An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [61]
"No," my mother said.
"No," I said, and then added, unnecessarily, "I have no idea where it is, either."
After that, none of us Pulsifers said anything else. Detective Wilson tugged at his coat sleeves, then fiddled with his hood; for some reason he kept looking toward the door, as though he were onstage and his director was in the wings, about to feed the detective his cues. "OK, that's all I need for right now," he finally said, visibly drooping in the shoulders. "I'll be in touch." Then, without shaking anyone's hand or even giving anyone his card, he practically sprinted out the door and into the night. My father disappeared into his bedroom to double-check, no doubt, the status of his precious shoe box and its missing letter. But my mind was still on Detective Wilson, who'd come looking for an answer and left behind all these questions. Why hadn't he kept on questioning us until he'd gotten some answers? Was he a bumbler, too? Did anyone know what the hell they were doing around here? What sort of detective was he, anyway?
"What police department was Detective Wilson from?" I asked.
"You know, I don't think he said," my mother told me. I could hear my father in his bedroom moaning loudly and deeply, like a wounded cow. But my mother didn't seem to notice. She was staring at me, her eyes full of questions, those questions orbiting the stationary suns of her pupils. Did you do something, Sam? she wanted to know. You just moved home: did you do something bad already? Oh, Sam, what have you done now? How have you disappointed me this time? She had these questions, all right, but she didn't have to ask them. Because my mother, thank God, was a drunk, and this was another good thing about being a drunk: you always had a question that would trump all other questions.
"Who wants a drink?" my mother asked, then got off the couch and walked to the kitchen before finding out who besides her wanted one.
I WAS SO OVERFULL with questions that it wasn't until five in the morning that I woke up and remembered what had earlier seemed like some of the most pressing ones. Why hadn't my mother told me she'd been fired from her job? And what did she do every day when she was supposed to be at work? I could have waited until a decent hour to ask my mother these questions, but who knew, once I woke up, what other questions might need to be asked and answered? Who knew what other mysteries might yet pop up and obscure the old ones?
I got out of bed and made my shuffling, groggy way down to my mother's room, the room my parents' used to share. There is something creepy and illicit about sneaking into your parents' bedroom when you are young, and this is no less true when you're an adult. The door was closed. I stood there for a moment, steeling myself to be stealthy, then carefully turned the knob and opened the door. Even in the dark, I could see that the room was as I remembered it. There was a wooden dresser to the right of the door, where my father kept, or used to keep, his clothes; kitty-corner to that was the mirrored walk-in closet where my mother kept her dresses and skirts. Kitty-corner to that was an end table with a phone and a digital clock and various framed pictures of her and me. And in between the table and me was the bed, my parents' big queen-size bed, which was empty. No one was in it. I ran my hand over the bedspread and then sat on the bed itself to make sure. Not only was nobody in it, but nobody had been in it, either. The bed was made, the bedspread taut except for where I'd sat on it. There were two pillows at the head of the bed, and no heads had touched them, not that night, maybe not the night before or the night before that or ...
So, despite my best efforts, here was another question, and first thing in the morning, too: Where the hell was my mother? There were so many questions that I began