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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.”
