“Oh. Okay.”
“Listen, Dad, it's good to see you.”
Good to see you! Good to see you! It's so goddamn good to see everyone around here I could tear my face off!
“Mind if I just . . . use your bathroom before I goâ¦it's a long drive back so . . . ”
And Troy standing there like a wooden post, a palm-shirt scarecrow. What do I do?
He wasn't gonna tell her, later. No way he would tell Terry. Later. After Shauna scurried out, polite good-byes all around, pleasantries in turquoise. No, there was no way to tell her, when Terry went back down to the clubhouse, what he found in the bedroom.
There it was, a nice little white note, in front of a nice shiny hardback black book, with a smiling tall man and, on top of it, a heaping pile of human shit. A pile of it.
On the note:
“Dearest father, This is what I think of the past.”
“PS: Don't forget to tell Terry to put on the wedding dress and cry while you fuck her.”
A
million miles of cable between them, stretched out on a wire. A system of radio signals, satellite signals, digital symbol in ones and twos spiraling down to focus, at the Home Depot, the TV set in the break room, back in Torrance. That's him, isn't it?
Torrance, California, where Jeff Cody had just been promoted to assistant manager. Ah, beautiful Torrance! Where Jeff Cody had stumbled after years upon years of blowing around, pissing away time, scorching it, doing whatever it is a man can do to make his head stop.
Yes, he knew they were coming. Of course they were coming. They would come and find him, track him down, wheedle their way into his sidelines, the margins of his shit-ball drive-to-work days and after-hours, this cockroach life, hiding around and in between boxes, stacks, piles of wood, burrowing out, only when the lights off, a thousand little tentacles, crawling scared. What kind of life is this? A look-back life. A thousand broken light-bulbs, might-have-beens, a thousand maybe-what-ifs. Junk cars on the pavement, everything a past glory, a past almost.
Living a life of almost-had-turned, somehow, everything inward, everything else away. The gang, the boys, all of them,
where now? In Pittsburgh, in Phoenix, in Plano. Gone to the four corners, spread, a common cause of guilt, a mirror unheld. Get them away! Lose them! Put them in boxes, ship them out, stack them high and steep, get them out of here. Storage. Lock the lock, throw away the key.
Those sunny, summer-always sunshine days of Torrance. Don't look at the ground, don't look at the cement. Keep your head up, up and away. Keep your head up to the bright bulb always summer sky, never mind the concrete blocks, barbed wire, metal fences, junkyard gates, rusty trucks, burned-out signs, leaning signposts. Keep your head to the sky, Torrance. And whatever you do . . . don't look back.
That morning he'd meant to take it easy. Don't sweat it, boss. Assistant manager Cody. And assistant manager Cody of the Home Depot didn't sweat it, why should he, that morning in Hardware or Fixtures or Plumbing. There was nothing to sweat. A slow Tuesday morning dragging along. A cleanup on aisle five, in Paint, someone dumped a can of primer. Dumbshit. That was not gonna be easy. Put up the cones. The orange ones. M
OJADO
. D
ANGER
. W
ET PAINT
.
Slip-n-falls! Christ, the lecture they give 'em on slip-n-falls. Two days devoted to the viscosity of tiles, the treatment, miracle treatment you put on the tiles. MORE traction when wet! MORE traction in the rain! Not that it rained much in sunshine always-happy Torrance. January and February, that's it. The rainy season. In June. June gloom. The blah cloud season. That's the only season. Two months of rain in winter. One month in summer of gloom. The rest, fuck it, sunshine all around. That
bright marble blue cloudless sky beating down on iron fencing and padlocks and lectures about slip-n-falls, out on the patio next to the nursery. You can get a hot dog on the truck but I wouldn't eat it. Burritos, too.
The no-papers fenced in, in a cage, waiting to work. Take a number and they'll paint your house practically for free, they'll move you, they'll clean your toilets, they'll mow your lawn, for peanuts, scraps, a shrug. They want to work. Jeff Cody strolling out on Sundays, out to the pen.
Agua! Agua, amigos!
