Libby Day
NOW
Iwoke up feeling like I dreamt about my mom. I was craving her weird hamburgers we always made fun of, filled with carrots and turnip bits and sometimes old fruit. Which was strange since I don’t eat meat. But I wanted one of those burgers.
I was considering how one actually cooks hamburgers when Lyle phoned with his pitch. Just one more. That’s what Lyle kept saying: just one more person I should talk to, and if nothing came of it, I could give up. Trey Teepano. I should look up Trey Teepano. When I said it’d be too hard to track him down, Lyle recited his address. “It was easy, he has his own business. Teepano Feed,” Lyle said. I wanted to say “nice work” back to him—how easy would that have been?—but I didn’t. Lyle said Magda’s women would give me $500 dollars to talk to Trey. I’d have done it for free, but I took the money anyway.
I knew I would keep going like this, actually, that I couldn’t stop until I found some sort of answer. Ben knew, I was sure of that now, Ben knew something. But he wasn’t saying. So keep going. I remember watching a very sensible love expert on TV once. The advice: “Don’t be discouraged—every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.” That’s how I felt about this miserable quest: every person I talked to would let me down until I found the one person who could help me figure out that night.
Lyle was coming with me to Teepano Feed, partly because he wanted to see what Trey Teepano was like, and partly, I think, because he was nervous about the guy. (“I don’t really trust Devil worshipers.”) Teepano Feed was just east of Manhattan, Kansas, somewhere in a squat of farmland wedged between several new suburbs. The developments were blank and clean. They looked as fake as the Western souvenir shops back in Lidgerwood, a place where people only pretended to live. To my left, the boxy houses eventually gave way to an emerald lagoon of grass. A golf course. Brand new and small. In the cold morning rain, a few men remained on the fairway, twisted and tilted as they swung their clubs, looking like flags of yellow and pink against the green. Then just as quickly as the fake houses and the fake grass and the pastel-shirted men appeared, they were gone, and I was looking at a field of pretty brown Jersey cows, staring at me, expectant. I stared back—cows are the few animals that really seem to see you. I stared so hard I missed the big old brick building labeled Teepano Feed and Farm Supply, Lyle tapping my shoulder, LibbyLibbyLibby. I hit the brakes on my car and hydroplaned a good fifty feet, that soaring feeling reminding me of Runner letting me loose after spinning me. I backed up wildly and swerved into the gravel parking lot.
Only one other car was parked in front of the store, the whole place looking worn. The cement grooves between the bricks were filled with muck, and a kids’ merry-go-round near the front door— quarter a ride—was missing its seats. As I walked up the wide wooden steps that spanned the front, the neon lights in the windows blinked on. “We Got Llamas!” Odd words to see in neon. A tin sign reading Sevin 5% Dust dangled from one of the building posts. “What’s Pharoah quail?” Lyle said as we hit the top step. A bell on the door jangled as I opened it, and we walked into a room colder than the outside—the air conditioner was blasting, as was a soundsystem, playing cacophonous jazz, the soundtrack to a brain seizure.
Behind a long counter, rifles were locked in a glimmering cabinet, the glass enticing as a pond surface. Rows and rows of fertilizer and pellets, pick-axes, soil, and saddles stretched to the back of the store. Against the far wall was a wire cage holding a pack of unblinking bunnies. World’s dumbest pet, I thought. Who would want an animal that sat, quivered, and shat everywhere? They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.
“Don’t … you know,” I started saying to Lyle, who was snapping his head around, shifting into his oblivious inquisitor mode, “You know, don’t—”
“I won’t.”
The crazy-making jazz continued as Lyle called out a hello. I could not see a single employee, nor customer for that matter, but then it was midmorning on a rainy Tuesday. Between the music and the sun-baked lighting from the ruthless fluorescent lamps, I felt stoned. Then I could make out movement, someone in the far back, bending and stooping in one of the aisles, and I started walking toward the figure. The man was dark, muscled, with thick black hair in a ponytail. He reared up when he saw us.
“Oh, dang!” he said flinching. He stared at us, then at the door, as if he’d forgotten he was open for business. “I didn’t hear you all come in.”
“Probably because of the music,” Lyle yelled, pointing up at the ceiling.
“Too loud for you? Probably right. Hold on.” He disappeared toward a back office and suddenly the music was gone.
“Better? Now what can I help you with?” He leaned against a seed bag, gave us a look that said we’d better be worth his turning down the music.
“I’m looking for Trey Teepano,” I said. “Is he the guy who owns this store?”
“I am. I do. I’m Trey. What can I do you for?” He had a tense energy, bounced on the balls of his feet, tucked his lips into his teeth. He was intensely good-looking with a face that blinked young-old, depending on the angle.
“Well.” Well, I didn’t know. His name floated in my head like an incantation, but what to do next: ask him if he’d been a bookie, if he knew Diondra? Accuse him of murder?
“Ben.”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised.
Trey Teepano smiled a cold crocodile smile. “Yeah, took me a second, but I recognized you. The red hair, I guess, and the same face. You’re the one who lived, right? Debby?”
“Libby.”
“Right. And who’re you?”
“I’m just her friend,” Lyle offered. I could feel him willing himself to stop talking, not pull a repeat of the Krissi Cates interview.
Trey began straightening the shelves, readjusting bottles of Deer-Off, poorly pretending to be occupied, like reading a book upside down.
“You knew my dad too?”
“Runner? Everyone knew Runner.”
“Runner mentioned your name the last time I saw him.”
He swung back his ponytail. “Yeah, did he pass on?”
“No, he, he lives down in Oklahoma. He seems to think you were somehow … involved that night, that maybe you could shed some light on what happened. With the murders.”
“Right. That old man is crazy, always has been.”
“He said you were, like, a bookie or something back then.”
“Yup.”
“And you were into Devil worship.”
“Yup.”
He said these things with the faded blue-jean tone of a reformed addict, that vibe of broken-in peace.
“So that’s true?” Lyle said. Then looked at me guiltily.
