The Snowman's Children
Page 32
“One day, when I arrived at the Daughretys’, I found Barbara there. She didn’t recognize me until I told her who I was. Then I explained to her what had happened. She said she wondered about the diapers she’d found in Theresa’s trash can. She didn’t really react much, at first. At all, really. I remember being kind of worried about it, until I was leaving and came back inside because I’d left my gloves on the dining room table and found Theresa sitting with her back to us on the white couch and Barbara leaning in the kitchen doorway with both hands in her hair and silent tears streaming down her face. I didn’t say anything, but after a while I put my hand against her cheek, and she leaned into my palm, and we stood there that way, not saying anything. Finally, she straightened up and looked at me. It was like signing a contract, that look. She signed it; I signed it. She nodded. I left.
“After that, Barbara and I worked together. When we had our plan completed, Barbara called Theresa’s aunt. But the aunt wouldn’t talk to Barbara—the family thinks she’s a gold-digger—so I had to get on the line. At first she wouldn’t listen to me, either, she just kept demanding that we bring Theresa to Cleveland. I tried to explain that Theresa couldn’t go anywhere. Eventually, I had to hang up and get one of the doctors from Chapin House to call and explain Theresa’s condition. Then I called her back. She kept saying things like “You’re betraying a great man. He would expect his wife—his pathetic wife—to take care of his daughter. Don’t you think?’ But she wasn’t really arguing anymore, she was just angry. Sad. In the end, I think, at least she understood that we were trying to protect Theresa. I think she respected the closing of ranks. And I think the Chapin House doctor must have made it clear how overwhelming it would be for anyone to take care of Theresa alone. Also, I could be wrong, but I got the impression that she hadn’t seen much of our Daughretys for some time. She didn’t even come to the memorial service. She said she would come and visit Theresa, but she never did. I haven’t had any additional contact with her until you rousted her this morning.”
The light has gone darker still, and the snow has intensified. Spencer goes on.
“When everything was arranged, Barbara and I took Theresa out to dinner at this restaurant called the Red Fox. She spent most of the meal playing with a spoon and a Sweet ‘n Low packet like a sulking six-year-old. I told her what I was going to do. I told her that going to the Chapin House would make her feel safer and better, and that neither Barbara nor I would ever leave her. She ate a whole steak and a piece of chocolate cake and didn’t look at either of us once. We brought her here that very night. She’s been here ever since, and now I can’t imagine her anywhere else. I come at least twice a week, usually more. Barbara’s here pretty much every day. She doesn’t date, doesn’t do anything but work and volunteer and read and come here. I worry about her, although she’s strong as hell.
“The insurance policies and the money Theresa’s father left are enough to pay for her upkeep for a while yet. Plus there’s some grant money the Chapin House receives from the state to do research on long-term conditions like Theresa’s. And there’s the house, if it ever needs to be sold, although the Doctor left strict instructions that the place was to stay in the family. God knows why, it doesn’t seem like there are memories worth cherishing there. So here Theresa stays. And here I am. And there you have it. That’s her life. And ours.”
I look at my friend. The snow seems to be chiseling tiny pieces out of him, eroding him bit by bit.
“The story made me persona non grata in my church for a long time, but it made me a kind of media hero, because Analissa survived—at least, until TB killed her a year later. I was in the papers a bit. I even got asked to be a sort of spokesperson for a couple of child protection and welfare agencies. How perverse is that?
“I’ve never told anybody the whole truth, not even Shepherd Griffith-Rice. Once, not long after Theresa was placed here, I went back to the clinic and described her to the blond receptionist.
“’The Doctor’s daughter? Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘Poorsweetthing. She used to turn up here sometimes and sit in that chair.’ The receptionist pointed to the one nearest her desk. ‘Dr. Daughrety surely loved her. I hope she’ll be okay now, with him gone.’
“One of the doctors who sees Theresa—the one who diagnosed her—thinks that what she did—the kidnapping, I mean—is the most positive sign we have that Theresa may be reachable someday. He believes she took the baby home to protect her.”
