by Lisa Unger
“Ancient history,” he said. “They’re all dead now.”
“Yes,” I said. “Lana, Race, and Max…they’re all gone. But I’m still here and I need to know what you saw that night.”
He let out a short, unpleasant laugh. “Well, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Max’s daughter.” I almost choked on those words; they tasted so much like a lie on my tongue. He didn’t say anything, just turned his dark, suspicious eyes on me. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe me or if he just didn’t care. I felt him examining me, looking for signs of Max in my face. A blizzard of snowflakes had collected in his hair and the beard that covered most of his face.
“Let the dead lie, girl,” he said, and turned away from me.
I raised my voice and called after him. “You said you saw someone else kill Lana. You said Race wasn’t even home when she died. If that was true, why did you wait until after he was convicted to say anything?”
He stopped in his tracks but he didn’t turn around.
“Please,” I said more quietly. “I need to know what happened that night. They’re all dead now, Mr. Smiley. What harm could it do to tell me the truth?”
He turned around to look at me, then glanced uneasily up and down the street. There was no one about, no one standing in a window watching. I was really feeling the cold work its way into my center; I started to shiver. Then something in his face went from angry to sad. I wasn’t sure what changed his mind about talking to me; to this day, I still don’t know. Maybe I looked as pathetic and desperate as I felt. Maybe he didn’t want me to make a scene in his driveway. But he began walking toward the house and motioned for me to follow. Then it was my turn to change my mind. Maybe he was just luring me into his house to kill me, or tie me up in his basement, or something equally terrifying. I hesitated as he disappeared around the side of the house. Finally, curiosity got the better of me. I hurried after him.
“People know I’m here,” I said as I caught up to him. Unfortunately, this was a complete lie. The truth was no one even knew I was in Detroit. If I were to go missing, how long would it take people to notice I was gone, to track me here?
Tall hedges separated his property from his neighbor’s; round concrete blocks acted as a path. He walked through a side door that led into a neat kitchen that looked as if it hadn’t been updated in decades. I followed him over the threshold and shut the door behind me, but kept my hand on the knob. He walked over to the sink and filled a kettle with water, placed it on the stove, and turned on the burner.
“You gonna sit?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “I’d rather stand.” I was nervous.
“I never knew Max had a daughter,” he said, his back to me as he stared out a window over the sink.
“I didn’t know until last year, after he died. It’s a long story. I was raised by other people. In fact, you probably know the man who raised me, Benjamin Jones.”
He nodded slowly, seemed to take in the information. “Bennie Jones. We came up together right on this street. He was a good kid. Haven’t seen him in years. Decades.”
We were silent a minute. I could hear the water in the kettle, little clinks in the metal pot as it changed temperature. I realized it wasn’t much warmer in the house than it had been outside. I looked around at the old wallpaper patterned with little cornices overflowing with fruit, the yellowed Formica countertops, the green tiled floor.
“Tea?” he asked. I was surprised by the civility of his offer.
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
He moved to get some cups out of the cupboard. He tossed a look behind him as he took teabags out from a white ceramic canister. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You might as well sit.”
I nodded and felt silly. I moved toward the kitchen’s round wood table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. It was wobbly and uncomfortable but I stayed seated just to be polite. He came to the table and sat across from me, bringing the tea with him. I took the cup he offered gratefully and warmed my hands on it.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, shaking his head. My heart sank; it looked as if he might be clamming up on me. His face had gone still. He’d pressed his mouth back into a thin line. I gave him an understanding smile. I wasn’t sure what to say to convince him to talk, so I said nothing.
“You seem like a nice girl,” he said, holding my eyes briefly. “I don’t want…” He let his voice trail off and didn’t pick up the sentence again. I closed my eyes for a second, drew in a breath, and said the only thing I could think of.
“Please.”
He looked at me sadly. Gave me a quick nod.
“I haven’t thought about that night in a long time,” he told me, but for some reason I didn’t believe him. I suspected he’d thought about that night a lot, and maybe this was the first time in years he’d been able to talk about it. Maybe he needed to talk about it. Maybe that’s why he changed his mind.
“ ’Course, it’s not the kind of thing you forget, either. It stays with you, even when it’s not on your mind directly. I busted an arm at work about five years ago, been on disability ever since. The arm healed but it’s never been the same. Some things are like that. After they happen, nothing’s right again.” I could definitely relate to that.
He didn’t seem quite as menacing as he had on first glance. He seemed softer and kinder now, more beaten down than angry. He didn’t say anything else for a minute, just stared into his cup. I listened to the clock ticking above the sink and waited. Finally:
“We’d been over there, at Race and Lana’s, for supper. We always spent the holidays together,” he said, looking at the tabletop. His voice seemed hoarse, as if it had been a while since he’d used it so much. I wondered if he’d feel unburdened by the telling of this. Or if it would be like exhuming a body, an unholy dredging of something better left to rest.
