The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  And now she has a son in the custody of the law.

  And all of it, except the last bit, was what she’d written at command on her first day of therapy, at her former therapist’s request—written on flimsy printer paper that had already been used on one side for an online travel reservation—with the liberty to construct your own personal history, Dr. Margaret Gould had emphasized.

  She’d lasted five weeks with Dr. Gould—and in that time had plenty of holes pricked into the dam that held back her miseries. But then the sessions weren’t affordable anymore.

  The day before, lunchtime, Friday, she’d tried to see her son, but had been refused. Too soon, even for family, said the uniformed officer behind the desk—all pimpled, no sympathy, a little shithead hamburger—she’d wanted to carve the boredom off his storm trooper face.

  She left the courthouse. It was farcical. Everyone was going about their normal days. She drove to … nowhere. Where was she supposed to go?

  When what she’d wanted to do was go back to the courthouse and plant a couple kicks into the guard’s eyes.

  So she smoked a cigarette, her lifelong friend. Then reapplied lipstick, and decided to run an errand across town at Aubuchon’s, the one on East Toussaint—where she bumped into, who else, Dr. Gould, in the paint-can aisle.

  Dr. Gould, who greeted her with an unconscious, wincing wave, until very perceptibly, as Dr. Gould would have said, did the doctor herself experience a profound shock of revelation—while she stared in disguised wonderment at her own shoes—as she connected the Suzanne Toussaint before her to the piping-hot, unspeakable story that had raced around town about a double murder.

  But thus, as she looked up into Suzanne’s face, did observant fucking Dr. Gould quite visibly resist flinging herself into an interaction to learn more. Instead stood squared, total hard-core marine shrew, called to attention by the micromoment’s significance—frankly, she was the most subdued that Suzanne had ever seen her, even overwhelmed, and still nakedly expectant, as she waited hopefully, as her nerve endings thrummed with ready sympathy in case Suzanne should avail herself in the quiet sanctity of Benjamin Moore—“Oh, Suzanne,” said Dr. Gould. “I’m so sorry.”

  And even then Suzanne didn’t frown or blink. Didn’t say, “Maggie, thank you.” Didn’t say, “Maggie, mind your own business.” Didn’t say or do shit except turn around and get back in her car. Drive home rigid in her seat. High humidity. Scattered clouds. The muscle above her left eye spasmed—a blood clot that raced toward her heart, probably.

  And in the garage she parked, rolled down the door, and had a beer from the back-up fridge and then another.

  Saturday morning, the next day, a new day, Suzanne Toussaint decides that Suzanne Toussaint will never sleep again.

  The bedroom is her parents’ bedroom, the wet bar was her father’s idea. He’d built it one Labor Day, she remembers the weekend exactly, down to the straw basket full of her mother’s prized tomatoes that sat on the porch. Did her parents love her? Does it matter? They certainly loved each other. To quote her ex-therapist, “We can simply be exactly who we think we are.”

  It starts to rain. So just one more shot, a half to get going, a sip and she’ll dress, do her makeup, hop in the car, return to the courthouse and burn down the gate. The window drips. Why are there so many trees? So many lawns full of grass, why is everything so green? As if every element in life is humid.

  She stares in the mirror. Her arms are corpse-blue from sweat. Does grief ever become abstract? She ignores the longing to hide beneath the covers.

  Then she thinks of Nicky again, and the chaos sinks all the way down.

  Suzanne Toussaint is daughter of two, mother to one, sister to an idiotic older brother she hasn’t spoken to in at least five years, who lives in Thailand for pennies and chases girls, girls who actually are girls—she hates him. Her family once helped to settle Claymore, her great-grandfather was a New Hampshire state senator—but anyone of notoriety in their family is in the ground. Except now—her son. She can’t explain anything. Murder? Murder? It must be her failure somehow, yet more failure, she’ll get the blame and deserve it.

  She stares wretchedly out the rain-beaded glass at all that guzzling green.

  Her son has been taken from her.

  Pain is pain.

  To be a mother is a never-ending attempt at repossession.

