The First Day of the Rest of My Life

by Cathy Lamb

  He had those jurors; those heads were bopping.

  “And after all the trauma the girls had been through, the crimes, when Sherwinn, Gavin, and Pauly were being held in jail before their trial, she started getting letters.” He read the letters where Sherwinn threatened to kill us, and the jury blanched. “Here’s another sad fact, folks. Marie Elise has got a brain tumor. Her days are numbered, sadly enough.”

  “Oh, no!” a woman on the jury declared, shaking her head.

  “That’s a damn shame,” another said.

  “Objection!” Terrence the Ferret snapped.

  “Overruled and be quiet,” the judge said.

  “Marie Elise knew she wouldn’t be around to protect her girls. She knew with those monsters out of jail in a few years, her girls would never be able to grow up and become mommas themselves, become grandmas, so she shot them, killed them, right here, by golly. You could call it self-defense. I would.”

  “Objection!” Terrence the Ferret yelled, on what grounds I don’t know.

  “Overruled,” the judge said.

  Dale rocked back on his heels, blinked his eyes to get those tears out of there! “What happened is not in dispute, folks. You’re gonna get the details of the shooting, I’m sorry to say. I’m not arguin’ it, not at all. I won’t lie to you, I’ve got nothing but honest words for all of you, but Marie Elsie isn’t guilty, no sirs, no ma’ams, she’s not.” He stuck his hands in pockets. “The prosecuting attorney, Mr. Walters, will tell you that Marie Elise was as clear as a bell that day, smart as a tack, that it was all coldly calculated. Premeditated. Planned. And you know what, folks?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s wrong. My client—” He turned to look at my momma in her white dress. “My client, Marie Elise, was temporarily insane. Why, she plumb lost her mind. Just plumb lost it.” He leaned toward the jurors. “Now y’all tell me something, and be honest with yourselves right here, right now. If monsters like Sherwinn, Pauly, or Gavin had come after your kids, wouldn’t you have lost your mind, too?”

  The jury nodded.

  “Yep,” a rangy, muscled man in a red plaid shirt said, slow like honey.

  “I would have!” a female juror announced, huffy and puffy. “I would have!”

  Terrence the Ferret audibly groaned. “Objection,” he said, but it was rote, defeated.

  I know for a fact that if my grandparents weren’t fighting for the very life of their daughter, they never would have let me testify again. Annie was not speaking. It was determined that we would not even try to put her on the stand.

  “You can do this, kiddo,” Dale told me privately. “Just tell the truth. Do it for your mom. Keep your eyes on me, don’t look away. Pretend it’s just you and me. Don’t be scared. I’ll be with you the whole time.”

  Over my momma’s vehement objections and pleadings, out loud, in court, I testified into that packed courtroom.

  I did what Dale told me to do because I wanted to save my momma.

  I told about how Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin put blue sheets over our heads so we couldn’t see then put ropes around our necks and giggled and called us the Blue Ghosts.

  I had to stop because one of the jurors said, “Aw, shit and hell,” blunt and loud, and I got distracted, but Dale told me to look right at him and answer another question and I did because I wanted to save my momma.

  I told how I was embarrassed to be naked and having men touch me and it made me cry.

  I had to stop again when two women on the jury made gasping sounds and they distracted me. Dale told me to look right at him, and I did even though I had to keep wiping my face. I did it to save my momma.

  I told how the cigarettes burned my bottom and how I didn’t like seeing Annie thrown against walls.

  I had to stop when Carman said, “For God’s sakes, that’s enough! That’s enough!”

  And Shell Dee moaned, “Lord help her, Lord!”

  I told everything. I did it for my momma.

  “Madeline, what did you tell your momma about a week before Sherwinn’s, Pauly’s, and Gavin’s trial?”

  I sucked in my breath as a whole pile of nasty memories sunk down on my head. I closed my eyes. I wrapped my arms around my body. I heard a moan slink out of my mouth.

  The judge waited.

  The jury waited.

  The news reporters waited to scribble.

  Everyone in the room held their breath.

