I was looking forward to Mr. O’Hara’s cross-examination. He promised us an entertaining afternoon overlooking the gladiatorial pit. Of the two gladiators before us, Mr. O’Hara is the dirtier fighter. He may betray a close relationship with and knowledge of, the sword family. I certainly hope so.
Under an impartial sky, the man who dares anything should win. But this is not an impartial sky. Alas, for my purposes Mr. O’Hara needs to lose. That makes him a loser and I was beginning to wash my hands of him already. Is Mr. O’Hara’s card the Hierophant? Naïve people think Death and the Hanged Man are the dangerous cards. They are not. Death represents transformation; the Hanged Man is taking charge of forceful, radical change.
The Hierophant is born to suffer, because he is a rigid thinker prone to errors in judgment. The Hierophant is born to suffer because he can’t adapt to changing conditions. He attempts to impose static values on dynamic situations. On my card he hangs suspended from a roadside stake shaped suspiciously like a cross.
Mr. O’Hara’s Bond girl set up a large, white piece of pasteboard on an easel and handed her boss a big black marker. She wore an attractive miniskirt, expensive looking boots, and a cropped jacket.
I began sizing her up to be a victim. She would be more fun than O’Hara. And in those fashion magazines she’d donated, hadn’t I found a piece of junk mail bearing her address? I promised myself to take a careful look.
Mr. O’Hara came out swinging. “Mr. Haymaker, you’re a murderer, isn’t that right?” Obviously the witness was loath to agree.
“Aren’t you pleading guilty to ordering a hit?”
“If that makes me a murderer, I guess I am,” said Reuben Haymaker finally. O’Hara wrote the word MURDERER in black magic marker.
“And you’re a thief. Isn’t that what you just testified to?”
“My intention was always to replace it the money.”
“Was that money YOURS to TAKE?” demanded O’Hara.
“No.”
O’Hara wrote THIEF under MURDERER. “Presumably insurance agents take some sort of ethical vow through their professional organizations, as part of their training, isn’t that right?”
“We’re bonded,” agreed Mr. Haymaker with sour humor. “We’re not supposed to pocket the client’s money.”
“And you didn’t take your marital vows any more seriously than your professional ones, did you? Did you?”
“I guess not.”
“You lied to your wife, you lied to your clients, you lied to the police when they first questioned you. Didn’t you?”
Mr. Haymaker looked out into his courtroom in search of a savior, some fearless knight to ride into battle bearing his colors. But none among us took him up on it.
O’Hara wrote LIAR, ADULTERER, CON MAN on his chart.
“Did you report that money you stole on the income tax? You’re supposed to, you know.” The witness made an explosive little noise that might have been incredulous disgust.
“I think we can take that as a no,” said O’Hara, adding CHEATER to his column. “Now didn’t I hear something about offering your wife to some businessman in order to get a break on your foreclosure problems?”
“It didn’t happen exactly like that,” objected the witness.
“Oh, so you’re weaseling now,” said O’Hara. “Let’s add “weasel” to this list. The formal word is “prevaricator” but I think “weasel” says it so much better. Would you like the court reporter read back to you exactly what you said?”
“What word are you trying to write?” asked the witness.
O’Hara wrote PIMP. “You have a problem with that? You want to object?”
“I’ll let it stand,” said Haymaker. “But we didn’t actually get any money for it.”
“What?” roared O’Hara. “What was that? I dare you to repeat that to this courtroom.”
“WE DIDN’T GET ANY MONEY FOR IT,” shouted Haymaker back at him. “They were sex parties. Sex play. Nobody got hurt.”
“You’re also not getting away with murder or thievery and you’re still a murderer and a thief,” said O’Hara. “The fact that you didn’t benefit the way you’d hoped is immaterial.” He wrote the word PUSHER and ADDICT. “I understand as soon as your wife emerged from rehab she divorced you.” “She had to,” said Haymaker. “Because of the lawsuits.”
“I think we can take it for granted that you’re not making your court ordered support payments,” said O’Hara, writing, DEADBEAT DAD.
“How can I?” shouted the witness. “They’re insisting on restitution first!”
“And we both know that won’t happen, don’t we?” O’Hara asked sarcastically. “Anyone betting on you is looking at disappointment.”
“There isn’t any money left,” Haymaker grumbled.
“Didn’t you take a video of yourself and Karen Sivarro having sex – without her permission, I might add – and post it on the Internet?”
Sensation in the courtroom! Haymaker hesitated.
Mr. O’Hara uttered an explosive sigh. “Are you really going to force me to show it in this courtroom? It’s Item I-115 in evidence.”
Did that mean we were going to get to see it? Several jury members licked their lips. “I was high at the time,” whined the witness.
“Is that a yes?”
Probably realizing that no video of himself in the nude could possibly make him look good, Haymaker folded. “It’s true,” he said.
O’Hara wrote PORNOGRAPHER. We were getting quite a list. And O’Hara wasn’t finished yet. PERJURER. “In your first sworn statement you said you had nothing to do with Zanelli’s death. Didn’t you? Will you admit it or do you want me to introduce that statement into evidence?”
The witness held himself rigidly. “The death penalty was on the table,” he said.
“So you made a deal,” O’Hara proffered. “You’d deliver another victim to the state to save your own neck, isn’t that what you said? Another woman you’d sworn to love? They’re an unlucky crew, those women, aren’t they?”
“Your Honor, I object,” Wilmot vaulted to his feet. “He’s making an argument! Sounds like a closing argument to me.”
“I was asking a question,” responded O’Hara mildly. “What’s the question?” The witness was at sea.
“Ask your question, Mr. O’Hara, dismissed the judge. I wondered if they golfed together. His Honor teed up so perfectly for the defense counsel.
“What I’m asking, Mr. Haymaker,” said O’Hara, laying his arm confidentially along our jury rail, “Is this. You tried addicting Ms. Sivarro to cocaine the way you addicted your wife and that didn’t work. Did it?”
“She was addicted to high living,” barked Haymaker, fighting back.
“I guess that will serve as testimony that you tried to addict her to something, didn’t you? If you needed to keep her at your side, what better way than to kill the man she was came into the office crying about and tell her she was involved in the crime?”
“She told me to do it,” said the witness stalwartly. “I never would have dine it without her.”
“And who are you?” demanded O’Hara. “You’re a proven MURDERER, THIEF, LIAR, ADULTERER, CON MAN, CHEATER, PIMP, WEASEL, PORNOGRAPHER, DRUG ADDICT, DRUG PUSHER, DEADBEAT DAD, and PERJURER.” O’Hara tossed down his marker in exaggerated disgust. But he let the poster stand. “Character is destiny, and chickens come home to roost. Why should we believe anything you say? No more questions, your Honor. I think the jury got the picture.” Character is destiny, all right. Or destiny makes character, how about that? As to whether “chickens come home” – that’s a ridiculous cliché. Some chickens get eaten and nothing’s left but the wishbone. Stupid chickens crossing the road are hit by cars. Other chickens are buried down so deep they can’t be found.
I think I can say the whole jury was so stunned by the simplicity of this cross-examination; we barely minded that Mr. Wilmot had dragged all attorneys and clients into one of their boringly endless sidebars so we could think it over. Surrendering his swords and becoming a whiney, complainy, endlessly post-adolescent is not a good look for our prosecutor.
Still, it gives me a chance to fill up this ugly juror notebook with my letter to you; kike a lovestruck girl. I have been assured the notebooks are ours to keep, that they go home with each of us, and will remain forever confidential. Unfortunately, being a juror, it seems, means I have to stick to this courthouse whenever they want me. And my beautiful book would attract too much attention. Mr. Wilmot might have no further questions to ask, but you better believe he hustled that poster down fast. O’Hara had some impressive swordplay with which to entertain us. Each and every one of us jurors had a lengthy opportunity to copy down his list of pejoratives against the state’s star witness, right into the notebooks we will take into the jury room. Which I’m sure was O’Hara’s intention.
Because really, what else is there to do? Watching justice is like watching paint dry. Such is the desperation of their competition, I’m sure they’re both counting on pure boredom to turn us. One way or the other.
Sitting over coffee in the jury room I assessed my fellow jurors in a new light. Every day with you is an adventure and every adventure changes me. They might forbid us to talk about the case all they want but I could plainly see that the state’s star witness had collapsed in everybody’s eyes. What if this group wanted to let Karen Sivarro go!
That’s not my plan, but I didn’t get this far playing a Hierophant. I can make adjustments. I pledge to you now, if they insist on freeing Karen Sivarro, she will be our Substitute Sacrifice.
Mr. Babbish answers his own phone. Clearly, Mr. Babbish drinks too much. He threw me off because he didn’t say “BloodProof”, which are the words printed on the card I was holding right in front of my face, but some other name. Some name with “windows” in the title.
“Babbish? Is this Arnold Babbish?”
“That’s right.”
“Hello, my name is Whitney Quantreau and I’m calling you because I understand you wanted to spray for blood in Charmian Carr’s old residence?”
“Well, that was then,” he said shortly. “I lost my client.” Then, apparently realizing that he was not making the best of his opportunities, he said hopelessly, “I could text you a price list.”
I zeroed in on the client he had lost. “What happened to your client?”
“Well, seven years passed,” he said. “The family had their missing person declared dead. I guess they wanted her benefits or some such thing.”
The family wanted her benefits. The county wanted her house. And Pearleen wanted her dead. Looks like Charmian Carr was out of luck in every way that counted.
“You want I should text you that price list?” Mr. Babbish asked me perkily. I could hear him pouring Dutch courage in the background. “What did you say your name was?”
“Mrs. Quantreau.” I gave him my stepmother’s phone number.
The courthouse was abuzz with excitement because today we would get to hear Haymaker’s testimony. I, alone, was bored by the burly man brought before us in an ill-fitting oatmeal linen suit. Imagine allowing yourself yo be shackled. To be caged! I despised him. Rather than testify before a packed courtroom about how “my beloved made me do it” I would take my own life. The tiny gold dagger I wear around my neck is razor sharp, but I could accomplish my goal in a thousand ways. Even if I had to eat a bedsheet. Cleopatra had the right idea. Anything other than become a trophy to be displayed as a triumph for the Other Side. Anything rather than grovel before those gawkers, allowing them think – even for a moment – they’d gotten the better of me.
Today’s card was the Chariot. Any Major Arcana card is exciting. The Chariot symbolizes control. Take control. From her flight above the cold world the Goddess peers down, planning where she will alight. Her eyes glow with the power of ideas, her hair ripples with glory. Even the horses that power the chariot gaze back at her adoringly.
What would she say if she could see the creature before me; a tie-less worm with the three-day beard? A man, once vain, now brought low. A man who no longer has any need for mirrors. “State your name and address, please, spelling your name for the record,” said the clerk after the witness had been sworn in.
