Save the Enemy Page 5

  And indeed, Ben is standing at the front door waiting for me, like Roscoe used to do. “I don’t want to brush my teeth,” he shouts. I don’t want Ben throwing a temper tantrum now. He does that occasionally. It usually happens when his schedule has been disrupted, he hasn’t had enough sleep, and he’s had a lot of sugar. I can’t imagine that an encounter with a diabolical, armed lobbyist helped. So, this really would be the time.

  I shrug toward Pete. “He doesn’t want to brush his teeth,” I say.

  “You don’t have a nanny who makes him?” Pete asks.

  I can’t tell if he’s joking to lighten the mood. “Just me.”

  Pete leans in toward me. I want to explain about my dad being missing and thank him for not asking why we had to go to the Postal Museum in the middle of the night. I want to kiss him. I want to cry. I also want to go examine the gun—I’ve never had one in my hands before; Dad’s special self-reliance training didn’t extend to firearms. He’s afraid of them. Seems reasonable, I guess, unless you believe that might makes right or that the Second Amendment is worth preserving. Or that you might actually need to defend yourself one day.

  Pete reaches out, touches my left hand. I realize my hands are clenched in fists again. Or maybe still.

  He rubs my hand and says, “Goodnight, Zoey.”

  I get out of the car and go inside. Ben goes up to his room without brushing his teeth.

  In my own room, I want to examine the gun, but it scares me too much. What if I accidentally shoot it? What if I accidentally do it on purpose?

  So I don’t even take it out of the tote bag—just remove my book, keys, wallet, and lip gloss, then put the bag-wrapped gun in my newsstand. I turn on this stupid, cheesy little lamp my mom and dad gave me for my twelfth birthday, that’s next to my bed. It’s one of those “motion lamps” where the heat of the light makes a paper cylinder spin. My cylinder has pictures of fish and dolphins on it. The fish and dolphins look like they are swimming. I wanted to be a marine biologist back then, which made my dad happy because—stay with me—we lived in Rhode Island and the University of Rhode Island has a good marine biology program, which meant I could be educated for in-state tuition.

  Dad also thinks that education shouldn’t be publicly financed, so he is opposed to state universities on principle, but he’s not going to turn away a good bargain. Mom thought marine biology wasn’t a good profession for me. It would mean too much time in boats, which would make having a family hard. I wasn’t thinking about having a family. I wasn’t concerned about my education. I just liked dolphins. They are ancient descendants of land-walking mammals, you know. I like that animals can evolve back into the ocean. And that dolphins are remarkably, stunningly good at recovering from injuries. They can be bitten by a shark and survive. I like that, too. And their permanent smiles. Are they as happy as they look? They must be happy to be able to survive shark bites so readily.

  I watch the swimmy creatures move around my room for a few minutes, saying “Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Dad” quietly. Then I look at the tote bag with its gun snuggled inside. And in case there’s more from Dad or his abductors, I look at my cell phone. But nothing, goddamn nothing. I look at the photo of the cigarette in the toilet. Then flip through some that are less alarming. When I get back to one of Mom wearing a holiday-themed sweater at Christmas—we had no tree, since “Jews don’t decorate shrubbery, but Catholics like themed knitwear” (Dad’s words)—I turn the phone off. It’s time for sleep.

  I wake up in the morning to find Ben standing over me, staring.

  “Pete made breakfast,” he says to me, as I try to control my startle.

  “Pete?”

  “He’s downstairs.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “He’s making breakfast,” Ben repeats. I’m not going to get satisfactory answers here.

  “Did you … sleep well?” I ask him as I start getting out of bed. The lamp is still spinning around. I turn it off, and the fishes and dolphins disappear. They’ve died is one way to look at it. They are just lights on the wall that have been turned off is another.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Did you … see Mom?”

  “She told me some more information,” he says.

  “Did she say if Dad is okay?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think she’s omniscient. She might not know how Dad is.”

  Ben leaves my room. I check my phone—still nothing—then pad downstairs, groggy, already in a somewhat anxious state. I don’t know what time it is. I have a vague recollection of some exciting, thrilling, terrible events from the evening before. I have a vague recollection that school is where I’m supposed to be going.

