The Last Good Day of the Year

by Jessica Warman

  DET: Maybe he’s a good actor.

  CB: He’s no Al Pacino. I’m telling ya, Stevie was there when we left for the call, and he was there when we got back, asleep in his bedroom. So what if he’d closed the door when he got up to piss? Now, don’t tell Jack I said this, okay? That boy was a worthless sack of shit after his accident. He wasn’t the kind of kid who gives his mom much reason to brag, but he didn’t take that little girl. He didn’t have time. I’ve thought about it over and over—I ain’t the kind of person who lies, not for a friend, not for anybody, and besides, I’ve got three daughters of my own, and I know those people are suffering like you and I can’t begin to imagine. If I could help ease their pain by telling you something that I’d seen or heard, I promise you, I’d do it. But like I said, Stevie never did much besides take up space after he flunked out of school, and that night wasn’t any different. I saw him with my own eyes. We all did. The TV was on, all the lights in the downstairs were on, and there he was, sleeping like a baby a few feet away from us. Now, I’ve thought about it plenty, like I told you. What kind of person could fall asleep after they’d done such a thing?

  DET: I can’t imagine.

  CB: He’d have to be some kind of monster, wouldn’t you say?

  DET: Maybe so.

  CB: Stevie isn’t a monster. He just isn’t. No good? Sure. But not a monster. A person who could fall asleep after that doesn’t have blood in their veins, you know? They have something else. Ice, or … something else. Pure, liquid hate. A person like that doesn’t walk around all their lives without folks noticing there’s something different about him. Evil like that can’t hide in plain sight. It’s not possible. What kind of a world would that be?

  Forty-Eight Minutes of Doubt, pp. 233–34

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Summer 1996

  “Rinse and spit.”

  “There’s blood in my mouth.”

  “That’s a sign you need to floss more often.” Gretchen twirls in her chair, trying to make herself dizzy. “This is a boring job,” she says, standing up only to stumble against the edge of the sink in the little room, knocking my free toothbrush onto the floor. “I have to get my kicks where I can.”

  She’s full of it; I floss every night before bed. As dental hygienists go, my sister obviously isn’t among the elite few who can make a professional cleaning bearable. She rushed through her job on my mouth, complaining for a solid fifteen minutes about the pitiful levels of oral care that she has to deal with on a daily basis. “Do you know what I hear at least once a week, Sam? I’m not making this up, I swear. At least once a week, after I scrape someone’s teeth, they look at what I’ve dug out and say, ‘Is that popcorn? I don’t even remember the last time I ate popcorn!’ Once a week at least.”

  “I know. You say that all the time.”

  “Sorry. It’s my only interesting work-related anecdote.”

  She’s all smiles as she walks me back to the waiting room, where our mom is balancing her checkbook, doing subtraction on her fingers. My sister starts calling out random numbers, trying to mess up her math so that she has to start over. “Eleven. Forty-three. Twenty. Sixteen. Four. Eighty-eight.”

  “You’re rotten,” Mom says, dropping the ledger into her purse. “No cavities, right?”

  “Right.” I’ve never had a cavity in my life. No way do I need to floss more; I could probably stand to floss less.

  “Do you want to come to lunch with us?” she asks Gretchen. “I was thinking we could try that new Mexican place by the mall.”

  My sister pretends to study her fingernails instead of looking at our mom. “No, thanks.”

  “Okay. Next time, then.”

  “Doesn’t Sam have another appointment today?”

  My mom glares at her. “Not until one thirty.”

  “What other appointment?” I ask.

  “You didn’t tell her?” My sister lays her southern accent on thicker than usual as she feigns confusion. “Why not, Momma?”

  “Gretchen. This is uncalled for.”

  My sister yawns. “I need to get back to work. I hope you took a shower this morning, Sam.” She gives me a smirk that makes my stomach drop.

  “Why would you say that? Where are we going after lunch, Mom?”

