Bunny Lake Is Missing Read online

“I didn’t bring any extras,” Blanche said.

  “Didn’t they tell you? Well, your living doll must be upstairs waiting to dry out, then. I tell you what, you can take a set out of Timmy’s cubby.” She saw that Blanche didn’t understand. “That’s what they call them—cubbies, cubbyholes. Each child has his own. They’re marked with the kids’ names. Aren’t they, Tim?”

  “That’s very kind of you. I’ll get them back by morning.”

  “It’s darn funny you weren’t told. With the Threes it’s the first thing to remember. I mean—after all . . .”

  “I suppose they did and I forgot. I’ll go up and get Bunny. One flight up and to the right.”

  “Two flights up and to the left.”

  “But I distinctly remember—I guess Bunny’s in another Three group. There they come now!”

  “Those elephants? That’s a Five, I think. No, there’s only one group of Threes. Third floor and to the left. The Threes use the roof garden up there instead of the yard or the park; that’s why they put them up there. Well, so long—and you take an outfit of Timmy’s.” She lifted the little boy down. “Let’s get out of here before that troop of elephants tramps us down, Tim. Run for your life!”

  The little boy screamed for joy and ran off after his mother, whose wide rear, outlined by the tight pants, wriggled as she ran. “I like her,” Blanche thought, watching them. The little boy, Timmy, wasn’t afraid of a herd of elephants while his mother was with him. Now that the children had come closer, Blanche could see that they were older than Bunny. She waited while the children lunged past her noisily. This teacher was older, too. She looked tired; the brilliant orange smock, apparently a uniform for the teachers, was not becoming. “Excuse me,” Blanche said. “Isn’t there a Three group on the second floor this year?”

  “Topside.” She jerked her finger up. “Threes topside, right, Marie? We stow the Threes topside, don’t we, Marie?”

  She was talking as much to keep the thin little girl whose hand she held busy as to answer Blanche. (The little girl’s mouth was trembling as she watched her classmates tumbling out of the door.)

  “Marie, this mommy’s little . . .”

  “Girl,” Blanche said, starting upstairs.

  “This mommy’s little girl is stowed away topside. Wait a minute!” Blanche stopped. “Aren’t the Threes down yet?”

  “They’re all out, just Bunny isn’t because she wet her clothes.” She was sure of this now.

  “Didn’t you bring any spares? . . . to stow away topside, Marie!”

  Marie enjoyed the word; that was why this teacher kept repeating “topside.” It showed how sensitive the teacher was to the little girl, Blanche told herself, approving. “I’m afraid this mommy forgot. I won’t forget again.” She touched Marie’s soft hair as she passed her.

  “This mommy’s going to try to improve—topside!” She tapped Marie’s white forehead softly and grinned, and Marie rewarded her with a shaky smile.

  “That’s the way! Now, Marie, let’s go into the office and we’ll put you to work while we wait for Mommy.”

  Orange Smock opened a door to the front of the hall and she and Marie went inside. Marie, Blanche told herself, trusted Orange Smock; you could see that. The building was very quiet now with the children gone, and dim for all the brave colors. This was an old brownstone house—fireproofed (the brochure had stated) and renovated, but they hadn’t improved the hall very much. Modernized where it counts, Blanche thought, put the improvements where it mattered. The room in which she had left Bunny had been beautifully light and airy. (But surely not on the third floor? Of course it had been on the third floor if the teacher said it was. She had been so rushed this morning and so nervous about leaving Bunny for the first time that she simply had not counted correctly.)

  When she reached the second floor, she was certain that this was where she had left Bunny this morning. Blanche paused, then shook her head. Could it have been—mustn’t it have been because she and Bunny had come so late? The teacher who had called—Miss Ditmars—had said that they did not want the little ones upset on this first day at seeing a mother just after their mothers had left, so the teacher must have told her to leave Bunny in what was the room where the older children were, on this floor. She started up the next flight. Leave Bunny on the second floor. Deposit child here. Child deposit. Child safety deposit, Blanche told herself.