“Yeah, and Runner owed me money. Lot of money. Still does, I guess. But it doesn’t mean I know what happened in your house that night. I been through all this back ten years ago.”
“More like twenty-five.”
Trey needled his eyebrows.
“Wow, I guess so,” he said, still seeming unconvinced, his face twisted as he added up the years.
“Did you know Ben?” I persisted.
“A little, not really.”
“Your name just keeps coming up a lot.”
“I got a catchy name,” he shrugged. “Look, back then, Kinnakee was racist as hell. Indians they did not like. I got blamed for a lot of shit I didn’t do. This was before Dances with Wolves, you know what I’m saying? It was just BTI all the time out in BFE.”
“What?”
“BTI, Blame the Indian. I admit it, I was a shit. I was not a good guy. But after that night, what happened to your family, it was, like it freaked me out, I got clean. Well, not right after, but a year or so later. Stopped drugs, stopped believing in the Devil. It was harder to stop believing in the Devil.”
“You really believed in the Devil?” Lyle said.
He shrugged: “Sure. You gotta believe in something, right? Everyone has their thing.”
I don’t, I thought.
“It’s like, you believe you have the power of Satan in you, so you have the power of Satan in you,” Trey said. “But that was a long time ago.”
“What about Diondra Wertzner?” I said.
He paused, turned away from us, walked over to the bunnies, started stroking one through the wire with his index finger.
“Where you going with this, Deb, uh, Libby?”
“I’m trying to track down Diondra Wertzner. I heard she was pregnant with Ben’s baby at the time of the murders, and that she disappeared after. Some people say she was last seen with you and Ben.”
“Ah shit, Diondra. I always knew that girl would bite me in the ass sooner or later.” He grinned wide this time. “Man, Diondra. I have no clue where Diondra is, she was always running off, though, always making up drama. She’d run away, her parents would make a big deal, she’d come home, they’d all play house for a little, then her parents would be assholes—they neglected the shit out of her—and she’d need the drama, start some shit, run away, whatever. Total soap opera. I guess she finally ran away, decided it wasn’t worth coming home. I mean, you try the white pages?”
“She’s listed as a missing person,” Lyle said, looked at me again to see if I minded the interruption. I didn’t.
“Oh, she’s fine,” Trey said. “My guess is she’s living somewhere under one of her crazy-ass names.”
“Crazy names?” I said, put a hand on Lyle’s arm to keep him quiet.
“Oh, nothing, she was just one of those girls, always trying to be different. One day she’d talk in an English accent, next day it was Southern. She never gave anyone her real name. Like she’d go to the beauty parlor and give a wrong name, go order a pizza and give the wrong name. She just liked screwing with people, you know, just playing. ‘I’m Desiree from Dallas, I’m Alexis from London.’ She was always giving, uh, using her porn name, you know?”
“She did porn?” I said.
“No, like that game. What’s the name of your childhood pet?”
I stared at him.
“What’s the name of your childhood pet,” he prompted.
I used Diane’s dead dog: “Gracie.”
“And what was the name of the street you grew up on?”
“Rural Route 2.”
He laughed. “Well, that one didn’t work. It’s supposed to sound slutty, like Bambi Evergreen or something. Diondra’s was … Polly something … Palm. Polly Palm, how great is that?”
“You don’t think she’s dead?”
He shrugged.
“You think Ben was really guilty?” I asked.
“I got no opinion on that. Probably.”
Lyle was suddenly tense, bobbing up and down, pushing his pointy finger against my back, trying to steer me toward the door.
“So thanks for your time,” Lyle blurted, and I frowned at him and he frowned back at me. A fluorescent above us thrummed on and off suddenly, flashing sick light on us, the bunnies scampering around in the straw. Trey scowled up at the light and it stopped, as if scolded.
“Well, can I give you my number, in case you think of anything?” I said.
Trey smiled, shook his head. “No thanks.”
Trey turned away then. As we walked toward the door, the music got loud again. I turned around as the storm started to crackle, one side of the sky black, the other yellow. Trey was coming back out of the office, watching us with his hands on his sides, the rabbits behind him doing a sudden scuffle.
“Hey Trey, so what’s BFE then?” I called.
“Butt Fucked Egypt, Libby. That’s our hometown.”
LYLE WAS GALLOPING ahead of me, leaping off the steps. He reached the car in three big strides, jiggling the handle to be let in, comeoncomeoncomeon. I dropped in next to him, pre-annoyed. “What?” I said. Thunder crackled. A gust of air kicked up a wet gravel smell.
“Just drive first, let’s get out of here, hurry.”
“Yessir.”
I swung out of the parking lot, back toward Kansas City, the rain turning frantic. I’d driven about five minutes when Lyle told me to pull over, aimed himself at me, and said, “Oh my God.”
*****
Ben Day
JANUARY 3, 1985
12:02 A.M.
They pulled up outside Diondra’s, the dogs barking frantically as usual, as if they’d never seen a truck, or a person, or Diondra even. They all three went through the back gate, then Diondra told Ben and Trey to stand in front of the sliding door and to take their clothes off so they wouldn’t drip blood everywhere. Just peel ’em off, put ’em all in a pile, and we’ll burn them.
The dogs were frightened of Trey. They barked but they didn’t come near him—he’d beaten the shit out of the white one once, and they all walked carefully around him ever since. Trey pulled his shirt off from the back, the way guys in movies did, the hard way, and then he unbuttoned his jeans, his eyes on Diondra, as if they were about to screw. Like this was some crazy foreplay. Ben pulled his shirt off the same way, and unpeeled his pants, those leather pants he’d sweat through already, and then the dogs were on him, sniffing at his crotch, licking at his arms, like they might devour him. He pushed one away, his palm on its snout, pushing hard, and it just came right back, slobbery, aggressive.
“It wants to suck your dick, man.” Trey laughed. “Get it where you can, right?”