It struck me again, as it had when I first read the article, that I had never heard of Nicholas Smiley or his family. Neither Max, my father, nor my grandparents had ever mentioned this cousin who’d apparently grown up with Max and Ben, living just down the street. I wondered if there was any end to the layers of secrets and lies.
“It hadn’t been a very good night,” he said, looking at me shyly. “Race didn’t show up for dinner and Lana was drunk and mad as hell. Ranting about her shit life.”
He looked down at his teacup again and I could see that his hand was shaking just slightly. For some reason, the sight of that made my heart rate rise.
“Race was a bastard. Beat the crap out of Lana and Max, ran around on her. Everyone knew it.” He spoke in short, quick-fire sentences, as if he had to get the words out before a timer went off. But there was something rhythmic, almost metered, about the way he spoke. I felt hypnotized.
He must have seen something on my face. Any good interviewer knows to keep judgment out of her voice, and I’d always been okay at that. It was keeping it off my face that gave me trouble.
“I don’t know why no one ever did anything,” he said, as though I’d asked the question I’d been thinking. “Been plenty of years to regret that. I guess in those days you just didn’t interfere between a man and his family.”
I nodded my understanding and he went on.
“Anyway, we left early. Lana had, like I said, been ranting and Max had barely said a word the whole night. He got that way sometimes, like he was trying to be invisible. Not that I blamed him; it was like living in the valley between two active volcanoes. You never knew which one of them was gonna blow.”
“Lana was abusive to Max as well?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She got her licks in.”
Max had always spoken of his mother as if she were the Madonna and Mother Teresa wrapped into one. I’d heard him talk only of her beauty, of her kindness, of her strength.
“You look a lot like her. Did you know that?” Nicholas said to me.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.” I hadn’t wanted that information, didn�
��t even know what to do with it. Suddenly I regretted coming.
He shrugged. “Compared to Race, she wasn’t so bad. But that kid never knew where it was coming from. Never knew if he was going to get stroked or slapped.”
I didn’t know what to say, thinking about this abused little boy who was not my uncle but my father. I waited for emotion to bloom in my chest, but instead it felt as if it was filled with lead, heavy and numb. I looked into my teacup and saw that the milk had curdled slightly.
“Max and I got walkie-talkies that year. But in my parents’ rush to get out of there, we’d left mine under the tree by mistake. I wanted it, couldn’t think or talk about anything else, drove my parents crazy. Tomorrow, they promised. But to a kid tomorrow seems like forever. I waited for them to go to bed, then I pulled on my coat and boots and snuck out of the house.”
I could picture it. The block dark, but illuminated by Christmas lights on the houses and from the trees glimmering inside, snow on the ground. I could see him trundling up the street in his coat and pajamas. I could smell the cold winter air, hear the cars on the busy road that ran perpendicular to their block.
“If Max was sixteen that year, I was fourteen. But Max was huge for his age. Not quite as big as Uncle Race but getting there. I figured Race wouldn’t be pushing Max around much longer. Still I looked for Race’s car in the driveway. He been home, I’d have gone right back to my house.”
I could tell he was back there on that night; his eyes had taken on a kind of shine and he looked right through me. I kept quiet.
“I remember that the air seemed different, like the night already knew something bad had happened. I didn’t go to the door. I went to Max’s bedroom window, but he wasn’t in there. I could hear the television up loud, so I went around to the living-room window.”
He stopped and released a sigh, as if the memory still frightened him all these years later. He put his head in his hands, then lifted it again. “That’s where I saw Aunt Lana,” he said. “I only recognized her by the outfit she’d had on at dinner. Her face was a pulp; her clothes were soaked with blood.”
“But Race wasn’t there?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “I told you, his car wasn’t in the drive.”
“He could have come home, killed her, and left again,” I said. “He could have been parked on the street.”
“No,” he answered.
“How can you be sure?”
He looked at me with something like pity in his eyes. I guess I sounded as desperate as I was feeling at that moment.
“I saw him standing over her. There was blood on his fists, on his shirt, and on his face. His eyes were glazed over and he was smiling, breathing hard like a prizefighter.”
“Who?” I asked him, horrified.
He shook his head at me and tears fell down his cheeks and into his beard. He shook his head again and opened his mouth but no words came out.
“Who?” I asked again, leaning forward in my chair.
“Max,” he whispered.
I COULDN’T HAVE been more shocked or devastated if he’d hit me in the head with a crowbar. I wished he had; I wished I could just pass out and get amnesia, forget I ever heard anything he’d told me. I hated myself for being so stubborn and curious and for being there at all. I was having trouble getting a full breath of air.
“No,” I said. “You were so young. It was dark and you were terrified by seeing your aunt like that.”
He stared at me. “I know what I saw,” he said softly. “Won’t ever forget.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything? You let an innocent man die in jail,” I said.
“He turned around and saw me in the window. He wasn’t the Max I knew. He was…a monster. Those dead, empty eyes on me—I knew if I ever breathed a word, he’d rip me in two. I ran and waited all night for that devil to come and turn my face into hamburger. But he didn’t. The next day Race was arrested; Lana died a few weeks later in her coma. Max went to live with Bennie’s parents.”
