Learning to Swim (12 page)

I glanced at Dumond, who smiled ruefully. I let Paul pull me into
the living room, where he had laid out the truck, the fat teddy, the action figures. Paul was making a complicated demonstration involving a little plastic man I wasn’t quite following when Dumond appeared and handed me a steaming mug. “Zach says you drink coffee sometimes. We weren’t sure how you took it.”

The hot mug felt good to my hands. I took a giant swallow. On the rare occasions I drink coffee I drink it with milk only, and this was loaded with sugar, but I didn’t care. I could feel it infusing life back into me, as if my brain cells were realigning.

Dumond perched on the arm of the couch, an indiscriminate nubby gray-brown fabric useful for hiding soda spills and pizza stains. We watched Paul play. Here sat the man who had slammed me against a wall yesterday. Here, playing happily on the floor, was the boy who had been kidnapped and almost drowned. And here was Troy, in the middle of it all. It was surreal.

Paul was still grimy. “Paul, have you had a bath?” As soon as the words left my mouth I realized this wasn’t my concern anymore. But Dumond didn’t seem offended, and when Paul looked at me blankly, I pantomimed scrubbing. It was one thing to talk to Paul in my rusty French; it was another to trot it out in front of his fluently bilingual father.

Paul shook his head, and looked at his father imploringly.

Dumond laughed, a deep delighted laugh, and stood up. “No, Paul, Troy is quite right.
Il faut que tu prennes un bain
. You’re overdue for a bath.”

We climbed the stairs. I started the water running in the tub while Dumond helped Paul undress. I went to get clean clothes from the ones Baker had lent us, and when I returned, Paul was in the tub, splashing his plastic men in the water. Dumond was sitting on his heels, leaning against the wall, watching his son.

“Et voilà, des vêtements propres, ici,”
I said, showing Paul the jeans and T-shirt. “I’m putting them here on the toilet.” He nodded, bashing the little figures in the water and making sputtering, crashing noises. Dumond closed the door part of the way behind us, and followed me into my bedroom.

He sat on the end of my bed. “How did you find him?” he asked. I think he knew I hadn’t just found an abandoned boy on a ferry. I sat against the wall and told him all of it: Paul’s fall from the ferry, my swim to reach him, bringing him here. I know I tell it flatly; I scoot past the grim parts. But a father, I expect, would live every moment no matter how you told it. Something flickered in Dumond’s eyes when I told him about the sweatshirt that had been tied around his son’s arms, but he didn’t speak until I was done.

He shifted where he sat. “So someone threw him off the ferry.”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“And he has been kept prisoner this whole time.”

I nodded again. “He said he was moved once, to a different place.”

We sat in silence, until Dumond spoke suddenly. “You saw no one?”

“No, I just saw Paul fall toward the water. I never even looked up at the deck—I kept my eyes on where he went in. When we got back to the dock, that ferry was on its way back to Vermont.”

“So you got him out of the water and brought him here.” His tone was even, but I don’t think I imagined the blame behind his words. I flushed. I looked down. I studied a tiny spring from a ballpoint pen that had somehow rolled between the gray painted floorboards.

The words were thick in my mouth. “I probably should have gone to the police,” I said. “Or the hospital. But I didn’t think anyone could do anything right away—and Paul was wet and tired and I wanted to get him warm and dry …” My voice trailed off.

He started to speak again, but Paul interrupted from the bathroom, calling, “Papa, Papa.” Dumond moved toward the doorway, and I stood.
“Papa, est-ce que je dois vraiment me laver les cheveux?”
Paul asked plaintively.

Dumond forced a laugh. “
Mais oui
. Of course you must wash your hair.” He turned toward me, once again the crisp efficient businessman. It amazed me how quickly he moved from one persona to another. “I’d like to make some calls and my cell isn’t working well here. May I use your telephone? I’ll reimburse you, of course.”

“Sure.” I nodded toward the phone on my desk. Only then did I
notice that the message light was blinking. “Just a sec,” I murmured, and went over and pushed the Play button.

