The radiator pinged black dots. His mother’s hair fuzzed up in a static halo, her glasses smudged and greasy. “We’re not,” she said. “Now hurry or you’ll be late for school.”
THE DAY SUSTAINED ITS afterglow following the scrapping of Florida—no more beaches, though—even when Travis Bhopa said “I’ll kill you” in a vampiric accent outside the cafeteria, although he’d said weirder things to other kids, like I’ll burn down your building and eat your ears. Travis lacked allies; he had no backup. After school Deming and Michael walked home together, unlocked the apartment with the keys their mothers had given them, exhumed a block of rice from the refrigerator and a package of cold-cuts, moist pink circles of ham. They were adept at making meals even their friends found disgusting. Later, these meals would be the ones Deming missed the most: fried rice and salami showered with garlic powder from a big plastic bottle, instant noodles steeped in ketchup topped with American cheese and Tabasco.
They ate on the couch, which took up most of the living room, a slippery beast printed with orange and red flowers that made zippy noises when you attempted to sit and instead slid. It was also Vivian’s bed. His mother hated it, but Deming saw worlds in its patterns, stared at the colors until he got cross-eyed and the flowers took on different shapes, fish tank, candies, tree tops in late October, and he envisioned himself underwater, swimming against the surface of the fabric. “When I manage my own salon, the first thing I’m going to do is get rid of that thing,” his mother would say. “You come home one day, it’ll be gone.”
Four to eight was the TV dead zone, talk shows and local news. There was a Geometry test tomorrow that Michael didn’t need to study for and Deming wasn’t going to study for unless his mother found out about it. He got sleepy thinking about the worksheet they had done in class today, on which he’d scribbled made-up answers next to triangles and other assorted shapes. What is the measure of angle C? Fifty hotdogs. When it was seven and his mother wasn’t home, he figured she was working late, that he had been granted a Geometry reprieve.
Vivian came home before Jeopardy ended, trailed by the scent of ammonia. She sewed at the kitchen table, piecemeal orders from a factory, but lately she had also been cleaning apartments in Riverdale.
“Polly’s not here? No one’s made dinner?”
“We had ham,” Michael said.
“That’s not dinner. Deming, your mother was supposed to get food on the way home.”
“She’s at work,” Deming said.
Vivian opened the refrigerator and shut it. “Fine. I’m taking a shower.”
When Leon returned it was eight o’clock. “Your mother’s supposed to be home already. Guess that new boss made her stay late.” He bought frozen pizzas for dinner, and the sausage balls resembled boils but were oily and delicious. Deming ate three slices. Mama never got bodega pizza.
Leon’s cell phone rang. He took the call in the hallway, and Deming put away the dishes and waited for him to return. “Was that Mama? Can I talk to her?”
“It was her friend Didi.” Leon squeezed his phone in his hand like he was wringing a wet towel.
“Where’s Mama? Are we going to Florida?”
“Away for a few days. Visiting friends.”
“What friends?”
“You don’t know them.”
“Where do they live?”
“It’s late. You should get to sleep.”
Michael was sitting on their bed. “Where’s your mom?” With his glasses off he looked older and thinner, his stare wide, unfocused.
“Leon says she’s away for a few days.” As Deming got under the blankets he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.
A WEEK PASSED AND he went to school once. When his mother and Leon had gone to Atlantic City for a night, she had called and reminded him to go to sleep on time, but now he stayed up late, ate M&M’s for breakfast, played hooky with his friend Hung, whose father had died the month before. They watched DVDs in Hung’s apartment on Valentine Avenue for so long they fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep again, cranking the volume until the car chases and gunfire soothed the cold horror skittering inside him. Where was Mama? She had no friends to visit. There was nobody to lie to for the following day’s detention, to hound him about having a plan. Vivian never checked homework; Michael always did his.
Saturday, again. The tube of hand lotion was inside the bathroom cabinet next to her toothbrush. Tucked into the bristles was a green speck, vegetable matter she had brushed from a molar. Deming uncapped the lotion, pushed out a glob. A familiar fragrance, antiseptic and floral, socked him in the sinuses, and he rinsed his hands with soap and hot water until the smell faded. He found one of her socks at the foot of the bed and its partner across the room, lodged against the dresser, and bundled them into the ball shape she preferred. He sat in a corner of the bedroom with a box of her things. Blue jeans; a plastic cat for decorating a cell phone antenna, still sealed in its packaging; a yellow sweater she never wore, tiny hard balls of yarn dotting its sleeves. There was a blue button, solid and round, which he stuck in his pocket.
Her sneakers, her toothbrush, the purple mug with the chipped rim that she drank tea from: still in the apartment, though not her keys, not her wallet or handbag. Deming opened the closet. Her coat and winter hat and boots were gone—she had worn them to work that Thursday—but the rest of her clothes still there. He shut the door. She hadn’t packed. Maybe she’d been the victim of a crime, like on CSI, and maybe she was dead.