Read The One I Left Behind Online
Authors: Jennifer McMahon
The One I Left Behind (8 page)
Sid was a senior at Brighton Falls High, drove a Mustang, and sold pot, though word was he smoked most of his profits. He worked after school and weekends as a groundskeeper at the country club. Sid was wearing army fatigue shorts and a white polo shirt with the Brighton Falls Country Club crest. Covering his perpetually bloodshot eyes was a dark pair of Ray-Bans.
Tara was standing nearby, eating an ice cream cone with long, slow licks.
“Oh my God!” Charlie yelped when he saw Reggie. He took a step back, looking shocked and vaguely frightened. “What happened to your hair?”
Reggie felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach with a two-by-four. “You said I should get it cut,” she said lamely.
“I said
cut
, not totally hacked off.”
Sid just smiled this goofy, vaguely amused smile.
“I think it’s perfect,” Tara said, licking around the edge of her ice cream cone. “She looks like a pixie!”
“She looks like a dude,” Charlie muttered, turning away.
“Come on, man,” Sid said. “The androgynous look is totally hot. Look at Annie Lennox.”
Reggie’s stomach was still clenched in a hard knot. Her face and ear burned and tears prickled the corners of her eyes.
Tara studied her a minute, then took her arm, gave it a squeeze, and said, “Don’t listen to these boneheads. You’re gorgeous.”
Reggie looked down at the ground.
“Nice to see you, Regina.” Charlie’s uncle Bo had come up behind Charlie and Sid. He was just putting on a Lions Club apron and looked flustered.
“Where’ve you been, Pops?” Sid asked him. “Everyone was looking for you. Freaking out big-time. There was some kind of, like, drama with lost hot dog rolls?”
“We were running low on ice for the soda coolers. Ferraro’s was closed, so I had to go clear out to Cumberland Farms to get some.”
Bo was a big man with a face like a ham—all meaty, shiny and pink. He heaved up a bag of ice and sliced the top open neatly with his pocketknife, dumping the contents into a cooler. “How’s your mom, Reg?”
“Fine, I guess,” Reggie said, squirming. She thought of her mother crawling into bed with her in the wee hours of the morning, reeking of gin, pretending to be the devil. Bo gave her a funny little smile that made her stomach hurt. Her mom and Bo had gone to high school together, had even dated once upon a time. Now Bo was married with a teenage stoner son, and they lived in a big old house out at the base of the mountain that was paid for by people buying Escorts and F-150s.
“You tell her I said hi, will you?” Bo said with a wink. His eyes moved up and down Reggie like he was searching for some sign of Vera there. Finding none, he gave a little snort.
“Sure,” Reggie said, thinking,
Like hell, slimebag
.
Tara leaned in to whisper to Reggie again, “Who is this pervert? He’s totally checking out my tits. Gross. And he’s so lying about getting ice, I can tell. He was probably banging some Girl Scout or something.”
Bo looked over at them, and Reggie thought for a second he must have heard. Tara looked right back at him and took a big brain-freeze-inducing bite of her ice cream cone, then licked her lips in a slow, satisfied way, never breaking eye contact. She was sick. Definitely sick.
“Guess I better go solve the mystery of the missing buns,” Bo said abruptly, jerking his gaze from Tara. He looked sweaty and distracted as he headed down toward the grill.
“C
HARLIE’S AN ASSHOLE
,” T
ARA
said at Reggie’s house later. They were in the living room, watching MTV and sharing a bag of Doritos. “You shouldn’t listen to a word he says. That haircut’s very you.”
“Mmm,” Reggie said.
“News is on in ten minutes and we’re changing the channel,” Lorraine called from the kitchen.
“
Bor-ring,
” Tara moaned. Tara’s mom was working a double shift, and Reggie knew Tara wouldn’t go home. She hated to be alone. Tara pretty much lived at Monique’s Wish when her mom was working lots of hours.
“Can I ask you something?” Reggie said to Tara.
“Go for it,” Tara said, stuffing another orange chip into her mouth.
“Do you like him?”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
Tara chewed, thinking it over. “He’s fine and all, but he’s not my type.”
Reggie wondered what Tara’s type was. Maybe someone like the guys in drama club who listened to The Cure and had spiked hair. But Reggie had never seen Tara talking to anyone like that. The only kids at school Tara ever seemed to hang out with were Reggie and Charlie.
