The Little Sleep (28 page)

Inside. I start the car. The dash lights up and I have plenty of gas, enough for another road trip. Beneath my seat, the manila envelope is still there, the pictures still inside, the girl still dead and anonymous. The film goes inside the envelope. It fits.

The sound of flames has disappeared but there are sirens now. One fire truck roars up Broadway past me. I watch it go by; its sound
and fury stops at the corner, my corner. Maybe they’re in time to save the building and some of my stuff, like the projector. I know better. They won’t be able to save anything or anyone.

It’s the wee hours of someone’s morning. I’m all out of cigarettes, but my leg feels like a used one. Hands on the wheel at two and ten. I check my mirrors. No one is double-parked. My U-turn is legal and easy, and I drive away.

I’m back at the bungalow. Ellen isn’t home and she didn’t leave the lights on for me. I’m used to it. I limp inside the back door and into the kitchen. First I grab that dusty bottle of whiskey from the cabinets above the refrigerator, take a couple of pulls, and then head to the bathroom to check out my leg. Priorities, man, priorities.

I took the back roads to the Cape, made a pit stop or two, pulled over and napped a couple of times. The sun was coming up as I white-knuckled it over the Sagamore Bridge again, but I made it here. And I made it here without another car accident, although I think I ran over a squirrel when I found myself two-wheeling it up a sidewalk. Sorry, fella.

Bathroom. I roll my pants up and the burned parts stick to my leg. I clean it up best as I can in the tub, but the water hurts. The whiskey doesn’t help as much as it should. The skin on my ankle and about halfway up my calf is burned pretty good. I have no idea of the degree scale, but the skin is red and has oozing blisters. I squeeze some Vaseline onto gauze pads and wrap things up tight, but not too tight. It’s a bad wrap job, gauze coming undone and sticking out, Christmas presents wrapped in old tissue paper. But it’ll have to do.

Me and the bottle of whiskey, we hobble into the living room and I sit on the couch like a dropped piano. I take out the manila envelope and one of the pictures, the picture of Dead Girl wearing the white T-shirt and skirt. The photo is black-and-white but I’ll remember her in color, like in the film. She seems a little more alive in this picture, as if the second picture, taken moments later, wears that spent time instead of clothes. The girl in the second photo is that much closer to death, and you can see it.

The living room is getting brighter and my eyes are getting heavier, but I can’t go to sleep just yet. I walk to the front windowsill and grab the picture of the old fisherman holding whatever it is next to his head, and I still think it looks like a gun. I also take the picture of the three musketeers: Tim, Billy, and Brendan, those clean-looking carefree preteens sitting on the stairs. I escort the pictures back to the couch and put them on the coffee table, whiskey bottle between them.

I pick up the old fisherman, flip it around to the back, undo the golden clasp, and remove the photo from the frame. I put the picture facedown on the table. Don’t mean any disrespect to the guy.

I stick the first picture of the girl into the frame. Don’t need to trim the edges or margins. It’s a perfect fit. I spit-polish the glass. Looks good as new. I put her down next to the boys. LIT in the lower left of both pictures.

The boys. Those goddamn buzz cuts and soda-pop smiles. That picture might as well be of anyone. I don’t know them, any of them, never did, never will, and don’t really want to, but I know their lies.

I think about taking down all the photos off the walls, making a pile, mixing these two in, then reshuffling the deck and hanging everything back up. Maybe I could forget that way and no one would ever find them again.

I think about Jennifer, Ellen, Janice, and me and of how, because of them, our lives will always be about lies and lost time, just like my little sleeps. I think about the dead girl, the stubborn memory that everyone has forgotten. Maybe tomorrow someone will remember.

I gather up my cargo and walk into the hallway. Framed black-and-white pictures hang on the walls on both sides of my bedroom doorway. Faux-lantern lamps hang on either side of the doorway and beneath the lamps are two pictures. I take those two frames down and stack them on the floor.

