by Anne McAneny
“Allison Fennimore,” I said, my plump lips framing a smile. “You probably know the name.”
Abby Westerling found a quick, urgent excuse to leave my company. She gathered her Gerber Peas baby, murmured an apology to the other mothers, maybe with a cautioning nod in my direction, and skedaddled. Whatever. Nothing could hurt me now. I was Lavitte’s favorite Teflon Daughter.
Chapter 2
Allison… present
I pulled into the two-car, detached garage of my childhood home, wondering why I’d driven to the park in the first place. It was only a mile away and the exercise would have done me good. Being out of the city was already costing me a good thirty blocks a day of serious hoofing.
The brakes on my mother’s Buick squealed as I pressed them, so I added Fix Brakes to the mental list of things I needed to accomplish before returning home. Ironic that my mother had to pay to get her car serviced.
“Car brakes,” I repeated to myself in an effort to remember the task long enough to write it down in the kitchen. Hopefully my mom hadn’t thrown out the list I’d started this morning, which included Leak in Basement, Stuck Shower Door, 60-Watt Bulbs for Back Porch, and Call Realtor. The types of things the man of the house might do, especially if he was good with his hands. Like a mechanic.
As I walked toward the house, I tried to envision the structure the way a buyer would: two-story colonial with a basement; lots of windows for sunlight; fresh marigold paint; flowered patio; stone walkway; cute and homey; cursed. I sighed. Maybe it had been long enough that it would finally sell.
Couldn’t believe my mother had stayed here all these years, like a wound begging for salt. Even if she’d been forced to take a loss, she could have started over again in a town where the Fennimore name was less notorious, where images of little Shelby Anderson didn’t crop up like a fated internet search the moment people heard Artie Fennimore’s name. Or pictures of Bobby Kettrick’s golden mug, with the too-white teeth and the square jaw that looked like it came from anywhere but Lavitte. Heck, there might be dozens of Arthur Fennimores out and about in the country whose name conjured joy in people’s minds. Imagine that. An old children’s game of word association popped into my head. You say horsey, I say ride. You say Fennimore, I say joy. Ha! Too far-fetched even for me.
I entered through the back door into the kitchen, staring at the list I’d made. What was it I wanted to put on there? Something to do with the house? With transportation? Oh yes, the brakes. I wrote it down. This was how my mind worked lately. In circles. Between my brother going to mandatory rehab, my mother dabbling in dementia, and the recent airing of Big Crimes, Small Towns on cable, I felt trapped on a mental merry-go-round, the gears grinding against the bones of my inner ear, the music stuck in a dissonant minor chord. In the old days, Lavitte residents would have jotted down Artie’s Autos, but nowadays they simply wrote Fix Brakes.
“You’re home already, honey?” my mother said. “Did school get out early?” She shuffled into the kitchen as if her legs didn’t have the energy to lift her feet. Odd the way the dementia came escorted by physical weakness. As if the mind told the body to match the message. Other times, she was her old self and walked with a smooth gait that looked youthful compared to her sixty years, as if her hips contained springs and her feet could negotiate clouds.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me, Allison. I’m here visiting from New York, where I live. I’m all grown up.”
If only. I guided her to one of the wooden chairs I’d always found too heavy for the kitchen, more suitable for a dining room. But the dining room had been forever cluttered with my mother’s projects—ranging from a collection of wreaths for the Christmas Bazaar to the infamous scrapbooking attempt during which she’d hot-glued half a dozen photos to her fingers before giving up. Oh well, it was never boring and a few of her projects had turned out okay, like the pressed flowers, the knitted hats we never wore or needed, and the intricate jewelry she’d beaded for years after my father’s death. It had kept her busy and, most of all, alone—away from the judgment of so-called friends.
“You didn’t get in trouble with the principal, did you, Allison? You’re usually so good.”
Yes, that was Allison Fennimore. Sweet girl. Teacher’s pet. Good listener. Hell, any 15-year-old who could sit quietly though a day of testimony in which her father was called a sociopathic slaughterer out for revenge over the theft of a few screwdrivers had no choice but to be a good listener. But good and a quarter’ll get you a cup of coffee. Lousy coffee at that.
