Undeliverable (29 page)

“Forgive me. What I meant to say is, the attempts to find your boy are not pathetic. Those are simply a waste of time and governmental resources. No,” he grabbed his suitcase and started walking quickly to the door, seemingly desperate to put more space between himself and the now furious Ben. But he couldn’t stop himself from shooting one last rejoinder over his shoulder. “Benny, my boy, it is you who are pathetic for thinking you can make any sort of difference in this slack-jawed fashion. We’re done here. I’ll be turning my recommendations in tomorrow. You will be hearing from us.” The auditor made a hasty retreat as Ben lunged for the door and just missed having it slammed on his fingers.

Ben turned and stood staring blankly at the back of his monitor, left in the puddle of light from the lamp in his office, the warehouse in shadow around him. The desire to chase down Reg and break his face was slowly fading and he felt limp. Pathetic, that’s how people saw him, saw his search. A waste of time and destined for failure. Maybe Reg was right, but what other options were left to him other than to keep going? Reaching over to turn off the light, he stood in the darkness for a couple of minutes before heading to the door.

As Ben stepped out of the stairwell to his apartment, he saw Detective O’Connor leaning against the wall beside the door. He took a short step towards Ben. “They finished today, Ben. They’ve identified all the bodies.”

It took a moment for Ben to register the change in conversation as he was still running the argument with Reg through his head. Then the imagined images of pain and torture resurfaced that had been suppressed by the more immediate pressure of the audit, and he groped his way blindly to his door, fumbling to unlock it before gesturing for O’Connor to follow him in. When the detective opened his mouth, Ben waved harshly and went straight to the kitchen, pulling out two glasses and the bottle of whiskey from over his stove. He poured two measures and stood braced with his hands on the counter, taking a deep breath. This was not something he wanted to hear sober, especially not after the dressing down he’d just gotten.

“You found him.” Ben tossed back one whiskey and placed his hand over the other. “Please, tell me you found him.”

The detective came over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “No. I’m sorry. I know it would be easier on you if we found him, but no. Thankfully, he was not one of the children at the farm.”

Ben stared at the second whiskey and felt his stomach sink. The first shot slopped around unsteadily and the room acquired a counterclockwise rotation. He realized he hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and thought he should probably eat something to balance the alcohol. He forced his gaze back up to the man standing on the opposite side of the peninsula counter. “What do you mean? You’ve identified all ten bodies? And Benny’s not there? How could he not be there?”

O’Connor stepped back and nodded. “All eleven. And before you ask, yes, we’re sure we have them all. It lines up with Leonard Moscovich’s story. None of the boys ever had a broken right arm, either, so we are not mistaken with the identifications. He wasn’t there, Ben. Never was. You can rest easy that your son was never with that man.” O’Connor reached out for the second whiskey, now abandoned on the counter. “Do you mind? It’s been a horrific day, notifying all the parents.”

Ben waved his permission and walked out of the kitchen to sit in his desk chair, staring at the pushpin-laden map, news articles, and notes wallpapering his living room. All his work and he hadn’t found him, all the leads and phone calls. All the sleepless nights, and even then, nothing.

“He’s out there, Ben. There’s still hope of a someday; I’ve seen a few miracles in my time. Blessed few, but they do happen. Don’t give up.” The glass clinked in the sink and O’Connor walked over behind Ben, putting his hand on his shoulder again. Ben hardly felt it. “You know, you’ve done some fine work here. You might someday consider helping others with this sort of thing. Never would have found Moscovich if you hadn’t been so damned determined.” He patted Ben’s shoulder a couple of times and walked to the door. “Keep hoping,” he said as he closed the door.

Please tell me you’ve found him.
Ben’s words to Detective O’Connor echoed through his mind, back and forth, over and over, and he tried to figure out why he wasn’t happy. He should be happy to hear his son wasn’t dead. Ben sat back slowly, slouching until his frame fit snugly into the familiar mold of the chair.
Please
. His hand rubbed absently over his mouth, eyes moving to the picture of his son placed in the center of his desk. He picked it up with his free hand, rubbing his thumb along his son’s cheek.
Please tell me
. Didn’t he want his son to be alive? How desperately he wanted his son to be alive, but he would be so relieved if he were found. If he were dead.

