When I heard my brother-in-law was dead, I thought my sister had probably done it. Apparently I was the only one who thought so, because my sister, an aggressively born-again Christian, is a Perfect Person. A martyr. St. Hayley. I recalled a conversation we’d had years ago, when I’d been needling her about her newfound identity, reminding her of all the things she couldn’t do. “No more adultery,” I said, although as far as I knew she’d never been unfaithful to that unfaithful bastard.
“True,” she’d remarked.
“No more lying. Not even tiny social lies. You’ll have to tell everybody the plain, unvarnished truth. No more friends.”
“That’s not true,” she’d said. “There’s a wider truth we must be faithful to. It’s spiritual dishonesty we have to fear. Spiritual dishonesty is a splinter in the body of God.” Hear that? I call that “Jesuitical”. That kind of “I know better” reasoning can justify anything. My husband talks like that, but he’s a lawyer. He says there’s no truth, only juries. “How about justice?” I’d demanded and she smiled at me with that superior smile. “God’s in charge of justice.”
See? A person like that could justify murder! Then she made it worse by talking about how there’s always both forgiveness for sin and sin. If you can be forgiven at the last minute, no matter what you’ve done, can’t you ultimately get away with anything? It bothers me because it’s so obvious, but I can’t get anyone to agree.
“Think she did it?” I asked my husband.
“Hayley? She’d have to stand in line,” Simon.snorted. “Plenty of people had a bigger motive than she did.”
That wasn’t true. There was all that insurance money, plus she’d had to live with him every day. The screaming, the vomiting, the violence. Dave was a piece of work. Now she was free to do whatever she wanted. Sell the house, take a cruise, live abroad. Of course by her lights she couldn’t have sex without marrying someone, but maybe that doesn’t matter either, with forgiveness shimmering eternally on the horizon. On the other hand, that kind of money brings parasites. I’ve heard women in abusive relationships are closet masochists. Right out of the frying pan and into the fire. “If she did it, would you defend her?” I asked my husband.
“Nah,” he said, knotting his tie. Busy guy. Always on his way to somewhere, looking like a fashion plate as always. “Shouldn’t have a relative for a client.” He considered. “Unless she couldn’t get anybody else.”
“If I murdered you, would Al defend me?” I teased.
“That would be tougher.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t be ridding the world of an incubus, you’d be robbing the universe of a first class litigator.”
He has an answer for everything. Litigators “She did it,” I said. “I know.”I don’t know why I kept after him. Maybe I have to.because it’s so rare that when he looks at me, he’s thinking thoughts with me in them.“I doubt she’d have the strength,” he told me. “Somebody gave Dave’s head a pretty good pop.”
“So she hired someone. Of course she’d be in that person’s power forever.” Masochistic, right? “Or somebody did her a favor,” my husband returned. “Danger invites rescue. You think chivalry is dead?”
He’s supposed to be the cynical one!
At the funeral I searched Hayley’s face. I don’t know what I expected to see. The Mark of Cain? What I did see was a person tired and worn, who hadn’t been sleeping. No makeup, hair a mess, black jacket and white skirt — at a funeral? She looked more the way she looked when Dave was acting up. Of course maybe getting your head bashed in behind a bar is the ultimate act-up. She gave me a hug. Can’t ask a person if they’re a killer, not in the receiving line. I was forced to move on. After the receiving line she rushed upstairs. I saw a friend of hers from Al Anon take up a plate of food and what looked like a glass of wine. Why not? She wasn’t the one with the problem. I chose a seat with Simon and the lawyers. Telling war stories as usual. Simon’s partner Al waved a sandwich at me to acknowledge my presence.
“Good eats,” he said. Like I had anything to do with it. Woman equals food in his equation. I took advantage of the pause in their conversation to revert to my favorite topic. asked.
“Think they’ll catch the guy that did it?” I “If he’s dumb enough to use the credit cards,” said Al. “You’d think he would have taken Dave’s car,” I suggested. “Clean getaway.”
Al shrugged. “Must have had a car of his own.” “Some “desperate thief”, then. What was Dave even doing there? The bartender said he wasn’t even drinking in that bar.” “So he got loaded somewhere else,” said Al.
“Those guys always lie,” said Simon, wiping his mouth with the hand that wears the law school ring. Ugly bulky tacky thing. “Bartenders. They don’t want trouble.”
See? No joy for me in this situation. Everyone was celebrating Dave’s death. Good riddance, they were thinking. I imagined our situations reversed, with me the widow and Hayley attending Simon’s wake. Simon’s family is Italian, there would be a lot of screaming and crying, I can tell you. He supports everyone. Would Ihave the nerve to disappear, the way Hayley had done? No, I’d have to stay to be pawed over and criticized. Everything I do is wrong. Thank God I only see those people once a year. If Simon died, I’d take a cruise first thing. Although I should probably go to the gym for a year before putting on a swimsuit. We have a family membership but only Simon uses it – who has the time? Hayley is thin enough but those stretch-marks of hers make her look like she’s been clawed by a tiger. She needs surgery but of course she can afford it now.
