Lacy Eye

by Jessica Treadway

  She returned the look with a happy expression, which puzzled me. “Of course I did,” she said. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “Of course we know you’re not stupid, honey,” I told her, but she didn’t reply, and I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. When we arrived home, she got out of the car first and ran toward the house, where my friend Claire had stayed with Iris. Curious, we followed close behind her. “Guess what, guys!” she called out, letting the screen door bang behind her. “I have a lacy eye! This one!” She pointed up to the left side of her face, and I had to open my mouth to take a breath then, feeling a punch in my chest.

  Iris began to say something, but I shook my finger at her and, uncharacteristically, she paid attention to my message and stopped herself. I knew she had been about to correct her sister, because we’d already let her know what was going on—what we knew the doctor would confirm at the appointment.

  Joe took Dawn by the hand and led her into his study. Leaving Iris and Claire in the kitchen, I moved to the study door, where I could hear Joe and Dawn’s conversation without their knowing I was there.

  Joe said, “It’s not a ‘lacy eye,’ Dawn.” He had never been one to call me or our daughters honey or sweetie or anything other than our names. “What the doctor actually said was ‘lazy eye.’ It doesn’t mean your eye is actually lazy, or that you are. But you can’t go around thinking it’s something it’s not.”

  “I do so have a lacy eye,” Dawn said quietly. “That’s what the doctor said. I heard him.”

  “You heard what you wanted to hear,” Joe told her, and I could tell that he was trying his best to be gentle, “but that’s not what it is. You have to call something what it really is, in life. You can’t just pretend it’s something better because you want it to be. Then you’re just fooling yourself, and that’s the worst thing you can do.”

  “Worse than somebody else fooling you?” I leaned forward, impressed by her question. Though she was only six and had never seemed all that reflective, it sounded as if this was something she might have thought about before now.

  “Yes,” Joe said, “because somebody else fooling you isn’t necessarily in your control. But fooling yourself is.”

  She said okay and asked if she could go, and he said yes, but that she had to give him a kiss first. I heard a big smack, and then she ran from the room. I waited a few moments, then asked him from the door how everything had gone. “Fine,” he said, turning to some papers on his desk. “I think she got it.” I could tell he was pleased with himself.

  But the next morning, when I walked Dawn and Iris to the bus stop, Dawn ran ahead of us to tell Cecilia Baugh, “Guess what? I have a lacy eye! This one!” And she pointed.

  Iris looked up at me, exasperated. “What a moron,” she said, but I shushed her and said I’d better not hear her using that word again.

  Standing in her living room now, next to the picture of Rud Petty, I was grateful that Iris had never overheard her father accuse me of “lacy eye,” because she was angry enough that she probably would have thrown it in my face, along with accusing me of living in “fantasy land.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing, Iris,” I said quietly.

  “This picture is precisely why”—she gestured at it again—“you have to remember. Look at what we had, before she did what she did.” She pointed, and though I didn’t follow her finger, I knew she was referring to the way Joe supported the two of us on either side of him, her and me, his hand pressing separate messages into our chiffon-covered backs. In her maid-of-honor dress Dawn stood on the other side of Archie, so that no one from our immediate family was touching her. Was it possible that she’d felt rejected, somehow, within the family celebration? In the photograph she looked a little lost, or hurt, but I thought maybe I was just being too sensitive on her behalf. After all, on her other side—at the edge of the family—stood Rud Petty.

  And back then Dawn had made no secret about the fact that as long as she had him, she had everything she needed.

  I didn’t stay long, after we argued over the photograph. It seemed to me that Iris felt as relieved as I did when she and Josie walked me out to the driveway. Upset as I was about our quarrel, I didn’t notice that during the time I’d been in the house, the sky that had been so bright when I drove out had turned overcast, and the air was heavy with about-to-spill rain. I was just getting my keys out when a tremendous crack split the sky, and shutting my eyes tight, I pitched myself to the ground; later, Iris told me it looked as if I were trying to crawl under the car.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” She was scared, I could see that, at the same time trying not to show it because Josie was standing beside her.

  “What was that?” I asked, still keeping my eyes closed.

  “Just thunder.” She knelt beside me. “Open your eyes.”

  I got up shakily with my daughter’s help. “I thought…it sounded like—” I said, but I couldn’t finish.

  “Are you remembering something?” Despite my distress, I could see she was excited. “Did you just have a flashback?”

  I brushed off my hands and felt for the keys I’d dropped. “No,” I said, though I wasn’t sure of that at all. The sound had set off a memory of some kind, but it made me feel so sick that I didn’t want to pursue it.

  “Come back inside,” Iris urged, but I insisted I was fine. Reluctantly, she let me go.

  I’d only pretended not to be able to identify the sound that had sent me to the ground in terror. And it wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of a croquet mallet hitting something as hard as it could.

  A Gesture of Modesty

  I drove straight home from Iris’s and gave Abby a walk. As much as I wanted to lie down when we came inside, because of the headache that had been escalating steadily since we’d started the trip back, I went to the computer instead. I’d had an inspiration about another way I might recall what happened that night, so that I could finally get it over with, be able to testify, and dilute the memory of the power it had held over me for so long. Now that I had the image of a tattoo, which meant that Rud Petty might not have been involved after all (making it even easier to prove to everyone that Dawn was also innocent), I needed to do everything I could to learn the truth.

