by Sarah Perry
* * *
I stayed at Linda’s house for ten hours that day. She cried often, she laughed openly, she kept apologizing: “I know you’re all grown up right now, but you’re still just that little girl to me, I can’t help it.” She referred to Mom only in the present tense. “For your mom and me, part of us will always think of you as that little girl.”
Her face was riveting. At first I thought it was just because I was seeing it again, when I had nearly given up. But over the hours I saw that her face, at fifty, was wildly mercurial. Her profile is like a fine-penciled drawing, like a girl, only shaded here and there with age. She has a delicate nose and lips, and her fine, dark blond curls are cut short around her face. Her hands are tiny and very soft. She began with them in her lap, leaning forward to sip from a bendy straw stuck into a tall boy of Natural Ice beer. Then, finally, she reached for my hand and held it for hours.
In other moments, especially after the sun went down, she looked like an old woman, twenty or even thirty years older than she was, than Mom would be. All her years of tanning had actually touched her quite lightly; it wasn’t the lines that aged her. It was a certain sort of tension, a widening of her eyes, a compression at the corners of her mouth. Sadness and fear and resignation. It would happen in a moment, linger, and then vanish.
Occasionally, strong expressions took hold of her face, appearing for only an instant. A grimacing smile, which often came after a self-deprecating remark. A fretful, worried look, where she peered down at her hands, then snapped her gaze back up. And sometimes when she was making a point, she lowered her forehead a bit and looked at me intensely, and I could see the whites at the bottom of her eyes. And in that moment, I could see what Walt had warned me about. I felt dizzy, like I was peering into a ravine. It was a moment of looking into wildness, a moment I fear will start growing and taking over more of her existence. There seemed to be an unleashed quality to it, as though she could tip over into something like madness. But then she would come back, perfectly placid. All this blew over her face like dark clouds and bright light speeding across a summer sky.
* * *
Linda told me about the days after Mom died, about talking and talking to the police. About her frustration as the years went on with no news of the killer. I asked her about Michael Hutchinson, if she knew him, if she thought he and Mom had dated. She only knew him after, she said, through his friend Ray. She met Mike at a party once, and he went pale. Acted really weird, she now recalls, although at the time she had no idea why. She is confident that Michael and my mother never met, that they were not dating. “We had been wild, in our day!” she said. “We were best friends, we knew everything about each other. I would’ve known.” She said she had driven herself crazy trying to figure out who had killed Mom. “I just kept thinking I should know. That I should figure it out!”
And I believe her. I believe her fully. When I asked her why she wouldn’t speak to me before, her voice got very small and she said, “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what to say to you. I was just so nervous.” I believe this, too. Sometimes the truth is less strange than fiction, and it can be a great relief.
Linda talked about times she and Mom had gone out dancing, how their friendship was more important than anything else. “We’d go out with two guys, y’know. Whoever it was at the time. And they’d sit in the front of the car and we’d sit in the back, and we would hold hands with each other! We would hold hands and just laugh and whisper and ignore them.” And, without my even asking, she brought up that one night, when the two of them were with the same man. She said there was a moment when he left the room, a kiss on the neck, and nothing more. They were young.
As evening fell, Linda led me to her back bedroom to show me the clothes she and Mom had gone out in: “We used to wear the most amazing things, you know. It was the eighties and nineties!” She opened a wardrobe and pulled out dress after dress. “I wore this one on New Year’s, and this one when we went out for our thirtieth birthday. Our birthdays are just six days apart, you know. We always celebrated together.” It was like a dream, where things you’ve lost return to you, whole and just as you remember them. I stood there, amazed that she still had all these dresses—fantastic ensembles with big shoulder pads and attached jewelry and cutouts in the torso; innocent shifts printed with tiny flowers or trimmed in white eyelet; electric blue suits with huge lapels and short, tight skirts. She had saved them all, although she no longer dressed up, had aged beyond them. But I could see Mom standing there in a slightly different version of so many of those outfits, with Linda right next to her, thinner and younger and happier.
Linda wanted me to sleep over that night rather than drive back to Portland so late. But as good as I felt, as happy as I was to be reunited with her, I knew I could not sleep there in her little house, so close to my own. She had done laundry recently, and against her protests I made up her bed, smoothing an old blanket over her flowered sheets. She’d been drinking all day, delicately sipping from one tall can after another, but was nowhere near drunk, and I wondered how long she could keep it up. How many years. I wanted to buy her a better blanket. I wanted to get her into AA. I wanted to do many things that I knew I would not do. She kept saying, “Now, I know I’m not your mother, but I’m the next best thing.” But I knew it was far too late for that; finally seeing her again had brought me to face that fantasy, which I could now let go. I asked if she would be okay for the night, if she would be lonely. She said, “I’ll be fine. You know what I’m going to do after you leave? I’m going to just sit here in the living room and talk to your mother.” I smiled and hugged her and promised to keep in touch.
I left shortly after midnight, eager to get away before one o’clock, before the death hour. As I drove, listening to all those old radio songs, I felt happy and whole. I felt as though different parts of me had come together. But I was also relieved to go, to head back to the present. I knew that serene feeling of connection would fade, in and out, like a flickering light.
