The Guilty One (9 page)

Ron backpedaled madly in his mind. This, also, was new, this minefield of his wife's emotions. But before he could trace the latest trigger, she yanked a tissue from the box on the coffee table and wiped it savagely under her eyes.

“You weren't thinking about
hurting
me when you went out on the bridge,” she said hoarsely. “You made that decision all by yourself, didn't you? Didn't think about how it would affect me. About how I would feel. So maybe I get to make some decisions without you too.” She gave up on the tissue and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, smearing her makeup.

“Oh, Jesus, Deb, I never—honey. Honey, please.” His voice broke, surprising him, and Deb looked up at him and sighed.

“Forget it. It's over. But what I'm doing, it's for
Karl
. Don't you see that I can never quit, not if it's for him? Whatever I need to do, I'll do. And I need you, Ron, I do. I don't need you to agree with me, I'm not asking you that. Just . . . don't try to stop me. Okay? I tried to keep you from having to deal with Kami, I know you don't like her. I didn't expect you home until later. I'll . . . you won't have to do anything, really. I'll arrange everything. But . . .”

What was he going to be asked to do? He steeled himself: in the barter system of their marriage, during their rare arguments, he would extend the first gesture of peace and she would collapse like a pretty parasol. But she was different now. Things had changed.

“It's Karl,” she said briskly. She spoke quickly, as if she was trying to get out a speech she'd rehearsed. “It's the stress of being transferred to Panamint, the new environment, new rules, new everything. And, just, you know. But he's balking at this. He's not sure . . . I need you to talk to him. Get him on board.”

“Wait, wait,” Ron said. “You're saying Karl doesn't even
want
to appeal?”

Deb tightened her mouth, blinking. “It's not that—look, you haven't seen him in a long time—”

“I went with you when he was transferred—”

“But other than that. Which, I'm not blaming you. But you haven't talked to him. Haven't seen . . . he's not himself.”

Of course he's not himself
, Ron wanted to yell,
he's a convicted murderer in state lockup
. It had been hard enough to see his son in Montair County Jail while he awaited sentencing, and it wasn't just the distance, either, though Panamint was nearly two hours away.

“But you want me to talk him into this? Isn't it kind of up to him, Deb? I mean, he's an adult and—”

“He's my
son
.” She glared at him defiantly, not even bothering to pretend to be chastened by her mistake:
her
son, not
theirs
. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing. Maybe that's how she really saw it—that Karl was hers alone, that Ron had abdicated.

“All right,” Ron finally said. Yes, he felt guilty for not visiting more often; yes, he'd needed a reason to do better. And he could go alone; Deb would have no way to police what he said to Karl.

“Good. I made you an appointment for tomorrow. Three o'clock.”

“You . . .” Ron stared at his wife, at her chin thrust out, the challenge in her gaze. It was audacious, especially for Deb, who had until the past year deferred to him in most things. She had been that kind of wife: old-fashioned, pampered, soft and pretty. A homemaker, in the traditional sense. A helpmate. The wind, as Ron had joked at their twentieth-anniversary party, beneath his wings.

“I know you might have to move some things around at work,” she continued. “but I was lucky to get the slot.”

Ron nodded. She could afford to be conciliatory, now that she'd won. He could have refused, argued that he couldn't get away from work, forced her to move it to another day. But the online visit scheduling system was notoriously flaky and unforgiving. Deb had it down to a science, logging on the minute new blocks of time opened up to schedule her weekly visits. Getting a cancellation was never guaranteed.

Ron was no longer sure where the line was, marking the debts they owed each other. But it was clear that his wife was not going to give up. “All right.”

“Thank you,” Deb whispered, sounding exhausted by her victory. After a moment Ron reached for her, almost expecting to be rebuffed, but she sagged against him, letting him wrap his arms around her. He could smell her perfume and her faintly sour breath.

The prison sentence that Karl had received was only the start. Who knew what reparations lay ahead—for all of them?

THE REST OF
the evening settled into brittle normalcy. Deb heated up some dinner for Ron; he ate it in the living room, watching Netflix, while Deb knitted. At eleven they went upstairs. Ron brushed his teeth and got ready for bed; when he came out of the bathroom, the bedroom was empty.

