Out of the Box(15)

I lean back into the couch and close my eyes, drifting with the strong, sad tones, hearing Piaf ’s mournful voice in my head. This is way better than my iPod.

“You keep playing like that,” Jeanette says, “and this kid’ll never finish her dessert.”

My pie is now a soupy mess on the plate, but I don’t care. I have a hundred questions bubbling up inside me. I don’t know where to start, so I begin with the most important. “Can you teach me to play the bandoneón?”

I ask before I think about having no money of my own to pay him, before I remember that my parents won’t want a noisy accordion-like instrument in the house and that I won’t have time to practice come September. Right now, none of that seems important.

“I was hoping you’d ask,” Frank says. “Jeanette tells me you’re now the proud owner of a fine instrument. So we’ll make a trade. A few lessons this summer for all those stamps you brought over, which will give me many happy hours. Deal?”

I sneak a glance at Jeanette. She nods. I wonder whether she’s already made arrangements to pay him. She does things like that: discovering something I’d like and helping me get it. She doesn’t care if it’s a practical skill. She does it just to see me smile.

I should protest. I should do the responsible thing and ask for time to earn money and pay him. I consider offering him some of the cash I found in the bandoneón case, but he’d probably wonder where I got American money. I could get a newspaper route, or water someone’s plants or babysit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my parents, it’s not to be in debt to anyone, not even my Aunt Jeanette. But I don’t care about any of that right now. “Can we meet twice a week?” I ask.

Louise laughs. “Frank, I think you’ve met your match.”





NINE


“You busy? Want to come to the library with me?” Sarah’s standing on Jeanette’s front steps with hay in her hair and goat poop on her knees. She picks what I hope is a wood chip off her T-shirt and flicks it to the side.

I laugh and pick the hay out of her hair. “You might want to get rid of some of the straw first, or the herons will take you for a new nesting site as we walk past the park.”

“Ha, ha.” She flings her hair around, and bits of barnyard fly out. Behind me, I hear Jeanette raise her voice. She’s on the phone, sounding unimpressed with the conversation. I assume she’s talking to Mom again. Mom’s called the past two nights, and we’ve talked briefly before Jeanette remembers something urgent that she has to talk to my mother about. No one’s ever explained that missed phone call. Yesterday I asked Jeanette what was going on, but she told me I worry too much. She had a nervous look on her face when she said it though, and I can’t help feeling she’s still hiding something from me.

I’m glad Sarah’s invited me to the library. I need to get out and think about something other than my family.

“I’ll grab my backpack,” I tell her. “Back in a second.”



“Your aunt let you out on your own today, eh?”

One of the men from the soup kitchen—Ned, the one the volunteers keep talking about—is sitting on the sidewalk on the way to the library. His ballcap lies upside down in front of him, and a few coins glimmer at the bottom.

Sarah raises her eyebrows at me, and I’m not sure what to say. “We’re going to the library,” I mumble.

“Keep reading, kid,” he says. “It’ll take you far.”

I smile and look him in the eye. He smiles back.

Later, Sarah wants to know who that was. “He stinks.”

“You would too if you’d been through what he has.” I tell her about the soup kitchen and what I know of his story.

She nods but says nothing more until we walk through the library doors. “I’m headed to the history section.”

“I’ll be at the computers,” I say. I can tell she’s dying to ask what I’m up to, but for some reason she holds back, which is good. I’m not ready to share my secret yet.

“Suit yourself,” she says and turns down the corridor.

I don’t waste any time. As soon as I’m logged in, I go online and google Andrés Moreno. At first I get a bunch of personal pages and Facebook listings, but they’re all for people in Spain and Colombia. I add Argentina to my search and come up with a bunch of websites in Spanish. The first one says Listado de desaparecidos on top, and below is a list of names. Screen after screen of names. Thousands of people. I look at another website. The word desaparecidos appears again near the top, and it’s another list. I do the same search with the other name, Caterina Rizzi, and again I get lists. Then I look up the word desaparecidos in a Spanish-English dictionary and discover that it means “disappeared.”