  * * *

  Over the last two decades, an idea has grown durable in a corner of Martin Krug’s mind that the world is graspable, the world of criminals. And what he knows of that world is quite a lot. For example, bad guys almost always do what he expects. Criminals as a species are mostly uneducated and inebriated. Inclined toward self-harm, self-pity, self-prosecution. With wits that have the staying power of a bruise.

  Even in the strangest crimes are the same motifs. Bad parents. Lust for vengeance. Men with mommy problems. Women with daddy problems. Women with baby-daddy problems.

  Any color of motive can turn more or less fluorescent, but the palette doesn’t change. Though some colors are more vibrant. The summer of ’93, he consulted for a sheriff’s department in rural Pennsylvania. A call came through on his second day. Violence against children. The address was miles into overgrown woods. Rolling hills. Yard posts and fields. A Greyhound bus appeared without wheels or windows. He reached a pair of cabins on a three-acre lot thick with garbage and machinery parts. Out front was an aboveground pool. The surface teemed with children. Kids clung to the side, faces and arms green for some reason, like swamp creatures. One of the boys had bubbling warts on his lower eyelids.

  Martin got out of the car and said hello. No response. The wart boy ducked under the water and swam away.

  Up close, the surface was a half inch thick with green algae.

  The front door on the first cabin was open. Three half-clothed adults were passed out in a heap, like a pile of bodies set aside to be buried. There was evidence of a long high. In the second house he found an old woman, dead drunk, plus four more children, one of them probably twelve years old. The kids had half assembled a jigsaw puzzle of Mount Rushmore. The oldest one had a Ruger Single-Six stuck in his pants.

  He put nine children into protective custody that day.

  But no matter the case, no matter how ugly it gets, it’s never the Martin Krug Show, it’s never about him. More often, he’s just confused.

  Saturday morning he goes to a meeting. The theme is Let’s be friendly with our friends. He jogs afterward on the beach. The funny thing about meetings, they always seem to correspond with his own problems. Or maybe that’s the addict’s narcissism. He takes a shower. Looks up Walter Dennis on the internet. The web’s full of tributes, quotes in The Wall Street Journal, one of those little dot portraits.

  “Walter Dennis speaking.”

  “Walter, hey. This is Martin Krug.”

  What the hell does he say next?

  “Martin?”

  “We met a month ago. Atlantic City. You received an award.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We were at the same table. I told you about my friends.”

  “Martin. Of course. You’ll have to excuse my memory. Every day, I lose a little bit more.” They both laugh. “What can I do for you? You doing okay?”

  “Thank you. I was just wondering.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve been going through some stuff.”

  “You’re in the program.”

  “I’m fine, thanks. But I was wondering. I don’t know how to say this.”

  “Blurt it out.”

  “Maybe, I thought, you’d want to do something together.”

  “Sure.”

  “What I mean is, the way we got along. This is new for me. I’m just saying, if you’re free sometime.”

  “I got it. Look, Martin.”

  “Yeah, you know, forget it.”

  “Your friend, the one who died. He was your doctor.”

  “Exactly. Chris.”

&nbs
p; “Martin, I should have told you. You’re wonderful. But I’m seeing someone.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “I’m going to stop you.”

  “Walter.”

  “Now I don’t know if there’s something about the office, or me and law enforcement, or it’s my profile in the community.”

  “Walter.”

  “Listen. Just listen. This is not rejection. Because I’m touched, sincerely. The closer you get to figuring this out, there are going to be a lot of lucky guys. I say this, too, that your friend, if he were here right now, and he is, of course, but he would be saying the exact same thing as me. You are not alone. Do you understand what I’m saying, Martin? Say it with me. I am not alone.”

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon, he arrives in New Hampshire. Claymore County, population 81,000. The county seat constitutes about a fifth of that number. Ocean and mountain country, thriving apple orchards, with a coastline that hugs a ragged edge. Once there was a prosperous shipyard in town, now it makes roofing panels. Wild strawberries for sale. Family gun shops next to delis. A good view of the Isles of Shoals, with excursion-boat companies that offer cruises. Outskirts of town enclosed by unsold developments. In the center, old townhouses, Georgian and Federal, blue and red, some with their coal chutes preserved.

