A Child's Book of True Crime (14 page)

They pulled a chair into the bathroom and he sat down while she touched his wound with warm wet cotton wool. She’d caught him having his fun, he’d been punished, and now she was fixing up her little boy. Lying just underneath his anger was his sense he was ridiculous: he would never get away from her. They went to bed and lay next to each other. His head throbbed. She started to cry again, but he figured she’d gotten the anger out of her system. He held out his
hand. She would not take it. He retracted the hand and waited on his side of the bed, eager for annihilatory sleep.

“How would you feel,” I’d once asked Thomas directly, “if your wife were to murder me?” We were lying next to each other in the spare room. For a moment he’d been silent. “I’d put my head in my hands and think:
Kill me! I did it!
And that’s what Harvey would’ve been thinking:
Why didn’t she kill me? The bitch slept next to me. She could’ve driven a knife into my chest! She could have taken scissors to my dick!”
Thomas paused. “Although if someone was sitting on top of me, holding scissors, and it occurred to her to go off and kill some little slut, which would I choose?” He turned to look at me. “Let me get back to you on that.”

The telephone stopped. I stared at it another minute before ripping the plug from the wall. Veronica had forsaken all goodness. She was so amoral she thought of this terrorizing as her art; as the purest form of self-expression. I remembered another time, asking Thomas, “You don’t think Margot survived?” “Absolutely. And now she’s drinking a cocktail.” “Wouldn’t it be cocoa?” “No,” he’d warned gnomically. “You can’t be sophisticated
and
virtuous.”

I walked into the bathroom. My legs were scratched. I could still smell meat. It could have been in my hair. It could have been on my skin. I poured sweet gunk into the bathwater, then looked up. A fluorescent tube was over the mirror. I searched my face for traces of doom.

Inside all the true-crime books were the same photographs. Publishers must have recycled them, knowing we were all secretly physiognomists. They’d found the ultimate photograph of a murder victim in her school uniform which
they reused over and over, alternating others from their
doomed girl
series. There was a shot of doomed girl sun-bathing, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun as she laughed into the camera. Blowing out candles on a birthday cake, doomed girl was surrounded by the kids with whom she did volunteer work. It was perverse; newspapers chose the prettiest photos, as if any witness would recognize the victim who didn’t have her face squashed against a car window, gun to head. Maybe the appeal, for young male readers, was that
they
could’ve saved them. Or, that they could’ve killed them. For young women, doomed girls are annoying. It’s a reminder one should start locking the doors of the car. A photo of a schoolgirl with bangs and a dental brace stands for never walk home alone on an ill-lit street.

I saw myself still wearing the black underwear that had gotten me into this trouble in the first place. Shivering, I took it off. “I’ll go away,” I whispered. “I’ll go away anywhere. I’ll leave this town and head straight to the mainland.” I checked the water temperature. The main reason for not leaving immediately was my class. I would break it off with Thomas, but I’d put so much into teaching those kids. I hadn’t fulfilled all the goals I’d had.

The sigh on entering the bath: the relief of it. I didn’t swim as often now; if I did I’d be overwhelmed by sadness. “I’ve missed you,” I’d say aloud, but then in a second the yearning passed and I didn’t even remember what it was I’d lost. Fear, I realized, had made me slightly numb. Walking down the street I sometimes had trouble smiling at people. I would see them coming and think, In thirty seconds look up and smile. In ten seconds. Get ready: smile, you must smile.
The expressions on people’s faces betrayed how odd they found me. “Kate, are you all right?” the teachers asked. “You seem jumpy.” “Oh, I’m fine,” I’d answer. But I had barely any flight mechanism, and my fright wasn’t too good either. It’s called counterphobia when you rush headlong into the thing that frightens you the most. It can feel a little like not caring: quicksand one sashays toward.

I lay back and bubbles surrounded my neck as would a white fur stole. The Scotch bottle rested on the soap stand. I felt like a woman who knew about the world. Taking slow sips, I applied all my experience to Ellie’s situation: Graeme had probably told her his marriage had been on the rocks long before her arrival on the scene. In fact he’d told her he and his wife were thinking of separating, they were discussing it.

