Not Marissa’s friends. Not those girls.
She crossed Trinity and continued. This was a slight extension of Marissa’s route home from school. It was possible, Marissa dropped by the 7-Eleven to buy a snack on Tuesdays/Thursdays when Leah returned home late.
Taped to the front plate-glass door of the 7-Eleven was
Marissa’s smiling eyes met hers as Leah pushed the door open.
Inside, trembling, Leah removed her dark glasses. She was feeling dazed. Wasn’t certain if this was full wakefulness or a fugue state. She was trying to orient herself. Staring at a stack of thick Sunday New York Times. The front page headlines were of U.S.-Iraq issues and for a confused moment Leah thought Maybe none of it has happened yet.
Maybe Marissa was outside, waiting in the car.
The gentlemanly Indian clerk stood behind the counter in his usual reserved, yet attentive posture. He was staring at her strangely, Leah saw, as he would never have done in the past.
Of course, he recognized her now. Knew her name. All about her. She would never be an anonymous customer again. Leah saw, with difficulty, for her eyes were watering, a second HAVE YOU SEEN ME? taped conspicuously to the front of the cash register.
Wanting to embrace the man, wordless. Wanted to press herself into his arms and burst into tears.
Instead she wandered in one of the aisles. How like an overexposed photograph the store was. So much to see, yet you saw nothing.
Thank God, there were no other customers at the moment.
Saw her hand reach out for — what? A box of Kleenex.
Pink, the color Marissa preferred.
She went to the counter to pay. Smiled at the clerk who was smiling very nervously at her, clearly agitated by the sight of her. His always-so-friendly blond customer! Leah was going to thank him for having posted the notices, and she was going to ask him if he’d ever seen Marissa in his store alone, without her, when suddenly the man said, to her astonishment, “Mrs. Bantry, I know of your daughter and what has happened, that is so terrible. I watch all the time, to see what will come of it.” Behind the counter was a small portable TV, volume turned down. “Mrs. Bantry, I want to say, when the police came here, I was nervous and not able to remember so well, but now I do remember, I am more certain, yes I did see your daughter that day, I believe. She did come into the store. She was alone, and then there was another girl. They went out together.”
The Indian clerk spoke in a flood of words. His eyes were repentant, pleading.
“When? When was—”
“That day, Mrs. Bantry. That the police have asked about. Last week.”
“Thursday? You saw Marissa on Thursday?”
But now he was hesitating. Leah spoke too excitedly.
“I think so, yes. I can not be certain. That is why I did not want to tell the police, I did not want to get into trouble with them. They are impatient with me, I don’t know English so well. The questions they ask are not so easy to answer while they wait staring at you.”
Leah didn’t doubt that the Indian clerk was uneasy with the Caucasian Skatskill police, she was uneasy with them herself.
She said, “Marissa was with a girl, you say? What did this girl look like?”
The Indian clerk frowned. Leah saw that he was trying to be as accurate as possible. He had probably not looked at the girls very closely, very likely he could not distinguish among most of them. He said, “She was older than your daughter, I am sure. She was not too tall, but older. Not so blond-haired.”
“You don’t know her, do you? Her name?”
“No. I do not know their names any of them.” He paused, frowning. His jaws tightened. “Some of them, the older ones, I think this girl is one of them, with their friends they come in here after school and take things. They steal, they break. They rip open bags, to eat. Like pigs they are. They think I can’t see them but I know what they do. Five days a week they come in here, many of them. They are daring me to shout at them, and if I would touch them—”
His voice trailed off, tremulous.
“This girl. What did she look like?”
“...a white skin. More than yours, Mrs. Bantry. A strange color of hair like... a color of something red, faded.”
He spoke with some repugnance. Clearly, the mysterious girl was not attractive in his eyes.
Red-haired. Pale-red-haired. Who?
Jude Trahern. The girl who’d brought the flowers. The girl who spoke of praying for Marissa’s safe return.
Were they friends, then? Marissa had had a friend?
Leah was feeling light-headed. The fluorescent lighting began to tilt and spin. There was something here she could not grasp. Pray with you. Next Sunday is Easter. She had more to ask of this kindly man but her mind had gone blank.
“Thank you. I... have to leave now.”
“Don’t tell them, Mrs. Bantry? The police? Please?”
Blindly Leah pushed through the door.
“Mrs. Bantry?” The clerk hurried after her, a bag in his hand. “You are forgetting.”
The box of pink Kleenex.
Flying Dutchman. Dutchwoman. She was becoming. Always in motion, terrified of stopping. Returning home to her sister.
Any news?
None.
Behind the drab little mini-mall she was drifting, dazed. She would tell the Skatskill detectives what the Indian clerk had told her — she must tell them. If Marissa had been in the store on Thursday afternoon, then Marissa could not have been pulled into a minivan on 15th Street and Trinity, two blocks back toward school. Not by Mikal Zallman, or by anyone. Marissa must have continued past Trinity. After the 7-Eleven she would have circled back to 15th Street again, and walked another half block to home.
Unless she’d been pulled into the minivan on 15th Street and Van Buren. The eyewitness had gotten the streets wrong. She’d been closer to home.
Unless the Indian clerk was confused about days, times. Or, for what purpose Leah could not bear to consider, lying to her.
“Not him! Not him, too.”
She refused to think that was a possibility. Her mind simply shut blank, in refusal.
She was walking now slowly, hardly conscious of her surroundings. A smell of rancid food assailed her nostrils. Only a few employees’ cars were parked behind the mini-mall. The pavement was stained and littered, a single Dumpster overflowing trash. At the back of the Chinese takeout several scrawny cats were rummaging in food scraps and froze at Leah’s approach before running away in panic.
“Kitties! I’m not going to hurt you.”
The feral cats’ terror mocked her own. Their panic was hers, misplaced, to no purpose.
Leah wondered: what were the things Marissa did, when Leah wasn’t with her? For years they had been inseparable: mother, daughter. When Marissa had been a very small child, even before she could walk, she’d tried to follow her mother everywhere, from room to room. Mom-my! Where Mom-my going! Now, Marissa did many things by herself. Marissa was growing up. Dropping by the 7-Eleven, with other children after school. Buying a soft drink, a bag of something crunchy, salty. It was innocent enough. No child should be punished for it. Leah gave Marissa pocket change, as she called it, for just such impromptu purchases, though she disapproved of junk food.
Leah felt a tightening in her chest, envisioning her daughter in the 7-Eleven store the previous Thursday, buying something from the Indian clerk. Then, he had not known her name. A day or two later, everyone in Skatskill knew Marissa Bantry’s name.