The Glass Case

“We’ll find him,” he says to me in a voice I barely recognize.

In that instant, I love him so much it is a dull pain in my chest. “Yes.”

He moves around and sits beside me on the porch, pulling me close. Together we stare out at the yard—at the lawn that always needs mowing and the flower beds that always need weeding. I think of how often I have bitched about the lawn. How could I have missed the obvious?

This backyard of ours needs only one thing. Children. Children playing and laughing and drinking water from the green garden hose on a hot summer’s day. I close my eyes in shame, wondering when I let things get so tangled. Was it only a few hours ago when I thought my life was unfinished and unformed? It feels like forever; the idle thoughts of a selfish child.

I lean against my husband, gathering strength and courage from him. Time falls away from us; I have no idea how long it has been when a police car pulls up in front of the house. A uniformed man gets out and slams his door, walking purposefully toward us.

Ryan’s arm tightens around me, and I know he is feeling it, too, this sudden, numbing rush of terror. I stare at the policeman’s emotionless face, thinking the same thing over and over again. Don’t say you’re sorry.

A tiny sound, a moan, escapes me. I can’t hold it all in.

The policeman stops and gives us a gentle smile. The gentleness of it is almost more than I can bear. “Mr. and Mrs. Bannerman?”

“Yes,” Ryan answers.

“We need a photograph of Bradley… to put out over the wires.”

I deflate, relieved momentarily. A photograph.

I think of Bradley’s T-ball picture, tacked to the wall in the kitchen, the one where he is wearing a black batting glove and a toothless smile. I think of all the times he missed the ball and all the times I said, “Don’t worry, pal. You’ll be as good as Billy one day.”

“Mrs. Bannerman?” the policeman says.

Wordlessly, Ryan gets to his feet. I know I should go with him, find the photograph for my husband, who can’t find the carton of milk in our refrigerator, but I can’t move. I stare helplessly at the policeman, trying awkwardly to smile. In seconds Ryan is back with the baseball picture. The policeman nods stiffly, tucks the small picture in a manila envelope, and leaves us alone again.

Ryan sits beside me, and the tiny patch of concrete between us seems to span continents. All I can think about is this morning, my last moment with my son. I zipped up his backpack and sent him off to school. Had I told him how much I loved him then? Or had I been my normal frazzled self, thinking of the hundreds of chores to be done after he left? I can’t remember.

“I don’t know if I can make it through this.” At the admission, control rips away like a damp tissue, and I am crying. Ryan takes my hands in his, cold flesh against cold flesh.

“We’ll get him back,” he says.

I can’t answer. Suddenly I am missing both my son and my mother. Of all the people who have passed through my life, she is the one I need now. I want to curl into her arms and be held. I want to smell her Pert shampoo and Estée Lauder perfume. I want her to tell me that Bradley is okay, that we’ll find him. She is the only one I will believe.

IT IS ALMOST NIGHTFALL—four hours since Bradley disappeared. A light rain has begun to fall. Is he warm enough, my baby who is out in the night all alone? Did I remember to put a coat in his backpack?

I am standing at the picket fence, staring out onto the street that yesterday was as familiar as the back of my hand and now looks as foreign and frightening as the lunar surface.

Two hundred forty minutes since we were plunged into the nightmare. I am broken now, utterly lost. Ryan is in the house, talking to the police. He feels better if he is doing something, trying to help. Me… there is nothing that will make me feel better, and trying only reminds me that my child is gone.

A breeze rushes along the street, slanting the rain across my face. It smells oddly of apple pie and carries with it a picture of my mother rolling out dough, then wiping her hands on her apron and coming toward me. Then crying, in that soft, unassuming way of hers, almost as if she had no right to weep at all. Oh, April… I wanted so much for you.

The words have a resonance tonight, a sad wistfulness I never noticed before; perhaps I wasn’t ready to see until now, this very moment. The disappointment was about my mother’s life, not mine, an expression of her dissatisfaction with her own life.

“I still love him, Mom,” I say quietly, tasting the salty moisture of my own tears. And it is true. After all these years—because of them and in spite of them—I still love my husband. Not in the starry-eyed teenaged way of long ago, but fully, deeply, and with all my tired housewife’s heart.

My mother could never have said that about her husband. That’s why she wanted me to be an astronaut or a surgeon. My father ran out on us early, and so my mom lived her whole life in Mocipsee, in a rented white house on a shaggy lot at the edge of town. She wanted more for me because she wanted more for herself.

I stare out at the sparkly street. Something glimmers at me, a knowledge that I’ve been seeking for most of my life, and I know all at once what it is. For years I have kept my mother’s memories in a glass case, thinking that they were too fragile to touch. But now I have to examine them, dissect them, and understand what part she played in who I am and how I feel about my life.

She led me wrong; I see that now. My loving, much-loved mother made me believe that happiness couldn’t happen in Mocipsee, that I was wrong to want Ryan and my children and my home.

It saddens me to realize how much her hopes and dreams hurt both of us. For most of my life I have been caught up in missing what I didn’t have, and so I didn’t see what was right in front of me. “I love the life I have, Mom. I’m happy. I’m sorry—so sorry—if it wasn’t enough for you, but it’s enough for me. As long as I’ve got Ryan and…” I can’t get the words out; I am crying too hard. And my babies, Mom. All I need are Ryan and my babies.

I stand there, sobbing, until the rain begins to slow. In the sudden quiet I hear the uneven rhythm of my heartbeat. Help him get home, Mom. Please…

The wind moans softly, and in the sound I hear footsteps. I know it is my husband, come to rescue me with a kiss. As usual, he knows when I am most vulnerable, and he is there. My handsome quarterback husband who now coaches Little League and sells toaster ovens.