by Jim Grimsley
“What happened?” she asks.
“Come and sit down.”
“I can’t, I’m too restless. Just tell me.”
“I woke up early this morning and your brother was there with your mother. We had breakfast together. I was still drunk from the night before and fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, I found your mother and your brother dead.” It is easier to refer to them this way, rather than use their names.
“Was it a robbery?”
“Your brother’s wallet was gone. I don’t know what else.”
“Was there a door open?”
“The door to the pool. That’s where your brother was sitting.”
“Oh my God,” she says, and sits on the opposite end of the couch.
I stand and walk between her and the door and the hall.
“You have to tell the police that,” she says. “There’s got to be evidence.”
When she sees the knife in my hand, she stops. Her face changes. Her body collapses toward its center and a shudder of terror wipes out the rest of her. She’s huddling, gathering her breath, getting ready to scream.
“Sit there and be quiet and I won’t hurt you. If you even call out for Hilda, I’ll kill you, and then I’ll kill her.”
She has a hard time controlling herself; I watch the changing emotions, terror struggling with a longing to cling to that possible world in which I am telling the truth about not hurting her. In which she will live if she does what I tell her to do. She grabs herself around the middle and holds her breath. “Please, Dad,” she says. “Don’t hurt me.”
“You better not say anything,” I tell her, and she nods, quickly.
“Everything all right out there?” Hilda calls.
“Tell her you’re fine,” I say.
“Everything’s fine,” Ann calls, her voice trembling. She has control of herself. She’s studying me for any weakness. She no longer cares who I am, that I’m her father, except that she can plead using the bond, for mercy. She is gathered at another level of herself, a level that no longer cares whether she is my daughter, where she simply wants to live.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ann,” I say, “but I have to do something.”
The shock of fear again. “What? I’ll scream. Hilda will call the police.”
“No. Hilda will come rushing out here and I’ll kill her and then I’ll kill you, too.”
She’s breathing more heavily, but nods. “All right.”
“You asked me a stupid question the other day. Do you remember?”
“I ask a lot of stupid questions.”
“You asked me why I never abused you.”
This sinks in and the new fear blossoms over her. She sinks backward against the couch slightly, tense in all her muscles. “I was joking around, Dad.”
“You were?”
“Dad, if you touch me like that, I will scream. I swear.”
I stand there with the knife. She’s poised on the couch to move in any direction in the next heartbeat; she means it. She’ll fight.
For a moment I might have done it, I might have attacked her. I can almost see it.
“Don’t ever be that stupid again,” I say.
“What?”
“To suggest such a thing for yourself. Don’t ever be that stupid the rest of your life. Now, go back in the room with Hilda. Call the police if you want to.”
She’s breathing. She’s trying to guess whether this is a trick.
“Give me the knife, then,” she says.
“No. I keep that. You girls just stay back there and I’ll sit out here and wait for the police.”
“Please, Dad.” She’s starting to believe me, studying me with an intensity she never evidenced before. She’s beginning to believe she may get out of this alive. Breathing with her abdomen, poised on her feet, sitting forward on the couch.
“I said I won’t give you the knife, Ann. You told me the police are on the way. I’ll just wait for them out here.” I move toward her and she immediately slides away from me toward the hall. “Go sit with your friend.”
“Why did you do it?” she asks.
I look at her. There’s that feeling of a sob that should be here, a ghost of a sob. It needs to come out but I won’t let it out. “I don’t know.”
“Were you quarreling?”
“Yes.”
“Why was Frankie there?”
“He was trying to help your mother. She found out we were losing the house.”
“Losing the house?” This knocks the wind out of her. “What? How is that possible?”
“Why do I still need to tell you that I’m out of work?” I say.
“I thought you’d have taken any old job you could get before you let that happen.”
“You sound like your mother. Any old job won’t pay that mortgage.”
Sliding closer to that person I would like to kill, that daughter I would prefer not survive me, she becomes petulant and shouts. “No wonder she was divorcing you. No wonder she was sick of you.”
“Don’t do this, Ann.”
“You could have said something. Frankie and I could have helped you.”
“Your brother’s idea of help was to schedule an appointment for your mother to see an attorney, and you’ve had your hand out to me for cash at every opportunity since you were eleven, so please tell me what kind of help you were going to be?”
She flushes red. “You didn’t have to kill them.”
