The One I Left Behind (21 page)
Read The One I Left Behind Online
Authors: Jennifer McMahon
George nodded. “They had their differences, yes, but—”
“Differences? Lorraine was always awful to her,” Reggie interrupted. “She used to warn me to stay away from Mom, to lock my door at night.”
“She was only trying to protect you!” George snapped.
“I didn’t need protecting,” Reggie hissed, the anger coming through. “Not from my own mother.”
She turned away from him and saw Lorraine’s mounted trout watching from the wall, dust covered and deformed, the rough black stitches on its belly showing. Franken-fish.
George was silent a minute, biting the inside of his cheek. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if you remember things the way they really were.”
Reggie’s head was pounding.
“Then maybe you’d be more appreciative for the sacrifices your aunt has made,” George said.
“Oh give me a break,” Reggie snarled, turning from the trout to stare at George. “What sacrifices?”
“Do you have any idea what it took to send you to the Brooker School for four years? And then there was college. You got to the place you are today because of Lorraine. She gave up a great deal for you.”
“Is that what she told you?” Reggie said. “Yes, she paid for Brooker, but that was her choice, and I honestly think she sent me there because she was so ashamed of the way my mother had soiled the Dufrane name. And she never paid a dime for college, George. I worked my ass off for grants and scholarships, did shitty work-study jobs all through school, and still graduated with a shit-ton of debt, all of which I paid off
on my own
.” She felt her anger spiraling up and out of control, and it felt good. She took a step toward George and pointed at him fiercely. “I did whatever it took to get as far away from this place as I could, this place where I was a stranger in my own home, where pain and loss were everywhere. So don’t you dare stand there and try to make me feel guilty. I am where I am because of
me
. No one else.”
Reggie turned away, breathing hard. She looked through the small window toward Monique’s Wish. It seemed crooked from this angle, the afternoon sun hitting the worn and broken shingles on the roof, the stone walls seeming to list left, then right.
George muttered something, but her false ear was toward him and she didn’t catch it. All she heard was one word:
ungrateful
.
“I’m done,” she said, and stalked out of the garage.
Reggie moved across the driveway toward the house, slowly at first, then with determination. Before she knew it, she was jogging, only one thing sure in her mind: she was wrong to have come back. George and Lorraine obviously had their own version of history, in which Reggie was the nasty, ungrateful villain, responsible for all the pain in their fucked-up little family unit. To hell with all of them.
“Regina?” George called after her, but she didn’t turn back.
She went inside, passing the kitchen, where she could hear her aunt making tea. She went hurriedly upstairs and into her room, where she shut the door tight and rested for a second with her back against it. She heard George come in downstairs. There was the scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor, the low murmur of voices. She turned, pressed her good ear against the door, trying to make out what they were saying.
“Did our best,” George said. And then Lorraine began to cry again.
“Oh, give me a break,” Reggie hissed.
In the room next door, she heard Vera say, “Have you ever been to Argentina, dear?”
“No,” Tara told her. “No, I haven’t.”
Reggie looked up at the water stains on the ceiling, the circles like crooked yellow bull’s-eyes. The stone wall on the north side of her room was like the wall of a prison—dark, thick, and impenetrable. And like the wall of a prison, she imagined that over the years it had picked up pieces of the lives it surrounded. The stones in the wall, like hundreds of dull eyes, had watched Reggie grow, knew all her secrets.
Heart hammering furiously, stones in the wall watching, she packed her things quickly—pulling the neat stacks of clothing from the bureau and tucking them into her rolling case. Reggie zipped her suitcase, shouldered her messenger bag, and went back down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door. Just like that, she was seventeen again, sneaking out at dawn to the taxi that waited in the driveway to take her to the Greyhound station, where she’d board a bus for Providence without even saying good-bye. It was that easy.
Reggie jumped in her truck, cranked the ignition. Tara’s face appeared in the upstairs window of Vera’s room, pulling back the curtain. Tara pressed her hand flat against the pane of glass, her palm pale and ghostly.
