The Rising

by Ryan D'Agostino

  A couple of limousines arrive—some friends of the Petits own Bailey Funeral Home in Plainville, and they sent the cars. The limos pull up the long lasso drive in front of the house on Red Stone Hill, and Billy climbs into the first one with his parents, Hanna, and Bill’s friend Steve Hanks. Hanks is a buddy from the hospital—when Steve became chief medical officer in 2004, Bill was running the childhood diabetes center. Tall and slim with a face all sturdy angles and dark features, Hanks slides into the seat next to Bill. He’s a friend, but today he’s at Bill’s side as a physician. During the five days he spent at St. Mary’s, Bill was receiving intravenous fluids. They tried to give him a blood transfusion on the first day, but he said no, let’s wait and see if it replenishes on its own. Doctors always hate treating other doctors, he knows, because as a patient, a doctor will do things like refuse a blood transfusion if he thinks he knows better. Eventually, they did give Bill a transfusion that brought his hemoglobin count up to nine grams. The normal count for a male, according to Bill, is between fourteen and fifteen grams. So on this Saturday morning, Bill still feels dizzy sometimes, the head wounds are still tender and throbbing, and his ankles and wrists, where he was tied up, are still laced with bruises. Truth is, Bill Petit is a mess.

  The day before, Friday, after the doctors at St. Mary’s told him he could go, and after Bill watched the three white coffins disappear into the earth in the cemetery in Plainville, he had gone to the house on Red Stone Hill. His family has told him his own house was burned, uninhabitable, and he knows he can’t go there, but he doesn’t know just how bad it is—the smoke stains around the windows outside, and inside, devastation. A crime scene, detectives toiling in the darkened ash. So Bill spent the night at his folks’ but didn’t sleep much. It wasn’t his bed, his new clothes felt odd, and when he reached over to turn off the lamp on the nightstand, his fingers didn’t know how to find the switch without him looking, the way they could next to his own bed.

  No one says much on the ride to Welte Hall, the auditorium at Central Connecticut State University that Ron arranged for the service. State troopers escort the limousines all the way from Plainville to New Britain, and by the time they get off Route 9, the Petits can see cars streaming onto the campus. It’s a Saturday morning in July, so there isn’t much else going on at CCSU. The cars pack the four-story garage next to the hall and spill over into the student-center lot out back. The sky is a matte gray, and the air is thick and hot and smells like rain. The people, hundreds and hundreds of them, and then thousands of them, converge purposefully and silently on the six double doors that lead into Welte. They’ve heard about the service on the news or read about it in the papers. There are close friends, family members, strangers. Most are dressed up, some aren’t. They are old and young, from all over the state, must be. They come to offer hope, or in search of it, or both.

  And there are the girls in black dresses. So many girls in black dresses—high-school girls, grade-school girls, clutching one another as they walk. Friends of the Petit girls. Reporters, notepads and recorders in hand or stuffed into breast pockets, nose around the sprawling patio out front, acting hesitant, approaching some of the girls in black dresses. Excuse me, hi, I’m so sorry. Are you a friend of Hayley’s? Some of the girls stop to talk.

  CCSU workers had prepared the day before, hauling folding tables, setting up chairs, and dragging a heavy red cloak across the stage as a backdrop. When the doors open at ten, the people file into the auditorium, taking only a few minutes to fill the 1,814 scratchy maroon seats. When the seats are all taken, the lobby, a good twenty feet deep, jams up, too—the school has set up TV screens out there to show the service, and more in overflow rooms. By the time the service is about to begin, four thousand people are watching the stage.

  This is the community that produced Bill Petit, come to wrap itself around him. It’s the community that Bill Sr. and Barbara have served their whole lives. Sometimes people wondered why they did all that, gave so much of their time to serving on boards and running committees. Maybe this is why, because when you help the place you’re from, the place you’re from helps you. In a strong community, this reaction is reflex. When someone needs help, there will be enough people—not everyone, but enough—to give their time to help. And Bill Petit needs help.

