Page 66 of What Boys Learn
“Of course I can.”
I looked back at my phone.
“She’s the same girl as that picture in your phone,” he said, looking over my shoulder.
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, it’s her.”
He seemed mildly interested at best.
After I finished cooking, I opened up my photos and toggled back and forth, comparing the girl’s picture to the news photo. Then I phoned the nonemergency police line. A woman took my message, though she didn’t seem particularly interested, especially when I told her how long ago I’d seen Veronica.
After I got off with the cops, I ate two pieces of French toast, all while watching Benjamin from the corner of my eye. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, tapping one knee with a pen as he stared out into space, with one of his notebooks sitting next to him, unopened.
A third piece of French toast was on my plate, but I’d lost my appetite.
“Ready,” I said. “And make sure you have your wallet. You can drive.”
The practice driving put him in a good mood, and he nodded his head to a song playing through the outdated car radio, despite an occasional crackle from the frayed auxiliary cord hooked to Benjamin’s equally outdated phone. But as soon as we approached the Dartmoor Club sign, his body language changed. Sitting more upright, with his chest close to the steering wheel, he maneuvered around the parking lot, tracing its perimeter. The entire lot was easily in sight of the pool’s front doors.
He crept slowest at the lot’s northern end, where there was a partial roof structure casting desirable shade onto one section of parking spots. Five of the spots were markedDIAMOND CIRCLE, probably for some upper level of club membership. At a greater distance from the front of the building, five of the spots were markedSTAFF.
Finally, he pulled up to the half-circle drive. He idled. Then he turned the music back on and drove away. I’d been so absorbed trying to understand what he was looking for that I hadn’t even registered when the radio had gone silent.
I was about to ask when he cut me off. “I need to think, Mom. Don’t talk.” Softer, he said, “Please.”
I obeyed. In any case, I felt I already knew: He was trying to remember that day with Izzy—the day he’d heard but thought he hadn’t seen the car that picked her up. Either that or he was doing an expert performance, showing me he was trying to remember.
Or maybe he was picturing what he’d say if the cops arrested him again—maybe even in connection with a new community concern. A girl had gone missing. Maybe it had nothing to do with Izzy or Sidney, but there must be pressure to prove that the police weren’t asleep on the job. I found myself thanking heaven that the Arlington Heights girl had gone missing from a sports bar nearly an hour away, and then feeling the wrongness of seeing every piece of possibly crime-related news only through the lens of my own child’s perceived guilt or innocence.
I said nothing else on the way home. But that evening, on the pretense of running to the store for milk and with that strange parking lot tour still on my mind, I drove around Pleasant Park, trying to count all the beaters (not even one) and the vintage cars (surprisingly many) in our town. I drove past a used-car lot and two different specialty car mechanics. I did several loops around our downtown district, then I drove to the library, past banks, a pet-grooming shop, a high-end toy store, and a fancy hair salon, and then finally to the train station, where various gleaming cars idled, waiting to pick up passengers from the northbound commuter train.
Next, I drove to Summit, where I felt my heart drop down into my stomach at the first sight of the electric signboard, which bore Sidney’s and Izzy’s names followed by some digital hearts. At the base of the sign, a small memorial had taken shape: teddy bears, cut flowers now wilted by the heat, and a few framed photos. I got out of my car and walked closer, crouching down to study the largest framed photo. In it, Sidney and Izzy were seated at a Halloween party, with their arms thrown around each other and red Solo cups at their feet. Sidney was dressed as an angel. Izzy was dressed as a devil, with plenty of cleavage showing.A little on the nose, I thought, but I was grateful Dean Duplass had allowed students to leave whatever they wished.
In my purse, I had an organic dark chocolate candy bar I’d bought as a treat while picking up the milk. I left the chocolate sitting flat on the grass, an inch away from one of the picture frames. Then I drove home. The whole time, I kept my window down, listening as hard as I could for the telltale sign of an engine making the tappety sound as it started up or idled.
In an hour of driving, I never heard a thing.
I hadn’t visited Willa in person since losing my job. I had no excuse to stay away now, especially since Curtis had started meeting with Benjamin for longer sessions—two hours instead of one. That gave me time to run up to Winthrop Harbor, chat an hour, and come back just as the session was ending.
When I dropped by that Monday morning, she was sitting in her yard with two metal lawn chairs already unfolded for us. We hugged, longer than we had in a while, my arms tight around her curved back. She was getting shorter, her arms and legs spindlier, although the only effect of aging she mentioned regularly was her hair, which she’d stopped dyeing during the pandemic. Once it was safe to visit, I’d come by regularly to help give her hair rinses to make the silver outgrowth look more vibrant.
“I’m still thinking about going back,” she said as we settled into our chairs with iced tea. I knew immediately what she was talking about, because she mentioned it nearly every time I saw her.
“I think your hair looks beautiful that color. And I like the shorter style.”
“Poodles. That’s what your mother and I thought of women who looked the way I look now. She would never have let her hair go gray.”
I had no idea. I’d frozen my mother’s image at the age she died, forty-two—the same age I’d be in just a few years.
Willa said, “They used to tell us that older women should never have long hair. And by ‘older’ they meant over thirty.”
“I think you should wear it however you like.”
“What they didn’t explain is you get my age and you don’t want to deal with clogged sinks. It’s a practical issue.”
Willa took a drag on her cigarette. Each time she did, she slitted her eyes nearly shut, the deep wrinkles running across her tanned skin all the way to her hairline. Then she exhaled, grinning broadly, the pleasure of her vice undeniable. I had to resist the temptation to ask for a cigarette, even with the proof of its damaging effects in front of me.