The Mourning Hours

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  “Perfect,” Aunt Julia pronounced. When she left the room to help Johnny with his tie, Mom blotted half her lipstick onto a tissue.

  She must have forgotten that I was still there, lying across her bed propped up by one elbow. I watched as she looked at herself in the mirror, fussing with her makeup and smoothing flyaway strands of blond hair. Then she sank her chin into the palm of one hand and stared straight ahead, directly into her own eyes in the mirror, although she didn’t seem to really see herself. But I saw both of them, the Mom in real life, exhausted and haggard, trying to hold it all together, and the Mom in the mirror, who seemed to be plotting her next move.

  twenty-two

  They left in Mom’s Caprice, as solemn as if they were headed off to a funeral. Johnny sat in the middle of the backseat, hunched and awkward, like an overgrown child. We promised to watch on TV—what else could we have done?—and Emilie pulled out a new tape and set the VCR to record. While we waited, I flipped idly back and forth from the news station to The Price Is Right.

  “God, this makes me so nervous,” Aunt Julia said. “I’m just going to pop outside for a quick second. Call me when it starts?”

  A dark-haired woman was trying to guess the prices of household items from least to most expensive, while Bob Barker wagged the microphone in front of her impatiently. Helpless, she looked to the audience, throwing up her arms.

  Emilie flipped back to the news station, which had a school picture of Stacy Lemke on the screen.

  “Aunt Julia!” I hollered.

  “Stacy was last seen by Johnny Hammarstrom, her boyfriend, also of Watankee, when she set out to walk home in Saturday’s snowstorm. Although police have questioned Hammarstrom, they have not yet identified him as a suspect,” reported the announcer. An 800 number appeared across the screen, and then the news flashed to the brick exterior of the Manitowoc Police Department.

  Last seen by Johnny Hammarstrom, her boyfriend... Emilie and I looked at each other. It was strange and shameful to hear Johnny’s name on the news, which of course was our name, too. They have not yet identified him as a suspect. Not yet. But it didn’t matter—I suddenly thought. People were going to think Johnny was guilty, whether he was or not. Wasn’t that what I thought every time I saw someone on the evening news, mentioned in connection with a crime?

  Detective Halliday’s face appeared on the screen. He stood at a podium flanked by Mr. and Mrs. Lemke on one side and Dad, Mom and Johnny on the other. I felt like pinching myself. My parents were on TV. My brother. Their faces occupied the space on the screen where Bob Barker had been only moments before. Dad was frowning; Mom’s face was grim. Johnny looked as if he was about to be sick.

  “Oh, dear God,” Emilie said, and Aunt Julia dashed inside, reeking of smoke.

  Mr. Lemke, on his side of the podium, had his arm tightly around his wife’s shoulders. He wore a black suit; she wore a blue dress with a cowl-neck, and, when the camera pulled back, I saw that she had matching shoes in the exact same brilliant blue. They might have been headed out to a fancy dinner. Behind them stood a handful of officers, anonymous in their crisp navy uniforms. On the far left side was an American flag, and on the far right, the blue flag of Wisconsin.

  “Here we go,” Aunt Julia breathed, crouching onto her haunches in front of the TV.

  “This is the most embarrassing thing in the world,” Emilie murmured, clutching a pillow from the couch to her chest. “I could die right here, right now.”

  Detective Halliday was already speaking in his gravelly voice, although it took a moment for us to register his words. Flashbulbs were popping; Johnny, after a few giant blinks of surprise, looked down at his feet. The camera zoomed in on Detective Halliday’s face, and Aunt Julia leaned forward, adjusting the volume.

  “The community of Watankee has been investigating the disappearance of one of our own, Stacy Lemke. Stacy is a sixteen-year-old junior at Lincoln High School. On Saturday night, Stacy was involved in a car accident and attempted to walk home. As you know, she never made it. We are scouring the fields, interviewing witnesses and conducting a thorough investigation. And at this point, we are seeking the public’s help.”

  More flashbulbs; a few questions called from the crowd simultaneously.

  Detective Halliday held up his hand. “I’ll take questions in a moment. The Lemkes have asked to make a statement first.”

