No One Tells Everything (7 page)

“You know the college murder out on Long Island?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“It’s not like it seems,” she says. “I mean how it’s been reported.”

Jimmy folds his arms across his chest and squints at her.

“You know something the police don’t?”

She balls up her napkin and throws it at him.

“Maybe. In a way. There’s more to it than evidence. There’s something about the kid they arrested.”

“Yeah, he kidnapped and killed a girl. He’s a shady character.”

“It’s not that simple, why people do things.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” Jimmy says.

He wipes up a puddle of spilled beer from the bar.

“If he did it at all,” she says. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough yet to figure it out.”

“What? You think he didn’t do it?”

“I don’t think he’s a sinister mastermind who planned it all out. People want retribution and they want a bad guy. It makes them feel better about themselves.”

“You think he’s redeemable?” he asks.

“I want to know more about this kid. I need to put together a few more pieces.”

“Humans are a giant mystery, Gracie. If you get all the clues and fill in all the little boxes, we still might not make sense.”

Grace rests her chin on her palm.

“Just don’t put yourself in danger,” he says. “What about the knitting? That seems like a better pastime.”

He’s summoned by a group of women in suits at the other end of the bar.

“I’ll be okay,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says and smiles. “That’s what you always say.”

She doesn’t tell Jimmy that she is ready to follow this thing wherever it goes.

###

A few months after Callie died, Grace watched from the family room window as her mother picked the first daffodils of the season in the backyard, her hand up under the throats of the bunched yellow blooms as she trimmed the stems to perfectly even stalks. In her mind, Grace pictured herself and Callie standing a few yards apart, her mother between them. She imagined that her mom looked at her, and then turned away, dropped her bouquet, and held out her arms to Callie. Grace became fixated on this image, on the feeling of being the unchosen. Even though she knew she’d made it up, the scene was cracklingly real to her, as if it kept recurring on some parallel stage. The thought so seared her consciousness that she would try to see how long she could go without thinking about it, forcing her mind blank, pushing away this vision she had created. It was too damning, and she had a sense that if she couldn’t get rid of it, it was proof of its truth.

Of course Grace knows now that her mother loved her as best she could, that her obsession was born from her own unease, but it’s never really gone away, that vague sense that she is a disappointment for having lived.

Grace couldn’t bring herself to answer when her mother called at work earlier, but after her stop-off at the bar, she dials freely.

“Mom?”

“Grace. Hi. What time is it?”

“Did I wake you?”

“I must have dozed off. I was watching an old Cary Grant movie.” Her mother yawns. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I wanted to see how Dad was doing.”

“He’s asleep. Today he watched eight trays of slides from when you girls were small. Such pretty children you were. I decided that he’s just going through some sort of phase, your father. Feeling his age.”

Her mother knows it’s more than that but she’s always in control, her emotions in check. Theirs was a household of silence, of close-mouthed smiles across quiet dinner tables. Tears borne in private corners. One night Grace’s father arrived home hours late, but her mother pretended all was normal. She put on her lipstick and met him at the door with his drink and a kiss on the cheek. Growing up Grace sensed that it was more important to be slim than smart, feminine than ambitious. When the Taylors got divorced, her mother shrugged and said, “Well, she’d really let herself go.” Grace preferred to stay out of view in the cool, obfuscating shadows. It was easier that way.

“How come we never talked about Callie?” Grace asks. The wine has loosened her tongue just enough.

“What do you mean talked about her? What was there to talk about?”

“She died and we were sad and we never talked about it.”

“What good would it have done? Why does it matter now?”

“It matters,” Grace says. But she relents. She lets her head fall against the couch and closes her eyes. “It might have.”

Her mother sighs. “Oh, Grace. Let’s not make this a big thing.”

“No, we wouldn’t want to do that,” Grace says.

There are some memories that are tucked away, like the sun, too bright to look at for more than an instant, too powerful and damaging.