“Reuben Haymaker – H – A – Y – M – A – K – E – R,” he said in a raw voice that crackled as if rarely used. “Colorado State Prison.”
The courtroom leaned collectively forward. Karen Sivarro gazed at him plaintively. “Mr. Haymaker, how do you know the defendant?” Wilmot bearded the monster.
“She was my personal assistant at my insurance agency for four years, from 2003 to 2008. Well, actually she started out as an agent, but she wasn’t much good at that.” So you thought you’d take it out in trade. The joke’s on you.
“And what were your personal circumstances at the time?”
“It was a growth period. We were making a lot of money. I opened a new office in Boulder and I hired two agents to man it. We wrote all kinds of policies, personal and corporate, and it looked as if business could only get better. Unfortunately I wasn’t making very good decisions at the time.” “What do you mean by that?” Wilmot fixed him with that “confession is good for the soul” look. “I started using cocaine on weekends, at parties. I thought it was part of the good life. Everyone was doing it. I didn’t realize until later how much it impaired judgment.”
“Where did you get your cocaine?”
“Barry Tobin. I was spending about a thousand a week.”
I suppose if they’re going to talk about your dad I should force myself to listen. I’d so much rather fill up my juror’s notebook with lovesick scrawls to you.
“Did the defendant ever use cocaine with you?”
He looked at her for the first time. I assume he would look at her with hatred. Not only had she gotten him into this mess, she’s the one who turned him in. But he looked at her with sadness. Love? He still felt something. A heart still beat in the ruins of that body.
“Never.” “Did you do it in her presence?”
“No. Not after the first time. I tried giving it up but…when I emerged from my coma, the news sent me right back in. My business was starting to dry up. My fourth wife and I had bought a huge home on the mountain and she had just given birth to twins. Some of my agents went into business for themselves so I started a lawsuit against them. My wife and I were threatened with foreclosure… I just couldn’t pay the mortgage. I was borrowing from clients. We were having group sex parties at our house on weekends. I thought inviting bankers and loan officers might help with our foreclosure problems.” He choked. “That was a fantasy!”
He tried opening his own sex club! I’m not sure a sex club whose only slave is a soccer mom is going to get the job done. What an idiot. And these are the people everybody envies! I gave a sidelong glance to Lacey to see how she was taking this. She was paying close attention but keeping her face immobile. I could tell from their rigid poses the other members of the jury that they were shocked and disgusted by our witness. Good. Make it easier to condemn Karen and get this over with.
“The sex parties stepped up our need for cocaine. I had to keep my wife supplied.” “Tell us again why you hired Karen Sivarro?”
The witness shrugged. I saw a blush creep up Sivarro’s neck.
“I thought she was gorgeously beautiful. In sales, that can only help. I admired her upscale tastes. She was the kind of person who can always encourage the people she’s with to spend more than they planned.” He chuckled hollowly. “It certainly worked with me.”
O’Hara stood up as if he were going to object, then sat down. “Never mind, your honor.”
“She did better with men rather than women…but most insurance decisions are made by men, so that counted in her favor.”
“She tell you about her family custody case?”
Haymaker grimaced. “It was difficult to shut her up on the subject. The very first day of work she was crying about it all over the office.”
“Crying?” Wilmot encouraged. Karen whispered to the Bond girl who squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.
“Something had happened. She told me her sister had married this very sleazy guy who got off tormenting her family. Said the guy was abusing her niece but the courts move too slow and the kid was being ruined.”
“I’m assuming she didn’t ask you for a hitman?”
The witness smiled faintly. “No, not on that first day. She waited until we were sexually and emotionally involved.”
Frantic whispering at the defense table but O’Hara did not object. How I wished you were in the courtroom so we could laugh about this together! But the clerk says witnesses are “sequestered.” They hear only their own testimony.
“When did the affair actually start?”
“November 2004…I had frequent out of town trips. Karen said she would be glad to go along. I took it as a proposition.”
“And you took her up on it?” “I did. We went to Chicago.”
“After that, what happened to Ms. Sivarro’s work product?”
“Oh, that was just a disaster… Straight downhill. She just couldn’t seem to get anything done. I have no idea how she managed to finish school. She couldn’t generate new business. She was very poor at follow up, and she was constantly losing files. She seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time at the gym, the hairdresser, the tailor… But once I fell in love with her I didn’t care. I put her on salary, so she could be my personal assistant. I was obsessed with her.”
“What else did you do for her financially?”
“She was living with her folks. I got her an apartment at Tyrolean Villas. I had a fantasy that she would lose interest in the situation with her niece.”
“And did she?”
He laughed ruefully. “Not a chance.”
Control! Control! You should have been consulting the cards, Mr. Haymaker. She had you right where she wanted you. She’s still scheming to slide out from under.
The defendant glanced down, her face hidden by her sheet of hair. Was she consulting astrological promises temptingly tattooed upon her inner thigh? I had already cast her fortune. Venus in Cancer; what can she hope for? She is clingy, weak-willed. Gluttonous. She will, like any parasite, soar over the cliff with any creature to whom she becomes attached.
Wilmot had the floor. He checked his quiver for another sword. “You described yourself as “obsessed.” Anything she asked for, you felt compelled to give her?”
“Objection!” shouted O’Hara sarcastically. “This is just a bald-faced attempt on the part of the state to smear the defendant with anything he can get into the record. Plus, what does he know about compulsion? This man hasn’t been qualified as a psychiatrist.”
“He can give evidence as to his own state of mind,” said Wilmot.
“The jury will decide whether or to what extent his testimony self-serving. Overruled,” said our flounder-faced judge.
I felt a cold thrill of excitement. The jury will decide. Yes.
“I’d say so, yes.” Haymaker answered the original question.
“Cast your mind please, to January of 2009. What notable events occurred then? What specifically did she ask you to do?”
“She told me her father said, “this problem could be completely taken care of for about ten thousand dollars.” But no one in the family possessed ten thousand dollars. I took it that we were discussing a possible hit.”
“Did you think she was looking to you for the money?”
O’Hara stood up wearily but Wilmot forestalled him. “Just his impression, your honor!” “I took t for granted. But she also asked me, did I have any idea where to get a hitman?”
Get more people involved, I thought cynically. These two were made for each other. She wanted someone else to take the heat and so did he. What could possibly go wrong? You and I will do our own wet-work ourselves.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I had a connection who was always bragging about the murders he’d committed. I asked her to get me a picture of her brother-in- law, his addresses both home and work, and the marker numbers on his vehicles.”
“What did the defendant do?”
“She pulled them right out. She had everything in her purse in a manila envelope.” “She was well-prepared wasn’t she?” asked the beady eyed prosecutor.
“Your Honor, please!” shouted O’Hara.
“Withdrawn. So what did you do next?”
“The next day I drove by Barry Tobin’s house. He was usually there in the mornings, and we never wanted to talk about… things over the phone. Anyone with a baby monitor can listen in on a cell phone conversation.”
“He was home?”
“He was. We went outside because he said his girlfriend was upstairs, asleep. We sat in my car.” “What did you say exactly?”
“I said I knew somebody who needed a hit. I said this guy was abusing children and it was obvious he would never stop.”
“What did Mr. Tobin respond?”
“He said right away, “I’ll do it for eight thousand dollars.” “Was that figure acceptable?”
“What did I care? I was stealing from escrow funds at that point. I told him to drop by the office. Then when I saw Karen next, I said, “It’s all arranged.”
“What did she do?”
“She jumped up and down. She hugged and kissed me. Showed her appreciation…” his voice roughened. The broke. “Right there in my office.”
The poor bastard. He never had a chance. “So what happened next?”
“Tobin came by and I wrote him a three thousand dollar check.’ “From a client fund account?”
“Yes.” “Your honor, I would like to submit this check into evidence.”
The check was solemnly passed among us; touched carefully as if written in poison ink. An ordinary little document on green “safety” paper. So much for advertising. “Did you hear any reports from Tobin on his progress?”
“He used to call me once a day. He was full of ideas, trying to acquire an old car, an untraceable gun. I thought he was treating it a little too much like a kid’s game. I warned him to be careful, to never to come to the office. “
“Why not?” “I was trying to protect Karen.”
Karen’s eyes widened. She stared at the jury with a “Who-me?” glance.
Haymaker went on, “I saw him one day while we were dining. He was dressed in a full camouflage outfit, with black smears under his eyes, like he had just come out of a jungle. He looked ridiculous. I went out on the street and yelled at him, told him never to go through town looking like that. But he’d already seen her. He said, “She’s the one, isn’t she?”
If we needed any more evidence that you’re the one who pulled the trigger, that your father was too much of a loser, this was it.
“My wife threw me out when she found out about the affair. I didn’t think she had grounds for jealousy after the group sex stuff, but she saw it differently. By March I was living at Karen’s. We got a call one Sunday morning, about six a.m. Karen’s mother said she heard it on the news: Zanelli was dead. Karen said we better go over to her parents’ house. When we arrived the cops were there. Two state police cars blocking the driveway. Said they were from “major crimes” Asked a lot of questions. They knew all about the bad blood between the families.” “What did you tell them?”
“Karen and I had an alibi. We were at the Hotel Boulderado till ten, and then we stopped for gas at ten-thirty. Using plastic everywhere. Karen’s neighbor saw us entering the condo at eleven. The police took Mr. Sivarro’s hunting rifles. We gave them our business cards and left. I went straight to the Best Western to give Barry the rest of the money and tell him to get out of town.” “Did you and Karen discuss the situation?”
“She refused to talk about it. She seemed to me to be having a mini-meltdown. She worried that the car was bugged. She said she was planning to act like we had nothing to do with it and that should be my policy, too.”
“That’s what she said?”
“That’s right. She said maybe it was time for the two of us to take a breather.” “When did you see or hear from Barry Tobin next?”
“Two weeks after the murder he called me on my car phone. Said he lost every dime I gave him in Miami and he had to borrow money to get home. I went to the bank and got him thirty five hundred dollars.”
Everybody was lying to everybody! And all the liars expecting the other lairs to be telling them the truth. It was reality show entertaining. All trials ought to be televised. All executions, too.
“Didn’t he tell you something else when he gave you that money?”
The witness paled. “Said he’d had his son along for the hit! Fifteen-year-old kid! So there was a witness, and it was a child! I just about gave up then. I realized it was hopeless. All of us were going down.”
Three people can keep a secret. If two of them are dead.
“Karen was doing what during this time?”
“She said we ought to leave the country. I really couldn’t afford it. I’d bled everybody dry. I sold my wife’s jewelry to buy Karen a plane ticket to France.”
“Did you maintain phone contact with the defendant?”
“I did. We talked every day.”
“What was going on in the Zanelli case?”