  He sits in a room backstage, waiting for the service to begin. Ron is there, too. Thank God for Ron. He and Hanks and the hunched, worried inner circle in the backstage room just want to get Bill through this before he passes out.

  Three easels stand behind the podium holding huge posterboard photographs of the girls, each one draped with white roses and curtained with lace. The Reverend Richard Hawke stands to speak. Jennifer’s father. The man who, with his wife, Marybelle, raised Jen never to say a bad word about anyone, to believe that everyone is capable of good. He is a compact man, short and lean, but his voice resonates like the clang of iron, and when he crinkles his forehead in earnestness, it gives his words the unimpeachable authority that is the special province of small-town preachers. He begins by quoting John 11:25–26, in which Jesus tells the sister of his friend Lazarus, who is dying, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, shall live. And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

  The image of Hayley’s smiling face, wreathed in the photograph by an ivy wall behind her, gazes over his right shoulder. Over his left shoulder is the poster of his own daughter, her face larger than it was in life, smiling in an evening dress. Next to her, beaming, is Michaela. Dick Hawke is assuming two roles here. He is Rev. Hawke, a clergyman trying to summon words from Scripture and a message of hope at an impossibly sad time. But he is also Dick, Daddy, Popup—a father mourning the loss of his firstborn child to a brutal rape and murder just six days ago, and a grandfather reckoning with the torture and asphyxiation of two of his grandchildren. Perhaps by the force of his own will, the role of clergyman pushes through to the fore—his voice is somber but clear and strong, and if you didn’t know his name, you might assume he was a pastor brought in from the local church to offer spiritual wisdom to the proceedings of a devastated family, so steady and purposeful is his demeanor. He doesn’t use the first person, never refers to “my daughter” or “my granddaughters.” Under the circumstances, his reserve is astounding.

  “Today we come together to celebrate the Petit family, the Hawkes and the Chapmans”—he pauses very slightly between the name of each family, careful to give each the same emphasis—“the Trianos, the Renns, and many others. We welcome you. We welcome you to this service. You who have come from far distances. We have people from Maine to Florida to Texas”—he speeds up, the list gaining momentum and power—“to New York, New Haven, Utah, Wyoming.” He invokes the metaphor of Good Friday, when Christ died and was buried: “You have come from everywhere because that dark Friday covered your light as well, and you come to support us to the beginning of a new life in Christ. We come today to celebrate—and I use that word in the greatest and highest sense of its meaning. It’s a religious term: We come to celebrate the lives of”—and here he draws out each syllable of the girls’ names, perhaps the first time since the murders that many of the four thousand people have heard the full names, which is why Rev. Hawke pronounces them with purpose and deliberation—“Jennifer…Lynn…Hawke…Petit. Hayley…Elizabeth…Petit. Michaela…Rose…Petit.” He looks out at the crowd. “You have come to strengthen us in our resurrection and hope. And perhaps we can covenant together with each other today to strive to build a new world. To have a new hope. And a place of peace. We hope that being together will not be in vain, but will bring about a strength to all of us as we make this new beginning. It is with heartfelt thanks and gratitude we welcome you. All of you.” He looks down at the podium. His volume drops, and for the first time, he allows into his magisterial voice a faint note of sadness, of despair—even of defeat. “Whoever you may be. Wherever you’re from. Whoever you are.”

  He doesn
’t look up as he collects his papers. The piano starts in from somewhere off to his right. On the stage, there’s a harp, about sixty singers and musicians—Ron tried to keep the bursts of music to a minimum, lovely though they are. Bill sits in the front row, lower right corner of the auditorium, just in front of the steps that lead to the podium. You can see the back of his head from almost any seat, and the staples look black against the paleness of his scalp.

