Waiting for Christopher (6 page)

“Why, sure,” the older woman told her. “You go ahead. Your sister will be fine right here.” She stood up just as Feena walked away. “Wait, honey. What’s her name?”

“Chris—” It was too late, she’d already said it, too late to call it back. “Christina,” she said, furious at herself. “It’s Christina.”

The CVS was crowded with after-work shoppers. Despite her success with Dale, Feena was afraid to meet their eyes. What if they’d heard it on their radios? What if they all knew about the kidnapping? A police officer in plain clothes might be watching the diaper section right now. She might walk straight into a trap if she hesitated, stood too long deciding on brands. She wasn’t worried for herself so much. But the thought of returning Christy to his mother, of watching the held-back smile she’d seen bloom on his face fade and disappear into that patient, hopeless stare, was more than she could bear.

Feeling shy, vulnerable under the fluorescent lights, she watched from a distance while other women shopped for canned formula and baby food. After two of them chose the diapers with a somersaulting baby on the wrapper, she did, too. Quickly, she darted toward the shelves, plucked up a package, then headed for the brushes and combs.

This was an easier decision. She simply chose what she would have liked when she was little, when she loved to wear ponytail wraps with fluffy pompoms on the ends. She used to sit quietly, as close to purring as a human can come, while her mother brushed and brushed her hair. Just the two of them—no daddy, no baby, no TV. Her mother beside her, humming, stopping sometimes to say, “Gorgeous, Feen. You’ve got gorgeous hair.”

She picked a card of pink pompoms and a card of speckled blue and white ones before she saw the stuffed rabbit. It was in the next aisle over, and it was wearing a dress that would just fit Christopher. The closer she got, the better it looked. The bunny, made of soft, tan plush, was nearly as big as Christy himself. Without its patchwork jumper, it would make a perfect toy. She picked it up, hoping she could afford it, noting the dress’s Velcro fasteners that would make it easy to slip onto a wiggler.

Seven ninety-five! She knew, of course, if she’d stopped to look at something like this back in Connecticut, her friend Denise would have told her that children in China had been forced to work long hours putting lace on the jumper pockets, pink lining in the rabbit’s ears. But now all Feena felt was relief that CVS had probably bought hundreds, thousands of bunnies—enough to bring the price down to her level. Enough to give Christy a new disguise and something to cuddle. She couldn’t put faces on the rows of poor hungry children she’d conjured up. So she left them sitting there, their machines clattering more and more faintly as she hurried to the checkout counter.

The line snaked all the way to the pharmacy, so when Feena stepped behind the last person, she had plenty of time to torment herself with what-ifs. What if Christy got sick? She studied the shelves: There were bottles of aspirin, bottles of decongestants, boxes of antihistamines. What if he needed a doctor? The back of one bottle listed one dose for children under one hundred pounds, another for children under fifty.
NOT TO BE ADMINISTERED TO CHILDREN WITH FLU SYMPTOMS
, one label warned.
NOT TO BE TAKEN WITH ORAL ANTIBIOTICS OR ANTI-INFLAMMATORY MEDICATIONS
, another advised. What if she made a mistake? Or missed a symptom, a sign? What if Christy slipped away like her brother had?
“Sometimes babies stop breathing and no one knows why.”
She remembered her mother’s face, stiff as a mask, a scary new voice seeping out from it.
“Every once in a while, a baby dies, too.”

“These for you?”

Feena suddenly found herself at the head of the line, face-to-face with one of the last people she wanted to see.

“I said, are these for you?” Raylene Watson picked up the package of diapers, ran them expertly over the scanner.

“What are
you
doing here?” It was somehow ironic, preposterous to see Raylene’s placid smile, her gleaming crown of cornrows above the red CVS smock and glassy-faced nametag.
HELLO
, the tag announced,
MY NAME IS RAY
. Embarrassed by her own wrinkled tee, and by the diapers and pompoms, Feena glanced instinctively toward the store window, searched the playground. But it was too far away to pick out anyone, to reassure herself that Christy was still there. “I mean, I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Sorry I didn’t check with you first,” Raylene told her, still smiling—was that grin pasted to her face?—reaching for the dressed-up rabbit. “How old’s your little sister?” The first time over, the rabbit’s dress caught on a corner of the scanner. Raylene grabbed the toy by its neck and dragged it across again.

