Last Woman Standing

by Amy Gentry

  “Rinski? Yeah, we went out for a while,” Jason said stiffly. “A long time ago.”

  “She told me. We’ve been hanging out lately.” Amanda had obviously been targeting her too. I hoped she had taken my advice and gone to my mother’s house in Amarillo. I vowed to call and urge her to do so as soon as we left the storage facility.

  While Jason continued to look, I dragged a banker’s box of binders out from under the bed and started flipping through them. Most of them were full of code, indecipherable to me, but one was dedicated to printed-out spreadsheets similar to the one she had shown me listing her online harassers. But these were all women’s names. I poked Jason. “Do these look familiar?” Names, birth dates, and current and past residences were listed neatly alongside phone numbers, names of relatives, current and past jobs.

  He nodded up at the wall. “These are like dossiers. How long has she been stalking me?” There was real fear in his eyes.

  But I was puzzling over the paper trail. Why hard copies? “She likes them for her own secrets,” I said slowly to myself. “She only stores things online when she wants other people to find them.”

  “Great. Let’s get some pictures and get the hell out of here.”

  He began snapping pictures while I examined the wall, searching.

  Jason saw what I was doing. “Don’t bother,” he said. “She was hunting down girlfriends. Which you weren’t, at the time.”

  We both went silent. It was absurd to feel hurt that I didn’t merit inclusion in some sicko’s photo gallery, but it served as a reminder of how much more Jason had always meant to me than I’d meant to him. I’d always known Jason had a thing for skinny blondes, but with all their photos taped up here, it was impossible not to notice their striking similarities. No wonder Amanda had looked vaguely familiar to me when I first met her; I was staring at a physical type I knew all too well. Now that we were together at last, the thought of all these women he had dated briefly and then broken up with made me feel a little nauseated. I wasn’t an ex-girlfriend. But would I be someday?

  “Well, this looks batshit crazy,” I managed weakly. “And it’s hard evidence. I bet there’s more in that box too.” I thought nervously of Kim, hoping she was out of Austin. “Do you think she’s contacted all these women?”

  “Maybe. If someone went looking for people who hate me, the pictures in this storage unit would be a pretty good place to start.”

  “You’re one of those bridge-burners, I guess.” Still stung by the comment about my missing photo, I couldn’t help myself. I’d never spent much time thinking about why Jason’s girlfriends never hung around. I was too busy being delighted at how quickly they vanished in the rearview mirror to wonder where they’d gone. “Leave a trail of angry women in your wake.”

  “This one’s the angriest,” he said. “At least, I hope so.” He went back to taking pictures, and I continued looking through the binder, keeping my thoughts to myself.

  Jason broke the silence. “Did Kim say anything about me?” he said in an odd tone. “We didn’t part on good terms.”

  “We avoided the topic, to be honest.” I couldn’t have said why my next statement had the sound, even to my ears, of a warning. “I really like Kim. We’re friends.”

  He started to say something, then swallowed it.

  I threw the binder back into the box with disgust. As I did so, something white and rectangular slipped askew and poked out of the side of the binder. I plucked it out and looked at it quickly, then stuck it in my purse, the blood rushing to my face.

  The thick white envelope was addressed to me at Jason’s house. It had already been opened, and the return address was mostly torn away. But what was left clearly indicated it was from Clements Unit.

  I was in the binder after all. Along with Mattie.

  Jason was quieter than usual on the way home and seemed chastened. Though we had found exactly what we were looking for, it didn’t cheer him up; his spy-movie antics had faded away the moment we found the photos. Maybe he was frightened for the first time. Or maybe, I thought, he just didn’t like the version of himself he saw reflected in the eyes of past romantic partners.

  But then, who likes to be reminded of failure? The sheer quantity of women in his past was sobering. His darkened mood would ordinarily have worried me, and I would have spent the ride home commiserating with him over Amanda’s sick obsession and finding subtle ways to reassure him that the contents of the binder didn’t make me think any less of him. Instead, the silence in the car was something of a relief.

