by Jessica Pack
Her tone was cautious, but not sympathetic. He narrowed his eyes. “No, I’m not working. I’m not gonna pack up that woman’s shit so she can go on with her life like nothin’ ever happened. That whole thing ruined me, Cherie. Ruined me!”
“I know, baby, but we need this job.” She pushed off the wall and walked toward him. “Let’s go in the living room and talk about it.” She put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off. What she really wanted was for him to put down the beer and he wasn’t about to fall for it.
“I don’t need to go into the living room to talk about it.” His voice was getting louder as the adrenaline rose. He wanted a brawl—anything to release the pressure in his chest.
“Tony, stop,” she said when he paused to take another swig of beer. Her voice was still calm and soft, which pissed him off even more. “The neighbors are gonna hear.”
“I don’t care if they hear!” Tony yelled, spreading his arms out. “I don’t care if the whole world knows what that bastard did. You know how many lives he screwed up that day?”
“I know, baby. But—”
“But nothin’!” The cops had been called twice before when their arguments had gotten too heated. But they hadn’t arrested Tony either time—Cherie was the one who left scratches on his face. In fact, he hoped the neighbors did hear him. He hoped they pounded on the door so he could get right up in their faces and tell them all the reasons why they could go to hell. He had gone to school with Claire and Valerie. He’d had math with Claire and his friend, Kayden, had made out with her once in the science hall. And then, just like that, Mallorie took out Claire and Valerie was all messed up and then, bam, she hanged herself. Killed herself at fifteen years old! That kind of stuff screwed with a guy’s head, and there wasn’t anyone who could argue with him about that, though he’d love for them to try. He had a whole list of ways life had screwed him over, but Claire and Valerie were the great-big-horrible thing no one could pat him on the head about. And it was all on Mallorie. Everything was on him. Tony was another one of the victims, and he deserved consideration for that. He deserved some sympathy, especially when he stood in the same room as that animal’s mother! She was right there, looking all nervous and uncomfortable. Ha! He wished he’d told her a thing or two when he’d stood in her spick-and-span living room.
Cherie’s hand was on his arm again. “Tony, you have got to calm down,” she said. “I know that was so hard for you, but let’s talk, not scream about it. We can’t keep doing this.” If not for the frustration in her tone, he might have listened. But she had no right—no right—to tell him how to feel about this. She didn’t know Claire. She hadn’t even lived in Sioux Falls when the shooting happened. She didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
“You’d better back off, woman,” Tony said, glaring at her and clenching his jaw. “You ain’t got any idea what I’ve been through.”
“It was four years ago,” she said, all sympathy suddenly gone. Her dark skin looked even darker, which happened when she was mad. Who was she to be mad at him? “And if you ask me, you’re just using it as one more excuse to be a jerk. You barely knew her and—”
He slapped her before he’d even thought about doing it, and she stumbled back against the wall, then slid down it. “Oh please,” he said, hiding his surprise at what he’d done, but not necessarily feeling bad about it. He took another swig of his beer. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
She looked up at him, the whites of her eyes stark against the black of her skin. “You said you’d never do that again.”
“And you said you’d never act like this again!” he said, raising his arms and walking toward her. She cowered against the wall and he relished the feeling of power. “I’ve told you not to talk to me that way, Cherie, and it ain’t my fault if you refuse to listen. Those girls died because of Mallorie, and they expected me to move her hoity-toity dining room set! Tomorrow I’m going into the office and I’m gonna kick up such a storm they won’t—”
There was a knock at the door. Cherie looked at it with hopeful eyes. Tony threw his can of beer at her and stomped to the door. “Bring it on!” Tony yelled as he reached the door and pulled it open. A cop threw him to the ground before Tony could even register who was at the door. Tony went down swingin’.
