Authors: Arin Greenwood
“You look like you’re going to church,” he says to me. Then he says that people who care about clothes are bad people, immoral people. I don’t think this. I usually believe that people’s outward appearance is somehow a manifestation of what’s going on inside. So if my brother is wearing an odd, stained T-shirt with dress pants, it’s because inside he is
a strange man-boy who doesn’t give two hoots about how he’s viewed by others. Meanwhile, when I wear weird prim floral dresses, it’s because inside I’m a Quaker. Or something. Until Pete arrives, I internally debate changing my shirt. The orange T-shirt is clean. I could just go put that on …
Pete has come in a taxi, not in the brown Volvo. He is wearing a jacket that looks like it is made of very expensive leather; it fits him in this sort of perfect,
insouciant
sort of way. Mom used to enjoy insouciant clothing, she always said. She meant casual and free-spirited-looking but expensive, which is how she thought of herself. My clothes tend to be the opposite of that. Uptight and cheap.
“Nice dress,” Pete says to me.
I smooth the floral fabric. It is a little bit Amish-looking, really, and I guess it’s fair to say that the Amish are not known as an especially free-spirited-looking or fashionable people. Might be more insouciant if I were wearing an expensive leather jacket over the dress. And then maybe a garbage bag over that.
“Where are we going?” I ask, trying not to blush or smile at his compliment.
“To Megan’s,” Pete says, like I have any idea what that means. I realize as the car starts that I forgot to check on the gun before we left, but it’s too late. I’m not used to checking on guns before going out the door, like making sure the stove is off. Speaking of, I didn’t check the stove, either. Shit. I don’t remember Ben cooking anything. But he’s “baked” non-food items in the oven before.
The taxi drives down the George Washington Memorial Parkway and over the 14th Street Bridge, up through the National Mall, through downtown. Ben, sitting between me and Pete in the backseat, reads the book
Economics In One
Lesson
while we head west and end up at a two-story brick house near Dupont Circle, where Pete pays the driver before I can even reach for my wallet. We get out, walk through an artsy-looking iron gate that blocks a flower-filled front lawn. There are some kids from school sitting in chairs on the front porch. We stop to say hi. None look as if they come from an isolated religious community, and I regret the floral dress. I regret my little brother’s big briefcase.
Inside, the house has big vibrant art on the walls. The couches are tufted leather. Girls wear cutoff shorts with tank tops or button-down shirts. Some of them have on canvas sneakers or boat shoes. Some wear flip-flops, despite the somewhat chilly evening. Why did I wear this stupid
floral
dress? With thick Amish tights? And clogs? (Which I don’t know if Amish people wear. What shoes
do
the Amish wear?) Pete’s sister, Abby, has on silver wedge shoes, gold pants, a black embroidered shirt, and is drinking something out of a plastic cup. She is the very epitome of insouciant dressing. I’d look preposterous in that getup. I look like I should be churning her butter.
“Heyyyyy, Zoey,” she says to me, coming over and bending down to give me a hug. “And hey there, Ben,” she says. She nods at her brother. “Pete,” she says.
“Doctor,” he says back. Then he says to me, “Let’s get a drink.” He puts his arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the back of the house.
I turn to look and make sure that Ben’s following, but I don’t see him. Intellectually, I feel like thirty seconds after getting to a party, he’s probably fine. Probably sitting in a quiet corner reading. Or maybe being social by giving a lecture on the natural history of Inuit architecture to some drunk seniors. But I can feel the anxiety re-bubbling up inside of me,
pushing out the excitement of the date (is that what this even is?) and the regret about the floral dress.
Out on the back patio, some kids are standing around a keg. Others are on the tiny yard playing bocce ball.
Hey Zoey, Hey Zoey
, they say, then talk to Pete about whatever—music or friends or something. I hardly even hear them; mostly my thoughts veer between wondering where Ben is, hating my dress, and trying desperately to imagine what a girl detective would do to save her father. (Likely get her two closest friends to help gather evidence, identify suspects and make observations. Unfortunately, my best friend isn’t speaking with me. And observations aren’t my strong suit. As for suspects? I mean, seriously. No idea.)
