You know you wish you were me Read online

  There is so much evidence to support her theory. Women attract power and scorn. Women can make life and give nourishment. Women, two particular women, rule her world.

  She is not a man hater. She loved her father, inept as he was. She loves Templeton in so many ways that it worries her sometimes. And there was Manny, he’s not a very good example because his weakness won out in the end.

  If her baby turns out to be a boy, she would be happy. She will just be happy to have a baby, to give Evee a brother or sister.

  She likes these feelings she is having. She is dreaming. Dreaming about the future. She used to do this a lot when she lived on her own. She didn’t dream of a careers or vacations. Love was her dream. To be in love. Love was a commodity that parents are meant to trade easily from each other to their children, a resource so rich, there is no danger of it depleting. This was her dream, her goal and career of choice – to be in love.

  She kisses her reflection and launches herself onto the bed, covers herself in the blankets and spreads her body out, taking up as much space as she can.

  ******

  TWO

  “Thank you for holding,” a young male voice rescues her from the static of a badly tuned radio.

  Hana talks quickly. She wants to get the campsite reservation settled before Evee comes home. Evee has been asking to go camping for weeks. She will be going into the second grade this year and it’s been too long since the three of them have gone away together. Hana can’t wait to see Evee’s face when she finds out about the dolphins. This campground guarantees dolphin sightings all summer. Hana tries to decide the best way to tell Evee, make her guess or give it to her as a reward.

  She listens to the guy on the phone as he lists the campsite options.

  As it turned out, there were only two things she absolutely had to do on her list today, the pregnancy test and this.

  As she gives the guy on the phone her credit card details, she hears a car door shut.

  Hana tries to facilitate good experiences for her daughter as much as possible. Hana’s memories of school are not her favorite, so she tries to arm her daughter with as many good experiences as possible, in the hope that Evee’s life will be a little easier. They’ve done a pretty good job so far, it seems. Evee has a lot of sweet friends and her school reports are always positive. Evee is a leader among her peers. Evee is a joy to have in class. That stuff must come from Olivia, because Hana’s teachers never gave such glowing reports. Hers were always, Hana is quiet and seems to spend a lot of time by herself. Does not work well in groups.

  She hears the boots.

  The credit card didn’t go through, the guy on the phone says.

  Hana is afraid Evee will come in now and the surprise will be ruined.

  “Evee, I’m on the phone I’ll be out in a minute,” she yells out into the hallway then shuts the door to the office and gives the guy the number again. It goes through.

  She hangs up the phone and slips her credit card back in her wallet and puts the wallet in her backpack. She looks around the little dark room they use as an office. It is at the end of the hallway, in between the bathroom and their bedroom. It is always cool, a good place to have long phone conversations or hide from the chaos of a house full of women.

  There are papers all over the desk. She picks up the one of the top of the pile, it’s a parking ticket.

  “Shit,” she says as she looks at the due date, it’s two weeks overdue. She picks up the phone and grabs her wallet from her backpack.

  The city employee on the other end of the phone is tired and Hana is annoyed. She is afraid there will be an additional fine, not that they can’t afford it, it’s the principle. The city has changed all of the parking rules and increased the fines at the same time. She is ready to tell the person that she does not agree with all of the strict changes and she is very frustrated, but there is no late fee after all so she holds her comments and wishes the tired and, most likely, underpaid woman a nice evening.

  She really has no reason to be upset about little things like parking regulations at the moment. Her life is pretty amazing.

  Hana smiles and takes a deep breath. Then she remembers Evee and tries to guess what she is doing, where she is in the house.

  Hana walks down the hallway to the living room. The sun is sending bright streaks of light through the room and dust is dancing in the glow. The house is silent except for the creak of the screen door’s hinges as it moves back and forth in the breeze. Hana goes to the front door and looks outside onto the porch.

  She hears music coming from down the street and the screech of tires somewhere in the distance.

  “Evee,” she says loudly.

  She walks to the kitchen and looks out the window above the kitchen sink. She can see the whole backyard from here. Evee is not in the yard, unless she is hiding underneath the window. Hana opens the back door and stands on the landing of the back steps. There is no sign of her. No backpack or boots.

  She goes back to the living room, stands behind the big maroon couch and looks out the front window. She can see the front yard, the driveway and the street. She leans her body onto the back of the couch and puts the palm of her right hand on the front of her neck.

  “Weird,” she says. The babysitter is very reliable. She is a mother herself and always does what she says she is going to do. There must be traffic or something.

  Hana decides to make use of the extra time and do the dishes. She doesn’t enjoy doing the dishes, but she likes the preparation.

  First she makes herself a cup of tea, which she sets on the windowsill overlooking the backyard. She stacks all of the dirty dishes next to the washing sink. She sips the tea in between scrubbing and rinsing the washing and the rinsing sinks. Then she scrubs the counter next to the rinsing sink with soap and water, wipes it down and sets the dish drying rack on top.

