Mary Clark - A Cry In The Night

Pray God they were. She didn’t believe it.

Mark phoned every night. They stayed on only a minute or two. “Nothing, Jen.”

“Nothing.”

“All right, I won’t tie up the line. Hang in there, Jenny.”

Hang in there. She tried to establish some sort of pattern to her days. The nights, either sleepless or wracked with torturing dreams, drove her from bed at dawn. For days she hadn’t been outside the house. An early-morning television program featured a yoga exercise. Faithfully she sat in front of the set at six-thirty, mechanically following the prescribed routine of the day.

At seven o’clock Good Morning America came on. She forced herself to listen to the news, listen politely to the interviews. One day as she watched, pictures were flashed on the screen of children who had disappeared. Some of them had been missing for years. Amy… Roger… Tommy… Linda… José… one after the other. Each representing heartbreak. Someday would they add Elizabeth and Christine… “nicknamed Beth and Tina” to the list. “Their adoptive father left with them on February sixth, three years ago. If anyone has knowledge…”

The evenings had a ritual too. She sat in the family-room section of the kitchen and read or tried to watch television. Usually she would spin the dial and leave the set at where it stopped. Unseeingly she endured situation comedies, hockey games, old movies. She tried to read, but pages later she’d realize her mind hadn’t taken in a thing.

The last night in February she was particularly restless.

It seemed as though there was a stillness in the house that was particularly jarring. The canned laughter during a program depicting a couple throwing bric-a-brac at each other made her snap off the set. She sat staring ahead, seeing nothing. The phone rang. By now without hope, she picked it up. “Hello.”

“Jenny, this is Pastor Barstrom from Zion Lutheran. How have you been?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“I hope Erich extended our sympathy at the loss of your baby. I wanted to visit you but he suggested I defer seeing you. Is Erich there?”

“No. He’s away. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

“I see. Will you just remind him that our senior citizens center is almost complete? As the largest donor, I want to be sure he knows the dedication date is March tenth. He’s a very generous man, Jenny.”

“Yes. I’ll tell him you called. Good night, Pastor.”

The phone rang at quarter of two. She was lying in bed, a pile of books beside her, hoping that one of them would help her while away the night.

“Jenny.”

“Yes.” Was it Erich? He sounded different, high-pitched, tense.

“Jenny, who were you talking to on the phone? Around eight o’clock. You smiled while you were talking.”

“Around eight?” She tried to sound thoughtful, tried not to scream out the words, Where are Beth and Tina? “Let’s see,” she made a point of the delay. Sheriff Gunderson? Mark? She didn’t dare mention either. Pastor Barstrom. “Erich, Pastor Barstrom phoned. He wanted to talk to you, to invite you to the opening of the senior citizens’ hall.” Her hands clammy, her mouth trembling, she waited for his comment. Keep him on the phone. That way they might be able to trace the call.

“Are you sure it was Pastor Barstrom?”

“Erich, why would I say that?” She bit her lips. “How are the girls?”

“They’re fine.”

“Let me talk to them.”

“They’re very tired. I put them to bed. You looked nice tonight, Jenny.”

“I looked nice tonight.” She felt herself begin to tremble.

“Yes, I was there. I was looking in the window. You should have guessed I was there. If you love me you would have guessed.”

In the darkness Jenny watched the crystal bowl, eerie, green. “Why didn’t you come in?”

“I didn’t want to. I just wanted to make sure you were still there waiting for me.”

“I am waiting for you, Erich, and I’m waiting for the girls. If you didn’t want to be here, let me come and be with you.”

“No… Not yet. Are you in bed now, Jenny?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What nightgown have you got on?”

“The one you like. I wear it a lot.”

“Maybe I should have stayed.”

“Maybe you should. I wish you would.”

There was a pause. In the background she could hear sounds of traffic. He must always call from the same phone. He had been outside the window.

“You didn’t tell Pastor Barstrom that I’m mad at you.”

“Of course not. He knows how much we love each other.”

“Jenny, I tried to phone Mark but his line was busy. Were you talking to him?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You really were talking to Pastor Barstrom.”

“Why don’t you call and ask him?”

“No. I believe you. Jenny, I’ll keep trying to get Mark. I just remembered. He has a book of mine. I want it back. It belongs on the third shelf of the library, the fourth from the right end.” Erich’s voice was changing, becoming whiny, fretful. There was something about it.

She was hearing it again. The high-pitched screaming that had nearly destroyed her with its accusations: “Is Mark your new boyfriend? Does he like to swim? Whore. Get out of Caroline’s bed. Get out of it now.”

There was a click. Then silence. Then the dial tone, a mild, impersonal buzz radiating from the receiver in her hand.

Sheriff Gunderson phoned twenty minutes later. “Jenny, the phone company partially traced the call. We have the area he dialed from. It’s around Duluth.”

Duluth. The northern part of the state. Nearly six hours driving from here. That meant if he was staying in that area he had started down in the midafternoon in order to have been looking in the window at eight o’clock.

Who had been with the children all the hours he’d been gone? Or had he left them alone? Or weren’t they alive anymore? She hadn’t spoken to them since the sixteenth, almost two weeks ago.

“He’s coming apart,” she said tonelessly. Sheriff Gunderson did not try to offer empty cheer. “Yes, I think he is.”

“What can you do?”

“Do you want us to go public? Release the facts to television stations, newspapers?”

“God, no. That would be signing the girls’ death certificates.”

“Then we’ll get a special squad combing the Duluth area. And we want to leave a detective in your house. Your own life may be in danger.”

“Absolutely not. He’d know.”

It was almost midnight. February 28 would become March 1. Jenny remembered the childhood superstition she had. If you fell asleep saying “hare, hare” on the last night of the month, and woke up in the morning the first day of the new month saying “rabbit, rabbit,” you would get your wish. Nana and she used to make a game of it.

“Hare, hare,” Jenny said aloud into the quiet room. She raised her voice: “Hare, hare.” Shrieking, she screamed, “Hare, hare, I want my children, I want my children!” Sobbing, she collapsed back on the pillow. “I want Beth, I want Tina.”

In the morning her eyes were so swollen she could barely see out of them. Somehow she got dressed, went downstairs, made coffee, rinsed off her cup and saucer. The thought of food sickened her and there was no use stacking the dishwasher with one lonely cup and saucer.

Slipping on her ski jacket she hurried outside and walked around to the window on the southern side of the house that looked into the family area of the kitchen. There were footsteps outlined in the snow below that window, footsteps that had come out of the woods, gone back to the woods. While she sat in that room, Erich had stood out here, his face pressed against the glass, watching her.