Tim doesn’t offer me any apologies, recriminations, or excuses. He doesn’t tell me what I know already, that I have to clean up the mess by myself. He doesn’t even say goodbye. He turns, walks over the pile of wood and glass and tar, and disappears into the woods behind our house.
FORTY
The real sun shines bright and hot. It has some bite to it. Spring has become summer. I guess there was a tomorrow after all. Fancy that.
Ellen and I are in the bungalow’s backyard. It’s my first time in Osterville since I was allowed back into my apartment and office just over a week ago.
Ellen cooks chicken and hot dogs on the small charcoal grill, the grill from the old shed. I think it’s the only piece of the lost treasure she kept. The shed is long gone and she hasn’t put up a new one. Landscapers spread topsoil and planted grass over the site. Grass grows, but the footprint of the shed is still visible. It’s the back-yard’s scar.
Ellen wears black gym shorts that go past her knees and a green sleeveless T-shirt that’s too small. She has a cigarette in one hand, spatula in the other.
She says, “The hot dogs will be ready first.” It might be the longest sentence offered to me since arriving at the bungalow.
“Great. I’m starving.” A cigarette rolls over my teeth. I’m sitting on a chaise longue, protected by the shade of the house while I wrestle with a newspaper. There are cigarette ashes in my coffee cup. I don’t mind.
Almost four full months have passed since the night of the fire in my apartment. Newspaper articles and TV exposés about the DA and the repercussions of my case are still almost a daily occurrence. Today’s page 2 of the Boston Globe details the complexities associated with the planned exhumation of the body from the foundation of the South Shore Plaza’s parking garage.
We know her name now too. Kelly Bishop. An octogenarian aunt, her only living relative, recognized Kelly in the photos, but very little is known or has been reported about Kelly’s life. Other than the photos and film, the evidence of their shared time, no further link between Kelly and the boys from Southie has been unearthed.
I don’t think the DA was lying to me when he said they didn’t know who she was. She was already an anonymous victim, which is why the press drops her story and sticks with the headliners, the DA and his daughter. Kelly’s story is too sad and all too real. No glamour or intrigue in the death of the unwanted and anonymous. I remember her name, though, and I’ll make it a point not to forget.
I flip through the paper. There’s a bit about Jennifer Times in the entertainment section.
I say, “Looks like somebody is cashing in, and it isn’t me.”
Ellen gives me a hot dog and bun, no ketchup or mustard. She says, “Who are you talking about?”
I say, “Jennifer Times is forging an alternate path back to celebrity land. She’s due to be interviewed on national TV again. Tonight and prime time. She has plans to announce that a book and a CD are in the works.”
Ellen shrugs, finishes her cigarette, and grinds it under her heel. Her heel means business. It’s the exclamation point on the months of stilted conversations and awkward silences. I probably shouldn’t be mentioning Times around her. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about that.
Then Ellen hits me with a knockout punch. She says, “I saw Tim with her.”
I drop the hot dog and ash-filled coffee cup to the grass. I say, “Who?” but I know the answer.
Ellen says, “Kelly Bishop.”
I struggle out of the chaise longue. I need to stand and pace or run away. I need to do something with the adrenaline dump into my system. I’m still in the shade but everything is hot again. I repeat what Ellen said, just to get the facts straight like a good detective should. “You saw Kelly with Tim.”
Ellen opens the grill’s lid, and gray smoke escapes and makes a run for it. She crosses her arms, knotting them into a life jacket. Then she takes off her glasses and hides her eyes. I might not be able to find them.
She says, “It was early evening, and it was already dark. I was leaving Harbor Point to meet my friends on Carson Beach. I’d stolen a quarter bottle of gin from the top of our refrigerator. I got busted later, when I came home drunk.
“I was fourteen. I remember running down the front steps, hiding the bottle in my fat winter coat even though it was summer. I was so proud of myself and thought I was so smart. Well, there was Tim and the girl, arm in arm, walking through the parking lot. He was holding her up, really. She was obviously drunk or high and couldn’t walk. I had no idea who she was. She was so skinny and pale.