9
Amanda
Nine hours, six minutes
Amanda knelt back in front of the box she’d been working through and moved faster than she had before, relying on the categorical decisions rather than pondering individual items—there was no time to be indulgent. She emptied the box quickly, most of the contents going in the trash. The final box was from Home Depot rather than one of the cartons she’d purchased from Walmart last month. It was older, more ragged and aged, and she’d left it for last on purpose. Unlike the boxes she’d been filling with odds and ends for months as she took apart the household, she’d found this box in the corner of Robbie’s closet—he had filled it himself years ago. Amanda was in her robotic mode of packing and decluttering at the time she found the box and wouldn’t allow herself the distraction of going through it then. Plus, it had frightened her—a time capsule that might create some kind of emotional explosion upon opening.
Now she couldn’t imagine why she’d waited until she was under deadline and had strangers in her house. She’d added more tension to the moment, not less, and the panicky feelings she’d been trying to keep at bay increased. Maybe she’d waited because she knew that right now she’d be backed into a corner with her old life making up one angle and her new life making up the other. She had to empty this box in order to choose the future over the past. Or something metaphorical like that.
Amanda pulled back the cardboard flaps and easily discarded the old Nintendo Game Boy and a dead MP3 player—both of them too outdated to be of value to anyone. There was a cigarette lighter from a local restaurant they used to go to—Robbie said their chicken fried steak was almost as good as hers—and a bouquet of heart-shaped suckers she’d given him for Valentine’s Day. She threw it all away. There was a golf towel in the box—she had no idea why Robbie had that—and a pair of soccer socks that had been his good-luck charm even though his community rec team had lost every game they played. They still smelled. She wrinkled her nose and tossed them in the trash box. There was a small teddy bear and a rubber snake he’d won at the Fun Plex. Hadn’t he won the snake during the summer following his sophomore year? If she could figure that out she might be able to pinpoint when he’d packed this box. She’d been in the final throes of her master’s degree that summer and it was his first year on that landscaping crew. She’d been so glad he had something to do so she could focus on her schoolwork. Robbie had spent time with new friends she didn’t know and made plans without telling her beforehand. Toward the middle of the summer she decided to get him a cell phone. Good parents kept track of their kids. He’d agreed and then had done better at checking in with her. Problem solved. Good mother crown in place. Teenage boy properly managed.
That was the same summer Dwight had stayed in Sioux Falls for the week following Melissa’s graduation. He’d taken Robbie fishing that first day. Part of her had hoped Robbie wouldn’t have a good time; he’d come home all smiles. “Dad’s been sober for six months,” Robbie had said. He pulled a green coin from his pocket. “He gave me one of his ninety-day sobriety tokens and told me how sorry he was for all the bad stuff. He wants to give the other one to Melissa when they go to dinner tomorrow night.”
Amanda had smiled and commented how great it was, but she burned eggs later that night to give her the excuse to scrub the burnt-on crud from the pan. Dwight had never apologized to her for all the “bad stuff,” but now he could come back four years later and act like father of the year? If Dwight’s sobriety resulted in his being more present in Robbie and Melissa’s lives, she wasn’t sure she could handle that. She and the kids had reestablished their family dynamics without him and she was anxious about having to make space now that he decided he was ready.
Would he ask the kids to come to Pennsylvania for the summer? Would they go?
She needn’t have stressed. Dwight stayed in Sioux Falls for the week, took the kids clothes shopping, which Amanda grudgingly appreciated, then went back to his wife and his job and his AA meetings. By the time Robbie graduated from high school two years later, Dwight said he wasn’t able to get away—he’d just started a new job, he’d said. Amanda was pretty sure he was off the wagon and her wicked heart had been a little bit happy about it. “It’s fine,” Robbie had said, waving it off. “No big deal.”
