Whatever Happened to Janie? (17 page)

“Why can’t you think of Mom? Think what this is doing to her! You are leaving her twice, and each time because it’s more fun someplace else!” Jodie hung on to her sheets to keep from leaping across the room and shaking Jennie by the throat. “You’re spoiled. You were a spoiled-brat three-year-old, and now you’re a spoiled-brat teenager! You’re going because the Johnsons have a better house! You get your own bathroom. That’s what this comes down to. You’re sick of waiting in line for the shower!”

The pause was very long.

“I hope not,” said Jennie, her voice quavering. “I hope I’m a better person than that.” She sounded three years old, in need of a hand to hold.

Jodie got out of bed, took the single step required to cross the little lane of rug between them, and lay down next to Jennie on top of the covers. “I thought we were doing so well,” said Jodie. “I thought you were getting happy.” Two thin blankets lay between them. There would always be something between them. “Were you acting?” said Jodie.

Jennie lay still.

“I want you to know something,” said Jodie. Her throat swelled hideously. “We weren’t acting. We were happy. We were glad to have you home.”

J
odie sat cross-legged on her bed as Janie emptied the bureau drawers: the half of the room Jodie had so optimistically, so childishly, prepared.

Jennie had too much for her three suitcases. Now she was filling brown-paper grocery bags. Very neatly she folded sweaters to the exact dimensions of the bag and very neatly lowered them on top of each other.

“We’re not going to have a life as neat as that,” said Jodie, “after you’ve gone. Do you think we’ll just lie here, neatly stacked? Color coordinated, like shirts on a shelf? Do you think you’ve been fair? Do you think you’ve been kind?”

Janie could not meet her sister’s eyes and stared out the window instead. It was a warm day—wild and wonderfully windy. The sun was gold and the sky was cloudless and all the earth felt like a gift. Here we are! the world was saying. Just what we used to be! Loving, flawless, and good. Come home! We’re waiting!

When she had telephoned home to tell her Johnson parents she had permission to come back
for good, even those parents said what Jodie said.
We have to be fair: we have to do the right thing by your birth family, we have to
—

But her Connecticut mother paused. “Forget fair,” whispered Mommy. “Come home.”

No matter what Janie chose, she could be fair only to half the people involved.

She thought of all divorcing parents whose children were forced to decide whether to live with Daddy or to live with Mommy. Tons of kids had to make this decision. Which parent to go to? Which parent to slap in the face? Nobody deserves a slap, thought Janie. Unless it’s Hannah.

“This is the best I can do,” she said to her sister.

Jodie Spring shook her head once. “You didn’t do your best. Not by us, anyway.”

It was true, so Janie said nothing.

She lined up the suitcases, the cardboard boxes and paper bags by the bedroom door. Mr. Spring had said good-bye to her early that morning, when he took the twins to their baseball game. He looked a hundred years old. He had put his arms around her and she had wept but he had not. He said sadly, “We love you, sweetie. Take care of yourself.”

There were few words for a man whose child wanted her other father.

The twins unemotionally waved good-bye. She had hardly made a dent in their existence, nor they in hers.

Mrs. Spring was driving her to Connecticut. Janie would not pick out her prom gown with Jodie and Mrs. Spring after all. She would not see a single baseball game of the twins’ and she would never
play Nintendo with a brother and sister again. She was going home to finish the school year where Adair and Pete and Katrina and Sarah-Charlotte would have lunch with her and Mr. Brylowe was her English teacher and Reeve would drive her each way in his Jeep.

Janie could hardly wait to see the huge blue turnpike signs with their immense white letters:

When she crossed the state line, it would be solid; it would really be over, she’d wake from the nightmare at last.

She could not look at her New Jersey mother, who had to stay in the nightmare.

Stephen silently loaded Janie’s belongings into the car. Janie was actually slightly surprised that Stephen had not killed her. He’d wanted to. “You,” Stephen had said, “deserve to be dead.” Now he was arranging her belongings with great care, so nothing would tip or rattle. As if it mattered.

In a dreadful circle of events, it was now Mrs. Spring who would bring her daughter to Miranda Johnson, just as Hannah had done twelve years ago. It was Mrs. Spring who would place her baby girl’s hand in the hand of the woman who would be her mother from now on.

She loves me enough to give me up, thought
Janie Johnson, but I don’t love her enough to give up anything.

Jodie, Stephen, Mrs. Spring, and Janie stood on the driveway. Nobody touched. Stephen extended his hand and it took Janie a moment to realize he meant her to shake it. This is my brother, she thought. Don’t sisters and brothers hug when they say good-bye?
Stephen’s been a brother, but I haven’t been a sister.

She shook his hand.

“Tell your mother,” said Stephen, “thank you for inviting us up for the weekend.” Janie could not imagine what it had cost him to refer to Mrs. Johnson as Janie’s mother. “Brendan and Brian aren’t going to come, but Jodie and I will. So we’ll see you in a month.”

Such a gentleman. Janie looked sideways at him, wondering.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t poison the sandwiches.” His control slipped and vanished. “It’s you Johnsons who do that kind of thing,” he spat out. “Hannah, she thinks nothing of stealing cars and babies. And Janie, she thinks nothing of destroying families and damaging—”

“Enough, Stephen,” said Mrs. Spring.

Stephen stopped.

For his mother’s sake, thought Janie. He loves her enough to give her what she needs. And I don’t.

