Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

She walks across the living room to the couch. Vivian helps put her into a sitting position. She sinks into the couch and stares across the room to the wall.

The wall is white.

Vivian walks to the telephone. She calls the police. She says hello, there’s been a murder. A man’s been killed. Yes, killed dead. I think he was shot in the head. She gives the address. She hangs up the telephone.

She looks at Candice and says, ‘Do you want me to make some coffee?’

Candice thinks no, no I don’t want any coffee, it’s late, and how could I drink coffee while Neil lies dead in the street, but instead of saying that, instead of saying anything, she nods her head.

‘Okay,’ Vivian says. ‘I’ll put the percolator on.’

‘Can you check on Sandy first? Can you make sure he’s okay?’

‘Oh, God,’ Vivian says. ‘Yes — of course.’

She disappears into the hallway.

4

Three quick taps on the door, the rattle of the knob. Sandy sits up expecting to see his mother, but when the door swings open it instead reveals Vivian, the right half of her face splashed with light from the living room, the left half covered in shadows. He’s glad it’s her. He wasn’t ready to look into his mother’s eyes. He wasn’t ready to lie to her.

‘Sandy?’

‘I’m here,’ he says in the darkness. ‘Is everything okay?’

He wonders what’s next. He heard their voices but couldn’t make out their words. He wonders if somehow they already know what he’s done, if his pretending at innocence will only make it worse for him. He knows it’s a possibility, but the alternative is to admit guilt before anyone has expressed suspicion, and that he won’t do, can’t do. The consequences are far too great.

‘No,’ Vivian says, ‘everything isn’t okay. Why don’t. . why don’t you come out to the living room?’

‘Did something happen?’

‘Come out to the living room.’

‘Okay. I have to get dressed.’

‘Get dressed, then come right out, okay?’

‘Okay.’

She pulls the door closed.

Sandy turns on his lamp and gets to his feet and pulls on his pants and a shirt.

He walks out of his bedroom, down the hall, to the living room.

His mother sits on the couch, her back to the hallway entrance. He can see her blonde hair, her slumped shoulders, the way her head hangs forward, but not her face. Vivian sits at the dining table on the other side of the house, looking at him sadly.

‘What happened?’

His mom turns around. Her eyes are very red and swollen, her lipstick smeared, and when she tries to smile, to comfort him despite her own pain, he sees lipstick on her teeth.

‘Sandy,’ she says.

She reaches an arm out toward him beseechingly. He walks around the couch, walks to her, feeling sick in his stomach. If everything else hadn’t yet made it clear, his mother’s face lets him know it: the shock in her eyes, the way her mouth is turned down, and the crease between her eyebrows all tell him the same thing: he was wrong and wrong and wrong.

But it’s strange. He still feels nothing for his stepfather. He knows he should, but he doesn’t. He’s sad because his mother’s sad, and he’s afraid he might get caught, and because of those things he would take back what he did, but if she weren’t so sad, and if he knew he would never be found out, he’d kill him again.

He hated the man almost as much as he loves his mother.

She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him close. She kisses his cheek and his forehead and says his name. She cries.

He sits silently beside her, afraid to speak. Afraid his mother will find out he’s responsible and will hate him. She will hate him forever if she finds out, and he’s sure she will find out.

In his heart, where he keeps his secret fears, he’s certain of it.

She’s going to find out, you know she will. She has to. She’s your mom. She knows when you’ve lied about doing your homework; how could you ever have thought you would get away with this? How could you have possibly-

He swallows back his fear.

He tries to block all the worries from his mind, all the bad thoughts. He imagines them being shoved into a chest and the hasp slammed into place and a lock through the staple and the lock latched with a click.

He manages to say, ‘What’s wrong, Mom?’

‘It’s Neil,’ she says. ‘He’s. . he’s been murdered.’

‘What?’

Mom nods. ‘I know.’

He can’t stop looking at the lipstick on her teeth.

Then the windows flash with red and Sandy knows the police have arrived. Mom gets to her feet, but Vivian tells her to sit down, then walks to the door herself. Mom does sit down. She collapses back into the couch.

Sandy wants to be sick. He thinks he might be sick all over himself.

He looks at Vivian. She stands in front of the door, staring at it, waiting. He doesn’t know why she doesn’t just open the door, but she doesn’t, not for what seems like a very long time.

Sandy closes his eyes and imagines himself far away from here. He imagines himself as a bindlestiff, clothes on a stick flung over his shoulder. He imagines himself walking alongside rusty railroad tracks, surrounded by trees, the sun shining down on him, birds singing, a dog trotting alongside him, another outcast befriended, and the sky as blue as it’s ever been, so blue it hurts your eyes to look at it. He could disappear into that world and never come out. Everything would be perfect in that world. There would be laughter and friendship and no one would ever hurt him ever again.

There’s a knock at the front door.

Sandy opens his eyes.

Vivian grabs the doorknob, turns it, and pulls.

1

Look at this man wearing nothing but a pair of tattered underpants and one argyle sock. Look at him with his pale white belly gone soft. Look at him with his stick legs lined with blue veins and his once-muscular arms now wasted. Look at the gray hair on his head thinning at the temples and the dry riverbed wrinkles in his face. Look at the purple smears like bruises under his eyes.

Look at the pale band of skin on the ring finger on his left hand.

He snores quietly, lying on top of the green wool blanket stretched over his narrow, sagging mattress. If he’s dreaming it doesn’t show. His face is still and without expression, and, being expressionless, free of the scowl he puts on daily, like a hat, before stepping into the morning sunlight. In sleep he looks innocent. It would be a shame to wake him, to bring reality back to that face, to the brown eyes now lidded, to the weary mind behind them.

A knock at the door.

The man shifts in his sleep but the shutters of his eyes remain fixed.

Another knock. A woman’s voice speaking his name.

Carl Bachman opens his eyes and sits up with a curse. He stares at the blank wall. He clears his throat, crawls out of bed, pads to the door. He says what. He’s told there’s a phone call for him. He says okay and pulls open the door, squinting at his heavy-set landlady, Mrs Hoffman. She looks away from him, clearly embarrassed by his lack of clothing. He scratches himself and yawns. She says you shouldn’t be getting calls at this hour. House rules say no phone calls after nine o’clock. You should respect the rules, being a policeman. He says he didn’t exactly call himself and won’t be held responsible for other people’s actions. Besides, he says, this is probably police business. He pushes past her, walks down the hallway in his stained underwear to the telephone stand, picks up the telephone and says ugh. Captain Ellis, Homicide Division, sounding like he was just awakened himself, speaks into his ear, telling him there’s been a murder. You and Friedman are next in the rotation so you probably want to catch the scene. He says okay, writes down the address on a pad of paper which rests on the telephone stand, hangs up.