He didn’t object. I wiped a bit of mustard from his chin. He put his head on my shoulder. I breathed in the smell of his hair, which smelled just like Leif’s.
Federal Rules of Evidence
Article IV. Relevance and Its Limits
Rule 405. Methods of Proving Character
(a) By Reputation or Opinion. When evidence of a person’s character or character trait is admissible it may be proved by testimony about the person’s reputation or by testimony in the form of an opinion.
April 2019
On the day of the consultation, the psychic arrived at the Lutheran Home with an entourage, which included two bodyguards, a stylist, and his PR rep. He was an hour late. He had also brought along a camera crew; the psychic reassured us this was standard procedure, it didn’t mean anything would be filmed. I gave Pete a look, but he refused to catch my eye. I caught Dana’s eye and she frowned at me.
Dana had strong-armed her parents into letting her attend the session with Thomas Alexander even though Pete and Helena had tried repeatedly to discourage her interest in Dee’s case. Gary Wolski, who had once been our assigned MPD detective but had become, over the years, more of a family friend, had also insisted on attending, though Ma had told him it wasn’t necessary. I suspected Wolski carried around the same kind of crushing, debilitating guilt that I did. (Though I didn’t know the true source of his guilt then.) We didn’t believe he was totally to blame for botching the crucial early days of the investigation into Dee’s disappearance, but he had made at least one massive and ultimately formative mistake. My family was quick to point out that his classification of Dee’s case as noncritical was largely the result of us having concealed her relationship with Frank. This meant that if Wolski was to blame for underestimating the suspiciousness of her disappearance, I was to blame for the fact that he had reached the conclusion in the first place. We were linked. Wolski noticed me watching him and he tried a half smile. I only nodded back.
My aunt Suze held Ma’s hand, and they both watched Thomas Alexander’s entourage rush around the community room. Thomas Alexander knelt down in front of Ma’s wheelchair and put his hands on her knees. Suze knitted her brows at him. I felt embarrassed and wanted to look away from the scene, but I didn’t. The psychic was dressed in a baby-blue cashmere cardigan, dark-wash jeans, and those low-cut leather boots that were popular among both men and women.
“I’m so sorry we’re late, ma’am. We got a little lost.”
I supposed he had taken forty-five minutes to get his hair just so—it was baby-fine and swept over his forehead as if his own mother had brushed it minutes ago.
My mother appraised him. “Well,” she said. “You certainly are pretty.” This time I did catch Peter’s eye, and we both stifled a laugh. Even Dana produced a half smile.
The kid didn’t miss a beat. Many people had probably told him this during his short life.
“I thought we might speak privately,” Thomas Alexander said. Pete looked like he wanted to say no, but he didn’t. I just shrugged. Suze made a face, like, Why not? Thomas Alexander rolled Ma through the automatic sliding glass doors that opened into the community center’s courtyard. It was a little too cold for Ma to be out there without a coat and a blanket, but I said nothing.
Pete attempted small talk, but none of us were up to the task.
“How’s Henry?” Pete asked me. My family didn’t know that Henry and I were now officially, and I believed permanently, separated. Dana frowned at me. I tried to make a meaningful face at her, but she looked away.
“Fine, yeah,” I said to Pete. “Thanks.” He nodded.
When Thomas Alexander rolled Ma back in, he shook everyone’s hands, saying our names loudly one by one: Alice (my mother), Wolski, Pete, Dana, Peg. He lingered with me and frowned slightly. His hand felt soft and small in mine. I assumed he’d had more manicures in his short lifetime than I’d ever have in mine. He looked slightly sweaty; there was a light sheen on his forehead. I wondered if his stylist would powder his face dry in the car when they left. He said he’d be in touch. And next time he’d be prompt. He winked. Ma loved him. I could tell.
Ma motioned for me. I crouched down next to the wheelchair. It was getting late and golden-hour light was dappling the leaves of the trees in the courtyard. It looked warm, but I knew it could still snow at any moment.