  “Madeline?” Dale said, gentle.

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear.

  For one second, I looked up and gathered my hellfire, as my momma would have said. Annie, my sister, my best friend, was standing in the courtroom. The one who wore tutus with me, grizzly bear outfits and kimonos. She held up her wrist and pointed at it. She was wearing a bracelet like our momma’s with puca shells and pink and yellow plastic flowers just like I was.

  I put my hand over my bracelet and took the deepest breath of my life.

  “Before my momma shot Sherwinn and Pauly and Gavin, I told her what they did to me in that room with no windows. I whispered it to her.” I rocked back and forth again.

  Dale took a deep breath. “And what was that?”

  “They did the ice-cream truck with me.”

  No one moved an iota, but the tension flared sky high.

  “The ice-cream truck?” Dale said.

  I saw my granddad sag in his seat.

  My grandma bit down hard on her lip.

  My momma kept her eyes right on mine, but that didn’t stop her anguish.

  “He did something bad to me. It hurt. When I screamed he hit me in the face. He said, ‘How do you like the chocolate ice cream?’ ”

  Sobbing was audible.

  I heard someone swear.

  “He did other bad things with me with ice cream. Vanilla and strawberry.” I detailed the bad things and the photography. Click, click, click.

  “Why is Marie Elise on trial at all?” someone from the back yelled. There was general agreement.

  Somebody else called out, “Marie Elise ain’t guilty. She ain’t guilty.”

  I heard someone yell, “This trial is a travesty.”

  “Quiet down.” The judge rapped his gavel. “Quiet.”

  My grandma’s whole body was vibrating, as if someone were right inside her, wringing her around.

  The Rubensteins were pale white.

  “I told my momma everything. Everything. I told her about the ice-cream truck.”

  “What did she say to you, Madeline?” Dale asked.

  I stared straight at my momma.

  “My momma.” I had to stop because I was crying, memories of the ice-cream truck, and Sherwinn and not being able to help Annie, mixing in with how much I loved my momma and how much I missed her, how alone and lonely I felt without her every single day.

  “My momma told me that she loved me!” My voice rung around that courtroom. “My momma told me that I’m a beautiful girl! She said she was proud of me.” I heard my words pitch high. “She said I’m smart and a good girl. She said I’m special to her and my dad loves me, too.” I thought of my dad, his hug and his smile. “My momma told me that nothing was my fault and she hated Sherwinn and Pauly and Gavin and she hated herself for bringing them into our lives, but Momma,” I said to her, my voice crackling, “you didn’t know. You didn’t know. They told us they would kill us if we told.”

  “What did your momma do next?” Dale asked.

  “My momma hugged me.” I shook my head back and forth, back and forth, so exposed, so lost. “I didn’t want to play ice-cream truck. I didn’t want to be in the room with no windows. I didn’t like them taking photos. But my momma loves me. I love you, too, Momma, I love you, too, Momma.” I stood up in the witness stand. I wanted to hug my momma so much I ached, my whole body a radiating mass of pain. “I miss you, Momma, I want to be with you. I want you to come home, please, Momma, come home.” I leaned over at the waist and yelled at her, “Come
home!”

  “Objection,” Terrence said, so weak.

  “Overruled,” the judge said, rote.

  I turned to the jury. “Please let my momma come home! Please! Please!”

  “Objection,” Terrence said, even weaker.

  “Overruled,” the judge said.

  The jury members were in tears and comforting each other.

  “I want you to come home, Momma! I want you to come home! Please, Momma! I miss you! I miss you so much! I love you!” My tears streamed down my face, like water from open faucets.

  “Okay, I’ve had enough,” the judge said, the best poppa in the world, as he swiped at his eyes.

  Dale came up to get me, took my hand, and walked me back to my seat. I was not allowed to hug my momma, but I said to her, loud so she knew I meant it, “I love you!”

  She blew a kiss back at me, her face a mask of misery, of desperation.

  There were formalities to follow that one would expect over the course of an excruciating trial. The attorneys for each side were up and down, up and down, and there were closing arguments.