“Barry said the police showed up with a search warrant. He was hanging around town like he promised me not to. His girlfriend spent just enough time in jail to tell them everything she knew.” “And what did you do?”
“I went to California.”
“But you were still calling Karen?”
“I couldn’t live without her voice.” The witness looked like he might break down. The courtroom hushed as we all studied him. Romantic love. Isn’t that what everybody wants? But you have to have a soul to be a soul mate. “Parasite mates” is not very romantic.
“I told Karen Tobin was already in jail and there was no way he would stay clammed up. I said we needed new identities. Could she join me in Mexico.” “What did she say?”
“She played me! Told me she’d call me January 5th, 2010 eight p.m. my time, at the phone booth outside my motel.”
“Was she there for that phone call?”
“No. The feds got me. That’s when I knew.” “What did you know?”
“That she set up.” He was quivering with rage. Karen sank down behind her table. “No more questions!” Triumphant, the prosecutor caromed away from his witness. I studied the audience, searching for a perfect sacrifice.
It was encouraging to see that Mrs. Greenbelt was right about everything. 37 Culpepper Heights was the nicest house with the nicest elevation (maybe a hundred feet?) at the top of the block. Believe me, it was no tower, the way my childhood house used to be. A single storey, a white stucco ranch house at the top of a pathetic miniature hill. Behind it, a spectacular view of dirt plain full of dead trees. If you like dead trees.
In spite of fact that it was now 120º with no shade (I swear that’s what it felt like) there was a woman digging up the front garden. I pulled up my truck and she stopped her work to look up at me. She had dyed, stiff red hair and the kind of plaster makeup that works a lot better in more intimate lighting. On someone digging up a garden, it looks distinctly clownish.
I turned off the truck but continued sitting there indecisively, listening to Pink’s Family Portrait to help me figure out what to do. I felt kind of hampered by the fact that I drove a truck, because surely an insurance professional would have a company car, or a rented Taurus or a Saturn at the very least. Also I was in a bad mood after my “it’s a free country and you’re a jealous bitch” lecture from Ignatz. He tried to be subtler but after all my education I have pretty much mastered subtext. I tried pushing that aside and concentrating on what Charmian would do. Charmian loves lying. She thinks it’s a fun opportunity to get “one over” on the other person, like those strange men who try to snow you in bars. My problem is that I get inside the other person’s head and feel for them. Feel their feelings. Charmian never bothers to do that. She doesn’t want to be anybody else because she sees the rest of us as weaklings. She doesn’t want to stoop to our level.
I can’t even call her Charmian any more since that isn’t who she is. And she doesn’t seem at all like a Pearleen! Bitch, that’s who she is. That’s what she is. Back at school we called them BB’s. “Born Bitches”. The kind of bitch that’s born not made. (All of us stoop – or rise – to bitchery on occasion. I mean, it’s a desperate world.) So what would a BB do, in my position? I can usually psych Charmian out. Her problem – weakness, really, is that she’s too predictable. That refusal to live in anyone else’s head makes her vulnerable. She doesn’t know what I‘m doing right now, for example. Probably doesn’t consider me capable of proving who she really is; what a liar she is. I should write a book about it. Maybe after this is over, I will.
A tapping on the window startled me. It was the gardener lady holding a water bottle. I admit sitting there, without air conditioning, sweat, tears and God knows what running down my face. Listening to The Way of the Fist. By Five Finger Death Punch, if you want to look it up.
“Are you all right?” she inquired anxiously, offering the bottle. The health index is bad today. Would you like to come inside and cool off?”
I exited the truck and took the proffered water bottle. Under the clown makeup and the wig – it was an obvious wig – this woman obviously had some kind of serious health condition. She had no hair – not even eyebrows – and her skin color was ghastly. Maybe it was cancer, like my own mother. Here I was trying to think up a lie she might believe and she had offered me the keys to the castle. I astonished both of us by bursting into tears. She patted my shoulder.
“You come on, now,” she said. “Let’s get you right.”
“I think it’s too hot for anybody to be outside,” I gasped as I drank the water.
“I’m used to it,” said the lady. “I was born in Baja.”
She was wearing one of those glittery satin tracksuits with silver facings that no one actually runs in. “You must be a member of that Charmian Carr’s family,” she said. “They used to come here crying! Oh, my Lord!” As we passed the rock garden where she’d been at work she said, “For the last time, I’m not digging anything up.”
I was a little surprised. She was digging, so if you’re digging, why say you’re not digging? Her arms were akimbo, and it’s a hostile posture so my mother’s training kicked in. Always apologize for causing the other person’s negative emotions, even if there’s no way it’s your fault. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
She relaxed a little. Sometimes my mother’s advice works. We had reached the shade of the portico and we looked back at her work.
“So what are you doing?” I inquired.
“I’m putting a fountain into the rock garden,” she said. “Well, WaterPro is doing it. I’m just making a place for it.”
She as panting from the short walk as she opened the door for me. I felt really guilty. So not the way BB’s think. The house was blessedly cool. Cold, really.
“Are you from the family or the county?” she asked.
“I’m not from either,” I said. “What do they want you to dig up?”
My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. Every window was draped in six or seven layers of fabric. If you wanted to open a window around here, it would be like undressing a nun. “I have to sit,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.” She fell into a chair and threw off her gardening hat, leaving her wig somewhat askew.
And I took this woman’s water bottle! I felt just ghastly! But aware of germs and all that stuff I really couldn’t give it back.
“May I get you something?” I asked. So awkwardly. My mother rose right out of her grave to give me a dope slap.
“Water, please,” she said, pointing. “In the refrigerator.”
I scarpered in the direction of her finger. The house had that indefinable sixties quality. You know, when designers were so in love with Formica and light fixtures that look like Sputnik. Retro. The kitchen had all copper-faced appliances, and the refrigerator was full of labeled Tupperware and prescription pill bottles. Not making me feel any better. I grabbed a water bottle and hurried back. She seemed much better, leaning back in her armchair and looking around her with considerable satisfaction.
“I’m not digging anything up,” she repeated forcefully. “Get a warrant.”
Light dawned. “Oh, I get it,” I said, sitting down on a matching yellow velvet armchair, “They think Charmian Carr’s body is around here someplace.”
“They want me to make a wreck of this place,” she said. “They can’t get a warrant because they don’t have probable cause.” She touched my arm with her cold water bottle. “My husband and I bought the place at sheriff’s sale and all this stuff was still inside.” She nodded forcefully. “It was the deal of the century.” And she drank a mighty drink.
I’m not so sure. The artwork was kind of oppressive. Floor-to-ceiling gilt-framed paintings of God as an angry, white bearded Caucasian dude with falling-off clothes. Sprites, fairies. Demons? Most unsettling. In fact the hair was standing up along my arms. On the other hand, it was freezing in here. I made out engraved words at the foot of the painting closest to me: “The Tigers of Wrath are Wiser than the Horses of Instruction.” It was the only thing left of my stepmother in this middle class attempt at an opium den. She’s a real Wrath Tiger, all right.
But my interlocutor was drawing strength. “It was a second marriage for both my husband and me,” she said, “And our kids didn’t want to part with their family homes. This was the perfect solution.” It’s a solution all right. “I’m just a friend of a friend of Charmian’s,” I said. “I don’t have anything to do with her family or the county.”
Her eyes glittered at me as she drained her bottle. “They brought a guy in here who wanted to spray for blood.” She snorted. “Who cleans up afterwards, that’s what I wanted to know. I sent him away with a flea in his ear. Could you fetch me that ottoman?”
I brought it to her and helped her get her feet up. She shrank so low in her chair she looked like a pile of bones already.
“So how come you let me in?”
“I’m a Christian person, or so I hope,” she said. “You were crying.” I wanted to deny it. There’s something very shaming about getting what you want through tears. No BB would be caught dead weeping all over her perfect makeup. Or would she?
“If there was a body anywhere,” she went on, “Wouldn’t it smell?” “You couldn’t live on top of a decaying corpse and not find out about it. And if she’s buried deep, why disturb her?” She shrugged. “Bodies are unimportant. It’s our spirits that matter. Everybody dies.”
That is what you’d think if you had some terrifying health condition. I thought about all the horror movies I’d sat through where it turns out the house is built on an ancient burial ground. Or haunted by some spectre who wants a grave in sacred ground.
“No ghosts?” I inquired.
She laughed out loud. “I told you I’m a Christian,” she chastised me. “There are no such things as ghosts!”
Aren’t there? I wasn’t convinced. I felt something. But what was it? Impossible to be sure in a place frozen like a meat locker.
“The blood guy left a business card,” she said. “If you want it.”
I did. She retrieved it from beneath the phone. The card was yellowed and dog-eared. I wondered if he was a fake like me. Babbish, with a number in New Mexico. I thanked her and left. I never even found out her name.
Back at the motel I got weepy. I hate motel rooms; they make me feel like I’m in a gerbil cage. I don’t know how anybody can sleep on sheets that smell like disinfectant. You get to wondering what they’re disinfecting from. I imagined the guy who wanted to spray Charmian Carr’s house for blood standing in my room carrying a hose canister and wearing plastic goggles. This room would probably light up like a galaxy. People have probably been murdered sand dismembered in here. That lucky lady might not believe in ghosts, but what kind of person has never been haunted?
Tennessee Williams’ definition of happiness is: “insensitivity.” I feel my father – the way he used to be – pulling at my sleeve all day long. And now maybe I had Charmian Carr – the real one – begging along my other side.
The horrible part was, my father wasn’t begging for justice. He was begging me to leave him alone, to let Charmian be the Queen he’d elevated her to. To back up his denial and not make him “look bad”. My sisters were willing to give him that. I wasn’t.
He was never angrier than when I accused him of being a hypocrite. He knew he was one, and he was angry with me for challenging him, even though he raised me to challenge him. He had a picture of himself he wanted to leave to the world. He was the man who conquered everything with reason; and I was the one who could prove that wasn’t so. He attacked all my rationalizations but wanted me to support his. The only way he was superior was in the depth of his denial.
He sent me to a religious school and sneered at everything they taught me. Am I a Christian? Hardly. My sisters think I want revenge, Ignatz thinks I want money and of course, I do want those things. But it’s more complicated than that.
One of Dad’s rationalizations was about Mom’s money. I know he felt bad about needing it. He always tried to pretend her investments were all the wrong ones, that they’d gone horribly downhill and required his intelligence to make us truly rich. It might have been true, if I hadn’t known that my mother was one of those old-fashioned women who earnestly believed that you have to pretend to be “less than” so the man can feel bigger.
So she’s the fourth ghost hanging off of me. Bugging me. Telling me to leave it alone and not expose my father. Should I just leave the dead to stew in their unresolved lies and hypocrisies and fakery? Leave Charmian the demon to live large in her big house on the lake, flourishing like the green bay tree in the Bible, an emblem of successful evil to all who see her?
