Holly

July 23, 2021

Vera Steinman lives on Sycamore Street, which is devoid of sycamores. Devoid of any trees, in fact. There are plenty in the manicured and well-watered acres beyond Sycamore Street’s dead end, but they are sequestered behind the gates and meandering rock walls of Cedar Rest Cemetery. In this neighborhood of treeless streets named for trees, there are only tract houses standing almost shoulder to shoulder and broiling in the sun of late afternoon.

Jerome parks at the curb. There’s a Chevrolet occupying the cracked driveway. It’s at least ten years old, maybe fifteen. The rocker panels are rusty and the tires are bald. A faded bumper sticker reads WHAT WOULD SCOOBY DO? Jerome has called ahead and started to explain that he came across Peter Steinman’s name while pursuing another case, but she stopped him right there.

“If you want to talk about Peter, by all means drop by.” Her voice was pleasant, almost musical. The sort of voice, Jerome thought, that you’d expect from a well-paid receptionist in an upscale law or investment firm downtown. What he thinks now is that this little house standing on a dead lawn is no upscale anything.

He pulls up his mask and rings the bell. Footsteps approach. The door opens. The woman who appears looks like a perfect match for the upscale voice: light green blouse, dark green skirt, hose in spite of the heat, auburn hair pulled back from her face. The only thing that doesn’t fit is the whiff of gin on her breath. More than a whiff, actually, and there’s a half-full glass in her hand.

“You’re Mr. Robinson,” she says, as if he might not be sure himself. In the direct sunlight he sees her smooth middle-aged good looks may be due in large part to the magic of makeup. “Come in. And you can take off the mask. Assuming you’ve been vaccinated, that is. I’ve had it and recovered. Chock-full of antibodies.”

“Thank you.” Jerome steps inside, takes off his mask, and shoves it into his back pocket. He hates the fucking thing. They’re in a living room that’s neat but dark and spare. The furniture looks strictly serviceable. The only picture on the wall is a humdrum garden scene. Somewhere an air conditioner is thumping.

“I keep the shades down because the AC is on its last legs and I can’t afford to replace it,” she says. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Robinson? I’m having a gin and tonic.”

“Maybe just some tonic. Or a glass of water.”

She goes into the kitchen. Jerome sits in a slingback chair—gingerly, hoping it won’t give way under his two hundred pounds. It creaks but bears up. He hears a rattle of ice cubes. Vera Steinman comes back with a glass of tonic and her own glass, which has been refreshed. He will tell Holly when he calls her that night that in spite of what one of the Dairy Whip skateboys said, he had no idea he was dealing with a deep-dish daily drunk until the end of their conversation. Which came suddenly.

She sits in the boxy living room’s other chair, puts her drink on the coffee table, where there are coasters and a spread of magazines, and smooths her skirt over her knees. “How can I help you, Mr. Robinson? You seem very young to be chasing after missing children.”

“It’s actually a missing woman,” he says, and gives her the rundown on Bonnie Dahl—where her bike was found, how he and Holly (“my boss”) went down to the Dairy Whip to talk to the boys skateboarding there, and how Peter’s name had come up.

“I don’t think Peter’s disappearance has anything to do with Bonnie Dahl’s, but I’d like to make sure. And I’m curious.” He rethinks that word. “Concerned. Have you heard from your son, Mrs. Steinman?”

“Not a word,” she says, and takes a long swallow of her drink. “Maybe I should buy a Ouija board.”

“So you think he’s…” Jerome finds himself unable to finish.

“Dead? Yes, that’s what I think. In the daytime I still hold out hope, but at night, when I can’t sleep…” She holds up her glass and takes a deep swallow. “When not even a bellyful of this stuff will let me sleep… I know.”

A single tear trickles down her cheek, cutting through the makeup and showing paler skin beneath. She wipes it away with the back of her hand and takes another swallow. “Excuse me.”

She goes into the kitchen, still walking perfectly straight. Jerome hears the clink of a bottleneck. She returns and sits down, careful to sweep the back of her skirt so it won’t wrinkle. Jerome thinks, She dressed for me. Got out of her PJs and housecoat and dressed for me. He can’t know this, but he does.

Vera Steinman talks for the next twenty minutes or so, sipping away at her drink and taking a second pause to refill her glass. She doesn’t slur. She doesn’t wander off-topic. She doesn’t stagger or weave on her trip to and from the kitchen.

Because Peter disappeared before Covid and the current turmoil in the city’s police department, his case was quite thoroughly investigated. The conclusion, however, was the same. The investigating detective, David Porter, believed (or said he believed) that Peter had run away.

