The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  “Camille?”

  “Dad. Is this a bad time?”

  He hurried outside, mashing the phone against his ear.

  “Of course not. Where are you?”

  “I’m at home,” she said. “So how’s it going? Mom said there’s been trouble with Lillian.”

  How did she know that? Lillian must have called his ex-wife. Had he known they were on speaking terms? He felt his mind shift into a different lane.

  “You know, I don’t really want to talk about that right now.”

  “I got your check. It’s actually kind of the reason I’m calling.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Dad, you sound weird. Tell you what, I’ll call you later.”

  “No. I mean, go ahead. Tell me.”

  “It’s about Roger.”

  “Roger who?”

  “Roger Federer.” She laughed. “The guy I’ve been seeing for the past six months? We’ve talked about him, like, a dozen times.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry.” He laughed. “It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s about his new film,” she said. “So he just finished his latest script. It’s great. I mean, it’s really good. So we’re starting to reach out to people.”

  Roger, he remembered Roger. Roger the film school graduate, who wanted to tell the world’s most difficult stories: Roger came back to him. There’d been the short film Camille had sent him, that he’d watched half of for her sake, about exploited prostitutes in Colombia. With, for his taste, too much emphasis on prostitutes, not enough on exploitation. Roger, he didn’t like Roger.

  “We don’t want to do a Kickstarter or something hacky, we’ve already got some good partners on board. Honestly the story’s great. It’s a heist movie, do you know what that means? Like a bank robbery.”

  “I’m a cop,” he said, smiling. “I know what a heist is.”

  “But here’s the twist: The bank robbers are kids. They’re orphans, they’re refugees from Syria. So they’re pulled along by this need to survive, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, we’re reaching out to people who’d like to get in from page one.”

  “You’re looking for money.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “Think of it this way: here’s a chance to invest in something meaningful. I mean, not only financially, with a decent return, depending how things go, but you also get to be involved in creating something.”

  “I get it.”

  “Dad, I don’t want to twist your arm.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “For angel investors, it’s like twenty. But I was thinking maybe more like two to five? I know it’s an ask.”

  He’d laughed, and tried too late to keep it muffled, but couldn’t help himself.

  “Are you still there?” she said.

  “Honey, I love you, I’m just processing,” he said. “You know, I’m a cop. An ex-cop. Not a banker. Not a lawyer.”

  It was only two grand. But it was the principle that bothered him. Calling up out of the blue, never to connect. For “an ask.”

  “I’m totally springing this on you, I get it,” she said. “Maybe if you were a consultant or something, on law enforcement stuff.”

  “It’s a lot of money. Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Even ten thousand. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Dad, listen to me.”

  “You have to be realistic.”

  “You know what,” she said a moment later, “forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “Now hold on.”

  “I’m going to let you go. We’re good.”

  “Camille, please. Wait a second.”

  The line went dead.

  He called back: no answer.

  Thirty seconds later, back inside, Nick’s mother asked who’d called. He grinned dismally at the floor, in a daze, but didn’t answer. She said they should skip dinner, she could tell he was too preoccupied to stick around. They crossed the road in the dark. The wind cut through his jacket. At the motel, he watched her run up the drive, somehow jogging in heels. He called softly for her to wait, but she ran to her cabin, slammed the front door closed without a backward glance. Not even a good night. The daze kept him staring in the dark for a good thirty seconds.

  His bedroom was bitterly cold. He ran a hot bath. All afternoon, he hadn’t been able to escape a feeling: something bad was coming. He undressed and lay in the water. Maybe his relationship with his daughter was dead at last. All her life, he bought her every little toy, a car when she turned sixteen. When she was five, she once made him so angry, he’d grabbed her by the face, like he was about to shake her. Like her head was a grapefruit. It was the worst thing he ever did. The kind of thing his own father would have done. Except his father would have started to squeeze, not release her in terror.

  For a couple months he’d seen a psychiatrist once a week. Then work got in the way, and his drinking.