I bet Margot sometimes came into the clinic acting as if Ellie wasn’t doing a very good job. Margot would look at her meanly, as if thinking, Soon you’ll be this old, and Ellie always wanted to answer aloud, “No, I won’t.” She had started planning to go overseas. She wanted to go backpacking with the money she’d saved working at the clinic. Ellie had come to realize she had been very naive: she could barely even read her old diary entries, because she’d drawn pages of wedding dresses with embroidered trains. She’d designed a bridesmaid’s dress and had written down flowers for a bouquet. Nearly a year after moving to Black Swan Point she realized she’d been crazy. Nothing was going to change. She’d been crazy. In the office Ellie made a show of reading postcards from her friends overseas. She ripped certain pages from her diary: it was embarrassing to have ever been so young.

Like in this house, everything in Ellie’s house was probably
exactly as it was when she was growing up: the daddy longlegs doing yogic stretches on the bathroom ceiling, the tap water tasting like twigs. When she opened the closets’ sighing doors, zephyrs of melancholy blew her hair back. Each shelf was like purgatory for all things once loved. Long-punctured inflatable canoes lived next to ancient electric blankets with rusted insides. There were jigsaw puzzles, all of the most inscrutable, infuriating images; and board games missing crucial pieces.
Cluedo
had one murder weapon left; tooth floss was the rope; a paper clip, the lead pipe. In the evenings, when she was small, her family played parlor games, snakes and ladders, gin rummy. Once she and her cousins made their own Ouija board and held a séance with her father. “Who last farted?” they asked the spirits gleefully and the impudent glass spelled out his name.

I stood up for a moment and turned out the light. The water again became still, but for the hot tap’s slow drip. I tried not to think of Margot leaving her sleeping husband, then driving through the night. Sometimes I pictured it so clearly I couldn’t get to sleep . . .

Ellie’s father had probably called all winter to check she had enough firewood. Even though she never lit fires. Even though she didn’t know how to. He’d call up, and talk her through the lighting process. And she’d say, “Yes, I’ve arranged the kindling now, in a tepee, yes . . . Oh! There it goes. It’s really raging!” Then she’d hang up, and turn on the radiator. The house looked just the same, but she didn’t fit inside it anymore. It shouldn’t have had to witness this behavior. Everything the same and her so different. On bad days she got the sense it might blackmail her.

“I find it hard to get aroused,” her lover had complained, “surrounded by so many photos of prizewinning marlin.” And she’d felt like answering: “Is that all that bothers you? Look underneath the fish photos. Can’t you see? Right there on the couch . . . it’s my father! My father may as well be sitting very straight, watching television with the volume down, because it’s
less excruciating.”
Her lover was pulling off her shirt, with his back to the TV. He couldn’t see the documentary on unsolved mysteries that was playing, and when the blurry footage of the Loch Ness Monster appeared—that famous image of a long-necked creature in thick fog—he was running his fingers along her spine, and only she could hear her indignant father calling, “It was probably just a duck!”

Her lover started to whisper the crudest things. Didn’t he realize her mother was still in the kitchen? If you squinted you could see her staring into the fridge with a slightly furrowed brow, realizing there was no food. One of her paperbacks was waiting on the countertop, as she took the last orange from the fruit bowl, cut it, and gave half to her husband, offering her daughter a quarter and saving the remaining quarter for herself.
Why does Dad always get half?
Ellie thought as her lover undid his belt, and then his trousers. And then she was shocked. She was shocked for them as he exposed himself, slowly stroking his erection.
Why don’t we just cut the orange into thirds?

He’d push her shoulders gently and she’d fall to her knees, eye level with his gut. A small, round gut from living well. He was grimacing, as if concentrating on impossible calculus, his brow wrinkled into a π symbol. These facial contortions made him the ugliest man in the world. He had the ugliest
face you could ever see. He’d start moaning and she had to close her eyes in order to concentrate. Then he’d gently stroke her hair, before pushing her head closer to his crotch. She tried not to gag. “Oh Lord!” Apparently chiropractors see a lot of women who’ve stuffed up their jaws from doing this sort of thing. “Do you like this?” he would moan, although obviously it was difficult to answer. Did she like
what
? Did she like that her parents were, in fact, all over the house? No. No, she didn’t. Their marriage hung in the bathroom like a scratchy old towel; like a shelf of aging sunscreen bottles, the nuptial smell was overwhelming.

