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, she looked like Wonder Woman in her invisible plane, sitting in the outlines of a bedroom. When she tapped her cigarette, the ashes fluttered down into the dining room.
All the pre-houses unnerved Patty. They were recognizable but totally foreign, an everyday word you suddenly couldn’t remember to save your life.
“Pretty, huh?” Diane said, wagging a finger at the neighborhood.
Two more turns and they were there, a block of tidy houses, real houses, a cluster of cars in front of one.
“Looks like a party,” Diane sniffed. She rolled down the window and spat outside.
The car was silent for a few seconds, except for Diane’s throat-noises.
“Solidarity,” Diane said. “Don’t worry, worst they can do is yell.”
“Maybe you should stay here with Libby,” Patty said. “I don’t want yelling in front of her.”
“Nah,” Diane said. “No one stays in the car. We can do this. Yeah, Libby? You’re a tough little girl, right?” Diane turned her bulk to Libby in the backseat, her parka rustling, and then back to Patty. “It’ll be good for them to see her, know he’s got a little sister around who loves him.” Patty had a shot of confidence that she’d thought the same thing.
Diane was out of the car then, on the other side, rousting Libby, and opening the door wide for her to get out. The three of them walked up the sidewalk, Patty immediately feeling ill. Her ulcers had been quiet for a bit, but now her belly burned. She had to unclench her jaw and work it loose. They stood on the doorstep, Patty and Diane in front, with Libby just behind her mother, glancing out backward. Patty imagined a stranger driving past, thinking they were friends joining the festivities. The door still had a Christmas wreath on it. Patty thought, They had a nice happy Christmas and now they are frightened and angry and I bet they keep thinking, but we just had such a nice happy Christmas. The house was like something from a catalog, and there were two BMWs in the driveway and these were not people who were used to bad things happening.