The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (17 page)

Bagg and Gracie sat in the Jeep in a back corner of a McDonald’s parking lot sharing a bag full of fish sandwiches and skinny French fries.

Gracie lounged over the folded down rear seat, drooling tartar sauce and bits of roll.

“You have a pret
ty big appetite for a ballerina.
”
Bagg fed
her a handful of warm
, salty
fries. “My little girl was a ballerina for a while.
”

Gracie gummed the fries and made mewing sounds for more.

“Then came soccer and she gave up her dancing
career.
She was about
four
when her mom and I called it quits.
”

Bagg pulled the lever on his seat and let it recline so he could give the bear a sip of vanilla milkshake.

“Her name is Morgan
.
”
Bagg
tried
to steady the cup as Gracie’s tongue greedily lapped at the shake. “I haven’t seen her in a really long time. It seems like forever.
”

Gracie
nudged the shake cup away, eyeing
the bag of fish sandwiches.

“
Her mom and I had joint custody.
”
Bagg
unwrapped
another sandwich for
her
. “I only got to see her every other weekend. That seemed like the worst thing in the world at the time. I kept having to say goodbye to her for twelve days, you know? I didn’t think it could get worse than that. But it sure did.
”

Bagg fed Gracie the rest of his own sandwich.

“One Friday night, they just didn’t show up. It was supposed to be six o’clock on the
dot. That’s how it was written i
n the court order. But then it was six
fifteen, then six
thirty. I kept waiting, but I think I knew right away she was never coming.
”

Bagg wiped his face
with a napkin
.
As he went to toss it into the bag, Gracie plucked it from the air with her tongue and swallowed it.

“I don’t know. Maybe if I’d called the township cops they’d have put out an APB, or something, and they’d have found them in line at the airport. Or maybe some cop would have shown up and told me to call my lawyer on Monday. What did I expect out of him?
‘
Your kid
’
s with her mother and here I am wasting time writing up a report
’
was the attitude I got when I went to the station
.
”

Gracie nodded for the milkshake again, and Bagg tried to steady the cup. White goo and drool dripped from his hand, a puddle forming on the back floor mat. He tried wiping the bear’s
mouth, but her tongue snared that one, too
.

“They found her mother’s car in the economy lot at the airport two wee
ks later.
It’s been over five years now. She was almost five
, and now she’s almost ten. Each year I try to figure out what a kid looks like at that age. How big they are, I mean. I know she’s far away, but I’m always
searching
for her in crowds and things
. Passing cars and grocery stores. Sometimes I think I see her, but I know better.
S
he’s a million miles away.

“She was my whole worl
d.
”
Bagg
leaned
back in the seat, and t
he bear arched forward and rested her chin on his right shoulder, foamy white lips making a warm wet spot on his shirt. Bagg absently rubbed h
er right ear. “I can’t go into her bedroom
. I had wanted to make it a second home for her, you know? We picked out cool posters and I bought a bunch of Christmas light strands and tacked them all across her ceiling.
”

“I put all those strands of lights up on a Friday afternoon, then picked her up and brought her back to our apartment. I told her I had a surprise, and she was all excited. I led her into her room, then snapped off her desk lamp and switched on the Christmas lights that lit up all over her ceiling.
”
Bagg stopped
. T
ears were trickling down his cheeks as Gracie listened quietly.
He saw her
yellow eyes
follow
the crooked trail the little clear drops were taking over his stubbly whiskers.

“I heard her gasp,
l
ike she was looking at something magic
al
,
”
Bagg told the bear. “And that’s just what she said
, ‘It’s
magic, Daddy. You made magic
!’
”

“But a couple of weeks later her mom took her away and the magic was gone.
”

Jennifer,
Morgan’s mother, had put a lot of time and effort in planning
the
escape to their new lives. When she did things, she did them right, which was a stark contrast to her half-assed ex-husband and the half-assed life they’d had together. She just hoped she hadn’t waited too long. It seemed like every time she turned around, Morgan became more and more like her father. Drifting through life
,
glassy-eyed and unmotivated
,
was loathsome and unacceptable. Lennon Bagg disgusted her, and she’d long ago come to wonder what
it was about him that
had originally caught her attention.

Jennifer cringed at the thought of her only child growing up an apathetic slug.

To this day, she relished the memory of Lennon’s face when she announced she was leaving him. “You make my skin crawl,
”
she’d hissed and
had
finally
been
rewarded with a
reaction
; the expression she caught on
that
normally
dull, uninspired face
before
it turned
away from her
was
crestfallen, humiliated.

But removing her daughter from
her husband’s
daily influence
had
backfire
d
. Morgan
had come
home
from weekend visits more like her father than ever. She
had been
insolent and brooding,
which
made Jennifer hate the man even more.
S
he
had
to
do
something drastic, beyond what the court was willing to do
;
she had to
fix the problem herself.

Escaping from Lennon Bagg was as easy as buying a plane ticket. He hadn’t bothered to hire a divorce attorney
—
not that he had any real assets to protect. They’d had maybe eleven thousand dollars in a money market fund, and
it would be lucky if
his 401k ha
d
another ten. With a kid, the house naturally
went
to her, with its modest equity.
T
he idiot judge granted him joint custody and regular visitation, despite the fact that he’d be living in a shit-hole apartment. No, the problem wasn’t getting Morgan away from her father, but the risk of making a mistake and getting caught was enormous. Jennifer took nothing for granted just because Lennon Bagg was an incompetent laggard.

Jennifer hatched her plan
,
pa
ying
careful attention to the smallest details. Her daughter was too old
for Jennifer
to chang
e
her first name, but most anyone would understand the confusion a small child had about a change of surname. Wasn’t everyone divorced at least once? And borrowing the famous actor’s name would make any sort of
Internet
search useless, lost among hits for
The Shawshank Redemption
and
Nurse Betty
.

