When she came downstairs at six o’clock, the smell of her perfume preceding her, Roby whistled. His mother’s loveliness was something he just never got used to. People still told her that even at forty-two she looked more like his big sister than his mother, and Roby agreed.
Tonight, though, she did not seem her usual tranquil, cheerful self. All day, Roby thought, she had seemed edgy. And now his father was late again and Roby didn’t feel like asking where he was.
Instead, he grabbed a box of Trivial Pursuit cards—the pink questions, Entertainment. Those were the ones his mother knew best.
“What film featured the characters Charlie Allnut and Rosey Sayer?” he called out.
“The African Queen,” Maria said.
“Who called himself ‘The Errol Flynn of B Movies’?”
She didn’t know. “Ronald Reagan,” he told her.
“What had one eye, one horn and flew in the 1958 hit by Sheb Wooley?”
She smiled. “The Flying Purple People Eater, of course.”
This went on for another fifteen minutes. Then he heard his father calling, telling Maria to hurry, they were late.
Roby kissed her goodbye, the way he did every time either he or she left the house. The night was chilly, unusual for that early in September. Roby spent much of it in front of the television set, doing sit-ups while watching the movie The World According to Garp. It wound up as such a bloody mess he didn’t like it. Also, it was completely unrealistic. There was no way that intelligent, middle-class parents could ever be so violent and weird.
After talking to Susan Salzman on the phone, he went to bed around midnight, which was early for him.
What woke him, about three hours later, was the sound of a hand fumbling in the darkness, reaching for the light switch on his wall.
Then the light came on and he saw his father in the doorway, crying, and he saw the blood that stained his father’s shirt.
The last time Chris Marshall saw his mother was on Friday, August 24, when she and his father left him on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for the start of his freshman year.
It was not a scene that the Marshalls had ever expected would be played out in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. What they’d envisioned, all through Chris’s career at Toms River East, where he had ranked in the top ten percent of his class, been editor of his yearbook, a member of the National Honor Society and possessor of six different county swim records, was Princeton.
For Roby, who had always been drawn more to parties than to schoolwork, even Villanova had been stretching. He would have been content with Lycoming or East Stroudsburg or any of the other northern Pennsylvania colleges that had proven themselves easy to get into. For Chris, however, the standard had been set higher, which was exactly the way he’d wanted it. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he studied until after midnight, and all his teachers remembered him as one of the brightest and nicest students they’d ever encountered.
By his junior year, selecting the right college for him and then making sure he got admitted had become his mother’s major project. He’d entered all of his vital statistics, as well as his desire for a career in architecture, into a computer at the guidance office at Toms River East. The computer had produced a list of colleges. His mother had taken the list and a Barron’s college guidebook, and had sat up nights working things out. Then she’d met with the high school guidance counselor. Then she’d phoned the colleges’ admissions offices. Then she’d planned the trips to the various campuses. Then she’d prepared a three-page brochure that called attention to his merits (including all his awards and every activity in which he’d ever participated, as well as a color photograph just because she thought he was so handsome) and had mailed it to the colleges at the top of her list. And then, when it came time to fill out the applications, she’d done it all, even a bit of rewriting of the essays. (The only mistake that Chris ever spotted was that she’d left the i out of architecture in every one.) And finally, when it became clear that Princeton was at the top of the list, she’d actually walked up to U.S. senator (and Princeton alumnus) Bill Bradley at a reception and had asked him to recommend Chris.
Thus, for Maria, it was not just a shock but a personal rejection when Princeton informed Chris that he had not been admitted.
Still, there was nothing wrong with Lehigh, especially when they offered a partial scholarship for swimming. Lehigh was a fine school. Very strong in engineering, as everyone knew. Chris was happy about it from the start, and before long, so was Maria. It wouldn’t be quite the same to talk at the club about how well Chris was doing at Lehigh as opposed to Princeton, but the club, after all, was not exactly steeped in Ivy League tradition.
