The Box Garden (23 page)

“Fine. And Louis ... thanks for everything.” I emphasize the word everything; suddenly I’m tired, too.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

I’m late. Will my mother dare to scold me? Yes, she won’t be able to help herself. This in itself is alarming enough, but something else is even more frightening, something unnatural about the crouched, waiting house, or is it that strange car parked in front? Or perhaps there are such things as psychic waves, perhaps Greta Savage is right after all about telepathic electricity, perhaps tense, waving vibrations actually penetrate my skin as I walk around to the back door. I don’t know. But coming into this house alone at this hour makes me suddenly and ridiculously weak with fear.

The first thing I see in the kitchen is my mother’s tuna fish casserole. Its tender breadcrumb crust is unbroken. A serving spoon lies tentatively by its side, but the table hasn’t been set. How odd.

Eugene. What is he doing here? He is supposed to be at the Orthodontists’ banquet eating warmed-up roast beef and hard little scoops of mashed potato. He crosses the kitchen and presses me in his arms. Eugene, not here, really, can’t you see my mother’s standing right here?

My mother is standing by the stove. Her hands can’t seem to find a resting place. They’re not clutched behind her back, they’re not clenched at her hips, not folded across her chest, not nervously laced beneath her chin; they are floating freely in a frightening pantomime of helplessness.

Martin and Judith. They are standing in the doorway. How curious, they aren’t actually touching each other, so why do they seem to swim before me in blurry tandem unison like synchronized dancers. Married people grow to look alike—it must be true—just look at those two twin jaws slung in the same attitude of guarded concern. Concern? What is the matter with them?

And then there are the two policemen. Why do policemen wear that dispirited shade of blue, snow-shovel blue, looseleaf notebook blue? Two policemen sitting at the kitchen table. Sitting there. But when I come in the door, they shuffle politely to their feet. A dream, of course.

“Charleen,” Eugene holds me close.

“Thank heavens you’re home,” Judith’s mordant contralto escapes in a gasp.

“Now don’t get excited, Judith,” Martin says. “Give her a minute, everyone.”

“Are you Mrs. Forrest?” one of the policemen demands.

“Wouldn’t you like to go into the living room?” my mother frets.

“You must be calm,” Eugene says into my shoulder. “You must try to remain calm.”

“And your regular domicile is Vancouver?”

“Just take it easy, take it easy now.”

“Keep things in proportion ...”

“You’ll find the living room more comfortable.”

“We have one or two questions for you, Mrs. Forrest.”

“Here, Charleen, sit down. Martin, get her to sit down.”

“You’d better sit down; you must sit down.”

“There, that’s better isn’t it?”

“And when was your departure from Vancouver, Mrs. Forrest?”

“Leave her alone for Christ’s sake, can’t you see she’s confused.”

“Take it easy, Char, take it easy—”

“ ... if you’ll just answer a few questions ...”

“The living room is cooler and you could ...”

“Keep your balance, that’s the important ...”

“Your exact arrival in Toronto was ...?”

“Hey, give her a chance ...”

“You tell her.”

“I’m only trying to help.”

“I think Eugene should be the one. He’s ...”

“We understand this is upsetting, Mrs. Forrest ...”

“The living room ...”

“ ... unfortunately they expect a complete report at headquarters.”

“Charleen, listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yes.” Was that my voice? Was it?

Eugene is sitting next to me with both my hands in his and he is saying the most preposterous things. Incredible things. How melodramatic—I wouldn’t have thought it of Eugene. Seth has disappeared, Eugene is saying that Seth has disappeared. What a joke. Is it a joke? It can’t be because these policemen are writing things down and besides my mother doesn’t like jokes. And neither, I realize for the first time in my life, neither do I.

Seth has been taken somewhere by Greta Savage. Taken away. Several days ago. No one knows for sure when. Or how. But they have both been missing for several days. Now don’t get excited. No one knows where they are at this precise moment, but in all probability they are safe. Greta Savage has disappeared with my son and Doug Savage has called in the police, that is what has happened, Charleen.

“Say something, Charleen,” Eugene commands.

“Is she going to faint?” Judith’s arm is on my shoulder.

“It looks like it. Someone get some water.”

“Are you going to faint, Charleen?”

“Darling.”

“No,” I say distinctly. “No, I’m not going to faint.”

All I have to do is hold on to consciousness. Nothing is more important than that, for the moment nothing more is required of me. But if I shut my eyes for even a second I will never see Seth again. I must sit still, I must pretend I am composed of dry, unjointed wood, if I move one inch from this table there will be an explosion.

I must try to understand. Slowly, perfectly like a child memorizing the Twenty-third Psalm,
He restoreth my soul for his something-or-other sake.
Certain facts must be absorbed.