  The valley floor runs east to the sea, west to mountains that rise gently, gain height, and become an alpine belt that shoots north.

  Acres of antique shops, pawnshops, tattoo parlors.

  Down by the ocean, mists rise to unveil even more trees.

  At dusk, when Martin arrives, the town is windless. From a distance, the village downtown is a small grid, parts of it refurbished, crisscrossed with blackish stone walls and lit by wintry lamps. It’s Edinburgh as much as Portsmouth, tarnished and elegiac, stripped and polished by years of salt and snow. A big church sits on the square. Teenagers cruise around on mountain bikes. The boardwalk bars are lined with motorcycles. Streets are named after foreign countries, Catholic saints. He follows a sidewalk down to the water. Compared to New Jersey, the sand on the Claymore beach is a little darker, the glow of the sunset paler, houses on the bluffs more heavily curtained. But it’s still a beach town. A girl glides to shore on a body board. A Ferris wheel is lit up like an episode of Miami Vice.

  He gets a room two blocks in from the ocean. The inn adjoins a tavern that looks like it dates back to the Revolutionary War. The manager shows him his room. It’s not big in the first place, and smaller for being stuffed with throw pillows. The guy opens the windows. Visible in the ocean is a gray streak of current. Time passes. Martin turns to his host. Bodybuilder type, silver crew cut. He bears a strong resemblance to a certain Bergen County prosecutor.

  “It looks fine.”

  “You’re in town for the bike rally?” the guy asks.

  “The what?”

  “The Weirs Beach Motorcycle Rally.”

  “Just work,” says Martin, probably too curtly.

  “You’ll notice a slight odor; our basement flooded. Chalk it up to global warming. If you need anything, my wife and I are the owners, one of us is usually on the premises. You’ll probably see our son around, too.”

  The ceiling has a sag to it, it creates a claustrophobic feel. The man leaves. The room is shadowy. Martin sits in front of the dark TV. He forcibly shifts his thoughts to the kid, Toussaint. The fact that somewhere nearby is a courthouse, attorneys, all the cogs of the machine, and a young man accused of home invasion and double homicide. Who must be terrified, Martin wonders, as the system whirrs around him. A kid he can’t imagine to be guilty.

  His back hurts from the drive. Martin picks up the phone. The front desk tells him to call the restaurant next door for room service. He orders a pair of veggie burgers, a bowl of ice cream. Thirty minutes later a teenager shows up in baggy shorts and a tank top. Tall, black, with short dreads and a ring through his nose. Name tag, DEMEKE.

  Martin spontaneously tips him twenty bucks. He feels a need to be nice to somebody.

  The boy smiles and gives a little nod.

  He eats, unpacks, gets on the internet, and finds a meeting that’s at a church downtown. In the morning he’ll confirm Monday’s lunch with the Toussaint kid’s attorney. From New Jersey, he’d called on a whim and spoken to an answering machine, extended an offer to help with the investigation.

  Every public defender’s office he’d seen before was overbooked, understaffed, underfunded. They’d need to hire an investigator anyway, and here he was, pro bono.

  The lawyer called him back ten minutes later.

  After dinner, he watches TV. His eyes start to shut. He skips brushing his teeth and pulls the covers up over his head. New Jersey is far away. Let it stay there for a little while.

  The last thing he does on his first night in Claymore is leave the framed photograph of Lillian inside his suitcase. But he has to get out of bed in the dark and crouch over his luggage to do so.

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon, Nick’s mom turns up in a ragged cardigan, loose jeans, hair disheveled, a wool scarf wrapped around her neck, like she’s a fisherman on shore leave in December. But the guard still gives her the eye.

  Men always look at his mom. She gives a glance to the walls. Nick can tell she hasn’t slept. He knows to recognize that her face is all marble, the telltale sign of a binge.

  “I said I wouldn’t cry,” she says hurriedly.

  He laughs darkly. “It can be tough when you’re drunk.”

