You Think It, I'll Say It(53)
I offered her my closed-lipped smile.
“Karen,” Alaina said, “do we have to forcibly drag this girl out for one lousy Budweiser?”
“At her age, she should be dragging us,” Karen said.
“I really can’t,” I said. “Sorry.”
As I walked away, Alaina called, “Hey, Frances,” and when I turned back, she said, “Bye, Miss Volunteer.” Her voice contained a performative note that made me suspect she’d thought up the farewell ahead of time and saved it, for just this moment, to say aloud.
* * *
—
I washed my hands and forearms at the café on Eighteenth Street, and then, when I got back to my apartment, I washed them again and changed out of my street clothes. I knew that I washed my hands a lot—I wasn’t an idiot—but it was always for a reason: because I’d come in from outside, because I’d been on the subway or used the toilet or touched money. It wasn’t as if, sitting at my desk at the office, I simply jumped up, raced to the bathroom, and began to scrub.
Usually when I got home at night, my roommate, whom I hardly knew, wasn’t there. She had a boyfriend, another grad student, and she spent a lot of time at his place. It was mostly on the weekends that I saw them. Sometimes on Saturday mornings when I left to run errands, they’d be entwined on the living room couch, watching television, and when I returned hours later, they’d be in the same position. Once I’d seen him prepare breakfast in bed for her by toasting frozen waffles, then coating them with spray-on olive oil. I was glad on the nights they weren’t around. After I was finished washing my hands and changing my clothes, it was like I’d completed everything that was required of me and I could just give in to inertia.
* * *
—
It was storming the next Monday: big, rolling gray clouds split by lightning and followed by cracks of thunder. The director, Linda, was wearing a jacket, peering out the front door, when I arrived. She was often leaving as I was arriving, and she said, “The rush-hour downpour—gotta love it, huh?”
I was the first volunteer there. When the kids came out of the dining room, Meshaun was clutching a red rubber ball and Orlean was attempting to take it away, which made Meshaun howl. As I tried to adjudicate, Derek’s mother descended from the second floor and said, “You know where D’s at?”
“Sorry, but I just got here,” I said.
“Monique told me she’d watch him, and now she don’t know where he is.”
“Derek’s lost?” My heart began beating faster. “If he’s lost, you should tell Svetlana.”
As Derek’s mother walked into the dining room, I hurried downstairs, but the playroom was silent, and all the lights were off. “Derek?” I called. “Are you here, Derek?” I flicked the lights on and looked under the tables, behind the shelves. But in the silence, I would have been able to hear him breathing.
When I returned upstairs, the hall was crowded with mothers and children, plus Alaina and Karen had both arrived; Alaina was holding a collapsed, dripping umbrella as Svetlana asked when people had last seen Derek. I was glad I hadn’t been present when Alaina had learned that he was missing—she’d probably opened her mouth, covered it with her palm, and gasped.
Svetlana, whose apparent lack of panic was both reassuring and unsettling, gestured at me. “Why don’t you go outside with Crystal and look?” Crystal, I realized, was the name of Derek’s mother.
I still had my raincoat on, and Alaina offered me her umbrella, which I didn’t take. Despite the seriousness of the moment, it felt awkward to walk outside with Derek’s mother—I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to split up or stay together. I glanced at her, and her face was scrunched with anxiety.
“He couldn’t have gone far, right?” I said.
“I’m gonna beat his ass,” she said, but she sounded frightened.
We did split up—I walked toward one end of the block, calling his name in such a manner that a passerby might have thought I was summoning a puppy. The cars made swishing noises as they passed, and my stomach tightened with each one. The roads had to be slick, and the rain on the windshields would make everything blurry. It was hard to know if it was worse to imagine him alone or with someone—if he was alone, I hoped the thunder and lightning weren’t scaring him.
I walked around the side of the shelter, expecting and not expecting to see him. In my mind, he was wearing what he’d been wearing the day Alaina had taken the pig, a red-and-blue-striped T-shirt and black sweatpants. I found his mother standing on her tiptoes, peering into the dumpster in the tiny rear parking lot and shoving aside pieces of cardboard. “You think he could have gotten in there?” I said. She didn’t reply, and I added, “You know the new volunteer who has kind of light brown hair? She came here a couple of weeks ago some night besides Monday, right? She brought Derek a little pig?”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“I’m wondering if you’ve seen her here other times. Has she ever invited Derek to do stuff during the day?”
For the first time, Derek’s mother looked at me, and I saw that she was on the verge of crying. She said, “I never should of left D with Monique.” Then her face collapsed—big, scary Derek’s mother—and as she brought her hands up to shield it, her shoulders shook. What I was supposed to do, what the situation unmistakably called for, was to hug her, or at the very least to set my arm around her back. I couldn’t do it. She was wearing an old-looking, off-white T-shirt that said LUCK O’ THE IRISH across the chest in puffy green letters, and I just couldn’t. If I did, after I got home, even if I changed out of my clothes and showered, her hug would still be on me.