“What’s with this car, anyway?” I tapped the Corvette and she flinched, as if I had made contact with her instead of the car’s hood. “Why are you driving this? You could get some good money for that car.” It had been something I’d wanted to say since the moment I saw her pull the Corvette into the driveway the night she arrived back home.
This did get through; I could tell from the way her eyes immediately began to narrow. “I like my car. I’m keeping it,” she said, the way a child would insist she wanted to keep a toy. She added, “Can we not talk about this now, while I’m at work?”
I didn’t want to hold Dottie Wing’s food from her, waiting for an answer I was never going to get. I waved at the house, and Dawn took this as the signal I intended—that she was dismissed.
Back at the clinic, we were overrun suddenly by more than a dozen four-year-olds whose mothers worried they had strep throat. They all seemed to come at once, after their mothers had picked them up from preschool, so we were able to finish testing them in a shorter amount of time than if they’d had appointments. My head was aching; I kept seeing, in my mind’s eye, the way Dawn had scrawled my name under the amount Thirty thousand dollars on the paper Tom had held out to me. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t even tried to disguise her handwriting, or to imitate mine. When the last child had left with her certificate for an ice cream cone at Lickety Split, I told Francine I didn’t feel well and left work an hour before my shift ended.
There was an unfamiliar car—one Iris would have referred to as a shitbox—parked behind Dawn’s in the driveway when I returned. In the kitchen I found a young man sitting at the table eating chips while Dawn put pizza on two paper plates. She turned to me looking startled and said, “Mom! You’re early!”
“I had to come home. My head is killing me.” I was still upset over the loan forgery, but not enough to continue arguing with Dawn in front of a stranger. I said a tentative hello as I read the front of his jersey, which said I GET ENOUGH EXERCISE PUSHING MY LUCK. It made me smile, and he seemed to appreciate this.
Then I felt my mouth go stiff as I recognized him: it was the kid with the Cat in the Hat tee-shirt and auburn curls I’d felt watching me at the mall, the day Rud Petty’s new trial was announced. “I know you,” I said, seeing the look of further shock my words triggered in Dawn’s face.
“You do not,” she said to me. “How could you? This is my friend Stew.”
Stew wiped crumbs across the top of his jeans and stuck his hand out to me. “I remember you from the mall,” I told him.
“What mall?” Dawn said.
“Really? I don’t remember.” He gave a smile I was sure was supposed to charm me. “But I like their food court, so, yeah, maybe. I’m there a lot.”
“What are you talking about?” Frustrated, Dawn pulled cheese off the side of the pizza box and rolled it between her fingers.
“I felt like you were watching me,” I told him.
He laughed. “Me? Why would I do that?” His tone implied I should feel stupid for suggesting such a thing.
I turned to Dawn. “How do you two know each other?”
“Mom, what is this, the prom and you’re my father?” Dawn flushed. “I’m allowed to have friends, you know.”
“Of course you are. I just don’t remember Stew from high school, that’s all.”
“I met him after that.”
“When?” At Lawlor? I might have asked. He didn’t look like the type who would have tried or wanted to belong to that kind of crowd. When would she have come across someone while the trial was going on, when she lived with Peter and Wendy? As far as I knew, she hadn’t exactly been out socializing during that time. And surely he wasn’t a friend from New Mexico who had followed her home to Everton.
But she was saved from having to answer when there was a rap at the back door and we all looked to see Warren Goldman standing there with a covered dish. He stuck his head in and said, “Anybody hungry? I made this big cassoulet.”
“The fuck is that?” Stew said.
“Oh, Warren.” I went over to the door. “Thanks, but right now I need to talk to Dawn. In fact, Stew, would you excuse us, too?”
Dawn’s friend seemed only too happy to follow Warren outside. For a moment I entertained the cartoonish vision of them sitting down to dinner together, but Stew got in the shitbox and drove away as Warren crossed the street back to his house, dipping his head in chagrin. I called, “Thanks!” after him, but I could tell he felt he had intruded.
