The Night Before

by Wendy Walker

  Rosie yelled at him then. I couldn’t believe it. Sweet, obedient, Rosie—yelling at Dick.

  Why do you have to live with that woman?

  Dick opened his stupid mouth and said his stupid words.

  Because I love her. Someday you’ll love someone and you’ll understand.

  Stupid, selfish Dick. Rosie cried again. Dick said shhh again. But then he said something else, something unexpected.

  Your mother is no saint.

  Rosie stopped crying and I heard footsteps. I ran back to my room and closed the door. Dick left Rosie on her bed with her red eyes and wet face. He walked down the hallway and down the stairs. We both came out of our rooms, Rosie and I. We stood together in that hallway listening to the last sounds our father would ever make in our house. And to the final pleas of our mother.

  Don’t go.… Don’t leave us!

  I know Rosie felt it then the same way I did when we heard our mother. Nails on a chalkboard.

  I never asked Rosie what Dick meant about our mother not being a saint, and she never asked me. Now we are adults. We’ve known our mother all our lives. What good has time done to reveal the truth? About our father? About our mother?

  About any of us?

  Nothing, that’s what.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to leave,” I say.

  He’s frustrated with me. I can see how he’s tensed up and I want to change it. I want to make it stop.

  It begins with recognition.

  But I don’t care why I feel this way, how broken I am. How wrong I am. I can’t go back to Rosie’s attic and wait for a call from this man who’s standing in front of me right here and right now.

  I think about the last time I saw Kevin. I feel the words I love you sink into my bones, transforming me cell by cell. Hands releasing fists. Peace visible on the horizon of what has been a restless life. I went home that night and conned myself into believing it was here to stay.

  And then it was all torn out of me.

  I can’t go home and wait for it to come again. Not again.

  So I give him what he wants. Or maybe the runner-up. I give him my darkest secret.

  “That night that you read about—the night that boy was killed. It was my fault.”

  Frustration: gone.

  “Okay,” he says. He sets down his keys and grabs the bottle of scotch. Then he returns to the empty living room and sits beside me.

  “I’d been dating him, Mitch Adler. He wasn’t a good guy, but that made me fight even harder,” I begin. My hands are shaking. He steadies them as he refills my glass.

  “One of the wolves?” he asks, smiling because he remembers my story about Catholic school. I’d forgotten telling him. I’ve told him so many things. Three hours is a long time to talk to a stranger.

  “I think I found the leader of the pack with that one. It was stupid high school head games. I can see that now. But at the time, it had me in knots.”

  “I had a friend who always fell for guys like that. We were in college then, so don’t feel so bad.”

  Everyone has a friend like that. Most of them learn from their mistakes.

  “I went to the party that night knowing he’d be there. He hadn’t called me for weeks. He hadn’t returned any of my messages.”

  “And you didn’t assume it was over?”

  I look away and don’t answer.

  “It sounds ridiculous to tell this story now. As a grown woman. I’m hearing the words in my head and I don’t want to say them.”

  He swirls his glass, takes a drink. “I get it. We were all in high school once. Just tell me what happened.”

  I cringe, but then say these ridiculous words.

  “He came to the party with his girlfriend—the one I didn’t know about until that night. Britney. I already told you that part.”

  “You must have been upset,” he says, trying to move things along. He’s been wanting to hear this story all night and I don’t care why. I don’t care about my list, which now includes this empty apartment. There is something about him that has reached me, and I want to hold on to it.

  “I was devastated. I wouldn’t show it, of course. I pretended not to see him. I went to get another beer. But then I felt a hand on my arm.”

  “Ah—so the silent treatment worked.”

  “It was part of our script. He asked me how the rest of my summer was and I said it was great. I turned away, pretended to be part of a conversation going on next to us. Then I felt him push my hair away from the back of my neck. He leaned in close, whispered in my ear that he needed to see me alone. I thought maybe that girl was just a friend. That I had overreacted. We went behind some trees. Kissed, laughed. He said he’d missed me.”

  This is where I should need to stop, because the memory of that night is too painful. Because it tortures me to go back there.

  But a wall has grown around this story. I didn’t ask for it. But it’s there now. It stands on its own. It never asks for maintenance or permission to be there. And I like it just fine.

  I don’t need to stop. So I continue with only feigned emotion.

  “He took a step back then. He smiled and folded his arms and soaked up the love that was radiating from my body. It was like he just turned the valve a little to the left and it started to flow right out of me. I thought his smile was from being happy—happy that I loved him and that we were sharing this moment. But then he started to tell me about the girl he’d walked in with.”

  This is the part where I do pause. One hand squeezes the glass. The other begins to close, fingers bending in perfect unison until they reach the palm.

  The smell of the fire. The damp brush of the deep woods. We steal a kiss behind a tree. He breaks away. He looks at me with tenderness, and I have a moment where I believe that I have finally done it. I have given enough, been enough. He opens his mouth to speak. I think the words before he says them.