  Terrence the Ferret’s argument was short. He’d sunk into himself during the trial, stuck down in the seat like he was glue. He did not look at our momma, or at us, only at the jury. “You can’t take the law into your own hands, even if it seems like you should. Mrs. O’Shea can’t do it, either, even if she believes that the men who kidnapped, abused, and photographed her girls deserved to die. She thought they would get out of jail and come after her girls and kill them because of the letters she received, and she was probably right, but she still can’t kill them. You have to find Mrs. O’Shea guilty even if you would have shot those men if they did the same thing to your kids or grandkids. Thanks for your time.” He sat back down in his chair, back hunched.

  Dale said, “Close your eyes and picture the faces of your kids and grandkids. See their freckles? Their gap-toothed smiles? Their messy hair? The time they were covered in mud, remember that? What about the way they eat snow cones? It’s all over them, right? Think about their first day of kindergarten, how excited they were to go to school for the first time.”

  I watched the jurors’ faces, their eyes closed. Each one of them had a sweet smile.

  “Now, folks,” Dale said, his voice bunny soft. “If someone played ice-cream truck with your kids, your grandkids, what would you do?”

  Instantly their expressions whizzed to fury.

  One juror, a man who was the size of a logging truck, started sobbing and didn’t even bother covering his face. “Oh no, oh no . . .” he moaned. “Oh no . . .”

  A woman hissed and raised herself halfway out of her seat.

  Another juror stood straight up and yelled to Dale, jabbing his finger in the air, “I would kill him, man, I would kill him!” His reaction seemed to surprise him, and he blinked a couple of times.

  The judge banged his gavel.

  Dale ended with, “At the beginning of this sad trial, I told you that Marie Elise plumb lost her mind. Heck, with that tumor she has in her head, who knows what that did to the poor woman. She was temporarily insane with rage and grief and fear, wouldn’t you have been? Folks, let’s not keep these girls from their mother for one more day.”

  The jury was dismissed.

  The jury filed back in under five minutes. It was, and probably still is, the quickest determination of guilt or innocence in the history of this country.

  “Jury Forewoman, do you have a verdict?”

  “We do, your honor.”

  “What say you?”

  “In the case of Massachusetts versus Marie Elise O’Shea, we find Mrs. O’Shea, of course, not guilty.”

  The courtroom exploded, deafening cheers and clapping, as the judge pounded his gavel, the reporters scribbled, cameras flashed. The jury forewoman had something else to say. She glowered at the prosecutor. “We do, however, find the prosecutor guilty of being stupid.” She shook her finger at the prosecutor. “Very stupid. Case never should have been tried, young man. You’re responsible for bringing more pain to Mrs. O’Shea and her family. Shame on you. Shame on you!”

  The courtroom exploded again, and I jumped over two rows to get to my momma’s hug. She caught me midleap, her face wreathed in smiles, her yellow ribbon flying.

  A photographer caught that photo, my excitement, my momma’s radiating joy, my grandparents’ euphoric happiness, the Rubensteins’ fists in the air in triumph.

  Annie didn’t smile, but she had her momma back. She had her.

  “I love you, Pink Girls,” Momma said, her voice wobbling as she held us close. “I love you so much. I will love you forever and ever. Now give me a kiss.”

  How did Momma’s French Beauty Parlor save her life? Everyone loved her. That’s why none of the good prosecuting attorneys would take the case. That’s why we got Terrence the Ferret. The attorneys had to go through tons of jurors before they could find twelve who weren’t close friends of my mom or dad.

  My momma shot three men in cold blood. That would be murder. It was clearly premeditated. She hadn’t lost her mind. She was totally sane.

  She came home a free woman.

  Later that night, snuggled into my momma’s bed with her and Annie, I closed my eyes and waited for my dad to appear. He did. He was smiling, his arms in the air, hands clenched.

  Victory.

  27

  “That reporter, Marlene, called,” Georgie said. She was wearing yellow rain boots, a white skirt, and a yellow sweater. “She wanted to know about your relationship with Steve Shepherd.”

  I slammed a book on my desk.