Chris and his parents had driven to the campus at the beginning of August to talk with the swimming coach about what kind of year they could expect.
Maria had asked most of the questions—how would Chris do his laundry (for the first time, she wouldn’t be there to do it for him), whether it was customary for parents to attend the home meets (at Toms River East, not only had the Marshalls attended, but Maria had led the cheering section and Rob had videotaped every meet), and which hotel was recommended. What the coach had noticed most about Chris’s father was how terribly nervous he seemed.
Three weeks later, they came back for the start of the term, arriving early in the day so Chris would be first in the room and thus able to get the best bed, the best drawer space, the desk near the window. While he and his father went off to go through the registration procedures, Maria stayed in the room to put all his clothes away and to make his bed with brand-new sheets.
After that they’d walked down the hill (the campus was set on a steep hill overlooking the town) to eat lunch at a restaurant called the Bridge Works. All through the meal, Maria had cried. Chris had never seen his mother cry so hard. Sure, she was going to miss him, just as he would miss her acutely—if anything, he’d been even closer to his mother than had Roby, and much more obviously dependent on her—but Lehigh was only two and a half hours from Toms River and he’d undoubtedly be seeing her at least two or three times a month.
He couldn’t figure out why his mother had cried so much, but very soon he was too busy to spend time thinking about it. Also, Maria seemed to regain her customary cheerfulness quickly. On Saturday, August 25, a gorgeous late-summer day, she sent him a note saying, “What a great weekend you have for starting school. I’m only concerned you don’t have enough clothes. HA!” Enclosed were laundry instructions: “¼ cup detergent. Separate light colors from dark. Warm-water wash the light colors. Cold-water wash the dark.” Chris considered that a good sign. If his mother was focusing on laundry she was clearly herself again.
Two days later she sent him another note, saying, “I took Mrs. A out to lunch today. She leaves Wednesday for Florida. I’m going to miss her a lot.” That was Andrea Alfonso, perhaps his mother’s closest friend. She had recently been divorced and had almost immediately discovered one of the basic facts of life among the Toms River Country Club set: the wives had no social life without the husbands. The husbands had created the social-business network that made whatever happened in Toms River happen. Except for their domestic functions, the wives were strictly ornamental. The system had no place in it for ex-wives. Women—especially those over forty—whose husbands had walked out on them vanished from the scene so quickly and absolutely it was as if they’d been kidnapped in Lebanon. Leaving town was really the only option.
The last letter Chris received from his mother was written on Labor Day, September 3, just after he’d told her about his election as dorm president.
Dearest Chris—
Hi, sweet. It was so good to hear your voice last night. You sound great. Once again, congratulations, Mr. President. I’m so proud of you.
Then Maria went on to describe her weekend, which had featured a quick trip to Columbus, Ohio, with Rob to visit friends and attend an Ohio State football game.
We got to the stadium an hour and a half before it began. Your father was thrilled. (HA!) We saw all the football players get off the bus (we got there ahead of the team).
Pete Finley has a new Mercedes 450 SLE, brown with a tan interior. He has an alarm system in it that’s so sensitive that it goes off even when a car door next to it is slammed! They really gave us the red carpet.
Last night, we took Grandma and Grandpop to dinner at PJ’s in Bayville. We all pigged out. When you come home we’ll take you guys there. I think you’ll like it.
Knock ’em dead at Lehigh. You’ve got the “Right Stuff.” We all miss you mucho.
Love ya,
At ten o’clock on Thursday night, September 6, he was in his room studying when the phone rang. It was his parents, calling from their table at the Meadows restaurant at Harrah’s Marina. Chris could just picture his father sitting there, feeling so important because he’d had a phone brought to the table.
They were calling to say how much they missed him and to urge him to come home for the weekend. But Chris figured that if he was ever going to learn to live on his own he’d better actually do it, and so he told them that he had too much work to do and would be staying on campus for the weekend.