  I didn’t use the computer very much anymore—only for e-mail and occasional online shopping—because it strained my eyes to look at the screen. But I managed to find, without very much trouble, the archives from the Albany newspaper that had covered the trial. Since I’d been unconscious in a hospital bed for three weeks after the attack, I missed all of the immediate news stories. After that, I made a point of avoiding them. It had occurred to me, driving home on the turnpike, that making myself read the details might unlock something in my memory that the district attorney could use.

  Most of the first articles I found were only brief, factual accounts—things I already knew—and not likely to offer any insights. I clicked through months’ worth of articles, feeling that I was getting nowhere. Finally I paused when I reached a longer feature that had appeared a year earlier, on the second anniversary of the attack, under the headline

  Mysteries Persist in Nightmare Suburban Killing:

  Everton, N.Y.—When Hanna Schutt failed to show up for their weekly walk on Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend two years ago, Claire Danzig knew something was wrong. Unable to reach her friend by phone, she drove to the home Mrs. Schutt shared with her husband, Joseph, on a street in this oak-shaded suburb of the state’s capital. Approaching the house, Mrs. Danzig found a dirt-encrusted key in the lock of the front door, and looking through the entry window, she saw Joseph Schutt lying in copious amounts of blood on the stairway landing.

  Claire had never told me what that day was like for her, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Because she was a good friend, she visited me at the hospital and accompanied me on my first trips out to the supermarket and the library, the pharmacy and the post office—places I had to relearn to negotiate,
with my not-quite-up-to-par brain. Sometimes we went to a movie together, sometimes a dinner out. Gradually, though, the visits diminished, until we rarely even talked on the phone anymore.

  It devastated me to lose Claire. We’d known each other since nursing school, and she and her husband, Hugh, had followed Joe and me to Everton to start their family. Although occasionally we went out as a foursome, we mostly did things in pairs; Joe helped Hugh with the financial paperwork when Hugh opened Caprice, the bakery and coffee shop at Four Corners, and then they took to scheduling weekly racquetball games. Outside the office, Claire and I often made plans to go to garage sales or movies or the book discussion group at the library.

  It’s probably fair to say that Claire’s sensibility and mine were more aligned than even mine and Joe’s. Once, we signed up together for a yoga class at a new place in town called Namaste, but we got ejected the first night because we caught each other’s eyes as we struggled our way into the Downward Dog pose, set each other off laughing, and couldn’t stop. When Dawn started kindergarten, Claire recommended me for a part-time job in Bob Toussaint’s office, where she worked. After she retired early, a couple of years before the attack, we began walking our dogs together at Two Rivers on Saturday mornings, as a way to make sure we had a regular time to see each other and to pick up our continuing conversation wherever we’d left it off. The things we talked about seemed so important then: Should I think about reducing my hours at the clinic? Should she and Hugh spend all that money on a new garage? We sat with our faces turned up to the sun, taking our friendship for granted because we didn’t know any better, not anticipating—because who would?—the tragedy that would separate us in the end.

  Especially after Dawn left for college, the walks became a highlight of my week. But those days were gone now. Claire would never have said so, but I knew it was difficult for her even to look at me, because it reminded her of the horrific discovery she’d made that morning. Though the surgeons had worked for hours restoring most of the sight to my damaged right eye, the skin around the socket was misshapen, and one side of my mouth sagged where the mallet had split open my lip. On the rare occasions we sat across a table from each other, Claire tended to focus her gaze on a point at the side of my face, rather than directly into my eyes. And I could never quite ignore knowing that she was looking forward to the relief of being able to leave.

  The last time she’d come over, I could tell she had something to say. When she finished her tea, she put her cup down with trembling fingers, and I tried desperately to think of a way to avoid hearing whatever it was. “Hanna,” she said carefully, in the tone I’d learned to pay attention to over the years. “You can’t sit there and tell me you honestly believe Dawn had nothing to do with it, can you?”

  “Yes, I honestly believe that.”

  When she didn’t answer, I took a deep breath and added, “I know you’ve always thought she was involved somehow. I get that you think there’s something I’m not facing up to.” I could feel her skepticism in the air between us, and I knew that whatever I said, it would not convince her. Still, I went on.

  “But I know her better than anyone, Claire. The way you know your kids. A mother knows.” When she remained silent, I felt anger rise in my throat.

  “What kind of mother do you think I am, anyway? You think I could raise a murderer?” It was the sentence I’d wanted to spit at someone since I woke up in the hospital and, through Kenneth Thornburgh’s sympathetic questioning, realized that the police suspected Dawn of some involvement in the attack. I’d expected the words to taste vile on the way out. Now that I’d forced them into the air, I felt disappointed that there wasn’t more relief in releasing what I’d wanted to for so long.