Dawn put the two plates of pizza down and said if she’d known I was going to be there for dinner, she would have gotten pepperoni. It was clear that she planned to pretend our conversation at Dottie Wing’s had never happened, and to distract me into doing the same.
But I couldn’t let her. “Are you trying to get me to kick you out of this house? It almost seems as if that’s what you’re hoping for.”
She stopped mid-bite. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mommy.”
“Do you understand that I could press charges about that loan signature? It’s forgery. It’s the same thing Rud did with his father. How could you be so—careless?” I’d been about to say “stupid,” and we both knew it, but I changed my mind at the last minute.
“So are you going to have me arrested?” She looked down at her plate.
“No,” I said, after letting a moment pass without speaking—not because I had to think about the answer, but because I didn’t like the idea that she presumed she knew already what I would do.
“It was dumb of me, signing your name,” she said, trying to appear contrite. “That was a mistake.”
I didn’t say what we both knew Joe would have said to that: A mistake is adding up two and two and thinking five is the right answer. What you did was make a bad moral decision.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” she added. I knew she was counting on her apology to end the conversation, and I let it be. My headache was starting to flare up again, and fighting would only make it worse.
No More Collateral Damage
I told Dawn I wasn’t hungry and went straight up to my bedroom, where I popped a couple of aspirin and lay down to wait for my headache to go away. After a while I sat up and from under the pillow next to mine pulled out the folder Gail Nazarian had left with me at the office on Halloween. When I returned home that day I’d taken it out of my bag and left it on my dresser, but then I decided to hide it in case Dawn came into my room for some reason. I knew she wouldn’t know what to make of it. Since I hadn’t actually looked at the contents yet, I wasn’t sure what to make of it myself.
The top page read “Transcript of Interrogation of Dawn Schutt,” and was dated the day after the attack. I was relieved to see that Kenneth Thornburgh hadn’t been the main interviewer, because I liked him and didn’t want to find a reason to stop feeling that way.
The interrogation had been conducted by another detective, Stephen Peck, whom I remembered from the trial. He was younger than Thornburgh, and he always seemed arrogant to me. He began by asking Dawn a bunch of simple questions—how old she was, where she went to college, how many siblings she had. He asked her if she understood that she was not under arrest—that he was just gathering information—and I imagined Dawn nodding dully, maybe apprehending what he was saying and maybe not.
DETECTIVE PECK: When were you at your house last?
MS. SCHUTT: Yesterday. My parents kicked us out. (Inaudible statement.) There was a misunderstanding about something, and they blamed Rud.
I expected that the detective would follow up to inquire about the “misunderstanding,” but instead he shifted to another subject entirely. I noticed that he did that throughout—it was probably a technique designed, I thought, to catch people in lies before they could settle into a comfortable groove. He asked Dawn about the layout of our house, then abruptly said, “I imagine this is a shock to you, what happened?”
MS. SCHUTT: Yes. It hasn’t sunk in yet.
DETECTIV
E PECK: I haven’t had a chance to talk to your mother yet, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to do that soon.
MS. SCHUTT: Me, too.
DETECTIVE PECK: You want us to talk to her?
MS. SCHUTT: No, I mean I’d like to talk to her. Is she making sense? Are you telling me she can talk?
DETECTIVE PECK: I’m wondering why you ask that. Whether she can talk or not. Instead of if she’s going to be okay.
MS. SCHUTT: (Inaudible statement.)
DETECTIVE PECK: I mean, do you have any idea what somebody did to her last night?
MS. SCHUTT: I know they said “bludgeoned.” Exactly what that means, I don’t know. But I assume it was—I assume it wasn’t pretty.
Wasn’t pretty? I could only think that she’d been in shock during the interview, and had no idea what she was saying. As it had in the newspaper accounts, the word bludgeoned made me wince. I tried to will myself to put the transcript aside, but it was no use—I felt compelled to keep reading, even as I recognized that my brain no longer processed the words as having anything to do with me, but had turned them into fiction.
