Brendan Dassey
Another evening, another episode of Making a Murderer.
‘I was working on his car . . .’ he begins.
My phone starts to ring. I jump off the sofa.
‘Pause it, pause it, pause it,’ I say to Josh, running out of the living room and answering the call. ‘Hey, Mum.’ I go into our bedroom and throw myself onto the bed. We haven’t spoken since the wedding announcement. ‘Are you in Salvador now?’
‘I am. It’s beautiful. Look.’ Mum requests a video call. I accept and see a pixelated magic hour; the buildings glowing, the sky pink and orange. It’s a contrast from my grey bedroom in grey England.
‘Very nice,’ I say.
‘Yes, well.’ She turns the camera, and her nostrils fill the screen.
‘Camera,’ I remind her.
She pulls it back so I can see her whole face.
The sea air and living off à la carte cruise menus are doing wonders for Mum.
She has let her hair grow out from the tight, bleached bob she had for decades, to a flowing silver mane that makes her look like she could be a character in a fantasy novel.
Her face has a natural sun-kissed glow, which goes well with her dangling turquoise earrings.
The old Charlotte wouldn’t be caught dead in plastic turquoise earrings, but that Charlotte is long gone.
‘Better?’ she says.
‘Better.’ I smile.
‘You look a tad tired, darling,’ she says.
‘I am tired.’
‘Could that be something to do with planning a wedding?’ she says. ‘Just so you know, I did try to say something, but bloody Linda kept crying about her demented dad. I can’t believe you agreed to it.’
Mum has met Linda twice. The first time was at my and Josh’s graduation.
The second was at Jason’s sixtieth BBQ party that Linda insisted on inviting Mum to.
For the entirety of the afternoon, Mum was stuck to my side, whispering things in my ear about the brown food and football-patterned paper napkins.
I had to keep telling her to be kind and to stop being a snob.
Linda stopped bothering after that BBQ. I know she would have wanted my mum to be like her, a family woman who would have met her for cups of tea in a Costa so they could talk about their children.
Unfortunately, Charlotte Dennis is not that woman.
I can’t imagine she’s ever sat in a Costa before.
‘It will save us a lot of money,’ I say to Mum. ‘And we’ll be able to buy a house quicker, so it makes sense. We’re signing off the venue this weekend. Rebecca is getting the bridesmaids’ dresses sorted . . .’
‘And you’ve got my dress, so that’s one less thing,’ she says.
She remembers then. I must have been 15 or so when I blurted out that I would love to wear her wedding dress one day.
I thought the divorce would put her off the idea, but she gave the dress to me and told me that if I ever made the mistake of walking down the aisle, then at least do it in her wedding dress.
‘So, I need to tell you something,’ I say.
‘Okay . . .’
‘D-Dad has bought me a wedding dress to be tailor-made.’
‘Course he has. Bastard.’
I had my answer ready for this very predictable reaction of hers.
‘I thought it would be really special if I remodelled the dress on your dress, Mum.’
‘Right.’ She doesn’t sound satisfied. This is not about me not wearing her dress, it’s about her ex-husband bulldozing her plans once again. First, he left her for another woman. Now, her only daughter is not wearing her ragged wedding dress.
‘If I’m honest, your dress may have had its day. It’s like . . . yellow, and there is a hole in the sleeve,’ I say. I get it and show her the hole.
‘That hole was your father’s fault. It was the first dance, and he .
. .’ I put her wedding dress back in the box as she tells the story.
I’ve already heard a million times how Dad pulled her by the sleeve because she was too busy talking to friends to realise their first dance was happening.
It’s another one of the many occasions that is brought up from the archives of, ‘The times Robert Elman was a dickhead to me’.
In fairness to Dad, Mum is infuriatingly late for everything.
‘I suppose it’s karma that he’s having to fork out to pay for a new one,’ Mum says, justifying it to herself.
She laughs in that strained way she does whenever Dad has a misfortune.
I hate it. When Mum was married to Dad, she didn’t say a bad word against him, but when he broke her heart, she let rip.
It was like venomous bats being released from a box after being trapped for 20 years.
Now, the man can’t do anything right. For the initial years after the divorce, I put it down to heartbreak, but it’s been almost a decade, and we still can’t have a conversation where she doesn’t have a dig at Dad or Jean-Ivy. The bitterness is exhausting.
‘I think Dad wants to pay. It’s a gift,’ I say.
‘Mmm. I’m sure,’ Mum says dismissively. The camera shakes briefly as she sits up against her bed frame. ‘Well, financial practicalities aside, I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.’ She suddenly sounds formal, like we’re work colleagues in a business meeting.
‘Yes, I have a checklist.’ I grab my notebook from the bedside table and wave it to the camera.
‘No. I mean. Is this what you want, Amy? Marriage?’ The door opens, and Josh comes bumbling in.
Thank God for that. I can’t be bothered to have to convince Mum, the anti-marriage officer, that I’m doing the right thing.
Josh and I have been together since we were 19, lived together for five years, and been engaged for two.
We have our plan to move to the country, start a family and build a deck for our BBQ parties. Of course it’s what I want.
‘Josh is here,’ I tell Mum. Josh throws himself on the bed and waves at the camera.
‘Hello, Charlotte.’
‘Hello, pet,’ Mum says in her forced, enthusiastic voice.
‘How’s cruise life?’ he asks.
She looks away from the screen as if distracted by something. ‘Good. How’s work?’
‘Stressful. Can’t wait for the term to end.’
‘Oh, you can’t be that stressed. It’s only teaching after all,’ Mum replies, rather cuttingly.
The one thing Mum and Dad would still agree on is that teaching is not a hard job.
Performing a hysterectomy on a young woman is stressful.
Going on school trips with a bunch of kids to count rocks on a beach is not stressful.
Mum gets up from her bed, and I can sense she’s going to make an excuse to end the call.
‘Well, I’d better be off. Captain’s dinner tonight. ’ There you go.
‘The captain, eh? Behave yourself, Charlotte,’ Josh says and laughs alone. A flicker of irritation crosses Mum’s face. It baffles me that, still, after all these years, Josh doesn’t know how to manage my mother.
‘Good luck with the wedding plans,’ Mum says, ignoring him. ‘Amy, let’s talk when I get back. Properly.’
‘When are you back?’ I ask. I need to talk to her too. Well, I need to plead with her not to start World War Three at my wedding against Dad and Jean-Ivy. It’s not going to be an easy request, so I will have to do it when she’s had a glass or two or three.
‘First weekend of February,’ she says. ‘We’ll do dinner.’
‘Bye, Charlotte,’ Josh shouts. She hangs up. Josh grabs my arm. ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. I want to see if Brendan confesses.’ He runs out of the room.