[Dean's World] Celia Farber: Zachary

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Posted by Celia Farber:
Zachary
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1160547134.shtml


   Last night my son Jeremy and I were returning late from Boston. He was
   wearing the MinuteMen hat I'd bought for him in Concord, and a guitar
   in a leather case strapped across his front; He was pleased with his
   look as we tromped through Port Authority, homeward. We stepped out of
   the subway and waited for the light and there on a lamppost was a
   Missing Persons sign. We both looked at it. The boy was fifteen and
   his name was Zachary. He had brown hair and a slope eyed grin--a hoop
   earing in his left ear. He was last seen the previous night at the
   Jewish Youth Center on the Upper West side. There were detailed
   descriptions of his braces, teeth, and clothes. He was wearing red
   high top sneakers when he was last seen.

   "Oh no," I said. "Mom," he hasn't been kidnapped. He probably ran away
   from home," said my son.

   "I can't stand it," I said.

   "Mom, calm down."

   The next day the posters had spread all around the neighborhood. Two
   nights, now.

   I had started cooking dinner when I got an email from my son's school;
   The whole neighborhood was looking for him. I wanted to join them,
   after dinner. I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a stick.

   I ducked back to the bedroom and checked my email and there was an
   email from the school, saying Zachary had been found and was "on his
   way home."

   I came into the kitchen pumping my arms and shouting: "They found
   him!!!"

   My father didn't know what I was talking about because I'd kept it
   from him. His worst fear. But he smiled and laughed and whooped and
   hollered. "They got him! Hooray!" We all started clapping and cheering
   and splashing wine into glasses and I was dancing around the kitchen,
   just completely happy for a few moments.

   I imagined his mother when she got the call from him.

   He would not understand, for many years, what he did to her.