“What?”

“Your baby sister,” Raylene repeated, waving the pompoms. “How old is she?”

Lord, why did everyone want to know kids’ ages? It was as if a number gave them a handle, a way in; it was the question of the hour. “Two and a half.” Feena fumbled in her backpack for the week’s lunch money. While the older girl bagged what she’d bought, Feena offered up a little prayer of thanksgiving that the woman in the cafeteria at school had refused to take her money. “Got to have a lunch form,” she’d told Feena sternly. “Can’t take that without no form.” But Feena had forgotten the form, forgotten even to have her mother sign it.

As she counted out the change, Feena forced herself not to look out the window, to watch instead, as if it were open-heart surgery, Raylene’s slender hands widening the mouth of a plastic bag, dropping in the toy and the diapers. “Well,” Feena said when there was nothing else to say. She glanced at the man in line behind her as if he were waiting impatiently for his turn at the register, instead of standing impassively staring at a display of batteries and miniature flashlights. “I’ll see you in school.”

Raylene didn’t stop smiling, didn’t even nod. “Sure,” she said, turning to the battery man. “Welcome to CVS,” she told him in a voice that sounded like an answering machine. “Did you find everything you need today?”

Feena propped her bag under one arm and tried to walk casually toward the door. Once outside, though, she streaked back to the park, to Dale on the bench and Christopher in the sandbox. He was covered, she could see even before she lifted him up and felt it, with a layer of damp gritty sand. “Thanks so much,” she told Dale. “Thanks a lot.” She wished she’d gotten some candy for the other little boy, but seeing Raylene had frozen her brain.

Christopher pulled away when she held out her hand, refused to give up his freedom. She wondered whether he would cry if she simply plucked him up and carried him off.

“Oh, that’s okay. They were real good together,” Dale told her. “We got to get home, though. Maybe we’ll see you tomorrow?” She joined Feena at the sandbox, and Feena watched gratefully as first Angel, then Christopher, in imitation, held up their hands and let themselves be lifted out of the sandbox.

It was only when they’d left the playground and were heading toward the dense growth along the highway that Feena remembered the book she’d forgotten to hand over to Raylene. And then the milk she’d meant to buy. “Damn!” She said it out loud, and Christopher turned his head toward her, searched her face as if looking for storm signals. She was instantly sorry she’d raised her voice, sorry she’d put him on alert, his whole body stiffened into a holding pattern.

“We forgot to get milk,” she explained to him. “You need to drink milk and brush your teeth before bed,” she added, not knowing where she’d heard this new rule, or why it seemed so important. But it was. So they edged their way back toward the Texaco station she’d seen by the mall.

It had restrooms and a Quick Mart, and the boy behind the counter didn’t even glance up from the pocket video game in his lap when Feena and the baby walked in. He didn’t look old enough to be selling cigarettes and beer, and he certainly wasn’t interested in customers. Feena had time to study the two large racks of newspapers and magazines in front of the counter. She tried to read the headlines in the local paper, to get close enough without distracting the boy. She had dreaded what she might find splashed across the front page—
TEEN SWIPES TODDLER
or
COPS CONFOUNDED BY KIDNAPPING
. But instead, in the same family-size type she’d fantasized, she read:
DOLPHINS TAKE DIVE IN THIRD
.

First, she felt relief, and then she felt foolish. It couldn’t be in the papers yet. Even if the sweet-faced woman had gone to the police right away, only television and radio would have the story so early.

Television! She thought of her mother, certainly home by now, glued to the Sony shrine. She imagined Lenore, swept up in her shows, suddenly ejected from the dream by a fast switch to the news desk and a paper-shuffling anchor: “We interrupt our regular programming for up-to-the-minute coverage of one of Florida’s most despicable crimes. Early this afternoon…”

Foolish again, she told herself. This wasn’t the Lindbergh kidnapping, after all. She still remembered the way the history teacher at her old school had actually gotten tears in his eyes when he described how the Lindberghs had begged the kidnapper to return their baby. Begged and begged, without knowing that it was too late, that the little boy was already dead, discarded like so much garbage in the woods a few miles from his house.

