Like I was saying, though, she and my father, on our way to the station, both thought I was lying, and badly at that. “Please stop,” said my mother, as we pulled into the parking lot, and my father said I better not mention to the cops “any of this talking-to-objects bullshit.” He told us he was pretty sure that one of them—Platzik—had a brother he worked with, and he had a good feeling that if all I’d really done was vandalize some swingsets he could keep me out of trouble. Was it all I’d really done?
It was all I’d really done, I said.
We stayed in the car while he went inside the station and man-to-manned Platzik. My mom lit a Quill. I asked if I could have one. I don’t know why I did that. In order to get her to respond, I guess. Or maybe—at least I’d like to think so—to make things simpler, to give her some relief. Although she’d maligned it all through dinner, anger was far less confusing an emotion than the ones we were feeling there in the car. Even at twelve years old, I knew that.
She turned around and slapped me, once, across the cheek. She’d never done that before, yet I wasn’t surprised. It seemed to be the correct response.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Belt?”
I knew better than to answer. I lowered my head, focused on the sting below my left eye.
“Your father, hopefully, is handling the police, but you are in lots of trouble with me, you liar.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t know what sorry is yet.”
I said, “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?” I said.
She slapped me again.
When my father returned, he said it was good, for once, that I was crying, and he said to keep it up. He said all I had to do was volunteer a list of swingsets I’d murdered—dates and locations—keep looking pitiful, and give the cops my word I’d stop my embarrassing, ludicrous behavior. No one would be interested in pressing any charges as long as I wasn’t a threat or a wiseass.
I did as he said, we were home in an hour, and time proved him right: no one ever pressed charges.
Most likely it was Officer Platzik himself who later gave a copy of the list to the Herald; a third Platzik brother was an editor there, and that Platzik had a nephew who’d attended the murders at the Strumms’ and at Feather’s. This nephew was Blackie’s doormat, Euwenus, and he was the first kid to talk to reporters. At least that’s what he claimed. I didn’t hold it against him. He wanted attention. Lots of kids did. Lots of kids ended up talking to the Herald, and bringing the edition they were quoted in to school, bragging about it. That was the only way anyone could know it was them, for the paper refused to print any of their names, or mine for that matter, the idea being that, down the line, as we all grew up and got jobs and families and homes of our own, the story wouldn’t be able to follow us.
FRIENDS
THE PENULTIMATE WEEK OF 1987, a block from the building downtown where she worked, my mom’s Civic caught its second flat in two days. The sky was at its steely, Chicago worst—throwing lumpy snow sideways through a drool of freezing rain—so she turned the car around, reparked in the garage, and, because her spare tire was already in use, returned to the office to phone for a tow. Three hours, they told her, the trucks were all booked—holiday rush hour, accidents everywhere. Three was too many, and it probably meant five. My mother was beat, distraught, on the verge. She was dying of cancer and had no idea. The insomnia, the headaches, the mood swings and nausea, her diminishing weight—she’d assumed these symptoms were brought on by the stress my illness was causing her. I’m sure that, at least in part, they were. I had just quit the Haldol. My grades were in the toilet. Neighbors knew our business; her coworkers, too. Neither her nor my father’s benefits packages covered mental health care, SSDI wouldn’t kick in for months, and all the treatment I’d been getting was paid for out of pocket. What they’d saved was being spent, and there wasn’t much left. She was tired, she was tired, she was tired, she hurt. So even though it would mean that my overworked father would have to drive ten miles through the slush-jammed traffic to get her at the station, and then, the next morning, drive her back before work, she left her car in the garage, took the bus across the loop to Ogilvie Center, and rode the Milwaukee Line out to Mt. Prospect.
The ad card was bolted to the wall of the bus, up near the ceiling: a research team at the University of Chicago was seeking volunteers, ages fifteen and under, who’d been diagnosed with psychotic disorders, to participate in a study involving therapy animals. In exchange for their participation, the volunteers’ treatment would be paid in full for the next six months.
* * *
Three Saturdays later, on a new set of tires, we drove to Hyde Park for my entrance interview. In a water-damaged office in a building made of stone that looked like a church or a place to buy poisons and tinctures of dragon’s scale, my mom gave a woman named Dr. Tilly a rubberbanded pair of Christmas-colored folders—red from the cops, green from my psychiatrist, Dr. Calgary. Tilly handed me a short questionnaire to fill out, had my mother read over and sign a few forms, told us she would be back soon, and left. We ate chocolate chip granola bars and played gin rummy—my mom, a freak for solitaire, always had cards—then ate more granola bars and played Old Maid until, eventually, Dr. Tilly returned. She thanked us for our patience, led us down some narrow hallways, and in one of these my mother brushed up against a woman distractedly heading in the opposite direction.
The woman had been looking down the length of her torso at a white wire cage she was pressing to her abdomen. I’d seen her coming toward us from half the hall away. Her cage emitted squeaks, and I saw the orange flash of small eyes between its bars, but before I had a chance to see what animal was in there, her padded shoulder had met my mother’s, and she’d turned the cage away, reflexively cradling it. Both women said, “Excuse me,” and, a few yards before me, a girl, roughly my age, wearing dirty satin evening gloves—a girl who I could tell, by their strong resemblance, was the daughter of the woman bearing the cage—echoed the phrase in a singsong voice. With a couple more steps, we became briefly parallel, this daughter and I, and she threw herself sideways, which knocked me to the wall. “Excuse me, don’t you think?” she said, grabbing my shoulders, shaking them a little. “Excuse me. Excuse me!” Then she ran down the hall to catch up to her mother.
Dr. Tilly apologized. My mom looked concerned. I enjoyed the encounter. I thought it was funny. I said, “That was funny.” We proceeded down the hall and a flight or two of stairs, and arrived at the office of Dr. Lionel Manx. Dr. Tilly knocked on the jamb, then departed.
Manx didn’t rise from his desk to greet us, but swept his arm widely to invite us to sit. All the surfaces were brown—mostly shiny, brown leather affixed to shiny brown wood by shiny, silver dollar–size, brown leather buttons. The buttons on the arms of the chairs facing Manx appeared to be chewed, and soon I knew why: the urge to pry them off with one’s fingers was powerful. Nearly irresistible. Every kid who’d ever sat there must have had to contend with it. My mom kept reaching sideways to still my left hand, while in the meantime the fingers of her own left went digging.