The Book of Someday (11 page)

There’s not a shred of doubt that Micah is in the right place and has found the right person. The stocky, gum-chewing, stone-faced individual leaning against one of the battered washers, lazily wiping down its rust-rimmed lid, is Hayden Truitt. An individual who, many years ago when she and Micah were girls, carried a switchblade and owned a dog named Lucifer.

As Micah is walking toward Hayden—and Hayden is warily watching her—Micah can’t find any alteration in Hayden’s expression. Any change in the steady rhythm of her gum-chewing. Any flicker of emotion.

In Micah, however, there is absolute chaos.

It’s as if a hole has opened in time and she’s being sucked back into that awful moment when she first met Hayden. A meeting that ultimately led to such unimaginable mayhem.

Micah is only a few feet away from Hayden now, and she’s surprised by how mannishly thick Hayden’s body has become and how dead her eyes are. Hayden, her face still emotionless, is making a show of casually pressing her tongue into the wad of gum she’s chewing—and pushing it to one side of her mouth.

Her voice is flat, deadpan, as she asks Micah: “You here to wash somethin’?” Without waiting for a response, she adds: “Can’t be that fancy outfit you’re wearin’—that little number looks right-out-of-the-dry-cleaner fresh.”

Micah is so rattled she can barely speak when she tells Hayden: “I need to ask you a question.”

Hayden snorts, twirls the grimy cleaning rag she’s holding, and flicks it at Micah’s wrist.

The hit is painfully sharp.

Hayden’s eyes stay blank and unreadable. But there’s a hint of a smile as she resumes her steady, lazy gum-chewing and asks: “You here for some help with stain removal? Maybe wonderin’ what the trick is to getting blood off your hands?”

Hayden’s question triggers a spike of guilt in Micah—Micah’s voice is defensively shrill as she shouts: “Your hands are a hell of a lot bloodier than mine!”

Several of the Laundromat’s patrons look in Micah’s direction. She stares them down until they turn away. Then. To calm herself. She runs her hands along the sides of her silk skirt, smoothing at nonexistent wrinkles.

Hayden’s gaze goes to the places on the silk where Micah’s palms are leaving damp trails of sweat. “What’s the matter? You look about ready to pee yourself.” There’s an amused, scoffing quality to the remark.

Micah waits for Hayden’s eyes to meet hers. “I’m sick,” she tells Hayden. “There’s a good chance I’m about to die.”

Hayden takes a moment to ponder this information. Then she turns her head, spits her gum into a nearby trash can, and mutters: “Holy crap.” When she brings her focus back to Micah, her attitude is still essentially blank but somehow not quite as cold.

And Micah tells her: “I need to know…if a person was able to accept a punishment…one that was cruel enough and permanent enough…would it erase…” She pauses. Searching for the right word. She doesn’t know what it is.

Hayden steps in close, spreading her arms wide, revealing clusters of ugly, crudely rendered, jailhouse tattoos.

She’s glaring at Micah, telling her: “When you’re in the middle of it, fifteen years in prison is cruel and feels pretty damn permanent.”

Something in Micah recoils—and is ashamed.

A glint is appearing in Hayden’s eyes. Whether it’s a glimmer of hostility, or of sympathy, isn’t clear.

There isn’t a shred of feeling in Hayden’s voice as she’s saying: “After spendin’ fifteen years pressed up against iron bars, whatever was sharp inside you, whatever was bad when you went in, doesn’t get fixed and doesn’t get better, it just gets worn down. By the time you’re through, big chunks of you are gone, and the wrong you did is just somethin’ you kinda remember once in a while—like a bad taste. You walk out of those prison gates pretty much who you were when you went in—only a little more tired.”

Hayden leans against the washer, her head thrown back, her eyes slitted, as if she’s silently laughing at Micah. “But not gettin’ redeemed and all is just fine. ’Cause the truth is…what’s done can’t ever be undone. All that’s left is to get on with things, the best you can.” She pops another piece of gum into her mouth and returns to sliding the dirty rag over the rusted lid of the washer.

Micah yanks the rag away from Hayden and grabs her by the arm so that they are again face-to-face. Micah is seething as she warns Hayden: “I didn’t travel all the way to goddamn Kentucky to have you bullshit me.”

