Homer held the scrap of newspaper to the light. “Look, if this isn’t the Boston Globe it must be one of those sensationalist rags they sell in supermarkets. You can’t believe a word they say. The editors, they sit around smoking cigars and making up headlines about aliens seducing rock stars. They’re fairy stories.”
“But Pearl is real. She’s not a fairy story. And something’s happened to her.” Mary fixed Homer with a fierce blue eye. “Look, Homer, you’re not doing anything in particular right now except teaching a couple of graduate seminars and a freshman course and writing a couple of books. Couldn’t you just take the time to find out where she lives? I mean, where she disappeared from?”
“I’m not doing anything in particular!” Homer groaned and thrust his hands into his hair. “That’s a joke, right? My light schedule? Which also includes, I might add, counseling inmates in the Concord prison once a week.”
“Good heavens, Homer, when did that happen?”
“This morning. They called me up.” Homer grinned at his wife. “What about you? You’re free as air. Why don’t you look into your old pal’s disappearance yourself? She’s your friend, not mine. You’re not doing one single thing beyond running the extension school and writing a history of women poets through the ages and grading a few hundred freshman papers and cooking a thousand meals.”
“Oh, Homer, that’s not all. I’ve just been appointed Historian in Residence at a private school, Weston Country Day. I’ll be teaching fifth-graders about history.”
“My God, how did that happen?”
“They wrote me a letter. I was flattered. They said Judge Aufsesser’s daughter is in the class. I guess I was attracted by his fame.”
“Judge Aufsesser won’t be in your class, you nitwit, just his daughter.”
“I know, but maybe he’ll come to parents’ night or something.” Mary grinned foolishly.
Homer sighed. “The truth is, we’re both doing too much. Neither of us has time to look for missing princesses with golden hair. Anyway, she’s probably been turned into a frog by now. It’s a job for a magician, not a couple of overworked scholars.” He glanced again at the picture of Pearl Small. “This isn’t from the Boston Globe, but the Globe might have run a story at the same time. Why don’t you call them? See if they have any record of her so-called disappearance. If they ever did a story on her, it would be in their file. Tell them to look under Frog.”
Mary tried. She called the Globe. After a couple of misdirected tries she was connected to a librarian in the archives department.
“Nope,” said the librarian, staring at her monitor and scrolling through the alphabet. “The name Pearl Small has never appeared in the Boston Globe.”
“Try Frog,” murmured Mary, disappointed. “Try Princess. No, no, that’s fine. Well, thank you very much.”
Mary put down the phone. She had an appointment with the heads of all the departments in the Harvard Extension School, and if she didn’t get going, she’d be late. She ran down the porch steps, jumped into her car, revved the engine, and charged up the hill.
Homer had been right. The lurid story about the disappearance of Pearl Small had the melodramatic flair of the headlines in the supermarket rags, those sleazy periodicals that rejoiced in the torrid affairs, the aborted pregnancies, and the drunken brawls of film stars, sports stars, TV stars, hunks, and sex kittens. How did one get in touch with those editorial boards?
The woods fled past, the dirt track gave way to a paved road. Mary told herself to stop at the supermarket on the way home—for oranges, broccoli, a roasting chicken, and a copy of every flamboyant journal in the store.
Chapter 8
“Why,” said he, “greed is the best, for if it were otherwise … I should never be jogging along through the world with six servants behind me.”
Howard Pyle, “The Wonder Clock”
Jack was a bigger presence than Annie remembered. He had gained weight, but he was still horribly good-looking. He had the kind of striking face that tells across a room.
Annie let him gather her in a fond embrace. He tried to kiss her in the old way, but she had enough dignity to turn her head away. “No, Jack, don’t.”
He let her go, and looked up at the house. “So this is your castle? Little Annie made it with her widdoo paintbwush, all by her widdoo self?”
“Oh, shut up, Jack.”
He was impressed, she could see that. Indoors he gaped around at her library, staring up at the windows, the high shelves of books. For an instant his cocksureness was shaken when he caught sight of the painted columns on her wall, but at once he dismissed them as Annie’s sort of thing, and sank into a chair. “Your dream house, is that it? Some dream. Must have cost you a bundle.” He turned and stared at her. “You’re famous. Best-selling kiddie books. I saw you on TV.”