The Hands of Strangers Read online

  She takes a coin from her pocket and reads the rules on the back of the card. Underneath the three circles are numbers one through nine. If all three numbers are the same, she is a big winner. If two are the same, she is just a winner. She flips the card and rubs the three silver circles. A four, a nine, a six. She folds the card and tosses it on the ground.

  She gets up and walks away from the river, takes the long way home through neighborhoods that she hasn’t seen in months. She notices a new bookstore, new paint on the face of an apartment building. She stops at an empty pizzeria and has a beer and a calzone. When she’s done she heads toward home, content in the sunshine, her hands in her pockets and a rhythm in her walk and twice men stop and give her long, wolflike stares. The second time she winks at the man and he loses his nerve. She catches her reflection in a window and sees a younger Estelle, less aware. She looks around, up and down the street, at a sheet drying on a balcony, and in an instant it seems foreign to her, as if she has been picked up and put down in a city she has never seen before. She is a Parisian and has known nothing else, filled her entire life with an unspoken pride of knowing the sidewalks that don’t find their names on the tourist maps. Unlike those that come for the spring, unlike those that put in a year or two and call it their own. The real thing. The real place. The swarms of wide-eyed visitors nothing more than part of her city, like a cloud of gnats hovering in her backyard. And now her city has displaced her, made her feel estranged, as if she woke one morning and the names of streets and cathedrals had been translated into a language she didn’t speak. She looks back at her reflection and realizes that the city that once held her as its own now holds her at its mercy. She sits on the curb and smokes a cigarette, tosses pebbles at a pothole. Maybe Jon has it right, she thinks. Maybe the more pathetic and hopeless we become, the more likely the empathetic finger of God will attach itself to our heads.

  After the cigarette, she walks home, less rhythm than before. At her building she avoids the elevator and walks up the stairs. She opens the door and expects to see Jon but he isn’t home. She lies on the couch and kicks off her shoes. Her heartbeat slows and she feels the end creeping toward her. Creeping toward her from every corner of the room, seeping through the walls and ceiling, closing in on her like a slowly drifting fog. She closes her eyes and imagines the flowers, imagines the way she looked in her reflection. She tries to fight it off but it is unbeatable and she relents, lets her body absorb the unknown.

  She opens her eyes and turns on the television. She takes the cigarettes from the coffee table and walks to the window and opens it. She lights the cigarette, looks down into the street. M. Conrer sweeps the sidewalk. An old woman watches her dog shit then she picks it up with a plastic bag. Estelle watches the street until she finishes the cigarette. She tosses the butt out of the window and goes into the kitchen. The cabinets are bare and she can’t remember the last time they have been shopping the way that normal people shop. She closes the cabinet doors and looks at the telephone and the red message light blinks. She pushes the play button and a generic voice says, “You have two messages.” Then she pushes the button again and hears the voice of Marceau.

  Jon wakes and sits up and his temples throb. His neck is tight as he moves his head from side to side and he smacks his lips, his mouth dry and chalky. The tube and duffel bag are in the corner. The sun has fallen and a gray twilight fills the room like a fog. He goes into the kitchen and splashes water on his face and rinses his mouth, then he notices a note pinned to his shirt. He takes it off and reads, Stay as long as you would like. Iris. But he knows by the faded light that it is time to go.

  He puts on his coat and picks up the bag and tube, but before he leaves he takes a quick stroll around the apartment. It is evident this is only where she works. He sees nothing but wine and water bottles in the kitchen—no refrigerator, no microwave. In another room are more portraits of the women and a pile of clean canvases. The bathroom is bare except for toilet paper, a bar of soap on the sink, and a clutter of dirty towels hanging on a rack. In the tub are recently rinsed brushes and the tub is splotchy with watered-down grays and oranges and greens. He reaches to open the door to another room down the small hallway from the bathroom but it is locked.

