The Weight Of Silence Part 4

"What time did you see Petra last?" he repeats.

Agent Fitzgerald is not what I expected. I thought he would be much older. Instead, he looks to be forty. He is very short in stature, with a bulldog chin and small feminine hands. His appearance does not fill me with confidence, and I am rather irritated with Deputy Sheriff Louis, as he had said this Agent Fitzgerald was well regarded in law enforcement and a force to be reckoned with.

"Last night," Fielda responds. "Eight-thirty, I'd say. No, nine. It was nine because she came downstairs once to ask me what a word meant in her book that she was reading."

"What word?" Fitzgerald asks kindly.

"What word? Umm, it was inedible. inedible. She wanted to know what it meant and I told her," Fielda explains. She wanted to know what it meant and I told her," Fielda explains.

I begin to shift uneasily next to her. "What does that have to do with Petra being gone? We have answered all these questions for Deputy Sheriff Louis. I do not understand why we need to answer them again. We should be out looking for the girls. Our time would be better spent," I tell him politely but firmly.

"Mr. Gregory, I understand your concern," Fitzgerald says. "It's good for me to ask the questions also and hear your answers, too. You may think of something that you didn't tell Deputy Sheriff Louis. Please be patient. We are all working very hard right now to find your daughter."

"All I know right now is that my little girl is missing, as is her best friend. She is out there somewhere in her pajamas and all I am doing right now is sitting here!" My voice is getting dangerously loud. "Why aren't we out there finding her?" Fielda grabs my arm and begins to cry, rocking back and forth.

"Shh, shh, Fielda," I soothe her. "I'm sorry," I whisper to her.

Fitzgerald leans forward. "If we focus on all the facts that we have, if we look at each little piece, no matter how inconsequential, then we are more likely to find out where Petra and Calli are. So I do understand how repet.i.tive this is for you, but it is very important."

I nod. "I apologize. Please continue."

"Can you give me a list of people who have visited your home in the last month or so?" he asks.

Fielda sniffs and wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Calli, of course, was over. Calli's brother, Ben, he delivers the paper. My friend Martha-"

"Last names also, please," Fitzgerald instructs.

"Martha Franklin. The two men from the furniture store, Bandleworths. I don't know their names, though. They delivered the bookshelf."

"We had a dinner party about two weeks ago, with some of my colleagues from the college. Walt and Jeanne Powers and Mary and Sam Garfield," I add.

"We often have students from the college come and do odd jobs for us," Fielda says. Fitzgerald looks expectantly at her. "Mariah Burton babysat for us on a number of occasions the last two years, Chad Wagner has done some lawn work this summer-he's in one of Martin's economics cla.s.ses-and Lucky Thompson. Lucky stops by once in a while. I can't think of anyone else, can you, Martin?"

"We have several hikers wander down this way, since we are right next to the woods. Many people from town come out this way to walk the trails, usually on weekends. Just about everyone we know has come near here at one time or another," I explain.

"When we leave, I'd like for you to make a list of everyone that has had contact with Petra, as far back as a year. Some names may be repeats that we've already spoken about. That's fine. We'll run all the names through our system and see if anything unusual comes up.

"Has anyone paid any extra attention to Petra while they were here? Talked to her or looked at her in a way that made you uncomfortable?" Fitzgerald asks, his blue eyes staring unnervingly at us.

"Everyone loves Petra," Fielda answers. "She just lights up a room, she can talk to just about anybody about anything."

"I look forward to meeting her, too." Fitzgerald smiles. "But think back, did anyone you know maybe go out of their way to give her a hug or speak to her in a way that made you pause, even just for a second?"

Fielda blinks at him several times and I can actually hear the connections clicking together in her mind. But she remains silent.

"I know these are uncomfortable questions for you, Mr. and Mrs. Gregory, but the sooner we look at all the possible scenarios, the sooner we get the girls home. We're sending officers door-to-door and checking on any known s.e.x offenders in the area."

"You don't think Petra and Calli went off on their own, do you? You think someone took them." Fielda looks desperately at Fitzgerald, and when he remains silent, she turns to Deputy Sheriff Louis.

"There are some slight similarities to the disappearances of Petra and Calli to the little McIntire girl," Louis says. "Nothing concrete, but...but like Agent Fitzgerald says, we need to look at everything, no matter how hard."

"Oh my G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d!" Fielda slowly slides off the slippery chintz sofa to her knees and then curls into a tight ball. "Oh my G.o.d!" she wails.

