Janie Face to Face (26 page)

“You think the book will hurt Janie?”

“Nah,” said Brian. “Janie’s too busy with the wedding. I think if Hannah got caught this afternoon, Janie would say ‘Oh, good’ and keep juggling her two sets of parents, which in a few days will be
three
sets, and going to the mall to choose china.”

Brendan thought, Let Janie have her wedding. Let Mom be the mother of the bride. Let all of us be together and let Reeve keep Janie safe.

He realized that he was praying.

Stephen and Kathleen walked to St. Thomas Aquinas. He did not explain why he suddenly wanted God.

Kathleen’s parents had a list of reasons for her not to stay with Stephen, and his failure to communicate was high on the list. “You need somebody you can discuss everything with,” her father said.

“I love Stephen, though.”

“I’m not sure he loves you,” her mother said.

Kathleen wasn’t sure either. On the other hand, he didn’t date anybody else and he always seemed glad to see her.

They entered the church. At home, weekday Mass was very early. It was thoughtful of St. Thomas to have theirs at five p.m. Kathleen imagined being a bride here. Being a bride anywhere.

She and Stephen slid into a pew. He put down the kneeler, got to his knees, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

Wow. He’s serious. Are my parents right? Is there too much space between what I believe and want and what Stephen believes and wants?

The Mass began and she could feel the intensity of Stephen’s participation.

The reading was the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. A man walking down the road was attacked by thieves who left him for dead by the side of the road. Two respectable well-to-do people walked on past, not wanting to get involved. The third person, a person nobody respected, stopped, and when he realized the victim was still alive, he got the man to an inn and paid for his care. So no matter how respectable you were, you weren’t the good guy unless you stopped to help.

Jesus did not address the problem of the robbers, who would shortly run out of money and want another victim. The next person who got attacked might be too old or too young to survive. The next one might die. Your truly good guy, in Kathleen’s opinion, would also have done something about the robbers.

“The Mass is over,” said the priest. “Go in peace.”

Kathleen was full of questions for Stephen, but she saw that he was going in peace. He had come here for something and he had found it.

Kathleen had silenced her cell phone when she entered, and now, with relief, turned it back on, as did everybody else coming out of the church.

Your truly good guy, she thought, would stop our criminal. Hannah. “Stephen, why don’t I call my father? I don’t think the three possible Hannahs mean anything, but they might, and my father—”

“What?”
Stephen swung around hard and glared. “Your
father? Meaning the FBI? Is that what you mean? You’re so greedy for details you’d go that far? Throw the FBI back into this when Janie’s wedding is almost here?”

When the surprise call from his twin ended, Brian Spring called Jodie. “So we’re closing in on gown number seven?”

“Yes.”

“And the reception is definitely in our backyard? That’s no fun,” said Brian. “When I get married, we are so not serving hot dogs in the backyard. We are reserving the country club, we are getting a great band, we will have a theme, there will be ice sculptures, we will dance till dawn, and people will get fabulous favors they cherish forever.”

“You have a candidate?” asked Jodie.

“No. Do you?”

“No, but Reeve is inviting every single boy he ever went to school with, was on a team with, or sat in the bleachers next to. I figure a great guy like Reeve has great friends, and my plan is that one of them will fall in love with me across the room and follow me around the nation.”

“You’re moving away already?” asked Brian. “You just got home. I haven’t even seen you yet.”

“I’m being romantic. Have you ever heard of romance?”

“It’s all I’m thinking about,” said Brian. “Reeve set the bar awfully high for the rest of us.”

“Mainly it’s insane,” said Jodie. “She’s twenty, they have no money, she’s dropping out of college, Reeve can take only three days off, there’s no honeymoon, and he can’t afford a ring, so he wants to tattoo one on her finger.”

Brian was laughing. “Mom around? Lemme say hello.”

Jodie handed their mother the phone.

Brian let his mother talk wedding talk. He had his own tuxedo from when he sang tenor in the high school concert choir, so he would not have to get there early to rent one.

