Sir? she said. She could hear a child’s singsong voice in the background.
You have to tell the story, he said finally.
Blood thudded in Rosa’s ears.
39
THREE YEARS AFTER Michael’s parents divorced, when he was seventeen, his mother, Kay, met a man, an ocularist—a maker of prosthetic eyes—remarried, and moved to Chicago. She and Michael didn’t talk much anymore. A phone call at the holidays, Alice’s birthday, his own. Festive occasions, his mother called them. When she visited them in Austin once, they’d gone to the Zilker Botanical Gardens and Alice fed the koi in the pond. Michael’s mother wanted Alice to hug her and call her Grammy, but the heat had made Alice red-faced and irritable. She wanted Alice to try on clothes at the mall, but it was near Alice’s nap time and so they’d said their good-byes at the Ruby Tuesday while Alice wailed inconsolably about a stuffed tiger kitten that he’d later find wedged in the backseat of the car. Pulling away from them in the parking lot, his mother’s eyes shone with need, and it pained him to remember the way he and Andrew had always taken advantage of her, telling even transparent lies because she would believe anything.
Kay lived in a Chicago neighborhood called Ravenswood. She and the ocularist had gotten a great deal on a house not far from Lake Michigan, she’d told him a month ago. He should bring Alice for a visit in the summer, she said. Alice would love the beach, the aquarium, the Lincoln Park Zoo. His mother even mentioned Lucinda, saying she’d recently been in touch, asking Kay to send her some photos of Alice. We talked just like two mothers, she’d said, her voice brightening.
When Michael and Alice drove into Chicago it was late morning and he could feel the cold through the windows. Snow swirled in the road ahead of them. In the distance, low clouds halved the skyscrapers downtown. He’d never been to Chicago, and as they drove in on Interstate Fifty-Five and turned onto Lake Shore Drive, the sheer size of the city struck him. It seemed to go on and on, bounded by nothing except Lake Michigan, which was more like an inland sea.
He’d spoken with his mother before they left his dad’s, and she’d seemed irritated with him, but she’d covered quickly with talk of Alice. There was always a place there for them, she said. Still, she needed to talk to her husband, the ocularist, since his daughter, Elise, was graduating from DePaul that weekend. A little hectic, she said, but doable. She would make it work. It was a treat, an early Christmas present, she said, worry pinching her voice. Alice, picking up on the conversation, loudly dictated her Christmas list. Michael felt the room tilt a little, panic flutter through him. His dad had even spoken to his mother for a few minutes, his voice softening as if speaking to a child. He’d turned away from Michael while talking to her, but now and then he’d look over, widen his eyes in mock frustration. On the drive to Chicago, Michael had called his mother twice and left messages, saying they’d be there a day sooner than planned, but he hadn’t heard back.
Why had he called the reporter the day before they left? Out of guilt? Fear? He couldn’t be sure. He was worried about the video. Was he sitting at one of the tables? Standing in line? It was somehow tangled up with his dead brother, disquieting dreams about a baby crying in a field. A part of him wanted to confess to the reporter things he’d never done.
In the backseat, Alice was playing a game with her dolls and looking up every few minutes, saying, It’s snowing and there’s a bridge and there’s a man walking across it and there’s a ship way down in the water but it has sunk right there and is not moving no matter what people say and the man is wearing a red scarf and it’s cold out and I’m hungry for a Nutella sandwich and a little carton of milk.