“He ain’t getting any from me, so he might as well,” Diondra snapped, doing her pissy, loop-de-loop head twist. She stepped out of her jeans, tan lines marking where her panties should have been, where no panties were, just white flesh and black fur, sticking up like a wet cat. Then she took off her sweater and stood there in just her bra, her breasts swollen, white stretch marks trailing along the tops of them.
“What?” she said at Ben.
“Nothing, you should go inside.”
“Thanks, genius.” She kicked her clothes over to a pile and told Trey—somehow she made it clear that it was just Trey—that she’d go get some lighter fluid.
Trey kicked his jeans into the center, stood in blue boxers, told Ben that he’d failed to prove himself.
“I don’t see it that way,” Ben muttered, but when Trey said what? he just shook his head. One dog was fully on him now, his paws on Ben’s thighs, trying to lick around his stomach, where the blood had pooled. “Get off me,” Ben snapped, and when the dog just leapt right back up, he backhanded it. The dog snarled, then so did the second, the third barking, its teeth bared. Ben shimmied naked back toward the house yelling, “Go’way,” to the dogs, the dogs backing off only when Diondra returned.
“Dogs respect strength,” Trey said, a slightly upturned lip aimed at Ben’s nakedness. “Nice fire bush.”
Trey grabbed the lighter fluid from Diondra, still nude from her big stomach on down, her belly button poking out like a thumb. Trey sprayed it over the clothes, holding the can near his dick like he was pissing. He flicked his lighter to one side, and WHOOMP! the clothes fired up, making Trey stumble back two big steps, almost fall. It was the first time Ben had seen him look foolish. Diondra turned away, not wanting to embarrass Trey by seeing it. That made Ben more sad than anything else tonight: the woman he wanted to be his wife, the woman who’d have his child, she’d give this bit of grace to another man, but never, ever to Ben.
He needed to make her respect him.
HE WAS STUCK there, at Diondra’s, watching them smoke more dope. He couldn’t get home without his bike—it was just too cold, dead man’s cold, snowing hard again, the wind blowing down the chimney. If it turned into a blizzard, the rest of those cows would freeze to death by morning, if the lazy-ass farmer didn’t do something. Good. Teach him a lesson. Ben felt the anger in him coming up again, tight.
Teach everyone a fucking lesson. All those fuckers who never seemed to have any trouble, who seemed to just glide by—hell, even Runner, shitty drunk that he was, seemed to get less hassle than Ben. There were a lot of people who deserved a lesson, deserved to really understand, like Ben did, that nothing came easy, that most things were going to go sour.
Diondra accidentally burned his jeans along with the leather pants. So he was wearing a pair of Diondra’s purple sweats, a big sweatshirt, and thick white Polo socks she had already mentioned twice she wanted returned. They were at that aimless time of night, the big event over, Ben still wondering what it meant, if he really did pray to the Devil, if he really would start feeling power. Or if it was all some hoax, or one of those things you talked yourself into believing—like a Ouija board or a killer clown in a white van. Were they all three agreeing silently to believe that they’d really sacrificed for Satan, or was it just an excuse to get really high and fuck stuff up?
They should have stopped early on with the drugs. It was cheap stuff, he could tell by how much it all hurt, even the weed went down fighting, like it was out to damage. It was the cheap stuff that made people mean.
Trey passed out, slowly, watching TV, his eyes blinking first, then his head looping around, up then down, then back up. Then he slumped to his side and was gone.
Diondra said she had to pee, and so Ben just sat there in the living room, wishing he were home. He was picturing his flannel sheets, picturing himself in bed, talking to Diondra on the phone. She never phoned from home, and he wasn’t allowed to call her because her parents were so crazy. So she got cigarettes and sat in a phone booth near the gas station or in the mall. It was the one thing she did for him, made him feel good, her making that effort, he really liked it. Maybe he liked the idea of talking to Diondra better than he liked actually talking to her, lately she was so fucking mean to him when they were together. He was thinking again about the bleeding bull and wishing he had the gun back, that’s what he wanted, and then Diondra was yelling his name from her bedroom.
He turned the corner and she was standing by her glittery red answering machine, with her head cocked to the side, and she just said, “You’re fucked,” and hit the button.
“Hey Dio, it’s Megan. I’m totally freaked out about Ben Day, did you hear about it, that he molested all these girls? My sister is in sixth grade. She’s fine, thank God, but god what a sicko. I guess the cops have arrested him. Anyway, call me.”
And then a click and a whir and another girl’s voice deep and nasal: “Hey Diondra, it’s Jenny. I told you Ben Day was a Devil-dude, did you hear about this shit? I guess he’s, like, on the run from the cops. I guess there’s going to be some big conference about it at school tomorrow. I don’t know, I wanted to see if you want to go.”
Diondra was standing over the machine like she wanted to crush it, like it was an animal she could do something to. She turned to Ben and screamed, “What the fuck?” turning pink and spitty and Ben immediately said the wrong thing: “I better go home.”
“You better go home? What the fuck is this Ben, what is going on?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I should go home.”
“No no no no no, momma’s boy. You fucking worthless fucking momma’s boy. What, you going to go home, wait for the police and leave me here while you go to jail? Leave me just sitting here waiting for my fucking dad to get home? With your fucking baby I can’t get rid of?”
“What do you want me to do, Diondra?” Home. That’s what he kept thinking.
“We’re leaving town tonight. I have about $200 cash left over from my parents. How much can you get at your place?” When Ben didn’t say right away, his brain on Krissi Cates and whether the kiss was something to be arrested for and how much was true and whether the cops were really after him, Diondra walked over to him and slapped his face, hard. “How much do you have at your place?”
“I don’t know. I have some money I’ve been saving, and my mom usually has a hundred bucks, two hundred, hidden around. But I don’t know where.”
Diondra swayed, closed one eye and looked at her alarm clock. “Does your mom stay up late, would she be awake?”
“If the police are there, yeah.” If they weren’t, she was asleep, even if she was scared out of her mind. It was the big joke in the family that his mom had never celebrated New Year’s Eve, she was always asleep before midnight.
