The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  “Granddad,” Annie said, clutching her head. “Get Granddad ! Grandma, can you help me, can you help me!”

  Annie screamed again, from that miserable place Sherwinn had put her that she couldn’t climb out of. I was done sitting. The courtroom had broken down to absolute anarchy with people yelling, some members of the jury standing up and protesting that Annie needed help, she needed help.

  “Help her! Help her!” they yelled.

  The defense attorneys, I was later told, were the only ones not moving. They had fallen back in their chairs, heads in their hands.

  I was quick and young, I could dart and twist away from people’s hands, and I went straight over one bench, then another, jumped into the aisle, dodged an outstretched hand from a bailiff, and went straight for Annie.

  As her cracking voice split that room in half she shouted, “I hate you, Sherwinn. I hate you, Gavin. I hate you, Pauly!” I reached her and pulled her into my arms, tight and close.

  “Madeline,” she called out, raw and coarse, her eyes at the ceiling, back in the corners of her numbing memories. “Madeline, where are you? We have to get out of here! I want to go home! I want to go home! I want to go home!”

  “It’s me, Annie,” I said. “It’s me. We’re going home.”

  She turned her head toward me, so our noses were two inches apart. “Madeline,” she choked out. “Madeline!” She wrapped her arms around me. I held her close. We swayed together, and she buried her face in my shoulder.

  No one tried to separate us.

  My granddad’s voice was raw from hurtling threats against the three evil men in that room with no less than three men holding him back, my momma had collapsed in Carman’s arms, and my grandma was calling out, struggling against the policeman who I was later told was an emotional mess himself that day, “I am coming, my darlings! I am coming!”

  One juror leaned over and vomited, one had to be propped up by another because he fainted, four were still standing and protesting that someone should go and help us, and one woman had her hands up in the air, shaking, as in, Help me, God.

  The room was a total, complete disaster, and it became worse as six men, all fishermen friends of my dad’s, hurdled benches and people, fought off police and bailiffs, and launched themselves, their muscles, and their lust for revenge at Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin.

  They beat the holy shit out of them.

  As one fisherman friend said later to my momma, “It was worth being arrested, Marie Elise. I heard my man, Luke, Big Luke, that night in my jail cell. He said, ‘Covey, good fucking job,’ that’s what he said. ‘Good fucking job.’ Heard it clear as I hear two beer jugs clinking together, yeah, I did.”

  Now my dad never used the F-word. Ever. At least at home around his Pink Girls but, maybe, maybe he would have used it with Covey. Why do I think he might have used the F-word that time, speaking straight from heaven?

  Because my momma gave Covey a hug on the deck of our house by the sea and said to him, “I think you did a good fucking job, too, Covey.”

  And my momma never swore!

  I testified the next day into the tight, rigid silence of the courtroom, police and bailiffs all over that room. I was supposed to testify after Annie, but since the courtroom was in total disarray with police and bailiffs restraining this person and that person, including the fishermen who were throwing punches like sledgehammers, the jurors yelling, and journalists snapping pictures, they had to close things down.

  Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin glared right at me, their faces a mass of swollen bruises and cuts. I tried not to look at them, but at one point Sherwinn drew his finger across his neck.

  I kept testifying.

  At another point Gavin stuck his tongue out and wiggled it at me.

  I kept testifying.

  Pauly pursed his lips like he was kissing me.

  I kept testifying. They made me feel sick and panicked, but I thought of Annie, and the more I told the truth, Arthur told me, the longer those bad men would have to stay in jail. So I shook, and I kept testifying, for Annie.

  I relived all the abuse Annie and I had endured as I recounted it. I could even smell the cigarette smoke, feel their sticky and slimy hands, the old pizza, the must and the rot. I told what they did to us, even though I was humiliated and shamed.

  The defense attorney kept trying to break my story up, to make me cry or stutter, but the judge kept saying, “Overruled,” and pounding his gavel, and I kept right on.

  Click, click, click.

