I hadn’t answered the phone in over two weeks, afraid it would be Dee wanting to talk about what she’d seen on the Fourth of July. I suspected, in those weeks after the Fourth, that she’d long since made up with Frank. I envisioned her enjoying languid and extravagant I’m so sorry dates followed by careful, devoted makeup sex. The thoughts sickened me. But also, I sickened me. What would I tell her about myself? How could I tell her to leave Frank when she’d seen the way I let Leif treat me? And how had I let Leif treat me? What did Dee think it meant? I don’t think I knew what it meant. Each day, I told myself I would be ready to pick up the phone, to have these conversations, to figure it out with her, because I needed her, and she was the only person in the world I loved without reservation.
When I finally did answer the phone, a day after the news about the serial killer broke, I was surprised to find that it was not Dee but my mother. Suddenly, it was clear that she was the one who had been dialing our landline for days on end, not Dee, and also that she was frantic.
“Where have you two been?” she yelled at me. I had to move the receiver away from my ear. You two.
“Who?” I asked her.
“Where have you and Dee been, and why haven’t you answered my calls? Have you seen the news? This city is out of its goddamn mind.”
“I haven’t felt good. I had the flu,” I lied quickly and without much thought.
“What about Dee?”
I shook my head, confused. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Margaret,” she said. Her voice took on a frightening robotic quality. I realized she hoped we’d been together. “When did you see her last?”
“July Fourth,” I said. And then my mother lost it.
I’m so ashamed now to say I didn’t really believe her. (I carry the weight of this disbelief with me every day.) I thought the news of the serial killer’s crimes had thrown my mother into a fit of hysteria. I figured Dee and I were playing a dumb game of chicken, though truthfully, it’s hard to remember what the hell I was thinking. I think about what I was thinking all the time now. We’d done this kind of thing before, after a big fight; whoever called first lost. Once it was over, we didn’t keep score, but the bouts of silence could last weeks.
My mother told me she was sending Pete to get me. I agreed, but I didn’t have the strength to tell her Pete didn’t know where I lived.
Leif was getting ready to take Erik over to their parents’ house, but he paused, hunched over his bootlaces. “What’s all that?” he asked.
“She thinks Dee’s missing,” I said.
“Is she?”
I paused. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “She’s probably just with Frank.”
Leif shook his head. “Yeah, your ma’s crazy,” he said.
I bristled at this. “Watch your mouth,” I said.
He was right, she was crazy, but only I was allowed to say it. Leif shrugged.
Erik came out of the kitchen with a milk mustache. I remembered Erik and Dee sipping out of the SlimFast cans with their limbs all tangled up in her bed.
“What’s wrong?” Erik asked.
“Let’s go, buddy,” Leif said. He ushered his brother to the door.
I suddenly had an urge to tell Erik about my mother’s phone call. To hear what he would say.
“Wait,” I said. Leif undid all the locks on our door. Erik looked like a baby boy, with his sleepy eyes and his messy milk face. I sensed I was missing an opportunity, although I probably can see the chance only now that I know. I had no words for the thing I wanted to say to Erik then or the one thing I should have asked. I only had a feeling I could not voice. Leif took his brother’s shoulder and nudged him out the door. He locked the door behind them.
I imagined them pulling up to their parents’ house. I bet they lived in one of those tiny shotgun houses on the South Side. There were probably geraniums hanging in green plastic baskets from the front porch and a leaning arbor coated in climbing vines that was a gateway to nothing except the alleyway behind the house. I imagined the boys pulling up in Leif’s flashy car, and their ma puttering around in the kitchen, hearing the noisy engine, and running to the screen door.
My baby, she’d yell. My beautiful, beautiful baby. (It’s a well-known fact that mothers reserve the softest, sweetest parts of their love for their youngest children.) She’d run her tiny hands all over Erik’s face, and she’d thank God for bringing him back to her, and she’d thank God for giving her two beautiful sons, and for saving them from that terrible, terrible man.