After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  Maggie met her at the front door and let her in the house. Freddy sat in his new bedroom and listened to the two women talk. Their voices were low, little more than murmurs of sound; the half-imagined skitter of mice beneath the floorboards. He rose from his desk as his mother called up to him in a voice so unlike anything he had ever heard from her.

  She’s laughing, he thought. Mom’s laughing. He didn’t even know his mother could laugh. Bewildered, he padded quickly down the hall to the head of the stairs. Three steps down he froze. Nancy and his mother were in the foyer below. They were holding each other, embracing in a strangely familiar way – arms slung low, pelvises touching. It looked as though they could kiss at any moment or had only a moment ago.

  Briefly the conversation with Nancy about lesbians ran through his mind. In that moment he felt betrayed. He felt a hot wash of jealousy and – just for an instant – he felt something deeply Freudian about Maggie. Freddy started walking again. He was certain they were going to announce that Nancy was moving in. They were going to tell him they were lovers – had been lovers for years.

  “Hey, Mrs. Hicks,” Freddy greeted her.

  “Nancy,” she reminded him. Her eyes spoke why. She stepped out of Maggie’s arms; her hands clasped uncertainly in front of her. “Hi.”

  Maggie’s eyes flicked back and forth between Nancy and her son. Her lips pursed in thought.

  “I’m moving,” Nancy announced quickly.

  “You’re moving?” Freddy tried to sound surprised but he was not. He had expected it and the sight of the U-haul from his bedroom window confirmed it. Where she was moving to was still unknown. Again, those jealous thoughts resurfaced.

  Nancy nodded. “I probably would have moved after Carrie went away to college anyway. But now …” She did not need to finish.

  A moment of awkward silence filled the foyer until Maggie spoke. “So where are you moving?”

  Nancy’s eyes never left Freddy but it was to Maggie she spoke. “Up to Calgary. In a few years maybe down south. Most of my family is around San Diego.”

  “You don’t have to move,” Freddy said.

  Nancy shook her head sadly. “Yes, I do.” She stepped forward and took Freddy’s hands in hers. “This has never really been my home. But I wanted to thank you once more – for Carrie and for myself. For Carrie – for being such a good friend to her. For me,” she paused, her eyes dropping. A small, shy smile tilted her lips. “Let’s just say for waking me up, reminding me I’m still alive.”

  Freddy nodded. This was another instance where he could not figure out what to say. He chose silence over poor wit.

  Nancy took another step forward. She kissed him. It was a lingering kiss, an adult kiss. While it lasted it was as though Freddy’s mother was not even there. Eventually Nancy did step back. She kissed both of his hands in turn and touched his cheek fondly. That sad smile was back. Her eyes were moist. A single tear, so much like a drop of dew, clung to her eyelashes before she blinked it away. “It’s best if I go,” she told him with a quick, intense look. She turned to Maggie, embraced her and back-pedaled to the door. “Thank you, Freddy,” she blew him a kiss, wiggled her fingers in good-bye and slipped out the door.

  With that she was gone. Freddy did not move. He stood at the foot of the stairs listening to his heart beat, a counter-point to the old clock ticking away on the fireplace mantle. He could still feel the pressure of her lips on his. Her scent lingered in the air. Faintly he could hear Nancy start her car and pull away, leaving him and Prince William Falls behind.

  The clock ticked and his heart beat. Freddy could not begin to measure how much time passed. It was one of those timeless moments when the whole of existence seems to take a step back, leaving us alone and as untouchable as wind in the high places and as fragile as a gossamer strand of spider silk in the face of it.

  Slowly he became aware of his mother looking at him in amusement. This too was an expression so completely out of place on her. He glanced at her and she cocked her head, one eyebrow raised in question. Freddy felt a hot flush rise to his forehead.

  “I’ve already heard,” Maggie said in neutral tones. She was neither pleased nor displeased. “Word gets around this town like chattering geese.” She embraced her son. She held him for a slow minute and he let her. Finally, she stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. She walked past him on her way back to her sewing room. At the foot of the stairs she paused. “Don’t let it go to your head, Honey.”

  Nancy had opened his little world to broader horizons. She opened the windows and let fresh air roll in. He knew what could be and maybe he could be content with that. The monster still lurked within him but I began to think maybe Freddy was in control. He had Nancy. She had been his life’s quest since the moment he spied her. At last he had her. Willingly and openly, she had given herself to him. And he was able to let her go.

  But Freddy sensed his power over life expanding. He could grasp in his hands a gift for granting great pleasure and greater pain. I suppose, even as I hoped, I knew better. Through these newly opened windows he could now glimpse all the far-off horizons.

  Ch8. All That Came After

  All That Came After

  Like the butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a metamorphosis occurred in Maggie Cartwright. Her husband was dead, killed at her son’s hands. It would have been normal for her to grieve, to fear for their future and to worry about her son’s state of mind. It would also be normal for her to harbor some secret hatred toward Freddy for taking away the man she married. But she felt none of these.

