The pizza gig he took on for more cash, to help with his mother’s bills and put a little aside. And because he had the time. But it also made him wonder what else he could do with his life. He talked about starting a T-shirt business. He talked about going to culinary school. He cut down on the weed, spent more time reading books. He bought a dumbbell set that he was really, really into for about a month.
By his eighteenth birthday, after a year-plus entrapment in fiberglass casts, after most of his friends didn’t swing around the house anymore and most had left town, Nick Toussaint Jr. began to display a moody inattentiveness and touchiness that hadn’t been there before the crash.
One thing he discovered about himself: he liked to go for long walks. The park, the beach. Some nights he’d put in a dip, just walk alongside the ocean. Stare at the pier lit up like a racetrack, the untroubled faces of so many kids that rolled through his vision, kids he’d known his whole life, who’d gotten so much ladled into their laps. Lives ahead of them like highways, wide open, to do anything.
The immobilization was what had done it, split the world between himself and them.
And he felt inside his soul a painful loneliness.
By the time he met Emily, he hadn’t kissed a girl in a long time.
Following the skunk’s instructions, he wrote the letter. It took him an hour, at the tool bench in the back of the garage. High shadows fell. He rewrote it three times. He wasn’t used to handwriting, his fingers cramped. His penmanship looked like a kid writing a note to Santa Claus. Who the hell wrote letters anymore? What would she think? Anyway, how was he supposed to sign it at the end, “love Nick”?
He laughed. Did he really just ask himself that question?
Equally out of nowhere, he wondered what his dad would have done.
His dad had been a drifter, self-described. Nick Toussaint Sr.: storyteller, entertainer, proudly Catholic with gold around his neck. “Never let anybody put a tattoo on your arm,” his dad used to say, meaning it as a metaphor for something—his dad who had multiple tattoos, including “Suzanne” on his hip. His father who, for Nick’s thirteenth birthday, had taken him out drinking, a late night in a bar on the boardwalk called the Harbor. The excitement quickly faded. He threw up in a gross-out bathroom. All he’d wanted was to go home, he didn’t know any of his dad’s loser friends. Near midnight, his dad shouted, “We’re lovers, Nick, not fighters.” Then he walked up to a woman Nick had never seen before and put a huge kiss on her lips, and everybody laughed.
The father who left him in the woods.
Nick got an envelope from Mr. Tyree with the shop’s logo, a smiling tire. He drove the half mile back to the hardware store.
“That’s for her to open,” he said to the skunk. “Not you.”
“You’re cute,” she said.
He walked out, jingling his keys. Couldn’t even remember what the hell he’d written! Everything inside him was tuned to a single note. Probably the wrong note. Sometimes at home Suzanne was afraid of him, he saw it in her eyes. He’d try to shrug it off, but the truth was there. And what was sort of fucked-up, he liked it. He grew out his hair. Bought a pair of boots that looked like ones he’d seen in a movie. Living up to a stereotype he saw flash in people’s eyes, the way customers at Tyree’s took him for a punk, because of the limp, the coveralls, the attitude. So he cultivated it. But girls didn’t like that stuff unless you could also be tender, he knew that much.
On a whim he blew off work, drove up the mountain above town. He parked in a lookout. The view took in the apron of the county, the ocean, the horizon. The day was breezy and bright. He went to the scenic marker and stared over the valley.
And without thinking ahead of time he made himself a promise, in words that weren’t words, that this would be the last time he’d ever think about his dad.
Because the truth was Nick didn’t mind his life, his new life. He was fearless, because what worse could happen? He felt so small, still the clouds seemed close enough to touch.
It would become his new duty, as of that moment, to think forward, quit living in the past. Imagine a new life built from scratch. He just needed something to start with.
* * *
To Emily Portis:
Your friend said this is the right way to reach you. Sorry if it’s bad. I don’t write a lot of letters.
We met the other night. I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Nick Toussaint Jr. My father’s name is Nick, that’s why the junior. People ask me that all the time, you’d think they’d figure it out on their own.
I liked meeting you. You’re really pretty and cool. I’m sure guys tell you that all the time. I’d like to hang out sometime if you want. We can go somewhere, whatever you like. Here’s my number: 603-627-4949. Text me or return something through your friend. Do you like movies?
By the way if you don’t want to see me that’s cool, just tell your friend to let me know. I’ll be honest I’m not the type to play games if you know what I mean.
I would like to see you again. I think you’re really special.
Thanks,
Nick
* * *
Emily finished reading the letter for a third time, then a fourth time, and her heart was racing even worse. Her thoughts dissolved. She didn’t know what to think, she was suffocating, she was on fire.
Alex ripped the paper out of her hands and started to laugh two seconds later.
“I think he’s illiterate.”
“Shut up.”
“He calls you special.”
“I can’t believe it.”
Even after the fourth time, the words spun tornadoes through her body that flashed with electricity. To continue to exist, to keep herself from a delirious spin out past the reach of gravity, she made herself quit smiling.
You’re really pretty and cool.
No one had ever said anything like that to her before.
“I’m calling him Junior from now on,” Alex said.