“She does seem a little better,” I say, not sure whether I’m telling the truth. “There was a moment there—several moments—where it felt like she was with me.”
Spencer shrugs and looks away, but not fast enough. I have seen the tears. “She has those, sometimes. With Barbara especially, I think.”
I close my eyes, and something locked under my ribs for years breaks free, and a gentle heat spreads through me. I’m not sure why. None of this qualifies as particularly good news. “You saved her. You realize that, right?” I say, and open my eyes. “After everyone else left or failed her, including me.”
“You were eleven years old. And you saw what was happening to her first, Mattie. Give yourself some credit.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. It’s also getting late. Maybe it’s time I took you back.”
Without waiting for my response, Spencer steps off the deck, and I can’t think of any reason to stop him. I have spent so much of my life missing Theresa, clinging to the ghost girl I once knew. But Spencer stayed with her, working and praying and spending countless hours just sitting beside her. He has loved her in the way I have always imagined I did. He will see her tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after. I, on the other hand, may never see her again. I turn one last time to look at the red house, the snow catching the light as it falls past the high windows. A woman in a trench coat and gray wool hat is straightening the stack of chaise lounges, and for a moment I imagine Barbara Fox wheeling around and waving to me. One last reunion. A happier one, because Barbara, I think, really did love me. But the woman doesn’t turn, isn’t Barbara, and the house stays silent. I drop my gaze and follow Spencer toward the street.
At the car, I climb into the passenger seat while Spencer fumbles with the keys. The cold billows around us. The car slides forward. I find myself unzipping my backpack and lifting out the notebook. But its essence has changed now that Theresa has held it again. Under my hands, the familiar pages fall away like dead skin. Nothing I can make from this material will ever live or breathe or laugh.
“Want to hear something horrible?” Spencer asks.
“As opposed to what?” I say, and for the first time all weekend—the first time since we were eleven years old—I hear Spencer Franklin laugh. Briefly.
“The whole Analissa tragedy feels like a turning point to me. That year probably saved Mariannah’s life. She held herself together. When Analissa finally gave up fighting and died, Mariannah organized a huge wake in her honor at the church that turned into a celebration. There were pictures of Analissa all over the hall, party streamers and hats, and a two-minute video that Shepherd Griffith-Rice had had made of Analissa’s christening. The next day, Mariannah went out into the world, got herself a job, and hurled herself into church work. She’s unspeakably sad, and I don’t think she’ll ever marry or have another child, but she Caretakes like a banshee.”
I look at the closed notebook in my lap while my thoughts run riot. I have carried the notebook, and everything I’d decided it symbolized, around on my back for such a long time. Adolescence, I think, isn’t really about growing up. It’s like ferrying across the river Lethe. If you make it, all you retain of your childhood is a taste. And it tastes like hell, or it tastes like heaven, and either way you can never wash it out.
“Will you take me back?” I say, thinking suddenly of Laura and Louisville.
“You kidding? Been waiting to hear you say that all weekend.” When he sees me wince, though, Spencer shakes his
head. “I think that was a joke.”
“Glad you think so,” I say.
For a while, we just drive, and I stare out the window at the passing subdivisions tucked in among the shadows of the oak and maple and evergreen trees. In the yards I see sleds, flying saucers. We head up Maple toward the Woodward Corridor, and I lean my head against the cold window and think about Laura’s dead brother. I don’t know why I’m thinking about him now, but I can see the picture of him we have framed in our hallway. He’s maybe thirteen years old, wearing a polyester red-and-black marching-band uniform, holding a huge fuzzy white hat that looks like a giant Q-tip. He’s waving drumsticks in front of his face and scowling. He’s her ghost, and she has never let me near him.
I’ve spent most of my adult years searching for the one grand gesture that mitigates catastrophic mistakes. I no longer believe such a gesture exists. Or, rather, it isn’t a single act but an accumulation of actions. Maybe that’s the real secret of Spencer’s recovery. For me, Theresa has remained a lost thing, a crushing regret. For Spencer, she has become a person again, and he has not only maintained his devotion to her, he has acted on it, over and over. Most of the marriages I know—mine, for instance—are built on shakier foundations.