I got the idea at the super market. I was standing in line, scanning the impulse purchases, and they had a stack of those lined tablets people who never write letters buy when they have to write a letter. Of course I‘d need one of those untraceable self-stick envelopes: no DNA. Use gloves. Simon says they get fingerprints off paper, now, all the time.
It was so much fun. I wrote the letter with my left hand. No way they could trace it to me. I wrote, I SAW WHAT YOU DID AND YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT and signed it GOD. A hoot, right? I used a “Love” stamp (nice touch) and the address was one of those return stickers my sister puts in her Heart Association collection drive packets. Must be tons of those around! Then I mailed it at the box closest to her house – it’s on my route to the hairdresser – I didn’t even have to get out of the car. Just thinking about it gave me pleasure for days, although I wished I as there when she opened it.
Two days was all I could stand. I called her right before lunch.
“Hayley? It’s Maxine. How are you holding up?” “Better. First night without pills.”
Maybe she hadn’t opened it. I cursed the Heart Association sticker idea. If she thought it was a donation maybe someone else opened it. Didn’t tell her, threw my letter away. “Anything I can do? Need food?”
“God, no. The freezer’s groaning.” She hesitated. “You could come over tonight and pack up Dave’s things for Goodwill. My women’s group is coming. I warn you – there will be praying.” Great! “No thank you,” I said stiffly. “Anything but that.” Dave wouldn’t have allowed her “witches” anywhere near his house. I imagined lengthy ceremonies to evict his drunken, aggressive spirit. Possibly they would even try to intercede for his sodden, bossy soul. Ugh. Let’s face it. Dave belongs in hell. But he won’t be alone there.
“Could you take Kevin and Deanie for the weekend? I’m going on retreat.” “Sure,” I heartily agreed. “No problem. James and Heather love being with their cousins.” “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll set it up.”
Now aren’t I a good sister? But when I got home Simon had strewn our marital bed with suits and shirts. Packing for a trip. It’s a kingsize so I still found a place to perch.
“Hey,” I said, “I just agreed to take Kevin and Deanie for the weekend.”
“Not like they’re any trouble,” he told me, carefully matching socks and ties. He’s fussy about his clothes. He always looks good. A litigator is an actor, he says. “Trial Lawyers Association. Gotta go. The kids’ll be fine with movies and pizza. Video games. Isn’t that all they care about?” He has no idea in hell what looking after four kids single-handedly is like. “Back Sunday night,” said Simon. “I’ll be at the Helmsley Palace.”
The Helmsley Palace! That’s where we had our honeymoon! Such a wave of erotic longing washed over me I almost came all over myself then and there. Simon was such a good lover, and I was a virgin. But every time I told him to stop he stopped. It took us technically – a whole week to become man and wife. But what a week! Had I felt such arousal since? God knows where Simon got such control – I didn’t know and I didn’t ask. Both of us have tried telling our kids during “facts of life” discussions that you don’t have to go “all the way” to achieve the sexual nirvana MTV is telling them is out there, but I suspect it’s falling on deaf ears. Along with everything else we say. Single-parenting is not for sissies. The video was plugged in, the pizza was ordered and I was making popcorn when Deanie came in to tell me she’d forgotten her retainer. Perfect. Of course I said I’d go, telling Jamie in the garage — he was showing Kevin his dirt bike — that he was in charge for an hour and giving him the pizza money. They’ve got my cell number.
Felt a surge of independence climbing into the car and driving down the darkened street. No wonder Simon loves leaving us behind, all warm and cozy, headed off to his other life. Well I have another life too! I’m an Anonymous Letter Writer. Plus now I’m Maxine, Girl Detective, searching for the bloodied sledgehammer or the hitman’s threat note: Pay Up or Else.”
Hayley’s house was substantially different without Dave’s dark spirit. You could just feel it. That hideous den of his was emptied of its ugly sports memorabilia and beer signs; repainted and furnished with chintz and wicker. You could just see the church ladies sitting down to their cups of tea.
But when I entered Hayley’s bedroom I got the worst shock. It was completely empty, carpet torn up, furniture gone. Like she was running away. Except there were ladders and tarps and paint swatches. She was erasing him from her life. Who could blame the lucky bitch? But my problem is, where to search when your suspect has no desk, no bedside table and everything’s in boxes? I’d waited too long.
She’d moved into the guest bedroom, a monastic cubicle with a cross above the single bed. But there was a bedside table, and the table had a Bible, and the Bible was stuffed with papers, and that’s where I found what I was looking for.