“We’ll go there, and if we don’t see a cop car, we’ll go in. You can get money, pack some clothes, and then we’ll get the fuck out of here.”
“And then what?”
Diondra crossed over to him, petted him where his cheek still stung. Her eye makeup was halfway down her cheek, but he still felt a surge of, what, love? Power? Something. A surge, a feeling, something good.
“Ben baby, I am the mother of your child, right?” He nodded, just a bit. “OK, so get me out of town. Get us all out of town. I can’t do this without you. We need to go. Head west. We can camp out somewhere, sleep in the car, whatever. Otherwise you’re in jail, and I’m dead from my daddy. He’d make me have the baby and then kill me. And you don’t want our kid to be an orphan, right? Not when we can help it? So let’s go.”
“I didn’t do what they said, with those girls, I didn’t,” Ben finally whispered, Diondra leaning on his shoulder, wisps of her hair curling up, vining into his mouth.
“Who cares if you did?” she said into his chest.
*****
Libby Day
NOW
Lyle was bouncing in his seat. “Libby, did you notice? Holy crud, did you notice?”
“What?”
“Diondra’s porn name, the one she used all the time, did you notice?”
“Polly Palm, what?”
Lyle was grinning, his long teeth glowing brighter than the rest of him in the dark car.
“Libby, what was the name your brother had tattooed on his arm? Remember the names we went through? Molly, Sally, and the one I said sounded like a dog’s name?”
“Oh God.”
“Polly, right?”
“Oh God,” I said again.
“I mean, that’s not a coincidence, right?”
Of course it wasn’t. Everyone who keeps a secret itches to tell it. This was Ben’s way of telling. His homage to his secret girlfriend. But he couldn’t use her real name on the tattoo, Miss Disappearing Diondra. So he used the name she used when she was playing. I pictured him running his fingers over the swollen lines, his skin still stinging, proud. Polly. Maybe a romantic gesture. Maybe a memoriam.
“I wonder how old the tattoo is,” Lyle said.
“It actually didn’t look that old,” I said. “It was still, I don’t know, bright, not faded at all.”
Lyle whipped out his laptop, balanced it on tight knees.
“Come on, come on, gimme a signal.”
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t think Diondra’s dead. I think she’s in exile. And if you were going into exile, and you had to pick a name, wouldn’t you be tempted to use a name you’d used before, one that only a few friends knew, a joke for yourself, and a bit of … home? Something your boyfriend could tattoo on his arm and it would mean something to him, something permanent he could look at. Come on,” he snapped at the laptop.
We drove another twenty minutes, trolling the highways until Lyle got a signal, and began tap-tap-typing in time to the rain, me trying to get a look at the screen without killing us.
He finally looked up, a crazy beam-smile on his face: “Libby,” he said, “you might want to pull over again.”
I swerved onto the side of the road, just short of Kansas City, a semi blaring its horn at my recklessness, shuddering my car as it sped past.
Her name sat there on the screen: Polly Fucking Palm in Kearney, Missouri. Address and phone number, right there, the only Polly Palm listing in the whole country, except for a nail boutique in Shreveport.
“I really need to get the Internet,” I said.
“You think it’s her?” Lyle said, staring at the name as if it might disappear. “It’s gotta be her right?”
“Let’s see.” I pulled out my cell.
She answered on the fourth ring, just as I was taking a big gulp of air to leave her a message.
“Is this Polly Palm?”
“Yes.” The voice was lovely, all cigarettes and milk.
Pause. Click.
“Would you find me some directions to that house, Lyle?”
LYLE WANTED TO come, wanted to come, really, really thought he should come, but I just couldn’t see it working, and I just didn’t want him there, so I dropped him off at Sarah’s Pub, him trying not to look sulky as I pulled away, me promising to phone the second I left Diondra’s.
“I’m serious, don’t forget,” he called after me. “Seriously!” I gave him a honk and drove off. He was still yelling something after me as I turned the corner.
My fingers were tight from gripping the steering wheel; Kearney was a good forty-five minutes northeast of Kansas City, and Diondra’s address, according to Lyle’s very specific directions, was another fifteen minutes from the town proper. I knew I was close when I started hitting all the signs for the Jesse James Farm and Jesse James’ Grave. I wondered why Diondra had chosen to live in the hometown of an outlaw. Seems like something I would do. I drove past the turnoff for the James farm—been there in grade school, a tiny, cold place where, during a surprise attack, Jesse’s little half brother was killed—and I remember thinking, “Just like our house.” I went farther on a looping, skinny road, up and down hills and then out back into country, where dusty clapboard houses sat on big, flat lots, dogs barking on chains in each yard. Not a single person appeared; the area seemed entirely vacant. Just dogs and a few horses, and farther away, a lush line of forest that had been allowed to remain between the homes and the highway.
Diondra’s house came another ten minutes later. It was ugly, it had an attitude, leaning to one side like a pissed-off, hip-jutted woman. It needed the attitude, because it didn’t have much else going for it. It was set far back from the street, looked like the sharecroppers’ quarters for a larger farmhouse, but there was no other house, just a few acres of mud on all sides, rolling and bumpy like the ground had acne. That sad remainder of woods in the distance.
I drove up the long dirt road leading to the house, already worrying my car might get stuck and what would happen if my car got stuck.
From behind the storm clouds, the late afternoon sun arrived just in time to blind me as I slammed the door shut and walked toward the house, my gut cold. As I neared the front steps, a big momma possum shot out from under the porch, hissing at me. The thing unnerved me, that pointy white face and those black eyes looking like something that should already be dead. Plus momma possums are nasty bitches. It ran to the bushes, and I kicked the steps to make sure there weren’t more, then climbed them. My lopsided right foot swished around in my boot. A dreamcatcher hung near the door, dangling carved animal teeth and feathers.
Just as the rain brings out the concrete smells of the city, it had summoned up the smell of soil and manure here. It smelled like home, which wasn’t right.
