“What the hell is going on!” she shrieked. It was a child’s tear-scream, wet, enraged and baffled.
“Some strange stuff,” Diane said, patting her back. “Let’s get you home.”
“I don’t want to go home. I need to find my son.”
The word son started her weeping again and she let it rip: gulping sobs and thoughts jabbing her like needles. He’d need a lawyer. They didn’t have money for a lawyer. He’d get some bored county guy appointed to him. They’d lose. He’d go to jail. What would she tell the girls? How long did someone go away for something like that? Five years? Ten? She could see a big prison parking lot, the gates opening, and her Ben gingerly walking out, twenty-five years old, frightened of the open space, eyes narrowed against the light. He comes near her, her arms open, and he spits on her for not saving him. How do you live with not being able to save your son? Could she send him away, on the run, fugitive? How much money could she even give him? In December, numb from exhaustion, she’d sold her dad’s army 45 Auto to Linda Boyler. She could picture Dave Boyler, who she’d never liked, opening it up Christmas morning, this gun he didn’t earn. So Patty, right now, had almost three hundred bucks squirreled away in the house. It was all owed to others, she’d planned on making her first-of-the-month rounds later today, but that wouldn’t happen now—plus $300 would only keep Ben going a few months.
“Ben will come home when he finishes blowing off steam,” Diane reasoned. “How far can he get on a bike in January?”
“What if they find him first?”
“Sweetheart, there’s no mob after him. You heard, the Muehler boys didn’t even know about the … accusation. They were talking about other bullshit rumors. We need to talk to Ben to straighten this out, but for all we know he could be home right now.”
“Who’s the family that’s saying he did this?”
“No one said.”
“You can find out though. They can’t just say things like that and expect us to lie down and take it, right? You can find out. We have a right to know who’s saying this. Ben has a right to confront his accuser. I have a right.”
“Fine, let’s go back to the house, check in on the girls, and I’ll make some calls. Now will you let me drive?”
THEY WALKED INTO pure din. Michelle was trying to fry salami strips on the skillet, screaming at Debby to go away. Libby had a splatter of bright pink burns up one arm and a cheek where the grease had hit her, and was sitting on the floor, mouth wide, crying the way Patty had just been crying in the car: as if there was absolutely no hope, and even if there was, she wasn’t up to the challenge.
Patty and Diane moved like they were choreographed, one of those German clocks with the fancy men and women dancing in and out. Diane strode to the kitchen in three big steps and yanked Michelle away from the stove, dragging her by the one arm, doll-like, to the living room, depositing her on the sofa with a swat on her tush. Patty crisscrossed them, swooped up Libby, who monkey-wrapped herself around her mother and continued crying into her neck.
Patty turned on Michelle, who was loosing fat silent tears. “I told you: You may only use the stove to heat soup. You could have set this whole place on fire.”
Michelle glanced around the shabby kitchen and living room as if wondering whether that would be a loss.
“We were hungry,” Michelle mumbled. “You’ve been gone forever.”
“And that means you need a fried salami sandwich your mom told you not to make?” snapped Diane, finishing up the frying, slapping the meat on a plate. “She needs you to be good girls right now.”
“She always needs us to be good girls,” Debby mumbled. She was nuzzling a pink stuffed panda that Ben had won years ago at the Cloud County fair. He’d knocked down a bunch of milk bottles, just as his pre-teen muscles were coming in. The girls had celebrated as if he’d won a Medal of Honor. The Days never won anything. They always said that, marveling, whenever they had a tiny piece of good luck: We never win anything! It was the family motto.
“And is it really so hard to be good?” Diane gave Debby a soft chuck under her chin and Debby lowered her gaze even more as she started to smile.
“I guess not.”
Diane said she’d make the calls, grabbing the kitchen phone and pulling it all the way down the hall as far as it could go. As she walked away, she told Patty to feed her dang children—the words riling Patty, as if she was so negligent she often forgot meals. Make tomato soup from ketchup and milk from a powder, yes. Toast some stale bread, add a squirt of mustard and call it a sandwich, yes. On the worst days, yes. But she never forgot. The kids were on the free-lunch program at school, so they always got something there at least. Even as she thought this, she felt worse. Because Patty went to the same school as a kid, and she never had to do Half-Lunch or Free-Lunch, and now her stomach knotted as she remembered the Free-Lunch kids and her patronizing smiles toward them as they presented their dog-eared cards, and the steamy cafeteria ladies would call it out: Free Lunch! And the boy next to her, buzz-haired and confident, would whisper inanely: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And she’d feel sorry for the kids, but not in a way that made her want to help, just in a way that made her not want to look at them anymore.
