The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (3 page)

Above all Marissa knew: come home directly from school.

Never enter any building, any house, except possibly the house of a classmate, a school friend
. . .
Even so, Mommy must be told about this beforehand.

(Would Marissa remember? Could an eleven-year-old be trusted to remember so much?)

Leah had totally forgotten; she’d intended to call Marissa’s teacher. From Miss Fletcher, Leah would learn the names of Marissa’s friends. This, the police would expect her to know. Yet she stood by the phone indecisively, wondering if she dared call the woman; for if she did, Miss Fletcher would know that something was wrong.

The ache between Leah’s eyes had spread, her head was wracked with pain.

Four-year-old Marissa would climb up onto the sofa beside Leah, and stroke her forehead to smooth out the “worry lines.” Wet kisses on Mommy’s forehead. “Kiss to make go away!”

Mommy’s vanity had been somewhat wounded, that her child saw worry lines in her face. But she’d laughed, and invited more kisses. “All right, sweetie. Kiss-to-make-go-away.”

It had become their ritual. A frown, a grimace, a mournful look—either Mommy or Marissa might demand, “Kiss-to-make- go-away.”

Leah was paging through the telephone directory.
Fletcher. There
were more than a dozen
Fletcher
s. None of the initials seemed quite right. Marissa’s teacher’s first name was—Eve? Eva?

Leah dialed one of the numbers. A recording clicked on, a man’s voice.

Another number, a man answered. Politely telling Leah no: there was no one named “Eve” or “Eva” at that number.

This is hopeless, Leah thought.

She should be calling ERs, medical centers, where a child might have been brought, struck by a vehicle for instance crossing a busy street . . .

She fumbled for the can of beer. She would drink hurriedly now. Before the police arrived.

Self-medicating a therapist had called it. Back in high school she’d begun. It was her secret from her family, they’d never known. Though her sister Avril had guessed. At first Leak had drunk with her friends, then she hadn’t needed her friends. It wasn’t for the elevated sensation, the buzz, it was to calm her nerves. To make her less anxious. Less disgusted with herself.

I need to be beautiful. More beautiful.

He’d said she was beautiful, many times. The man who was to be Marissa’s father. Leah was beautiful, he adored her.

They were going to live in a seaside town somewhere in northern California, Oregon. It had been their fantasy. In the meantime he’d been a medical student, resentful of the pressure. She had taken the easier route, nursing school. But she’d dropped out when she became pregnant.

Later he would say sure she was beautiful, but he did not love her.

Love wears out. People move on.

Still, there was Marissa. Out of their coupling, Marissa.

Gladly would Leah give up the man, any man, so long as she had her daughter back.

If she had not stopped on the way home from the clinic! If she had come directly home.

She knew this: she would have to tell the police where she had been, before returning home. Why she’d been unusually late. She would have to confess that, that she had been late. Her life would be turned inside out like the pockets of an old pair of pants. All that was private, precious, rudely exposed.

The single evening in weeks, months
. . .
She’d behaved out of character.

But she’d stopped at the 7-Eleven, too. It was a busy place in the early evening. This wasn’t out of character, Leah frequently stopped at the convenience store which was two blocks from Briarcliff Apts. The Indian gentleman at the cash register would speak kindly of her to police officers. He would learn that her name was Leah Bantry and that her daughter was missing. He would learn that she lived close by, on Fifteenth Street. He would learn that she was a single mother, she was not married. The numerous six-packs of Coors she bought had not been for a husband but for her.

He’d seen her with Marissa, certainly. And so he would remember Marissa. Shy blond child whose hair was sometimes in plaits. He would pity Leah as he’d never had reason to pity
her in the past, only just to admire her in his guarded way, the blond shining hair, the American-healthy good looks.

Leah finished the beer, and disposed of the can in the waste basket beneath the sink. She thought of going outside and dumping all the cans into a trash can, for police would possibly search the house, but there was no time, she had delayed long enough waiting for Marissa to return and everything to be again as it had been. Thinking
Why didn’t I get a cell phone for Marissa, why did I think the expense wasn’t worth it?
She picked up the receiver, and dialed 911.