I lunge toward her and grab her by the hair with the knife toward her throat. She whitens over with fright, her face pale, her lips trembling, drool brimming at the corner of her mouth. I shove her against the door and when Hilda appears I say, “If either one of you says a word or moves, I will cut Ann’s throat wide open just like I did her mother. Do you understand?”
Hilda backs toward the door she came out of and nods.
“Stay still,” I hiss at her.
She freezes and clings to the wall. I can see every blue vein in her thin, long arm.
Ann is trembling, tears in the corners of her eyes bursting into streams, little noises coming out of her throat.
“I don’t know why,” I say. “I crossed that line. That’s all. Don’t talk to me like I’m nobody, like I’m nothing.”
She shakes her head, eyes closed, terrified to look at me.
“Never once in three years have you stopped to ask whether I could still afford to give you money, never once. You need to think better than that, Ann. You need to think a lot better.”
She whimpers. I shove her down the hall; my shoulder burns when I do. She falls on the floor and looks at me. I am no longer certain what she might be seeing, how she might feel about it. She will have that for her future. She is the daughter of a monster, not quite human any more. Maybe that will be enough to save her life.
“Go in that room there, both of you. Close the door. If I hear the door open, I’ll kill you both. Do you understand?”
Hilda nods quickly, nostrils flared. She helps Ann up and pulls her into the room. The door closes.
I put the knife in the bag and roll it to the door. I get out of there as fast I can. Nobody stops me as I pull the SUV onto the street.
Chances Are My Chances Are
I CHECK INTO A CHEAP MOTEL-ISH hotel along the interstate, nondescript, a room and a bathroom, a TV in a cheap stand. There’s no news before noon so I won’t know till then what my coverage is like.
In this barren room with two chairs and a queen bed I have to decide which kind of villain I have become. Am I the tragically stupid hero who stumbled into killing his wife through unfortunate throes of chance and ends his own life as soon as he comes to his senses? Or will I outlive my wife and son by a lot more than a day? The clock is ticking.
I test the hot water in the bathroom, run a tub full of it, get out the knife.
I have Carmine’s purse, which has her bottle of Ambien in it. I can swallow those, drink the bourbon, get in the hot tub, cut my wrists as dee
p as possible, cutting carefully along rather than across the forearm; with this heavy knife I should be able to do plenty of damage, with the bourbon and Ambien to put me into a dreamy drowsiness and dull the pain. If I’m lucky I’ll have time to die before the police figure out where I am.
If I’d planned better I’d have a gun with me but I’ve never owned one. In some ways, that would make the choice too simple and quick. With my luck I’d miss, anyway, and end my days as a paraplegic.
A decent man would do it, would end it here.
In the movie of my life, though, I might not present myself as much in the way of a decent man.
I scan the channels for a few seconds, a worshipful car ad leading to a male enhancement product leading to an pharmaceutical ad about a cure for toenail fungus that might kill you with liver disease, followed by beautiful Nicole Kidman selling Chanel and for a very good price, or so it appears, arresting images, every one. What star is there to help me now in my need? Ed Asner in his character from The Mary Tyler Moore Show? Alan Thicke from Growing Pains? Ellen DeGeneres on her new talk show? Ricki Lake?
No celebrity of any sort appears. Instead, it’s Carmine in the corner, sitting in a chair with yellow vinyl upholstery, playing herself, dead. The bloody flap of cheek hangs down, and the nick in her lip makes her voice sound funny. “You know what you’re going to do. Get on with it.”
“You think I’ll kill myself over you?” I blow out my breath. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”
“I think you’ll turn yourself in,” she says. She really is smoking a cigarette in this take, sitting there in good light, the special effects working, the latex making her look like she’s been sliced to pieces. “I think you’ll get on the phone and call the cops.”
“You think I’m that brave?”
She grins. It’s really an ugly sight, but completely in character for her. “I think you’re the same wimp you’ve always been, Charley. Killing me doesn’t make you anything. You’re still a dumpling.”
I feel the clutch of hate for her in my gut that refuses to fade. “You’re trying to push me into getting into the tub.”
“It’s going to run over soon,” she says.
“I’m watching it.”
“I don’t know why you’re bothering.”
“Go to hell.”
“Not a chance,” she says. “I’ll never leave you, darling.”
I think about that. I turn off the tub and run my hand into the water. It’s steaming.
“You can tell yourself you’re staying alive for your daughter,” she says. “Thanks to you, you’re all she’s got left. So you can say to yourself you’re doing it for her.”