On a rare impulse (he ordinarily wasn't the sort of man to be overly concerned with how his wife occupied herself in her own time; he was a believer in practical distance in a marriage), he walked quietly down the hall to the bedroom Deb had converted to her “office.” Here, she had a desk, fabric-covered bulletin boards, her sewing machine, bins of wrapping paper, and boxes of Karl's school papers. Shelves containing mementos and bins of craft supplies. A little television and a chaise where she sometimes liked to lie while she talked on the phone to her sisters.

She'd left the door open, and she was sitting, as Ron had known she would be, at the desk, haloed in the light of a porcelain lamp. In front of her was the carved wooden box that her great-grandfather had made and brought with him from Finland. Her hand rested on the top. There was a key; Ron had seen it once, a tarnished, pretty little brass one on a faded silk ribbon. Ron didn't know where Deb kept the key, and he didn't see it now. The box was closed, her hands folded on top, her head bowed.

Everyone was entitled to their secrets, Ron thought, turning back down the hallway toward their bedroom. Lord knew that he had his own. He'd wondered, of course, about the box, especially in the months after Karl was gone when she first got into the habit of taking it down from its place on the shelf in the evenings.

But tonight, for the first time, he began to wonder if there was something in the box that he ought to see. Some secret clue to his son, his wife; something he could use to spin the fragile strands that held them all together.

MARIS DELETED HER
first attempt at a reply to Alana. There had been a fourth text while they were moving the bedding—
Srsly beginning to worry CALL ME
—but how could she explain what had happened? It would seem to Alana that Maris had made a decision, but it didn't feel that way to her at all. Sitting on this rickety metal kitchen chair, after she had wiped its brown vinyl seat and back with a wadded sheet of newspaper dampened under the kitchen faucet, she felt as though she had arrived here on a raft swept along a river by a current. The river hadn't been especially frightening; it wasn't the stuff of cartoons—rushing rapids and jagged rocks and deadly waterfalls. The last few days had been more like the Mississippi River after a spring flood: dull, lugubrious, devoid of beauty, studded with potential hazards whose threat was impossible to discern until you were upon them.

And she, to carry the clunky metaphor to its conclusion as she sat sweating under the flickering light fixture in the stinking kitchen, was the near-drowned dog that got in over its head, fought hard just to stay afloat, and was now lying exhausted on a muddy bank, more dead than not. And this was all she could come up with:

So sorry I didn't text earlier. Decided to stay w a friend tonight.

Long story. Will call u tomorrow.

She powered the phone all the way off. Her charger had been in her luggage. She would have to buy a new one tomorrow so she could call Alana.

So much to do tomorrow. If she could just sleep for now . . . if she spread newspapers on the floor, then put the box spring on top of the newspapers. Slept in her clothes. She was certainly tired enough, exhaustion slamming her moments after Norris left.

Except what if whatever was on the floor seeped through? And how could she sleep with the smell, the still-hot air, the taste in her mouth that she had no toothbrush to scrub away?

And Norris had someone picking up the trash in the morning. If she missed this chance, she would have to live with the mess until Monday. Even if she bagged all the trash, she wouldn't be able to leave it out in case animals got into it. It would have to sit in these two rooms, ballast that would keep the space tainted.

“I can do this,” Maris said out loud. As mantras went, it wasn't much of one. That was what happened when you lost a child, though: you didn't have enough of yourself left to come up with much. You were all crushed shards and severed bits, and when Nina told you
just a phrase, it can be anything at all, it can be as simple as “I can do this
,” your broken brain echoed back like you were only a toddler yourself.

I can do this
had gotten her through the days with all of their terrible milestones. It had been a barely adequate trick, and Maris had put in a barely adequate performance, but she was here, wasn't she, she was still breathing, and besides, the next few days didn't require her to be anything more than barely adequate.

