Authors: Lisa Howorth
Mann answered the phone and Mary Byrd said what she always said when things, for one reason or another, weren’t going well: “Come get me.”
“What now?” he asked.
“God,” she sighed. “The worst. Well, of course not the worst, but not good.”
“Tell me,” he encouraged.
“You know that stuff that happened with my stepbrother? When he died?”
“Of course.”
“And you know they never got the guy who did it? A guy right down the street, but they could never prove it, and oh, god, I don’t know, it just never got solved. We . . . we didn’t keep up with it. We just wanted it to go away.” Mary Byrd could hear Mann fiddle with his stereo, turning down his music. Sade. It bugged her when he did certain trademark gay things—profiling himself. “But now some reporter in Richmond has apparently been going back through files, cold cases, and digging around for stuff to write about. She’s going to do an article or book or something.”
Mann exhaled loudly. “How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Because she—the reporter—called me. I guess she turned something up, and the police don’t want to look stupid, or have her fucking up the case. A detective called me, too, and now they want to talk to my whole family. On
Monday
.” Her voice broke a little on
family.
“Aren’t you glad that they might finally solve things? And it will all be over?”
“No!” she said, and quickly added, “I mean of course I am. I, we,
are
sort of over it, as much as we can be, you know? I mean, it was thirty years ago. I don’t want to have to do all that again.”
Mann asked, “So maybe they’ve got new evidence. DNA. Or a new suspect.”
“I don’t know. The detective wouldn’t say, and I don’t know what the reporter knows. I wouldn’t talk to her.”
“Just think: whoever it was could still be walking around committing more . . . crimes, and messing up more lives. It’s got to be a
good
thing that they’re bringing the case back up.”
She sniffed hard to steady her voice. “Of course I get that. I just can’t tell you how much it will suck to go there again. And if it’s true—did I ever tell you this?—one of the
theories
,” she said the word with sarcasm, “one of the stupid ideas the police had was that this guy who they thought killed Stevie did it because of some twisted fixation he had on
me
. That I led him on. What if that’s true?”
Mann said firmly, “Look, I don’t think that can be what happened. We talked about this before. Child molesters who go after boys are
not
interested in teenage girls. They don’t make substitutions. That is a fact. They want what they want, like animals. Or like everybody else! You know that, M’ Byrd. I can’t believe a detective or whatever would tell a teenage girl something like that.”
“A lot of things were going on with me and my family, and what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t believe a cop?” Her exhaled breath whistled in the receiver.
“What was the name of the guy—the guy down the street?”
“Ned Tuttle.”
“Look, this is
not
about you! Maybe it’s true that Ned Tuttle had a crush on you, but that doesn’t mean he killed your stepbrother, right? And maybe he
did
kill your stepbrother, but that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with
you. Did you not ever watch
Car
54
or
Andy Griffith
? Those cops in Virginia were probably just hicks. Do you think they knew anything about criminal psychology? They’re just guys who can make mistakes. Probably they’d never even had a crime in Richmond like that. Not back then.”
“They took my diary,” Mary Byrd said. It was hard to keep the tremble out of her voice. Why did people mostly only cry if they had an audience. “I don’t know
what’s
in that thing. I didn’t even remember then. They still have it. Mann, I’m scared of Ned Tuttle.”
There was silence on the line. Then Mann said softly, “Jeez, M’Byrd. I don’t know what to tell you, except that I can’t believe anybody would pay much attention to anything in a teenager’s diary, and I don’t think it makes sense for you to be scared of the guy. You just feel upset and paranoid. I’m really sorry. Please don’t blubber.”
“I’m not,” she said, snorting back hard to abort her sniveling. “You know I don’t cry. But—maybe I did say or do something to . . . piss Tuttle off or something. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if it was true or not, or made any sense, I just know my stepfather probably believed it. He was always giving me crap about being boy-crazy, guys sniffing around. It didn’t take much for him to blame my sluttiness for—whatever. We really didn’t get along anyway and we pretty much stopped talking after Stevie died.”