  Pete has scrambled eggs and toast.

  “Coffee?” I ask him.

  “Just tea,” he says, pouring a cup from a pot.

  “Nietzsche would like that,” I say to him. Yes, Zoey at—I check the clock on the microwave—6:45 in the morning is full of random allusions to the German philosophers. “No meals between meals, no coffee, coffee breeds darkness,” I mumble. “Tea is wholesome only in the morning. A little, but strong. It’s from Ecce Homo. My dad read it to me when I was a kid. But I still like coffee …”

  Pete turns back to the food. “You can have a lot of tea if you want. It’s pretty strong.”

  “Thanks,” I say. This boy is so chipper so early in the morning. It is a relief to see my brother eating eggs, not ice cream. “So … what are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Cooking breakfast,” he says.

  “Why are you here cooking breakfast?”

  “I slept in the car last night. We got done in DC after curfew,” he says. “Figured I’d stay outside your house, make sure you and Benster are okay, with your father out of town and no nanny.”

  Jesus. This guy is looking out for me and Ben. He slept in the car and is here making breakfast. I can feel a tiny drop in my anxiety. For a moment, my heart rate seems very nearly normal. My head isn’t completely buzzy. Adrenaline isn’t giving me the sensation of EVERYTHING BEING AWFUL AND SCARY AND UNMANAGEABLE AND COMPLETELY UNFATHOMABLE. Do all rich kids stand guard outside some girl’s house all night when the father isn’t home, only to swoop in and man the griddle first thing in the morning?

  “Do you find yourself sleeping in your car outside your classmates’ houses a lot?” I ask him. “Is this something normal for your cohort?”

  “Heh,” Pete says. “I don’t know about my ‘cohort’ but I’ve slept in my car a few times. When I go play gigs, sometimes I’ll sleep in the car if I’m missing curfew. Or when I stay at my mom’s house, if she happens to be in the country, I’ll sometimes sleep in the car rather than coming in and having to deal with her. Moms can be really crazy.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. But then I get sad. My mom was crazy, but now I really miss her. I didn’t have my own car or maybe I’d have slept outside rather than deal with her, too. We won’t get to see. “What about your dad?” I ask.

  “He died when I was little,” Pete says. “He drowned.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” I say.

  “Thanks,” Pete says.

  Pete serves me up one last piece of buttered toast, drinks another swig of tea, then says he has to get going to school soon, so he can change clothes before classes. He asks if we want to ride in with him.

  “Sure,” I say. “We’ll just go get dressed.”

  By 7:30 we are out the door, back in the Volvo, on our way to school, where I quickly realize that my homework is not done, my reading isn’t completed, and—since I seem unable to read people’s minds, despite reading several books on the topic—I am not going to pass the pop quiz in chemistry. My dream of going to Berkeley—it’s always been a long shot, given my wildly erratic transcript, but I have good SATs and my mother is dead, which should count for something—seems ever-farther away. As far away as California.

  I run into Pete in the hall between miserable, unfathomable chemistry and English, which
I am pretty good at, though distracted by trying to employ psychic phenomenon. He smiles. “Hey,” he says. “How are you feeling today?”

  How honest an answer should I give?

  “Thanks for driving us,” I say. “Thanks for cooking breakfast.”

  “No problem,” he says. He pauses. “There’s a party tonight. Want to come with?”

  Oh boy. My pulse quickens. Little Zoey, getting asked on a date. Little Zoey, who can’t leave little Ben by himself, lest he turn on the stove and forget to turn it off.

  “Can my brother come?” I ask.

  “Ben? Sure, of course,” Pete says. “Ben’s the best.”

  A voice inside of me says, “This is not the time to develop a frivolous social life. Now is the time to find Dad.” Another, louder, less sophisticated voice inside of me says, “Squee! Pete wants to take me to a party!”

  Ben is waiting for me by the field house after lacrosse practice. I notice that instead of his uniform, Ben is wearing suspenders with a pair of Dad’s pants and what may be one of Mom’s T-shirts. His shoes don’t match, but at least he is wearing two of them. How did I miss this outfit when we were going to school today? Did Pete notice it?

