The Comfort of Monsters

by Willa C. Richards

  He was still beautiful, but I could see that the past few weeks had robbed him of the energy that made him Leif. He was wearing prison blues, starched short sleeves, and dark blue pants. His hair was long, and he’d begun to grow a beard that did not look particularly well cared for. He stood up and hugged me, and it was hard to remember the last time we’d touched. Was it in his apartment when he’d been speeding so hard he’d been insistent on making me come again and again? As he hugged me, he stroked the back of my head, combing my hair gently with his fingers. I felt him get a little hard against my stomach, and I drew away from him. I squinted at him.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Jesus, Peg. I’m so horny I can’t see straight. I’m losing my mind in here.” His eyes did have a starved, hungry look.

  “Well, that’s the least of your worries right now.”

  Leif nodded. He looked down at his own hands, and we both saw they were full of my hair. The long dark strands were wound around his fingers and plastered to his sweating palms. I had an image of snaking hair from a drain. He wiped his hands on his pants. He took stock of me and he was shocked. How much different could I be?

  “You’re skinny as hell,” he said.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I’m worried about you,” he said. “I mean, Jesus, when’s the last time you ate something?”

  “I’m fine. What’s going on with all of this?” I gestured at the jail. A woman seated two tables away from us was in danger of violating the excessive emotionalism rule. She was waving her arms above her head. I looked away and Leif was watching me.

  “I don’t know. Donald, the lawyer your brother got me, thinks an illegal search argument might work, but also since I’ve got the prior, I don’t know, I don’t understand much of it.”

  “Prior?” I asked.

  “Your hands are shaking. You sure nothing happened to you since I’ve been in here?”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded anyway, because I didn’t want to talk about me. “What prior? I didn’t know you had a record.”

  “I mean. I don’t have a record. Just me and a couple of buddies stole some beer from a convenience store back up in Rhinelander once. I had just turned eighteen, so it stuck. We got caught. That’s it.”

  “I’ll try to get a meeting with Pete and Donald too. I’ll try to figure out what’s going on. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  I didn’t know if that was true; I didn’t know if it was possible. I knew I had to say it, though, and I was glad I did, because Leif nodded and kept picking my hairs off his palms, which were still sweating badly, and he dropped them one by one, and we watched them float to the cement floor.

  Leif reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out a stack of tattered postcards. He slid them across the table. “All from Erik,” he said.

  My heart leaped. “Does he know—?”

  Leif shook his head. “He hasn’t mentioned her once. He sends about one a week. He’s on the West Coast. It’s his handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

  “What do they say?” I rifled through the stock photos on the opposite sides—glossy panoramas of the muddy Mississippi, the Badlands, the snow-covered Rockies, Sun Valley, Idaho. The middle of America did not seem like a safe place for a gay man, but then again, Milwaukee hadn’t been either. I wished more than anything that Dee was with him.

  “Mundane shit, mostly. You can take them. Give them to police? Maybe it will help.”

  “Maybe,” I told him. I took the stack from him. I turned over the one from Idaho. I love you, Leif, it said.

  “There’s something else,” Leif told me. He leaned in. I thought we might get yelled at. “He’s seen the photo too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “One of the postcards,” Leif choked out. “It says, Now I know who you really are.”

  I shook my head. “That could mean anything,” I said, though I had the feeling he was right. A tear fell down Leif’s cheek and he wiped it away quickly. He rolled his shoulders back and set his spine up straight.

  “That’s not who I am,” he said. “The photo.”

  I felt at the time it was intensely, absolutely, unequivocally important to ignore this.

  “If he has seen it,” I said, “we need to find him.”

  Leif shook his head. “He’s gone.”

  One of the odd things about the Milwaukee County Jail is that it shares a parking structure with the Milwaukee Public Museum. After I left Leif, I came out into the lobby of the parking structure and stood in front of the doors to the museum. I had a sudden urge to go inside and sit somewhere quiet and fake. I paid for my ticket (I didn’t want to see the exhibit on the Titanic) and then stood beneath the massive blue whale skeleton screwed to the ceiling of the museum’s lobby.