Jodie touched Janie’s shoulder. It was hard for her, and the closest she could come to an embrace. Jodie shrugged, and bit her lip, and stepped back. Janie wanted to fling her arms around Jodie, tell her that she was a wonderful person—

But instead she gave Jodie a tight and trembling smile, and quickly climbed into the front seat. Mrs. Spring sat behind the wheel. They backed out of the driveway. Janie waved. Neither Jodie nor Stephen waved back.

The car pulled away. The red house disappeared. They left Highview Avenue, and in a little while they were on the interstate, heading north.

Once they commented on traffic, noting a close call by a poor driver. They did not discuss their mission. In northern New Jersey, Mrs. Spring pulled into a service area to get a cup of coffee. They left the car and went into the restaurant. Janie got a Pepsi. At the end of the cafeteria line, Mrs. Spring paid for both drinks. It was a transaction that absorbed her deeply. Tears welled up in her eyes as she accepted her change, and Janie thought: this is the last thing she will ever do for this daughter.

“I want you to know I’m sorry,” said Janie.

They walked stiffly, each trying not to cry.

“I don’t know why I went with Hannah,” said Janie. “I want you to know I’m sorry I did it. I know that Hannah didn’t make me. I know she didn’t use force. Jodie and Stephen are absolutely right. You can blame me for everything.”

Mrs. Spring seemed unaware of the stink of exhausts and the roar of traffic. She looked up into that same lovely windy blue sky they had left an hour ago and blinked hard. “No. It’s my fault, sweetheart. Don’t take this on your shoulders.”

“Your fault?”

“You were the middle child. A pair of kids above you and a pair of kids below you. The twins took up
tremendous time and attention. They were in diapers, they were yellers and screamers, they were kickers and fighters. Jodie and Stephen could do things in a pair. Even though in some ways they were antagonists, they were inseparable. And there you were in the middle.” Janie and Mrs. Spring went down the wide cement steps from the restaurant into the parking lot. Janie tried to remember where they had parked the car. “I didn’t have quite enough time,” said Mrs. Spring. “I tried, but … the twins … in the shoe store that day … you stormed off. You were only three but you had a mind of your own. I’m sorry, sweetheart, that …
oh, God!
I’m sorry!”

Now Janie was weeping. “No! From the minute I saw my face on the milk carton, I knew I was the one who had been bad. Because my parents couldn’t have been.”

“You were three, Jennie. Three-year-olds aren’t bad. The only person to blame is Hannah, and Hannah is out of reach. There’s no point in laying blame.”

They reached the car. Set their drinks on the hood while they fumbled for the locks. Hesitantly, Mrs. Spring ran her fingers over Janie’s face. Janie flung her arms around Mrs. Spring in a hug so tight it hurt her own muscles. Their tears mixed when they touched cheeks.

“Good-bye, honey,” said her real mother. Her voice was barely audible. Her last three words were more breath than speech. “
I love you.”

S
tephen helped Jodie move the second bed out. Jodie could not stand to look at it, the bed her sister was supposed to be in. They hammered apart the railings and dismantled the headboard and footboard. Stephen yanked the cord to the disappearing attic stairs and with considerable difficulty hoisted each piece into the low-ceilinged heat trap. “She left her Jennie things,” said Jodie.

“Her what?”

“Her mug, her book bag, her headband, her key ring—all the stuff Mom and I bought for her that say
JENNIE
.”

“You want to smash them or pack them?” said Stephen seriously.

The violence had gone out of her. Jodie could think only of her mother, taking that terrible drive, meeting the Johnsons, having to leave and drive home alone. Would she make it? Could she manage that return trip? Why hadn’t they gotten that lawyer again, or else Reeve?

But Mom had insisted. “I have to,” Mom had
said, refusing to explain. “I have to take Janie there myself.”

“Janie?” Jodie had repeated.

“That’s who she is. She stopped being Jennie when she was three and a half.”

Jodie looked at the
JENNIE
things. “We’ll take them to the Salvation Army. We’re not going to have a Jennie collection in the attic, the way the Johnsons saved Hannah. It’s too sick.”

“It’s Hannah’s fault,” said Stephen. His eyes were bright with rage and hatred.

Brother and sister thought of the suffering and fear and endless burden of worry their mother and father had borne. Every minute and every hour and most of all, every night, spent wondering:
Is she all right? Is she hurt? Is she safe? Is she dead? Is she afraid?

They thought of their mother’s sleepless excitement in December and January, when she knew she was getting her daughter back; their father’s desperate eagerness to hold his baby girl again.

They thought of Janie Johnson: somebody else entirely, who chose to go back to another set of parents.

“I’m going to get Hannah for this,” said Jodie, filled by an ancient primitive ache. Revenge sounded hot and rewarding.

Her brother’s eyes narrowed while he considered it.

“I want to hurt her back,” said Jodie. “The police aren’t really looking. It’s not a priority for them. They have murders happening this afternoon. Why
would they bother with a twelve-year-old kidnapping where the kid is safely home again?”

It was true. After the little flurry of activity, which in Mom’s opinion was just bald curiosity—greedy peeking into private lives—the investigation had dried up.

“The FBI won’t do anything unless some local police force turns her up,” said Jodie. “We can look instead. Hannah was in New York two years ago. I bet she’s still there. I bet we can find her.”

“But there are millions of people in New York,” said Stephen. “What are the odds of us finding the one person we want?”