Free Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates

family in Kittatinny Falls knew where she’d been. And he was needing to tend to the child. So calmly Chet Cash spoke.
    You did a great job, Darlene. I’ll call.
    Thanks, Chet! Like I say, it just takes work.
    Very reluctantly the woman shifted her weight in the doorway. A blush had lifted into her heavy face, you could see that Chet Cash had the ability to make her happy.
    You got my cell number?—I guess you do.
    Right.
    OK, Chet. G’night.
    G’night.
    A few yards away like an irrepressible child the woman turned, grinned and waved—Good to have you back, Chet. Missed ya!
    There is the need for a female. Somehow, it can’t be avoided.
    He watched Darlene Barnhauser walk to her car. She had the side-to-side shuffling gait of a fat child. He would not take his eyes off her until he saw her climb into her piece-of-shit Saturn hatchback, with difficulty fitting her stout body behind the steering wheel, and turn on the ignition, and depart.
    All these minutes Daddy Love’s excitement had been mounting. Blood like hot lava flooding the pit of his belly, his groin.
    In the back bedroom, where the child awaited Daddy Love.

11
YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN MAY, JUNE 2006
    They waited.
    Each hour of each day they waited.
    The phone would ring and the message would be
Good news, Mrs. Whitcomb! We’ve found your son and he is—
    The choice of this next word was crucial. The word might be
well, or alive and well,
or
—alive.
    Just to hear that word—
alive.
     
    “‘Alive.’ ‘Alive.’”
    In her scratchy voice Dinah practiced. Her jaws were not so painful now when she spoke though she still had difficulty eating and so did not eat anything that involved an agitation of her jaws.
    Alone, Dinah practiced. She had her physical-therapy exercises to do and these she did religiously as required and she forced herself to walk up and down stairs using just a single crutchnow. She thought
It’s no worse than arthritis would be. Millions of people have arthritis.
    The landline rarely rang now. Yet, Dinah often heard it.
    A single short ring, cut off. She was sure.
    Her heart beat hard, as she listened. In the silence of the house it would have been difficult not to hear the phone ring and yet, she was anxious that she might miss it.
    Mrs. Whitcomb? Good news! We’ve just got word—
    It was a foolish sort of consolation and yet: her heart lifted, hearing her own scratchy voice as if it were a stranger’s voice on the phone that rarely rang for it was a phone with an unlisted number and this number was known only to law enforcement officials.
    Aloud she practiced the words she would someday hear:
    “‘We’ve found your son Robbie and he is—
alive
.’”
    Or, “We’ve found your son, Mrs. Whitcomb, and Robbie is
alive and well.”
    On a cork bulletin board in the kitchen, on the refrigerator door and on a wall above the telephone were snapshots of Robbie, Robbie and his parents, drawings and watercolors of Robbie’s in bright colors—Dinah stared at these countless times a day.
    Alone in the house on Seventh Street, Ypsilanti. Often she was alone.
    She’d had to quit her part-time job at the University of Michigan biology library. They’d given her a medical leave but it wasn’t clear when she’d be well enough to return and so, in all fairness to her employers, Dinah had quit.
    As she’d withdrawn from her classes in the education school. She’d been six credits from a master’s degree in public-school science education, with a social sciences major.
    Co-workers from the library had more or less ceased dropping by for there was no news to relay to them. And Dinah’s physical condition—her faltering words, her poor motor coordination and scarred face—her attempt to seem
upbeat
—was just too sad.
    Friends and neighbors were more faithful. Especially if Dinah was sitting out on the front porch with her laptop, furiously typing.
    The Internet had not yet yielded any helpful information. But the Internet was a great