A Happy Catastrophe

“Marnie, I-I’m flattened by this.” He’s surprised at how calm his voice sounds to his own ears, even though his whole brain seems to have gone on red alert. He remembers this feeling. He’s moving through a fog. It’s as though the world has so many sharp edges, and the worst thing are the edges he can’t see to focus on.

“I know.”

“Please, can you come back home?” he hears himself say from very far away. “Not just for this! For everything. Marnie, I can’t tell—I mean, this isn’t the time to tell you how much I love you and how much you mean to me, because I have to call the police now. But—could you come?”

“Call the police, Patrick.”

“Wait,” he says. Something is beeping in his ear. “There’s a call on the other line.”

“This is Officer Timothy Pettigrew with the Kennedy Airport police unit,” says the voice on the phone when Patrick clicks over. “To whom am I speaking?”

He tries to explain who he is, says it all too fast, has to repeat it. Tongue is suddenly all too thick. Can’t remember how it is a person can breathe and talk at the same time. The police are calling him? Kennedy Airport—what? So . . . kidnappers? Traffickers, then? IS SHE ALIVE?

“We have your daughter, Fritzie Delaney, here in custody, and we’re requesting that you come down . . .”

“The airport?” he says. His breath is high in his chest. “Oh my God. Is she all right?” So it was kidnappers. Traffickers. Smuggling her somewhere. His breath leaves his body.

The officer seems to be talking to someone else. He can hear the muffled sounds of voices; some kind of explaining is going on.

Patrick has died three times by now. He’s surprised to realize that he’s now slumped on the floor. Bedford has come over to investigate. “Is she all right?” he says again, yelling this time, and then Officer Whoever the Hell His Name Is returns to the phone and says, “She’s fine, sir. A little scared, but she’s all right. She was trying to get on a flight, but she got stopped in the security line. She was pretending to be with a family of four, but when they went through security, they told the TSA worker that she wasn’t with them, so our officer went over and took her into custody.”

So no kidnappers. Or maybe the family of four was the kidnappers, and then Fritzie outsmarted—

“I’ll be there,” says Patrick. “May I talk to her?”

“Fritzie,” says the officer. “Your father is on his way, but first he wants to talk to you.”

There’s the squawking of radios in the background, and then he hears her say quite clearly, “I don’t want to talk to him.”

“What?” he says to the cop. “Why not?”

“It’s just what she says,” says the cop. Then he lowers his voice, changes his tone. “I’ve got kids like this myself. Especially one of them. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s embarrassed right now. This was a pretty big mistake. Guess she thought she was going to see her mom maybe? Had her plans wrecked. She’ll be real happy to see you when you’re here.”

Her mom. Fritzie was heading to Italy? He has so many questions he needs to have answered this second. He’s tempted to ask the cop, but he knows he can’t. How had she planned all this? Did she have a ticket? And how did she get to the airport in the first place? And why, why, why was she thinking that going to see Tessa was going to solve anything? Is that who she’s been pining for? Do kids always run back to the neglectful parent?

“So, Mr. Delaney, if you’ll bring her birth certificate with you when you come. Just so we know we’re releasing her to the right person.”

Her birth certificate.

Does he even have that? After he hangs up, he calls Marnie back. She listens silently as he tells her the whole story.

“Okay,” she says when he finally winds down.

“I thought we were doing so well,” he says. “I thought I could do this job. We did homework, bedtimes, guessing games, playtime. We cooked. It was all good. She was sick—so sick for days and days, and I didn’t sleep, I stayed by her side—”

“Patrick,” she says, interrupting him. “I’m sure you’ve been brilliant at all this. And I’m coming. I already made a reservation, and I’ll get in tonight. But you have to know something: I’m not coming because you asked me to. I know we’re not together anymore. I’m coming because I want to see Fritzie. And I’m probably going to come right back here. Just so you know.”

“Okay,” he says. He wonders if she was being sarcastic about the brilliant part. “Thank you for that.”

“Not a problem,” she says crisply. “I want to see her.”

“Do you happen to know where her birth certificate might be?”

She says it’s in the top drawer in the kitchen, the one near the toaster. Like this was something she had told him before. She keeps some important stuff there. He finds the envelope containing it while he’s still on the phone with her. His guts feel like they’re in a knot. He can’t seem to bring himself to hang up the phone.

“I love you,” he says. “Thank you for helping me through this. And I don’t think I can live without you.”

“Patrick, I am really, really mad at you.”

“I know. I know you are.”

“I guess she really has been missing her mom all this time,” Marnie says. “I hope Tessa steps up here. Otherwise this is just going to be so sad.”

“It is sad,” says Patrick. “Now would you please go get on that plane? I think if you miss it, I might actually die.”

The airport police office has a big counter and uncomfortable plastic chairs and officers coming in and out, some filling out paperwork, while others are drinking coffee or talking. One cop is standing with his foot up on his desk chair while he talks on a cell phone. Radios are crackling, cutting in and out with the static news of police business. A German shepherd, all harnessed up for duty, lies on the floor with his eyes open. He raises his head when Patrick comes in.

Fritzie is sitting in a black plastic chair, with her feet in their scuffed-up boots not touching the ground, her legs swinging back and forth. Patrick can’t believe how tiny she looks. She is such a force in his life, so loud and powerful that he is shocked to see that she’s really such a little girl, so small in that busy, government-business room, with her crazy haircut. Big saucer eyes, fingers in her mouth, looking around at all the activity. Waiting for him with an empty granola wrapper next to her on the chair.

When she sees Patrick rounding the corner, her lower lip starts to tremble, and then she puts her face in her hands and brings her knees up and scoots backward in the chair.

He makes his way over to her, squats down next to her, and puts his arms around her. After a moment of hesitation, she buries her head in his neck. He feels her shaking, and her tears are wet against his skin.

“Hey. It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. His own eyes are watering, too.

She’s whispering. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Sssh,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

He sees a police officer approaching them and then backing off, letting them be. Patrick is grateful for that. He’s not sure he can compose himself just yet.