Maxine (2 page)

Maxine has waited and wandered. She's gone back to the car a few times, poked around in the trees at the perimeter. She has looked and called, and time has passed. She presses her eyes shut for several seconds and then opens them. Above the row of parents at the top of the hill stand the trees, almost all the leaves gone now—dark supplicants, their naked arms curving skyward.

Maxine just has to figure this out, that's all. She's called her best friend, Gail, on someone's cellphone, because Gail is good at figuring things out, but Gail isn't answering. Theremust be something she's missing—a miscommunication, a behavioural tic—maybe all youngsters take off at predetermined intervals throughout the day to do child-business of which Maxine has no knowledge, and Barb didn't think to warn her because everyone else knows. Any minute now he'll heave into view and she'll bundle him into the car and snap all the locks shut and drive off as fast as safety allows and never ever agree to babysit for anyone ever again ever.

Maxine has checked out the little stone and timber hut halfway down the hill, and the one at the bottom. She checks them one more time and then plods back up, calling out occasionally in a friendly way, letting him know that whatever goofball prank he's cooked up is OK. All is already forgiven. No penalties, hot chocolate still on offer.

But at the top of the hill the line of parents has thinned considerably. Only a few snowsuits remain. The snowy hill glows a bluish-white as the air above it grows darker. What she has been staving off with calm, methodical action, with logic, with patience and common sense, rips through her now. Terror. She works her way along the row of parents. She can hear her own voice sounding tight and the effort of walking seems greater, she's riffling through her pockets for an inhaler—Have you seen, His name is, Excuse me, did you see, He's nine, Hi I'm looking for, About half an hour, I've been looking, Can you help me, No the car's right there, Please help me, No that's not him. Please. Help.

You all right?

Maxine has sat down suddenly in the snow in a way that was not a hundred percent intentional and now a man in a navy ski jacket is offering her a hand up, passing her the inhaler—You dropped this. He gestures over to a huddle of parents pointing in various directions: So, we're going to divide up and check out the parking lot, and past the Fluvarium a ways, and the trailer park. A few of us'll head over across the road and walk around the Confederation Building. Meet back here in half an hour. If there's still no sign of him, well, then you'd better make some more calls.

Maxine can't quite grasp this situation. It's impossible, and yet it does seem to be happening. The man has a competent face, a small, neat jaw with grey and black stubble. Someone who gives the impression he could fix an engine, even though he's trained for other things. He seems decisive and experienced.

Thanks, Maxine says. Thank you for your help.

Name's Tom.

Maxine.

Tom looks into her face with dark, lively eyes. Maxine, if a youngster takes it into his head to run off, there's not a whole lot you can do about it, hey? You can't chain yourself to 'un.

Thanks, Tom.

Pippy Park is big. It's not like wandering off in a town square and vanishing inside a rosebush. There's the more urban bit, with the playground and walking trail, the Fluvarium and parking lot, the sliding hill, the trailer park and mini-golf. But that's just the downtown core of Pippy Park, as it were. After the trailer park, there's miles of woods and bog, paths whose popularity is signalled by a breadcrumb trail of dog shit, ponds like the one where Maxine and her pals used to go skinny dipping on hot summer midnights, a curve of white skin gleaming like a bit of dolphin, a laugh, a splash carrying over the surface into distant spruce. It's the kind of place you could stay lost in for a long time.

Frédérique, the main character in Maxine's novel, is quite unlike Maxine. Frédérique is a bit older, more mature, forties maybe. She's worldly, sexy, on the go—not predictable, not dull, not cautious. This is a great relief as it would be tiresome to include all of Maxine's caution in the novel. Caution leads to dithering. And dithering is so often protracted and inelegant. Excessive caution is caused by a variety of things, including habit, genetic predisposition, and sudden sick terror. And sick terror is generated in situations like this. Scanning the area fast, wondering where he is, is he behind this tree, if not this then the next, will he be behind the next tree, you can see a bump, will he be alive behind the next tree or not quite alive?