“Someone like Charlie,” Tara went on, “he could never get me. There’s stuff about me, secret stuff, that I’d never tell Charlie in a million years.”
Reggie nodded.
Tara looked right at her. “Maybe I’ll tell you, though. One of these days.”
Lorraine bustled into the living room. “Time’s up. Channel Three. Let’s see what Andrew Haddon has to say tonight.” Reggie was sure Lorraine was secretly in love with the Eyewitness News weatherman, Andrew Haddon. He was a gangly scarecrow of a man whose shirts never seemed to fit him right. During the weather, he always pulled this stupid slot machine that was supposed to sum up the forecast. Instead of apples and cherries, it had pictures of suns, clouds, snow, and raindrops. He’d spin the wheel with a smile, like he was using his machine to make the weather, then peer down and announce:
It’s a four-sunshine day! Get out there and enjoy it!
Or
Nothing but raindrops today, folks. Be sure to pack your umbrella.
Reggie reached for the remote and changed the channel. There was a commercial with a guy in a chicken suit doing an ad for Bo Berr’s Ford Dealership.
No credit, no problem. Don’t be chicken. Come on down.
“Do you think that’s actually dear old Uncle Bo in the suit?” Tara asked, eyes wide as she leaned forward a little, studying the television. Reggie remembered the suggestive way Tara had bit into her ice cream cone, then licked her lips while she stared Bo down. It made Reggie queasy to think about.
“Nah,” Reggie said. “He probably got one of the poor sales guys to do it. Or maybe it’s Sid!”
“No way,” Tara said.
“Who’s Sid?” asked Lorraine.
“Bo Berr’s son,” Reggie explained. “He’s kind of a pothead.”
Lorraine made a sour face.
“Mom and Bo were an item once, right?”
“I don’t recall,” Lorraine said in a dismissive tone.
“No way!” Tara squealed. “Really?”
Reggie nodded. “My mom told me. It was back when they were in high school. Bo was like this big football star then.”
Lorraine fiddled with a loose string on the arm of the couch and said nothing.
“Where is Mom, anyway?” Reggie asked.
“I don’t know,” Lorraine said. “She got up just before noon and left without a word.”
After the news, Reggie knew Lorraine would go to the garage for her fly rod and waders, then make her way down the slope of the backyard to the creek, where she’d stay until it got too dark to cast flies. The left side of the couch where she sat night after night was infused with the tangy, fish smell that seemed to follow her everywhere she went. Reggie half expected to look at her neck one day and see gills.
“Two more weeks till summer vacation,” Lorraine said, still focused on the loose thread.
“Mmmm,” Tara said, reaching for another Dorito. “Then it’s good-bye, Brighton Falls Junior High. Thank
God
.”
“Maybe you two should get jobs,” Lorraine said.
Tara laughed. “We’re too young.”
“I was working in my father’s shop when I was twelve,” Lorraine said.
“That was back before the days of child labor laws,” Tara shot back. “The Dark Ages,” she added, wiping orange cheese powder on her black jeans as she gave Reggie a conspiratorial wink.
“I don’t think it’s good for young people to be idle,” Lorraine said.
“We’re not going to be idle. We’re going to finish the tree house,” Reggie said. “And I’ll probably help Charlie do lawns,” Reggie added. Charlie had been cutting grass around their neighborhood since just after his mom died. He made good money and was always looking for help.
“Speak for yourself, Dufrane,” Tara said. “I plan to be as idle as possible. Lay around. Eat bonbons. Work on my tan.”
Reggie laughed. The idea of Tara sunbathing was bizarre. Reggie had never even seen her in short sleeves. “Don’t you die if sunlight hits you? Spontaneously combust or something?”
Tara smiled. “Can’t see my reflection in a mirror either. And keep your damn crosses away from me!”
“Tara!” Lorraine snapped. “That’s quite enough.”
“Sorry, Miss Dufrane,” Tara said in a singsong voice.
The six o’clock news came on and the lead story made them all hold their breath, leaning toward the television and the newscaster with perfect hair and a square jaw who sat behind the Eyewitness News desk.
“A woman’s right hand was discovered on the front steps of the Brighton Falls police station earlier today. An unidentified source in the police department reports that the hand was left in a milk carton wrapped in brown paper.”
