Scott Sherman - Third You Die

I sat on an uncomfortable couch while Mrs. Dawson settled into a club chair to my left.

“Thank you for coming,” she began. “You’re the only one who did. I know Brent had a life after he left here, but I don’t know much about it. Can you tell me…” She took a deep breath. Her hands fluttered in the air, looking for a place to land. They settled on her knees, where they clenched and released, clenched and released, like she was kneading.

She was needing. Needing a connection with a son who, through malice or weakness or a combination of both, she’d abandoned when he was at his most vulnerable.

I’d brought the card Lucas had given me from Brent-well, here it was probably better to think of him as Richie-to wound his parents. To pierce their hearts with guilt. Seeing her now, here, I realized she’d hurt herself more than I ever could. In fact, I thought that seeing her son’s final words to her might actually bring her some peace.

“He wanted you to have this,” I said. “I think he was going to send it himself but never got the chance to.” A fib. The first of many, I suspected. There was no way I could tell her the truth about how I’d met her son, or how he made his living. I handed her the note he’d written, telling his parents that no matter what happened, he forgave and loved them.

“You’d think,” Mrs. Dawson said, her gaze still directed down at the two-sentence note she’d spent several minutes reading and rereading, “that eventually you’d run out of tears.”

She looked up at me, the water running freely from her eyes. “But you don’t. It seems like a well that never runs dry.” She took a used tissue off a table next to her and blew her nose as discreetly as she could.

“I suppose that’s a good thing, too. Because I should cry. I deserve to cry. Every day. For my son. For what I allowed to happen to him.”

“You loved him very much.”

“Yes.” This brought on another wave of sobs.

“Then… why?” The obvious question.

“Oh, why? That’s the one I ask myself every day. I was raised very traditionally. Conservatively. There was right and there was wrong. Sin and godliness. A man’s role was to lead the family and a woman’s role was to serve. Blah, blah, blah. I could tell you that I married my husband too young, that I was afraid of him. That he… hit me. It would all be true.

“He told me Richie would come back. That we had to be strong and wait out the devil. That the only way to save him was to… banish him. To hurt him a little now to save his soul for eternity.

“Every cell in my body knew it was wrong. But I was weak. Weak and afraid. Everything else is just an excuse.”

“He never stopped loving you,” I told her.

“I know. He told me.”

“In the note,” I affirmed.

“No.” A small smile through her tears. The first time I’d seen her lips curl upward. “On the phone. About a month ago.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been a stupid, frightened woman, but I was getting stronger. A few months ago, my husband came home with brochures from church. For a ‘conversion camp.’ ”

“I know,” I said. “Richie told me about it.” Another bending of the truth. It was Lucas who’d relayed that story to me. But you figure out how to describe Lucas’s role in all this. Tell me a good way to explain Richie’s adulterous relationship with a guy he met while shooting skin flicks. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

“I always suspected Ellen-his sister-was in touch with Richie. My husband had warned her not to be, of course, but she’s a grown woman now. Living on her own. And she is strong. Stronger than me. She confronted me about the camp. How could I even consider such a thing? she asked. She called it ‘torture therapy.’

“She was right. I told my husband the idea was off the table. It was the first time in a long time I’d said no to him. But I insisted. I told him if he even called them, I’d leave and move in with Ellen. I used a word I’d heard on Judge Judy’s show. I said it was ‘non-negotiable.’

“He spent a few days yelling, slamming doors, and grouching even more than usual. But eventually, he promised me to drop it.

“I got Ellen to give me Richie’s number. She’d told me she warned him about the possibility of being abducted by the camp’s ‘counselors,’ and I didn’t want him to worry anymore. No, more than that. I wanted to be the one to take that burden off his shoulders.”

The tears continued to stream down her face. The front of her robe looked like she’d spilled a glass of water on it, soaked as it was in her sadness. But her voice was even and clear.

“I’d given him so little,” she said. “I’d failed him so. Having this one thing to offer him, this tiny piece of good news, was a start, I hoped. A chance for me to begin making it up to him.

“We talked for hours. Hours. He was so happy to hear from me. So happy. As if I weren’t to blame. As if he didn’t have every reason to hate me.

“But he didn’t hate me. I don’t know why, or how, but he said he understood. I’ve never been prouder.

“He told me all about how he was trying to make it as an actor. About the temporary jobs he took to keep himself afloat. The office positions, the sales work. But his dream was to be on screen.”

Of course he told her that. I used to tell my parents I made my living as a computer consultant. It seemed easier, and kinder, than telling them I earned my wages as a rent boy.

You can only get away with that for so long, though. Like snow in the city, the lies start out white but get dirtier and uglier over time. Soon, you’re standing up to your ankles in nasty slush, your feet wet and cold. What you save in convenience you lose in integrity.

It was a lesson Richie didn’t live long enough to learn.

Mrs. Dawson’s call to Richie explained why he’d told Lucas he was no longer worried about his parents trying to “deprogram” him. I wondered if it also hadn’t been the catalyst in his telling Lucas he needed to take a break from seeing him for a while-at least until he made a decision about Charlie. Nothing like a call from your mother to get the guilt train running down the track. It was also around the time Richie was talking about getting out of the jizz biz. Maybe he was reevaluating everything.

Which, as far as I was concerned, made it even more unlikely he’d killed himself while all doped up-whether by accident or on purpose.

Mrs. Dawson encouraged me to talk. How did Richie look? Was he content with his life? Had he found friends? Did he have someone… special? Was it me?

I stuck as close to the truth as I could. She accepted any evidence of Richie’s happiness with the joy of a person dying of thirst receiving a glass of water.

She brought out pictures. Richie as a baby. Richie in the tub with his sister. Richie dressed like Batman for Halloween. Richie’s high school yearbook, where he appeared as a freshman.

Wait.

I looked at the cover of the yearbook.

For a moment, it seemed to come alive, wriggling in my grasp like a magical tome in a Harry Potter novel.

My hands were shaking.

With excitement. With fear. With the shock of discovery.

Tony was right.

People kill for one of three reasons.

Money.

Sexual jealousy.

Thrills.

Now I knew which one got Richie murdered.

“This may seem strange,” I told her, “but can I take this?”

“My lord,” she said. “After all you’ve given me? The gift of your coming here? Showing me that Richie had friends who cared enough to reach out like this? You can have them all. Hell, you can have the whole fucking house!”

Her eyes flew open in shock and she made a sound that scared me. A startled, staccato bray than soon turned to laughter. A lovely laugh at that, musical and joyous, which had me laughing, too, although I didn’t know why.