For in the end, the woman is left with caring. In her physical being, encoded in her flesh, helpless, stricken, the woman will continue to care for the man after he has ceased feeling anything for her.

  Hannah worried that Wes had essentially ceased caring about her. Of course he was her husband, he was not a rebellious or an unconventional person, like all of the Jarretts he respected routine, and was dependent upon the comfort of routine; he took pride in the property he’d acquired, at considerable expense, which included his wife and children—his. But caring on his part had faded over the years of their intimacy, so gradually, Wes was possibly unaware of the loss himself. But Hannah was aware.

  So rarely now, Wes made love with her. To her. At such times Hannah sensed that his mind was elsewhere.

  She did not blame him: the (bored) husband. That he took her for granted she understood, she was resigned to understanding. Only if she veered from her course, like a driver heedlessly changing lanes, would Wes take notice of her, but it would be a devastating notice.

  But now, Hannah basked in her own secret. How he’d closed his fingers around her wrist.

  How brazen he’d been, claiming her in such a way. Not gripping her wrist tightly enough to bruise it, but rather more playful, provocative. As if suggesting what he might do if he wished.

  Still, Hannah imagined that, if she examined her wrist closely, she could see the faint imprint of his fingers in her skin.

  Empty Ballroom

  Today, Good Friday 1977. The Riverview Ballroom of the Renaissance Grand Hotel which Hannah remembers as deafening and festive, now deserted.

  Such emptiness! Vast and graceless as a warehouse, unpleasantly chilly and smelling of floor polish and chemical cleanser.

  The ivory-white walls are not pristine, as they’d appeared to be on the evening of March Madness. Grimy and scuffed at the baseboards, with a look of general wear though the hotel is only a few years old. At the high ceiling gilt ornamentation looks as cheap as foil. Chandeliers that had appeared to be made of brass and crystal are surely made of neither.

  No elegantly dressed men in black tie, no women in dazzling cocktail dresses and spike-heeled shoes, no buzzing warmth of voices, laughter. No brassy jazz quintet, no festive decorations. No uniformed waiters making their deft darting ways through throngs of guests, trays uplifted. The small sea of tables covered in gaily colored tablecloths, bedecked with floral displays and reproductions of celebrated works of art—dismantled, merely utilitarian, stacked against the walls.

  Which one are you?

  Or was it—Which are you?

  Hannah is disoriented, dazed. It doesn’t seem possible that what happened to her in this vast soulless space could ever truly have happened. Amid the smells of floor polish, chemical cleanser like a whiff of formaldehyde …

  She hadn’t thought that he would call her. She hadn’t thought that, if he’d called her, she would have agreed to meet him.

  None of it has unfolded as she’d anticipated. A strange passivity has overtaken her like a narcotic. If the ballroom began to ooze befouled water, if a tide of filth arose about her ankles, legs, she’d have been paralyzed to move away from it, to save herself …

  He awaits Hannah on the sixty-first floor of the hotel. Hannah has taken an escalator to the mezzanine, to (re)visit the Riverview Ballroom.

  She tries to recall: the ballroom thrumming with life, voices and laughter, music. An aqueous environment quivering with raw creaturely appetite, desire.

  She remembers being in a conversation of forced gaiety with persons she knew slightly, knew by name as they knew her by name, shouting to hear one another over the din, and the brush of someone’s fingers against her wrist …

  More than two weeks ago, by the calendar. So vivid in Hannah’s memory it might have been yesterday.

  Waiting for a call. Waiting, as one might wait for news of a medical test result. Telling herself—Of course I am not “waiting.”

  Lifting the receiver with the expectation that it was a call of no great significance, lifting the receiver without steeling herself for the shock of his voice—Hannah? Hello.

  The actual call, the exchange, she scarcely remembers. But now it is the following day and she has returned to the Renaissance Grand Hotel.

  Good Friday. The single day of the year in which there is no communion in the Roman Catholic Church.

  No communion on Good Friday because there can be no consecration of the host on Good Friday.

