Missing Chldren Read online

  MISSING CHILDREN

  GERALD LYNCH

  Doug Whiteway, Editor

  © 2015, Gerald Lynch

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Doowah Design.

  Photo of author by Maura Lynch, Crow Photography.

  Acknowledgements

  The editors of The Puritan magazine invited and published the short story “Child’s Play” that, after lying fallow for a good spell, grew into this novel. I am most grateful to the staff of Signature Editions, and especially to publisher Karen Haughian for expertly guiding the novel through to publication and for tolerating, and pretending convincingly to welcome, my ‘interventions’ in that process. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to editor Doug Whiteway — in my experience, a reader and editor nonpareil.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lynch, Gerald, 1953–

  Missing children / Gerald Lynch.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9927426-79-1 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-927426-80-7 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8573.Y43M58 2015 C813’.54 C2015-905905-4

  C2015-905997-6

  Signature Editions

  P.O. Box 206, RPO Corydon, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3M 3S7

  www.signature-editions.com

  for

  Mary Jo

  and our adult children,

  Bryan, Meghan, and Maura

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  L’Envoi: The SUV to Troutstream

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  No matter a Saturday night, for a long time already we’d been going to bed earlier. No more staying up for the late local news and snacking away like teenagers. Getting older, sooner tired, even if a sound night’s sleep was as long gone as the languorous passage of golden summer afternoons and endless evenings, when a night’s sleep was all sweet dreams and restoration. Anyway, the only thing new under the TV sun was bad news. Even the local show increasingly blared crime: murder, muggings, break-ins, drugs, molesting of children in their schools and playgrounds and homes — anything to arrest your attention long enough to sell you snow tires for the SUV, if you really really love your loved ones. Such fare disturbed sleep like a bellyful of barbecue Fritos. So, early to bed. Which was also the only way we ever got any pleasure reading done. Or that was Veronica’s idea of a bonus. I wasn’t much of a reader for pleasure then.

  For me the true bonus in going to bed at around ten was that both kids were still awake. Of course, Owen never slept regularly, prowling at all hours, sleeping in till shouted out of bed. I opened his door first.

  On his back, with eyes closed and wearing earplugs, he couldn’t have noticed me, yet something alerted him. A shift in the rank dimness? Paternal atmospheric pressure?

  He pulled the left plug and made an irritated face. “Huh?”

  I controlled myself. “I just saw something about that Rot-10 on CNN. Paternity suit. Looks like your rappin’ rebel hero’s about to become a daddy.”

  I’d meant only to mention the news item, and not in that voice.

  “Anything about the Market Slasher?”

  “Nope, not ready for the big show yet. He’ll just have to try harder.”

  I hated Owen’s sick interest in this, Ottawa’s very own psychosexual serial killer, who’d already been dubbed with a CNN-friendly name and announced with percussive theme music. Three young girls’ deaths so far, all hookers, two of them Natives, down in the ByWard Market. MURDER IN THE MARKET. That’s what my son was asking after. The media had been instantly on it like starved sharks to a banquet of fat white thighs. I needed to redirect Owen’s attention.

  “Uh, seriously, you should listen to the remastered Abbey Road LP.”

  He closed his eyes. “Beatles again? Who gives a shit?” A dismissive puff. “How ’bout turnin’ on the air?” He reinserted the earplug and dropped back his head like his throat had been incised. “El-pee,” he wagged and smirked, which I liked.

  It was hot but no call for A/C, as the temperature should moderate through the night. I had to fight a sudden urge to shake him by the shoulders and warn him against the tattoo he’d been threatening to get. So I shut his door and turned to my daughter Shawn’s.

  She was lying diagonally on the bed, facing away from me, on her stomach, legs together, in pyjama shorts that looked too small for her bum. From the back, her frizzy pale head made me think of a dandelion clock. She was growing, changed every time I looked at her, like when she was a baby and I was super-busy and hardly saw her at all. I suffered a hollowing pang of missing her.

  Her curtains were still open, which I didn’t like, and though gathered at the sides they were still moving in a light breeze, which I did like. But the window was a big black rectangle looking in on her.

  “Goodnight, sweetheart. You should close your curtains.”

  She made a sound that was mere acknowledgement. I reminded myself to be careful, as she was moodier and moodier these days. I sometimes wondered if she was growing to hate me. Veronica said it was just normal girl growing up. I argued that Shawn was taking her cue from disrespectful Owen. Veronica said I had to make more of an effort with Owen, that we should be patient with those we love. So now I made an effort just to continue pleasantly with Shawn.

  “What’s Wy been up to lately?”

  Wy’s her favourite TV character, from the daily noon-hour show Wy Knots that was all the rage. Wy plays the ancient Chinese philosopher character in pillbox hat, half-foot-long moustache, and shining dragon-decorated robe that might have been cut from the curtains at our local Chinese restaurant. His low-production show couldn’t be missed, even on Sundays, though it happened over the lunch hour. And the show’s product line — all manner of stuffed animals with names like Hei and Wei and Meimei — must have been costing us fifty bucks a month. Supposedly, most of the money went to the Children’s Wish Foundation. There must be a lot of kids out there wishing that Honourable Wy, as he styles himself, get filthy rich on Dishonourable Dad’s hard-earned dosh.