DETECTIVE PECK: No. No, I would say it wasn’t pretty, not pretty at all.
MS. SCHUTT: (Inaudible statement.)
DETECTIVE PECK: Listen, Mrs. Hinds over there is asking if you can speak up a little. I’m going to be honest with you, okay? Your mother was badly injured, but she’s been able to communicate. And she indicated to us that you were involved in this.
MS. SCHUTT: That’s impossible.
DETECTIVE PECK: I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. Now, I don’t know what the situation was inside your family, but I want to try to work with you here. I really do.
MS. SCHUTT: M-m h-m-m.
DETECTIVE PECK: Why would she indicate a family member? (Indecipherable, two words.) One of her daughters?
MS. SCHUTT: I don’t think she did.
DETECTIVE PECK: Well, I wish she hadn’t, either, but it’s the truth. Listen, trust me on this, this is going to get way out of hand fast if you don’t start talking to us. If this goes to a grand jury, you’re not going to have time after that to give your explanation.
MS. SCHUTT: (Inaudible statement.)
DETECTIVE PECK: Work with me here, okay? I’m telling you she’s not dead. She’s indicating what happened to her. (Inaudible three words.)
MS. SCHUTT: I don’t think so.
DETECTIVE PECK: So you think I’m a liar? Or maybe your mother is?
MS. SCHUTT: (Inaudible statement.)
DETECTIVE PECK: Could you speak up? We need to get all this on the record. Now, put yourself in our shoes here. It looks to us like a family coming unraveled.
MS. SCHUTT: Unraveled. Ha! My father would never let that happen.
DETECTIVE PECK: But he did, didn’t he? (Indecipherable two words.) You know what bothers me about all this? You’re not really showing much of anything here. I get a hangnail, I show more emotion than what I’m seeing right now. We’re talking about two people, your parents, beaten to a pulp. In their own bed.
MS. SCHUTT: I’m sorry if I’m not responding the way you want.
DETECTIVE PECK: I mean, I’ve been around this job long enough to know how people react, depending on whether they’re guilty or not.
MS. SCHUTT: Yeah, I’m sure you deal with a lot of hard-core criminals around here. Tons of murderers in Everton, hunh?
I sat back on the bed, as astounded by this last statement attributed to Dawn as by anything that came before it. Of our daughters, Iris had always been the snarky one—in fact, it was her tone I read in this last remark, instead of anything I could imagine in Dawn’s voice. Reading on, I saw that Stephen Peck seemed to keep his cool instead of reacting with anger to Dawn’s sarcasm.
DETECTIVE PECK: Yeah, enough. One just a month ago, over on Grove Street—this one guy killed another guy in a lawn mower dispute; don’t know if you heard about it. Anyway, I’m still interested in why your mother would have said you were involved in all this.
MS. SCHUTT: Ask my mother in front of me when the last time she saw me was.
DETECTIVE PECK: You think her answer’s going to be different than when they asked her who did this to her?
MS. SCHUTT: I want to see my mother. I’d like to hear everything from her.
DETECTIVE PECK: Well, you can’t see your mother, because we believe you’re involved in this. The last thing we want is for her to wake up and be in fear for her life again. You can understand that, right?
At this point, the transcript indicated that Dawn had said she’d be happy to keep answering their questions, but she wanted to call her lawyer—“Actually, he’s more of a family friend”—first. Not for nothing, I thought, was she addicted to TV shows like Law and Order. When Peter Cifforelli showed up, he advised Dawn to stop talking to the police until he could meet with her in private, so there was nothing further for me to read. Not that I wanted more. Besides, with all the “inaudible” and “indecipherable” statements, who knew if the transcriptionist had gotten it right?
I wasn’t sure what Gail Nazarian’s real intention had been, in giving me these pages. Ostensibly, they were supposed to help me remember the attack, but the transcript had the opposite effect—the more I read, the more numb my body and brain became. I stuck the papers back in the folder, laid it on the bed beside me, and fell asleep.
