Free The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

Anita and me, we have a feeling, we have a really strong feeling, Mrs. Bantry, that Marissa is alive. And Marissa is depending on us. So, if—”
    Avril came forward quickly, saying the visit was ended.
    “My sister has been under a strain, girls. I’ll see you to the door.”
    The flowers slipped through Leah’s fingers. She caught at some of them, clumsily. The others fell to the floor at her feet.
    Two of the girls hurried to the door, held open by Avril, withfrightened expressions. Jude, pausing, continued to smile in her earnest, pinched way. She’d taken a small black object out of her pocket. “May I take a picture, Mrs. Bantry?”
    Before Leah could protest, she raised the cell phone and clicked. Leah’s hand had flown up to shield her face, instinctively.
    Avril said sharply, “Please. The visit is over, girls.”
    Jude murmured, on her way out, “We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. Bye!”
    The other girls chimed in Bye! bye! Avril shut the door behind them.
    Leah threw the flowers away in the trash. White flowers!
    At least, they hadn’t brought her calla lilies.
    D UTCHWOMAN
    . . . in motion. Tracing and retracing The Route. Sometimes on foot, sometimes in her car. Sometimes with Avril but more often alone. “I need to get out! I can’t breathe in here! I need to see what Marissa saw.”
    These days were very long days. And yet, in all of the hours of these days, nothing happened.
    Marissa was still gone, still gone.
    Like a clock’s ticking: still, still gone. Each time you checked, still gone.
    She had her cell phone of course. If there was news.
    She walked to the Skatskill Day School and positioned herself at the front door of the elementary grades wing, which was the door Marissa would have used, would have left by on Thursday afternoon. From this position she began The Route.
    To the front sidewalk and east along Pinewood. Across Pinewood to Mahopac Avenue and continue east past Twelfth Street, Thirteenth Street, Fourteenth Street, Fifteenth Street. At Fifteenth and Trinity, the witness had claimed to see Mikal Zallman pull Marissa Bantry into his Honda CR-V van, and drive away.
    Either it had happened that way, or it had not.
    There was only the single witness, a Skatskill Day student whom police would not identify.
    Leah believed that Zallman was the man and yet: there was something missing. Like a jigsaw puzzle piece. A very small piece, yet crucial.
    Since thc girls’ visit. Since the bouquet of dazzling white flowers. That small twitchy smile Leah did not wish to interpret as taunting, of the girl named Jude.
    We will pray for you anyway, Mrs. Bantry. Bye!
    Important for Leah to walk briskly. To keep in motion.
    There is a deep-sea creature, perhaps a shark, that must keep in motion constantly, otherwise it will die. Leah was becoming this creature, on land. She believed that news of Marissa’s death would come to her only if she, the mother, were still; there was a kind of deadness in being still; but if she was in motion, tracing and retracting Marissa’s route . . . “It’s like Marissa is with me. Is me. ”
    She knew that people along The Route were watching her. Everyone in Skatskill knew her face, her name. Everyone knew why she was out on the street, tracing and retracing The Route. A slender woman in shirt, slacks, dark glasses. A woman who had made a merely perfunctory attempt to disguise herself, dusty-blond hair partly hidden beneath a cap.
    She knew the observers were pitying her. And blaming her.
    Still, when individuals spoke to her, as a few did each time she traced The Route, they were invariably warm, sympathetic. Some of them, both men and women, appeared to be deeply sympathetic. Tears welled in their eyes. That bastard they spoke of Zallman. Has he confessed yet?
    In Skatskill the name Zallman was known now, notorious. That the man was—had been—a member of the faculty at the Skatskill Day School had become a local scandal.
    The rumor was, Zallman had a