“Man,” said Mann. “I hate it for you. I’ll go up there with you if you want,” he lied.
“Yeah, right.” Mary Byrd paused. “Thank god my stepfather is dead. Okay. I’ve gotta get my ass in gear and get the kids and tell Charles what’s going on. I’ll call you later. Thanks, Mann.”
“You okay?”
“Course. Always am.”
“Tough girl,” he said.
“Ha.”
“You know what that guy—what’s his name? Don Walsh?—says on every
America’s Most Wanted
show?
‘
And remember: YOU can make a difference.’ Just do it.”
“
John
is that guy’s name,” she said. “I don’t know if you watch too much TV, or not enough.”
They hung up. Mary Byrd didn’t feel any better. It wasn’t about feeling better, there wasn’t any feeling better about Stevie. It was a matter of feeling
less
as time went on, but not
better
. She guessed it felt safer for somebody to know what a little hell she was in. She couldn’t even stand to mention the note that Ned Tuttle had written her, which seemed to definitely point to her . . .
involvement.
How was it that the reporter seemed to know something about all that?
Mary Byrd stepped out of the booze closet and wandered back into the study, heading for a box of old family photos. She dug through the piles for a small manila envelope that held the few family snapshots with Stevie. She hadn’t looked at them in forever. All but one was black and white and she supposed had been taken with her old Brownie. Here was the only shot of the whole family together at the bay, standing in the sand in front of the family cottage. Pop, smoking a cigar, handsome and fat, her teeny mom with cool shades and a Jackie Kennedy scarf over her hair, holding Baby Pete. Nick stood sideways, flexing his biceps, practically black with a tan, holding a dead crab; that was his MO, picking up dead crap on the beach and pretending he’d caught it. James and Stevie knelt in the sand, James imitating Stevie who was imitating Nick, all flexing their pathetic muscles, squinting into the sun like they were badasses. Everyone was in a bathing suit but Mary Byrd, who wore a sweatshirt and cutoffs; she’d rather have died than be in her two-piece in a family photo. She stood off to the side, looking enormous—as big as Pop! It must have been the summer before Stevie died. Who’d taken that picture?
Here was another shot of her, Nick, Stevie, and James stacked up in order on the sliding board in the backyard. She wore a madras kerchief and one of her mom’s old bathing suits, a black tank she could barely squeeze into. She’d loved it because it had great falsies. The big boys were shirtless in shorts, and James wore only a droopy, probably damp, cloth diaper. Boys never wore clothes or shoes in summer back then. William and his friends never went shirtless or barefoot, or even wanted to. Funny.
The other two pictures were just of Stevie. In one, the color photo, he sat at the kitchen table, leaning on his crossed arms, smiling a tight-lipped, satisfied smile. Lined up before him was a row of his little metal trucks. He was obsessed with them, especially his yellow and green dump truck, whose doors opened and the dumper thing actually dumped. He had a thing he’d say to himself over and over, down on the floor or in the yard, playing intently, “Pickin’ up dirt, brrrrooom,
dump truck
,” as he made the dumper dump. It looked like he’d loaded it with—what? Peanuts? Or maybe pumpkin seeds; her mother toasted the seeds in salt and butter at Halloween. Stevie loved them. Mary Byrd noticed that the truck was worn nearly silver with use. The last shot was Stevie in a gigantic cartoonish bonnet she’d made for Baby Pete. He was making a goofy monster face and raising his fist at the camera. His big, blocky head looked ridiculous on top of his scrawny little neck and shoulders. Oh god, she thought, his pitiful, pitiful little birdy shoulders, where his killer had cut the letter N. Mary Byrd put the photos back in the envelope, wondering how long it would be before she’d look at them again.
She startled, hearing the school buses grinding their gears on the steep hill at the intersection of their street and Jefferson. She’d be late to get William and Eliza. What else was new. She could think this trip crap through later.
