One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  “Why don’t we go right now?”

  I looked up at my mother. Her face was smooth, her eyes bright as if she were suggesting we take an impromptu shopping trip.

  “You’re serious?” I said.

  “Why wait? Do you have more than we can fit in the SUV?”

  “We filled it up last time we went to Pottery Barn. But I’m not sure I want all of it. I picked it out for Seth and me, and now . . .”

  “I’ll get the keys.” Mama took off across the kitchen, still talking over her shoulder. “You don’t even have to stay. Just tell me what you want and I’ll put it in a pile and Kellen can come by after work and load it up. How does that sound?”

  It sounded awesome. Awesome and supportive and sad.

  I had only been to the place on Jones once since the Monday I was waiting for the furniture. The day I found out Seth was still using porn. The day I completely flipped out on the corner of Whitaker and Gaston. I expected to be sickened or angry or even hysterical again when we walked in the front door, but at first I didn’t feel anything.

  Even when I saw that the furniture was all gone, every end table and floor lamp and striped ottoman, I didn’t feel any emptier than I did before. Everything had been spilled, poured, or dumped out already. There was an end to done after all.

  “Let’s not linger, Tara, you think?” Mama said behind me.

  “No. Let’s not.” I headed for the kitchen. “Most of what you and I bought is in here, I think.”

  “I’ll check upstairs just to make sure,” she said and headed for the steps.

  I stopped at the granite counter and started to cave. I had loved that countertop. Somehow it had held so much of the promise—of rolling out dough for piecrust to take to Gaston Street for Thanksgiving and slicing tomatoes from Fritzie’s August garden and leaning across to get a kiss from Seth when he came home from work with his eyes twinkling.

  I spread my hands on the vanilla cream and cranberry and gold and tried to disappear into it. It was the last thing I’d stopped to savor before we had the spat that started the slow unspooling of barbed wire. What if we hadn’t had that argument? Would I be married to Seth now? What would I know? What would be left to be discovered in years to come?

  I knew only one thing as I surfaced from the depths of my beloved countertop. I knew that Mama was right. I would have been left behind closed doors to handle it alone.

  “I tell you what.” Mama somehow appeared on the other side of the counter with a box, her tidy body in full efficiency mode. “I found a few things I think might be yours. Why don’t you go through this box and toss what you don’t want. I’ll take care of the kitchen. This all goes?”

  I let my gaze sort of glaze over the pottery jar full of wooden spoons that had never been used and the smoky grey teapot on the stovetop.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”

  “Oh, Tara.” Mama’s eyes shone. “I know this feels like the end, but I have a feeling it’s just a beginning for you. Go on now—here.”

  I took the box and sat with it in the middle of the living room floor and pulled out a few random items. A pair of pink socks. A to-go cup sleeve Fritzie had knitted for me at some point. A silver hoop earring (so that was where it was). And my Finding Neverland DVD.

  I couldn’t remember having any of the other stuff here, but the night I’d brought Neverland was digitalized in my memory.

  ME: (snuggling in next to Seth on floor cushions and pressing Play on the remote) This is my all-time favorite movie.

  SETH: (grinning and tugging my hair) Does it have a car chase?

  ME: No.

  SETH: Gun battle?

  ME: No-o.

  SETH: Not even a fistfight?

  ME: This from the paragon of Christian virtue? No!

  SETH: (tugging my hair again) So it’s a chick flick.

  I gave him the you-are-made-of-slime sigh and homed in on Johnny Depp. Five minutes later Seth was asleep with his warm head in my lap. He never was as into movies as I was.

  The irony of that cut straight through me.

  As I tossed everything back into the box, it occurred to me that most of what was true about me wasn’t necessarily true about Seth, and vice versa. I was movies; he was music. I was casual elegance; he was starched and tailored. I was dreams; he was plans. It had seemed like a perfect balance. It had all seemed perfect.

  That should have been my first clue, shouldn’t it—that everything before that night in the kitchen was perfect? If any one of the movies in my collection had featured a perfect couple, Lexi and I would have ripped it apart for lack of realism.

  We’d have been right.

  I closed the box and pushed it against the empty wall. Knowing that it had never been completely real—that helped somehow. Maybe a vision was easier to let go. Maybe now we really could heal, both of us. Maybe now I could find what was true.

  If I could have measured feeling better by inches, I would have given myself at least three by that afternoon when I got to the Piebald. Not so Ike. He was simmering because Wendy didn’t show up again, and she wasn’t answering his calls or texts. The only thing that gave him even a half inch was the fact that I did both our jobs and didn’t give anybody the wrong sandwich or put ketchup in somebody’s cappuccino.

  “I’m telling you—you’re management material,” he told me as I was leaving to join the Watch. “Think about it.”

  I didn’t. I didn’t even stay with my Betsy and Gray and Ms. Helen very long, except to tell them about the townhouse being for sale.

  “You okay with that?” Betsy said, reaching for my hands across the table.

  “I am,” I said. “I know I’m going to have my tough times, but it seems like the worst is over now.”

  If anybody disagreed with that, they didn’t say.