It didn’t have an address, it didn’t even have a signature but I hope I know my husband’s handwriting. He said he respected her decision but his feelings would never change. That he would always be “there” for her. He said, “I want you to know there’s someone on this planet who loves you utterly.”
When I took the letter I was blind with pain and rage. It was like he’d killed something in me with that letter. Something in me was stillborn because it needed another person to bring it to life and I had never had that person. Because my own husband was “there” for someone else. Was she “rewarding” him right now at the Helmsley Palace? Was she speaking to his hands the way I used to, saying “here” and “here” and “here”? Faster, slower, deeper? And whose fault was that? Not mine, because I had always done everything that was ever expected of me. I took the letter because I knew then I could make him finally speak the truth to me. But what happens if the truth is that I’m alone and I’ve always been alone and I’ll always be alone? Where’s the justice in that?
I guess you could say that when my mother died, I came out of the closet. And – unfortunately for me – so did she. Different closet, naturally.
I’m one of those people born gay. It’s not just something I chose because there was nothing better on offer. And honestly, it had NOTHING to do with my mother. When I talked to the first lawyer he seemed to think that living with your mother until you’re forty and going to bed with women have to be two facts that have some sort of relationship. Not the case. Far from it.
So I have to make the point that my mother wasn’t sexual to me. I doubt that she was ever sexual to anybody. People who think of their mothers sexually must have mothers a whole lot different from mine, that’s all I can say. You don’t think about the body under the apron on the person nagging you to finish the food on your plate. At least I don’t.
I was a late-bloomer — over thirty before the penny finally dropped. I had rubbed bodies with girlfriends before, but I really didn’t think anything of it. If they had orgasms I sure as hell couldn’t tell. But then I was thirty-two and I met Eva. Eva was ripe. Eva was rich. Eva was honky-tonk come to life. She bleached her pubic hair with the reasoning that then it would become invisible and then she wouldn’t have to bother to shave. (NOT). That’s what drew me to her – this amazing woman with an explosion of Orphan Annie hair – a curly mirkin – coming out from under her bathing suit. I mean, you had to look inside, you know?
So I was the aggressor. I let it all hang out, and she liked that. Constant sex is my recipe for love. I was amazed to discover – this was after three months of me doing everything to her – that she was a masseuse, for Chrissake. Her job was rubbing people’s bodies. (And she was not one of those whore masseuses. She had a degree and all that.)
But when I was working her over I didn’t have those kinds of thoughts, hey, breasts just like my mother’s, a slit just like I came out of. I mean, that’s the furthest thing from your mind. But Eva and I were a short term thing.
I lived with my mother because she had that huge house and because it was convenient. Check the “get ahead” literature and they’ll all tell you to get yourself a wife. Well, this was the best I could do. When my brother died, I became my mommy’s only kid. The rest of our relatives really didn’t want to have anything to do with us. According to Mom it was because of the divorce. Everybody dumped us. She didn’t take it well. Not too strong to say she flipped out. But there’s a lot of that going around as well as a lot of divorce. After the right to marry the right to divorce tags right along behind.
My father’s family was no day at the beach, let me tell you. Too much emphasis on who sits where, who serves what and whether you have help in the house. Bunch of snobs. We were better off without them.
My mom wasn’t better off in the technical sense, because she insisted on staying in that house. Must have been worth a half a mill ; more, with work done. Without me, no way she could have paid those bills. But I wasn’t handy, and I wasn’t making enough money. I was too thirsty for poontang.
I do collection work and I enjoy it. You live on the phone. You find out things about people that are interesting to know, and yet you stay anonymous. Lots of secrets in this universe. First off, there’s no tiny subculture separate from the Real World because there is no Real World. Everyone’s got an act, and the only people who get to find out are the doctors and the lawyers and the guy who has to fix the corpse so Granny won’t be shocked and me. Who gets to see both sets of books.
My mother was a limited person, even though it’s me that says it. She probably thought no woman getting three tasty nourishing meals a day would even be interested in sex. I do remember she had arguments with my father about it. There was time we went away for vacation to some shrine in Connecticut. We used to be very good Catholics until the pope instituted liberalities and he lost Mom. (Which turned out to be good for us because she stopped trying to make us go to church.) But now I’m wondering – if she had been more spiritual, would any of this have happened? Who knows?
Anyway, when we got back from the shrine it was pretty obvious Dad had been “entertaining” while we were away. The woman must have been a smoker because her lipsticked butts were everywhere – but worse, there were condoms lying around like exploded balloons from a party we weren’t invited to. It was plain from my mother’s outraged screaming that he should be getting his sexing the back seats of automobiles like a normal person and bringing his floozies across her threshold was a sin so vile he would writhe in hell for eon upon eon. So I’m not likely to ask my mother’s opinion if a little snatch after work is OK. I had a pretty good idea what she would say.
