Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  I still missed my mother, but I knew that she, like Roger, wasn’t coming back. Belle explained to me that my mother had been very sick and had gone to heaven to be with the angels. She said I would see her again someday. I really wanted to believe this, but Belle wasn’t that big on church, so my exposure to spirituality was limited. Every so often I would go to church with a friend after a sleepover. I would look around at the beautiful stained glass, the wooden cross hanging above the altar, and the massive organ pipes lining the stone walls in the back, and whisper, “Mommy?” I figured if angels hung out anywhere on Earth, it would be in a church. But I never got a response.

  Visits with Roger stopped after a string of incidents where he got into trouble in prison and was thrown into solitary confinement. As a result, he lost his visitation privileges. By the time he got them back, several years had passed and I wasn’t interested in seeing him anymore. I was a pre-teen, and I was busy running cross country, writing for the school newspaper, and hanging out with my friends. I was also starting to feel embarrassed about having a father in prison. I had read enough books and seen enough movies to know this wasn’t normal. I only told one friend at school—Brandi. The first time Brandi and I got in a fight over a boy at school, Ike Bollinger, she told everyone that my father was in prison. I even considered changing schools, until Debbie Arnold got pregnant after having sex with Keith Preston in the back of the school bus and everyone found out. Once again, my story was yesterday’s news.

  When I was twelve, I was sent to the judge’s chambers to talk to him in person about the situation. The court had appointed me a guardian ad litem named Lucy to help me navigate the case because they said my grandmother couldn’t be objective on account of her being Roger’s mother. Lucy set up the meeting with the judge when I told her my feelings about Roger. She told me to be calm and simply tell him the truth. We even practiced it in her office. To her credit, Belle did not try to interfere in my discussions with Lucy. She just looked sad when I told her my decision.

  “I don’t want to see my father,” I told the judge without apology. I tried to sound as firm as I could for a twelve-year-old. He looked a lot less intimidating sitting in a shirt and tie behind his desk instead of the black robe he wore in the courtroom in the big chair that looked down on everyone.

  “Why is that?” he replied.

  “I really don’t know him that well. He’s been gone for a long time. And the prison is a very scary place. I don’t like going there. I’m very happy with my grandmother.”

  Belle had not been permitted to come into the judge’s office. I overheard our attorney tell her that the judge didn’t want me to be influenced by her, that it was my decision, and that the judge wanted to speak with me in private. I really didn’t think Belle would be upset with me for my decision, but I also knew she still loved Roger despite whatever bad thing he had done to land him in prison. Other kids at school whispered about him killing my mother, but at this point in my life no adult had confirmed this information for me yet.

  “Okay, young lady. Seeing that you’re twelve, and you seem to have a pretty good head on your shoulders, I’m going to enter an order saying that you do not need to visit your father in prison until you are ready to do so. But in the meantime, I will allow him to send you letters. Is that okay? You have no obligation to write him back.”

  “Sure, but I don’t have to read them if I don’t want to, right?”

  “Nope, it’s entirely up to you. You can do whatever you want with them. If at any time you change your mind and you want to visit him again, let Lucy know, and you and I will have another chat.”

  I took his words to heart. For twenty-four years I filed Roger’s letters away in a box, never opening even one. Though I didn’t read them, I kept them. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. Part of me wondered if I might read them someday.

  “Aren’t you even curious what he has to say?” Adam used to ask me, every time he saw one of the envelopes perched on top of a stack of mail on the kitchen counter. Of course, I was. By the time I was an adult, I knew the truth. Belle had finally told me what happened. My psychologist told her it was something I needed to know when I was ready. She told me when I was sixteen. She, of course, qualified it with her own personal belief that he was innocent and wrongly convicted on circumstantial evidence by a vindictive, upwardly mobile prosecutor who simply wanted an open-and-shut case.