  It was because this was the first day and so much had happened that she felt nervous. “And darling, when I stood there in the hall and saw all your little classmates coming downstairs and you weren’t with them . . .” No, that’s not to be said to Bunny! What a terrible thing to say to Bunny! Darling Bunny with her big brown eyes and the twitchy button nose.

  Blanche turned left to the front of the building and stood for a moment outside the door marked CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, waiting, so that she wouldn’t appear breathless and anxious when she saw Bunny. Then, because it was so quiet in the room when she threw the door open that she could only think of Bunny being put to bed for punishment—because Bunny wasn’t happily playing with the blocks Blanche had seen in the morning, or with the finger paints or the plasticine, or any of the equipment the brochure had listed—she called, “Bunny! Bunny!”

  The room was empty.

  No. The teacher must have put Bunny in one of the little cots which were around the corner of the L-shaped room. (And not for punishment! Never, never had she given Bunny the idea that bed was punishment, and certainly a nursery school . . .) “Here’s Mommy, darling! Darling, we’re going to borrow dry clothes from the little boy named Timmy!” She hurried across the linoleum floor. “And after dinner we’ll wash them and then we’ll put them on the radiator to dry . . .”

  The cots were set in stalls, each with a low enclosure so that the children who wanted to could really get to sleep, the brochure had said. Bunny must really be asleep.

  Although she intended to wake Bunny, now she whispered her name. Under that mound of green blanket? “Bunny?”

  There was no one under the green blanket.

  Blanche called out, “Bunny!” Then, hearing how shrill her voice was, added, “Come out, come out wherever you are! Bunny—that’s a game Mommy used to play. Do you know that game, Bunny? ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are?’ Do you know that game, Bunny?”

  Blanche went out of the Threes room and down to the second floor, to the room on the right. She had brought Bunny to the Fours on the second floor. She had left Bunny there because the teacher had told her to leave Bunny with the Fours. (After all, three in April—whereas that little Timmy hadn’t been three until June sixth!) Bunny would be right where she had left her.

  Blanche opened the door to the room on the right. In this room the children had “cooperated” to build a—something—of blocks. (Bunny would tell her what it was supposed to be.) “Here’s Mommy, Bunny! What is that—thing—the children built in the middle of the floor?”

  She went out into the hall again and threw open the door of the room to the left. “Are you in here, Bunny?”

  They wouldn’t just give Bunny another child’s dry clothes without his consent. So when Bunny wetted and there were no dry clothes for her to get into, they had to take poor Bunny out of her group.

  Children were very possessive about their own things. Not that she needed to read that; even Bunny was possessive about her things. Bunny’s dwess. Bunny’s tschair. Bunny hadn’t got over not having her things in New York yet. But even so, Bunny would give any child anything of hers if she was asked nicely. (You certainly are a doting mother, aren’t you?)

  She would find Bunny in the office where the pale little Marie child had been taken to wait for her mother.

  2

  Marie was sitting behind the big desk happily stamping PAID over a huge sheet of newsprint spread before her. The teacher was at the window now, smoking a cigarette. She glanced up quickly as Blanche entered, then turned away again. (Looking out the window for Marie’s mother, wishing
Marie’s mother would come and take her child home? Well, here was Bunny’s mother come to take her child home.)

  Bunny was probably in the room behind the sliding doors.

  “Your mommy will be here soon, Marie. You get the paper all stamped up, won’t you? Miss Benton isn’t here, if you want her.”

  “No, it’s Bunny I want. Don’t you remember? You told me in the hall about the Threes being—topside?”

  “Of course. It’s kind of dark in the hall and I didn’t . . . This is my first day here. I’m fresh from the Walton School in Chicago. The cement hasn’t hardened on our building yet—not that there is any—cement, I mean. All glass, of course. But, of course, what counts in a nursery school isn’t the bricks and mortar, is it?”

  Blanche said, “Of course it isn’t.” She gestured toward the sliding doors. “Have they put Bunny in there?”

  “The kitchen and pantry are in there.”

  “But she wet—and—”

  “You’re the one who forgot to bring the extras? Oh, and she wet—then she could be in the infirmary. No, we call it the ‘quiet room,’ don’t we, Marie? Bunny must be in the ‘quiet room.’ It’s on the second floor, rear. I’d show you, but I don’t want to leave Marie alone.”