Hello, Troy
, came Thomas’s pleasant tones.
Just calling to see how things are going. Please give me a call
. Damn. He’d be wondering why I hadn’t called him back.

Dumond paused, hand over the phone. “Do you need to use it?”

I shook my head. Thomas would be at work. Not that I felt like talking to him anyway. Dumond picked up the receiver and began punching in numbers.

As I helped Paul rinse his hair and dry off and get dressed, I could hear Dumond, calling his office and giving instructions; speaking in French to someone named Claude; getting a doctor’s referral and, with calm insistence, making an appointment; and speaking with someone I assumed was the Ottawa police. Then he called someone else, speaking in voluble French, fast and emphatic, then slower and calming. He was just hanging up as we emerged from the bathroom.

“His nanny, Elise,” he explained, eyes on Paul. “She has been with Paul since he was a baby, and she came with me from Montreal, as my housekeeper. Now she can be a nanny again.” I couldn’t help but wonder if he was romantically involved with the nanny; he’d hardly have been the first.

Paul handed me the comb I’d bought him, and I ran it through his wet hair. Dumond watched, and I could see him noticing the worn lettering on the T-shirt and the faint grass stains on the jeans. “They’re Mike Jr.’s,” I said, a bit defensively. “Baker and Mike’s son.”

Dumond nodded. “
Paul, mon p’tit
, could you please go show your toys to Zach?
Veux-tu montrer tes jouets à Zach? Je pense qu’il veut les voir
. We will be down in a minute.” Paul nodded, and walked carefully down the stairs, holding the railing as I’d shown him.

Dumond watched him go, and looked at me. “I want to head back to Ottawa today.”

I nodded. Of course. Paul would go home to Canada with his father. My life would go on, minus one small child I hadn’t known a week ago. “Did you want to see the police here?”

He shook his head. “No, we’ll do that in Ottawa, tomorrow morning. The kidnapping took place in Canada.”

“But the ferry,” I pointed out. “That was in New York.” State lines, I assumed, ran through the middle of lakes.

“I’d rather everything be coordinated by the Canadian police. They can work closely with the Montreal police; they can speak French with Paul; we’ll be in our own country. It will be better for Paul to be home.”

He stood. I felt the razor, cutting me out of their lives. Paul would remember the woman who rescued him, but to Dumond I was forgettable, expendable. It was a not unfamiliar feeling.

“I’d like to buy some clothes this morning before leaving, for Paul and myself.” He gestured at the track suit he wore, smiling slightly, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Of course he wouldn’t be comfortable driving across the border in a borrowed track suit. Nor would he want to wear yesterday’s crumpled Armani.

In the living room, Zach was delighting Paul by pretending not to understand how the bucket loader worked.

“So you turn this crank like this?” Zach fumbled with the truck.

“Non, non, non!”
Paul declared, and with great deliberation showed Zach how to move the bucket arm up and down.

From the doorway, Dumond cleared his throat. “Paul,
mon fils
, we need to go shopping.”

“Shop-ping?”
Paul looked up, inquisitive.
“Pourquoi?”

“Because you need some new clothes, my son. And so do I.” He turned to me, “Do you know where to go?”

“The Gap on Main Street would probably have everything you’d need. If not, there are other clothing stores up there.”

“Do you need to work, or can you go with us?”

“Um, no, don’t have anything I have to do right now. Just a sec,” I said. I ran upstairs for shoes and socks. On the way back down I realized I was ravenous, and stopped in the kitchen to slather peanut butter on a slice of bread to eat on the way.

I
T’S A QUICK WALK TO THE GAP, ABOUT HALFWAY UP MAIN
Street. Two boys from the track team I used to cover ran past, waving at me. As we passed the high school I pointed out the outdoor speedskating oval where Eric Heiden won his five gold medals in the 1980 Olympics, and then the arena where the U.S. hockey team had defeated the Soviets in the Miracle on Ice, en route to winning gold. Dumond nodded politely. Maybe he’d seen it before, or maybe he was, like me, underwhelmed by skating rinks where something exciting happened a long time ago. And a Canadian wouldn’t likely be impressed by U.S. skating and hockey victories.