  “Want to go to a party tonight?” I ask him as we start walking toward home.

  “Not really,” he says. “Not at all.” Then he starts to breathe quickly. “Please don’t make me go to a party. We need to go find Dad.”

  “How about we go to the party for fifteen minutes, then go to P.F. Greenawalt’s house?”

  “Okay,” Ben says.

  I’ll find a way to make this work.

  Pete comes to pick us up at 8:30. I’ve agonized over what to wear—what indeed is the appropriate outfit for an evening that includes romance, socializing with wealthy classmates, and then hunting for one’s mysteriously kidnapped father? I have no idea. In Rhode Island, I’d have worn tight jeans, old clogs, and an acrylic sweater. Then I would have regretted what I was wearing when I saw what the other kids were wearing. But mostly those are just the sorts of things I owned. Mom had great clothes; I have acrylic sweaters and spritzed bangs.

  For all I know, kids wear, like, suits to private school parties. Or floral dresses. A lot of girls wear exceedingly prim floral dresses on our few “dress-up days” at school. I finally put on a floral dress that I found at an Old Town consignment shop with tights and my clogs. This is what I now usually wear to dress-up day. It is a soft teal with lilac flowers on it, and it’s made of a very fine corduroy.

  I used to wear a different outfit to dress-up day—a navy blue skirt with a nice orange T-shirt—but then one day that kid Brian Keegan asked me why I always wore the same outfit and why it didn’t look like what the other girls wore. He didn’t ask it meanly. He seemed genuinely curious. I don’t know how or why he noticed my attire, but I went out after that and hunted down a floral dress I wore to three subsequent dress-up days. It is an alarmingly repellent dress, according to some people—Mom, who was raised semi-Catholic, told me that only backwards Protestants wear dresses like that—but I hope I will fit in.

  I’ve asked my brother to change his clothes, but he refuses. He says he won’t leave the house at all if I keep talking about clothes.

  “You look like you’re going to church,” he says to me. Then he says that people who care about clothes are bad people, immoral people. I don’t think this. I usually believe that people’s outward appearance is somehow a manifestation of what’s going on inside. So if my brother is wearing an odd, stained T-shirt with dress pants, it’s because inside he is a strange man-boy who doesn’t give two hoots about how he’s viewed by others. Meanwhile, when I wear weird prim floral dresses, it’s because inside I’m a Quaker. Or something. Until Pete arrives, I internally debate changing my shirt. The orange T-shirt is clean. I could just go put that on …

  Pete has come in a taxi, not in the brown Volvo. He is wearing a jacket that looks like it is made of very expensive leather; it fits him in this sort of perfect, insouciant sort of way. Mom used to enjoy insouciant clothing, she always said. She meant casual and free-spirited-looking but expensive, which is how she thought of herself. My clothes tend to be the opposite of that. Uptight and cheap.

  “Nice dress,” Pete says to me.

  I smooth the floral fabric. It is a little bit Amish-looking, really, and I guess it’s fair to say that the Amish are not known as an especially free-spirited-looking or fashionable people. Might be more insouciant if I were wearing an expensive leather jacket over the dress. And then maybe a garbage bag over that.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, trying not to blush or smile at his compliment.

  “To Megan’s,” Pete says, like I have any idea what that means. I realize as the car starts that I forgot to check on the gun before we left, but it’s too late. I’m not used to checking on guns before going out the door, like making sure the stove is off. Speaking of, I didn’t check the stove, either. Shit. I don’t remember Ben cooking anything. But he’s “baked” non-food items in the oven before.

  The taxi drives down the George Washington Memorial Parkway and over the 14th Street Bridge, up through the National Mall, through downtown. Ben, sitting between me and Pete in the backseat, reads the book Economics In One Lesson while we head west and end up at a two-story brick house near Dupont Circle, where Pete pays the driver before I can even reach for my wallet. We get out, walk through an artsy-looking iron gate that blocks a flower-filled front lawn. There are some kids from school sitting in chairs on the front porch. We stop to say hi. None look as if they come from an isolated religious community, and I regret the floral dress. I regret my little brother’s big briefcase.

