The Last Good Day of the Year (18 page)

Steven taught us how to play Bloody Mary in the first-floor bathroom. He showed us how to cover the staircase with pillows and blankets to turn it into a slide, which we barreled down headfirst. He brought us handfuls of the miniature peppermint patties that his mom kept beside the register at her dry-cleaning store. When Steven was around, even Gretchen seemed to enjoy our company, at least more than she usually did. Maybe she just didn't want Steven to think she was a shitty big sister. She'd tousle my hair or give Turtle a spontaneous hug for no reason. She called us sweet, made-up names like “Cuppycake.” Because of this overall improvement in the quality of our Saturday nights, Turtle, Remy, and I
began to look forward to them with an enthusiasm that pleased our parents even as it aroused their suspicions. More than once, my mom pseudocasually asked me, “What's so great about Gretchen all of a sudden? I thought she and Abby didn't play with you very much.” (Abby was allowed to come over while my parents weren't home, because she was a teenage girl. As an adult male, it went without saying that Steven's presence would have been frowned upon.)

Over the years—especially in the weeks and months after Turtle's kidnapping—I have been given countless opportunities to sit down with a number of Caring Adults to discuss Steven's behavior when he came to our house on all those Saturday nights. A social worker once gave me a stack of blank sheets of paper and a box of crayons and asked me to draw the games we'd played with him or “anything else that might have happened.” I made poor sketches of myself, Remy, Turtle, and Steven (Gretchen hadn't cared to participate) playing Bloody Mary; the social worker asked me if we played any other “bathroom games.” My first therapist (there were several), Miss Russo, gave me a naked Raggedy Ann doll and told me to point to anywhere I might have been touched. I shrugged and handed the naked doll back to Miss Russo, explaining that I didn't remember Steven touching me anywhere, not even on the arm. A hypnotist did his best to relax me with his dull monotone before asking me what animal I thought Steven most resembled. I compared Steven to a grasshopper because of his long, skinny arms and legs. Even though all the Caring Adults claimed to be relieved by what I shared with them, I could tell a part of them was always just a little disappointed. I wasn't giving them the answers
they were looking for, not exactly. They didn't want to hear that Steven had been friendly and funny, more so than Gretchen or Abby ever were. As much as they were glad Remy and I had been spared any abuse, they wanted confirmation that Steven was a monster. They wanted what had happened to Turtle to make some sense. In a world where all is right, nice men don't kidnap four-year-old girls in the middle of the night. They certainly don't murder them. They don't hang their heads and sob in court, pleading their innocence. But they also don't sleep with seventeen-year-old girls. So there's that.

My sister must have known that it was only a matter of time before our parents caught on to her lies about Steven, which were stacking up into a pretty impressive piece of fiction. In the end, it was Mike Mitchell who made the crucial discovery when he swung by our house in the middle of the evening to pick up the wallet he'd left on our kitchen counter earlier that day. He didn't knock or ring the doorbell, he just let himself in through the front door and strolled into the living room, where the five of us were watching
Gremlins
. Gretchen and Steven were cuddling under a blanket on the sectional sofa while Remy, Turtle, and I sat on the floor eating popcorn. Mike didn't get angry or act surprised; he just said hello to all of us, introduced himself to Steven, retrieved his wallet, and left as quickly as he'd arrived. I thought there was a chance he wouldn't even mention anything to my parents. But the next morning at breakfast, when I saw Gretchen glaring puffy-eyed at our mother over a bowl of Rice Krispies, I knew we'd been busted.

All these things happened in relatively quick succession during the last six weeks of the summer of 1985. Had Gretchen's
relationship with Steven ended that Saturday night in August like it was supposed to, my memories connected to that summer would be quite different from what they are now. The older guy who'd dated my sister for a few weeks would be a distant memory, barely a footnote in an otherwise ordinary childhood. There were so many other, more significant events that took place during that decade: IBM introduced the first desktop; MTV premiered at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981; the Senate confirmed Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice; the CDC announced its discovery of a new strain of deadly pneumonia, thought at first to affect only gay men. “Small-town teenage girl sneaks around with older guy” was hardly newsworthy, even to our neighbors. And it might have stayed that way; the relationship likely would have faded into nonexistence even in our memories. Years later, Gretchen, Turtle, and I might have reminisced while out to lunch somewhere about the guy who used to come over when our parents went out. “What was his name?” Turtle might have asked, unable to recall any details from that time in her life. Gretchen might sigh, her gaze rolling toward the ceiling in thought. “Sean? No, that's not right. But I'm sure it was something that started with an
S
.” Then maybe she'd shrug, losing interest in the matter. “I don't remember. It isn't important.” And we'd go back to doing whatever it was we'd been doing: getting our nails done, the three of us seated in a row at a busy salon; chatting softly in a movie theater during the previews; lying on a beach. We'd be all grown up. Turtle, with her long, silky hair and big eyes, freckles across her nose and cheeks as though
someone had pitched a fistful of brown confetti at her face, would have been the most beautiful of the three of us. I think about these things sometimes, and what I feel is not quite sadness as much as abstract curiosity, a distant yearning that never quite gets too painful to tolerate, but never goes away completely.