  Our mother ignores the question; instead of responding, she takes my arm and guides me toward the door. “We need to hurry if we want to have enough time for a decent lunch.” She gives Gretchen one final try: “You’re sure you won’t come along? Last chance. I hear they have amazing guacamole.”

  “I’m not hungry, and I hate guacamole. I’ve hated guacamole my entire life. Don’t you know that?”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’d forgotten.”

  “You’re thinking of Hannah. Hannah loves guacamole.”

  Let’s go. Please, let’s just go, I think, but my mom’s hand is frozen on the doorknob.

  “You’re right. It is Hannah.”

  “Wait. No. I’m wrong.” Gretchen taps a finger to her lips in thought. “It was Turtle who loved guacamole. Not Hannah. Turtle. She used to eat it with a spoon.” She smiles. “Remember that, Mom?”

  I can tell how hard my mom’s working to summon what’s left of her training from her days as a beauty queen: how to stay composed and keep smiling when all she wants to do is scream, or hide, or slap Gretchen across the face.

  “Make sure you eat something for lunch. You seem tired, sweetie. And you’re getting too thin.” She’s not wrong. Gretchen has lost ten, maybe fifteen pounds since summer began. Combined with her new haircut, she’s starting to look puny.

  “I don’t care how you think I look.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for caring about my own daughter. You need to take it a little easier. I don’t understand why Abby can’t hire a private nurse for her father. You’re too kind to her, Gretchen. Don’t you ever feel like she’s taking advantage?”

  “She’s not taking advantage of me. I want to help.”

  “You look like you haven’t had a good meal in ages. What are the two of you eating? I can’t imagine either of you is much of a cook.”

  “Right, well, we all know you can’t imagine Abby as much of anything.” Gretchen’s jaw goes click-click-click as she grinds her teeth together.

  “I don’t deserve this kind of treatment. Not from my own child.” She pauses. “Especially not from you.”

  Even in her most tender moments, my mother has never been as nurturing as, say, Remy’s mom. We don’t have frequent heart-to-heart talks like I’ve heard of other mothers and daughters doing. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with her; it’s more like I’ve made a deliberate effort to not need her too much, and the arrangement seems to be working fine for both of us. When I was younger, after Turtle disappeared, she did her best not to let me out of her sight for years unless I was nearby with another adult whom she trusted. But you’d be surprised how easy it is to spend every moment with a person without ever truly getting to know them. You might say she watched without seeing. Even back then, I got the sense that her need to keep me close wasn’t so much diligent parenting as self-preservation.

  “I know I should have told you about this, but I thought you’d be embarrassed.” There’s no missing the big white sign above the door, announcing what I’m in for: Dr. Glick, Ob-Gyn. My mom fills out the insurance forms before passing me the clipboard so I can fill in the more personal information: Are you sexually active? How many partners have you had in the past twelve months? Did you use protection? If so, what kind? Are you presently using any method of birth control? Have you ever given birth? Have you ever had an abortion? Is there any possibility you might be pregnant? What was the date of your last menstrual cycle? Do you drink? Do you smoke? Do you use recreational drugs? If so, circle all that apply.

  I can’t even look at her without wanting to scream. She pretends to be engrossed in a months-old issue of TV Guide while I fill out the form, but she’s obviously stealing glances whenever she thinks I�
��m not paying attention. So I act as though I don’t notice, and then I check off whatever responses will upset her most without being too obviously false. By the time the nurse calls my name, I’m a self-described bisexual who has engaged in unprotected intercourse with “more than ten but fewer than twenty” partners. I also admit a weakness for “very occasional” cocaine use; chronic, moderate pain during urination; and “frequent thoughts of sadness and despair.”

  Dr. Glick is youngish and handsome, and I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than his examining my naked body while my feet are up in stirrups and my paper gown flops open in the front. I wait with my legs pressed together at the knees while he looks over my chart, wondering whether I should speak up before he orders a massive amount of blood work and antibiotics.

  “You’re seventeen, Samantha; is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you filled this questionnaire out all by yourself?”

  “With my mother sitting beside me, yes. She sort of, uh, surprised me with this appointment.”