  I spent most of the rest of that afternoon there, and I never told Peter or Ma or Suze. I suspected they’d be indignant and judgmental, like I was taking a day off from Dee’s disappearance. I guess I was. I wandered through the exhibits aimlessly. I read nothing and I learned nothing. I bought rock candy from the candy shop in the Streets of Old World Milwaukee, which re-created the streets of Milwaukee as they looked one hundred years ago. I sat inside a fake igloo and stared through thick glass at the plastic Inuit family as they went about their icy lives, spearing seals, swaddling babies, sewing skins. I went deep into the bowels of the ocean, descending dark ramps to stare at watery exhibits full of fake lantern fish and giant squid and feel the weight of the rushing water soundtrack. I stood beneath a full-size T. rex as it ripped the guts out of a perpetually unlucky stegosaurus; the entrails hung from the massive plastic teeth, and the prehistoric jungle noises played on repeat. The Milwaukee Public Museum never changed. I was surprised to learn, though, that they’d begun to offer tickets to a butterfly room. This was an uncomfortably warm room in which cases of butterfly larvae hung on the walls until they metamorphosed. These butterflies lived out their short, beautiful lives inside the museum’s warm room for the pleasure of the visitors. There was a fake rushing stream with tiny bridges, a wall of fake rock, a trickling waterfall running over it all, real vegetation, some stunning flowers, and of course, butterflies everywhere. They landed on children’s shoulders and heads and fingers; they fluttered around the room, knocking against the glass again and again.

  I wondered how many of these poor things were crushed under careless boots or in the hands of overeager children. I’m sure there was a great amount of scientific value in the room, but there was also something very dark about the setup. I stood in that room for a very long time, my lungs wet with the humidity and my legs aching from standing in one place, and I thought I had been very careful. I thought I’d been the most careful one in the room. But on my way out, I noticed my sneaker squishing loudly against the museum’s marble floor. I lifted the sole of my shoe to find one of the butterflies, folded in half, wing to wing, pressed tight to the bottom of my foot. I scraped it off with my fingernails.

  Back at the house, Peter and Ma and Suze were sitting on the front stoop. We spent long hours there that summer and fall, waiting, and waiting, as if maybe Dee would waltz up the block, and we’d all wrap her up, and laugh, and pretend she’d never been gone. Suze was chain-smoking, by the looks of the ashtray next to her. Ma’s disapproval of Suze’s smoke was obvious, but she looked too tired to protest. I felt their eyes on me as I came up the walkway. The front yard always got me thinking of Dee. In summer we used to run bare-chested, in matching pink-and-white underwear, through garden sprinklers, and we were so beautiful, such blurs of girl and skin, that once someone called the cops on us and said there were naked women in the front yard. The cops came and our parents threw our swimsuits at us; we were six and seven years old. We used to pretend we lived outside, underneath a big pine tree at the edge of our front yard; we pilfered pots and pans and took them beneath the boughs, where we mixed up needle soups and grass stews. Ma used to find her cookware under
neath the tree and run after us, shaking heavy soup pots at us as we screamed. This memory made me smile, and when I looked up at Peter, and Ma, and my aunt, and they saw me smiling, I blushed. I couldn’t even smile without raising suspicion. I wanted to say, Listen, I was thinking of Dee. I was thinking of when we were little girls, when we used to play out here, do you remember, do you remember. But I just straightened out my lips so they didn’t have any interpretable shape to them at all. Suze slid over on the cement stoop to let me in. I was grateful for this kindness. I sat down with them. I wanted to ask Suze for a cigarette, but I knew my mother would have a hernia. I couldn’t believe how many things she didn’t know about me. How does that happen?

  “How’s Leif?” Peter asked. He reached across Suze to squeeze my shoulder and got a handful of bone. Peter’s concern for Leif was jarring to me; three weeks ago, he’d wanted to bash Leif’s skull into our record player.