  Shawn went still, then spoke clearly: “Why can’t we get a dog?”

  “Owen’s dander allergy, remember?”

  “Owen says like you care about him.” She moved her head only a bit to the side, but as she spoke she fluttered her lower legs, kicking the bed: “Wy says if we can’t love our fellow creatures then we can’t love anybody, including ourselves!”

  She was rising, turning, so I was shutting the door when I said, “Goodnight, sweetheart, love you.”

  As I was pulling on my NOBODY KNOWS I’M ELVIS T-shirt (a gift from Owen, Veronica would have bought it), I said, “It did not go well with the kids again tonight.”

  She was reading in
bed and closed the book on her finger, turned her big browns on me.

  “That’s because you argued with Owen about the tattoo again, didn’t you? And all you do is make fun of Shawn’s ideas…don’t I know it.”

  She smiled forgivingly false, like I was the one needing forgiveness. Or maybe it was lovingly. I didn’t want to argue. Her eyes in bedroom lighting were as lovely as the first day I saw her, some twenty years ago. I often thought so lately. I should tell her. If I could just manage the right tone.

  In blue jockeys and T-shirt I lay beside her and knitted my fingers behind my head. “You’re thinking of last night. Tonight I simply told Owen the story about the rapper Rot-10 we saw on TV. He grunted at me, spoke disrespectfully. Shawn’s started that too now.”

  “I’ll bet you told him simply. Anyway, Owen’s embarrassed now about Rot-10. Didn’t you notice the poster’s gone? He’s already on to something new. Let me just finish this chapter.”

  “What poster?” I grunted. “Something new, yeah. All our son cares about these days is that damned Market Slasher business. It’s sick as sick can be.” She was ignoring me. But I was spoiling…for something. “Have you been letting Shawn think it’s up to me whether she gets a dog?”

  I didn’t have to look, she was pinching her lips. Then patiently: “No. Let’s stay together on the dog thing, dear. Or we’ll end up like Jack and Trixie using poor Jake as a bargaining chip. Okay?”

  Jack and Trixie and Jake, our troubled and troubling next-door neighbours. Some new crisis with them, I forgot what, it’s impossible to keep track. I could sense Veronica had returned full attention to her book. I moved my thigh against hers and she shifted away ever so slightly, made a knowing sound as if she were amused by something on the page. As long as Veronica was reading, I had the full back-cover photo of the female author staring at me. I think it was that Margaret Atwood character, looking like a mask from some Greek chorus accusing me of something I’d not even done yet.

  I stared at the ceiling and wondered how I could get the lights turned out. I didn’t really know why. I was restless. If Veronica turned away and slept, I’d probably lie in the dark again, my mind a wasp nest. Maybe I should be on something for sleep. I didn’t really like this going to bed early and reading business. I’d been staring at the same book for months: a tome about water that Shawn had supposedly given me for Father’s Day, whose author claimed that all future wars would be fought over fresh water. That’s all I needed to know. The rest was all boring case studies and statistics about thirsty dirt and death, with enough footnotes to make a whole other book. Besides which, all future wars will be fought over the same things as all past wars: tribalism, religious hatred, revenge, territory, whether water’s involved or not.

  I said, “Did you know that all future wars will be fought underwater?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It says so right here in my book.” I pretended to read: “The ice caps will have melted by 2050 and antimatter submarines will rule! Aquaman will rally legions of giant squid and schools of piranha in defence of the American way! There’s even a footnote citing Entertainment Tonight.”

  “Uh-huh.” But her chest shook for me now, not for something in her book. “Funny, this novel’s actually about the end of the world as we know it. Seems to be the new fad. Between the Apocalypse and sexual-abuse stories, there ain’t much to laugh at no more.”

  I thought of a joke, but instead reapplied the thigh pressure, suppressing the beginnings of an urge to pee.

  “Is there a world other than the one we know?”

  “What? Are you getting weird on me?” She looked like she meant it.

  Then she got excited, if not as I’d wanted. “Oh, yeah!” She clapped the book shut and rolled to place it on the night table. The pale flesh of her shoulders in the thin night dress, the curve of her cupped back to bottom, the bed perfumes… I forgot the piping up of my bladder. The next move was critical.

  She hurried, “That Debbie Carswell phoned to remind you of a meeting of the Troutstream Community Association executive committee, something about our arsenic-contaminated playgrounds. She said it is absolutely essential that Dr. Thorpe attend.” A fair imitation of the TCA’s wonky chair. “This is connected with that same case you just had at work, right? Still the arsenic-poisoned little girl that Art Foster misdiagnosed? The lawsuit you starred in?”

  I thought meanly about Debbie Carswell and yet another TCA meeting and that it was Veronica who’d roped me in with that crowd, but bit my tongue for once.

  “Hmmm.”

