The Deep End of the Ocean

  It made him wonder if they were all telling him the truth, and whether Ben was really killed instead of alive but not here. And letting him have anything he wanted actually made him miss his mom even more, and he already missed his mom a lot. She was never around when they were in Chicago. Sometimes she called up and said, “Hi, Vincent.” His dad was around more often, but had this new, really hard way of hugging him that was also creepy.

  All in all, though, Chicago was better. Grandpa Angelo used to put him in their big cannonball bed at night to sleep—not just the first night, every night. And even when he couldn’t sleep, people were talking out in the living room. Police and grownups.

  Now, at home, when he couldn’t sleep, he just sort of sat there. His mother never made any noise at night. Kerry never made any noise. Unless it was Monday, his dad was always gone at the restaurant at bedtime. Vincent hated just sitting. He understood now why adults knew how to read fast. A long time ago, he and Ben used to figure out quiet ways of getting out of bed and playing with their cars until they started hitting and laughing and somebody caught them. But Vincent was afraid to do it on his own. It just seemed really dangerous to disobey, even though he was pretty sure his mom wouldn’t even notice.

  Getting to sleep had always been Vincent’s best thing. His mother used to say, “You’re the best sleeper of all.” All you did was shut your eyes and float, like you were in a big, warm tub. But since the thing happened in the lobby, Vincent couldn’t just fall asleep anymore. For one thing, he had the room to himself now; and though he liked being able to spread his stuff out on both beds, it felt weird having nobody to talk to at night. For another thing, he was all of a sudden almost afraid of the dark. It wasn’t just one of those things kids feel. He had a good reason to be scared. After all, the kidnapper would probably come and get him, too. It made sense. That kind of bad guy, the kind they told you about at school, who would come up and ask you for directions and grab your arm right in front of your own house, and give you drugs and touch you inappropriately, would definitely want the other brother, too. And if the bad guy asked, Ben would say where Vincent was. Ben knew the number of their house.

  Vincent got so nervous, he told Uncle Joey about it, and Uncle Joey said no bad guys better dare ever come near Grandpa’s house or he would take them out.

  “Do you know what that means, buddy, ‘take them out’?” Uncle Joey said in a rough voice. And Vincent had nodded his head, though he didn’t; but Uncle Joey was a bodybuilder, so he figured it meant he would punch the bad guys.

  But people always said stuff like that to kids, didn’t they?

  They said you would always be safe, and they would keep you safe, but then you could fall on the playground toys and break your collarbone with them standing right there. You could get kidnapped in front of a million people. And the bad guy probably didn’t even need to give Ben drugs or candy. He probably just told him what to do, because kids like Ben did what grownups told them. Even Vincent, who usually didn’t, even he sometimes did what certain adults told him to, like when his mom told him to eat eggs, even though eggs made him want to barf.

  Once, before they came home, he dreamed that who took Ben was a witch, like in “Hansel and Gretel.” Grandma Rosie said there were no such things as witches. Vincent didn’t really believe her. It was just another sort of lie adults told kids to make them not be scared. If there were no witches, how come there used to be in the olden times? When all those stories were written? Where did they all go to? Didn’t they have babies who grew up to be witches?

  There was also the third thing. The smell thing.

  It was the only thing he really remembered about the day Ben got lost, that smell. And he couldn’t really smell it; he could just remember it. Like all the different powders and perfumes in Mom’s makeup bag, all mixed, and then this stinky cooking smell. Uncle Augie would say in a restaurant that wasn’t owned by somebody they knew, “Bottle gravy.” Like at Thanksgiving, when his mother had opened up a jar of turkey gravy because they forgot to bring gravy from the restaurant—it was just like that smell. It made Vincent so sick he couldn’t eat anything, and his dad said quit trying to always be the center of attention, and his mom said shut up about it, and she didn’t eat either. She took him upstairs and lay down on the bed with him, which was actually pretty nice. He had no trouble going to sleep that time, and they slept all day.