Her voice was breathless as if she’d been running.

“I want—I want—to report a child missing.”

L
ONE
W
OLVES

I am meant for a special destiny. I am!

He lived vividly inside his head. She lived vividly inside her head.

He was a former idealist. She was an unblinking realist.

He was thirty-one years old. She was thirteen.

He was tall/lanky/ropey-muscled five feet ten inches (on his New York State driver’s license he’d indicated 5′11″), weighing one hundred fifty-five pounds. She was four feet eleven, eighty-three pounds.

He thought well of himself, secretly. She thought very well of herself, not so secretly.

He was a substitute math teacher/“computer consultant” at
Skatskill Day School. She was an eighth grader at Skatskill Day School.

His official status at the school was
part-time employee.

Her official status at the school was
full-tuition pupil, no exceptions.

Part-time employee
meant no medical/dental insurance coverage, less pay per hour than full-time employees, and no possibility of tenure.
Full-tuition, no exceptions
meant no scholarship aid or tuition deferral.

He was a relatively new resident of Skatskill-on-Hudson, eight miles north of New York City. She was a longtime resident who’d come to live with her widowed grandmother when she was two years old, in 1992.

To her, to his face, he was
Mr. Zallman;
otherwise,
Mr. Z.

To him, she had no clear identity. One of those Skatskill Day girls of varying ages (elementary grades through high school) to whom he gave computer instructions and provided personal assistance as requested.

Even sixth grader Marissa Bantry with the long straight corn-tassel hair he would not recall, immediately.

The kids
he called them. In a voice that dragged with reluctant affection; or in a voice heavy with sarcasm.
Those kids!

Depending on the day, the week. Depending on his mood.

Those others
she called them in a voice quavering with scorn.

They were an alien race. Even her small band of disciples she had to concede were losers.

In his confidential file in the office of the principal of Skatskill Day it was noted
Impressive credentials/recommendations, interacts well with brighter students. Inclined to impatience. Not a team player. Unusual sense of humor. (Abrasive?)

In her confidential file (1998–present) in the principal’s office it was noted in reports by numerous parties
Impressive background (maternal grandmother/legal guardian Mrs. A. Trahern, alumna/donor/trustee (emeritus), impressive I.Q. (measured 149, 161, 113, 159 ages 6, 9, 10, 12), flashes of brilliance, erratic academic performance, lonely child, gregarious child, interacts poorly with classmates, natural leader, antisocial tendencies, lively presence in class, disruptive presence in class, hyperactive, apathetic, talent for “fantasy,” poor communication skills, immature tendencies, verbal fluency, imagination stimulated by new projects, easily bored, sullen, mature for age, poor motor coordination skills, diagnosed Attention Deficit Syndrome age 5/prescribed Ritalin with good results/ mixed results, diagnosed borderline dyslexic age 7, prescribed special tutoring with good results/mixed results, honor roll fifth grade, low grades/failed English seventh grade, suspended for one week Oct. 2002 “threatening” girl classmate, reinstated after three days/legal action brought against school by guardian/mandated psychological counseling with good/mixed results.
(On the outside of the folder, in the principal’s handwriting
A challenge
!)

He was swarthy skinned, with an olive complexion. She had pale sallow skin.

He was at the school Monday/Tuesday/Thursday unless he was subbing for another teacher which he did, on the average,
perhaps once every five weeks. She was at the school five days a week, Skatskill Day was her turf!

Hate/love
she felt for Skatskill Day.
Love/hate.

(Often, as her teachers noted, she “disappeared” from classes and later “reappeared.” Sulky/arrogant with no explanation.)

He was a lone wolf and yet: the great-grandson of immigrant German Jews who had come to the United States in the early 1900s. The grandson and son of partners at Cleary, McCorkle, Mace & Zallman, Wall Street brokers. She was the lone grandchild of New York State Supreme Court Justice Elias Trahern who had died before she was born and was of no more interest to her than the jut-jawed and bewigged General George Washington whose idealized image hung in the school rotunda.