Then Mom got cancer, the basically curable kind that if you just spread your legs for a doctor occasionally you could totally avoid. But she wasn’t that “easy” so by the time they found out about it, sayonara.
I had one night a week reserved for myself. Not too much to ask, right? I used to tell her I was going to the “club” – she wasn’t to know Rape of the Lock was a gay bar. They always had stuff — poetry readings, treasure hunts, mini-plays. Performances calculated to make the gals hot and horny, and a good time had by all. That’s where I met Klea – she was one of the bartenders there. She always claimed to be working towards an MBA but frankly I never saw any signs of it. She was stuck in a tense living situation too – living over a garage for free for a couple she was supposed to “caretake”.
Blurry job description leads to lots of complaining. She wasn’t supposed to have any roommates – this couple was afraid that the outside world would find out they had a house loaded with QVC collectibles. What with Snoopster Mom Klea couldn’t visit me and the only way I could visit her was by sneaking. I climbed the trellis on occasion. Heavy drinking, heavy sex, heavy trellis climbing – romance killers when you’re looking forty in the face. Ask any actuary. We were primed for new life. For a short window of time there I was busy with my work and Klea, and Mom was busy with hospitals and ladies’ clubs and life was doable.
Then there was another period where Mom was in the hospital and I could have Klea over. That was tense in some ways and better in other ways. It was better because it gave us an idea what it might be like to live together.
We felt we were through the period where you try to make the other person jealous – just to prove you can – and we were talking about selling the house right after my mother died – “as is” condition, of course, but at least it was free and clear – and opening our own place. Not a bar – no trying to keep horns clipped — more of a café. We had both reached exactly the same time in our lives where we had to make up our minds: keep babysitting the straight world, or shape our futures the way we wanted them to be. We were dreaming.
Klea worried Mom would “find out” and leave the house away from us. She kept nagging me to “come out” to this cancer-ridden lady. I told Klea she was being hysterical. The real problem was keeping Mom from finding out I was going to sell the place. If she’d been able to think in terms of progress and reward, her life wouldn’t have been such a shambles. Let me say right here that in her own way, Mom loved me and I loved her. If we loved “stylized” versions of each other – that’s family. So how do I explain what came after?
My conclusion that a person’s ghost is that person’s worst self. When you die, the good part goes to heaven or whatever, and the bad part stays here to torment us. Get it? We’re hell. That guy who said, Hell is other people? Bingo. Hell is being at the mercy of a dead person that’s shed its conscience. We’re like nightmares dead people keep having. And they’re ours.
The worst part was when the hospital sent my mother home to die. I think they were just trying to make things easier on themselves, but Mom was a willing participant. Home. That’s what she wanted. Hospice idea rejected right out of hand. So there I was with a nurse by day and a nurse by night. Hard on me, going without sex just when I needed it most. I had to have Klea back. I needed sex to relax, sex to get to sleep, sex to clear my head, sex to digest my food. You know how it is. Mom was confined to a hospital bed. So why couldn’t I get that support?
I told Klea to only use the back stairs and never the front part of the second floor, where Mom was. But the noises she made! You could say Klea haunted Mom before Mom haunted Klea. Mom actually decided — because of Klea — that the house she’d lived in for forty- five years was haunted. My dead twin, Uncle Andrew – her own mother – people I’d never heard of like “Carla” and “Mrs. Myers” – I had to listen to hours of crazy ravings about everyone who’d ever nurtured a grudge against Mom. Who knew there was such a long list?
They taught me to give her the morphine shots – made me practice with an orange – and I just kept upping the dose so she’d be out of it most of the time. Everybody does it. The nurses don’t mind so long as it isn’t them. Towards the end there’s a very fuzzy line between life and death and everyone understands that, but the law, apparently, still operates under the Old Testament scapegoat system. That’s all I can deduce.
I was with her when she died. It was right between nurses,by coincidence, just at dusk. I had given her that last shot, and I was sitting there listening to her breathing go raspy. Definitely a death rattle – I had to leave the room. Then nothing. Hallelujah! I’d swear mom was relieved too. Now she was free. No need to Stepin Fetchit, I decided to wait for the nurse, who was late, by the way. So I called Klea down for a beer. Watching someone die is an unsettling experience, I can tell you. It’s Miller time.
Klea wanders around in the nude by choice, but when the nurse is around she will make the concession of long shirt and jean-shorts. But her feet were bare. Halfway down the stairs she doubled up with pain and started screaming. Stepped on something. “Jesus!” she yelled. “I’ve been stabbed!”
I sort of half carried her upstairs where I could lay her out on the bed. “It’s a hat pin,” I told her. “It’s really in there. I’m going to pull it out.”
