“I was just trying to be nice.”
“So am I,” Tina said. She grabbed my wrists and pinned them to the pillow above my head, nuzzling the stretch of skin between my jaw and my ear. I wondered if Janelle had taught her that, or if Tina had always known what to do. I couldn’t decide which version of her made me crazier, the girl who had to be taught or the girl who just knew.
PAMELA
Tallahassee, 1978
Day 35
The Defendant’s capture unleashed something into the world. At first, from the epicenter in Tallahassee, I was unaware of the impact. Here, it was completely normal that The Defendant was all we could talk about, that his picture was on the front page of every newspaper and the top news story of the day. He had proclaimed his innocence with a waggish grin. He’d fled Colorado because although he hadn’t murdered Caryn Campbell, the media had already convicted him and tarnished his shot at a fair trial. He’d lied about his identity to the police in Pensacola for two days because he’d known they would tie him to the carnage at The House as well as to the disappearance of Kimberly Leach, and he had nothing to do with either one. Women were attacked all the time, by all sorts of men, weren’t they?
It wasn’t until my mother called and pleaded with me to come home for the weekend that I had any sense of the nationwide strain. My mother did not plead.
“Bring…” She paused. I had no doubt she was closing her eyes, knowing she had one shot to get this right. “Brian,” she said, by some small miracle.
There weren’t any direct flights from Tallahassee to Newark back then, and there still aren’t today. It was in the tin hangar of the Atlanta airfield, a decade before it was transformed into the yawning Hartsfield-Jackson complex, that I first noticed it. The Defendant, everywhere. I went to buy a coffee and a magazine and overheard a customer asking where he could get a newspaper. I read the labels on the empty stalls as the cashier apologized: they had completely sold out earlier that day. No one could get enough of the story about the polite murderer in the robin’s-egg-blue suit he’d worn to his arraignment. I saw Carl’s byline constantly, and I’d scan the article, eager to read the Colorado cover-up story finally, but it was never about that. My editor said he needs to be charged, not just arrested, Carl scoffed in a Can you believe this guy? tone. I have the whole thing written and copyedited and everything. But within weeks, The Defendant had been charged with first-degree murder for the slayings of Denise and Robbie, and the attempted murders of Jill, Eileen, and the student in the off-campus apartment. He pleaded not guilty. And still Carl’s editor wouldn’t run the story, saying if it came out now, it would get lost in the swirl of publicity. He wanted to make sure that when the article ran, it made a splash.
Sitting back down at the makeshift gate, I took stock. Everywhere I looked, people were holding up their papers, local and city and national alike, various versions of The Defendant’s face staring back at me like some perverted version of masks at a masquerade ball.
“I’m already so sick of this,” Brian said, shifting uncomfortably in the too-small chair. Travel was a wholly unpleasant experience for someone with his gangling proportions, and back then we did not dress for comfort. Brian wore a summer blazer and linen loafers, looking like the last of the Southern gentlemen, and he opened doors and carried my bag. Other women were watching us dreamily, and I forced myself to watch back, the way they tell you to look to the stewardesses when you hit a bad patch of turbulence. If they’re not worrying, then neither should you.
* * *
I always took a taxi home from Newark airport. Denise loved that about coming home with me. She’d pop her hip, fling her thumb into the street, and throw me a minxy look over her shoulder. Am I doing it right? I would laugh and pretend like this was a part of my life that dazzled me too. I used to believe that Denise and I told each other everything, but there were certain things neither of us was ready to admit to ourselves back then. How deep it cut that my parents could never be bothered to pick me up from the airport. That was my best-kept secret, even from myself.
On the radio, they were talking about The Defendant. There was a three-way war raging between Colorado, Florida, and Utah. Utah wanted him back behind bars, where he should have been all this time anyway. Colorado was whispering into Florida’s ear: Let us try him for Caryn Campbell’s Aspen murder while you guys work out the details on your end. The radio hosts were saying, Florida better get their act together, present their evidence before a grand jury sooner than tomorrow. No one thought it was a good idea for Colorado to have him. They’d proven their incompetence twice over.
“Hell, I’ll take him,” the driver said. “Give me fifteen minutes with the son of a bitch.” I stared at the back of his head in utter disbelief. Was there some sort of script men were instructed to follow in these kinds of situations? It was exactly the language Brian and Mr. McCall had used over dinner at the mansion in Red Hills.
“Sir,” Brian appealed. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror, and Brian’s slid in my direction. A lady is present. My stomach slopped sideways. Motion sickness, perhaps. “Can we listen to some music instead?”
The driver twisted the dial and landed on an old track by the Supremes. You’re nobody till somebody loves you. He nodded apologetically at Brian in the rearview mirror.
* * *
Doreen, our housekeeper since before I was born, was the only one home. She was an Irish woman in her midforties with six children, petite and round-faced, like me. My mother was always taking her by the hands and holding up her arms, crucifix-like, saying, This waist,Doreen.
Doreen took the bags from Brian as if they weighed nothing and asked if we were hungry. Brian was starved, but I just wanted to shower and to know when my parents would be home.
“Soon,” Doreen promised, which was what she used to tell me as a kid. Soon could be anywhere from an hour to two days. “Go freshen up and I’ll make you a plate.” Doreen took Brian’s bags to the first-floor guest bedroom, and he followed, saying he couldn’t wait for a hot meal.
I’d moved into my older sister’s room after she graduated from college and got married. There were eight years between us, and while I didn’t have many memories of what my mother was like with her, their relationship intimated a sort of closeness and comfort that had been established early. Some part of me thought I could slip into her place and my mother may not notice. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, but I never forgot the trying, how it made me ache with confusion. What was I doing wrong?
I went into my mother’s room and shook one of her sleeping pills into my hand. I stepped out of my shoes and hung my coat in her closet, nuzzled alongside her pack of minks. I curled up without getting under the covers, my head at the foot of the bed, and fell fast asleep, thinking about how my parents would find me immediately when they came home.
* * *
I woke with my pulse gaveling my wrists. Someone was in the bed, touching me. I launched forward, tangling in the blanket by the footboard, wheezing and wild-eyed.
“It’s me!” my mother was saying. “Pamela, it’s me!”
She came around the back of the bed and hooked her elbows under my armpits, freeing me from the snarl of the comforter. My blouse clung to my back in a feverish sweat.
“What time is it?” I asked her in a drowsy voice.
“Eleven.”
“In the morning?” I cried.
“Shh, shh,” my mother said. “It’s nighttime, and Brian is sleeping.” She pointed at the Turkish rug, where, just below, his bedroom was located.