  The information about his conviction, while I secretly suspected it most of my life, sent my sixteen-year-old self into a downward spiral involving alcohol, drugs, and sex. Thankfully my therapist, Dr. Ginette Kincaid, pulled me out of the dark hole and made me realize that I couldn’t carry my father’s burden around and allow it to ruin my life. Eventually I survived, some would say even thrived, rising above my past and trying to live my best possible life in my mother’s honor.

  Sadly, Belle’s insistence of Roger’s innocence, which we never spoke of again, drove an untenable wedge between us. It sat there like a poison which infected every strained, civil conversation we had until I went to college. After college, we drifted even further apart. I rarely visited and only called out of obligation for the kindness she had extended to me as a child. I knew my reaction to her was unfair, but I couldn’t get over her defending the man who took my mother away from me.

  “Not in the least,” I would reply to Adam, regarding the letters, without a hint of regret in my voice. I had gotten good at convincing myself that I didn’t want to know what Roger had to say. Was it possible that he could have killed my mother but had also been a good father? Was it possible that he did love me, despite this violent act? The day I buried Belle, my last living link to my father, I decided I would never look back.

  O

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been sitting there in the car in front of the restaurant, Roger’s letter in my hand, flooding me with unwanted memories. I saw the door open and a small hand reach out for my business card as it fell from the frame and fluttered to the ground. Maria stepped out onto the sidewalk, her pregnant belly leading the way in a tight black dress, and picked it up. She smoothed her dark sleek hair with her other hand, which was in a long braid slung over her shoulder. She looked nervously up and down the street. I guessed she wanted to see if the person who left the card was still nearby. She then backed into the doorway and closed the door behind her.

  Part of me wished I had jumped out of the car and tried to speak with her, but something didn’t feel right about the moment. I was pretty sure I would have startled her. So I stayed put. As I watched her retreat into the restaurant with my card, I had a strong feeling I wasn’t going to hear from Maria Lopez anytime soon.

  7

  Multiple Meltdowns

  “I woke up and there was a pillow over my head. I pushed it off, and I heard him roll over quickly. He pretended to be asleep, but I think he was really trying to smother me.”

  Suzanne called me, breathless, while I stood in line at Target to return some items. They were outfits for the kids that I had bought on a whim, hoping they would be the right size. But when I got home they were all wrong—wrong size, wrong color, wrong style, according to both of my picky fashion-forward ten-year-olds.

  “Seriously, Suzanne, if you really believe he’s trying to kill you, that he tried to smother you with a pillow last night, you have to call the police. I can’t protect you.”

  I forgot where I was for a moment and looked around to see the people in front of me in line staring back at me, including the young cashier, who had been sorting through a pile of receipts in front of her, until my much more interesting conversation tore her attention away from the mundane task. This wasn’t what normal moms at Target talked about on the phone.

  “Suzanne,” I said in a loud whisper, stepping away from the line to a corner of the store near the automatic glass doors. I waited for them to whoosh one time before I continued. “You have to listen to me.”

  “I know you’r
e right, Maddie, but I’m not ready to leave. Just the other day, I was looking for Winston’s passport because I needed to fill out some paperwork for a school chorus trip in the spring, to Costa Rica, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m a very careful person. I know where everything is in my house. He’s hidden it from me, Maddie. Tanner has done something with Winston’s passport. I’m sure of it.”

  “Okay, don’t panic. What about a lawyer? I know several very good family lawyers. That way you could work out the custody of Winston before you leave Tanner. That might ease your mind.”

  I looked over to see that the line for returns had grown exponentially since I’d walked away. I glanced at my watch and realized I would never get to my next assignment if I waited in the line now. Between work and the kids, I never had a span of more than thirty minutes to run an errand or perform some menial task. I shrugged and left through the automatic doors, heading toward my car.

  Suzanne said, her voice changing quickly from somewhat hysterical to calm. “Okay, I’ll talk to an attorney. I’ve got to go. Just text me the information and I’ll make an appointment,” I was happy that I was able to talk her off the ledge again with a logical solution. It felt good to be helping someone.

