63 Disappearances
Disappearances
By this point I’d been functioning as Regina’s personal detective for weeks, and I wanted to be done with the job.
I’d given her the information she’d asked for.
Still, she couldn’t leave it alone. She kept wanting more evidence.
She was like a person with poison ivy who couldn’t keep herself from scratching at a bloody sore. Making it worse.
She had gone off the deep end now.
Forrest had made a trip to Bangor that day to purchase supplies for the big party, with the plan of stopping off at his friend Evan’s on the way home for poker night.
Regina had made the surprising decision to give Jilly her bath—a ritual she’d participated in so seldom that she seemed not to get it that a silk blouse wasn’t the best attire to wear for that particular task.
I figured this had to be part of her campaign to reinvent herself as a good mother.
It wasn’t working all that well. When I stepped into the bathroom with the fresh towels, Jilly was sitting nearly buried in the bubbles that had formed after Regina poured an entire bottle of bubble bath in the tub.
She eyed her mother with a wary expression.
She had brought one of her American Girls, Samantha, to join her in the tub.
“Maybe Samantha would do better staying dry,” I suggested. “It might ruin her hair if you get her wet.” Regina made no comment. Jilly plunged the doll underwater, then looked up at me with a smile.
When they got to shampoo time, it was up to Jilly to explain to Regina what to do next. She pointed to the bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo on the edge of the tub. “You put some in your hand and rub it over my head to make the suds,” Jilly said.
She handed her mother the cup to rinse out the suds, then closed her eyes.
When I did this, nights when Forrest wasn’t around, I’d learned how to keep the soapy water from getting in Jilly’s eyes.
I’d hand her a washcloth and cup my hand around the place where the water ran down.
Watching Regina pouring water on Jilly’s head—a great deal of it, no washcloth or protective hand—I guessed she probably hadn’t washed her daughter’s hair much before this, possibly ever.
Crying now from shampoo in her eyes, Jilly stepped out of the tub. This would have been the moment for the person giving Jilly her bath to wrap her tightly in one of the extremely fluffy, hotel-quality towels that filled the Emersons’ linen closet, dab her face, and put their arms around her.
Regina sat on the edge of the toilet taking it in as if this were a play and she the lone member of the audience. Jilly stood naked and shivering, and wailing, waiting for her mother to do something. I reached for her myself.
When it was time for bedtime reading, Jilly said she wanted me, not her mother, to read that night’s chapter. After I’d got her tucked in, I came downstairs. Regina had the television set on—rare for her—and her cup of tea.
“My daughter doesn’t like me,” she said. “I doubt my son does either.” She took another sip of her tea. “I can’t say I blame them.
“If I disappeared tomorrow, I doubt if they’d notice.”
You might have thought this thought would depress her, but after she said the words, she laughed.