To Die For (29 page)

You know, I still remember the Christmas Eve I stayed up all night, putting together that Barbie Dream House. A year ago I was walking my daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Now I’m posting bail money and hiring lawyers to convince a jury that my daughter didn’t arrange the murder of her husband. When the truth is, I don’t know anymore if I believe that myself.

S
OMETHING
I
HEARD ON
a talk show one time—I think maybe it was Cher who said it—really got me thinking. Just because a person wears nice clothes and shaves her legs more than once a year doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a deep side, you know?

Obviously, Cher is another example of an individual such as myself, because one thing I learned from this program was what a spiritual person she really is. She said this quote I’ll always remember. It was a question actually: “If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, where no one’s around to see it, did it really fall at all?”

I thought a lot about that. What’s the point of doing something if nobody sees you? That makes about as much sense as seeing this great meal on the table, and nobody’s there to eat it. Which reminds me of an article I read in the
National Enquirer
—a publication I don’t make a habit of reading, but it was the only thing they had at the beauty parlor that day— about this minister out in Nevada who has been preaching sermons every Sunday for all these years, even though nobody’s left in his congregation. Now if you ask me, that isn’t holy. It’s just dumb.

The way I see it, everything people do in the world, the whole point is having an audience, having someone else see it. I mean, artists like to put their paintings in museums, right? And musicians generally like to have people listen to their music. Not having someone there is kind of like the tree falling in the forest, if you follow me.

That’s the beauty of television. It’s like an eye that’s on you all the time. Watching even if nobody’s around and recording what you do. And knowing it’s there makes you be a better person in so many ways. Kind of like God, if you want to get heavy.

Say you’re in this cabin in the woods and nobody’s going to stop by all weekend. Do you have any reason to take a shower and put on your makeup? But now suppose you’re going on the “Today” show? Naturally you pull yourself together a little more.

If everybody’s house had one of those TV cameras in it all the time, like the kind they have in banks and stores to check on shoplifters, do you think mothers would still scream at their children and hit them? Do you think Deborah Norville was always so nice to her husband as she used to be to Joe Garagiola and Willard Scott and Bryant Gumbel? And why not? There’s no TV camera in her living room.

Take Oprah’s diet. Look what happened to her. She was fat, then she went on this big diet and lost sixty-seven pounds. She came back on her show hauling a wagon full of sixty-seven pounds of hamburger meat and wearing these tight jeans, looking fantastic. And for a while everybody was talking about how she did it, and how great it was, and it looked like she was finally going to marry Steadman Graham and everything would turn out great.

Then what happened? She started eating wrong again. Never on television, mind you. You never saw Oprah sitting on her show, eating a plate full of french fries. The problem was, she wasn’t on television every minute. Sometimes they turned the cameras off her. That’s when she got into trouble. And now look at her, fat as ever.

You can say, oh well, that’s her true self coming out, and the person she shows us on television is just a façade, whatever you want to call it. But as far as I’m concerned, what’s wrong with a façade, so long as it’s a nice one? If being true to yourself means gaining back sixty-seven pounds, I’d just as soon be a little dishonest.

This is why I have always aspired to being on television. Because it brings out the best in a person. As long as you’re on TV, someone’s always watching you. If people could just be on TV all the time, the whole human race would probably be a much better group of individuals. The only catch is, naturally, if everybody was on TV, there wouldn’t be anyone left to watch. Now I’m actually driving my own self crazy. Which can be a problem with me. One time I got so tangled up in these thoughts of mine I forgot all about turning myself over in the tanning booth, and was I ever a mess.

W
E’RE DOWN AT THE
restaurant. I’m in back tallying up our meat order, Angela’s out front, and the news comes on the TV we got mounted at the end of the bar. Nobody called us or anything—we just heard it on the news, same as everybody else.

“New developments in the Maretto case. Details at six.” At this point you come over to the bar. Then you have to wait there for ten minutes, through the end of some damn “People’s Court” and five or six commercials, to find out what they’re saying now about the murder of your son. How do you think that feels?