His skin was dotted with moles. Not disfiguring exactly but he’d see people staring at these moles as if waiting for them to move.

Her skin was susceptible to angry-looking rashes. Nerve-rashes they’d been diagnosed, also caused by picking with her nails.

He was beginning to lose his thick-rippled dark hair he had not realized he’d been vain about. Receding at the temples so he wore it straggling over his collar. Her hair exploded in faded-rust fuzz like dandelion seed around her pointy pinched face.

He was Mikal. She was Jude.

He’d been born Michael but there were so many damn Michaels!

She’d been born Judith but—
Judith! Enough to make you want to puke.

Lone wolves who scorned the crowd. Natural aristocrats who had no use for money, or for family connections.

He was estranged from the Zallmans. Mostly.

She was estranged from the Traherns. Mostly.

He had a quick engaging ironic laugh. She had a high-pitched nasal-sniggering laugh that surprised her suddenly, like a sneeze.

His favored muttered epithet was
What next?
Her favored muttered epithet was
Bor-ing!

He knew: prepubescent/adolescent girls often have crushes on their male teachers. Yet somehow it never seemed very real to him, or very crucial. Mikal Zallman living in his own head.

She detested boys her own age. And most men, any age.

Making her disciples giggle and blush, at lunchtime flashing a paring knife in a swooping circular motion to indicate
cas-tra-tion: know what that is?
as certain eighth grade boys passed noisily by carrying cafeteria trays.

Boys rarely saw her. She’d learned to go invisible like a playing card turned sideways.

He lived—smugly, it seemed to some observers—inside an armor of irony. (Except when alone. Staring at images of famine, war, devastation he felt himself blinking hot tears from his eyes. He’d shocked himself and others crying uncontrollably at his father’s funeral in an Upper East Side synagogue the previous year.)

She had not cried in approximately four years. Since she’d fallen from a bicycle and cut a gash in her right knee requiring nine stitches.

He lived alone, in three sparely furnished rooms, in Riverview Heights, a condominium village on the Hudson River in North Tarrytown. She lived alone, except for the peripheral presence of her aging grandmother, in a few comfortably furnished rooms in the main wing of the Trahern estate at 83 Highgate Avenue; the rest of the thirty-room mansion had long been closed off for economy’s sake.

He had no idea where she lived, as he had but the vaguest idea of who she was. She knew where he lived, it was three miles from 83 Highgate Avenue. She’d bicycled past Riverview Heights more than once.

He drove a not-new metallic blue Honda CR-V, New York license TZ 6063. She knew he drove a not-new metallic blue Honda CR-V, New York license TZ 6063.

Actually he didn’t always think so well of himself. Actually she didn’t always think so well of herself.

He wished to think well of himself. He wished to think well of all of humanity. He did not want to think
Homo sapiens is hopeless, let’s pull the plug.
He wanted to think
I can make a difference in others’ lives.

He’d been an idealist who had
burnt out, crashed
in his late twenties. These were worthy clichés. These were clichés he had earned. He had taught in Manhattan, Bronx, and Yonkers public schools through his mid- and late twenties and after an interim of recovery he had returned to Columbia University to upgrade his credentials with a master’s degree in computer science and he
had returned to teaching for his old idealism yet clung to him like lint on one of his worn-at-the-elbow sweaters, one thing he knew he would never emulate his father in the pursuit of money, here in Skatskill-on-Hudson where he knew no one he could work part-time mostly helping kids with computers and he would be respected here or in any case his privacy would be respected, he wasn’t an ambitious private school teacher, wasn’t angling for a permanent job, in a few years he’d move on but for the present time he was contentedly employed, he had freedom to
feed my rat
as he called it.

Much of the time she did not think so well of herself. Secretly.

Suicide fantasies are common to adolescents. Not a sign of mental illness so long as they remain fantasies.

He’d had such fantasies, too. Well into his twenties, in fact.

He’d outgrown them now That was what
feeding my rat
had done for Mikal Zallman.