“Tim said, ‘Hey, Ellen.’ Then he smiled. It wasn’t a good smile. It was a smile I used to get from the boys who snapped my bra strap or grabbed my ass when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t say anything back to him. That Kelly looked at me but she couldn’t focus. She giggled and rested her head on Tim’s shoulder. Then they just stumbled away, into the building.
“I invited you down today to tell you this, Mark.” Ellen closes the lid on the grill and the smoke goes back into hiding.
I don’t know what to think, but I’m angry. I probably shouldn’t be. “Why didn’t you tell anybody else?”
“I told the police. I told them as soon as I saw the pictures of her. I just didn’t tell you.”
My anger evaporates instantly and leaves only sadness. Sadness for us and for everything. The truth is sadness. I walk over toward Ellen and the grill and say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ellen isn’t hiding her eyes anymore. I get the double barrel. “You kept that case a secret from me. You kept everything he did from me.”
“I told you everything I knew once I’d solved the case.”
“Only because you had to, Mark. Would you have told me anything if you managed to solve your case without destroying the shed and setting my building on fire?”
I take off my hat and scratch my head. “Yeah, Ellen. Of course I would’ve told you.”
Ellen turns away and opens the grill again. The chicken hisses and steams. It’s done. She plucks the meat off the grill with tongs, then dumps on the barbecue sauce. She says, “I know, Mark. I’m sorry. I’m not being fair. But I’m still so angry. I wish you’d told me about what was going on earlier.”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I knew exactly what had happened. There was no guarantee I was going to figure it all out. Giving you the bits and pieces and then living with the doubt would’ve been worse.”
Ellen breathes in sharp, ready to go on offense again, but then she exhales slowly and shakes her head. She says, “I’ve tried telling myself that it wasn’t Kelly I saw with Tim that night. Maybe I’m just putting that face from those pictures onto someone else’s body. It’s possible, right?” She pauses and fiddles with the burner knobs. “I do know that just a few days after I saw him with that girl, Tim stopped hanging around with Times and Sullivan and started chasing after me. He was a different kid. He wasn’t obnoxious and loud and cocky like the rest of them. He got real quiet, listened way more than he talked. At the time, I thought it was because of some puppy-love crush he had on me. Jesus Christ, I thought he was acting like that because of me. Ridiculous, right?”
Ellen talks just above a whisper but waves the spatula over her head and scrapes the blue sky. “Now, I don’t know what to think. Did he only start pursuing me and dating me because of what happened, because of what he did? Was he using me to hide his guilt, to try and somehow make up for that night, to try and become some person that he wasn’t? What do you think, Mark? I want to know. I have to know. Can you answer any of those questions for me, Mr. Private Detective?”
I could tell her that maybe it was her and that she somehow saved Tim, redeemed him. But she knows the truth; I can’t answer any of those questions. No one can. I don’t even try.
I say, “I’m sorry, Ellen,” and I give her a hug. She accepts it grudgingly. It’s the best I can do.
Ellen releases me quick. “Let’s eat before the flies and yellow
jackets find us.”
So we sit outside, next to each other on adjacent chaise longues, and eat our barbecued chicken and hot dogs. We don’t talk because we don’t know what to say anymore. When we finish eating we each smoke a cigarette. The filters are pinched tight between our fingers. We’re afraid to let go.
Eventually, I get up and say, “Thanks for dinner, Ellen. It was great. I’m getting tired. Should probably move around a bit or I’m gonna go out.” I get up and gather the dirty dishes and makeshift ashtrays.
Ellen says, “Thank you, Mark.” She doesn’t look up at me. She starts in on another cigarette and stares out to where the shed used to be, to where the grass isn’t growing fast enough.
I say, “You’re welcome.”
I walk through the back door, dump the dishes in the sink, then mosey down the hallway and into the living room. I dock myself on the couch as the murk and fatigue come rolling in.
My eyelids are as heavy and thick as Dostoyevsky novels and my world is getting dim again, but I see all the black-and-white pictures are still on the walls. Ellen hasn’t taken any of them down. Not a one. Maybe it means that, despite everything, Ellen is determined not to forget, determined to keep her collected memories exactly where they were before, determined to fight against her very own version of the little sleep.
