I didn’t hear my mother answer him, but I imagined her shaking her head, saying no, this is not what I want.
“Wait, I’ve got it,” Rick said. He stood up, still holding on to my mother’s hand. “I’ll grab that fan. It’s so damn loud, it’ll drown out anything.”
And before my mother could say anything, he hopped across the room, desperately searching behind the TV for the fan’s plug. He was so excited, so focused on the fan, he wasn’t even thinking about my mother, who I could see for the first time since Rick had smothered her with his back. Now I could see everything. I saw the red on my mother’s neck and shoulders where Rick’s mouth had gone. I saw where Rick had pushed up the side of her dress, where he had walked his hard hand up her pale leg. And when I looked closely, as Rick finally found the plug and the room went silent, I saw where my mother’s bra had fallen. I saw the pink of her breast.
I looked away. I looked at my hand, which had been pressed against the back of the bookcase. It was covered in dust. Thick dust. I had missed this spot earlier in my cleaning. It hadn’t been touched in months. I held my hand up to my face, this hand that didn’t look like my own. I spread my fingers wide. I imagined my hands were webbed flippers, excellent for swimming. But unlike fish flippers, I could see through this webbing, and when I did, I saw my mother staring directly at me, her head tilted like our once-living dog. Her arm had fallen, revealing the rest of her breast. But she didn’t cover herself up. And she didn’t yell at me, or point above my head and mouth, Go to your room. This isn’t a place you should be. Her neck kept crooked, and she looked right at me, through me, as if I wasn’t there.
Finally, she shook her head, slowly, and without blinking. I turned and ran back to my room. I got in bed with my brother, who for once, and the one time I wished that he was, wasn’t snoring. I could hear anything, everything. The apartment was all quiet. I lay there and I waited. I waited for my mother to walk back, to flip on the hall light, the yellow shining through our door’s crack, forming a straight-edged capital C. I waited for the door to creak open, for my mother to say, hey, we need to talk. She would walk me to the bathroom and sit me in the bathtub, where I went when I was in the wrong. I would sit there, staring at the bath faucet, awaiting my execution. A moment later the lights would flicker in our bedroom, and that’s how my brother would know I was a goner.
I waited for this all to happen. I waited in the dark. I put my brother’s arm around me, my head on his chest, and waited. I waited and I waited, until dreams started to sneak into my head. I waited and waited, but my mother never came.
six
OUR DAD PICKED US UP the following morning. He actually came to our door in uniform, and with a small box in hand. He asked if our mother was around, but true to her word to Rick, she was already at work.
I sat in the back of the cruiser, where the criminals went, with my bag, which wasn’t zipped up all the way. There was a little hole at the end that gave the bag a mouth, and in my mind I turned the bag into a person, someone I could talk to. I asked the bag what was in the box my dad had brought. Was it a gift? The bag didn’t know, nor did it know why my dad had come up and knocked, and not just waited outside, like he normally did.
I thought about these questions until we passed a prison. It hit me. My mother had told on me. She’d told him what I had seen the night before, how I was up late spying on people again. That was why he was here, to take me in. Don’t be an idiot, the bag said. He’s got bigger fish to fry. There’s a murderer on the loose. But as we drove around in the police cruiser, I couldn’t help but feel like the lake again. I thought of all the things I was guilty of: two counts of spying, talking to a stranger, lying to my mother.
Oh, c’mon, the bag said. No one cares about that. You haven’t done anything really wrong. Have you?
As we coasted by the second of three prisons we would pass driving through the city, I put my fingers in the wire screen behind the front seats, the barrier that separated the cops from the criminals, me from my brother and my dad. My dad’s arm stretched across the passenger’s seat headrest, a habit he picked up when he used to drive our family around. I shook the screen. I was the Stranger and my dad was the sheriff, my brother his deputy. I put my mouth right behind my dad’s head, so close I could almost kiss him, so close that my breath brushed his hair. Hey, I whispered. Let me out. Let me out of here.
* * *
We didn’t grill out that night. We went to my favorite fast-food restaurant, the one that served square burgers and soft-serve ice cream. The lobby was full of large men in prison-guard khaki who had just gotten off work. They stood in line, thumbs in pockets. There were also a few big-bellied men in dirty jeans — mechanics, struggling farmers. No matter who they were or what they did, my dad knew all of them. And they all knew my dad. Sometimes when we were in a crowded place like this, my brother and I would make bets on how long it would take before a stranger started a serious talk with our dad. But the time was never over thirty seconds and the game quickly lost the little fun it began with.
Today it didn’t take long. The man in front of us turned and did a double take when he saw our dad. He was a younger man, with a small body and eyes as big as a squirrel’s.
“How are you doing, sir?” the man said.
“Fine, Jason.”
“Hey, can I talk to you about something, sir? Sue’s got this lawyer, see … do you think we could…”
My dad sighed through his nose and scratched his mustache. He had a way of not letting his face change when he was annoyed with the public. I tried the same when dealing with my brother, but always broke down.
My dad turned to us. “You two know what you want?” he said. He gave my brother some money. “Order me whatever you get. Jason, let’s warm up the table.”
We stood in line and watched our dad lead the young man to a booth by a trash can. We didn’t listen to what they were saying, because we knew the deal. Jason had done something stupid and now wanted our dad’s help in fixing it.
My brother and I ordered our food, and the cashier gave us a number. Our dad was still talking to Jason, so we picked another booth by a window. We filled paper condiment cups with pools of ketchup for our fries to dive in. We set the table with yellow napkins and extra salt packets for our dad. We were proud and organized, but soon grew bored. We used the table as a football field and a salt packet as a football. By the time our dad came back, we still had no food and the table was a mess.
“Sit by your brother, son,” my dad said to my brother.
“What did that guy want?”
“None of our business.”
“Did he ask you about the prisoner?”
“He did.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I told him we’re going to catch him.”
“We are?” I said.
“Of course we are. We’re the good guys, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” my brother said.
“Yeah!” I said, a little too loudly.
My dad gave me a knowing squint, winked, and sat up a little straighter. I smiled back and sat on my feet, trying to be as tall as him.
“Find him yet?” a man said. Where he had come from I hadn’t seen. He was an older man, wide in overalls, and with a gray beard down to his chest. I had seen him before and never liked him. He always talked to my dad with fake respect, like how my brother treated me the time I got to rule the apartment for a day as the result of a bet.
“Hi, Wayne,” my dad said.
“You talk to his family?”