  “Whoa. Bad feelings on that one, huh, Madeline? Anyhow, I asked that she-witch why she wanted to know and I got to talking to her and she said you and Steve grew up together and she was pissed off, I could tell, because she said that Steve Shepherd had his attorney file papers against her, too, like you, to stop this article, and Steve told her, himself, over the phone to ‘Back the hell off’ and told her that the article was ‘inappropriate and hurtful’ and ‘What is wrong with you, Marlene?’ ”

  Georgie tapped her boot. “Yeah, Marlene wasn’t happy. She said that everyone in Cape Cod, and now this ‘famous writer,’ was down her throat, and she was upset because she has a book herself she’s trying to get published, and she thought that Steve was going to get in the way of that because of who he is.”

  Georgie pulled on the ends of her hair, which were dyed yellow to match her outfit. “So. Is Steve an old love of yours or something?”

  An old love.

  Yes, that would be right.

  My only love, too.

  Steve and I used to write stories and poems together. We’d run off into the woods, or scramble down to the ocean, or tie on life jackets and paddle a canoe to the middle of a pond and write in journals (me) and notebooks (him). We’d take turns sharing with each other.

  He liked snake stories for a while, then he moved on to snake families and all the problems they had with each other. He also wrote informational papers about snakes. I wrote about swans, like my grandma, only my swans were always wild and rode motorcycles and shot arrows and gave advice to all the other swans on how to live their lives, like my momma.

  Sometimes I would write a paragraph of a story, he’d add a second paragraph, I’d add the next, switching back and forth, and we’d end up laughing till we were rolling on the grass. Other times I’d give him a silly sentence like, “My name is Frog Man. I like to eat . . .” and he’d have to write a story. He would tell me to write, “If I were a bee I would . . .”

  “You’re a good writer, Steve.”

  “Thanks, so are you. Do you want to read the fourth chapter of The Snake and Me now?”

  Sometimes we’d read books, too, back to back under a tree, or lying on our stomachs in the tree house my dad built us. It was odd how many things we both liked to do.

  We liked to tease a dog named Frisky. He was a bad, brown dog and liked to bite people. If you could le
ap over the fence wrapped around his backyard, run to the other side, and leap over the fence again without getting bitten, you won. I tried this run one time; Frisky ran out and bit me on the arm. While the other kids screamed, Steve leaped over the fence, stuck his hands in the dog’s mouth, yanked it open, yelled at me to run, then took off himself when I was over the fence, my pink dress ripping as I leaped off it.

  He was like that. He would take the bite for me.

  What would have happened if, over the years, I had called him back, or thanked him for the flowers or funny gifts he sent periodically? What would have happened if I had accepted one of his humorous, kind offers to meet him for dinner or fishing or canoeing?

  What would have happened?

  I sniffled.

  What if?

  “I’m being blackmailed.”

  Annie stilled across the table from me under the gazebo. It was drizzling teeny raindrops, as if the skies wanted only a scattering of attention. Door and Window were with us, white and fluffy, sitting by Annie, their mother.

  “By who?” She clenched her jaw: Scream in.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I have an idea.” I put my violin, with all its dents and scratches and butterfly blood stain, which came from the blood of my family, back in its case. “I’m sorry, Annie. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to involve you, didn’t want to upset you,” my voice wobbled, “but I think—”

  “I think we’re done with you trying to protect me, that’s what I think,” she snapped. “I don’t need it and I’m sick of it.”

  I sat back, verbally smacked.

  “I think we’re done with you feeling guilty about what happened to us and you believing that you have to make it up to me for the rest of our lives. I think we’re done with you treating me like a fragile kid sister. I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and weaponry. I know how to poison people, and I can kill anyone with my bare hands. I am not fragile. I am your equal and you need to remember that we were children, children, Madeline, when everything happened and you were absolutely heroic in what you did to save me, to help me. You hugged me every night when we were kids, you hit all three of those sickos so many times I can’t count, and when we were in that shack, you held my hand constantly, so let it go.” She grabbed both of my hands. “Let it go.”