The Garden of Last Days (48 page)

She was smiling. She turned the hose on her face, her mouth open to the warm mist that tasted like rubber and brass, and she swallowed and swallowed, the water beading up and running down her forehead, cheeks, and chin.

IT WAS SERGEANT
Toomey who stood in the sun beside the emergency room door. A pair of green aviator lenses were flipped down over his glasses, and as Lonnie pulled up the Tacoma, the old cop saw her and smiled and she got the door open and ran to him and hugged him hard, pressing her wet cheek to his chest, his big hand patting her back.

“We found her, hon. We sure did. We sure did.”

He led her to a small yellow room and left her alone. It was cold with too much air-conditioning and April couldn’t sit down at the table or one of the chairs against the wall. She crossed her arms over her chest, goose bumps rising across her skin. The only window looked out at a corner waiting area where Lonnie sat talking to Sergeant Toomey.

The last minutes now were almost a hallucination. Did he really
say she couldn’t see her daughter just yet? Did he look her in the face and say
that
? “Just yet?”

And now Lonnie on the other side of the glass, shaking his head and shrugging at whatever Toomey was asking him. This new friend of hers who knew nothing about her and that’s what she was seeing, wasn’t it? They were talking about
her
.

Franny asleep in her car seat, purple syrup on her chin and at the corners of her mouth, the hot coffee spilling on April’s thigh like some scolding God she should’ve listened to, the drunk little foreigner and his money, again the images searing her—her daughter’s small thighs, her smooth abdomen, Franny’s eyes wide when she chokes, these things seen by someone else, in a different way, a sick way, and they find her in some
car
in a
garage
, and her mother is not staying in this room without her another fucking second!

The door opened just as April reached it. Sergeant Toomey held it for a short woman in a cardigan sweater who glanced at April and pulled out a chair and placed a notebook on the table. She looked over at April, the door closing behind her.

“Are you April Connors?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Marina.” She offered her hand.

April ignored it. “Are you a doctor? Where’s my daughter? I want to see her right now.”

“Please, have a seat, Ms. Connors.”

“I don’t want to sit. I want to see my daughter.” Her voice broke. She took a deep breath that moved unevenly through her. Pinned to the woman’s blouse was a laminated ID card, her photo there, some writing.

“I’m a child protective investigator, Ms. Connors. Please, do sit down.”

Child. Protective
.

April pulled out a chair. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry and tacky. There was the dead dog curled on its side on the shoulder
of Washington Boulevard, its matted fur and sunken rib cage. “Is she okay? Just tell me—” She tried to swallow, looked at the woman’s knees. “Is she all right?”

“She appears to be, yes.”

April covered her face with her hands, her crying filling the room like the air itself had been waiting for it, Franny swaddled in a blanket in her arms, her pink face, her closed eyes, that thin patch of hair on her head. And it was as if a rope had been lifted away from April’s throat.

“Here.”

April lowered her hands. She wiped at her eyes and took the tissue from the box the woman slid over to her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The woman glanced at April’s T-shirt and bare legs, her flip-flops. She looked down at her closed notepad, then back up. “This has been very difficult, I’m sure. But you should know that in situations like this, where a child is left unattended and is put in some kind of danger—”

“She wasn’t unat
tended
. I paid someone to take care of her! She was not unattended.”

The woman raised her hand. “Please, let me finish.” There were gray hairs at her temples, though her skin was smooth, her eyes warm but guarded. Like a nurse. “It’s clear to me you love your child very much.”

“Of course I do.”

“But we have a set of guidelines we go by—we must go by—whenever a child has been placed, knowingly or unknowingly, in a potentially hazardous situation.”

“But, she—”

“Please, Ms. Connors, let me finish.” She took a breath, straightened her shoulders. “The medical exam indicates your daughter was not sexually abused.”

The woman blurred. April looked down and shook her head, the quivering breath filling her lungs a gift, everything a gift.

The woman patted her hand. “Your daughter will have to be examined further, by me, to make sure of this. But the physical indications do look good. Would you like a glass of water?”

April nodded. She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. The woman was in the corner of the room, filling a paper cup from a spring water dispenser. April looked out the window. Lonnie was watching her from his seat. Two old women were sitting next to him, talking to each other.

The woman handed her the water. It was cold and April drank it all. “I just need to see her. Please, she needs me.”

“Yes, she does. But—” The woman picked up her pen. “Because she was put in a situation where her abduction occurred, I’m afraid I’m required by law to assess her home life before she can be returned to you.”

“
What?”

“Is there a relative she can stay with?”

There was a jolting inside April’s chest, a queasiness spreading through her belly. “What are you saying? For how
long
?”

“It could be a few days, it could be longer. We have ten days to complete the investigation.”

“Ten
days
.”

“Yes. Is there someone I can call?”

April stared at her. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d just said or meant. Did she just say what she’d said? Franny had never spent one night away from her. Not
one
.

“Ms. Connors? April?”

“What?”

“Where is the father? Does he live with you?”

“No.”

“Can I contact him?”

“No, he’s up north. He’s nobody. He’s nothing.”

