“Emily, if you remember nothing else, beware the drunken double-tap.”
“She’s not online,” Alex said. “Also, she’s a prude.”
“I am not,” Emily said, shocked, a second too late.
“I meant it as a good thing.”
“I’m sure she’s not a prude,” Meg said. She turned to Emily, consoling. “Honey, I’m sure you’re not a prude.”
A garbage truck on the street started beeping. Emily got up and poured herself a glass of water. Her face was on fire. How unfair. And what did Alex mean? Her heart hammered, she was sure they could hear it. The big-sister tone of Meg’s voice annoyed her, but it was Alex she was mad at. Was she a prude? Was that better or worse than being a slut? She wasn’t even completely sure what a prude was.
“By the way,” Meg said to Emily, “my friend said to be careful with that baggie. That batch is supposed to be superstrong.”
* * *
The next day, her boss gave her the day off, and the first two things Emily did were to check her bag and make sure Meg’s Ziploc was still there, then take the bus all the way to the beach, to see the ocean. The sunlight was crystalline, almost too much. She worried the whole way about her prudery. Swallowed two caps and two stems on the ride. She decided that even if she were the last prude on Earth, it probably made sense, it suited the narrowness of her feeble life thus far.
She sat in the last row, next to the window. A pod of motorcycles swarmed darkly around them in traffic, like sharks. A man in front of her, totally ordinary and old, stroked and pinched his girlfriend’s neck in a way that made her feel uncomfortable.
Forty-five minutes later, she’d gotten as far as the public locker room at the beach and couldn’t leave. The terror was real. She clamped her eyes shut. She licked her lips, so dry. Little noises sounded like explosions. It was all she could do to open her eyes, but the visions persisted, everything heaved and dripped. She wanted to kill somebody, she could honestly kill somebody.
A woman came out of one of the toilet stalls, bathing suit down, her breasts wobbled left and right. She said, “Are you okay?”
How did she know to ask?
Was this woman the person she was supposed to kill?
Emily smuggled herself outside. She’d never been so afraid. She ran. Ten minutes later, behind the Dairy Queen there was an old wooden bench under an awning that faced the woods. She sat and shivered in the darkness, she couldn’t calm down. She wanted to die on the spot. A prude, Alex said—the horrible irony made her laugh. She fixated on a bush in front of her, a small fist of blackberries. She counted the berries, and sang a song the way her mother used to sing. Two hours later, the world was restored, mostly. She walked to the bus stop. Maybe this time she’d actually gone crazy. She passed a little house, painted red with vivid yellow trim, like a McDonald’s, but with ornate scalloped railings and boxes stuffed with geraniums. Wasn’t life the real insanity? At the bus stop, she decided she’d be fine with whatever was life’s opposite. Nothingness. Death. Oblivion. Actually, it was about the only thing that she was comfortable with at that moment, the notion that right there, on the sidewalk, she could collapse in front of the crazy house and it would be of no consequence, it wouldn’t matter, she was absolutely fine with that: the future without her. Die/live/whatever.
But something was different a day later: her mood stayed the same.
And for weeks from that point, she would smile calmly at her little desk, and quite enjoyably write down list after list, stream-of-consciousness inquisitions, of pros and cons. Like little written-out versions of Truth or Dare, to see how far she could go with the question, life or death, and the ways by which they could be achieved. It brought her peace, to witness herself be so imaginative about the matter.
A comforting fog snuck in as Emily started sophomore year. After two full diaries, she couldn’t decide, life or death, so indecision became decision. She’d wait a bit. In the meantime, she quit mushrooms. Continued to run, even started to place in races. But she didn’t care at all about her performance. She still made A’s to satisfy Father, to give him no reason to pay her any attention, but she cared about grades even less. Overall, there was less soreness in her chest. No more panic attacks. Her hands and legs didn’t shake when she was in the bathroom at school. What fueled her during class, or after school, or while she ran, or at the dinner table at night while she sat, and didn’t eat, and just withstood, was how it all would play out come Christmas. Death/life/whatever.
How she’d arrange it so there’d be a sliver of a chance at the final moment to go either way, and she’d let fate decide.
For now all she had to do was settle on the method.
And it was earlier in the evening on the same night that she first met Nick, in October—the night that the three of them went up to Whitehall—that she’d sat at her desk with homework, and waited for Alex to pick her up, when she had her epiphany. She’d hang herself in the barn. Quick, simple, easy. The realization came to her out of the blue: how all she’d need was a chair to kick away, or use to climb down.
But just as she reached this happy conclusion, there was a noise downstairs. Father shouted at the phone. Something to do with the cost of Mother’s treatment, the insurance for her facility up in Maine. For nearly ten years, her mother had been in and out of clinics. Not even the diagnoses remained the same. Trichotillomania. Panic disorder. Anxiety disorder with OCD. Anafranil, Abilify, Adapin. Now she was in full-time care, in a facility outside Camden, about three hours north and east. Emily still hadn’t visited.
At the sound of Father’s voice, she couldn’t take it anymore, instantly felt shredded to raw strips. In the closet was the old baggie. She guzzled the remains.