“I can’t talk long,” said his mother. “We’re working on bridesmaid dress sizes. We’re going to have emergency alterations. Heard from Brendan lately?”

“We’re doing better,” said Brian cheerfully. “By the time we’re thirty, we might behave like twins again. Or bond at the wedding. Listen,” he said. “I don’t have any money to contribute, but I just want you and Dad to know that hot dogs on the grill won’t cut it. Janie needs more of a party.”

“I totally agree. Janie doesn’t know, and I’m not sure she cares, but we’ve found the only caterer in New Jersey willing to take on a wedding where nobody knows how many people will show up. The food will be fabulous.”

Conversation swirled around Miranda Johnson. Reeve’s mother, who for years had been Miranda’s dearest friend, babbled on and on. “Reeve is practicing using the name Jennie,” she said. “He hasn’t quite mastered it.”

Miranda hadn’t quite mastered it either.

She sat on her little tufted velvet bench and watched her daughter step out of gown number seven. Not my daughter, she reminded herself. Donna’s daughter.

Way back, in a misty past Miranda rarely allowed to surface, there had been another daughter. How thrilled she and Frank had been with their pretty little Hannah.

Their beloved daughter. Difficult from the day she was born. Nothing came easily to Hannah. Not sleep, not eating, not potty training. Not school, not friends, not piano, not softball.

The pediatricians had been comforting. “Every child goes at her own pace” was a favorite remark.

But Hannah did not have a pace. She just stood there while life flowed around her.

What hadn’t they tried? From horseback riding to tennis, slumber parties to Girl Scouts, public school to private school.

“She’ll come into her own” was another pediatrician’s piece of nonsense.

There were all these new syndromes today, like Asperger’s, that you never heard about decades ago when Hannah was growing up. Miranda had read extensively about these and their symptoms did not match hers. But if Hannah were a teenager today, Miranda thought some psychiatrist somewhere would be able to name her condition.

“It’s fine for a child to daydream,” the pediatricians would say.

Indeed, Hannah had loved to sit in a daze and tell her mother she was planning to be a yacht captain or a filmmaker or a spy or a poet. But she never did anything about a goal. She just sat.

If only they had known enough to bypass the pediatricians and go straight to a psychiatrist. But when a child is pretty and smiling and cooperative, what does a parent say? “There’s something wrong” was all she and Frank could come up with, and every doctor dismissed it, laughing.

Janie stroked the fabric of the seventh wedding gown, smiling as if she and the gown were friends.

Miranda had known that a wedding was not a likely outcome for Hannah. But she never dreamed that Hannah would drop out of college—a huge choice; a choice that seemed way beyond Hannah’s capacity to make—to join some quasi-spiritual group that hid her away for a few years and then sold her body on the streets for a few more. Miranda and Frank had fought in court for the right just to visit Hannah, who didn’t want to see them. They won. Hannah hated them for it. Her return home lasted less than a week.

Hate was not an emotion Miranda had ever felt, and to see it possess her daughter like the devil in some terrifying story could still reduce her to trembling.

When Hannah showed up all those empty years later with that lovely, sweet, chatty toddler, asking her parents to bring up her baby for her, Miranda had known that it was the one good act of Hannah’s adult life: saving her child from the life Hannah was leading.

Miranda also knew that when Hannah was back in her group, the group would want that baby again. So she and Frank changed their names and hid themselves and Hannah’s lovely child.

When the truth came out, Miranda was stunned.

Hannah had never had a good moment after all.

She had had only evil moments.

My daughter
, Miranda would think, unable to fathom how this could be.

In the last few months, sitting in the parlor downstairs at
the Harbor, often the only available activity, Miranda sometimes wondered if she and Hannah led the same life—just sitting, dreaming of things that could not be, pretending the past had a different shape.

When Miranda looked into the future now, there were only shadows. Frank was no longer a companion but a responsibility. She still loved him. But the man who had been her rock and her joy had mostly departed.

And now Janie had turned into Jennie and was moving a thousand miles away, and Miranda might see her once a year for a few days. And Donna would be kind, and the Spring family would be courteous, and life was over, really.

