Whatever Happened to Janie? (12 page)

T
he living room and the dining L of the Springs’ house shared a long, windowless wall. The couch was pressed up against the living-room end and the sideboard against the dining-room end. The wall above the couch was completely covered with framed photographs of the children. One was the picture that had found its ultimate use on a milk carton.

It showed a laughing toddler, bright red hair yanked into pigtails high on each side of her head. Her dress—the famous summertime dress—was white with vivid dark polka dots.

She wanted to run, but the Spring family blocked the stairs and the hallway. Police filled the chairs. Janie could not seem to hear what the police were saying to her, nor find the vocabulary to answer them. Her head spun around as if it were popping off, the way Barbie-doll heads popped off if you dressed them too hard.

“Let’s sit down, Jennie,” said the biggest policeman. He held out his hands as if to show her that they were empty, that he held no weapon.

She wanted her mother, the one who had loved her and brought her up. But of course it was her New Jersey mother who crossed the carpet, circled the coffee table, and tried to touch her. Janie backed away. She could not back any farther. The room was not large enough.

The world was not large enough. How was she supposed to stay loyal to Mommy and Daddy during this? But she had promised to keep her Family Resolutions, too. What would the police find out in this interrogation? Janie did not want to know one single thing more than she already knew.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jennie,” said the policeman. “We just want to talk. Nobody is going to get hurt.”

“Do my parents know about this?” she said. “Are they okay?”

“We’ve talked to your parents.” He knew she meant the Connecticut ones. “They’re okay.”

They were not okay. They had not been okay since the news broke. How could she trust a person who lied like that?

The policeman said softly to the Springs, “I think we might do better if all of you went into another room, okay? This is going to be hard on everybody and maybe we could talk a little easier without you.”

“I’m her father,” said Mr. Spring, “and I’m not leaving.”

Janie stared at that big, tired red-bearded man. He seemed alternately and both family and stranger. Her Connecticut father would not have left the room either. He is a father, thought Janie. And I
guess he’s mine. “They can stay.” She felt behind her, finding the arm and lowering herself into the corner of the sofa. One of those awkward pillows that serve no purpose made a lump behind her back. She picked it up. It was soft and velvety in her arms, and she held it against her chest like a teddy bear or a shield.

“I’m Mr. Mollison,” said the policeman. She had a feeling he had told her that several times. This time she could hear him. “I’m the FBI officer who was assigned to your case twelve years ago, Jennie. And this is Mr. Fabrioli, who is with the state police, and Mr. Saychek, from the local police. Each of us is doing different things now, but we’ve come back to help on the Jennie Spring case since we’re the most familiar with it.”

I’m not her. I stopped being her twelve years ago.

Jodie could hardly bear to look at her sister.

Jennie’s fingers scrabbled around the pillow like little separate animals trying to hide under leaves. Her eyes darted around the room looking for a safety zone. Her speech pattern changed radically. With every sentence she sounded younger and younger, as if she were falling backward in time, to when she was three years old, and by the end of the interview they would actually hear the three-year-old’s version.

Jodie’s mother tried to stifle tears. The weeping had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Mom was weeping because she could not hold this daughter
in her arms to comfort or protect her. Jennie would crawl under the sofa first.

It took Mr. Mollison several more minutes of talking, and then he was the one who sat down next to Jennie. He was able to put his arm around her shoulder and get her to talk. Jennie talked only to him. The Spring family might as well not have been there at all.

“Jennie,” said Mr. Mollison. He had a big, slow voice, as if they had all day; would always have all day. “We don’t want to talk about what we think happened, but only the things you really remember.”

“I don’t remember,” said Jennie quickly.

Mr. Mollison nodded for a while. Then he said, “Must have been pretty scary to pick up that milk carton in the school cafeteria and recognize your own picture on it.”

Jennie clutched the pillow even harder.

“Did you say anything to the kids you were eating with?” asked Mr. Mollison.

“I said I was the face,” said Jennie. “Out loud. Right away.”

“And what did your friends say to that?” asked Mr. Mollison.

“They said I must really want to get out of the math test,” said Jennie.

Jodie had to laugh.

Jennie let go of the pillow a little. “No, wait,” she said. “I wasn’t the one with the math test. Pete and Adair had the math test. I was going to have to read my English essay out loud. See? I’ve already gotten
the facts wrong. You can’t use me for facts. I get them mixed up. See?”

“It’s easy to mix things up,” agreed Mr. Mollison, smiling. His big torso nodded along with his head, and he and Jennie almost rocked together. “You must have figured whoever put that photograph on the milk carton was pretty mixed up, too.”

Jennie nodded. “Because my parents were my parents. And they’re good. See, I had my whole childhood. I was there. I lived it. And kidnapping is wrong. It’s evil. Only terrible people would do that.” Her chin was dimpling in and out as she fought sobbing. “And my parents are good. So 1 knew that it wasn’t really my picture on there.”

“And yet …” said Mr. Mollison. “You took the milk carton home that day, didn’t you?”

Jennie clung to the pillow again. “Just in case,” she said.

Jodie remembered the day Mom and Dad had decided to put Jennie’s picture on the milk cartons. Talk about arguments!

Uncle Paul said absolutely categorically
not
to; it would just put everybody through it all over again. The baby had been killed and they had accepted that fact years ago. Why drag up something so hopeless and futile yet again?

Aunt Luellen said, “This is ridiculous. Nobody could recognize a teenage girl from a picture of her when she was three!” Aunt Luellen whipped out pictures of Stephen and Jodie when they were three, and sure enough, they were generic, assembly-line tots, not a single thing about them that carried into their teenage photographs.