  No one thinks Billy is going to speak today. Sure, last night, when Ron left Red Stone Hill around eight-thirty, Billy had told him that yeah, he was going to stay up and work on some remarks, and that he was going to stand up and speak. Absolutely. That was Bill: No way he could be kept down, no way some cuts on his head were going to keep him from speaking at a memorial for his own wife and daughters. And Hanna had read a draft—last night, or this morning, it was a blur. But privately everyone thought: Not a chance. They didn’t even list him in the program. The wounds on his head are hideous, his vision is blurry on and off, he gets dizzy—the thought of him rising, walking up the steps, and standing before the four thousand people…Billy is mortal, and there are some things even he can’t do.

  Another hymn ends. Two high-school girls wait for the last note to fade before one of them, tall and athletic in a black dress, sunglasses nested in her blond hair, lets out a short, I-can’t-believe-this sigh, and says, “We’re Bill’s nieces.” She is Hanna’s daughter, Abby, best friend to Hayley, devotee of her Uncle Billy. Her composure is astonishing as she reads from John 14. “And where I am going, you know the way. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come back to you. Just a little while now, and the world will not see me anymore. But you will see me. Because I live, you will live also.”

  Her cousin Brook, by her side, a full head shorter in a white headband, a heart-shaped locket, and a gray blouse, says, “Per my uncle’s request, we’d now like to invite all the children to come forward to the front of the stage.”

  Maybe a dozen children, mostly from the family, walk from their seats to the stage. Abby and Brook hand each child a white or a pink flower. Ron is up there supervising, waving the kids along, patting a child on the shoulder here and there. Dick Hawke walks up to the lip of the stage and gently waves over his grandson, Evan—Cindy’s boy—and whispers something to him. The boy squats and listens to his grandfather, nods, then steps to the microphone and says, “Can we have all the children come forward please.” This was meant as a clarification: Bill didn’t want only the children in his family up there. He wants to see a parade of children, a mass, a celebration of kids standing side by side, holding flowers, looking beautiful in their dresses and their too-big suits perhaps bought for this very occasion. The reality of the loss of his own children has not yet fully set in, and right now he wants to see every child in the building up there. His head darts from side to side, a sudden jolt of life in him, as the children, so many beautiful children, walk quietly down the aisles around him, some of them stealing glances at him, others head-down, little boys holding their big sisters’ hands, none of them knowing where to look. Bill reaches out to give a high-five to a few of them as they pass by his seat, and one girl’s mother motions for her to give him a hug. The children line up on the steps, Abby and Brook pressing flowers in their hands, and before long there’s a line—a line of children spilling down the steps and onto the auditorium floor, so many of them are there, come to see the man whose own were taken from him. Come to pay respects. They crowd onto the stage in front of the three posters, looking nervous in the unexpected spotlight, pursing their lips with solemnity. Ron looks like a teacher lining up students for a recital, pointing, scooting a kid a few inches to the right, waving them up the stairs, making sure every kid has a flower.

  At the podium in front of all the kids now stands a handsome teenage boy in a charcoal suit, his hair combed forward. He looks over to Ron for his cue, and then says, “Hello, my name is Evan, this is my sister, Lydia.” These are Cindy’s kids—Jen and Bill’s niece and nephew. Evan looks up at the crowd for a second and lets out an audible, nervous exhale. He shuffles a page on the lectern and says in his deepening teenage voice, “I found these papers at the house, um, where the Petits lived. These are quotes from a book we found…of Hayley’s. I’ll read a couple of them.”

  The house.

  This poor boy—has he been in the house? On this morning of flowers and new dresses, those words—the house—are an unintended reminder of not just why everyone is here but how it happened.

  “The first one’s by the Beatles,” Evan says to the crowd in a low monotone, allowing the beginning of a smile at the pleasing image of Hayley listening to the Beatles. He looks down and reads: “There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain. All these places have their moments, with lovers and friends, I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life, I’ve loved them all.”

