Whatever Happened to Janie? (20 page)

Building-wise, Jodie could not see much. People-wise, she felt that at least one million of New
York’s many million had walked by. She was close to tears. It was hard to swallow the ice cream, and it melted on her and she didn’t have a napkin and had to lick her hand.

To Stephen, Forty-second Street was full, not of potential Hannahs, but of successful businessmen in fine suits, who knew what they were doing, whose days were not stupid and futile, who would laugh if they knew what grandiose plans Stephen had brought with him on the train that morning.

Give it up, thought Stephen drearily.

And yet … against all odds … a little girl two states away had picked up a milk carton she normally would not touch, seen an old picture that nobody could recognize … and she had recognized it.

Against all odds …

Would they find Hannah against all odds?

He thought of all the hopeful young actors and actresses who came from their high-school plays to make it in New York; who must, like him, be shocked and scared by the city and the odds. But the odds were this: the ones who gave up and went home could never make it. The ones who trudged on just might.

Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend. Commuters were heading home early. Offices emptied as if the hands of God had turned the skyscrapers upside down and shaken out another zillion.

Fortified by the ice cream, they followed the laminated map to the next soup kitchen.

Stephen felt as if other humans had breathed in the available oxygen, leaving him gasping for air.
They took up the available sidewalk, shouldering him against pillars and building projects. But they didn’t, really. Nobody touched him. Like the school of fish he had first thought they were, they slipped around him. Irritably. He was always swimming the wrong way.

They accomplished nothing at the next soup kitchen, and never located the shelter supposedly near it.

Stephen no longer cared whether they were in safe neighborhoods. He didn’t care what color or what disease or what clothes anybody had. He just wanted to get home without anybody finding out what a jerk he was.

“Check the train schedule,” he said to Jodie. “When’s the next one?”

Jodie was not there.

He looked back, through the sweating, hurrying crowds.

She was gone.

His heart lurched, as his mother’s had before him, twelve years before, when another Spring child vanished in the crowd.

Never to be seen again.

S
tephen hunted for Jodie. His heart pounded so hard his ribs hurt. What will I say to Mom and Dad? he thought. How can this happen to us twice?

Where is she?

I have to find her!

The people of New York tightened in a hideous, evil net, impenetrable, and permanent. He could not break through, or see among them. He had thought he could pick Jodie out anywhere with her shining cap of red hair, but suddenly the world was full of redheads, and extremely full of people tall enough and wide enough to block Stephen’s view of anything.

Jodie!

He found himself losing his mind, becoming disoriented and shocky. He ran to one corner, crossed the street, and crossed right back on the same street.

Every legendary nightmare on which he had been brought up—the trunks of six abandoned cars—the twirling soda-fountain seat on which his baby sister had last sat—filled his mind and exploded.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, he thought. Not again! Not Jodie!

His arm was caught by somebody’s hand and he was jerking free, ready to scream, I’m busy! Don’t get in my way! when he saw that it was a policewoman. Pleasant-looking but calculating, estimating his potential for trouble the way Stephen would estimate the answer to a math problem.

“Something wrong?” she said politely.

“My sister.” It was all he could manage. Explanations would be so long and involved that there was no point even starting. “I’ve lost my sister.”

The policewoman just nodded. She did not let go of his arm.

Another voice said, “How old is she? She have red hair like yours?”

Stephen’s turn to nod.

The other voice belonged to a policeman, thin, Hispanic, full of amusement. The cop pointed across the street. There was Jodie, talking with many gestures to another policeman on the opposite corner.

Stephen’s terror turned abruptly into humiliation and a wave of scarlet shame completely enfolded him. The two cops next to him were laughing. He was a hick, a rube, a tourist.

“Walk light’s on,” said the policewoman, giving him a push into the street.

Stephen was so embarrassed he would not have minded being hit by a truck. But of course no truck hit him, and he reached Jodie, and now he was raging again, because his stupid worthless sister had left his side. It was her fault he had behaved so pitifully.
Stephen was careful to keep his back turned to his pair of police.

Jodie’s cop was a black man, built extremely wide, as if his shoulders had come from some other mold entirely than Stephen’s. His skin seemed more solid than white skin would; in fact, his entire body seemed more solid. His muscles went all the way through.

Jodie was discussing soup kitchens with him. She had the rest of the list, places far enough way that they needed to take subways. The cop did not seem to be impressed with Jodie’s plan of attack.

“Not neighborhoods for you two,” said the cop firmly. “Stupid idea. Your parents know you’re doing this?”

Stephen lied. “Sure they do.”

The cop knew a lie when he heard one. “Sure they don’t,” he said, grinning. “Catch a train, kids. Go home.”

“You don’t understand,” said Jodie, frowning. “My sister was kidnapped.” Jodie, incredibly, was prepared for this discussion. She had a flattened milk carton with her, which she showed to the cop. Stephen had not known Jodie possessed one, let alone that she had brought it.

The cop glanced at the picture of Jennie Spring, age three. Stephen knew he had never seen it before. He knew immediately that among all the hype he’d heard in his life, it was hype from Mr. Mollison that New York police were hunting Hannah down. New York police did not know the first thing about the Jennie Spring case.

“You’re looking for Jennie?” said the cop.

“No. Jennie is safe now. She’s with—well, her other set of parents, so to speak. We’re looking for the kidnapper.” Jodie showed the photograph of Hannah to the policeman. “You’ve seen this,” she informed him. “New York police are looking for her.”

Just when Stephen thought he could not be more humiliated, he was more humiliated. Jodie sounded like Nancy Drew.

