Prodigal Blues

"Yeah, it does… and I'm sorry."  I sat in silence as she double-checked the button.  I wondered what sort of dreams she had, or if she dreamed at all.  I remembered some line from a novel I'd read a few years ago, wherein the novelist, remarking on the number of homeless girls the narrator saw on the streets, said:  They are all our daughters, and we are not caring for them very well.  There was a strength about Rebecca that I envied, yet at the same time it sickened me to think of how she'd come by it.  I wondered what the rest of her life was going to be like.  I wondered a lot of things about her, all of it tinged with sadness.  Finally, I said:  "Look, I don't mean for this to sound stupid or rude, but… you seem awfully okay.  You come off as a lot older than fifteen.  I mean, after all you've been through, you're pretty together.  Most people would be a mess."

She hesitated with the third and last button, one frozen hand pulled back, co

"I have to be okay," she whispered, her voice thin and quavering as she resumed sewing.  "The rest of them wouldn't know what to do if I ever"—her voice broke, her lower lip trembled, and for a moment the gleam of tears began forming—"…if I ever let them know how much it hurts, how much it scares me and makes me want to die, I just don't think they could handle it."  She took a deep breath.  "I used to have braces.  I really hated those things.  I wish I still had braces.  Now I have bad dreams.  Maybe my folks can send me to a doctor or something."  She released her breath, and the sparkle returned.  "We just don't let each other think about it or talk about it unless we have to, like with you today.  We had to tell you about it.  By the way—how are you doing?"

The question surprised me.  "All right, I guess."

She finished the last button, then patted the shirt, smiling at her work.  "You sure?"

I shrugged.

She reached out and squeezed my hand.  "How bad was it?  What you saw?"

I swallowed, then closed my eyes; the image of Grendel kneeling waited behind the lids.  I opened my eyes and ran my hand through my hair.  "I wouldn't know where to begin.  It was… it was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, Rebecca.  Don't ever ask Christopher about it.  Don't ever make him tell you.  Don't even wonder about it, okay?  Just know that it was… it was something that… diminishes you by looking at it.  I'll never forget it, and I wish I could.  God, how I wish…."

She leaned over and gave me a hug.  "You're a really nice guy, you know that?"

"Thank you."

She pulled back and stared at me.  "You don't believe that, do you?  That you're a nice guy?"

"No.  Maybe.  Sometimes—hell, I don't know."

"Well, take it from me, Mark Sieber, you are a nice guy.  I've known guys who weren't nice.  I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference.  Okay?"

I tried smiling at her, settled for nodding my head.  "Yeah."

A nod.  "Okay, then."

Arnold came out of the bathroom and sat next to her.  "Man, I'd forgotten what it was like to have the john all to yourself.  I miss anything?"

Rebecca pointed.  "Christopher's drying his face."

Arnold leaned toward her.  "Did you put wrinkles on this time?"

"Yes."

"Well, shit…if I'd've known that, I would have had you give me some."  He looked at me.  "I could get used to this cussing thing."  Then, to Rebecca:  "You'd better be careful about making yourself look too different.  Mess around with the look too much and your folks maybe won't know who you are."

"They'll know," she said.

"I hope so."  Arnold leaned toward me.  "See, what happened was, we got this one Michelle Pfeiffer movie… I don't remember what it was called…"

"The Deep End of the Ocean," said Rebecca, then:  "I think Michelle Pfeiffer's real pretty."  She brushed some of her phony hair away from her face, then—reconsidering—brushed it back down.

"Stupid title for a movie," said Arnold.  "Wasn't even an ocean in it.  See, in the movie, Michelle Pfeiffer's little boy, he gets stolen from her when he's real young—like two or three, right?  They look for him for a long time but then they give up, and one day, like, five years later, Michelle Pfeiffer sees him again, and even though he looks all different, she recognizes him right away.  He doesn't look a thing like he did when he was stolen, but she still knows who he is."

"We talked about that a lot," said Rebecca, "and Christopher said that the reason she recognized him, is because she was his mother and that any woman who had given birth to a child would… would… what was the word he used?"

"Instinctually," shouted Christopher.

"You're supposed to be not talking," said Rebecca.  "And thank you."  She turned back to me.  "Christopher said that any mother would instinctually know their own child, no matter how much they might have changed."

"So that got us to thinking," said Arnold.  "We all could mostly remember what we looked like when Grendel took us, so we got real good at using the makeup to make our faces look like they used to look—I mean, like we remember them looking.  Or something like that."

Rebecca patted his hand.  "Grendel did not allow us to have any mirrors, except once a month, before the meetings.  We got to use mirrors then."

"But you can forget an awful lot about your face in a month," added Arnold.  "I never thought about it much before, but, man, a lot of people sure do spend a lot of time looking at themselves in mirrors."

"Or windows, or shiny surfaces," said Rebecca.

"Or puddles," said Thomas from the corner.  "Don't forget about puddles."

"Or puddles," said Arnold.  "So we been working on getting our faces back the way we remember them looking.  We don't have pictures of ourselves, though, so we're just guessing.  I just hope that Christopher's right and that our moms will know us, anyway."

"How do you know where your families are?" I asked.

Arnold and Rebecca looked at one another, then over at the still-kneeling Christopher, who raised one of his hands, index finger and thumb curled into the "OK" symbol.

"Grendel kept track," said Arnold.  "He kept track of how long they looked for us, when they gave it up, if they moved, everything."  His eyes became suddenly sad.  "That's how I found out my grandma died."

"He always let us know when our families gave up looking for us," said Rebecca, gently rubbing Arnold's back.  "He really enjoyed that part.  'I told you they didn't care about you,' he always said.  'Only I love you.  Only I care what happens to you.'  Yeah… he really enjoyed that."

Arnold pulled over the other laptop and started typing with the keys.  "All of the information is in here—my family's still living in the same place, but Rebecca's family moved about a year ago.  Thomas's folks moved, too… about five blocks from his old house."  He showed me his own file, and all the information was there.  It was incredibly thorough; not just about him, but about all the members of his immediate family.  I wondered just how many city and police officials were parts of Grendel's i