cheese—and the kind of rolls that Bruce’s mother would never have allowed at her table, choosing instead to serve stale sevengrain, or toasted pita, or nothing at all. The rolls bloomed between Mrs. Van Wyck and the boyfriend, who approached her, unzipping his pants. He was faceless. Bruce let himself stroke the smooth tip of his penis as he thought of this. Just for a couple of seconds—a light, electric touch. The next morning, he allowed himself to forget that he’d done it.
T HAT WINTER , Toby’s mother went missing for good. She had become prone to skipping appointments and relying on the au pair for long stretches during the afternoons; but when she wasn’t home by dinnertime one January evening, Mr. Van Wyck waited until almost midnight and then called the police. Two days after the call—days during which Bruce remembered wondering why Toby wasn’t in school—an investigation was begun. After a couple of weeks it yielded only this: Mrs. Van Wyck’s unlocked bottle-green Volvo wagon, found in the long-term lot at Kennedy, the keys still in the ignition.
Everyone talked. There was nothing else to do. Bruce’s mother said that the talk went on for even longer than it otherwise might have, because the Van Wycks had money. There were a couple of news cameras outside of school at 3:00 p.m. every day for a week. The papers ran pictures of the car and interviews with the few neighbors and acquaintances who were willing to go on record with their suspicions about the boyfriend, whose name was Viri Minetti. He was a man of violence, several of them said. He had walked out on jobs, had threatened to sue certain clients when they’d tried to replace him with another contractor. He had been overheard screaming at Sis Van Wyck on the back patio of the Van Wyck house, on a late autumn afternoon, screaming unprintable things, things only a lover could scream. It wasn’t difficult to imagine: the residents of nearby houses creeping toward their windows, pulling curtains aside an inch, and seeing only the barren Van Wyck yard, the leaves at the bottom of the drained pool, the small frost-repellent tarps stretched neatly over the shrubbery. Perhaps they saw Sis’s legs stretched out on the divan that protruded fromunderneath the patio awning, her feet, in their beige Pappagallo flats, flexed against Viri’s rage. She called that area of the house, with its adjacent changing rooms and warm shed full of floats, towels, and skimmers, “the swimmery,” which had made Bruce’s mother laugh the first time she’d heard it. “Manischewitz,” she’d said, half to herself, on the train ride home from Toby’s swimming party the previous summer, “I’m glad we live in the city.”
“Why?” Bruce had asked her. At that age he had still loved to hear his mother expound on her convictions, make the little speeches that grew more passionate as they wore on until they consisted mainly of the fake swearwords she concocted for use in front of children, the words that could still break his heart when he remembered them.
She’d only muttered distractedly: “Poor Sis. Swimmery. That’s some Stepford stuff, sweetie. Some real grade-A bullpie.”
Bruce had nodded, knowing—a little—what she meant. She meant the way everything matched, the tight smile on Toby’s mother’s face when Toby had made a production of farting in the pool, the way she’d bitten her lip when some of the other mothers, who hadn’t seen the way the dining room table was set with flowers and trays of sandwiches, had begged off lunch and left early.
“But she’s decent hearted, of course,” his mother said. “Just fitting into that kind of stupid … that paradigm. I told you I knew her a little at Barnard. She had some fun then, you know? She lived on my hall. Obsessed with Lennon. I remember that. God.”
Bruce had nodded again, unsure of paradigm’s definition but somehow not wanting to mar her reverie by asking, and they had slouched
T HAT WINTER , Toby’s mother went missing for good. She had become prone to skipping appointments and relying on the au pair for long stretches during the afternoons; but when she wasn’t home by dinnertime one January evening, Mr. Van Wyck waited until almost midnight and then called the police. Two days after the call—days during which Bruce remembered wondering why Toby wasn’t in school—an investigation was begun. After a couple of weeks it yielded only this: Mrs. Van Wyck’s unlocked bottle-green Volvo wagon, found in the long-term lot at Kennedy, the keys still in the ignition.
Everyone talked. There was nothing else to do. Bruce’s mother said that the talk went on for even longer than it otherwise might have, because the Van Wycks had money. There were a couple of news cameras outside of school at 3:00 p.m. every day for a week. The papers ran pictures of the car and interviews with the few neighbors and acquaintances who were willing to go on record with their suspicions about the boyfriend, whose name was Viri Minetti. He was a man of violence, several of them said. He had walked out on jobs, had threatened to sue certain clients when they’d tried to replace him with another contractor. He had been overheard screaming at Sis Van Wyck on the back patio of the Van Wyck house, on a late autumn afternoon, screaming unprintable things, things only a lover could scream. It wasn’t difficult to imagine: the residents of nearby houses creeping toward their windows, pulling curtains aside an inch, and seeing only the barren Van Wyck yard, the leaves at the bottom of the drained pool, the small frost-repellent tarps stretched neatly over the shrubbery. Perhaps they saw Sis’s legs stretched out on the divan that protruded fromunderneath the patio awning, her feet, in their beige Pappagallo flats, flexed against Viri’s rage. She called that area of the house, with its adjacent changing rooms and warm shed full of floats, towels, and skimmers, “the swimmery,” which had made Bruce’s mother laugh the first time she’d heard it. “Manischewitz,” she’d said, half to herself, on the train ride home from Toby’s swimming party the previous summer, “I’m glad we live in the city.”
“Why?” Bruce had asked her. At that age he had still loved to hear his mother expound on her convictions, make the little speeches that grew more passionate as they wore on until they consisted mainly of the fake swearwords she concocted for use in front of children, the words that could still break his heart when he remembered them.
She’d only muttered distractedly: “Poor Sis. Swimmery. That’s some Stepford stuff, sweetie. Some real grade-A bullpie.”
Bruce had nodded, knowing—a little—what she meant. She meant the way everything matched, the tight smile on Toby’s mother’s face when Toby had made a production of farting in the pool, the way she’d bitten her lip when some of the other mothers, who hadn’t seen the way the dining room table was set with flowers and trays of sandwiches, had begged off lunch and left early.
“But she’s decent hearted, of course,” his mother said. “Just fitting into that kind of stupid … that paradigm. I told you I knew her a little at Barnard. She had some fun then, you know? She lived on my hall. Obsessed with Lennon. I remember that. God.”
Bruce had nodded again, unsure of paradigm’s definition but somehow not wanting to mar her reverie by asking, and they had slouched
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