I still hear her talking. Something about “entry.” She is angry when she gets back on the line.

“They won’t let me in, Simon.” Her anger turns to obvious fear. “They’re searching the house.”

“What do you mean they’re searching the house? Did you tell them about the call?”

“What call?”

“I called Jake’s phone. He answered.”

“You talked to him?!”

“No, he didn’t talk. I just heard . . .”

I don’t know what to say. I can’t even ask myself why they might be searching our house.

Finally, Rachel speaks again. “Get over here.”

“I can’t leave. I’m waiting for Jake. I called his cell. He answered . . . or someone answered. I—”

I turn around. A police officer stands in the doorway of the church. He is looking at me. I turn away. He’ll go away if I don’t pay
attention. My eyes close. Everything will go away if I don’t look at it. It will all disappear, not like a dream, but like it isn’t real. None of it is real. I am not real.

“Mr. Connolly?”

“What is it?” Rachel asks.

“Mr. Connolly.”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Who’s that? What’s going on? Simon?”

“Nothing,” I repeat.

The officer is standing over me. “I need you to come with me, sir.”

“Simon.”

What does it all mean?

The officer leads me to one of the vestry’s back rooms. White linen cloths drape a thick-legged, wooden table. A plastic bag filled with pounds of white wafers, perfect circles, rests on a counter in the back. Robes hang from pegs beside the door. I know I will remember every last detail of that room. Forever.

He pulls a chair out for me. I sit, and he sits across from me, placing a leather-bound spiral notebook on the table. The pen fits perfectly into the tubular wires. He slips it out and opens the pad. His eyes meet mine for the first time. I assume this is because I did not look him in the face before that moment.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” the officer says.

Some leftover, primal instinct urges me to strike this man. My brain can’t come up with a single reason why, but I have to restrain myself. I nod.

“Are you Jake Connolly’s father?”

I nod, but he looks like he is waiting for more. “Yes.”

“Did Jake attend school today?”

“Yes. Look, can you please tell me what’s going on? Is he okay?”

The officer pauses, as if carefully choosing his words. This, for
some reason, frightens me more than anything else that has happened so far. Finally, he answers.

“At this time, Jake’s whereabouts remain unknown. All we know for sure is that his car was found in the student parking lot.”

“What does that mean? He just answered his cell.”

The officer checks his pad, tapping it as if he suddenly understands something. “Does your son know Doug Martin-Klein?”