  “Good plan. And I really think you should try and stay with a friend or in a hotel or something for your own safety.”

  Should I call the police? I wondered, in the Target parking lot after hanging up. If what she was saying was true, that her life was in danger, and I knew about it and didn’t do anything, that would forever weigh on my conscience. Didn’t I have an obligation to do something to prevent her from getting hurt or killed?

  My mother’s blood was smeared on the hardwood floors. It seeped into the cream baseboard that lined the hallway in my grandparents’ house. I pictured this scene from a dog-eared, yellowed newspaper article Belle kept in a shoe box in the attic. She didn’t know I knew about it, but I had found it one rainy day when I was bored. I could still remember how the old newspaper felt between my fingers, at once stiff and fragile, like it might crumble if I touched it the wrong way. The photo was taken with a bright flash, the dark outline of the stains clearly visible in the decomposing picture.

  I still didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with, but I knew I didn’t want Suzanne’s life to end this way.

  O

  I was assigned to do a story about a cat they called Picasso. Her name came from her amazing aptitude for painting…yes, painting. Her owner, Ivanka Picu, displayed Picasso’s art in a gallery in the downtown warehouse district, and people were paying more than a thousand dollars to own one. Tonight, was the grand opening of the show. It was another Janie special. The show was naturally titled Puss N’ Painting. You couldn’t make it up.

  I suspected Ivanka had some taxidermist stuff a cat, and she dipped the dead cat’s paws in paint and then spread them around the canvas. Still, I had to give her credit for her creativity and ability to get Picasso into the limelight. Due to Ivanka’s viral videos, the feline had already been on The Today Show and several late-night television talk shows, not to mention on the cover of People Magazine.

  But before I interviewed the genius cat and her master, I decided I had enough time to pay Kojak a quick visit and tell him what was going on with Suzanne. He would surely know what to do. He always did. My gut said he was going to tell me to tell Suzanne to call the police, but I needed to hear this directly from him.

  Kojak was meeting me on a corner across the street, about a block away from the art gallery. I circled the block several times to find a parking space. Parallel parking was not my forte. I needed at least two spots to be able pull my massive SUV in and get close to the curb. I had already gotten multiple tickets for violating the city’s ordinance that said you had to park no more than twelve inches from the curb. I was ready to get rid of the car since it had 130,000 miles on it, but Adam was always a pragmatist and told me I should wait until we owned the car for at least nine years. I wasn’t sure why nine was his magic number, but I wasn’t about to question it now.

  It was just getting dark as I approached our meeting spot and saw the glow at the tip of Kojak’s cigarette. In all the years I had known him, he had never smoked in front of me. As far as I knew, he had quit decades ago, using a nicotine patch at first, and then substituting lollipops for his oral fixation. I met him when he was firmly in the lollipop stage. Those eventually went away, too, when his wife, Marion, put him on a no-sugar diet.

  “What’s up?” I said as I approached from behind, obviously startling him. He quickly threw the cigarette onto the sidewalk and crushed it with his shoe, a worn, brown leather loafer with a sad-looking tassel. He stiffened his posture like a little boy who had been scolded at the dinner table and told to sit up straight.

  “Shit, you weren’t supposed to see that. No one is. Fell off the wagon again.” He turned to look at me with a sheepish grin that I could barely make out beneath the light of the street lamp. “It’s just that the wife has me on this goddamned gluten-free, sugar-free, fun-free diet, and I can’t think straight. I’m craving everything I can’t have. I literally want to go into the coffee shop and ask for anything with gluten, extra gluten, gluten as a side dish. Just no more cardboard, please.”

  I smiled to reassure him that his secret was safe with me. Although I was pretty sure gluten was a safer bet than tobacco, it wasn’t my place to lecture him. Out of all the secrets I kept for people, this was by no means one of the biggest.

  “So what’s going on? Sounds like this Suzanne chick is really starting to lose it, huh? Why the hell doesn’t she report the guy if he’s really doing this stuff? We can protect her.”