  “Oh? How lovely of her.” He looks from the chart to my face, then back to the chart. “So, I’m taking a wild guess here: Did you think you’d surprise her with your answers?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I see.” He crumples the paper into a ball and tosses it into the garbage can, but he’s smiling. “Okay. Let’s start over. Are you sexually active, Samantha?”

  “No.”

  “Planning to become sexually active in the future?”

  “At some point, I assume.”

  “Do you want to be on birth control?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any medical issues you’d like to discuss?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  I sigh, trying to come up with a decent answer. Because my mother is a pain in the ass.

  “Because my mother is worried about me.”

  “Ah,” he says, nodding in understanding. “As mothers are wont to be.”

  “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

  * * *

  In the car, my mom touches up her makeup in the rearview mirror while I sit stiff and silent beside her. I’m clutching a paper bag filled with free condom samples, which the nurse insisted I take “just in case.”

  “What do you have there?” she asks, talking out of the side of her mouth while she colors her lips with coppery liner.

  “They’re Girl Scout cookies, Mom. Dr. Glick had a few extra boxes lying around beside his speculum.”

  “That’s very funny, Sam.” I can’t tell whether she’s frowning at me or her own reflection. “Really, though, what did he give you?”

  “They’re condoms, Mom. Are you happy? Now I’m protected from all the terrible diseases I’m exposing myself to with all the unprotected sex I’ve been having with strangers.”

  “Sam, I was only trying to be cautious.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Take me home.”

  My mom almost never fights with me. She fights with my dad and with Gretchen, and I’m sure she’ll fight with Hannah once she’s older, but almost never with me. I don’t even remember the last time we argued. This is too much, though. A pelvic exam isn’t the kind of thing you surprise someone with, especially not your seventeen-year-old daughter. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. “Do you think we should stop to see an ear-nose-and-throat specialist before we get home, Mom? What about a proctologist? That way you can make sure all my orifices have been sufficiently penetrated today.”

  She swerves the car off the road and into the nearest parking lot. “What the hell has gotten into you? I’m sorry for looking out for your health and safety. Actually, no, I’m not sorry. I’m your mother, Sam; it’s my job. And if it makes you feel any better, Remy is going through the same thing today with Mike.”

  We’re parked next to a Dumpster behind a building. A swarm of flies hovers in a thick cloud above the trash, their tiny wings beating rapturously against the July heat. When I close my eyes, I think I can smell the garbage fumes rippling past.

  “I know what you’re doing with him, Samantha. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Excuse me? What is it you think I’m doing, exactly?”

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t expect you to tell me everything. I know you’re old enough to make your own decisions. But if you’re going to lie to me, then I don’t—”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Oh, no? What would you say if I told you that Susan found condoms in Remy’s bedroom?”

  “I’d say that Remy is being foolishly optimistic.”

  “I’ve seen the two of you together. You’re with him all the time. And I’m not even angry—I’m just concerned, that’s all! Can’t a mother be concerned for her teenager?”

  “But you don’t have any reason to be concerned! I’m not doing anything wrong!”

  “Like how you weren’t doing anything wrong when you went to the Holiday Inn with Noah last year? You’re Samantha,” she says snidely, “not Gretchen. I expect more from you.”

  I can feel my heart pumping blood to every pressure point in my body. I can hear it rushing behind my ears.

  My mom can tell she’s pushed me a hair too far. She softens her tone and tries to move past it. “I shouldn’t have said that about Gretchen. I’m sorry. And I’m not trying to hurt you, Sam. I’m trying to be a good parent. It’s my last chance.”

  “What about Hannah?”

  “Don’t drag Hannah into this. Hannah is still a baby. Don’t you dare drag her into this mess.”

  “You think I’m the one dragging her into a mess?” I laugh in her face. “That’s hilarious. You had Hannah to replace Turtle, and she doesn’t even know it yet. You won’t be able to hide it from her forever.”