A long, loose pause followed my knock on the door, and then quiet feet approached. Diondra opened the door, decidedly undead. She didn’t even look that different from the photos I’d seen. She’d ditched the spiral perm, but still wore her hair in loose dark waves, still wore thick black eyeliner that made her eyes look Easter-blue, like pieces of candy. Her mascara was double-coated, spidery, and left flecks of black on the pads of flesh beneath her eyes. Her lips were plump as labias. Her whole face and body was a series of gentle curves: pink cheeks with a hint of jowl, breasts that slightly overflowed her bra, a ring of skin bordering the top of her jeans.
“Oh,” she said as she opened the door, a flood of heat coming out. “Libby?”
“Yes.”
She took my face in her hands. “Holy crap, Libby. I always thought some day you’d find me. Smart girl.” She hugged me, then held me out a bit. “Hi. Come in.”
I walked into a kitchen with a den to the side, the setup reminding me too much of my own lost home. We walked down a short hallway. To my right, a basement door hung open, leaking gusts of cold air. Negligent. We entered a low-ceilinged living room, cigarette smoke blooming from an ashtray on the floor, the walls yellowed, all the furniture looking drained. A massive TV sat like a loveseat against one wall.
“Would you mind taking off your shoes, please, sweetheart?” she said, motioning toward the living room carpet, which was gummy and soiled. The whole house was crooked, beaten-up, stained. A miniature dog turd sat in a lump near the stairs, Diondra stepping deftly around it.
She led me toward the sofa, trailing at least three different scents: a grape-y hair spray, a flowery lotion, and maybe … insect spray? She was wearing a low-cut blouse and tight jeans, with the junk jewelry of a teenager. She was one of those middle-aged women who thought they were fooling people.
I followed her, missing the extra inches my bootheels gave me, feeling childish. Diondra turned her profile to me, marking me from the corner of her eye, and I could see a pointy canine poke out from beneath her upper lip.
She cocked her head to one side and said, “Come on in, sit down. Jeez you’re definitely a Day, huh? That fire-red hair, always loved it.”
As soon as we sat down three squat-leg poodles came running in, collars jangling like sleigh bells, and clambered up on her lap. I tensed.
“Oh crap, you are definitely a Day,” she cackled. “Ben was always all jumpy around dogs too. Course the ones I used to have were bigger than these babies.” She let the dogs lick at her fingers, pink tongues flashing in and out. “So, Libby,” she began, like my name, my existence was an inside joke, “did Ben tell you where to find me? Tell me the truth.”
“I found you from something Trey Teepano said.”
“Trey? Jesus. How’d you get to Trey Teepano?”
“He has a feed store, in the yellow pages.”
“A feed store. Wouldn’t have called that one. How’s he look by the way?”
I nodded enthusiastically—he looks good—before I caught myself. Then said: “You were with Ben that night.”
“Mmmm-hmmm. I was.” She searched my face, wary but interested.
“I want to know what happened.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Sorry, Miss Libby, this is all so out of the blue. Ben say something to you? I mean, why’d you come looking for me now? Why now?”
“I need to know for sure what happened.”
“Oh, Libby. Ohhh.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Ben is OK taking the time for what happened that night. He wants to take the time. Let him.”
“Did he kill my family?”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“Did Ben kill my family?”
She just smiled at me, those ridgeless lips staying rigid.
“I need some peace, Diondra, please. Just tell me.”
“Libby, this is about peace, then? You think you know the answer, you’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? You think after what happened there’s any peace for you, sweetheart? How about this. Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Serenity Prayer. It’s helped me a lot.”
“Just say it, Diondra, just tell me. Then I’ll try to accept.”
The sun was setting, hitting us through the rear window now, making me blink with the brightness. She leaned toward me, took both my hands.
“Libby, I’m so sorry. I just don’t know. I was with Ben that night. We were going to leave town. I was pregnant with his baby. We were going to run away. He was going to his house, to get some money. An hour goes by, two hours, three hours. I’m thinking he’s lost his nerve. I finally cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I heard what happened. At first I thought he was killed too. Then I hear, no, he’s in custody and police think he’s part of some coven—a satanic, Charles Manson–type clan they’re looking for. I’m waiting for a knock at my door. But nothing happens. Days go by, and I hear Ben has no alibi, he hasn’t mentioned me at all. He’s protecting me.”
“All these years.”
“All these years, yes. The cops were never satisfied it was just Ben. They wanted more. Looks better. But Ben never said a word. He’s my goddam hero.”
“So no one knows what happened that night. I’m never, ever going to find out.” I felt a strange relief, saying it aloud. I could quit now, maybe. If I could never, ever know, then maybe I could quit.
“I do think you could find some peace, if you accept that. I mean, Libby, I don’t think Ben did it. I think he’s protecting your daddy, is what I think. But who knows? I hate to say this, but whatever happened that night, Ben needed to be in prison. He even says so. He had something inside him that wasn’t right for the outside world. A violence. He does so much better in prison. He’s very popular in there. He penpals with all these women, the women are so crazy about him. He gets a dozen proposals of marriage a year. Every once in a while, he thinks he wants back outside. But he doesn’t.”
“How do you know this?”
“We keep in touch,” she snapped, then smiled sugar. The yellow-orange light of the sunset rayed across her chin, her eyes suddenly in the dark.
“Where’s the baby, Diondra? The baby you were pregnant with?”
“I’m here,” said the Day Girl.
*****
Ben Day
JANUARY 3, 1985
1:11 A.M.
Ben opened the door into the dark living room and thought, home. Like a hero-sailor returning after months at sea. He almost shut the door on Diondra—can’t catch me—but let her in because. Because he was scared what would happen if he didn’t. It was a relief at least they left Trey behind. He didn’t want Trey walking through his home, making his smart-ass remarks about things Ben already knew were embarrassing.
Everyone was asleep now, the whole house doing a collective breath-in-breath-out. He wanted to wake his mom, willed her to turn around the corner, blurry eyed in one of her clothes cocoons, and ask him where in the world he had been, what in the world had possessed him?
The Devil. The Devil possessed me, Mom.