At two o’clock the next afternoon, Chris was sitting on the top half of a bunk bed in his dorm room, talking with his roommate and another friend. Physically, Chris bore more of a resemblance to his father than to his mother (though most who knew the family said the reverse was true in terms of personality).
He was just under six feet tall, with a dark blond crewcut, stronger, more fully formed facial features than those of his brother, and the well-muscled body of the competitive athlete. Of the two older boys, Chris had always seemed the more mature in many ways, the more conscientious and responsible, the one more eager to please adults. He was the one of whom teachers said, “I’ve never had another kid I liked as much.”
The door to the room opened and Chris saw his father standing there. Right away, just from the expression on his father’s face, Chris knew that something was wrong. He looked over his father’s shoulder for his mother, expecting her to be standing in the doorway, because all his life he’d been used to seeing the two of them together, and because if something was so wrong that his father had had to drive all the way out to Lehigh to see him, then surely his mother must have come, too.
“Where’s Mom?” he said.
Chris’s father didn’t answer. Instead, he motioned to the two other freshmen in the room.
“Guys,” he said. “Get out.” Then he pulled a chair away from a desk and took a seat. Chris jumped down from the bunk bed and stepped toward him.
Rob Marshall looked up at his son. The two of them were now alone in the room.
“Something terrible has happened,” Chris’s father said.
2
As soon as Roby came awake enough to see the priest from St. Joseph’s, Father Mulcahy, standing at his father’s side, he knew that his mother was dead.
What was strange was that nobody said anything. Once they saw that Roby was awake, the two men left the room and walked down the hall to the bedroom of his younger brother John. They were back in what seemed like less than a minute, with John, who looked very sleepy and confused.
Then Rob sat on Roby’s bed and John sat on the foot of the bed, next to him, and Rob put his head on Roby’s chest, crying harder. He was trying to talk through his sobs. Trying to tell Roby what had happened. Something about pulling into a picnic area to change a flat tire. Being followed. Getting hit on the head. Maria shot. Maria dead. Roby’s mother. Murdered!
Roby had been sitting up to listen. Now he lay down again, on his back, feeling that he was about to throw up. Later, he remembered thinking, “This is a stupid dream, buddy,” and knowing that he had to wake up. He was crying. He knew he was crying. But over his own sobs he heard the sound of his brother. John was bawling.
Poor John. Only thirteen. He would need help. Roby sat up again and made himself stop crying and then actually made himself talk.
“You know that Mom’s happier than we are right now,” he said. “She’s in heaven.” Then he reached across the bed and took his younger brother in his arms and hugged him tight. All the while, he could hear his father’s voice. Saying, “I wish it was me, I wish it was me,” through his tears.
What time was all this? Three A.M.? Four A.M.? It didn’t matter. Time had stopped. His mother was dead. His brother was hysterical. His father had blood all over his shirt and also, Roby could see, stitches to close a cut on his head. The priest didn’t seem to know what to do, what to say. Who could blame him? Nobody could know what to do. Except his mother. She always knew just what to do, just what to say, to comfort her sons. He remembered the smell of her perfume. He remembered how great she had looked dressed for dinner. And the delighted way she had laughed when she’d said, “Purple People Eater.”
He didn’t throw up. But he didn’t really stop crying, either, even though he knew he had to be strong because his brother John was going to need a lot of help. He didn’t feel strong. He felt sick. The terror was locked into the pit of his stomach and he was a little boy again, crying because he’d lost his mother, except that this time he’d never find her and it wasn’t a dream, like the dreams he’d often had of his parents being killed in an automobile accident, and it wasn’t a movie, either, like Garp. His mother had been murdered by a man with a gun in the Oyster Creek picnic area off the Garden State Parkway, ten miles south of Toms River.
