This makes the day a winner in her book. Then she finds a pint of raspberry chocolate chip in the freezer. And while she’s eating it from the carton, her phone buzzes, a text from a familiar number, although it is one that she has never entered into her Contacts.
NEXT WEEK?
Her first instinct is to say yes, but then she thinks about the timing. The week after Valentine’s Day. Ugh. So she types back only:
Maybe
Who’s she kidding? It’s probably going to be yes.
I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE (TRASH) THANKSGIVING
Our fathers spoke and Randy was granted permission to attend our Thanksgiving dinner. He arrived at 1 P.M., bearing a bottle of crème de menthe in a paper bag; the seal was broken and the bottle appeared to be about three-quarters full. My father thanked him with grave courtesy and placed it on the butler’s bar alongside his cut-glass bottles of clear and amber liquors.
“Won’t you get in trouble?” I asked Randy while we played checkers in my room. “For taking that bottle?”
“I didn’t take it,” he said.
“Randy-it’s not even full.”
“Okay, I took it, but my dad will never know. He’ll think one of my sisters took it and they’ll blame one another, or even their boyfriends. I’ll be fine.”
Randy had a cunning streak. Was it always there or was he coming into it now that he was almost eleven? I just hoped he wouldn’t use his cleverness to try to kiss me. I made sure the door to my room stayed open, and I tried not to turn my back to him at any point. But he seemed far more interested in my stuff than he was in me, pulling board games off my shelves, exclaiming over such ordinary things as playing cards and Trouble, which I considered way too babyish for fourth graders.
At dinner, he was polite about my father’s dryish turkey, the cold Parker House rolls, the reheated cornbread dressing. That is, I assumed at the time he was trying to showcase his good manners. I realize now that our lackluster meal seemed like a feast to Randy. Dinner done, Randy, as our guest, was exempt from cleaning, not that he objected with even token protests. While AJ and I washed the good china and silver by hand, Randy sat with my father in front of the football game, a plate with a slice of (store-bought) pumpkin pie on his lap. He looked terrified, too terrified to eat. He perched on the edge of the wing chair and balanced that plate of pie on his lap, unsure what to do. Eventually, he began to pick at it with his fingers, one crumb at a time, careful not to let any crumbs fall from his plate. His fingers inched closer and closer to the glop of Reddi-wip I had added to his slice.
“Use a fork, Randy,” I said, coming out to the living room with my own piece of pie.
“That’s not good manners, Lu,” my father said.
“Eating with your fingers isn’t good manners-” I started. My father stood and summoned me back to the kitchen, where I received what can only be described as a tongue lashing. Manners, my father said in a low, hard whisper, are about making one’s guest feel comfortable. When someone who didn’t have the privilege of my upbringing came into our home, it was my duty to demonstrate good manners without calling the guest out. This lecture went on and on.
“But how’s he going to learn?” I asked. “Maybe he doesn’t notice what he’s doing wrong. And other people won’t be nice. They’ll laugh at him. At least I’m nice. But, Jesus, Dad, he’s just white trash.”
And that’s how I ended up in my room on Thanksgiving Day. I’m not sure if it was the “Jesus” or “white trash.” Possibly the combination. Or maybe it was because I was carelessly loud and Randy overheard what I said. My father urged him to stay, but once I was exiled, I don’t think Randy could get out of there fast enough. He had come to our house for a respite from fighting.
Ah, well, holidays always end badly, don’t they? Anticipation builds up; anticlimax is inevitable. Confined to my room, I found the deadness of the day especially acute. It didn’t help that AJ was pacing the halls like a tiger, unused to being at home. Toward early evening, “his” phone rang and he pounced on it.
“That was Bash,” he told our father. “He wants to come by and pick me up, go out for the evening.”
“And do what?” Our father had an intense loathing for “just hanging.” He allowed AJ to roam the mall because AJ always claimed to have an errand, a purpose. But the mall would be closed on Thanksgiving night.
“Well, nothing’s really open, except the movies, and we’ve seen what’s playing. We just thought we’d drive, maybe go to Roy Rogers or the Double T Diner.”
“You can’t possibly be hungry,” our father said. “And if you are, go make yourself a turkey sandwich. Driving around, with no plans-that’s how young people get in trouble. Young people and not-so-young people. I see it all the time. I’m not a churchgoing man, but the Bible got it right, about idle hands.”
“Honestly, Dad-”
“Not tonight, AJ. You can go out tomorrow and Saturday, if you have concrete plans. But not tonight. Your friends, however, are free to come here if their parents agree.”
“There’s nothing to do here.” AJ, usually so amiable, stormed into his room and didn’t emerge again except to slice another piece of pie.
Over dinner the next evening, AJ told my father that his group had worked up a definite plan for the evening: “The girls want to go bowling, up on Route 40. And they always want to go get ice cream after, even when it’s cold out.”
Our father was not the kind of man to gloat in victory. He was so glad AJ was doing things his way that he gave him twenty dollars. But when AJ asked if he could have the family car, he demurred. “Can’t Bash come get you?” he said. “It’s practically on his way.”
“In what universe? He could go straight out 108 to 29 if he didn’t have to come down here first.”
“I just hate that turn,” our father said. “That left onto 29 from Governor Warfield Parkway, with no lights and that enormous blind spot-I worry when I know you’re headed that way.”
“But if Bash picks me up, he has to make the turn. What difference does it make?”
“I’m not always rational,” our father said, smiling at his own inconsistency. “Sometimes, I’m a father first and a lawyer second. But, okay, you make a good point. Take the car. All I ask is that you be home by midnight.”
“Midnight,” AJ groaned.
“How late are bowling alleys open?”
“I said the girls wanted to go out after and they’ll want ice cream, but the guys will want sandwiches or burgers, so we’ll probably choose the Double T because you can get everything there, and it’s open all night.”
“Twelve thirty.”
AJ was home by 12:25. Could I have been awake? Is that how I remember hearing him, then checking his arrival against my digital clock, a gift at Christmas a year ago? A digital clock. I am old enough to remember when they seemed magical. Or do I know the time AJ returned home because he would have to repeat the fact again and again over the next few months, and our father would confirm it? He arrived home at 12:25 A.M. and went straight to bed.
Eleven hours later, the Howard County chief of police called and said my brother might be a material witness to a felony.
FEBRUARY 17
Lu waits a week before sending the DNA report to Fred. In her heart of hearts, she has come to believe that Rudy Drysdale did not set out that evening to kill someone. But that is not how the law defines intent, which can be formed in an instant. He broke into Mary McNally’s apartment. He was probably masturbating when she walked in. Imagine the moment for both of them-she finds a strange man seated on her bed in midstroke or perhaps just finishing up, tidying himself with a corner of her pretty red-and-khaki bedspread. She screams. Maybe they both scream. It’s New Year’s Eve. Her nearest neighbor is out, and a hoarse shout or two, even a scream, might not attract attention. He can’t let her scream again. She has to stop screaming. Maybe he panics because she’s between him and the door. He hits her in the back of the head, knocks her down, chokes her. He has to stop the screaming. Then, when she’s dead, he takes whatever he has used to hit her-what, they still don’t know, and Lu is resigned to the fact that the weapon will never be discovered-and hits her again and again and again. Is it his humiliation that accounts for the ferocity of the attack? Is he trying to blind her?