Libby was still heaving and crying in her arms; Patty’s neck was sweaty from the girl’s hot breaths. After twice asking Libby to look at her, the girl finally blinked and turned her face up to her mother’s.
“I, got, buuurrrned.” Then she started crying again.
“Baby, baby, it’s just a few ouchies. It won’t be permanent, is that what you’re worried about? They’re just some little pink ouchies— you won’t even remember next week.”
“Something bad’s gonna happen!”
Libby was her worrier; she came out of the womb wary and stayed that way. She was the nightmare girl, the fretter. She was an outta-nowhere pregnancy; neither Patty nor Runner were happy. They didn’t even bother with a baby shower; their families were so sick of them procreating that the entire pregnancy was an embarrassment. Libby must have marinated in anxious stomach acid for nine months, soaking up all that worry. Potty training her was surreal— she screamed when she saw what came out of her, ran away naked and frantic. Dropping her off at school had always been an act of utter abandonment, her daughter with the giant, wet eyes, face pressed against the glass, as a kindergarten teacher restrained her. This past summer she refused to eat for a week, turned white and haunted, then finally (finally, finally) revealed to Patty a pod of warts that had sprouted on one knee. Eyes down, in slow sentences that Patty extracted from her over the course of an hour, Libby explained that she thought the warts might be like poison ivy, that they’d eventually cover her and (sob!) no one would be able to see her face anymore. And when Patty had asked why, why in the world hadn’t Libby told her these worries before, Libby just looked at her like she was crazy.
Whenever possible, Libby prophesized doom. Patty knew that, but the words still made her clench. Something bad had already happened. But it would get worse.
She sat with Libby on the couch, smoothing her hair, patting her back. Debby and Michelle hovered near, fetching tissues for Libby and fussing over her the way they should have done a good hour ago. Debby tried to make the panda pretend-talk to Libby, telling her she was OK, but Libby shoved it away and turned her head. Michelle asked if she could cook everyone soup. They ate soup all through the winter, Patty keeping giant vats of it in the freezer-locker in the garage. They usually ran out right around the end of February. February was the worst month.
Michelle was dumping a big frozen square of beef and vegetables into a stew pot, cracking off the ice, ignoring the plate of salami, when Diane returned with her mouth tugged into a grimace. She lit a cigarette—trust me, I need it—and sat down on the sofa, her weight bumping up Patty and Libby like a seesaw. She sent the girls into the kitchen with Michelle, the kids not saying anything, obedient in their nervousness.
“OK. So it’s this family
named Cates that started it—they live halfway between here and Salina, send their kid to Kinnakee because the public school’s not finished in their suburb. So it started because Ben was doing after-school volunteering with the Cates girl. Did you know he was volunteering?”
Patty shook her head.
“Volunteering?”
Diane pushed her lips out: didn’t jive with her either.
“Well, for whatever reason, he was volunteering with these young kids in the elementary school, and this girl’s parents say something wrong went on between them. And so do some others. The Hinkels, the Putches, and the Cahills.”
“What?”
“They’re all comparing notes, they’ve all talked to the school. From what I hear, the police are now involved, and you should expect someone, a cop, to come by today to talk to you and Ben. It’s reached that stage. Not everyone at school knows—we’re lucky this happened on Christmas break—but I guess after today that won’t be the case. I guess any kid who Ben helped after school, the school is talking to the parents. So, like, ten families.”
“What should I do?” Patty put her head between her knees. She felt laughter in her stomach, it was all so ludicrous. I wonder if I’m having a breakdown, she thought. Maybe I could have a breakdown and then I won’t have to talk to anyone. A safe white room, and Patty being ushered like a child from breakfast to lunch to dinner, maneuvered by people with gentle whispers, Patty shuffling like someone who’s dying.
“I guess everyone’s over at the Cates place, talking right now,” Diane said. “I got the address.”