Emily snatched the letter back. She read through it a fifth time.
“What do I do?” she whispered.
“What do you mean? What do you want to do?”
“How should I know?”
“Jeff Goldblum, bitch. Life finds a way.”
It was the most intense moment of her life.
“I know what I’d do,” Alex said. “I’d tell him to stick to texting.”
But she didn’t listen, she looked frantically for a pen.
Her body and soul were more primordial than words, thousands of miles out of reach—and that was a serious problem in this situation.
“I need to write him back,” she said. “Seriously, what do I say?”
* * *
Dear Nick,
Hi Nick,
Nick,
Hi Nick. This is Emily. Thank you very much for your letter. You’re so cute. I think you’re special too. I love movies and I would love to see one with you and talk about it afterward.
Hello Nick. It’s Emily. Thank you for your note. It’s in my pocket. It’s been there every moment since I got it. It’s so embarrassing how wrinkled it is. I already ripped one of the corners this afternoon and I nearly started crying about it. That’s not the most embarrassing part, I think I’m going to sleep with it tonight under my pillow.
Hi Nick. I got your letter. It was so nice. Let’s meet this weekend and kiss for sixteen hours straight
Dear Nick, Thank you for the note. You’re pretty cool, too. What are you up to tomorrow or anytime you’re not busy for the rest of your life
Dear Nick, I can’t stop thinking about you I’m boiling over I’m worried this is all a joke I don’t even really remember what you look like except I think I remember you were cute and I liked your hair and eyebrows I’m thinking right now about kissing you and it is driving me crazy it’s crazy I’m crazy
Dear Nick
* * *
Friday morning, Martin returns to the Ashburns’ cul-de-sac to knock on doors
. But nobody he talks to saw anything, heard anything, and the redhead isn’t home.
He restores Nick’s file to its rightful place. It didn’t reveal much except notes about the kid’s injuries from the snowmobile crash, otherwise he received a clean bill of health. The file establishes a professional relationship between Nick and Dr. Ashburn, nothing more.
The previous night, Martin had gone through the rolls of local knuckleheads. Guys on parole. Ladies with records. Anyone recently charged with armed assault. Brenner’s assistant had been through once already, he’d found two men who robbed an emergency-care clinic with a shotgun nine years earlier. But both had an alibi for the night the Ashburns died, and they worked at the same steel warehouse now, verified and on video. After them, no magical names.
Martin grabs the register off the desk in the doctor’s office, plunks down on the Ashburns’ back porch, into the stiff embrace of a wooden chaise, and proceeds to call the last ten patients the doctor saw.
Six people answer their phones.
Of them, five report the doctor in a normal state, with normal rapport. One says he’d seemed distracted, but no idea why.
End of the day, orange dusk, Martin decides to visit the doctor’s golf club. According to Brenner, it’s the preferred roost for the Claymore wealthy who hadn’t yet flaked off for richer towns.
He immediately finds much to annoy him. Upper-crust shrubbery. Mercedes, new and old. Stars and stripes next to the New Hampshire state flag, next to the club’s flag, white with green insignia: a pair of American Indians nobly posed straight-backed and mum, courtesy of smallpox.
He hates country clubs, golf clubs, old-money crap.
Martin interviews the manager first. And doesn’t exactly care if his condescension fills the room. It’s a windowless, low-ceiling office. Horse paintings. Dog paintings. The man lives up to expectations. Fearful, pudgy, he wears a visor indoors and idly plays with a pocketknife, flicks it open and closed with his thumb while he talks about nothing.
Martin wants to stick the knife into the son of a bitch’s leg. But he probably still wouldn’t learn much.
The halls are striped red and green. More paintings of animals, foxhunts, as if it’s not New Hampshire outside but Yorkshire. Who are we when we hate the world we inhabit? At the bar, everything’s old, the plants, the men. A semicircle of windows overlook a course fenced by trees. The golf greens are striped by long shadows. Night will fall soon: another day of no gains. He needs to do something. He barges into the conversation of a trio, three older golfers with cocktails and shaky hands. The nervous manager appears in the doorway to vainly listen for trouble. But no one has a word to say against the good doctor, or the wife, none of them would call him an asshole, no one knows of any enemies or threats or knocks against the family name, except the daughter, conceivably? A disappointment. But every family has its black sheep.
And what does Martin expect, anyway? A self-selecting pack, self-satisfied elites believing only the superlative best of their dead. As they hoped to be remembered one day.
He purposely takes his time to find his car in the shaded parking lot. Old habits die hard, and sometimes they still pay out: a forty-something guy jogs down the front stairs. The prep-school letterman who never grew up, eyes down, no handshake. There’d been a certain matter, the guy says under his breath, involving a receptionist the previous year. Basically, doctor balled the secretary. Everyone knew, they didn’t want to speak ill. But something must’ve come out? Because either the chick took off or got fired, and suddenly Mrs. Ashburn had quit all her charity work and ducked back behind the doctor’s desk.
“The wife used to be his secretary?”
“That’s what people say.”
“What else do they say?”
“No, that’s it.”
“Pretend I’m dumber than you think.”
