The Final Act

by Joy Fielding

  You have to stay calm, she admonished herself, scratching painfully at her arms, her skin on fire, as if she’d just slipped into a burning sweater. She wanted to jump from the car, strip off all her clothes, accost total strangers, laugh hysterically in their faces, scream at them until she was hoarse, but she couldn’t do any of those things because Tom would tell her she was behaving inappropriately. And he’d be right, of course. He was always right. She did behave inappropriately. She yelled when whispers would suffice, laughed when others might cry, lashed out when what she wanted most was the comfort of someone’s arms.

  How was it that Tom managed to stay so focused, so in control? Cindy wondered, glancing over at her ex-husband, who was sitting beside her in the backseat of the police car, staring out the side window. How was it that his feathers never seemed to ruffle? That even faced with the loss of his daughter, he remained stoic and cool?

  Was it possible such composure was all an act? That underneath the deceptively placid surface, a smouldering geyser was waiting to erupt? That behind the pat phrases, the condescending nods, the maddening reserve, he was every bit as panicky as she was?

  “Do you remember how much Julia used to talk when she was a little girl?” Cindy asked Tom, who either didn’t hear her question or chose to ignore it. “You couldn’t shut her up,” Cindy continued, undeterred. “She’d start talking the minute she opened her eyes in the morning, and she didn’t stop until she closed them again at night. And sometimes she’d even talk in her sleep. It was so cute. Remember, Tom?”

  Tom’s shoulders stiffened. “Cindy. . .”

  “You’d keep waiting for her to take a breath, so you could get a word in, but it would never come. You’d think, surely she has to come up for air at some point, but she just breezed from one topic into the next. Isn’t that right, Tom?”

  Tom’s head turned slowly toward her. “Cindy . . .”

  “And you didn’t dare interrupt her,” Cindy continued, chuckling at the memory. “If you did, she’d just start all over again from the beginning. And you’d have to listen to the whole thing again until she got to the part where you’d cut her off, and then she’d give you this little look. Remember that look, Tom? You used to say it could cut glass.”

  “Cindy . . .”

  “What?” Cindy snapped, understanding now how Julia must have felt at being interrupted. Why had she always interrupted her? Why couldn’t she just have let her speak?

  “I think we should go inside now,” Tom said quietly.

  “Why? What’s the rush? Is she going anywhere?” Cindy caught the look of horror on her ex-husband’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that inappropriate?”

  “Mrs. Carver, are you all right?” Detective Gill asked from the front seat.

  “I’m fine,” Cindy told him. “I mean, why wouldn’t I be fine? We’re just here to identify my daughter’s body, right? Nothing to get upset about.”

  “Mrs. Carver . . .” Detective Bartolli said.

  “She always wanted to be an actress, you know,” Cindy told the two detectives, trying to prolong her time in the car, to postpone the inevitable. “She used to prance around the house in my high heels and nightgowns, like a fairy princess—you should have seen her—and she’d make up these cute little plays, and act out all the parts. She’d sing and dance. She was really very good. Wasn’t she, Tom?”

  “Cindy. . .”

  “I remember one afternoon when Julia was maybe four years old. I was busy with Heather, and Julia was playing with her Barbies—she had at least fifty of them—and I suddenly realized it was awfully quiet in Julia’s room. So I put Heather in her crib and went to see what was going on. And there was Julia standing naked in the middle of her bedroom, in front of all her Barbies, whom she’d arranged in this kind of free-floating semicircle, and she was holding up this pencil, and she was saying, ‘And now, audience, we’re going to operate on my vagina.’ ” Cindy laughed out loud.

  “Cindy, for God’s sake,” Tom said.

  The smile slid from Cindy’s face, as if rubbed off by a harsh abrasive. “What? Not appropriate?”

  “Mrs. Carver,” Detective Bartolli said gently. “Maybe Detective Gill should take you home. Mr. Carver can make the identification.”

