Read Online The Last Good Day of the Year by Jessica Warman - Free Book Online

before walking to Abby’s house, he said, just to be stupid. He said he wanted to make Gretchen laugh.
    As the owners of Precision Cleaning, what was then the area’s biggest dry cleaning operation, Steven’s parents were the go-to cleaners for Armando’s Tuxedo and Costume, which was the area’s sole supplier of Santa Claus costumes. Armando had three of them, and they’d all been rented out to local churches for the holiday.
    On New Year’s Eve, 1985, Steven made his usual Thursday afternoon visit to Armando’s at around five to pick up any tuxes thathad been returned with marinara stains or whatever else you could imagine after a weekend wedding. He’d done the same thing almost every Thursday for the past year and a half. (Armando’s also boasted a wide selection of VHS rental tapes and a small arcade; most weeks, Steven would stick around to pick out a video or two for the weekend and play pinball until he ran out of quarters.)
    By Thursday the thirty-first, all the Santa costumes had been returned to the overnight deposit box. When he showed up to get the dry cleaning order, Steven told Armando he didn’t have time to stick around and play video games. He said he was about to start his shift driving his truck through the storm in the dark, plowing roads for the county. It didn’t matter either way to Armando. He was far more concerned about Steven’s mouth, and his missing tooth, and the fact that Steven was clearly upset about whatever had caused it to fall out.
    Steven finished his shift at eleven and drove straight to my neighborhood. He parked his truck a block away under a broken streetlight, so my parents wouldn’t see it on our street. He walked down an alley to Abby’s house, where she and Gretchen were expecting him.
    Of course, they noticed his mouth right away. Despite the distraction of his Santa suit and the white polyester beard covering part of Steven’s face, it wasn’t the kind of thing anybody would miss.
    He lied about it at first. He said there had been a mechanical problem that morning at Precision Cleaning and he’d accidentally hit himself in the face with a socket wrench while he was making the repair.
    The three of them hung out in Abby’s basement until a fewminutes before midnight, when Steven finally admitted the truth: he’d been fired from his position with the county. His supervisor had learned about Steven’s relationship with an underage girl. He’d called Steven into his office and explained, more or less, that he wasn’t worth the trouble it might cause. Steven lost his temper. He took a swing at the supervisor, who swung back, and Steven felt his tooth getting knocked down his throat.
    His story must have scared my sister a little bit, because she told him to leave after that. She said he was acting crazy, which only made him more upset. He started to fall apart once it was clear he’d taken things too far, and Gretchen wasn’t ready for these kinds of stakes in a relationship. It was all because our father had been so hell-bent on keeping them apart lately; he’d been doing everything he could think of to keep Steven away from Gretchen. He was probably the one who called Steven’s boss.
    Our father was always closer to Gretchen than he was to me or Turtle, and sometimes even our mom was jealous of how much he obviously adored their oldest child. When push came to shove, Gretchen’s loyalty was to our dad. She told Steven she didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. She didn’t exactly break up with him that night, but it was pretty close. It was enough to make him frantic.
    Once Gretchen and Abby managed to get Steven out the door, he stood there in the cold, pounding on the glass with his fist while he begged my sister to kiss him when the ball dropped at midnight, even if it was for the last time. Abby turned out the basement lights and switched off the television.