  But he didn’t say the words old me was waiting for. The small child tugging on a sleeve, wide eyes. Pleading eyes. And the words that he did say filled me with a bigger rage than I had ever known.

  Jonathan has guessed it.

  “He told you she was his girlfriend,” he says.

  I nod. “He said he needed to get back to her. And the thing is, I was not the kind of girl who would cry and beg and plead. That was my mother, so I knew it was useless—and besides that, it repulsed me, violently, to show any sign of weakness, even if I was weak. So instead I just shrugged. I told him he’d better go, then, before she got mad at him.”

  I see us now, in my glass of scotch. I see Mitch and remember the swirling together of warm, lusty bliss and red-hot rage. Danger waking me from the illusion of safety. My hands in fists at my sides, but a smile on my face because I knew how to win that fight. Or, at least, I thought I did.

  “Then he said, changing course, I could send her home. He was a worthy opponent that way. When I didn’t try to stop him, he brought out bigger guns. I said he should do what he wants. And he said that he had a dilemma.”

  I hear his words. I’m back in those woods.

  I have a dilemma.…

  What dilemma…?

  I know she loves me. But I don’t think you do.

  “He said I needed to prove it to him.”

  “What the hell did he mean by that?” Jonathan asks. He seems genuinely pissed off on my behalf.

  “He meant exactly what you think he meant,” I say. “He wanted me to sleep with him.”

  “Well, I hope you realized what was going on!” Jonathan is so sweet to be concerned for me eleven years after the fact.

  Of course I realized what was going on. The boy I loved wanted me to have sex with him as a condition to staying with me. To loving me. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff.

  “So what did you do?” Jonathan asks. His eyes are wide, his brow furrowed.

  “I laughed like it was no big deal. I told him I’d been with someone else all summer, so he missed his chance to b
e my first. I told him I was worried he wouldn’t measure up, but I was happy to find out. Let’s go, I said. Honestly, this story should make you go back to the kitchen and grab your keys and walk me straight to my car.”

  Jonathan places a hand on my shoulder. “Why? Because you were young and in love and couldn’t make the best decision?”

  “It’s more than that. Most girls would have run away in tears, cried to their friends. Got shit-faced, puked, then gotten on with their lives. That’s what Rosie would have done.”

  I’m not digging for sympathy, or for one more person to let me off the hook for my self-destructive behavior. I hate this part of me, then, now, and at every moment in between. She is undeserving of sympathy.

  I look at Jonathan Fielding and wonder if it’s this part of me that has drawn me to him. That let him inside my head, which is the straightest path to my heart.

  I’ve paused to drink and ponder. Jonathan is eager for the end. He says nothing, but stares at me with that serious expression.

  “But I’m not like those other girls. Not like my sister. I rattled off things I could do with him—using as many obscenities as possible—and then I asked him if he knew what he was doing because I didn’t want to waste the night on him if he didn’t.”

  “Jesus,” Jonathan says. He smiles. “Ballsy move.”

  “It was some strange game we were playing then. I was waiting for him to blink. He was waiting for me. Neither of us did.”

  “Did he answer the question?”

  “No. He just smiled and said something slick like Don’t worry; you’ll enjoy it.”

  “So that’s why you went to his car? He called your bluff?”

  Jonathan treads carefully. He wants the end of this story. And I want the end of our story. Me and Jonathan Fielding. I want the journey to be over. I’m so tired. And now my head spins from the scotch.

  “You don’t have to tell me the rest,” he says.

  But he doesn’t mean it. I am so close to opening my mouth and rendering my confession. I don’t want to break the spell of intimacy that pulls us together.

  I smile sadly and look away. I think suddenly about the notes. The threats. If someone wanted me to pay for that night, why am I still here? Why am I not in jail or lying in a hospital bed? Why am I not dead and buried? What are they waiting for? To torture me?

  “Laura,” he says, his hand on my cheek now, turning my head to face him. So gently. “I don’t care about that night. I can see that it still upsets you.”

  Liar, I think. He would have to be an idiot not to care about that night. And Jonathan Fielding is no idiot.

  Notes, notes, notes.

  I’ve been home for five weeks. I’ve received three notes. And now I’m on a date with a stranger who’s been asking me about that night in the woods.

  I stand up from the couch. My head spins and spins. Scotch and confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I don’t answer because I don’t know. Except, perhaps, one small thing.

  “Laura? Tell me what’s wrong.…” He grabs my hand as I turn to walk away.

  I stare at him and think something. Something is very wrong.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 8:30 a.m. New York City.

  Rosie sat at a small table, a fresh cup of coffee in front of her.

  “Do you take milk?”

  Laura’s roommate, Kathleen, worked as a graphic designer for a marketing firm downtown. Laura had found her through an advertisement. They had not been friends, but there had been no complaints, either. They shared a two-bedroom walk-up on Jane Street. Laura worked long hours. She rarely ate at home. Kathleen had a boyfriend in New Jersey and was gone most weekends. That was all Laura had said about it. Rosie had been there a few times before when she’d come to visit her sister, and every time her roommate had been gone.

