get drunk. She just kept itching and itching. And thinking and thinking. What if she could never get drunk again? Oh, God. Why couldn’t she get drunk today? She recounted the day, and she thought about Christopher. She knew it was crazy. There was no way a little boy could touch her arm and make her unable to feel drunk. But the thought was there like the itch on her arm. And she needed to find her own version of “itch medicine.” She had to get her drunk back before sobriety drove her insane.
The clock read 2:17 a.m.
Mrs. Henderson sat in the kitchen. Her perfect kitchen. Her dream kitchen. She had spent years creating it. Finding every knickknack. Every antique. She was not a rich woman, but she had taste. And over the decades, every Sunday, she would go out into the world of yard sales and flea markets and find pieces for ten dollars that would have gone for thousands at Christie’s. Little by little, bit by bit, she created the perfect home for herself and her husband. It was her life’s work. She taught children to read and love books during the day. And she created the perfect home for her husband at night. But now her husband was never in it. It was 2:17 a.m., and her husband was still out somewhere. So, Mrs. Henderson sat in her kitchen, just staring at the front door. She stared at the little WELCOME HOME antique plaque and the perfect little curtains on the brass railing. She stared and scratched and thought about the day she got engaged on top of the Ferris wheel at Kennywood. Mr. Henderson couldn’t keep his hands off her back then. She would tell him “no” in the backseat of his car even though her body screamed “yes.” Because she was not that kind of girl. Men don’t marry those kinds of girls, her mother told her. But her skin itched whenever he kissed her. Her skin burned for him. Like it burned now. Like it burned in her first year teaching at Mill Grove Elementary School. She would never forget that little boy. That little frightened boy. How smart he was. How sad she felt when he went missing. Why was she thinking of him now? She had no idea. But it made her arm stop itching to think of him. It made her stop asking when her husband stopped touching her. It made her remember that this was going to be her last year of teaching. She was going to retire and have a great life with him. Yes. Her husband would walk through that door eventually. Eventually, he would get hungry and need her warm kitchen again.
Chapter 46
The clock read 2:37 a.m.
Mary Katherine lay alone in her bedroom. She had been awake for twenty minutes now. She woke up because her arm was itchy. She tried to put on some lotion, but that didn’t work. She drank a glass of water because sometimes itchy skin means dehydration. But that didn’t work, either. The itch just stayed on her skin.
The strange thing was that she enjoyed it.
Her skin was warm. Soft and quiet like silk sheets. And the itch felt good against it. Nice and scratchy like the one time when Doug forgot to shave and kissed her cheek. The scratching kind of hurt, but she liked it, and kind of wished that Doug could grow out his beard. He tried once for their production of Fiddler on the Roof. All the boys in the cast did. The results were varying degrees of tragic. Why were boys boys? she wondered.
Why couldn’t they just hurry up and become men?
Mary Katherine lay on her bed in her cotton nightgown and looked around the room. The wind was blowing outside. A little more than usual. Mary Katherine pictured the wind sneaking into her bedroom and blowing the itch on her arm all over her body. She pictured it moving down her forearm to her wrist to her fingers.
Five little fingers on her right hand.
Mary Katherine took her fingers and started to move the itch around. Inch by inch. She started on her arm, then slowly moved her itchy fingers up her shoulder to her neck to her mouth. She stopped there. Just grazing her fingers back and forth across her lips. They were dry and cracked from her walk through the cold Mission Street Woods. Every time she grazed them, the itch became warmer and softer