I drop to the floor next to her and glare at Louis and Fitzgerald. "Get out," I say enraged, surprising even myself. Then more calmly add, "Please leave us for a moment, and then we will talk more. Please go." I watch the two men as they stand and unhurriedly walk out the front door into the scorching heat. As the front screen closes and latches with a soft click, I lie down next to Fielda, molding myself to her, pressing my chest to her back, tucking my knees into the soft groove behind hers, sliding my arms around her middle and hiding my face in her hair. She smells sweetly of perfume and talc.u.m powder, which to me will forever on be the odor of deep, deep grief. Her cries do not soften, but become more fraught and my own body rises and falls with each of her shudders.

DEPUTY SHERIFF LOUIS.

Fitzgerald and I step out into the Gregorys' front yard, the sun nearly directly above us, hidden slightly behind an enormous maple tree-a perfect climbing tree, Toni would say.

"Jesus," Fitzgerald says in an exasperated voice, and I steel myself for criticism of the way I just handled the last three minutes in the Gregory home.

"How can you stand this sound?" Fitzgerald says disgustedly.

"What sound?"

"Those bugs. It sounds like millions of insects chewing on something. It makes my skin crawl." Fitzgerald pulls out a pack of cigarettes and taps one out, holding it between his slender fingers.

"They're cicadas," I explain. "It's vibrations. The noise they make. It's their skin pulled tight over their bodies."

"It's annoying. How can you stand it?"

"I suppose the same way that you get used to the noises in a big city. It's just there-you don't really notice it after a while."

Fitzgerald nods and lights his cigarette. "Do you mind?" he asks after the fact.

"Naw, go ahead," I reply and we both stand there, listening to the cicadas' anxious song.

"You feel bad," Fitzgerald observes.

"Yeah, I do," I respond blandly.

"It needed to be said, the thing about the McIntire girl. They need to know it's a possibility. Give them a few minutes to let it settle in their minds and they'll be ready to go forward. There's no way they will accept that their little girl could have been lured from her home, raped and murdered, but the possibility will be there, and they will be out here in a moment ready to fight like h.e.l.l to find her, to prove that's not what happened."

"We need to bring in search dogs, organize a formal search," I tell him, knowing this is already on his mind.

"I agree. We can get a trained hound and handler from Madison or even Des Moines down here by late this afternoon," Fitzgerald responds, taking a deep pull on his cigarette.

"The families are not going to want to hear about a search dog. Sounds too much like we'll be looking for bodies," I say, not relishing the thought of being the one to relay the information to the Gregorys and Toni.

"What's your gut feeling on this one, Louis?" Fitzgerald asks me, leaning against an old oak tree.

I shrug. "Not sure, but between you and me, I would look at Toni's husband a little more closely. He's a shady character, a drinker. Rumor has it he can be violent."

"Violent in what way?"

"Like I said, just rumor. Toni doesn't talk about it, there's never been a domestic call. Several drunk and disorderlies on Griff, and one DUI. Just something to keep in mind as this all unfolds," I say wearily.

"Good to know," Fitzgerald says looking off toward Toni's house.

"Days like this, I wished I smoked," I say, eyeing his cigarette.

"Days like this, I wished I didn't," Fitzgerald replies, as Martin Gregory steps outside his home.

"I'm sorry," Martin apologizes. "We are ready to go on, tell us what you need to know. Please...come in."

CALLI.

Calli had traveled deeper into the forest, beyond any spot she had been before. She was lost, the fawn had long since left to join its mother. Calli wandered around, trying to get her bearings. The trees here were thick and shielded the sun's rays from her, though the air around remained steamy, heavy with moisture. The trail in front of her led upward, a winding, rocky path that disappeared into a stand of hemlocks. Another trail led downward, she thought to the creek. Her tongue felt oversize and dry; she was so thirsty. She considered going back the way she had come, but dismissed the idea, knowing that Griff was still there somewhere. The muscles in her legs were shaky and tired from running and a dull hunger had settled in her stomach. Calli scanned the forest around her; she saw the plump red-and-yellow berries that the cardinals flocked around, but knew she should not eat them. She tried to remember what her mother and Ben had told her about the berries of the forest, what she could eat and what was poisonous. She knew about mulberries, the fat purplish-red berries filled with sweet juice that hung heavily on branches. She could eat those, but she knew not to eat the reddish-brown berries of the toothache tree, because they would cause your mouth to go numb. She trudged upward, eyes inspecting every bush and vine.