  He forced other thoughts from his mind. The void filled with Nick’s mother. Her long neck, her lips. He put his wet hands over his eyes, pictured the bathroom door open. Steam drifted past her and out into the bedroom. Enough. He emptied the bath and pissed down the drain. Pulled on his pants, a shirt, a thin cotton sweater. And in the next moment, as he put on his shoes, Martin decided that he was done: no more marriage. He grabbed his phone and texted his wife’s lawyer. Then shut off the phone and was on his way out to go buy a pint of ice cream at a gas station when the cabin’s front door opened suddenly, minus the sigh of the screen door’s hydraulic arm.

  “Going somewhere?”

  He laughed. “Ice cream. You want some?”

  Suzanne smiled coldly and held it as if with effort. She closed the door and walked past him, lowered her long body into a plaid love seat. With a fresh varnish of lipstick, and a bottle of vodka in her hand.

  He brought her a juice glass from the bathroom.

  “Martin, let’s talk.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Sometimes,” she said slowly, “you can have a dialogue even if only one person is talking.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed. “Tell me something. How come people say ‘dialogue’ these days when they really mean ‘conversation’?”

  She ignored him. “Here’s what I was thinking, in my room. That there is no shortage of opportunities. For heartbreak in a mother’s life.”

  She hiccupped and placed her hand over her mouth.

  “Suzanne, what are we doing right now?”

  “I just wanted to talk,” she said. “You don’t like to talk?”

  “Not with someone who’s drunk.”

  “I am drunk. It makes me perceptible.”

  “Perceptive.”

  She laughed and shut her eyes. He stared at her feet. Her feet were faultless. Perverts would pay good money to spoil them. Thirty seconds and she opened her eyes again, face all bright.

  “You’re patronizing,” she said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”

  “I worry that I have a drinking problem.”

  “You know who doesn’t worry if they have a drinking problem?”

  “People who don’t have drinking problems. See? Patronizing.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “You are perceptive.”

  “But not you.” She readjusted herself in the seat. She said, “You really should have made a move tonight.”

  “What?” he said, truly startled.

  She stared around the room. Outside the windows, treetops swung in the wind and made the sky seem even blacker.

  “Men are so stupid,” she said. “You know, I used to really like sex. You could’ve had me for nothing.”

  Then she lifted an arm, sleeve raised, and her head tilted slightly so that a piece of hair fell into her face. Part of him wanted to fling her out the door. The rest wanted to throw her on the bed. Kiss her, undress her. A strong wind tossed the screen
door loudly skittering across the parking lot. Suzanne stood up. She looked around the room with fresh eyes, with abhorrence. But he wasn’t fast enough to see any of it, or he didn’t want to, he was already up, in action, his hand grabbed her arm, he pulled her in. She let him. She touched his sweater and let the touch linger. He kissed her. She didn’t kiss back.

  “This room is hideous,” she said quietly, when their lips parted. She grinned and closed her eyes at the same time, like every other drunk on the planet. He lay down in bed. Every inch of his body was sedate. Every ounce of his soul still felt reckless.

  “You’ve got a wife,” she said. “Where’s she hiding?”

  “She’s in New Jersey.”

  “But something’s wrong. You’re here. Look at you. You’d fuck me in a minute.”

  She got up and sat lightly on an arm of the love seat.

  God, he did want to fuck her.

  “The wife’s screwing around, isn’t she?”

  “Will you please go?”

  “So she is. And you don’t even get to drink. It’s a crock, man. Look at you, you’re not even protesting.

  “You look like a dad,” she added.

  “I’ve got a daughter,” he said softly.

  “I’ll bet she’s great,” she said, fully sincere, almost whispering out of some kind of respect. “I’ll also bet she’s not the daughter. Of the current Mrs. Krug.”

  “You should have been a cop.”

  “Allow me.”

  “Oh, please,” he said, all cold now. “Go ahead.”

