The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  She becomes more like her mother by the minute.

  What does he see, anyway, of interest? Is it the house? Wood siding scored to look like stone blocks. A mansard roof. Can he see all the way inside, the grisaille wallpaper that her father had preserved? None of that explains the phone.

  Among her students, even the littlest ones have phones. They yank them out as soon as the lesson ends—when it used to be the rectangle you’d grab after class was a pack of cigarettes.

  She hates at least half of her students, their reeking expertise. The previous week a ten-year-old, thoroughly overparented, threatened to quit because there was nothing, she’d said, that Mrs. Toussaint could teach her about the piano that wasn’t on the internet. So that night Suzanne went to the web, and the girl was right—and if only the little twat would disconnect her umbilical cord from Mommy and plug it into her computer, maybe she’d finally learn the Mahler theme.

  She crushes the drapes. A second later the doorbell rings. The nerve of this man! She shouts, “What do you want?” and flings open the door.

  Dr. Margaret Gould, with a foil-wrapped pie dish.

  Behind her the man in the car adjusts his camera.

  “Maggie,” Suzanne says, out of breath. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “It’s fine. You must be under so much stress.”

  “Thank you. It’s an off day.”

  “So that’s sort of why I’m here. The other day. In the store.” Her eyes crinkle. “I want to apologize. I wasn’t myself. I just feel so badly for you, and your family.”

  “It’s fine. It’s really nothing.”

  “No, it’s much bigger than that, we both know that.”

  Her tone makes Suzanne pause, open her eyes just a little bit wider. The doctor’s black jeans are pressed. Dirt-free tennis shoes. The pie was likely purchased, rewrapped to appear homemade. But the eyes shine, a most minuscule glimmer.

  The fact that Suzanne is only a little buzzed makes her judgments order themselves with a certain predetermination toward aesthetics. Where refined suggests calculated, and calculated becomes cold.

  But cold is Suzanne Toussaint’s starting place.

  “Maggie, can I help you with something?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” says the doctor. “I just feel awful.”

  “You said that.”

  When has she ever not lived almost completely inside her head?

  “I want to help,” the doctor says. “Help you. If you’ll let me.”

  “You want to help me.”

  “I’m sorry, but I thought,” the doctor says, a little breathlessly, “considering recent events, what’s happened, Suzanne, if you want to resume our sessions—I would be so happy. Sliding scale. Let’s not worry about that right now. I want to be here for you.” Breathing quietly, Suzanne thinks, like a cat. “There’s going to be a lot of hurt. In what your family’s going through. But, if I can: Let it happen. Let it take you places. That’s what I want to help you do.”

  There are a million ways to hate a woman, but how many to dislike your former therapist?

  Dr. Gould had been wild for two things: Zen breathing and confessional truth. The first was easier to explain, regarding benefits. Truth turned out to be more complicated. In Dr. Gould’s office, truth was the raw stuff that provided pages for “Personally True,” which was the title of her work in progress, also a chapter title in the book proposal she’d shown Suzanne during what would become their final session—a technique of her own devising, she’d claimed, of redrafting one’s story, how to reconstruct one’s life so far to become whatever shape that one preferred, around so-called personal truths, numbers one through infinity. So Daddy wasn’t the Ferrari of assholes, he was conceited. Those libidinal feelings toward Mother weren’t real, they were symptomatic of a person type with too much love to give. And so on. Whether something was “true” in the frightful real world mattered less than if it was subjectively appealing, “personally true,” the way one preferred one’s history—leave alone other schools of analysis, leave alone the carefree child you must once have been, leave alone the parents who used the child for their own social purposes.

  And Suzanne figured it all for so much certain horseshit right away, the kind that kept a billion therapists in business—people’s never-ending thirst to be comforted, to be the center of a universe, neon-lit against the great black wall of outer space, or even just a small office in a shopping complex—and maybe she’d said as much, even insultingly? Because, come on: the idea that repression might become the basis for a healthy life? Was her wheelhouse. But therefore end session, end treatment, commence goodbye.