  The final quote Hayley had written down in her book, salvaged by her cousin from her burned-out room and read now by him into a microphone to people she loved and people she will never meet, is both earnest and chilling. “This last one I believe is by Nike—that’s who Hayley had [writing] it: ‘Somebody may beat me, but they’re going to have to bleed to do it. If you can’t win, make the guy ahead of you break the record. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.’ ”

  —

  It was only last Sunday, six short days ago, that Bill, Jennifer, and Michaela sat in Cheshire United Methodist and heard Pastor Steve speak about the U.M. ARMY, but to Bill it feels as if that brilliant July morning happened in another life. Pastor Steve stands now before a different congregation, wearing his black suit and clerical collar, a silver cross the size of a paperback hanging from a long chain around his neck. Jennifer was an active member of his church, so he knew her pretty well. He allows some pain into his voice today, some anger, some consternation as he tries to convince the mass of people before him that Bill’s wife and daughters are in a better place. He elongates the last words of some sentences, ending almost in a whisper. “Remember this: That Jennifer, Hayley, and Michaela are no longer suffering,” he says. “They are free of all earthly terrors and pain. They are with God. They are with God. They are resting in God’s peace, living in the home of God, where Jesus tells us there are many dwelling places. They are there now. They are making it home. They are making it home. They are making friends. They are living their reward that we here are only dimly aware of. And they have truly become the heavenly angels that they lived as on earth.”

  Another life. A couple of weeks ago the four of them went to Cape Cod together, as a family. Was it only two weeks? Bill had taken off work and Jen had found a house at the last minute, in Chatham. One night, real late, they all went to see the new Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix or something. Hayley and Michaela love those books. Another day they took a bike ride. It was in the afternoon. They rode down Main Street and went off to the right toward the lighthouse, past an inlet, a cool Atlantic breeze cutting the damp New England heat. They were gliding along and suddenly someone yelled, “KK!” One of Michaela’s friends from school, her voice carrying in the wind. They all rode to a place nearby and sat outside eating clams, the girls laughing eagerly about summer and friends, the parents chatting like grown-ups. That was a good day.

  “This is the second-hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

  Hanna. Black dress, string of pearls, elegant, exhausted.

  “The hardest thing came yesterday, when we buried Jen, Hayley, and Michaela. I’m gonna try and draw my strength from Bill and his three girls, so please bear with me.”

  Shaking. Clutching both sides of the podium as if it’s holding her up. Her quick, troubled breaths escape in bursts. But she is breathing. And she can do this. She’s telling the story of a family.

  “…When Bill had to leave the state to deliver yet another lecture on diabetes, Jen held the f
amily together. When Hayley had a collapsed lung the week of her graduation, Jen held the family together. When she developed MS, she learned quickly about the disease and never once let it define her or slow her down, once again: Holding. The family. Together.”

  “…Hayley was a strong, quiet leader. Emphasis on quiet. Always willing to take the lead, never the credit.”

  “…Last but not least, just the youngest, there was KK.” Hanna puts her hand on her heart. “My heart aches for KK. She loved to cook, which is also my passion. Given the chance, we could have prepared some grand feasts for the holidays.” Hanna’s voice rises, quivering. “I promised her this summer that I was gonna teach her how to make the pasta from scratch, and make the gnocchi. Just a little flower and a little egg, mixed with the Italian attitude that only Gram Triano could provide….Losing her at age eleven is possibly the greatest loss of all, because she never got the chance to show us just how great she could have been.”

  A boyish, blue-blazered young man rises amid the sea of singers and musicians onstage, holding a music folder in front of his chest with one hand. He begins to sing the Ave Maria, accompanied by arpeggios on the piano and harp, a smooth and soaring rendition. High-pitched, like a schoolboy. While he sings, seven girls, all around eighteen years old and wearing black dresses, quietly make their way up the steps to the podium. The orchestra and chorus members seated around the Ave Maria man look over at the girls and purse their lips—they know what’s coming. Friends of the girls.

  The girls whisper a little bit at the microphone, taking their places.

  The Ave Maria ends. One by one, the girls begin to speak.

  A dark-haired girl, the shortest of the group, her face hidden by the double microphone, her voice clear and wise: “You see, Hayley, your presence in and of itself is brilliant. You have this light about you. And when that light hits someone, its effect is contagious—it spreads from one person to the other. And before you know it, we begin to feel like better people.”