His eyes ached and he had trouble focusing on Benny’s face. His laugh, that wonderful sound that made his heart leap the first time he had heard it. What did it sound like? He couldn’t bring it to mind, couldn’t make it echo like he once could. He thought he could still remember what his son’s hair smelled like right after Jeannie had given him his bath and he had come to beg Ben for one last story before he closed his eyes. Ben set the picture back on his desk and rested his head in his hands.
Please
.

He stood up in an abrupt motion, his chair slamming back hard enough to coast across the room, and he strode to his wall, scanning the pictures and notes, the map, and the twine strung between pins and scraps of paper. He reached up to finger the top right hand corner of the map, the small corner that stuck out from the blue tape holding it to the wall. Yanking on it, he tried to rip the map from its moorings. He only managed to tear a strip from the middle of the map, and so he scrabbled at the paper, pins sticking his fingers, twine connected to other papers pulling them along behind the fluttering roads and byways.

None of it had helped; it had only led him to darker places than he’d ever thought he would encounter in his life. None of his work had done anything to find Benny, he was still just as gone as he was on the first day, only more so because now he was being forgotten by the police and the news cycle. And by his father. Ben was silent as he tore paper after paper from the wall, tears just starting to run down his face.

Sweeping his arms across the walls, he started to keen. More and more of the results of his investigation ended up heaped on the carpet until the wall was bare. He knelt slowly, burying his hands in the paper, sorting through until he found the flyer with his son’s face and turned to find the box with the pins in it.

Flipping it open, he sorted through to find a white pin and posted his son’s face back in the middle of the bare wall. He stared at it, the hand holding the box falling to his side and the pins scattering across the floor. The patter of them cascading over the fallen paper drew his attention back down to the box in his hand. Twice broken, twice fixed, with brass hinges and chipped parquetry. He could almost see his son’s fingers trace across the design, mimicking Star Wars sound effects and rocking on the stool in the store. Almost, but it was gone, along with his laugh and his scent, the sticky fingers pulling at his hair during piggy-back rides. All of it, gone.

A sob tore through him and he threw the box at the wall, watching it break once more. He regretted it immediately and scrabbled after the pieces. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Everything he touched, he broke. His marriage, his job, the search for his son, he couldn’t even keep from breaking this box over and over again. He didn’t even know what he was sorry about, but he couldn’t stop saying it,
sorry, sorry
as he slumped against the wall, half buried in the drifts of paper, cradling the broken box.

It wasn’t as badly damaged as the last time, the lid had held together where it had been glued before, but the bottom portion of the box was broken in two, and he didn’t have any glue, none. He tried vainly to fit the pieces together, wishing he’d thought to pack even one of his travel tool kits for repair work. As it was, he had nothing with which to try and repair anything, let alone a box. But he thought he knew someone who might have glue. If she had paint, she probably had glue. Artsy people kept stuff like that around all the time.

He got up, tripping over the map and stumbled to the door, grabbing his keys, the box cradled to his chest. In ten minutes he was pulling up in front of Sylvia’s house, the box still in his hand. He rested his head on the steering wheel for a long second before getting out of the car and weaving up to the door. He rang the bell and waited. He swayed from foot to foot although he’d only had the one drink, his knuckles white around the box. He couldn’t tell anymore how much was the alcohol and how much was sleep deprivation and the numbness that had started to settle over his heart and head.

Just as he thought she wasn’t going to answer, the door swung open and Sylvia was standing there, her hair straggling out of its pigtails, wiping paint from her hands onto the heavy canvas apron she wore. “Ben?” She reached out one blue-speckled hand and grabbed his arm as he listed in her doorway, pulling him inside. “What is it?” He held out his hand with the cracked box and she took it, uncomprehending. “Ben, I don’t understand, you have to talk to me.”

“Benny, that was the box I was going to give Benny for his next birthday. He thought it looked like something from Star Wars, remember, I told you? Now I can’t, I can’t give it to him, he’s gone.” Ben’s voice broke over the last word and he started crying in earnest.

