Still Missing

woman's eyes turn to her daughter in relief and gratitude that it wasn't her child, then see in those eyes that she was sure--sure with a mother's necessary confidence--that nothing terrible was ever going to happen to her daughter.

When I tried to pull my finger away, Samantha squeezed tighter, and a tiny bubble of spit formed at her lips. My nostrils inhaled her scent--baby powder, diapers, and the faint sweet odor of milk. I wanted her. My hands ached to lift her out of the seat and into my arms, into my life.

With furtive glances down either end of the aisle--empty--my mind worked to calculate how many steps it would take me to escape. I knew only one cashier worked this late. Easy breezy. I stepped closer to the cart. With my heart whooshing in my ears, I noticed every one of the baby's fine blond hairs glimmering in the store's fluorescent lights and reached out with my free hand to finger one silken strand. My baby had dark hair. This wasn't my baby. My baby was gone.

I stepped back just as the mother rose to her feet in the aisle, noticed me, and began to walk back toward the cart.

'Hello?' she said with a tentative smile.

I wanted to say, What were you thinking? Turning your back on your child like that. Don't you know what could happen? How many crazies are out there? How crazy I am?

'What a happy baby,' I said. 'And so beautiful.'

'She looks happy now, but you should have seen her an hour ago! It took me forever to get her to calm down.' While she went on about her mom-stress, stress I would have traded my soul for, I wanted to call her an ungrateful bitch, tell her she should be glad for every cry out of her baby's mouth. Instead I stood paralyzed and gave an occasional smile or nod to the woman until she finally ran out of steam and wrapped it up by saying, 'Do you have kids?'

I felt my head shake back and forth, felt my lips straighten out from the smile, even felt my throat vibrate with the words, 'No. No kids.'

My eyes must have revealed something, though, because she smiled kindly and said, 'It'll happen.'

I wanted to slap her, wanted to scream and rage. I wanted to cry. But I didn't. I just smiled, nodded my head, and wished her a pleasant evening as I left them there in the aisle.

That was when I realized I might not be doing such a good job of handling things on my own. I'd managed to shove that moment behind all my other moments of near-madness until I saw a notice in the paper yesterday that one of the girls I used to work with just gave birth to a boy. I sent a card, but I knew I didn't trust myself to be around that baby. Even picking out the card was agony. Not sure why I did it, other than as another pathetic attempt to prove to myself I can handle shit I very clearly can't.

'Wayne and I would like you to come for dinner tonight,' Mom said when she called late Tuesday afternoon. 'I'm making a roast.'

'Damn, I just had an early dinner. Wish I'd known.' I hadn't eaten, but I'd rather rake my body over hot coals--hell, I'd rather eat hot coals--than go over there and hear what I was fucking up on now. Only Mom could manage to make me feel like shit about feeling like shit. I was already in a bad mood because of this one asshole movie producer who keeps taping proposals to my front door--he actually stands there and tries to talk to me through the wood, raising the amount every few minutes like he's bidding at a goddamn auction. He's wasting his breath.

Years ago, I remember watching the movie Titanic. People stuffed with popcorn were commenting on their way out about the great special effects and how realistic it was, particularly the bodies bobbing in the sea. And me? I went to the bathroom to throw up, because people actually died like that--hundreds and hundreds of people--and it seemed wrong to sit there and eat candies and lick salty butter off your fingers and admire how authentic their deaths in the freezing water looked.

I sure as hell don't want people stuffing their faces while they rate my life for its entertainment value.

'I tried to call you earlier, but you didn't answer.' Mom never says, 'You weren't home,' it's always, 'You didn't answer,' in an accusing tone as though I let the phone ring just to piss her off.

'Emma and I went for a walk.'

'What's the point of having voice mail if you don't check it?'

'You're right--sorry. But I'm glad you called back, I wanted to ask you something. I went through my things last night looking for my pictures of Daisy and Dad but I couldn't find them.'

Not that I'd ever had a lot of photos anyway. Most of them had been given to me by relatives, and the rest were held hostage by Mom in her scrapbooks and albums with vague promises of their coming to me 'one day.' I was especially pissed that Mom was holding on to one with just Dad, Daisy, and me--it was unusual to find a picture Mom wasn't in.

'I'm sure I dropped those off after you moved back to your place.'

'Not that I remember, and I looked everywhere for them the other night....' I waited for a couple of seconds, but she offered up no explanation for the missing pictures, and I knew she wouldn't unless I pressed harder. But there was something else I wanted to ask her, and I'd learned to choose my battles with Mom. Russian roulette was probably less risky.

'Mom, do you ever think about Dad and Daisy?'

An exasperated sigh hissed through the phone. 'Of course I do. What a silly question. So how much did you eat? Those canned soups you live on aren't a meal. You're getting too thin.'

'I'm trying to talk to you about something, Mom.'

'We've already talked--'

'Actually, no, we haven't. I've always wanted to because I think about them all the time, especially when I was up there, but whenever I brought the subject up, you either changed it or you just talked about Daisy's skating and all her--'

'Why are you doing this? Are you trying to hurt me?'

'No! I just wanted...well, I thought...because I lost a daughter and you lost a daughter, I thought we could talk and maybe you'd have some insight on how to deal with it.' Insight? What the hell was I thinking? The woman had never shown any insight deeper than an ounce of vodka.

'I don't think I can help, Annie. The child you had...It's just not the same thing.'

My voice turned to steel as my pulse sped up. 'And why's that?'

'You won't understand.'

'No? Well, how about you explain to me why my daughter's death doesn't compare to your daughter's so I understand.' Rage made my voice tremble, and my hand gripped the phone so tight it hurt.

'You're twisting my words. Of course what happened to your child was a tragedy, Annie, but you can't compare it with what happened to me.'

'Don't you mean what happened to Daisy?'

'This is just like you, Annie--I call with an invitation to dinner and somehow you turn it into another of your attacks. Honestly, sometimes I think you just look for ways to make yourself miserable.'

'If that was the case, I'd spend more time with you, Mom.'

Her shocked gasp was followed by the loud click of her hanging up. Anger propelled me out the door with Emma, but after a half hour of hard running, my brief high from the exercise and saying no to Mom was snuffed out when I imagined the next phone call. The one where Wayne would tell me how much I'd hurt my mother, how she was just beside herself, how I really should apologize and try to understand her better--she's the only mother I'm going to have in this life and the poor woman's already been through so much. Meanwhile, I sit there thinking, Why the hell doesn't she try to understand me? What about what I've been through?

After my baby died on the mountain, I woke up staring at her folded blanket, and my breasts began to leak milk through the front of my dress as though they were weeping for her. Even my body hadn't accepted her death. When The Freak noticed me awake he came over, sat behind me on the bed, and rubbed my back.

'I have some ice for your face.' He set an ice pack down near my head.

I ignored it and rolled over to face him, in a sitting position. 'Where's my baby?'

He stared down at the floor.

'I'm sorry I yelled at you, but I didn't want her blanket, I want her.' I slid over the side of the bed and knelt in front of him. 'Please, I'm begging you. I'll do anything.' He still