“Why didn’t he come live with you? You were his only family.”
“My parents were barely making it. With me and my three sisters, they couldn’t afford another kid. As it is, they died in debt, a debt I’m still paying.” He looked around him. “I’m barely holding on to this house.” He cast his eyes to the floor.
“I’ve never even heard of you,” I said angrily. I hated him for what he’d told me and was looking for reasons he could be lying or wrong or just crazy. “Neither Max or Ben has ever spoken of you or your family.”
“They judged us for not taking Max in. Nothing was ever said, but from that point on, we didn’t have much to do with Max.”
I looked hard at his face. I could see, at least, that he believed what he was telling me. The fear and sadness, the ugliness of his memories made a home in his face.
“But it wasn’t the money, not really,” I said. “That wasn’t why they didn’t take him in, was it?”
Nicholas shook his head.
“You told your parents what you saw that night. And they believed you.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
“But no one said anything as Race was arrested and stood trial. You were all so terrified of a sixteen-year-old boy?”
“We waited,” he said, clearing his throat. “Hoped that Race would be found innocent. That we’d never have to come forward with what we knew. Even when Race was convicted, my parents still didn’t want me to go forward.”
“Because they were afraid of Max?”
Nicholas released another sigh. “No, it wasn’t that. I think they just didn’t want Max to go to prison. Maybe guilt that they hadn’t stepped in earlier to stop some of the violence in that house. And, well, Race might have been innocent of that murder, but in a lot of ways he was guiltier than Max. That kid was raised with violence; he didn’t even know another way. My parents thought that maybe he just didn’t know his own strength that night. That a lifetime of suffering and regret was punishment enough.”
“But you didn’t think so?”
“He wasn’t sorry,” said Nicholas, holding my eyes. “I could tell by the way he looked at me. He was so sad-faced for everyone else. But when we were alone, he turned those eyes on me and I knew. He killed his mother, accused and then testified against his father. Effectively, he killed them both. And I don’t think he lost a night’s sleep over it.”
I tried to reconcile this version of Max with the man I knew. The child Nick Smiley described was psychotic—a murderer and a liar, a scheming manipulator. I had never seen anything in Max that hinted of that. Never.
“That’s why you came forward finally? Because you didn’t think he was sorry?”
“I don’t know that you’d call what I did coming forward. It was a half-assed attempt to undo one of many wrongs that had been done that night and all the nights leading up to it. I was racked with guilt, couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat. Finally my parents took me to the police station and I told the cops that I saw someone else there that night. I told them about the walkie-talkies, that I hadn’t seen Race’s car, and that there was another man there, a man I’d never seen before. I never told them about Max.”
He took a sip of his tea, which I knew from my own cup was stone-cold by now.
“I told them I hadn’t come forward because I was afraid this stranger I made up would come and kill me and my family, too.”
“They didn’t believe you?”
He shook his head. “There was nothing to show that anyone else but Race had been there. No one else saw a strange car or saw anyone come or go other than Race later that night. They told me I’d just had a nightmare. I mean, they weren’t going to reopen a case that was long closed, the accused tried and convicted, because of the ramblings of a kid. But someone in the station leaked the story and an article ran in the paper the next day.
“That night I woke up to rocks being thrown at my window. I looked out on the street and saw Max standing th
ere. He had a crowbar in his hand. He just stood there under the streetlight and I could see those eyes. He knew I was a chicken—hell, he’d been pushing me around since we were in diapers. I never said another word.”
I sat in silence. He seemed like an honest man, simple and down-to-earth. The kitchen was neat and clean, like any working-class suburban kitchen—nothing fancy but everything in decent shape. His story had just enough detail but not too much flourish. It had the ring of truth—I could see that he believed the things he’d said, that it still haunted him. I didn’t know what to say. I must have just stared at him with my horror and disbelief because he shifted uncomfortably beneath my gaze.
“I told you to let the dead lie,” he said. “You should have listened.”
Nobody likes a know-it-all.
6
My uncle Max (of course, he’ll always be that in my mind) was a great bear of a man—big in stature with a heart and a personality to match. He was an amusement park, a toy store, an ice-cream parlor. Occasionally, my parents would travel and have Ace and me stay with him (and a nanny, of course, because Max was not one for tying shoes and making grilled-cheese sandwiches). Those memories are among the happiest of my childhood. I never saw him without a smile on his face. His arms were always filled with gifts, his pockets full of money or candy or small surprises.
At least these are my memories of him. These days, though, I distrust my recollection of the past—not the actual events, necessarily, but the layers and nuances that clearly had eluded me. So much of my life was built on a foundation of lies that my past seems like a dark fairy tale—pretty on the surface but with a terrible black undercurrent. There were monsters under my bed and I was too naive to even fear the dark.
On the plane back to New York, I searched my memories for fissures, for the spaces through which the “real” Max might show himself, this psychotic and abused young man who killed his mother and framed his father and terrorized his young cousin into silence. The “real” Max, my father.