  Most of the time, though, his mother didn’t put him to bed or wake him up. She put the baby in bed and said, “Night-night, Kerry,” and then she would just stand there in the hall, for so long, with her hand on the knob of baby Kerry’s door.

  Vincent would get his pajamas on and come back out there. Then he would brush his teeth and come back out there. After a while, he would go and get in bed. He didn’t know if it was his bedtime, because he couldn’t tell time on the upstairs clocks, only the one on the VCR that had actual numbers. A few times, he didn’t get up in time for school, either, but when he told his teacher that his mother forgot to wake him up, they said it was okay, they wouldn’t mark him tardy. After a while, a couple of times, he didn’t go even when he knew it was time, when he could see other kids going to school on the street. He just watched TV until his mother came down with the baby.

  She just said, “Did you eat?” She didn’t ask him, “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Once she asked, “Is it Sunday?” That time, he got up and left. They were halfway through journals when he got there, but his teacher didn’t say anything except ask him if he had any breakfast. Vincent said no, and the teacher’s face got all hard, like she was going to cry. She gave him part of a doughnut. After that, he just said he ate.

  After school, he mostly went to Alex’s. He had heard Alex’s mother say, on the phone, “Yes, of course, Vincent’s here, too. I’m filing the adoption papers next week.” And he had to ask his dad if Alex’s parents were really going to adopt him. His dad told him, “Of course not,” and said, “Maybe you should come home some days after school.”

  But Vincent didn’t like to get home too early. Not until Jill got done with classes. The baby would be asleep. And his mom would be sitting in funny places. Once down in the basement in her darkroom, on the floor in the dark, but not doing anything. Once in his bedroom, next to the bed that used to be Ben’s but was now his. Once right in the kitchen, on the floor. That was the scariest time. She had a cup of coffee next to her that had scummy stuff on top and a bug stuck in the scummy stuff, and he’d had to yell, “Mom, ick! Don’t drink that!” because when she saw him, she picked it up and started to drink it. And she’d tried to laugh then, a sort of scary heh-heh laugh. And she just put the cup back down on the floor and sat there.

  But even if he went to Alex’s right after school, he couldn’t eat over every night. He had to come home when Alex’s dad got back from work, which was about five o’clock. There were times, of course, when he didn’t go to Alex’s at all.

  To get to Alex’s house, he had to pass his own house on the other side of the street. And there were some afternoons that he could see that somebody’s car was in the driveway, like Laurie, who would probably have one of her kids with her, and the kid and Vincent would go play in the treehouse or have jumping contests off the swings.

  And even if one of the kids wasn’t with her, when Laurie was there it was like his mom woke up. It was like they turned on her remote control or something. She answered things when they said them, and if they had to sit around and mail and stamp packages of Ben’s Wanted poster, Mom would do that right along with Laurie. If Laurie brought a salad for her, his mom would eat it. She would make coffee. She would seem to see Vincent, too, when Laurie or a neighbor was there. She would say, “Would you get me the stapler, big buddy?” in a voice that sounded almost like her old voice, except if you had actually heard her old voice you knew that this one was a toy version, a lot faster and smaller.

  Those nights, things would be really great, because by the time Laurie left, Jill would
be there, and she would warm up whatever Laurie brought for dinner—not that he didn’t love the food from Cappadora’s, but you liked to have American food once in a while, too, like fried chicken. That would be a whole day, from the end of school until bed, when he didn’t have to be alone with his mom, if it was one of the nights when Jill didn’t have a night class, which she did three times a week. But if she didn’t, she would read to him and run a bath for him and even stay in his room until he fell asleep.

  Once, he woke up in the middle of the night and Jill was still right there, sleeping on the bed that used to be his with her clothes still on and no covers. Vincent got up and put the comforter over her, trying to fit it up around her shoulders without waking her up. But she woke up anyway, and hugged him. He felt awful then; he was afraid she’d leave. But she just turned over and went back to sleep. Vincent liked that so much he told Jill she could sleep there any time she wanted, instead of the guest room she lived in. But when he said that, Jill started to cry, so he didn’t tell her it again. His bed was not as comfortable as Ben’s, it was true. His mattress was older, because Ben had peed his to death and he got a new one, and Vincent’s had a major saggy place in the middle. He didn’t really blame Jill.