Giving them water in the beating-down sun. Jesus. You had to feel sorry for them. On Christmas he'd given out a bunch of returns in a raffle. No big deal, he couldn't sell them anyway. And beer.
Cervezas! Cervezas, amigos!
It was obvious they were good people, fucking sweat their asses off for four bucks an hour in the beat-down heat. You couldn't help but feel bad for them. What the fuck did they ever do?
And there, in landscaping, between the bougainvillea and the azaleas, in Outdoor Nursery, assistant manager Jeff Cody rounded the corner and stood face-to-face with, eyes to eyes, staring at, Detective Samuel Barnett of the Muskegon, Michigan, police.
Beside him, flanked, a cop of each color, one white bread, one black. Big-bicep-bodied L.A. kind of cops, Rodney King cops, Rampart cops, cops you didn't want to fuck with. Cops not on the beat, cops not on a squad. Cops on a force. Cops like soldiers. City soldiers, armored, billy-clubbed, heat-packed, muscle-bound.
Between them, a relic, Detective Samuel Barnett of fish-town Michigan.
“Jeff Cody, you are under arrest for the murder of Elizabeth Lynn Krause.”
And the cuffs get put on.
“Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of . . . ”
And the white cop and the black cop get to lead him through the maiden grass, through the lace-leaf maple, through the crimson queen. The sweet-scent blooms of jasmine, the gentle trellis of periwinkle, gardenia, peonies, poppies, daisies, belles, all watching as the black-beetle uniforms scurry through, marching past the lily-of-the-valley, the ruby stella, the old-fashioned bleeding heart.
And behind them, the law words, the make-it-right Miranda words of halls of marble, justice words float through, through and up toward the bright cobalt sky, a sky made of Play-Doh, banishing clouds to Michigan, banishing gloom to Michigan.
And below, the bougainvillea and the bluebells gossip and giggle. The peonies concur. The poppies demur. And the sweetheart roses smile finally.
A
raw scallop sky in the middle of March, the nothing month. The courthouse, the cement steps, the beige brick walls all faded as a photograph, turning white before your eyes. Blink now and it was never there.
No one knows what to make of this new century, 2004 and it's not looking good. They had come from every corner of Michigan, all parts of the glove, from Holland to Saginaw, from Clarkston to Traverse City. The story had filled them with rage. Gross indifference. Reckless endangerment. Murderers! Animals! Sickos! Some with signs: J
USTICE FOR
E
LIZABETH!
B
URN THE
B
ASTARDS!
F
RY
'
EM!
And then, the churches . . . from Good Shepherd Assembly to New Hope Bible to the United Methodist down the way. The Dearborn Heights Baptist all the way from Detroit. A candlelight vigil. Prayers in silence. Some pray for clemency. Some pray for revenge. The snow plower and his wife seated at the back of the courtroom, hand in hand. And the students, the classes in Hope College, practically empty. The students down at the courthouse. And for the law students, a required course. A field trip.
And for the four students Danek, Lars, Brad, and Katyâa special seat, there would be the Lt. Colonel and his lovely wife,
Dorothy. Brad and Katy sitting protectively next to the Lt. Colonel. Lars next to Danek next to Dorothy. Danek held fast next to her. He would save her. The couple, quiet, unheeding of the cameras and the gasping and the scrutiny.
And across from thisâthe defendants.
Seeing how they'd aged, you'd think they'd already been in prison. Billy and Terrance and Randy and Russ. Spread across the states like spores. From Reno to Tampa to Buffalo . . . they'd been rounded up and now reunited. A parade of shame.
And Jeff Cody. Now dyeing his hair, what was left of his hair, brown. A cheap bottle-brown. A Just for Men brown. He couldn't stand it. So this. This! This is how he meets the Lt. Colonel and his wife. Not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas, not at the wedding to their daughter. But here, in court, twenty-five years later and at the trial for their daughter, his one true love. His one true love whom he strangled. His one true love whom he dumped by the side of the road in the snow. How he wished to explain it! How could he? Impossible. It had all gone through his hands like sugar.