  Later I was told I was crying during my testimony, winding my fingers in and out of each other, pulling on my curls, making strangled gasps and groans, but I didn’t remember that.

  By the time I was done, Arthur was the color of a sick ghost, and Hicks with the fleshy face was almost curled into a fetal position at his table. His co-counsels were holding their heads, as if they couldn’t bear another sentence from me entering their lives.

  There were formalities after that, closing arguments, the graphic photos were brought up again, then the jury was excused to the jury room.

  They were back out in twenty minutes. They had their verdict.

  They found it in our living nightmare.

  Guilty. All three, all charges: Guilty.

  “May you rot in hell forever,” the jury foreman intoned. “Rot in hell.” The courtroom exploded in triumph, but there was no triumph for Annie or me or our mother.

  This was not a win.

  We had already been destroyed.

  Momma forbid us from coming to court the next afternoon for the sentencing, for reasons that were later obvious to us. We didn’t want to be in a courtroom again, ever, but we were not going to miss this. I knew Annie felt the same as me because I said to her, “I want to see them go to jail,” and she nodded.

  Momma had a neighbor, Mrs. Donnehey, come and stay with us on that sunny spring day. She was older, with long white hair, and she cried over soap operas, sometimes starting at the very beginning credits, before the story had even unfolded. She brought us cookies every couple of weeks. When she found out what happened to Annie and me, she brought us cookies every day, pinwheels, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, all in pretty boxes with ribbons.

  We loved her, but when she started watching her soap opera that afternoon, bawling much harder than normal, we snuck out in our pink dresses, our white sandals flying us to town. We slid into the back of the courtroom, and when the judge said, “Marie Elsie, you may make your statement,” we snuck in to sit with our grandparents. They were dismayed to see us there, but what could they do at that point? They put their arms around us, kissed the tops of our heads.

  Momma walked to the witness box, her light pink dress with the embroidered white daisies circling the trim swirling around her legs. Her step was strong in the cotton candy pink heels, and the yellow ribbon she wore that held back her black hair reminded me of what she’d told me. “Yellow means there’s still hope in this pickled, wrinkled, warped world, sugar. Yellow means there’s a new tomorrow scootin’ around the corner.”

  I could not see any hope that day. I don’t think I’ve seen much hope since then. It died with that yellow ribbon.

  “My husband, the girls’ father, Luke O’Shea,” Momma said, then stopped, and tried to get control of her emotions.

  Beside me, Annie clutched my hand. Beside her Granddad inhaled quickly, and muttered, “Now there was a man for you,” and Grandma dabbed her eyes.

  “Big Luke was a good man.” Momma put her head up and faced Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin at the defense table. Her back straightened, her gaze almost violent, and I knew she hated them with every fiber of her being.

  “He was a wonderful father and a wonderful husband.” There was loud agreement in the courtroom, scattered applause.

  “He provided for his family, kept us safe.” My momma sniffled, tightened her lips together. “He loved us. He loved us so much.”

  Annie snuggled closer to me. We missed our dad. Damn the sto
rm that whipped up every ugly emotion on the East Coast that night, spun it into the ocean, and drowned him.

  “I miss him every day. I miss him more than ever now. Truth is, if that storm hadn’t taken him and the other good men on the boats that day, I would still have my Luke and this never would have happened to my girls. No, never. I blame myself. I blame myself for getting involved with Sherwinn. He’s an evil, horrible person, and so are Gavin and Pauly. They are sick, violent men who will always be a plague upon this earth.”

  The courtroom was now silent with respect for my momma, who was struggling not to cry.

  “I don’t know how my girls are going to get over this. I know that the love of my parents, the love of all of you, will help, but will my girls ever be able to put it behind them? Have they scarred them so badly they’ll never get over it? I keep asking myself those questions, and I don’t know. But what I do know is that Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin will always be a threat to my girls’ lives.”

