The Last Good Day of the Year (11 page)

Summer 1996

It's so nice to have found a place of my own in the playhouse, even temporarily, that I try to forget the fact that it doesn't belong to me and I don't have permission to be here. Several nights have passed since the first time I spied on Remy from the playhouse, and each evening I've found myself returning after dark to this little room, with all its remnants of the long-lost comforts of my childhood.

Tonight I've brought along a cardboard box filled with Grandma Bitty's old photos from the basement. Except for the silver locket, the box is all I've kept so far. The only light I have to see the pictures with comes from a strand of multicolored Christmas lights strung around the playhouse ceiling, but it's enough. Go look sometime at pictures of yourself as a cute, happy little kid, when life was
easy and everyone wore ridiculous clothing. It's a blast. I hover over a bunch of photos spread out across the floor, sifting silently through stack after stack, my eyes straining to stay focused in the dim light.

For a second, I think I hear a light tapping on the door. I pause, holding my breath to listen. Nothing.

“So there's this beautiful woman who goes to see her doctor one day for a checkup,” Remy says, sticking his face through the open window.

“What are you doing out here?” I scramble to hide the photos, shoving them back into the box and underneath the sleeping bag, but it's too late.

“What am
I
doing out here? That's funny, Sam. This is my yard. What are
you
doing out here?” His gaze flicks around the tiny room. “You'd better not be drinking my wine.”

“Don't worry.”

Remy lifts his right hand to show me the six-pack of Rolling Rock he's brought. “It feels like more of a beer night, anyway.” He sits cross-legged on the floor beside me, cracks open a can, and takes a few gulps. “So, as I was saying, this hot woman goes to the doctor. When he comes into the room, he's stunned by how beautiful his patient is. The doctor considers himself a professional and a gentleman, but sometimes a person can't help himself. He tries to do the exam as usual, but eventually he starts rubbing her thighs.”

“I've already heard this one.”

“I know.” He offers me one of the beers. “But it's a good one.”

“Maybe if you're twelve years old.” It's the same joke we overheard Remy's dad tell that New Year's Eve.

“Oh, I think it's universally funny. When she tells the doctor she's there to be tested for herpes, but they've already had sex? What's not funny about that?”

“Right. Because the best jokes are the ones you have to explain.”

“No, the best jokes are about naked women.”

I close my eyes for a few seconds, hoping that he'll be gone when I open them. It doesn't work. “Why are you out here?”

“Don't you want this?” He means the beer.

“No.” I could cry. Now that he knows I've been coming here, it's ruined. “Why are you here, Remy? What do you want?”

“I told you, it's my yard. I can come out here whenever I want. You, on the other hand, cannot.”

“Why do you get to decide that? This place isn't yours, either, not technically. You didn't build it.”

“But it's on my property.”

“It's
barely
on your property. Ed built it for all of us. He only used your yard because the tree was the right size.”

“Ed's not in charge of much around here, Sam. Not lately.”

“Your parents wouldn't care, either.”

He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. But I care.” He glances down at all the pictures. “Were those my grandma's? Did you steal them?”

“I didn't
steal
them. Your mom told me to throw them away, but I kept them instead.”

“So you stole them.”

“No! I told you, I only—”

“Relax, Sam. I'm kidding.”

“Oh.”

He picks up a stack of photos and brings them closer to his face
as he looks through them. “Are you sure my mom meant for you to throw away all of these? Some of them look like ones she'd want to keep.”

“I think so.”

“Wow, these are crazy. I forgot they existed.” His eyes flash with nostalgia as he takes in each picture, and for a moment I think I see the Remy I remember.

Looking at the photos makes me self-conscious about the fact that Remy and I used to spend so much time together. There are only a handful of shots of him that don't include me. “Did we do
anything
without each other?” He flips through a few shots of us naked in the tub together, our lower bodies obscured by a thick layer of bubbles. The date scribbled on the back reads 8/25/79; we weren't even two years old. In another—this one from October '85—we're standing shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk in Halloween costumes. Remy's a cowboy; I'm an Indian princess. Gretchen is in the background, posing like an aspiring model in her witch costume. Her black skirt is too short for a sixteen-year-old, and her legs seem unsteady as she balances on five-inch stilettos. Turtle stands on the periphery of the scene, her form blurred as she twirls gleefully in a pink ballerina costume. It is Halloween night, exactly two months before she disappeared, and the fact that her features are fuzzy gives me a sick, dizzy feeling. It's as if she was already starting to fade.

“Why did you come back?” Remy flicks the photo aside and fixes his gaze on me. “I'm not talking about Gretchen; I know why she's here. Why did the rest of your family come back?”

“My dad lost his job. We had no choice.”

“No jobs in Virginia, eh?”

“It's temporary.”

“Everything's temporary, Sam.”

“That's so philosophical of you.”

“I'm a pretty deep guy.” He looks pleased with himself, which makes me want to scream.

“Listen, Remy, I know it's weird to be here, okay? I get it. But what were we supposed to do?”

“I don't know. Weren't you upset that you had to leave all your friends with only one year of high school to go? Wasn't there anyone you could have stayed with until graduation? It's not like your parents would be across the country. It's only a four-hour drive.”

“There was someone.” I pause. “But it didn't work out. It wouldn't have worked out, so I didn't stay with him.”

“I see. With
him
. How interesting.”

“Stop it.”

“What was his name?”

“Rudolf Schmidt.” Obviously, I'm lying.

“That's funny. So here you are, anyway.”

“So here I am. Here we are, Remy.”

“What are you like now, Samantha? Because here's how I remember you: you were loud and funny, and you could fart on command. We used to play this game with my plastic army men and your humidifier; do you remember the one I mean?”

