Eloise
“Will I die too, mommy?” Eloise asked her mother, her auburn curls blocking the light from her eyes. Her mother was sitting on a chair in the middle of the front room reading the new Patricia May novel. She was so engrossed and the noise of her small daughter’s voice brought her reluctantly back to reality.
“Hmm?” she responded, nonchalantly. A truck passed by the suburban home as Eloise climbed onto the large leather chair facing her mother. She didn’t speak, only stared and smiled with that twinkle characteristic of her. Her fingers met each other at the tips. Her mother smiled, thought a moment, and went back to her reading.
She was a fan of bestsellers: Always enjoyed reading, but never sure what to read, she only purchased that which could be found in the greeting and gift card aisle at a grocery store. She could never get into any specific genre and enjoyed only semi-realistic fiction. A mystery novel taking place in the 1920s that couldn’t have ever happened, yet seemed to logically flow. A romance that held absolutely ridiculous characters, but still opened her mind to possibilities. Patricia May wrote bestsellers. Everyone had heard that name.
Her husband arrived home late from work as she was finishing the last chapter. Patricia May has a wonderful skill of intertwining love, death, guilt, and innocence into one novel, she thought. A father, on a whim, asks his little girl to lead the way as they’re travelling in Spain. Left, she says; no, go right! In Madrid he meets a beautiful young wife, coincidentally one who is as unhappy with her husband as he was before he took his child and left the country. He leaves the child in front of the television to consummate lust in the next room over. When the lovers return, she is gone. They will find her again on tomorrow’s news broadcast, and the novel follows the mother on her quest to find her little girl. Eloise’s mother was impressed. Her father rolled his eyes.
“What’s for dinner?” he inquired as he kissed her lightly in the cheek and gazed lovingly at his wife.
“There’s some pizza in the ‘fridge.” He smiled. How could he expect more? She set three plates at the dining table and called for her daughter. He poured drinks and after a moment, called for his daughter. They set the pizza on the table and allotted pieces to the dishes, then both called for their daughter.
A moment of panic. “She was watching me read this book the whole time!” said her mother, convinced it was not her fault the girl was missing. “She can’t have gotten far.” They rushed through the house, searching all of Eloise’s usual hiding places. It wasn’t uncommon for the girl to pretend she was somewhere else, but it was quite unusual that she’d not answer her parents’ calls. Come and find me! was her saying, and they’d play the game and act extremely surprised when Eloise popped out of a closet or from under a bed. Now she wasn’t under the bed or in the closet, nor was she in any place they could imagine.
They went outside to see a neighbor on his rocking chair. Have you seen our daughter? they ask, and he shakes his head no. She has short curly red-brown hair, and today she’s wearing an adorable black dress. He’s been sitting there for nearly three hours, and would have seen the child bounce past if she’d come out of the house. “Say, I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
Where is Eloise? When they reenter their home, her mother is sobbing, her father trying very hard to keep a straight mind. He hears a noise in the coat-closet underneath the stairs, almost like a fumble. The parents face each other and slowly creep to the door, open it. Eloise wrapped in a coat looking up at her parents, not smiling, though not frowning. Her eyes are large and innocent, revealing her craving for their touch and their love. She reaches out a hand and her mother tries to grasp it, but to no avail. The child is always just out of reach.
“Mommy, will I die too?”