I don’t think she’ll succeed, but I admire the effort.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are so many people who need proper thanks that I won’t be able to thank them all, but I’ll give it a try. If I’ve forgotten anyone, it wasn’t intentional and mea culpa.
Gargantuan thanks to Lisa, Cole, Emma, Rascal, Kathleen M., Paul N. T., Erin, Dan, Jennifer, the Carroll and Genevich clan, and to the rest of my family and friends for their love and support and for putting up with my panics, mood swings, and egotistical ramblings. Special acknowledgment to Michael, Rob, and Mary (along with the tireless and wonderful Lisa and Dad) for acting enthusiastically as my first readers way back when I wrote just awful, terrible stuff.
Giant, sloppy, and unending thanks and admiration to Poppy Z. “I love Steve Nash, really” Brite, Steve “Big Brother” Eller, and Stewart “Don’t hate me because I root for the Raiders” O’Nan. They have been and continue to be invaluable mentors, supporters, and friends. I will never be able to thank them enough.
Big, aw-shucks, punch-you-in-the-shoulder thanks to the following who have shared their talent and helped me along the way: assorted Arrows, Laird “Imago” Barron, Mairi “seismic” Beacon, Hannah Wolf “da Bulls” Bowen, Michael “The Kid” Cisco, Brett “They call me F” Cox, JoAnn “He’s not related to me” Cox, Ellen “Owned by cats” Datlow, dgk “kelly” goldberg (you are missed), Jack “I know Chandler better than you” Haringa, John “Don’t call me Paul” Harvey, and the rest of the Providence critique crew, Brian “bah” Hopkins, Nick “I hate TV” Kaufmann, Mike “Blame Canada” Kelly, Dan “Samurai” Keohane, Greg “Hardest working man in horrah” Lamberson, John “Purple flower” Langan, Sarah “He’s not related to me” Langan, Seth “I’m taller than you” Lindberg, Simon “IO” Logan, Louis “A guy called me Louie . . . once” Maistros and his family, Nick “nihilistic kid” Mamatas, Dallas “They call me . . .” Mayr, Sandra “I can whup Chuck Norris” McDonald, Kris “Mudd” Meyer, Kurt “Fig” Newton, Brett “el Presidente” Savory, Kathy “I played Mafia before you” Sedia, Jeffrey and Scott “But not Kristen” Thomas, M. “Not related to them” Thomas, and Sean “Cower as I crush you” Wallace.
Special thanks to my agent, Stephen “They’re coming to get you” Barbara, who understands my work and tolerates my occasional tantrums and delusions.
More special thanks to the entire Henry Holt team, and especially to Sarah “The Dark” Knight for her thousand-watt enthusiasm and for believing in The Little Sleep and in Mark Genevich.
Thanks to (give yourself a nickname) for reading The Little Sleep. Now, go tell your friends and neighbors or blog about it. Blogging would be good.
Cheers!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL TREMBLAY was born in Aurora, Colorado, but raised in Massachusetts. He graduated from Providence College in 1993, and then the University of Vermont in 1995, earning a master’s degree in mathematics. During those college and postgrad years he spent his summers working at the Parker Brothers factory in Salem, Massachusetts, unloading tractor trailers, driving the occasional forklift, manning the Monopoly and Ouija board assembly lines, and once beta testing a Nintendo game. After graduation, Paul taught high school mathematics and coached junior varsity basketball at a private school outside of Boston.
He has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: The Year’s Best 2007. He is the author of the short speculative fiction collection Compositions for the Young and Old and the hard-boiled/dark fantasy novella City Pier: Above and Below. He is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist and a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards. The Little Sleep is his first novel.
Other fun facts: Paul once gained three inches of height in a single twelve-hour period, and he does not have a uvula. He is an insufferable Boston sports fan, and can shoot the three. He enjoys reading The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher aloud in a faux British accent to his children. He plays the guitar adequately, mainly Bob Mould and Ramones tunes. He once purposefully ate a student’s homework assignment. Paul still lives in Massachusetts with his wife, two children, a hairy dog, and a soggy basement. www.paultremblay.net
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