And for the four students Danek, Lars, Brad, and Katy—a special seat, there would be the Lt. Colonel and his lovely wife, Dorothy. Brad and Katy sitting protectively next to the Lt. Colonel. Lars next to Danek next to Dorothy. Danek held fast next to her. He would save her. The couple, quiet, unheeding of the cameras and the gasping and the scrutiny.
And across from this—the defendants.
Seeing how they’d aged, you’d think they’d already been in prison. Billy and Terrance and Randy and Russ. Spread across the states like spores. From Reno to Tampa to Buffalo . . . they’d been rounded up and now reunited. A parade of shame.
And Jeff Cody. Now dyeing his hair, what was left of his hair, brown. A cheap bottle-brown. A Just for Men brown. He couldn’t stand it. So this. This! This is how he meets the Lt. Colonel and his wife. Not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas, not at the wedding to their daughter. But here, in court, twenty-five years later and at the trial for their daughter, his one true love. His one true love whom he strangled. His one true love whom he dumped by the side of the road in the snow. How he wished to explain it! How could he? Impossible. It had all gone through his hands like sugar.
And there she was, Shauna Boggs. The Blob. Piggy-face. There she was in her teal sweater and foofy hair, thinking, how could it be twenty-five years earlier, that grabbing for Jeff at the Green Mill Inn. Afterward. At five in the morning, watching him pack, how could it be that she’d begged him, cried to him, “Don’t leave me. Oh, please don’t leave me.” Acting out a scene from a movie of the week she’d maybe seen earlier or later or maybe just made up. “Don’t you see? Now it’s just us! It’s meant to be.” And thinking that Jeff looking up was gonna mean a movie kiss. He loves me! But, instead, he sticks to the wall, sinking into the wood panel and gritting his teeth.
Seeing her then, a glob of want. What he would give to switch back. What he would give to reverse it. “Don’t you get it? It’s over.” And wanting to chop up time and throw her in the woods instead. Why couldn’t it have been her? He’d been had. Not enough pills to turn it back, never enough pills anymore. Falling now, melting into the ground. Now, collapsing into the floor, a whimper, a slop of remorse. “I’m dead. I’m just fucking dead.” A man turned boy in the carpet. Shauna looking down, quick, now she has him. Reaching her hand to his neck, to console him. Before she touches him, he freezes, “Stop it. You’ll never be her, pig-face.”
Shauna Boggs now. Not able to look at him, or across the aisle, not able to keep her head on her neck. Not able to meet the eyes of the coroner, those damning words, “Yes, that’s correct. DNA evidence. Saliva. Female. Matching the defendant.” And then the realization, a wave through the court. She’d spat on her. Shauna Boggs had spat on her best friend while she lay pummeled on the floor. A hush. Hatred heavy as a house.
Shauna Boggs, the last name read off. The last conviction. All of them. Homicide. Abduction. Murder. Aggravated assault. Assault with a deadly weapon. Assault and battery. Gross indifference. Conspiracy to commit murder. The myriad names for it. The many names for what happened that night. Who knew what happened that night had so many names? And that’s how she saw it. Not what they did. Not what she did. What happened.
She had not meant to catch eyes with anyone and particularly not with Dotsy But there she was, looking at her, or through her, from across the courtroom. She had looked away. Not fast enough. But now, in Shauna’s head, a thousand rushing thoughts, a tsunami, almost she couldn’t hear it, when they read it, now, over the din.
Shauna Boggs. Conspiracy to commit murder. Gross indifference. Murder one.
Listen to it. You’ll hear it for days. You’ll hear it for the rest of your life in a gray little box. Shauna Boggs, the State of Michigan hereby sentences you to . . . drum roll please . . . life in prison. Sentence to be served immediately. No parole.
A hammer to the head. A shock to the system. What they did that night. What she did. No longer what happened.
And Detective Samuel Barnett standing at the back of the courtroom. Mister Perfect. For him, an almost smile. A quiver of a smile from Shauna to him through the glass, eyes welling up. A wink. She throws him the thought through that red-eye wink. She throws him the thought and it lands on him, catch.
It was her.
She was the one who had given up the dingy little box.
