January 7th, 1996
Staring out the front window of our colonial, I can’t stop smiling as the thick blanket of white envelops our narrow street. Living in Newark, NJ, snow is not some magical thing we never see. We are such pros at winter weather. It’s rare for us to have snow days. This storm, though, is different. The drifts are taller than my little brother. Heck, they’re taller than our station wagon. I’d heard my parents talking, and apparently, this was a blizzard.
Mom told me I could go out and play with the neighborhood kids when there’s a break in the storm, but here we are, twenty-four hours in, and there’s no end in sight. I have my snowsuit laid out, ready for the moment I can venture out into the fresh piles of frigid joy, but time feels like it’s moving backward.
“Catherine, it’s my job.” I hear my dad say from the other room. I don’t take my eyes off the window.
“You own the company, so you don’t have to go out in this.” I can tell my mom is irritated with my father.
“Do you like the food I put on the table?” From the corner of my eye, I can see that my dad is dressed in his winter coat and boots. A second later, I feel a tug at the bottom of my pants. It’s my brother, Patrick. I’m eight years older, and despite initially being annoyed when I found out I would have a younger sibling, I’ve loved every second of the past two years of being his big sister.
“Wanna see?” I whisper. He smiles, nods, and reaches his hands up for me. Mom and Dad are still arguing in the other room. I pick Patrick up and place him on my hip. He presses a hand against the glass and stares out, wide-eyed. I can tell he sees the same magic outside that I do.
A burst of cold air rushes in as my father throws open the front door, exits, and then slams it shut behind him. I hear an engine start, and a couple of minutes later, his large blue truck with the plow attached exits our driveway.
I glance over my shoulder and consider asking my mother if everything is all right. Instead, I decide against such an action and watch as my father heads off into the storm. The snow blows sideways, so I lose sight of his taillights after only a few moments.
January 15th, 1996
The beauty and excitement of the blizzard have passed. The snow is still fun, considering every day all of the neighborhood kids gather to play king of the hill on the mountain of white left behind by the plows. However, there are no more days off from school, and the sea of pristine white has become covered in a grimy layer of gray.
I’m halfway up the climb to the top of the mountain when I hear Patrick start to cry.
“Why do you always have to bring him?” My friend Molly grunts as she rolls her eyes. I don’t respond. Instead, I turn and slide back down to the bottom.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” I ask as I take a seat next to him. I noticed the pile of snow he’d been creating when I started my ascent had been flattened by a large boot print in the center. Patrick’s cries trail off into a whimper. I look around to see the culprit behind the destruction, but in the chaos of laughing kids, I see no obvious suspects. I turn my attention back to my brother. “You wanna go home and get some hot cocoa?” I ask. He looks up at me with tear-filled eyes and nods. Taking his small gloved hand in my own, I pull him to stand, and we head in the direction of our house.
The age gap makes me a natural caretaker for Patrick. I like that he trusts me and always wants to go everywhere with me. Mom had a hard time after Patrick was born. She was always tired and couldn’t sleep. She also always seemed frustrated; if it wasn’t with us, it was with Dad or her job. When Patrick was a baby, she would let him cry in his crib until he started to gag. Maybe it’s why I hate it so much when he cries now.
Things got better after Patrick’s first birthday. When he turned two a few months ago, Mom even threw a birthday party for him, and we baked his cake together. He loves Dad’s plow truck, so we did our best to make the cake in the shape of it, but truth be told, it looked more like a big blue egg. Either way, it was one of the best days we’ve had since Patrick was born. It was also the same day that Mom and Dad told us there would be another baby.
At the time, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. At ten, the idea of another kid taking up so much attention in the house didn’t exactly excite me, but then I thought about Patrick. The way he wants to see me first in the morning. The way he sits at the front window, watching and waiting for me to get off the bus in the afternoon. Maybe this time I’ll get a little sister.
When we walk around the corner to our street, a police car is parked in front of our house, and I hesitate, gripping Patrick’s hand tighter. The first thing I think is Dad has been in an accident, but then I see his truck in our driveway. My next thought is of Mom and her pregnancy. I sprint toward the house as I drag Patrick behind me; he’s struggling to keep up, his snow boots scraping the ground as we move.