Hayden looks down at the place on her arm where Micah’s fingers are digging into her flesh, waits for Micah to release her, and then says: “What do you want from me?”

“I need the truth. I don’t believe you’ve never thought about wanting forgiveness, wanting to atone for what you did. You couldn’t be human and not have. I need to know every single thing you’ve ever thought about doing that would help make it right, that would help get your soul clean. And I don’t want to hear about how fifteen lousy years just washed everything away, like it never happened.”

And Hayden hisses: “If I’d stayed in for twenty years. For fifty. If I’d sliced my own throat with a razor and bled to death”—Hayden’s face is so close to Micah’s that Micah can feel flecks of Hayden’s spit landing on her cheek—“would it make things even? Would it change what happened that night?”

Micah is uncertain of the answer to Hayden’s question. And unable to let go of her own guilt. Her voice is shaking as she says: “Because of things we did, someone died.”

“Yeah. And me and two other people went to prison for it. One of them tried to hang himself in his cell. And none of it makes a bit of difference—’cause that poor, innocent soul is still dead. There’s nothin’ anybody can do about that. So I don’t know what you want from me.”

What
I
wanted,
Micah is thinking,
was
to
hear
that
with
the
right
penance
I
could
finally
be
absolved
for
my
part
in
what
happened
that
night. But what you’re showing me is that being punished didn’t make you less guilty, didn’t make you feel forgiven…it just made you hard, and old, and fat…

Now, without intending to, Micah speaks the final bit of her thought aloud. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing I could do on this earth that would balance the scales. Maybe the death-penalty people are telling the truth. Maybe the only real way to pay for one life is with another.”

Hayden’s fingertips are surprisingly cool and delicate as they come to rest on either side of Micah’s face, and Hayden tells her: “I don’t know what idiot idea you’re wrestlin’ with right now. I got no interest in it. But I’m guessin’ you haven’t changed a bit. You’re still the spoiled rich girl who thinks she’s the star of the play when the truth is that everybody drawin’ breath is in the same play and who’s starrin’ in it depends on what day it is and who’s tellin’ the story. You ain’t the center of the universe. You ain’t got the power to carve the future or erase the past. All you got is today, and all you can do is try to do as good as you can till the sun goes down. Then tomorrow get up and try and do a little better. What you did, you did—and you’re stuck with it. You dyin’ isn’t gonna solve anything. All it’s gonna do is let you off the hook for shit you didn’t have the time—or the balls—to stick around and face up to.”

Micah jerks free of Hayden’s grasp; her mind is filling with images of tumors and scalpels and mutilation. “You have no right to talk to me like that. You don’t know what I’m facing—what I’m going through.”

Hayden slams the lid shut on the battered washer and gives Micah a withering stare. “I’m guessin’ you’ve led one fucked-up life and I’m bettin’ you’re the one who keeps fucking it up ’cause you’re always lookin’ for stuff that doesn’t exist, like happiness and forgiveness. Know how I know? ’Cause I’m cool, even after doin’ time in prison. I’m content. Right here. In this dump. Helpin’ people get their clothes clean. Married to a guy you wouldn’t wipe your shoes on.”

Hayden looks in the direction of the dryers, and the little man in the faded brown pants and the wide red belt. Then she adds: “But you’re miserable. Even after walkin’ away scot-free from what happened. You’re miserable and you probably live in a penthouse. You’re miserable ’cause you’re wasting your life eatin’ your guts out over all the stuff you shouldn’t have done, and can’t change, and don’t have, and never got—”

Micah has stopped listening. She’s already walking away. Escaping to the parking lot and the taxi that’s waiting there.

Hayden is calling after her, warning her: “Your problem isn’t with that poor creature who died. Your problem is with somebody else and you know it.”

AnnaLee

Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986

The problem of Bella’s fever has been washed away with a cool bath, her fretfulness soothed with a lullaby. AnnaLee is at rest. Everything is quiet. The linen window-shades in the nursery have been drawn against the late afternoon sun. And the diffused light is making the candy-striped toddler bed, and the shelves of colorful toys, and the enormous stuffed giraffe that’s propped in the corner look like illustrations in a children’s book.

AnnaLee, with Bella cradled in her arms, is in a yellow rocking chair. And while she is watching her little girl sleep, she’s experiencing a swell of emotion that’s overwhelming. A love that’s powerful, and infinitely gentle.

