Vox(42)

“Time for the old man to retire,” Patrick says. “Here. Taste this and tell me what it needs.” He spoons up a bit of the veg he’s been sautéing.

“Perfect,” I say, even though it tastes off. Nothing smells good right now. The red wine Patrick pours stinks like rancid oil; the meat, which I think is chicken, but could be goat liver for all I know, fills the kitchen and dining room with a hellish stench. I should be starving, but I’m not. “Steven’s not back yet? Oh. Speak of the devil.”

My son walks in, slamming the back door behind him. Sonia brightens, as do the twins. Patrick and I are about to say a “Hello,” but Steven walks past us, past the fridge, and straight down the hall toward his room. His face is flushed, a bloom of mottled red on his cheeks and neck. Somehow, he looks thirty-seven instead of seventeen, the entire world on his shoulders.

And here’s the shittiness of parenthood, wrapped up in one sullen teenager.

“I’ll go,” I say. I need a break from food odors before my olfactory nerves decide to rebel. “Ask Sonia to tell you about her card game.”

Steven’s music shakes my bones as I walk down the hall to his bedroom door. I knock once; there’s no answer. On the second knock, Steven grunts a bored “Enter.”

“You okay, kiddo?” I say, sticking my nose in the doorway.

Whatever he’s listening to fades to dull background noise. “Yeah,” Steven says.

“School go okay?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Julia?”

“Fine.”

“Coming out for dinner? It’s almost ready.”

“Soon.”

I turn to go, and he breaks the chain of monosyllables. “Mom? If someone you knew—maybe even someone you really love—did a shitty thing, would you rat them out?”

It’s necessary for me to think about this.

Once, I’d have said yes. See someone go sixty in a school zone, take down their license plate. Watch a parent hit his kid in the Walmart, call the cops. Witness a robbery next door, report it. For every action, there’s an opposing and appropriate reaction. Except there isn’t, not anymore. The reactions might be opposing, but they sure as shit aren’t appropriate. I knew about Annie Wilson and her backdoor man in his blue pickup truck, although he didn’t bother using the back door. I know Lin Kwan, who now lives with her brother, is the type of woman who prefers other women. I also know that if I—in Steven’s words—had ratted Annie out, I’d have a hell of a time facing myself each morning. The idea of playing informant on Lin is anathema, whatever Reverend Carl and the rest of the Pure have to say about it.

“Depends,” I say. “Why?”

“No reason,” Steven says, and hoists himself off his bed. “Guess I should take a shower.”

As he brushes past me, leaving me with the hum of electronic music—a tune from the time before, whose lyrics probably don’t mesh with Fundamentals of Modern Christian Philosophy or Pure Manhood or Carl Corbin’s twisted worldview—I feel the heat of trouble settle on me again. It presses, squeezing out the air from my lungs, forcing me into a breathless state.

There’s no way Steven could know about Lorenzo, I tell myself. No way. We were careful that last time, meeting accidentally at Eastern Market, driving through traffic toward our Maryland crab shack with all of me scrunched down on the floor of the back seat. It was March, and Steven would have been in school.

Fatigue and worry hit me like bags of bricks, one on each side, and I head back down the hall to join Patrick in the kitchen.

He’s still whistling.





THIRTY-FOUR




The sirens wake me up. They’re like screaming animals in the quiet of the night, growing louder and louder until it seems they’re at my bedroom window. Reds and blues flicker through the blinds, and I know I’m not dreaming.

“What the hell?” Patrick says, rolling over once, then twice, then pulling a pillow over his head. He doesn’t last long in his cave; reality seeps in, drawing back the curtain of sleep, and he’s up.

All I can think about is the conversation I had with Lin in our office this morning. Still got a thing for our Italian colleague? . . . How long has it been going on? . . . Be careful, honey. You’ve got a lot more to lose than your voice.

And then there’s Steven, his cryptic question ringing in my ears now.

“Oh my god,” I say, and go to the window.

As best I can see, there are two cars and one larger vehicle, boxy, like an ambulance, but not white. A third car pulls up behind the boxy van, blocking our driveway.

Blocking any cars from getting in. Or out.

The next words I say scratch the air, hardly more than a hoarse whisper. Nothing inside me is functioning, not my knees, which have gone to jelly, not my voice, not my stomach. Wave after wave of nausea ripples through me as I stare at the electric colors lining the street in front of our house.

I’m expecting the doorbell to ring, such an ordinary event, one I used to look forward to. Doorbells meant visitors on holidays; packages I was expecting; friendly pairs of young men from Utah who, despite my resistance to any sort of conversion, somehow always seemed pleasant and well scrubbed. Doorbells meant trick-or-treaters dressed as ghosts and goblins and the princesses or action heroes of the month.