Sometimes he is lost.

A short story from the archives.

Home.

She clutches Benny’s hand as they walk into the house. “Paul, we’re home!” And Mia says only that they are home. Her voice wavers enough to hint that behind what she’s saying is what she’s not saying.

Paul enters the kitchen as Mia unpacks the groceries. One: a gallon of milk. Two: apples, on sale. Three: parmesan cheese. Such a small trip, a short list, not long enough to write down. She kept it in her head on the way to the store: one, two, three, all we need. And if she thinks about remembering, it fills her head, one two three, like that’s all she should think about, because that’s what matters.

“Hey, honey,” Paul says, kissing her cheek, tousling Benny’s hair.

Mia closes her eyes, just a second, just longer than a second. “Paul,” she says.

And when she opens her eyes, he’s looking at her, confused. Like why are you doing this again? But he can’t know, he doesn’t know. Each time, it’s different.

“What is it?” he says, voice concerned, impatient, forgiving, mean. Some combination of emotions, conflicted in the way the words form, behind the words she doesn’t know what he’s thinking. Oh man, she always does this. Or oh man, what’s wrong.

“I lost him again.”

It’s happened before.

One time, Benny sits in the tunnel at the zoo park. The tunnel looks like the stomach of a lion from the outside, painted golden and brown, rough brush strokes that all together make fur. Benny climbs up the ladder on the lion’s legs, enters the stomach, but the tunnel doesn’t contract and swallow him up. He pretends for a moment that he’s in a real lion’s stomach, curled up next to pork chops or whatever it is lions eat in the movies. But then it’s just a tunnel like any other, just quiet, and he closes his eyes, listens for the beat of the lion’s heart, presses his ear against the cool plastic.

Mia sits on the bench outside, across from the giraffe-tongue slide. It must’ve been two minutes, as she fumbled in her purse to type, “Benny loves the zoo,” on her phone, just a quick update so Paul will know she thinks of him, their son is happy, the day goes on even when they’re apart. And when she looks up, she can’t see him, because he’s in the lion’s stomach, eyes closed, resting and pretending he can hear the heart of the jungle.

But she can’t see him, she looks around frantically, where, where could he be. She tells herself, be slow, be calm. Walks on the woodchips, circles the playground. He must be on the other side, on the whale’s back. No. Or in the tower, where five birds form the walls of the platform, where a little kid wouldn’t see over the edges but could pretend he was on top of the world. And she’s racing up there, up to the top, the only adult on the structure, the only adult within twenty feet of it, all the others sit on the benches, waiting, watching. Like she thought she could, until she couldn’t, until he was gone.

And up on the structure, surrounded by tropical birds, tropical plastic birds, she finds another child, peering up over the edges at the entire zoo. No. No, where is he? She rushes down, she yells, she’s been yelling, “Benny, where are you? Benny, Benny?” She says, where’s my son, and she’s crying, just a little, and her heart’s racing, just a lot, and she finds the zoo man and tells him, I lost him.

And the zoo man uses the intercom, and the zoo man’s voice booms over, “Benny? Your mother is looking for you. Benny? Little boy who wandered from the park, where are you, where are you? Benny?” He says, wait here, we’ll find him. He says, it’s okay, we’ll find him. He thinks, this happens every day and parents never look like this. They’re never breathing so hard, so sure he’s gone, gone forever. She’s staring at the park, she’s circling it, circling the lions and the tigers, the giraffe, the bird tower. She’s screaming, Benny, Benny, Benny.

Benny’s head pokes out from below the lion’s head, his head pokes out and his mouth says, “I’m here, Mama,” and it’s been only five minutes. And she rushes to him, she climbs into the tunnel, she holds him tight, she says, I thought I lost you.

It’s not about understanding.

Paul nods his head, he listens, he speaks. He does everything right, but it doesn’t fix anything. Because she’s afraid, because she’s hurt, because she knows he’s right.

He understands she’s scared. He understands that each time Benny disappears, for a moment, for a minute, she thinks of never seeing him again. She sees his round face smiling from the milk cartons, lost forever. Each time she picks him up from school she walks all the way inside, all the way to the door of the classroom, and waits there so he won’t get snatched on his way to the car. Paul understands that she’s scared and he doesn’t let himself say the words he’s thinking—paranoid, overprotective, obsessive.

He strokes Mia’s hair, says, “I know, but we didn’t lose him. I know, but he’s here. I know, but he’s safe.”

She keeps her eyes closed and he has fears of his own.

She was little once.

Mia was a little girl, and she never got lost. You can’t be lost if no one is looking for you. And no one looked for her. No one was scared for her. And when she walked from her classroom, she walked past the parking lot where the other parents waited, and she walked four blocks, one two three four, and turned left and walked through the trees by the park. Sometimes she played in the park for hours, swinging on the swings, hanging from the monkey bars and dropping to her feet halfway across, because she could never make it to the other side. And she’d sit in the tunnel, playing patty-cake by herself.

After the hours, after she was tired, she walked the next two blocks home, where no one was surprised to see her, no one said, “Oh baby, you had us so scared! School ended three hours ago, where have you been, what have you been doing? We called the neighbors, the police, the school. But oh man we’re not mad, we’re happy, you’re okay, okay… okay?”

Nothing is simple unless it is.

She rolls the cart down the aisle, thinking of her list. One, two, three. She bends down and kisses Benny’s head, whispers, “I love you.” Keeps the rest to herself, because that’s all that matters.

At the produce section, she sorts through apples. Honeycrisp, five for a dollar. Not Granny Smith, not Golden Delicious, just the Honeycrisps, on sale. She pushes aside the Honeycrisps with bruises, abnormalities, imperfections, searching for the smooth, the delicious. And when she has her bag of five apples and sets it in the cart, he’s gone. He was just at her side, he was pulling on her pant leg, he was wandering over to the carrots, he was entranced by the starfruit. And now, he’s gone, he’s gone and she doesn’t know where he is and she leaves her cart and runs down the aisles, saying, “Benny!” in a calm voice, in a quiet voice, and she finds him by the candy, of course he’s by the candy, and she pulls him in tight and says, “There you are.”

If we are scared we’ll be safe.

In the kitchen, Paul hugs her. “You didn’t lose him, you thought he was lost.”

She cuts up the Honeycrisps in slices that no one can choke on. She pours one glass of milk and leaves the parmesan cheese in the fridge. And she hears what Paul says and tries to say, and she knows there’s a difference between losing and almost losing, tries to draw a line between the two, between the truth and the almost truth. But to her, the line is fainter, to her, her fear makes her better. Because Benny will always be looked for. And even when you care this much, you can lose someone. Even if she’s a good mother, something could happen.

Mia walks to the kitchen table where Benny sits on his little chair. She kisses his head. We’re okay, she thinks. He’s here, we’re here, we’re together. And Benny drinks his milk, he smiles, he’s fine, just fine. And Paul crosses the kitchen, sits in a chair next to Benny, smiles at his wife and says, “See, he’s right here.” See, what were you thinking. He’s watching Mia, but she doesn’t turn towards him. She looks at Benny, thinks, he’s here, we’re here, we’re fine. One, my son, two, my husband, three, me, all safe, all here, all fine.

Paul says, “Mia.”

“I love you, Benny,” she says, kissing Benny’s head again.