“Reeve keeps repeating his vows,” Janie was saying. “ ‘I, Reeve, take thee,
Jennie
’—as if some other bride might leap into my dress and take over.”

An inexplicable sense of horror paralyzed Miranda.

Brendan took the subway to the Upper East Side and the address he had found online. It was a big white-glove building whose large tasteful awning extended from the front door to the curb, so that residents getting in and out of limos or taxis would not have to deal with the weather. The two uniformed doormen, very spiffy-looking, were never going to let him in.

Nevertheless, Brendan walked right up.

“May I help you, sir?” asked one doorman.

“Sure. I’m here to be interviewed by Calvin Vinesett.”

They held the door for him.

Brendan grinned.

And the moment they opened the real door, Brendan
knew that the next door would open too. After all, the man was writing a book about Brendan’s family. Calvin Vinesett had the notes from Brendan’s three interviews. Calvin Vinesett would explain everything and Brendan would feel at ease and the author would agree to let it drift until Janie was safely married.

The foyer was small and elegant. Mirrors and black marble, leather benches and immense green ferns. Smiling people at the desk also wanted to help him.

“I have an interview with Calvin Vinesett,” said Brendan. “Could you let him know Brendan Spring is here?”

“Of course.” The concierge picked up her house phone, called the apartment, and then frowned slightly. “He doesn’t remember scheduling anything,” she said.

“Tell him I’m Janie Johnson’s brother Brendan.”

“It’s Janie Johnson’s brother Brendan,” repeated the concierge. Then she handed the phone to Brendan.

“I’m sorry,” said a deep voice. “I don’t know the name.”

The author of the book did not know the name of his subject? “The kidnap book you’re writing?” said Brendan. “Janie Johnson? The face on the milk carton?”

There was a long silence.

The deep voice said, “I’ll be right down.”

Every day, sometimes ten times a day, Hannah checked Facebook. Everybody else out there had a life. Success. Friends.

Every day, sometimes ten times a day, Hannah counted her money. Every day it dwindled. The day came when there was none left.

She lay down in the nest of old coats she kept on the floor, when it seemed easier to be a cat or a dog instead of a person. She did not awaken until morning, when her alarm rang. She had to work at the Mug.

The Jennie/Janie would never have to bus tables.

Hannah struggled to her feet. She wanted to curl back up in the nest. But without money, she could not keep even this miserable excuse for a home.

She could take no comfort in her brilliant plan. Without money, it could not proceed.

She took a quick peek at Facebook before she left for the
Mug. Adair really did have 476 friends and they all had posted. They all had something to say about the wedding.

What wedding?

Hannah scanned the material.

That parent thief was getting married in July!

She remembered her very first plan, when she had been sitting on a stool at an ice cream counter. When she decided to show a stupid smiling three-year-old that not everybody was a friend.

The plan had not worked.

Everybody
was
the Jennie/Janie’s friend.

Except me, thought Hannah Javensen.

She thought of a white gown spattered with red blood.

The alarm rang a second time, the way she had programmed it to do. She had to run all the way to the Mug, and when she got there, the owner was very rude, lying that Hannah was not clean and she smelled. They wouldn’t let her bus tables because they pretended she would upset the customers. But they would let her do the dishes, because they had nobody else.

She hated that word, “let.”

Customers came in and out of the Mug at warp speed, throwing coffee down their throats. The owner kept snapping at Hannah to work harder. Nobody cared how difficult her life was. In the tiny kitchen, next to the huge sink, Hannah opened the dishwasher to load it with juice glasses and mugs and oatmeal bowls. Each glass was slippery. Each plate was heavy.

The owner was yelling now.

Hannah was already going as fast as she could.

Mug after mug had to be turned upside down, and the silly handles jiggered so they fit against each other. She repositioned a dark red mug with navy blue writing.

Stephen Spring

One of those red rabbits had been here? In her space? In her life?

She flung the Stephen Spring mug against the tiles of the floor. It shattered into sharp nasty triangles, long and thin, that you could cut a person with.