Read The Girls Are Missing for Free Online Page B

please?”
    She looked past him, into the room. “I’m sorry, Mary Ellen. I guess I felt harassed, and you were a tiny bit fresh, but let’s all start over. Carl, hurry up and change. Dinner’s almost ready.”
    Carl whipped off his tie and stalked away to their bedroom, noisily opening and closing the door, letting Adam’s screams escape like angry hornets.
    Mary Ellen curled up on the bed and resumed whatever she was writing.
    Joyce stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry he came at you like that, honey, but you know, I wouldn’t talk to you the way you did to me. I think we’ve both got to learn to respect each other.”
    Mary Ellen did not reply. Joyce went on, “Anyway, you were right about its being your vacation. We’ll make it a nice one. We’ll go swimming, take picnics, do all sorts of things. But this isn’t a resort with paid help, so we all have to pitch in sometimes. And even in a resort, you’d keep your clothes off the floor, wouldn’t you?”
    Finally Mary Ellen looked up. “What’s this thing you people have about clothes on the floor? It’s weird.”
    “You know how your father is. He’s a very orderly person.” Joyce abandoned any further attempt at discussion and went
    to the bedroom, where Carl had stripped for his shower. He was tying on a bathrobe. She picked up Adam, who immediately lapsed into choking snuffles.
    “I’m sorry, Carl. I’m sorry I brought it up to start with. It doesn’t really matter, it’s only a room. Teenagers are like that.”
    “She’s not a teenager.”
    “Twelve? It’s teenage. I was, I remember. She just wants to prove that she exists.”
    “Little bitch,” he muttered.
    “Carl!”
    He had never done that before, called his own daughter, or anyone else, a bitch. It must have been the weather. It made everybody irritable.
    He joined her for a moment as she put Adam back in his crib. They watched their son thrash about and subside, munching contentedly on his pacifier. Carl slipped an arm around her waist.
    She snuggled against him. “It won’t be long now.”
    “What won’t be long?” he asked.
    “Till I see the doctor. You know, my six-week checkup.”
    “What’s the significance of that?”
    “Then we can—you know. We’ll be back to normal.” She spelled it out. “We can make love.”
    He smiled faintly, and drew away to tighten the sash on his bathrobe.
    “It’s been a long time,” she reminded him.
    A very long time. He seemed to be one of those men who had either a revulsion or a superstition about physical love with a pregnant woman. She had tried to assure him that it was all right, but still he hadn’t liked the idea. And so she had waited. Soon, she thought, they would go back to the way it had been in the beginning. The way it should always be.
    “She can’t treat you like that,” he said.
    “Who, Mary Ellen?” She wished they were finished with Mary Ellen. “It’s a bad age. What can you do? And a kind of mixed-up life for her.”
    “She’s got a mixed-up mother.”
    “Yes, but in some ways you have to admire Barbara. She’s very competent.”
    “Huh!” he snorted.
    “Well, she’s pretty good at making a career for herself. But even with a career, she should give a little more of her time to Mary Ellen.”
    “It got to be more than I could take,” he said. “All her neuroses.”
    “Do you think she’s really bad for Mary Ellen? Why don’t you try and get custody?”
    For just a moment, she thought she saw a look of longing. Then he shook his head.
    “Can’t disrupt the kid any more. It’s home for her, there in White Plains. All her friends, her school…”
    He wanted Mary Ellen. Joyce had spoken rashly. But if it meant so much to Carl… And if Barbara was neurotic, and harmful… Before they were married, he had often talked to her about how he missed his daughter, how he saw her only during the day on certain weekends, because Barbara, being so neurotic, would never let her stay overnight. It was