Where
was
Evagreen, she wondered. She didn’t hear the vacuum, so she was probably still upstairs doing the bathrooms. Feeling too sapped to climb the stairs, and not wanting to catch Evagreen possibly smoking out the window, Mary Byrd cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled up at the air vent, “Evagreen! Going to get the children!” Pausing a second for a response that she knew wouldn’t come, she put on her coat and pulled on her gloves and left the house by the back door. Some slugs had left a big map of shiny rainbow mucus on the steps, she noticed. What were slugs doing around in the winter? Why did slugs even exist at all? So gross, she said to herself. Were slugs just escargot without shells? And why did so many disgusting things feature rainbows? Slug tracks, spoiled ham, fly wings, greasy starlings, oil on a fish pond? Aloud, she said, “Assholes,” knowing how the slugs spent luxurious nights devouring her hostas. William would be happy to salt them, or make them a little beer hot tub. Poor slugs, just trying to get by like everybody else, and, like everybody else, they couldn’t help it if they did some asshole things.
From the window on the landing upstairs, Evagreen watched the driveway until she saw the Ford Explorer backing out through the bare crape myrtle trunks. Pushing the window up, she muttered, “Hmph. Never gone put this screen back in. Wonder so many bugs always be around in here, matter
how
I clean.” From the pack of Salems in the pocket of her warm-up jacket she took a cigarette and lit up, exhaling the first delicious, minty draw into the cold air. She sat down on the windowsill with her feet on the roof.
“Hollerin’ up through the vents!” She was indignant. “Like trash.” From blocks away, she could hear the squeals and shouts of children being let out at the elementary school. Three squirrels ran up and down, chasing each other high up in a leafless chinaberry tree she could barely see off in the woods. Look like they on wheels, or a rollercoaster, they move so smooth and quick, up and down. Chinaberries in winter, with their round gold seed pods, always reminded her of a crayon drawing one of her twins had made for her a long time ago, with clusters of polka-dot fruit grouped in the branches. She still had that drawing, probably Tommy Smith’s; John Carlos never too big on coloring, even though the boys identical. She had
all
the twins’ and Ken’s and Angie’s old school things in the deep bottom drawer of her bedroom chest. Beyond the woods the school bus engines rumbled and groaned as they climbed the hill, and somewhere in the neighborhood college boys were carrying on. “Not studyin’, that for sure,” she tsked. She wished her own boys had stayed close, gone to Delta State, even Valley, instead of going to college in Atlanta. Had to go where the most money was, though, and at least they got to go together; keep each other out of trouble and focused on playing ball. They’d been a little wild, not solid like Angie or Ken, but they seemed to be straightened out now, and she thanked the Lord for that. Evagreen suddenly felt as chilly and gray as the day outside, and shivered, but instead of closing the window, she pinched out the cigarette butt between two leathery fingers and lit another. The butts would be stashed in the pocket of her warm-up pants, and later when she cleaned one of the bathrooms she’d flush them. Air things out, then close the window.
In the master bedroom—Mary Byrd just referred to it as “her” room, or “our” room, but Evagreen insisted on calling it the “master” bedroom to Mary Byrd’s aggravation—she picked up a bottle of lavender body oil and some Q-tips from the dresser top and headed to Eliza’s room.
The room, a messy pink lair, gave off the bright message that a girl child who considered herself to have outgrown the room’s furnishings and décor lived here. Somewhere between a dorm and a nursery, faded pink eyelet curtains hung at the windows and a gauzy mosquito net floated above a bed piled with gaily printed Home Barn pillows. Three big bulletin boards covered the walls, and each was thickly shingled with snapshots. Every photo was the same as the others: tight gaggles of pubescent girls grinning ferociously with glittery, braced teeth, arms around each other, mostly blonde heads pressed tightly together, the girls on the ends with one leg, toe pointed, raised coyly behind. Mardi Gras beads, beer huggies with fishing jokes, invitations, ticket stubs, and words and phrases clipped from magazines festooned it all—masterpieces of new-hormone collage. Alicia Silverstone vamped from a
Clueless
poster on the closet door. In a corner, a number of dingy, matted stuffed animals were mounded carelessly next to a battered dollhouse that vaguely resembled the Thorntons’ Victorian home.