Peter: Did you notice anything unusual about Dee’s behavior on the third?
Felicity: Dee’s an eccentric woman. What exactly do you mean?
Peter: She wasn’t emotional?
Felicity: We’re artists, Peter; we’re all emotional.
Peter: But she didn’t mention anything to you about Frank?
Felicity: What do you mean, about Frank?
Peter: Did she mention a fight with Frank?
Felicity: My understanding is that their relationship is relatively low-stress for Dee-Dee.
Peter: Have you met Frank?
Felicity: In passing. I think. Maybe.
Peter: What was your impression of him?
Felicity: He didn’t impress me much at all. But boy, is he into Dee-Dee.
Peter: How so?
Felicity: Oh, you know. He dotes on her. He buys her lots of gifts. A Walkman and dresses and jewelry sometimes too.
Peter: Did Dee say anything to you recently about fighting with Peg?
Felicity: Well. You know Dee and Peg. They’re always fighting about something; they don’t see eye to eye on much. But they always make up.
Peter: But did Dee mention if they were fighting on the third? Or what they were fighting about?
Felicity: I don’t remember. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe they weren’t fighting, then.
Peter: Did she say what she and Peg were going to do for the Fourth?
Felicity: I think the fireworks at the lakefront? Oh, wait, that was the third. I don’t know if she said.
April 2019
After the first session with the psychic, I drank a whole bottle of wine and paced around my apartment like I was practicing for an afterlife in which I would haunt the building. I had truly believed the pearls belonged to Dee. The realization that I’d misremembered this small detail was disorienting. I felt confused. Knocked out of time. I needed to take back control, but I wasn’t sure how.
I stared out the window overlooking the street, where groups of students drunkenly paraded up and down Oakland. One teetering boy shouted: Who wants to have my babies? A car honked at him. He blew kisses into the night. I thought of the night Dee and I went to Walker’s Point. I searched my inbox for the psychic’s contact info, which Pete had forwarded a month ago. I dialed Thomas Alexander’s number and a woman picked up. She asked who was calling. I told her. She said to hold.
“Hello? Peg?”
“Hi,” I said. “I was wondering if we could meet.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I need to explain some things.”
There was shuffling, almost like the sound of tissue paper being crumpled. “Okay. One drink. I’m at the Hyatt.”
I hung up the phone, put my coat on, and drove to the Hyatt. The top floor of the hotel rotated slowly to give viewers a panoramic experience of the city’s mostly meager skyline. Lake Michigan’s black expanse stretched out behind the city.
I felt dizzy after the first rotation, but Thomas Alexander claimed that was impossible because the rotations were extremely slow. It’s all in your head, he said. I felt like the sloppier I got, the more composed he became. I imagined him sucking every sober fiber out of my body and internalizing it for himself. Magic. The bartender was serving him whiskey lemonades muddled with extra sugar. I asked how he could be drinking in public, aged twenty, as he was.
He flashed a fake ID at me. “But this is just a formality, really.” He slurped his drink loudly and laid down a forty-dollar tip for the bartender. “Also,” he whispered, “I’m famous.”
“I’ve heard.”
“From whom?” he asked jokingly.
“My niece,” I said.
He nodded. “I’m very popular with Gen Z. They have a great appetite and appreciation for the psychic sciences, for alternative forms of healing, and for astrology.” He sounded like his own infomercial. I didn’t bother telling him that Dana wasn’t exactly a fan. Instead, I nodded.
“I wanted to apologize for the necklace. I really thought it was Dee’s.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I understand.” This reaction surprised me: He had thrown a tantrum at the nursing home. He slid to the edge of his stool so he was closer to me.
“And I . . . I really want this to work,” I told him.
“Of course, of course,” he said.
“So what can I do?”
“You’ve got to get me something of hers that isn’t all gummed up with your own psychic energy. You know? Like something untainted. Do you think you can do that?”