Her eyes settled upon a th.o.r.n.y tangled thicket holding blackish berries hanging from a white stem. Black raspberries. Calli hungrily plucked them from the twig, their juice bursting out of their skin with her touch, staining her fingers. The sweetness filled her mouth and she continued picking, fanning mosquitoes away from her find. Her mother had taught her where to find the wild black raspberries and she and Ben would collect as many as they could in old ice cream buckets, trying not to eat too many. When their buckets were full, they would carry them home to their mother, who would carefully wash them and bake them into pies that she served with homemade ice cream. Calli loved homemade ice cream and everything that went into making the concoction. She would tromp down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs where they stored the old hand-crank ice cream maker. It awed her how just adding the eggs, vanilla, milk and rock salt would create something so delicious. She didn't even mind the ache in her arm from turning the crank, and Ben would take over when she couldn't turn it anymore. The first thing she would do, she decided, when she got home was to haul that old ice cream maker up the steps so they could make a batch.

When she finished eating all the raspberries she could reach, she wiped her blackened fingers on her nightgown and rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, the imprint of her lips left behind like lipstick. Her hunger sated for the moment, Calli decided to continue her climb upward, to the highest point on the bluff. From there, perhaps she could see exactly where she was at and which direction would lead her home. But it was so hot and she was so sleepy. Just to lie down for a few moments, just to rest. She found a shady cl.u.s.ter of evergreens, well off the trail, cleared away the sharp branches that lay at its base, and, using her arms as a pillow, shut her eyes and slept.

BEN.

We've been waiting for eons for Deputy Sheriff Louis and the other guy to get here. Mom made me put on a nice pair of shorts and a shirt with a collar for when they come over to talk to us. I'm starving, but feel weird making a sandwich or something when you're out all by yourself with maybe nothing to eat. I grab a box of crackers and take 'em upstairs to eat in my room. When I walk by the door to your room, there's this little stretch of crime scene tape stretched across the door frame. Stupid, I think, people rifling through your stuff in your room when we should all be out looking for you in the woods.

I see Mom sitting on the floor of her bedroom, pulling things out of your treasure box. It's really an old hat box filled with junk. I got one, too. Mom calls it our treasure box because she wants us to put all the important stuff from our life in it. Then when we're old and gray, as she says, we can dig through all the things that at one time were so valuable to us. Actually, I'm already on my second treasure box because my first one got all filled up. She doesn't notice me standing there so I just watch all quiet. She's surrounded by a bunch of your school papers and art projects and she's touching each one, gentlelike, as if one wrong move will cause them all to turn to dust. She reaches into the box again and brings out something that I can't quite figure what it is. Neither can she, because she just stares at it for a long time, turning it around in her fingers; it's whitish-gray and about three inches long. Mom hears me behind her, turns and holds it out to me.

"What do you think it is?" she asks me as I take it.

I shrug and pick at some of the gray bits that look like fur sticking out of it. "I think it's an owl pellet," I say. "Look, you can see little bits of bone sticking out."

Mom looks and takes it back from me. I love that about her. Most mothers would freak out at the sight of something like owl throw-up, but she doesn't.

"Yeah, I think you're right. Why would Calli have this in her treasure box?" she asks.

I shrug again. "I guess for the same reason that I have a box of periodical cicada sh.e.l.ls in my room." This causes her to laugh and I'm glad, she hasn't laughed much lately. She carefully sets the pellet back in the box and pulls out a pile of something that looks like cotton.

"I know what this is!" Mom exclaims, smiling. "It's dandelion fluff all bunched together!"

"Okay," I say, "I can kinda understand the owl pellet, but I don't get the dandelion fluff."

"Don't you remember?" she asks me. "'When fairies dance upon the air, reach out gently and catch one, fair. Make a wish and hold it tight, then softly toss your pixie back to summer's night.'"

"I wonder what she wished for," I say.

"I wonder why she didn't let them go," Mom adds.

"Maybe she was saving the wishes up for something real big, then she was going to let them all go at once."

It's Mom's turn to shrug and she lays the fluff back into your treasure box on top of all the other stuff, puts the lid back on and slides it under her bed.

"Come on, Ben," she says. "Let me make you a sandwich. Louis will be here soon."

I have an idea of what you might have wished for, because they're the same wishes as mine. Number one-for you to talk again. Number two-get a dog. Number three-that Dad would just go on back to Alaska and not come back. G.o.d knows you'd never admit it and neither would I, but those would be your wishes. I know.

ANTONIA.