“I need you to do something for me,” Ma said.
“Okay.” I waited.
“He needs something that belonged to Dee. From the storage locker. It doesn’t matter what. Just something she used to use a lot or keep close to her. Can you get it?”
The thought of the storage locker made my stomach turn. Peter paid the bill for it each month, and we all tried to pretend it didn’t exist. It hurt just to think about all her stuff in a dark ten-by-ten cement block. The contents of her dorm room. Her paintings. The hope chest she curated for her wedding. The storage locker was filled with things like that—the stuff of Dee’s life that Ma used to say she kept so Dee could have it when she came home.
“I don’t want to go in there,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “I know. But he needs it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can do it. What else did he say?”
She looked back out the window to the courtyard, which was filling in with shadows.
“He knew something,” she whispered, and then she laughed harshly, like I’d made a dirty joke, and I cringed. Her eyes went wide.
“About what?”
“About me. Something only I know.” She laughed again, and I slumped over and put my head in her lap. I felt her thighbones through her skin. She rubbed my back, but it was so light I barely felt her touch.
The item from the storage locker was not the only thing Thomas Alexander required to begin his sessions. Two days after he met with Ma privately, he sent Pete an invoice for six thousand dollars. He said this was to get started, but after that, nothing would be due until the sessions were over. Pete tried to get a sense how much each subsequent session would cost, but the psychic said he never quoted because there wasn’t any way to tell for sure what would be required of him. Every session was different. I could hear Pete grinding his teeth as he told me over the phone.
We didn’t tell Ma about the money Thomas Alexander asked for to get started, or about his suspicious billing procedures, not only because we didn’t think she would care, but also because we became embarrassed to talk about it at all. The sheer amount of the money made me nauseated and unable to speak, and I sensed Peter felt the same. We divided this in thirds between me, Suze, and Pete, and we said nothing else about it to one another or to Ma. I used the remainder of my savings to pay for my portion. The bank called to ask if I’d like to close the account.
May 1991
Dee was living in the dorms at Mount Mary College and planned to stay on through the summer because, she said, she wanted to take a few summer classes. I also suspected she didn’t want to move back in with Ma for those few months. Ma wasn’t pleased with this arrangement, but seeing as Dee was paying her own room and board, Ma couldn’t really say much about it. Technically, Mount Mary students weren’t allowed to have men stay with them. Maybe, I thought, she could say Erik needed sanctuary. It was a Catholic school, but they were what Ma called those liberal kumbaya Catholics.
I borrowed Leif’s car and drove to Mount Mary to tell her about Erik. The phone lines at her dorm were shoddy and usually jammed with girls calling long-distance lovers or whatever. Everyone knows those conversations can last hours. When I got there, though, I knew she wasn’t alone. She’d marked the chalkboard on her door with a small, polite X. This was the code she and her roommate used to indicate the presence of male guests. I entertained the idea of knocking but instead pressed my ear to the door. I wondered what Frank sounded like when he came. Dee would have chided me for the thought, but I was fascinated by the noises men made when they came. The first time I heard that kind of noise (I lost my virginity whe
n I was fifteen, and he couldn’t have been inside me longer than a minute), I couldn’t discern whether the kid was in pain. The cry sounded so desperate. Men, and maybe women, are their most animal selves when they’re coming; I’d seen it with Leif. He always seemed so vulnerable in that moment, and sometimes I wondered if he resented that part of it, if other men did too. I couldn’t hear much because those doors were so thick.
A girl walked down the hallway and narrowed her eyes. “Do you have a visitor’s pass?”
“This is my sister’s room,” I said.
“You still need a pass,” she said.
“What the fuck are you, the hall monitor?”
The door swung open and nearly hit me in the forehead. The girl looked like she wished it had.
“What the hell’s this?” Frank’s sweaty forehead was inches from mine.
I peered over his shoulder to see Dee slipping her jeans on. “Frank,” I said.