  He walks back into the large room where the women sit on easels and he looks them over. None have the draw of the woman on the café wall. So he reaches for the one nearest—the half-dressed woman sitting on the concrete steps of a vague building—and he rolls her up and puts her in the tube with Jennifer. As he leaves and walks into the street, he looks both ways for Iris, wonders where she eats her meals, bathes, falls asleep.

  His headache is sharp and he stops for aspirin at a magazine stand before he goes down to the metro. The man behind the counter looks at him and laughs, says something in an Eastern language to the woman unpacking a box of postcards. She looks at Jon and cuts her eyes back at the man and throws her hands up in celebration and they laugh together. Jon pays for the aspirin and walks down the street, feels the eyes of the neighborhood on him. The morning comes back to him in a cloud. The proclamations, the reaching for strangers. He sees the sign for the metro at the end of the street and he hurries, walks with his head down, eager to disappear below, where no one looks anywhere but straight ahead.

  He opens the apartment door and Estelle rushes over to him before he can get the door closed.

  “Listen, listen,” she says, almost breathless. She grabs his arm and pulls him into the kitchen. “Listen to the message. Marceau.” She pushes play and then she clenches her fists and holds them under her chin.

  “What is it?” he asks and she puts her hand over his mouth.

  After a beep, the recorded Detective Marceau says, “Estelle and Jon, this is Detective Marceau and I would like to talk with you as soon as you receive this message. We have some information regarding Jennifer. It is only information but it is helpful so telephone me when you hear this.”

  The message ends, and there is another beep, and it is Marceau again with the same message.

  “Twice,” she says. “It must be something important. He has never called twice.”

  “You haven’t called yet?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “Don’t wait,” Jon says. “Call. Now, now, now.”

  Estelle takes the phone and they sit on the edge of the couch. Jon’s right leg bounces. Estelle misdials once and starts over. Marceau answers on the third ring and she says, “Detective Marceau, this is Estelle and we have the two messages. What is it?”

  “Estelle, yes. Is Jon with you?”

  “Right here.”

  He clears his throat and says, “Wait for a moment, please.”

  “What is it?” Jon says.

  “I’m on hold.”

  Jon leans forward, rubs his hands together, the pain in his head and neck forgotten. Estelle’s eyes are wide and tentative. Marceau returns and says, “Sorry, I wanted to get the information correct before we spoke. Please understand this is nothing absolute but it is more than we have had.”

  “Just say it,” Estelle says. Jon puts his head next to hers to share the receiver.

  “This morning we received a phone call from an unidentified woman who says she saw a young girl at the RER station at Les Saules who fit Jennifer’s description. Her hair was cut short and she was wearing boy’s clothes but the woman believes it was the same child she has seen in your poster. She was with two middle-aged men. According to the woman, she tried to speak to the girl but the men took her by the arms and left the station quickly.”

  “She didn’t follow them?”

  “Unfortunately, no. But she gave us a description of the men and we have had officers in the area all afternoon. We will keep an alert in the area for some time. This is not great news, but it is news. At the least, it gives hope that she is alive.”

  Estelle gives the phone to Jon and covers he
r mouth with her hand and begins to cry.

  “Hello?” Marceau says.

  “That’s good,” Jon says. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Not now. I will call you again soon.”

  Jon hangs up and sets the phone on the coffee table. Estelle falls across his lap and he leans on her. After several minutes she stops crying and they sit up. Look at each other. Don’t say anything. They sit close together on the couch until the last remnants of daylight fade and the apartment grows dark except for the light in the kitchen. Jon begins to speak once but stops himself. The street traffic disappears as the evening transforms into night and only an occasional passing car breaks the silence. Estelle pushes Jon to the end of the couch and lays a pillow in his lap, then she stretches out. She turns on her side and in minutes she falls asleep. He slumps, lays back his head, and stares at the dark ceiling. He imagines the faces of the middle-aged men who are handling his daughter—thin, sunken faces, strange bloodshot eyes and contorted smiles, the same face divided by two, twice the ugliness. The faces float around the ceiling and then there aren’t only faces, but four arms, four hands, holding her and cutting her fine, brown hair, putting her into clothes that don’t fit. Two voices daring her to speak once outside the door.