  “No!” Cindy said quickly. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine,” Tom said.

  “There is no way you’re going to go into that room without me.”

  “Cindy . . .”

  “She’s my daughter too.”

  “Nobody disputes that.”

  “We recognize how difficult this is for you,” Detective Gill said.

  “Then you also recognize there’s no way you’re keeping me from her.”

  “Mrs. Carver,” Detective Bartolli continued, “it’s very important that if you go inside, you stay calm.”

  “Why?” Cindy asked, genuinely curious. “Are you afraid I’ll upset the other corpses?”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Tom said. “Clearly my wife is hysterical.”

  “I’m not your wife,” Cindy reminded him curtly.

  “But you are hysterical.”

  “I’m fine,” Cindy assured the two detectives. “I’ll be okay. I promise.” I’ll be a good girl, the child in her protested, pulling back her shoulders, and taking a deep breath, determined to prove she could be as rational, as grown-up, as they were. I’ll be as cool as a cucumber, she decided, puzzling over the origin of that expression. Why a cucumber? Why not “cool as a carrot” Or “cool as a cabbage”? How about “cool as a corpse”?

  Now that’s appropriate, she thought, almost laughing as she pushed open the car door and stepped onto the pavement, the unseasonably hot September air descending on her head like a collapsing parachute. Better to keep such musings to herself, she decided. Any more outbursts and they wouldn’t let her into the building, let alone into the viewing room. They wouldn’t let her see her daughter. Or what was left of her. “Oh God,” she said, trying not to picture Julia lying battered and lifeless on a cold, steel slab.

  She felt her knees buckle, her legs give way, as if someone had kicked at them from behind, the reality she’d worked so hard to keep at bay pushing itself on top of her, holding her down, tearing through her body, like a rapist.

  “Cindy,” Tom said, catching her by the elbow before she could collapse.

  “I’m all right,” she told him, regaining her composure, putting one tenuous foot in front of the other.

  “Mrs. Carver?”

  “I’m fine.”

  They walked slowly around to the front of the building, Detective Gill rushing ahead to open the heavy glass door, then stepping back to allow them entry. Cindy crossed into the main lobby, a cold but efficient use of space that was typical of most government buildings. Detective Bartolli checked in with the dispatcher, a middle-aged man whose lush black beard was in stark contrast to his shiny bald head, then quickly ushered the small group toward a room to the right of the lobby.

  “What’s in here?” Cindy asked, pulling back as they reached the door.

  “It’s just a room,” Detective Gill assured her as they stepped over the threshold.

  “This is Mark Evert.” Detective Bartolli introduced the surprisingly robust-looking morgue attendant, who was waiting for them inside.

  “Mr. Evert,” Tom said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “What is this, some sort of bereavement room?” Cindy asked.

  “We call it the comfort room,” Mark Evert replied.

  “Really? What kind of comfort are you offering exactly?”

  Mark Evert smiled sadly, as if he understood her pain. “If you’d like to sit down. . .” He pointed toward a grouping of recently refurbished sofa and chairs. “And there’s a bathroom, if you’d like. . . .”

  “To freshen up?” Cindy asked.

  “Cindy. . .” Tom’s voice warned from somewhere beside her.

  She looked around the small room, i
ts dim lights meant to be soothing, the smell of new carpeting permeating the cool air. “I think I would like to use the bathroom,” she said, disappearing into the tiny room, and locking the door after her. She turned on the tap, splashed several handfuls of cold water at her face. “Stay calm,” she whispered at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. The face in the glass stared back at her through hopelessly dazed eyes. Cindy noted the greenish-yellow of the woman’s cheeks, the dark circles under her eyes, the circles spreading out in ripples, like a still lake disturbed by a stone. You can do this, her reflection admonished silently. You can do this.

  “No, I can’t,” Cindy said out loud. “I can’t.”

  There was a gentle knock on the bathroom door. “Cindy?” Tom called. “Are you all right in there?”