Other courses of action are easier. Someone hands me a cup. I drink what’s in it. It’s coconutty. I haven’t had any alcohol since moving to this area. The last time I’d gotten drunk was that time at the movies, when I slept with my best friend’s ex. And
that
did not improve my life much. I feel that pleasant driftiness starting after half a cup, then the whole thing.
“Where did this come from?” I ask someone standing nearby. A boy from my class named David pours some more from a blender. I drink it. The drift, the fuzz, is welcome.
A girl named Muffy—it’s her real name—is saying how she’s looking for a condo in Georgetown now, since she’ll be going to college there next year, but that she’s “super angry” that her parents are going to make her get a two-bedroom in case her sister stays in town for college, too.
“I need my independence,” Muffy says. “Why can’t my parents understand this?”
“Totally,” someone else says.
Then David says, “But aren’t your parents buying you the condo?”
“Oh, shut up!” Muffy says. “Like your parents aren’t buying you a place in New York!”
“Are you going to New York for college?” I ask him.
“NYU for film school,” he says. “I’m gonna make documentaries. Shine a light on reality. How do you like your drink?”
“Tasty,” I say. “Strong, I think. Have you seen Ben?”
David leans toward me and whispers, “There’s no alcohol in it. I like to see people make themselves drunk through the sheer power of suggestion.” He brushes his lips on my ear. These kids, these kids, I don’t understand these kids. I still feel drunk. I do not know where I will be going to college in the fall, if I will be going.
If Dad doesn’t come back, I couldn’t go anyway … I couldn’t leave my brother. We’d have to go somewhere, though. The house is paid off, I think, but how would we even pay for, like, electricity? How would I pay for Ben’s school? His doctors? Where is he?
Where is he
?
“I’m going to find Ben,” I say to Pete, who is tossing a bocce ball into the middle of someone else’s game. If I were him I’d be worried about tearing my jacket while tossing those heavy balls around. The leather looks so supple and delicate. We’ve only been at the party a short time, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, and I know I have to leave once I find my brother, so that he and I can embark on our next steps in the effort to save our fucked family.
“I’ll help,” Pete says.
We walk back into the perfect house, filled with the rich and friendly. My brother isn’t in the kitchen, he’s not in the living room. I could call him if he’d carry a cell phone, but he won’t, on the grounds that given the lack of study, he’s not yet convinced that long-term exposure to the radiation won’t
cause cancer, and, he says, he has no one to call and can’t think of anyone he’d want to hear from.
Pete goes off upstairs to look. I stay on the bottom floor. Ben is not in the den, where I thought I might find him watching something on the gigantic television, amidst the many books. A girl named Lucille from the lacrosse team is in there with some guy from the class below us.
“You’re here with
Pete
?” she asks me. “I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Kind of,” I say.
“You know Anne’s liked him since second grade,” she says, which of course I didn’t know. I also don’t know how girls at this school react to interlopers. Probably politely.
I walk upstairs, toward a large black and white photograph of a glamorous woman smoking. I open a closed bedroom door, startling some
in flagrante delicto
classmates (Brian Keegan from English class, who says, “Hey Zoey, how’re your psychic powers?” when he sees me—he’s fooling around with a girl I’ve seen around but don’t think I know) but I don’t find my brother. Shit shit shit shit. I run into Pete coming out of the bathroom. Or restroom. Or latrine. Or whatever stupid word rich people use in expensive houses.
“No luck,” he says. He takes my hand as we walk down the stairs and start asking people if they’ve seen Ben.
People ask, “Who?”
“My brother,” I say. “He’s wearing suspenders.”
I’m feeling more and more on the verge of tears. As always, these days—but this time it’s my own fault. I’m so upset about losing my brother I’ve forgotten to be humiliated by wearing stupid clothing.
Why did I bring him here? Why did I even want to be here myself? I don’t get these kids. This is not my world.
My father is missing, my dog is missing, I’m wearing Amish clothing, I probably won’t get into college, my mother is dead, my brother—where is my brother?
Pete’s sister finds me. She says that Ben walked out the door some ten minutes earlier, telling her to tell me that he was leaving, going to …
“Georgetown? I think he said Georgetown,” Abby says, shifting in her big silver shoes. She has her hair tied up in a knot on top of her head. “He said there was some lobbyist’s house he had to go to or something. P.F. Chang’s? No, wait, that’s that crappy Chinese restaurant …”
“P.F. Greenawalt,” I say. “Of course.”