But the worst is yet to come. Because when the news finally comes on, they’re sitting there saying my boy was a goddam wife beater and a drug addict, and those punks shot him because he didn’t pay his bills. My son that never finished a bottle of beer in his life, a drug addict. As for hitting her—that guy never could never lay a hand on anyone. Least of all her. He worshiped the ground she walked on.

For a minute we just stand there staring at the set. Who knows what the customers are doing at this point? You hear nothing but the voices coming from the screen. Somebody hands me a shot of whiskey—here, Joe, you better drink this. But I just stand there holding it. Can’t move.

Then she comes on. Suzanne. Our daughter-in-law. She’s sitting on the very couch in the very place where my boy died. Little microphone clipped on her blouse. That little turned-up nose of hers that always looked to me like they took her out of the oven too soon. Looks like she got her hair done for this event. She’s got the dog in her lap and she’s petting him. And the reporter that’s talking to her, he’s acting like this is the First Lady or the Queen of England he’s got here. “I know this must be very hard for you, Mrs. Maretto,” he says. “I know everyone’s heart goes out to you.”

She looks right into the camera, like she’s looking straight at Angela and me. “My husband was addicted to cocaine,” she says. “He owed a lot of money to the two young men currently facing charges. He was getting violent, losing control. I believe that’s the reason why they killed him.”

I can’t help myself then. I don’t even think, I just pick up the table that’s next to me and throw it. I smash my hand on the bar, knock over every drink, every bottle that’s sitting there. Then I start in on chairs. Angela tells me I was screaming too. Maybe I was. I don’t remember.

When my wife gets me calmed down—quiet anyway—they’re just finishing up with the damned interview. “So, Mrs. Maretto, how does all of this make you feel?” says the reporter.

She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye with this piece of Kleenex she’s holding. “Well I try to be a positive person, Bud,” she says. “I’m a fighter. All through this terrible ordeal I have tried to move forward with my life, hold on to my dreams. I know my husband would’ve wanted me to. But I have to admit to you that sometimes I wish I had died myself that night. Sometimes I actually wish I were dead.”

When we heard her say that, a strange thing happened to Angela and me. Neither one of us said anything, but I knew we both understood what had to happen. I mean, we’d have to work out the details. There’d be time enough for that, but we knew we could handle it. You don’t run a bar in the Italian section of town twenty years without making a few friends that can help you at a moment like this. The important thing was we knew what we had to do, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we were going to do it.

I
PROBABLY SHOULDN’T BE
telling you this. This is supposed to be top secret. It’s not official yet, and they told me not to discuss it with anyone until we had the details ironed out. But just between us, I got a call from a very important New York producer yesterday. They want me to meet with them this evening, and they’re flying in today. He’s with ABC. They want to do a one-hour special about my story. He said some people at the top of the news division are really excited about this. He didn’t name names, but from the way he was talking I got the feeling he meant Barbara Walters.

He said my story has all the angles. Nice-looking young couple, in love, with their whole lives ahead of them and everything to live for. Dreams smashed by drugs. A family torn apart by a bunch of aimless kids, thrill killers, raised without any moral values, who can pull the trigger of a gun as easily as they light up a joint. They might even make us a movie of the week. Plus, he wants me to bring along some of my videos. He said they’re always looking for new on-camera talent in New York. And somebody he was talking to from that conference I went to told him I have what it takes.

He said not to tell my parents. Word gets out, people start talking to other people, the whole deal can be ruined, he said. It’s better for them to iron out the details with me first, in private. That’s why he wanted to meet with me out of town, in a secluded spot. It’s funny, but you know, since having my picture in the papers and on the news, it’s almost like I’m a celebrity. I can’t go anyplace without someone pointing at me or staring. One time this little girl even asked for my autograph. Her mother tried to pull her away, like I’d be offended. I told her not to worry. I thought it was cute.

So I’m meeting him at the beach. I said, “How will I know you?” He said, “I doubt there will be more than one limo around.”