“No, no, no!” she screamed, grabbing my hand. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Promise you won’t touch it!”
“Klea, stop being a baby about this. I can call the paramedics but when they come, you know what they’ll do? They’ll pull it out. Or we can wait for the nurse – to refuse to work on you — and who knows how long that will be? “
“Please,” she whined, clutching me so desperately her face bones turned white and stuck out of the skin like a skull, just like Mom’s before she died – “Don’t do it yet! Give me some morphine!” I could hear myself explaining to the nurse why there was so much morphine missing with Klea zonked out upstairs. Recipe for trouble.
“Relax. I’m going to pull it out real fast. It’ll be just like a bandaid. Don’t look at it.”
But she held my hand. “So don’t give me a big dose. Just a little. You know they won’t miss it.” “Klea! Morphine to take a pin out of your foot! What an infant!” “You don’t know how it HURTS,” she wailed. “It hurts and I’m scared.”
Well, it was in pretty far. Long hatpin. God I hoped her tetanus was up to date. What was it doing on the stairs anyway – in that position? Tell me how likely is that? My brain was scrambling. “Ok,” I said. “Be a pussy. Be a drug addict.”
I tell you what decided me. I had a feeling this nurse wouldn’t do anything – she’d call the paramedics anyway. She was one of those people very worked up on only doing exactly what they’re paid for. I squirted plenty out because obviously she wouldn’t need as much. But since I got rid of it, how could I prove it? I shot the inside of her elbow, and it hit her pretty fast. You could see her blink off like a light. Went right to sleep, but her breathing was good.
I hadn’t expected her to lose consciousness, but you better believe it helped me. Pliers got that thing out of there. I had the wound all dressed before the nurse arrived, so we could make the Mom calls together. Death certificate, doctor, funeral home. Then I got that Miller, long overdue. I had no idea Klea would be such a five year old. I’ve seen her handling drunks twice her size, which is nothing I’d line up for.
She didn’t open her eyes till next morning. “So how’s my little junkie this morning?” I asked her. She was lying in bed – clothes askew, hair spilling everywhere – it would make the pope horny.
“My foot’s sore,” she said. But she smiled. Looked like herself again. Pulled me on top of her. “So….” she whispered, “Is the place ours?” She probably shouldn’t have said that. “What’s for breakfast?”
“I got a better idea than breakfast,” I said, rubbing her hard, flat stomach and trying to get my hand under her jeans, “How about deep, deep tissue massage? Guaranteed cure-all.“
That’s when it happened. I was trying to unzip her jeans, wiggling that zipper up and down – and she started screaming again. Pushed me away, screamed I’d zipped her skin. When I realized what it was, I got the scissors and I cut the pants off her. But it was difficult because she was fighting hard the whole time. She was so upset she pissed on herself in the bed. God, it was like taking care of my mother all over again! And then to get blamed for everything. She was bleeding all right, but it was a tiny wound – just a little of the loose skin on her gut. It would grow back. It’s not my fault she wears her jeans so tight. Definitely no need for morphine here.
“Here’s the culprit” I said, trying to show her the zipper with its played metal teeth.
“YOU DID IT!” she hissed. “Don’t go blaming my zipper that never did that before! And it was your pin, too!”
I was so taken aback I really didn’t know how to defend myself. “Hey, I fixed it,” I said. “You mean you fixed ME!” she said. “You sure did! I’m getting the fuck out of here before you slit my throat and offer to stitch it up for me!” And she shot out of bed and started pulling on sweatpants – my sweatpants.
She was flying out the door before I had a chance to warn her about the stairs. I took up the rug and the stair rods so they could take out Mom and her hospital bed and I hadn’t replaced them yet. I mean, I get tired too. Mom waxed and waxed those goddamn stairs. My hair used to hold the smell for days. Klea would have been fine if she wasn’t going a hundred miles an hour. But I heard the thump, the slam – I swear I heard a crunch – and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, there was my second corpse in a two-day period.
But I knew at that point that it was my mother who killed Klea — to keep us from living in her house! Of course! Bad anger, competitiveness, rage, resentment – they’re killers.
Don’t you see I’m next? This way she gets us both. It looks so bad, what with the missing morphine, the extra morphine in Mom, the wounds on Klea, even her piss in my bed – and I can’t find a lawyer who will treat my story with respect!
The way I see it is, it’s too late to apologize to a dead person. Too late to say the things I should have said — so she died and left pure rage behind. As a sort of default mode. What I need to know from you is, can a hant get a person convicted of murder? Because if that’s possible, we should all give up right now. Nobody’s safe.
