Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  At this point, there had to be at least a few intrepid reporters thrown into the mix, who had learned Mom was staying at Robin’s. She imagined them camped at the foot of her driveway, phones poised, waiting for shooting survivor Renee Bloom to go out for a breath of fresh air. Maybe the cops would scare them off.

  Robin’s screen beeped—an incoming email to her work address, the sender (somebody from the National Enquirer) and subject (Quentin Garrison) flashing briefly. This had happened so many times today already, she was starting to think she was being overly optimistic in her belief that there were just a few reporters outside her house rather than dozens. Poor Mom.

  At least Quentin’s mother wasn’t alive to see this—her son in the lead role of psycho killer. As a journalist, Robin found it troubling how quickly the press had jumped on Quentin Garrison, bending and molding him into something that had to be so much simpler than who he was. She wondered if Quentin had seen the newspapers wherever he was. And as a daughter, she had to admit, she hoped he had. She couldn’t find it in her to fret too much over inaccurate press coverage when it came to the man who’d murdered her father. But she did feel sorry for the people in his life who had trusted him. His friends. That handsome husband. Had they known he’d just implode?

  Robin’s phone extension buzzed. Eileen, again. “You okay, sweetie?” she said for probably the tenth time today—a real achievement considering it was only 11:00 A.M.

  Robin quit out of the article as though Eileen could see her screen. “Fine,” she said. “Just coming up with column ideas.”

  Eileen said, “How do you feel about the idea of writing a personal essay?”

  Robin’s jaw tightened. Last night, she and Eric had sat bolt upright in bed, awakened by a scream. Robin had hurried into the guest room to find Mom still asleep, thrashing and mumbling. She’d tried to wake her. Mom? she’d said. You’re having a nightmare.

  But Renee had stayed trapped in the dream. Put it out, her mother had said in a rough, unfamiliar voice, her eyelids fluttering open and shut. Put out the motherfucking fire. Her whole life up until that moment, Robin had never once heard Renee swear.

  Some personal essay that would be.

  “I’ll think about it,” Robin said.

  Eileen didn’t say anything for several seconds. “You know what, Robbie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want a personal essay.”

  Robin exhaled.

  “To tell the truth, I really hope something happens to knock this story out of the headlines, so we can all just go back to normal.”

  Robin smiled. She’d arrived at work to a big flower arrangement on her desk—lilacs and white roses, her favorites. There had also been a sympathy card from the whole office, but clearly it had been engineered by Eileen, who was the only one in this place who knew what her favorite flowers were. “Maybe Beyoncé will drop an album,” Robin said.

  “I’m praying to her as we speak.”

  “You’re a good friend, Eileen.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “Also, I never thanked you for the flowers.”

  “What? Oh . . .”

  “Seriously. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Actually, hon,” Eileen said, “the flowers were from your hubby.”

  Eric . . . Robin thanked Eileen for her honesty anyway and hung up the phone, thinking again of the previous night. Her mother, so thin and frail, her whole face clenched up, as though she were trapped inside and trying to burst out. How shaken Robin had been—not so much by the swearing or even the talk of fire but by that strange, husky voice. Who are you, Mom? She’d returned to the bedroom to find Eric wide awake, sitting up in bed, waiting for her. They’d talked—or rather he had—about Renee, about everything she’d been through and how she’d lost the person she loved and depended on in a violent act and how therapy might be a good idea for her and how her physical body may be healed, but emotional scars last so much longer . . . Something like that. Robin couldn’t recall the exact words Eric had said because she hadn’t really been listening. The important thing had been the soothing tone of his voice, his arms around her. His being there. That had been what mattered.

  Robin stared at her computer screen. She needed to get out of her own head, think of a column idea. She typed out a few sentences about the new Batman movie, deleted them, wrote a few more about a proposed Poseidon Adventure reboot, then deleted them too. She pulled the flowers closer to her, inhaled their lush scent and typed the only sentence that made sense: It’s hard for me to care that much about movies right now, when my own life seems to have lost its structure. Great. She was about to write a personal essay.

  Her head was starting to throb. Robin grabbed her phone and purse and got up from her desk, moving past Michael and David mapping out a slide show on Jennifer Lopez’s marriages, past Jill on the phone with a pop music flack, begging for a phoner with some former Mouseketeer.

  Once Robin made it outside the newsroom, she ducked into the small, empty hallway that led to the bathrooms and breathed in the quiet. It smelled of pine floor cleaner in there—a vaguely antiseptic scent that reminded her of the hospital. She called Eric, and he answered after one ring. “How are you holding up?” he said.

  “Okay, I guess. Thank you for the flowers.”

  “I wish I could take you to lunch.”

  “But you can’t because Shawn will ruin your life.”

  “Actually, I want to stick around so I can keep my eye on him,” he said. “I feel like the minute I let him out of my sight, he’s going to do a show about your parents.”

  “You should stay then.”

  Robin slid down the wall and sat on the floor. She had an urge to spend the rest of the day out here in this hallway, filing stories from her phone.