  “They’re going ahead with the other charges,” I said. “The drugs and the gun.”

  Ma’s face collapsed, and I guessed what she was thinking. I knew you two were mixed up in some bad stuff.

  “But how is he?” Suze asked.

  “He’s alive,” I conceded. “He gave me these.” I handed Ma the stack of postcards.

  “What the hell are these?” she asked.

  “Leif’s brother, Erik, he sent them.”

  She rifled through them, much as I had done, looking for any mention of Dee. Finding nothing, she threw them all back at me. They fluttered pathetically in the air and landed at my feet. I kicked at them.

  “These are no help at all, Margaret. This whole time. I haven’t understood any of it. And I don’t understand you at all. You’re focused on all the wrong stuff. You’re almost as bad as the police. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to ruin this for us. I swear to God.”

  She leaped up from the porch stoop in a swirl of long skirts, pushed the screen door open, and let it slam shut behind her. Later, I understood Ma felt guilty too. She blamed herself for not protecting Dee or me, or for not raising us up to know the difference between a good man and a bad man. As if there were a checklist she’d failed to provide us. Does he smoke cigarettes and/or marijuana? Does he own a gun? Does he own a bowling ball? Does he hit you during sex? Do you like it? I wondered if the victims’ families felt this guilt. Was there any kind of list that could have prepared those men for the serial killer? We were all just guessing at the risk of our relationships. God, it still makes me so sad and debilitated to think about Dee in that moment—the moment she needed us, needed me. Isn’t that the most terrifying part? Imagining her fear. I don’t indulge in those kinds of thoughts for long, because it produces a paralysis in me; I can’t move or think for minutes, or hours, or days.

  “Ma hates me,” I said to Suze and Peter. I was hoping they’d contest this, but they stayed quiet. Peter stared at his shoes. Suze blew smoke up to the sky, which was just beginning to go dark. Bats swooped through clouds of mosquitoes above us.

  “She wants to find Dee,” Suze said.

  “Jesus, I’m sick of everyone pretending like I don’t want her back too.”

  Peter was biting his lower lip so hard, the entirety of it had disappeared into his mouth.

  “But I’m not under any delusions. Frank—”

  Suze slapped me on the back of my head. “Jesus, Margaret. For your mother’s sake, can you please carry on as if she’s alive.”

  “You’re driving her crazy,” Peter added.

  “Pete,” I tried to reason. “You saw his apartment. Why would he leave his dog there like that? Why would he take all of his stuff with him?”

  Peter shook his head at me, and then he left me and Suze alone on the stoop. She patted the back of my head, the stinging place she’d hit me only moments before.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Suze said.

  “You’re not,” I told her.

  I felt like a child again, or worse, as if I were reliving my teenage years, those dark thrilling years in which it’s possible to convince yourself that no one understands you. This time I didn’t have Dee as a buffer between me and the rest of the family. A phrase rang in my head: The course of conflict is not determined by the person who initiates but by the person who responds.

  Suze shrugged it off, and I loved her for it. I resisted the urge to bring Frank up again. To my mind, the only interview worth conducting was one with Frank. The police had botched their chance, and Peter and Ma hadn’t even bothered speaking with him. No. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t that they hadn’t bothered. He’d disappeared from Milwaukee. I knew Suze didn’t want to hear any of this, so I bit my nails instead. Isn’t it funny? That’s Ma’s conditioning in me, I think. The daylight lingered in cotton candy–colored swaths of low clouds, but the streetlights were already casting pools of garish light in the gutters. Suze squeezed my knee.

