“See it yet? It’s somewhere up ahead.”
The game was to allow Robbie to lead her. Tugging at her hand to hurry her.
But Robbie wasn’t sure where the car was. Too much had happened in the mall to intrigue him and dazzle him and he’d wakened early that morning and naturally he was tired, and inclined to be fretful and anxious. And she could hardly say in exasperation to a bright energetic five-year-old Didn’t I tell you, you’ll be sorry if you don’t take a nap?
It was hard for Dinah to scold her son. Hard for Dinah to scold anyone.
Even when, at Story Hour at the local public library, it was her dear son Robbie who sometimes chattered and jostled other children, he was so enthusiastic.
Or when, feverish with excitement, Robbie slipped his hand out of hers inside the mall and ran on his short stubby legs to the Easter bunny enclosure paying no heed to Mommy calling after him with exasperated laughter.
The mall was a favorite place for mothers with young children. There was a children’s play area and there were numerous “outdoor” restaurants serving inexpensive food. Each season had its appropriate decorations—Christmas had lasted a long time at the mall; and now with the approach of Easter, fluffy white bunnies were displayed amid pots of bloodred tulips and vivid-yellow daffodils. Some of the mothers seemed to be herding as many as three—four?—young children and these women Dinah regarded with awe. How could they manage, with more than one child! Robbie was as much as she could handle, or could imagine wishing to handle. All of her volcanic Mommy-love was invested in this single child. Whit was possibly less obsessed with parenthood than Dinah, but not by much less.
Imagine, if Robbie was twins! a friend had said and Whit had said wittily You mean he isn’t?
“This way, honey. I think we want to go in this direction.”
Robbie had been tugging impatiently at her hand. He must have forgotten Kresge Paints though Mommy had pointed out the garish rainbow facade as a landmark for locating the car.
With a fraction of her (distracted) consciousness she’d been aware of the vehicle, a van, that passed her and Robbie slowly as if the driver was looking for a place to park as close to Home Depot as possible. She’d gripped Robbie’s hand to allow the van to pass before they stepped out from between two parked vehicles and in that instant her awareness of the van was no more distinct than her awareness of any other vehicle, stationary or moving, within her range of vision. She did not see who was driving the van, or whether there was someone sitting in the passenger’s seat. She might have been aware that the van wasn’t a new shiny model but a not-new slightly battered model of the indefinable hue of last fall’s leaves trapped in gutters and ravines. She was certainly not aware of the van’s license plates either front or rear.
“Watch out, sweetie Do not ever step out from between parked cars without looking left and right.”
In the mall she’d allowed her little boy to become over-stimulated. It was the indulgence of a young mother intoxicated with motherhood as with an exotic drug.
She’d shared in his excitement. It was a giddy experience to see the world through a child’s eyes. For she could not remember ever having been so young.
Before bringing Robbie to the mall, initially in his stroller, she’d never quite realized how fascinating the displays were in many of the store windows and in the mall’s three-storey atrium, beside the escalators. (And the escalators were like amusement park rides, thrilling to the very young, and seemingly very safe.) So much in this consumer paradise was gaily colored and in motion to catch the eye’s attention and to hold it.
She understood: the mall was designed to draw in shoppers, consumers. The children’s displays were designed to draw in children whose parents might be prevailed upon to buy them what they begged for. She and Whit did not “believe” in impulsive buying, certainly not at the whim of a five-year-old. Nor could they afford to spend money on perishable toys or things that Robbie would quickly outgrow.
Yet there was an undeniable romance to the mall. Ridiculous, the glamour of new-model auto vehicles positioned on revolving platforms, that quite dazzled the eye. The very names were seductive—Forester, Wrangler, Optima, Cavalier, Echo, Lancer, Sunfire. Whit complained of the Nissan he’d had for years. It was time to buy a new car, maybe a SUV. They might look ahead to driving their kid with other kids to—soccer games? Little League softball? (Whit was one who’d long scorned suburban life yet each year was sinking a little more into it as if into, as he liked to say, a spongy AstroTurf.) They’d need a vehicle larger than a sedan. But not probably new: “pre-owned.”
