She sighed. "Pretend you're cleaning one of the buildings, then: start with the biggest part of the mess and work down to the details."
"That's a good analogy, I'm impressed."
"I went to college and actually did something with my degree. That's how come I get to be a Property-Pricing Analyst and have fantastic insurance for your sorry ass. College people make impressive analogies. Now, are you going to ruin my dental work as well or can we talk like a civilized married couple?"
"That part about the degree was kind of a cheap shot."
"I figure I'm entitled tonight—stop trying to change the subject. And quit pouting. I found it cute when we were dating but right now it just annoys the shit out of me."
Don't think from this that Tanya and I don't get along because we do. She knows me better than anyone ever has or ever will and still loves me. Go figure. I knew I'd been a pain in the ass lately so I had at least one good punch coming. This was the first time Tanya had ever done anything like that. She's the most level-headed, pragmatic person I know, and if she was mad enough to hit me, then it was more than just anger and irritation; she was hurting. This was a woman who worked a forty-five, sometimes fifty-hour week at a tedious job where no one appreciated what she did, and for her week's efforts came home to find that her pearl-of-a-human-being hubby—who for the last ten days or so had worn a jackass suit that fit so well you'd swear it was tailor-made, who hadn't so much as kissed her in a week, and who, instead of parlaying his English degree into a teaching position, decided he'd rather mop up after students than instruct them because somewhere along the line whatever spirit he had for things packed its bags and took the long and winding road—this glittering prize she permitted to be her husband had gotten himself thrown in jail.
I had hurt my wife's feelings, and in my eyes that's just as low as if I'd hit her or worse.
I reached over and placed my hand on her leg, then gave it a little squeeze. "I'm sorry, hon."
"Uh-huh...?"
"I love you."
"You'd better." Her voice still sounded hurt but she managed a little grin.
We stopped for a red light. Still too ashamed of myself to meet her gaze, I glanced out at a telephone pole that was covered in fliers advertising everything from dating services to Goth bands to tattoo parlors and pizza delivery specials; most of these were ragged and torn and discolored, but one flier, deliberately placed on top of all the others so it faced the street, was new, and had been stapled in about a dozen places to make sure that the wind wouldn't tear any of it away.
I squeezed her leg a little harder.
She turned toward me. "What?"
"Look at that."
She leaned over and stared out the window. "What? What am I supposed to be looking at?"
I pointed toward the flier. "The biggest part of the mess."
2. From the House of Heorot
You see their pictures everywhere these days; they're so ubiquitous that, after a while, you force yourself to stop paying attention to them because they've become a perpetually sad and sick-making part of the background; this kid's face on a rectangular card lost amidst the rest of the junk mail—Have You Seen Me?—or that child's badly-photocopied picture on a homemade poster hanging inside the Post Office; maybe another kid's face stares out at you from a piece of paper thumbtacked to a cork bulletin board by the entrance and exit of your local grocery store; sometimes, if the parents and friends have exhausted all hope, you'll even see these fliers stapled to telephone poles or taped onto windows of abandoned and condemned buildings because, well, you never know, do you, who might have seen them in what god-awful parts of this city or the next?; if you're one of those who use the Internet like most people use oxygen, then you know there are websites dedicated to displaying these photographs along with their age-progressed counterparts (This is what Aaron may look like now, at age 10); whatever the source of your encounter, odds are you give the photo an at-best perfunctory glance (like I used to), then toss aside the card or look away from the poster or surf on to the next and less depressing website. It doesn't make you a bad or unfeeling person; it only reaffirms your helplessness as an individual to do anything about it: after all, how many kids do you see on a daily basis? How many children do you pass at the mall, on the street, in the lobbies of movie theaters? Every so often one of these kids might make a brief impression—a prolonged moment of eye contact, waving hello, giggling at a face you make because you want to see if you can get a laugh out of them—but most, if not all of them are in the company of an adult; so how are you supposed to tell if this adult is a parent, an aunt or uncle, an older sibling, or some monster who stole them away however many days, weeks, months, or years ago? And in all honesty, how long does the image of that particular kid's face stay fixed in your memory?
Have You Seen Me?
Maybe, possibly, could be; but I'm damned if I can remember.
So you look away—if you look at all—and try not to think about it. If you have children of your own, maybe you hug them a little tighter than usual when they go to bed that night, look in on them a couple of extra times while they're sleeping, and watch them go all the way through the school's doors when you drop them off the next morning on your way to work. You try not imagine how you'd feel if it was their face on the cards, the fliers, the websites. These are your kids we're talking about here, after all, not one of the missing, and while you might feel bad for the families of those card-, flier-, and website-children, you have to look out for your own as best you can, and you don't need these constant reminders in the sad, sick-making background that ultimately, like it or not, you have no control over what happens; that anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, regardless of how careful and watchful you are, a hand could reach out of the crowd, take hold of your kid's arm, give it a tug... and you're out stapling homemade fliers to telephone poles before dinner. So you look but you don't see because you can't think about it.
This does not mean you are a bad or unfeeling person. It means you love them. It means you are concerned.
It means you are afraid.
And you damned well ought to be.
I probably think about this far too much than is really healthy, but I can't help it. Tanya says I need to "see someone" about what happened, and she's right... but I'm not sure I'd know where to begin. I distract too easily these days; if we pass a car on the road and I see a crying child with their face peering out at me from the window, my first thought is always: They're scared to death and need help; if I see a kid in a store struggling to pull away from the adult who's got hold of them, I immediately wonder if they've only moments ago been snatched away from their mom or dad or other family member; if I hear a child yell or scream in the evening when our street is filled with children at play, it never occurs to me that the sound might just be one of glee or excitement or good-natured Let's-Scare-So-and-So because they're such a wuss—no; in my ears it is the sound of a terrified, helpless child being yanked into a stranger's car and shrieking for someone they love to come save them, please, please, Mommy, Daddy, somebody, anybody please help me.
I react this way because I am afraid, and when I tell this to Tanya she touches my cheek, smiles while trying to understand, and says: "How could you not be, after what happened?" Despite the strain it has put on our marriage (we were planning to have a child soon but now, I just don't know) she remains for me a rock, and I love her all the more for it, yet as soon as she says, "How could you not be...?" I snap back to that first phone call and it starts all over again....