I’d lost the reputation overnight, of course. Because a good girl couldn’t possibly come from a man who shot people in cold blood or yanked young girls off their bicycles. The same man who couldn’t even get up the nerve to do whatever it was he wanted to do to the girl in the first place, who killed without rhyme, reason or remorse. Of course, who could show remorse for something they denied doing? To show remorse was to show guilt. And my father never felt guilty about anything, at least not that I knew of. Arthur “Artie” Fennimore was famous for putting it all in God’s hands and believing that if God was at the wheel, then He knew what He was doing and there must be a gold-plated and indisputable reason for it. If Artie Fennimore took his fist to his wife on the occasional, drunken Saturday night, that was God’s fist. God must have been trying to teach Justine Fennimore a thing or two about pleasing her man. If God every so often felt the need to withhold affection from a socially awkward young girl, He might as well use Artie Fennimore to do His bidding.
Always seemed like an excuse to me.
“Everything’s okay, Mom,” I said. “No call from the principal coming your way. Can I make you some tea?”
“No thanks, honey, I think I’ll just rest. I’m so tired. Must be that time of the month.”
My mother hadn’t had a time of the month for eight years, but if she wanted an excuse for a good nap, let her enjoy it. If anyone deserved an altered state of consciousness, it was Justine Fennimore. She shuffled toward the spare room I’d converted to a bedroom so she wouldn’t have to manage the stairs as often. Then she turned back to me and tilted her beautiful face, framed by dark hair worn in the same, short coif since her twenties. Her lips parted to say something, but then a slow shock crescendoed on her face as she rejoined reality. Not a fun place to be.
“Kevin,” she said, the two syllables of my brother’s name carrying enough weight that it made her shoulders slump.
“Yes, Mom, Kevin should call today. Around three.” Precisely at three, actually, because that was Kevin’s allotted time for his five-minute call.
I waited for my mother to lapse into concerns about Kevin getting off the school bus at three, hoping for her sake that she was still in Dementiaville, but no such reprieve today. Clarity had come and she knew full well why he would call at three. It must break her heart, at least what was left of it.
“I’ve got to go out again, Mom, but Selena’s in the sunroom if you need anything.”
Selena, a tall, muscular, Guatemalan woman I had hired as my mom’s caretaker, made out like a bandit. Twenty bucks an hour to make sure her charge didn’t wander off or do anything dangerous. Not sure how Selena accomplished these responsibilities while napping on the couch most afternoons, but so far so good. Whenever I walked in on her, she swore she wasn’t asleep, but rather, she suffered from a bad case of dry eye syndrome and needed to minimize her corneal exposure to air. After explaining this the first time, she’d tried to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.
“I’ll be back in time for Kevin’s call,” I said.
I could have told my mom where I was headed, but it would have ripped out another piece of her soul and forced it through the shredder. That’s how it had been for me when I got the call from Kevin a few weeks ago. My landline phone, silent for months at a time, had rung early in the morning, throwing me for a dreaded loop. My friends knew I worked until 3:00 a.m. and they were forbidden to call before noon...
*** Twenty Days Earlier***
/> “Hello?”
“Allison, it’s Kevin.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t someone calling to report a death or an arrest for murder—distinct and precedented possibilities in the Fennimore family. “Kevin? Thought you could only use the phone—”
“Look, I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Cashing in a favor to call this early.”
“Cash me in a favor and don’t tell me what you had to do for your favor.”
“Can you get in here tomorrow? I need you to do something for me. It’s big.”
I sat upright, not an easy accomplishment on my cheap mattress. “Is it legal?” I asked, realizing too late that eager ears were probably monitoring his call and would perk up at the mention of skirting the law.
“I want to reopen the case,” Kevin said. “You know, against Dad.”
I laughed and slumped back. “Kevin, please. You get a few sober months under your belt and you suddenly have time for deep reflection? Oh, I know what’s going on here. What’s the title?”