He didn’t want to go anywhere with Diondra, but she was behind him, rage fuming off her body like heat, eyes wide—hurry up, hurry up—and so he started to quietly sift through the cabinets, looking in his mom’s hiding places for cash. In the first cabinet, he found an old box of wheat flakes, opened it up, and swallowed as much as he could of the dry cereal, the flakes sticking to his lips and throat, making him cough just a little, a baby cough. Then he stuck his whole hand in and grabbed the flakes by the fistful, jamming them into his mouth, and opened the fridge to find a Tupperware container packed with diced peas and carrots, a skin of butter on top, and he stuck a spoon in them, put his lip to the plastic rim and shoveled it all in his mouth, peas rolling down his chest, onto the floor.
“Come on!” Diondra hissed. He was still in her purple sweats; she was in nice new jeans, a red sweater and the black menswear shoes she liked, except her feet were so big they were actually men’s shoes. She did not like this acknowledged. Now she was tapping one. Come on, come on.
“Let’s go to my room,” he said. “I definitely have money there. And a present for you.” Diondra brightened at that—even now, her eyes blinkering on and off, swaying with the drugs and liquor, she was distracted by presents.
The lock to his room was snapped off, and Ben got pissed, then worried. Mom or police? Not that there was anything to find. But still. He opened the door, flipped on the light, Diondra closing the door behind him and settling on the bed. She was talking, talking, talking, but he wasn’t listening, and then she was crying and so he stopped his packing and lay down next to her. He smoothed back her hair, and rubbed her belly and tried to keep her quiet, tried to mutter soothing stuff, talking about how great their life was going to be together and more lies like that. It was a good half-hour before she calmed down. And she’d been the one telling him to hurry up. Classic.
He got back up, looking at the clock, wanting to get out of here if they were really going to get out. The door had opened a crack and he didn’t even stop to go close it, wanted it open, the danger making him move faster. He threw jeans and sweaters in a gym bag, along with his notebook filled with girls’ names he’d like for the baby—he still thought Krissi Day was the leader in that, that was a good name, Krissi Day. Krissi Patricia Day or else, after Diane, Krissi Diane Day. He liked that because then her friends could call her D-Day, it’d be cool. He’d have to fight Diondra though, she thought all his names were too plain. She wanted names like Ambrosia and Calliope and Nightingale.
Gym bag on his shoulder, he reached into the back of his desk drawer and pulled out his hidden cash pile. He’d been tucking away fives and tens here and there, had convinced himself he had three hundred, four hundred dollars, but now he saw he had not quite a hundred. He jammed it in his pocket, got down on his hands and knees to reach under his bed, and saw only space where the bag of clothes had been. His daughter’s clothes.
“Where’s my present?” Diondra said, a guttural sound because she was lying flat on her back, her belly aimed up, belligerent, like a middle finger.
Ben lifted his head, looked at her, the smeared lipstick and dripping-black eyes, and thought she looked like a monster. “I can’t find it,” he said.
“What do you mean, can’t find it?”
“I don’t, someone’s been in here.”
They both stood in the glare of his single lightbulb, not knowing what to do next.
“You think it was one of your sisters?”
“Maybe. Michelle is always nosing around in here. Plus I don’t have as much money as I thought I did.”
Diondra sat up, grabbing her belly, which she never did affectionately, protectively. She clutched it like it was a burden he was too stupid to offer to carry. She was holding it now, out at him, and saying, “You are the father of this goddam baby, so you better think of something fast, you are the one who got me pregnant, so you better fix this. I am almost seven months pregnant, I could have a baby any day now, and you—”
A flicker at the door, just a swipe of nightgown, and then a foot jutting out, trying to keep balance. An accidental bump and the door swung wide. Michelle had been hovering in the hallway, trying to eavesdrop, until she leaned in too far and her whole moony face popped into sight, those big glasses reflecting twin squares of light. She was holding her new diary, a dribble of pen ink coming from her mouth.
Michelle looked from Ben to Diondra, and then pointedly down at Diondra’s belly, and said, “Ben got a girl pregnant. I knew it!”
Ben couldn’t see her eyes, just the light on the glasses and the smile beneath.
“Have you told Mom?” Michelle asked, getting giddy, her voice a goading hint. “Should I go tell Mom?”
Ben was about to reach for her, jam her back into bed with a threat of his own, when Diondra lunged. Michelle tried to make it to the door, but Diondra got her hair, that long brown hair, and yanked her to the ground, Michelle landing hard on her tailbone, Diondra whispering not a word, you little cunt not a fucking word, and then Michelle twisted away, pushing against the walls with slippered feet, leaving Diondra holding a clutch of hair, which she threw onto the floor, going after Michelle, and if Michelle had only run for Mom’s room it may have been all right, Mom would take care of it all, but instead she went straight for her own room, the girls’ room, and Diondra followed, Ben trailing her, whispering Diondra, stop, Diondra let it go. But Diondra was not going to let it go, she walked over to Michelle’s bed where Michelle was cowering against the wall, whimpering, and she yanked Michelle down by a leg, straightened her out on the bed and sat on her, You want to tell the world I’m pregnant, that your plan, one of your little schemes, some fucking little secret you sell for fifty cents, tell your mommy, guess what I know? I don’t think so you little shit, why is this whole family so stupid, and she wrapped her hands around Michelle’s neck, Michelle’s feet, cased in slippers that were supposed to look like puppy feet, kicking up and down, Ben watching the feet, disconnected, thinking they really did look like puppy feet, and then Debby slowly waking from her zombie sleep so Ben closed the door, instead of opening it wide, calling for his mom, he wanted everything to stay quiet, no other instinct than to stick to the plan which is don’t wake anyone up, and he was trying to reason with Diondra, thinking it would all be OK, Diondra, Diondra, calm down, she won’t tell, let her go and Diondra leaning deeper onto Michelle’s neck, You think I’m gonna spend my life worried about this little bitch, and Michelle scratching, then stabbing Diondra’s hand with her pen, a glint of blood, Diondra letting go for a second, looking surprised, looking like she just couldn’t believe it and Michelle leaned to one side and gulped air and Diondra just grabbed her neck again, and Ben put his hands on Diondra’s shoulders to pull her off but instead they just rested there.