Part of Detective Porter’s reasoning was based on his interview with Katya Graves, one of two guidance and health counselors at Breck Elementary School. A year or so before Peter’s disappearance his grades had slipped, he was often tardy and sometimes absent, and there had been several incidents of acting out, one resulting in a suspension.

In Graves’s meeting with the boy after the suspension had run its two-day course, the counselor persisted past the usual no-eye-contact mumbles, and finally the dam burst. His mother was drinking too much. He didn’t mind his friends calling him Stinky, but he hated it when they made fun of his mom. Her husband had left her when Peter was seven. She lost her job when he was ten. He hated the jokes, and sometimes he hated her. He told Ms. Graves he thought often about hitching to Florida to live with his uncle, who had a home in Orlando, near Disney World.

Vera says, “He never showed up there, but Detective Porter still thought he was a runaway. I bet you know why.”

Of course Jerome knows. “They never found his body.”

“No,” she agrees. “Not to this day, and there’s no more exquisite torture than hope. Excuse me.”

She goes into the kitchen. The bottle clinks. She returns, walking straight, skirt swishing, hose whispering. She sits. Good posture. Clear speech. She tells Jerome that Peter’s photo can be found among thousands of others on the Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s website. He can be found on the FBI’s Kidnappings & Missing Persons website. On the Global Missing Children’s Network. On MissingKids.org. On the Polly Klaas Foundation website, Polly Klaas being a twelve-year-old kidnapped from a slumber party and subsequently murdered. And for months after Vera reported Peter missing, his picture was shown on the assembly room screen of the city PD at every rollcall.

“Of course I was questioned as well,” Vera says. The smell of gin is now very strong. Jerome thinks it isn’t just coming from her mouth, but actually seeping from her pores. “Parents murder children all the time, don’t they? Mostly stepfathers or natural fathers, but sometimes mothers get into the act, as well. Diane Downs, for instance. Ever seen the movie about her? Farrah Fawcett was in it. I was given a polygraph, and I suppose I passed.” She shrugs. “All I could tell them was the truth. I didn’t kill him, he just went out one night on his skateboard and never came back.”

She tells Jerome about the meeting she had with Katya Graves after Graves’s talk with Peter. “She said anytime that was convenient for me, which was funny because anytime was convenient, me being between jobs. I lost the last one because of a DUI. While I was out of work Peter and I lived on savings and the monthly checks I get from my ex-husband—child support and alimony. Sam can’t stand me, but he was very good about those payments. Still is. He knows Peter is missing, but he still sends the support checks. I think it’s superstition. He loves Peter. It was me he couldn’t stand. He asked me once why I drank so much, was it him? I told him not to flatter himself. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t childhood trauma, it wasn’t anything, really. It’s a stupid question. I drink, therefore I am. Excuse me.”

When she comes back—perfectly straight, sweeping the back of her skirt before sitting down, knees together—she tells Jerome that she learned from Ms. Graves how Peter’s friends were making fun of him because his mommy was a drunk who lost her job and had to spend a night in the clink.

“That was hard to hear,” she says. “It was my bottom. At least then. I didn’t know how deep a bottom could be. Now I do. The Graves woman gave me a list of AA meetings and I started going to them. Got a new job at Fenimore Real Estate. It’s one of the biggest firms in the city. The boss is an ex-drunk, and he hires lots of people who are getting sober, or trying to. Life was better that last year, Mr. Robinson. Peter’s grades improved. We stopped arguing.” She pauses. “Well, no, not entirely. You can’t not argue with your kid.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jerome says, “I was one.”

She laughs loudly and humorlessly at that, making Jerome realize that she’s not somehow magically metabolizing all that gin, that yessir-ree-sir, she’s really drunk. As a skunk. Yet she doesn’t seem it, and how can that be? Practice, he supposes.

“That’s why it’s stupid to think Peter ran off because of my drinking. Just three weeks before he disappeared, I picked up a one-year sobriety chip. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get another. I didn’t start boozing again until six weeks or so after he disappeared. During that six weeks I practically wore out the carpet on my knees, praying to my higher power to bring Peter back.” She gives another loud and humorless bark of laughter. “I might as well have spent that time praying the sun would come up in the west. When it really sank in that he was gone for good, I reacquainted myself with the local liquor store.”

Jerome doesn’t know what to say.

“He’s listed as missing because that makes it simple for the police, but I think Detective Porter knows he’s dead as well as I do. Luckily for me, there really is a higher power.” She raises her glass.

“What night did he go missing, Ms. Steinman?”

She doesn’t have to think about her answer. Jerome supposes it’s engraved on her memory. “November 27th, 2018. Not a thousand days ago, but getting there.”