I am thinking about the Cider Mill, and the day I last left Detroit, and it occurs to me that there is a sort of triumph in what might have happened. A bitter sort. A few days after my family left, the weather warmed, for good this time. And when the snow returned in November, the monster did not return with it. By the spring of 1978, according to a letter my mother got from Angie McLean, when an entire winter had passed with no Gremlin sightings, no unexplained kidnappings or ghostly murders, people began to believe the Snowman had been caught for something else, or become aware of the noose tightening around him and fled, or killed himself.
Or, I remember thinking—lying in my old bunk bed in our new house in Lexington while my father played his fitful stereo quietly in the living room and my mother read outside on the porch swing-maybe he met Theresa Daughrety, and she changed him. Not healed him—the thought was not a comforting one—but confused him somehow. Paralyzed him. Stopped him. It seemed possible, and certainly no one—at least, no one I know—has seen him since. Back then, when imagination was still more powerful than memory, Theresa seemed capable of just about anything, to me. We all did.
Childhood becomes myth for every single person who survives it. It’s not just somewhere we can’t revisit. It’s a fever dream, with very real monsters we can’t even recall, but that settle inside us. And when the fever breaks, we’re left with a handful of people whose importance in our lives is all out of proportion to our affection for them.
Bringing the car to a stop in front of the Moto-Court, Spencer shuts down the engine and turns to me. For once, he doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Take care of yourself,” he finally murmurs.
“You too. Take care of our girl.”
“Always,” Spencer says.
“Will I hear from you?”
He watches me awhile. Then he watches the snow. “Probably. If you make me.” He doesn’t smile, but he watches as I climb out and stand on the curb in the falling snow and fading light. Snowflakes blot the windshield and slowly obscure his face.
I close the door, and without another word he pulls away, leaving me hovering, holding the city of my birth to my ear like a seashell. It’s still snowing, and the Snowman is still gone, and the kids he took with him will never rise from their swellings in the ground. I don’t relish being one of his children, but there are so many of us: James Rowan, Jane-Anne Gish, Courtney Grieve, Amy Ardell, Edward Falk, Peter Slotkin, the Cory twins, James Sea, Theresa Daughrety, Spencer Franklin, me. Some of us aren’t even dead, just prowling the lakeshores and twilit backyards. We’re surrounded by boundaries we create ourselves. We live in communities whose boundaries we are brought up to accept, locked into bodies whose boundaries are imposed upon us on the day we are born. Then, one day, the boundaries get breached, and there are yellow jackets burning in the grass, and we find ourselves haunted by an inexplicable buzzing in the hidden heart of the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
By intention, I used more memory than research when reconstructing and reimagining the all-too-real events that form the backdrop for The Snowman’s Children. Nevertheless, two books provided an important factual framework. Tommy McIntyre’s Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Search for a Child Killer helped me clarify, for myself, the boundaries between half-accurate childhood memories, invention, and fact concerning the Oakland County Child Killer, which I promptly blurred again wherever the story I was telling required me to do so. Ze’ev Chafets’s collection of Detroit essays, Devil’s Night, offered both historical information and insight into the sources of the communal sadness and mistrust that haunted my hometown throughout my years there.
Numerous people have made helpful suggestions or provided useful information during this book’s long journey from nightmare to daydream to shared memory to novel. A few individuals, however, made substantial and consistent contributions in terms of editing and support. First among these, as with everything I write, is my wife, Kim Miller, still the most thoughtful, thorough, and constructively ruthless critic I know. Meir Ribalow has been perhaps my most attuned reader for over fifteen years. My agent, Kathy Anderson of Anderson/Grinberg Literary Management, invested herself completely in the editing and selling of this novel and has played an important role in its evolution. Emily Heckman helped solve a two-year-old problem in one two-hour phone call. Finally, Tina Pohlman at Carroll & Graf has given me both clear-eyed, perceptive editing and generous encouragement. To all of these people, I owe my profound thanks.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
Cemetery Dance Publications
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
Cemetery Dance Publications