Unfortunately, Ron was already pacing and angry when I got home. I guess it was an evening of firsts. I felt first guilt, then a cold, unpleasant wedge of fear across what was left of my gut. But in our game of emotional isometrics it wouldn’t do to show him. I had to force myself to act unconcerned as I strolled through the kitchen door.
“You went out,” I said, tossing my purse to the chair. Missing, dammit. “So did I.” “You were out with some guy,” he sneered. “How could you think I wouldn’t find out?” Lucky guess or did Ron have spies? Here was something Bolio obviously hadn’t thought of. Me either, for that matter.
“I don’t know his name,” I said, walking past him up the stairs. “He just happened to be there so I talked to him. You talk to people, I talk to people. I’m sure your spy told you we never touched each other.”
He was following me up the stairs too closely. It was all I could do to keep from running. Showing fear would be fatal; I would lose my upper hand. I found myself thinking frantically about possible weapons, methods of escape. Slam my door shut and jump out the bedroom window? Now!”
“I don’t believe you!” he barked. “Strip!
Physical fear is a disgusting and unforgettably horrible experience. Ron was drunk, but not enough to help me out. His eyes glowed insanely. If I’d had a gun I would have rescued Bolio then and there. In all our time together I had seen Ron this mad plenty of times; just never at me. Because I never challenged him. How had I ever lived with this man? Kidded myself that I was free? I started undressing because I knew I had to or he would tear the clothes off me. What was he after? I could no longer read him. He pushed my garments aside and put his hands on my body – hard. “Where did you get those marks?”
He pried my thighs apart. I tried to back away from him, almost tripping over the bed.
“You made them yourself, this morning. Don’t you remember?” I bruise easily. Cost of doing business. “Twice.”
He flipped me to my stomach. He had a lot of strength. “You’re lying. Who have you been with? What did you do?”
Out of his back pocket he pulled the handcuffs and began to smack them menacingly against his palm. At the sight of them I began to shriek and babble. I’ve never liked confinement or restraint – this was not a game I cared to play. As I’d suspected, my fear only emboldened him. He handcuffed me right to the headboard. I couldn’t help showing fear, so I needed Plan B. Maybe if I just cooperated with everything I could calm him down. I wasn’t guilty after all, not of what he thought. He bent over sniffing me. Sniffing me like a dog.
I kicked at him furiously. Big mistake. He stared at me as incredulous as if I’d aimed a punch. Then he started taking off his belt. I began screaming, but out on the country there was no one to hear. We were both out of control.
“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! I’m leaving! I’m calling the police!” I said everything except, “I’ll kill you,” which was the only true thing. He was a dead man from that moment. He beat me, rhythmically, shouting, “Don’t -Ever-LieTo-Me-Again!”He said he only hit me six times – but I wasn’t counting. I floated away.
I floated away because I hate being trapped. Closed my mind because, in spite of everything I’d ever thought, everything I’d ever felt, everything I’d ever done, my life came down to the fact that I was the sort of person to whom this happened. That was the truth about me. Was there blood? It hurt a lot. He said, “You brought it on yourself.”
I could tell from his face that he was the scared one now. That meant there were marks. Now the police would lock him up for the night on just my say so. He knew that. He uncuffed me, asking solicitously,
“Are you going to be good?”
I pulled the comforter up over my head and snuggled down into a hot fetal nest, the way I used to when I was a little girl. Gone. I didn’t want the police. I planned for better than momentary satisfaction. I am a cultivator and my plans were flowering hugely.
I heard him talking to himself, stomping around and muttering, something about putting a roof over my head, giving me gas money, being entitled to respect. Entitlement? On the “fairness planet,” he would be squashed at birth like the bug he was. It was up to me to squash him.
“Well, I’m going on a rubber run,” he said. “Now that I can’t trust you any more.” I didn’t want him out in the world, babbling to sets of sympathetic ears about his horrible, ungrateful devastation of an evening. So I lowered the comforter. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I guarantee you. I swear to you. You’re the only one.”
Was there something in him that was wishing I was lying, so the beating would be OK? Who cares? Try too hard to understand someone and you let them invade you. I had to play through. My conciliatory attitude inflated his confidence.
“Well, next time I won’t just beat your pretty ass,” he said in a big voice for the trees to hear. “I’ll toss you out.”I reached for him. Hardest thing I ever did.
I proved it. Next day I was very sore. I woke up first as I always did, stepping out of bed over the pants I’d sucked off him. I made coffee, brought him a cup. As he drank, he looked me over with a fond smile.
“Let me see your tail.”
I turned. He pleated my buttocks with his hands, petting his handiwork. “Nothing. It’ll be gone in a week.”
He found me sitting out in the garden with a glass of wine. No comment on how early it was to be hitting the bottle.
“I’m going to PepBoys. Need anything?”
What the hell would I be needing at Pep Boys? Thank God for dark glasses. I didn’t trust myself to answer. dinner?”