 

Summer 1996

It takes me almost eight weeks to finish clearing out the Mitchells' basement. Now that I've gotten rid of all the clutter, Susan is moving forward full speed with her renovation plans. The next step is to put a fresh coat of paint on everything. At least I'm not working alone now; Remy is helping.

While we're pushing all the remaining furniture away from the walls, I find a few more boxes of old photos underneath his grandmother's bed. Remy doesn't seem bothered when I sit down to look through them while he's doing all the painting prep. He tries to be nice to me in little ways like that—ways that are more like how a boyfriend might act, instead of a boy who's only a friend. I've never been treated this way before, not by Noah or anyone else. It's better than I could have expected.

Remy whistles at me. “You know you've been staring at the same picture for about a year, Sam?”

“What?”

“Yeah. You've been spaced out. Let me see that.” He tugs the photo from my grasp to have a look. It's from our fifth birthday party. We're seated at the round picnic table in my backyard. My mom stands nearby, holding Turtle on her hip. Young Remy's chubby cheeks are smeared with cake and icing. Beside him, I look like I'm about to fall asleep in my party hat.

“Your mom sure is rocking those shoulder pads.”

I don't laugh. I don't say a word.

“Come on. That was funny.”

“Who's this man in the picture?”

Our dads are standing next to an open cooler filled with ice and cans of beer. Remy's dad, with his white shorts and pink collared shirt, looks like he just stepped away from the set of
Miami Vice
. There is a lit cigar in his mouth, its smoke winding into the sky in thick, blurry loops. Behind him and off to the side, a strange man is lurking at the edge of Remy's yard, watching the festivities. He doesn't seem like a guest at the party; more like an uninvited outsider. His clothing is ragged, yet almost formal looking: he wears a white collared shirt and black pants, which are odd choices for what was obviously a warm day.

“Are you talking about this guy?” Remy presses his thumb against the man's face as if he's trying to squash his head.

“Yes.” His outfit looks like it came from the Salvation Army; his shirt is too big for his body, the sleeves too long, but his pants are a few inches too short. He has a full head of curly black hair. His face
is pale and so slender that his cheeks have visible hollows even from so far away; it's less a face than it is skin stretched over a skull.

“I don't know,” Remy says. “Just some guy, I guess.”

“But what is he doing there?”

“I don't know, Sam,” he says impatiently. “Maybe he knows Mr. and Mrs. Souza.”

I frown at him. “Mr. and Mrs. Souza don't have any friends.”

“You're probably right,” he admits. “But I'm sure it's nothing. He's just a guy in the woods. There used to be dirt paths running all over the place back there. He looks confused, don't you think? Maybe he was lost.”

“But we saw him somewhere else once. Don't you remember?”

“Should I?” He holds the photo closer to his face. He looks at it for only a second before flinging it back at me as though it's a Frisbee. “I don't know. Maybe. I've smoked a lot of weed since then, Sam. My memory's not so sharp.”

“We saw him by the railroad tracks, Remy—the tracks that run along the river uptown. You have to remember it. It was Gretchen's fourteenth birthday. She and her friends went horseback riding, and we begged to go along to see the horses, but we were too little to ride. A couple of the girls who worked at the stables took us on a walk, and he was there.”

Remy shrugs. “Sorry. I don't remember any of that.”

I remember the girls' obvious resentment at having to babysit the two of us.

“We were on the tracks inside the tunnel. The stable girls were way back. They weren't paying any attention to us. Remember? We went into the tunnel and he was there, walking and singing a
song. He gave us marbles. He seemed nice at first, and then he started singing that creepy song.”

“He started
singing
?” Remy laughs at me. “Are you messing with me right now?”

Susan interrupts us, calling down from the top of the stairs: “Are you hungry, Sam? I made tuna salad.” She pauses. “Is Remy down there with you?”

“Yeah, Mom, I'm here.”

“Okay … You kids having fun?”

“So much fun, Mom. So much. More than you could ever imagine.”

“You have to be a smartass, don't you? Listen, I have to run over to the school for a little while. Can you switch the laundry around for me?”

“Sure.”

“You have to run the sheets on hot water. Don't forget.”

“I won't.”

“And keep the door cracked. You don't want to inhale all those paint fumes.”

Remy sighs. “We will, Mom.”

“There's Pepsi in the fridge. Sam, do you drink Pepsi?”

“I'm not thirsty right now. Thanks, though!” I can picture her standing in the doorway up there, her purse hanging from her shoulder, probably worried that if she comes down she'll see us half-naked or something. Remy and I listen in silence, tracking her footsteps as they travel out of the kitchen and down the hall, until she leaves the house. We hear the garage door open and close, followed
by the chiming of the grandfather clock in the foyer, announcing that it's noon. I realize I haven't eaten a thing all day, but I'm not the least bit hungry.

“Okay—what were you telling me, now? He sang to us?”

I nod.

“Let's hear it, then,” he says, grinning, and I know he doesn't believe me. “Maybe it'll trigger a memory.”