I double-check that the manila envelope with the other photo and the film is still inside my jacket. It is. I’m holding on to that sucker like a mama bird with a wing around her egg.

The other photos, those I hang on the wall. The girl and the boys fit the nails and fill those glowing empty spots on the walls, one picture on each side of my door for all the world to see.

I open the bedroom door. Unlike the hallway, it’s dark inside. I won’t open the curtains or pull the shade. I won’t turn on the light. I know where I am and I know where I’m going.

Tomorrow, if there is one, will be for remembering. Now? I’m going to sleep, even if it’s just a little one.

The sun shines bright and hot, too hot. It’s a remorseless desert sun, a sun completely indifferent to the effect of its heat and radiation. It’s the real sun, not a cartoon. Can’t even be bothered to say
fuck you.

It’s the weekend. Tim and I are in our backyard. I’m five years old. Not everything is green. Debris and old equipment cover the yard. Someone’s life has exploded. The shed has been destroyed and is nothing but a pile of sharp and splintered pieces. All the king’s men can’t put it back together again. The shed is dead.

Tim and I stand in front of the fallen shed, hand in hand. His big hand sweats around my little one and I want to let go. I really want to let go, but I can’t.

He pats me on the head, hands me the brown paper bag, and says, “Come on. Let’s clean up all this shit.”

I follow Tim around the yard. He picks up his old lawn mower along with the sharp and toothy tools that used to wink and gleam at me from inside the shed. They go inside my little brown paper bag. Next into the bag are the bottles of cleaners and bags of fertilizer. There’s no game today and Tim doesn’t name dogs after the stuff we pick up.

He says, “You can still sing your song, buddy.”

I don’t. And I won’t.

Some of the stuff we find lying on the grass is charred and smoking. He picks up a projector, a screen, and a film can, all empty secrets, and they go into the bag. There are other bits and pieces burned beyond recognition, and I get the sense that this is a good thing. Everything goes into the bag. The bag is getting heavy.

We still have much more to pick up, haven’t made a dent with our cleanup effort, but Tim leads me behind the fallen shed, takes the brown bag, and tips it upside down behind the fence. Nothing comes out. Tim says, “Goodbye,” as he shakes out the empty bag.

We walk around to where the front of the shed used to be. He kicks at the fallen cinder blocks, gray as tombstones, and paces in the rectangular dirt spot left by the shed. I stay where the shed’s front doors used to be, like a good boy.

Tim stops walking and stands in the middle of the dirt spot. He says, “So, kid, whaddaya think?”

The five-year-old me is tired, tired of the cleanup and the questions, tired of everything. I say, “I think you’re a coward.” It has no
ring of authenticity to it, not one bit, because I think I’m a coward too. Like father, like son.

Tim doesn’t offer me any apologies, recriminations, or excuses. He doesn’t tell me what I know already, that I have to clean up the mess by myself. He doesn’t even say goodbye. He turns, walks over the pile of wood and glass and tar, and disappears into the woods behind our house.

The real sun shines bright and hot. It has some bite to it. Spring has become summer. I guess there was a tomorrow after all. Fancy that.

Ellen and I are in the bungalow’s backyard. It’s my first time in Osterville since I was allowed back into my apartment and office just over a week ago.

Ellen cooks chicken and hot dogs on the small charcoal grill, the grill from the old shed. I think it’s the only piece of the lost treasure she kept. The shed is long gone and she hasn’t put up a new one. Landscapers spread topsoil and planted grass over the site. Grass grows, but the footprint of the shed is still visible. It’s the back-yard’s scar.

Ellen wears black gym shorts that go past her knees and a green sleeveless T-shirt that’s too small. She has a cigarette in one hand, spatula in the other.

She says, “The hot dogs will be ready first.” It might be the longest sentence offered to me since arriving at the bungalow.

