Vera Steinman talks for the next twenty minutes or so, sipping away at her drink and taking a second pause to refill her glass. She doesn’t slur. She doesn’t wander off-topic. She doesn’t stagger or weave on her trip to and from the kitchen.
Because Peter disappeared before Covid and the current turmoil in the city’s police department, his case was quite thoroughly investigated. The conclusion, however, was the same. The investigating detective, David Porter, believed (or said he believed) that Peter had run away.
Part of Detective Porter’s reasoning was based on his interview with Katya Graves, one of two guidance and health counselors at Breck Elementary School. A year or so before Peter’s disappearance his grades had slipped, he was often tardy and sometimes absent, and there had been several incidents of acting out, one resulting in a suspension.
In Graves’s meeting with the boy after the suspension had run its two-day course, the counselor persisted past the usual no-eye-contact mumbles, and finally the dam burst. His mother was drinking too much. He didn’t mind his friends calling him Stinky, but he hated it when they made fun of his mom. Her husband had left her when Peter was seven. She lost her job when he was ten. He hated the jokes, and sometimes he hated her. He told Ms. Graves he thought often about hitching to Florida to live with his uncle, who had a home in Orlando, near Disney World.
Vera says, “He never showed up there, but Detective Porter still thought he was a runaway. I bet you know why.”
Of course Jerome knows. “They never found his body.”
“No,” she agrees. “Not to this day, and there’s no more exquisite torture than hope. Excuse me.”
She goes into the kitchen. The bottle clinks. She returns, walking straight, skirt swishing, hose whispering. She sits. Good posture. Clear speech. She tells Jerome that Peter’s photo can be found among thousands of others on the Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s website. He can be found on the FBI’s Kidnappings & Missing Persons website. On the Global Missing Children’s Network. On MissingKids.org. On the Polly Klaas Foundation website, Polly Klaas being a twelve-year-old kidnapped from a slumber party and subsequently murdered. And for months after Vera reported Peter missing, his picture was shown on the assembly room screen of the city PD at every rollcall.
“Of course I was questioned as well,” Vera says. The smell of gin is now very strong. Jerome thinks it isn’t just coming from her mouth, but actually seeping from her pores. “Parents murder children all the time, don’t they? Mostly stepfathers or natural fathers, but sometimes mothers get into the act, as well. Diane Downs, for instance. Ever seen the movie about her? Farrah Fawcett was in it. I was given a polygraph, and I suppose I passed.” She shrugs. “All I could tell them was the truth. I didn’t kill him, he just went out one night on his skateboard and never came back.”
She tells Jerome about the meeting she had with Katya Graves after Graves’s talk with Peter. “She said anytime that was convenient for me, which was funny because anytime was convenient, me being between jobs. I lost the last one because of a DUI. While I was out of work Peter and I lived on savings and the monthly checks I get from my ex-husband—child support and alimony. Sam can’t stand me, but he was very good about those payments. Still is. He knows Peter is missing, but he still sends the support checks. I think it’s superstition. He loves Peter. It was me he couldn’t stand. He asked me once why I drank so much, was it him? I told him not to flatter himself. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t childhood trauma, it wasn’t anything, really. It’s a stupid question. I drink, therefore I am. Excuse me.”
When she comes back—perfectly straight, sweeping the back of her skirt before sitting down, knees together—she tells Jerome that she learned from Ms. Graves how Peter’s friends were making fun of him because his mommy was a drunk who lost her job and had to spend a night in the clink.
“That was hard to hear,” she says. “It was my bottom. At least then. I didn’t know how deep a bottom could be. Now I do. The Graves woman gave me a list of AA meetings and I started going to them. Got a new job at Fenimore Real Estate. It’s one of the biggest firms in the city. The boss is an ex-drunk, and he hires lots of people who are getting sober, or trying to. Life was better that last year, Mr. Robinson. Peter’s grades improved. We stopped arguing.” She pauses. “Well, no, not entirely. You can’t not argue with your kid.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Jerome says, “I was one.”
She laughs loudly and humorlessly at that, making Jerome realize that she’s not somehow magically metabolizing all that gin, that yessir-ree-sir, she’s really drunk. As a skunk. Yet she doesn’t seem it, and how can that be? Practice, he supposes.
“That’s why it’s stupid to think Peter ran off because of my drinking. Just three weeks before he disappeared, I picked up a one-year sobriety chip. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get another. I didn’t start boozing again until six weeks or so after he disappeared. During that six weeks I practically wore out the carpet on my knees, praying to my higher power to bring Peter back.” She gives another loud and humorless bark of laughter. “I might as well have spent that time praying the sun would come up in the west. When it really sank in that he was gone for good, I reacquainted myself with the local liquor store.”
Jerome doesn’t know what to say.
“He’s listed as missing because that makes it simple for the police, but I think Detective Porter knows he’s dead as well as I do. Luckily for me, there really is a higher power.” She raises her glass.
“What night did he go missing, Ms. Steinman?”
She doesn’t have to think about her answer. Jerome supposes it’s engraved on her memory. “November 27th, 2018. Not a thousand days ago, but getting there.”
“One of the boys at the Dairy Whip said you called his mother.”
She nods. “Mary Edison, Tommy’s mom. That was at nine o’clock, half an hour after he was supposed to be in. I had numbers for several of his friends’ parents. I was a good mother to him during that last year, Mr. Robinson. Conscientious. Trying to make amends for the years when I wasn’t so good. I thought maybe Peter was planning to stay over with Tommy and forgot to tell me. It made sense… sort of… because school started late the next day. Some kind of teacher meeting about what to do if there was a violent incident, Peter told me. That I do remember. When Mrs. Edison said Peter wasn’t there, I waited another hour, hoping. I got on my knees and prayed to that higher power guy that he’d come in with some nutty story about why he was late… even with beer on his breath… just to see him, you know?”
Another tear which she wipes away with the back of her hand. Jerome isn’t sorry he came, but this is hard. He can almost smell her pain, and it smells like gin.
“At ten o’clock, I called the police.”
“Did he have a phone, Mrs. Steinman?”
“Oh sure. I tried that even before I called Mary Edison. It rang in his room. He never took it when he was skateboarding. He was afraid he’d fall and break it. I told him if he broke his phone I wouldn’t be able to afford a replacement.”
Jerome recalls what Holly asked him to find out. “What about his board? Any idea about that?”
“The skateboard? It’s in his room.” She stands up, sways briefly, then catches her balance. “Would you like to see his room? I keep it the same as it was. You know, like a crazy mom in a horror movie.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jerome says.