Besides, why should I defend Nick Greenwald, of all people? I had surrendered all claim to him long ago, in that bitter winter of 1932. He had surrendered all claim to me.
Aunt Julie honked the horn.
“I must go,” I said. “Kiki?”
I looked around for her bobbing dark head, but she was nowhere to be seen. I called out, “Aunt Julie, is Kiki in the car with you?”
Aunt Julie and Mother glanced into the back, nearly bumping heads. “No,” said Aunt Julie. “I thought she was with you.”
My shoulders sagged. “She’s gone off again.”
Aunt Julie threw her hands up in the air. “Again. For goodness’ sake. Can’t you keep track of the child?”
“Go on ahead. I’ll find her.”
Aunt Julie put her hands on the steering wheel. “You’re sure?”
“It’s a short walk along the beach. Plenty of moon.”
Aunt Julie tapped her fingers against the rim, considering. She turned to Mother and asked her something in a low voice, too low for me to hear. Mother’s shoulders shrugged against the cloth-covered seat.
“All right, then,” said Aunt Julie. “Let us know when you’re back.”
My mother said to be careful, over the rush of gravel beneath the tires.
Mrs. Hubert shook her head. The diamonds flashed from the lobes of her ears. “You’re a martyr, my dear. Check the bar. Jim’s been feeding her ginger ales all night, on the sly.”
But Kiki wasn’t near the bar, nor was she chatting with the old ladies in the dining room, nor was she helping them dry the dishes in the kitchen: none of her usual haunts, in fact.
I wasn’t worried yet, not quite. For one thing, there was the gin, still humming in my veins. For another, Kiki had been an absconder from the moment she could crawl. I’d spent the larger part of the last six years chasing her down in our apartment, on the pathways of Central Park, around the dinosaur skeletons in the Museum of Natural History, through the ladies’ underwear department at Bergdorf’s. All the doormen on our stretch of Park Avenue knew to snag her and hold her for me, should she come racing down the sidewalk alone without her shoes or, very often, her dress; I once had to march through the gentlemen’s restroom of the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal in order to fetch her, which caused one portly old businessman to fumble for his nitroglycerin tablets and another to make me an indecent offer on the spot.
For an instant, I’d been tempted to accept.
“Have you seen Kiki?” I asked the ladies in the dining room, one by one.
Why, no. They hadn’t. Had I checked the bar?
I checked the bar again, and the ladies’ room, and found Mr. Hubert groping for his eyeglasses in the foyer and asked him to check the gentlemen’s restroom. I waited outside with my fingers knit tightly behind my back, listening to him open the stalls and call her name. Then the sound of water trickling in elderly fits and starts; a flush; a pause, and the whoosh of the faucet.
I waited.
“Oh! Kiki. No, no sign of her, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Hubert, when he emerged. “Have you checked the bar?”
Adrenaline, the scientists called it. I had read an article about it, in Time magazine. Adrenaline made your heart thump and your limbs go light, in a natural response to the perception of danger. I was familiar with adrenaline by now. Every time Kiki absconded, it coursed along the channels of my body like an old friend. By the time I scooped her up into my arms, I would be shaking, unable to speak in complete sentences.
Of course she was perfectly safe. Kiki was a sensible girl. She might ignore most of the small rules, but she generally abided by the important ones. She wouldn’t go out in the water by herself, she wouldn’t go running along the jetty at night. I just had to find out where she’d gone, and she would be safe, amusing herself with something, her flexible imagination stretching itself to new lengths.
But the glands of my body didn’t know that, had never known that. Not since the moment she was born.
I moved outside, onto the veranda, where the rush of ocean against the sand had magnified in the darkness. All the tables were empty now, drinks and dinner finished. Even Nick and Budgie had left.
I cupped my trembling hands around my mouth. “Kiki!” I called.
A wave broke in a slow crash upon the beach, its white foam lit by the gibbous moon.
“Kiki!” I called again.
A seagull screamed overhead, and another. Something dropped in the sand, and the birds swooped down, squabbling. I thought, I wish I could travel forward half an hour, when Kiki would undoubtedly, undoubtedly, be safe and alive in my arms, and not have to endure this.
I had to be sensible. It was time to think like Kiki. If I were Kiki, and it was time to leave for home, why would I run off? What unfinished business might I have left behind?
Her cardigan. Had she left it somewhere?
No, she’d had that on at dessert. I remembered, because I’d had to roll up the sleeves for her so she wouldn’t stain them with her chocolate ice cream.
Hair ribbons?
Shoes?
I was grasping at impossibilities now. Of course she had her hair ribbons. Of course she had her shoes. But there was nothing else, was there? No other children around, no one to say good-bye to. Had she been talking about anything in particular at dinner?
If she had, I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t been listening, had I? I’d been drinking and numbing myself, chatting with the grown-ups, my mind careening among its own preoccupations. As if anything else were as important as Kiki.
“Kiki!” I called again, screaming her name, but my voice was lost and tiny amid the roar of the Atlantic.
I tore off my shoes and stumbled down the steps into the sand. Logic had fled, leaving only the adrenaline. I was one pulsing, panicked vessel of adrenaline.
“Kiki!” I screamed, wallowing in the sand, stumbling over the hem of my dress. “Kiki!”
A horn tooted from the club driveway, impatient.
I stopped. The driveway? Surely she hadn’t gone darting among the departing cars, in the twilight crossed by headlamps. Surely she hadn’t seen Mother and Aunt Julie roar off in the car and thought we’d left her behind.
I hovered, torn. Abandon the beach for the driveway? Which was the likeliest possibility? Which was the greater danger? I couldn’t think. I wanted to move, not to think.
Fight or flight, the scientists called it, as if a scientist were ever moved to do either. As if a scientist in his laboratory had any idea how precious a little girl could be, how infinitely important, how deeply and passionately loved. How silken her hair under your cheek, how warm and promising her shape in your arms.
“Kiki!” I screamed again, down the length of the beach.
Was that a movement, flickering in the darkness?
I froze and listened, listened, to the water moving in my left ear and the pulse hammering in my right.
Again. Like something passing between my eyes and the porch lights, as they stretched like a diamond string down Seaview’s long neck.
“Kiki!” I burst into a run, scrambling for footing in the deep sand. “Kiki!”
She appeared out of nowhere, one second darkness and porch lights and the next second Kiki, running forward with her perfect spiral conch brandished triumphantly in her right hand. She threw herself into my arms