  She shuffled a few papers with shaking hands. “Sherwinn sent me a few letters. I have them here.” She waved them in the air. “This one says, ‘Marie Elise, sweetie, you going to be running your whole life, ’cause if I see you in court, I’m killing you after I’m outta jail and you ain’t ever gonna see your girls again if you live that long.’ ”

  There were gasps in the audience.

  “The second note says, ‘Marie Elise, sweetie, you keep your girls’ mouths shut tight or I’m going to see they go and visit their daddy soon. Got that, sweetie?’”

  There were more gasps, shocked words exchanged.

  “One more letter. ‘You can run, but you ain’t gonna hide from me. I will track Madeline and Annie down, sweetie, and have my fun with them.’ ”

  She lifted her chin.

  “You see, folks,” my momma said, “I can’t have my girls’ lives threatened like that. I can’t. I can’t have them growing up, knowing that these men will get out of jail and come after them with a knife or a gun or their bare hands. Sherwinn is a psychopath. Gavin and Pauly are sick child molesters. If my husband, Luke, were around, he would take care of this problem, but he isn’t, so it’s up to me. But the problem is, you all know, that I’m fighting this tumor in my head.” She tapped her head. “I can’t guarantee that I’ll be around to protect my girls.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Sherwinn, Gavin, and Pauly, I hate you. Hating anyone was a foreign concept to me before you three, but I hate you more than I thought I could hate. The Bible tells me not to hate, but I hate what you did to my girls, what you did to my family, to me. I hate what you’ve done to their futures. But I believe in God and in hell, and I know where you three are going and that gives me some peace.”

  She put the letters down as the courtroom burst into applause. “I want to apologize to all of you, to all of my friends out here, whom I’ve traumatized. You’ve been good to me, true friends. Luke and I love you all, and so do our girls.”

  I didn’t get that statement—no one got it at the moment, the words hanging in the tension like jagged mysteries—but we all “got it” later.

  “Judge, I am done making my statement. Thank you.”

  The judge nodded at her. “Thank you, Marie Elise. You’re right about Luke. I think I speak for all of us when I say we miss him.”

  “He was a good man, Marie Elise,” someone shouted.

  “He’d be proud of you, Marie Elise.”

  My momma left the letters in the witness box so she didn’t have anything in her hands, her light pink dress with the white daisies circling the trim swirling around her legs.

  When she was about three feet from those viperous creatures she said, in a voice as hard as a chunk of iron, “This is from Big Luke. He’s going to escort you to hell. Good-bye.” She spread her legs in her cotton candy pink heels so she would have perfect balance, then whipped her gun out from her bra.

  It was a small pistol, a lady’s pistol, but it did the job fine. You don’t need a Herculean-sized UZI or a bazooka to shoot child molesters. A ladies’ pistol will do the trick.

  She raised it, lickety-split, before anyone could stop her, the white daisies still twirling a bit, and bang, bang, bang.

  She shot Sherwinn first. His chest arched as the bullet went straight through. Then she shot Pauly and Gavin, who had half a second to react. Their bodies twisted and jerked. My momma took three steps forward and leaned full over the defense table and shot each one of them one more time, as their attorneys cowered or jumped over the bench behind them. My momma wanted to make sure the job was done, and done right. One of her cotton candy heels tipped up in the air for balance, her yellow ribbon slipping over a shoulder.

  It is somewhat a wonder that no one else was hit by an escaping bullet, but like my momma said when we visited her in jail, “I shot at a downward slant. You know I have perfect aim. Grandma taught me how to shoot, and I can hit a fly buzzing a bee. And you two! I told you to stay home!”

  Indeed the bullets that passed through their bodies were found imbedded in the wood floor.

  Were Annie and I further traumatized by our momma’s shooting of those three sickos?

  Yes, we were. We had seen our momma kill three men.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I’ve heard those shots forever. I’ve relived that day thousands of times.

