She stalks the mall, she visits him. There’s nowhere else to go. Her mother calls to talk, but that’s all; she doesn’t drop by or ask Patty over for lunch. Patty’s not imagining it, her mother doesn’t mention Tommy, as if he’s already gone, no longer part of their lives.
She goes to the doctor alone. Everything’s on schedule, everything looks good. He’s not concerned about her weight gain, it’s typical. Rest is more important. Has she been sleeping well?
Ten more shopping days till Christmas. Nine, eight. She feels herself inching them along, taking naps in the afternoon to waste the hours. She comes home from a bad visit with Tommy and plops on the couch, sits there in her jacket, staring at the crack on the wall behind the TV. She’s done with her elephants—not that they have a tree to hang them on. She’s already called the lawyer once today, and it’s too late to go to the mall. She has to force herself to start dinner. Stirring in a bag of egg noodles, she pictures her things in storage frozen in a solid block, a black scab of ice covering the floor. She hasn’t been back to check on it and thinks that’s something she can do tomorrow.
Once Eileen and Cy get home, they’ll distract her. She used to dream of having time like this. It used to be that work took up the entire week.
As she’s draining the tuna fish, Casey kicks her, a sharp knee in the gut. She groans and drops the can, doubling over. She has to lean her arms against the sink to catch her breath. She worries that it’s something wrong. But she just saw the doctor on Tuesday. She waits to feel the telltale trickle of blood, stays still an extra second to make sure. The tuna’s okay—still compressed tightly inside the can—and she’s fine, just winded, her heart thumping from the surprise. She thinks of blind Mrs. Wagner, the shock seizing her, knocking her to the carpet, and Tommy and Gary freaking, not knowing what to do.
That’s as far as she’ll venture into Mrs. Wagner’s house, just deep enough to imagine something other than murder. She wipes her hands and turns on the radio to drown out the other versions that crowd in—and gets Carole King, You just call, out my name, and you know wherever I am. She turns it up so it fills the kitchen. When Eileen finally opens the back door it’s a surprise.
After dinner, their mother calls to discuss Christmas plans. They’re having ham, so could Patty make her cheesy potatoes? Oh, and that pea casserole that was so good last year. Eileen waits patiently for her assignment—applesauce and crescent rolls.
“Gee, do you think I can handle it?” she asks when they’re off
Patty wants to offer her the pea casserole but knows enough to shut up.
She hasn’t asked Eileen yet if they’re going to have a tree; no one’s mentioned getting one and Christmas is a week away. She used to have to badger Tommy about it. Eileen and Cy are the same way—practical, not like her. If worse comes to worst, she’ll buy one and decorate it herself.
The next day she sees a place on her way to the self-storage and almost stops, then figures they’ll be open over the weekend.
The unit’s the way they left it—dry, the tarp in place. She resists the temptation to move one of the concrete blocks and check.
At the mall she finds a gift for the kids, a nature kit with a floating lens that lets you see underwater. It’s perfect for the goldfish pond in their backyard that Shannon’s always bragging about, and Patty hasn’t seen anything else. It’s expensive, so she skips Arby’s and goes straight home. She wraps it on the coffee table, taking her time, watching GH, then during a commercial she adds it to the pile of presents at the bottom of her closet. And like that she’s done. It’s stupid, she thinks, but somehow it feels like another loss.
So why is she surprised when the lawyer calls and tells her the coroner’s report is in and that Mrs. Wagner died of a blow to the head? She’s known it the whole time.
BEST CASE
THE GRAND JURY’S SECRET. SHE’S NOT ALLOWED IN, OR THE MEDIA, only Tommy and the lawyer, and the lawyer can’t object to anything. It’s basically the DA’s show. Patty doesn’t see the difference between the prelim and the grand jury; it seems like they’re trying him over and over, each time nailing down his guilt a little more. Now the DA’s tacking on extra charges in case he can’t get the murder conviction.
“Just to prepare you,” the lawyer says, “and I told your husband this, he’s going to see some time on the burglary no matter what, unless he testifies against his friend.”