  “Yes, thanks,” Rosie answered.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. It didn’t sound urgent—your message,” Kathleen said apologetically as she walked back into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t know what was happening. I wasn’t sure … and I didn’t know how close you were to my sister. That seems strange now—that I didn’t know. You were never here when we came to visit her.”

  Rosie could see Laura’s room through the small living space next to the kitchen. The door was open. The room bare.

  “Did she take everything when she left?” Rosie asked. The day she’d picked Laura up, the boxes had already been packed and moved to the street.

  Kathleen returned with a pint of milk and she sat down. Her eyes followed Rosie’s through the adjacent room to the open door.

  “She did,” Kathleen answered. “That’s how I knew she wasn’t coming back. The furniture is mine. Just a bed and a desk. The closet has built-ins so she didn’t need a dresser. You can look if you want, but I went through it after a few days. I’ve been showing it again.”

  “If you don’t mind—I might just walk through.”

  Rosie’s hand was shaking when she picked up the coffee. She set it back down, drew her hands to her face.

  Kathleen looked at her with caution, as though she didn’t want to be pulled into the storm. “So what’s happened, exactly?”

  “I don’t know what’s happened. That’s the problem. She went on a date with a man she met online and she never came home.”

  “How long has it been?” Kathleen asked. “She used to leave for days at a time. I never knew when she would be here, when she was coming home. She worked long hours. And she traveled. She was covering industrial chemicals, she said. Took the train to Pennsylvania, Upstate New York. Sometimes she flew. She wasn’t one to…” Kathleen couldn’t find the right words, so Rosie finished the thought.

  “I know—she wasn’t one to be considerate of other people in her life. People who might worry about her or wonder where she was.”

  Kathleen looked at Rosie and nodded. “I got used to it. I never worried about her.”

  “It’s different,” Rosie said. “She had my car. She knew I would worry if she didn’t come home, or call, at least.”

  “You’re right,” Kathleen said. “I didn’t mean to imply that she was inconsiderate. It wasn’t like that. If she thought I worried about her when she was gone, she would have let me know where she was. Things I cared about, like dishes in the sink or taking out the recycling—she never forgot those things. We were friendly, but not friends, if that makes any sense.”

  It did. It made perfect sense. Laura wasn’t used to people worrying about her. Caring about her enough to worry.

  “Did you know her boyfriend? The one she had right before she left?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  But Rosie could tell she had an opinion.

  “Did she tell you what happened? Why she left New York? Left her job?”

  “She just said she needed a change.” Kathleen looked back toward Laura’s room. “I came home one Sunday night and found her in there. She was sitting on her bed, staring out the window. She was sitting in the dark—no lights on anywhere in the apartment. It took me by surprise when I saw her. It was so quiet. So dark. I went to the edge of the door and knocked on the wall just outside. I didn’t want to bother her if she wanted to be alone. She had a glass of something in her hand, resting on her knee. Both feet were on the floor. Her hair was falling around her face. It was hard to tell, but I think she’d been crying.”

  “I asked her what was wrong, and she just said that it was over with the guy. She never told me his name. I asked her if I could help, if she wanted to talk. She thanked me, politely, but then said she would be fine. She just needed a little time. I asked her if she wanted the door open or closed and she said closed. So I closed her door, turned on the lights, took a shower, made some food. She never came out. I thought she’d gone to bed. But she must have started packing, because the next afternoon, she was gone. The room was cleared out. She left me a check
for two months’ rent and a note saying she was moving home for a while. That was it.”

  Rosie stared at Laura’s roommate, picturing this scene. It was so familiar. Rosie had found her like that countless times when they were still living on Deer Hill Lane. Laura, sitting on the edge of her bed, in the dark, staring out a window.

  “I tried to call her,” Kathleen said eagerly. “She didn’t answer and didn’t return the call. Like I said, we weren’t friends, so I didn’t think it was my place to do more than that.”

  Rosie smiled sadly. “No—don’t feel bad. You couldn’t have done anything.”

  “Still,” Kathleen said. “Now she’s missing. I wish I’d found out more that night. Maybe it would be helpful.”

  Rosie got up. “Can I look in the room?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  They walked from the kitchen to the living room, then to the doorway of Laura’s room. Kathleen walked past her and turned on the light.

  “This is it,” she said. “Just the bed and desk.”

  Rosie stood still for a moment. The room had been so full of life the last time she’d been there—before the day she moved out. It was in the spring and the windows were open. Jane Street was lined with trees and the smell of blooming leaves had been coming through on a cool gust of air. Laura had a bright orange quilt that Mason had found irresistible.

  “My son was here last spring—jumping on that bed.” Rosie walked to the window and looked out at the street below. “It was May. Before she’d met him.”

  Rosie tried to remember that day. “I would have remembered if she had. Laura was always different when she had a new man in her life.”

  “I couldn’t say one way or another. I’m sorry. She mentioned him in passing over the summer. She wanted to bring him here for the weekend and asked me if I minded. I was leaving anyway, so I said it was fine.”