As I make Ben and me a ham sandwich and slice an apple in half, I think of Calli's treasure box. The dandelion fluff reminds me of Louis, of when we were kids.

The summer after Louis moved here, we'd go out to the meadow behind my house, the very house I live in now. Our field would be filled with happy yellow dandelions, and my mom would pay us a penny a weed to dig them out by the roots. No easy feat. We'd get old spoons to dig down as deep as we could, under the roots, and then toss them into an old plastic bucket. We could wrench out about one hundred in a day. My mother would give us a dollar, one shiny quarter for each of our grimy hands, and we'd hop on our bikes, ride downtown to the Mourning Glory Cafe and pool our earnings. I'd buy us a cherry c.o.ke, not the kind that comes in a can like today, but the kind straight out of a soda fountain, with the cherry juice squirted in. Mrs. Mourning would always put in two straws and two cherries, one for Louis and one for me. Louis would buy us a basket of French fries, piping hot and salty. He would write my name out on top of the fries in ketchup from the squirt bottle and then script his own directly below it. The fries with my name on them were mine, the fries with his name, his to eat. Some days, we'd each buy a candy bar. I always picked Marathon bars, and he would choose a Baby Ruth. Petra's mother, Fielda, was often at the cafe helping her mother. Friendly and sweet, Fielda would stand behind the counter watching us carefully, refilling our sodas. Looking back, I can see that Fielda wanted to be my friend, but I had Louis, and, well, he was all I needed, all I wanted. Years later, when we became neighbors and were eventually pregnant with our girls at the same time, Fielda tried again, invited me over for coffee, for walks, but once again, I was aloof, this time for completely different reasons. I was afraid she'd get an inkling of my sad marriage, catch my husband and me in a bad moment, see the bruises. Eventually she gave up and left me alone, just as she had eventually done when we were young.

Our dandelion weeding would last approximately ten days. By then we were bored with the job and had our fill of cherry c.o.kes and fries. We hadn't even made a dent in removing all the dandelions. They were beginning to seed and white puffs were whirling in the air above us, undoing all that we'd accomplished.

"You know," Louis told me, "these really are fairies."

"Yeah, right," I said, unconvinced.

"They are. My dad told me. He said that dandelion fluffs are magical fairies. If you grab one before it hits the ground, the fairy will be so grateful she will give you a wish once you set her free."

I sat up, setting down my dirt-crusted spoon. This interested me. Louis never spoke of his father, ever. "I didn't know they had flowers in Chicago."

"Yeah, they have flowers and weeds and gra.s.s in Chicago," he said indignantly. "Just not so much of it.

"My dad would say, 'When fairies dance upon the air, reach out gently and catch one, fair. Make a wish and hold it tight, then softly toss your pixie back to summer's night.' My dad said his granny from Ireland told him that and that the wishes really come true. Every summer when we'd see dandelion fluff we tried to catch one, make a wish, and then blow it back into the air."

"What'd you wish for?" I asked.

"Stuff." Louis, all of a sudden bashful, dropped his spoon and ran toward the woods, grasping at fluff as he went.

"What kind of stuff?" I called as I chased him.

"For the Cubs to win the pennant, things like that." He wasn't looking at me.

"What about your dad? Do you ever wish for your dad?" I asked softly. His shoulders sagged and I thought he would take off running again.

"Naw, dead is dead. It doesn't work for stuff like that. You gotta wish for money or to be a movie star or something." He handed me a soft white wish. "What are you going to wish for?"

I thought for a moment, and then blew it gently from my hand, the cottony wisp floating away.

"What did you wish for?" he asked again.

"For the Cubs to win the pennant, of course," I responded. He laughed and we ran off to play in the creek.

That wasn't my wish though. I wished for him to have his dad back, just in case.

Eight years later, when we were sixteen, we were back at the creek. We had just made love for the first time and I was tearful. I couldn't put into words what I was feeling. I knew I loved him, I knew that what we had done wasn't a mistake, but still I wept. Louis was trying to make me smile, tickling me and pulling funny faces, but tears just kept rolling down my face no matter what he tried. Finally, in an act of desperation, I suppose, he ran from the creek. I sat there, devastated, pulling my clothes on, mucus dropping from my nose. I had lost Louis, my best friend. He came back moments later, though. He held his two hands in front of him clenched tightly.

"Pick a hand," he said, and I chose his left. He opened his palm and inside were three frail white tufts of a dandelion. "Three wishes," he said and then opened his other fist to reveal three more dandelion fairies, "for each of us."