No. Because there are some things I do believe in. I know when I uproot that green tree up, something disgusting will crawl out.
My father’s position on “justice” was that, since it’s subjective, and anyway we never get it right, it can’t exist. It must remain, like romantic love, an idea. To keep the peasants honest. An unachievable ideal.
I dried my tears and called Mr. Babbish in New Mexico. Justice is bigger than our ideas. It’s bigger than time, it’s bigger than history; it’s larger than anybody’s flesh-bound ego. Maybe Ignatz was right and I should go to law school. There is an objective reality: I insist. The truth is real. Just the Fact’s ma’am, no exciting falsehoods need apply. What really happened will always be superior to anybody’s fake. And I can find the truth. Murder’s probably addictive, like anything else that gets rewards! No guarantee Charmian-Pearleen won’t go shopping for that buzz again. I listened to the ringing phone and prepared my speech. My father always said you can accomplish anything if you just put every iota of your will, your intelligence, your education and your resolve into it.
That night I dreamed about you. In the dream you were a rowboat and I was the ocean; I was a castle and you were a massive, cut-glass chandelier. I was the moon and you were the stars. It was one of those pleasurable dreams you think you can control, a dream where I sat on my throne and said “Show me. Please me.”
But your spirit invaded my dream and took control. I saw you as a child; I became you, but I was also an observer above the scene. I felt your terrible fear as I saw your devil-worshipping father holding a frog gigger like a miniature pitchfork. I felt the pain and he used it on you head. I felt the warm blood running down my face. When I forced myself to wake up, the blood turned into tears. Do you know how long it’s been since I wept? When a Queen weeps, a universe sorrows with her. I felt the yearning of your heart that your father must die.
I awoke a different person. I had already traveled a small way towards rescuing you, and I will go further. I owe it to you. Last night transformed me, freed me; more than the death of my stepfather, more than leaving home, more than the extinction of mentor, more than coming into my money or even buying my perfect house. These had were just steps on a ladder – you are flight. Neither of us needs “steps” once we are airborne. Our throne is of the air. It was as if I had lasik surgery and no longer needed a crutch. The Queen weeps. The Queen can fall in love. For the first time in her life, when she finds a worthy knight.
I used to see my loneliness as freedom. It isn’t. You want a gift from me; the gift of your father’s death. He’s locked up in a SuperMax so that’s a conundrum I haven’t yet solved. But by the time the trial ends, I will have. Sometimes you simply have to cut your way through a troublesome problem. I long to introduce you to the power of magic. The power of magic is the power of substitution. We must agree on a vessel acceptable to you into which your father’s spirit can be drawn. And we must arrange a time, a place, a method for sacrifice. Believe me, you must trust that that will heal you. It will be your father’s own blood with which I will adorn your face.
As soon as I got in the truck I got the air conditioner blasting. I swear it was ll0º in the shade in this part of Texas. Second thing I did was crank up the music. It wasn’t until I had Muse’s Uprising blasting that I had the nerve to put in a call to Nicholas Rudoff down at the bank. I didn’t expect to actually speak to him. I am way low on Nicholas Rudoff’s list of priorities. “Probably on the “avoid at all costs” list. In my experience it takes ten phone calls to even get a phone call returned. That’s when he finally figure out that you just won’t go away.
I didn’t have a good feeling about it, though. He’s Charmian’s little cat’s-paw. But wouldn’t you think he’d be at least interested to find out Charmian is really Pearleen Purdy? You’d think. But here’s the other thing; he would definitely tell Charmian what was up. He has no special confidentiality deal with me, whereas Charmian takes him out to lunch and lets him look down her blouse. How much would it matter if I lost the element of surprise?
Rudoff’s paralegal, on the other hand, always seems much more helpful. He acts like he actually likes me. And, after all, he’s the guy doing all the work. His name is Max Ignow, but my sisters rudely refer to him as Ignatz. Just never to his face. But I have to work hard not to call him that. Max, Max, Max. Couldn’t I swear him to secrecy? Maybe. I pulled over and pulled out my cell. “Max Ignow, please. Whitney Quantreau calling.”
He was available. He was always available. Either he has a special thing for me or Max Ignow has no private life whatsoever. With this friendly accessible attitude in life he’ll go nowhere.
“How ya doing, Whitney?” he said. “How’s school?”
Poor Ignatz. His news is always out of date. I turned down Arctic Monkeys’ Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair so I could hear him better.
“I’m taking a breather.” Bravely – after all, he pays the “education” bills so on a need-to-know basis he needs to know – I said, “I’m thinking of transferring. I’ve got an ex-boyfriend I need to get away from.”
“Oh, my God,” said Max with all the sensitivity anyone could require. “I’m so sorry. Did you get the police involved?”
“I want to avoid getting the police involved. That’s why I’m thinking of transferring out of Pueblo to the University of Colorado at Boulder. If they’ll let me in. But it’s interesting that you mentioned the police.”
“It is?” asked Max. “Uh oh. Not what a lawyer – or even a paralegal – likes to hear.” “Yeah. Put on your lawyer hat. I have a question for you in absolute confidentiality,” I said. “Don’t even tell Nick. I want to figure out how to tell him and maybe we can figure it out together.”
“Hit me,” Max answered evenly, as if he cuts Nick out of the loop a lot. And maybe he does. Nick’s a golfer. Nick’s a partier. Nick hangs out at the club. Nick gets naked with a bunch of other out-of-shape old men in a steam room on a regular basis. Need I say more? Nick is a blabbermouth. “I just found out Charmian is pretending to be someone she’s not.”
“Really?” he said again, reflexively. Could he hear this a lot, too?
No way! He had that “stop being jealous of Charmian” note in his voice! Max, who likes me! Max, of all people! I turned down the airconditioning so there was no way he could mistake my meaning.
“She seems to have borrowed someone’s identity,” I said heatedly, trying to heat him up. No point telling him she used to be a stripper. Men love that. He probably thinks every man ought to have equal opportunity to marry a stripper.
“Well, has she committed a fraud?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said. “She didn’t use her right name when she married my father. She stole someone’s identity!”
“Are they complaining?” asked poor, innocent, out-of-the-loop Max.
“No,” I said, summoning up all the portent and the foreboding I could manage, “They’ve disappeared. It’s over seven years and no one’s seen them.”
“Interesting,” said Max. “Have they found a body?”
God, he’s annoying. This whole “law” thing is for the birds. I almost have sympathy for Charmian taking a shortcut to get what she wants. Almost.
“They haven’t found a body,” I said through gritted teeth. “Charmian’s probably hidden the body. I mean, duh. If you want to pretend to be a person you can’t have said person turn up dead!”
Max was as calm as if people consult him about murders and impersonations and missing persons every day of the week, instead of spending his time looking up trust documents and making copies for shut-outs and shut-ins.
“If I were you I would go to the missing person’s family and get them to complain. If your stepmother used someone else’s accounts or licensure to perpetuate a fraud, that would definitely be a matter for the police. Otherwise –”
I had a horrible, horrible memory that Charmian persuaded my father she could work for less per hour if she didn’t have to “change” her license to Colorado. God what a sucker my dad was. “I don’t think she used the other person’s caregiving license,” I muttered. “But she must have used her driver’s license! Maybe passport! Stuff like that!”
“That isn’t necessarily illegal unless she was perpetrating a fraud,” he instructed me in an annoyingly patient way. “It really is a free country. People can call themselves anything they want. Changing your name can be perfectly legal. Some women like to change their names.”
Not me. I’ll be Whitney Quantreau forever. If I ever get married I’ll make my husband change his name. He should be proud to link himself with any family as great as ours.
Max was droning on, “Marriage isn’t the only reason people change their names. Maybe she changed her name when she became this other person’s heir.”
I was so crestfallen I fell forward in my seat. I hadn’t thought of that. It certainly was possible, especially since they were mixed up romantically. Maybe they went to Europe – God knows the real Charmian had a good enough reason to get out of town – and Charmian died overseas and Pearleen – my Charmian – “inherited” everything that used to be the real Charmian’s. I was hungry and I can’t reason when I’m hungry. I could see this was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
“If she’s using a Social Security number she’d not entitled to, you could make a complaint to the Social Security Administration,’ he said. “But they usually take years to look into things. If somebody’s a natural born citizen and paying their taxes and no one’s complaining about their own identity being stolen I’m not sure you could make much of a case.”
He’s lucky I wasn’t talking to him in person. I was beginning to feel a need for violence, which I ordinarily would have satisfied by tipping over something on his desk. Violence. Hunger.
Frustration. It certainly is extra enraging to be actually becoming as bad as the enemy. I need virtue and justice and honor on my side to give me some lift-off here and Max isn’t helping.
“If she wasn’t legally married to my father I don’t see how she can benefit under the trust,” I muttered.
“Unfortunately Colorado recognizes common law marriage,” said Max. “Your father certainly intended to marry Charmian – or whoever she is. We know he did. You know he did.” Dammit I did know.
“Don’t remind me,” I muttered. “I’d like to think he was out of his mind.” But I was lying to myself. His mind was all he had left. At the end.
Fortunately Max didn’t rub it in my face that my father had the perfect right to sit ringside at a strip club and throw my inheritance into every passing G-string if that’s what he decided he wanted to do. Instead he set up a trust to pay for my healthcare and education and see that I maybe get some money after Charmian’s death. If she doesn’t use it all up first. And am I grateful? Hardly. I’m starting to consider bumping Charmian off myself. I wonder what she would do if she were in my position?
“You’re further out of luck,” Max went on serenely, “Because of the phrasing of this particular trust. She’s not even mentioned by name. She’s just “ux”. Now if you could prove bigamy,” he went on, “That would present a very intriguing little legal problem. They don’t punish bigamy very harshly – she might not even get jail time – but it would certainly freeze the trust till it got sorted out and you could get it up under a judge’s nose. I think an effective litigator could definitely argue that as she had perpetrated a fraud on the trust she should be estopped as a beneficiary.” Don’t you just want to smack people who use jargon so ruthlessly?
“So I have to find out if Pearleen Purdy made another marriage?” I inquired. “Is that what you think I ought to do?”
“I think you ought to enroll at UColorado Boulder in pre-law,” said Max. “You know the trust will pay for that. Do your own legal work. That’s my personal opinion. If you’re determined to hassle your stepmother, try to find out if she committed bigamy by marrying your father. Maybe she thought it wasn’t bigamy if she used another name.”
Go ahead. Take her side.
“But I’m not a lawyer,” said Max. “Not yet. So don’t quote me.” “Well, you don’t tell Nick what we talked about. Zip your lip.” “Consider it zipped.”
“I have a call into him. Cancel it.” “Consider it canceled.”
After I hung up I had to find a drive through and get the full combo meal. With a whipped cream shake. Because, I mean, really. There’s just so much a person can stand.
