“I told you. He was a . . . dad. I loved him. He took me to Disney World. He would let me ride him around my room as if he was a horse. ’Cause when I was little I loved horses. He called me Jenny Penny because he used to do this trick with a penny where he hid it in between two fingers and then he’d pull it out of my ear—and I could never figure out how, and I would always ask him to do it again, do the penny trick, so he started calling me Jenny Penny.”
Detective Mary asked me if I needed a tissue.
I shook my head.
“After a while,” I said, “they became like my storybook mom and dad. Like the kind you make up, because I started to forget what they looked like. And what they sounded like, their voices, you know? And Father and Mother were real because they were there. And you’re six and seven and eight and nine, and this is your family now. And, okay, it was a real bizarro family—you know those Superman comics about the planet Bizarro. Father had whole stacks of these old comics. Anyway, there’s this planet Bizarro where there’s another Superman and Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen but they’re all, well . . . bizarre; they’re like the opposite of the ones here on Earth. And it used to, like, terrify me . . . those Bizarro Superman comics—because that’s what I was living, see? That’s what this family was . . . because back on Earth, your father doesn’t well, you know . . . he doesn’t . . .”
I took the tissue from Detective Mary. This was what happened— I talked about being six, and seven, and eight, and nine, and I turned into six and seven and eight and nine. I reverted.
“Where did they take you?” Detective Mary said. “After they kidnapped you . . . where did you go?”
“Down the rabbit hole,” I said.
THREE
This is what I found out later.
Detective Mary called the house on Maple Street. No one answered because both my parents were working and Ben was at school—high school, even though he should’ve easily been in college by now, meaning he must’ve screwed up big-time. Some detective there did some detective work and found out Mom worked at Mooney Realty and called there. When she answered the phone Detective Mary said, I don’t want to get your hopes too high, but there’s someone here claiming to be your daughter.
Mom fainted—that’s what she told me later. The next thing I saw was the ceiling.
After she was picked up off the floor by Tom Mooney—the Mooneys used to show up at our Fourth of July blowouts and somehow he’d become her boss, just like somehow she’d become a Realtor—Mom called Dad, who still worked at the same production company in the city but was now its executive producer, whatever that meant. He takes people to lunch, Mom explained.
Mom told Dad what the detective had told her—word for word, because she didn’t want to get anything wrong. I don’t want to get your hopes too high, but there’s someone here claiming to be your daughter. Mom’s hopes were apparently already floating somewhere past Jupiter, but Dad reminded her that the year after I’d disappeared, they’d been told that two separate girls might be me.
One of them was black, he said.
He was coming to the station anyhow.
Before Detective Mary slipped outside to call my parents, she asked me if taking my picture would be okay—still being courteous. I asked her what the point was, even though I kind of knew what the point was. “Is this my mug shot or something?”
“No, Jenny. No one’s arresting you.” Fake smile. “Just standard procedure.”
Smile for the camera, I said, or thought I said. Or both.
Mary snapped two—I smiled in one but not in the other. Then she said she’d be back in a few minutes.
“In the meantime, I’ll send Officer Farley in to keep you company, okay?”
“I’m fine with me, myself, and I.”
“Afraid it’s procedure again.”
I was tempted to ask if it was procedure for police officers to drool all over you, but I was starting to hyperventilate.
“My parents?” I asked her. “Have you talked to them yet?”
But Mary was already out the door, and Officer Farley was in.
“Hey there, stranger,” he said, still his friendly lecherous self.
“I really don’t need babysitting, you know. I’m legal.”
“Noted,” he said. “You want anything to drink?”
“Jack Daniel’s. Straight up.”
“How about some coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He sat down in Detective Mary’s chair, looked around the room a little as if he’d never been there—maybe he hadn’t, since this must be where detectives did their questioning and he wasn’t one. He drummed his fingers on the desk—he had bitten-down fingernails—and sighed. Then cleared his throat. Then sighed.
I wanted to be alone. I wanted to focus. In a little while they’d be walking into the room.
What if I become a fish and swim away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will become a fisherman and fish for you, Mommy Bunny answered. What if I become a bird and fly away from you? Baby Bunny asked. Then I will be a tree that you come home to, Mommy Bunny answered.
Mom used to read The Runaway Bunny to me every night. It’s how I went to sleep. No matter what Baby Bunny did, no matter how far he ran or swam or flew or jumped, Mommy Bunny would go after him. Baby Bunny would never get away from her.
“Are you feeling all right?” Officer Farley asked me.
“I’m cold.”
“Yeah? Feels like a furnace to me.”
“Glad you’re nice and toasty.”
“I can go check the thermostat, but . . .” He hesitated.
“But what?”
He looked confused, the way he had in the car when he was supposed to help me but looked like he wanted to help himself to me instead.
“You can’t leave me alone in here, is that it? Am I on suicide watch or something?”
“Suicide? Of course not.”
“Could’ve fooled me. I’m freezing.”
“You sure you don’t want that coffee?”
“I’m sure.”
What I wanted was about to come through the door. You want me to make it better? Mom asked when I roller-skated into that crack on the corner of Maple and opened up a bloody gash on my knee. Yes. Please.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“No shit. Are they here?”
“Your . . . parents?”