Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

she could think A week. This Sunday is a week. And she hasn’t been found and it would have the ring of tentative good news: She hasn’t been found in some terrible place.

      He would never forgive himself, she knew.

      Though it could not be his fault. Yet.

      Arlette had long gotten over being jealous—at any rate, showing her jealousy—of her daughters. Particularly Zeno adored Juliet but he’d also been weak-minded about Cressida, the “difficult” daughter—the one whom it was a challenge to love.

      At the very start, the little girls had adored their mother. As babies, their young mother was all to them. Which is only natural of course.

      But quickly then, Daddy had stolen their hearts. Big burly bright-faced Daddy who was so funny, and so unpredictable—Daddy who loved to subvert Mommy’s dictums and upset, as he liked to joke, Mommy’s apple cart.

      As if an orderly household—eating at mealtimes, and properly at a table, with others—walking and not running/rushing on the stairs—keeping your bedroom reasonably clean, and not messing up a bathroom for others—were a silly-Mommy’s apple cart to be overturned for laughs.

      But Mommy knew to laugh, when she was laughed-at.

      Mommy knew it was love. A kind of love.

      Except it hurt sometimes—the father siding with the daughter, in mockery of her.

      (Not Juliet of course: Juliet never mocked anyone.)

      (Mockery came too easily to Cressida. As if she feared a softer emotion would make her vulnerable.)

      Arlette knew: if something terrible had happened to Cressida, Zeno would blame himself. Though there could be no reason, no logical reason, he would blame himself.

      Already he was saying to whoever would listen I wasn’t even there, when she left. God!

      In a voice of wonder, self-reproach Maybe she’d have told me—something. Maybe she’d have wanted to talk.

      COUNTLESS TIMES they’d gone over Saturday evening: when Cressida had left the house, on her way to the Meyers’ for dinner.

      Casually, you might say indifferently calling out to her mother and her sister in the kitchen—Bye! See you later.

      Or even, though this was less likely given that Cressida wouldn’t have stayed very late at Marcy’s—Don’t wake up for me.

      (Had Cressida said that? Don’t wake up for me?—intentionally or otherwise? Wake up not wait up. That was Cressida’s sort of quirky humor. Suddenly, Arlette wondered if it might mean something.)

      (Snatching at straws, this was. Pathetic!)

      Certainly it was ridiculous for Zeno to reproach himself with not having been home at that time. As if somehow—(but how?)—he might have foreseen that Cressida wouldn’t be returning when she’d planned, and when they’d expected her?

      Ridiculous but how like the father.

      Particularly, the father of daughters.

      EACH TIME the phone rang!

      Several phones in the Mayfield household: the family line, Zeno’s cell, Arlette’s cell, Juliet’s cell.

      Always a kick of the heart, fumbling to answer a call.

      Deliberately Arlette avoided seeing the caller ID in the hope that the caller would be Cressida.

      Or, that the caller would be a stranger, a law enforcement officer, possibly a woman, in Arlette’s fantasizing it was a woman, with the good news Mrs. Mayfield!—we’ve found your daughter and she wants to talk to you.

      Beyond this, though Arlette listened eagerly, there was—nothing.

      As if, in the strain of awaiting the call, and hearing Cressida’s voice, she’d forgotten what that voice was.

      DRIVING TO THE BANK, fumbling with the radio dial, in a panic to hear the “top of the hour” news—almost colliding with a sanitation truck.

      Recovering, and, in the next block, almost colliding with an SUV whose driver tapped his horn irritably at her.

      And, in the bank, bright-faced and smiling in the (desperate, transparent) hope of deflecting looks of pity, waiting in line at a teller’s window exactly as she’d have waited if her daughter was not missing.

      This fact confounded her. This fact seemed to mock her.

      Wanting to hide. Hide her face. But of course, no.

      “Arlette? You are Arlette Mayfield—aren’t you? I’m so sorry—really really sorry—about your daughter . . . We’ve told our kids, one is a junior in high school, the other is just in seventh grade, if they hear anything—anything at all—to tell us right away. Kids know so much more than their parents these days. Out at the lake, and in the Preserve, there’s all kinds of things going on—under-age drinking is the least of it. All kinds of drugs including ‘crystal meth’—kids don’t know what they’re taking, they’re too young to realize how dangerous it is . . . I don’t mean that your daughter was with any kind of a drug-crowd, I don’t mean that at all—but the Roebuck Inn, that’s a place they hang out—there’s these Hells Angels bikers who are known drug-dealers—but parents have their heads in the sand, just don’t want to acknowledge there’s a serious—tragic—problem in Carthage . . .”

      And not in the bank parking lot, can’t let herself cry. Not with bank customers trailing in and out. And anyone who knew Arlette Mayfield, including now individuals not-known to her who’d seen her on WCTG-TV with her husband Zeno pleading for the return of their daughter, could stare through her car windshield and observe and carry away the tale to all who would listen with thrilled widened eyes That poor woman! Arlette Mayfield! You know, the mother of the missing girl . . .

      CALLS CONTINUED TO COME to police headquarters.

      Though peaking on the second day, Monday, July 11: a record number of calls following the front-page article, with photos, in the Carthage Post-Journal. And the notice of the ten-thousand-dollar reward.

      Myriad “witnesses” claiming to have sighted Cressida Mayfield—somewhere. Or to have knowledge of what might have happened to her and where she was now.

      In some cases, making veiled accusations against people—(neighbors, relatives, ex-husbands)—who might have “kidnapped” or “done something to” Cressida Mayfield.

      Zeno had wanted these calls routed through him. It was his fear that a valuable call would be overlooked by someone in the sheriff’s office.

      Detectives explained to Zeno that, where reward money is involved, a flood of calls can be expected, virtually all of them worthless.

      Yet, though likely to be worthless, the calls have to be considered—the “leads” have to be investigated.

      The Beechum County Sheriff’s Department was understaffed. The Carthage PD was helping in the investigation though this department was even smaller.

      If kidnapping were suspected, the FBI might be contacted. The New York State Police.

      Was offering a reward so publicly a mistake? Zeno didn’t want to think so.

      “Maybe the mistake is not offering enough. Let’s double it—twenty thousand dollars.”

      “Oh, Zeno—are you sure?”

      “Of course I’m sure. We have to do something.”

      “Maybe you should speak with Bud McManus? Or maybe—”

      “She’s our daughter, not his. Twenty thousand will attract more attention. We have to do something.”

      Arlette thought But if there is nothing? If we can do nothing?

      There was Zeno on the phone. Defiant Zeno on two phones at once: the family phone,