“Margaret,” he said. He reached out to touch my lower back and I jumped backward. “I was just leaving.”
He looked odd in the hallway. His body was too large and too grown for the dorm. It was early afternoon, and he looked like he already needed a shave. The girls’ doors were decorated with pastel-hued paper flowers.
“See you,” I said.
“Good to see you.”
I said nothing.
He smelled sweaty. Dee padded to the threshold, her clothes askew, and he leaned in and grabbed her behind the neck. He pulled her in for a showy kiss with a lot of tongue. “Bye, baby,” he said.
The hall monitor stood there the whole time. “She needs a visitor’s pass next time,” the girl told Dee.
“What about him?” I said. I pointed at the back of Frank’s head as he left.
Dee laughed, pulled me inside, and slammed the door. I imagined the paper flowers floating to the floor. Inside the room, I choked on the smell of sweat and cum. Rooms that small keep everything inside. I threw open a window, and Dee lay back on her skinny bed, her legs hanging off, bare toes brushing the dirty carpet. Mount Mary let the students decorate their own dorm rooms. Dee had repainted hers in dark purple and forest green. They were beautiful colors, but they kept sunlight at bay and made me anxious. And there were canvases everywhere. I think she had more canvases than clothes. Most of them were facing backward, so all I could see were the wooden skeletons of the frames. Paint was splattered on the carpet.
“Don’t you have a studio?”
“I like to keep them close to me. What’s up?” she asked. Her breath was heavy. I had the sudden urge to be close to her, right near her, shoulder to shoulder, but I stayed where I was. I touched my fingers to my sternum and felt the bruise there that never went away. This was where Leif put the heel of his hand when he was on top of me, the whole of his weight concentrated on a few of my flimsy bones. The spot stayed sore. Touching the bruise could be a strange comfort to me.
“I saw Erik today,” I told Dee. She ticked her head to the left, like, Go on. “He needs somewhere to stay.”
She sprang up. “Why? What happened?”
“He said he’s homeless.”
“Fuck,” she said. “He’s still fighting with Leif, then?”
I nodded.
“He can stay here,” she offered easily, as if inviting him to dinner.
“Yeah. He’s worried—”
She stopped me. “He probably said there wasn’t any room here, right?”
I paused. I didn’t know how to say it. Frank. He won’t have it. “Something like that, yeah.”
“We’ll make it work. Felicity is never here anyway,” she said. This seemed true; her roommate’s side of the room was relatively empty of personal belongings. Still, I knew I should bring up Frank, but I didn’t know how. Or maybe I was just afraid of her reaction.
“Thank you, babe.” I sat next to her on the bed and hugged her. She shoved me playfully.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Of course, he should be staying with Leif.”
I curled up on the bed next to her, and we lay together with our faces close. It was hard to imagine Frank’s big body on the skinny bed. I shrugged. “I know,” I said. “Leif’s fed up with him, though.”
Dee humphed.
“Plus his ma’s on his case about it.”
“Look at you. Making excuses for Leif. Family’s family. You know that.”
“Nope. I’ve been trying to disown you since the day you were born.” I tickled her rib cage. I knew, from when we were little, the spots she hated: touchy tissue between the bones. She laugh-cried and shoved me away. Her ribs felt small between my fingers.
After all three of her children left home, Ma liked to make sure the four of us still met at least once a week to share a meal. Sometimes this was Sunday dinner (and usually the Packers game) at Ma’s; other times we liked to meet at a Milwaukee establishment called Ma Fischer’s. This was a 24/7 diner known for its pies and its recurring grease fires. Aunt Suze waitressed there, so she could comp small items for us. Sometimes, if we went when it was slow, Suze would share a couple of pieces of pie with us and catch up.
I remember one of these meals at Ma Fischer’s the spring before Dee disappeared because the conversation, at the time, felt fun and clandestine. Dee and I worked together to keep each other’s secrets. I still didn’t want Ma and Pete to know I was living with Leif, and Dee wasn’t ready to tell them she was seeing a grown Guido.
