The Labyrinth of Blue Towers: The Disappearance of Jack Arneson: Chapter Four

 

The Labyrinth of Blue Towers:

The Disappearance of Jack Arneson

(A Sewing Box Mystery)

Chapter 1: Friday, June 10, 2011, 7:21 pm

Chapter 2: Saturday, June 11, 2011, 8:38 am

Chapter 3: Thursday, June 28, 1984, 10:10 am

Chapter 4: Thursday, June 28, 1984, 7:46 pm

Jean was lost in thought, sitting on the stool with the lid down, as Missy finished up her bath.

Bedtime always seemed to come at exactly the right time this summer; that being moments before Jean's patience and energy were about to totally bottom out. Keeping up with a five-year-old was a lot more difficult than Jean remembered. Of course, things were different back then, and her girls, Helen, Jeanette and Dorie, had the advantage of growing up with a father in the house. Granted Tom wasn’t much of a disciplinary presence - he let the girls do pretty much whatever they wanted, but at least he was there in the evenings to give Jean the occasional break.

Maybe that was something she should talk to Dorie about. It would be different if Dorie was actually working full-time, but she wasn’t, which meant she certainly could find time to help out with Missy the tiniest bit. Jean loved all her daughters, of course, but she couldn’t help but be a little disappointed in how they were turning out. They were young woman now. She marveled at how a single household could produce three such different creatures.

She worried that Helen had married too soon. So serious and driven, her eldest was never satisfied with anything less than perfection. Planning her wedding had been an excruciating experience, one that Jean hoped never to have to go through again. Still, that kind of pain was preferable to the moral quandary she faced when considering the alternative; the shacking up and bed-hopping that came so naturally to her youngest, Dorie. Where did she get that from? Not her. Helen, on the other hand, was such a traditionalist. She was also the one who'd possessed the most potential. Settling for such a traditional role, the same one Jean had, seemed to fly in the face of what the world today had to offer a young woman of Helen’s caliber. But Helen was also headstrong and wouldn’t even entertain the idea of waiting at least a year before getting married. Was she afraid it might be her only chance?

Or maybe it truly was love. Rick, Helen’s husband, was a very nice guy - a little too buttoned-up for Jean’s tastes, but he and Helen seemed perfectly suited.

 That was certainly not true of Jeanette and her current boyfriend; they seemed to fight all the time, even in the presence of other people! Jeanette was such a sturdy, hardy soul; no- nonsense with a good head on her shoulders. So how was it she kept hooking up with such rough characters? Jeanette’s current boyfriend gave Jean the willies; all those tattoos and leather. Maybe it was the motorcycle? Good thing Tom was not around to see how that young man treated his middle daughter. Tom would have sent him packing, his boot sticking out the kid’s rear end. The one upside was there was no sign of wedding bells coming from the two them; though that might be preferable to the four letter words that frequently did.

No wedding bells for Dorie, either. Jean’s head shook back in forth in a kind of denial whenever she thought about the day Dorie came back from Arizona and announced she was pregnant. The shame she had felt - Jean, not Dorie. Oh, no, according to Dorie everything was just ‘Hunky Dorie’ (actually. 'Hunky Dorie' had been a joke in the family for years, but given all that Dorie had put her mother through, Jean no longer saw the humor in it.)

Whatever Jean thought or felt didn’t matter - hadn’t for years - so there was nothing she could do about it. Poor Tom, he had no say in the matter, either. That had been a difficult time for the entire family. Two months later Tom was diagnosed with colon cancer. Three months after that, he was gone. In a way, Jean was grateful for the distraction that Dorie’s pregnancy offered. Circle of life. One comes in, one goes out.

Jean glanced over at her granddaughter, splashing away, singing the chorus of some awful pop song over and over again... and smiled. Such a blessing. Missy’s arrival helped fill up all the emptiness that had threatened to overwhelm Jean in the months that followed her husband’s death. Oh, she mourned, for sure. Mostly at night, in the silence of her bedroom. Parting with Tom's things had been a big step and a difficult one at that. His favorite work boots still sat in the back of the closet. She also had one of his white t-shirts neatly folded, nestling in the bottom of her underwear drawer. On occasion, she would pull it out and hold it next to her cheek, imagining his chest on the other side of the cloth. 

Since Tom’s death, sleeping had been something of a challenge. There was a hole in her heart that only appeared at night; in the daytime she had Missy to occupy that space. But at night, in the dark, it was always there to greet her. She had yet to find something to fill it.

Missy, still singing away at the top of her lungs, managed to splash a drop or two of bathwater high enough and far enough to hit Jean right below one of her eyes. Shaking herself out of her reverie, and still seated, she grabbed a well-worn towel from the rack next to the tub. “Okay, Carmen, Carmen, Carmen Camellia, enough with the water ballet. Hop out of that tub so I can dry you off.”

“That’s not how it goes.”

“I don’t care how it goes, but I’m telling you I’ve heard enough. No more singing. Come on, get out, let me dry you off, and then we’ll go read a nice quiet story. It’s bedtime.”

“But the sky is still blue. How am I supposed to sleep if the sun is still awake?”

“I don’t know. Missy, but if there is a God in heaven, you will. And oh, please let there be a God in heaven.”

Missy stopped short, and then in a very pragmatic voice, said, “Don’t be silly. Grandma." The child rolled her eyes for effect. She was quite the little actress. “Of course there is a God in heaven. That's who Grandpa lives with. You tell me that all the time.”

“Oh, you are absolutely correct.” Jean rose and pulled Missy from the tub by her arms, “How did you get so smart?”