Yes. There was something undeniably thrilling in children’s faces at the mall as they tugged at their mother’s restraining hands.
Mom-my! Mom-my! MOM-MY!
Robbie could be headstrong and even defiant, in an environment that was both disorienting and enchanting. The glittery Libertyville Mall was an environment distinctly other, set beside which the household in which he lived with Mommy and Daddy was altogether ordinary.
Whit had read to Dinah a passage from one of his psych texts: at age two the average Homo sapiens is as “wantonly destructive” as he/she will ever be.
They’d laughed together. Grateful that their son was a special child who hadn’t been “wantonly destructive” or even, in fact, unusually difficult, as a toddler; and, by age three, had already begun to show signs of child-maturity—allowing other children to go first in line, curbing his instinct to interrupt, expressing embarrassment for his mistakes. Especially, Robbie was inclined to be deeply embarrassed if he spilled or fumbled something. But when he was tired, or in an edgy mood, Robbie reverted to his younger toddler-self, a tight-wired little creature on the verge of a tantrum.
The Libertyville Mall was just too large. It must have been miles they’d walked—drawn irresistibly forward by something glittery and promising in the near distance. Dinah had known exactly what she’d wanted to buy and in which (probable) stores and yet, once at the mall, you were captivated by the bright buoyant welcoming Muzak and forgot your resolutions. And the boy was fatigued, and not thinking clearly.
In the parking lot Mommy was thinking In another minute he’ll see the damned car! Then, all will be happy again.
She was thinking of how, aged two, Robbie had had a bronchial infection; his skin was flaming-hot, his temperature was a stunning 102.2°F. In a panic she and Whit had driven him to the ER in Ann Arbor—Whit hadn’t wanted to wait for an ambulance—he’d driven the 1991 Nissan sedan so fast it began vibrating and shaking as if it had been about to disintegrate into pieces and Dinah had clutched at their small limp feverish son vowing If You will save him, dear God, I will never doubt You again. Please God help us, Robbie is so little and we are so helpless.
In the ER, emergency medical workers had started an IV line in his arm. And how small Robbie’s arm, and how small the “butterfly needle” used to draw blood! The chief resident had said Your son has a bronchial infection and is severely dehydrated and she hadn’t wanted to think that he had spoken to her and to Whit with an air of reproach or disgust. Dehydrated? What was that, exactly? Not enough water? But how do you make a two-year-old drink water if he doesn’t want to?
Later she’d clutched Robbie’s hand. When Robbie was in intensive care. The bronchial infection had invaded both lungs. The child was so very small in the (child-sized) hospital bed. Family members had come but weren’t allowed to stay because the room was too small. Dinah’s mother had come and stood in the hall wringing her hands. A hag’s face like something hacked out of stone. Yet she’d seemed genuinely stricken, and sorry for what she’d said about Dinah’s marriage to the “mulatto disc jockey” who was Perry “Whit” Whitcomb whom Dinah adored.
Someone has to be to blame, if a two-year-old is critically ill. Such an illness as a severe bronchial infection doesn’t just happen. Dinah’s instinct was to say It was my fault. I didn’t realize he wasn’t drinking enough liquids. She had known that Robbie??
?s skin was hot, that he was running a fever, but her pediatrician had told her repeatedly that babies run fevers, babies sniffle, snuffle and fret and cry, she must resist the impulse to fly into a panic at every snuffle. Yet she’d stammered to anyone who would listen It was my fault. My fault. As if her confession might mitigate the child’s condition. As if God might decide not to punish the child, but the (bad) mother. It had been gallant of Whit to object saying It’s my fault just as much, Dinah. It’s both our faults. And it happened fast—overnight.
Gallant of Whit to say We’re amateurs at this. We’re trying to learn. But Robbie is going to get well. And Robbie will never remember a minute of it.