  “Really? You know as well as I do a domestic violence protection order is just a piece of paper. If someone is intent on doing harm to another person, it won’t stop him. But at the same time, she’s putting all this stuff on my shoulders, and there’s really nothing I can do to help her.”

  “Well, I did a little research. He does have the same initials you saw on the license plate near the running trail the other day TJP. But his last name is not Parker, its Pope. If I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, he’s in orthopedics, affiliated with Chester Hospital. Definitely a bigwig. He’s got a fancy office, expensive house, nice cars. But clean as a whistle from a legal standpoint, as far as I can tell. Still, we both know that means nothing. He could be a bad egg, and not have a record.”

  “Very interesting. Thanks for getting that information for me. Not sure what I will do with it. But it’s always better to know what you’re dealing with. So here’s what I’ve been doing. I went to see Maria, but the restaurant was closed. I left her a card in the door, and I was sitting in my car and saw her step out and take it. I probably should have jumped out of the car and rushed over and tried to talk to her. But I kind of froze. I’m not sure what to say to her. Like, Hey there, are you having an affair with this guy who is threatening his wife, a woman I kind of know?”

  “Do you think that’s smart to contact her? You’re getting pretty wrapped up in this mess. Sounds like someone misses the mean streets. Maybe you should give up your pussycat stories and get back to your roots.” Kojak slapped me a little too hard on the shoulder.

  His lingering tobacco smell wafted over me, making me gag a little.

  “No, I’m just trying to help her, that’s all. I can’t stop thinking about what could happen if I don’t. I’m not sure what’s actually going on, but I have no doubt she is truly afraid of this guy.”

  “You’re thinking about your mother.”

  The word mother hung in the air between us stronger than any tobacco smell. My heart started pounding so loud I was sure Kojak could hear it, too. My throat was dry and I felt like it might close up. I couldn’t get enough air. My palms were sweaty, and I felt throbbing around my temples. I was either having a stroke or an anxiety attack.

  “Sit down, kid.” Kojak led me to a nearby bench and steered me with both arms onto the seat. “I
shouldn’t have said that. My bad. Not my place to talk about that.”

  I hung my head and tried to catch my breath, steadying myself with both arms on the edge of the wooden bench, which was sticky from something I didn’t want to imagine. I had panic attacks for many years after seeing my mother’s body, but with Dr. Kincaid’s help, along with yoga, meditation, and some medication, I had eventually grown out of them. I started running cross country in high school, and they magically disappeared. The last time I remembered having one was when the doctor told me Adam had only a few days to live.

  Adam was in the hospital at that point, being kept alive by IV fluids and multiple golden medications that snaked down plastic tubes, into his veins. He didn’t hear what the doctor said because he was so out of it, but I did. It will be soon. Probably a few days. I ran out of the hospital room and down the hallway toward the nearest public restroom. I was sobbing and trying to catch my breath, when I almost ran right into a female janitor standing in the doorway of the ladies’ room.

  “The restroom is closed.” She put up a hand sheathed in a blue latex glove so close to my face I could have touched it with my tongue.

  “Can I just get some tissues and splash a little water on my face?” I pleaded.

  “No.” She moved the blue latex palm even closer to my face. Her face was stoic, an unmovable mask of nothingness. No empathy.

  I ran out of the bathroom and into the first door I could find. It was a linen closet where I fell to the ground in a fetal position and cried myself tearless. All those same symptoms of a panic attack enveloped me at once—the pounding heart, breathlessness, throbbing temples. When I finally calmed down and was able to pick myself up from the floor, I crept out of the closet and tried to regain my composure. I wiped my stinging cheeks with the backs of my hands, pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail with a hairband from my wrist, and tried unsuccessfully to smooth down my wrinkled pants. I bowed my head as I walked back down the hallway towards Adam’s room. People who had witnessed my breakdown looked away as I passed, not wanting to make eye contact. I didn’t care. Watching someone die disabled your vanity.