How long had it been, six months?
Then she remembered that Alex was picking her up soon. The plan was to sneak out to a bar in town so Alex could try out her new fake ID.
High / not high / who cares.
Hours later, after the bar, after the boy, after Whitehall, during the drive home from the quarry, it started raining, a big downfall. Alex turned on the wipers and told a long story about how the boy they’d just met, Nick Toussaint Jr., the one with the limp, seemed to be totally into her, as in her, Emily. She’d laughed, mainly to disguise the injury. Because there wasn’t much she was sure about in the world except that boys preferred Alex. Also she was still deep in the high, she couldn’t even remember the boy’s face. All she wanted to do was to go to bed.
“At least he’s more interesting than boys at school. And older,” Alex said. “Did you realize he’s nineteen? And he’s into you.”
She’d said nothing, hopefully loudly.
“He’s not tall,” Alex said. “But he kind of makes himself look taller.”
Still nothing.
Alex turned to stare at her. “Hey, are you tripping again, weirdo?”
She shrugged.
“You are. Seriously? Who the hell gets addicted to mushrooms?”
“Will you just leave me alone? For once?”
Five minutes later, the rain stopped. Alex dropped her off at the bottom of her road. She’ll probably never call me again, Emily thought. The tires hissed away into the endless valley. The forest around her was drenched. She could hear it breathe. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to consider maybe Alex was right about the boy. She couldn’t even remember his name. Had she told him hers? But it was too impossible. And she knew she should be embarrassed about her behavior in Alex’s car, she’d allowed her self-centeredness to bully her best friend.
Of course the boy preferred Alex, that was natural law, who was she to complain?
When she looked up at the house, smoke rose from the chimney. Another fifty yards of trudging and she saw her father’s police car parked nose-out to the road.
He was supposed to be at work, he’d give her hell.
She used the front door anyway, so Very Very.
“Where were you?” came the voice.
The living room was hot and dark. It smelled of citrus. He switched on the light. His lap was full of orange peels.
“Where were you?” he said quietly.
“Out.”
“Out, you were out.” He smirked. He said, singsong, “And how did you get ‘out’ exactly?”
She wanted to laugh. She had no idea what she’d say next. But for some reason, and she had no idea why, for the first time she didn’t feel afraid.
“I snuck out.”
“You ‘snuck out,’” Father said evenly. Surprised. He placed his hands on his lap. “Do you do that? Regularly? Where did you sneak out to, once you snuck out?”
“We drove around.”
“‘We drove around.’”
“I said, we hung out.”
“You’re full of surprises. You were with that girl,” Father added a moment later. “Who happens to be such a wastoid even her parents don’t want anything to do with her.”
“I don’t think people say ‘wastoid’ anymore.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, no one says ‘wastoid’ anymore.”
He would expect her to explain herself in detail. To possess enough discernment to identify what she’d done wrong, but not to understand why or what it meant. How many times, since she was little, had she stood before the stove and recanted? Anytime she was in trouble. Always measured enough for him to savor. Begin at the beginning. What was your first thought, before you did anything? A problem always starts somewhere. If we don’t know how this started, how will we know where to begin and what to fix?
Father stood up awkwardly, he pretended he hadn’t heard, he lifted the stove lid and the room jumped with color. He dumped in the peels. His voice was so light it was weightless. “You think I don’t know her situation. You think the entire town doesn’t know her situation. That someone in my position isn’t privy to the details.”
She said nothing.
“Do you really think I don’t see the pattern here.”
She said nothing.
“Emily, are you listening?”
“Fine. I’m sorry.”
Life/death, basically it was a math problem.
“Oh, don’t worry about apologizing.” He sat down calmly, and fixed his shirt. “You don’t need to worry about that. You’re in control. Don’t tell me you’re not in control. You’re sixteen. You’ll be driving soon. I’ll even let you use the work truck. Did you see that coming? Well, you’re practically an adult. Coach Hopper contacted me, did you know that? She said you skipped a meet last weekend. You have anything you want to say?”
She said nothing.
“You don’t eat, as far as I can see.”
She said nothing.
He laughed scornfully. “You’re on a bad path, Emily, you don’t need to speak to see that. Anyone who’s got eyeballs in her head can see that.”
“I broke the rules. I disobeyed,” she said.
“Well that’s an understatement,” he said, and folded his legs.
“I put myself in harm’s way.”
“Take a seat, Emily.”
All of a sudden there was a fire inside.
“I was really stupid, I’m so sorry,” she said flippantly, with the voice of a little girl.
“Slow down,” he said.
“It was stupid. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I was so bad.”
“Do not use that voice.”
“It’ll be the only time, I promise, I’m just a stupid little bad girl.”
“Emily, quit it right now.”
He coughed and slammed back in his chair. Eyes furious.
She bit her hand to stop from talking. She’d be held responsible anyway.
After half a minute he said, “I would like you to sit down. Start at the beginning and tell me.” He coughed again and clenched his fists. “Tell me exactly when you had the first idea. That you wanted to break our rules.”