  “There’s been some kind of mistake,” she insists, “a huge mistake.”

  “Mom, listen to me.”

  The situation is irreversible, impossible. Nothing changes.

  “Nicky, what happened?”

  “Mom.”

  “Oh, darling.”

  “Suzanne.”

  “What?”

  He swallows. His mind is lost. He’s losing chances by the minute.

  She sways in her seat.

  “Has anyone been bothering you?” he says, as softly as possible.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Please.”

  “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a great job.”

  “I need you to get ahold of Emily.”

  “Nicky, stop.”

  Her voice drops, on puppet strings, her “sober” voice, heavy emphasis. “For god’s sake, darling.” She secures one hand with the other. “Now tell me what happened. I have to know. I’m your mother.”

  “Will you listen to me?” he says. “You need to contact Emily for me.”

  She leans across the table, fixes the glasses back on her nose. “Here’s what I’ve done. I contacted a lawyer. He’s a friend, he was a friend, of your grandfather’s. He doesn’t do this sort of thing, but he found out the name. The woman you’ve been assigned. She’s supposed to be good, so that’s good. I’m supposed to go fill out an affidavit after this, I’ll see if I can meet with her. Nicky, you need to tell me right now what’s going on. Anything.”

  She leans forward, and for a glimpse he sees her, her fear. It guts him. He drags the words out, “I just need you to get in touch with Emily.”

  Her face hardens again. She sits back and adjusts her scarf. She stares out the windows, boxed with mesh.

  “You don’t want her to see you like this.”

  He ignores her. “I’m asking you for a favor.”

  “You can’t just want things.”

  “Can you please do this one thing for me?”

  She sobs. So loud and instantaneous it should be fake. He knows it’s not. He can’t stand it when she cries. She thrusts out her bony white hands in fists. He takes them from instinct. When he does, one slightly opens.

  She cries even louder.

  “That’s enough,” the guard says over the intercom. “No contact.”

  He takes the folded paper from her hand and drops it down his undershirt. His mother rocks back in her seat, sheds tears. Not for one second does he believe
it’s an act.

  * * *

  The week that Nick met Emily, nine months earlier, it took him two days after the quarry to find her again. It nearly didn’t happen.

  He’d stressed about it every minute. He’d never had feelings like this before! Luckily, he ran into the skunk girl at the hardware store.

  Three nights a week, he delivered pizza for Coney Island Pies, an Italian restaurant near the beach. Tips were good, they comped him for gas, he ate free, he liked to drive. It was a good gig.

  That afternoon, someone ordered a personal-sized Hawaiian pizza to Mitchell’s Hardware, and there she was, sitting on the counter next to the register while she took pictures of her shoes. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it.

  “Look, it’s Nick Toussaint.”

  “You’re Alex.”

  He held out the box. She took a slice and started to eat.

  “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

  “Let me guess. About my friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t remember her name.”

  “Of course I do. It’s Emily. So will you give me her number?”

  “Not unless you want to call her dad.”

  “Why?”

  “His number’s easy. It’s three digits.”

  She laughed at her joke. He didn’t get it.

  “Look, forget it,” he said.

  “How about this, be a gentleman. Write her a letter.”

  “A letter. Like on paper.”

  “She doesn’t have a phone. I’m not joking. How much do I owe you?”

  “Twelve bucks.”

  She handed him a twenty. “She’s only sixteen, you know that, right? Give me three bucks back.”

  He nodded automatically in recognition of a good tip. He peeled the change off a roll in his pocket. Sixteen years old. Did that change anything? Should it change things?

  He asked the skunk if she’d still be at the store at seven, he’d drop off the letter when he got off work.

  * * *

  Dear Nick,

  I don’t know what happened or where you went but now you’re locked up and Father won’t let me see you and I can’t get around him. I’m so sorry for everything. Please forgive me. I feel so guilty. It’s all my fault, I know it, and everything’s just so awful and miserable that I can’t put it into words. Everything I told you, I take it back a million times. I feel so horrible about what I did. I miss you so badly it’s like my whole body’s broken.