The Polaroids.
She was the one who had left the box at the station.
She had given herself up.
FOUR
It would be strange, at the end of your life, measuring it out, teaspoon by teaspoon; what did you get?
Who would forgive you? And would you forgive yourself? All of your indiscretions—were you a fool? Maybe you were just a whore, after all. Or a weather vane, aimless and choking, always choking in gust after gust, tumult after tumult . . . what did you make of it?
Shauna sat there, in her ash-by-ash little box, staring at the wall, thinking of that moment, centuries ago, when she had not been Shauna Blobs, then Blobs, then Blob, when she had said, “Good.” When her friend, not best friend, not dearest friend, but most precious friend, had been ushered into heaven? She had even laughed.
Laughed.
How much biting, eating away, crumbling into herself, doughnuts and Twinkies and Pop-Tarts, too. How much gorging after gorging, throwing up, then gorging again. Looking at herself, wanting to throw up again, endlessly, eternally, ’til the end of time?
And when she shuffled off this too-sullied body, when she left the Blob behind and flew up, straight on a wire . . . would she then shortly descend? Or had she already descended?
It wasn’t that she was going mad, exactly. It was just . . . there were whispers. Tiny ones. Little voices, coming quick like ambush thoughts. They will see me. They will kill me. They are trying to kill me here. They will laugh at me. They are laughing at me. They have always been laughing at me. I’m not safe. I’m not safe here. I’m not safe here through the night. Rapier voices, slashing in and out and back into the temple, sometimes from the back of the skull. Don’t you see? It’s over.
They will get me.
FIVE
There beside the lake, two black spindle trees, one outstretched upward reaching high into the infinite dusk, the other crumpled in on itself, crying into its belly, hobbled. And there, on the bench between, a raven woman. Dotsy Krause. An almost-painter with memories in brushstrokes of the Lindy Hop at the Three Deuces, of a sweltering July spent in Cape Cod, of a Wedgwood locket found and lost. Each brushstroke a pulse, the shock of it a kind of vista disappearing into the horizon, once it was there, then smaller and smaller, then minuscule, then a pinprick, then nothing.
The Lt. Colonel didn’t know she would come here, wouldn’t like it. But there had to be something. Looking down, seeing the hands attached to her wrists shaking. More frequent now, and stronger. Last week she had even dropped a teacup. Irreplaceable. He had brought it back from Seoul.
There must be something. A cure somehow in the wind off the dunes.
Looking out across the pitch-gloam water, as fixed as glass, Dorothy Krause had the feeling of being watched. And for a moment, above her, as she peered over into the gloom-glass lake, that still-ice Michigan, never-light water, she thought she saw, but no, how could she . . . a rustle of light, a ghost figure, a tentative quiver. And a whisper came quick, almost from the trees . . . take me back gently, into the night sky.
I will wait for you.
And Dotsy, hearing her daughter’s voice, turns in pieces to the green pine trees, searching desperate in grasps and shadows, through the elm, through the elder, through the oaks. And then realizing, yes, of course, there was no one there and never would be again.
SIX
The green blades of the tulips stabbing up through the dirt like half-buried knives. It had rained for two days straight, but now the sun shining over the puddles, turning dew into diamonds on the Kelly grass spears. The sun back, reassuring, never-mind, never-mind, I am here. I came back.
Dotsy hadn’t known what to wear to the Kent County Correctional Facility, Holton, Michigan. She had never been, nor thought she would ever be, in such a place, and she, well, she didn’t think she’d be back. Wondering, as she stepped out of the green striped taxi onto the dew-sheathed sidewalk . . . will I be back? And then deciding, No. No, I won’t.
A grid. All around a grid. Squares and rectangles, laid out in gray. And, too, a barbwire frame.
There was no reason to be here. No one knew she was coming anyway, certainly not her husband. Of course not. She could leave at any moment. No one would know.
Through, through, through each door, each gate, each cage, chain metal corridors clanking open and shut. Open and shut. Locking you out, locking you in.
Dotsy descending somehow, each circle down into the next, into a drab dishwater room, ammonia-laced. Scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed erasing all sins, the walls whispering regret. Take me home.