E
ven more than five years and eight hundred miles of blue-green ocean
hadn’t done
much to mitigate Lennon Bagg’s influence.
The girl
obsessively drew pictures of birds instead of doing her homework. Her room was littered with them, and her teachers sent home warning notes regarding her erratic behavior and lack of attention.

*
*
*

Morgan Freeman
sat on her towel, alone on the bea
ch except for the birds. At ten
years old, the skinny little girl with pale skin and brown hair just touching her shoulders had already given up on a lot of things. Santa was the hardest to let go
of
, but there was also the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and all that junk about crossing your fingers for good luck and not stepping on cracks. All were gone for the fourth
grader
,
who had
also
given up on
finding
any real friends on this stupid island.

“Are you my dad?
”
Morgan halfheartedly asked a seagull. The question was strictly out of habit, since she’d seen him around enough to know better.

The gull had snuck up next to her towel in the pink sand, but without food
, Morgan was
apparently
not
all that interesting. It watched her for a minute or two, refused to answer any questions, and then flew back in the direction of
its
flock’s usual dumpster hangout behind the church kitchen.

Morgan Bagg had been renamed Morgan Freeman, according to the passport and other documents her mother had spent several thousand dollars to have created.

“Oh, yes, little missus, like the famous actor!
”
the uniformed customs officer at Bermuda L
.
F
.
Wade International Airport had said, waving the two females on with a friendly smile.

Birds being dead people was a fact etched in stone; it was absolute truth and nonnegotiable. It was also the main reason other fourth graders called her Mental Morgan and Cuckoo Bird Girl.

“I don’t care
what names they call me
,
”
Morgan told a Sooty Shearwater
that
had hopped up to her, head cocked to one side to better eye the girl. “I know you, don’t I? Have we met? You look really familiar.
”

The bird kept
watching
her from a safe distance. This big animal, it
seemed to
be
think
ing
, wasn’t making any sudden moves and maybe had something
to eat
in its pocket
s
.

“I’m looking for my dad,
”
Morgan told the curious, mud-colored bird. “My dad is a bird, too. His name is Lennon Bagg, and I miss him very much.
”

Back when Jennifer Bagg, now Freeman,
had
hustled her daughter through the Philadelphia airport, Morgan
had
kept asking about Daddy. She was supposed to see Daddy
that night
and spend the weekend. Where were they going?
Was
Daddy coming on the airplane, she
had
cried as her mother handed the tall lady in a dark blue skirt their tickets.

“
I don’t see Daddy anywhere, Mom.
”
Morgan peered
around her mother as they walked single file toward their seats.

“Daddy said we were going to make a real pizza tonight,
”
Morgan told her mother. She refused to sit, blocking the
a
isle for the impatient,
w
e
ary-
looking passengers behind them.

Morgan had heard her mother and friend talk
ing
about an airplane and a place called Bermuda,
whispering
things about starting life over far away.
Was
this what all the secret talk had been about?

“Daddy’s going
to be really, really sad, Mommy.
”
Morgan reluctantly
scooted into
her seat. “He can’t make pizza without me. I have to put on the tomato sauce and cheese. He’ll mess up.
”

“We’re going to a very special place with beautiful beach
es.
”

“Will Daddy be there?
”

“No, sweetheart.
”

“Then I don
’t want to go!
We have to get off the airplane right now!
”

“Daddy can’t come,
”
Jennifer
beg
a
n
, but she
looked
stuck
to the little girl, like she was having a hard time telling the truth. It happened sometimes to Morgan when she broke something nice.

“If Daddy can’t come
,
then I’m staying!
”
Sh
e
was
teetering
on
the edge of panic. “I don’t care about beaches. Daddy can take me to the beach.
”

“Daddy can’t come because he got very sick,
”
Jennifer said to the little girl
,
who was suddenly quiet, her face frozen by the words. “He’s very sick and you know how when people are sick they can be contagious? Do you understand what
‘
contagious
’
is?
”

“You can make other pe
ople sick,
”
Morgan
whisper
ed
.

“Yes, Daddy is very, very sick and he’s contagious.
”

Morgan
looked past her mother, out at the runway lights. The stewardess beg
a
n explaining the emergency procedures as Jennifer buckled them both
in
tightly. All the fight had gone out of
Morgan
as the plane backed up and
headed
away from the terminal. It
revved its engines and then coasted out toward the runway.

Morgan sat quietly, worrying about her father. Had she made him sick?

As the plane raced down the runway, Morgan watched her mother peering out the little window. It seemed like her mother didn’t care at all about Daddy. Why would
they
be flying away when Daddy was so sick, even if he was contagious?

“Is Daddy dead?
”
Morgan whispered to her mother, but Jennifer
didn’t
answered
,
didn’t
even
seem
to hear the little girl’s question. “Is he, Mommy?
”

The tears on Jennifer Bagg’s face
seemed
real as she turned and pulled her daughter into her arms as best she could with the seat belts still attached.
“Yes
,
he is.
”

“What happens when you die, Mommy?
”
Morgan asked into her mother’s
silky,
lightly perfumed blouse.

“You grow wings, Morgan. You grow wings and you fly up to Heaven.
”

The little girl rocked in her mother’s arms, crying softly, thinking about the two boxes of pizza mix she and her dad had bought on their last trip to the gro
cery store.

“We’ll make one giant pizza,
”
Daddy had told her. “With anchovies!
”

“Yuck!
”

“With pickles!
”

“Doub
le yuck!
I know y
ou’re just teasing.
”

Morgan
fell
asleep somewhere over the blackness of the Atlantic Ocean on her way to her new life. She dreamed about her father growing wings.