“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t really know lobbyists. Just the ones my parents are friends with. MAN, I’m so wasted! Are you so wasted?”
How could I not have known, just immediately, that’s where my brother had gone? All these years of living with Ben and having my deductive logic skills honed via Dad’s constant lectures, and still, I’m a fucking moron. A moron in a bad dress. I go back to find Pete again. He’s in the kitchen, talking to Muffy and Anne.
“You find Ben?” he asks me when I come over.
“He left,” I say to him. “I have to go find him. I really have to go find him. This is a disaster.”
“We’ll go get him. But I’m sure Ben’s fine,” Pete says. “He’s fourteen, right?”
What a comforting thought. No one’s ever talked about my brother before as if he could just be “fine.” I contemplate the idea of it. Then I realize that, like me, he’s got no money with him. He’s got a better sense of direction than I do, at least. If he had to, he could probably walk home. Though he forgets to look both ways when he’s crossing the street, so …
“I think I know where he is.” To get the address, I dig the business card out of my tote bag—a different one from the other night, the one that holds the gun, and which I believe and hope is still in my nightstand.
“I’ll come,” Pete says.
Pete puts his hand on my shoulder and steers me out the front door. We walk out onto the tree-lined residential street. It’s gotten chilly and I’m shivering. Pete takes off the leather jacket and hands it to me. I put it on. It is softer than silk, softer than velvet. I have that feeling again, of panic and elation and anxiety and family and the possibility of sex and the possibility of growing up and the possibility of losing—maybe even already having lost—everything I care about, all mixed into an alienating cocktail of a head-state.
Pete is in the here and now. He asks where we’re going.
“Georgetown,” I say.
“Then we should get a cab,” he says, raising his arm. And magically, one appears.
The cab driver is from Ethiopia and listens to NPR. He tells us that DC has the second-largest Ethiopian population in the world.
“Outside, of course, of Ethiopia,” he says.
Pete has been to Ethiopia. His mom, he says, used to be in the State Department. She was some sort of attaché. When he was a kid, she took him and his sister along on a lot of trips. He says he doesn’t remember much about the trip—he was young—but does recall eating raw beef by hand with a bunch of mid-level diplomats in Addis Ababa. Pete and the driver share information about a certain Ethiopian jazz musician who’d recently turned up in a club on U Street after being missing for some twenty years. They make tentative plans to go see him play together sometime soon. I half-listen. Pete takes my hand, keeps talking. Eavesdropping on this worldly conversation takes my mind off what we’re doing in this cab hardly at all.
I watch out the window as the city passes, from yuppie Dupont through somewhat sterile Foggy Bottom into
Georgetown. We drive along M Street for a little bit. The gorgeous girls with glossy hair and leather boots have shopping bags, even near eleven at night. They do not wear flowered dresses. The boys have popped collars. They look like assholes. “Date-rapey,” Mom would have said. She liked to point out guys who she thought would carry roofies. She told me never to accept a drink from one of them, but that it could, in some circumstances, be acceptable to have them pay for dinner. Helpful life lessons were Mom’s forte. Oh, Mom. Were you joking? Did you mean it? Did you teach me what to look out for well enough? Did Dad teach me how to get myself out of the fixes you didn’t teach me to avoid? I look for more assholes; I look for Roscoe. I miss my parents. I have this crazy feeling of wanting to make babies with Pete.
The cab takes us up to O Street and along the street of beautiful houses. The houses here look like the ones in Old Town but somehow, without any clear visual difference (to me), they look even more expensive. The cab stops in front of a large stone house. The meter reads $14.75. I look at Pete. He pulls out his wallet.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him.
“You’re very cute,” he says, as we get out of the car, and I realize, with a sick stab in my stomach, that this is the very spot where my mother was killed. I haven’t been back to this spot since the week after she was found there, shot on the sidewalk. We kept going back to look for Roscoe. Dad made me knock on all the doors on the block to see if anyone had seen our dog, because he doesn’t like talking to strangers. No one had seen a dog. Several people invited me in to have cups of tea, though. They saw the crying and cold girl asking about the dog that went missing when her mother was killed outside on the sidewalk. I declined, since Dad didn’t want me leaving him alone outside.