The month after Robbie graduated, Amanda got an official letter from the courts confirming that she would no longer receive child support payments—they’d already been decreased when Melissa had finished high school. Now Dwight had no financial obligation to his children whatsoever. And with those monthly checks went most of the contact. Melissa had confided her hurt a week before her wedding, when Dwight had e-mailed to say he couldn’t make it, but he’d send a check—his generous two hundred dollars was almost enough to cover the cost of the cake. “How can he just dump us over and over and over again? How can he turn away so completely?” Amanda hadn’t known what to say, but felt terrible for all the times she’d been glad she didn’t have to make room for him. She’d held her daughter and let her cry. If Dwight hadn’t been three states away that night, Amanda might have driven to his house and lit it on fire. And yet, she’d felt as though she’d done a pretty good job on her own. Until Robbie shot up a mall and killed nine people six months later. Maybe if she and Dwight had made things work, Robbie wouldn’t have done what he did. Maybe if she’d insisted Dwight remain better connected to his children, things would have been different.
The green sobriety chip Dwight had given Robbie all those years ago hadn’t been among Robbie’s keepsakes—nothing in these boxes reflected Dwight at all.
Amanda sorted through game pieces and household items like fingernail clippers and paperclips—what was the organizational method behind these contents? It looked as though Robbie had just pushed everything off his dresser into the box, then put it in the closet. Maybe on a day she’d insisted he clean his room before he could hang out with friends. She wished she’d thought to ask him about the box during that last visit on Monday. A twist of her stomach accompanied the realization that she would never be able to ask him anything again.
At the bottom of the cardboard box was a small wooden one—six inches wide and maybe ten inches long. Mr. Rider, the shop teacher, had his students make their own gender-neutral treasure box—everyone else called them jewelry boxes—as a midterm project. Amanda had forgotten that Robbie had taken wood shop, and now she brushed her hand across the smoothly sanded top. It wasn’t varnished, just stained, and didn’t reflect any great skill. Still, the skinny blond kid from that cross-country picture had made it with his own hands, which were now limp and cold. Or maybe those hands had already been sent to the crematorium; she hadn’t focused on the specifics of what would happen to Robbie’s body after the poison had done its job of stopping his heart and lungs. She knew he’d be stripped naked, put in a large cardboard box, which would be put on a metal tray, and shoved into an oven. She closed her eyes against the images conjured in her mind and forced herself to take a breath. She would pick up the urn with Robbie’s ashes at a funeral home in Cincinnati. She didn’t know what she’d do with them after that. Would he be happy on her mantel?
She set the jewelry box aside and pulled out a small spiral notebook from the Home Depot box. The words Robbie Mallorie’s Leaf Journal were written in sloppy handwriting across the front. Amanda smiled, another memory coming clearly to her mind.
“I found number thirty-three!” Robbie had said one day after school while Amanda corrected papers at the kitchen table. All the seventh graders collected leaves and used Scotch tape—clear, not frosted—to “laminate” the leaves onto individual pages of a composition notebook. Each page was labeled with the common name, scientific name, family, and genus of the tree from which the leaf came. The students got one point for each completed page, with ten pages being the minimum but no limit. Mrs. Web had told Robbie’s class that the record was thirty-two different leaves. Robbie was determined to get thirty-three and spent hours wandering the neighborhoods around their home in search of leaves from trees not already in his book.
“This man saw me looking at trees and asked me what I was doing,” Robbie had gone on to explain on that way-back afternoon. “I showed him my book and he took me to his backyard.” Amanda had gripped her pen tight at the thought of a strange man inviting Robbie into his yard. “And he had a pygmy Japanese maple tree—it’s little, not like a regular maple.” He turned some pages to show her a regular maple tree; a red maple—Acer rubrum. The maple leaf was almost too big for the page. Robbie then flipped back to the last page in his book, where a smaller, delicate-looking maple leaf the color of orange sherbet was taped in. “The leaves start out pink and then turn red and orange and yellow in the fall—like this. Isn’t that cool? Mrs. Web is going to love it!”