“Ra-chel,” Patrick cries my name in protest. I slow my pace only slightly, my eyes locked on the burgundy front door of our home. It’s cracked somewhat, and I can barely contain my panic to get inside and see what’s happening.
I push open the chain-link gate in front of our house, and the sound of the salt on our walkway as it crunches under our boots fills my ears. I never release Patrick’s hand as we climb the steps, and I pull open the storm door, pushing the front door open the rest of the way. The first person my eyes connect with is Mom. She’s standing below the arch that leads to the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest.
I feel Patrick release my hand as he shuffles over to my mother. She looks concerned but not unwell, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Patrick, sweetie, your boots are covered in snow.” She uses a tone that feels unfamiliar. Too tender in a way. She grasps his hand and guides him back over to where I’m standing. Before she reaches me, my eyes have already moved to my father, sitting on our green sofa. His eyes are fixed on the empty coffee table in front of him, and it makes me uncomfortable that he doesn’t look at me. Two men are standing in front of my father. One is in a police uniform, and the other is wearing trousers and a blazer.
“And who do we have here?” the man in the blazer asks, peering at me.
My mother doesn’t wait for me to speak. Her head jerks in the man’s direction. “Ask him what you have to, but leave my kids out of it.”
“Mom, what’s going on?” I whisper, looking up at her and then at the men and my father. He still doesn’t look at me.
“Nothing for you to worry about. Come on, we’ll take your boots off upstairs,” she replies as she places a hand on the middle of my back and nudges me toward the stairs. My eyes stay fixed on the scene unfolding in my living room as I climb each step, and the scene eventually disappears out of sight.
A few minutes later, when my boots and snowsuit are off and I’m changing into dry socks, I hear the front door close. I rush to my window and peer out as the men climb into the police cruiser and pull away. When I turn around, I see my mother standing in the doorway, watching me. I ask her repeatedly why the men were there and why they were talking to Dad, but she continually changes the subject.
“I don’t want you to ask your father any questions about this, do you understand?” she asks me. I want to question her. To ask her why she won’t tell me what they want and why she doesn’t want me to bring it up, but the concern in her gaze frightens me. She doesn’t want me to know what’s happening, and I wonder if maybe that’s for the best.
January 19th, 1996
I love weekends. I look forward to them Monday through Thursday. Fridays are always the best day of the school week because I won’t have to go back to school until Monday. After this Friday, I will no longer look forward to them. This Friday, when I get off the school bus, half our neighborhood has gathered outside our house, dozens of cops roam about our home, and Mom sits on the couch with a dazed look in her eyes as she’s holding Patrick to her chest.
I walk into the house as neighborhood people shout things that I can’t make out, but the looks on their faces frighten me. As I make my way to the steps leading into my home, I hear one say, “Did you know?” None of it makes sense to me.
I enter our house and go to my mother’s side; my heart is pounding in my chest. I’m desperate to make sense of the scene unfolding around me. I beg her to tell me what’s happening, but it’s like she doesn’t even see me. She stares at the space in front of her with a blankness to her gaze. “Where’s Dad?” I ask at last, my head rotating around at the chaos. She still says nothing.
I watch several officers exit our home with boxes full of items inside plastic bags. I can hear them marching up and down the basement steps, but I don’t dare leave my mother’s side. Eventually, when I realize she’s not going to respond to me, I lay my head on her shoulder. Patrick tilts his face up, and our eyes meet. He’s sucking his thumb—something I haven’t seen him do since before his second birthday.
I don’t know what’s happening or why, but somehow part of me knows whatever it is, our lives will never be the same. In the coming weeks, I learn just how right I was.
The police claim my father has been murdering women for years, and they believe his victims number in the dozens. My mother stays glued to the television. She doesn’t seem to care that her children can hear and see every minute of it. The things I see make no sense. The things they claim my father did can’t be true. I ask my mother what we will do if they don’t figure out that Daddy is innocent. She looks back at me but doesn’t say a word.
Two weeks later, he confesses.
He’s a killer. My entire childhood has been a lie. When I watched him drive away to work as a landscaper in the summers or as a plow driver in the winters, I might have been watching him as he left to murder some innocent woman. When he sat across from me at the dinner table and told me stories of his day or asked about mine, it was all lies. The only truth that exists anymore is that my father is the “Lipstick Killer.”
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