The moon loves me. The moon is my friend. When the Moon card appears, it means the hero is at the critical stage of his journey. The Moon represents Hecate, Queen of Hell. Hecate is the Hero’s Muse in her menacing aspect. The crab – seventh sign of the zodiac – is pictured at the base of my beautiful moon card, a work of art. The Crab is trying to birth himself as he drags his body from a stagnant pool. This armored creature represents primitive unacknowledged forces of the spirit which seek to sabotage us and which must be overcome. In the middle distance a road is seen, guarded by a wolf and a dog. Their attraction must be resisted. The moon is freedom; the dark path descends back into the womb from which we’ve fled; the inchoate hell of life before we recognized identity and made choices.
I advocate no path; I wind around through the bushes sharing beneficiary of the Moon’s light and glamour. The wolves won’t know I’m there.
Memories stirred as I darted through the shadows. I felt like a teenager again, sneaking in and out of my house, avoiding my stepfather. How relished staring into people’s windows when they did not know they were being watched. Tonight I saw a family – I guess Zanellis – through their picture window, working together, cleaning up after dinner. An older woman, older man, two kids under 10 – the dead son’s children from his previous marriages? moving as if in a dance through the kitchen, opening and shutting, drying and passing, folding and wiping. No sign of you.
My mother always felt spied upon. She was a “what will the neighbors think?” kind of person. If you’re gong to be controlled by your neighbors, you’d better choose them carefully, don’t you think? Don’t live in a trailer park, or the next worst thing, a shack ghetto around a dead-in-the-water lake. When Moms tried recruiting me for her act I just shut her out, trying not to listen, recognizing it as the mind control an older generation attempts to exert over the younger. She always said we should live our lives as if we were being watched every minute!
It wasn’t until I was taking the required Introduction to Basic Psychology course at the college that I had the chance to realize that she couldn’t hope to know what the neighbors actually thought. Their minds were forever closed to her. Duh. In fact ours is the only mind in which we can ever, ever live. The only person whose thinking matters is you.
By my mother’s own choice she was living in an ineffective world of her imagination – the very thing she accused me of – where she had no responsibility but no power either. Each of us lives completely alone inside our heads. It is literally as if there are no other people in the world.
There is an exception to that. The exception is the telepathy that exists between two perfect and like minds, sexually joined. You will become me as I become you. Admit it; haven’t you always wanted breasts and a pussy of your very own? We will wield each other’s weapons as well as our own. It is power doubling that vaults us head and shoulders above all other puny lives. The shed was pretty unappetizing. No wonder the social workers stoked the Sivarro’s fires! Not a place for a three year old.
There was a window, but it was dark. There was a pile of cans beneath the window as if somebody too lazy to get out of bed had thrown them there. I had to kick them out of the way and stand on a pile of compost to look in. A drape of honeysuckle partially obscured my view.
I writhed as if stung at the thought that I had missed you. I’m not sure I have ever felt true jealousy – as opposed to, say, envy – in my life. But I was discovering that when you want a person, everything is different. I used to spend all my time trying to maneuver men who had something I wanted into wanting me. Is this “I’ve got to have you” sensation what you men feel?
Sex is usually like the solitary experience that trains us in desire. Men like pornography, women like romance novels. My mother’s eating was her pornography. “I want a chocolate one layered with a vanilla one and then a salty snack washed down by a cold hush of juice.” Understandably, people want experiences they can manage. My grandchildren are obsessed about electronic games. Virtual games. What happens when “virtual” isn’t enough and you must have reality?
I push away the doll-like figures, kick them out of sight, and you and I stand alone but together, facing each other, weaponless, maskless, along a level plain. It is your freedom that I desire. And in turn, my beautiful Knight of Swords, my Knight of the Colt .38, I offer you my power. I want to be the one who provokes that rich, slow smile.
And then my eyes became adapted to the light and I saw you, sleeping nude upon a narrow bed. Your sheet was partially thrown off, your manhood rose, exposed. Knowing I was there. Summoning me. I felt the answering squirt between my legs. Suddenly I needed to pee, and squatting right there relieved myself upon your junk pile, my hot perfume of me mixing with the honeysuckle. Athletes must imagine the course before possessing it, dancers imagine the dance; my husband used to say that for all we know we’re the imagination of a dreaming Chinese philosopher.
Your chest was bare, the color of moonlight. I would finally touch its hard silk and hairless ripples. The tattoo on your shoulder: what does it represent? I imagined the tattoo was my own face looking out at me from your chest, swelling like a spider-web across muscle and throat, reaching toward your nipple. You knew I was coming and you had always kept yourself pure for me.
The door was unlocked and almost silent. I stepped over the pinkish flannel shirt I had seen you wear. I picked it up, pressed it to my face and I was rewarded – surrounded by your smell. Sweat, yes, cigarettes, and a subtler, musky aroma like the underside of leaves. Like the mossy lake after a rain. That will be the way you taste.
I thought of the power of the stars. As a Gemini born on the cusp of Aquarius rising, your Sun was in Gemini and your Moon in Aquarius. Your strong air element gives you a throne like mine; you were born to be a revolutionary and a man of ideas. By birthright you possess the power of your other twins. In the womb you slaughtered him; gave him up for sacrifice, probably during the Transit of Mars with Saturn in your twelfth house. You knew instinctively that you would lay him someday on my altar.
You are my ram in the thicket, given to me as an offering. Will I startle you? Will you push my hand away? It’s the creature with the sharpest senses that transforms, transmutes, transcends each otherworld encounter, by intuiting the opponent’s move. There ‘s our edge.
Somewhere music played – back in the house they cranked up a singer’s sorrowful wail as a wall, to curtain, to separate each from the other as the empty people wandered towards their beds. I stripped off my clothes and threw them in a pile. My body moistened, senses sharpened, heart contracted. Lust for your otherness opened inside me like a flower. I took my scarf, winding it around my palms, and covered you eyes. Lightning passed between us.
I feared you would vault out of that bed as if you’d been gouged. But you didn’t. You reached a sleepy hand over one of mine to capture it, to keep me from escape. As I mounted your magnificence still you were not afraid. I ran my hand upwards toward your throat: still accepted my invasion, your blind eyes fluttering behind my scarf. You reached your arms up for me and I rode you like a succubus, like a revenant.
In the moonlight I saw your beautiful body as well as felt it: every inch. You are lit from within; the flying buttresses of your ribs are tent spines where the parachute silk of flesh is stretching tight. I thought of bodies as machines, as engines, now I saw yours as the tabernacle for your spirit, for your hidden self, a thing too beautiful even to risk the moonlight. Too beautiful for exposure. I ran my hands over the pale silver fur of your legs and crotch and I raised a lot more than gooseflesh; your balls tightened in my palm like a pair of dice yearning to be thrown.
Your muscles felt like those of a powerful animal like a jungle cat, locking and interlocking smoothly beneath the velvet of your skin. I saw the tattoo; gothic words; Razor’s Edge, and the semblance of a creature. Bird? Buffalo? I will know for certain soon. The razor’s edge is where both of us live indeed. From the words dripped drops of blood; one for every man you killed?
If so, you slaughtered more than me. I wonder if we can count the walking corpses left behind; those who might as well be dead but still they lurch and breathe because they refuse to recognize their own mortality.
The Zanellis are dead, Karen Sivarro, maybe also her lover, the wretched Mr. Haymaker. Your father is dead and my stepfather, the Empress and all the zombies who hashed their lives to make our dinner. I sometimes think my poor stepdaughter Whitney, with her mind and heart so preoccupied – interred, you could say, with her father’s ashes, is a victim too.
Most of all I loved your chest, so wide and hard it could enfold like the spines of a boat. My ship of rescue, a pleasure yacht to float me away from the boredom and the loneliness of all my lovely money.
Whatever have you wanted, you shall have it. Other women? I will bring you whoever you desire. There mist be someplace on this earth you long to go. But we must wait until the trial ends, so you are safe. We cannot be seen together. I must restrain myself but it is hard. I have been so long alone.
I touched each star of your precious constellation; the cords of your neck, your silver seashell ears, the tip of your strong nose, your scarred bare head. Your pentacles. I wanted you to feel my hard body, not a young girl’s any longer but just as lovely as it was in childhood, before my stepfather tortured off my “flying dust”, as we once did to butterflies.
Everything you want I will do, Everyone you want I will be. This is my vow. Our hot breath steams the room, but this magic veil can conceal us not much longer. It is time to say goodbye. Making man come at my pleasure has a lot to do with the forefinger and everything with what ring I choose to wear. A gold nugget does the trick. You boiled inside me like a volcano.
I left you blinded with my scarf and stole in turn your red bandana, fleeing naked, holding my clothes before me, melting into the spring night that shelters lovers, becoming one with the crickets chirping, the peepers peeping, the lilacs rustling. I giggled as I climbed still nude into my car like a frat boy on a successful panty-raid.
I laughed while I drove. We will wrestle! I am strong from battling with currents; we will be so evenly matched. Even if each of us wants to be on top both of us can have our wish. I will caress the places where you shave and do not shave; I will free you from yourself. And when the rollercoaster breaks free both of us will fly free forever. We inherited hard shells like dragonfly larva, they will fall away as we give birth to our own power.
It will even be a beautiful way to die, spirits gone and left behind our abandoned silver shells, joined at the hip like a pair of Siamese twins? My husband always called orgasm “the little death”, I hated him for that. I never came with him. It is not little, it is a big, big death to catapult one’s self so freely through the reveries of another.
Is it raining? I felt the rain on my cheeks and hands as I rushed to my front door and disarmed the security system. Dogs barked everywhere, but thank the Goddess humans cannot understand their language.
Safe inside I took a long, perfumed bath, cleansing myself completely (except for my left hand) and when I climbed out, I wrote this down so I could live it all again.
Warm in bed I hugged my trophy – hugged you – to myself that night, recalled your every inch. When I pleasured myself to sleep, yours were the invading fingers.
I was afraid to go back to the dean. This impersonation stuff is soul wracking; I don’t know how Charmian – whoever she is – can stand it. You can’t ever relax. More evidence that she doesn’t have a soul. I feared the dean might call the police on me, so I went instead to the college library, darting and lurking like Someone with a Secret. Like I think I said before, it was very small, and disappointingly, only incredibly young students stood behind the desk. But behind bulletproof glass I did notice a door labeled, Director, so I asked the nearest Goth child if it was possible to ask the Director a question.
Without looking up he buzzed me into the sanctum. I rapped upon the door. “Come in.”