  At least, it gives us hope that she is alive, he hears Marceau say. He looks down at Estelle. Her mouth is open and her breaths long and he brushes a strand of hair away from the corner of her mouth and remembers the day they met on the train. The way he brushed her hair away and she opened her eyes and said thank you. The way the world opened up in front of him at that moment, this city, this life, racing toward him with the speed of the train. And now this woman in his lap in this city that was once an open-ended question but now shrinking, disappearing a little more each week, its answer to the direct question the same day after day, a bland, apathetic no. But today its answer is maybe. His leg has fallen asleep but he doesn’t move. He can almost hear footsteps in the hallway, the small voice asking if it can stay up longer. He closes his eyes and this time there is another face with the two men, the face of Iris, wide-eyed and alive. He squeezes his eyes tighter but it won’t go away, moves in front of the other two, opens its mouth to speak, but he opens his eyes and shakes his head and chases it away. Estelle moves, makes a short, childlike snore. He puts his hand on her hip, then rubs his fingertips along her leg, up her arm, across the back of her neck, hoping that there is a way back.

  7

  Jon falls asleep with Estelle in his lap and they don’t move for several hours. Estelle wakes a little past midnight, sits up and rubs her eyes, then she walks to the window. The night is deep and the streets are quiet. Jon feels her move and wakes and she tells him to stretch out on the couch, that she is up for a while.

  She walks into the hallway toward their bedroom, but as she passes Jennifer’s half-open door she pauses, then gently pushes the door open. She takes two slow, careful steps into the room and stops, looks around, breathes in with hopes of smelling her smell. The shades in the room are down and the light from the street is blocked out and the room is dark like a closet. She walks over and sits on the bed and turns on the lamp of the bedside table.

  With the light come the colors—the pink sheets, the white comforter, the rainbow rug at the foot of the bed, the yellows and blues from the open closet. Estelle takes the bed pillow and holds it close to her chest, then she rocks and hums. She breathes in again but the smell is gone and she squeezes the pillow tighter, then she lies down on the bed, the pillow wrapped under her.

  It is the first time she has lain in Jennifer’s bed. She has been afraid to spend too much time in the room, afraid that being in her place might be a sign of replacing her, of moving on. But as she lies in the bed now, the fit of her body to the twin-size bed pacifies her, holds her like a hand holding a wounded bird. She rolls on her back and looks at the ceiling and wonders what Jennifer imagines at night when she looks at the same ceiling but her thoughts drift and she can’t find herself in Jennifer’s head. She tries to remember what she imagined as a little girl and it too is absent and she wonders what good it is anyway. If you can’t remember what you once imagined, what is the point in imagining? What is real is what is strong and she touches her finger to her nose and presses until it hurts. Then she pinches the back of her arm until she loses her breath. Then she pulls her eyebrow until several hairs pop out and she looks at them on her fingertip. What is real is what is strong. She blows the eyebrow hair from her fingertip, takes the pillow from her chest, and puts it behind her head.

  “God?” she says aloud.

  The quiet in the apartment is stale and almost smells.

  “God?” she says again, and a car horn sounds. She reaches over and turns off the lamp. I can see better like this, she thinks, and there is Jennifer moving around the room, going through drawers and changing clothes until she is satisfied.

  As a child Estelle prayed because she was told, as a teenager she prayed because she was trained, as a young woman she prayed when she remembered, and as an adult she prayed when she felt a need. As the mother of an abducted child she prayed because she didn’t know what else to do. She asked Jon once if he had been praying and he said, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

  “We’re dangling at the end of a rope,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “A drowning man will grasp for straws.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just something an old basketball coach used to say.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “I don’t know. He used to say something about horseshoes and hand grenades and making love too. He used to say a lot of dumb shit.”