  Vincent knew Jill was going to go home to her real home, with her mother, his auntie Rachelle, for Christmas anyhow. She’d be gone a whole month. Dad said Stacey, the cashier from Cappadora’s, was going to baby-sit him and Kerry some nights “until Mom feels better.” Stacey wasn’t really mean or anything, but all she ever did was watch TV. And she wasn’t going to come every night. Even when she did come, she wasn’t going to be there at ten o’clock at night, after his mom and the baby were asleep and his dad wasn’t home yet.

  That was the part Vincent dreaded, being up when his mom was asleep.

  By the time vacation started, a week before Christmas, Vincent had his routine pretty well figured out. He could look forward to Monday nights being pretty good, because Dad was home; Tuesday and Wednesday nights would be pretty bad; Thursdays okay because by that time of the week, one of Mom’s friends usually was starting to call to see if she was okay; Friday would be okay. Saturday okay about half the time because he could usually talk his dad into taking him to the restaurant and letting him fall asleep on the couch in Uncle Augie’s office.

  Sundays were the worst. Dad had to open, and so he left right after lunch. He always looked really upset when he left. He kept saying, “Beth? You’re all right now, aren’t you?”

  And his mother would say, “Sure. I’m fine.” Then she would watch out the window when his dad left, like she could still see his car pulling down the driveway backwards an hour after he left. A few times, Vincent asked her if he could go out to play. She said, “Okay.” But Vincent didn’t; he didn’t feel too good about going out to play, even if there was new snow, until Kerry was down for her nap. If she threw all her toys out of the playpen, his mom wouldn’t put them back. Vincent did, even though it drove him nuts that Kerry would just throw them out again.

  On Sundays, the phone would ring all day. Sometimes, his mom would pick it up. Sometimes, she wouldn’t. A couple of times, after she picked it up, he heard her yelling swear words—like “You sick buster!”—and then she called his dad and he had to come home from the restaurant so his mom could go to bed. His dad was pretty upset when that happened, and once he even called the police in Madison.

  So Vincent answered the phone most of the time now.

  Often the person who called would be Detective Bliss, who said to call her “Candy.” Or the lady from Compassionate Circle. Or Uncle Bick. Uncle Bick always made him actually get his mother, even if Vincent said she was asleep, and he could also make her talk, even if in just one words.

  Two times, though, it was a man Vincent didn’t know. Except he knew it was the same man. He sounded like he was calling from a room with all the sounds sealed out of it, a room that didn’t even have normal noises in the back, like TV or cars going by. He asked, “Are you the brother of the little boy?”

  Vincent told him, “Yes.”

  And the man asked, “Do you know why he was stolen?”

  Vincent said, “No.”

  The man said then, real whispery, “Do you know how our Lord Jesus Christ punishes sinners? That he who disturbeth his own house shall reap the whirlwind?”

  It wasn’t what he said that scared Vincent, but how angry he sounded. Mad at Vincent. Like Vincent was the one who stole Ben. Vincent tried to tell him, “My mommy’s asleep,” even though that embarrassed him a little, because he usually didn’t say “mommy” anymore; but the guy just kept right on, hissing, “Do you know about Benjamin in the Bible, son? Vanished into slavery in Egypt? Do you know what sick people do to little boys like your brother?”

  The one time, Vincent called his mother, and something in his voice made her shake her head and sit up—she had been watching a bass-fishing show that he was pretty sure she wasn’t really interested in. “What?” she said. “What?” He just held the phone out and shook it. And his mother took it and when she heard the man, she really yelled, “Don’t you ever call my house again, you—” f word, a word, p word.

  The next time the man called, Vincent just said, “I believe in God,” and hung up. The man called back and left sixteen messages. “Pick up the phone, if you want to know what really happened to Benjamin,” he kept saying. Sixteen times. Vincent counted. Then he never called back again. Vincent figured it was the kidnapper. But when his dad heard the tape he said it wasn’t; it was just a sick buster who had nothing better to do with his sick life than scare women and children. He gave the tape to the police in Madison. They came over to the house in a squad car to get it.