Afterwards when he was gone, she wanted to call up her mother, and for her mother to say, nearly in a baby voice, “How’s my little girl? How’s my sweetheart?” Busy with her own deceit, Ellie didn’t realize that in no time her lover’s wife would leave him sleeping and drive through the night to pay a visit. She heard her mother’s voice and she wished she were nine years old sitting by the fire, burning a piece of paper’s edges to make an antique treasure map. She wished she would be sent to bed before
The Sound of Music
’s finale, because it was almost ten o’clock. She wanted to go out into the garden when the guests arrived with a lit sparkler to do her “sparkler dance.” And for them all to clap when she came back inside, triumphant.

The push-pull of children and parents separating: a minute ago she had been walking barefoot between her mother and father, watching as their shadows took turns carrying her shoes. Nowadays she sat with them as they came inside from the beach. She watched as they took off their sandals, as they wiped the sand off their skin, and thought, I know too much
about your feet. And, I suppose, you know too much about mine. I know too much about the language of your face. And you know too much about the way to say my name. We’re like castaways, you and I—families are like castaways on a makeshift raft; baling out water, plugging leaks with whatever we can find—but you’d better teach me again how to swim. I’ll kick hard, while strong arms hold me in the water. If I curl up at your feet, pretending to be a baby, perhaps you’ll never die.

 • • • 

Margot moved around the Siddells’ house, staring at the blank night windows. Her footsteps were heavier on the ground than she’d expected. There was a knife in her pocket for protection. She would teach that girl a lesson; she’d like to cut her pretty face to teach her a lesson. Margot kept each step steady. The wind through the leaves made its whispering and she kept each step steady. Her husband wouldn’t cope a day without her. Imagine Graeme putting his big hand into their daughters’ little pockets. Shoving in his hand to find a shell before the wash. His fingers would jam against the soft lining, the silky lining. He’d nearly rip the fine stitching, searching as if for a love note wedged into the little fold.

Following the side fence, Margot found a window with a tease of open curtain like a slit of a skirt from ankle to waist. Inside glowed a dull light. She didn’t bother with the front door. She walked further, and tried the fly-wire screen around the back. In one dream moment it wheezed open. From the hallway she made her way toward the light. Margot heard breathing. And then a lamp on the bedside table showed off the sleeping girl. The girl breathed in and out.
Her dance dress was hanging on the back of the door. A little slip of velvet which would barely cover her arse. A skinny little dress she’d probably worn for him.
You vain bitch, dancing round the room for my husband, stripping off your slut clothes.
Cold was being injected into Margot’s veins. Cold was surging to her brain. She walked toward the bed. She hated the flutter of the sleeping girl’s breath.
Everything you see belongs to me.
She could feel the knife pierce the skin, the young unblemished skin. The mouth was gasping, spluttering a half scream, and Margot wanted it to stop.
Every time you laugh, that’s my happiness. When he kisses you, when he puts his fingers inside you: that’s love you’ve stolen from me.
As Margot brought the knife down, she knew she was also dying.
Stop spluttering.
Her hands were covered in the girl’s blood, and she could already feel herself plunging, she could feel her body falling. Her hands were covered in warm blood and she thought,
It’s you who’s killing me. Stop spluttering.

 • • • 

The bathwater had turned cold. I lifted myself out, heavy. Sand, on the floorboards, stuck to my feet. Sand was sprinkled through the sheets; it was in the rug by the bed. Brushing the grit away, I lay down—eyes closed, heart horizontal—playing at some ideal of night, while outside a dog refined its barking. Before she drifted away, the girl must have thought that nothing could happen, nothing would happen.
Sleep the sleep of the just babes
. In the morning, early, she planned to get up and start again. So,
lie there still
, she heard her mother’s voice whisper.
Lie there still. Close your eyes. The window will cover you in a sheet of moonlight, while I tell you this story.

• MURDER AT BLACK SWAN POINT •