  She lay down next to him on the bed. They stared at the ceiling. “You’re retired,” she said quietly, sounding not quite drunk and not quite sober. “Newly retired. So that’s done. We’ll call that personal truth number one. Number two, the wife is sleeping with somebody else. So something’s wrong with you, is what you’re thinking. And it’s true. You’re not the guy. Number two. But you had your career, you used to be somebody. Then there’s addiction, the drinking, the recovery. That’s who you are now. Then you get hooked on my son. Not for some do-gooder bullshit. You needed distraction. From your own crap. It’s Martin’s hour of need. That’s number three. So now you’re here. Second chance. Make good on all you messed up. Except, push comes to shove, what are you? My son’s in jail, and the one time something gets done around here is when he tells you what to do. So look at that: in the end? You’re a chauffeur. You’re useless. You’re the messenger.”

  She got up to leave and crossed the room unsteadily. She caught herself on the doorjamb just as Martin was rustling his body off the comforter. She laughed, but it sounded stricken.

  “I really would’ve fucked you,” she said. “But not the way you wanted.”

  From the doorway he watched her walk back to her little cabin. He was turning back when he heard her heel snap. She fell so fast, she couldn’t brace herself, she smacked her face on the cement outside her cabin with a crunch that turned his stomach. Nose bleeding, mouth gushing blood. The last time he’d seen blood like that, it was from her son. She was bawling. He ran and pulled her up. He ripped off his sweater to blot the wounds. She tried to stand, but couldn’t put weight on the ankle. It looked like her teeth had sliced through her bottom lip.

  He shoved her into the car. The motel clerk came running, said there was a hospital downtown. Suzanne wanted to see her lip in the visor mirror, she’d pulled off the hand that was supposed to be holding the dressing in place. Blood ran off her chin. He crammed her hand back against her mouth, and she howled in pain.

  They made the hospital in seven minutes. Green rooms, bright lights, the smell of tea, the smell of industrial disinfectant. Empty rows of seats in the waiting area like church on a Tuesday. Nurses in scrubs came out quickly, softened by the sight of blood. He let them mistake him for her husband to cut through the bullshit. Ninety minutes later, the intern who did the stitches pronounced Suzanne Toussaint very, very lucky. Her nose wasn’t broken. The ankle was merely sprained. Her teeth had cut into her lip, but not through it. There would be scarring, but less than originally thought. Martin listened, nodding, the dutiful man. Suzanne meanwhile was half-comatose, drunk, woozy with agony. Her face was swollen, brown and purple beneath the gauze. Once they were alone Martin subsided into a plastic chair beside the bed. He held her hand for a few minutes. She squeezed it, but she’d long ago closed her eyes; it was probably just a twitch. Why would she have wanted to sleep with him? He got up and darkened the overhead light. The stench of the room was acrid. He opened the sliding window. It overlooked a concrete patio, a single nurse smoking a cigarette under an orange light. He waved to her unconsciously. Did the kiss with Suzanne mean something more than just a kiss? Did it matter? Do kisses mean anything when they’re not shared? He felt confused, sad, and also slightly relieved. After all, when was the last time anyone said he was fuckable?

  He unrolled an egg-crate mattress that one of the nurses had left him. His knobby vertebrae compressed the slender foam. Under his breath he sang a song that he used to sing to Camille when she was little. He remembered how she’d watch him sing, how her eyes would converge tiredly on his lips. And how wonderful it felt; what peace. To know that it was him singing, more than the song itself, that was responsible for lulling her to sleep—he’d never felt so valuable in his life.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, Suzanne was awake when Martin opened his eyes and found her watching him anxiously over the side of the bed, her face a bandaged mess.

  “How are you feeling?” he’d said groggily.

  He got up slowly. It would take at least a week for his spinal cord to forgive him. He took Suzanne’s hand. Her face was badly swollen, much worse bruised. Creased by her muscles’ response to being battered. She squeezed his hand. He made a feeble attempt at smiling. She took up a small dry-erase board and a magic marker.

  DOCTOR VISITED. NO TALKING 72 HRS. SO EMBARRASSED.

  “You look like shit,” he said. “That’s the good news.”

  ASSHOLE.