Amanda traced the lines of that last maple leaf with her finger, then set the notebook in the box of keepers and turned her focus to the wooden jewelry box again. She undid the cheap metal clasp and lifted the lid. Solidified bubbles of glue around the upper edge of the fake velvet lining spoke of Robbie’s attention to detail. Inside were several ticket stubs from different movies he’d attended. Amanda wondered whom he’d gone to those movies with. Whoever it was had certainly gone on with their life, perhaps trying not to think about the blond-haired kid they’d been in dark theaters with. That blond-haired kid who rampaged through a shopping mall while screaming about the spies infiltrating his country.
In addition to the movie tickets there was a Pikachu-shaped pencil eraser, two sphere-shaped charcoal-colored magnets and . . . a ring.
Amanda cocked her head to the side as she regarded the ring a few moments before picking it up. Once it was in her hand she could see that it was a high school class ring. Amanda had offered to pay half of a class ring if Robbie had wanted one. He’d said rings were for girls. The stone in the center of this ring was blue, not black or gold, which were Jefferson’s colors. Or purple—amethyst—Robbie’s birthstone.
Amanda looked at the ring more closely and turned it as she read the name of the school printed in a circle around the stone. “Skyline High School,” she read out loud, then turned the ring in search of additional identifying information. On the left side was the year 1989 above an image of a football upon which was imposed the number 76. On the other side of the ring was the name Steve and below it an image of a bear. Amanda held the ring away from her and lifted it so that the blue stone caught the light from the window—not sunlight, seeing as how it was overcast today—just daylight muted by clouds. A class ring that belonged to someone named Steve who’d graduated from Skyline High in 1989 and was number 76 on the football team. Amanda scanned her thoughts and memories, trying to find anyone she knew who might fit that description. A distant cousin? A friend of Melissa’s? But the graduation date was 1989, which put “Steve” closer to Amanda’s age than either of her children—she’d graduated in ’87. She looked at the jewelry box again and tried to create a possible timeline for when this ring would have come into Robbie’s possession. Robbie had made the wooden box in high school. She went back to the movie tickets—Robbie’s sophomore year. A class ring was such a personal item with value limited to the person who ordered it. Why would Robbie have someone else’s high school ring?
10
Steve
Ten years, five months, two days
Steve Mathis tapped the last item on the list with his pen. “The last of the converters will be here Monday to finish up the recalls, but I can send someone over the river if we need more before then.”
Chuck nodded, his eyes not leaving the computer screen as he listened to Steve and updated the day’s schedule at the same time. “We’ve four today and seven tomorrow s
o we should be all right until Monday.” He paused long enough to make eye contact with Steve. “Anything else?”
“That’s it,” Steve said. He rolled the papers into a tube he then tapped on his knee before he stood, bringing him even with Chuck, who had pulled his desk up so that it was a standing desk this afternoon. This whole meeting—a mid-week service management meeting—was ridiculous. Steve basically repeated what he said in the production meeting Monday morning, let Chuck vent about the other departments, and called it good.
“Okay, thanks for the report. I wish the cashiers could get their crap together half as good as you guys do.” This was Chuck’s dismissal.
Steve nodded, exited the office, and hoped Chuck would soon realize what a waste of time this meeting was. Anytime someone got a new level of responsibility, they cocked around for a while: calling extra meetings, changing protocol, and introducing new “initiatives.” Chuck had been promoted to Service Center Supervisor three weeks ago. Among the other employees there had been the typical eye rolling and grumbling, all behind the newly promoted’s back, of course. Eventually the demands of the promotion would balance out the determination to be the guy who fixed the predecessor’s problems, bringing Chuck back to the oil and parts that were the backbone of their job at Brigham Brothers’, Florence’s one and only Ford dealership.
It had only been two years ago that Steve had been promoted to manager of the parts department. He, too, had been determined to make his mark. He redesigned the way orders were placed, had a coffeepot plugged into the back of the parts room, and changed the staff meeting to Wednesdays instead of Fridays. Within a month, he was back to the old way of ordering and staff meetings were on Friday again. The coffeepot was the remaining tribute of the grand power of his promotion. Since he was paid on salary now instead of hourly and averaged close to fifty hours a week, he needed that coffeepot.
