The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Read Free Page B

that morning? She didn’t think she’d had time. Instead she had brushed it, lovingly. Maybe she was a little too vain of her beautiful daughter and now she was being punished . . . No, that was absurd. You are not punished for loving your child. She had brushed Marissa’s hair until it shone and she had fastened it with barrettes, mother-of-pearl butterflies.
    “Aren’t you pretty! Mommy’s little angel.”
    “Oh, Mommy. I am not.”
    Leah’s heart caught. She could not understand how the child’s father had abandoned them both. She was sick with guilt, it had to be her fault as a woman and a mother.
    She’d resisted an impulse to hug Marissa, though. At eleven, the girl was getting too old for spontaneous unexplained hugs from Mommy.
    Displays of emotion upset children, Leah had been warned. Of course, Leah hadn’t needed to be warned.
    Leah returned to the kitchen for another beer. Before dialing 911. Just a few swallows, she wouldn’t finish the entire can.
    She kept nothing stronger than beer in the apartment. That was a rule of her mature life.
    No hard liquor. No men overnight. No exposure to her daughter, the emotions Mommy sometimes felt.
    She knew: she would be blamed. For she was blamable.
    Latchkey child. Working mom.
    She’d have had to pay a sitter nearly as much as she made at the clinic as a medical assistant, after taxes. It was unfair, and it was impossible. She could not.
    Marissa was not so quick-witted as other children her age but she was not slow ! She was in sixth grade, she had not fallen behind. Her tutor said she was “improving.” And her attitude was so hopeful. Your daughter tries so hard, Mrs. Bantry! Such a sweet, patient child.
    Unlike her mother, Leah thought. Who wasn’t sweet, and who had given up patience long ago.
    “I want to report a child missing . . .”
    She rehearsed the words, struck by their finality. She hoped her voice would not sound slurred.
    Where was Marissa? It was impossible to think she wasn’t somehow in the apartment. If Leah looked again . . .
    Marissa knew: to lock the front door behind her, and to bolt the safety latch when she was home alone. (Mommy and Marissa had practiced this maneuver many times.) Marissa knew: not to answer the door if anyone knocked, if Mommy was not home. Not to answer the telephone immediately but to let the answering machine click on, to hear if it was Mommy calling.
    Marissa knew: never let strangers approach her. No conversations with strangers. Never climb into vehicles with strangers or even with people she knew unless they were women, people Mommy knew or the mothers of classmates for instance.
    Above all Marissa knew: come home directly from school.
    Never enter any building, any house, except possibly the house of a classmate, a school friend . . . Even so, Mommy must be told about this beforehand.
    (Would Marissa remember? Could an eleven-year-old be trusted to remember so much?)
    Leah had totally forgotten; she’d intended to call Marissa’s teacher. From Miss Fletcher, Leah would learn the names of Marissa’s friends. This, the police would expect her to know. Yet she stood by the phone indecisively, wondering if she dared call the woman; for if she did, Miss Fletcher would know that something was wrong.
    The ache between Leah’s eyes had spread, her head was wracked with pain.
    Four-year-old Marissa would climb up onto the sofa beside Leah, and stroke her forehead to smooth out the “worry lines.” Wet kisses on Mommy’s forehead. “Kiss to make go away!”
    Mommy’s vanity had been somewhat wounded, that her child saw worry lines in her face. But she’d laughed, and invited more kisses. “All right, sweetie. Kiss-to-make-go-away.”
    It had become their ritual. A frown, a grimace, a mournful look—either Mommy or Marissa might demand, “Kiss-to-make- go-away.”
    Leah was paging through the telephone directory. Fletcher. There were more than a dozen Fletcher s. None of the initials seemed quite