  But here’s the thing: My momma, still lost in a black depression for not protecting her beloved daughters, was taking opportunity where she found it. Where else would she have been able to shoot those three dead? They’d been in jail, they were going back to jail. When they got out, she knew she’d be dead. My momma wasn’t taking any chances. No, Marie Elise O’Shea was not taking any chances. She did not leave things to chance. She called chance “wishful wishing.”

  She killed them to protect us, now and forever.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  They were dead.

  Her girls were safe.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  She was arrested.

  Steve was waiting for us outside the courthouse, in the midst of the panic and confusion, after the shooting.

  Trudy Jo, Carman, and Shell Dee hustled Annie and me out of the courtroom, amidst a rush of policemen running in, a crowd of buzzing people, and a sky-high level of cacophony. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mrs. Donnehey sprinting toward us—I had no idea she could run that fast—and I knew by her crumpled face that she was sobbing.

  I dropped my gaze as soon as I caught Steve’s eyes. I was dirty. Guilty. Ashamed. I would never be good enough to play with Steve again. He was Steve. He was tall and cute and smart. No, Madeline O’Shea couldn’t be with Steve Shepherd.

  In my pocket I had the heart-shaped rocks he’d given me.

  I turned away from him.

  That night, way way late at night, with Annie curled up beside me in bed, our grandparents downstairs reeling in shock over what their daughter had done, our momma in jail, I closed my eyes and saw my dad. This time, he was standing tall. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t look happy, but he was upright, his hard chin squared, his shoulders back.

  I knew that my dad would have met those three on their way down to hell and beaten the tar out of them before escorting them to the devil himself with a smile, like my momma said.

  Would he have wanted my momma to go to jail for killing those men? No. He adored her every word, every kiss, every dream. But would he have believed, especially given that my momma was dying, that she made the right decision in killing Sherwinn, Pauly, and Gavin?

  Yes. Without a doubt, yes, even though not having my momma around made me feel empty, completely gutted, as if love had left me for six gunshots.

  Annie had pulled herself into a tight, tense ball. I wrapped my arms around her, but my hug wasn’t enough. It had never been enough. I had not protected my little sister.

  I have lived with that forever.

  25

  “What did you make him do, ride a trapeze?”

  I smiled
with relief when I saw Dr. Rubenstein coming out of Granddad’s hospital room with a smile.

  “He’s okay, ladies. We’re going to keep him here for a few days, but then we’ll send him back to the farm. Here’s his list of complaints: Hospitals make him sick. He’s bored. He wants to be with your Grandma—she worries easily. He could walk out right now, dammit, this is costing a fortune, why all the fuss, the nurses won’t let him rest, all this gobbledy gook and medical slang, it’s like we speak from a foreign planet.” Dr. Rubenstein laughed. “And, again, he’s bored, bored, it’s so boring here!”

  “That’s our granddad.” I breathed, then sagged with relief against the hallway. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He eyed both of us. “What is it? Is something else wrong?”

  What was wrong? Let me count the ways: Granddad had stopped breathing momentarily so we had to do CPR to revive him. When he was breathing, we carried him to the truck, sped down the driveway, and called an ambulance. We met the ambulance about a mile down. Granddad had prostate cancer, heart disease, and arthritis. He’d had a heart attack. We’d just heard about how our biological grandma had committed suicide, how Granddad’s son had died, and their near-fatal escape. Grandma had dementia. I was expecting a media storm very shortly detailing events that still made my breath swirl frantically around in my body. I am a lie.

  “We’re fine,” I said. I remembered how my granddad answered that question. “Damn fine.”

  “Yes, we’re dandy fine,” Annie said. “Dandy damn fine. All dandy.”

  Dr. Rubenstein didn’t believe us. We knew he didn’t believe us. He wrapped us in those huge arms of his, anyhow. “Our families go way back. Call me anytime you need anything.”

  We nodded.

  “It is boring here, though,” Annie drawled.

  “Nothing to do at all except listen to doctors speaking from a foreign planet.”

  “Damn boring,” he agreed. “Damn boring.”

  He was a good man, that Dr. Rubenstein. There are good men around, you know.