  She put her hand on my thigh: “I was thinking — and don’t say no right away — but why don’t you take Shawn somewhere tomorrow, just you and her. She loves the Experimental Farm. And she loves her father.”

  A negotiation. “In this heat?”

  She removed the hand.

  I said, “What about the Museum of Science and Technology? We’ve always had fun there, all of us.”

  She leaned on me, almost a snuggle-up. “Good idea, but just you and Shawn. Yeah, and that Carswell woman said” — and here she talked like a toff — “the necessitated emergency meeting is Monday, seven-ish.”

  “Necessitated emergency meeting my essential hairy ass. How did I ever get involved with those people? Oh yeah, it’s all your fault.”

  She rolled away again, turned off her light, thumped onto her pillow sideways, flicked her hips, and that was that.

  Hey, I was joking!

  I pinched my mouth, shook my head and rose noisily to take a leak.

  I didn’t think I was sleeping a wink through yet another long night of wavering consciousness, but I must have, disturbed, angry, irrationally enraged. The most memorable image was my screaming after her retreating back: “All I want is something to eat! I’m starving!” And awoke from such uneasy dreams to find myself…well, myself.

  Chapter 2

  I was craning about for a parking spot, squinting against the glare and silently cursing the forgotten shades. Sweating as I manoeuvred Veronica’s boxy little VW Golf through the rush of latecomers to the day’s opening of the Museum of Science and Technology. Thanking God that at least it wasn’t my white Caddy. But proceeding extra carefully because only the day before I’d driven her car into the wall while parking in my underground spot at work (bumping it only). I’d told Veronica my foot had slipped off the brake onto the gas pedal, but that’s not really what had happened. Pulling into my space, at the last second I’d pressed harder on the accelerator — some jolt. No real damage to the car, but I’d been shaken, mostly from the shock at how suddenly it had happened. And the thought: what must a real accident be like?

  Sitting beside me now, Shawn was searching the area on the right. “There’s …” she trailed off, because there wasn’t.

  Such monster parking lots make me feel overexposed. No shade. It was early September, yet we were in another heat wave. Ottawa, Sunday, and an affordable air-conditioned museum for the season’s late rush of tourists. The longer I cruised the choice lanes, the likelier I’d have to park even farther from the entrance. Just when I decided to give up and head for the Congo of tarmac, I spotted a space on the right. Shawn had missed it, as had all the others, a spot at the end of the row closest to the entrance!

  I bellied widely at the end of the row and came nose to nose with a Jeep. Its steering wheel was topped by a big head of wild hair and bushy black beard, bared teeth in a biting smile. I thought: don’t push me, suburban bwana, right now I’m game for a standoff.

  Both vehicles rolled forward in pulling-in arcs, both stopped. He broke into an unhinged grin and gestured at the space with upturned left hand as if he were presenting me to an audience, then threw back his dwarf’s head in a loud-mouthed laugh and gunned past me. Big of him, showing me up politely in front of my daughter like that.

  It was a parking spot reserved for the handicapped, of
course. I shook my pinched face at the freshly painted icon, the thermometer-like stick figure in the broken C of a wheelchair, the swastika-like legs. Ah yes, the dictatorship of the deprived.

  Shawn whined, “You can’t park here, Dad. This is for the physically challenged. Hurry up, find a spot!”

  I didn’t move. “Challenged? When they get the best spots and have to walk only a little ways?”

  “But they can’t even …” She got it — momentary shock — then giggled her guilt, the delightful Shawn, with her big green eyes and hated fair hair like that dandelion clock. Hated by her, adored by me.

  I relaxed some and backed up. I must show her today how much I love her. I mustn’t joke all the time. Resolved. But is such change even possible? Or would it have to be imposed, like smoking bans and designated parking for the afflicted — I jammed the brakes, almost having backed into a dad blinded by the toddler on his shoulders. Oblivious of his escape from disaster, he strolled on, his kid clutching his hair for dear life.

  By the time I’d found a parking spot, way out beside the lot’s lone school bus, and we’d walked to the entrance, there was a long lineup out the lobby. A stout woman in a tight grey uniform worked the door from inside, admitting a few at a time, quickly pulling it shut, enjoying her “empowerment.” So we stood in the morning’s mugginess, which thickened even as we waited, with the fat line extending behind us like a pale sunning snake.

  The temperature was forecast to zoom again. Yet another “hottest summer on record” was refusing to die with dignity. Even the climate-change protesters were finding it too hot by high noon on Parliament Hill, while the politicians were promising what they couldn’t do and really had no intention of trying (those would be my delusional boomer fellow travellers, whether demonstrating or promising to control the world’s climate like that). A/C use was causing more brownouts than ever. At work we were spending over a million on emergency generators instead of the beds and nurses we sorely needed. A girl had suffered second-degree burns on her abdomen when a rad unit came back in a power surge. There’s no malpractice suit as successful as one based on violation of the first principle of the Hippocratic oath, especially when it comes to kids, as my recent experience with the arsenic-poisoned girl, Marie LeBlanc, again testified.