The Last Good Day of the Year (13 page)

Sheila Keller is the unofficial leader of our chapter, which she founded more than a decade ago. Her son William was sixteen when a mugger shot him in the face. He'd been out walking his dog. He didn't even have a wallet with him; he traded his life for less than two dollars in pocket change. The Kellers are African American, and William's murder got far less attention than it should have because he wasn't a pretty little white girl. Sheila jokingly refers to my family as the RWPs: the Rich White People. We aren't rich by anybody's standards—completely the opposite, actually—but I can see why we've earned the distinction in Sheila's mind. When my sister was kidnapped, it was front-page national news for weeks, from the night it happened until Steven's sentencing months later. When William died, he got two sentences on page sixteen of the local paper. That's it. Meanwhile, his murder is still unsolved. It's the kind of injustice so heinous that you would almost have to ignore it unless you were face-to-face with his mother; the prejudice of the system is the kind of thing most people can't stand to acknowledge, because they aren't willing to accept what that says about the world we all live in.

Sheila runs a small bakery in the city; she brings trays of homemade cookies and pastries to every meeting. Tonight everyone is nibbling small squares of lemon torte off Styrofoam plates. We sit in a circle of metal folding chairs. Sheila opens the meeting with
the Serenity Prayer. In this group, nobody's faith is lukewarm: people either cling to God or reject the possibility entirely. As we sit with our heads bowed, my mom and I stay silent while my father and some of the other members recite the prayer with Sheila.

Unlike at other meetings I've been to, Sheila doesn't have to ask for volunteers to get the conversation started tonight. Everybody stares at the Taylors, anxious to hear how it feels to experience some supposed closure. We're like a bunch of virgins hanging on every word while a friend describes how it feels to have sex. There might as well be a spotlight shining on their faces. Bethany's mom, Darlene, is almost giddy with happiness. It might seem bizarre to anyone who hasn't lived through something similar, but we all have at least some idea of how she feels. I'm sure I'm not the only person in the room who is trying to suppress some jealousy over the sense of closure she must be holding, and it's clear she's holding it as close to herself as she can, basking in the relief she thought would never come. Yet here it is, and she shares it with us, she says, to give us hope that anything can happen.

“I'm sure you all remember when we went on
The Judy Stone Show
a few years ago,” Darlene says, and most people respond by trying not to roll their eyes. Judy Stone is a talk-show host whose most frequent guests include women who are unsure which of the men in their lives have fathered their children, as well as pretty much anybody who is willing to go on national television and take a lie detector test that could potentially reveal any number of unpleasant truths to the viewing public.

Every Friday, Judy hosts a psychic who calls herself Mary Marie Boon, an overweight, wrinkled woman in her sixties who claims
to be able to communicate with the dead as easily as you or I might pick up a phone and order pizza. She has written over a dozen books detailing her many supposed encounters with the “other side”; apparently, dead people have nothing better to do but stand around and wait for a chance to shoot the breeze with her. She talks often and in great detail about her experience as one of Cleopatra's ladies-in-waiting in a former life. She is bright and charismatic; she is also a grotesque fraud. When Darlene appeared on the show and begged Ms. Boon to contact Bethany, Mary Marie told her she couldn't do that, because Bethany wasn't dead. “She's okay, honey. There was a reason she left you that night; there was something going on in her life that you didn't know about. But she's out there, I promise, and she is most definitely alive. When she's ready to let you into her life again, she will come to you.”

“Nobody could understand why I was so upset,” Darlene says. “Well—you all understood, I think. But my friends thought I'd finally lost my mind, because I couldn't even get out of bed after the show, not for weeks. I knew Mary was wrong. I guess I knew she was lying to me, trying to make me feel better or give me some hope, but she did just the opposite.” Darlene looks around the room, trying to make eye contact with every single person, desperate for confirmation that we understand. “After so long, you just want to know that your child isn't hurting. It can never be over for us, but it can be over for her. That was all I wanted, but instead I found myself imagining my little girl out there, wondering why I hadn't found her yet.”

