The Last Good Day of the Year

Warman

Chapter One

New Year’s Day, 1986

Midnight had come and gone, but Remy and I were still awake. How could anyone expect us to sleep with all the activity going on above us? Our mothers had tucked us into our sleeping bags hours ago, but the adults had continued their party upstairs. Through the thin basement ceiling above our heads, we felt the constant, dull tremble of the music playing on the living room stereo. If we paid close enough attention, we could track the path of every footstep right down to its owner—my mom’s light gait, my dad’s clumsy plodding that sent occasional sprinkles of drywall from the seams of the recently finished basement walls. We heard their countdown to midnight, followed by the pop-pop-pop of corks from champagne bottles. We listened to Ed Tickle and Darla—whom we all knew as Darla Tickle, even though she and Abby’s dad were never married—saying their good-nights. Remy’s mom played a tinny version of Auld Lang Syne on the electric keyboard I’d gotten for Christmas a few days earlier. We smelled the cigars that our dads had lit up the second us kids had been banished to the game room, the smoke spilling downstairs and permeating every surface, souring the warm basement air almost instantly. We heard Remy’s dad tell a dirty joke, and I thought I’d never be able to look him straight in the eye again. We heard our mothers screeching with laughter at the punch line, and I think we both felt horrified by this quick glimpse behind the curtain of adulthood, which brought with it the creeping realization that our parents, when they weren’t being our parents, did all kinds of things we didn’t understand or expect.

Beside me on the floor, Turtle slept through all of it. My sister—whose real name was Tabitha, but nobody ever called her that—was four years old. Remy and I were seven. The three of us were resting side by side on the carpet, with Remy nearest the stairs, me in the middle, and Turtle cocooned next to me in her Disney Princess sleeping bag, Boris, her tattered stuffed bear, in her arms. Her wavy blond hair almost glowed in the moonlight that shined through the sliding glass door at our backs. I’d always been jealous of her hair, which was thick and dense but soft as silk. My own hair was coarse and wavy, full of cowlicks that kept it looking unkempt, and my mother forced me to wear a bob cut even though I wanted to grow it long; but my little sister’s hair hung almost to her waist in smooth tendrils that sometimes seemed to sigh with the weight of their own beauty. Turtle’s small body took up less than half of the length of her sleeping bag. She was sucking her right thumb, like babies do, and pulling in slow, even breaths as she remained unconscious despite all the noise coming from upstairs.

It was well known in my family that Turtle could sleep through just about anything. A few months earlier, our dad had fallen asleep on the sofa late at night, forgetting he’d left the oven on with a frozen pizza baking inside. The sound of the smoke alarm was so loud and piercing that my eyes watered; if it had gone on too much longer, I might have thrown up. On my way back to bed, I found my mother standing in the doorway to the room I shared with Turtle, staring at her. My sister was still dead asleep, Boris nestled beside her with his head peeking out from under the blanket. Turtle’s thumb was planted securely in her mouth as she dreamed of rainbows or puppies, or whatever four-year-olds dream about. Her blanket was still smooth across her body, the top folded down and tucked beneath her chin, just the way our mother had left it hours ago. Turtle hadn’t moved.

According to Channel 4 meteorologist Mike Schmitt, that year’s winter was our area’s coldest in decades. Shelocta, the little town where I lived, was situated in a valley in the mountains of southeastern Pennsylvania. Lousy winter weather was nothing new, but that season was so cold and hostile to life that I remember wondering whether nature was deliberately trying to harm us. By early December, school had already been canceled a handful of times due to the temperature alone. There was a ten-day stretch where it didn’t even manage to climb into the single digits. People had trouble starting their cars in the morning. Some of the moms in our neighborhood put together a list of all the elderly residents and took turns checking up on them, making sure they hadn’t frozen to death. Leo and Milly Souza, the elderly Portuguese couple who lived down the street, started dressing their beloved German shepherds in thick sweaters and booties that Milly had knitted herself. Some mornings we’d wake up to find that, while we slept, slivers of frost had grown through the seams around the light switch beside our kitchen sink. It was a mean kind of cold. My dad called it suicide weather.