He persisted. “Got everything you need for Cyanide? Rat poison?“Sure,” I managed.“Enough wine?”
He was teasing now. He liked that I was hitting the bottle. Not so superior now, was I? He could see I’d turned some sort of corner, but he couldn’t tell where that left him. heard.” “Liquor stores aren’t open on Sundays, so I He rattled his keys. “I’ve got connections.”
“Sure then.” Let him be seen buying illegal booze all over town. “St. Emilion.” There’s a touch of my old self. “Nothing later than ’94.” Blowing smoke, but he wouldn’t know. He never knew. He drawled, “Right.”Then he was gone. Free! I went straight to the phone and hit 2 on the speed dial.
Would Bolio be in the office on a Sunday, cooking the books, trying to make sense out of his own addicted senselessness? And if so, would he answer? He did, on the second ring. possible.”
“I want him dead,” I said. “As soon as “What happened? What’s up?” He kindled at my change in tone.“He beat me up last night. First time.”
“Could be a problem. Is it visible?”“It could be a problem! Hell, it’s more than a problem. I almost killed him myself.”“We don’t want you to have too obvious a motive, that’s all.”“No. Not visible.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Someone saw us together, you and me. But they didn’t seem to know who you were.”
“We might be able to carry it off tonight. Make sure the liquor flows. Stay away from the stuff yourself. Right before bed, take him out to the garden to look at the moon, or whatever. I’ll do the rest.”
I prepared steaks the way Ron liked them, rubbing them with garlic and mustard, pounding them thin. While I worked, my mind wouldn’t stop whirling. Back when I was having chemotherapy, they threw a therapist at me. She made much of the fact that I’d lost my dad at age 5. Lays you open to subsequent depression, she said. Making it sound like that caused the cancer.
Death, she said, would be “processed” by my five year old self as rejection. “Narcissistic injury”. When I told her I didn’t believe in wasting time in depression, she made one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” modern therapy comments; said, “Maybe you don’t allow yourself to feel it.” That remark has bugged me all my life. If I was going to start getting even, that dame would be on my list. Blaming my poor dead dad for cancer. Telling me she knows my feelings better than I do.
If I had ever been depressed I was no longer. Instead, I was galvanized, pulsating with excitement in every cell. Call it “The murder cure”. I laughed out loud as I imagined myself writing a book, becoming famous, touring the talk shows. “Sometimes You Just Have to Kill ‘Em.”
“Well, Geraldo, all I can say is it worked for me.” I set the table with my best linen, china and silver, things used only once or twice a year. Ron would be impressed. He never knew they weren’t my antiques. I had always tried to convey the impression I was wellborn, a mysterious wealthy family somewhere off in the mist. Of course I’d bought all the things myself. Presents to myself.
If I am the one who gives them their meaning, I might as well give them their existence. That’s the way I look at it, whatever people say. The only thing I really want is that chainsaw mermaid. Everything else is a substitute. If while looking for her I found a wonderful piece of china or silver instead, it was like a gift from my dad.
I actually tried telling that damned therapist about my chainsaw mermaid, and how much she meant to me, about how I lay in bed imagining her looking at me from the woods, peering through the trees, and it gave me such a sense of reassurance. I felt so safe. But the stupid therapist said, “Why does she feel she can’t come inside?”
Because she’s a garden sculpture, you idiot! That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I clammed up, because I was too sick. But the real question is, why didn’t I go out into the woods to join her? I couldn’t go, because I was only five years old, but I was not five years old any more. The woods were beckoning, dark and deep. Boiling with life and possibility.
Ron was late coming home, and when he did, it was obvious he’d been boozing. When he saw my slinky black dress, heels and makeup and the ornamental table, he thought just what I wanted him to think, which was that I was trying to make up to him. Apologizing for upsetting him so much he had to hit me. Big You, Little Me.
He pinned me up against the kitchen wall and gave me a tongue bath. I wondered how many bars he’d visited. All of them, I hoped.
“Got you something,” he told me, after he’d scored my thong as a trophy. “Come and look.” My trophy was a fairly new looking, bright blue Pontiac GrandAm. I knew him too well to even imagine he had put it in my name. It was just about the most repulsive thing, outside of Ron himself, that I’d ever seen. Don’t care for “push” presents.
“Only thirty thousand miles on it”, he bragged. “Sure beats that ancient Beamer of yours.” In Ron’s world, everything “beats” something. I guess it’s beat or be beaten. You bought your own coffin, Ron, I thought. I had a hard job convincing him not to take us out for a spin. Told him you can’t keep red meat waiting!