  Eric said, “I talked to your mom today.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep. She called, asking where we keep the tarragon,” he said. “She sounded fine.”

  “She’s probably in better shape than we are.”

  “Well, she did have a better night’s sleep.”

  Robin slipped the Polaroid out of her purse, gazed into the young girl’s eyes. Put out the motherfucking fire.

  “I think she’s going to be okay,” he said. “I mean . . . okay as she can be.”

  Robin thanked him for saying that, which was the only response she could think of. The truth was, she wasn’t sure Mom would be okay, or even that she ever was okay, with this big chunk of her past tamped down so tight, packed away from the world. And the only person who could help her, gone. That’s it, Renee. That’s it. Let it out. Don’t run from it . . .

  “Eric?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you sure my mom doesn’t have some weird connection to April Cooper?”

  “Robin, come on.”

  “Well, why was Quentin Garrison so convinced that she did?”

  “You know Occam’s razor,” he said. “What do you think the simplest explanation would be in this case?”

  “Quentin Garrison is a nutjob.”

  “Bingo.”

  “In his confession, he said he’d wanted to do an expert interview with my dad.”

  “Maybe on some level, he knew he was being crazy.”

  “Or maybe he just didn’t want the cops to find out about this giant bombshell until he had proof.”

  “Honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you want for dinner tonight?”

  Robin sighed. “Way to change the subject.”

  After they ended the call, Robin pulled herself to her feet, the subject still unchanged in her mind.

  She headed back to her desk thinking of her mother, of all the things she didn’t know about her, and then Quentin’s mother.

  Last night after they’d gotten Mom to bed, Eric couldn’t sleep. He’d used a service they paid for at Anger Management to see if Kate Sharkey Garrison had a rap sheet. He’d only found one arr
est, but it was a strange one.

  Fifteen years ago. Quentin was probably about twelve . . .

  Drugs?

  Actually no, though I’d guess there were drugs involved.

  Huh?

  She broke into a wax museum on Sunset Strip. Tried to steal a life-size figure of Marilyn Monroe. Looks like it made the papers. It was in some column called Weekly Weird News . . .

  Once she was at her desk, Robin did an advanced search for the column and found it. Kate Sharkey Garrison’s drugged-out mug shot was front and center. Robin wondered if this wasn’t part of Quentin’s illness—the belief that everyone else’s mother was like his own, weak and deviant.

  The headline read, MARILYN’S BIGGEST FAN. Robin started to read. When she got to the third paragraph, she stopped breathing. “Oh my God,” she whispered. Then she hit print.

  “Everything okay?” asked Jill as she was folding up the article and slipping it into her purse.

  “Fine,” Robin said. “Be back later. I’ve got a publicist meeting.”

  Robin headed past the rows of desks, some chipper new intern on one of the phones, talking loudly and excitedly about an exhibit of mosaics made entirely of cat food. Robin’s heart beat in time with her staccato delivery. She could feel the intern watching her as she passed, could feel everyone watching her, those looks on their faces, that wary concern, as though at any given minute, she might just detonate.

  Robin kept her eyes aimed straight ahead of her, smiling stiffly as she passed the front desk and heading fast for the elevator. Once she was on the sidewalk, where it was crowded enough to make her feel anonymous and she could finally breathe again, Robin slipped Nicola Crane’s business card out of her wallet and tapped the number into her phone.

  “Robin?”

  “Nikki.”

  “Hey, it’s great to hear from you!”

  “Listen, can you get together?” Robin said. “I really need to talk.”

  “DO YOU THINK she’ll like this?” Nicola said. She opened a red velvet box and showed Robin a necklace—an aquamarine heart on a delicate silver chain. The two of them were in a Starbucks on Madison Avenue, a few blocks away from where she’d been shopping when Robin had called her, asking if they could meet. It just so happens, I’m in your area, Nicola Crane had said. I’m just buying a little something for your mom, you know. To cheer her up.

  The necklace glittered against a white satin pillow. Aquamarine was her mother’s favorite, her birthstone. She had an aquamarine pinkie ring, worn as long as Robin had known her. And the necklace itself . . . it reminded her of something she’d seen in Mom’s secret box—a plastic heart on a string, that same blue-green color. “She will love it.”

  “Oh good,” she said. “Maybe the blue stone will take her mind off all the Blue Meanies.”

  “Blue Meanies?”

  “You know. The cops.” She shrieked with laughter. Several customers turned to stare. Robin was tempted to laugh along with her, but she couldn’t. Not after what she’d found.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  Nicola frowned at her. “Of course we are.”

  “Well, where I come from, friends don’t keep important information from each other.”

  Robin removed the Weekly Weird News column from her purse and handed it to her. And then she waited for her to get to the third paragraph—the one that described a young police officer named Nicola Crane who had posted the bail for Kathleen Sharkey, the mad wax figure thief. Kate’s a good friend, Officer Crane had said back then. She’s a good person. She’s just going through a difficult time. Nicola looked up from the page, her expression calmer than Robin had expected.