I woke to a shock of electricity and the sensation of being shaken on the shoulder. When I opened my eyes and saw Dawn’s face hovering over me, I gasped and threw my hands up, and she stepped back as if I’d struck her.
“Sorry,” I said, sitting up and putting my hands to my temples, which thudded in rhythm to the panicked throb I felt in my gut. “I must have been dreaming,” I told her, though I could not remember any dream.
“What’s the matter?” She stepped back from me, asking the question warily from a distance. “Are you remembering something?”
“Nothing. Just give me a minute.” I got up and went into the bathroom, where I covered my face with a warm cloth, hoping to slow down my pulse. When I came back, Dawn was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at the transcript I’d forgotten was there.
“What’s this?” She shook the folder in front of me as I sat down next to her.
My heart did a flip. “Well, you can see what it is,” I told her, trying to keep my voice even and figure out how I was going to respond to what I knew would come next.
“I mean why do you have it?”
I shrugged, hoping she might take it as some kind of answer.
“How?” she persisted.
“Gail Nazarian.”
“Why?”
I shrugged again. “She thought it would help me remember.”
“Why would an interview with me help you remember anything?” Her questions came at me like bullets.
“I don’t know, Dawn.” It was the truth.
“Did it work?”
“No. It gave me a headache.”
“Oh.” She closed the folder and put it back beside me. “Well, I’m sorry.” She opened and closed her fists at her sides, but then began peering at something under the bed. “What’s that?” She got down on her hands and knees and pulled out the baseball bat. I’d forgotten it was there. “What the hell are you doing with this?”
“I don’t know. It made sense when I got it. Sleeping alone—you know. I guess it’s just silly.” Her alarm made my head hurt more. “Did you need something?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You came in and woke me up.”
“Oh! Right. I came to tell you I’m leaving.” She leaned the bat carefully against the wall next to my nightstand.
“Leaving? What do you mean?”
“Not leaving leaving. But Opal called while you were asleep, and she asked me to come down there. She’s in trouble somehow. I think she had a fight with her mother—you know how they are. Anyway, she asked me to come and give her some moral support.”
“But I thought
you were the ones who were fighting.”
“We weren’t fighting, exactly. More like just not seeing eye to eye.” She blushed, the way she always had at any expression containing the word eye. “Anyway, I’m taking off now. She sounded pretty upset. I’ll call you tomorrow when I know what’s going on.”
“Are you sure you want to be driving all that way in the dark?” Dawn was the one who seemed upset to me, and I didn’t like the idea of her making such a trip at night. “Can’t you just wait till morning?”
She shook her head. “You know how Opal gets. She’s impulsive. She doesn’t always take care of herself. I’ll be fine—like I said, I’ll call you tomorrow.” She leaned forward to kiss me, then seemed to think better of it and pulled me into a long hug. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too.” The words came automatically. “Be careful, okay?”
She promised and left the room. I heard her collecting things from the bathroom, zipping her suitcase shut, and lugging it downstairs. I waited a few minutes after I heard the Corvette glide down the street before I opened the folder and read the transcript again. My impulse was to call Iris, but I stopped myself, and instead tried Gail Nazarian again. This time I would have liked to speak to her in person, but got her voice mail. “Have you followed up on Emmett Furth yet?” It was difficult to ignore the sound of my own desperation, but I did my best.
When I saw how early it was, not even eight o’clock yet, I threw on a jacket and crossed the street. After ringing Warren’s doorbell, I thought for a moment about making a run for it, back to my house, before he could see who was on his stoop.
But even though I might have had the time to do so, I knew that I had left my own house for a reason, and I forced myself to stay put. When Warren opened the door, the pleasure I saw on his face made me know I had done the right thing.
“Hanna,” he said. His voice broke a little saying my name, and I felt a reckless rush of warmth.
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