And there she was, Shauna Boggs. The Blob. Piggy-face. There she was in her teal sweater and foofy hair, thinking, how could it be twenty-five years earlier, that grabbing for Jeff at the Green Mill Inn. Afterward. At five in the morning, watching him pack, how could it be that she'd begged him, cried to him, “Don't leave me. Oh, please don't leave me.” Acting out a scene from a movie of the week she'd maybe seen earlier or later or maybe just made up. “Don't you see? Now it's just us! It's meant to be.” And thinking that Jeff looking up was gonna mean a movie kiss. He
loves me! But, instead, he sticks to the wall, sinking into the wood panel and gritting his teeth.
Seeing her then, a glob of want. What he would give to switch back. What he would give to reverse it. “Don't you get it? It's over.” And wanting to chop up time and throw her in the woods instead. Why couldn't it have been her? He'd been had. Not enough pills to turn it back, never enough pills anymore. Falling now, melting into the ground. Now, collapsing into the floor, a whimper, a slop of remorse. “I'm dead. I'm just fucking dead.” A man turned boy in the carpet. Shauna looking down, quick, now she has him. Reaching her hand to his neck, to console him. Before she touches him, he freezes, “Stop it. You'll never be her, pig-face.”
Shauna Boggs now. Not able to look at him, or across the aisle, not able to keep her head on her neck. Not able to meet the eyes of the coroner, those damning words, “Yes, that's correct. DNA evidence. Saliva. Female. Matching the defendant.” And then the realization, a wave through the court. She'd spat on her. Shauna Boggs had spat on her best friend while she lay pummeled on the floor. A hush. Hatred heavy as a house.
Shauna Boggs, the last name read off. The last conviction. All of them. Homicide. Abduction. Murder. Aggravated assault. Assault with a deadly weapon. Assault and battery. Gross indifference. Conspiracy to commit murder. The myriad names for it. The many names for what happened that night. Who knew what happened that night had so many names? And that's how she saw it. Not what they did. Not what she did. What happened.
She had not meant to catch eyes with anyone and particularly not with Dotsy But there she was, looking at her, or through
her, from across the courtroom. She had looked away. Not fast enough. But now, in Shauna's head, a thousand rushing thoughts, a tsunami, almost she couldn't hear it, when they read it, now, over the din.
Shauna Boggs. Conspiracy to commit murder. Gross indifference. Murder one.
Listen to it. You'll hear it for days. You'll hear it for the rest of your life in a gray little box. Shauna Boggs, the State of Michigan hereby sentences you to . . . drum roll please . . . life in prison. Sentence to be served immediately. No parole.
A hammer to the head. A shock to the system. What they did that night. What she did. No longer what happened.
And Detective Samuel Barnett standing at the back of the courtroom. Mister Perfect. For him, an almost smile. A quiver of a smile from Shauna to him through the glass, eyes welling up. A wink. She throws him the thought through that red-eye wink. She throws him the thought and it lands on him, catch.
It was her.
She was the one who had given up the dingy little box.
The Polaroids.
She was the one who had left the box at the station.
She had given herself up.
I
t would be strange, at the end of your life, measuring it out, teaspoon by teaspoon; what did you get?
Who would forgive you? And would you forgive yourself? All of your indiscretionsâwere you a fool? Maybe you were just a whore, after all. Or a weather vane, aimless and choking, always choking in gust after gust, tumult after tumult . . . what did you make of it?
Shauna sat there, in her ash-by-ash little box, staring at the wall, thinking of that moment, centuries ago, when she had not been Shauna Blobs, then Blobs, then Blob, when she had said, “Good.” When her friend, not best friend, not dearest friend, but most precious friend, had been ushered into heaven? She had even laughed.
Laughed.
How much biting, eating away, crumbling into herself, doughnuts and Twinkies and Pop-Tarts, too. How much gorging after gorging, throwing up, then gorging again. Looking at herself, wanting to throw up again, endlessly, eternally, 'til the end of time?
And when she shuffled off this too-sullied body, when she left
the Blob behind and flew up, straight on a wire . . . would she then shortly descend? Or had she already descended?