“He’s not going to testify against Gary,” she says.
“At some point the DA’s going to come sniffing around. I don’t want Tommy to get caught on the wrong side of that, because that’s worst case.”
“You don’t think we can win.”
“Not if they’re tried jointly. If we can separate them, we get our reasonable doubt back. I’ll tell you what I told your husband. I think you need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
Patty says that’s exactly what she’s been doing, but on the way home, winging through the frosted fields with the sun warm on the dashboard, she thinks it’s a lie. He’s right. She’s so messed up over what’s happening now that she doesn’t see how things could get worse.
SECRET SANTA
CHRISTMAS MORNING SHE WAKES UP BEFORE EILEEN AND CY. THE house is quiet around her, only the furnace blowing in the basement, sending a rush of dried air through the floor vents, herding the dust bunnies along the baseboards. She takes her shower and gets dressed by the cold light of her window, the brown trees crowding in on the backyard, shriveled weeds poking from the snow.
She pulls the box for Eileen and Cy out of the closet and carries it into the living room, where their tree fills the far corner in its brand-new stand. The silver bulbs are new too, and the single string of colored lights like the ones around the mirror at the Iroquois, all for her. She kneels to slide the box under the lowest branches—the only present so far. She wishes she had something else to give them besides the ornaments and hopes they haven’t gotten her anything too nice.
She can’t wrap her gift for Tommy. It sits in a manila envelope on the card table she uses as a desk—a picture of the two of them from Perry’s Fourth of July party, blown up. The store put it in a cardboard frame with a cellophane cover special for her because glass isn’t allowed. Tommy’s tan in his yellow muscle shirt and has his hair tucked under his bandana. He’s sitting on her lap in a lawn chair with an arm around her neck, kissing her cheek. They’re both toasting the photographer with their beers. A couple seconds later the chair fell over and they both got soaked.
She’s too impatient to wait for the teapot to boil, and pours herself a lukewarm cup of Sanka, takes a couple slugs and ditches it in the sink. She needs to leave if she wants to get there before the doors open. She grabs her bag and the envelope, pulling her jacket on as she pushes through the side door—which bangs against something solid and knocks her in the head when it won’t open the whole way.
For a second she thinks she’s forgotten to take the chain off, but there on the stoop sits a huge cardboard box with THIS END UP on the side and a red bow stuck on top. She has to muscle the door open and squeeze through to inspect it. There’s a torn orange plastic pocket where an invoice should be, but she knows what it is just from the size of it.
It’s too heavy for her to move, and she needs to go. She can’t just leave it out here.
She squeezes back into the house and pads up the stairs. Their room is gray, the blinds letting in slices of light. She has to push Eileen’s shoulder.
“Hey.”
“What?” Eileen grumps.
“Merry Christmas,” Patty whispers.
UNAPPROVED ITEMS
SHE PULLS UP AT THREE AFTER NINE. DONNA’S FIREBIRD’S OFF IN A corner by itself, and she swings the Dart in right beside it. She doesn’t bother to lock it, just grabs the envelope, flings the door closed behind her and heads across the lot.
Donna’s sitting in the hospital chairs, made up for a night out and wearing a white silk blouse, open to show off
her throat. In her lap, on top of her folded leather jacket, she holds a shoebox.
“What’s up?” Patty asks, because she should have been processed and inside by now.
“There’s like nobody working, and there’s a big fire up in Candor.”
She goes to the empty desk and stands there, a customer looking for some service, but it’s no use. She takes the clipboard back to the chairs and fills in the blanks mindlessly, then has to scratch out their old address. She clips her license to it and leaves the whole thing on the desk.
“I do that too,” Donna says.
“Where are you now?” Patty asks, though she’s heard from Eileen that she’s moved in with Gary’s folks—into the separate apartment they kept for his grandmother.
“It’s not like I eat dinner with them every night. I’ve got my own entrance, I come and go when I want. They’ve been really great.”
“Good,” Patty says. She points to the shoebox. “What’d you get him?”