  It was shocking to see the Lemkes in their close-up. They didn’t look like the glamorous couple I’d met only last summer. Now their eyes were red-rimmed, their expressions drawn with grief. Mrs. Lemke’s lips were downturned and trembling.

  Mr. Lemke cleared his throat, waited for the reporters to settle down, and began. “As you can imagine, the past four days have been a nightmare for our family. We would like to thank the police department and volunteers for their diligent searches. We would like to thank—” His voice caught, and Mrs. Lemke leaned her head against his shoulder. “We would like to thank the people who know and love Stacy and the strangers who have generously donated their time and energy to help us find her.” He paused, looking down. The camera flashes doubled in intensity, and the screen zoomed in on Mr. Lemke’s face, wet with tears. Then it zoomed out to include our family again—Dad standing stiff, staring straight ahead with his eyes unfocused, Mom in her too-tight blazer, Johnny awkward in his green dress shirt.

  “We would also like to—” Mr. Lemke continued, fighting for control of his words. “We would like to make a special plea to anyone with any information about Stacy’s whereabouts. If you have any information at all about our daughter, please contact local law enforcement immediately. We are prepared to offer a $15,000 reward for any information that leads us to Stacy.”

  Mrs. Lemke’s shoulders heaved; the camera zoomed in on her downcast face. The lines around her mouth were deep and hard, like someone had taken an Etch A Sketch and given her a permanent frown. Mr. Lemke tightened his grip around his wife’s shoulders, the fingers of his left hand clenched tightly.

  “Oh, that poor woman,” Aunt Julia breathed.

  “Please,” Mr. Lemke continued. “Please help us find Stacy. Please bring her back to us.” He stepped back from the microphone, pulling his wife to his chest. An officer stepped forward to guide them to the side, and Detective Halliday came to the podium again.

  “Fifteen thousand dollars?” Emilie repeated, whistling. It was funny how the world worked. Fifteen thousand dollars was more money than we had ever had all at once, I was sure. Fifteen thousand dollars would have paid for a good chunk of Johnny’s college or zillions of private music lessons for Emilie or a fancy vacation for Mom and Dad, the kind that involved airplane tickets and sandy beaches.

  “At this point,” Detective Halliday said, “we’ll take questions.”

  There was a volley of voices at once, unintelligible and excited. Detective Halliday held up one hand, and the reporters obeyed, settling into order. The television camera panned the room, and we saw for the first time dozens of reporters, holding cameras and microphones and little pads of paper. The questions came, disembodied, male and female, terse and eager.

  “Can you tell us how far Stacy was from home when she started walking?”

  Detective Halliday nodded. “We estimate just under a mile.”

  “What was the cause of the accident?”

  Johnny reacted slightly at this, his head jerking to one side.

  “It appears that the tires lost traction in the heavy snow and veered off to one side. When we located the truck, it was wedged into a ditch.”

  “Was the driver speeding?”

  Again, Johnny flinched.

  “We’re examining the possibility that speed may have been a factor, especially with the road conditions Saturday night.”

  “And Johnny Hammarstrom was driving the truck?”

  An explosion
of flashbulbs, a close-up of Johnny. His face was stony, yellowish under the fluorescent lights. A faint sheen of sweat shone on his forehead.

  “That is correct,” Detective Halliday confirmed.

  “What kind of search has been conducted?”

  “At this point we’ve involved members of the Watankee Police Department, a volunteer force and a K-9 unit from Manitowoc. We’ve searched the fields surrounding the accident site several times and private properties throughout the area.”

  “Does that include the Hammarstroms’ property?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Does this mean you consider Johnny Hammarstrom a suspect?”

  I was holding my breath, a million oxygen molecules slamming around in my lungs.

  Detective Halliday cleared his throat. “From the beginning, we have considered Johnny Hammarstrom a person of interest, since he was the last person to see Stacy alive and had a personal relationship with her. However, he has not been named as a suspect.”

  The buzz intensified.

  “Will that change? Will he be named as a suspect?”

  “Are there any other possible suspects?”