Dinah wondered if this could be so: Robbie wouldn’t remember the eight-day vigil in the University of Michigan Medical School Hospital in the children’s wing.
Young children remember very little. Unless the corollary was more likely: young children forget very much.
Lacking a concept of death, extinction they are not able to attach emotions to such possibilities.
Robbie had recovered. Of course, Robbie had recovered.
He was susceptible to lung infections, severe colds. But he’d recovered and they were sure he didn’t remember and he’d never known that his parents had been desperate with fear that he might die; that they’d sat on either side of his narrow little bed and clutched at his small perfect hands and wept together and laughed and reminisced When he was conceived? That night? I’m sure it was that night—you know—at that terrible “motor hotel” in Bozeman—in the morning a swarm of blackflies rushed at us—ugh!—in our hair, eyes, mouths …
In such ways you are bonded with another. The connection with the man was so deep, and the connection through the child, she could not ever separate herself from them, no more than she could separate herself from her own soul.
She shuddered at such thoughts. But it was a shudder of an almost uncontainable joy—was it?
“Robbie? Our car is in the next row—I promise. Please don’t cry.”
One witness would report to police officers that the little abducted boy had seemed to be crying in the parking lot. He’d been pulling at his mother’s arm and she’d been speaking urgently to him. Asked if she’d overheard what the mother was saying to the boy the woman said no, she’d been too far away. She’d been headed into Home Depot, not coming out.
Witnesses who’d seen the mother and the child inside the mall as recently as fifteen minutes before the abduction would tell police officers There was nothing special about them. There was nothing that would make you look at them.
A young mother with her little boy. Nice-behaving and nice-looking but nothing special.
The little boy seemed excited about the rabbits. But all the children were.
And there didn’t seem to be anyone harassing them or following them, that I noticed. Nobody suspicious.
A sudden cry seemed to erupt out of the air. Not a plea for help but sheer sound—surprise, terror.
She’d have thought it was Robbie but it was not Robbie but herself.
What struck her seemed to come down vertically, from a height above her head. She’d seemed to see—(it was happening far more swiftly than she could fathom)—a large bird with flailing wings, a ferocious bird, like the bird that tore out Prometheus’s liver, and in the next instant she was falling, and Robbie’s fingers were wrenched from hers even as the child screamed Mommy!
4
Take my hand, she said.
How many times a day she said. When they were out.
And he’d taken her hand for he was an obedient child.
And she’d clasped the little hand tight for she was Mommy, and she was responsible.
In the mall, he’d slipped away from her more than once. Squealing and giggling, he’d slipped away from Mommy who’d had to run after him.
But that was a game. Out of a game erupts childish laughter.
If he was tired, if he was fretful, she’d have liked to push him in the stroller but he was too big for the stroller now, he said. And he was too big to be carried in Mommy’s arms! He said.
He was a bright chattery happy child. He was (sometimes) mischievous and exasperating and in bed his poor Daddy moaned pulling a pillow over his head Oh Christ! The little rooster is crowing already.
Daddy liked to tell funny stories of how mischievous Robbie was and of how lively Robbie was waking Daddy and Mommy in the middle of the night wanting it to be morning because morning was breakfast-time and a happy time before Daddy left. And if it was a day that Mommy had classes, he’d be taken to day care and left at day care where there were children he liked but some children he did not like—(why, wasn’t clear. Dinah had made inquiries).
He’d given her his hand. They were approaching Lot C.
She’d had no preparation. She’d had no warning. No sixth sense or Mommy-instinct.