For his last meal I fed him all his favorite food. Ranch dressing on his salad, cheese poured all over his vegetables – restraint was gone for good. He didn’t offer St Emilion – lowballed me with California Riesling instead – but I was only pretending to drink so it didn’t matter. Ron, who considers wine an affectation, swilled several bottles of Magic Hat.
Was I going overboard? Was he too drunk to realize I wanted him to explode? But he accepted it quite unironically in tribute to his kingliness. He even finished my dinner.
“You go sit in front of the TV,” I said. “I’ll clean this up.”Should I make coffee? I didn’t want to sober him up one iota, but I needed the stuff myself. Hell, I could throw brandy in his.
As I was carrying plates out through the pantry I was annoyed to discover the light was off. I know I’d left it on. Must have been the bulb.
But then Bolio detached himself from the darkness and stepped into my path. “Having fun yet?” he asked, touching my neck. Left hand-right hand. Tried to kiss me.
I smelled scotch, cigar and sweat. He wore a suit but no tie, and his shirt was partially unbuttoned. I was angry that he had broken with our plan and let his gambler out and enraged that he’d been drinking, but I couldn’t do much with all those plates in my hand. I tried to push around him, but his hands grabbed my shoulders.
The light went on. It was Ron, screwing in the bulb and gaping at us, too stupefied to speak. He shook his head as if to clear hallucinations.
Bolio lunged for him, grabbed his head and smashed it into the glass cabinet. Glass shattered everywhere, spraying out into the room in fine particles. I dodged away from them into the kitchen. They clutched each other and went down on the floor, rolling back and forth in the tiny space. Ron had the upper hand of knowing the room. He grabbed a drawer, pulling the contents down on himself. Uh, oh. Knives. He was on top – it looked to me as if Bolio was losing. His cell phone skittered across the floor.
But it was Ron who lost when I slapped the brandy bottle against his head. It didn’t break, but he went down and stayed down.
“Thanks,” said Bolio. I wanted to shriek at him for betraying our plan. But I never cuss when I can get even. “He dead?” I asked instead.“Not hardly. Better tie him up, he could come to at any moment.”
“How are we going to explain this mess?” We were out of the plan and floating free. “We’ll take the crime scene elsewhere. Clean it up. Tell anyone who’s interested he was going to replace the cabinet fronts. We’ll break the window on that new car of his and hope they can’t tell one kind of glass from another. Got any bungee cords?” I went to get them.
“And a couple cans of whatever he was drinking. Full.” Ron up.
“Bottles.” I produced them as he trussed “I suppose that will do. Ready to roll.”“I’ll get my coat.”“You won’t need it.”
“Will too.” I certainly didn’t tell him why. My coat pockets have gloves.
“Nice new car,” said Bolio as he bundled Ron into the front seat of the Pontiac. I followed them in Bolio’s diesel Mercedes. At the railroad crossing Bolio propped Ron up in the driver’s seat and began removing the bungee cords.
Ron was coming to, moaning. I came slowly up behind Bolio and from my pocket whipped out the handcuffs, cuffing both him and Ron to the steering wheel. I counted on a moment of drunken, frozen amazement to be able to steal the car key and I got it. I threw it across the tracks. Bolio couldn’t puzzle it out. With all his best efforts, best intentions, the house kept winning. “What’s this?” he demanded drunkly. “No time for this, babe.”
“I’m not your babe,” was all I said. See? Save your breath for the important stuff. It was already almost midnight, so I got in his car and drove away.
I would have liked to stay and tell him I’d figured out who reported seeing me with a man to Ron, but I could already hear the train. Maybe Bolio salted the earth a bit, never wasting an opportunity to point out to Ron how little I gave for what I got.
Bolio was banging on the hood and screaming so loudly I was afraid he’d rip out the steeping wheel. But he hadn’t managed to do it by the time the train blew through.
As soon as I got home I called the police. My husband and his lawyer had a terrible fight. Something about money. When it turned physical and they started smashing things, I ran upstairs. Then they drove away in Ron’s car. Since they were drunk as well as angry, I was scared, so I took the lawyer’s car and tried to follow them but I couldn’t find them. I was afraid something awful was going to happen.
The police were extremely uninterested in things that were about to happen. No emergency that they could see. So instead of cleaning up I took a nice hot bubble bath, with music and candles. I was still in the bath when I got the call about the train crossing.
Bolio was right. There was a lot of money. But I was most surprised to get a check from the Client Security Fund, some special fund that compensates people for thieving lawyers. The attorney who brought me the check was such a nice young man. He explained with great seriousness how apologetic the Bar Association was, but in a whole barrel of apples one or two are often bad, and poor Mr. Bolio was infected with the disease of gambling. Maybe they’ll find a cure someday, said the nice young man handing me the check.
Actually he was infected with the disease of losing, I thought, but I certainly didn’t say so. And they’ll never find a cure for that.
Alysse Aallyn 