  No consecration of the host on Good Friday because Jesus Christ has been nailed to the cross, He has not yet risen from the tomb nor has He been carried lifeless to the tomb to await His resurrection on Easter morning.

  Good Friday, so often a raw wet day in childhood. Cold rain laced with pellets of snow.

  If you would just smile, Hannah! You would be pretty. At least try.

  Made to walk from the parking lot behind the church to the front entrance of the church no matter the weather. Hard stinging rain, rain mixed with snow, hailstones. For Hannah’s father refused to drop his passengers off in front of the church as others were dropped off—“coddling” was to be resisted.

  Joker Daddy believed least of all in “coddling” himself. He had no patience for weakness. Hannah’s mother seated beside him in the passenger seat wordless, making no appeal, head bowed as if meekly.

  Don’t be ridiculous. You can walk. We can all walk. What d’you think I am, a chauffeur?

  Good Friday, not a day to laze around.

  Hannah was determined at a young age: not to laze around.

  But now it is years later. A lifetime later: Good Friday 1977.

  No connection between that old, lost life and Hannah’s life now. She is sure.

  Retreating now from the Riverview Ballroom, its emptiness, vacuity. Vanity.

  Nothing so desolate as a grand ballroom from which all human life has drained.

  Why, where is everyone? Have we all died?

  Silent as a morgue. Perhaps this isn’t a ballroom at the Renaissance Grand Hotel at Renaissance Plaza, perhaps it is a hospital morgue. Windowless, because underground.

  Faint whiff of formaldehyde. Hannah feels the shock of a fiery sensation up her nostrils, wires into her brain. She did come to him, like a fool she’d come to him, he’d strangled her with his strong bare hands, he’d disposed of her body and has already forgotten her name. Like a flash it had happened, and now it is happening again. Quickly, stepping out into the corridor and allowing the heavy door to click shut after her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am? May I help you?”

  A smartly dressed hotel employee on her way to the escalator notices Hannah in the corridor outside the ballroom, where she appears to be standing motionless as if stricken in thought or in some way entranced, and so pauses to address her in a Renaissance Grand–trained voice of friendly solicitude even as Hannah wakes from her trance, embarrassed, assuring the woman—“Thank you but no. I am not lost.”

  Lost

  On the sixty-first floor of the hotel tower he awaits her.

  Rapidly ascending in the sleek glass capsule like a vessel shot into space she feels a thrill of vertigo, she shuts her eyes.

  A hissing sound like a sharp intake of breath. She is hurtled into time, she has been shaken free of gravity, such a curious sensation—to fall upward.

  Sin

  My happiness is my children, my husband. My marriage. My happiness is not myself but …

  In the glass cubicle rapidly ascending soundless and weightless rehearsing these futile words. Clutching between numbed fingers the folded-over sheet of hotel stationery she’d intended to crumple and throw away downstairs in the lobby.

  … and so, I can’t stay. I hope you can understand and will be my friend.

  He will take pity on her, she believes. And he is dazzled by her, she has been led to believe.

  The glass cubicle stops. Abruptly.

  No choice but to step out. Finding herself standing before a plate-glass window facing the elevator. Many stories above the ground, disoriented. A fierce white sun impales Hannah like a spike through the forehead.

  A blow of God. A stroke.

  This is a mistake, this is sin, turn back.

  Making her way to the room on a high floor of the hotel. His room.

  With a part of her mind understanding that none of this is real. The familiar dream in which she is a child again. Trying to run, breathless and frightened. Not again, but still.

  So many years we push forward. Always the effort of pushing against gravity, time.

  It has been Joker Daddy who pursues her, has it?—Daddy longlegs overtaking frantic foolish short child legs.

  That’s a mistake, sweetie! Running from your daddy.

  Not a mistake you want to make, sweetie. See?

  Never struck her. Or—rarely.

  Not sure where this place is. A windowless corridor. Rows of doors, shut and mute. Identical doors. A high floor of a high-rise building, just perceptibly tremulous in the wind.

  Run stumbling along the corridor pounding on doors with both fists, no one will hear.

