Don't I Know You? (4 page)

Sam said, “Alcoholics say that it's a big deal when they've been sober longer than they were drunks,” she said. “They, like, celebrate that day.”

He tried to figure out what had made her say that.

“How do you know that?” he asked. The fan in the room was loudest when it rotated toward them. He had to time what he was saying.

“Phil's an alcoholic,” she said. “I know a lot about them.”

“I didn't know that,” he said. “I mean about Phil,” he said.

He could hear her moving around under her sheet. He was on top of his covers. Tweety and Sylvester. Kitty was lying across
I tawt I thaw a puddy tat. I did! I did!

He was thinking about what Juan would say about him spending the night in Sam's room. Juan could go on about Sam. Steven told him he just liked her 'cause she was blond. “And,” Juan had asked, “your point is?”

He had a hard-on. He got under the sheet. Kitty seemed annoyed.

“What're you doing?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

He was still hard. He put his mother's keys around himself.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked again.

“Nothing,” he said.

“It better not be gross,” she said.

“I took my mom's keys,” he said.

She was quiet.

The door opened, and light from the hallway sliced into the room. Phil stood there, looking at them. Sam sighed loudly and made little sleepy noises. Steven kept his eyes open a crack. Against the light, Phil looked black. Steven wished he would quit looking at them. He felt like he might laugh. Sam murmured something. She was good, he thought. Maybe she was really asleep.

Phil came over to the bunks. He put his hand on Steven's belly. Steven tried to breathe evenly. Phil didn't seem upset. Steven's stomach rumbled.

“Phil?” Sam said.

“Hey, honey,” he said. “Didn't mean to wake you.” His voice didn't sound like his.

“What're you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, too loudly for the room. “Go to sleep.”

His fingers massaged Steven's belly lightly.

“You too,” Sam said.

He took his hand away and pulled the sheet up over Steven a little more. “You're right,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “You're always right.”

He left, closing the door behind him. The room went back to dark.

His hard-on had gone away and come back. “That was weird,” he said.

“Sorry about him,” Sam said. “Parents are mostly embarrassing, don't you think?”

Steven was quiet. He rubbed his flat hands up and down across the tops of his thighs. His skin was like he hadn't showered in weeks. His mother would've called him a Scoad Monster. He could hear her voice.

“God,” Sam said. “I'm a major idiot.”

What had the guy wanted? Why hadn't she given it to him?

“It wasn't her fault,” Steven said. He hadn't meant to say it out loud.

Outside, a car alarm started and wouldn't stop. A dog barked. Someone told the dog to shut up.

“Of course it wasn't,” Sam said. She sounded older than she was.

He imagined doing to the guy what he'd done to Steven's mother. Once, a friend of his mother's had been killed in a plane crash. “Imagine what those last few minutes were like?” his mother had said.

“What's your mom like?” he asked.

Sam started to talk and her words were like hands and he listened.

T
here are things to do when someone dies. He was surprised at breakfast when Phil had a list. He looked like he'd been up all night putting it together, but when Steven glanced at it, it was just a list of numbers, one through eight, with nothing next to them.

Getting woken up by Sam had been nice. He'd heard the sounds of her getting ready for her day. She hadn't been trying to wake him up. That had been the best part.

“You grind your teeth,” she'd said.

He'd rolled his tongue around his gums, the insides of his cheeks. Sometimes he ground so hard his gums bled.

It was ten after nine. His mother would've said, sitting at the kitchen table, “What's the plan, little man?” She would've smiled at her own rhyme.

He couldn't stop thinking like this.

He threw up the Frosted Flakes and milk on the kitchen floor. He didn't know where their garbage can was. He kept his hand over his mouth even though he could feel nothing else was coming up. He couldn't look at them.

“Oh, man,” Sam said.

She was being nice. But he hated her anyway.

Phil said her name like a warning. He told Steven it didn't matter, and led him to the bathroom off the kitchen. The bathroom was about four steps from where he'd puked.

In the small space, Phil's smell got to him. He told him he could handle it from there. He tried to sound normal while holding his breath. He tried not to swallow. Phil left. Steven ran both taps full blast and flushed the toilet and rinsed his mouth with the cold water and closed his eyes so he wouldn't see bits of anything making their way down the drain.