Patty just stared.
“I think we should go over there,” Diane said.
“Go over there? I thought you said someone would come here.”
“The phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Michelle said, Michelle who’d been in the kitchen and shouldn’t have heard any of this.
Patty and Diane both turned to the phone, waiting for it to go off.
“Well, why didn’t you answer it like we asked, Michelle?” Diane said.
Michelle shrugged. “I forgot if we were supposed to or not.”
“Maybe we should wait here,” Patty said.
“Patty, those families are over there talking … shit about your son. Now who knows what kernel of truth may be in there or not, but don’t you want to go speak for him? Don’t you want to hear what they’re saying, make them say it to our face?”
No, she didn’t. She wanted the stories to go away, nice and quiet, creep backward into oblivion. She didn’t want to hear what people in her town—Maggie Hinkel went to high school with her, for Pete’s sake—were saying about Ben. And she was afraid she’d crumble with all those furious faces on her. She’d weep, beg for forgiveness. Already, all she wanted was forgiveness, and they hadn’t even done anything wrong.
“Let me put on some better clothes.”
SHE FOUND A sweater without rips in the armpits and a pair of khaki slacks. She ran a comb through her hair, and exchanged her gold studs for a pair of imitation pearl earrings and matching necklace. You really couldn’t tell they were fake, they even felt heavy.
As she and Diane went toward the front door—further admonishments about using the stove, a request to turn off the TV and do chores at some point—Libby began wailing again, running toward them with her arms flapping. Michelle crossed her arms over her stained sweatshirt and stomped a foot.
“I can’t deal with her when she’s like this,” she said, a perfect imitation of Patty. “She’s too much. It’s too much for me.”
Patty took a breath in, thought about reasoning with Michelle, thought about bullying Michelle, but Libby was bawling louder, a howling animal, screaming iwanttogowithyouiwanttogowithyou, Michelle arching an eyebrow. Patty pictured a cop showing up here while she was away, a burnt-faced, weeping child lying inconsolable on the floor. Should she take all three then? But someone should be here to answer the phone, to be here, and it was probably better to have both Michelle and Debby here than …
“Libby, go put on your boots,” Diane ordered. “Michelle, you are in charge. Answer the phone, don’t answer the door. If it’s Ben he’ll have a key, if it’s someone else, we don’t want you two worrying about it. Michelle?”
“What’s going on?”
“Michelle, I’m not messing with you. Michelle?”
“OK.”
“OK,” Diane said, and that, literally was the final word.
Patty stood in the hallway, useless, watching Libby put on her boots and a pair of dirt-caked mittens. Patty grabbed one woolly hand and walked her toward the car. It might be good, anyway, if people were reminded Ben had little sisters who loved him.
Libby wasn’t a big talker—Michelle and Debby seemed to hog all her words. She made pronouncements: I like ponies. I hate spaghetti. I hate you. Like her mother, she had no poker face. No poker mood. It was all right there. When she wasn’t angry or sad, she just didn’t say much. Now, seat belted in back, taken along for the ride, she sat silently, her pink-blotched face aimed out the window, a finger against the glass, tracing the tops of trees outside.
Neither Patty nor Diane spoke either, and the radio stayed off. Patty tried to picture the visit (visit? Could you really call something this repulsive a visit?), but all she could see was her screaming “Leave my son alone!” She and Maggie Hinkel had never been friends, but they’d always exchanged conversation at the grocery store, and the Putches she knew from church. These weren’t unkind people, they wouldn’t be unkind to her. As for the parents of the first girl, Krissi Cates, Patty had no idea. She pictured the Cateses as brightly blond and preppy, with everything matching and the house pristine and smelling of potpourri. She wondered if Mrs. Cates would spot the fake pearls.
Diane guided her off the highway, and into the neighborhood, past a big blue sign boasting of model units in Elkwood Park. So far it was just blocks and blocks of wooden skeletons, each one an outline of a house, each one allowing you to see the outline of the one next to it, and the outline of the one next to that. A teenage girl sat smoking on the second floor of one skeleton house, she looked like Wonder Woman in her invisible plane, sitting in the outlines of a bedroom. When she tapped her cigarette, the ashes fluttered down into the dining room.
