The Abduction Chapter 3

He looked at me in absolute bewilderment.  I was breaking every rule in the kidnapping manual. 

            “Okay, tell me where to drop you off.”

            Without hesitation, I responded, “6721 Golf Road.”  Never in my life had I wanted so badly to go to the place I so badly wanted to get away from forever.  Again, a look of astonishment blazed across his face followed by a look that said, “come on now, who do you think is in charge here?”  On the other hand, maybe it was a look of fear in realizing that he had come across someone crazier than he was.

            “Right here.  You can drop me right here.”  He stopped the car and told me to get out.  He also told me not to tell anyone.  Right, as if my mother wouldn’t question the fact that her treasured Cadillac was missing.  He again asked directions to Milwaukee.  Really?  I robotically pointed the direction.   What do you say to a kidnapper who has altered his plans twice now to accommodate your requests and is now setting you free?  Thank you?  At that moment, I realized I had been sitting right next to him, shoulders touching shoulders, like a teenaged couple on their first date.  It repulsed me and I felt the sweet and sour taste of bile rising in the back of my throat.  I slowly slid to the passenger door, quietly opening it, and backed out, eyes on the knife still glimmering in his clenched and now sweaty right hand.  I closed the door and watched the gold Caddy until it became a glint on the horizon and then it was gone.

            I collapsed onto the cold, concrete sidewalk.

            I am sure I was a sight to see.  I was drenched in sweat as I walked up the driveway to the house and rang the doorbell.  I crumpled in front of the door.

            “My car was stolen.  I need to call my house.”

            I stood in a kitchen that looked oddly like my boyfriend’s kitchen and dialed home.  Strangely, calling the police had never entered my mind.  The homeowners cautiously stood nearby as I listened to the ringing. 

            “Hello,” my little brother answered.

            “Put Ma on the phone.”

            “Why?”

           

            I said again, “Get Ma on the phone. Now!” 

            He hung up on me.  Shit!  I sheepishly smiled at the people now staring at me in disbelief and redialed the house.  My brother answered again.

            “What!”

            I said in a maniacal whisper, “If you don’t get Ma on the phone right now I will tear your lungs out of your chest through your mouth.”  He screamed, “Ma! Phone,” and put the receiver down.  So I waited…and waited… till she picked. 

            “Where the hell are you? Where is my car?”

I couldn’t think straight.  What was her concern? 

            “It was stolen.”

            “What?  How?”

            “A man kidnapped me and took the car to Milwaukee.”

            “Why did you let him take the car?”

            “Can you please come and get me?”

            My Dad wasn’t available.  He had been helping a friend whose dry cleaner business had just had a fire the night before.  He had the only other car, a 1967 Rambler station wagon, filled to the brim with scaffolding, wallpaper paste, brushes, and empty Tab bottles with mold growing in the bourbon and cola residue that fell back out of Dad’s mouth when he took his quick swigs before entering the house.

            “You can cut the tension in this house with a knife,” he once said when pushed for a reason as to why he disappeared for a few days, leaving the rest of us home to deal with Ma.  His car was the old beater to Ma’s new Caddy. Her desire for finery in all things was just one of her abnormalities.  No one in her own family was like her in this way.  She was raised by Greek immigrants in a very modest Hyde Park bungalow.  Her father was a shoemaker, her mother a housewife.  The Great Depression brought with it prudence in finances, and like other immigrant families of the time, they managed to save a comfortable nest egg.  They owned their home, a small business, and my mother wanted it.  All of it.  Money became her best friend in life.   Her parents foolishly entrusted her with their finances.  The one person she loved or tried to love and who actually loved her in return was her mother.  After she died, Ma became harder and more determined to possess things, fancy cars, homes, and money in bank accounts.  She placed her father in a putrid, derelict nursing home, telling her horrified sisters and brother that their father’s money was running out and there was not enough to place him in a more suitable facility.  After he died, and the family got together to divvy up their inheritance, Ma told them there was none, it had been used to care for their father.  She then drove up to the next family function in her first shiny new Cadillac and brand new mink. 

            The police came with Ma to pick me up and drove us to the station to report the crime.  She sat in the waiting room.  I was 18 years old and did not require parental guidance anymore.  Funny, I didn’t recall any guidance given to me in my 17 years prior to this evening.

            After returning home very late that evening, I sat down at the dinner table to discuss my adventure with the family.  I was hungry and tired but there was no food prepared for me.  Instead, a barrage of questions and suggestions was waiting on the lips of five very excited people.

            “You dummy, there was a bat in the front seat!  Why didn’t you use it on him?”

            “Yeah,” Ma countered, “why didn’t you?  Why did you let him take my car?”

            Well, my caring, loving family, did I neglect to remind you that he was holding a knife on me, was my first thought to the shower of comments blasting forth simultaneously.  I was exhausted but needed to put forth a strong front or they would tear me to pieces and I would hear about my failure to save Ma’s car for the rest of my life.  Wit and sarcasm were the only skills honed to a fine edge as this family’s survival method.  The discussion or exposure of fear and pain were not allowed. 

            “He had a knife.  He threatened to hurt me.  He wanted to rape me.  He planned to take me with him to Milwaukee.  But I was able to get away.” 

            “ Well, I wouldn’t have let that happen!”

            “ Yeah, you need to be more careful.”

            “ Why did you let him into the car?  Now we only have one car.  How will I get to work?”   Ma had a one-track mind and wasn’t about to let me off the hook.  This was huge.  Her prized possession was missing.  She was mad at either the disco assailant or me.  Probably me.  My thoughts drifted through the cacophony onto the fact that my punishment for failing that day was going to be no car privileges for a long time. Work, school and other outings were going to require transportation creativity.  A long sigh fell out of my mouth and surprised me by the length of it.  I must have been holding my breath until that very moment.

            A couple of days later, they found my abductor.  It appears he took a wrong turn to Milwaukee and ended up in Rockford, Illinois.  He had spent the $7 he took from me; it appears he decided to rob a bank.  He went in, wrote a note to the girl behind the sliding glass window, told her to hand over all her cash or else.  She told him the dentist didn’t keep cash in the office, that he was looking for the bank next door, showed him the way out and called the police. They tracked him down using a police helicopter and several squad cars.  I actually felt very stupid considering the intellect of this man.  And, my family reminded me of this fact, the new family joke.

            I went in to identify him at the station and the police asked me again what weapons he had on him when he abducted me.

             “It looked like a seven inch blade, why?”

            “Oh, nothing…”

What kind of a retort was this?  Their secrecy brought me right back into the front seat of the Cadillac.

            “What do you mean nothing?” 

They continued their covert probing.

             “Is that all you saw?  He didn’t show you anything else?”

By this time, I was so tired of this clandestine behavior and evasiveness.

            “No, would you like to tell me something?”

There was a long pause………

            “He had a large butcher knife on him.”

            “Oh.”

My assailant’s sentence didn’t include any time for the abduction.  He hadn’t held me long enough.  They only booked him for grand theft auto and jumping parole.

He trashed the gold Caddy with champagne leather interior.  Man, was Ma pissed.