  I actually wanted time by myself so I could go back in my mind to my meeting with Ned, and I couldn’t process that with anybody. It looked like I had the perfect setup when I got home. Kellen’s car was gone and Mama and Daddy were off at a dinner, so I fixed myself a helping of Mama’s homemade macaroni and cheese. She’d left me a note about it with a P.S. I dropped off the key at Randi’s office. New beginnings. I was headed for the sunroom with a steaming microwaved plate when someone knocked on the back door.

  Dang it.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “It’s me,” a thready voice said. “Evvy.”

  I was less in the mood for an anti-Seth tirade than I was for a root canal, but I set the plate on the counter and let her in. She looked like an alley cat that hadn’t had a handout in days.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t be in that house right now. Can I just hang out here for an hour or so until Paul and Randi retire for the evening?”

  I didn’t point out to her that the house was so big you could be in it for a week and not run into the other people who lived there.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You don’t even have to talk to me. I’ll just sit in a corner or something.”

  “Don’t be a martyr, Evvy. I’m fixing you a plate of mac and cheese.”

  “No—”

  “Hush up. You’re eating with me. It’ll take me two minutes.”

  That two minutes stretched into an eternity as Evelyn paced the kitchen, pulling knives out of the holder and examining them and putting them back. I had to find something to occupy her or she was going to plan a homicide. Lizzie Borden came to mind.

  The microwave dinged and I had a stroke of genius.

  “Let’s take our plates up to the theater,” I said. “We can watch a movie. Sound good?”

  “Yeah,” Evvy said. “I want something really depressing so I’ll feel better about my life.”

  When we got to the theater, I discovered the box from the townhouse. Kellen must have brought it up.

  “There’s one in here,” I said, tapping the box with my toe. “
I haven’t seen it in a while.” I felt a surge of sisterliness. “Watch it with me.”

  Evelyn set her plate on a table by one of the recliners and opened the box. “Finding Neverland.” She almost smiled at the case. “This has Johnny Depp. He rocks.”

  “Because . . .”

  “He gets to be whatever he wants, and there’s nothing he can’t be.”

  “I thought you wanted something depressing.”

  “I changed my mind.” She barely looked up from the box. “It’s impossible to be depressed around you.”

  I sat in one of the other recliners and watched her as she threw her hair impatiently back over her shoulder and headed for the DVD player.

  “You are going to love this. I know you are,” I said. “This is the movie that started me wanting to be a filmmaker.”

  Evelyn sat on the floor with the remote in her hand. “What happened to that?”

  “Life, I think.”

  She shrugged. “You’ve got nothing stopping you now.”

  I nodded at the remote. She pushed the button.

  On the first chord of music I knew the wrong DVD was in that case. Instead of the strains of “Where Is Mr. Barrie?” there was silence, followed by breathing that was sickeningly, horribly familiar. The camera pulled out to reveal a mop of thick black hair hanging over a woman’s face.

  “Stop it, Evvy,” I said.

  “What is this?”

  “Just turn it off!”

  She went for the remote but it bounced off the table and onto the floor. As she scrambled for it I couldn’t pull my eyes from the screen. The hair parted and a face came into view, with perfect teeth and a pair of eyes like National Velvet.

  “That’s her!”

  I jerked to look at Evelyn. She was pointing frantically at the screen. “That’s the prostitute I saw with Seth. I swear it is.”

  The camera zoomed in until only the lips were visible. Wendy’s pretty lips in a pant that was anything but.

  Evelyn fumbled with the remote and fast-forwarded until we could see her face again, which was hard because her face wasn’t what the camera was interested in.

  “That is totally her,” Evelyn said.

  “She’s not a prostitute.” My voice was so thin it was all but not there.

  “What do you call that?”

  “Turn it off, Evvy. Give me the thing.”

  Evelyn threw the remote in my direction and I had to lunge for it. An entire lifetime passed before I could snap the image from the screen.

  “Now do you believe me?” Evelyn said. “My brother is a gross, disgusting phony . . .”

  I didn’t hear the rest. Because it wasn’t Seth I was thinking about.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It was never going to be over. Ever. The pain would just go on and on and on because there would always be one more thing to tear open the healed places. One more thing to make the next wound deeper and bloodier and more debilitating than the one before.

  I sat curled into a tight ball in the window seat after Evelyn left and tried to keep that last thing from digging into me, but I couldn’t stop it. And as it opened me up again, I felt all of the things.

  My first glimpse of the black-maned woman on Seth’s computer screen and the sound of his moans.

  The promise shattered by my next look, the abusive horror I found on the new, supposedly innocent hard drive.

  The lonely shame of keeping the secret. Randi’s accusations. Paul’s insinuations. Evelyn’s revelation.

  My brother’s withdrawal.

  And then Seth’s suicide attempt and more secrets and the life-ripping newspaper article by someone who hated him.

  Seth was abused. Seth was fired. Seth was broke. Seth was broken. My poor Seth.

  That Seth I could understand and forgive and love and maybe trust again when he found his true self.

  But now? Now with this new, heinous, too-real vision of him in my head, watching a girl he knew, if Evelyn was to be believed. Wendy—the girl I admired and respected and learned from—who took care of me and . . .