The guy looks uncomfortable. “Well, she’s the second Mrs. Ashburn. But you guys already know that.”
In fact, they didn’t. At least he didn’t.
“Keep going.”
“The daughter comes from the first wife. But that was, like, twenty years ago. I think she died. Violet was Nathan’s secretary, back when. If you see what I’m saying.”
“So he’s a repeat offender,” Martin says. “With secretaries.”
“Yeah. So it seems.”
The guy continues vaguely, losing enthusiasm. How Dr. Ashburn had gone into crisis mode, one to pour his own drinks at the bar. No one knew how Mrs. Ashburn had figured it out. But recently, things had seemed better. The doctor and the Mrs. were happy again, they sat together at bingo nights.
“What’s this woman’s name? The previous receptionist.”
The guy hesitates. “Look, Nathan was a friend.”
“You’re the one who came to me.”
“I just don’t like…” The guy stares away. He refocuses. “The story about that kid doesn’t add up.”
“I agree with you.”
“I saw her last month.”
“The receptionist?”
“I never knew her name. I had to get some tennis shoes. She must’ve gotten a new job. You won’t miss her, believe me.”
“She sells shoes?” He has an idea. “Is this at the New Balance store?”
“You’ve been there?”
“I think I’m going to.”
The man starts away smoothly, conscience clear. But something’s wrong. Martin pinches his windbreaker. He says quietly, whispering across the distance between them, “Hey, if Dr. Ashburn didn’t tell you the woman’s name, how’d you recognize her?”
The guy smiles. Like they’re both in on a joke. “From the office. Nathan was my GP. He played doctor to the whole town. The guy knew everything.”
“Everybody.”
“Sure. That, too.”
* * *
And that night he telephones on an impulse. And he has no idea what to say, staring at the room-service tray, the empty soda glass, the dirty plates, with a half-formed chart in his head of possible outcomes.
And, as though the cosmos endorses his plan, Lillian answers. And announces immediately, before he can say anything, that she doesn’t want to talk to him, not for a couple more weeks will she be ready, in which respect she appreciates that he left town and gave her space.
And from there she has quite a few big words to use to describe her current emotional state until Martin interrupts, “What are you talking about?”
“What?”
“This was a mistake.”
He’s temporarily lost in contemplation of what he’s done simply by calling her, when she hadn’t called him first: so cliché, so pathetic.
“Martin, I want you to know something. That I’m truly, truly sorry. About what’s happened. This is not on you.”
“Well, you are the one cheating.”
“I just want you to know that I know it. How hard this is for you.”
He should hang up. He feels so heavy. Is it over? Is it all over now?
“Lillian.”
“I’ve been alone,” she says, “for a long time.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just said it.”
Her patsy. Her stooge. He needs to think about something else.
“I’m on a path, Martin. A path that I’ve been on since I was a little girl. That’s what I am trying to explain. I don’t know where it’s going. I’ve been in pain. But for the pain that’s been added, I totally own the fact that I’m the one responsible.”
He feels like he’s been under sedation for months. And everything’s been out of control without his notice.
“You have some balls,” he says, “you know that?”
“Can you please not talk like that?”
“How about what I need?”
“Of course,” she says gratefully, almost reverently. He’s speaking her language, the loftiest of superficial platitudes. “Martin, what do you need?”
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“You’re really asking that.”
“What I’m hearing,” she says, “deep down, is bitterness. Which we both know is only an amplifier for self-pity.”
“Sure.”
“But in this scenario that is totally normal.”
He lies down on the ground, to elongate his spine. Displays on his face a calm and easy sympathy that is different in five hundred ways from his thoughts, which grind and gnash.
“I really am sorry,” she says, after a long silence.
“Here’s what I need,” he says. He trails off. But what does he need? Where is he going with this? What does he want? He realizes, he knows, he is deeply, deeply angry.
“I want to know something,” he snaps.
“Of course. What is it?”
It comes out of nowhere, full speed ahead: “Did you fuck him in our bed?”
“What?”
“Did you?”
“Oh god. Martin.”
“I want to know. Did you fuck this guy in my bed?”
“Are you listening to yourself? You really want to know that?”
“Goddammit yes. Lillian—”
“I’m sorry, but I need to go, I just can’t.”
* * *
A little man in wraparound sunglasses and a black baseball cap sits parked on the street outside her family’s house—the same man from the day before, the day before that, now he’s filming her again, or why else hold his phone in such a way, aimed at her porch?
Suzanne throws the door open and says loudly, “I’m going to call the cops.”
No reaction. Sunglasses, sweatshirt, not a twitch.
She slams the door. And wishes the force of repercussion would strike the little prick at the base of his skull. She makes a fresh show in the window of picking up the phone, and feels in the moment an outpouring of righteous persecution that’s so strong she drops the handset—fervor like her body’s just a talisman for magic, a voodoo doll—finally, she has literally become the Red Woman—but the rush becomes instant fatigue a moment later, from the world looking in, a world against her, and her complete lack of sleep over the past week.
She crumples into the couch face-first.
The Last Kid Left Page 13