“What is it?” Marie asked.
Shelly held the rings up. “History of the world,” she said.
73
DAVID’S MOTHER fumbled with the foil crimping over the carton of juice. She tried to pinch it between her thumb and forefinger, but the thin tab of foil and her blindness worked together to elude her. She scratched at the foil-crimped lid, as if to puncture it, but succeeded only in flattening some of the minor perforations of metal, bowing it in. David reached for her hands to help but she pulled them back, protecting the juice with her forearm. The attendant standing at the corner of the room already knew not to go to the trouble of an advance and assist.
“There was a court case in one of the southern states years ago,” she said, “twenty years ago. The only witness to the act in question was a five-year-old child, a boy. Without question he had witnessed the act. His mother’s lawyer led him to the stand, and the judge asked the boy what color the lawyer’s tie was. The boy said it was blue, and the judge said, no, that tie is red. The boy was confused and said it was blue and the judge said that the tie was red and the boy was very bad if he thought it was blue.”
“What color was the tie?”
“Yellow, that’s the thing. There’s an interesting tale about the minds of children.” She had run a divot in the foil with her fingernail, and she went back to trying to grasp the edge with her thumb and forefinger.
“They searched the house,” David said.
She squeezed the plastic juice carton until one section of the foil, weakened from the struggle, lifted from the corner. A dribble of juice leaked into her hand, and she laughed and put her finger into her mouth. “Did they find her?” she asked.
“Franny?”
Bright drops of juice spilled onto the table, and she took her finger from her mouth, bent her head to the table, and held her lips to the drops. She pressed her tongue to the table and slurped the juice. “Your sister,” she said into the table, smacking her lips as if she tasted a delicious dish. “Did they find your sister?”
“That’s over, Mom.”
His mother had stopped smacking her lips. She turned her head slightly and rested her left cheek on the wet print her tongue had left. “Things were never quite right,” she said. “It was my fault, with your sister. The doctors gave me pills and I took them.”
“You don’t need to say that.”
“Your father and I loved you and we loved your sister, but things were never quite right with her. It was my fault.”
David had a vision of his mother delivering a speech facedown on the table. The speech would be about drug use, and she could tour the state offering it to middle school students. Each school would provide a chair, a table, and a microphone that had a broad enough range of motion to bend and nearly touch the woman’s lips, which now repeated the mouth shapes required to create the words “your” and “sister” without sound. On cue with visiting hours ending, the woman in the corner advanced to hook her heavy arms under David’s mother’s armpits, pulling her gently back into her wheelchair with care, the attendant’s eyes blankly suggesting she had done this many times before with many other confused mothers who had all ultimately tried their best to form a family.
At the bus stop outside, David noticed how dry and clean the air felt. The snow had melted, and the landscape featured blooming buds. He found, carved into the bench:
SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS.
74
MARIE HEARD THE CARS PULL UP and saw the officers organize. “The police are here,” she said, watching from her spot at the garage door. The other woman was still stooped over her laundry, folding and unfolding, as she had for the past thirty minutes. The stack of folded clothes was on the floor, which Marie had not ever swept and which was thick with wasp bodies and the webs of spiders. Fifty years of motor oil and dryer lint had layered underneath the bodies. Marie tried to imagine the poured-concrete floor without the mired gunk but could think only of chemicals she might pour onto the floor to try to cut it. An acid, perhaps combined with a few passes from a power washer, though it would require her to move her papers. The thought of all her papers outside in boxes filled her with sadness. The woman had been folding a striped polo shirt for ten minutes and was at that moment tucking the fabric of the sleeves behind the trunk with her fingertips. She leaned forward to examine her angle of attack on the fold. Stooped like that, she looked like a scientist examining a specimen.
“Police are here,” Marie said.
“I’m sure they’ve got a good reason,” said the woman.
Marie looked back out the door and saw that they were headed toward the house. Chico was among them.
“I should let them in,” Marie said.
“That sounds helpful of you.”
Marie found the keys in the desk drawer and headed for the house. “Helpful of you,” she said to herself as she walked.
75
ON APRIL 11, I was on the North Side when I received a call to assist a detective with a search warrant order. I arrived on the scene to find Detective Chico with Officers Riley and Hanson on the scene. Officer Marks arrived shortly after I did. The home had boards over the windows and seemed abandoned. Detective Chico knocked on the door. There was no response. The process was repeated, and Detective Chico noted that he was concerned for the safety of parties inside the home. Due to departmental lack of funds, a battering ram had not been purchased. Officers Riley and Hanson began to consider entering via the window. At this time, a woman arrived on the scene with a key that unlocked the door. There were no lights on in the house, and the officers deployed their flashlights. There was a strong smell of urine, which the officers noticed and remarked upon. There was broken glass on the kitchen counter. Officer Marks took photographs of each room. The stairs to the basement were deemed impassable by the officers due to a buildup of discarded books, print media, and containers filled with the above, and Detective Chico made a note to call in a secondary crew for further search if necessary. Their flashlights swept the room. The team ascended the stairs and searched the master bedroom, at which point the detective and officers found a dark room full of items such as newspapers, magazines, greeting cards, books without book covers, blank computer paper, empty cardboard boxes, tissue paper, wood shavings, Post-it notes, index cards, receipts, and other materials. On the bed, one individual was found and deemed unresponsive. The individual was positively identified by Detective Chico as David B
. When officers neared, they found that the man was agitated, and his breathing had been hindered. An urn was opened by his side, and it appeared that he had spread its enclosed contents over his body. Paramedics were called. The officers attempted to help Mr. B remove some of the items from his mouth or pull them from his hands, but he refused their assistance. When they reached for his mouth, he moved his face to the side and became agitated. He would not release the paper in his hands, and he became aggressive, swinging his arms from his position on the bed. Two of the officers caught his arms and held him until the paramedics arrived. Mr. B