  Who had suddenly pulled herself away from me.

  I raised my head and stared out at the park without seeing it. In my own reflection in the window I could almost find Wendy beside me.

  “When did it start?” I whispered to her.

  When you overheard me tell the Watch about my porn-addicted fiancé?

  Surely when you heard about the article in the paper. Yes, then.

  But why did you run away from the Piebald? Why did you start believing you couldn’t come back?

  I put my fist to my mouth and closed my eyes. I knew. I knew it was just yesterday, when she came to work and saw me there with Seth.

  Bile rose in my throat. It doesn’t mean anything, he’d said to me, again and again. Wendy isn’t doing it to me, I told Lexi.

  I couldn’t sit there any longer. I paced the room, kicking shoes and pillows and discarded clothes out of my way as I tried to clear some kind of path in my mind. But every one led to a dead end.

  Could I ever, ever have a new vision with Seth after this?

  Ever have a vision with anyone? After I’d experienced thrusts that cut so deep I couldn’t breathe?

  Ever take a step without falling over someone dragging this heinous thing behind them? Alyssa. Jacqueline. Wendy. Seth. Ned.

  I collapsed onto the floor next to my bed and rocked. Screams died in my throat as desperate croaks. “Oh, God! Help me! Help us!”

  I couldn’t remember the rest of the psalm and I wanted to. I reached for it in my soul where I’d tucked it away with Ned’s voice.

  Ned’s voice. Find out what’s true about you. Then you can reach out—

  I pulled myself abruptly from the floor and paced again. This—this thing was not what was true about me. It was a sick thing that had gotten stuck to me when I was busy trying to build a life. Same for Seth. Same for all of us.

  Including Wendy.

  I tore across the room and snatched my cell phone from my dresser. My hand might get bitten, but I couldn’t just stay here and let this agony go on. My hands shook as I poked at the screen. Lexi answered right away, but her voice was thick with sleep.

  “Tara?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where does Wendy come out of the club when she gets off work?”

  “There’s a door on the side that opens out to the alley. Why?”

  “What time?”

  “Huh?”

  “What time?”

  “About one thirty, usually. Tara, what is going on?”

  I pulled the phone out to look at the time. One ten. I could get there.

  “Lex, can I come to your place, say, before two o’clock?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  I hung up while she was still asking questions.

  None of my midnight promenades in the historic district could compare in darkness and desolation to the trek I took down Montgomery Street at 1:25 a.m. The sidewalks were empty, except for the one couple who spewed from the door of a bar on the corner as if they’d been hurled through a Roman vomitorium.

  All the noise and fear came from inside the handful of clubs I passed, which vibrated with music like gangsta cars. Their doors were mostly open but I tried not to look in. The smell of liquor and sweat and sex painted all the picture I could handle.

  I was close to vomiting myself as I took a deep breath and turned into the brick-paved alley that ran beside the club where Wendy worked. Garbage cans overflowing with empty beer cases and reeking like retch lined the outside wall until the side entrance interrupted them. Three cement steps led sideways to a thick metal door marked Personnel Only.

  I had no intention of disobeying that edict. I wrapped my jean jacket tighter, even though the February night was humid and almost warm, and prayed for Wendy to come out alone. And soon. I didn’t let myself even think about what my father would say about this. If he said I was stupid, he’d be right.
I probably should have told somebody besides Lexi. But who?

  The door opened and I took a step out of the shadow of the nearest trash can. A man stepped out, dressed in a sheened jacket with the collar up to his ears.

  I turned away and pressed my cell phone to my ear. “You’d better be here in fifteen seconds!” I said, so loudly only an imbecile would have believed I was actually talking to someone.

  I kept my head down and pretended to be listening intently. The man’s footsteps echoed in the alley as he came lightly down the steps. They paused near me. I died several deaths. When he moved on, I waited until his footfalls faded onto Montgomery Street before I sagged against the garbage can. My insides were the exact consistency of one of my mother’s congealed salads.

  Knowing I wouldn’t be able to pull that off again—as if I’d actually pulled it off then—I stuffed my phone in my jacket pocket and went up the steps. My hand was poised to bang on the metal door when it opened, nearly knocking me back into the railing. Wendy came out.

  If I hadn’t seen her in the video, I might not have recognized her at first. The violet eyes wore so many layers of smoky shadow she seemed barely able to operate her lids, and the perfect white teeth were whiter yet against the thick lacquer of red lipstick. Her hair fell over her shoulders and sparkled with glitter that was more menacing than pretty. But one thing I did recognize because I had seen it in the mirror too. The moment she registered that it was me, her face was shrouded in shame.

  She tried to recover and head for the steps, but I stood in front of her.

  “Don’t run away from me, Wendy. I know everything and I just need to talk to you. That’s all.”

  The words came out in a rush because I knew I only had as long as it would take for that to sink in before she bolted. I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me down the steps and up the alley.

  “Tara—what are you doing? Let go!”

  She tried to wrench away and I held on, but I knew she was ultimately stronger than me. I got us as far as Montgomery Street and then I released her and put my arm around her shoulders and headed toward Lexi’s apartment building.

  “Walk with me, please,” I said.