  Olivia gets impatient with Hana’s method. Olivia does the dishes in what Hana feels is chaos. Not clearing anything beforehand and leaving the water running the whole time. She puts clean dishes next to dirty ones and lets everything air dry. The kitchen usually looks exactly the same after she is finished as it did before she started, except that there is water everywhere.

  These dishes are pretty gross. It’s a little like punishment, she thinks.

  Hana picks up the mixing bowl with the dried pancake batter and submerges it in the steaming water.

  The phone rings. She is startled and drops the bowl into the full sink. She runs through the house to the office and picks the phone up.

  “Hello,” she is a little breathless.

  Water runs down her arm from the rubber glove. It tickles. She presses the phone against her ear with her shoulder and tries to take the sticky gloves off. There is a loud buzz as her ear presses on one of the numbers on the phone.

  “Hello? Hello?” it’s a voice Hana doesn’t recognize.

  “Sorry,” Hana grabs the phone. “Hello?”

  “Good afternoon, may I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Sims?” the woman says. Hana can tell from the robotic voice that she doesn’t want to talk to this person.

  “Uh, what is this regarding?”

  “Are you Mrs. Sims?”

  “No, there is no Mrs. Sims or Mr. Sims. This isn’t a good time. Sorry,” Hana hangs up the phone. She looks at the clock above the desk, it is twenty past three now.

  She calls the babysitter, but gets the machine. She doesn’t leave a message. She goes back to the kitchen, looks at the dishes and throws the gloves on the drying rack. They can wait.

  She goes out to the front porch and sits on the rocking chair. It is warm outside. She has been inside all day with front door open and the screen door closed. That’s what she does in the summer. Hana gets up and goes to the back of the house to call the babysitter again. No answer.

  She goes back to the living room and looks out the front window. Maybe the babysitter was supposed to drop Evee off at three thirty and they are on their way now. She sits o
n the couch and picks up a magazine. As she flips the pages, she looks out the front window. The street is quiet. Any second she will see the babysitter’s car.

  Here leg is bouncing up and down. Her stomach is tight and she feels like she wants to shake her hands. Stretch. Relax. She gets up and goes to the phone again.

  “Hello,” the babysitter says.

  “Oh, great, you haven’t left yet.” Hana is so relieved, she is smiling. She wipes sweat from her forehead.

  “Hana?”

  “Yeah, can I talk to Evee?”

  “What?”

  “Can you put Evee on the phone, please?”

  “She’s there, I dropped her off.”

  “When?”

  Hana feels like the room has shifted, just a little, but quickly.

  “Um, about three,” the tone of the babysitter’s voice is higher than before.

  “She’s not here.”

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Hana drops the phone and runs to the living room then turns back down the hallway. She looks into the bathroom, but knows Evee is not there, she would have seen her go in. She would have seen Evee if she went in to either of the two bedrooms as well, they are all off the hallway, which is visible from the office.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

  Hana looks into the rooms just in case. They are empty. She stands in the doorway of the living room again and scans the small room. She looks at the front door, which is on her left. It is open. Has it has been open all day? She is sure the screen door has been closed all day because she hates the fat flies that come into the house during summer, so she always leaves is closed.

  “Evee, you here?” Hana checks all of Evee’s hiding places. Closets, the bathtub, in between the couch and the loveseat and she is steeling herself in case Evee jumps out and screams, as she likes to do when they least expect it.

  On her hands and knees now, crawling like she did when they used to play horsey before Evee shot up three inches in the months before her seventh birthday. Hana is close to the dust and fuzz of their hard wood floors and part of her wants to go get the broom and dustpan, but she stands up and moves from room to room again. Bathroom, the office, bedroom and Evee’s chaotic room. Her face is getting hot and her heart is beating quickly.

  She goes out to the backyard, hoping to see Evee’s striped pants in the green grass or her head poking out of the bushes in the back by the fence. But as she reaches the edge of the yard and runs along the tall fence that divides the back of their property from the neighbor’s, she sees nothing.

  She runs toward the house and takes the steps up to the back door two at a time. In the small kitchen facing the backyard, she is dizzy and she can’t see well after being outside in the bright sun. She reaches out with both hands for the counter and closes her eyes for a few seconds.

  She sits down on one of the chairs around the old wooden dining room table. She looks at the piles of folded and unfolded laundry that require attention. She turns her body and looks out through the living room and the front window of the house.

  “Evee, come out now.”

  If she were hiding in the house, Evee would know to come. She would know that Hana’s tone means she is in trouble. Hana runs through the living room out to the front porch and down the steps that lead to the driveway, turns right and walks along the side of the house to the garage.

  “Evee.”

  Back to the front of the house. Nothing. She stands on the sidewalk not wanting to cross the threshold between the street and the border of their property. Not wanting to believe her daughter could be outside their safety zone.

  The street is eerily quiet. The sun shines bright white light on the empty driveways. There are no trees for Evee to hide behind. The city cut them all down after a postal worker broke her neck from a fall in a neighborhood miles away. The tree roots had ripped the sidewalk apart in protest against their confinement in this suburban street. Hana could relate. Years of growth broke the cement apart and created mountain ranges good for kids to ride bikes on, but bad for someone who wasn’t watching where they were going. Hana had not realized growth was an act of defiance punishable by death.