  “Doesn’t it seem likely that the last person to see her alive—”

  “Is it possible that there’s some sort of madman on the loose, driving up and down the streets of our town?”

  Detective Halliday’s voice was steady. “The investigation is ongoing, and it’s too soon for me to speculate on these questions. But at this time we have no reason to believe that we are looking for a random assailant.”

  Another barrage of flashbulbs, rapid-fire questions from reporters.

  “When will you speculate?” a man sneered. “When there’s been a spring thaw?”

  The detective’s lips settled into a straight line, and his jaw nudged ever so slightly forward. Mrs. Lemke let out a small, sharp cry.

  “What exactly was the relationship between Johnny Hammarstrom and the victim?”

  “They were dating. They were boyfriend and girlfriend,” Detective Halliday said firmly, back on solid footing.

  Johnny, the camera full on his face, moistened his lips nervously. Yes, I thought. They were dating. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. But it was more than that. They wrote love letters, they had sex, they talked about the future, they fought the way people who are really in love fight.

  “How long were they dating? Were they serious?”

  “They were not serious,” Bill Lemke announced suddenly, away from the microphone, but loud enough for the reporters to pick up his words. Johnny’s head snapped in their direction, as if he’d been slapped from the other side. Mom glanced at Johnny, and Dad glanced at Mom, like a chain reaction. Mr. Lemke was standing up straighter now, his chest puffed forward. Was he saying that Johnny Hammarstrom wasn’t good enough for his girl, that Stacy was too smart for such a fool?

  “Was she also dating other people?” the same voice asked, clearly puzzled at Mr. Lemke’s reaction.

  Mom put a hand on Johnny’s arm, but it was too late to stop him from speaking. “We were serious. We loved each other,” he announced, looking from Mr. Lemke to the reporters and back. “We were—” Mom’s grip tightened on his arm, and he stopped.

  Emilie sucked in her breath, then let it out. She had heard, too, what I’d heard: loved, not love.

  Detective Halliday raised his hand, trying to regain control of the situation. “We know they had a dating relationship. I can only reiterate to you that Johnny Hammarstrom has been cooperative with this investigation.”

  “You have to ‘iterate’ something in the first place in order to ‘reiterate’ it,” Aunt Julia huffed. “He failed to mention that Johnny had been cooperating.”

  “At this point, if there are no other questions dealing specifically with the investigation,” Detective Halliday continued, “then we’ll close this press conference.”

  This would have been the end of it if it wasn’t for Mrs. Lemke, who slid downward, suddenly weak in the knees. Mr. Lemke grabbed for her—unnecessarily dramatic, it seemed to me—and the flashbulbs went wild again, capturing her unsteadiness, his heroics. “Look what you’ve done,” he yelled, to no one in particular, it seemed at first, and then, throwing his head like a mad horse, to my family. “Look what you’ve done to us.”

  Dad and Johnny were frozen, uncertain, but Mom was trembling.

  “I can’t watch,” Emilie said, her hands in front of her face.

  “What we’ve done?” Mom said, and repeated, more loudly. She leaned across Johnny, in front of Detective Halliday. The blazer did look tight on her, her arms like encased sausages, especially as she raised one hand to point directly at the Lemkes with an outstretched finger. “What do you mean, what we’ve done? It was your daughter who was obsessed with our son. She was the one who—”

  And then Dad, no longer a prop in this setting, gave her arm a good yank and pulled her off the stage, away from the podium. Cameras followed them as they retreated toward an exit at the far end of the auditorium, Johnny only a few steps behind.

  “Well, shit,” Aunt Julia said, and snapped off the TV.

  twenty-three

  After the press conference, things only got worse. It felt as if we were in the middle of our own tiny volcano with the pressure building and building, and we were waiting for it to blow. I watched from the kitchen window as Dad and Johnny emerged from the Caprice followed by Mom, already in midargument. Johnny pushed past me at the door and pounded up the stairs.

  “Tricked us into it,” Mom was saying. Her face was red, the flush of a deep, public embarrassment.

  “It’s probably not as bad as it seemed,” Aunt Julia said, trying to be kind.