It is a love that has consumed AnnaLee since the moment of Bella’s birth. The moment in which AnnaLee’s soul fluttered, and her heart lifted away. As if it was going from her own body into her child’s. The sensation was like being turned inside-out. Suddenly having her nerves and their intricately braided pathways netted on the surface of her skin. Attuned to a single mission, to keeping her baby safe.

The words AnnaLee was whispering to Bella in that incredible moment while Bella was being born are the ones AnnaLee is whispering now: “No matter how big you grow, my darling, or how old you get, or how far away from me you travel, I’ll always be with you. I will always love you, and protect you. Always and forev—”

A shadow, from the doorway, has shot across the nursery floor. Ominous and quick.

Before AnnaLee can lift her gaze from her sleeping child, the shadow has vanished. Leaving in its wake the faint smell of cloves. And the malevolent stomp of thick-soled boots rapidly moving away. Toward the far end of the hall.

AnnaLee has been reminded. Things are different now.

Now, during the day, even when Jack is gone and at work, AnnaLee no longer has her house to herself.

***

A relentless thumping sound—muffled and hellish—has begun in the few minutes that have elapsed since AnnaLee tucked Bella into bed and began walking toward the other end of the hall.

The door to the bedroom that AnnaLee is approaching is closed. A hand-lettered sign is taped to its front—a sheet of paper ripped from a notebook and scrawled with fat red letters.

You’re not welcome here. Stay out. This is my realm. I am the one and only Persephone!! It’s pronounced Per-sef-o-nee. Don’t dare say it wrong!

As AnnaLee is opening the door, a black combat boot is flying through the air. Banging into the wall just above her shoulder. Leaving an ugly scuff on the apple-green paint.

Near the window, a purple-haired teenager is sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed—a sketchbook in her lap and a piece of artist’s charcoal in her hand. She’s stubbing out a clove cigarette: defiantly wearing nothing but skimpy, tiger-stripe panties and a pair of large headphones. The headphones are attached to an oversized boombox. Its volume turned up so loud that the thump of heavy metal is shaking the floorboards. Not only in the room AnnaLee is in, but throughout the house.

This bedroom was once AnnaLee’s girlhood sanctuary. And up until three weeks ago, it was pristine in its simple sunlit beauty. Now, the walls are plastered with images of skulls and blood and destruction. The floor is littered with piles of discarded clothes and magazines. And the air is rank with the smell of forgotten tuna sandwiches and half-eaten pizzas.

The desecration, and the sullen teenager who is creating it, are infuriating AnnaLee. But most of all, she’s angry at Jack. For not having had the strength to keep his niece—this obnoxious girl—from coming here in the first place.

AnnaLee is pounding on the boombox, fumbling to find the power button.

And the purple-haired girl is leaning back against the headboard. Nibbling from a bag of Oreos.

And laughing.

Until AnnaLee manages to slam the boombox into silence.

Then the girl is roaring up off the bed in a frenzy. Tossing the bag of cookies aside and clutching at AnnaLee. Dragging her toward the door, shouting: “What’s your problem? Can’t you read?”

For a split second AnnaLee’s outrage is as uncontrolled and furious as the girl’s. AnnaLee is on the verge of slapping her.

But the girl is oblivious. Pointing to the sign on the door. Shoving her face toward AnnaLee’s and screaming: “This is
my
realm and I am Persephone!”

The girl’s voice is reedy. Unsteady. Pitifully childish. She’s less than an inch away from AnnaLee and underneath the fragrance of cloves AnnaLee can smell the scent of bubble gum, and baby powder. She can see injury, and indescribable loneliness, in the girl’s eyes.

AnnaLee is overwhelmed by an urge to hug her. To console and mother her. But the girl is shoving AnnaLee aside and heading back into the room.

“Just so we’re straight on this,” she’s informing AnnaLee, “I think being here sucks.”

“I know—”

“Wrong answer!” The girl has cut AnnaLee off and is shouting at the top of her lungs. “You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know anything about me. Nobody does. Why should they? Everywhere I go I’m just passing through, and that suits me fine.”

She retreats to the bed and sits angrily on its edge. “Now get out!”