An image of our storage locker loomed large in my mind. I thought of Dee’s paintings piled up almost to the ceiling in that dark room. I nodded and took a drink. The spherical space of the bar seemed to be closing in.
“What did you tell my mother?” I asked him. “What does she think you know about her?”
“She had a miscarriage,” he said easily, like he was reporting the weather. “Between you and Pete. No one knew. Not even your father.” I didn’t know if this was what he’d told my mother, and I knew also that I’d never, ever ask her or try to confirm it. He was a smart kid. “What about you? The first one is always free.”
“No, no, thank you,” I said.
“You’re hiding something. Some kind of behavior. Destructive behavior. And what about this photo?”
“Please,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“Okay,” he said. “But the more you hide from me, the harder it makes my job.”
I drained my glass and motioned for the bartender to pour another. “I thought people couldn’t hide things from you. Isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that what you do?”
“Oh, no, not at all. Willing participants always present clearer channels and better access, you know? Those who are resistant can easily create confusion for me. A messy, distracting aura can complicate my readings. Cause me to make mistakes. That’s why I always tell people to be absolutely sure they’re ready. Otherwise the process can be . . . dangerous?”
I caught the bartender’s eye as he put down my vodka soda. Our fingers touched as I picked up the drink, and I thought he looked like he wanted to ask if I was okay. I hated those kinds of men—the ones who wanted to intercede on my behalf.
“I’m not scared of him,” I said to the bartender.
The bartender frowned at me, confused. “Sure,” he said. He left to help another customer. I’d maybe said the wrong thing. Thomas Alexander looked like he might laugh.
I turned back to him. “Dangerous how?”
“Like with this photo. I’m sensing it means a lot to you. But you’re blocking my path to it. With something. I can tell you’re all caught up in it. Was it . . . the photo . . . was that the last time you saw your sister?” Without realizing it, I had edged closer to him, to hear more clearly what he was saying. To try to understand what he meant. I wanted to shake myself awake. I realized our knees were touching, and I jumped back.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I muttered, but without conviction. It was too late; I felt I’d already folded. My vision wavered. The photo bloomed in my mind like I was watching the images come alive in developing solution—my own body taking shape in the dark. I finished my drink in two gulps, threw down some cash, and left.
Once, when we were girls, we took a family trip to Washington Island, a small island off the Door Peninsula accessible only by ferry. It was the middle of winter, and the surface of the lake had frozen unevenly in massive ice floes that crashed against one another in the waves. We drove our car onto an old ferry, which then began to make its way across the strait. There was a terrible splitting noise like a band saw put to concrete. Dee held her mittened hands over her ears, and we ran up the stairs to see what was happening. From the top deck, we saw that the bow of the ship was breaking through the ice as it moved. The noise was the sound of the ship clearing ice from its path. Dee and I stood on the top deck the whole trip, even though it was below freezing and the tips of
our noses burned with the cold. I couldn’t stop watching as the ship moved and cracked the ice, and the fissures in the largest ice floes rippled out and away from the ship, out farther than we could see. It’s so pretty, Dee mouthed over the sound of the ice breaking beneath us. I smiled at her, but I didn’t think it was pretty at all.
June 1991
When Frank walked in on Dee and Erik cuddling in her bed one afternoon, he didn’t ask any questions. Dee said Frank grabbed Erik by his shirt and threw a punch that Erik ducked. She said Erik tripped and fell as he tried to get out the door, and Frank kicked Erik in the gut and the neck, and pinned him down by holding his knees tight against Erik’s hips. Dee called me at work; I was gently erasing pencil from some very delicate yellowing paper. Dee was hysterical and barely making sense. In the background, I heard the soft, sick sounds of one body caving into another. I thought of the wound on her ribs. I told her to call the police; I tried to use my calm voice. It didn’t work. The nub of my eraser tore a hole through the paper in front of me.
“Dammit,” I whispered.