She couldn’t win, only withstand. But she could withstand, and not take him at all seriously anymore. He was Very Very insignificant.
And in a math problem only one answer is ever possible.
That night, Father kept her in the room for forty-five minutes while she went through her mistakes, so that in the gaps in their relationships she might find space to process her transgressions, note how one led to another, and realize how much the entire chain dragged her down, grasp not only what such a thing meant for her own reputation, but also Father’s reputation as her guardian, as county guardian, and also the reputation of their family, a name that rang long in the valley.
But none of that was on her mind. Instead, the whole time, what she thought about, what really bothered her, beneath even her fantasies, was what Alex had said about the boy. Was it Nick? Because as she slowly recovered her mind, she couldn’t figure out any reason why Alex would have lied about Nick, why she’d say the boy liked her, her as in Emily.
* * *
From beat to chief, among other truths that appeared inevitably over a long career of policing, Martin had seen enough guys tell themselves they were doing the right thing when really they were just doing the lazy thing.
Always, when cadets start their careers, they expect the public to be better. They learn that, on the whole, most people do worse.
He said this all the time, to kids who already eyed their twenty years—who forever looked, to Martin’s eye, like so many popsicles in uniform—that in policing, everything goes to shit, always.
Always, people lie to you for no good reason.
Always, you get thug boyfriends, pregnant baby mamas, grandmothers with an axe to grind.
Always, people hate you, especially when their iPhone’s missing.
Always, you buy the next round.
Always, you’ll be threatened, spat upon, called names that are nastier than anything you could’ve come up with. In this respect, your imagination will improve.
Always, if a fellow officer dies, if a kid’s shot in the street, each time a shithead on the news takes cops for granted, you feel everything intensely for a moment, then overall you feel things a little less.
Or you feel things more, and the chip on the shoulder grows.
Always, you have people whose value to the species weighs less than toilet paper, and they’re the ones who hold power over your career.
Always, between a good fuck and a nap, you take the nap.
What’s the difference between a beat cop and an extra large pizza? An extra large pizza can feed a family of four.
People choose their poison, though frequently it chooses you. Weight gain. Insomnia. Heart disease. In his case it was caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, repeat.
Always, the facts aren’t worth much, emotions even less, especially when the everyday truth that eventually all police officers must stomach—and no one takes it well, because it tastes like shit, so naturally you need a drink to wash the shit out of your mouth—is that the bad guys do their thing and you help them. You help them. You exhaust every option, you go past your limits—your limits are just the start of what you’ll do—but then it comes time to put some tweaker back on the street, who goes on to steal and rape again—rape and kill, kill and steal.
Sometimes it’s thanks to some bleeding-heart defense attorney. But sometimes it’s thanks to you.
You who are almost never the good guy.
You’re so rarely the good guy, not even your chiropractor likes you, and that guy you’re buying a beach house, with the rate you pay.
When everything goes south, and it does, always, you say to yourself, This is it. This is me. Naturally your spouse worries about you, gets upset about the time away. Naturally she turns jealous over the hot probie. She resents you, fears you, definitely fears you unconsciously. You’re a nonfeeling monster who runs on sugar and saturated fat.
Your daughter is afraid of you, and that truth is the one that dogs you all day. That the look in her eyes when she sees you come home is no longer just simple love.
>
And even the kids you buy ice cream for, as a reward for wearing their helmets to skateboard, to them you’re just some fucking cop.
Then pension time rolls around; you made it. And if you’re at all like the majority, you get divorced and collect boat catalogs. You screw around with a thirty-six-year-old who knows the score, who’s also divorced, who likes cops, who has friends who are cops and friends who date cops and everybody goes to Vieques together. And if you’re lucky you make your first boat payment six months later off that shiny new security gig that bores you to death. And you still die in five years, you piece of shit.
But one thing Martin won’t tell recruits, because most recruits are good kids and they figure it out on their own, because their dads were cops or their aunts were cops or a granddad was in the FBI, and these kids worshipped their dads and aunts and granddads, and had strong minds like their sisters, stout hearts like their mothers, nasty funny streaks like their motormouth brothers, and still for some boneheaded reason they wanted to live and die in service to others—they wanted to be cops—since he loves those kids, he never tells them the truth, that the job is a prison.
Where, no matter who you are, any rank, you need help, but you don’t ask for it. Because you’re an asshole. Even at the Toy Drive you bitch in the car. You were born dumb and now look at you. Your back’s a wreck. Teeth are brown. Eyes are cold and flat. And every bad scene haunts you for the rest of your life.
But how do you ask for what you don’t know you need?
So your tolerance for stinking crap grows. And tolerance has a cousin named indulgence. Because once you figure out that some people are habitually at their worst, not biologically above disproportionate nastiness, then it’s much easier for your own standards to drop. And in the heat of the job, two a.m., three nights in a row, after two weeks of such crap amid a four-month backbreaker, the fact that the bad guys don’t play by the rules makes the rules seem less important.
The Last Kid Left Page 9