Lost Boy Lost Girl

“Are you really? I don’t know, you just look kind of . . .”

Visibly making an effort to imitate her normal self, she straightened her shoulders and gave him a look of mock rebuke. “Kind of what?”

The only answer he thought he could give was a weak “Tired?”

“Maybe I am tired. You know what?” Now her smile communicated some actual warmth. She reached out and rubbed the top of his head. “I wouldn’t exactly mind a little help in the kitchen. Your father would only get annoyed if I asked him, but maybe there’s some hope for you.”

“Sure,” he said, and held out his hands for the rinsed plates. “I was thinking you maybe looked sort of worried, too.”

“Maybe looked sort of worried.” Nancy spoke the words as if testing her understanding of a foreign language.

“Yeah,” Mark said. She still had not handed him the plates.

“Why shouldn’t I be worried? At work today, Mack and Shirley told me that someone’s been abducting teenage boys right in this part of town. From Sherman Park! Mack said, ‘Nance, I hope you’re keeping your boy away from that fountain at night.’”

With that, she handed him the dripping plates. Mark bent over and began inserting them into the bottom rack of the dishwasher.

“But you do go there, don’t you? You and Jimbo hang around that fountain almost every night.”

“Probably not so much anymore.” He straightened up and held out his hands for whatever she would give him next. “Now they have cops all over the place. They ask you all these questions. It’s so stupid.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid. It’s what the police should be doing.” She handed him two water glasses with a touch of belligerence.

“Not if they want to catch the guy,” he said. “This way, all they’re doing is guaranteeing that fewer and fewer kids will go there every night, until nobody’s there at all. I don’t think the bad guy, if there is a bad guy, is going to stop what he’s doing, I just think they won’t know where to look for him anymore.” He put the glasses into the machine and held out his hands for two more.

“So what do you think they should do, Mark?”

“Go to the park, but stay out of sight. Conceal themselves. Go in disguise. That way, they might have a chance.”

“And use you kids as decoys? No thanks, Buster Brown.” She shoved another glass into his hand and took his cereal bowl from the sink. “I don’t think I want you going to that park at night anymore. At least not until they catch the man who’s been taking these boys. I don’t care if the Monaghans let Jimbo sashay over there every night. Jimbo isn’t my son. He can go alone, or you and he can either stay home or go somewhere else. You know, you could join a church youth group. Shirley’s daughter, Brittany, has a lot of fun at her youth group. She uses it like a club. They even have dances.”

“I don’t want to join a church youth group with Shirley’s daughter. Please.”

“I want you to think about it. Please. You and Brittany could, I don’t know—”

“Mom, sorry. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

She closed her mouth on her unfinished sentence and nodded at him, frowning. Uncertain if this was actually a good idea, Mark said, “Is there some kind of story about that empty house right in back of ours?”

For a second, his mother’s mouth hung open and her eyes lost focus. The cereal bowl dropped from her hands and smashed against the floor, separating into three sections and a scattering of white powder. Nancy stared down at the remains of the bowl without moving her hands.

“What?” Mark said. “What’s wrong?” he added, this time meaning something different.

Slowly, Nancy lowered herself. She did not change the position of her hands until she could touch the floor, after which she piled up the three large sections of the bowl and nested them together. “Nothing’s wrong, Mark,” she said. “Get the whisk broom and the dustpan, will you?”

Feeling blocked and almost rejected, he spun away to fetch the pan and brush from the broom closet. When he knelt beside his mother, she snatched the things away from him. “Go on, I’ll do it. I mean it. I dropped the darned thing, didn’t I?”

Mark stepped back and watched her brush the fragments into the dustpan, go after the powder, then continue sweeping the whisk broom over the same patch of kitchen tile until she appeared to be attacking invisible fragments. He was determined not to leave her side until she at least looked at him.

Evidently, she had been gathering herself to speak while she rid the tiles of nonexistent particles, and she spoke without looking up. “You were asking me about that empty house on Michigan Street, weren’t you?” Her voice was deliberately uninflected.

“Come on, Mom. Stop pretending.”

She glanced up at him. “You think I’m pretending? What do you think I’m pretending about?”

“I’m pretty sure you know something about that house across the alley from us.”

“You can think what you like.” She stopped moving the whisk broom over the tiles.

“Mom, that’s why you dropped that bowl. It’s obvious.”

Nancy got to her feet without taking her eyes from him. “Let me tell you something, Mark.” She waved him aside so she could dump the fragments of china in the wastebasket. “You have no idea on earth what is obvious. None.”

“Then tell me,” he said, more alarmed by her present manner than he had been earlier.

“You’re interested in that house for some reason, that’s clear. Have you done anything about it, Mark?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been sneaking around that place?”

“No.”

“Have you ever tried to break in?”

“Of course not,” he said, stung.

“All right. Don’t. Stay away from that place. Everybody else does. Did you ever think about that?”

“I only noticed the place about a day ago.”

“I’m sorry you did.” Her gaze grew more intense. “Answer me this. Let’s say the reason you never noticed that house before now is because everyone else around here ignores it. Does that make sense to you?”

He thought about it, then nodded.

“Now I’m just guessing, okay? I think something terrible happened in there—something really, really bad, and that’s why everybody leaves the place alone.”

“But what about the people who came here too late to know about it?” Like us, he could have added, but did not.

“It’s obvious, Mark. Something’s wrong, and they smell it. One of these days, the city will knock the place down. Until then, it’s better to forget about it.”

“Okay,” Mark said.

“So that’s what I want you to do.”

“Well, I can’t really forget about it, Mom.”

“Yes, you can. At least you can try.” She came a step closer and gripped his arm.

“Fine,” he said. The wild expression in her eyes frightened him.

“No, not fine. Promise me you’ll stay away from that house.”

“Okay.”

“Say it.”

“I promise.”

“Now promise me you’ll never go inside that place.” She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “For as long as I live.”

“Yo, Mom, you’re scaring me.”

“Good. Being scared isn’t going to hurt you. And don’t say yo to me. Now, say it.”

“I’ll never go inside that house.” Eyes blazing, she nodded at him. “For as long as you live.”

“Promise.”