  Inside, the house has big vibrant art on the walls. The couches are tufted leather. Girls wear cutoff shorts with tank tops or button-down shirts. Some of them have on canvas sneakers or boat shoes. Some wear flip-flops, despite the somewhat chilly evening. Why did I wear this stupid floral dress? With thick Amish tights? And clogs? (Which I don’t know if Amish people wear. What shoes do the Amish wear?) Pete’s sister, Abby, has on silver wedge shoes, gold pants, a black embroidered shirt, and is drinking something out of a plastic cup. She is the very epitome of insouciant dressing. I’d look preposterous in that getup. I look like I should be churning her butter.

  “Heyyyyy, Zoey,” she says to me, coming over and bending down to give me a hug. “And hey there, Ben,” she says. She nods at her brother. “Pete,” she says.

  “Doctor,” he says back. Then he says to me, “Let’s get a drink.” He puts his arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the back of the house.

  I turn to look and make sure that Ben’s following, but I don’t see him. Intellectually, I feel like thirty seconds after getting to a party, he’s probably fine. Probably sitting in a quiet corner reading. Or maybe being social by giving a lecture on the natural history of Inuit architecture to some drunk seniors. But I can feel the anxiety re-bubbling up inside of me, pushing out the excitement of the date (is that what this even is?) and the regret about the floral dress.

  Out on the back patio, some kids are standing around a keg. Others are on the tiny yard playing bocce ball. Hey Zoey, Hey Zoey, they say, then talk to Pete about whatever—music or friends or something. I hardly even hear them; mostly my thoughts veer between wondering where Ben is, hating my dress, and trying desperately to imagine what a girl detective would do to save her father. (Likely get her two closest friends to help gather evidence, identify suspects and make observations. Unfortunately, my best friend isn’t speaking with me. And observations aren’t my strong suit. As for suspects? I mean, seriously. No idea.)

  Other courses of action are easier. Someone hands me a cup. I drink what’s in it. It’s coconutty. I haven’t had any alcohol since moving to this area. The last time I’d gotten drunk was that time at the movies, when I slept with my best friend’s ex. And that did not improve my life much. I feel that pleasant driftiness starting after half a cup, then the whole thing.
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  “Where did this come from?” I ask someone standing nearby. A boy from my class named David pours some more from a blender. I drink it. The drift, the fuzz, is welcome.

  A girl named Muffy—it’s her real name—is saying how she’s looking for a condo in Georgetown now, since she’ll be going to college there next year, but that she’s “super angry” that her parents are going to make her get a two-bedroom in case her sister stays in town for college, too.

  “I need my independence,” Muffy says. “Why can’t my parents understand this?”

  “Totally,” someone else says.

  Then David says, “But aren’t your parents buying you the condo?”

  “Oh, shut up!” Muffy says. “Like your parents aren’t buying you a place in New York!”

  “Are you going to New York for college?” I ask him.

  “NYU for film school,” he says. “I’m gonna make documentaries. Shine a light on reality. How do you like your drink?”

  “Tasty,” I say. “Strong, I think. Have you seen Ben?”

  David leans toward me and whispers, “There’s no alcohol in it. I like to see people make themselves drunk through the sheer power of suggestion.” He brushes his lips on my ear. These kids, these kids, I don’t understand these kids. I still feel drunk. I do not know where I will be going to college in the fall, if I will be going.

  If Dad doesn’t come back, I couldn’t go anyway … I couldn’t leave my brother. We’d have to go somewhere, though. The house is paid off, I think, but how would we even pay for, like, electricity? How would I pay for Ben’s school? His doctors? Where is he? Where is he?

  “I’m going to find Ben,” I say to Pete, who is tossing a bocce ball into the middle of someone else’s game. If I were him I’d be worried about tearing my jacket while tossing those heavy balls around. The leather looks so supple and delicate. We’ve only been at the party a short time, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, and I know I have to leave once I find my brother, so that he and I can embark on our next steps in the effort to save our fucked family.