The game room was toasty, though, with all three baseboard radiators purring along at full blast. Combined with the heat coming from the space heater that my dad had left running in the bathroom a few feet away—he spent a lot of time that year fretting over the possibility of a burst pipe—it was almost too warm; I was sweating inside my sleeping bag. Remy was still awake, but I was starting to fade. I tried to fight it. Remy thought he was so tough, being a boy and all, even though I was taller and could run faster. He’d bet me a dollar that I couldn’t stay up until midnight. I’d already won, but I wanted to be the last to fall asleep. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.

Our moms had ushered us downstairs at ten o’clock sharp that evening—a full hour past our normal bedtimes, but still disappointingly early for New Year’s Eve. They’d pulled the standard bedtime scam that parents shamelessly use on holidays and special occasions: You don’t have to go to sleep yet, but you have to stay in bed. Once we were downstairs, Turtle threw a temper tantrum when I wouldn’t let her share my sleeping bag. She had a pitchy, shrill way of crying that could drive anyone crazy, and anytime she was overtired, her collapse into sleep was always preceded by a meltdown. The adults were having none of it that night: my mom ignored Turtle while she put our copy of Sleeping Beauty in the VCR and turned it down so low that we couldn’t hear a thing over the crying, kissed our foreheads, zipped up our sleeping bags, switched off the lights, marched upstairs, and shut the basement door behind her. She managed to do all of this while still holding on to her drink, a red plastic cup filled with foamy champagne that splashed onto my nightgown when she bent over to kiss me good night.

I think your mom is drunk, Remy said.

What’s ‘drunk’? Turtle asked. She had finished crying, and would be asleep any second.

Remy and I exchanged an annoyed look, as though it were such an awful drag to be down here with someone so intellectually inferior to us, a couple of real mental giants. Turtle and I were like most sisters in the sense that we loved each other fiercely but fought almost nonstop. I didn’t like having a little sister. There were so many things I wasn’t allowed to do because she was too little, and our parents didn’t want her to feel left out. I’d wasted countless pennies already in my short life, tossing them into fountains and wishing she would disappear. Don’t you know anything, Turtle? You’re so dumb sometimes. I pinched her on the arm, harder than I should have. Even once I knew it was too hard—after she yelped and tried to pull her arm away—I held on for two or three more seconds. Even then, I couldn’t have told you why I did it.

Turtle’s chin trembled, and her eyes filled up again. I’m not dumb. I’m four.

Go to sleep. We don’t want to play with you.

Remy does. And she looked at him for confirmation, but all he did was turn away and focus his gaze on the television screen. While lonely Aurora sang of her yearning for the one true love who would come into her life and make everything okay, I saw the pain I’d caused Turtle for no good reason and thought, Good.

My sister shut her eyes, wringing tears from her lashes. She held on tightly to Boris. She never went to bed without him. His white fur was matted and dirty because Turtle refused to let our mother put him through the wash. She was afraid his ear would fall off, and she was probably right to be. Caligula (one of the Souzas’ dogs) had torn it off months earlier during an ill-conceived game of tug-of-war. Mrs. Souza had sewn it back on with purple thread, creating a crooked scar along the seam.

I’m going to tell Momma you won’t play with me.

You’ll get punished. We aren’t supposed to go upstairs.

You’re being too mean.

I hate you.

I was only seven, and we were siblings. Siblings fight. It’s not like we were heading into Cain and Abel territory quite yet. But when she put her head onto her pillow and closed her eyes, she balled her hands into little fists and cried without making any noise, and I knew I’d gone too far. I told her I was sorry. I think I even told her I loved her. She asked me to snuggle with her while we watched the movie—that was her big thing, always wanting to snuggle with everybody—and I did, until she fell asleep a few minutes later. I pulled her sleeping bag up to her chin and brushed a few stray hairs from her face. I kissed her cheek and whispered, Good night.