*****
Libby Day
NOW
The Day Girl was slender, almost tall, and as she came into the room, she showed me a face that was virtually mine. She had our red hair too, dyed brown, but the red roots were peeking out just like mine had days before. Her height must have come from Diondra, but her face was pure us, me, Ben, my mom. She gawked at me, then shook her head.
“Sorry, that was weird,” she said, blushed. Her skin was dusted with our family freckles. “I didn’t know. I mean, I guess it makes sense we look alike, but. Wow.” She looked at her mom, then back at me, at my hands, at her hands, at my missing finger. “I’m Crystal. I’m your niece.”
I felt like I should hug her, and I wanted to. We shook hands.
The girl wavered near us, twisting her arms around each other like a braid, still glancing sideways at me, the way you glimpse yourself in the glass of a storefront as you walk past, trying to catch a look at yourself without anyone noticing.
“I told you it would happen if it was meant to, sweetheart,” Diondra said. “So here she is. Come here, sit down.”
The girl tumbled lazily onto her mother, pushing herself into the crook of Diondra’s arm, her cheek on her mother’s shoulder, Diondra playing with a strand of the red/brown hair. She looked at me from that vantage point. Protected.
“I can’t believe I finally get to meet you,” she said. “I was never supposed to get to meet you. I’m a secret, you know.” She glanced up at her mom. “A secret love child, right?”
“That’s right,” Diondra said.
So the girl knew who she was, who the Days were, that her father was Ben Day. I was stunned that Diondra trusted her daughter to know this, to keep the secret close, not seek me out. I wondered how long Crystal had known, if she’d ever driven past my house, just to see, just to see. I wondered why Diondra would tell her daughter such a horrible truth, when she didn’t really need to.
Diondra must have caught my train of thoughts. “It’s OK,” she said. “Crystal knows the whole story. I tell her everything. We’re best friends.”
Her daughter nodded. “I even have a little scrapbook of photos of you all. Well, just that I clipped out of magazines and stuff. It’s like a fake family album. I always wanted to meet you. Should I call you Aunt Libby? Is that weird? That’s too weird.”
I couldn’t think what to say. I just felt a relief. The Days weren’t quite dying out yet. They were in fact flourishing, with this pretty, tall girl who looked like me but with all her fingers and toes and without my nightmare brain. I wanted to ask a flood of nosy questions: Did she have weak eyes, like Michelle? Was she allergic to strawberries like my mom? Did she have sweet blood, like Debby, get eaten alive by mosquitos, spend the summer stinking of CamphoPhenique? Did she have a temper, like me, a distance like Ben? Was she manipulative and guiltless like Runner? What was she like, what was she like, tell me the many ways she was like the Days, and remind me of how we were.
“I read your book too,” Crystal added. “A Brand New Day. It was really good. I wanted to tell someone I knew you because, you know, I was proud.” Her voice lilted like a flute, as if she was perpetually on the verge of laughter.
“Oh, thanks.”
“You OK, Libby?” Diondra said.
“Um, I guess, I guess I still just don’t understand why you all stayed secret for so long. Why you have Ben still swearing he doesn’t know you. I mean, I’m assuming he’s never even met his daughter.”
Crystal was shaking her head no. “I’d love to meet him though. He’s my hero. He’s protected my mom, me, all these years.”
“We really need you to keep this secret for us, Libby,” Diondra said. “We’re really hoping you do. I just can’t risk it, that they think I was an accomplice or something. I can’t risk that. For Crystal.”
“I just don’t think there’s a need for that—”
“Please?” Crystal said. Her voice was simple, but urgent. “Please. I seriously can’t stand the idea that they can come any minute and take my mom away from me. She’s really my best friend.”
So they’d both said. I almost rolled my eyes but saw the girl was on the edge of tears. So she was actually frightened of this specter Diondra had created: the vengeful bogeymen cops who might bust in and take Mommy away. I just bet Diondra was her best friend. All these years, they lived in a two-person pod. Secret. Gotta stay secret for Mommy.
“So you ran away and never told your folks?”
“I left right when I was really starting to show,” Diondra said. “My parents were maniacs. I was happy to be rid of them. It was just our secret, the baby, Ben and mine.”
A secret in the Day house, how unusual. Michelle finally missed a scoop.
“You’re smiling.” Crystal said, a matching small smile on her lips.
“Ha, I was just thinking how much my sister Michelle would have loved getting her hands on that bit of gossip. She loved drama.”
They looked like I slapped them.
“I wasn’t trying to make light, sorry,” I said.
“Oh, no, no don’t worry about it,” Diondra said. We all stared at each other, fingers and hands and feet wiggling about. Diondra broke the silence: “Would you like to stay for dinner, Libby?”
SHE FED ME a salty pot roast that I tried to swallow and a lot of pink wine from a box that seemed to have no bottom. We didn’t sip, we drank. My kind of women. We talked about silly things, stories about my brother, with Crystal layering on questions I felt embarrassed I couldn’t answer: Did Ben like rock or classical? Did he read much? Did he have any diabetes, because she had low blood-sugar problems. And what about her grandma Patty, what was she like?
“I want to know them, as, you know, people. Not victims,” she said with twenty-something piousness.
I excused myself to the bathroom, needing a moment away from the memories, the girl, Diondra. The realization I was out of people to talk to, that I’d come to the end, and now had to loop around and think about Runner again. The bathroom was as gross as the rest of the place, mucked with mold, the toilet perpetually running, wads of toilet paper smeared with lipstick dotting the floor around the trash-bin. Alone for the first time in the house, I couldn’t resist looking for a souvenir. A glazed red vase sat on the back of the toilet tank, but I didn’t have my purse with me. I needed something small. I opened the medicine cabinet and found several prescription bottles with Polly Palm written on the label. Sleeping pills and painkillers and allergy stuff. I took a few Vicodin, then pocketed a light pink lipstick and a thermometer. Very good fortune, as I would never, ever think to buy a thermometer, but I’d always wanted one. When I take to my bed, it’s good to know whether I’m sick or just lazy.
