The Garden of Betrayal

8

I was running late by the time I finally left for lunch, Kate’s words ringing in my ears. Walking north on Park Avenue, I pressed the heel of one hand hard against my breastbone, fighting the pain the way a runner fights a cramp. There was another mantra I’d picked up in family therapy-you can do only as much as you can do. I’d always interpreted it to mean that I couldn’t completely protect my loved ones, no matter how hard I tried. For the first time ever, it occurred to me that maybe the limitation was within myself, and that the thing I couldn’t do was to ease my wife’s pain by letting go of my missing child.

An Asian girl who looked to be about Kate’s age approached me on the corner of Forty-seventh Street, offering me a leaflet about Tibet and asking politely if I’d be willing to send an e-mail to my congressperson. She looked apologetic when I met her eye, perhaps recognizing how upset I was, but I made an effort to smile and took the leaflet from her hand. I know how difficult it is to be ignored when you’re trying to attract attention to an issue that’s desperately important to you.

In the immediate aftermath of Kyle’s disappearance, I’d spent feverish hours devouring books and articles about missing children, trying to learn everything I could about who took them, and what happened to them, and-most important-how they were found. There’s an entire fraught literature on the subject, and innumerable sad organizations and support groups. The cardinal rule is to publicize the disappearance as widely as possible and to reach out to the community for help. The police had hung posters throughout our neighborhood, appealing for information, and the local news led with the story the morning after Kyle’s disappearance, following up with smaller stories and articles in the paper over the next couple of days. But bad things happen all the time in a city the size of New York. A few media cycles later and Kyle was lost in the clutter. I bought a series of prohibitively expensive ads in the Times and the Post and the Daily News, desperate to keep my son’s face in front of as many people as possible. Riding the subway home from One Police Plaza on day seven, though, I noticed that only a handful of riders were reading newspapers, and that at least a third of those were papers in languages other than English. It occurred to me that there were millions of people only a short train ride away who would never have any idea what my son looked like-or even that he was missing-regardless of how many quarter-page ads I purchased.

The next morning, I had the employment office at Columbia University post a notice offering top dollar to students with language skills who were willing to hang posters and hand out leaflets. I hired twenty-five teams of two, insisting that the students work in pairs for safety. Most of the kids tried to refuse the money when I explained what I wanted, but I made them take it. It was only fair. We produced dual-language versions of the police posters in Spanish, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Bengali, Arabic, Urdu, Portuguese, and half a dozen other languages, and then they-and I-hit the subways, guided by an ethnological map of the city that I’d found online.

Claire and Kate and I were already in family therapy. I talked about my work with the Columbia students-about how much better it made me feel to be actively doing something, and to be meeting strangers every day who cried for our loss and promised to do whatever they could on our behalf. Claire was in bad shape at the time, cycling between uncontrollable weeping and prolonged periods of near catatonia. Kate spoke up, saying she wanted to come with me. I was hesitant because she was so young, but the therapist sided with her, pointing out that she felt the same need to do something for Kyle that I did, regardless of her age. I started taking her with me on short jaunts after school, and then on slightly longer trips on weekend mornings. Pretty soon I was taking her with me as often as I could.

There was a garbage can on the corner of Forty-eighth and Park a hundred yards beyond the Asian girl. I glanced in out of habit and saw a mound of crumpled leaflets. It didn’t surprise me. Ninety percent of the leaflets I’d handed out had ended up in the nearest garbage can as well. I knew, because I used to check. It made me despair sometimes. But when you really care about something, it’s impossible not to do whatever you can, if only to keep your own sense of hope alive. I folded her handout and put it my pocket. An e-mail wasn’t much to ask.

The Columbia kids fell away as summer approached. I didn’t blame them. We’d already hit every neighborhood in the city twice. Kate and I kept going. The leafleting had become an act of solidarity, with each other and with Kyle. We ranged increasingly far afield, hanging posters and distributing handbills throughout Westchester, Connecticut, and New Jersey. We even went to Boston and Washington. We talked in the car on our travels-about serious things and not-serious things. And when we weren’t talking, we listened to audiobooks, and we followed the New York sports teams on the radio, and we worked on crossword puzzles, Kate reading the clues aloud. The time together was a gift, the only thing that kept me sane.

Eighteen months passed somehow. Alex took me to lunch, learned I was verging on money difficulties, and arranged for Walter to offer me work. Shortly thereafter, Yolanda-who’d been acting as the other functioning adult in our household-announced that she had to move home to the Dominican Republic to care for her sister. I’d been able to balance the time spent leafleting and the time with Claire, but the new job made it difficult. I curtailed the leafleting but refused to give up entirely. Giving up meant acceptance. Claire had begun volunteering at Sloan-Kettering, and Kate and I used the time when she was at the hospital to resume canvassing locally. And then Kate began making excuses not to accompany me, and I realized one day that she’d had enough. It was understandable. She was thirteen, with interests of her own. My choices were to continue alone, spending less time with Claire and Kate, or to stop. I stopped. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made. Stopping felt like a breach of faith and deepened my sense of shame.

A liveried doorman greeted me as I entered the Palace hotel. There was a round red sofa in the center of the ornate lobby, and I sat down to rest for a moment before heading toward the dining room. I abandoned the leafleting because it had been the right thing for the family I had left. It was time to abandon my denials as well. I’d put a halt to Kyle’s mail, and give up my vigil at the office window, and move to San Francisco, if Claire wanted me to go with her. And I’d hide my shame. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. My son was dead. Claire and Kate were alive. I had to be strong for them.