Page 10 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
Mom kept a strong chin during our time up north, throwing herself into “improving our diet” as a way of distracting from her grief. But now, back in Winnetka, in a huge house with an excruciatingly empty bedroom where her youngest son should have been, she shuts down. Shuts the door to her bedroom. Climbs into bed.
We won’t see her for a month.
—
IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING MOM’Sdisappearance, my family deteriorates. Karma stops inviting friends over. Dad stops playing Bob Dylan records in his office. Taz stops drawing. Clarence and Caleb, who have their own apartments downtown, no longer come for family dinner on Sundays.
It’s August. The days are long and hot and suffocatingly humid, a quintessential Chicago summer. Cicadas drone. Fireflies twinkle at night. Our house sits right on Lake Michigan, the back door looking out over the private beach that we share with our neighbors. I spend the mornings reading on a towel in the sand or in our backyard, a long grassy hill surrounded by towering oak trees. In the afternoon, I curl up with my laptop in our upstairs library and log into the online games that Taz taught me how to play. At night, I sometimes bike to the ice cream shop in downtown Winnetka, eating Moose Tracks alone on a bench just for an excuse to leave the house.
It’s quiet at home. Far too quiet. The only real activity comes from the kitchen, where Karma bakes her feelings into more batches of pastries than our house can handle. She keeps every tray that comes out of the oven. Even the failed attempts. Cloud-dolloped vanilla cupcakes sparkle next to beige bricks topped with oozing grey puss. She swaddles each batch in Cling Wrap and stores them throughout the kitchen. Anywhere—the counter, the windowsill, the breakfast table, the cabinets—just as long as they remain in plain sight. One lumpy, Saran-wrapped bundle atop another. Stacks turn into mountains. The kitchen grows thick with new aromas: charred chocolate, melted butter, biting sweetness. And, as the days pass, the subtle, ominous hint of mold.
Taz says, “Mom might spontaneously combust when she sees this.”
Karma says, “Mom would have to leave her bedroom for that to happen.”
For a week Karma makes nothing but brioche. Each batch comes out lighter, puffier, floating with air and yeast. The kitchen overflows with them. The loaves grow so large she stores them in garbage bags, not Ziplocs. Black ones, the Hefty kind. She fills every cabinet and the countertop, too. With nowhere else to go, she dropsthe bags onto the floor. They pile up in the corner. The kitchen becomes confusing; it looks like a landfill but smells like a bakery.
Nobody stops her. Not even Dad. It’s not like we need the kitchen for cooking; our fridge is stuffed with more sympathy food than we can handle. Every night, we choose whatever Saran-wrapped casserole looks best and stick a slice in the microwave. Sometimes, we skip dinner altogether, eating Karma’s desserts instead.
Anyway, Speedy doesn’t have the bandwidth to care about the fact that it has become virtually impossible to move about the kitchen. For the first time in twenty years of marriage, Dad has to manage all four of us—sorry, all three of us—alone.
It’s not that he can’t do it. He can. It’s just that it’s completely foreign territory for him. The arrangement between my parents has always been the same: Mom manages the kids, Dad manages everything else. You’d be surprised at how much admin it takes to be this rich—the bills, the banks, the taxes, the travel. But they handle it, they’ve always handled it. Until now. Until Wendy Beck disappeared into her bedroom, leaving her husband to deal withallof it: every last bill, every last dinner, every last child.
—
“I BET IT’S PAYBACK,” KARMAsays one afternoon. We’re standing in the kitchen. Karma is teaching me how to pound dough. I feel guilty saying it, but part of me is glad she stopped bringing friends around; she finally has time to pay attention to me.
“What is?” I ask.
“Mom staying in their room and making Dad do everything. I bet it’s some messed-up version of payback.”
“Payback for what?”
Karma looks up. “You don’t know about Dad?”
“Know what about Dad?”
“He’s sober.”
“What’ssober?”
“It means he doesn’t drink alcohol or anything.”
I absentmindedly tear chunks of brioche from the warm loaf on the counter. Huh. Now that I think about it, Momdoesget red wine when we go out to eat, while Dad gets Shirley Temples. But I didn’t think that was because he couldn’t drink; I thought it was because red wine is gross and Shirley Temples are delicious.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because.” Karma looks down at the ball of dough and presses the heel of her hand to its soft belly, kneading gently. “Dad was a drug addict.”
I know about drug addiction. I saw a documentary about it on TV. Hideous women with stringy hair and sunken eye sockets stared out from the flatscreen and talked about how their families don’t love them anymore.
“What drugs did he do?”
“Cocaine, mostly.” Her hand speeds up. “But there were other things, too. Alcohol. Marijuana. Cigarettes. But cocaine was the main thing. Cocaine was the ‘problem.’ ” She sighs. “It wasn’t his fault, really. It was the way he grew up. Everything pushed Dad toward addiction—his friends, his parents, his money. Even his genetics, for God’s sake.”
I try to keep up with what my sister is saying. I recognize that the story she’s telling me is important. Very important. But I can’t make the pieces fit. I can’t reconcile the images of needles and scars and hideous, disfigured faces with my harmless, well-kept father.
“He was able to keep it secret for a long time, but when Mom finally found out about it, they’d already had Taz and me. The way Dad tells it, when she caught him…” Karma trails off. She looks up from the ball of dough. Her face is horrified, as if she only just realized she’s talking about drug addiction to a ten-year-old. I’m not sure what my face looks like. She finishes briskly, saying, “He toldme about it a few years ago. I’m sure he’ll do the same for you one day.”