  The air is thickly humid. Suzanne says quietly to the doctor, “Did you know I grew up with Stephanie Condren?” She closes the front door behind her and steps forward into the doctor’s space. “You know Stephanie, right?”

  “Stephanie Condren?”

  “Our parents were friends. We hang out online these days, if at all, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know Stephanie, of course,” says Maggie.

  “Stephanie is a bitch.” Emphasis on “bitch.” “Last night, she put up a post for anyone to see—I don’t think Stephanie understands privacy settings very well—and there was a link to that story in the Globe. Regarding Nicky. Commenting, Stephanie, that she is stunned that such a thing could happen around here. Not just that, but by a young man she knows personally. Or thought she knew, she writes, considering ‘the things he’s done.’ Not ‘accused of doing.’ ‘Things he’s done.’”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “But then, much later in the thread, which had, I think, somewhere like three or four dozen comments and likes and whatever, then you, Maggie, you chimed in. You said you, too, were surprised. To see him accused. And yet, do we ever really, truly know who our neighbors are? You said. Quoting some shit to that effect. I mean, you couldn’t even say something original.”

  Dr. Gould says nothing for a moment. Both hands grip pie. “You’re angry,” she says. “I don’t blame you. No one blames you for that. With everything that’s going on. Suzanne, you can count on me. If not before, then starting here, right now.”

  Suzanne Toussaint does not slam the door, she merely closes it. Turns around, lowers herself into the couch again, turns the phone off again, and tucks in Suzanne’s extremities, closes Suzanne’s eyes and tries to breathe without rattling Suzanne’s ribs—and can’t help but remember Dr. Gould’s primary instruction, from back in their first days, on how to breathe properly, from the stomach, one breath at a time, to let the body relax, the mind be free.

  * * *

  In their few sessions, before the book proposal was revealed, they’d come up with a list of a dozen truths that in Suzanne’s case were true, verifiably, and not fantasy, and had definitely messed up her life.

    1.   It’s true that Suzanne Toussaint was fundamentally ignored by her beloved daddy, generally cultivated by her mother in her own image, to be an adult as soon as possible—and so, in a way, from birth, she was buried alive in images, examples, rich impressions, and left to find her way out. And thus was she tolerated to smoke cigarettes around the house at age eleven. Pale Mommy in men’s golf shirts, men’s shoes, the same shirts and shoes Suzanne wore, side by side digging in magnificent gardens—her private, unpredictable mother, who used to say things to her like she’d never met a child she actually enjoyed, daughter included.

    2.   True also that Suzanne loved her piano early. She didn’t have superhuman powers, she couldn’t memorize by ear, but she had dexterity, speed—she was always almost too good for her age. Dr. Gould said music possibly had been an attempt to find something to match her parents’ passion for each other?

    3.   Her parents had been a pair so reclusive, so tightly wound, she’d been the odd one out.

    4.   True as well that Suzanne’s parents formed her, ultimately, by dying in her last year at
school. So she quit. Goodbye piano, goodbye practice, goodbye formulaic artistic ambitions, hello Manhattan, Lou Reed, and the Palladium, hello Black Beauties. And goodbye, dreams! Goodbye, the moody little girl who wowed the Marlboro Festival with her physical technique. She got legal voices imposed on her, enough money for a good half decade of meager living—the old family money was long gone, vacuumed by poor decisions, bad investments, Daddy’s pills. She got the house in Claymore, took some smart advice not to sell, and stayed in her crappy, delightfully ramshackle East Village walk-up. So therefore, for a time, she got good in high heels, knew the bouncers and club dealers by name, discovered the pleasure of being lost while feeling found. A class in Semiotics in the afternoon to have something to do, a different path to consider, but mostly it was a life of nighttime smiling, goose bumps, tobacco smoke, red eyes and a million friends, everyone bright and burning, nights that became mornings that became nights.

    5.   And along the way she acquired the will to fuck. And found it true that men do get better with age. At pretty much everything, but sex especially. Men from the bar, men smiling in the street, Hey, what’s your name? She craved transgression, craved distance from her feelings, craved for craving’s sake. At least sex in those days still was something.