The cop rubbed his upper lip. “Mmm,” he said, which was not very revealing. “And you two are hitting every soup kitchen in New York to locate this woman?” He looked at Stephen as if he had expected somebody Stephen’s age to be more sensible. Stephen flushed.

“This calls for a Coke,” said the cop. He handed a dollar to a vendor and popped open a can for himself. Stephen was low on funds. He bought one to share.

Jodie was encouraged by the presence of a police officer. She started so far back in the story of Jennie and Hannah that Stephen thought they would be here for days; that the policeman would have to bring in a second shift to hear the ending.

Stephen felt oddly insulated by the policeman, as if they were behind plate glass now, removed from the crush of the sidewalk, so it became a sideshow instead.

The policeman seemed relatively young, and yet tired enough that he also seemed rather old. Stephen wanted to ask his age but couldn’t think of a courteous way to do it. The cop asked no questions. He listened without expression. Surely even an experienced,
jaded Manhattan cop was not used to stories like Hannah’s.

When Jodie was done, he just said, “Still think the train home’s a better idea.”

Stephen remembered how much Jennie hated voices of authority getting all gentle on her.

“We can’t go yet,” said Jodie. “We’re going to find Hannah. I want Hannah Javensen to pay. I
know
she’s here. I
know
she is! If we go home now, we’ll always wonder. Would Hannah have been around the next block? At the next shelter? I still want to get her!”

The cop tossed his empty can in the trash. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who ever missed, and he didn’t.

Jodie said, “Are you people actually looking for Hannah? I do not have the feeling that you are really looking.”

The man’s eyes revealed nothing. Stephen had no idea what he was thinking or expecting.

Fashionable businesswomen, kids on Roller-blades, derelicts shuffling, bikers making deliveries, tourists listening to guides went past like surfers on waves. And like the sea coming in, were endlessly replaced by more.

He thought of his parents in historic Williamsburg, with its charming colonial houses and sweet brick paths. What sidewalks could be more different?

“That’s Hannah,” said the cop softly, pointing.

Stephen’s jaw fell.

Jodie whirled.

A figure swathed in layers of filthy clothing
stood in the gutter, picking up cigarette butts and examining them to see if there was anything left to smoke. It wore greenish pants, two cardigan sweaters, and a torn overcoat in spite of the heat. The hand not grubbing in refuse clung to the rim of a rusted shopping cart with a missing wheel. Plastic and paper bags filled the cart, and an old bowling-ball bag sat in the child’s seat. A large pink plastic doll with no arms stuck out of the bowling bag.

The creature straightened up. Its hat had once been a baseball cap and the bill hung in ribbons over its face. Its fingers remained twisted, stuck permanently in a scavenging position.

Stephen would not even have known it was a woman. He saw no resemblance to the photograph of Hannah.

Jodie was staring like a two-year-old with her nose pressed up against the car window. This
thing
was the daughter of Frank and Miranda Javensen? “Arrest her!” said Jodie.

Stephen’s mind cleared. There were loopholes here. “You don’t know who that is,” he accused the cop. “We told you about Hannah. You never heard that story before. You never saw that photograph before.”

The policeman smiled without showing his teeth. It was more of a non-smile. It carried a deep understanding, the kind Stephen remembered from his grandmother.

“I don’t know who that is,” the cop agreed. He put a hand on Stephen’s shoulder. It seemed too much weight for a hand. “But I know some things. When a person gets too old for a cult, when they
can’t bring in money, when they get sick, who needs ’em? Not the cult. Your sweet little girl from 1969? Your thoughtful college kid from 1972? Street people now. That’s Hannah, even if we can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. That’s Hannah, even if she’s a different race. Someday maybe we’ll stumble over Hannah Javensen. Maybe we’ll know it and maybe we won’t. But you don’t need to take revenge on Hannah. Life already has.”

The cop’s partner appeared. A woman. She tapped the radio strapped to her waist. “Come on.” She jerked her head in the direction he was to come.

Jodie ignored this inconvenient interruption. “Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Johnson know?”

“Who are they, exactly?”

“They’re the parents of Hannah and the ones who brought Jennie up.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, they know what happened to Hannah. Why do you think they live in some pretty little Connecticut town in the middle of nowhere? Because they know. Why live in New York and see it, too?”

They know
, thought Stephen. His heart, never before willing to enter the state of Connecticut, broke for the Johnsons. “Jennie went back to them,” he said. He felt perilously close to tears. Crying would be the ultimate horror.

“Sounds okay to me,” said the cop. “Everybody’s happier than they were, even if they aren’t completely happy.”

Jodie put her arms around him and hugged him. She was a girl and did not mind when her tears spilled over. “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if
she had invited him to a party and would miss him once the festivities were over.

The woman cop rolled her eyes. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute,” she teased.

Their cop smiled again. Tight, kind of sad, kind of nice. “Don’t worry about Hannah,” he said. “She’s beyond worry. Beyond punishment. Listen to me. You got a family that loves you, and Jennie’s got a family that loves her. What else is there? Huh?”

The train was already at the platform, waiting.

They got on.

The train pulled out.

New York vanished behind them.

The train lurched past some stations and stopped at others.

“I’m glad we went in,” said Stephen.

“Me, too.”

“We found Hannah.”

Jodie looked at him.

“Found her enough to count,” said Stephen. “Found her enough to stop thinking about it.”

The train went farther and farther south, closer and closer to home. By the time it reached their station, Stephen was a different person, almost as much as Jennie and Janie had been different people. His resident anger, his layers of hostility, were gone. He felt unusually peaceful.