* * *
Last September, I was in Maine for a few weeks, coasting to the end of my research and also, finally, taking some days to enjoy myself, visit friends, drive aimlessly through the mountains. One weekend, I went over to Bridgton to see my old friend Marie. She and her husband were hosting a barbecue, the last of the season. I was the first to arrive, so we sat and talked for a while. She left the TV on, playing a mesmerizing feature on the custom-designed pools of millionaires, long, hypnotic shots of perfectly bordered, teal water. She had just moved back to Bridgton after seven years away in the city and was glad, she said, that her two girls, and her son on the way, would now grow up swimming in real lakes, that they would feel sand under their toes. Her new house is right near Woods Pond, a place we visited many times when we were small.
Marie sat calm and unperturbed while we chatted, often glancing at the TV. It was like I’d just dropped in on my way to the grocery store, or on a walk from my house nearby, like I’d been there just the day before. It made me feel like I could come back the next day, or the following week. It was a moment from the life we might have had.
She had sent online invitations to the barbecue, so I had an idea of who might be coming. The first to arrive was an old friend of ours, Shauna, one sister in a big family. She wasn’t one of the sisters I knew well, so I hadn’t seen her since before Mom died. She was kind, and asked the usual catch-up questions, and I felt loved when it became clear that Marie talked about me occasionally, that Shauna had some idea of what I’d been up to in recent years. But the conversation was weighted for us both. When she said she was glad I was doing well, I could hear the unspoken “in spite of . . .”
More people had gathered around the fire by then. I reached the bottom of my second beer and started thinking about what I wanted off the grill. Some people were introduced to me, and others blended into the other side of the small crowd; this was a weekly gathering, and everyone was easy with one another. Little kids started ar
riving with parents, and Marie’s daughters, Brianna and Kayla, ran around with them in the slanting light. I felt welcomed but different, apart. In moments when everyone else was engaged in conversation and I had no clear way in, I played kickball with Brianna. At some point I drifted back to the grown-ups, and Marie introduced me to a redheaded man who had just arrived. “This is Rob,” she said.
I knew which Rob this was. This was Rob Desjardins, the man whose missing pot plants had led to Michael Hutchinson’s arrest for kidnapping. Rob looked a little serious, a little nervous, maybe. We shook hands. I gave him my most assertive grip, the one that a Republican friend taught me my freshman year of college. He introduced his girlfriend, Alyssa, whose name I also knew: back at the time of the kidnapping, she had been the victim’s girlfriend. She was thin and beautiful and had excellent hair, the sort of natural-looking highlights and precise cut that are hard to get in a small town.
Then the three of us stood there, in the semicircle around the firelight. I felt I should ask Rob some questions, learn something about Hutchinson, but couldn’t bear to bring up any of that at a neighborhood barbecue. I felt like I had him trapped; it seemed unfair. I could tell he knew who I was, but I could not tell what that meant to him.
An hour or two later, parents started leaving; it was Sunday, a school night. I went home not long after, to a lakeside cabin that some friends had lent me in Casco, less than a mile from Tenney Hill Road. It was the off-season, and all the other places along my narrow dirt road were abandoned until spring. To get to the cabin, I had to walk down a very steep hill, climbing down from a long ridge. There was no cell reception, no internet, no landline. When someone at the party asked me where I was staying, I had been intentionally vague. Just in case.
That night, I sat on the porch as the sky fell from deep blue to black, watching the stars reveal themselves. I didn’t turn on a single light. I listened to the loons sending their ghostly calls across the water, my gaze drawing a straight line over the low hills to Highland Lake, to my old house. And I felt at peace, there in the darkness.
Coda
As many times as I’ve tried to remember, I have never been able to recall the hours before Mom and I went to bed that final night. They’re completely gone, wiped out by the violence of what followed. When the police asked me to think back, I had no sense that anything strange had happened, was quite sure we had watched TV, then gone to bed at the usual time—nine o’clock for me, no later than nine thirty for her. But I couldn’t see it—she and I curled up on the couch, laughing. Eating ice cream, or not. The phone ringing, or not. I couldn’t remember what we had talked about, what we had eaten for dinner. I couldn’t remember anything at all, and that emptiness made my loss even heavier. She was just so completely gone.
My memory will not bring that evening back to me; imagination must suffice. I close my eyes, slow my breathing. Here she is now, at my door, for the last time. I’ve brushed my teeth, washed my face, climbed into my high daybed. I’m surrounded by curlicues of white metal and my most special stuffed animals, the ones who get to stay on the bed with me at night. Mom smiles when she peeks her head around the doorframe and says, “All ready?” She’s still wearing her eyeliner, but she is wrapped in a bright blue bathrobe. I say, “Yeah!” and she comes to my bed. When she leans over to kiss my forehead, I see her freckled breastbone through a gap in the robe, and her hair makes a bright cave around me. She smells of vanilla perfume. We say I love you. We don’t know to say goodbye.