    6.   Fact: She once fucked a divorce lawyer on the floor of a steakhouse coatroom, he’d said his topcoat was alpaca.

    7.   And maybe it’s also true that she’d gotten to be a bit of a master, then and still to this day, of telling herself stories that serve her needs.

    8.   True that Suzanne Toussaint returned to Claymore at twenty-six, restored to the old family name and its floundered quarries, to the lumber liquidators and tombstone dealers who’d done plenty of Toussaint business in the past. Late in May, lush mountain greens, ocean waves in grayish navy blue with white epaulets—and it was true that she was full of yearning in that period, even back in New Hampshire, but empty otherwise. She unlocked the mothballed house. She saw the end of existence around every corner. Opened closets of old coats and robes—mere ideas of coats and robes. Cats had moved in and multiplied, the stairs were black with cat shit, the gardens were dead. She was home.

    9.   Truth: One of the first things she remembered, going in through the front door, was how she used to listen to her parents having sex. Through the crack under the door, she’d eavesdrop, lie down on the floor, press the side of her head against the crack so it folded back her upper ear. She loved the chaotic sounds, even if she didn’t know what they meant—only that she wasn’t supposed to enjoy them.

  10.   And it remains true that Suzanne Toussaint counts her misfortunes daily. They give her direction, they are what is certain. And for solid hours those first two weeks back in Claymore she’d been feverishly angry, acutely sad, dressed like a bale of gray wool. She ran into classmates around town, she couldn’t connect. Boys bought her drinks, they wanted to sleep with the girl who’d returned. But she slept with no one—and fuck them. Then, two months later, a large tree branch fell during a thunderstorm, ripped down half of her gutters. She hired a handyman. He came recommended by a neighbor as effective, cheap, and nice to be around, not bad looking. With a cross around his neck and a knack for conversation. Nicholas something.

  11.   It is true that to be left behind is an act requiring more than one party.

  12.   Her least favorite truth, to be viewed from behind a veil, is the reason that she’d finally gone to see a professional—that a woman abandoned, at least “a woman” like her, becomes a fanatic. Arms encircling an absent neck. That when a woman marries a man, and the man bucks convention and takes her name, then leaves one day and takes her name with him—she’ll think of him every time her name is pronounced. And will become a woman to pick up the phone and press no buttons. To carry around the remains of her marriage in her hands, and see ghosts in the street, and say the wrong thing to liquor store cashiers—she’ll say he’s dead, Nick’s dead, he was killed in Boston, murdered in the street, shot in the gut.

  Is it possible, ever in this life, to pull back fired bullets? She puts up her long hair and lights a cigarette. “I said go away,” she yells out the window, to the man in the car. Who’s probably a therapy victim, too. She struggles to find her drink, she drinks crookedly. If the whole world’s in therapy, maybe the cameraman also sees an analyst. Then again, if everyone’s in therapy, don’t everyone’s issues become everyone else’s issues? She smiles and bites an ice cube. Her eyes close. Ever since she was a little girl, whenever she smiles, her eyes close automatically. Her husband once asked, “Did you know you do that?” Implying on the nose—he only knew one way—that she’s afraid of happiness, she doesn’t like to see it.

  On the side table is a photograph of little Nicky. Even fixed in time, he shivers, after a swim in the ocean. She wants to dive into the picture and rub warmth into his skinny little arms.

  There’s a noise outside. A car parks. She looks out the window. Whoever it is, the cameraman is compelled to drive away. And from the new car comes a child, her next student, strutting up the walk as her father jumps out of the car. The girl forgot her lesson book. The father hugs her tightly.

  Suzanne struggles up to answer the door.

  She wants her strength back.

  She wants her son back.

  * * *

  Three days after he’d met the girl up at Whitehall, a cold rain fell on Claymore and Nick was pissed. Usually people loved ordering pizza in bad weather. It was good for tips: customers felt bad for dragging you out in the rain. But for some reason he was getting shafted left and right. On top of that, for three days, he hadn’t had anything to do except worry. He’d never participated in anything so weird. He didn’t know what was happening with the girl, the stupid letter he’d written. All his frustration came right to the skin. He snarled at a customer who didn’t even tip a dollar.