  I’m fine in here, she wanted to answer. It’s out there I have a problem. Instead she said, “I’ll just be half a minute.” She took a deep breath, then reached for the door, stopped, walked back to the toilet and flushed it, watching as the water swirled aimlessly around the bowl before being sucked down the drain. Gone. Just like that. “Okay,” she said, coming back into the so-called comfort room, noting how quiet it was. This is what they mean by the term “deathly quiet,” she thought, knowing it would be inappropriate to voice such an observation out loud. “What happens now?”

  “We go inside.” Mark Evert indicated the door directly behind him. “We’ll show you the body of a young woman. She’s been strangled.”

  Cindy drew in a sharp intake of air, automatically reached for Tom’s hand, felt his fingers close around hers.

  “I thought you had closed-circuit TVs for this,” Tom said, his body stiffening along with his voice.

  The morgue attendant nodded. “We do, and generally speaking, we prefer to make identifications that way, especially in cases where’s there’s been significant trauma to the face. . .”

  “There’s been trauma to her face?” Cindy repeated, struggling to understand the man’s words.

  “There are a few bruises, along with some swelling and discoloration.”

  “Oh no.”

  “You can’t just show us a photograph?” Tom pressed.

  “Unfortunately, in cases of homicide, this isn’t an option. We require a direct identification.”

  “But on TV, people usually stand behind a window or something.”

  “Procedures vary in every jurisdiction,” Mark Evert explained patiently. “If you need a few more minutes, Mr. Carver. . .”

  “Are you all right?” Cindy asked her ex-husband, surprised to find their roles suddenly reversed.

  “Just tell us what to expect,” Tom said tersely.

  “The young woman you’re going to see was strangled some time in the last forty-eight hours. We haven’t done an autopsy yet to determine the exact time of death, but decomposition has started. . .”

  “Decomposition?” The terrible word assaulted Cindy’s ears like an icepick to the brain.

  “We’ll try to spare you as much as we can. I’m afraid we aren’t allowed to clean up the body in any way.”

  “Is there a lot of blood?” Tom asked.

  “No.”

  A prolonged sigh leaked from Cindy’s lungs.

  “You’ll be asked to make a formal identification in the presence of these detectives, myself, and the pathologist.”

  “What if we’re not sure?” Tom asked.

  Cindy moaned, the prospect of not being able to recognize her own child almost too much to bear.

  “Then we’ll ask you to supply us with Julia’s dental records, or her hairbrush. . .”

  “Can we go in now?” Cindy interrupted, knowing that if they waited any longer, if she had to listen to any more malignant words like decomposition and discoloration, or even to formerly benign words like dental records and hairbrush, she would go mad.

  Mark Evert’s hand hesitated on the doorknob. “You’re sure you’re ready?”

  Cindy marvelled at the question. How could anyone ever be ready for something like this? “I’m ready,” she said, feeling Tom’s fingers digging into her own as the door opened, and they stepped into the morgue.

  It was like a huge operating room. Cindy’s eyes bounced from the cream-colored tiles on the walls to the darker tiles at her feet. In the center of the room, and running its entire width was a big, stainless steel refrigerator at least ten feet high, containing three rows of compartments. There must be room for a hundred bodies in there, Cindy thought with a shudder, wondering how the attendants removed those bodies from the lockers without straining their backs, becoming only slowly aware of the narrow table directly in front of her, of the white vinyl body bag stretched out across its smooth surface.

  “This is Dr. Jong, the pathologist,” Mark Evert said of the disconcertingly young-looking man doing his best to look invisible, the doctor responding with an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

  He’s here to cut her up, Cindy realized, a sudden, loud buzzing filling her ears, as if a thousand bees were trapped there.

  “Remember,” Mark Evert was saying, “you have to be one hundred percent sure.”