  “What does that have to do with praying?”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  She stares at him and sometimes she wants to choke him. But not now. Not after the news. The only news. She sits up in the bed and watches Jennifer put on a sweater she has outgrown, tight through her shoulders and an inch from her wrists. She takes it off and holds it up, looks at it as if the sweater didn’t understand it was to grow with her. Then she tosses it in the corner and puts her hands on her hips, wondering what to do next. She moves to the closet and gets on her knees and picks through the shoes. She makes two piles in the floor, one for the shoes she likes and one for the shoes she doesn’t like. When she is done she puts the shoes she likes back into the closet and slides the dislikes under the bed. She moves to the toy box next, but before she can open it, there is a rumble of thunder that distracts Estelle and Jennifer fades.

  Estelle stands and walks into the living room. Jon sleeps soundly and she notices he hasn’t taken off his shoes. She carefully unties and slides them off and he doesn’t move. Then she takes the cigarettes and an ashtray from the coffee table and a bottle of water from the refrigerator and goes back into Jennifer’s room. She sits in the middle of the floor and lights a cigarette. “Yeah, I can see better like this,” she whispers, and the child begins to move again.

  Beautiful dreams full of numbers. A crowd on a boardwalk watching fireworks. An army of coyotes playing tug-of-war with a bone as long as a flagpole. In another, he has a big family, eight brothers and sisters, and they’re all there, laughing and arguing and slapping one another in the arm. But they don’t have names, and when Jon asks them, they laugh big, will say anything to keep from giving him names. He doesn’t know whose house they are in but it’s old, and when he looks out of the window there’s no street or neighborhood or city lights, only a flat field that runs into a dull horizon. He shifts from happy to frustrated, knows that these people share his blood but they won’t be handled too carefully. But even frustrated, it’s a room of people all pieces of him, all familiar with one another. One by one they leave until he’s alone and then he notices there’s no furniture in the room and the window is shrinking. The room gets smaller and smaller until he opens the door and walks out
and there’s a forest where the open field used to be and it’s so dark. He walks into the woods and the only sound is the crunch of leaves under his feet. No birds, no squirrels, no snakes. He stops and leans on a tree and the tree is rotted and falls over, then he moves to another tree and gives it a shove and the same thing. And another, and they start to fall like dominoes and he turns to run back toward the house, leaping and ducking, but he’s lost and only running and running, dodging crashing trees and looking into the sky for some light to steer him but in every direction the sky is mud.

  Jon wakes with a jerk, sits up, then falls back again. Estelle calls out to him from Jennifer’s room and he says he’s okay.

  “What are you doing in there?” he asks.

  Estelle leaves the child’s bedroom, walks into the living room, and turns on a lamp. Jon shields his eyes, then rolls over and puts his face into the sofa pillow. Estelle sits on the floor.

  “It feels different tonight, doesn’t it?”

  Jon answers into the pillow and it comes out in a mumble.

  “What did you say?”

  He turns to her and says, “He said don’t get excited.” In her face he sees that he’s too late, that she’s decided this is it. In only a few hours, a lift has appeared in her tired eyes.

  “Her smell is gone,” she says.

  Jon sits up on the couch, stretches his arms and twists, then says, “I went in there last week and noticed the same thing.”

  “Do you think it’s her?”

  “I don’t know. He said don’t get excited.”

  “You already said that.”

  Jon stands and goes into the kitchen and makes coffee. The microwave clock reads 3:59, the first morning light of a hopeful day still hours away. Jon brings over coffee for both of them and Estelle turns on the television. They drink the coffee and watch the television screen with blank stares, too aware that nothing is on at four in the morning. Estelle flips through the channels for half an hour until she tosses the remote to Jon and says, “I need a bath.”