  Maggie felt alive, reborn, vindicated and free. Stepping out of a long, dark tunnel into the first rays of a new day, she could at long last breathe deeply, smile and cry out her greeting to the dawn. I am being melodramatic perhaps but the change in Freddy’s mother was something to be melodramatic about. It was as if someone had abducted Maggie Cartwright and replaced her with an entirely different person. Well, not entirely different – this new woman enjoyed sewing just as much.

  Almost overnight Maggie’s little side business boomed. She made dresses, she altered suits and would hem anything while you waited. She was also making custom quilts, drapes and duvet covers to match any bedroom décor. Before John’s death, she sold her wares in a little boutique downtown and worked mostly on commission. Having only so much time to work, she was able to clear just a few hundred dollars a month. She could only manage an hour or so each day and less on weekends. John hated the sound of the machine and his patience was usually pretty short. A few hundred a month isn’t much, but I don’t think he was ever aware how much money his wife actually made and how much of it she managed to squirrel away.

  After his death she made a few hundred dollars in a bad week. Now that she was available to accept them, the commissions came rolling in. The following spring, when the girls of Prince William Falls started thinking graduation and the well-to-do women started thinking marriage, she made a thousand a week for nearly three months straight. Yes, her life without John Cartwright would be at least financially secure.

  As I said, Maggie was a new woman. The first notable change was that she would look at you when she spoke. She would engage you and you could see the light in her eyes. There was no doubt that someone was now home. She smiled more – quite a bit more. And she laughed. It was real laughter. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was shocked to discover she actually had a sense of humor. The automaton was gone. The silent shadow of a person who had all of Freddy’s life flitted around the edges of the room stood proudly in the middle.

  Possibly for the first time in his life Freddy found himself with a loving parent, a mother who cared for him. She always had loved him and cared for him but rarely was she able to show it. He might have been startled by the change in his mother but I think he was happy too. Unknowingly or more likely unwittingly he liberated this woman from what easily could have been a death sentence in the years to come. Sure, he killed his father to accomplish it but I doubt anyon
e faulted him for it.

  In regard to John’s death, Maggie spoke to Freddy only once about it. He was washing dishes while she dried and put them away. This had become something of a routine for them each evening after dinner. They chatted idly about the day’s events, their plans for the evening and occasionally the future. Not often did they talk about the past.

  This would have been early November of ‘91. The leaves were long gone from the big old poplar on the front lawn. The birch out back was being stubborn, holding onto its curled, yellow-black foliage like a set of cracked and gnawed fingernails. A few sets of Christmas lights were already twinkling in the darkened neighborhood and the season had begun in all the major stores. No snow had fallen yet. It was cold enough for it. I seem to recall nearly no snow fell that year until January.

  “We gotta get a dishwasher,” Freddy grumbled. It was an old joke, one he reiterated at least weekly.

  Maggie would usually respond by swatting him with her dishtowel and reminding him that she already had one. On this particular evening she didn’t take the bait. Her shoulders sagged and Freddy could see she would have cried if she let herself. She did not.

  Freddy stopped washing and set aside his scrubber. “What’s up, mom?” He asked her pleasantly.

  Maggie remained silent a moment. She did not look at him. “I was just thinking of an old joke your father used to tell. Not many people laughed at it. Mostly they just gave him a look. Those who did laugh, laughed hard.”

  “Mom,” Freddy tried. He took the dish towel from her and dried his hands with it.

  “What do you do when your dishwasher breaks down?”

  “Mom, don’t.”

  “Buy her a new pair of earrings.”

  He held out the dishtowel to her. “Mom, I don’t think I would even call that a joke.”

  “He had others. Better ones,” she went on. “How does a real man open a beer? Hmm? He doesn’t – bitch better have it open when she brings it to me!” Maggie made a croak that could have been a laugh.

  “Mom,” Freddy tried again. He put an arm around her narrow shoulders and drew her close. The gesture was made because that is what a normal person would do. Maggie was rediscovering what it was to be normal and Freddy was learning right along with her. Of course, he was merely going through the motions – it was good practice for the future.

  “My John was full of ‘em!” Maggie declared. She did not cry. Her eyes were dry and her voice steady. Too many years of quiet suffering had left their mark.

  No, she did not cry. But she leaned into her son’s embrace. Freddy could feel the pressure of her breasts against the side of his ribcage. At their touch an irrational stir of arousal came over him. Briefly he recalled the torrent of thoughts and emotions he had when Nancy Hicks stopped by on her way out of town. He knew the very notion of seeing his mother in this light was wrong. It was one of the great taboos. Something far worse than wearing white after Labor Day, was how he put it. Still he did not draw away from her. Her breasts were firm and they were there, pressed against him through mere millimeters of cloth. While they were there, he would enjoy them. Meanwhile, Maggie would believe she had a caring and consoling son.

  “Thank you, Honey.” she whispered to him after a long, drawn-out silence.