Neighbors who had lived there when Jennie vanished said not to do it; the Springs would get phony calls from crazies and go through yet more hell. Neighbors who had moved in long after the kidnapping said not to do it, because who knew what unimaginable horrors might turn up.

Mom and Dad prevailed. They wanted one last try and they got it.

And they had been right.

Because there was one person who would recognize the picture, if she saw it.

Jennie herself.

As vividly as if she had fallen into the very cafeteria where it happened, Jodie imagined that moment of unwrapping a sandwich and picking up a milk carton. That moment in which Janie Johnson ceased to be a happy well-adjusted kid who wanted nothing more than a boyfriend and a driver’s license. That moment in which she became a terrified wreck who eventually uncovered the truth.

Not that anybody, including Jennie, knew the truth.

Mrs. Spring had taken her five children shopping at the mall. It is not easy to shop with five children. An adult has but two hands, one if she carries packages. So the twins, staggering insecurely on bow legs, had had little red harnesses around their baby chests. Mrs. Spring kept their leashes wound around her right wrist, along with her purse handle. Stephen, six, and Jodie, five, were to hold each other’s hands. Jennie, three and a half, clung to her mother’s free left hand.

In the shoe store, Jennie had been a nuisance.
Jennie was jealous of the attention the others got. The others came in pairs and she did not. She was in the middle and it was not her favorite place. Jennie wanted not just the pretty new shoes, but also the matching patent-leather handbag. Jennie pranced around the shoe store, the handbag over her shoulder, demanding that her mother buy it and whining unmercifully when Mom said no.

The twins were difficult to fit. Their little toes curled under when the salesman tried to feel where their feet ended inside the shoes. He and Mom were kneeling on the floor, trying to coax the twins to stand up straight. The twins loved this game and kept falling over onto their diaper paddings and laughing themselves sick.

Stephen and Jodie were hugging their new shoes to their chests. There is just nothing like a new pair of shoes when you’re little. Jodie loved the box as much as the shoes. She kept peeping inside the box to check on her lovely new-scented leather shoes, planning what she would do with the empty box when they got home. Stephen kept shifting his weight from one foot to another, saying, “Mom? Mom? Mom? I wanna wear my new ones. Mom? Mom? Mom? I wanna wear my new ones.”

“Hush!” their mother kept saying, pressing down on a twin’s toe.

It was not until they lined up at the cashier’s desk that they noticed Jennie was not there.

Mom was furious. She yelled at Stephen and Jodie for not watching Jennie. Yanking the twins by their cords and the older ones by their linked hands, she marched out into the mall expecting to
find Jennie window-shopping at the stuffed-toy shop, or watching the man who silk-screened your name on T-shirts while you waited.

But they did not find Jennie.

They never found Jennie.

Jennie was never seen again.

Twelve years later came the story none of them could have thought up.

It seemed that a Mr. and Mrs. Frank Javensen, of Connecticut, had had a daughter, Hannah. Many years earlier, teenage Hannah had joined a cult. This was a sort of religious group, which brainwashed its new, confused members—young, lonely, idealistic kids like Hannah. Cult members obeyed their leaders in every way, including where they sat, what they ate, whom they married. Cult members earned money for their leaders by selling anything from flowers to their own bodies. Once you joined, you never left. You were never given permission. You did not visit home, and you scorned your parents and everything that home and upbringing had once meant to you. Any word uttered by your leader was Truth. Any word uttered by your country, school, or family was Corruption.

Hannah, eighteen, was sucked in. She was so completely brainwashed she could speak only when spoken to and lost the ability to initiate anything. When the cult moved her to California she went. The Javensens hired private detectives to find her.

When they could not coax Hannah to come home, Mr. and Mrs. Javensen actually stole her
back. Then they paid an expert to un-brainwash Hannah.

The plan failed. Hannah preferred the cult and back she went.

The years passed.

Hannah acquired a “mate” chosen by the leader and was married in a mass ceremony with hundreds of other couples. The Javensens knew there was no hope. They still wrote, but the letters were never answered, and they still phoned, but Hannah never came on the line.

And then one day, one ordinary suburban day, with no warning and no notice, Hannah came home. She just walked in, after all that time. She was not alone. She was with
her
daughter, a sweet little red-haired girl.

My daughter Janie
, said Hannah.
I want her brought up in your world, not mine. I can’t change my life, but I can save Janie from it

And back Hannah went, address unknown, needing whatever strange and sad things the cult had to offer her.

The Javensens, knowing the cult would claim and then whisk away this innocent grandchild as well, fled. Not only did they find another town, they even changed their unusual last name to a dull and unmemorable one. Frank and Miranda Javensen, whose daughter Hannah disappeared in the clutches of a cult, became Frank and Miranda Johnson, whose daughter Janie soon entered nursery school.

They didn’t want little Janie to remember Hannah, nor pine for her, and certainly never to look for
her, because a search would lead to the cult. So they taught Janie to call them Mommy and Daddy.

But Hannah had never had a child. It was a lie, one that Mr. and Mrs. Javensen had completely swallowed.

What had happened in that shopping center in New Jersey?

Hannah must have decided to leave the cult, fleeing California, stealing money to make the trip, and eventually stealing cars as well. Hannah would have been nearly at the end of her journey. Only a half day’s drive from her home. Had she panicked? Had she been so desperate for company that even a three-year-old seemed attractive? Had she planned to ask for ransom money and then gotten scared? Had the cult told her to kidnap a baby? Had it been her idea, or could she actually have been assigned such an evil task?