St. Germain Debbie - Son of a gun: a memoir

Son of a Gun is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some of the names and personal characteristics of the individuals involved have been changed in order to disguise their identities. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Copyright 2013 by Justin St. Germain
Reading group guide copyright 2014 by Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Random House Readers Circle and Design is a registered trademark of Random House LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

St. Germain, Justin.
Son of a gun : a memoir / Justin St. Germain.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53874-1
1. St. Germain, Justin. 2. St. Germain, JustinFamily. 3. St. Germain,
Debbie, d. 2001Death and burial. 4. MurderArizonaTombstone.
5. MothersCrimes againstArizonaTombstone.
6. Mothers and sonsArizonaTombstoneBiography.
7. Children of abused wivesArizonaTombstoneBiography.
8. Tombstone (Ariz.)Biography. I. Title.
HV6534.T58S84 2013
364.1523092dc23 2012020280

www.atrandom.com

Cover design: David G. Stevenson
Cover photograph: courtesy of the author

v3.1_r2

I was riding my bike home from class when a plane roared overhead, a green A-10 flying so low I could read its markings. I took my eyes off the road to watch it cross the sky. Id been living in Tucson for a year, and hardly noticed the planes anymore as they flew over the city, to and from the air force base. But it had been nine days since the towers fell and we were all newly conscious of planes. I was twenty years old, and thought often of the future; I knew the world had changed, but I didnt know how much.

I rode my bike recklessly, helmetless and against traffic, hopping curbs and cutting across yards on my way to the rented house I shared with my brother, sweating through my shirt in the liquid heat. The streets shimmered like rivers. It was almost the end of summer, the last days of a long siege.

When I remember that bike ride, its always beautiful: a bright expansive sky, tires whizzing on the road, my heart still whole and beating fast. About a mile, that ride, from the university mall gone brown and patchy after months of punishing sun, by the bricks and banners of Greek Row, down the sidewalks of strip malls along Speedway, past the squat stucco houses of my neighborhood, to the dirt yard of our bungalow, where, inside, the phone is ringing. A mile, a few minutes of my life, a few hundred beats of a young heart, but in my memory it lasts forever, and I remain that young man riding his bike, never reaching that front porch. That moment is golden, its gone, its a myth, but I remember it.

When I reached our driveway, I got off my bike to check the mailbox. The screen door flew open and my brother emerged, red faced and weeping, phone in hand, struggling to speak through the tears and mucus, his shrinking throatbut that struggle wasnt necessary, because I had never seen him anything like that before, so I knew what he was going to say. He let the screen door slam behind him. I dropped my bike in the yard. He bent at the waist and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, still holding the phone in the other. I hoped hed never find his voice.

Shes dead.

Who? I had the sense of being watched, as if I would be expected to ask.

Mom, he said. Moms dead. He turned and walked inside.

I crossed the yard, climbed the porch steps, and stood on the threshold. Josh walked around our living room, circling the couch. He told the person on the phone that he had to go and hung up.

Who was that?

Connie. She and her husband, Bob, were our mothers best friends. She was supposed to meet them for lunch and didnt. Bob went to the property and found her.

What do you mean, found her? The heat pressed against my back. I couldnt go inside until I made sense of this feeling: not shock, not griefthose would come laterbut recognition, as if I had always known this moment would come.

She got shot.

Soon after we learned that our mother was dead, my brother and I went to a bar. Wed already worked the phones. Josh had called our grandparents, whod been divorced for forty years but both still lived in Philadelphia. Grandpop said hed book the first flight he could, but air travel was snarled from the attacks nine days earlier. Grandma was afraid of flying, so she stayed in her rented room in suburban Philly, wrecked and helpless. I called my dads house in New Hampshire, but he wasnt home. Eventually he called back. I told him she was dead and a long pause ensued, one in a litany of silences between my father and me, stretching across the years since hed left and the distance between us, thousands of miles, most of America. Finally he said she was a good person, that hed always cared for her. He asked if I wanted him to fly to Arizona. I said he didnt have to and hung up.

I emailed my professors and told them what had happened, that I wouldnt be back in class for a while. I called the office of the college newspaper where I worked and told my boss. Josh called in sick to his bartending job. Then we sat on the couch with our roommate, Joe, an old friend from Tombstone wed known since grade school. It was a Thursday, and we had nothing to do. Somebody suggested the French Quarter, a Cajun joint nearby that had spicy gumbo and potent hurricanes. It seemed like a good idea: Id heard stories of grief in which the stricken couldnt eat, but I was hungry, and I needed a drink. So thats where we spent our first night without her.

When we walked in, President Bush was on TV, about to give a speech. The jukebox was turned off, as it had been since the attacks, because now everybody wanted to hear the news. Joe went to the bar to talk to some of the regulars. Josh and I took a booth in the corner. Orion, the bartender and a friend of ours, came over and told us he was sorry, and to have whatever we wanted on the house. I wondered if Joe had just told him or if hed already heard. I didnt know yet how quickly or how far the news would travel, that within a few hours we wouldnt need to tell anyone about our mother, because everyone would already know.

I flipped through the menu but couldnt understand it. Wed both put our cell phones on the tabletop, and mine rang, chirping as it skittered across the glass. I ignored it.

What now? I asked.

Josh kept his eyes on the menu and shook his head. Theres not much we can do.

Should we go out there? I didnt know what to call the place where shed died; it wasnt home, because wed never lived there, and it didnt have a name. It was just a piece of land in the desert outside of Tombstone.