That August day twenty-five years ago, her mother was drinking coffee, watering her plants, dusting, getting the house in order in hopes everything else would fall in line. Grace and Callie were playing Monopoly on the floor of the family room and in the way of their mom’s vacuuming. She told them to go outside and run around. She said she didn’t want to hear from them until lunchtime. Their father was nursing a hangover in his den with a Bloody Mary, trying to soften his regret for how things had gone the night before. Callie tried to get him to come outside and play tag. She pulled his lifeless arm and said, “Please, please, please, Daddy,” and tried to tickle him.

“Not now. Your dad needs some quiet.”

“Come on, Callie,” Grace said. “Stop being such a pest.”

If only, each of her parents must have said to themselves innumerable times in the ensuing years. If only I could have that morning back.

Grace’s role in the accident was something else altogether. She was there, the only witness. She didn’t move, didn’t reach out, didn’t grab Callie’s shirt, her hand. She had time to do something but she stayed rooted in the crabgrass at the edge of the yard as Callie tripped into the street, as the car didn’t slow, as the body was lifted into the air. Grace shunned the memory of those moments, and for most of her life has refused to look.

She remembers them now in odd, still frames accompanied by the rapid click, click, click of a camera shutter.

###

Grace wakes up sweating in the late morning sun searing through the window, still in her clothes from the night before. At least she had the wherewithal to take off her shoes. She is already two hours late for work. Her mouth is dry and fuzzy and it hurts to lift her head off the pillow.

“I’m sick again,” she says to Brian’s voice mail, hoping her scratchy voice sounds authentically marred.

Today is the day Charles Raggatt will be arraigned, and Grace drives out to Long Island to see him for the first time. By the time she gets to the courthouse in Mineola, the proceedings are an hour behind. She situates herself in one of the wooden flip seats in the back. The old window doesn’t close all the way and a spring breeze finds her neck. In the first row of spectator seats a Hispanic woman crochets until her son is brought before the judge on some kind of drug charge. The young man juts his chin out with defiant bravado. He has a tattoo of a tear on his cheek. The mother bursts forth with something in Spanish and the boy closes his eyes and sets his jaw. She says his name, Carlos, but he will not look at her. Finally, she crosses herself and then leaves the room.

Other than court personnel, there are only a few people left in the gallery: family members mostly, a reporter taking notes. Three more men are brought in— tough men, hardened men, men with violence and steel in their eyes—one for robbery, another for assault, the third for vehicular homicide. Grace fears the others can hear her rapid breathing. And then there he is. Charles Raggatt. A boy’s face on an oafish body that seems to have swelled in the weeks since his arrest. His face is greasy, his hair matted. He trudges in, cuffed and shackled, wearing the standard-issue orange jumpsuit, led by a guard and followed by his short, bald, well-shod lawyer. Charles doesn’t look Grace’s way. He moves past the gallery and slumps into his seat.

She fights the urge to catch his eye and say, “Charles, I’m here.”

Y
ou see his mouth moving but you can’t make out the words. You have lost feeling in your left hand, the handcuff too tight. It’s cold and hard against your wrist and attached to the chain around your belly. “In God We Trust,” it says above the judge’s head, but the letters blur like water spilled on ink. You’ve long since realized that your parents can’t buy your way out of this one. The thought of them, small and disconnected from you, makes you angry. You’re not just angry. You hate them. For what? For not understanding you and for always telling you to try harder and for being so providing and, well, nice. They are on their way to New York and you know the sight of them will make you cry.

The judge has said something else but you can only hear the jangle of your chains. You pick up one foot and then the other. You think about the smell of blood, metallic as it hung in the room. You look down in a panic but it is only sweat that coats your hands now, bloated and pink and shiny like large baby mice.

You try to tense your muscles to stop the shaking but it only makes it worse. The chains are getting louder. You are lonelier than you’ve ever been, and you can’t remember ever really not being lonely.

“Do you understand the charges against you?”