  Why isn’t anyone helping me? Can’t they see something’s wrong?

  She has the feeling that people are around, watching her panic from behind closed blinds. It’s like that Twilight Zone and she is the last person on earth.

  She heads to the house next door on the right. The Franks. She feels uncomfortable standing on her neighbor’s property without an invitation, but she continues halfway down the driveway then turns around.

  “Evee.”

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. There is a logical reason, she’s seven, she’s impulsive.

  She crosses the street and goes to the Stevens’ backyard. They have a pool. Evee swims there sometimes. Maybe they invited her in. She knocks on the front door and puts her ear to the wood. The house is quiet. She goes down the driveway and looks through the gate into the backyard. The pool cover is on.

  She can hear her own breathing, it’s a rough sound coming from deep in her throat. She feels lightheaded. She looks at her house from across the street. The screen door is still open.

  She looks towards the alley a couple of houses down. It runs perpendicular to their street and provides a thoroughfare for delivery trucks to go to the businesses on the main street near their house. High walls separate the alley from the houses at the end of the street. Sometimes teenagers drive their souped up cars very fast down the alleys, so Evee knows not to ride there, but she has taken her bike down there without permission several times lately. Hana is running there now, hoping to find Evee on her little bike with the tassels on the handlebars. She likes thrills, especially wheelies and speeding down hills, the faster the better. Hana hates how scared she gets when Evee does her stunts.

  When she gets to the alley she looks to the left. All she sees are potholes and gravel road and vines growing over the wall of someone’s yard.

  She looks to her right and sees much of the same, except there is a fast food place down the block, with the parking lot that they sometimes take shortcuts through when they walk to the beach.

  On the ground about 20 yards down the alley she sees something she recognizes. Something red. She is afraid, but she is moving towards it as fast as she can, one of Evee’s red boots. That’s what she heard running up the driveway.

  She is frozen and doesn’t know what to do. The boot lying on the ground means her daughter was in the alley. From the house to here, somehow that happened and she can’t make sense of it. Evee loves those boots. Why would she just leave one?

  Hana picks it up and walks into the parking lot of the fast food place, up to the drive through the window and knocks.

  “My daughter, have you seen her? This is her boot. I found it in that alley. Have you seen a little girl with brown hair?” The guy behind the window stares at her and shakes his head. She sees her reflection in the glass. She can see sweat, shiny on her forehead. Her mouth is open and she looks panicked. She feels panicked.

  A car in the drive through honks at her and she is startled. She turns away from the window and goes to the front of the restaurant. She stands outside of the door and looks out at the busy street. They have told Evee so many times not to go on the street alone. She scans up and down the street, but sees nothing unusual, just the blur of car after car and no sign of Evee.

  Maybe she is overreacting, allowing herself to panic and jump to conclusions. But she is sure she heard Evee’s boots on the driveway. She knows because she’s heard the sound so many times before. And the screen door, it had been shut.

  She opens the door to the restaurant and stands in the doorway.

  “Has anyone seen a little girl, she’s got long hair, brown.” She takes a step halfway in and looks around the dining area. There are five maybe six people sittin
g down and a few more behind the counter. Some look at her and shake their heads, others don’t seem to notice her. “She was wearing boots like this. I found it in the alley? Please, I can’t find her.”

  No one says anything to her. She turns around suddenly angry and pushes the door hard, but it doesn’t slam like she wanted. It closes quietly.

  She walks quickly towards her house with the boot tucked closely to her chest. She sees a police car turn down her street. She runs back through the alley. The police car stops in front of her house. Two young policemen get out.

  Hana runs towards them yelling. “I need your help. My daughter, this is her boot. I found it in the alley over there.” She hugs the boot and breathes loudly.

  “Do you live at this address, maam?” the dark haired officer says motioning to their house. She nods and looks at the second officer whose ear is pressed to his shoulder. He is turned away from them.

  “We received a call,” the officer says, then pauses. He turns his head down the street toward the alley. “Someone has reported seeing what they think was a young girl being carried away from this address.”

  Everything slows down except Hana’s heartbeat. It is loud and she feels it everywhere in her body. There are more voices, little sounds coming from the other cop’s shoulder, the car.

  Hana looks down the street where a second police car has parked in front of the alley. The lights are on, but there are no sirens. The car backs up and parks in the middle of the street, blocking oncoming traffic. There is a third car at the other end of the street in the same position.

  She looks back at the officer. He is looking at her.

  “Does a young girl live with you at this address?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes, my daughter.”

  Hana’s body is hot and she can feel the weight of the boot in her arms, but she can’t feel it against her skin.

  “Did you say someone called you?”

  “One of your neighbors…”

  “One of my neighbors? Who?” Hana is looking at the houses on her street. Nobody said anything to her. Why didn’t anyone come out and say anything?