The harassed-looking woman behind the desk was on the phone. It gave me a chance to think of a cover story. Guilt gets in the way of everything. That’s what gives my dear old step mom her edge. A triumphant lack of guilt. For some enterprises – like transformations, say, or impersonations – salesmanship isn’t enough. You need actual magic. In sales you soon realize that a lot of being accepted has to do with whether you think you’re going to be rejected or not. In sales I’m comfortable, because it’s so impersonal. People might say they want American’s Next Supermodel salesperson but what they really want is someone they can be comfortable with and depend on. I can be that person.
In my private life it’s a different story. Since Penn and I went blooey and my official dating status is “desperate” I should be putting myself out there, but obviously I’ve been distracted. Some things I’ve gotta do.
Looking at the poor, exhausted library director groveling to some anonymous person about budget line items and “new collections” I suddenly had the weirdest memory of my mother. My mother could have pulled this off. Her big advice in life was, “Don’t think about yourself, just concentrate on the other person.”
Yeah, and we saw how that got her screwed over. I can’t stop thinking about how ludicrous I must appear to the other person – that’s if it’s anything personal that I want to get for myself. Am I feeling particularly unentitled? Or am I just ruined by seven years of knowing Charmian, whose feelers are oh so sensitive for anything you might want (or need) so that she can block it or obstruct it or mine it for a Shame Opportunity. Charmian the Beautiful, whose obstructive efforts are so graceful, so patently second nature, and so obviously pleasurable – to her. Why should anybody give me what I want?
You’ve got to hand it to me, though. I keep on trying. Whitney is a trier. “Whitney shows persistence in attacking her goals” was a typical teacher comment about yours truly. Attacking my own goals? Houston, we have a problem.
The woman before me with the tight curls and the loose dewlaps slammed down the receiver and barked, “What is it?”
I summoned up my inner magician. Nothing. OK, Sales. You say why you’re there and you wait for The Objection.
“I’m trying to trace Charmian Carr’s friends. Do you know of anyone who might be able to identify this person?” And I handed her the printout.
She didn’t look at it. She looked at me. Thoughtfully.
“Charmian Carr, eh?” she said. “We get a lot of inquiries about her. Maybe you should go to the police.”
I see we are at least talking about the same person.
“I have to find her first,” I said honestly. The real Charmian Carr. Or what’s left of her.
The woman shook out a pellet of nicotine gum and counted the few she had remaining. “Never had anyone looking for her friends before. It’s an interesting approach.” She gave my paper a cursory glance. “I couldn’t say,” she said finally. “I never get out of this damned hole. But I can tell you who would probably know. Mrs. Greenbelt. She’s our volunteer. She knows everything worth mentioning about everyone worth knowing.” She barked out an appreciative, reminiscent laugh, then shivered all over. Visibly reining herself in. “I was raised to believe gossip was a sin, Miss – er. Mrs. Greenbelt thinks it’s an art form.” She dismissed me. “I think she’s shelving in the basement today. Lucas or Mindy could buzz you down.”
Neither Mindy nor Lucas even looked up as whichever one of them it was – I swear I couldn’t tell – hit the buzzer. I was an unwelcome interruption to their intense conversation. Their warding, waving gestures appeared designed to tell me, “Take this whole library. Please.”
Down, down, down, into a world designated by wall art as a Civil Preparedness Bomb Shelter. I guess that’s a relief that the world won’t come to an end before I‘ve talked to Mrs. Greenbelt.
The stairs were strictly utilitarian, built of porous cement block in which antediluvian pebbles could still be seen. That theory that we are all breathing the very same air breathed by previous generations had never seemed so true to me before; this was definitely “used air: they were expecting me to breathe. Lucky I never got asthma, like Darby. Dad said I acquired my toughness from his side of the family. They had that kind of motion-triggered lighting that lights up as you approach and dies away the moment you leave. Not reassuring. Plenty of warning that I might well get stuck down here in darkness. If only I was a cast member on CSI I’d have one of those little flashlights. I cursed my total lack of preparation. No fake business cards, no miner’s helmet. I wasn’t even a good Girl Scout, much less a detective.
At the bottom of the stairs I was confronted by a pair of swing doors, so to escape from the spitting, hissing, sparking fluorescent light I pushed them slightly open and peered through. Just in case. If this was a more impressive institution of learning I would suspect I was an unlucky rat in a science experiment. I was hardly reassured by the musty, dusty, gloomy world before me. How could Mrs. Greenbelt stand it, unless she was the Cryptkeeper?
There she was at the end of a row of shelves, standing over a cart containing its own portable lighting unit. The buzz from the fluorescent light apparently did not bother her in the least, nor did she hear my call. I would have to take my chances and get closer.
She was a doll-size wisp of a person in a cardigan sweater set and an old tweed skirt. Her skimpy hair was encased in a hairnet and she wore huge thick glasses behind which her eyes revolved and swam independently of one another. She wore a magnifying glass on a chain of fake pearls and made liberal use of it. She took plenty time studying a book, checking her list, then looking at the book again as if she had already forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.
“Hello,” I said, loudly enough so that I could hear the echo.
She looked up annoyed. “No need to shout.”
Those big eyes swam over me, and her face lit up.
“What a pretty young lady,” she sighed. She consulted a watch pinned upside down on her sweater vest. “Tea-time!”
Not even the purblind have ever called me “pretty” so this must mean she had decided to be my friend. I followed her painful perambulation to a hidey-hole beneath the stairs. I wanted gossip and by repute she had raised gossip to an art form. We all know art takes time.
Very slowly she placed a tea bag in each of two thick diner mugs, and poured in water from a smoking electric kettle with such an unsteady hand I had to look away. She gestured me to a straight-backed chair of the kind schools have long since discarded, then settled herself down in a well-padded basket chair with an explosive sigh. I was afraid to ask for sugar.
I decided with Mrs. Greenbelt honesty had to the best policy if I wanted to keep explanation to a minimum, so I said, “I’m Whitney Quantreau, and I’m looking for somebody. They told me upstairs that you know everything.”
She continued to gaze at me beneficently. “You’re such a lovely, healthy-looking young woman,” she informed me. “Girls these days look so terrible. They just look terrible. They want to look terrible. It’s all I can do to keep from jumping back when I see one of them as if it’s a vision of the Antichrist. You on the other hand – ” she sipped her tea, completely unbothered by the fact that it was scalding hot. Pepper spray probably wouldn’t even work on her. “Are you a hockey player?”
I knew she meant well. I struggled to be complimented. I had the padding, what I lacked was the aggression. That “attack” so praised in school seemed to drain away when I hit the battleground. “I was a left wing,” she went on. “But you can’t even say left-wing nowadays.” “Not actually,” I temporized. “Do you know this person?”
I handed her the sheet with my thumb right next to my stepmother’s laughing face. “Oh, goodness,” said Mrs. Greenbelt. She put down her tea mug and picked up her magnifying glass. “My, my,” she breathed as she studied the face. “I never thought I’d see her again.” “Who?” I held my breath.
“Pearleen. That’s her name. She had a last name too. Probably. I could look it up for you.” She touched the blurrily printed face and shook her head back and forth.
“Are you certain?” I inquired weakly. It seemed rude but her vision was so compromised and the picture was such poor quality. Maybe Pearleen was my stepmother like I was a hockey player. “Oh, I’m sure nobody ever forgot Pearleen once they got to know her,” said Mrs. Greenbelt. “And look.” She pointed again to the picture, which under these lights was looking worse and worse, more of a Rorschach blot than an Identikit. “Here she is with Charmian Carr.”
“Charmian Carr,” I echoed, trying to damp down my excitement. “Didn’t she disappear?” “Oh, yes,” breathed Mrs. Greenbelt, as big-eyed as a night-hunting lemur. “It was the scandal of the campus.”
A miracle. I had myself a genuine miracle. Here was someone who knew everything, liked to talk, and didn’t punch a time clock. I took a cautious sip of my tea. Dusty. Green. Tasted like that diet tea everyone was in such a frenzy about a few years ago. So bad it had to be good. But after a few musty sips, I felt it growing on me. It was a keeper, just like Mrs. Greenbelt. The Tea of Knowledge, from the Tree of Knowledge.
“Miz Carr — that’s how she liked to be known, she was very fussy about not being known by her marital connections or lack of them – worked up at the college. She was – ” she halted, whether struggling with political correctness, generalized politeness or a lack of vocabulary I couldn’t say. “Miz Carr was one of them dykes,” she said finally. “Her hormones were all of a whack. Nowadays she’d just get her sex changed.” She waved the printout at me. “See? She had a mustache.” I was afraid to point out that she was in costume. I just hoped Mrs. Greenbelt had some actual facts and knew what she was talking about.
“Oh, she kept it quiet. She had to be subtle. But we don’t have much to talk way out here. She had a nice big house out on the Heights. And she used to invite students – girl students – to “live” with her.” She gave the word expressive air quotes, making moony eyes at me. “Helping them out. The poor ones. Doing them a favor. Oh, she could see ‘em coming! No questions asked.” She chuckled richly. “You know they say being a dyke was never against the law because nobody wanted to explain it to Queen Victoria! So there she was with her little girl gang and along comes Pearleen.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I know I must have a better picture of her somewhere. Even though she didn’t graduate.” She gestured behind my head. “Fetch me down a Firewalker. 2004.”
At first I thought we were talking about wine. Or malt liquor, at the very least. But no, The Firewalker was a yearbook, apparently. All the slimy vinyl volumes she had neatly ranked by number. I wondered if Mork and Mindy – no, his name was Lucas – knew how to do that. Maybe Mrs. Greenbelt was more than just than a charitable deduction and a fire hazard.
She leafed slowly through the pages, studying them with her glass while she spoke.
“Pearleen was a good deal older than most students. Word had it she’d been a stripper out of Branson, Missouri. You’ve heard of Branson, Missouri?” she hissed. I waggled my head nervously like a mongoose captured by a snake. Should I say I’ve heard of Missouri?
“Where anything goes.” She bobbed her head enthusiastically up and down so both of us could picture it. I tried envisioning Charmian as a stunt pussy. No surprises there, but it was just too much for me. Mrs. Greenbelt poked my shoulder suggestively and gave her throaty chuckle. “At the Brass Pussycat on our honeymoon my husband had a cigarette taken out of his mouth by a whip-wielding houri.” Her head bobbed. “He liked it better than the army.”
Most people like their honeymoons better than the army Or so I thought. But I’m a beginner, as I keep finding out. What do I know?
“Of course that was a hundred years ago,” said Mrs. Greenbelt dismissively. She poked me. “He gave up smoking but he died of cancer anyway. Still, he was almost a hundred. So, anyway, we get a lot of students the government pays for to transition.” She worked her dentures from side to side and poured herself a second cup of tea. I shielded my own mug protectively. How old could she possible be? I thought she might be looking at the magic three-digit number herself.
“They get trained to do something useful, something there’s call for, like asbestos abatement and wiping old people’s butts. If they’ve been in a line of business they can’t follow anymore. Pearleen was getting on in years.”