“Oh my god, he was one of them? One of the boys on the farm?”

He shook his head, the motion unbalancing him further. “No.” He rubbed his hands over his face and whispered into them, “But I wanted him to be. God help me, I wanted for him to be dead.” The numbness started to break apart and all that was left inside of him was pain. Not even any hope left, just a rushing, throbbing pain. A sob contorted his frame and he started to collapse into himself, but Sylvia caught him and guided him to a couch in the front room of the house.

“No, Ben, no. Don’t say that. I’m sure you don’t mean it.” Sylvia hesitantly rubbed his back, her hands catching on the flannel and leaving little streaks of paint. When he didn’t respond, simply sat there with his head in his hands, she moved a bunch of ratty art books off of the coffee table and sat in their place.

“Hey,” she took his hands and lowered them, then tilted his face up. “Hey there. Why do you think you wanted him to be dead?”

“I asked Detective O’Connor—no I told him—please. Please tell me you found him. And I wanted him to be one of those eleven little boys. So badly. Jesus. What kind of father asks for his own son to be dead?” He wrenched out of her hands and stood facing an easel leaning against the wall. “I wanted him to be there, to be one of those boys tortured and suffocated. Who wants that?” He turned back to Sylvia, “Who?”

Sylvia sat a moment in silence, turning the bits of box over in her hands before answering. “Someone who is tired, Ben. Someone who needs to find closure. I know you, and I know you do not want Benny to be dead. You just need to know what happened. Some hint of a clue. You’re driving yourself mad; you already drove Jeannie away. Very nearly lost your job this week because of it. That would have been the second job you lost to your search, remember. You need a reason to let go and move on.” She walked up to him, laying her hand on the side of his face. “You are a wonderful father, a wonderful person, and you need to stop torturing yourself. Accept the fact that Benny is gone.” Ben turned away and back to the wall. “Gone, Ben. But that doesn’t mean you’re a bad father.” She watched him a moment as he stared through the easel, her lips pursed and hands on her hips.

“Ben, can I show you something?” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Please?” He nodded slowly and she took him by the hand, leading him into what should have been the dining room of the house.

On each wall there were at least two canvases, sometimes three, with more leaning up against the walls beneath them.

Some were brilliantly colored, others were muted shades of gray and brown, some abstract, some portraits, some with other things on them, such as ribbons, lace, film negatives. But the common theme among them was the fact that each painting or collage was done overtop a layer of letters.

Hundreds and hundreds of letters, painstakingly gathered, Ben realized, as she slowly tipped bins of letters into the shredder. Love letters, letters to Santa, damaged junk mail, formal letters from businesses about overdrawn accounts. Pasted together and used as a canvas for a whole new impact.

Sylvia left his side and uncovered a canvas that was still sitting on the easel in the center of the room. “It was almost done. I was going to show you as soon as I finished, but now seems better.”

This canvas had no letters on it. Instead it was papered in flyers. His flyers of his missing son that she had taken those long weeks ago. It felt more like years. He walked up to it, ran his hand over image after image of his son. They were resized, torn, puzzle-pieced together, finally all glued down with a decoupage finish. His son’s face staring out at him from a hundred different images. And overtop of this collage there was a portrait.

At first he thought it was his son, but he realized the person in the picture was too old. It couldn’t be himself either, it was too young, and the face was the wrong shape.

“Who?”

“It’s Benny.”

Ben traced the outline of the matured jaw. “Benny’s six.”

“It’s what Benny should be. What he could be. When he’s grown.”

He picked up the canvas and sank to the floor with it, bracing himself against a wall. “When he’s grown. If he’s grown. I can’t tell the difference anymore.” Ben’s eyes ached but he couldn’t shed another tear. There wasn’t any left. “Am I a bad father?” He was asking the canvas, willing the specter of his son to answer, but it was Sylvia who responded.

She slid down the wall next to him. “From what I have seen, I would be blessed to have a father like you. I can’t tell you how much I have needed him over the years, needed any parent. What you have done for your son—nobody could do better.”