At some point his father put on a clean shirt. Then the police came. That pissed him off. He needed time. He needed to talk more to his father. He needed to find out exactly what had happened. He needed to figure out why. He needed to know if his mother had suffered. He needed somebody to tell him what to do next.
The police said they had to take his father to the Bass River state police barracks in order for him to make a formal statement. Roby got more pissed. He started yelling at one of the cops, some smart-ass detective named O’Brien, a guy with a mustache who had the kind of 1890s face that made him look like a cop from a silent movie. Bass River was more than a half hour away. It was on the parkway, well south of Oyster Creek. That meant his father would be driven right past the picnic area where it had happened. This seemed so unnecessary, so unfair, after all that had already happened.
“Relax, son,” O’Brien said. “I pride myself on being a fast driver. We’ll have him back to you in no time.”
Then his father was gone. It was just Roby and John and the priest, and the priest looked as if he wanted to get out of there, too. Who could blame him?
Roby went to the phone. It was now 6 A.M. Susan Salzman would be getting up for school. Roby called her, told her that his mother had been murdered. Within twenty minutes, she and her own mother were at the house.
Some time after it was light out, Rob got back from the state police. Before long the phone started ringing. News of the murder apparently had been broadcast on the radio. By 8:30, friends were already arriving at the house. Joe Moore, who’d been Rob’s boss when he’d worked for Prudential. Sal and Paula Coccaro, who were friends from the club. Sal owned a restaurant-supply business on Route 37.
“She loved you two so much,” Rob said. “You know she loved you. You know she loved you.” Paula Coccaro could barely walk. She looked as if she was about to faint. Sal just looked stunned. He hugged Roby and John a lot. Roby found it hard to move around. His limbs felt overwhelmingly heavy, as if he were standing underwater. He also knew how much new horror still lay ahead. Chris hadn’t even been told yet. Neither had Grandma and Grandpop, his mother’s parents, who lived in Philadelphia. His uncle Gene, a lawyer—the husband of one of his father’s three sisters—was said to be on his way to the house from Wilmington, Delaware.
Somebody had followed them, his father kept saying. A car had followed them into the picnic area when he’d turned in there to check a tire that had felt like it was going flat. It must
have been someone who’d followed them all the way from the casino. Someone who’d seen them win money at blackjack. It was a robbery. He’d been knocked unconscious as he knelt at the rear of the car to check the tire. When he awoke he found his head bleeding, more than two thousand dollars in cash missing from his pants pocket and Maria sprawled facedown across the front seat of the car in a puddle of blood.
Roby was amazed at how quickly his father had become functional again. He’d already been on the phone making funeral arrangements. There was to be no viewing. Maria’s body would be cremated. They’d have a memorial mass at St. Joseph’s on Monday, followed by a reception back at the house. That was the way Maria would have done it, Rob kept saying.
At some point, Roby went back upstairs and lay on his bed. Images of his mother flooded his mind. She was so real, so warm, so loving, so alive…she couldn’t be dead. She had always been so there for him, she couldn’t all of a sudden be not there. He kept telling himself it still might be a bad dream. Worse than bad. The worst and longest dream he’d ever had. But then he heard the sound of his brother John crying down the hall. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. But how could it be real when it seemed so unreal?
The worst of it was that every other time in his life when he’d felt sad, alone, threatened, despondent or unfairly maligned, his mother had been there to help. She was the one person he’d always been able to turn to, the one person who would always understand and who would know just the right words to say to make things better. Even at nineteen, Roby had still had that kind of relationship with his mother. He’d known it was unusual but that had made it all the more valuable. His mother’s love and concern and understanding were the most precious gifts that Roby had ever received and there had not been a day he could remember when he hadn’t, at least once, told himself how lucky he was because of her. He’d never taken her for granted. On the other hand, he’d known that she would always be there. He’d often thought that he’d like to get married young—he didn’t know to whom yet, Susan Salzman wasn’t that big a romance—just so he could watch his mother’s face as she held her first grandchild in her arms.