In the store Dumond quickly selected jeans, a pullover shirt, and a cotton sweater, emerging from the dressing room with Zach’s warm-up suit in a neat bundle. The young clerk was ogling him as if he were a rock star. “I’d like to leave these on,” he told her. She fell all over herself setting aside his price tags and the warm-up suit, and we went to the kids’ floor downstairs.

I’d thought he’d get Paul one or two outfits, but Dumond apparently didn’t do things by halves. He quickly acquired a stack of clothes. This was going to run into hundreds of dollars, even at a discounted outlet store. I shifted on my feet. “You know you may have to pay taxes on this at the border, and duty on anything not made in the States,” I told him. I knew that Canadians here fewer than forty-eight hours get only a fifty-dollar exemption, although it was possible that children’s clothing was exempt. Of course Paul had been here a lot longer, but Dumond wasn’t going to announce that to border agents.

He shrugged. “We’re here; we might as well get it now.” He watched Paul eyeing a new jacket in front of the mirror. “I don’t think many of his old things at home will fit.”

Of course not. Paul had been gone since December—more than five months. Kids grow. Somehow I hadn’t thought of that.

At Bass, across the street, Dumond selected leather shoes for Paul, and then at Eastern Mountain Sports he bought a duffel bag to hold all the new clothes, and Paul admired his new shoes as the clerk rang up the purchase. From the time we’d left my front door the whole expedition had taken just over an hour. Amazing how fast you can shop when you don’t look at prices. Paul was wearing one of his new outfits, and now I was the worst dressed. But one of the reasons I like Lake Placid is that everyone dresses casually, so I fit right in.

We walked back to the house in silence, Paul skipping along between us, holding our hands. The sun was bright and it was one of those beautiful Adirondack days that make you grateful to be alive, a segment of life you want to hang on to forever. I could almost pretend this was real, that I had a partner and small son and was out for a walk with them.

On the front porch Paul turned to his father, his face creased in a frown.
“Est-ce qu’on retournera à Montréal?”
Are we going back to Montreal?

The porch swing creaked as Dumond sat on its edge.
“Non, nous allons retourner au Canada, mais pas à Montréal. J’ai acheté une nouvelle maison à Ottawa.”
Not to Montreal, but to Ottawa, a new house.

The furrow between Paul’s eyebrows disappeared. He emitted a burst of French too fast for me.

“Oui, oui, c’est vrai,”
Dumond said, pulling his son to him for a hug. His eyes met mine. “He says he is happy that we have moved, because now the bad men will not find him.”

A lump grew in my throat. Paul had not, after all, shucked off what had happened to him. Of course not. This was no TV movie of the week, happy endings in two hours or less. This was real life, gritty and painful. He had a lot of adjusting ahead: new life, new city, new house. With no mother.

“I’ll get his things together,” I said. I went up to my rooms and stuffed the clothes he’d worn when I’d found him into a Gap bag, along with the things I’d bought him and, as an afterthought, my crayons and coloring book. I’d had them since I was a kid, but they’d only remind me of him. I wondered if Dumond would let me come visit, but it was, I thought, more likely he’d want his son to put all this behind him.

As I turned toward the stairs, Dumond was coming up. I held the bag toward him, but he didn’t take it.

“I’d like you to come with us,” he said.

I blinked, not understanding. Suddenly I remembered my car was in Ottawa—of course I’d have to go get it. “Oh, right, my car.”

“No, I mean I’d like you to stay with us awhile, in Ottawa.” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Yes, we have Elise, the nanny, but Paul has gotten very attached to you, and I think it will help him adjust to have you with us.”

I stared at him.

“It’s a big house,” he said, meeting my gaze. “You can bring your dog. And I’ll compensate you for your time.”

I shook my head. “No, no. It’s not that. I can do most of my work wherever I am.” A moment ticked by. My brain raced. Me with Paul and his father, in Ottawa. Surely it would be better for me to break with Paul now—a clean, sharp pain, back to my solitary life. But I knew I wasn’t going to.