  Or at least, it would have been if I hadn’t had the letter in my purse. I held the purse on my lap and stared resolutely out the window, watching the L.A. sprawl inch past and counting the minutes until I could be alone to read it. To distract myself, I dialed into my voicemail remotely and was relieved that there was nothing from Amanda. The only message was from my mom, informing me that my nice, funny friend from Austin had arrived safely last night and gone to bed after a late dinner. I breathed a sigh of relief for Kim’s sake, then cast a sidelong glance at Jason, but he was deep in his own thoughts.

  By the time we got home, Jason had finally come out of his bubble enough to notice my distracted state, but of course he assumed he knew the reason for it. As soon as the door closed behind us, he moved to embrace me. I felt his arms pressing my purse into my side, and the letter in it seemed to burn through to my skin. I let him hold me for a moment, forcing myself not to break off the hug.

  “Hey,” he said, drawing back to look down at me, his arms still around me. “I hope you know—all those girls in my past—now I know how dumb I was. Too busy chasing after what I thought I wanted to see what was right in front of my eyes.”

  I smiled up at him, not trusting myself to speak.

  “I don’t want you to think that’s what I want, not anymore. That was a wall of my mistakes. And she was the last one, thank God.”

  I didn’t need to ask who. “I’m not hurt,” I said. “Honestly, I’m not.”

  It was Jason who seemed hurt. He needed more than absolution from me; he needed comfort. Under the pretense of reassuring me, he kept finding excuses to touch me, drumming his fingers on my knee as we sat next to each other at the table, squeezing the back of my neck when I said I was tired. Finally, in desperation, I waited until he was looking the other way, then slipped the letter into my waistband so I could sneak it into the bathroom.

  Alone in the bathroom, I turned on the tap water to cover up the rattling of paper. My hands shook uncontrollably as I pulled the letter from the envelope. I took a deep breath to compose myself and unfolded it.

  It was handwritten with a ballpoint pen in surprisingly neat lettering. Laurel used to say that in our age of electronic communication, a glimpse of someone’s handwriting is more intimate than a glimpse of his underwear drawer. I tried to imagine Mattie hunched over a tiny desk in his dreary cell, lank black hair falling over his bulging forehead, shaping each word carefully, starting over with a fresh sheet whenever he made a mistake. Before I could begin to feel sorry for him, I had a sense memory of the TV room, the dull pressure pushing my spine against the sofa springs. After all, what did it cost Mattie to rewrite a letter once or twice? Where he was, he had all the time in the world.

  Dear Dana,

  Please don’t throw this letter out without reading it. I started going to group in here because the laws like it, but now it’s got me thinking about the past, mulling over my mistakes. I’m writing to say: I’m sorry about what happened that night you spent at our house. For years I tried to forget about it, or at least pretend it wasn’t my fault. It’s only now that I’ve heard a lot of guys talking about it in group that I really get what rape does to a person. And that’s what it was. It was rape.

  I fumed. Of course it wasn’t Mattie’s fault he’d raped me. Just like it wasn’t Neely’s fault he’d exposed himself to me in the back of an SUV. It was never their fault. It was mine, for being in the wrong place at the
wrong time, wearing the wrong dress, looking the wrong way. I didn’t feel much like reading the rest, and the only reason I didn’t crumple the letter up right then was that I needed to know what Amanda had found out about me from it.

  I always felt mean when you came over. You’d hang on Jase’s words, looking at him with these wide eyes, like he was some kind of prize. No one ever looked at me like that. In our family, Jason was the smart, funny one, and I was the ugly, stupid fuckup. And believe me, he made sure I knew it.

  I kept him in line most of the time. Dad used to beat me up, especially after he didn’t have Mom to push around anymore. Jase never got any of that. He was so little when Mom left, he didn’t really get how bad it was. I felt like it was only fair if I gave him a hard time. To even the score, sort of.

