Still other parents preserved the child’s room, thinking of it as a magnet that would draw their loved one back. A child’s bedroom furnishings and toys became something tangible to hold on to when the child himself or herself had unthinkably slipped from their grasp. For some, these rooms were a physical demonstration of remembrance, a defiant refusal to let go. A sign of enduring hope. Sometimes I find myself wondering if there is anything more cruel than enduring hope.
Ives was a curator. Carla’s room was just as it had been the last time she was home. Cleaned and dusted. Favorite toys on the bed, the lion among them.
He moved to a closet and opened it. “I gave away most of her clothes,” he said, “except for her favorite pj’s. I know she won’t fit in them now, but…”
He went over the story he had told me on the phone, this time in greater detail. In the years after she left the newspaper, Bonnie had apparently gone on something of a downhill slide. Ives had met her about halfway down the slope-when she was already picking up speed, hurtling toward hitting bottom. That came when she grew restless with caring for an infant, and ran off with Reggie Faroe, a man with a criminal record and a drug problem. Blake and Bonnie Ives were divorced by the time Carla was two. The courts, considering Bonnie’s history and reports on Faroe, agreed with Blake that he should have full custody. Bonnie moved around a lot but stayed in touch and visited her daughter. As Carla went from infant to toddler, Bonnie’s desire to be a mother seemed to be renewed. “She was cleaning up her act-or so I thought,” Ives said. “She claimed Faroe was no longer in the picture, but I didn’t trust her. I never let Carla spend the night with her. Bonnie seemed content to spend hours with her here. Hinted about maybe getting back together.” He paused. “I’d love to say I didn’t fall for that, and if I had been by myself, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it. But I kept seeing how good she was with Carla, and thinking about Carla growing up without a mother. And Bonnie seemed more stable than she had been in years. So I was tempted.”
He walked around the room, picked up Squeegee, and held him.
“She came over one afternoon and asked if the three of us could have lunch together in a restaurant. While we were there, I went to use the gents and came back to an empty table. By the time I figured out that she wasn’t just in the ladies’ room with Carla, she was gone. I think someone, probably Faroe, must have been waiting outside to pick them up and drive off with them, because I was the one who drove us to the restaurant. A private detective found out that Faroe was living in Nevada around then, but he disappeared not long after Carla was taken, so I think he’s taken them to another country, probably Mexico.”
He looked down at Squeegee, said, “This guy was her favorite,” and gently repositioned the lion on the bed. “She used to get scared when there was a thunderstorm. Lots of kids do, I know, but…Anyway, I’d sing that song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ She loved that song. Whenever it rains, like it did the other day? I think about that, and then I wonder if she’s scared.”
He stood up and exhaled hard, like someone who had been sucker-punched in the gut.
The pain, the loss-easy to see. Likewise, his fears for his daughter’s safety. What took a little longer to observe was that he had been brought to a halt on a journey that was designed to go on to another end, the one parent and child were meant to share. It took a little longer to see how incomplete this had left him.
He gestured toward a stack of brightly wrapped packages that filled one corner of the closet. “Birthdays,” he said. “Christmas.”
The photographer wanted Ives to pose with them. Blake hesitated, then did. “She’ll be too old for most of them now,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. The tears didn’t fall, but he looked like hell while he held them back.
The photographer was too well trained to miss the moment. Our bosses would love it. Neither of us took joy in that, despite whatever rep those in our professions may have. I don’t expect anyone who wasn’t there to understand this, but shying away from Blake Ives’s misery would have, essentially, dishonored it.
I looked around the room. “A map of the United States? Books? Flashcards? Wasn’t she a little young?”
“She walked before she was nine months old. She started talking before she was a year old. She could name all the states and point them out on the map by the time she was two. She knew how to read simple sentences before her third birthday and was working her way through Dr. Seuss. She could add and subtract.” He paused. “I’m sure that just sounds like bragging, but we had her tested. I should say, I gave in and let her be tested. I regret it now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to know, so that we could make informed choices about her education. But once your child is identified as a gifted preschooler…let’s just say there are people who won’t let that kid just be a kid.”
“Bonnie one of them?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “Bonnie loves Carla. I know she does. It’s the only thing that keeps me from going completely crazy. But sometimes-Yes, I think she pushed her academically and didn’t balance it with play and all the other things that a child needs. From Bonnie’s point of view, I was holding Carla back.”
“What preschool was she in?”
“Barrington Hills.”
The photographer whistled.
I looked over at him.
“Not cheap, but kids get into the best prep schools if they go there or Sheffield Gardens. Or to Fletcher Day School, of course.”
“That’s part of Fletcher Academy?” I asked.
“Not really, even though the family owns both. A lot of kids at the day school do go on to the academy.”
“And the academy is the best private school in Las Piernas,” I said. I turned back to Ives. “So you paid high preschool tuition?”
“I would have paid twice that,” he said, “even if it meant taking a second job. I wanted her to be a kid, but it’s not that simple-I also wasn’t going to deny her any options for her future. The kids who go to Barrington end up in prep schools that lead to Ivy League schools. I wanted her to have the best opportunities.”
I just barely kept my jaw from dropping. “She wasn’t even five years old yet. She hadn’t started kindergarten.”
“The competition is unbelievable.”
“Is it even possible to know how smart a child that young is? Or if he or she will like school?”
“Sure-I mean, not always, of course. But in cases like Carla’s, you could tell even without the tests.”
“Who tested her?” I asked, hoping to get the name of someone who wasn’t going to be quite so biased.
“I made copies of her school papers for you. Hang on.”
Ives left the room. I turned to the photographer, ready to make a crack about parents who push too hard. The look on his face was wistful, not cynical, though, and he sighed dreamily. “Barrington Hills,” he said. “God, I hope I can get my kids in there.”
“How old are they?” I choked out.
“My daughter is six months old. My son is two.”
IVES brought back a thick stack of paperwork, including reports from a private eye he had briefly hired, information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and his notes from a meeting with a psychic he had paid. “I was desperate,” he said when I came across that one. I saw flyers with his daughter’s picture on them and copies of pages from a notebook he kept on his conversations with police, the notes getting briefer as time went on, the last series at three-month intervals, with the dates, the names of various LPPD detectives who happened to have the misfortune to be working in the low-status realm of missing persons, and the word nothing written next to their names.