Unspeakable Things(42)
CHAPTER 25
Dad had risen as far as the fourth step before turning back. Even though I’d heard him finally shuffle off to his bedroom, and then Mom came home shortly after, I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until the sun pinked the horizon. Sephie discovered me in my closet and roused me without comment. When I told her that my story had kept Dad from making it all the way to the landing and that she should thank me, she looked at me like I was cuckoo.
Whatever. It was light out. That meant I could tell Dad that Teddy Milchman lived in the Hollow, same as Clam, so the police could catch whoever was hurting those boys.
Dad was as scruffy looking as a hobo when I found him in the kitchen. He looked as if he’d slept as poorly as me. I pointed at the scrunched-up newspaper I held like I could make him see their houses and the monster hunting those Hollow boys.
“Dad, you know this article?”
He rubbed his raspy face and poured himself a cup of coffee, black.
“Both these boys live in the Hollow, Dad. Both boys who were taken. You said there was another boy attacked, too, and that he was also from the Hollow. You need to tell the police. They’re practically neighbors, Clam and Teddy.”
“The police know,” Dad said. His voice sounded terrible, like a rusty engine screeching to life.
I set the article down and planted my hands on my hips. “You sure?”
He turned on me, bleary-eyed. “They’re too stupid to listen if they don’t already know that bit.”
Tears pushed hot against my eyelids, and the thought that I was going to cry made me so angry. Dad laughed at girls who cried. Didn’t matter if it was me, Sephie, or Mom. He got a real kick out of it. So I swallowed those tears. “Promise me you’ll tell the police those boys are practically neighbors. That they both ride my bus.”
Something in my voice gave Dad pause. “Fine.”
“Promise me.”
He did a crisscross over his heart. “Hope to die.”
I had no choice but to believe him. Then do my outside chores. And think about how I should have told Frank that I liked to sneak around and hide in dark places and snoop and that that would come in handy when we became detectives, his Remington Steele to my Laura Holt. I peered at the cornfield across the road, at the spears of corn no taller than my ankles, and thought of the Indonesian tree man who didn’t know where his skin ended and his warts began, and how I wished Jin were here.
By the time the first party guests started arriving, Sephie and I had set up all the potluck tables and decked them out with paper plates, plastic silverware, and matchbooks. Dad had placed out bottles of his homemade strawberry wine. I’d tried it once. It tasted like a fruit burp smells. Most of the ladies went for the wine, though, and were sure to praise Dad on how good it tasted. The men wanted beer or mixed drinks, which is where Sephie and I came in.
When we’d first been asked to bartend, both of us had been so proud. The job wasn’t too hard. Two fingers of whiskey, the rest pop or water. We received quite a few compliments, but as the day wore on, the praise felt more like probing fingers. It was nice of Sephie to take the bullet on that one and offer to bartend today.
She always looked out for me.
“Holy cats have you grown!”
I smiled up at Mr. Frais, who’d just arrived at the party. He and his wife, Mary Lou, were friends of Mom and Dad’s from way back. I’d always liked them. They were both professors. They hadn’t attended one of Dad’s parties since I was little.
I glanced hopefully toward their car. “Peter and Lisa aren’t with you, are they?”
Of course they weren’t. People used to bring their kids to Dad’s parties, and man, was that sweet like cherries. We’d explore all over our property with those kids. It really was a magic garden back then, even though Dad didn’t have half as many sculptures up as he did now. We’d play capture the flag, kick the can, TV tag. The parties were always potluck, and Dad would roast a whole pig, the smell so good it made your teeth ache. There’d be Tupperware containers crammed with every salad you could dream of, from the healthy to the straight-up mandarin oranges floating in clouds of sweet white Cool Whip.
Back then, the adults focused on cribbage tournaments—which Sephie and I won one year because everyone else was too drunk to play, and boy, had we been proud—or backgammon rallies, with the occasional game of volleyball. They’d talk about college, which was where many of them had met, or the war, which most of them had protested. Many of them toked on the pot that Dad cultivated in the little greenhouse off his studio, and they got loose, and they laughed, and then somewhere along the line they decided they should all start having sex with each other.
I remember the year it started. I was maybe nine, and Dad disappeared into his and Mom’s bedroom with a woman named Kristi. She was married to someone else back then, I can’t remember his name, I just knew that she made me sad. She was one of those people who laughed too loud and hung on Dad like a tree monkey and carried herself like she lived in the smallest corner of her body.
I had a crush on a boy named James that summer. His parents had brought him to the party, where James told me I had strong legs. That was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me at that point in my life. He and I and some other kids whispered about what Kristi and Dad did on Mom and Dad’s waterbed, but mostly, we didn’t think a whole lot about it.