Kate, who’s around Mom’s age, was born in a wealthier coastal community, but she’s lived in Bridgton since shortly before the murder. She sees the town from inside and outside, a dual perspective that is strengthened by her experience as both a police officer and a civilian. On the afternoon we met, she said, “I was surprised, the other day, to see Michael Hutchinson’s father, Brad, sitting with a bunch of gentlemen who were on the fire department, and other really entwined Bridgton folk, at our local Dunkin’ Donuts. I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’” Because after the trial, she said, it had seemed like people in town were shunning Brad, especially when he publicly defended his son. You could see people physically avoid him, avert their eyes. Now, it seemed, Brad had been accepted back into the fold.
Kate provides another glimpse of Hutchinson. She talks about his upbringing, about how Brad trained his son to treat women, leading by terrible example. “After it came out that Mike had murdered your mother, I thought back to the interactions I’d had with him. One would assume the murder would be a hugely traumatic event, even for the person who did it. But, y’know, it clearly wasn’t. With all the violence he’d been witness to at a very young age, he had a real high capacity to just shove it off, to just shake it through the next day and move forward.”
When I think about that ability to move forward seamlessly after violence and fear, I’m reminded of Mom fighting with Dennis, crying and screaming and raging, and then, a day or two later, taking me to the planetarium in Portland and smiling up at the synthetic stars while gently holding my hand. I think about hearing her cry herself to sleep and then seeing her appear in my bedroom the next morning, kissing my forehead and tickling me, darting forward and back and laughing until I finally sat up, cranky but smiling begrudgingly. As a kid, Mom learned how to recover quickly from danger and fear. And when she grew older, she was brave enough to maintain the hope that she could make things better; through all her difficulties, she was determined.
But Michael was a coward who visited danger and fear upon others. I imagine a little boy trying to save his mom from a scary dad. I think about how this boy might have felt as he failed, over and over, too powerless and small to make a difference. Eventually it might be less painful to conclude that, as his father said, she got what she deserved. And then when he got bigger, he’d find other women, decide what they deserved. Be powerful.
Kate tells me how shocked people in Bridgton were when they learned that the killer had been living among them all along: “We had assumed whoever had done it had walked away.” Of course, no matter where he’d been, Mike would have been living in some community, somewhere. But it’s worse that it was his own town, that it was ours. That so many people he saw each day were connected to Mom and to me. That Linda saw him at parties and dated his good buddy Ray King. That he bought cookies from Adams Bakery, owned by another childhood friend of Mom’s, and worked on a house construction crew with my father.
My sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Shane, also knew the Hutchinson family. I met her in a little park behind Renys, a new addition to the town, and waited nervously for her to show up, afraid I wouldn’t recognize her. Of course, I did. She had changed so little, was even still teaching in Bridgton, in her thirtieth year. Very early in her career, she’d had Michael Hutchinson as a student. His father was intimidating and demeaning to her in after-school conferences, and Michael was impossible to handle. “Even at that age,” she said, “he was always a problem. A huge discipline problem. He had absolutely no respect.” I thought about this. I wanted to be intelligent about it. I suggested: “Maybe he was so dominated at home that he had to act out at school?” “No,” she replied. “He already had the markings of a sociopath.”
But I don’t want him to be a sociopath. I don’t think sociopaths feel empathy or regret when they harm others. I hope that the emotion he showed on the stand, when he pointed his finger at me and told the court that he hadn’t tried to save me, is proof that he spends every day in anguish.
I also don’t think Michael is insane. There’s no reason to think he wasn’t mentally present that night. I think he raped and killed my mother because he believed he could, because he thought he had the right. And I think it’s worth examining where he might have gotten that idea.
There is nothing that could lessen Michael Hutchinson’s guilt and responsibility: he chose his actions, and they were senseless and vicious. Even in the realm of murder, he stands out: Justice Warren called what he did to my mother “butchery,” and the precedent he applied during sentencing concerns a crime so horrible I can barely read about it. It would be easier to think he was just a monster, an aberration; it would make us all feel a lot safer, now that he’s locked away. But I think it’s a lot more likely that Michael was born with a natural tendency to violence, which worsened in a violent home, and easily found a target in a world where many men are trained to exert power over women. Punishing him should not prevent us from trying to understand how he was made. I’m glad Michael Hutchinson is in jail. But I’ll be more glad when there are no more Michael Hutchinsons.
47
* * *
In the years after Mom died, so many things made me think of her; every detail in the world seemed to be associated with her. There were so many opportunities for pain. Some days, the colors and sounds and textures of the world still seem to conspire to bring her back to me, but now it is mostly gratitude I feel for the shadow of her presence. These are deep memories, things the cops do not know, the everyday details that make a person’s life. I gather them while I can, before they disappear, as so many others have.
She loved summer thunderstorms, and when they hit, she’d turn off the TV, turn down the lights, and open the windows and doors to the cool breezes and mist. She and I would sit and watch the lightning flash, our faces and shins in the spray, our noses full of the metallic scent of the fly screen.
On long drives through the woods, she’d pull the car over to pick tiger lilies from grassy ditches. At the Dump, with Dale, we always had pussy willow branches in a deep, dry, bottle-green vase.
She liked Boston, where her sister Glenice lived. The rest of the family found it too big, too crammed full of people, too hot, too cold. She liked its museums, its interesting food. The view of the Charles along Storrow Drive. The grimy adventure of riding the T.
She whistled poorly. She was right-handed. She had been a majorette in high school, before she dropped out. She got me a silvery baton when I was about eight, and she could still twirl pretty well. She tried to teach me, but my hands were slow.
She licked every finger meticulously clean when she ate something messy.
She loved tiny, waxy Dixie cups, and we always had pullout dispensers of them in the bathroom and the kitchen. They were convenient for little sips of water, for mouthwash at night. And for rinsing paintbrushes.
Once, at our annual extended-family pool party, my aunts and uncles were competing to see who could do the best backflip off the diving board. I wanted to do one, but I was afraid. As I stood at the end of the board, hesitating, she pushed me over into the water. Thought it would be good for me. I scraped my thigh on the rough board, bled into the chlorine and cried.