Mrs. Greenbelt was a hoot. Literally. She hooted ecstatically.
“Here she is!” she exulted. “I knew I could find her.” She swiveled the page toward me. There, in the center of a black and white portrait of The Future Caregivers of America, was my stepmother, crowned by amber waves of hair. Lots and lots of hair. My eyes were blurring as I located her name. Pearleen Purdy.
“I had a cat – Beazley he was, short for Beelzebub – who wouldn’t let any of the other cats sleep on my bed,” said Mrs. Greenbelt. “He’d hiss and chase them off. He’d fight them if necessary.” She blotted her huge eyes with a yellowed handkerchief. She was a lot more worked up over the cat than the hundred-year-old husband. “It was really kind of flattering.” She sighed. “I miss that cat. Now Pearleen was the same way. Miz Carr had several young women living with her when she invited Pearleen in. Some people complained she was running an unlicensed boardinghouse. But Pearleen put a stop to it. Pearleen ran them off.”
“And then what?” I asked her. There wasn’t going to be a happy-ever-after at the end of this story. “What happened?”
Mrs. Greenbelt shrugged regretfully. “No one sees behind closed doors, but I think that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. If it had happened now, they’d take a trip to one of them elitist states and get married. Pearleen stopped attending classes regularly and started spending money. She didn’t want to be a butt-wiper! One look at her and you could see what she had come for. Designer clothes! She and Miz Carr took plenty of trips to Houston and Dallas.
She must’ve thought she’d hit Easy Street but maybe Miz Carr had problematic health conditions. I don’t know what was wrong. I was a cleaner then. I saw Pearleen in the Administration office, helping Miz Carr with her work. Doing her work, for all I know. Maybe she didn’t like it. Maybe the worm turned. Miz Carr used to say that she was bronchial, and the college was built on a swamp. I thought she must have died. If she didn’t leave a will, Pearleen must have cleaned her out and run away.” She smacked her shriveled thigh. “That’s what I think happened.”
“But why get rid of a body that died of natural causes?” I demanded. Answering my own question. To steal her identity. Duh.
“I think she murdered her,” I muttered rebelliously. I wasn’t giving Charmian-Pearleen an inch. I couldn’t wait to call her by her real name.
“And everybody else thinks they went to Rio and were happy-ever-after,” said Mrs. Greenbelt. “But the most interesting part was what happened after.”
“What happened after?” I was on the edge of my seat. That Mrs. Greenbelt is a born storyteller. “Everyone who had ever known Charmian Carr started contacting the school. She still had parents and at least a pair of siblings – all of whom said they were comfortable with her lifestyle. But she ran away without letting them know! Nobody seemed to know where she had gone.” “Odd,” I said.
“Very odd. Now Pearleen always wanted to see Europe. She wanted to go on a millionaires’ cruise. Maybe they went there.” She leaned forward. “But you know why didn’t they come back?” “Why?”
“There was money missing. That’s what Mr. Butterbatch said. He was dead at the time.”
Mr. Butterbatch? I was willing to bet that name was slightly off, but otherwise Mrs. Greenbelt’s facts were irreproachable. No more Pearleen Purdy. Just a Charmian Carr with no right to the name. I longed to tell Mrs. Greenbelt the rest of the story, but I didn’t dare. Loose lips sink ships. “So where’s the Heights?” I asked.
“It’s The Heights.” She corrected. “It’s just a dinky little hill but things are so flat hereabouts. It’s a cul-de-sac with Miz Carr’s old house at the top. It was sold at sheriff’s sale. Not too long ago, neither.”
“I’d like to see that house,” I said thoughtfully. I stood up. “I’m sure I can find it. Thanks for the tea.” I waved the book at her. “May I make a copy of this? I’ll bring it right back down.”
“You may NOT,” she said fiercely, glaring at me. “These are my own personal Firewalkers. You put that back. They have their own set in Reference.”
I mollified her somewhat by shelving the book carefully in its appropriate space. Thanks a lot,” I said. “You have been really helpful. You really do know everything.”
She glowed. “Now you be careful,” she recommended. Whether she was referring to the perils of hockey or missing-person investigation, I couldn’t say. She walked me back to the swing doors on her way back to work.
“I love libraries.” She sighed. “Libraries are where it’s at.”
She hadn’t even noticed they’d relegated her to the basement. Maybe she thought crypts are where it’s at. Maybe she couldn’t see well enough to know where they’d put her. I wondered if she lived down here.
I had my foot on the third step when I heard her holler, “Number twelve! Get it right!” She-Who-Knew-Everything was quite correct that Reference had Firewalkers. Lucas and Mindy allowed – even expected – me to Xerox one. For a price. They would have sold me a frame – any size – if I had wanted one. They seemed to be operating a nice little side business in memorabilia for people whose lives had been a straight slide downhill ever since the excitement of community college. But I wasn’t into recalling school triumphs to impress my friends. I wanted to impress a trustee into voiding my father’s will.
I enlarged Pearleen-Charmian’s face but it didn’t come out too well. Some people might have said it wasn’t her. Maybe she would say it wasn’t her. And what would I do then? I sighed. Contacting the Absent Miz Carr’s relations seemed the obvious next step.
In order to escape and find you I had first to peel Lacey’s clutching fingers off my life.
“In my day children cemented a marriage,” Lacey was saying in such an alcoholically disconnected way that I was certain her “prescription meds” had to be some kind of downers. Making her even more easily manageable. Complainers are only looking for agreement. “Every marriage is shaky till there’s children. Without them there really is no reason on God’s green earth for any couple to stay together after the thrill is gone. I mean, don’t you think that’s what explains why gay people are always moving from partner to partner?”
All the gay people I’ve known were in a frenzy to find The Perfect One and settle down, but whatever.
“Sorry, Lacey,” I said. “You know the big problem with grandchildren? They’re constantly having events. Gotta go.” “Well, “ she called feebly, “If you ever need a “plus one – “
I nodded and smiled, but really! As if! I separate people into two categories in life: driver’s seat or backseat passenger. You can imagine what category poor old Lacey’s in.
Moralists say “criminals” – whatever those are – long to be caught. There’s a comforting belief. Can’t be true of all of us. But risk and exposure opportunities for those of us who exercise permissionless power are out there, so it’s well to be aware.
We had been told not to investigate the crime, so of course that was what I was setting out to do. No less. But I would exercise appropriate care about it.
They’ve proved that the heads of major corporations all rank highly on the so-called “sociopath” scale. What’s that mean? It means that ruthless risk takers with a grandiose sense of self do a lot better in the world than bleeding hearts and sob sisters. So what else is new. It’s the law of the jungle. Evolutionary science. Survival of the fittest, as my husband used to say.
Power changes everything. That’s my motto. To seek power, you need control. You must know that already. Obviously this woman needs to be convicted. She’s going up, Haymaker’s going up, your dad is going up. That’s what’d got to happen to leave you free.
Here’s today’s horoscope for me: “Line up priorities: what was lost will be retrieved. Do not equate delay with defeat. Play waiting game: time is on your side. Rules, regulations prove irksome, but red tape ultimately lines up in your favor. Creative urges will be fulfilled.” First I needed to see the place where you were “born.”
The rest stop itself was easy to find because it’s right before the bridge. More of a layby than a real rest area – it has no amenities, not so much as a picnic table. No chance mistaking the place: I knew it was the right one because wreaths of fading flowers were heaped there. Who had loved this pathetic Zanelli person so much? He sounded like a born loser to me.
I stepped out of my car to check out the offerings. Yellow and white roses, from “Your Wife”. A huge white heart of carnations with a bleeding slash of red. Ribbon said, Beloved Son. They did know he couldn’t be buried there, right? Some people are so primitive. Those flowers, those offerings, should have been for you. I saw what you had left there.
What would have happened if you’d shot your father too? The mentor must be destroyed so you can truly live. No, you played that exactly right. The courts have to dangle your father before they can convict Karen Sivarro because they want him to testify. After that, he’ll go down. As trigger man, though, he probably won’t get the death penalty.
There’s your problem. It drags it out. We’ll have to give you something to take your mind off it, that he’s plotting against you every second, sending waves of hatred to the one who was too strong. The one who got away. It’s so much more satisfying to smash them yourself. To see the expression on their face when they realize their example “Took” too well. He’s the one who set you free. The King is Dead, Long Live the King. You stopped being a victim that day, and again the day you first spoke to the police, and once again today in court when you said about your father, “He knew what he was doing.” That was your message to him.
From my bag I took the Knight of Swords card and flipped it on the pile. At an angle I set the Justice card because the dead man had been tried in the Midnight Court and found wanting. Let those who have eyes, see.
Yet still I lingered. Your spirit had been freed from that place, yet something of you still remained. The connection between us is so strong. I have never felt the slightest impulse towards motherhood –in fact have taken care to dampen that possibility several times, and yet sometimes I am jealous of the power of the bond.
Was what I was feeling now something like what a mother feels, an emotion so physical, like a global positioning system has been permanently planted in my gut and tuned toward you? Or is it because I’m a beginner at love? I have so much to teach you, but you can teach me too. In that way, the vulnerability of need, I admit I am a beginner.
It was starting to get chilly. Felt almost as if it might rain. Bought a sandwich from a drive through and set my GPS for your address. Was I surprised to see the mailbox read Zanelli!!
What’s this? What is going on? I think I sat for twenty minutes in my car. Didn’t I say you had so much to teach me? About my own business, too, apparently! The Zanellis had lost a son. I knew from reading the newspapers that Rafe’s wife and the Disputed Child had actually gone back to live with the Sivarro family. So Karen Sivarro had achieved her end and she should quit her bitching. But that meant the “shed” behind the Zanelli home – the one the social workers bitched about because it had no running water – was available. What better way to master the universe than to adopt your victim’s identity? It’s perfect.
The mark of my youth was longing. And the Empress – my mentor – had everything. She liked me. That was the first thing that amazed me. I took it for granted that she wanted me sexually. Everybody did. She was the first to take out the tarot deck and give me a reading. She was the Empress. I was the Queen of Swords. She’s the one who introduced me to my rich, dark heritage. She treated me like the two of us were allies, two people exactly alike from different universes. She worked for a college that licensed nursing home aides. She made fun of the other staff members, he made fun of the students, and when we went to nursing homes, she made fun of the patients and their visitors. She knew how to make giving enemas or inserting catheters secret maneuvers and meanings in our own private games.
She was so witty and well read. She wasn’t a snob like my husband. She reassured me that I could become whatever I wanted. Assume any mask or guise.