  Vincent started to think he could tell whether it was a good call or a bad call by the ring. If it was Aunt Tree or somebody, Vincent thought it could hear a kind of friendly bounce in the ring. If it was police or strangers or guys wanting to sell his parents some graves or houses or something, it would have sort of a distant sound, as if it didn’t really know where it was ringing. So he tried to only pick up when he heard the bounce, and by Christmas vacation he had determined that he was right about twenty times out of twenty-five; he kept count by making a little tiny ink mark on the bottom of the kitchen table where they put the raw, crummy wood that didn’t have the gray covering on top. It was entirely possible that he had ESP.

  Usually it was Grandma Rosie who called.

  Grandma would say, “Is your mama there, Vincenzo?”

  And Vincent would say, “Yes. She’s sleeping.” Even if she wasn’t. Because if he gave his mom the phone, she would just hold it and listen to Grandma Rosie, hardly saying anything, and he would hear Grandma Rosie’s little phone voice getting louder and louder on the other end. Which made him want to jump out of his skin, because he couldn’t really tell his mom to say something.

  When Vincent told Grandma that his mom was sleeping, though, that was another problem. She would say, “Hmmmmmm.” He could hear her tapping on the table with her little silver pen, the one she used to write orders at the Golden Hat. Then she would say, “Where is the baby?”

  And he would say, “Sleeping, too.” Even if she wasn’t. He could tell that was what Grandma Rosie wanted Kerry to be doing, because people always thought babies were better off sleeping. Then Grandma Rosie would ask if he was watching television. She would ask him to spell a couple of words—usually, two easy, like “ran” or “fat,” and one hard, like “nose” or “high,” which could fool you. She would say, “I was thinking my car might come up to Madison this weekend. But Grandpa said no, too many people getting married this weekend. Everybody’s getting married on the west side, ’Cenzo.” She said that almost every time. Except just the past week, she was saying, “Soon we will be there for Christmas,” and asking if Vincent had been a good boy, and what Saint Nicholas would bring for him.

  That was when he told her he was asking for Ben.

  He could tell right away Grandm
a Rosie didn’t like the idea. She said, “Oh, Vincenzo. Carissimo.” Like he had said he got suspended for fighting or something. Vincent had actually expected her to be proud of him, and have her voice get all purry, the way it did when he sent her the recital tape the first year he took Suzuki violin. But, he figured, probably she was just tired. He asked to talk to Grandpa Angelo. Grandpa would probably like the idea better; he was really missing Ben. Grandpa said it made his heart feel like a bone in his throat or something—Vincent couldn’t exactly remember the way he described it. But Grandpa hadn’t been home. And Grandma Rosie got off the phone really quick.

  Vincent thought he’d have to tell Dad, and see if Dad would help him with the letter to Santa. He didn’t want to tell his mom.

  Christmas Eve was going to be on a Monday, and on the Friday night before, Uncle Paul called to tell Vincent’s mom they’d be up that night. Then, Vincent started getting really excited. Uncle Paul’s twins, especially Moira, were really nuts and rough, for girls; he always had a good time with them. “Can the twins sleep in my room?” he asked Uncle Paul. “I have an extra bed now that Ben’s gone.”

  There was a long pause, in which Vincent could hear somebody’s car phone or radio click in and out on the line. “Uh, okay,” said Uncle Paul. “Let me talk to your mom.”

  Grandpa Angelo and Grandma Rosie arrived Saturday morning. Vincent’s dad had to make three trips to the car to bring in all the presents. Vincent began to read the gift tags on the packages out loud: “To Kerry, from Santa.” “To Beth, F.U.F.I.L.” (that sounded like a swear, but Grandpa Angelo did it all the time; it meant “From you father-in-law,” and it was funny because Grandpa had an Italian accent). Then there were a whole stack of boxes that said, “To Ben from Grandma and Grandpa.” “To Ben from Santa.”