“Of what?” he said, his patience with me often a surprise.
“The book you’re writing about Dad. Going with Lavitte Lasher? The Fennimore Fiend? No, too reticent. I’ve always been partial to Maniac Mechanic myself.”
“Stop screwing around,” Kevin said. “Although those titles aren’t bad.”
“What’s this about then? Seeking closure?” My tone mocked him for even considering the concept. Children of convicted murderers, guilty or innocent, had no relationship with such psychological malarkey.
“This is the longest I’ve been sober, Allie. Give me a chance.”
“A chance to what? Open old wounds? Make Mom miserable? Step into the insanity of claustrophobic Lavitte? No thanks.”
“Something’s rolling around in my head,” he said.
“Teachers used to call that your brain.”
“You’re going to Lavitte, anyway, right?”
“To put Mom’s house on the market. Not to reminisce about Bobby Kettrick.”
Kevin sighed. I could picture him now. Callused hands, dark, shiny hair, and a scruffy growth on his face that the women loved. At least women who also enjoyed leather jackets, flea-bitten mattresses, and cheap, imported beer. But above the stubble, the same full, crooked lips as mine, the scar on his left cheekbone from the playground seesaw, and the vibrant olive eyes—when his brain wasn’t swimming in alcohol.
“I need you to talk to some people,” he said. “I got it all coordinated. You wouldn’t believe how the stars are aligned.”
“Please don’t go all stars-aligned on me, Kev. Besides, Dad is dead. What does it matter?”
The confluence of discussing my dad’s case while staring at the bland piece of art on my wall called Possibilities actually made me tremble. I forced myself to close my eyes and fight the impulse to slam the phone as loudly as I could in my brother’s ear. He was supposed to be the mellow one, the cool, distant guy who didn’t talk about the case, the one who let me know it was okay to gloss over it.
“I gotta go,” Kevin said. “Favor’s up. Come by tomorrow. It’s your day off anyway.”
“I’ve played this record too many times,” I said, tugging at a piece of hair with my hand. “Only scratches left. Sorry you wasted your favor.”
I reached the heavy phone receiver out toward its cradle. Slowly. Part of me didn’t want to disconnect from the bizarre fantasy that I could storm into Lavitte, rip through its healed skin, and reveal the infection still lingering there. But most of me wanted to move forward, away from a past with tentacles so tangled in my soul that to completely disconnect might be to die.
“Tomorrow at nine!” Kevin shouted just before I let the phone drop into its nest. A brother who knew me too well, as if he sensed the phone was distant from my ear. I hung up. Now I’d never get back to sleep. I lurched from the comfort of my mattress and yanked the blinds up. Dust flew out from between the neglected slats and made me cough. I brushed it away but it hung in the air like tear gas. I staggered back to bed and curled into myself, knotted up on the inside, my eyes wide and wondering.
Reopen my dad’s case? What the hell was he thinking? Where was he when the case was still fresh, when the people and places weren’t covered in denial and grime, the events untainted by their infamy? I knew where. Drunk in some godforsaken rented room, or sobbing it out with some tattooed hooker, always trying to forget. Maybe if Kevin could avoid prison after rehab, he could put his off-the-charts I.Q. to better use than trying to steer around a Subaru driven by a blotto, 17-year-old, lacrosse star. The young athlete had entered the New Jersey Turnpike going the wrong way on the same night that Kevin had decided to pay me a visit in New York City. Kevin had tried his damnedest to avoid the kid, but Kevin was a Fennimore; we never landed on the lucky side of the rainbow. According to the skid marks, Kevin had managed a masterful swerve followed by a NASCAR-worthy spinout, but he who doesn’t die in that pathetic scenario loses. Kevin’s blood alcohol level tested on the edge of New Jersey’s stringent legal limit. At least they’d gone easy on him and put him in mandatory rehab first. With good behavior and positive counselor reports, he might get a lighter sentence, but he still needed to pay the price for killing a teenager while under the influence. Hardly a first in our family.
End of Sample. Thanks for reading. To see more, just go here: Raveled