Donna takes the top off to show her—a tape recorder, the kind you lay flat on a table, with a square silver grill and a row of big plastic keys. There’s an adapter wrapped in its cord, a pair of headphones, some extra batteries, a couple of tapes.
“It’s cheaper than the phone, and it’s easier than writing letters.”
“I hope they let you take it in,” Patty says.
“What’d you get Tommy?”
She opens the envelope and shows her the picture.
“That’s sweet,” Donna says, giving it back.
Patty tells her about the bassinet waiting outside the door.
“So you got it okay. Tommy was all worried it might get snowed on.”
“You knew.”
“Who do you think picked it out? You think I’d let Russ go by himself?”
“Thank you,” Patty says.
She keeps the rest of her questions to herself, waits until the lady cop comes back and processes Donna and then her one at a time.
She can’t take the picture in. She can mail it to him, the lady cop says.
“It’s Christmas,” Patty argues. It takes her a minute to recover. She’s not going to let this bitch ruin the visit.
She thinks there’s no way Donna got the tape recorder in.
Inside, the guard lets her kiss Tommy. She lingers, pressing her belly against him, smelling his hair—newly shampooed, fruity and chemical—before they have to sit down. She tells him about the picture.
“So Merry Christmas,” she says.
“It sounds nice,” Tommy says. “I’ll make sure they don’t lose it in the mail.”
“Thank you for the nice surprise.”
“I knew you wanted it.”
He’s pleased, so she’s happy, but no matter how many times she visits, it’s always awkward, the guard standing in the corner, the stale, windowless cube of a room as if they’re miles underground. After a couple minutes the conversation stalls like a bad date.
“It was nice of Donna to help out.”
“I figured that was the best way.”
It’s a special day, and they want this visit to be a good one, so they stick with safe topics. Neither of them mentions the security deposit, or his truck. They don’t bring up anything having to do with the grand jury, or Gary.
“So what are you doing the rest of the day?” he asks, and she tells him about her mother’s.
“How’s she doing?”
“You know how she is. She never changes.”
“Say hello for me,” he jokes.
“I will,” she threatens. “No, you’re lucky. lt’s going to be a repeat of Thanksgiving, except Cy’s coming.”
“Cy’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, I feel bad for him,” Patty says. “He’s going to have to watch football with Marshall all day.”
“Tell him I’m sorry.”
They riff back and forth, sleepwalking through these old routines. The guard turns his wrist to look at his watch, and she tries not to check hers. She thinks they have to give her and Donna the minutes they missed earlier, fears that they won’t (they don’t have to do anything), and yet, in the middle of Tommy talking to her, she’s already gone, dicing the potatoes by the sink, running water while she chops the onions. She needs to find a dress that will fit her and iron it. She fades back in, and he’s still talking, saying something about his grandmother’s mincemeat pie, she hasn’t missed anything. She wants to reach across the table and take hold of his face, but she knows the rules. All she can do is give him her complete attention, and she does, searching his eyes the whole time, as if she can pour herself into him, absorb him into her, the two of them changing places right under the guard’s nose, the perfect jailbreak.
They’re back on their favorite topic, Casey, when the guard rocks himself off the wall and says, “Time.”
Patty checks her watch and sees she was right. “We’re supposed to have an hour and a half. The guys in front let us in late.”
“Visiting hours end at ten-thirty.”
“We’re supposed to have an hour and a half.”
“C’mon, man,” Tommy says, “it’s Christmas.”
“Sorry,” the guard says, and turns his back on them to open the door.
“Thanks a lot,” Patty says.
“It’s all right,” Tommy tells her, his voice low and serious. The new skin over his eye is pink, and she realizes there’s nothing she can do to protect him except shut up.
She’s allowed a goodbye kiss, a last touch of his cheek.
“I love you,” she says, and then the lady cop takes her away, through the metal detector and back into the world. The light through the windows is blinding.
She gets her picture back at the desk. Donna’s waiting for her out front, smoking in the cold, the shoebox under one arm. “You believe those assholes?”