Not to get too heavy or anything, but all of this has made me think. About the way life works, I mean, and how strange it is. First something terrible happens. Then, just when you least expect it, something good comes along, that evens up the score again. Kind of like saying, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” I mean, Larry dying and everything, that was a tragedy I’ll never forget so long as I live. But you have to keep things in perspective too, and remember that if it wasn’t for one thing happening, so many other things wouldn’t have happened either.

This morning I went over to the tanning parlor. Just to get a little color in my cheeks. I can’t say that a few weeks in Women’s Correctional Facility does anything for a girl’s looks. Plus, if you want to know something, I do some of my best thinking in the tanning booth. It’s so quiet and peaceful in there, with the lights glowing. Kind of like meditation.

So while I was lying there, I got this revelation, if you will. That everything that’s happened to me so far is all part of a big master plan. It’s like, if you get too close to the screen, all you can see is a bunch of little black-and-white dots. You don’t see the big picture until you stand back. But when you do, it all makes sense. Everything comes into focus.

U
SUALLY
I
DO MY
raking further down along the flats, but the wind was bad that day, so I figured I’d stay in the cove, closer to the bridge. Wasn’t having much luck. I was just lighting a cigarette when I saw it. Something lying on the beach, tangled up in a bunch of seaweed. Too far away to see clear.

First thing I think is maybe it’s more of that medical waste that keeps washing up lately. Last month I raked up a shitload of surgical gloves and what-have-you. Bloody rags, used hypodermic needles, plastic tubes, you wouldn’t believe the stuff they dump these days. Which is why, when I got closer, and I spotted her hand sticking out, I thought to myself: Oh, great. Looks like now when they amputate someone’s arm, they just toss it off the side of a boat, waiting for us clammers to rake it up. This is probably where they throw the dead babies from over at the abortion clinic too. I know for a fact I seen someone’s appendix one time.

Only it wasn’t a cut-off arm. There was a whole body attached, and a nice one too, or used to be.

I didn’t recognize her right away from the pictures they’d been having on the news. I don’t care who it is, nobody looks too pretty after they been bobbing around in the Atlantic ten, twelve days. But then I remembered hearing on the news about how everyone’s looking for this TV reporter that’s out on bail, awaiting trial for planning her husband’s murder. And you got her mother on saying, “I know my daughter would never run away. There must have been foul play.” And the guy’s old man saying, “This proves she did it. They never should’ve gave her bail.” Ten days, that’s all you been hearing is, Where’s Suzanne Maretto? Looks like I found her.

She still had most of her clothes on. Her shoes were gone naturally, but she still had on panty hose. There was a lot of seaweed and what-have-you tangled in her hair, but you could still tell she was a blonde. Her eyes were open. Blue.

Now some people I know, if they spotted that wedding ring she was wearing, they would’ve took it. We’re talking a big diamond here. Not that it would’ve been easy getting it. You’d have had to cut off the finger.

Me, I just laid my jacket over her face, keep the sea gulls from pecking at her anymore, and went for the cops.

F
IRST PERSON
I
THOUGHT
about when they pulled Suzanne Maretto’s body in from the river was Lydia. All the things Suzanne said about her in the end, everything Lydia went through, and still I knew, Lydia worshiped that woman. This was going to tear her apart.

She was at the house with that mother of hers when I got there. Up in her room listening to rock music. “Come on,” I told her. “We’re going for a drive, you and me.”

“It was all my fault,” she says. “If I hadn’t got the gun, none of this would’ve happened. She’d still be alive, and him too. We could all be at Disney World right now.”

I said some things, but none of it meant anything to her. “Don’t believe it,” I said. “If you hadn’t got the gun she would’ve found someone else to do it for her. One way or another, her type always gets what they want.”

“Not like me,” she said. “I’ve been a loser my whole life and I always will be.” It’s funny that you’d be talking about someone they found floating in the bay like she’s a winner, but that’s how Lydia saw her. And always will.