You Will Know Me(53)

They climbed the staircase, Drew’s eyes jumping, his first time in an apartment building.

“This is where Ryan lived?” Drew asked. Inside, it looked like anyone’s apartment, any young person living paycheck to paycheck. Small and sunstruck, everything in it beige and worn, with the same foam sofas, the microfiber shiny with age, the halogen torchiere, the set of acrylic bar stools along the kitchen counter that were in all furnished rentals, everywhere.

But there were little things that made it personal, a gently broken-in baseball cap on the glass-topped coffee table, a Weaver’s Wagon apron hooked forlornly on a molded plastic coat stand. A windbreaker, faded red, hanging over the back of the sofa. Katie had seen Ryan wear it a half dozen times. She didn’t see his jean jacket. She guessed why.

“Their eyes have two thousand lenses,” Drew said, pointing toward a half-eaten blondie, its plastic wrap folded back, resting on the kitchen counter. “They can see everything.”

“What, devil boy?” Helen asked, winking at Katie.

They all watched as a cockroach scuttled across the counter and down the sink drain.

“We only have one lens,” he said, a little wistfully.

“Oh dear,” Helen said, walking over and squinting down the drain. “I saw a critter yesterday too. Well.”

There was a brief pause, then Katie couldn’t wait any longer.

“So, you wanted to talk?”

“In the bedroom.” Helen looked over at Drew. “Maybe we can put the TV on for Big Red.”



Later, many times, Katie would remember the room’s particular smell, sweat and must and forest pine from the Little Tree air freshener hanging from the blinds’ cord. And something else, something intimate, bodily.

She looked down at the deep blue sheets coiled on the mattress, which sat on the floor exotically, summoning up bohemian memories of youth, a youth like Katie dreamed up as a girl, beaded-curtain doorways and those Technicolor saint candles in glass jars.

There was no furniture other than that mattress and a table lamp on the floor, an open book beside it, its red cover bent back. She wondered if it was the novel he’d always kept in his back pocket. She found herself wanting to touch it.

She hadn’t known him at all, really, but that made it sadder somehow.

“He’d had his trouble,” Helen was saying, “but he was figuring things out. He finally had a steady job. Still couldn’t afford cable or a cell phone. You try to help, but they don’t want their moms’ help, do they? He had his own journey.”

“This must be so hard.”

Helen skittered her fingers along the window blinds, peeking through the dust-laced slats. “There’s a lot I’m trying to figure out now. Like that girl of his.”

Katie looked over at her.

“He always had a weakness for girls like that,” Helen continued. “Handfuls. I’d only met her twice, but I don’t think Ryan was too serious about her.”

Katie hesitated, then finally said, “They were pretty serious. I heard he’d bought her an engagement ring.”

Helen’s head jerked up. Then after a pause she sank down to the mattress, laughing a little, a kind of laughing.

“Isn’t it a strange day,” she said, “when you realize you have no idea what’s going on in your kid’s head? One morning, you wake up and there’s this alien in your house. They look like your kid, sound a little like them, but they are not your kid. They’re something else that you don’t know. And they keep changing. They never stop changing on you.”

Katie almost said something but stopped herself. She didn’t want to be one of those smug parents, like Gwen, like Molly, who claimed to read their daughters’ expressions with one hundred percent accuracy. But she could: the particular twist of Devon’s mouth that meant frustration. The shake of her elbow that meant her wrist was throbbing. The twitch over her left eye that meant she was afraid.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Katie said instead, touching the window blinds, warm in the sun. “Losing your—”

“You keep losing them nonstop, don’t you?” Helen said. “Where’d you get that idea, anyway? About the ring?”

“Someone saw him at Ahee Jewelers the week before.”

Helen shook her head. “Ah, well, Katie, I don’t see him buying any ring. He couldn’t pay his water bill. He didn’t even have a credit card.”

“Oh,” Katie said, not sure what else to say, and not sure why she was here. She peeped through the bedroom door, checking on Drew, his tiny head behind the sofa back, those little ears red as Swedish fish.

Behind her, Helen was sliding open the closet door, a waft of fabric softener and old smoke. Bending down, she lifted something off the floor.

“Here,” she said, handing it to Katie. “Here’s why I asked you to come.”

It was a vinyl gym sack Katie recognized dimly, one of those tournament giveaways a few months back. Gingerly, she slid its pull string. The room dark, the navy bag dark, she couldn’t see anything except a flash of red.

Her hand inside, the familiar feel of Lycra.

A leotard. A competition one.

Red and black, with a swirl scoop neck. A spray of crystals up one shoulder. They’d paid extra for the crystals. Eric said it would be worth it. The light would pick up the sparkle.