  “All right. You got me. I knew Garrison’s mother.”

  “How?”

  “She helped me out when I was young. Got me into foster care. We spoke occasionally as grown-ups. I tried to help her . . . Look, I haven’t brought it up with anyone because I don’t want word getting around. Poor thing can’t rest in peace even as it is.”

  “Did my mom know her?”

  “You’ll have to ask her,” she said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. That son of Kate’s was a handful and then some. Pretty much scared me off having kids of my own.”

  “What was so bad about him?”

  “He was always sneaking out. Never minding her. Got into fights at school all the time, and not because he got picked on. He was just . . . mean. His mother was endlessly upset by him. Endlessly disappointed.”

  “Couldn’t he have been acting out to get her attention?”

  “First of all, Kate was a single mother working two jobs while battling an addiction. She gave him all the attention she possibly could.” She took another sip of her drink, cringing this time. “Also, as someone whose parents died when she was very young, I’d have killed for half the attention that little brat got.” She cleared her throat. “Screw it if that sounds harsh.”

  Robin took a swallow of her coffee. “Really?”

  “Okay, think about this,” Nicola said. “I probably saw Quentin Garrison at least half a dozen times, and I was in contact with Kate right up until he was a young teenager. And I know we all age, but when he approached me after the funeral, I recognized him instantly. He, on the other hand, had no idea who I was. I know I look different than I did fifteen years ago. But I have the same friggin’ name, and it didn’t even register with him. Now if that isn’t the dictionary definition of narcissism . . .” She took another wincing sip. “God, this latte should be a criminal offense.”

  “You want some of my coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” Nicola took a sip. “Nothing like getting a bad taste out of your mouth.”

  Robin gazed at the opened red velvet box, the necklace inside, sparkling serenely. “How long are you in town for, Nikki?”

  “Just a few more days. My dog-sitter says they’re about to mutiny.”

  AS ROBIN WALKED back to her office, she thought of what Nicola had said, and of what she hadn’t said back: Not remembering someone you’ve seen several times isn’t the dictionary definition of narcissism. Some people simply have bad memories for names.

  She hadn’t remembered Nicola either, not at first. She pulled Morasco’s business card out of her bag and called it on her phone. He picked up after one ring. “I don’t know if this information is important at all,” she said, “but my mother’s old friend Nicola used to be friends with Quentin Garrison’s mother.”

  “Is that right?” Morasco sounded distracted and strange. She heard voices behind him. People shouting to each other.

  “Are you outdoors?” she said.

  “Ms. Diamond,” he said. “You have to clear out your voice mail. I tried to call you a few times, but I couldn’t leave a message.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Listen,” he said. “We found Quentin Garrison.”

  Robin stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You did?”

  The shouting got louder. Someone saying, “Stand back.”

  “Detective Morasco? Has he been arrested?”

  “No,” he said. “Quentin Garrison is dead. He appears to have shot himself.”

  Thirty-One

  June 20, 1976

  Midnight

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  Jenny is dead. Gabriel told me. He said she’s been dead from the beginning of our trip. He said he killed her before Papa Pete came home, that he buried her body in our backyard.

  The times he’s called her on the phone, the times she’s listened to me and I could hear her breathing . . . He said that was just dead air. A random number that he’d called.

  I don’t know whether he was telling me the truth, or if he just said it to hurt me. He was angry at me for so many things: Not forgiving him for hitting me. Spending the day with Elizabeth. Getting drunk with Elizabeth when I was supposed to be with him. “You can’t abandon me like that,” he had said. “You’re Bonnie. I’m Clyde.”

&nbs
p; And because I was drunk, I didn’t lie and tell him how much it meant to me for him to say that. I didn’t make big sad eyes at him like I normally would. I didn’t say I was sorry, that I’d never abandon him again.

  What I did was this: I pointed out to Gabriel that Clyde Barrow couldn’t get it up. Just like him.

  That was when he told me about Jenny. Because he knew he couldn’t hit me anymore without Elizabeth cutting him in his sleep with her sewing shears, which she’s sworn to him she’ll do. Because he knew he couldn’t shoot me in the Bristol Arms because there would be too many witnesses. But most importantly, because he knew that telling me he’d killed my sister would hurt me more than hitting or shooting ever could.

  At first, I didn’t believe him. I told him I know what Jenny’s breathing sounds like, and I can feel that she’s alive. I told him that he’s a liar and that lies can’t hurt me. But he just laughed. “She’s dead,” he said. “Whether you want to believe it or not.”

  “You will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.” That’s what the Bible says. Jenny was never his enemy, even for a second. She wasn’t anybody’s enemy. She wasn’t big enough.

  Never trust a boy, Aurora Grace. Even if it’s the one boy in the world you’ve been forced to rely on. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t confide in him. And whatever you do, do not believe that he is interested in keeping you safe. A boy will use you. He will hurt you. He will lie, and worse.