  June 2019

  Dr. P wedged her trowel between the coffin’s lid and one of its walls. She pried on the lid and it gave way easily. Her movements suggested she had done this many times before, which was strange to consider. The coffin’s hardware left bright orange stains in the earth. The color gave the soil a sick radioactive look. I smelled the harsh acid of iron in the air. Some of the coffin’s wood crumbled underneath Dr. P’s trowel. She pried the entire lid off and we all peered in. The coffin was clogged with mud, but a glint of fabric shone through. Dr. P had gloves on. She lifted thick layer upon thick layer of fabric. Someone had buried ten or twelve evening gowns inside the coffin. I heard Wolski make a choking noise. The sniffer dog barked loudly.

  “Is she in there?” Wolski asked for us.

  Dr. P lifted up the heavy layers of fabric—they were muddy and moldy and crumbling in her gloved hands, but I could make out the glint of glitter, sequins, sheer fabric in all colors, pale blue, yellow, emerald green. I had an image again of swaths of fancy dresses, some with the tags on, hanging in Dee’s dorm room closet at Mount Mary.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to make of this,” Dr. P said.

  “I might have something,” one of the archaeologists said. He was screening all the dirt they had pulled out of the pit. He held up a tiny fragment. “Looks cranial. I can’t be sure it’s human, though.” He handed it to Dr. P, and she placed it gingerly in a paper bag. I stared at those dresses packed tightly inside their grave. The sniffer dog continued to pull against his leash. He whined and whined. What did the dog want? What was he trying to say?

  The archaeologists began to pull more fragments from their screens—finger bones, and toes, and maybe pieces of ribs, I heard them say. Small bones.

  “It could be her, right?” Pete asked Dr. P.

  “It could be,” she said, though her voice suggested she didn’t think there was much chance. “They’re very fragmented, though, and they look quite old.”

  “Can I see one?” Pete asked. The younger archaeologists looked ready to refuse him, but Dr. P nodded. A young man handed Pete a few crumbling pieces of bone. He rubbed them between his thumb and forefinger. I imagined the oil in his skin shining the mud away. He looked up at me and gestured toward the field outside the woods. I followed him to where Ma was wilting in her wheelchair.

  “There was a dog,” Pete told Ma. She nodded like she’d known. Thomas Alexander’s eyebrows went up just slightly. “And a coffin with dresses. And they’re finding some bone fragments.” He knelt down and handed Ma three pieces of bone. She took the fragments in her hand. They were so deteriorated, I worried they might crumble into her lap. She looked up at the sky.

  “Thank you, God,” she said. “Thank you for bringing her home. For putting us back together.” She clutched the muddy fragments to her chest. Dirt rolled down her dress.

  “Mama,” Pete said. “We still can’t be sure—”

  “Hush. Hush. Come here, now,” she said. “Both of you.” I went to her and knelt next to Pete in front of the wheelchair. The day was warm, and the clouds moved over us like lus
h cotton in the sky. I often forgot how beautiful Wisconsin could be. Ma put the fragments in her lap and reached for our hands. Someone in Thomas Alexander’s crew snapped a photo of us: heads bent like we were praying together, and maybe in a way we were. I kept my eyes open. I tried not to stare at the muddy bones. I knew they were Dee’s.

  Ma asked if she could bring the bones back to the Lutheran Home with her, and that’s where Dr. P drew the line. Legally, she said, that wasn’t possible. The archaeologists would take the fragments back to the lab for analysis. I saw her speaking with Wolski as we loaded Ma back into the van. Thomas Alexander stayed behind, trying to get some action shots with the archaeologists who had the unfortunate job of reburying the dead dog.

  I rode back to the Lutheran Home with Ma, Peter, and Suze. Maybe Ma’s hope had spread among us: a wildfire we hadn’t bothered to fight. Did it matter? Back at the cemetery, Ma had rubbed her face with her dirty hands, so her cheekbones were streaked with mud. Suze tried to rub them clean with a wet wipe, but Ma shrugged her off. She smiled a half smile at her sister with her good side. “Suze,” Ma said.

  “Hmmm?” My aunt was watching the city rush by. I remembered that as a small child, Dana had been very afraid of freeways. She would complain when we began to accelerate too quickly.

  “I want you to call Forest Home and start making the preparations.”