InMaxine's novel, Frédérique is a tenured professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Victoria, where coincidentally Maxine's actual father took a visiting lecturer position a year before he retired. After twelve months on Vancouver Island, Maxine's parents were unable to contemplate spending their declining years in an east coast climate, so they came home just long enough to pack up and head back. They bought a small condo in a converted Victoria mansion, which is where Frédérique lives. Where she would live if she were real.

Frédérique would never have let herself be pressured into babysitting.

Stumbling through brush in the dark, Maxine is wondering if this could be, in some weird way, part of her novel. Maybe it's all in her mind, maybe she wrote it and forgot it wasn't true, maybe she fell asleep at her desk and will wake up shortly and shake her head and look out the window at a boy heading off to school.

But she doesn't wake up. It's cold and dark and something horrible has happened.

Voices rise through the trees like bird calls: KY-ell, KYYY-ell!

If some part of him is a bird, he'll be drawn; he won't be able to help himself. If he's still here. If he can still hear.

They walk for hours. People weave through the line of searchers handing out granola bars, flashlights. Phone calls at intervals, on someone's cell. Gail's house, the Larsens', Gail's house, the Larsens', the hospital. Gail's voicemail fills up. Dave must be long since out of day surgery. He and Barb should already have reassumed responsibility for their child. If there were no complications with his procedure. If Maxine hadn't gone and lost the damn child. The officers who come in on the search are able to confirm that no one fitting Barb's or Dave's description has been in a car accident on the way home from the hospital.
Breep, breep, breep
, hang up before the machine kicks in, and as soon as you hang up you think maybe your hanging up happened the second they walked through the door, you hear the ring echoing in an empty hall and then the key in the door, you imagine them running for the phone as the last ring dies out, so you call again.

Maxine's parents have gone out. Maxine doesn't leave a message. Who wants to come home to a message saying that your daughter has misplaced someone's child?

All a searcher can do is plod forward through the night. Call out and listen for an answer. Sweep your flashlight left and right. Walk. Look. Call.

At some point, late, something in a hurry comes crashing through the bushes, the noise terrifying in the stillness. (Are there moose? Will a moose trample you? Let's hope it's not a bear. You either run from a bear or play dead, depending which kind it is. Maxine would definitely not know what kind it was. The bearish kind. Maybe you ask the bear which kind it is and then draw up a flow chart.) But then, cursing, a familiar voice:

OK, thanks... Max? Max, are you out here?

Maxine turns, swinging the flashlight, and picks out Gail's white face. Maxine stands still, not answering, but Gail follows the beam of light like a rope, pulling herself along, hand over hand. She stumbles forward and grabs Maxine, hugs her. She squeezes so hard Maxine can feel herself deflating like a leaky air mattress that has held up for the one last night of the camping trip and can now collapse onto the floor with a sigh and bleed to death.

They found him, Max, he's OK. It's OK.

2

november 2002

m
axine sleeps late. When she wakes the second time, it's past noon and the phone is ringing. Maxine doesn't answer. She is in recovery. She's convalescing from life. She's waiting for the moment when the mysterious figure appears at the bedroom door wearing a weathered cloak and says I Have Come To Inform You Of Your True Birthright And To Take You Away To A Place Where You Will Have Important Missions And Use Your Sword With Astonishing Dexterity And We Shall Leave All This Crap Behind. She rolls onto her back and pretends to do yoga. She relaxes her body one muscle clump at a time. She doesn't have to go anywhere today. And tomorrow is Saturday. She might never go anywhere again.

The phone plays an electronic melody, familiar but not quite identifiable, which now stops and starts and stops and starts until Maxine extends a hand without opening her eyes. If you don't open your eyes, you avoid confirmation. There's a chance the world might not actually be there, might have gone away for a time, to return at a more opportune moment or, if you're very lucky, not at all. Maxine's hand flops around the night table like an injured bird until it alights on her inhaler. She hauls herself up to a slouch, depresses the cold metal canister, and sucks in medicated air, which she holds for one more beepy little song before exhaling a long, slow breath and picking up the receiver.