  Before Babysitter

  How’re you doin’ in a kindly voice. Important there was no threat implied for in truth, those days before Babysitter became Babysitter, there was not, or not usually.

  Cass Corridor, East Warren, Gratiot. Cruising down Woodward and at the City Center exit of I-75, vacant lots heaped with rubble like wartime. In bodegas, on tenement stoops, in alleys, stairwells it was welfare mothers you’d approach. Sleepy-lidded eyes just barely lifting to yours, irises shrunk to a pinprick. Crack-cocaine glaze, soft-mouthed so just the right smile was the key, you could work it out so for a dime bag they’d give you their kid, that’s to say lend.

  At the Motor City Motel. Girl looking too young to be a mother sprawled in the backseat of the Olds, for a dime bag she’d lend us her kid.

  You know, I could babysit for you. I’m, like, bonded.

  It was a joke, even if you didn’t comprehend you could see it was a joke and kindly meant with a wink. If your face was familiar to them, they didn’t distrust you. Basically it was a small world.

  Okay, man. Yeh.

  Babysitter took only white children but before Babysitter there were Black children, brown-skinned, as well as “white.” Depending on the mothers, on who came along. Weeks they’d be living on the street, then one day gone.

  Life is what it is—who comes along. Tell yourself something more, you’d be lying.

  By the exit underpass. Lucia, pronounced “Loo-she-a,” would be missing anywhere from two to three hours to overnight. The baby was four years old but small for its age. Eyes not in focus but liked to be cuddled, hugged. Made a mewing sound. Anything soft it could eat like ice cream if not too cold. Melted was best.

  Mister R__ would send us to deal with Lucia—“intermediaries.” We had “bargaining power.” Mister R__ was all we knew of his name but there were rumors he lived in a mansion in Bloomfield Hills. He’d pay you up front. “Cash and carry.” You never had to worry about Mister R__ owing you and not paying like those others.

  His friend rarely spoke. The Hawk, we called him. Tall, skin like parchment, heavy-lidded eyes but nothing sleepy about him.

  The Hawk was the driver, Mister R__ would ride in the backseat in those days. They wore dark glasses and the car had tinted windows. The Hawk laughed at Mister R__ for the Hawk had no weakness for children. The Hawk could slap a child into submission as a snake might hypnotize its prey before swallowing it whole.

  (My friend here tells me I am wrong, the Hawk had a weakness for some of them. A girl child, the Hawk might take for himself, you’d hear her screaming, then you’d hear the silence. You never needed to clean up after the Hawk, he took care of that himself. But Mister R__, he’d get drunk and need to be comforted.)

  Years later, Mister R__ would kill himself. Single shot to the head, Glock revolver dropped at his feet. Brains dribbling down the broken skull. “Suicide note” left behind.

  Evidence suggested that Mister R__ was (likely) Babysitter. Never proved.

  For the record I am stating this now because all of this, Babysitter and all the evil he wrought, that was known to have been done, and attributed to him, and all that was never known and never attributed to him, as the sum total of all evil must be greater than the sum total of known evil, in those accursed years 1976 and 1977 in Detroit and suburbs, is “history” now passing into oblivion and the blamelessness of oblivion beyond even evil.

  Conscience

  They know! They will never forgive me.

  That morning the children behaved strangely as if sensing their mother’s mood. Nervous, anxious—like their mother, except Hannah knew better than to betray her feelings.

  Hannah laid her hand against their foreheads that seemed slightly overwarm, damp. Fever?

  Four-year-old Katya, usually so cooperative in the morning, had balked at being dressed, sulky-faced, tearful for no reason, and later, wincing when her hair was being brushed (by Mommy, not Ismelda) as if her scalp hurt. Usually Katya was sweetly docile, unresisting; there was a strange passivity in the child that worried Hannah, Katya so unquestioningly did what adults told her to do.