  “What for?”

  Maggie snorted a humorless laugh. “I suppose I have sinned, Freddy. I was raised Roman Catholic and in the eyes of God I have sinned.”

  He was silent, patient as winter while she had herself pressed against his side.

  “I was going to kill him,” Maggie confessed. “I planned on doing it any number of times. But I always-”

  “Chickened out?” Freddy supplied a little abruptly. Maggie stiffened under his arm. He thought she would pull away but she didn’t.

  “Not really, no. John was a beast of a man in the end – to both of us – but every time I got ready to do it – poison him, smother him when he was passed out or something like that – I would remember him the way he used to be back before we were married. He was such a charmer then.”

  She glanced up at him, a whimsical little smile on her face. “Did I ever tell you he used to sing to me?”

  Freddy tried to imagine his father singing but could not. The idea was ludicrous.

  “Back in high school he was in a band. They did mostly covers – Zeppelin, The Doors, Kiss. Those were the big ones. But they did a few of their own. He wrote a song for me and it won my heart.”

  “What happened?”

  “Life.” Maggie shrugged. “That’s what always happens. Your dad changed. He always had a temper. I never really saw it until after we were married, until after you were born. And his temper only ever got worse.” She released a shuddering, hot breath into his armpit. “I’ve been on eggshells for so long I nearly pee myself when someone slams a door.

  “But I could live with it,” she went one, “his abuse I mean – because I could remember what he used to be like and because I had you. That’s what I told myself anyway. When he started in on you that all changed.” Maggie looked up at him, her lips a slim line low on her slim face. “I swore to myself John would not live to see Christmas.” She drew away from him then. Maggie went to the fridge and glanced idly inside before turning back to him. “But still I don’t know if I could have done it. You did it for me – for us.”

  Freddy lowered his eyes. He relived the afternoon not three months past. The knife had plunged so easily, so willingly. He recalled the flood of hot blood spraying across his skin. The shock, the disbelief in his father’s eyes had been beautiful. He would relive John’s death a thousand times and still crave more. Each time he knew – and I dreaded – it would never be enough.

  Maggie crossed the kitchen and kissed her son. She did not embrace him or surely she would have felt the erection hidden only by the dish towel in his hands. “So, I just want to say thank you. Don’t ever feel bad for what you did, Honey,” she told him in a low whisper. “Don’t ever feel sorry for him or for me and don’t ever for a moment think I hate you for what you did. I love you for it.”

  “Love,” Freddy murmured. He listened to the sound of the word, tasting it, sampling it as if hearing it for the first time.

  Perhaps he only understood it for the first time.

  -

  Freddy saw a psychologist of course – Tuesdays and Thursdays at four o’clock for five months. A psychologist is trained to read people, to understand them or to figure them out if they do not understand. This one, Dr. Liza Harding, was no exception. Likely her only fault was she was too young, too inexperienced to realize what she was looking at. She could have made a career out of Freddy Cartwright.

  Dr. Harding was the same slender, professionally dressed woman who had climbed into the back of the cruiser with Freddy on the day of the murders. She was likely the only one to see the scratches on his cheeks under John’s blood and she could have challenged his story.

  “Carrie did it,” Freddy answered honestly when she asked in the back of the cruiser. She asked again during one of their first sessions. Maybe she did have her doubts after all.

  This was Dr. Harding’s first mistake. She should have said nothing. The forensic crew should have photographed them and he should have been questioned at a later date. No photos were taken of his face and he was asked to give his statement only once. His story was bought – hook, line and sinker. As I said, John’s reputation was well known.

  “Carrie did it?” Dr Harding asked him.

  Freddy nodded. He made it seem as though he was in shock but what he felt was something closer to ecstasy. He played it well of course. His months of observation had given him a rare insight into human behavior. He knew how to act and react – if not why.

  “She was still alive after-” insert dramatic pause, a slight catch in his voice and a distant look in his eyes. “-after I killed him. Carrie couldn’t breathe. My dad squeezed her. Here.” He touched his windpipe. “There was blood on her face. I didn’t know whos
e it was but she was still alive. I tried helping. We took CPR a couple of years ago. She was out of it – probably never even knew it was me. She probably thought I was my dad.”

  “Did it help?” Dr. Harding asked. “The CPR, I mean.”

  Freddy shook his head. “It was just mouth-to-mouth – you do CPR if their heart stops.”

  “Okay, did the mouth-to-mouth help?”

  Again, Freddy shook his head. “I thought I was gonna hurt her. I think she was scared of me.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I called 911. Josh’s mom answered the call. It was weird having her answer. He was supposed to give me a ride home after school. I would have been with her.”

  “What happened to Josh?” Dr. Harding asked him. “Why didn’t you get a ride?”

  Freddy snorted. “I got in a fight and they left without me. I was supposed to be waiting at the principal’s office while they called home. I just walked out.” He looked up at her and made a little scared expression widen his eyes. “Do you think I’m gonna get a suspension?”