Marina DeFelipo, that was her name, April could read it clearly on her ID card, this child protective investigator, who opened her notepad now and was writing.

“Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”

Her mother smoking at the kitchen table, waiting for Franny to hurry up and eat. “No, I have no family here, but my landlady takes care of my daughter. She has her own bedroom there and everything. Look, she watches her all the time, I only took Franny to work last night because Jean was in the hospital; she can stay with Jean, can’t she?”

“It’s possible. What’s her address and telephone number?”

“It’s the same as mine.”

“What’s the same?”

“Her address. We live above her.”

Marina DeFelipo sat back in her chair. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, it can’t be the same residence we’re investigating.”

“Why
not
?”

“That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”

April said nothing. She could feel her heartbeat. The sick emptiness inside her. The cold air of the room. But it was all so unreal. This conversation could not possibly be real.

“Do you have any close friends I can call?”

Stephanie in her new condo in New Hampshire, her fake breasts and polished nails and sincere smile, Lonnie out there, alone now, skimming a magazine, his Puma club T-shirt under the fluorescent light.

“April?”

She shook her head.

The woman wrote something on the pad she quickly closed. “Your daughter will have to be placed into temporary guardianship.”

The air in the room had knives in it, a whirring, an electric hum. “A
foster
home?”

“Yes, she’ll be safe.”

“She’s already safe! I can’t fucking believe what I’m hearing, I paid someone to take care of her and she didn’t and it’s not my
fault
. I want to see my daughter. I want to see her right
now
!”

The door opened, Sergeant Toomey there, one hand on the knob. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” the woman said. April was breathing hard. She didn’t remember standing. Her knees were water and she was caught now between both of them, this investigator of families and this policeman who hadn’t slept all night either, who’d found her daughter and brought her here safe. In his presence she felt ungrateful and very tired, a blood-deep tired she spoke through now: “I just want to see her. Please, she needs to know I’m here. Please. She needs to
know
that.”

THEY HAVE TWO
rooms attached one to the other. Two beds in each, a polished television cabinet, a clean bathroom with golden floors that shine, a kind of stone not found at home. The carpet is new and will not be an insult to pray upon, and the window has a view of a courtyard, small tables beneath the trees.

Imad takes one room for himself, though the Egyptian may stay here with them for one night, Bassam does not know for sure. From the minibar he takes a Perrier water and opens it and drinks half of it and lies upon the bed. The room is cool, comfortable. He is tired from the trip and from his night of no sleep. Tariq stands before the open television cabinet, the remote control in his hand. He presses the buttons until there is a picture. He presses more and then there is sound. A man swings a long steel rod and watches the ball fly into the air and land so far away on the short grass near the hole, a flag sticking out of it, hundreds of kufar watching silently behind ropes on both
sides of the green. The low voices of the announcers. As if this were a holy place, as if what these people were doing was important.

Again he is a boy, standing behind rope in the crowd in Riyadh. He has six or seven years and he is here with his married brother Adil and their uncle Rashad. Bassam no longer remembers why he is in Riyadh, so far from Khamis Mushayt, but he is standing in a crowd of many people, his brother behind him, his hands on his shoulders. There is a wooden platform. Two men are upon it, one standing, one kneeling. It is after the midday prayer and the sun is high and it reflects sharply off the blade of the sword held by the man in the black kaftan. At his feet the kneeling man weeps from under a hood, his hands bound behind him, he weeps and recites the Al-Fatihah. This seems to confuse the other man for he pauses and holds the sword high and waits for the weeping man to finish.

Not of those who have incurred Your wrath
.

Nor of those who have gone astray
.

The sword falling in the sunlight, the soft cracking sound, the thump of the hooded head as it rolled along the platform, blood spraying from its base so redly. In the crowd there was the cry of a woman, prayers muttered by men. And Bassam could look at the hooded head but not the body that held it, not that.

In a teahouse later, his brother and uncle argued over the executioner’s decision to wait. Uncle Rashad said it was right and just that he wait but Adil said no, no, Respected Uncle, and he cited the Al-Tawbah sura: “‘For they denied Allah and His apostle and remained sinners to the last. … Through these Allah seeks to punish them in this life, so that their souls shall depart while still in unbelief.’ He should have slain him in a pure state of unbelief, Uncle. Let him taste Jahannam.”

“But Allah is merciful, Adil. The man should have his chance to repent.”

“No, there is no repentance.”

“I disagree, my nephew. I disagree. This also from Al-Tawbah: ‘They knew there was no refuge from Allah except in Him. Therefore
He turned to them in mercy, so that they might repent. Allah is the Forgiving One, the Merciful.’”

“Yes, respected Uncle, for believers. Not for this killer and adulterer we saw today.”

Uncle Rashad stroked his beard. He looked down at Bassam sitting at the table beside Adil, Bassam who loved asabi’ al-sit, but he could not eat it. Each time he looked at it he saw the hooded head rolling along the platform, the blood spraying from it. And he both wished he could see the man’s face and was glad he could not. Uncle Rashad smiled down at him and sipped his tea and looked out the window.