“Yes!” I almost shriek. Remy leans away from me, as if to create more room for my enthusiasm, and I feel embarrassed that I've let myself show so much excitement over a children's game. “Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. That was the best game! We used to make such
incredible special effects with the steam from the humidifier.” The air in the playhouse is hot, and the cool breeze from the open window has the pinch of a bee sting when it hits my face.

“You have the same ears.” He reaches out, brushing my earlobe with his fingertip. “So what are you like now? You didn't answer me.”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Well, here's what I'm like.” He pauses and pulls his hand away from my ear. “Sorry. I'm not trying to grope you or anything.”

“It's only my ear. I don't feel groped.”

“Yeah, well … the thing is, my girlfriend maybe wouldn't quite, like, be
excited
to know that we were in here alone at night and I touched your ear, okay?”

“Oh, okay. I won't bring it up right away the first time I meet her, then, because that's what I was planning to do.”

“I see. You're clever.” He taps his nose and points at me like you would in a game of Charades.

“I don't know about clever. I'm smart. I get good grades.”

“I almost didn't pass my junior year,” he says. “My parents are concerned that I'm wasting my potential.”

“My parents don't worry about me,” I tell him. “I'm good. Boring and good. I've never even drunk a beer.”

Remy makes the same perplexed frown that I've seen on Gretchen's face so many times before. I'm a disappointment to both of them, but Remy doesn't want to accept it so easily. “Oh, yeah? That's about to change.” He reaches for the six-pack.

“I don't—”

“Shush. It's my playhouse; I make the rules.” He stares at me,
dead serious. “It's international playhouse law, Samantha. A smart girl like you should know that.”

Remy opens a beer and brings it closer and closer to my lips until I reach out and take it. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and watches me as I drink. I take a few little sips. It's not bad. I mean, I've tasted alcohol before—a sip here and there from one of my dad's cans of Coors when I was younger, just to see what it was like—but I've never been drunk. There are circles of sweat beneath the arms of Remy's T-shirt, and he smells the way you'd imagine a teenage boy would smell at the end of a hot summer day. It's the strangest feeling to go from then to now with ten years of static in between; I remember him as a boy who was nothing but my best friend, but now it's impossible not to notice that his body is all grown up.

“So you're the smart one and the good one,” he repeats. “It's, like, your role in your family.”

“Yeah.” I force down a few more mouthfuls of beer.

“Do you want it to be?”

“I guess so.” The truth is, I've never given the matter much thought before now. “It's easy for me. I've never had any problems in school. I don't cause trouble. It makes my parents happier.”

He looks disappointed. “No trouble at all?”

I pretend to try to remember. “I stole a Kit Kat from a gas station once.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh, God. If that's the worst thing you were willing to
make up
…”

“I told you, I'm very well behaved.”

“Obviously. It's disgusting. So if you're the good one,” he continues, “what does that make Gretchen?”

“Do you have to ask?” I shuffle through a stack of photos taken in Remy's living room during one of Darla's in-home Mary Kay Cosmetics parties.

“Fair enough. What's with her haircut? Isn't it supposed to be a sign of, like, huge emotional distress when a person chops all their hair off out of nowhere? And she's, what—divorced? About to get divorced?”

“I don't know, Remy.”

“Does she seem normal to you?”

“I don't know! Maybe. I have no idea what normal is for Gretchen.” I hold up my hand and start ticking off everything I can say for sure about her on my fingertips: “She showed up at our house at the end of May, alone, and I don't know what's going on with her husband, Michelangelo, or if she's ever going back to him. She's a dental hygienist over in Penn Village. My mother hates her. Gretchen's probably permanently, irredeemably fucked up forever and ever, no matter what, because of what happened to Turtle. And she's rocking the short hair.”

“Okay, I get it. What about Hannah?”

I wince at the sound of her name. “You know what she is.”

“She's the replacement.” He stretches out each syllable as he pronounces it, taking his time to let the implications settle in the air around us.

“My mom would have died.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she was almost dead already, even though she was still walking and talking and breathing. Before Hannah was born. You don't know what it was like before then, and it got worse when Davis's book came out. She was so sad, Remy.”

“And now she's happy? The pageant stuff with Hannah is creepy, Sam.”

“It's not creepy. Lots of kids do it. Hannah has been taking dance lessons since she started walking, so it makes sense for her.”

Remy shrugs. “My mom thinks it's gross.”

“She does?”

“Yes. She and your mom aren't going to be close again, you know. She doesn't even like my dad hanging out with your dad all the time.” He's staring me right in the eyes. I don't remember him being this mean.

“I don't believe you. Our moms are best friends.”

“They
were
best friends, Sam. Things are different. Your family moved away ten years ago. You think my parents want to think about this stuff all over again? It's not like we can just pretend nothing happened and start up a bowling league. We haven't exactly been dying to get the old gang back together.”

Maybe he finally realizes how upset I'm getting. He breaks away from my glare, looking at the floor and slumping like someone who's blurted out something they immediately regret, but I bet he's more relieved to have said it than anything.

“Thanks, Remy. Why don't you leave me alone, then?”

He laughs. “Because you're in my playhouse! Listen, Sam, what
happened was hard for us, too. I know it was worse for you guys,” he adds quickly. “I know it was way, way worse for you, worse than we could ever imagine. I'm not saying anything different. But it's not like we weren't there that night.”

“I know.”

“And it's not like your mom even has time to hang out with my mom. She's always busy with Hannah. And you said she's happy, so everything is okay. Right?”

“I didn't say she was happy.”

“You didn't?”

“No. I didn't answer you yet. But I will now. She's not happy, Remy. She'll
never
be happy. But at least now she doesn't sleep for twenty hours a day. Now she doesn't have to use prescription eyedrops because her eyes are so dried out from crying—crying every day for so many years that it's starting to permanently affect her vision.”