Reggie had this sense of slipping into a movie, leaving real life behind.
“What the hell?” Tara said, and Lorraine was too shocked to reprimand her for swearing.
Reggie jerked her leg involuntarily, like when the doctor tapped her knee with a rubber hammer. Her body felt twitchy and strange, like it was pulled on by invisible strings.
There was now a detective being interviewed and he had little else to say. He was a red-faced man with a bushy mustache and green polyester sport coat.
“Oh my God,” Tara yelped. “That’s Charlie’s dad!”
“Is not,” Reggie said, moving closer to the TV.
“Regina, don’t hog the television,” Lorraine scolded. “You’re blocking our view.”
Reggie went back to the couch.
“It totally is,” Tara said. “He’s like . . . famous now.”
“Do you have any idea whose hand this might be?” the newscaster asked. “Or whether it was taken from someone dead or alive?”
“I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at this time,” the bushy-mustached detective said. He asked anyone who might have been downtown and seen a person with a brown paper package to call the station. Reggie looked at his face. Tara was right. It was Charlie’s father. He looked fatter, more washed out and potato-like than in real life. But then again, she hadn’t seen him a lot lately. Charlie didn’t invite her over all that much these days, and when he did, his dad was always working.
“Je-sus!” Tara said, her mouth staying open, her eyes huge and hungry, all lit up like they got when she was playing one of her end-of-the-world games.
Lorraine smoothed the front of her stained fishing vest and shook her head, then closed her eyes for a moment, like she was making a wish.
Reggie reached up and touched her new ear, pulling it loose, then attaching it again with a satisfying metallic click.
Officer Thomas Sparrow was the first one to notice the package when he returned from the parade at approximately 11:45. It sat at the top of the granite steps leading to the main entrance of the Brighton Falls police station. It was a plain brown package, tied with string. Officer Sparrow, the newest member of the force, untied the string without notifying his superiors or screening it as a possible explosive device.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he told me in an interview later. He was a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old who’d gotten an associate degree in criminal justice from the local community college and joined the force right away. He’d grown up in Brighton Falls and had always wanted to be a police officer. “I guess I figured it was a mistake, you know? Someone set it down and left it by accident. It looked like something from a bakery, all wrapped up like that.”
Under the brown paper, Sparrow found a red and white milk carton, stapled closed. His curiosity piqued, he pulled open the top and discovered a woman’s right hand, the well-manicured nails done in a fresh coat of coral polish. Officer Sparrow set the carton back down, hurried inside to alert the desk sergeant of his discovery, then ran down the hall to the men’s room and vomited.
October 16, 2010
Worcester, Massachusetts
“R
EGINA?” THE WOMAN UNDER
the covers crooned. “Is that you?”
Her face was skeletal, her skin so thin and white you could see the blue veins pulsing behind it. Her hair, once a radiant platinum blond, was now limp and colorless as rice noodles. But it was Vera, no doubt.
Reggie froze in the doorway, a tight squeezing sensation in her chest pushing all the breath out of her, nearly stopping her heart.
Go on in there, you fucking coward
, she told herself.
“It’s me, Mom,” Reggie said. How strange, to find herself wondering who it was her mother saw. Was there some part of the kid she used to be peering out from under the dark bangs of curly hair, the five-foot-eight frame—still all elbows and knees like some absurd marionette? Maybe not much had changed after all. In her leather jacket, jeans, and boots, she was still dressed like the tomboy she’d always been.
The walk from the doorway to the bed seemed to take forever. Reggie’s boots slid on the freshly waxed floor like it was ice. Like she was ten again, back at Ricker’s Pond, skating toward her mother.
She got to the edge of the bed and put a shaky hand on Vera’s shoulder. There was very little flesh there—Reggie could feel the knobby bones making the loose framework that held her mother together. Reggie was reminded of the Lincoln Logs she’d played with as a kid, putting several sets together to build a tower right up to the ceiling; a tower that leaned and swayed and eventually came crashing down to the ground. Vera’s arms were tucked under the covers, and Reggie found herself staring down at the shapes they made, trying to imagine the right one ending at the wrist. The blanket covering her was thin and white, the words
PROPERTY OF UMASS MEDICAL CENTER
stenciled in blue letters. Vera’s knees were bent, making a tent of the covers. The pillow beneath her head was damp and stained.