“Please,” she screamed at me. “Help.”
When I got off work, I drove to the dorm, but there was no sight of Dee, or Frank, or Erik. The angry hall monitor who’d chastised me before paced in front of Dee’s door. Pastel paper flowers crunched underneath her shoes. I was about to ask her where they’d gone, but she beat me to it.
“Dee went in the ambulance with that other guy.” The girl lowered her voice. “The gay one.” She seemed impressed with herself for saying the word.
I drove to the closest hospital and checked in at the ER’s reception. A tired nurse motioned down the hallway behind her. There were stretchers lining the hallway and people standing over these stretchers waiting for rooms. Some of these people were very sick; some of them were handcuffed to the metal rail of their bed. Erik and Dee were curled up in one of these beds together. They were holding hands. I felt a pang of jealousy and then a wave of nausea. I tried to shake it off.
Erik had his eyes closed. His face had already begun to swell up badly, so I almost didn’t recognize him. When I got close, Dee narrowed her eyes to slits and put her finger up against her lips. “They gave him some morphine,” she whispered. “He’s dozing now.”
“Are you okay?” I asked her. I took her free hand into mine and kissed it.
“Frank thought we were fucking.”
“He’s an idiot,” I said. “Erik tried to tell you . . .”
Dee bristled. “You’re an idiot,” she croaked. “You’re the one who suggested he stay with me!” The tone of her voice was changing fast. She tried to take her hand away, but I kept it and squeezed hard.
“You said it was okay!”
She paused and breathed a labored breath like she was trying to calm herself down. Her tone stayed strained, though. “Look at him,” Dee said. I couldn’t. I looked at Dee’s thin pink fingers threaded through my own. “Look,” she said again. I did and I felt the nausea rising in me again.
“We have to fix this.” She gently released Erik’s hand and used her opposite hand to pry my fingers away from her own, one by one. It hurt. She took Erik’s hand back up and buried her face in his neck. I’m ashamed now to admit I didn’t tell her that from where I stood, it looked like she was the one who needed to fix things. She needed to get rid of Frank.
That night there were fifteen-foot waves off the shore of Bradford Beach. When I picked Leif up at Ambrosia, I told him about the waves before I mentioned anything about Erik. I didn’t know how he would react. It occurred to me that this meant I didn’t know Leif well at all. He wanted to see the waves, so we drove to the break wall, but there were fire trucks and neon-orange fencing blocking us from the beach. The waves had begun to wash up into the street, and the officials were working on blocking that off too. A policeman waved us back. He came up to Leif’s car and rapped his knuckles on the window.
“We’re closing this all off until the waves die down,” he told us. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn around.” He shone his flashlight into our car and then pointed it out toward Lake Michigan, where the black waves ate the light. “I’ve never seen waves like this,” he admitted.
“We just wanted to see them, Officer,” I said.
He nodded. “Leave your car here,” he whispered conspiratorially. “You can walk to the edge of the fence if you want.”
Leif was ecstatic. We hurried out of his car. The lake was so loud it drowned the noises of the city: the sirens, and the cars, and the groans of buses and trains, and people everywhere making it known they were unhappy. It was late, but there was some purple light left in the sky, so we could see the waves as they collected themselves high and then crashed heavy on the white rocks of the break wall. There was a desperate energy to the scene, and it had the effect of making me want to confess. But to what? I looked at Leif, his face wind-whipped and tired from the slow slog of his shift at Ambrosia, and I told him I was sorry. He took up my hand, maybe because there was no one to see. It was hot and wet.
“For what?” he asked.
“Erik’s been staying at Dee’s. Frank found the two of them there together and got the wrong idea. He beat Erik up bad. He’s in the hospital.”
One of the waves rushed through the holes in the orange fencing and kissed our feet. The water still felt like winter. I shivered, and Leif, to my surprise, collected my body in his arms.
“You can’t fix people,” he whispered. I wished he would speak loudly; I could barely hear him.