It was a pit of confusion into which she fell headlong. She was aware that she was very likely dying because her breathing had ceased because her skull was cracked because her soul was leaking through the crack like smoke from abandoned, long-smoldering mines in Pennsylvania that yet continue to ascend through cracked pavement. There was time to think of this—yet there was no time—for what happened, happened so swiftly. It would be said that she’d managed to rise from the pavement bleeding from a head wound and she’d managed to stumble after the van into which her son’s abductor had thrown him, like an automaton she must have stumbled after the van for she had little conscious memory of it, of screaming, not fear so much as rage, white-hot rage, and she was clawing at the vehicle, she was trying to grab hold of a door handle; and then, the van reversed, and sped at her, and she stood her ground in defiance and the impact was such, her soul seemed to have been struck from her body, like her breath. And when she came to consciousness in a brightly lighted place smelling of something sickening, antiseptic it might be, alcohol, they were asking who’d taken her son, what could she remember of the attack and the abduction, and she was trying to stay awake to tell them what she could but her jaw had been broken, teeth had been knocked from her jaws and words failed her.
Yet she knew to be conscious of the terrible loss.
The child’s hand snatched from hers. Mommy had had to let go.
This was the defeat of her life as a mother. The defeat of her life as a human being. Though they were telling her that none of this was her fault—of course.
Her son had been taken. Whit’s son.
There had been no ransom demand so far. Very likely, it had not been a kidnapping.
And, “Police in three states are looking for the abductor. There’s every kind of media coverage.”
She was being prepped for more surgery. Her body was a smashed starfish. She smiled down upon it, pitying.
Patient going down. Distinctly she’d heard these words as she sank into sleep.
5
Later, it might have been another day. There was no Time in this place where she was no longer Mommy but the pitiful broken thing with half a face scraped off.
Everyone was very kind. The nurses were soft-spoken, very thoughtful and kind. She faded in and out of consciousness and in and out of caring if she lived, or did not live.
Her last effort had been to throw herself at the van. Stupid, and a fiasco. If she’d had more sense she would have walked the child directly to the car parked perpendicular to the front entrance of Kresge Paints, she’d have walked on the sidewalk and not taken what had seemed to be a shortcut through the parking lot, slantwise, through a labyrinth of parked cars; she would not have made herself so vulnerable, and put her child at risk.
Her last effort. A failure.
She’d been struck down by her assailant with a blunt instrument, believed to have been a hammer. Dragged beneath her assailant’s vehicle for fifty feet along the parking lot pavement. Both her legs had been broken, her right arm, ribs and collarbone broken; the skin on the right side of her face had been torn away; teeth were
missing in her lower and upper jaws. She’d been an attractive young woman and now would have a Hallowe’en jack-o’-lantern face.
She had no need to look at this face, yet. She knew.
In morphine delirium she’d consoled herself what good luck it was, Robbie couldn’t see his mother now. He’d have shrieked at how grotesque Mommy had become.
In the street sometimes he’d stared at handicapped people, especially children. His eyes widened in an expression of childish fright utterly empty of sympathy or identification.
As he’d stared in wordless horror and revulsion at a squirrel struck by a vehicle in the street near their house, not quite dead, writhing in the gutter.
Don’t look, honey. Shut your eyes.
She said to her husband in an urgent voice as if what they were discussing—what she was discussing with him, not quite comprehensibly—was a concern of, say, the next several hours. That she would wear a “nice pretty white satin” mask when Robbie came to see her, so Robbie wouldn’t be frightened of her. Of all things they must spare their son seeing his mother so mutilated.
Me instead of him. If only.
It was a ridiculous notion. It was a profoundly naïve notion.
For the abductor had not wanted an adult woman but a young child. That was the point of the abduction—the young child.
Whit would appear on TV. An unshaven man with pleading eyes, disheveled grayish brown hair. The man’s skin was pallid and yet distinctly the skin of a “mixed-race” individual. (Black? Native American? Middle Eastern?) Photos of five-year-old Robbie would appear on TV.
The father was Whit Whitcomb. His 11 P.M.-nightly-except-Sundays program on WCYS-FM American Classics & New Age was one of the NPR station’s most popular programs. At the present time a substitute was taking Whitcomb’s place.
Whit would be interviewed on WCYS-FM and make his special appeal as the Ypsilanti police had encouraged him. Whit Whitcomb whose sexy radio-voice was dazed now, somber and faltering.