She took the key that Norris had given her and worked it onto her keychain, next to her house keys and car keys and the key to Alana's condo. The keychain was an enameled-pink metal daisy that Calla had given her for Mother's Day a month before her death. It had come from the Coach store and Calla had paid for it with her babysitting money. The enamel was wearing off at the edges. Maris let herself out, a bright spotlight on the back porch coming on automatically, triggered by a motion sensor.

It had cooled off considerably outside. She headed for her car, parked half a block away. It was crazy to walk around this neighborhood by herself after dark. It was asking for trouble. At least she should hold her keys between her knuckles, the way she'd seen on
Oprah,
ready to slash, to aim for the eyes. But Maris left her keys in her purse and her purse over her shoulder. No one was going to come after her, not here, not now. She didn't have that kind of luck. Whatever bitter fate had cursed her wanted her alive.

Safe in her car, she passed the shuttered diner where she'd first met Pet. In apartment windows she saw figures moving, the blue glare of televisions. She found the Walgreens that she remembered from this morning—had it only been this morning? It shared an intersection with a Carl's Junior and a mortuary. Cars drove by her, speeding through yellow lights in the intersection. As Maris waited for the light to change, a woman pushed a stroller in front of her and talked into her phone, staring at Maris as she passed. The baby was wide awake, waving its tiny fists.

Inside the Walgreens, the air-conditioning hit Maris along with a cool, chemical smell. She picked up a blue basket and filled it with Windex, Comet, bleach, green Scotch-Brite pads, a roll of paper towels, and two packages of cheap thin rags before going back to the front of the store and exchanging the basket for a cart. She added a plastic bucket, a broom and dustpan, a two-pack of rubber gloves, another package of rags, and a small box fan. A twelve-pack of bottled water, feeling a twinge of guilt because she hadn't packed her stainless water bottle, though it would have just gotten stolen anyway. A box of Fiber One bars, toilet paper, a toothbrush and toothpaste, hair elastics, shampoo and soap and a bottle of Jergens moisturizer, which had been her mother's brand.

At the register, a
People
magazine, a pack of gum. If the clerk thought either Maris or her purchases were noteworthy, she gave no clue. Maris signed the charge on the little device and headed back to her car.

Two men were standing behind it, talking in low voices. They looked like they were in their twenties. Maybe younger. They were black. Despite the heat, they wore jeans, not shorts. Silver flashed in their mouths.

Maris had worked with boys who looked just like these, but that was not what gave her the courage to push her cart within inches of their legs and look directly in their faces.

“Excuse me, I need to get in my trunk,” she said. She was ready to shove them out of the way if necessary. She just didn't care.

But they stepped away.

HER ENERGY RETURNED
when she tore open the package of gloves. She pressed them to her nose and inhaled the latex scent, crowding out the odors of rot and filth. That had been almost three hours ago.

With her hair in a ponytail and her pants rolled up, Maris had swept the tiny bedroom, then cleaned the walls first with a rag, wiping off cobwebs and loose flakes of paint, then again with more rags dipped into hot water mixed with Comet. She dabbed at the corners of the room with a rag hooked on the broom handle. She changed the water in the bucket before washing the bed frame and finally the floors. The rags she used on the floor were gray with dirt when she was done.

Maris thought about quitting for the night once she got the mattress and box spring in place, the fan balanced in the window, and moved her purse onto the bedroom floor. This one room was clean enough now, and the fan blew cool air scented with jasmine into the room. But her clothes were damp with sweat and she wasn't tired anymore.

She filled three bulging trash bags just with the garbage strewn around the kitchen, the abandoned toiletries in the bathroom, the contents of the refrigerator and the food left in the cabinets, mostly open boxes of cereal and cans of chili. She threw away the curtains from the kitchen window, the torn shower curtain and all the grimy rings, two dead plants in their pots, a brand-new package of men's V-neck undershirts she found in the dresser that served as an end table next to the sofa in the kitchen. She ran steaming hot water in the sink and added bleach along with the dish soap, and soaked the dishes while she went through the drawers and threw out everything rusted or bent or broken. She tore a glove on something sharp in the junk drawer while she was shaking its contents into the trash, and had to put on the second pair. She washed the counters and spread out clean rags to serve as a dish drainer, then washed the dishes and stacked them in a teetering pile.