  He was too scared of getting whaled on to say anything to my face, but he used to pull these dumb tricks to remind me how he could get away with anything. He did it even when we were little. My mom had this jar shaped like an owl where she kept the cookies for our lunches. After she left, Jase and I used to sneak Oreos when my dad was at work. Well, one day I got caught and spanked, and the jar got moved to the top of the refrigerator. A few days later there was a big crash, and my dad found Jason on the floor, surrounded by Oreos and blood and broken pieces of jar. He’d climbed up there to sneak some cookies. This time I got pounded within an inch of my life, because, see, it was my fault the jar got moved in the first place and Jason fell.

  Jason could do no wrong. He hated our dad too, but he could manipulate him. When he did get in trouble, he could always get out of it, crack a joke and get a laugh. And it didn’t stop when we got bigger. Jason narc’d on me when I was selling pot in high school so I’d get kicked out and he could have his own private TV room. And I’m pretty sure he let my dog Kenny out that time, maybe even drove him somewhere and dropped him off in a field. Or worse. Of course I got blamed for leaving the gate open, but Kenny never ran off like that before.

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading. No wonder the letter was so long; Mattie’s childhood traumas, no doubt, could fill a library. I guessed this had all come up in “group.” So it was his father’s fault that he had raped me, or Jason’s fault, or possibly their mother’s, since she’d left her boys to be raised by an abusive man. Well, it didn’t scan. Mattie was the one who had been avoiding responsibility all these years, not Jason. And here he was, still trying to get out of it, spending more of his supposed apology letter wallowing in self-pity than actually apologizing. Moreover, his accusations toward Jason sounded delusional. As if Jason would risk wrestling that mountain of bristling fur into a car alone. Either Mattie was truly paranoid or he was just very, very into blaming Jason for the bad things that had happened to him. I suspected the latter.

  Anyway, all of this was beside the point. So Mattie had had a rough childhood. Jason had too, and so had I. Not everyone with a rough childhood grew up to be a rapist or an abuser or an internet troll. We all had choices.

  I thought uncomfortably of Carl’s face, bloody and bawling, and glanced quickly back at the letter.

  That night—you know the night I’m talking about—I was drinking before I came home. Then I saw you and Jase laughing it up together in front of the TV, and the mean feeling started. I don’t know what made that night so much worse than any other—maybe it was a tough day at work, I don’t even know. I just know I felt alone. And angry.

  After you fell asleep, Jason and I got in a fight. I wanted to make him feel as small as I felt. It pissed me off, how he always had this adoring fan. I started giving him shit about you, calling him a fag for not sealing the deal, that kind of stuff. Told him he’d never be a real man. We were drinking, and stuff started coming out. He said I was just like Dad, and Mom left to get away from me. That made me go kind of crazy, I guess. I just wanted to get back at him, hurt him, I didn’t care how. We fought some more, and he stormed off. And then . . . well, you know what happened next.

  I knew. I remembered all too well his tequila breath in my mouth, his forearm pushing down on my collarbone while his other hand yanked at my jeans. And all he’d wanted was to get back at Jason. I wasn’t even a person to him—just something he could take away from his brother to prove who was the bigger man. I felt too disgusted for tears. For the first time, I regretted that I hadn’t given Amanda his name. Even if he was already in Clements by that time, I trusted Amanda could find a way to make anyone’s life hell.

  Suddenly I realized: Amanda had read this letter long before she met me. She’d known about Mattie the whole time—before I told her about Neely, even. She had sent me into the Carl hit knowing I had been raped; knowing, perhaps, I’d be triggered. When I came back with blood on my hands, she’d guessed right away what had happened. “You have one more, don’t you?” she’d said. All that hounding me for the name was just a charade. She knew very well who my third name was—and where he was.

  Afterward, I waited for you to tell someone about the rape, but you didn’t. So I didn’t either. You kept coming over to hang out with Jason, like nothing happened. I let myself think it couldn’t be that big a deal. Maybe I was mad at you, that you liked Jason so much you’d still come over even after that. I pushed it down, told myself it had nothing to do with me. Now I know that’s bullshit. I’m not the only one to blame, but I’m still sorry for my part in the whole thing. Most of all I’m sorry that I didn’t understand how much you were hurt that night. I was so focused on Jason, I hardly saw you as a person at all.