  Cindy turned to Tom. “Do you remember when Julia was a little girl, and she was showing off on that new bicycle you bought her, and she fell off and broke both her arms?”

  “I remember,” Tom said, clutching tightly to her hands.

  “And I rushed her to the hospital, and of course, we had to wait about four hours till somebody saw us, and she kept saying, ‘Why doesn’t God like me, Mommy? Why doesn’t He like me?’ And I told her, ‘Don’t be silly. Of course God likes you. He loves you.’ But she was adamant. ‘No, He doesn’t love me, or He wouldn’t have broken my arms.’ And we laughed about that later. Do you remember how we laughed about that later?”

  “I remember,” Tom said again.

  “And then the poor thing couldn’t feed herself or go to the bathroom with both her arms in casts.”

  “It didn’t take her long to get the knack.”

  “And she was embarrassed to go to school.”

  “The teachers probably thought she was an abused child.”

  “And then you got that rock ‘n’ roll band you represented—who were they again?”

  “Rush.”

  “Yeah, Rush. I remember. Such nice guys. They all signed her casts. Then she couldn’t wait to get to school to show everybody. And when it came time to take the casts off, she cried and carried on.”

  “We had to keep those damn, smelly things for years.”

  “I remember that just after the doctor removed them, Julia fainted, and the doctor, who was standing on the other side of the room, came flying back and caught her before she fell off the table. She might have cracked her head open on the floor. And there I was, standing right beside her, and I didn’t realize what was happening.”

  “Cindy,” Tom said softly, “don’t do this.”

  “If I’d watched her more closely, she would never have fallen off her bicycle.”

  “Kids fall off their bicycles every day.”

  “If I’d paid closer attention. . .”

  “Mrs. Carver,” the morgue attendant said gently. “Do you think you’re ready now?”

  “Do you think she had any idea how much I love her?” Cindy asked her former husband, tears filling her eyes and spilling down her cheeks.

  “She knows,” Tom said.

  “I yelled at her. The morning of her audition. I yelled at her about the dog, I yelled at her for banging on the bathroom door, I insisted she come to the bridal fitting that afternoon when I knew she didn’t want to come.”

  “This didn’t happen because you yelled at her.”

  “What if she was kidnapped on her way to the fitting? What if whoever did this to her saw her as she was getting on the subway and followed her?”

  “Cindy. . .”

  “I should have been paying more attention.”

  “You’re a great mother, Cindy,�
�� Tom told her.

  “She must have been so scared.”

  “Mrs. Carver,” Detective Bartolli ventured, then stopped.

  Cindy confronted the young-looking pathologist. “How long does it take to strangle someone?”

  “Cindy . . .”

  “Please, Dr. Jong. Tell me how long it takes to strangle someone?”

  “Approximately two minutes,” the doctor answered.

  “Two minutes,” Cindy repeated. “Such a long time.” The buzzing in her ears grew louder.

  “We’ll get through this,” she thought she heard Tom say.

  Words jumped out at her only to retreat.

  “Are . . . ready . . . Mrs. . .?”

  Cindy noticed the police shield on the front of the body bag as a man’s hand reached for the zipper, the sound of the zipper cutting through the buzzing in her ears, like a chainsaw through a chunk of wood, one sound magnifying the other, until Cindy felt her head about to burst.

  Hands parted the zipper. A head emerged, as if from the womb. Cindy saw the straight blond hair plastered against the ghostly white skin, tried not to absorb the unsightly blotches of purple, blue, and red that stained the colorless cheeks like paint on canvas.

  Oh God, she thought, recognizing the once-lovely face.

  And then the room filled with the sound of angry bees, and Cindy fell unconscious to the floor.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Are you all right?” Tom was asking.

  Cindy opened her eyes, lifted her head from the soft beige-and-ivory-print silk of the sofa, stared at the man looming over her. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe this will help.” He pushed a tall glass of something cold into her hands.

  “What is it?”

  “Vodka and cranberry juice.”