All the pre-houses unnerved Patty. They were recognizable but totally foreign, an everyday word you suddenly couldn’t remember to save your life.
“Pretty, huh?” Diane said, wagging a finger at the neighborhood.
Two more turns and they were there, a block of tidy houses, real houses, a cluster of cars in front of one.
“Looks like a party,” Diane sniffed. She rolled down the window and spat outside.
The car was silent for a few seconds, except for Diane’s throat-noises.
“Solidarity,” Diane said. “Don’t worry, worst they can do is yell.”
“Maybe you should stay here with Libby,” Patty said. “I don’t want yelling in front of her.”
“Nah,” Diane said. “No one stays in the car. We can do this. Yeah, Libby? You’re a tough little girl, right?” Diane turned her bulk to Libby in the backseat, her parka rustling, and then back to Patty. “It’ll be good for them to see her, know he’s got a little sister around who loves him.” Patty had a shot of confidence that she’d thought the same thing.
Diane was out of the car then, on the other side, rousting Libby, and opening the door wide for her to get out. The three of them walked up the sidewalk, Patty immediately feeling ill. Her ulcers had been quiet for a bit, but now her belly burned. She had to unclench her jaw and work it loose. They stood on the doorstep, Patty and Diane in front, with Libby just behind her mother, glancing out backward. Patty imagined a stranger driving past, thinking they were friends joining the festivities. The door still had a Christmas wreath on it. Patty thought, They had a nice happy Christmas and now they are frightened and angry and I bet they keep thinking, but we just had such a nice happy Christmas. The house was like something fr
om a catalog, and there were two BMWs in the driveway and these were not people who were used to bad things happening.
“I don’t want to do this, I don’t think we should do this,” she blurted.
Diane rang the doorbell and gave her a look straight from their dad, the calm, unmoved look he gave whiners. Then she said exactly what Dad always said when he gave the look: “Nothing to it but to do it.”
Mrs. Cates answered the door, blond and prairie-faced. Her eyes were red from crying and she was still holding a tissue.
“Hello, may I help you?”
“I. Are you … Krissi Cates’s mother?” Patty started, and began crying.
“I am,” the woman said, fingers on her own pearls, her eyes shifting back and forth to Patty and Diane, and then down to Libby, “Oh, was your little girl … did he hurt your little girl too?”
“No,” Patty said. “I’m Ben’s mother. I’m Ben Day’s mother.” She wiped the tears with the back of her hand, then with the sleeve of her sweater.
“Oh God, Oh God, Oh, Louuuu come here. Hurry.” Mrs. Cates’s voice grew loud and quivery, the sound of an airplane going down. Several faces Patty didn’t recognize peered around the corner of the living room. A man walked past from the kitchen holding a tray of sodas. One girl lingered in the hallway, a pretty blond girl wearing flowered jeans.
“Who’s that?” the girl chirped.
“Go get your father.” Mrs. Cates moved to fill up the doorway, almost physically pushing them from the doorstep. “Louuuu …” she called back into the house. A man appeared behind her, slab-like, 6’5” at least, solid, with a way of keeping his chin up that reminded Patty of people who got what they wanted.
“This is her, this is Ben Day’s mother,” the woman said with such disgust Patty could feel her womb flinch.
“You’d better come inside,” the man said, and when Patty and Diane glanced at each other, he snapped, “Come, come,” like they were bad pets.
They stepped into the home, into a sunken den, and peered out on a scene that looked like a children’s birthday party. Four girls were in various states of play. They wore foil stars on their faces and hands, the kind of stickers teachers use to mark good grades. Several were sitting with their parents, eating cake, the girls looking greedy, the moms and dads looking panicked behind brave faces. Krissi Cates had plopped herself in the middle of the floor and was playing dolls with a large, dark-haired young man who sat cross-legged in front of her, ingratiating himself. They were those spongy, unpretty dolls Patty had seen in Movies of the Week—with Meredith Baxter Birney or Patty Duke Astin as determined mothers or lawyers. They were the dolls that kids used to show how they were abused. Krissi had stripped the clothes off both dolls and was placing the boy doll on top of the girl doll. She bumped it up and down, and chanted nonsense words. A brunette girl watched from her mother’s lap while eating icing from under her fingernails. She seemed too old to be in her mother’s lap.