His mother would've held his bangs away from his head. He threw up a lot.
Sensitive
was the word people who liked him used.

He could hear Phil moving around in the kitchen. Sam said something. Phil didn't answer.

Steven sat under the tiny sink, his shoulder wedged under one of the pipes. From now on, when he thought of his mother, he would think of the hallway rug bunched up under her hip. Somewhere, the guy was eating breakfast. Or maybe not even up yet.

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. “Pussy,” he said.

Steam from the hot water was filling the little room. The mirror got cloudy. He made a fist and put it under the hot water. It got red. He counted fifty and turned the water off, putting his hand in his pocket before going back out.

T
he autopsy was going to take a little time. Phil was talking to Detective McGuire. Steven was listening on the extension in Sam's room. She was digging around in her closet, pretending not
to notice. She had a dark red phone. She had to pay her own phone bill out of her allowance. She'd had a checking account since she was twelve. She cooked dinner one night a week. Phil said he wanted her to be able to take care of herself.

He'd argued about it with Steven's mother. He said she coddled Steven. “You're not helping him in the long run,” Steven had heard him say to her more than once. “What's he gonna do when you're not around?”

Phil hadn't meant anything by it. Still, it was freaky.

Detective McGuire told Phil that they should just make their arrangements, do what needed to be done. The cops would need to keep the apartment stationary for another forty-eight hours, but after that, it was all theirs.

Sam backed out of the closet on all fours, dragging a cardboard box. She looked pleased with herself until she saw him. Then she looked something else.

Phil was asking about the guy. Were there leads? Theories? Anything?

Detective McGuire said the case was a priority. They were on it. They'd know more after the autopsy. They were working on phone records. It looked like she might have made a phone call.

“A phone call?” Phil repeated. “While the guy was in the apartment? Isn't that a little weird?”

“Yes,” Detective McGuire said. “A little.”

“Who did she call?” Phil asked.

“We're working on it,” McGuire said. “On all of this. Listen,” he said, “in New York these things take longer than they should. I'll let you know when the body becomes available.”

Phil asked if any determination had been made about—he in
terrupted himself to clear his throat, and then finished his sentence—sexual assault. He wanted to know about sexual assault.

It was like last spring when Juan had found a note about Steven that a girl he liked had written to a friend, and had offered it to him to read.

The detective said they wouldn't know about that until after the autopsy. It was a good bet, though, he said.

Steven wondered how cops knew what they knew.

“How's the kid?” Detective McGuire asked, like it had taken him this long to get the courage up.

Sam looked at him and then left the room. Phil took a breath like he'd hoped he'd get through this conversation without that. Steven pressed the disconnect button. That was the way you did it if you didn't want to get caught. The fan turned back and forth, back and forth. Hot air moved around him. Kitty wove around his ankles, meowing. He held the receiver down to her and she rubbed her cheek against it like it was what she'd been looking for.

When Phil came to the doorway, Steven still had the receiver in his hand. Phil took in the scene.

“You heard?” he asked.

Steven nodded.

Phil gestured at the cardboard box. “Sam says those will fit you,” he said.

“Where is she?” Steven asked.

“Music,” he said.

She played piano. One time when they'd all been over here, his mother had played her guitar, Sam played the piano, and he'd played drums with chopsticks on an overturned box. Beatles songs.

He dragged the box over. In Sam's handwriting on the top flap it said 12–13
YEARS
in black marker. He opened the box and peered inside. “There's a lot of purple,” he said.

Phil smiled. “Boys wear purple,” he said.

Steven didn't say anything.

Phil considered him. “Well, see what else you can find. We can always go over to Morris Brothers.”

“That's okay,” Steven said. “This is good.”

H
e chose a pair of navy blue gym shorts and a homemade T-shirt that said
DERVISH POWER
. They seemed like the least girlie things in the box.

“I borrowed some of your socks,” he said. He'd pulled them up to his knees. The heel came to the middle of his calf.

“No problem,” Phil said. “Did you get them from the basket in the closet? Those are the clean ones.”

“You have the same sneakers as the guy,” Steven said.

Phil stared. “I'm sorry,” he said.

Steven shrugged. “Everyone does,” he said.

They didn't seem to have anything more to say to one another.