All that was required was to turn around. Turn around and this will all be over. Twenty-five years of this and still not over. These gray circles, this dust-mop cage, this the only way to make it stop.
She was alone but it was not special treatment. She was alone because it was Tuesday at two and these people have to work for God’s sake. Worker class. Work or prison. You choose.
Shauna had not been expecting a visitor. Ever. And maybe that was why, over these last few months, she had the expression of a lost rabbit down the watering hole. Oh, this room, yes. This room I had not seen. This was a room for people with families. Moms. Daughters. Baby girls. Grandsons. Little boys. Fathers. Husbands. No, this room was not for me.
And yet, there across the gunmetal concrete, Dotsy sat in a chair. Comical. A woman of her age. A woman in pearls with a purse . . . here. Some sort of comedy sketch with no punch line. But then, Shauna thought, oh, yes, the punch line is me.
She had lost weight. It’s not that Dotsy had ever thought about Shauna Boggs’s snickering obesity, although she’d overheard the taunts. Sometimes, after the verdict, to make her feel better, the derision was proffered to her like an ice-cream cone. Eat up. We’ll make fun. That’s what we’ll do. But it did not make her feel better, any more than vultures eating carrion by the side of the road would make her feel better. Dotsy could see nothing but the carrion.
And so Shauna was plump now. Simply plump. No longer obese. And inside that face, somewhere, were the vestiges of that little girl who’d come over to play Candy Land, to play hopscotch, to call boys. She had worn a black one-piece swimsuit as a halter top. Dotsy did remember that. Thinking at the time, cover up! Cover up, they’ll get you!
Shauna doesn’t look at her when she sits down, or ever, for that matter. Shauna keeps her eyes strained on the table, the chairs, the floor. Anything other than her. Her, here. The mother.
And there is a kind of quiet made of feeling giddy or being in love or finding home. But this is not that quiet. This is a quiet of failure, of wanting to go back, of restlessness.
Figuring out that she’s the only one who will be speaking. Figuring out that maybe this is stupid and she should just go home in the first place, never should have come. Dotsy tries to keep her hands from shaking, but they shake now, little tremors, all day long. Barely able to write her name, or make out a check. Good thing she’s not still painting. Trembling hands, hold each other on the table. Hold still.
The guard gives her a nod, better hurry up, you’re on the clock. This is not the country club. Well, of course not. Isn’t that obvious? This is the place you get to go to if you’ll never make it to the country club. Lucky bastards, they have no idea.
Okay, break this moment. This silence deafening, make it stop.
“Shauna.”
And there it is, her name. Gentle. Spoken in a way it had not been spoken for years. Spoken like she was a person.
But still, there is no looking up. Shauna’s eyes fixed on the floor, blinded.
“Shauna, I can’t carry this. Um. I can’t carry this any longer.”
Expecting a reaction. What was she expecting? Tears? Revelation? Laughter? Whatever it was she had been expecting, here there was nothing. Here there were just eyes fixed on metal chairs.
Another try. Get in. Look at me, Shauna.
“I was in love, once, you know.”
Maybe there is something there in Shauna now, something stirring, but still, eyes stay staring at the steel square tiles.
“It was a kind of madness. Like trying to pour an ocean into a teacup. Funny. All it could do was spill and break.” And then a kind of laugh, stifled.
Maybe this will make her eyes get off the tile. Look here. Look at me. But no, not even this. She is gone now, isn’t she?
And noticing now, for the first time, on the side of her face, a scar, four inches long, but deep, just healing. Just missed her eye. Christ, what had they done to her? What happens here? What happens here in this horrible place? This place made of nightmares, contract-built. A kind of slavery for being poor. A kind of slavery for mistakes, if you’re poor. But no, they are here for a reason, Dotsy told herself. They are here for a reason. Aren’t they?
Trembling hands reaching now, fumbling into the coral clip purse, an envelope-looking thing, subtle as a shoe shine. But elegant, look closer. Mother-of-pearl on the clasp. Look closer. Meticulous.