  I guess maybe I owe Jason an apology, too, for some stuff. He’s my brother and in group they say I must love him deep down. I don’t know about that. All those years beating up on him probably made him worse, and some days I wish I could take it back. Other days I’m still so mad, I feel like I could kill him. The prison shrink says it’s my father I really hate, but what the hell. Someone has to hate Jason. It might as well be me.

  Matthew Murphy

  I read the letter over three times.

  The first time, I could barely make it to the end, my stomach heaving.

  The second time, I read it slowly and thoroughly, without stopping, angry tears burning my face. I’m not the only one to blame. What a coward.

  The third time, I skimmed, trying to imagine Amanda’s thoughts when she’d read it. The letter was in a prison-issue envelope with Mattie’s return address at Clements clearly marked on the outside. Amanda must have snagged it before Jason got a chance to see it. Which meant that even while they were still living together, she was already sneaking around, looking for ways to ruin Jason’s life. She must have been burning with hatred when she read Mattie’s words—I’m still so mad, I feel like I could kill him . . . Someone has to hate Jason. It might as well be me. In Mattie, she’d found her strongest ally yet; she’d even made his name her new password. How could I find out whether they were in contact and, if so, what they’d said? It was someone’s job at the prison to read all the prisoners’ mail, incoming and outgoing. If I just had someone on the ground—

  Kim. Kim was in Amarillo visiting my mom. She was gutsy enough to do a little undercover work, and she was in need of distraction. She could start by visiting Mattie at Clements. With her improv experience, she could even pose as Amanda—she was tall and blond and could pass for her if he’d only seen photographs. I’d have to call her as soon as I could, on my mom’s landline. With Kim on that photo wall, I wasn’t convinced her phone would be safe.

  I flushed the toilet and turned on the tap to conceal the sound of me folding the letter back up and stashing it in my waistband again. When I came out, Jason was sitting on the sofa holding my old phone—the bugged one. The duct-taped packet of insulation lay beside him, slit up one side. He immediately held the phone out to me.

  “You have some new messages,” he said with a wink to show he was speaking for the benefit of our eavesdropper. “It looks like your mom called.”

  Confused, I took the phone and played along. “Oh yeah?
I’ve been meaning to call her. Thanks.”

  He grabbed a pencil and paper and scribbled, You shouldn’t let your phone die or she’ll figure out that you’re not using it. I got it out to charge it.

  I nodded, found my charger in my purse, and plugged it in. He was right. Besides, the presence of the bugged phone gave me an excuse to take my burner outside to call my mom’s house, where I was hoping to find Kim. It was true I wanted to keep my conversation with Kim safe from Amanda, but I didn’t want Jason to hear it either.

  My mom’s phone rang longer than usual, and for a moment I worried she was out, even though it was a weekend. When she picked up, she sounded a little distant.

  “Hi, Mama, it’s me.”

  “Mija!” Her voice changed instantly. “I thought it was somebody selling something. The number on the caller ID looks funny.”

  “It’s a new phone.”

  “Please take some more coffee, dear, it’s just going to go to waste,” she said, her mouth away from the receiver. Before I could ask her to put Kim on, she started talking to me again. “Mija, I don’t want to worry you,” she said, in a tone indicating she was clearly worried herself. “But I got a call yesterday from the police.”

  I froze. “The Austin police? About what?” It had to be Fash. I cursed myself for telling Laurel I was staying with my mom in Amarillo.

  “They wouldn’t tell me, mija. It’s you they want to talk to. They said you weren’t answering your phone. I told them you were off running errands and I didn’t know when you’d be back.”

  I let out my breath with a sigh. Trust my mom to be cagey with the police. As a Mexican-American immigrant in Texas, where ICE crackdowns could make anyone with an accent a target for harassment, she distrusted officers of the law, though she was unfailingly polite to them. “Thanks, Mama. You told them right. And I’ll be back soon, when I’m done with what I need to do out here.” You won’t have been lying for me, I promised silently.