Tears are welling in my eyes, genuine tears. “If you’d ever had an ounce of mercy in you, Carmine, you would have been the best woman in the world.”
“I know you, Charley. You were drunk when you killed me. You didn’t have the balls to do it sober. You don’t want to die. You’re about to piss yourself thinking about it.”
I’m dizzy and sit on the bed. My hands and arms are trembling. The chair she was sitting in is empty now and she’s nowhere else to be seen, but there’s still her voice. “Pick up the phone, Charley. Stop wasting time.”
I look for her and feel tears in my eyes. What I’ve done is so wrong, so complete and irrevocable, now that it’s no longer fiction, now that I can’t change it.
Her voice is so set and hard. “What do you want, you miserable piece of pork? You cut me into chunks and you want my forgiveness? Now that I’m dead I’m supposed to bless you? Fuck you, Charley. From beyond the grave, fuck you. Hate is eternal, Charley, it lasts just as long as love. I will always be here, I will never leave you, and from all the way back to the moment I met you I curse you. You are the scum of the universe to me, and I will hound you for the rest of your miserable days. Even if you don’t want to survive I’m not giving you any choice. So pick up the phone and dial, my sweetheart.”
I pick up the phone and dial. It takes a while, but I get through.
The noon news comes on and there I am, the cops around my house, the police tape, the earnest news reporter with outrageous hair. Shots of a stretcher covered by a sheet leaving the house. A shot of my frail, shaken mother-in-law. The police are asking anyone with news as to the whereabouts of the suspected assailant, Charles Ebenezer Stranger, please call this number and etcetera. For identification they’re using my last picture from my days at Arthur Andersen. The images come to me as if from a distant planet, as if the story is about someone else.
I wait for a while. Every couple of minutes I think I need to pee and try and nothing comes out. There finally sounds a pounding on the door. “Police,” I hear, and other words I can’t make out, and my heart pounds. Uniform cops in body armor bash through the door and point guns at me. Detectives in suits come in, and more uniforms. The detectives look forceful and determined. My crime has caught their attention, they are energized, focused, striding in, looking around the room, while I’m being manhandled in the nicest way by a uniformed woman taller and heavier than me.
“The knife’s over there,” I say, pointing to a table across the room. “I’m not armed.”
The guy detective grabs me anyway and the woman bends my arms behind my back and I feel joints ache from being twisted the wrong way. The shoulder burns from Carmine’s scratches.
“Are you Charley Stranger,” the detective asks.
“Yes.”
“You live at,” and he gives my address.
“Yes.”
“Why you here in this cheap hotel, Charley? You want to tell us what happened?”
“You know what happened,” I say. “I killed my wife and my son. Carmine Stranger and Frank Stranger.”
“They were pretty cut up. What happened?”
“I had a fight with my wife. We were losing the house. She had asked for a divorce. She said some things.”
The detective is nodding his head, listening, not responding at all. “What about your son?”
The woman is watching me without any sign of what she’s thinking. The questions and their blank expressions are making me see, hear, what I’m saying, and it sounds so cheap, so ordinary.
“He was there. He would have stopped me from killing his mother.”
The detectives look me over as if I’m hardly even there. This is nothing like a movie when I tell it, nothing at all. I’m a failed wreck of a human being who killed his partner and his child, one more vote for the dark side of the Force. I’m nobody. I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m going to amount to anything as a criminal.
The woman recites my rights and they take me outside. There are reporters here from only two local TV stations but that’s a start. The cops walk me past the reporters and cameras snap. I never try to cover my head, I’m true to myself from the first moment. Someone asks me, “Did you kill your wife and son, sir?” and I shake my head in weariness, looking stricken, as if I have seen too much. It is as if I can see myself in the lens of the camera, as if I can manipulate the image that is the final end-product, the picture of me that people will receive. Looking broken and penitent, I follow along beside the woman guiding me. The detectives shove me into the back seat of a car with my hands cuffed behind me. I make note of which television stations these are, and hope some of these people are real news reporters. I try to look willing to be interviewed. I’m going to need all the coverage I can get.
Epilogue
PRESIDENT BUSH HAD THIS TO SAY about my case, when he was taking questions on family values at a recent press conference at the White House: “I think if he’s guilty of the crimes he committed, he should duly be punished underneath the law of, whatever, the state where he lives. That’s the beauty of our justice here, you know. Even a criminal like this man will get his day in court. He’s lucky he killed his wife in America. Next question.”