Remy and I practiced cartwheels and headstands while the movie played. We started a game of Bloody Mary in the bathroom, but got too scared to finish. We took turns seeing how long we could stand being outside without a coat or shoes. Neither of us made it past twenty seconds.

Remy was like a brother to me. His family had lived next door my whole life. Our mothers were best friends who had been pregnant with us at the same time; I’d seen tons of photos taken throughout their pregnancies, their arms around each other’s waists, big bellies nearly touching. We even shared the same birthday—August 25—and had joint parties every year. Each July, our families piled into Mr. Mitchell’s old conversion van and drove eight hours to a rented beach bungalow in Ocean City. Those were the days I like to mull over now, when I need something happy to remember. Neither of our families had much money, but that fact didn’t make the stars above the ocean shine any less at night.

For the first seven years of our lives, I spent almost as much time at Remy’s house as I did at mine, and vice versa. I had two sisters—Turtle and Gretchen, who was seventeen—but Remy was an only child, and I think he and I gave each other something we otherwise would have missed. Having Remy next door meant that I always had somewhere to go when I’d had enough of my own sisters. For Remy, having me meant having someone like a sibling, even if that someone was a girl.

By the time the movie ended, we were both in our sleeping bags again. I don’t think I’ll go to sleep at all tonight, Remy said. I’m not tired. He was out by the time I bothered to respond. Without him to keep me company, there wasn’t much to do besides listen to our parents as they goofed around above us. I heard Remy’s dad shouting from the kitchen: Sharon, can I eat this cookie dough? You sure? Awesome.

The one-sided exchange filled me with enough fury to sit up and silently freak out at the ceiling, waving my arms and mouthing my outrage. My mother had clearly forgotten that it was my cookie dough she was so thoughtlessly giving away. I thought about stomping upstairs to remind her, but knew it would get me nowhere. I lay on my side and pouted while I stared into our yard through the sliding glass doors. It was a clear night with a full moon, and it had started to snow a little bit, the flakes swirling in the wind, the cold air whipping past with what felt like purpose, its singular goal to destroy even the tiniest pocket of warmth.

My eyes were shut when I heard the click of the backyard floodlight turning on. It had a motion sensor, and I turned my head to look outside, expecting to see a deer. Instead I saw Santa Claus. He was just standing there in the snow, his body so still and calm that I could have mistaken him for a statue if he hadn’t begun to sway ever so slightly. He was thinner than any self-respecting Santa ought to be. His wig and beard, which were one piece, rested crookedly on his head.

As I watched him, I felt more curious than anything else. I wasn’t scared, not at first. We were safely on the other side of the sliding glass door, and our parents were only a few steps away. Nobody was going to hurt us, especially not this guy. I mean, I knew he wasn’t the real Santa. I wasn’t even sure Santa existed at all. But a seven-year-old’s grasp on reality is fluid at best. Santa’s skinny now? And he’s in my yard? That doesn’t seem right, but I’ll accept it.

All that time he kept staring at the ground, swaying a little but otherwise not moving. If I had to guess, I’d say he stood there for a full minute like that before he started opening and closing his fists like someone getting himself ready for a fight, the same as I’d seen my dad do only the day before. The stranger in my yard raised his face and started strolling toward my house. I closed my eyes and held them shut for as long as I could stand it, and then took a peek.

He stood with his nose pressed against the sliding glass door, his gloved hands cupped around his eyes as he peered inside.