But Christopher wasn’t dead. And his mother wasn’t famous. What was more, she might not have reported him missing. Feena remembered those formidable arms, their relentless swipes at Christy’s head and shoulders. Why, she might have driven off and not come back. Might be glad to be rid of him. And even if she wasn’t, how would she explain to the police that she’d left him at Ryder’s? Abandoned him, that’s what she’d done. Feena hadn’t kidnapped Christy, she’d
found
him, that was all. Lost and found.

The boy at the counter still hadn’t looked their way. Feeling braver now, and much more self-righteous, Feena led the baby between the Tastykakes and the chips to the large green door at the back of the store. There was no stick person painted on the front, no upside-down-triangle skirt or long thick pants to tell them whether the bathroom was for women or men. But Feena didn’t care. All she knew was how good it felt, how safe, once she’d slid the lock closed behind them.

I
f Christopher had ever brushed his teeth, he seemed to have forgotten all about it. As Feena pulled the toothbrush out of the bag from home, he stared as if he’d never seen anything like it before. Tentatively, he touched its bristles, then pulled his fingers back quickly. He was willing enough, though, to perch on the edge of the sink and peer into the dusty mirror while Feena demonstrated her preferred brushing technique.

“Cwiss,” he said, delighted with the sandy face he saw in front of him. “Cwiss, Cwiss, Cwiss,” he chanted rhythmically until Feena realized he’d been watching himself, not her. “Cwiss, Cwiss, Cwiss,” he repeated as she squeezed the toothpaste onto the brush, determined to do the job for him. “Cwiss, Cwiss, Cw—” He tried to keep going, even with the brush in his mouth.

“If you think you look good now,” she told him when she’d finished and had rinsed out the brush, “wait till you see yourself cleaned up.” She wet a paper towel and rubbed it over his filthy cheeks, inside the folds of his neck. “Now,” she said, presenting him to the mirror again. “Who’s that?”

“Cwiss?” he asked, checking with her rather than his reflection.

“The
new-and-improved
Chris,” she said, tossing the towel into the trash and turning his head back to the glass. “Say hello to the clean and totally adorable Chris.”

“Wo,” he told himself, obligingly. “Wo, Cwiss.”

“Is there anyone cuter in the whole world?” she asked, shaking her head. He shook his right along with her.

“How cute are you, Chris?” She set him down now, opening her arms across the damp, ammonia smell of the room. “Sooooooooo cute.” When he opened his own arms, she couldn’t help picking him up again, nuzzling his neck, kissing the soft, still-damp skin behind his ears. “Now,” she told him, “milk and bed.”

But that meant opening the door. Going back into the world, where good people, law-abiding citizens, would think what she had done was wrong. Would want to take Christy away and give him back to his mother. Feena gripped his hand and wished they could leave without seeing the clerk. Mercifully, he was still engrossed in the dimly lit figures on his Gameboy, and they slipped past him to the baby food. Feena kept hold of Christopher, chose a squat glass jar containing alarmingly yellow Easy Chew Peaches. She was sure he was old enough for regular food, but it would be good to have, just in case. When they reached the dairy cooler, she lifted out a quart of milk, not thinking about how they’d keep it refrigerated.

They were headed for the counter when she saw the face on the carton. It wasn’t Christy’s, she knew that; the carton must have been printed weeks ago. But the eyes were the same, and the nimbus of hair, like spun glass, above the small features, the uncertain smile.
HELP FAIRHILL DAIRIES FIND THIS CHILD
, it said in large letters under the black-and-white photo. Then, beneath those, in smaller type, were the facts.
NAME
:
Lester Milton Dailey
.
DATE BORN
:
August 12
.
DATE MISSING
:
March 21
.
LAST SEEN
:
Oak Park, Illinois
. At the bottom of the carton was an 800 number.