  Conor, too, was irritable, uncooperative; daring to slap at Hannah’s hand, not hard but petulantly, as if Hannah had slapped him. (She had not.) (Not even a feather-light slap against her children, ever.) Conor was complaining of bad dreams, his feet “stuck” in the bedclothes so he couldn’t get out of bed in time to use the bathroom. (Ismelda had already dealt with a wetted sheet, quickly changing the bedclothes before Hannah noticed.)

  It had become a curious complaint of Conor’s that the bedclothes on his bed were too tight, or in some way confining, so that he couldn’t move his legs or turn over without a struggle; the child seemed to fear that something was beneath the covers but when Hannah pulled down the bedclothes, proving there was nothing, Conor remained suspicious, uneasy.

  Wes chided Hannah for indulging the children’s fears. Allowing the children to sleep in the adults’ bed when they were frightened was particularly not a good idea. All children are fantasists, Wes said; adults have to dispel their fantasies, or they will never grow up—they will be neurotics, weak-minded and fearful of life.

  But life is fearful, Hannah thought. Especially the lives of children.

  Hannah recalled a terror of sleep, in her childhood. For her the terror had been the paralysis that comes with sleep, that leaves you helpless, unable to escape if someone, or something, comes into your room in the night.

  And suddenly in a rush, recalling the first abduction of Babysitter—a boy named Michel, thirteen years old—Hannah had seen his photograph in the paper without knowing what, who it was, staring at the soft-eyed sweet-faced boy looking younger than his age whose naked mutilated body had been found in a snowbank in a public park only a few miles away from her own children peacefully sleeping in their beds.

  But Michel had been an orphan, Hannah recalls. A resident in a Catholic boys’ home in Ferndale or Royal Oak, one of those suburbs just outside Detroit, he hadn’t had parents to protect him …

  There was Wes staring at her—why?

  “Did you hear what I just said, Hannah?”

  “I—I think so … Yes.”

  “You’ve been listening?”

  “Yes of course. I—I’m in agreement with you.”

  No idea what Wes had said. No idea why he was staring at her.

  At what point in a marriage, Hannah thought, do you begin to see the other? When does the other begin to see you? Wondering who this person is, why you are together?

  A sudden chill, finality of a grate being yanked down over a store window.

  Hannah thought, of the fretting children before her—I will keep them home!

  She’d never thought of the (orphan) boy Michel again, since that morning. Never, no purpose, pointless, why?—not even the last name, no idea what the last name was, is.

  Not her child. Not a child of anyone Hannah is likely to know.

  Reports of colds, sore throats, bronchitis at the children’s school. For April it was such a raw wet windy disagreeable morning and the house was wonderfully warm. (When Wes was away, Hannah set the thermostat at seventy degrees; before Wes returned, the thermostat was discreetly reset at sixty-eight degrees.) She would keep the children at home and she would remain at home.

  A call to him. A murmured excuse. Possibly, she could leave a message for him at the hotel, wouldn’t have to speak to him in person.

  Sorry. Can’t. Not possible.

  Not now.

  Mommy would prepare Easter eggs with the children as they’d done last year. Already, Mommy’s heart was lifting.

  If Ismelda had purchased the bright colorful dye, the decals. If Ismelda had hard-boiled the eggs …

  Yet: In the next half hour it happened in the confusion of breakfast, amid the daily morning task of feeding children who’d developed finicky appetites, Hannah was made to realize that yes, she was going to drive sixteen miles to Detroit along windswept I-75; and though she’d certainly intended to take the children’s temperatures she did not take the children’s temperatures (for that meant running back upstairs to get the damned thermometer) (she didn’t want to send Ismelda on another errand for there was always so much for Ismelda to do in the morning), driving them to school as usual thinking (guiltily) that if they came home with colds, if they had fevers that evening it would be Mommy’s fault.

  She did like to drive them to school herself. Mommy in the bulky car coat! Waving at other mothers in their station wagons.

  Mom-my! Strapped into their safety seats in the spacious cushioned rear of the Buick the children pleaded with her, no the children were angry with her, never would they forgive Mommy if she went away leaving them feverish, ill on Good Friday 1977.