Dark Places

the hook,” Michelle said, Michelle who’d been in the kitchen and shouldn’t have heard any of this.
    Patty and Diane both turned to the phone, waiting for it to go off.
    “Well, why didn’t you answer it like we asked, Michelle?” Diane said.
    Michelle shrugged. “I forgot if we were supposed to or not.”
    “Maybe we should wait here,” Patty said.
    “Patty, those families are over there talking …
shit
about your son. Now who knows what kernel of truth may be in there or not, but don’t you want to go speak for him? Don’t you want to hear what they’re saying, make them say it to our face?”
    No, she didn’t. She wanted the stories to go away, nice and quiet,creep backward into oblivion. She didn’t want to hear what people in her town—Maggie Hinkel went to high school with her, for Pete’s sake—were saying about Ben. And she was afraid she’d crumble with all those furious faces on her. She’d weep, beg for forgiveness. Already, all she wanted was forgiveness, and they hadn’t even done anything wrong.
    “Let me put on some better clothes.”
    SHE FOUND A sweater without rips in the armpits and a pair of khaki slacks. She ran a comb through her hair, and exchanged her gold studs for a pair of imitation pearl earrings and matching necklace. You really couldn’t tell they were fake, they even felt heavy.
    As she and Diane went toward the front door—further admonishments about using the stove, a request to turn off the TV and do chores at some point—Libby began wailing again, running toward them with her arms flapping. Michelle crossed her arms over her stained sweatshirt and stomped a foot.
    “I can’t deal with her when she’s like this,” she said, a perfect imitation of Patty. “She’s too much. It’s too much for me.”
    Patty took a breath in, thought about reasoning with Michelle, thought about bullying Michelle, but Libby was bawling louder, a howling animal, screaming iwanttogowithyouiwanttogowithyou, Michelle arching an eyebrow. Patty pictured a cop showing up here while she was away, a burnt-faced, weeping child lying inconsolable on the floor. Should she take all three then? But someone should be here to answer the phone, to be here, and it was probably better to have both Michelle and Debby here than …
    “Libby, go put on your boots,” Diane ordered. “Michelle, you are in charge. Answer the phone, don’t answer the door. If it’s Ben he’ll have a key, if it’s someone else, we don’t want you two worrying about it. Michelle?”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Michelle, I’m not messing with you. Michelle?”
    “OK.”
    “OK,” Diane said, and that, literally was the final word.
    Patty stood in the hallway, useless, watching Libby put on her boots and a pair of dirt-caked mittens. Patty grabbed one woolly hand and walked her toward the car. It might be good, anyway, if people were reminded Ben had little sisters who loved him.
    Libby wasn’t a big talker—Michelle and Debby seemed to hog all her words. She made pronouncements: I like ponies. I hate spaghetti. I hate you. Like her mother, she had no poker face. No poker mood. It was all right there. When she wasn’t angry or sad, she just didn’t say much. Now, seat belted in back, taken along for the ride, she sat silently, her pink-blotched face aimed out the window, a finger against the glass, tracing the tops of trees outside.
    Neither Patty nor Diane spoke either, and the radio stayed off. Patty tried to picture the visit (visit? Could you really call something this repulsive a visit?), but all she could see was her screaming “Leave my son alone!” She and Maggie Hinkel had never been friends, but they’d always exchanged conversation at the grocery store, and the Putches she knew from church. These weren’t unkind people, they wouldn’t be unkind to her. As for the parents of the first girl, Krissi Cates, Patty had no idea. She pictured the Cateses as brightly blond and preppy, with everything matching and the house pristine and smelling of potpourri. She wondered if Mrs. Cates would spot the fake pearls.
    Diane guided her off the highway, and into the neighborhood, past a big blue sign boasting of model units in Elkwood Park. So far it was just blocks and blocks of wooden skeletons, each one an outline of a house, each one allowing you to see the outline of the one next to it, and the outline of the one next to that. A teenage girl sat smoking on the second floor of one skeleton house,