  Mom huffed. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  Aunt Julia nodded and started to speak, but Mom silenced her with a look that said she didn’t want to be babied, or pitied, or consoled. “I need to see it for myself,” she decided. “But we were set up! Come to the press conference, everyone said. Present a united front with the Lemkes...” Suddenly uncomfortable in her clothes, she began to wriggle her arms out of the navy blazer. Normally Dad would have stepped forward to assist—he was always on hand to help Mom with a necklace clasp or a back zipper—but this time he held back, keeping his distance. We all held back, watching her squirm.

  The phone rang, and Mom grabbed for it, one arm still tangled in the blazer, the other sleeve flapping loose. “Hello?” she demanded, listened for a second, and slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Those damn reporters!”

  “Alicia,” Dad began, tiredly, “if we don’t work with them—”

  “They don’t want to work with us! Don’t you see that? They just want a story, and the story is us. The story is Johnny, the murderer.” Mom finally freed herself from her blazer and stood panting and triumphant before us. Aunt Julia took the blazer from Mom’s arms and hung it over the back of a chair.

  “I should have known, I should have seen it,” Mom continued. “You get mixed up with a family like that, with a man like that...” She was moving around the kitchen like a madwoman, touching things haphazardly, not caring when she dragged the sleeve of her white turtleneck through a smear of strawberry jam on the counter, left over from breakfast. “Look what we’ve done, he says. What we’ve done! We! When all along I tried to discourage them.... And it was her! She was the one pushing him into a relationship!”

  Dad tried to steady Mom with a hand on her shoulder, the pressure of his fingers on her arm. “Okay now, okay,” he kept repeating. “We just need to think this through.”

  Mom picked up a bread knife, glanced around as if she were trying to find a loaf of bread, and set it down. “What does anything matter anymore? You heard the man. Johnny might as well just turn himself in this second for daring to touch his daughter. But that p
robably won’t be enough to satisfy him. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll only want to crucify the rest of us in the public square.” Her eyes flashed dangerously around the room, not settling on any of us.

  “No one wants to crucify you—” Aunt Julia began.

  The phone rang again, and Mom reached for it, but Dad was faster. “We have no comment at this time,” he said firmly, then held down the switch hook and set the receiver on the table. We stared at it, listening to the faint beeping sound of the busy signal.

  Emilie came in from the living room, her face pale. “They’re going to replay it.”

  We raced into the living room in time to see a montage of photos of Stacy flash silently across the screen: as a sticky-faced toddler on a summer day, holding a Popsicle; as a little girl in pigtails, about to dive into her birthday cake; as a sixth grader in front of her science project. I imagined Mrs. Lemke sobbing, pulling back the protective plastic sheet on a neatly organized photo album to remove these pictures.

  Mom gasped as another photo appeared, one of Stacy sitting on the hood of Johnny’s truck, laughing. There were precise, towering rows of corn in the background, the tops foaming with tassels. A slant of late-afternoon sunlight hit her backside, lighting up her loose red hair like a halo of fire, the way it had been the first time I met her. Johnny must have taken the picture, I realized, not only because she was sitting on the Green Machine, but because she was flirting with the camera, her lips slightly parted, her expression teasing, Come here. She was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

  The last picture, the one that lingered longest on the screen, was of Johnny and Stacy at their Winter Formal in December. They were standing in front of a black backdrop with thousands of sparkly stars, Johnny’s right arm wrapped around her shoulder, Stacy’s left arm tucked around his waist. We had a wallet-sized version of this photo stuck to the front of our refrigerator, but blown up like this, I noticed things I hadn’t seen before. Johnny was in his rented tux, broad-chested and strong-armed, and Stacy was in her sea-green chiffon dress with the cinched waist. They were smiling, but it was a smile-on-demand kind of situation, and both of them looked as if they were smiling only with their mouths. They stood close together—so close that Johnny’s arm looked too tight across Stacy’s shoulders, as if he wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. Somehow, I noticed, Stacy wasn’t looking directly at the camera. It was as if someone off to the side, out of range, had called her name and at any moment she was going to squirm free of Johnny’s stiff grasp.