I got back to the table, Crystal sitting with one foot on her chair, her chin resting on her knee. “I still have more questions,” she said, her flute voice doing scales.
“I probably don’t have the answers,” I started, trying to ward her off. “I was just so young when it happened. I mean, I’d forgotten so much about my family until I began talking with Ben.”
“Don’t you have photo albums?” Crystal asked.
“I do. I’d put them away for a while, boxed them up.”
“Too painful,” Crystal said in a hushed voice.
“So I only just started looking through the boxes again—photo albums and yearbooks, and a lot of other old crap.”
“Like what?” Diondra said, smushing some peas under her fork like a bored teenager.
“Well, practically half of it was Michelle’s junk,” I offered, eager to be able to answer some question definitely.
“Like toys?” Crystal said, playing with the corner of her skirt.
“No, like, notes and crap. Diaries. With Michelle, everything got written down. She saw a teacher doing something weird, it went in the diary, she thought our mom was playing favorites, it went in the diary, she got in an argument with her best friend over a boy they both liked, it went—”
“—odd Delhunt,” murmured Crystal, nodding. She swallowed some more wine with slug.
“—in the diary,” I continued, not quite hearing. Then hearing. Did she say Todd Delhunt? It was Todd Delhunt, I never would have remembered that name on my own, that big fight Michelle got into over little Todd Delhunt. It happened right at Christmas, right before the murders, I remember she stewed all through Christmas morning, scribbling in her new diary. But. Todd Delhunt, how did—?
“Did you know Michelle?” I asked Diondra, my brain still working.
“Not too,” Diondra said. “Not really at all,” she added and she started reminding me of Ben pretending not to know Diondra.
“Now it’s my turn to pee,” Crystal said, taking one last swirl of wine.
“So,” I started, and stalled out. There is no way Crystal would know about Michelle’s crush on Todd Delhunt unless. Unless she read Michelle’s diary. The one she got Christmas morning, to kick off 1985. I’d assumed none of the diaries were missing, because 1984 was intact, but I hadn’t even thought about 1985. Michelle’s new diary, just nine days of thoughts—that’s what Crystal was quoting from. She had read the diary of my dead—
I caught a flash of metal to my right, just as Crystal slammed an ancient clothes iron into my temple, her mouth stretched wide in a frozen scream.
*****
Patty Day
JANUARY 3, 1985
2:03 A.M.
Patty had actually drifted to sleep, totally ridiculous, and woken up at 2:02, scooted from under Libby, and padded down the hallway. Someone was rustling in the girls’ room, a bed was creaking. Michelle and Debby were heavy sleepers but they were noisy—cover throwers, sleeptalkers. She walked past Ben’s room, the light still on from when she’d broken in. She would have lingered, but she was late, and Calvin Diehl didn’t seem likely to put up with late.
Ben Baby.
Better not to have the time. She walked to the door, and instead of worrying about the cold, she thought of the ocean, that single trip to Texas when she was a girl. She pictured herself slathered in oil and baking, the water rushing in, salt on her lips. Sun.
She opened the door, and the knife went into her chest, and she doubled over into the arms of the man, him whispering, Don’t worry, it will all be over in about thirty seconds, let’s just do one more to make sure, and he tilted her away from him, she was a dancer being dipped, and then she could feel the knife turn in her chest, it hadn’t hit her heart, it should have hit her heart, and she could feel the steel move inside her and the man looked down on her with a kindly face, getting ready to go again, but he looked over her shoulder and his kindly face got mottled, his mustache started shaking—
“What the hell?”
And Patty turned her face just a bit, back into the house, and it was Debby in her lavender nightgown, her pigtails crooked from sleep, one white ribbon trailing down her arm, yelling, Mom, they’re hurting Michelle! Not even noticing that Mom was being hurt too, she was so focused on her message, Come on, Mom, come on and Patty could only think: bad timing for a nightmare. Then: shut the door. She was bleeding onto her legs, and as she tried to shut the door so Debby couldn’t see her, the man pushed opened the door, and yelled Goddamgoddamgoddaaammmmm! Thundering it into Patty’s ear, she felt him trying to pull the knife out of her chest and realized what it meant, that he wanted Debby, this man who said no one should know, no one could see him, he wanted Debby to go with Patty, and Patty put her hand hard on the hilt and pushed it deeper inside her and the man kept yelling and finally dropped hold of the knife, kicked the door open and went inside, and as Patty fell, she saw him going for the axe, the axe that Michelle had propped by the door, and Debby started to run toward her mother, running to help her mom, and Patty screaming Run away! And Debby froze, screamed, vomited down her front, scrambled on the tile and started the other way, made it to the end of the hallway, just turning the corner, but the man was right behind her, he was bringing the axe up and then she saw the axe go down and Patty pulled herself up, stumbling like a drunk, not able to see out of one eye, moving like in a nightmare where her feet go fast but she doesn’t get anywhere, screaming Run, Run, Run, and turning the corner to see Debby lying on the floor with wings of blood, and the man so angry now, his eyes wet and alight, yelling, Why’d you make me do this? and he turned as if to leave, and Patty ran past him, picked up Debby, who wobbled a few steps like when she was a fat little toddler, and she was really hurt, her arm, her sweet arm, It’s OK, baby, you’re OK, the knife sliding out of Patty’s chest and rattling down onto the floor, blood pulsing out of her more quickly and the man came back this time with a shotgun. Patty’s shotgun, that she’d placed so carefully on the front-room mantelpiece, where the girls couldn’t reach it. He aimed it at her as she tried to get in front of Debby because now she couldn’t die.
The man cocked the gun and Patty had time for one last thought: I wish, I wish, I wish I could take this back.
And then with a whoosh, like summer air shooting through a car window, the blast took off half her head.
*****
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