  Claire looked away. “I’m not saying she swung the mallet,” she murmured, and I tried not to grimace at the image. “I’m not saying it was her idea—in fact, I’m sure it wasn’t.” She didn’t sound sure, but I tried to believe her anyway. “But Hanna, don’t some of the things still bother you, that came up in the grand jury? The stuff about the alarm being disabled by someone who knew the code? How the spare key was in the front door? And what about the dog?” She knew that the mention of Abby—the question Gail Nazarian had raised about why the dog hadn’t barked, if the intruder was a stranger—would hit home with me, so she saved it for last.

  She was waiting for an answer, but I couldn’t think. “Don’t you understand,” she continued, “that that…animal convinced her to help him kill you because he thought Dawn had a big inheritance coming? And that’s not even me talking. That’s evidence from the trial.”

  I said, “That wasn’t why.”

  “See? You said Dawn didn’t do it.”

  “She didn’t. I meant—”

  She waved my words away before I could finish. “We both know what you meant.”

  Though I knew it was a losing battle, I fought on feebly. “You’re forgetting something. She had an alibi. There was no physical evidence, or are you forgetting that, too? Trust me, they wanted to indict her. You remember Gail Nazarian; she was out for blood. If she could have done it, she would have.” My heart was beating too fast again. “Rud Petty was enraged because we caught him stealing from us, right after his father caught him forging his name on a loan. He couldn’t get away with his usual act, fooling people into thinking he was a good guy when really he’s a sociopath. And he couldn’t allow us to live knowing what we knew about him.” During the trial and after he had been convicted, I’d read books, when I could stand to, about personalities like Rud’s. They described him down to the minutest detail: the charm, the grandiose and unfounded ambitions, the expectation that other people would take care of him, especially financially. And the complete lack of a conscience.

  When I look at the accumulated details in retrospect, it couldn’t be more obvious. My daughter fell in love with a madman, and the consequence was fatal.

  “I’m worried about you, Hanna,” Claire said.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. And it’s not your business.”

  The moment the words were out, I wished I could take them back. From the look on my best friend’s face, I could tell I’d said more than I should have. But it was too late. Claire closed her eyes for a moment, and I could only imagine what she was telling herself inside. A few minutes later she said she had to be leaving, and we hadn’t spoken since then.

  I tried not to be sad about it, but it didn’t always work. Some nights, I just lay in bed and cried, using Abby as a pillow behind my head. She never seemed to mind the way I shook against her, or the fact that my tears slid into her hair. I’m sure she didn’t feel it—the vet said she had a little paralysis left over from the attack. We were two damaged bodies in the bed together, and it saved me, because if I had to be alone on those nights when I started thinking about Joe dying, and the trial, and the fact that I couldn’t be a real nurse anymore, and what now, I don’t know how I would have survived.

  Mrs. Danzig summoned the Everton police, who arrived at the house within minutes along with emergency medical technicians. Before allowing in the medics, who would determine that Joseph Schutt was dead, the officers searched the home to make sure it was clear of danger. In the basement, closed off from the rest of the house, they found the family dog, a mixed breed whose legs had been struck so hard that she was unable to stand.

  Reading this, I felt a twinge of discomfort, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a memory or the same pain I always felt when I thought about what Abby had suffered that night.

  In the upstairs master bedroom, officers encountered a scene so gruesome that police lieutenant Kenneth Thornburgh, a 25-year veteran of crime scenes, described it as “the worst I’ve ever seen, by far.” Lying across the bed was Joseph Schutt’s wife, Hanna, who had been bludgeoned in the head so fiercely that one eye was shattered. The officers’ initial impression was that she also was dead, but then they realized that, remarkably, this severely injured woman was attempting to pull h
er nightgown down over her body in a gesture of modesty.

  I had absolutely no memory of doing this. I sat back from the computer and closed my eyes, trying to summon even a glimpse of the self-consciousness I might have felt, despite how wounded I was, hearing the policemen’s steps on the stairs. But again I came up with nothing. Though I knew the article referred to me, I felt as removed as if I were reading a description of some other woman who’d suffered things I couldn’t imagine, in some other part of the world.

  That Hanna Schutt survived the attack upon her and her husband that night is, even medical experts agree, nothing short of a miracle. And what followed remains one of the most intriguing puzzles in the Capital District’s criminal history, in part because—at least in the opinion of some circles—it has yet to be solved.

  Pulling aside the bedsheets to make way for the medics to evaluate Hanna Schutt’s condition, Lieutenant Thornburgh uncovered a bloody croquet mallet, later determined to be the murder weapon taken from the croquet set stored in the family’s garage. Believing that the victim was on the verge of death, he bent down to ask if she could hear him. When she nodded, he asked her if she had seen who had attacked her and her husband. Again she nodded. “Was it a stranger?” the lieutenant said, and she shook her head from side to side on the bloody pillow.

  When asked, “Was it Rud Petty?” Hanna Schutt nodded “with as much energy as she could muster,” the officer said in his later testimony.

  Sensing the urgency of the situation, Thornburgh did not stop there. “Was Dawn here too?” he asked, referring to the Schutts’ younger daughter, and Mrs. Schutt appeared to give one last nod before beginning to cry so vigorously that it was feared she might choke to death. The medic attending to her during the lieutenant’s questioning confirmed the officer’s account of the exchange.