“I like what you just said, Dar.” My mom and Darlene have always gotten along well; they're both around the same age, both
beautiful. “But I think it can be over for survivors, too. Maybe not completely, but at least a little bit. You know, we have only a few more months to go before Steven's time runs out.” What she means is that she and my dad are hoping he'll tell people what he did with Turtle. It wouldn't be that unusual, since he's trying to avoid the death sentence hanging over his head.

Noah has been quiet throughout the meeting. He hasn't made eye contact with me once tonight, and I'm surprised he's here at all. When she found out we were moving, Darlene offered to let me stay with her and Noah for my last year of high school. At first my parents said yes, even though they knew by then that something was going on between the two of us. My father had walked in on us kissing in my bedroom one afternoon. Noah's hand was up my shirt. It would have been easier if my dad had yelled at me or punched Noah in the face before dragging him from the room, or done
something
. But he didn't do anything like that; all he did was stare at me for a second with a look of complete heartbreak before walking away. He even quietly pulled the door shut on his way out.

Maybe my parents weren't concerned about letting me live with Darlene because they knew Noah was in college already; he only came home on the weekends, so how much would we really have even seen each other? Or maybe they knew I wasn't the kind of girl to lose her mind over a boy, and they trusted Darlene to watch out for me.

That all changed a few weeks after my father walked in on us. If I'd been smart about things, I would have known to stay away from Noah after the incident, at least for a little while. But I guess
I wasn't thinking straight, because instead I did the opposite. That's how we ended up spending the night together at a Holiday Inn, although it wasn't for the reasons everyone assumed. When I realized what a mistake I was making the next day—although I guess I'd already made it by then—Noah took me home, but the damage was done. Our parents were waiting for us when Noah pulled into his driveway. That was in April. We haven't seen each other since, until now.

Noah sits up straight in his chair and laughs too loudly, saying, “Some asshole on death row is gonna say whatever he can to stay away from that needle. I bet he'd tell you he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby if it meant the death penalty got taken off the table. It's basic evolution; we're all wired to do whatever we can to stay alive. That doesn't change when somebody goes to prison.”

Nobody reacts in any noticeable way; we all look at Darlene, who seems mortified by her son's outburst, for guidance. “Noah has some strong feelings about the, um, darker side of human nature.” She pauses. “I don't think he's getting enough sleep, either. You know …
college
.”

It was supposed to be funny. Nobody laughs.

Noah has never acted this way in front of the group before. And the last I knew, he was doing fine at school. “I'm getting plenty of rest.” He stares across the circle at me and my parents. He doesn't look so hot, actually. The whites of his eyes are glassy and bloodshot. His clothing has the dingy, wrinkled look of an outfit that's been slept in. His intensity is just a hair past a comfortable level.
There's the slightest tremor to his hands. He grips his knees, struggling to hold them steady. “What if the guy who took your daughter never tells you anything, and then he dies? What does that accomplish? Once he's gone, you'll never know what happened to Turtle.” He pauses. “That's if Steven is even guilty. Lots of people think he might not be.”

My mother's body stiffens. “Excuse me?”

“Noah. I thought we talked about this.” Darlene tries to put a hand on his shoulder, but he flinches away from her. When the legs of his chair scrape against the floor, I swear I can almost taste the metal in my mouth.

“It shouldn't make you happy when he dies. And it won't. You don't know it yet, but it won't make things any better.”

My mother looks as lovely as can be as she takes another stab at maintaining diplomacy. Her voice is flat and only a little shaky. “I understand why you might say that,” she manages, “but if that's what you believe, Noah, then you have been grossly misinformed. Steven was convicted by a jury, and that's all I'm going to say about the matter. And who are you to say how we'll feel when he dies? The day they kill him will be a good day for our family. He doesn't deserve the life he's been living for the past decade. He gets a warm bed, three meals a day, plenty of rest. No. No. He doesn't deserve that. He gave up the right to be treated with even a hint of compassion or mercy when he decided to
kill my child
.”

