We went into an empty, echoing department store and I picked up some socks and undervests. All boring white for me, pink and yellow for Lauren. The undervests had unicorns on them.
To entertain her, I started making up names and histories for the bored-looking clerks standing behind their counters. The buck-toothed girl was Mabel Worthington, working extra hours to help her little brother realise his dream of becoming an ice dancer. The guy with two big moles was Monty Miles, and he had just arrived here, straight from his little ice-fishing village in Canada.
‘Those two blonde girls are sisters,’ I said. ‘They were separated by foster care, and they’ve just found each other again.’
‘I don’t like that one,’ Lauren whispered, unhappy. ‘That’s not nice, Dad. Change it.’
‘You’re a fussy kitten today, aren’t you?’ I was trying to think of a good one for those two when Lauren tugged my hand hard. I turned and saw a pair of leggings hanging on a nearby rack. They were bright blue with shiny gold lightning bolts on them. Lauren held her breath as she looked at them.
‘I guess you can try them on,’ I said. ‘I have to come with you into the changing room, though.’
All the leggings on the rack were too small. I looked around hopelessly. The two sales girls came over to us. Close up they didn’t look much alike, after all. They were both blonde, that was all.
The taller one said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is this all you have in stock?’ I asked.
‘I think so,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’ I could tell how much Lauren loved those leggings and how disappointed she would be if she couldn’t get them. ‘Don’t you have more in back?’ I gave her my best smile and told her the size Lauren needed. The short one smirked.
‘Something funny?’ I asked. In that moment I hoped the smirking girl actually had been raised in foster care and separated from her family. Luckily Lauren’s attention had wandered back to the leggings and she didn’t see.
The taller woman ignored her friend and said in a professional tone, ‘I can check.’ I noticed that she had a twitch in her left eyelid, some kind of tic. Maybe living with this had made her a nicer person. After a while she came back with more pairs of leggings draped over her forearm, like a fancy waiter carrying a white napkin. ‘These might work,’ she said.
The changing room was long and quiet, hung with white curtains.
‘Go away, Dad,’ Lauren said when we were inside a cubicle.
‘You know I can’t do that, kitten.’
‘At least – don’t look. PLEASE.’ So I closed my eyes. There was rustling and silence. Then she said sadly, ‘They don’t fit.’
‘I’m so sorry, my kitten,’ I said. I really was. ‘We’ll find you something else.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, now. Let’s go home.’
We left the leggings where they lay on the floor in a sad pile of blue sky and lightning. We followed the green exit signs through what seemed like miles of empty aisles: leather goods, lingerie, then into home furnishings.
As we reached the store exit I heard running feet. Someone yelled, ‘Stop!’ When I turned, the tall blonde girl was running towards us through the display living room.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ Her voice shook. Her eyelid was twitching furiously.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.
She held out a handful of blue and gold fabric. ‘This,’ she said, and turned the leggings inside out. They were lined with white stretchy stuff. Lauren had treated this lining like a piece of blank paper. On it she had written, in her favourite pink marker:
Plaes help. Ted is a kidnaper. He cals me Lauren but taht is not my nam.
And then underneath, she had drawn a map to our house. It was pretty good. She must have been watching carefully as we drove.
‘That shit is not funny,’ the woman said. ‘Do you think missing children are a joke?’
I could feel Lauren starting to get upset by her shouting, and by the cursing, so I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened. Obviously I’ll pay for them.’ I put a twenty and a ten in the blonde clerk’s hand, which was much more than the pants cost, and took them from her. She shook her head at us and her mouth was a grim little line.
We walked back through the desert of the parking lot. The sun was high in the sky, now, and heat was shimmering off the asphalt. When we reached the car I said, ‘Get in please, and fasten your seatbelt.’ Lauren obeyed in silence.
I turned on the AC. The cool air began to dry the sweat on my brow, and I let it soothe me. When I could at last trust myself to speak I said, ‘You must have been planning that one for a long time. Give me the marker.’
‘I left it in the store,’ Lauren said.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘You didn’t.’
She pulled the marker out of her sock and handed it to me. Then she started crying silently. That hurt, it was like a skewer to my heart. ‘You have to learn that your actions have consequences,’ I said.
Lauren’s back heaved with huge sobs. The tears ran in a steady stream down her face. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t send me away.’
I took a deep breath and said, ‘Six months. You can’t come home for six months.’
Lauren moaned. It was a bad sound that made tears poke out in my own eyes.
‘It’s for your own good,’ I told her. ‘It hurts me as much as it hurts you. I’ve tried to raise you right. But I’ve failed. I see that. Defacing property and downright lying. You have to learn that you can’t pull that kind of stunt. What if that woman had believed you?’
The separation that followed was so painful that I have tried to erase it from