You can come out now, Max.

Gail.

You're not still in bed, are you?

No—Maxine tugs on the phone cord and lies back. She pulls the red plaid duvet up over her head so she can speak from within a warm, dark tent of flannel—I just haven't used my voice much yet.

You're sounding kind of muffled over there. Did you work this morning?

Yes.

You did? Well that's impressive.

Mm.

So I was just checking up on you. Themain thing is the boy was fine and none of it was your fault, right?

Right.

You didn't do anything, and whatever he did is not your fault and he's fine anyway, so all's well that ends well.

Mm.

You don't sound like someone who's been working. How about we go out for coffee? Say, fifteen minutes or so?

Maxine sits straight up and the tent falls off. Her voice sounds urgent and much louder: Oh no. No. No, I'm really not up for it, Gail, honest to god, not today.

Half an hour. I'll be over in half an hour. Come on now, hop in the shower.

Barb Larsen beats Gail to Maxine's door by a couple of minutes. She's carrying two enormous cardboard cups, a paper bag. She asks if she might come in for a moment. Maxine should never have opened the door, should have known, should have drilled a spyhole and peeked out and, when asked if anyone was there, should have responded, like Rabbit in
Winnie-the-Pooh
: No! But now it's too late and she opens the door a few inches and explains that her best friend is on her way over, in the hope that Barb will take the hint. Soon, however, they are all three standing around the small table in Maxine's kitchen. It's a cheap white café table with two matching chairs in chrome and black leatherette, fine for one person, a fact Maxine notes silently as she thumps away to push a heap of clothes off a stool in her bedroom and haul it out. Maxine is not even pretending to be pleasant—she can't believe at least one of them hasn't already left, out of politeness, allowing her to get rid of the other. Gail's politeness was spiked with curiosity and Barb welcomed her so warmly that in no time the two of them were chatting away, making a fuss of sharing the coffee out into three smaller cups and cutting up slices of pastry, arranging them on plates—they, Maxine realizes with a shock, are
enjoying
themselves— while she drags up her stool and plops onto it, pointedly doing nothing.

Yes, Barb is saying to Gail as if Maxine didn't live here at all and was not the person whose life her son had destroyed less than twenty-four hours ago, Yes he's fine today, I was the first one up this morning and I just stood there in the doorway and looked at Kyle, you know, and I must say it was nice to see him so peaceful in his bed.

I bet, Gail is saying back. I bet you felt relieved seeing him like that.

You can't imagine.

And your husband, he's fine too?

Dave?

After his day surgery?

Oh yes, yes, my gosh, it's such a quick recovery with that sort of thing these days, you know, in and out.

So what did Kyle have to say? Gail asks as if she knew Kyle all to pieces, as if she'd been there, as if she had herself scoured Pippy Park by flashlight for clues left behind by a murderous pedophile. She sits down and leans eagerly forward over the table. Barb does the same. Maxine tips her stool back against the counter and squashes her bottom lip between her thumb and finger.

Kyle, Barb says. You know, communicating with boys. I ask Kyle how his day was at school and he says, Fine. That's all he says, fine. If I ask what he did, he says, Great.

I'm sure, Gail says. I don't doubt it. Boys! says Gail, flapping her hand downward, as if she knew a single thing about youth of either gender, as if she had ever in her adult life manifested the teeniest smidgen of interest in the behaviour of anything under seventeen. Maxine considers mentioning Gail's repeated assertion that the possession or cultivation of children in urban areas should mean automatic jail time, but she does not wish to join the conversation.

So, Gail tries again, he didn't say much?

Oh yes—well—it was hard to get anything out of him at all. I don't know a lot of details and frankly I'd be surprised if the police know any more.

It's one thing, Maxine is thinking, to scan a crowd and not see a kid you're looking for and feel a stab of panic, knowing that it's irrational and that your neighbour's only youngster is just behind a tree or wandering off for a sec, but it's another thing when thirty minutes later there is no trace of that child. That is another thing completely.