The fear was swift and crippling, in the sense that I had no control over it whatsoever. Have you ever had a dream or a nightmare in which you’re trying to scream but can’t force your body to make any sound? It was like that. I felt as if I had no mouth at all, like I was suffocating with fear. I kept my eyes shut, hoping I’d only imagined Santa, but when I opened them he was still there. His hand was on the door handle now, and I knew the door was not locked. I knew he was coming in. I closed my eyes again. I wanted to scream so badly, but I could barely breathe. I couldn’t move. All I felt was the cold rattle of panic in my gut and the hard beat of blood in my ears.

The party upstairs suddenly seemed very far away. I heard the door slide open and felt the freezing air rush into the basement, and I knew it was too late to run; he was right here, inside, standing above us. I could hear him breathing. The sound seemed to fill the room, drowning out all other noise. I could smell tobacco on his clothing. He stood there for what felt like forever, although in reality it was probably less than a minute. Then he knelt down behind us, and I felt the warmth of his breath on my face and heard his clothing moving against his body. I heard him slowly unzip Turtle’s sleeping bag and lift her small, sleeping form into his arms, but I still could not force myself to move or scream. I wanted to more than anything, but I couldn’t.

I kept my eyes shut as I sensed him carrying her away. She was wearing shoes with her nightgown; she’d gotten a pair of red slip-ons covered in sequins, like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, for Christmas and had been wearing them nonstop for the past week. When I was finally able to open my eyes, the first thing I saw was the sliding glass door, which he’d closed, and the dark backyard lit only by the moon. I thought maybe it had all been a terrible nightmare. I reached for my sister, but she wasn’t there. Turtle was gone. I didn’t know it yet, but she was never coming home.

Chapter Two

Summer 1996

I didn’t realize how poor we were, not until the fact became an important plot point in the media’s approach to my family’s narrative. People say the news doesn’t care about missing kids unless they’re rich, white, and cute. I guess even if you can’t claim all three of those, having one of them in spades can still be enough to hold people’s attention. When a journalist from National Public Radio did a story on Turtle and our family back in 1990, he described our appearance for listeners by observing that if Hollywood ever made a movie based on us, they’d have a tough time finding actors good-looking enough to play our parts with any accuracy.

But we were poor back then, whether I knew it or not, and we’re still poor today. I’ve been holding on to all these memories of home for ten years, clinging to the version of my childhood that’s easiest to manage. Everything about our old house is sort of the same as I remember it, but it’s different in a million little ways that add up quick: the ceilings are lower, the windows and rooms are smaller, the kitchen linoleum is a seamy array of ugly black and white squares instead of the shiny checkerboard floor of my memories. It was a dump back then, and it’s still a dump now; the only real difference is that it’s older. My mind has done its best to Photoshop those early years, to make what was dull and bleak more shiny and hopeful by polishing the memories with so much nostalgic wax.

Our place in Shelocta was at the end of a cul-de-sac. We were the last of a four-unit block of town houses. The Mitchells lived next door; the Souzas were on their other side, followed by Ed Tickle and his daughter, Abby, and Ed’s girlfriend, Darla. If Remy was like my brother, then Abby Tickle was Gretchen’s sister. They were best friends.

We moved almost a year to the day after my sister was taken, and it always seemed to me that the idea was to never, ever return. I guess plans change. When my dad lost his job in Virginia last winter, my parents couldn’t afford to pay our rent anymore. They’ve never been great with money.

The move back here is supposed to be temporary. It was the only choice we had; we couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. Since my parents couldn’t manage to sell the house on Taylor Street, even at a steep discount, they’ve been renting it out for the past nine years. But the last tenant disappeared in January after failing to pay his rent for the third month in a row. On February 1, I woke before dawn to the sounds of my mom’s Toyota getting towed away by a repo company. Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, my father fell asleep in our old station wagon while it was parked in our garage with the engine still running. The doctor at the emergency room told us he’d nearly died from asphyxiation. My dad insists the whole thing was an accident. Nobody believes him.

So here we are, once again. It’s the last place any of us wants to be, and the only place left for us to go.

Mike Mitchell taps on our kitchen window with his beer can