It's the word “child” that sends her controlled response veering all the way off course into rage. “This isn't your intro to philosophy class, Noah. It's very simple, you see? I have a problem. My problem is that my daughter is dead, and the man who murdered
her is still alive. I want that problem to be resolved, Noah. Do you understand?”

I expect him to back down, but he is unfazed. “I understand that's how you're hoping to feel, Sharon, but I think you're going to be disappointed. Steven will die, and it won't change anything. It won't bring your daughter back. He'll just be dead.”

“I know it won't bring her back. I know that.” My mom's voice is shrill and singsong. It's the voice of someone else altogether, some nightmare facsimile of my mother, her vocal cords warped and dripping with hot tar, the surrounding muscles bruised.

“You
think
you know. You
think
you'll have a sense of closure anyway, because at least he's dead. I just wouldn't bet the farm that it's going to work out like that. What if it doesn't make any difference? What if it makes you feel worse, because now somebody else's kid is gone? He has a mother just like everyone else, you know, and her heart will be as broken as yours is. Is that going to make you happy? Breaking his mother's heart? Taking her baby away? Everybody was somebody's baby once, Sharon. Even him.”

My mother opens her mouth to respond, closes it, then opens it again, but says nothing. Noah appears almost breathless, his face flushed. Beside him, Darlene stares at a plate of half-eaten lemon torte in her lap. The pastry seems out of place here, like red balloons at a funeral.

“Maybe we should give this topic some breathing room,” Sheila says, nudging her way into the conversation.

But my father has had enough. “You cocky little shit.” He says the words quietly. Beside him, my mom is crying without making any sound, which she's really good at.

Noah isn't this tough. I know it. He knows it. Everybody in the room knows it. He pauses for a beat too long to keep the momentum of his aggression going.

“You stupid
boy
,” my dad says. “You stupid goddamn infant. How old were you when Bethany died?”

Noah doesn't blink as he responds. “Why does that matter?”

“You don't remember a thing, do you?”

“I remember plenty.”

“But what do you remember, specifically? Can you tell me one story about her? Do you remember the sound of her voice?”

“Yes. We have lots of old home movies of her. I've seen them all, plenty of times.”

“That doesn't count. I'm talking about the way she was in real life. For example, do you remember what she smelled like? Here's a memory for you: Turtle, my daughter, smelled like peppermint. I don't even know why.”

I do. Ed Tickle was an Altoids addict. Anytime Turtle saw him, she'd beg him for a handful of mints. She'd eat one or two and stash the rest of them in her pocket. “I'm savoring them,” she'd tell us. That was the actual word she'd use: “savoring.” Our mom used to keep a list of all the big words Turtle used. She was such a clever kid. She would hoard the mints in little hiding places around the house to make sure they lasted until the next time she saw Ed. That's why she always smelled like peppermint.

My dad rubs his eyes with balled-up fists as his breath stutters and catches in his throat, eventually erupting into sobs. He looks weak, like a frightened coward, when he cries. I'll never get used to it. It's another one of those unwritten universal rules: a father
doesn't let his kids see him cry. Fathers are supposed to be able to keep their shit together, even when things aren't looking good. It's in their job description, sort of how flight attendants are trained to stay calm even in the worst turbulence. They know the passengers are watching them for reassurance that everything will be okay.

I guess the rule applies no matter whose father is doing the crying. Noah can't stand it, either. He slumps in his seat and stares at the floor in a posture of surrender. He rubs a threadbare spot on his jeans as the circle waits for him to summon a response. It doesn't come. Even though I'm not looking at her, I can discern the wavelengths of my mother's gaze, her uneven breath rippling across the circle. She's still crying without sound. Now that it's started, she won't be able to stop it for hours.