We tried to focus Ma’s attention back on Peter. Ma loved Peter in a way Dee and I knew she would never love us, because he was her only son, and because he’d filled our father’s shoes after he’d died. In another sense, I knew Ma would never love me the way she loved Dee because Dee was her youngest, her baby, and the only one of us who had been a surprise. Or that was how she told it. Over breakfast that day, Ma asked Dee if she was dating anyone at school.
“What’s this I hear about an Erik?” Ma asked Dee. My sister smiled at me, and I looked away. “Last time I dropped you off, your roommate was telling me he’s been around quite a bit.”
Dee shrugged. “He’s just a friend,” she said.
“We’ve heard that one before,” Ma said.
I laughed because it was true. Dee used to have lots of “friends” in high school.
“So you’re not seeing anyone, then?” Peter asked with an air of authority that had a bad effect on me; it made me want to spill Dee’s secrets. Had he learned this affect in law school? I had the sudden urge to tell Peter and Ma about the jagged wound I’d seen on Dee’s ribs, and I looked at her across the table, where she held my gaze like she knew. She kicked my shin, and I spilled my coffee on the paper place mat in front of me. I watched the stain spread. Suze rushed over, whisked the place mat away, and with one fluid motion, wiped the table down and refilled my coffee. She ruffled my curls and gave one of my earlobes a tug. Then she rushed away again.
“No, no,” Dee said. “I’m not seeing anyone right now.”
“Well, that’s smart,” Ma said. “Focus on school. Right, baby?”
Dee nodded smugly. Peter blew on his coffee. Neither of our parents had attended college. After getting out of the navy, our father had inherited a filling station from our grandfather. The gas station, and the repair shop he ran out of the station, kept our father busy and away from home a lot. My mother was hired as a typist at a local paper straight out of high school. When computers had made her job obsolete, her union continued to pay her a decent stipend while she worked as a rep.
“And how’s Leif?” Ma asked me.
“Good,” I told her. “He’s still working third shift, but his boss told him if he gets through this summer, he’ll have his pick of shifts in the fall.”
“That’s honest, hard work,” my mother said. I nodded. “Where does he live again?”
“Riverwest,” I said.
She clucked her tongue. “You be careful when you’re visiting him. You’re liable to get robbed over there. In broad daylight.”
I said nothing. Dee smiled at me sweetly. Pete picked up on something there, but I could tell he didn’t know what it was. He eyed me suspiciously.
“So are you still planning on being an English major?” Pete asked me. He said the word English like it was a food he hated.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you still planning on being an asshole?”
Dee giggled. Our mother frowned. Suze’s timing was impeccable. She bustled over with four slices of pie and a bowl of ice cream that she placed in the middle of the table. She spooned a healthy scoop onto each plate.
“When are you taking the bar again, Pete?” Suze asked.
Under the table, Dee rubbed her foot against my shin where, minutes earlier, she had kicked me.
My father used to always say, “Poetry isn’t a job, Peg.” After he died, Pete took up that refrain as if he were afraid I would forget it. Ma and Dee were always more gentle with me about my writing—Ma because I think she dabbled herself, and she understood what writing meant for me, and Dee because she was an artist too, and though she was more realistic about her job prospects than I was, I knew she harbored the kind of dreams that would make a high school guidance counselor shudder. The last summer we lived together in Ma’s house, we liked to trade some of these dreams back and forth. We liked to hear how they sounded out loud. Sometimes we’d be lying in our matching twin beds just staring at the ceiling and dreaming out loud. The dreams we really liked, we used to write in pencil on the part of the ceiling that slanted down toward our beds.
I’m going to paint a mural in New York City.
I’m going to learn the name of every native bird in Wisconsin.
I’m going to write a book about birds.
I’m going to paint birds.
I’m going to go to Italy and eat nothing but bread and olives.
The Comfort of Monsters Page 9