Reggie slammed the truck into reverse, turning around, tires spitting gravel. She turned on the GPS and pushed the button that said go home.
June 20, 1985
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
R
EGGIE’S CLOCK RADIO SAID
8:58
A.M.
The phone was ringing. Reggie put a pillow over her head, waited for Lorraine to answer it. The pain in her ankle was down to a dull throb. The bag of frozen peas Lorraine had sent her to bed with lay clammily on her toes.
After Reggie had called home from the pay phone outside the bowling alley, Lorraine had come to pick her up, retrieved the bicycle, and taken Reggie to the emergency room. It was only a sprain, but she was supposed to stay off it as much as possible until it healed. Reggie had told Lorraine about her mother getting into a tan car driven by a man whose face she didn’t see. Lorraine said the color of the car didn’t mean a thing, that Reggie had an overly active imagination, and that there was far too much nonsense and hysteria in Brighton Falls for her liking. Reggie was quiet after that.
In Reggie’s dreams her mother got into the car with the broken taillight over and over again. Sometimes the driver was the devil. Sometimes it was Lorraine. The last time it was Reggie herself behind the wheel, and there was a big knife with a jagged blade on the seat between her and Vera.
The ringing stopped, then started again.
Reggie sat up, damp with cold sweat, shaking off the dreams, and grabbed the phone on her nightstand.
“Hullo?” she said in a groggy voice.
“Reg!” Tara shrieked. “Are you okay? Have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Oh shit! Listen, turn on the news, okay. I’m coming right over.” Tara hung up before Reggie could respond.
Reggie lay back in bed, flipped on her clock radio. She dozed through the national news—something about President Reagan—but bolted upright when she heard the top local story.
A fourth hand in a milk carton had appeared at the police station. This one, the police spokesman said, bore a distinguishing mark: it was badly scarred from an old injury.
Severely disfigured,
was how the policeman described it.
Reggie knew instantly that the hand was not only thick with scars, but was also stuck pointing, as it had done for eight years now, toward some unnameable place off in the distance.
Neptune’s final victim, Vera Dufrane, was a washed-up beauty queen with platinum blond hair who wore kid gloves, chain-smoked Winstons, and would convince men to buy her a drink by telling them she was once the Aphrodite Cold Cream girl. If you look back through old magazines, you might spot a copy of the one ad Vera was in:
Treat Yourself Like a Goddess,
the tagline said. And there was nineteen-year-old Vera, in a form-fitting white gown, pouty lips painted glossy red. In her hands, a jar of Aphrodite Cold Cream.
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and lust, a fitting deity for Vera. Her face was always perfectly made up, her clothing a bit too nice for the bars the now thirty-four-year-old Vera would frequent on Airport Road. She stood out like a movie star, and when a newcomer wandered into Silver Wings, Reuben’s, or Runway 36, he’d inevitably be drawn to Vera, like a moth to a flame.
Neptune, no doubt, spotted her right off. What we don’t know, what we can only speculate about, is whether he watched her for some time, waiting, hunting her down. Was he one of the regulars, a face Vera knew and trusted? Or was he someone new—a handsome man who stepped into the bar, saw her, and knew she had to be his?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Rockland, Vermont
L
OGARITHMIC SPIRAL
. T
HE SWIRLING
of tropical cyclones, a hawk circling its prey, spiral galaxies, the nautilus shell. Reggie drew spirals on paper, in her head, starting at the center, radiating out, growing. Reggie drew a spiral with a Sharpie, cut it out and glued it to the end of a pencil, twirling it, the pattern moving, hypnotic as she stared into the center. She studied the pattern, trying to put the perfect tiny mobile house inside it.
What did a person really need to live? Protection from the environment. Warmth. Food.
Add to this the ability to move—to pick up and go at a moment’s notice.
Follow your dreams.
Follow your heart.
Run.
Run as fast and as far as you can.
Sometimes I wonder if you remember things the way they really were.