  “Of course not.” But who was with Bunny? Second floor, rear. I went right and left, but not rear. Blanche smiled at Marie and went upstairs again.

  The quiet room was quiet and empty. Although there was no suggestion of hospital about the small room, which had a cot with a cheerful plaid throw over it and a wicker chair and a table and gaily flowered draperies on the narrow window, “hospital” was what came to Blanche’s mind. The teacher in the office didn’t know about it because they wouldn’t have come into her classroom and told her that a little girl called Bunny in Group Three had been taken sick and rushed to the hospital. The doctor had been called in and that was why the director, Miss Benton, wasn’t in her office. The director was the one who had taken Bunny to the hospital. They had tried to call her at home, and, of course, no one was there. (She had decided not to give them her business telephone until she could explain about that.) She hurried back downstairs to the office.

  Blanche’s voice explaining her theory to the teacher was enough to frighten Marie, who stopped stamping PAID, threw the stamp on the floor, and climbed off the chair.

  The teacher (as Blanche was happy to see, visualizing the director comforting Bunny in the hospital) scooped Marie up into her arms and, retrieving the stamp from the floor, sat down at the desk with Marie in her lap.

  “Let’s keep our voices even, shall we?” She renewed the ink on the stamp, stamped PAID hard, then held out the stamp to the child. (Marie had her thumb in her mouth.) “Why do you think hospital?”

  “Well, she isn’t here. Bunny. Anywhere I can see.”

  “Gently does it!” Gently, she took Marie’s thumb out of her mouth. “Which group did you say she was in?”

  “Bunny is three.”

  “Three is Ruth. She left, but—just a minute . . . You still have that corner to fix up, Marie.” She looked down at the child, noticing that her delicate mouth was quivering. “Could you sit with Marie, Mrs.—”

  “Lake.”

  “Mrs. Lake, you sit with Marie and she’ll show you how to use the PAID stamp. Marie, you’ll show Bunny’s mommy, won’t you?” She stood up and waved Blanche into the seat, then put Marie on her lap. “Please show Bunny’s mommy—I think Dorothy is in there having a cup of tea. She lives out in Scarsdale and waits for a certain train, anyhow. I’ll get Dorothy, maybe she knows—while you show Bunny’s mommy how to stamp, Marie.”

  Blanche hugged Marie, because she could feel her trembling. Marie had outgrown her baby fat; such a thin, rigid little girl! Blanche could feel her bones. She held Marie closely and dropped her chin gently onto the small, smooth head the way she did with Bunny sometimes. All little girls had hair like silk. All little girls sighed when they relaxed in your arms.

  The door slid open and a young woman came out. “I’m Dorothy Klein. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand . . .”

  “I’m Bunny’s mother. Bunny Lake. I can’t seem to find Bunny anywhere in the place.”

  “Bunny?”

  “Felicia.”

  “What’s the matter with Bunny? Bunny’s a fine name! Bunny isn’t in my group, and I thought that the Threes were all on their way home . . .”

  Marie screamed.

  “I’m sorry,” Blanche said. “I must have squeezed her too tight. The Threes aren’t all on their way home, Miss Klein. Bunny isn’t.”

  Marie’s teacher said, “Dorothy says your Bunny couldn’t be with Louise Benton—the director, Miss Benton—because Dorothy knows definitely that she’s at an agency trying to promote a cook. The one who was supposed to be here today didn’t turn up and there was quite a mess. It doesn’t seem likely that Miss Benton would take your Bunny along to the agency with her . . .” She saw Blanche bite her lips. “I suppose she could have . . .”

  “Why would she do that?” Dorothy asked. “Where’s Elvira?”

  “Gone home. And what would a Three be doing with the Fives? They’d murder her!”

  “Do you think they did?” Blanche shook her head, laughing at herself. “I don’t mean murder, of course. I mean unless I’m mistaken, I did leave her in the wrong room with the bigger ones.” Now she wasn’t laughing. “Do you think they could have hurt her?”

  “All I have to do is open my big mouth! Now, Mrs.—”

  “Lake,” Blanche said. “Lake.”

