Joshua Mohr - All This Life

“What was he wearing?” asks the cop.

“What?”

“His clothes.”

“What was he wearing today?”

“At the time of his disappearance.”

The two of them stand in the parking lot, in front of the therapist’s office. Paul keeps his phone in his hand, compulsively checking it every few seconds to see if Jake has responded to any of his texts (he hasn’t), while Paul turns in circles every thirty seconds or so to spot his son’s return (no on that front, too).

The police officer is somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties. Barely looks like he needs to shave. It bothers Paul that he’s so young. He wants someone chiseled, battle-tested. Somebody who has worked cases like this his whole career, and yet there’s nothing Paul can do about it. He’ll have to hope that this young man is good at his job.

Paul is, for all intents and purposes, calm. He’s not raising his voice, no cantering heart, no tears, no hysterics. He’s concerned, but he’s having trouble accepting this as reality: The whole thing feels

too blasé, too relaxed to be about a missing child. Jake is missing in terms of no one knowing where he’s at this second; however, it’s temporary — Paul knows this is short-term. His son overreacted, much like taking a baseball bat to his room, but his tantrum will wane and he’ll be back, he has to come back.

There is a suspicion, though, huffing all the air from Paul’s lungs. His breathing grows shorter, so he’s not as composed as he thought. Perhaps Paul wants to collect himself via a flurry of Keep your head and things will all work out platitudes, yet he can’t really nourish himself on those empty calories. Fact: His son is missing. Fact: It happened on Paul’s watch, which plumps him up with blame. Paul has been painted with parental blame plenty of times in Jake’s life. All parents have had this experience, he knows. It’s part of the job. He remembers a time when Jake was two feet away from him — no more than that — and Jake fell down and chipped his front tooth. The boy was only three years old, and the rest of the tooth didn’t fall out until he was seven and Paul had to see the chip, that denunciation, every day for four years, a jagged reminder of his negligence. I was doing the right thing , he always told the chip. I was standing right there. I wasn’t being careless.

That’s the devastating thing about being a parent — the world doesn’t care about your plans. There’s no tally for intentions. Kids fall, teeth chip, and you live with it.

In the parking lot, Paul checks his phone again for texts.

He turns in another circle, scrutinizing his surroundings.

And now Paul has to make eye contact with this young cop and his questions.

His lungs aren’t pumping out full blasts of air. They’re a garden hose with a kink. Paul pants out the next couple breaths.

“He had on sneakers,” says Paul. “White and red Nikes.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“I bought them for him about a month ago.”

“What clothes was he wearing, sir?”

“Can’t you track his cell signal?”

“We need to finish this report.”

“I’ve seen that done on TV, the authorities locating criminals from their cell signals.”

“That technology exists,” the cops says, “but our priority is to complete the report.”

“We don’t need a report if we track his cell.”

“A physical description of what he’s wearing will help spot him, sir.”

“Well, it was. . uh. .”

“Let’s come back to this.”

Paul doesn’t want to, though. He doesn’t want to admit that he can’t remember what his son wore today. Doesn’t want to feel the repulsive burden of not knowing because, he guesses, other parents always know what clothes their kids have on. His ex would be able to answer this question with no problem and Paul should as well.

There are so many things that he doesn’t want to acknowledge, things he can’t bear remembering. Like the feeling of being in the office, he and the therapist barricaded away from Jake. The feeling of being interrogated by the doctor, his questions about the divorce, the separation, the living arrangements. The feeling of being indicted, of being on trial. The feeling of guilt — something Paul didn’t necessarily know he felt about his son’s well-being until that moment. The feeling of sweating on a witness stand. The feeling that a sentence will be handed down shortly.

The feeling of listening to a therapist express “deep concern”—his words — about Paul’s son. “Deep concern for what?” Paul had asked, and the doctor only got to say, “Jake is at a precarious intersection.”

Then they heard a loud noise from the waiting room, a door slammed, a woman’s voice calling, “Doctor!”

Both Paul and the therapist emerged from the office and saw the smashed hand sanitizer dispenser on the floor, clear liquid oozing out, looking like a dead jellyfish.

“Where’s Jake?” Paul asked the woman, her tablet resting on her lap, a napping child.

She pointed to the door. Paul ran through it. Paul screamed his son’s name. Paul was down the stairs. He exited the building. He stood in the parking lot and couldn’t spot his son anywhere.

“Jake!” he yelled, turning in circles. “Jake!”

Soon he dialed 911. Soon he was alerted by the operator to the fact that this wasn’t an emergency situation. Please call your local authorities, sir. They’ll be happy to assist, sir.

And ten minutes later, here he is with this police officer asking him a battery of questions, equally if not more defaming than those of the therapist, and Paul wants one thing: to remember what his son was wearing.

“His weight?” the cop says.

“Jeans, I think,” Paul says. “Yeah, blue jeans. Baggy.”

“His weight,” the cop says.

“You know how they wear them too baggy?”

“Do you know his weight?”

“Maybe 130 pounds.”

“Height?”

“Probably five-five or five-six or around there.”

“We need to be as precise as possible.”

“Five-six then.”

“What’s his date of birth?”

“April 24th, 1999,” says Paul proudly. As precise as possible. He can be more precise. He can go down to the minute. 7:18 AM. He can tell the cop all about that morning, can re-create the whole scene, his son with the umbilical cord looped twice around his neck, the doctors getting more anxious and agitated. Every time Paul looked up these doctors multiplied, two of them at first, four, eight, and because they’d administered such a heavy epidural, his wife couldn’t push, not really, and the doctors were now using a vacuum on the baby’s head to suck him out, and the worst part was that they’d broadcast his heartbeat over speakers in the room, and as his wife tried to push the baby’s heartbeat would crank up and between these too-light pushes Jake’s heartbeat would slow to this dismal thump thump thump , and Paul was convinced the baby was going to die. Paul stood next to his wife’s bed, holding her hand, their foreheads touching, saying to her, “We’re all going to be fine; we’re going to be fine,” and the vacuum wasn’t getting the baby out, either, thump thump thump , and the doctors were readying for a C-section if this one final push from his wife and one final yank from the vacuum didn’t work. But it did. Jake finally slid out, his head misshapen from the pressure created by the vacuum, Paul actually thinking the head looked like a layer cake, and the baby was this terrible purple color and he wasn’t crying and the doctors took him away, and Paul stayed right next to his wife, his wife that he loved so much, stayed right with her and whispered, “You did such a great job,” and she said, “How is he?” and he said, “Are you okay?” That was when Jake cried for the first time, sitting on a table a few feet from them, having all the mucus sucked from his airways, and it was Paul who walked over to cut the cord, Jake’s head already returning to a normal shape a few minutes later. Paul stared down at his son and felt relief that this was over, Jake was here now, Jake was safe, and Paul leaned down and kissed his child for the first time and said, “Welcome.”