The judge’s voice cuts a hole in your brain. Your lawyer’s whisper is cool and wordless against your ear. He is urging you to do something but you can’t focus on what he’s telling you to do.

“Say yes,” he says, “tell him yes.”

“Yes,” you say. The voice is not yours at all but low and damp. You say yes again just in case it didn’t come out the first time. It sounds like it originates from outside your body.

Your lawyer’s cologne tickles your nose and you wonder if he can smell your oniony odor. You have not showered in almost a week and your hair is limp and dirty on your forehead. They have you isolated and they monitor you around the clock. If they only knew that you don’t care enough to even get up from the lumpy mattress, let alone figure out how to hurt yourself. You wonder at the events of the last month but you want to say that it was all part of something that started in you long ago, before you ever arrived in New York, before you accepted that you couldn’t shed the soul you were born with.

“Judge Richard Castiglione” the plaque says. You read it over and over, tracing the curves of each letter and leaping over to the next. You notice him now, for the first time. Although he is sitting, you can tell he is short, his head like a cantaloupe perched on a round body, his skin accordioned around his eyes. Now that you look at him, he seems more paternal than imposing, his voice firm but not mean. More like a father than your father, more interested in your fate, it seems at this moment you stand before him, than anyone else. You want to tell him how it was, how it came to be, how you arrived at this ratty courtroom in Mineola, unable to even scratch your nose, impotent against the churning in your skull. You’re pretty sure he just called you son. Your lawyer puts his hand on your shoulder, warm and heavy through your jumpsuit, so heavy you fear you might tip over. He shakes you a little and you guess you are supposed to say something to the judge who isn’t smiling when you look up at him, but isn’t scowling, either. He doesn’t look disapproving and you like him for it.

“Say yes,” the lawyer says again.

All you want to do is sit down, even if it’s back in jail. You are at once unbearably tired and thirsty and you wonder if you could ask Judge Castiglione for a sip of his water. You know that’s ridiculous but you bet he would make the bailiff get you your own if you asked. At last the lawyer leads you to a chair, and then the other man, the one in the wrinkled suit who looks at you with contempt and waves his long fingers around when he talks, gets up. His voice is a yell.

“He planned to kidnap and murder Sarah Shafer,” he says, but you close your eyes and tuck your brain deep inside to keep from hearing any more. He is the Assistant District Attorney, the one who hates you, the one who thinks you are a killer. That is not what it was at all.

Count one: Murder in the first degree.

You are nineteen years old. The boy you once were was overtaken by someone you despised even more. You can hear your father saying, “I just don’t understand this,” and in your head you answer, Neither do I, Dad. You don’t understand why you were the one that was different, why you were the one that everyone decided was the odd man out.

Count two: Murder in the first degree.

Your lawyer tried to explain why there was more than one count for the same charge but you tuned out his words as they tumbled from his shiny lips. You are on suicide watch and the District Attorney could seek the death penalty. You laugh as you think of this now but you don’t explain why you are laughing to your lawyer, who winces and then smiles a little, hoping to make what appears to be your craziness more understandable. If I am crazy now, you want to tell him, then I’ve been crazy for a very long time. But you seem to have lost the connection between your thoughts and your ability to speak. When you open your mouth, all you can hear is the sound of saliva sticking to your tongue and the roof of your mouth. You used to be able to control the messiness better, but somewhere along the line it got harder and harder to keep at bay.

Count three: second-degree murder.

You found blood in the most unexpected places. A smear on the dashboard. Soaked into the tip of your shoelace. On the box of Tide.

Count four: second-degree murder.

Crusted in your ear.

Count five: second-degree murder.

You liked to hear her say your name.

Count six: second-degree murder.

Okay, you feel like screaming, okay, okay, okay. You are trembling. The judge’s words sound like they are elliptical and warbling on a tape stuck in an answering machine. You wonder if you will ever go home again, ever leave the state of New York. But then again you don’t really want to go back to Ohio, do you?

Count seven: first-degree kidnapping