Doug Savage has been trying to reach me all day. The last call came from Parry Sound. He phoned at least four times today. Finally he agreed to talk to Judith. Judith phoned downtown immediately and had Eugene paged at the conference. Eugene came home at once and since then he has been trying unsuccessfully to reach Doug Savage. But Doug Savage promised Judith he would phone back at eight o‘clock. That’s less than an hour, Judith says, only fifty minutes now, and until then there is nothing anyone can do.

Seth and Greta have been missing all week.
While I was eating English muffins on the train, while I was kissing Eugene in the back of a taxi and, Oh God, while I was chasing around the countryside with Louis Berceau on a foolish, pointless, private, childish quest Greta and Seth disappeared; they took the Savages’ car in the middle of the night—there is some confusion about which night it was, Sunday? Monday? The Vancouver police think—there is reason to believe—that Greta may have given Seth some sleeping pills. Sleeping pills!

For the first two days Doug thought he could avoid calling in the police. He had a hunch that Greta might have taken Seth to a cottage they own in the mountains in Alberta. He borrowed a car and drove all night, but when he got there, he found only rumpled beds and tire tracks. They must have spent the first night there. After that, he thought they might have gone to Winnipeg where Greta has old friends, but when he got there, twenty-four hours later, he couldn’t find any trace of her. So he phoned here last night—Can that possibly have been only last night?—hoping Greta had made some kind of contact; after that he phoned the police. There had been no alternative.

The police: they are looking right across the country, but they have to move cautiously (are they dealing with a mad woman?). They don’t know. I don’t know. The situation has been judged too risky for public appeals, but they are making all sorts of inquiries. It seems Greta is driving mostly at night. A gas station attendant just outside Thunder Bay is almost certain they stopped there: a woman and boy resembling the police description stopped for gas and a hamburger. Did the woman appear dangerous? No. Had the boy appeared intimidated or drugged? No one had noticed. Which way were they headed? The attendant wasn’t sure. All he could remember was that they were in a hurry.

There is nothing to do but wait until Doug calls again. The two police officers wait courteously in the living room. My mother frets about whether or not to offer them coffee. Eventually she decides against it. She is more confused than alarmed; her six-thirty supper has been disrupted and in some indefinable way the untouched casserole precludes the making of coffee. As always she is just outside of events, hovering—ghostlike but demanding—at the perimeter. “How could you leave him with people like that?” she scolds me sharply. “What kind of friends are they?”

Judith tries to soothe her, but Martin flushes with anger. Martin is convinced that what I need is a stiff drink, but of course there is nothing, not in this house. “I’ve got some Scotch in my suitcase,” he says, suddenly assertive. He brings it out, and my mother, her hands still flapping wildy, finds a juice glass. But my stomach leaps and dissolves; I can’t even look at it; Martin picks up the glass, regards it mildly, and then drinks it off neat.

Judith’s voice floats over my head in a sort of chanting reassuring descant. “Look at it like this, Charleen, they’ve both been seen alive and well. Yesterday. So they’re okay. Maybe she’s a bit on the crazy side, but she isn’t dangerous, that’s what Doug Savage said on the phone. He said try not to get Charleen upset because Greta wouldn’t hurt a fly, it’s just a matter of hours before they find him.”

Martin pats me awkwardly on the crown of my head. “Look here now, Charleen, she’s a little unbalanced maybe, but, God, who isn‘t, and you’ve known her for years. You know she wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, nothing
really
crazy. You’ve got to keep thinking what she’s really like.”

Eugene sits wordless beside me. He’s not a wordy man, he never was a wordy man. He’s still holding on to my hands, and I’m grateful to him. There’s nothing to say. And nothing we can do.

I think of the huge distance between Toronto and Vancouver, the blending agricultural regions, the mountain ranges, river systems, squares of acreage, contours, city limits, county lines, townships and backyards with chickens and shrubs and children. I try to hold that whole terrain in my head; it is a numbing exercise, though it shouldn’t be all that difficult, for haven’t I just crossed that country myself? Haven’t I touched every inch of it? I think of all the people strung out over that distance, imbedded in their separate time zones. Seven-thirty: they’re washing dishes. I can hear cutlery right across the country dropping into drawers. They’re bathing children, playing bridge, reading newspapers, all of them magically sealed in their preserving spheres of activity. Out there in all that darkness is Greta’s car, a blue Volvo—it has to be there—cruising past apartment houses and suburbs and farms; and these people, shutting their windows, watering their lawns, walking their dogs, they just
allow
her to go by. Maybe they even wave to her. Maybe she waves back, she has always been so friendly, so pathetically friendly. She would do anything to help a friend; she is so kind, she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Remember that, above all remember that; she wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Eight o‘clock. We wait in the kitchen. The silence is minutely detailed like a blueprint for a piece of immensely complicated machinery. The minutes are sharply cornered and pressing, and each one hangs rigidly separate.