"I'm smart like my Daddy ”

“Mmmmm,” demurred Jean, working the towel over Missy’s dripping form, “I think the jury's still out on that one, hon. I'm not sure how smart he can be if he’s missing out on someone as special as you growing up.”

“Will he come see me?”

“Maybe. Someday.” Jean thought better of it and decided to end the conversation, “That is something you will have to discuss with your mother. Now, put on your ‘jammies and brush your teeth, while I comb your hair.”

Missy cooperated. Maybe she was running out of steam, finally. Soon they found themselves sitting on the bed in Missy’s room, side by side; Jean’s left leg hanging over the side. They read one of Missy’s favorites, Ferdinand the Bull. Missy loved it when the bee stung Ferdinand. Over and over again she would say, “If you were a bumble bee and a bull sat on you what would you do? You would sting him.” Each repetition was followed by a fit of laughter. She also liked it when the ladies arrived at the arena with flowers in their hair and when Ferdinand, rather than fight, sat down to smell the flowers.

When the book was finished, Missy was not. In fact, the whole idea of getting stung by a bee now seemed to be a very real possibility to her. “But if the window is open they could get me.”

Jean did her best to reassure her, “All the bees are asleep now. Missy, just like a certain little girl should be."

“What about the ones that are lost and can’t find their way home?”

Jean thought for a moment, before answering, "They’re asleep, too, but not at home. It's like a camping trip; they bring along their sleeping bags made of honeycombs and nestle in there, happy as a bug in the rug.” This seemed to put the child at ease

 “We should pray for them. The ones that are lost.”

This made Jean smile. What a thoughtful little person she was raising. “What a good idea,” added Jean.

“And we should also pray for that boy. He’s lost, too.”

The Jack Arneson story had been the lead on the Six O’Clock News. No new developments. The station just replayed all the old footage and information they had broadcast earlier in the day. After Tom had died, Jean developed a habit of having the news on during dinner. From where she sat in the kitchen, she had a clear view of the T.V. It was her sole attempt to stay in touch with the rest of the world. Usually whatever was reported served as little more than background noise, but the Arneson story, that caught her eye, Missy’s, too. After the newscast had gone to a commercial Missy asked, “Grandma, did that boy do something bad?”

The question caught Jean, lost in thought, off-guard. “What? Oh, no, honey. But..." and she paused, unsure why exactly she felt this way, but she did. Her tone grew darker before continuing, her words moving slower as she began to feel their actual weight, “But, something bad has happened to him.” The moment it came out of her mouth, she regretted it. Such statements usually only invited more questions; questions, in this instance, she had no answers to. Fortunately Missy seemed to pick up on her grandmother’s ambivalence, and became thoughtful, silently rearranging the carrots and peas on her plate. The subject had been dropped.

Until now.

Missy slid off the end of the bed, got on her knees and began to pray. Jean was tempted to join her, but something in her resisted. Too late for prayers? Is there such a time? For a moment her forehead ached, this topic much too complex to grapple with at this time of night. Changing course, she was struck by the naivete of her granddaughter; how in her young mind, the plight of sleepy, wayward bees held the same gravity as a missing ten year-old boy. How much longer before Missy learned the truth about the world they lived in?

And how much longer before the world learned the truth about what had happened to poor Jack Arneson?

Later, that night, after St. Elsewhere was over, Jean decided to stay up and watch the news, hoping that her gut feeling was way off base and that the boy had been found. But no deal. Nothing new. A search party was being organized for the morning. Volunteers from all over the state were expected to come and walk the ditches, fields and wooded areas that surrounded the family farm and the town of Jasper. The FBI was now involved. Nothing that the newscasters had to share really registered with Jean. Her thoughts were with the boy’s mother. What that woman must be going through.

As the news anchor moved on to different local story, Jean rose and moved to her front door. She peered out its tiny, peek-a-boo window in search of Dorie. Of course she wasn't there and it was doubtful that Jean was going to be able to stay awake long enough to make sure she got home safely. Why the sudden fear? Jean reasoned that if something horrible could happen to a little boy walking along a dirt road in the middle of the country during daylight, there was no telling what could happen to a reckless twenty-five year-old woman who put herself in all sorts of dicey situations at night in the middle of a city as big as Minneapolis. The thought sent a chill through Jean’s bones, so she shook herself back to reality. “Snap out of it, Jean,” she told herself. Hadn’t years of doing exactly what she was doing now taught her anything? Just as watched pots never boil, wayward children never appear on your doorstep when you want them to.

She should just go to bed. Tomorrow, Missy had a dentist appointment. There was coffee in the afternoon at Terri's house and groceries she needed to pick up for Jeanette’s birthday which was coming up soon. She’d have to get a card. At least a card. Laundry, too. So much to do. Too much?

Leaving the front light on for Dorie, in case she did decide to come home, Jean double­-checked the locks on both the front door and the one in the kitchen before heading up the steps. She pulled back a corner of the summer quilt along with the top sheet beneath it and slipped inside. The sheets and pillow were cool to the touch due to the open window on her side of the bed. It offered up a slight, welcome breeze which floated throughout the room. She could put up with the sounds of the city, as long as there was a nice breeze. It had been such a hot day.

Instinctively, Jean’s left hand reached out and moved along the unruffled covers on the other side of the bed.

Yes, sleepy bees and ten year-old boys were not the only things missing in the world that night.

 With that thought she closed her eyes, allowing the night’s breeze to carry her into sleep

--- ---

Karma Chameleon - Culture Club