  “We do believe in a certain amount of freedom here, Mrs. Lake, but we certainly don’t permit Fours or Fives to beat up on a Three!”

  “I can’t get over the idea that Bunny’s been taken to a hospital.”

  “Without notifying you?”

  “Parents are notified before anything is done to any child.” Topside glanced out of the window, grabbed up her coat from a chair, and thrust her arms into it. “There comes your mommy, Marie!” She said to Miss Klein, “I’m afraid some other arrangement will have to be made about Marie after today. I have to get to 108th Street three times a week.” She showed her teeth. “Pyorrhea! Isn’t that the mostest? Dorothy will get your trouble straightened out, Mrs. Lake. You have to hang around anyhow, don’t you, Dorothy?” She buttoned Marie’s jacket and scooped her up. “Come on, we’ll beat Mommy to the door.” She carried Marie off and they heard the door slam.

  “Of course!” Dorothy said. “I know! Gosh, I should! It’s happened before! Someone else called for Bunny!” She shook her head affirmatively more vigorously, to override Blanche’s head-shake. “Take my word for it, Mrs. Lake, some member of your family came and took her home, and there you’ll find her all anxious to tell Mommy about her first day in school.”

  “Nobody would have . . .”

  Dorothy snapped her fingers at Blanche. “Right? I can tell by your expression that somebody would have, after all!” She walked toward the room beyond the sliding doors.

  “I suppose it is possible that my mother could have—”

  “Your mother did! I haven’t taught for six years without knowing what grandmothers can do—their range is enormous!” She went into the other room and came back with her pocketbook, coat, and hat. “You go on home and—if you’ll take my advice—give your mother hell. If she just came here without a word to you and nipped Bunny up without so much as a by-your-leave she should be given hell the first time, or it will go on happening.”

  She put the hat on. “Grandmothers have their uses and their abuses. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my train at Grand Central or my mother will give me hell!” She held the front door open for Blanche. “Your mother will tell you that she never thought for a minute you’d be upset—suddenly couldn’t wait to hear how her granddaughter made out and got her afore you!”

  It was sunny and October out on the street. Blanche stood still. Miss Klein gently pushed her by the shoulder, nodded, and hurried off
.

  The way home lay in the same direction Miss Klein had taken. Blanche had to walk west to First Avenue, but she didn’t want to keep the teacher any longer. She walked slowly to give Miss Klein a head start, and then began to run.

  Something had made her mother change her mind and come back to the city. Any number of things could have, Blanche thought doubtfully. Once I know what it was, I’ll know that it was sensible—that I should have thought of it at once. And, if she had come back—as Miss Klein suggested—how furious Mother would have been when she came back and saw the mess I left this morning in the kitchen. Mother wouldn’t admit it, but part of the reason she must have decided to call for Bunny would be to have someone (even Bunny) to complain to. Mother doesn’t realize how much she complains about me. “Bunny,” Mother would say, “how in the world will Mommy manage when Granny is gone for good? Granny goes away and look how Mommy leaves this kitchen.”

  “Mommy,” Bunny would have repeated. It would be all that she could understand of what Mother was saying. Bunny’s tiny perfect mouth rounding, saying “Mommy.”

  “You see what all this talk about being able to manage without me comes to, Bunny?” Mother would have said, plunging the breakfast dishes into the dishpan of soapy water as if she were drowning them.

  Bunny would be waiting for her. Blanche caught a glimpse of the white fur in the toy-shop window. “My pussy!” Bunny had said, pressing her nose against the window in an ecstasy of longing. She would buy it for Bunny now. She would go into the store now and buy it for Bunny, put it into her arms. (“Oh, Mother!” Blanche whispered, running again. “How could you do this to me? Didn’t you realize what it would mean for me to come for Bunny and not find her there?”)

  “Do you realize what things mean to me?” Mother would say. The white crescents of anger would appear around her nostrils as they always did when they got onto that subject. “Do you realize what it means to me not to be able to hold up my head with my oldest friends? Forcing me to tell lies all over the place! Making me want to sell my own house where I’ve lived ever since your father and I were married! Needing to leave the place where your father is buried! Don’t you talk about not realizing things to me.”