Page 96 of The Sign for Home

As we drove slowly down the road, the apartment buildings and row houses were replaced by car repair shops, a White Castle, and a dirty video store called Jezebel’s. And suddenly, there it was: New Bridge Gardens Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center. It definitely is not one of your upscale nursing homes. It sits between two empty lots and has a rocky,unkempt lawn with two untrimmed boxwood bushes. That day, a large green dumpster sat in front with several dirty mattresses peeking out. The building itself is a one-floor cinder-block construction, with light blue paint and a sign out front that reads,WE CARE FOR THE LONG TERM!For some reason it was the exclamation point that creeped me out the most.

“Are you sure you have the right address?” Molly asked, perhaps hoping for something nicer.

“It’s the address Larry sent Arlo,” I said. “Not exactly the Taj Mahal, huh?”

“Well,” Molly said, “let’s go see if he got here.”

“Wait,” Hanne cautioned. “We should call first. We don’t want to make them suspicious.”

We all agreed. Then, as Hanne spoke to a person on the phone, we focused intently on every detail of Hanne’s “mm-hmms” to get clues to what she was finding out about Shri. Her expression looked concerned, and then she hung up.

“Arlo definitely hasn’t gotten here yet,” Hanne said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, noting something behind Hanne’s eyes.

“The receptionist told me Shri’s file says you have to get special permission if you want to visit. She hasn’t had any visitors in a long time.”

All of us looked at one another, not wanting to acknowledge out loud the challenge that might be ahead.

“Where could Arlo be?” Molly asked, her voice cracking with frustration. “I knew he couldn’t make it here on his own.”

“Maybe he took a cab?” Hanne asked.

“He couldn’t afford a cab,” Molly explained. “Birch barely gives him any of his SSI money. What if he got lost on the subway or worse, what if he fell?”

Molly covered her face with her hands, attempting to hide her fears while Hanne got up on her knees and swiveled to face Molly in the back.

“There, there,” Hanne whispered, taking Molly’s hand. “We will findhim. He also has Snap with him, and his keyboard typing dingus, the thing he communicates with, right? He’s not a stupid man.”

“No, he’s not,” I said, though my own worry began to escalate, not because of Arlo’s lack of intelligence, but because New York City in all its Rube Goldberg complexity was hard to navigate even for the able-bodied. For the disabled it was a nightmare. “But maybe it’s time to call Birch and the police?”

“Cyrilje! Stop it,” Hanne snapped.

“She’s right,” Molly added from the back. “Once Birch knows, it’s done. None of us will be allowed within a mile of Arlo, and he’ll never get to see Shri.”

“But what if he’s lost?” I argued. “What if he’s in trouble?”

“Let’s just give it a little more time,” Hanne pleaded. “Here is my idea: I’ll stay here and watch for Arlo. Cyrilje, you take Molly to wait for him at the exit to the subway station nearest to here. Then you take the subway to Grand Central and see if you can find him.”

“But what if he’s not there?” I asked.

For some reason this set Molly to crying again.

“Cyrilje, you’re not helping!” Hanne punched my leg. “Look, if we can’t find Arlo in the next two hours then we call Brother Birch,ja?”

Before I could even respond, Molly was buckling her seatbelt again.

“Let’s get to the subway station,” Molly begged. “Hurry!”

I left Hanne at a seedy coffee shop across from the nursing home, with a direct view of the front door. Then I parked my car and left Molly at the Jamaica Center subway station. Because the station has multiple exits, we agreed it was better for her to stay on the inbound platform, watching each train for Arlo. I grabbed the next Manhattan-bound E train, transferring at Roosevelt Avenue for a 7 train into Grand Central. The entire trip took me over an hour, and the whole way I was bombarded with catastrophicvisions of Arlo and Snap falling off the edge of the subway platforms, or being kidnapped by potential murderers, or just disappearing into the bottomless pot of human stew that is New York City.

By the time I arrived at Grand Central, it was already rush hour and the station was a crush of people pouring into every tunnel and passageway. I found my way to the cavernous Main Concourse with its golden central clock and its dazzling cerulean-blue ceiling filled with the constellations. I figured Arlo would have had to pass through here. Making my way to the information booth, I was horrified by the thought of Arlo and Snap trying to navigate this crowd.

“I’m sorry,” I said loudly to the clerk over the din. “I lost my little brother. He’s a DeafBlind man, twenty-three, a little taller than me. Walks a little wobbly. He has a pretty scraggly guide dog. Have you seen him?”

The attendant, an older man with a sheen of sweat on his bald head, looked at me, bored and annoyed. He gestured to the throngs of people and smirked sarcastically.

“No. But, at this time of day, if Godzilla came up to me with a neck brace and a bum leg I wouldn’t notice him neither. Ask a friggin’ cop. Next?”

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