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Most of the time.
I push those words away and focus on the others, trying to call you. They are a lifeline. While I’ve been standing here, waiting, doing nothing, my boy has been trying to call to say he missed the bus.
I mean to mumble a thanks, maybe manufacture a smile, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, I turn and run. In some distant part of my brain I can hear Rex loping beside me, his leash snapping and clanging on the cement; at any other time I would worry that the puppy might trip over the strap and hurt his throat. Right now I can’t even think straight. All I know is that my precious six-year-old is out there somewhere, my baby who doesn’t understand yet about crossing the street and isn’t afraid of strangers.
I hit the house at full stride, crashing through the screen door. There is no message light blinking on the answering machine.
“Stay!” I bark at Rex, knowing this word has no meaning for him. I take a precious second to unsnap his leash and snag my purse, and I am gone again.
It takes several tries to get the car key in the ignition. “I’m coming, Bradley,” I whisper over and over again as the engine sparks to life and I jam the gearshift into reverse.
It is thirteen blocks from our house to the elementary school. I make it in four minutes—four minutes that feel like a lifetime. Fish-tailing into the parking lot, I wrench the old car into park and get out. In two strides, I am running.
He is all right. He’s in the principal’s office—just like the time Bonnie missed the bus in first grade.
I refuse to remember that they called that time, long before I left for the bus stop.
Then I see it.
“Oh, my God…”
Suddenly I am not running anymore. I can’t. I feel as if I am walking under water. The air resists me, draws the oxygen away until I can’t draw a breath.
Slowly, so slowly, I move toward the small blue container that lies fallen on the grassy hillside in front of Mr. Robbin’s third-grade classroom.
A Power Rangers lunchbox.
The fear I have been fighting explodes inside me. I sink to my knees in the grass; my fingers are trembling so badly that it is difficult to pick up the box. I fumble with the plastic latch for a second—lots of kids have Power Rangers lunchboxes, this isn’t Brad’s—then the latch works and the front gapes open. Out tumbles half a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich on wheat bread and an empty vanilla pudding container. Through the plastic baggie I can see that the sandwich is soaked with honey—just the way he likes it. A metal spoon clangs against the side. He has remembered this time to bring it home.
“Mrs. Bannerman? April, is that you?”
It is the principal, Mr. Johnston, and the casual tone of his voice severs the thin strand of my hope. He obviously did not expect me; he has no idea why I am here, kneeling in the grass, pawing through the remains of my child’s lunch. For a second—a heartbeat that brushes into eternity—I cannot look at him. When at last I do find the courage to turn, to lift my chin, my eyes are burning and coated with tears. “Bradley…” I whisper his name, hearing the hopelessness echoing in my voice. “Is he here?”
“Bradley? Didn’t he come home? I saw him standing in line for the bus.”
Through my tears I stare down at the leftover lunch. I clutch the half-eaten sandwich, bringing the baggie to my nose. The peanut butter smell is strong, even through the plastic. It is the smell of little boys everywhere. I allow myself a memory—peanut butter smeared in his hair, on his cheeks, on the scratched metal tray of his high chair. I remember laughing at the mess as I swept him into my arms and carried him to the bathtub. It was four years ago, that day, when he was just learning that food was for eating, not for playing with.
Four years ago… yesterday.
I think for a second that I can’t take the pain, that this heart of mine will simply stop beating—for how can it beat when my son is missing?
“Come on, April,” the principal says quietly. “We should call the police. The longer we wait…” Thankfully, his words trail off.
Like mothers have done for centuries, I get up, I go on. I do what I have to do. “Yes,” I answer, and though my voice is a frayed remnant of itself, it is a triumph. For already, before this tragedy has truly begun, I can imagine the end. I am an old, old lady. My eyes are wild and I live in a box under the freeway. I haven’t spoken in fifty years. Not from this moment on.
The last word I ever spoke was to the police when Mr. Johnston handed me the phone.
“My son, Bradley, is missing,” I said. “He is six years old.”
I AM sitting on the front porch when Ryan gets home. Already the house is swarming with well-meaning police officers. They are poking through my son’s room, picking up toys and opening drawers. I cannot watch. They act as if the secret to his disappearance is here, in the one place on earth where he was safe. In my arms is Teddy, the tiny patchwork bear Bradley sleeps with.
Ryan stops in front of me. It takes forever, but I manage to lift my head and look at him. His beautiful blue eyes are filled with tears, and I realize that I have never seen him cry before. I ache to join him, to feel the relief of tears, but I am dried up inside, the tears a hard knot in my chest. It is all too real now; my husband is here, and I have to tell him everything that has happened, and when the words leave my mouth, I know I will fall apart.
Behind Ryan, a roving red police light throbs from its static place on the top of the patrol car, slicing through my yard in surreal bursts.
I force the enormity of my fear into tiny compartments. Details. These I can handle. “I called Susan. She’ll pick up Bonnie and Billy after school. We’ll have to tell them, or course. But I thought… not yet.”
Ryan kneels before me, his big hand caresses my face, then curls protectively around my chin. He is crying openly now, my strong, silent, honorable husband, and his pain breaks what little bit of my heart remains.