“Great. I’m starving.” A cigarette rolls over my teeth. I’m sitting on a chaise longue, protected by the shade of the house while I wrestle with a newspaper. There are cigarette ashes in my coffee cup. I don’t mind.

Almost four full months have passed since the night of the fire in my apartment. Newspaper articles and TV exposés about the DA and the repercussions of my case are still almost a daily occurrence. Today’s page 2 of the
Boston Globe
details the complexities associated with the planned exhumation of the body from the foundation of the South Shore Plaza’s parking garage.

We know her name now too. Kelly Bishop. An octogenarian aunt, her only living relative, recognized Kelly in the photos, but very little is known or has been reported about Kelly’s life. Other than the photos and film, the evidence of their shared time, no further link between Kelly and the boys from Southie has been unearthed.

I don’t think the DA was lying to me when he said they didn’t know who she was. She was already an anonymous victim, which is why the press drops her story and sticks with the headliners, the DA and his daughter. Kelly’s story is too sad and all too real. No glamour or intrigue in the death of the unwanted and anonymous. I remember her name, though, and I’ll make it a point not to forget.

I flip through the paper. There’s a bit about Jennifer Times in the entertainment section.

I say, “Looks like somebody is cashing in, and it isn’t me.”

Ellen gives me a hot dog and bun, no ketchup or mustard. She says, “Who are you talking about?”

I say, “Jennifer Times is forging an alternate path back to celebrity land. She’s due to be interviewed on national TV again. Tonight and prime time. She has plans to announce that a book and a CD are in the works.”

Ellen shrugs, finishes her cigarette, and grinds it under her heel. Her heel means business. It’s the exclamation point on the months of stilted conversations and awkward silences. I probably shouldn’t be mentioning Times around her. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about that.

Then Ellen hits me with a knockout punch. She says, “I saw Tim with her.”

I drop the hot dog and ash-filled coffee cup to the grass. I say, “Who?” but I know the answer.

Ellen says, “Kelly Bishop.”

I struggle out of the chaise longue. I need to stand and pace or run away. I need to do something with the adrenaline dump into my system. I’m still in the shade but everything is hot again. I repeat what Ellen said, just to get the facts straight like a good detective should. “You saw Kelly with Tim.”

Ellen opens the grill’s lid, and gray smoke escapes and makes a run for it. She crosses her arms, knotting them into a life jacket. Then she takes off her glasses and hides her eyes. I might not be able to find them.

She says, “It was early evening, and it was already dark. I was leaving Harbor Point to meet my friends on Carson Beach. I’d stolen
a quarter bottle of gin from the top of our refrigerator. I got busted later, when I came home drunk.

“I was fourteen. I remember running down the front steps, hiding the bottle in my fat winter coat even though it was summer. I was so proud of myself and thought I was so smart. Well, there was Tim and the girl, arm in arm, walking through the parking lot. He was holding her up, really. She was obviously drunk or high and couldn’t walk. I had no idea who she was. She was so skinny and pale.

“Tim said, ‘Hey, Ellen.’ Then he smiled. It wasn’t a good smile. It was a smile I used to get from the boys who snapped my bra strap or grabbed my ass when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t say anything back to him. That Kelly looked at me but she couldn’t focus. She giggled and rested her head on Tim’s shoulder. Then they just stumbled away, into the building.

“I invited you down today to tell you this, Mark.” Ellen closes the lid on the grill and the smoke goes back into hiding.

I don’t know what to think, but I’m angry. I probably shouldn’t be. “Why didn’t you tell anybody else?”

“I told the police. I told them as soon as I saw the pictures of her. I just didn’t tell you.”

My anger evaporates instantly and leaves only sadness. Sadness for us and for everything. The truth is sadness. I walk over toward Ellen and the grill and say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ellen isn’t hiding her eyes anymore. I get the double barrel. “You kept that case a secret from me. You kept everything he did from me.”

“I told you everything I knew once I’d solved the case.”