ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AMY SHEARN’s first book, a novel entitled How Far is the Ocean From Here, came out in July 2008 from Shaye Areheart/Crown Books. Her work has appeared in Jane, Modern Painters, West Branch, Salt Hill, the small-press anthology Hysteria, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing for NYU and Gotham’s Writers.

The Kidnapped

By Amy Shearn


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They sat in the booth for an hour or two, Martine bounding up once to try her luck at the prize grab machine, which turned out to be broken, and chattering at him the rest of the time. By two or three that afternoon he knew all there was to know about her brothers—who were terrible brats—and Katie—who was double-jointed and collected dolls that had to stay in their packages and not be touched—and her stepmother Tess—who was really nice—Tess and Martine’s dad had warned Martine that Geneva might try to come back for her one day and that she wasn’t a good person and to stay away—and Mrs. Silbert’s third grade—which was a terrible bore and filled with terrible boys, but every time you finished a book you got a construction-paper-circle added to the Reading Caterpillar that snaked around the room, so that was halfway cool. “And look at this,” she ordered, and she pushed with her tongue at a tiny pearl of a baby tooth dangling by a meaty mess of red on her lower gums. Bob shuddered and she laughed, “Gross, right? It’s my last baby tooth and I can’t wait to get it out, I have a special pillow with a pocket for it and the tooth fairy, you know, not really, but Tess, when I’m sleeping, comes and gives me a dollar.”

Martine had Geneva’s flair for story-telling. She jumped around in her seat, talking in funny voices and contorting her face into grotesque parodies of her brothers or teachers. The bar’s half-light shone off the crown of her head, creating a hazy golden spot in the center of his field of vision. She snapped and unsnapped the latches on her overalls as she spoke. He couldn’t take his eyes off her tiny fingers. It seemed amazing and utterly unlikely that such little hands should be able to do things, to snap her overalls or zip the suitcase (“Do you think I could keep this?” she’d asked cautiously), and as she talked he imagined her going about her day, tying her shoes and penciling multiplication tables and pinching her brothers, with those tiny hands. “Someday,” she told him, bobbing her head around goofily, “I’ll grow up and have a boyfriend like you. Only not a kidnapper. Just kidding just kidding!” After that she grinned at him—the first real grin of hers that he’d seen—and he saw the big, ragged adult teeth that were having their way with her mouth.

Bob would think later—after the door swung open and Martine’s parents burst in with a rush of cold air and the first few flurries of what would be a major snow storm; after Martine had seen something in the panic and pain of their faces that had made her realize what had happened and run to them and cry and wail, though she’d seemed perfectly happy a minute earlier, so that the parents and Santa and everyone in the bar shot Bob evil looks; after Geneva’s ex had offered him a ride back to Chicago (it was big of him, Bob thought, but of course he couldn’t accept, just looked down at his hands and muttered something of apology) and then the big, ordinary-looking man had turned and lifted Martine and carried her away while the stepmother pelted her face with kisses; after Bob paid for his beer and went out alone into the street and snow—it would seem then to Bob that maybe he had never loved someone so much as he loved that child in those few hours. In the weeks and months to come he would not be able to get her out of his mind. He would feel her hand in his, a little pulse of heat. Geneva he would run into now and then, she soon had another man, and Bob soon got over his embarrassment at what had occurred between them, at what had almost occurred. But Martine he mourned. One night, stumbling through an alley with some buddies from work, he would come across an abandoned toy pony and start to sob, much to the amusement of the buddies. He would go out to the Wal-Mart and stroll through the kids’ department, trying not to look creepy and then finally giving up, rubbing his fingers across the polyester pajama suits, caressing the thin nylon of the backpacks, touching the faces of the girls he recognized from Martine’s suitcase. He would not stop drinking and he would not get in touch with Kimmy’s mother, though he would get a letter from Kimmy, now just Kim, in ten years or so, when she was finally curious enough about him. They would meet at a restaurant in Chicago for a few hours and the whole time he would wonder what had become of Martine. Martine, for her part, would have nightmares about him for the rest of her life.

But this hadn’t happened yet, and for a while longer they could sit in their booth, chatting, interrupted now and then by the roar of the televised game. He ordered her a Coke and onion rings and a burger. He didn’t have enough cash left to get anything for himself, so he hungrily watched her eat. “And in the spring I’ll take gymnastics,” she was saying. “Can you do a handspring?” She took a big bite of the burger and then widened her eyes, leaned over, and spit it out onto her plate. “Hey, Bob!” she cried. He watched her finger through the gummy mass, watched her raise up, triumphantly, her little lost tooth. And because she wasn’t afraid of him yet, she took his hand in hers, unclenched his fist, and placed her tooth in his palm. “All right!” she said. “Finally!”



Published July 2008