“Ready to make some calls?” Phil asked after a while.

They sat at the kitchen counter and glanced at the open address book. There were cross-outs and eraser marks. Things were written in pen and pencil. All in her handwriting. It was tiny and looked like it should only appear on small pieces of very thin paper.

He studied the page hard to keep from crying. Lisa Altiere. Becky Amidon. Josh Armstrong. Who were these people? He felt like he'd felt that time a few years ago when he'd come out of his
bedroom to get something to eat, and his mother was in the living room on the couch with her feet in a guy's lap. He'd never seen the guy before. Kurt. His name was Kurt.

He looked at Phil. Phil was crying.

“We probably shouldn't go in alphabetical order,” Steven said.

Phil looked at him like he had no idea what he was talking about but was willing to hear him out.

“There are probably people we should start with,” Steven said.

Phil nodded.

“Probably my dad,” Steven said after a minute.

Phil nodded again. He flipped to the
E
s. There was the number. They stared at it.

“He may not be there,” Steven said. “Those guys called him last night. He said he was coming here today.”

If they didn't call, he wondered how long it would take for his father to call him.

“I guess we should call anyway,” Steven said.

It was like talking to himself. Like the part of Phil that was a grown-up had decided to leave. He nodded again, got up, took his coffee, and left the room. He was crying the whole time.

Steven checked the clock. It had twelve different versions of yellow smiley faces instead of numbers. It was noon. In San Diego that was nine. He knew that much. If his father was still there, he would be at work. His father was a plastic surgeon. His mother said that was the main reason she'd left him. She'd put him through medical school. He was supposed to be some other kind of doctor, something better than a plastic surgeon. But somewhere along the way he'd changed his mind and become someone his mother barely recognized. He had a wife in San Diego. Kids. A
boy and a girl. Steven didn't know their names. They were little. He guessed the whole plastic surgeon thing didn't bother the other wife. He didn't see what was wrong with plastic surgery. His father probably gave people who never looked in mirrors a chance. Once, he'd heard Mrs. Carpanetti tell his mom that not all doctors had to run free clinics in Harlem.

The new wife had made it part of their marriage agreement that she'd never have to take care of Steven. He wasn't supposed to know that, but he overheard his mother talking about it with a guy one night.

He thought of her feet in Kurt's lap. He wondered if she ever thought she and his father had done the wrong thing. He wondered if she'd been happy.

H
e dialed. Then he had to go to the bathroom. He had diarrhea. He stayed in there a long time. Blood rushed to his head and stayed there.

Back at the counter, he opened a can of ginger ale and dialed again. The woman who answered sounded like there wasn't a problem she couldn't fix.

He asked to speak to Dr. Engel.

She said he was with a patient; if there was a message, she'd be happy to pass it on. Who should she say was calling? She was merry.

“His son,” Steven said.

She was quiet. His son, she was probably thinking, was way too little to be making phone calls, to be sounding like this boy.

“His other son,” he said, helping out.

She was still quiet. He couldn't tell if she knew about him or not.

She told him to hang on.

The phone played jazz. His mother had said his father used to take her to listen to music in the Village. They'd heard Tiny Tim sing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Steven hadn't been impressed, and his mother had scrunched her face at him. “Whadda
you
know?” she'd said, smiling.

There he was. Right on the other end of the phone, saying, “Hello?” just like he was supposed to.

“Hi,” he said. He didn't know what to call him. “It's me.”

His father didn't say anything.

“Steven,” he added.

“I know,” he said.

Steven wasn't good at talking with grown-ups.

“She's dead,” he said for the first time ever. “Last night.” He said these things though he knew his father already knew.

“I know,” he said quietly. “The police called.”

“I found her,” Steven said. He saw her again, lying there. He saw her face again. He felt as if he were standing at the edge of something high. Would thinking of her be like this from now on?

His father was quiet for a long time. Steven didn't know what else to say.

“I'll be there tonight,” he said, and Steven thought he might cry. He wanted so much for his father to be someone he'd like. He wanted even more for his father to be someone who liked him.

Steven gave him Phil's number, and his father said he'd see him tomorrow, and they hung up. He sat there at the kitchen counter, his hand on the phone, not feeling like throwing up at all.

Phil called everyone else.