  My mom’s breath stutters in her throat as she starts to cry. She pushes her sunglasses onto the top of her head and dabs at the corners of her eyes, blinking rapidly, trying to divert the flow of tears away from her mascara. “I didn’t think I had to worry about you. You’ve always been such a good girl. I don’t know what I did wrong with Gretchen, I really don’t. I did the best I could with what I had. That’s all any parent can do, you know. We did our best, but she was wild, Sam, like an animal. Do you remember? Tell her she’s grounded, and she would sneak out of the house. I’d have locked her in her room, but she would have climbed right out the window. We told her to stay away from that boy, and she only chased after him harder. She wasn’t just a rebellious teenager, she was a destructive force. Nobody was safe. And then your little sister …”

  “Mom, stop.” I can’t listen to her narrate the worst moments of our lives, not in a hot car beside a Dumpster with the insides of my nostrils tingling from the smell of all that decaying meat a few feet away. Every time she sucks in a breath, I imagine a curl of black flies and death tunneling down her windpipe, seeping into every pore of her body. I can’t stand to see her like this, not because of something I’ve done. “If I do anything with Remy or anyone else, I’ll be careful. I promise. Please, just calm down.”

  “Thank you.” She is trying hard to compose herself, a skill that she’s had plenty of practice sharpening over the years. She can go from smiling and happy to falling apart in a few seconds flat, and then back to cheerful just as quickly; she’s like the Porsche of emotional meltdowns. It’s sad to know that the ability has grown so refined, and it makes me suspect that she’s never anywhere near as happy as she sometimes seems, as if it’s just a face she’s learned to maintain for as long as possible, until she loses her focus and it drops away, and she has to scramble to piece it back together again.

  When she stood onstage at the Miss Pennsylvania pageant in the seventies, beaming at the crowd and waving like a pro, her smile stretching so wide that the gums showed on the sides of her mouth, I’m sure it never crossed her mind that her life would be anything other than enchanted. Back then, she never had to wrap her he
ad around the fact that shitty things happen to good people all the time. Instead, she campaigned for her title on the platform that hard work and good deeds were sufficient tools to build a sweet life. I’ve seen the video clip: she stands in a purple sequined evening gown slit up to her thigh, her posture that of a lucky girl who moves confidently, almost giddily through her charmed life. “I believe that kindness can change the world. When you treat others with love, respect, and dignity, it multiplies and spreads.”

  It’s easy to watch the pageant now and consider her words a load of pandering bullshit; the judges might not have cared about her message if her dress hadn’t been so sexy or her face so lovely. But I believe she meant it. When she hired Lenny the landscaper without bothering to inquire about the moral quality of his employees, she assumed they would all reciprocate with the same kindness she’d extended toward them. Sometimes kindness doesn’t beget anything but misery. My mother didn’t have to learn that until she was in her thirties; I’ve known it nearly all my life. I’m not sure which of us is better off.

  The police and prosecution were quick to call the case a slam dunk. District Attorney Patrick Klein held a press conference immediately following Steven’s indictment, during which he bragged that “I have zero doubt in my mind that we’ve got the right guy, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he can never hurt anybody again.” If there had been any effort at all to investigate anyone else, his words put an end to it—but in fact there were plenty of other people who could have been involved that night.

  Forty-Eight Minutes of Doubt, p. 51

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Summer 1996

  A week has gone by since I showed Remy the picture of Mister Marbles in the woods behind my house during our birthday party. The photograph is tucked between the pages of my hardcover copy of Wuthering Heights.

  It’s nothing; I know it’s nothing. It’s the song that bothers me more than anything else. If I heard it only that one time, how do I remember all the words? And why would he sing it to us in the first place? He must have known it would scare us. As much as I try not to think about the photograph, just knowing it exists makes me feel uneasy. At least twice a day, I take it out for another look, hoping every time that it will be different somehow—maybe I’ll realize the man isn’t there at all, and it’s just a double exposure or a trick of the light that looks at first glance like a person. It’s silly, and I feel stupid even getting my hopes up; it’s the same thing I do every time I read Bridge to Terabithia and hope for a different ending, even though I know what’s going to happen.