  Then the skunk sent a reply. Not actual correspondence, but a directive via text, that “Junior” should meet them, if man enough, that evening around eleven down at Little Horse, and bring beer, or Smirnoff and Snapples, Diet Peach, no Red Bull, they weren’t sluts.

  He raced home, parked, grabbed a six-pack from the garage, crossed the house on his way out through the living room, and found his mom drunk in one of the window seats, wrapped in a wool blanket, peering at him steadily from under black, heavy eyelids, with a grimacing face.

  Suzanne had never been like other kids’ moms. He was old enough to begin to see her for what she was. First of all, she wasn’t like anybody else he’d ever met. More stuck-up, for one thing. Opinionated, spontaneous. She liked to light a fire in the fireplace in July. On multiple occasions she’d slept in until three in the afternoon, stayed up until sunrise playing piano. Addicted to television, and also probably the smartest person he knew, and among the weirdest. Which was odd to say about your own mom. One day in a silk gown, the next in jean cutoffs. She was beautiful, he knew that. She had a closet full of party clothes she never wore, short dresses and high-heeled shoes. His friend Typically used to stop by just to flirt. One time she made him explain what a MILF was, while Nick stood by gagging. But she was also weirdly childish sometimes for an adult. There’d be an onslaught of neediness, of persistent questioning, clawing desperation. When his dad walked out, it didn’t help.

  More than once someone asked him if his mom had a brain injury, due to the stuff that came out of her mouth. Of course he loved her. Typically was in a similar boat. His dad had remarried and took off for Alaska, he’d explained the psychology of mama’s boys several times. But that autumn Nick honestly couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Suzanne anymore. Her drinking was over-the-top. He’d tried to get her to quit, but she refused, she made excuses, she was always her best co-conspirator. Twice in a six-week period, he found her passed out with a cigarette burning between her fingers. Once it singed a hole through her sweater, like a volcano in the middle of her chest.<
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  Nick didn’t pay rent, but he paid rent.

  That night, he announced, “I’m going out.” He was halfway across the room when she said, “That’s my beer.”

  “I’ll get more.”

  “We drink and drive. We never surprise.”

  “I’m going out.”

  “You make it sound like a job.”

  “Okay, thanks, Mom.”

  “Where’s my goodbye?” he heard from the porch.

  Little Horse was a blank inlet where the cove met the ocean. People called it Little Horse because the inlet was shaped like a horse’s head. But there really wasn’t anything there, no reason to go. The beach was normally deserted, that’s why kids liked it. From the house he drove up Jefferson, past the courthouse, the red mulberry trees, the Victorians, then out to the beach, the boardwalk. Personally he liked it better over there, the town’s other cheek, the seedier streets, all the acne of amusement parks, the Sundial, the pulsating go-kart track, the dive bars wrapped in Budweiser banners, the bars that his dad used to love.

  Another minute and he turned off, where in a bend was a sandy parking area. The ocean glittered. Someone had left the pier light on, otherwise the beach was dark. His car smelled of sausage pizza. He rolled down the windows to let the breeze clean it out. Five to eleven. Too early. His nerves were on high fizz.

  He thought about the girl, Emily Portis. All day, he’d tried to remember her accurately. What if he exaggerated her? Maybe she’s dumb as bricks. Or maybe she didn’t like him, not a loser like him. The dropout. The burnout. Probably she didn’t remember him at all. Or she pitied him for the limp, that’s why she’d asked to hold his hand, the way you console a kid in the hospital.

  He rolled up the windows and got out. Spat on the ground between his feet. Walked twenty feet down the sand. No sign of anybody. He waited angrily, optimistically, pessimistically. Maybe it was all just a stupid joke. Why did he think she’d like him anyway? The cold reality of the situation sank in fast. He humped, shivering, back to the Explorer and sent a text to Typically.