“They always treat us like shit,” Patty says. “Why should Christmas be any different?”
“How’d he like your picture?”
Patty pulls it out of her purse.
“Jesus.”
Donna’s finished and flicks the butt onto the cops’ sidewalk. They walk together across the lot, and as she has so many times since this whole thing began, Patty feels like she should invite Donna for lunch or just coffee, but the situation makes it impossible. She already feels like she’s lying just saying goodbye at their cars.
“Hang in there,” Donna says.
“You too,” Patty says.
GOOD NEWS
IT’S A NEW YEAR, BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE ONE. THE NUMBERS look strange on the sign-in sheet, as if she’s been transported to the future.
The grand jury meets and nothing happens for a week. The DA’s people have to draft the indictment, the lawyer explains over the phone.
“If they indict him,” Patty corrects him.
“I’m actually glad they want the manslaughter. It means they’re prepared to get the lessers and hope the judge maxes them out at sentencing.”
“I thought we didn’t want the manslaughter.”
“I’d rather have that than assault one. Combine that with the burglary one and we’re looking at a minimum of eight years.”
Holding the phone, Patty wonders if he says shit like this to scare her. She clearly remembers him saying they didn’t want the manslaughter; it backs up the murder charge if the jury’s not completely sure.
“What about the arson?” she asks.
“They’ll probably get that.”
“It sounds like they’re getting everything they’re asking for. Is that right?”
“We won’t know till the indictment comes back, but that’s how it usually goes.”
“I don’t see why they even have a grand jury if that’s how it works.”
“I understand how it can seem that way, but you have to remember, it’s just an intermediary step. It doesn’t prove or disprove a thing, and it lets us see what the DA’s thinking. That’s the most important result of a grand jury, and we’ve got
that, we can see he thinks his case is weak. I think that’s good news. Murder two—minimum—is fifteen to life.”
Patty can’t see how any of this is good, but doesn’t argue. She knows by now that half of what he says is bullshit. He says things not for what they really mean but like moves in a game, strategy that she has to guess at. Right now he’s probably just softening her up so she won’t freak out when the grand jury returns the indictment.
The next time he calls, two days later, he has news. The court clerk has sent him notice. The indictment’s officially in.
“Okay,” she says.
“Now remember what I said the other day,” he says, and she thinks: You fucker, you fucking bastard.
CONTEMPT
THEY’RE ARRAIGNED TWO DAYS LATER. THE BENCHES ARE FILLED; the room buzzes like a farm auction. Elsie Wagner reappears with her Jackie O sunglasses, sitting in the front row opposite them with an older man Patty thinks must be her husband. Patty’s mother has said she’ll attend the trial itself with her and Eileen, as if these hearings are just dress rehearsals. Neither of them mentioned Shannon.
There’s a different judge today, a man with a greasy combover and bushy eyebrows who wears a permanent scowl. The lawyer’s already talked to Patty about him. “He’s not the worst we could do,” he said.
The charges are murder two, manslaughter two, burglary one, arson two and criminal mischief two. Bail is a half million dollars, cash.
“Gimme a fucking break,” Donna says out loud.
She’ll never get used to seeing Tommy in his prison scrubs. He looks back at her as if he’s sorry, this is all his fault. It is—and Gary’s—but when they’re face to face she can’t be angry with him, only when she’s alone.
The lawyers enter not guilty pleas and they take him away. The courtroom clears out, the hall all noise. Elsie Wagner is doing interviews. With Eileen at her side, Patty walks a gauntlet of cameras, and finally they’re outside and then in the car, driving, free of the insanity.
At Eileen’s she retreats to her room, lying on the hard bed, facing the wall as if she’s sick. Eileen looks in on her and then leaves her alone, pulling the door behind her till it clicks. Patty tries to be quiet as she cries, covering her mouth with a hand, cradling her stomach with the other. She didn’t really think they’d make bail, but now there’s no way he’ll be out in time for the baby. That by itself doesn’t worry her; it’s the fact that—she realizes only now, afterward—she’s been holding on to some slim, hidden hope that he actually might.
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