“What do you mean?”
I tried to pull away from him, but he held me against his body. Our feet were soaked.
“Listen to me,” he begged. “You can only ever make it worse.”
Interstitial
Name: Todd Albrecht
Relation: Boss
Interviewer: Suze
Date: July 11, 1991
Suze: When was the last time you saw Dee?
Todd: God, it had to have been almost a week and a half ago.
Suze: How many hours was she working here?
Todd: Oh, maybe ten to fifteen.
Suze: Do you remember the last time she worked?
Todd: I can check. But off the top of my head, I think it was July first. She told me she wanted to reduce her hours here the last time she was in.
Suze: Did she say why?
Todd: Yeah, uh. Something about wanting more time to paint. And she had some hotshot boyfriend who was taking care of her.
Suze: She told you that?
Todd: In not so many words. She told some of the other girls. Her boyfriend bought her things. Took her out. I think she thought they might get married. Or that’s what she told the other girls, like I said.
Suze: Did you ever meet this guy?
Todd: Not directly, no. He came by here a couple of times to pick Dee up after work.
Suze: What was your impression of him?
Todd: Looked like a real Guido type if you ask me. I think she could have done better. But he was clearly crazy about her.
Suze: Why do you say that?
Todd: Oh, I don’t know. He did a lot of totally pussy-whipped shit. Over-the-top gifts. Like he was scared to lose her.
Federal Rules of Evidence
Article IV. Relevance and Its Limits
Rule 405. Methods of Proving Character
(b) By Specific Instances of Conduct. When a person’s character or character trait is an essential element of a charge, claim, or defense, the character or trait may also be proved by relevant instances of the person’s conduct.
April 2019
On the day I went back to the storage locker for the first time since we’d moved Dee’s things there, I woke up with a powerful hangover. The predictability of it was a comfort: I lay in bed late into the day and my mind fed me a slow, sad diet of memories: Dee and me being followed by a car full of boys. They ride the bumper of our parents’ station wagon while I try to drive. Dee sticks her middle finger ou
t the window, and my face burns so red it hurts. Dee, I choke out in fear. Dee sobs on the Fourth of July. Her whole body is cast in fluorescent firework hues. Me and Dee and Pete splash in the shallows of Lake Michigan just north of the city. Dee takes her shirt off when Pete does. Don’t do that, Pete tells her. Why? She puts one hand on her waist and juts her hips out to the left in a perfect imitation of our mother. With the other hand, she rubs her flat baby chest. He shrugs. Dee climbs onto Peter’s back and wraps her legs tight around his waist. I try to tackle both of them. Dee throws her mouth open to the sky, laughing. Henry stands over me while my knees burn against the carpeting in his bedroom floor. What did you do? he asks me. He brushes the pad of his thumb over both of my lips and opens my mouth.
I tried to focus. What did I want? We all wanted different things. Ma wanted to find Dee’s body so she could be buried next to her baby and her husband. Suze, I think, wanted her sister to finally find some peace. Pete wanted more press in the hopes that this might reenergize local or national interest in our case. Wolski probably wanted to assuage his guilt. And I still wanted to nail Frank. At that point I hoped, and was edging dangerously into the territory of believing, that whatever the psychic discovered, it would bolster my own evidence against Frank. It would prove that he murdered Dee and tried to disappear her body. Maybe it was the psychic’s comment about the photo, vague as it was, that had pushed me toward this notion. I tried to rationalize his knowledge of the photo—but there weren’t many people who knew. (Wolski was one of them.) Maybe I needed to commit, like the psychic said. Maybe, in order for this to work, I needed to believe, without reservations, that it would work. I decided to go to the storage locker. Suddenly, though, the hangover began to overwhelm me, and I felt sick, so I dragged myself into the kitchen, forced down the lone beer in my fridge, and called Wolski.
The Comfort of Monsters Page 12