When I moved in I was so impressed by her house. It was full of artwork – not originals, but big and tasteful paintings in wonderful gold frames. She loved William Blake especially. All her furniture and rugs were the best quality. Not so good as I have now but still, better than anyone around there had reason to expect. She didn’t care for clothes and jewelry for herself but she would give me anything I wanted. She was going to take me to Europe. Take me all around the world. When she told me she was stealing from the college I knew I had to kill her right away. It was so stupid! She was begging to get caught and I wasn’t going down with her.
One of her scams was a fake laundry company. All she did was drive the sheets from the nursing home to the cleaning plant – you wouldn’t believe what she charged for that. But she used her own car! So stupid. I got her to borrow a van from the college.
I gigged her with a box cutter. She died so fast. Her eyes were open but there was nothing behind them. She wasn’t special after all. It was kind of a disappointment actually, because I wanted her to realize how dumb she’d been. But I had to get her from behind and bleed outs go so fast. There was all that blood but I was ready for it. Her whole body emptied out on piles and piles of sheets. But I was ready for that. We’d carefully lined the van with plastic! I undressed the corpse and separated the sheets and clothing into “medical waste” bags. Off to the “medical waste” dumpster. No one ever looks in there!
For the body I had just as good an idea. Better, maybe. The college had this tree-planting thing going on. Catalpa trees lining the entrance road, each given by a different owner. We got a little plaque! I got the Empress to buy one in honor of my stepfather! Of course she didn’t know what the secret meaning was.
Robert Garvin Junior. The backhoe digs a gigantic hole and tree sits in a bag beside it. I told them we’d fill it in ourselves. The Empress thought I was all worked up because my stepfather meant so much to me, and that was true! The best lies use the truth as well as the expectations of the victim. Line ‘em up and shut’em down. Nobody knew I’d ill the hole in at night with the Empress at the bottom of it. It’s just shovelfuls of earth. I’ve done harder jobs.
I bet it’s the healthiest tree in the line, because the Empress enjoyed her food. I threw away the plastic and my clothes in the college dumpster and then returned the van. Off to new horizons. I had new identity, jewelry, gorgeous clothes and plenty of cash.
Not enough cash. I needed a nice millionaire with a hole in his life and such are my life skills, I found one. I’ve got plenty now for the both of us.
It feels so good writing all this down. I never thought I’d find someone to tell. Now I have told you all those spirits are released. Up, up and away. Gone forever.
My husband was very into Jung, the psychoanalyst philosopher. Basically the man said we are all figments of our own imaginations. Our desires give us birth. My poor husband liked the concept, without understanding its hidden meaning. We are all subjects or objects. Not both. In our short term across this planet plain, we must ordain our own beings as well as our own lives. When I needed you, you came.
Walking through the little East Texas airport was like entering a time warp. It was one of those Sputnik-inspired sixties buildings whose a sloping ceiling was presumably meant to suggest “flight”; walls of randomly colored, randomly spaced tiles meant, I guess, to represent “art” and massive, bowing, tinted plastic windows meant to suggest “cost-savings.” I had a light truck reserved – you can rent those without having to be twenty-five. Armed with a suitcase and a Map Quest printout I was all prepared to get myself to Cold Creek Community College.
About an hour’s drive. Fortunately I brought along I Hate My StepMom CD so I could listen to Congratulations, I Hate You by Alesana and Nightmare by Avenged Sevenfold on my way there. Cold Creek Community College is yet another poorly planned, unsightly mess; mushrooming its way out of a partially abandoned industrial park. As a freshly minted member of the intellectual elite I felt a ripple of concern about what they were passing off as “education” in this place. They had enough parking to satisfy the Pentagon, and a library the size of a laundromat. The gaudily huge entrance sign beneath rotating floodlights did not prepare me for a compound of cattle trailers circled like covered wagons against the sciroccan blasts.
The “main building” might have once been somebody’s private home. The inside of the residence had been enthusiastically gutted; I had to negotiate my way through a maze of fabric-covered cubicle dividers, with no other guide than a series of handmade signs designed to assist students in locating the dean; presumably so they could complain. I felt pretty secure in my cover story and proud of the way I looked. Small black-rimmed eyeglasses, a blue linen pantsuit, and a briefcase; two can play at the game of Let’s Pretend identities. I was an Insurance Official.
The woman seated outside the Dean’s office looked as if she had once majored in animal husbandry, or was even, considering her big bones, the product of some such union. The words “blusher,” “foundation,” even “mousse”, were utterly alien to her. Charmian had not learned her wiles here. But she was friendly enough. She came to me blinking and smiling as if my briefcase contained gold bars.
“I’m looking for someone who can tell me about Charmian Carr,” I said in my most confident way. “I believe she was a student here about a decade ago.”
She stepped backwards under this barrage, her face wiped clean of memory or thought. After a moment she said, “Well, Dean Inglesleeve has been here forever. He probably knows everybody.” I looked a tad less confidently at his barred door; what would it take to get inside? But instead she plucked at the sleeve of a bearded, bespectacled, Birkenstocked man scuttling past with a cup of hot coffee, and queried, “Dean? Someone to see you.”
He sucked me into his wake as he entered his office, threw up his blinds, pressed the button on his blinking answering machine, and swung his gladiator sandals up to his desktop.
“Coffee?” he offered first, and at my denial said, “How can I help you?” in a folksy way. I figured he couldn’t be more than fifty but he certainly looked like a refugee from a very different era. Somewhere hidden around this room there must be a pair of bongo drums.
“I’m looking for Charmian Carr,” I said, “She graduated from the Allied Health program. She’s due an insurance payout and this is the last address I have for her.”
He was listening out of one ear to a considerably less interesting stream of complaints from his answering machine, all of which appeared to concern the failures of “the boiler plant”. He turned it off.
“Charmian Carr?” he echoed. “I’d like to know where she is myself.”
We looked at each other across his messy desk. I didn’t know where to take that one. So I sat down. He helped me out.
“We usually don’t lose track of people,” he said, rubbing his balding gingery head. “She worked right here, in this office. We offered her a faculty position. After she called in sick I discovered she had sold her house on the Heights and moved away. We discovered some – er – financial improprieties in her accounts. I’m not making any accusations, you understand,” he looked hungrily at my briefcase as if to suggest that any “payouts” must belong to him – “But it would be helpful if she could explain. I assumed we’d at least be contacted as references for future employers, but nothing. Hasn’t been a peep out of her. Our alumni department is very clever at keeping track of everybody, and we are the beneficiaries of a great deal of loyalty and enthusiasm from our graduates – but nobody’s been able to find her.”
We blinked at each other. It seemed incumbent upon me to say something. I said, “That’s weird.” Then I added, “Maybe she got married and changed her name.”
An odd expression flickered over his face. Cynicism? Maybe some kind of private joke. Was he really another of her victims? I tried to remind myself, when you’re lying to other people, you always have to assume that it’s at least possible that they’re also lying to you.
He said smoothly, “Maybe she’s in jail. Maybe she’s in a monastery in Tibet. People change. Who can possibly know the heart of another?” He picked up a rubber band and played with it, wrapping it round and round his stubby fingers. I watched mesmerized as he shut off his own circulation; the fingers swelling. Reddening.
I had the strongest sense that he telling me she was gay. Of course, with Charmian, who could be surprised? Charmian would do anything – if it was worth her while. What had she said to me?
Something about “containing legions”. Like those demonically possessed creatures in the Bible. I tried not to fall out of “character”. My persona would be focused on one goal and not into character assessment. “You’d think she’d have some friends she’d keep in touch with,” you know, building up to asking him about them, but he said, “Or her family. But they keep coming to us. Last time I spoke to them they were thinking of having her declared legally dead.” He stopped with the self-torture and gazed at me strangely. I think I may have been open-mouthed at that point. Then he turned and raked the wall with a glance.
I followed his gaze. The wall was covered with eight by eleven color photos, dates beneath. “Are these staff pictures?” I inquired, standing up.
“They are. Staff and faculty.” He shot his rubber band at one of them. “That was her last year.” He had good aim. I stood up to look at it. 1997. There were a couple of white haired women but no blondes. I didn’t see her anywhere. I peered closer, as if I might find her peeking out between others’ shoulder blades.
He came up behind me. “There she is,” he said. “Sitting in the front row.”
I gasped. This dumpy creature with the dark waterfall of Gina Lollobrigida hair and all the jowling couldn’t be Charmian. Even if she won the lottery and had every one of her bones and all of her skin replaced, this woman was just too short. It was impossible.
He was regarding me with wild surmise because of my gasp. I had to stop giving myself away. Focus. I was good at selling advertising because I was all about win-win. Figure out what they want and give it to them. Like a beginning con artist I couldn’t stop worrying that he would see through my interpretation. But he wanted Charmian too. If I had money – if she had money, and I knew she did – he wanted it. To keep the conversation going I said, “We only have a driver’s license photo but it doesn’t look anything like this woman.”
“Leave me your card,” he said. “We’ll make some inquiries.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I was planning to use my own name but my card doesn’t say anything about insurance. I felt I had lost him forever. I said stupidly, stiffly, hearing myself obviously lying, “I’ll get you one. They’re out in the car. ” And I got the hell out of there. Damn. I was bad at this. Was Charmian just naturally better at this kind of thing? Or was it simply because she’d had so much practice?
I checked in to the Sleep Inn along the highway and asked for the library. The desk clerk said the college had a library – except now I was scared of the college. But the nearest public library was in Kirkup, twenty-two miles away. To the soundtrack of Death of an Interior Decorator by DeathCab for Cutie, I drove there.
There had to be another record of community college doings other than their own. The librarian told me the local newspaper was the Hornet but everything was already on microfiche. Still, it was cross-referenced by subject matter. That could help me, right? I didn’t have to pretend to be anybody special. She didn’t look at me funny or even ask what I was up to. When I said I was searching for Charmian Carr, she taught me how to enter the name, then look up the resulting stories.
There were a lot of them. More than twenty. Some were only a mention, but others had pictures. Two stories were about her exclusively. Wow! I should have come here first!
“Turkish Vacation Turns Into Archaeological Dig,” read a headline. Here was a photo of the real Charmian, sitting in her office at the college. I scrolled down, searching for I don’t know what. This woman was never the Charmian I knew. It was impossible that there could be two Charmian Carrs out of Cold Creek Community College. My growing excitement was threatening to get in the way of my detective work.
It sure looked like Charmian had stolen somebody else’s identity, and that someone else had subsequently disappeared.
“Cold Creek Faculty Tackles Ionesco Play,” said the other headline, and there was the real Charmian Carr, dressed up in drag with a Groucho-like moustache and a tailcoat, bowing deeply for the camera. Behind her, laughing, stood my stepmother. Oh my God!
But who was she? The article gave the cast list but of course it meant nothing to me. I pored over the names, but nothing leaped out at me.
I asked the librarian if there was any way to get a copy of the article. Just like my father always said, as long as you’re willing to pay, you can get anything you want.
Alysse Aallyn 