And out comes the locket. That blue silhouette cameo from days on the sound, days in the water playing stupid seashell games with Edward. That salty blue cameo from days on the levee, from days with Jeff Cody, from days on the ground.
“Have it, Shauna.”
And then, somehow a breath, “I want you to have it.”
If she’d been able to look up from the gray tile floor, look up from the grid of gray-laced white speckles, she would have. She would have lifted her eyes and met Dotsy’s and then maybe there would have been tears. Of what? Gratitude? Desperation? Regret?
But, no, there was no looking up. There couldn’t be. As easily as packing the sun into a basket. As easily as killing the moon. That’s how easy that could be. No, there was no looking up. It was impossible. Now.
The locket now just sitting there on the table. A dumb gift. A gesture stalled. Dotsy almost wanting to take it back now. Maybe this was ridiculous.
But no. There’s no want in a gift. There can be no taking in a gift. And anyway, this isn’t giving. Any more than the ocean gives to the tide. Let these waters crash in out, in out, taking this burden out to sea. Someday the sand will whisper this.
The guard, nodding again, time’s up. And that is that. Do it quick, do it fast, get out of here. You don’t belong here, lady, in the land of zombies and miscues and never-beens. Out of here, sweet old lady, go home and bake cookies. This is not a place for you.
And Dotsy, one last look at Shauna. Strange, how she felt sorry for her, considering. Strange, how she wanted to hold her, to soften her, to comfort her, considering.
But now, with the gate and the alarm and the gray metal clanking her out, out into the bright blue sky, out into the gorgeous green glass globe, she was lighter. Dotsy was lifted, as if on a wire, twenty-five years later and now somehow not touching the ground. Out there the sky could be blue again, out there the clouds could be puff-puff-puffy like cotton candy. Out there the smell of grass and the breeze off the lake, all these things could contrive to make happy. As simple as a clock ticking. As simple as the sound of the rain.
And inside now. Shauna standing at the gate, waiting for the electric door. The alarm will go off, so loud it scares you. Every time it scares you. Shauna Boggs, staring into the gate, past the gate, down down down into the maze upon maze, the rat-maze of choices and bad choices and missteps, in degrees of gray, charcoal, dust, endless and banning. Shauna Boggs walking by the guards, past the guards, some nodding tiny, some looking away, looking through, looking through her. Shauna Boggs, walking past the guards, quietly steeling herself, wondering which one of them will find her feet swinging in the morning light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Obviously, this wouldn’t be possible without the help, support and advice from some very kind people. (Otherwise I would just be babbling to myself in a room somewhere.) So here goes . . . Thank you to my amazing mother and best friend, Nancy Portes Kuhnel. My whole family, Charles, Lisa, Alejandro Portes, Pats, Doug, Nancy, Bobby and Carlos. My grandparents: Lt. Colonel Charles Brazie & Arlene Brazie. Helio & Eulalia Portes. The gentleman who keeps me sane: Brad Kluck. My dear friends: Dawn Cody, Mira Crisp, Simon Eldon-Edington, Matthew Specktor, Natasha Leggero, Io Perry, Noelle Hale, Super A, Gary Wishik, Tylene De Vine, Demetrius Griffin, Amy Stokes, Niels Alpert, Jenniefer Pacelli and Haley Gore. My editor, Dan Smetanka. (Thanks for taking a chance on me.) My literary agent, Katie Shea at Donald Mass Literary Agency. My book-to-film agent, Josie Freedman at ICM. Everyone at Soft Skull. Fred Ramey at Unbridled Books, my editor on HICK. Kristen Pettit at HarperCollins, my editor on ANATOMY OF A MISFIT. Everyone involved in HICK the film: Derick Martini, Chloe Grace Moretz, Eddie Redmayne, Blake Lively, Charles de Portes, Alec Baldwin, Juliette Lewis, Rory Culkin, Christian Taylor, Ray McKinnon, Teri and Trevor Moretz, Jon “Peepaw” Cornick, Erica Munro, Roshelle Berliner, Frank Godwin, Michael Jefferson, Pedro Portes and Tommy Brazie. Finally, I’d like to thank the one and only little prince, my sun and moon and stars, my baby boy: Wyatt Storm.
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