  She wrote something else, in smaller letters. She stared intensely at him through sudden tears when she slotted the board in his grip. FEEL HORRIBLE ABOUT LAST NIGHT. ESP. WHAT I SAID. SUCH A BITCH. SORRY.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s all behind you.”

  She pleaded with her eyes. Even grinned, miserably. Then she wiped away the tears, and erased the board with a little blue rag.

  I NEED A DRINK

  “I know. I’ve been there.”

  I’M NOT JOKING

  “No drink. This is the bottom.”

  PLEASE

  “Listen to me. It’s going to be rough. It’ll feel like death’s door. But you’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”

  Her eyes were angry. Flammable. She turned away with a choking sob.

  He held her hand until the tears quit and her shoulders relaxed. Then he made promises to be back as soon as possible, and on his way out he informed the nurses to watch for withdrawal symptoms, to make sure she didn’t try to drink the mouthwash. From the hospital he drove straight back to Claymore. Pine trees stood out razor-edged against the blue sky. There were two voicemails on his phone, one from Lillian’s lawyer. As soon as the guy started, he erased the message.

  The second message: “Martin. Walter Dennis. How are you. Look, I was too hasty. Was it two weeks ago? The last thing you needed was some old prick telling you that you’re confused. I want you to call an old friend of mine. She’s terrific, she operates a group specifically for guys our age. I already told her a little about you. Just trust me, I’m going to give you the number, call her. You don’t want to go through this alone.”

  * * *

  “I took off. I panicked.”

  “You were scared.”

  “I was going crazy. I thought I was going to explode.”

  Because he and Emily had stayed in the dark as long as possible, as long as he could take, until it was too much and he’d needed to get out of that h
ouse, off the mountain, and do something. Otherwise he couldn’t live with himself.

  “All right,” Martin said. “You panic, you leave. Then what?”

  He couldn’t just do nothing. Not after listening to everything she’d said.

  “I went to the Ashburns,” Nick said.

  “Why?”

  Because his thought had been, Must do something. An impulse like a character in a video game, bouncing up and down, only capable of doing one single thing.

  “Dr. Ashburn was cool when my leg was messed up. I just needed to talk to somebody.”

  “What time did this happen?”

  “I got something to drink first. So, like, ten, ten-thirty.”

  He remembered the night like it was yesterday. He’d never felt so crazed. His head had been full of everything she’d said, he couldn’t just pretend he hadn’t heard anything. He caught a buzz in the Ashburns’ driveway, from a fifth he had in the glove compartment, he drank like Typically was challenging him to a duel. And afterward, his whole head was light, his body relaxed. He felt better. Any problems would be overcome.

  “I got sick.”

  What the FUCK dude FUCK.

  “What kind of sick?”

  “I threw up. Out the window.” All down the door, like a paint-can spill. “Then I went and rang the bell.”

  And someone called out, Will you get it? The wife opened the front door in a bathrobe, all surprised. Hey, Mrs. Ashburn. The wife said, Nick, what are you doing here? He said, Is Dr. Ashburn here? Mrs. Ashburn said, Of course. Is it an emergency? He said, Do you think I could speak to Dr. Ashburn, please? The wife allowed him by, staring oblong, pausing halfway up the stairs when the doctor came up from the basement. The doctor sized things up fast. I’ll be there in a minute, the doctor said, and the wife went upstairs, like it was no big deal to either of them, this showing up. And that actually had made him feel a little better. They went into the study. Nick, what’s this all about? He’d been dreading the question. He tried repeating exactly what Emily said, but he screwed it up. The doctor said he got the gist. The doctor asked about Emily, wanting to know if she was okay. But he was still trying to explain at that point how he’d needed to do something, she’d been crying, after all, and he held her, listened, kissed her, did everything the way you should—if there even was a way you should—with his heart drumming full speed, but still it reached a point where having that type of stuff in his head, all those images crashing into each other—and the little room in her house was dead silent—he was all nerves, grossed-out, upset, so mad. Someone needed to do something. You’re absolutely right, Nick. And we are going to do something. But for the moment I need you to calm down.