Fuck.
She’d thrown herself into her work since returning to Vermont, doing her best to forget all about her mother and Monique’s Wish. Her home and office had always been her safe haven—the one place where she was in absolute control and nothing could touch her. And now she’d come back there like a dog with its tail between its legs.
Fucking coward.
She’d picked up the phone a hundred times to call since she ran off Sunday, to try to explain herself, but she never had the guts to actually dial. Reggie hated feeling powerless. She was used to being in control, knowing what to do in every situation. But she’d run away like a child and now she couldn’t shake that little-girl feeling of uncertainty. It permeated everything, made her unable to focus.
What kind of daughter leaves her dying mother like that?
“They’re better off without me,” she told herself out loud, thinking of her mother lying naked on the bed, calling Tara an angel while she sprinkled powder over Vera’s shriveled skin.
And if they wanted her, if they needed her in any way, they knew where to find her. She’d half expected George to call and apologize for being so hard on her, to beg her to come back. Or Tara to say,
I thought we had a deal—no more weird shit
.
But the phone didn’t ring.
Reggie looked into the center of the spiral, trying to calm her mind.
Focus, damn it
.
Your work has always been the one thing you can get lost inside, the thing that saves you time and time again.
But it was no good.
She glanced up, looked at the astrology chart Len had made, which was pinned to the bulletin board above her desk. She saw the little blue trident, Neptune in the twelfth house.
“It’s what makes you so intuitive,” Len had told her. “It’s also why you’re so tormented.”
Reggie’s skin prickled. She looked across her desk, her eye going to the coffee cup she used to hold her tools. She touched the handle of the X-Acto knife, then pulled her fingers away.
Restless, she left the office, changed, and went for a run—her usual five-mile loop around the lake. But even this wasn’t right. She couldn’t get into her running groove. She struggled, pushed herself too hard on the hills, muscles screaming, shaking, until finally she had to slow to a jog. “Goddamn it,” she hissed. Feeling pissed off and defeated, she headed for home, relieved to see Len’s truck in the driveway.
“You’re home,” he said, eyes gray and steely.
He was wearing paint-splattered Carhartts and a denim work shirt. His hair, black with streaks of silver, had that just-got-out-of-bed look Reggie loved. She stepped closer to him. He smelled like turpentine and marijuana.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’ve just been working too hard. Trying to get a handle on this new project. Come on in,” she said, unlocking the door.
Len followed her into the kitchen. Reggie got herself a drink of water and gulped it down.
“How was Worcester?” Len asked.
“Draining,” Reggie said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. “It turned out there wasn’t much I could do there, so I came back.” She set down her water glass and walked toward him, thinking that sex with Len might be just what she needed to break this rotten spell she’d been under.
“That’s too bad,” Len said, a strange stiffness in his voice. “When did you get back?”
“Sunday night,” she admitted. “I really am sorry I didn’t call. My head wasn’t on straight after my trip and I just wanted to make some headway with the Nautilus house. You know how I hate being stuck with a project.” She leaned forward and touched his chest, running her fingers up to his throat, along the side of his face where they scratched against the stubble.
“Reggie,” he said quietly, “I know where you were. I know what happened.”
“What?” She jerked her hand away.
“We get the news up here, too, remember? Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Christ, I saw the picture of you and your mom. It’s a huge headline, Reg, Neptune’s final victim showing up after all these years. Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice sounded slightly strangled, the way it did when he was trying to keep his temper under control.
“Oh shit.” She sighed. “I . . . I really don’t know.”
“Right,” he said disgustedly.
“Maybe you were right,” Reggie said. “Maybe it’s because my sun and moon are at war with each other, and having Neptune in the twelfth house makes me prone to self-inflicted isolation?” She gave him a hopeful look.
“You don’t believe in any of that,” Len said, “and even if you did, having some hard shit in your chart is no excuse for treating the people who love you like crap.”
It was like being slapped in the face. “When have I ever treated you like crap?”