Author’s Note
After the Eclipse is a work of nonfiction featuring real people and real events. While it is a memoir, it is a work not only of memory but of journalism, and involved a substantial research component. I conducted dozens of interviews, gathered hundreds of documents, and read and watched as much news coverage as I could find. I reviewed my own personal archives of photographs, home movies, journals, letters, and notes and consulted those of generous family members and friends of my mother. I also visited many of the story’s locations in Maine, returning in all seasons, over a six-year period.
While Part One weaves together different time periods, rather than offering a straight chronology, I have made every effort to verify the sequence of events depicted in this story, cross-referencing my memory and that of others with all available data, placing each event on a master timeline that begins with my mother’s birth and leads nearly to the present day. Police officers’ field notes have been invaluable, especially for the days immediately following the murder, as have interview subjects’ references to contemporary events, such as the eclipse and the ice storm in 1998. Wherever possible, I have confirmed my memories of my own experiences with third parties and with accounts I gave (in writing or while being recorded) in the past, closer to the time of the events depicted. When accounts have deviated significantly, especially in regard to important events, I have tried to present that deviation in the text and discuss what it could mean.
Forensic details come from various documents in the investigation file, including the autopsy report, as well as the testimony of experts at the trial. I reviewed select photographs of the scene for the purposes of this book, but avoided the worst ones. I still have not watched the videotape of the crime scene. The words of the man who called 911 for me from the Venezia—Pasquale Orlandella—are from my transcription of the call recording. The outer world of the book was verified by and built from a variety of sources, including Google Maps, historical weather data online, and contemporary newspapers on microfilm at the Portland Public Library.
Nearly all dialogue uttered by police officers and detectives—with the exception of any names that have been changed to pseudonyms for reasons of privacy—is verbatim from transcripts, either found in the investigation file or from interviews I conducted for the book. Every word of Dick Pickett’s and Dale Keegan’s speech is verbatim. Each uninterrupted sequence of Keegan’s dialogue that appears during my interview in the hotel in Texas is composed of his exact statements, presented in the order in which they appeared, with my responses removed and some of his statements removed for length. The recordings are part of a collection of audiotapes that the Office of the Maine Attorney General sent me prior to the trial, which I transcribed in 2014.
Some of the older police interviews with suspects and witnesses were not tape-recorded, but written up by the officer in a paraphrased report. This is especially true of interviews with individuals more peripheral to the case, and of brief initial conversations the police conducted with key figures while planning to conduct more in-depth interviews later. In these instances, I have worked to represent the tone of the conversation and the personalities of the people involved, combining my prior knowledge with an analysis of the report, keeping an eye out for any deviations from the dry, procedural tone of official documents. The words of Detective Charles Stevens on the morning of the murder are imagined, based on his paraphrasing, as are Linda’s words in that scene. Lieutenant Walter Grzyb’s words are verbatim from transcripts when he’s testifying at the trial. However, in the visit to Dr. Brown, in the DNA match call, in the conversation about Linda’s decline, and in my visit to Gray at the beginning of the book, Grzyb’s words are reconstructed from my notes and memory. Dialogue with Susie Maynard (previously Miller), the victim witness advocate at the time of the trial, is reconstructed. Every quotation during the trial proceedings is pulled directly from the official trial transcript.
Direct quotations from the social worker who visited my grandmother’s house, as well as the psychologist I saw in Portland immediately after the murder, are pulled from a Maine State Police detective’s field notes from that time. Tom Perry’s quotations in the sections about his meeting Mom and their time in California, and in the short scene where he and his friend see Mom crossing the road in Bridgton, are from my 2012 interview with him. Tom’s words during the party scene at my uncle Ray’s, and when Mom confronts him at the Sulky Lounge, are reconstructed, based on detailed accounts of other pe
ople who were present. Dennis’s quotations are all verbatim, from several long conversations we had in 2011, where he repeated much of what he’d told me during our reunion at the trial. The accounts of him and Mom kissing at the drugstore and directly after his divorce are based on his memory. The words of the many men who reported being attracted to Crystal Perry appear as quoted by police officers in their reports.
All of my aunt Gwen’s and aunt Glenice’s words are verbatim from transcription; most other family members’ dialogue is from memory—either mine or a trusted source’s. Linda’s words during our long-awaited reunion are verbatim, as are those of Kate Leonard and my former teacher Ms. Shane. For personal and logistical reasons, I was unable to interview either Peggy or Tootsie. I did my best to corroborate my experiences with both women with the memories of others. Diary entries I wrote at the time were also useful in this regard.
Family history is tricky for a researcher, perhaps even trickier for one who is part of the family in question. Memory is both created and distorted by emotion and personality, and I have worked to identify and omit those distortions, especially in scenes that re-create my family’s past. I collected as many perspectives as possible on Grace, Howard, Ray, and the experience of being their children, but there will undoubtedly be disagreements about what I have written here. I confirmed Howard’s rape conviction and his sentence at the Maine State Archives office in Augusta, and calculated his release date using my mother’s date of birth and the memories of family members. His victim was not available for an interview, and I hope she will forgive my inclusion of this sad tale. This book would not be complete without Howard’s crime, Grace’s tacit acceptance of it, and the messages both sent to my young mother and others in their family.