“One of the boys at the Dairy Whip said you called his mother.”

She nods. “Mary Edison, Tommy’s mom. That was at nine o’clock, half an hour after he was supposed to be in. I had numbers for several of his friends’ parents. I was a good mother to him during that last year, Mr. Robinson. Conscientious. Trying to make amends for the years when I wasn’t so good. I thought maybe Peter was planning to stay over with Tommy and forgot to tell me. It made sense… sort of… because school started late the next day. Some kind of teacher meeting about what to do if there was a violent incident, Peter told me. That I do remember. When Mrs. Edison said Peter wasn’t there, I waited another hour, hoping. I got on my knees and prayed to that higher power guy that he’d come in with some nutty story about why he was late… even with beer on his breath… just to see him, you know?”

Another tear which she wipes away with the back of her hand. Jerome isn’t sorry he came, but this is hard. He can almost smell her pain, and it smells like gin.

“At ten o’clock, I called the police.”

“Did he have a phone, Mrs. Steinman?”

“Oh sure. I tried that even before I called Mary Edison. It rang in his room. He never took it when he was skateboarding. He was afraid he’d fall and break it. I told him if he broke his phone I wouldn’t be able to afford a replacement.”

Jerome recalls what Holly asked him to find out. “What about his board? Any idea about that?”

“The skateboard? It’s in his room.” She stands up, sways briefly, then catches her balance. “Would you like to see his room? I keep it the same as it was. You know, like a crazy mom in a horror movie.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jerome says.

Vera leads him down a short hall. There’s a laundry room on one side, clothes heaped in careless piles in front of the washer, and Jerome thinks he’s just had a glimpse of the real Vera, the one who’s confused and lost and often half in the bag. Maybe all in the bag.

Vera sees him looking and closes the laundry room door.

Pete’s room has PETE STEINMAN H.Q. Dymo-taped to the door. Below it is a Jurassic Park velociraptor with a word balloon coming out of its toothy mouth: Keep Out Or Risk Being Eaten Alive.

Vera opens the door and holds out a hand like a model on a game show.

Jerome goes in. The single bed is neatly made—you could bounce a dime off the top blanket. Over it is a poster of Rihanna in a come-hither pose, but at the age the boy was when he blinked out of the known world, his interest in sex hadn’t yet overshadowed the child’s hunger for make-believe… especially, Jerome thinks, when the child in question was known as Stinky to his peers. Flanking the window (which looks out on the almost identical house next door) are posters of John Wick and Captain America. On the dresser is Peter’s cell phone in its dock and a Lego model of the Millennium Falcon.

“I helped him build that,” Vera says. “It was fun.” At last Jerome detects the faintest slur: not was fun but wash fun. He’s almost relieved. Her capacity is… well, he doesn’t exactly want to think about it. Propped in the corner to the left of the dresser is a blue Alameda skateboard, its surface scuffed by many rides. A helmet rests on the floor next to it.

Jerome points to it. “Could I…?”

“Be my guest.” Gesh.

Jerome picks up the board, runs his hand over the slightly dipped fiberglass surface, then turns it over. One wheel looks slightly bent. Written in fading Magic Marker, but still perfectly legible, is the owner’s name and address and telephone number.

“Where was it?” Jerome asks, suddenly sure he knows the answer: on the cracked pavement of the abandoned auto repair shop where Bonnie Rae’s bike was found. Only that turns out not to be the case.

“In the park. Deerfield. They searched it for his, you know, body, and one of them found it in some bushes near Red Bank Avenue. I think that’s where someone took him to kill him and do whatever else to him first. Or else, it was a foggy night, maybe someone hit him with a car and took the body away. To bury. Some drunk like me. I just hope, you know… please God, he didn’t suffer. Excuse me.”

She heads back to the kitchen, posture still perfect, but now there’s an appreciable hip-sway in her walk. Jerome looks at the skateboard a little longer, then puts it back in the corner. He’s no longer sure there’s no connection between Steinman and Dahl. The similarities of location and artifacts left behind may be coincidental, but they certainly exist.

He goes back to the living room. Vera Steinman comes out of the kitchen with a fresh drink.

“Thanks very much for—”

Jerome gets that far before Vera’s knees buckle. The glass falls from her hand and rolls across the rug, spilling what smells like straight gin. Jerome ran track and played football in high school, and his reflexes are still good. He catches her under the arms before she can go all the way down in what might have been a nose- and tooth-breaking faceplant. She feels completely boneless in his grip. Her hair has come loose and hangs around her face. She makes a growling noise that might or might not be her son’s name. Then the seizures begin, taking her and shaking her like a rat in a dog’s mouth.